Weird

by Jeremy Strong

  I watched her swing down the road towards home. Swimming. Some people have all the luck. She really did have nice legs. My mind went on holiday to a French beach.

  Fizz

  I was pleased I had remembered my little cat. He’s so cute. He’s got an extra-long tail and that kind of knobbly covering with a tiny bean filling that makes him very cuddly. God, I sound like I’m seven! Come to think of it, that’s probably what Josh thinks. He didn’t seem impressed when I showed him, but I had this feeling that Mrs Ogweyo was going to like him. You can fold his arms and everything. Well, not his arms obviously, because cats don’t have arms – I mean his front legs. You can cross his back legs too, and he sits there with crossed back legs and folded front legs, looking like a cat-buddha. I expect Josh was jealous because he hadn’t thought of it, not that he’s got a toy cat to give Mrs Ogweyo and he couldn’t give her a real one because she’s not allowed so that just leaves his rocket. Don’t suppose Mrs Ogweyo wants a big red rocket. Yeah, he’s jealous.

  I decided I’d better not let Matron see the cat or she was bound to confiscate it or keep it for herself so I kept him in my bag and when I had a few minutes to spare I snuck up to Mrs Ogweyo’s room.

  ‘I hear you’ve got a new wardrobe,’ I began.

  Mrs Ogweyo shook her head sadly. ‘That poor boy, Josh. I felt so sorry for him, but what could I do? I couldn’t tell Matron he was looking for Freddie. Matron frightens me when she’s cross and she’d be furious if she knew I was keeping Freddie in my room. All I could do was sit there and let him take the blame for everything. I hope his knees weren’t hurt. The new wardrobe isn’t as nice as the old one, either. The door sticks.’

  ‘Is Freddie here?’ I asked, feeling stupidly excited.

  ‘I’m sure he was a moment ago and I don’t think he’s gone out.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s under your bed? I’ll take a look.’

  ‘Oh. All right.’ She seemed surprised.

  I pushed myself halfway beneath Mrs Ogweyo’s bed and pulled the cat from my bag. Then I wriggled out, holding him. ‘Yes, he’s here. I thought so. Look.’

  Mrs Ogweyo stared silently at the cat. I held him at arm’s length, his long tail dangling down, slowly swinging to and fro. Mrs Ogweyo sat and stared.

  ‘Freddie?’ she hesitated and raised her eyes to mine. I nodded. I didn’t dare speak. She held out her hands and I passed the cat over. ‘He always had such soft fur,’ she murmured, squeezing the beanbag body.

  ‘I’d better get back to work,’ I said, and headed for the door. She called after me.

  ‘You’re a clever young thing, that’s for sure. Thank you, Rose.’

  Rose? I almost stopped and went back. Then I thought, no, it doesn’t matter. She’s got the cat. That’s the important thing. God knows who Rose is, or was. Knowing Mrs Ogweyo, it could be a rhinoceros. She was a bit confused, that’s all. But not so confused that she didn’t know a real cat from a beanbag cat – I was pretty sure of that.

  I met Josh at lunchtime and we had the usual crazy argument where he thinks he’s terribly sensible and knows everything and then gets cross when I disagree. He looks really handsome when he’s being serious. His face becomes more powerful. He looks funny too. I wish he could see how funny he is. He needs to lighten up.

  I don’t think he was very pleased about me going swimming either. Not that it was swimming. All I had to do was stand in the pool and be there in case any of the wrinklies decided they wanted to try drowning as an alternative exercise to the splashing the instructress got them doing. There were only three of them but, honestly, I’ve seen goldfish do more exciting things. After a while I began to hope that someone would try drowning. At least it would have given me something to do. Instead of which I was just getting colder and colder. It was the most boring visit to a swimming pool I’d had, ever. Eventually the olds were allowed out so they could change and I had to spend the next ten minutes retrieving all the floats and bits and bobs they’d been using for their exercises and stack them away properly. Pure slavery, of course. At last I was able to go and get changed myself. I’d barely got my knickers on when the fire alarm went off and panic broke out.

  Josh

  It’s astonishing that I didn’t have a heart attack. I was standing right beneath one of the alarm bells when it went off. Almost at once voices began to call out. Fortunately I had been so bored most of the week I had read the Fire Procedure notices at least ten times so I had a fair idea of what everyone should be doing – assemble in the garden, basically.

  I thought I ought to check the rooms to make sure they were empty so I started at the furthest end. Miss Dash hurried past in her wheelchair, muttering something about hating all these exercises they had to do, so I guessed it was probably a practice drill, except that at school when they have practice drill they tell everyone first of all.

  The corridor was filling up with slow-moving prunes. Mr Winkleberry offered to help several of the ladies by putting an arm round them but they usually beat him off and obviously didn’t need helping at all. Fancy being a sex maniac at that age. How can he even consider it? I mean, I’ve seen better-looking tortoises than most of the residents at Marigolds.

  I wandered along behind them, checking each room as I went, and feeling like a shepherd with a wayward flock of sheep. At the door I met Major Trubshaw and told him I’d checked upstairs.

  ‘Good. Sensible lad,’ he grunted. First time he’s been nice to me. Wow. I was thrilled. (Sarcasm.) By this time I had realized that maybe all this was Mrs Kowalski’s doing and there was no fire; it was simply a diversion so she could make her escape. Mrs Ogweyo passed me, clutching Freddie. I was surprised to see Madame Dupont too. I had assumed that they would be in the tunnel. Maybe this wasn’t anything to do with the escape attempt and there was a real fire.

  Everyone tottered out to the garden. The last to arrive were three ladies wearing an odd mixture of swimming costumes, skirts, cardigans, towels and goggles, but not necessarily all of them at once. They’d come from the physiotherapy pool. Matron did a head count. That’s when the missing member revealed herself. Mrs Kowalski. My heart sank and I crossed my fingers behind my back. I hoped she’d already made it.

  ‘She must be inside,’ growled the Major. ‘It would have to be her. I’ll go and check.’ He turned to me. ‘I thought you checked her room?’

  ‘I – I did. She wasn’t there.’

  Matron was looking back at the building. ‘I can’t see any sign of fire,’ she murmured, and at the same time we caught the distant sound of approaching sirens. ‘I hope the brigade aren’t hurrying to a false alarm. They won’t be very pleased.’

  ‘I’m going back in for Mrs Kowalski,’ the Major declared and walked quickly into the building. I looked round for Fizz but couldn’t spot her. My heart began to beat faster. She must be here somewhere. I pushed past the little crowd of onlookers but there was no sign. Panic set in and I ran towards the building.

  ‘You can’t go in!’ Matron shouted after me.

  ‘Fizz is still inside,’ I yelled and disappeared through the doorway. I headed straight for the physiotherapy pool, because I knew she’d been there and I had to start somewhere. I hurled myself through the double doors and looked round.

  ‘Fizz? Fizz! Fizz!’ I yelled and yelled but there was no answer. I was about to check the cubicles when out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of something, something floating at the edge of the pool. It was Fizz, face down, slowly sinking. I forgot all about not being able to swim properly, raced along the side and jumped in next to her, and was surprised to find the water only came up to my chest. I lifted her face from the water and turned her over. ‘Fizz, Fizz!’ She didn’t move. Right, what to do? Where had all that First Aid stuff gone in my head? Why couldn’t I remember?

  Get her out first. Quickly. I got her to the side, jumped out and hauled her on to the edge. Lay her on her side, clear her mouth of any obstacle. Roll her on to her back, one hand under her neck;
tip her head back so her air passage is clear; kiss of life. I bent over her. I did this five or six times and then she coughed and spluttered and I quickly turned her head to one side so she could spit up any water. She spluttered again and took a deep breath. OK, get her outside. She was still choking but I didn’t dare spend any more time in the building in case there was a real fire. I dragged her on to my back and stumbled down the corridor. I felt her body go limp again and said over and over again: don’t die, don’t die, don’t die. We made it to the front doors and down the steps. I laid her on the grass and went through the whole procedure again. Tip head back, apply mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

  It was on the third attempt that Fizz’s body gave a little jolt and she took a deep, smooth breath, and another. And another. Her eyes fluttered open, registered me bending over her, then she lifted her arms, wrapped them round me – and kissed me back.

  I surfaced from that to a chorus of hoots and cheers. Miss Dash had two fingers in her mouth and was whistling encouragement. All the prunes were lined up and were watching the drama. A moment later two fire engines and one ambulance screeched to a halt and men poured into the building. Cool!

  Fizz

  My funky-hunky hero! I mean, Josh actually saved my life. I didn’t even know he knew all that life-saving stuff. He never said. Maybe it’s standard training for a would-be astronut. Anyway, he saved me. Me! He saved everything except my glasses. I think they might be at the bottom of the pool and they can stay there.

  The fire alarm got the old biddies panicking a bit. Me too. I mean, we were all still getting changed. Why do fire alarms have to go off at such inconvenient times? Why couldn’t it have waited quietly until we’d finished dressing and then gone off? But no, it was extremely rude and decided to catch us all by the unawares. I’d got underwear on and I slung a T-shirt over my top and raced out of the cubicle, pulling up my skirt as I went. Everyone else was already hurrying out. I was the last, delayed by all that float-fetching.

  I ran after them, still trying to do up the zip on my skirt, which means I was doing two stupid things at once – running along a wet poolside while trying to do something fiddly. I stumbled, tripped over my own feet and fell headlong into the pool, hitting my head on the side as I went in. I was temporarily stunned.

  It can only have been a few moments before Josh came charging in and rescued me. Then he gave me the kiss of life. Twice! I don’t remember the first much, but the second was brilliant.

  I was still lying there in his arms with everyone cheering when the Major came out with Mrs Kowalski. It seemed she’d been missing and he’d gone back in to look for her. Meanwhile the fire brigade arrived and took over, even though, as things turned out, there was no fire.

  It took a while for everything to come to light. Mrs Kowalski had set off the fire alarm as a diversion. Everybody left the building except for her. Plus me, of course, but that’s because I was practising deep-sea diving with a drowning option in the pool. Mrs Kowalski went to the tunnel and that’s where Major Trubshaw found her – not in the tunnel but at the entrance, and the entrance turned out to be the door to a storeroom, the one with all the toilet rolls and soap and stuff. You’d have thought it astonishing that Josh and I hadn’t noticed that there was a tunnel entrance inside the very room we had spent so much time in. The reason we didn’t see it was simply that it wasn’t there. It didn’t exist. It had never existed. It was Mrs Kowalski’s Freddie.

  ‘She’s done it before,’ the Major told us, when Josh and I went back yesterday, which, I would like to point out, was a Saturday. Exactly – we turned up at work on a Saturday. How weird is that? Well, we had to find out what had really been going on. Hadn’t had a chance before, what with being carted off to hospital in a real ambulance and everything. Josh came with me. He wouldn’t leave my side. He was brilliant and he looks so handsome when he’s wet through. Poor boy, he was shivering with cold.

  We both ended up in the back of the ambulance wrapped in blankets. I said we should share our body heat and that way we’d get better more quickly and the ambulance chap said he didn’t think that was true and I said it was a well-known fact that when Native Americans got trapped in the snowy mountains and were dying of cold they used to disembowel one of their horses and climb inside the dead body while it was still warm in order to conserve their own body heat and the ambulance man said he didn’t think that would be necessary and besides it wasn’t snowing. Anyhow, while he was saying all this I crept under Josh’s blanket anyway and I can tell you I was right. It was much better sharing.

  Where was I? Oh yes, Major Trubshaw said Mrs Kowalski had done this sort of thing before. ‘This was her fourth non-existent tunnel. We know when she’s in a tunnelling phase because the spoons start to disappear. I found her outside the storeroom door. She was searching her handbag and saying she was sure she had a key. She doesn’t, of course. It’s always been pretty harmless before, but this time she set off the alarm. She really does believe she’s been tunnelling.’

  ‘I think that may have been our fault,’ I owned up.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘She told us at the beginning of the week about the tunnel and we believed her and we brought her a spade and a map and…’

  Major Trubshaw gawped at us and then started to choke. His cheeks bulged out. He coughed and spluttered until I was getting quite worried. His whole body convulsed and finally he bellowed with laughter. ‘Priceless!’ he shouted. ‘Absolutely priceless. Yes, I can see that might have helped convince her.’

  ‘Sorry,’ muttered Josh.

  ‘To tell you the truth,’ said Major Trubshaw, ‘I think that’s rather fine – that you two would make such an effort to help. You may have gone about it in a strange way, but the residents have enjoyed your visit. I can’t deny that.’

  ‘We thought all the residents were going to escape. We thought they all knew about the tunnel,’ Josh said.

  ‘They did. As I said, it’s happened before. They know it’s all a fantasy in Mrs Kowalski’s mind, and they quietly go along with it because it’s easier that way and it keeps everyone, especially Mrs Kowalski, happy. There’s not much else wrong with her after all. Like many old people she remembers the past more clearly than the present. She had a very exciting time in her youth. She flew with the RAF for a start.’

  ‘She really was with the Air Transport Auxiliary?’ asked Josh.

  ‘You know about that? Oh yes. Did she tell you about her husband, Jack, and how he got shot down and made an escape bid? It all happened. They were dangerous, exciting times for those who lived through them. All she has now is old age and a room in a care home. It’s no wonder she prefers to spend most of her time reliving her past.’ He paused and chuckled. ‘It’s funny, don’t you think? There was Mrs Kowalski trying to escape and she was the only one left in the building! All the others were already outside. Apart from you, of course.’

  There was still one thing I wanted to know.

  ‘Did Madame Dupont work for the French Resistance?’

  ‘Is that what Mrs Kowalski told you? No. Madame Dupont was married to a diplomat and travelled the world, which is exciting enough.’

  So that explains that.

  Josh held my hand at the hospital. He said I looked better without my glasses.

  ‘Of course I do. They were made in seventeen hundred and something and hewn out of crud by cross-eyed, blind and ugly elves, their minds set on revenge against a world full of beauty.’

  ‘You are so weird.’

  ‘It’s true, and if I didn’t have parents who were also made in seventeen hundred and something I’d be wearing contact lenses.’

  ‘Weird but beautiful.’

  ‘Say that again.’

  ‘No, it’ll go to your head.’

  The hospital kept me in for a few hours in case I’d been concussed. They contacted my parents and they rushed to my bedside, like I was dying or something. I mean, they’d missed that bit by hours. They did all the u
sual parental concern stuff and asked how it happened and I said it was because my glasses were so heavy they were falling down my nose so I couldn’t see where I was going and tripped over my own feet etc., etc., etc., and what I really really needed were CONTACT LENSES.

  ‘I don’t believe it’s been scientifically established that contact lenses prevent drowning…’ began Dad, but Mum told him not to be stupid and of course I could have contact lenses.

  Result! I was so excited I hugged Josh and his face sort of went peach, strawberry, beetroot, in that order, which sounds like some totally bonkers salad but that’s Josh for you, and Mum said, ‘Don’t we get a hug?’ So I had to hug them too. Then the doctor said could he have one, but I think he was joking. Or maybe he’s going to turn into a Mr Winkleberry when he gets old.

  So there we are. Josh and I have still got to write up our report for Friday. God knows what we’re going to put. But we’ve got other things to do as well. Josh says it’s going to be a good evening for launching Escape IV, so we’re going up to the park later, after we’ve done the report.

  ‘We’ll have to wait until the stars come out before we launch the rocket,’ I told Josh.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So Escape IV can see where it’s going.’

  ‘You are so…’

  I shut him up before he could tell me, yet again. I shan’t say how I shut him up but he didn’t seem to mind.

  It was cosmic telling Evie what had happened. She kept squealing: ‘He never!’ and I kept squealing: ‘He did!’

  ‘What was it like?’ she asked breathlessly.