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Wild Stories

Page 12

by Colin Thompson


  ‘Isn’t that wonderful?’ said Lucille. ‘Let’s go and get some.’

  ‘Hang on, hang on,’ said Attila. ‘What do you think we are – wasps? We’re bluebottles. We eat rotten meat and dead fish.’

  ‘But it smells so good,’ said Lucille. ‘Couldn’t we just go and lick it a bit?’

  ‘No, of course we can’t,’ said Attila, ‘but I tell you what we could do.’

  ‘What, what?’

  ‘We could go and be sick on it.’

  So the two bluebottles flew into the house and buzzed round and round the kitchen table, their heads all dizzy with the luscious smell of hot sugar. And there in the hot summer kitchen they discovered that not everything their mother had told them had been wrong. They had learnt that the world was a huge and wonderful place full of light and wide open skies. They had learnt that everywhere there were new and amazing things, that there was so much to see and to do, it seemed as if an endless life of adventure stretched out before them. And the very last thing they learnt as they swooped down towards the soft meringue mountains was that their mother had certainly been right about one thing – The Massive Rolled Up Newspaper.

  Arkwright the Cat

  Winter came to the garden and plants that had stood tall and green all summer turned to gold and crumbled to dust. The skeletons of great thistles stood brown and lifeless, their dangerous spikes now no more than frail icicles crisp with frost. Between their shrivelled leaves the shells of insects turned to paper and blew away in the wind.

  The swallows had gone to Africa leaving their nests to sleeping spiders while above them tortoiseshell butterflies hibernated in the roof. The birds that remained grew silent and lazy. They sat huddled in the bare branches fluffed up against the cold. With the flowers dead and gone the insects that had lived off them died too.

  Below the old shed at the bottom of the garden the hedgehogs sank deep into their nest of grass and slept. The worms moved deeper into the earth to escape the cold and the moles tunnelled deeper to find them. At the bottom of the pond next year’s mosquitos and dragonflies lay suspended in tiny eggs and above the city the timeless stars flickered in the clear cold air of night.

  Nature slowed down until it had almost stopped.

  In the yard beside the house the wind picked up the loose leaves and threw them in a pile by the back door until it had made a golden pyramid against the step. It whistled round the corner and rattled past the dustbins as sharp as a rusty knife. Arkwright the cat sat in the coal bunker and listened as the wind roared round the house.

  Maybe it’s just my memory playing tricks, he thought to himself, but the wind seemed softer in the old days.

  Maybe it’s because I’m getting old, he thought, and my fur is growing thin, but it didn’t seem to be so cold either.

  He drifted off into dreams of long hot summer days when he and Gertrude had been the most feared creatures along the whole canal. No bird or mouse had been safe as they swept like tigers through the grass. Even tiny moths had flown away as they approached.

  The years had passed and they had grown old

  and slow. A year ago Gertrude had crept into a tunnel under a mountain of old railway sleepers. Arkwright had sat by the dark hole and waited but he had known she wasn’t coming out again.

  A sparrow hopped down the yard but Arkwright was too cold to move. All he had eaten for the past few days had been the last moths of autumn that had flown into the streetlights. There was nothing much else to eat in this quiet tidy street. It wasn’t the sort of place where people threw scraps out. He’d found a few crusts thrown out for the birds but as soon as people saw him on their lawns they chased him away. He had grown so thin that every breath of cold reached into his bones.

  He had grown up wild among the factories across the canal. There were dozens of cats there, dirty scraggy creatures that fought and screamed in the night.

  He had had his day, when he had been top cat and all the others moved aside as he’d passed. It hadn’t lasted long. It never did. After one proud summer when he was five years old another younger cat had pushed him aside and over the next five years he had moved further and further away from the centre of things until he found himself with the old cats who scratched around in the younger ones’ leftovers. His companions then had been one-eared, half-blind, limping creatures hiding in dark corners. Arkwright hadn’t been like the rest of them. He still had all his ears and teeth and, although slowed by age, he still walked straight and proud.

  After Gertrude died Arkwright felt restless and unwelcome. He sat by the canal and looked across the brown water at the tall trees and thick bushes alive with birds and butterflies, and said to himself, That’s where I’ll go, over there to that beautiful garden.

  He walked along the canal in both directions for miles and miles but there was no way across. From time to time an old barge moved slowly along the water with its engine purring softly like a heartbeat. The warm smells of coal fires and cooking food drifted across the water as they passed. Ducks moved lazily aside and then the canal fell quiet again. If he had been younger he would have jumped onto one and waited until it had gone close to the opposite bank and leapt off, but he was too tired and stiff in his bones. So he just sat and watched them as they went by.

  ‘How can I get across the water?’ he asked the other cats.

  ‘Too good to live here with the rest of us, are you?’ they said and stopped speaking to him. Arkwright left the old lorry where most of the cats lived and moved into an oil drum by the towpath. And then one winter night there was a great storm and lightning struck a giant oak and it fell across the canal crushing the lorry as it came. In the morning when the wind and rain had faded away there was a path over the water to the wonderful garden. The other cats had fled into the desert of factories, too scared to go near the wrecked lorry or the water.

  ‘If we were meant to be on that side of the canal we’d have been born there,’ they said, but Arkwright saw his chance and scrambled through the tangled branches to the opposite bank. Later on, when some of the others had changed their minds, it was too late. Men had come and taken the tree away and the bridge to freedom had gone. On calm nights Arkwright could still hear the others across the water fighting and squabbling.

  He had been eleven years old when he had crossed the canal and now he was fifteen. He had had four good years, with plenty to eat and a warm dry home. In those years the house had been empty and Arkwright had lived in the cellar in an old rat’s nest of warm newspapers. Away from the fighting and squabbling he had felt himself a king again. There were very few cats on this side of the water and those there were poor pampered creatures who avoided him. He had been lonely but he had felt at peace.

  Then the people had moved into the house. They had closed up the hole into the cellar and Arkwright had spent the summer among the bushes and undergrowth. It had been a good summer, warm and well fed, but now winter had arrived and Arkwright began to feel his age. He was scared of people. He had seen the way they treated the cats around the factories and he knew man was something to keep away from, but the coal bunker was the only place he could find out of the biting wind.

  At night he crept out into the garden to look for food. He had a terrible pain in his front leg that made him walk with a slow limp, so slow that any thought of catching mice was out of the question. Soft yellow light shone from the house onto the lawn carrying with it the warm smell of food and the sound of laughing voices. Next door’s cat was inside its house in the warmth by the fire, and Arkwright found himself wondering if maybe all humans weren’t the same.

  Maybe some of them are all right, he thought, but when he tried to follow next door’s cat into its kitchen a thin woman threw a jug of water over him. A frost fell that night and the water froze in his fur and Arkwright lay in the coal bunker wishing he could just go quietly to sleep and never wake up again. But he didn’t,
he just sat in the coal dust and shivered until morning.

  The frost stayed all day now and the people in the house turned up their new central heating and decided to light the fire. The man brushed away the leaves from the coal bunker lid and opened it. At first he didn’t see the two yellow eyes staring up out of the blackness. Only when Arkwright ran limping out of the shute at the bottom did the man realise the cat was there. He called him, but of course Arkwright stayed hidden in the bushes.

  When the old cat crept back to his shelter that night, there was a saucer just inside the door, a saucer of white liquid that Arkwright had never seen before, but he knew what it was.

  ‘Poison,’ he muttered.

  He had seen dishes of it in the factories and seen what had happened to the rats and cats that had eaten it. Later that night a hedgehog stuck its nose in and drank the liquid. Arkwright thought he should warn the poor animal but whenever he’d said anything in the past they’d all cursed him.

  Still, he thought, I’m the only one who’s lived past ten. And then as the wind got colder he wondered if that had been such a great thing to achieve.

  The next night the man put another saucer down and the hedgehog came back and emptied it.

  ‘Was it you here last night?’ said Arkwright.

  ‘What if it was?’ asked the hedgehog.

  ‘Do you feel all right?’ said Arkwright.

  ‘What’re you talking about?’ said the hedgehog.

  ‘The poison,’ said Arkwright.

  ‘What poison?’

  ‘The poison in the saucer,’ said Arkwright.

  ‘That’s not poison,’ laughed the hedgehog. ‘That’s milk.’ As soon as he’d said it he realised what an idiot he’d been. If he’d let Arkwright keep on believing the saucer was full of poison, he’d be able to come and drink it every night. Now the cat would get it.

  And the cat did get it. He sat in the bushes until the man had gone back indoors and then he hurried over and drank every last drop. After two weeks he no longer bothered to hide. The man spoke gently to him as he put down the saucer and Arkwright’s ancient fear began to soften. The man’s children began to come too and they brought food as well as milk. They held out their small hands to Arkwright but he wasn’t ready to touch them. A lifetime of avoiding man, and avoiding him with good reason, couldn’t just vanish and although instinct drew him towards the children other older instincts from untamed ancestors kept him back. He was not a cat who had once been loved by humans and abandoned to go wild. He had been born wild to parents who had been wild.

  As November became December Arkwright grew stronger. With food and drink each day he became fatter and his fur thickened against the cold. The children put a box with a cushion in it inside the coal bunker but still he wouldn’t let them go near him. Every day when they came to feed him, they held out their hands and talked to him. Every day he sat at a safe distance and listened to them. He was unable to undertand the words but he felt from the way they spoke that they meant him no harm.

  ‘Come on, cat,’ said the boy, ‘come and live in the house.’

  ‘Come on, pussy,’ said the girl, ‘please.’

  But Arkwright kept them at ten arms’ lengths.

  Although he was growing fatter and warmer, the arthritis in his front leg got no better. In fact it was getting worse. Sometimes the effort of walking hurt so much that he could barely move. The pain seemed to spread through his whole body even into the deepest corners of his brain. Only when he lay on his cushion and kept perfectly still did it get any better.

  And that was how they caught him. The man came out with the saucer and as Arkwright tried to run away, the pain shot through him like a knife of fire and his leg collapsed beneath him. The man reached down and scooped him up and before he could spit or scratch he was in the house by the fire. For everyone there are times when they have to stop struggling, times when they have to shrug their shoulders and let things happen. For Arkwright it was that time. He saw the dancing flames of the fire, felt its sunshine sinking into his cold fur and realised that he had been cold for too long. The flames flickered and swayed in front of his eyes and, like humans and animals everywhere, he was hypnotised.

  With the warmth of the house and the pills they gave him the pain in his leg grew less and less. For the rest of his life he walked with a limp but as long as he could jump up onto the little girl’s bed he didn’t care that he couldn’t stalk mice. He lay in the soft quilt at the child’s feet and dreamt of Gertrude.

  If she could see me now, he thought, what would she think?

  On Christmas day they gave Arkwright a collar. It was red velvet and had a medallion with his address on it.

  I’m not going anywhere, he thought.

  And he didn’t, though when they started calling him Susie he did wonder about it.

  Christmas

  At the end of a quiet street, at the edge of a large town, stood a beautiful old house. On either side in flat silent gardens the houses sat cold and weary. There was heat inside them made by white boxes on kitchen walls that clicked and moaned through the winter nights, but outside the houses looked dull and lifeless. Their chimneys stood damp and empty above closed up fireplaces.

  Only at the house called fourteen was it any different. The garden was like a sleeping jungle. It was the middle of winter. The leaves had fallen and the trees stood dark and quiet but still the garden was full of life. Birds cluttered up the branches and small secret creatures tunnelled through the thick piles of leaves hunting for food. The house itself looked warm and comfortable like a big armchair. There was no white box on its kitchen wall and in its fireplaces real fires danced and crackled. Every single brick was warm and cosy. The whole house seemed to glow in the November darkness.

  The days of winter moved slowly on and it started to get very cold. The sun kept low all day. Its light was weak and tired and gave out so little heat that the heavy frost lay undisturbed from dawn to dusk. Every twig, every blade of grass, was covered in crystals of ice that sparkled like a million tiny diamonds as the thin sun danced through them. A deep cold crept into every corner. In the deserted factories across the canal, ferns of ice crystals covered the windows and from the pale roofs icicles hung down towards the freezing ground. The canal itself froze over, dark dull grey at first then white as frost covered the surface. Ducks flew in sprawling and sliding across the ice, trailing wild skid marks and frantic footprints as they tried to slow down. As the swans came down they crashed into each other and sent the ducks scattering in all directions. For weeks the canal was covered with irritable clumsy birds falling down at every step yet too confused to fly away to warmer waters.

  As the winter sank deeper and deeper into the earth so the worms and moles dug down below it. Sensible animals had flown away to warmer lands while those that were left did the best they could to survive. Some crept into their beds and hibernated. Others fluffed themselves up and waited for spring. People, unable to adapt like most animals, hid in thick clothes and blew clouds of steam into the air.

  In December even the clouds grew cold and slipped quietly away. For two weeks the sky was pale blue from side to side. It was a thin wintery sky that seemed much less part of the world than the bright skies of summer. Far above, in its highest reaches, the smoke lines of aeroplanes crossed from one horizon to another covering the world in white cobwebs.

  Dennis the owl sat in his big oak tree and shivered.

  ‘I wish I could hibernate,’ he said.

  ‘Well, why don’t you?’ said a robin, sitting on a branch above him.

  ‘I’ve tried,’ said Dennis, ‘but I keep falling asleep.’

  ‘Yes, but...’ the robin started to explain but Dennis wasn’t listening. He was looking up at the sky. The sun had given up and gone off to Australia and thick black clouds were rolling across the town. It was as if someone was wrappi
ng the world up in a heavy eiderdown. It was only midday but it had grown so dark that it felt like evening.

  ‘Oh well,’ said Dennis, ‘time for bed.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said the robin. ‘It’s only midday.’

  ‘But it’s dark,’ said Dennis. ‘It must be bedtime.’

  ‘It isn’t always bedtime just because it’s dark,’ said the robin.

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Dennis.

  ‘What about thunderstorms?’ said the robin. ‘The sky gets really dark when there’s a thunderstorm. What do you do then?’

  ‘Go to bed,’ said Dennis and then he added, ‘What do you do?’

  ‘Hide under a branch until it’s finished,’ said the robin. ‘And get wet.’

  ‘That’s clever,’ said Dennis and went to bed.

  Two days before Christmas it snowed. The wind stopped blowing, the bitter cold air seemed to grow warmer and at midnight the snow began to fall. The big white flakes floated down from the clouds in total silence. Other sounds grew fainter too. As the snow settled on the roads, the noise of the traffic grew softer. The whole city faded to a quiet murmur, quieter than the countryside. And beyond the city the countryside itself was as silent as an empty dream.

  In the garden the animals that lived by night awoke to find their homes buried. The rabbits and the mice made new tunnels through the snow. Even though it was the first snow that many of them had seen, they knew by instinct what to do. Only Dennis the owl was confused. He hopped out of his hole in the oak tree and stood on the branch.

  ‘Where’s all the colour gone?’ he said. ‘It’s washed away.’

  Apart from the yellow squares of light from the windows across the lawn everything was white. Dennis walked along where he thought the branch should be and fell off. He floundered around on the ground kicking and flapping great clouds of snow into the air until he finally shook himself free and fluttered up to the tree.

 

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