Timba Comes Home

by Sheila Jeffries

  But Vati made his feelings perfectly clear. He came down from the windowsill, avoided Angie, and jumped into Graham’s favourite chair. Deliberately he curled up on a blue sweater Graham had left there, and went to sleep.

  I was shocked. Vati was making a statement. He was going to stay with Graham.

  I loved my brother. I needed him.

  Now it was my turn to feel betrayed.

  Weeks passed, and Angie did nothing but sit in the window, stare out at the garden, and cry. She did talk to Laura when she came, bringing flowers and hugs. One day Laura showed her the snowdrops standing stiffly in the winter wind, crowds of them under our apple tree. ‘I can’t bear to look at them,’ Angie said. ‘Graham and I planted them together when I came here. I can’t look at anything beautiful any more. Only Timba and Vati.’

  When Leroy was there, she made an effort to be happy, giving him what was left of her joyful spirit. Leroy was not convinced. ‘Why are you sad, Angie?’ he asked, and brought her little gifts of cards he had made and pictures of lions he had drawn.

  ‘That’s brilliant!’ she gasped when he handed her a detailed drawing of a lion, done in white on black paper. ‘You’ve got the curly mane so well, and the paws . . . but . . . there’s something powerful . . . it’s his eyes! They’re really alive.’

  Leroy glowed. ‘It’s my best picture,’ he said, ‘but you can keep it. I’m doing an even better one.’

  Angie proudly put the picture in a frame and hung it next to the poster of the White Lions above the fridge in the kitchen.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be taking things down, not putting them up?’ asked Graham.

  ‘Oh don’t you worry . . . I’m making plans.’ Angie looked at him coldly.

  ‘What plans are those?’

  ‘That’s for me to know, and you to find out.’

  She picked me up and carried me outside into the crisp blue light. The noontide sun was pale and bright, and the twigs of the apple tree glistened with frost. A single apple still hung there, like a reminder of fruitful times. The snowdrops trembled a little as some creature disturbed them. ‘A bee!’ shouted Leroy. ‘Look, Angie. It’s massive. Why is it out in the winter? It’s too cold for bees.’ He sent a puff of breath steaming into the light.

  ‘Oh she’s got a fur coat,’ said Angie.

  ‘But where does she live? And how do you know it’s a she?’

  ‘It’s probably a queen bumblebee,’ Angie said, ‘and she’s got a cosy nest under some long grass.’

  ‘She’s brave,’ said Leroy. ‘Queen bees gotta be brave.’ Not for the first time Leroy’s words did something to Angie. She stood up straighter, and carried me to the gate from where we could see the distant landscape.

  ‘See those dark blue hills, Timba?’ she said. ‘That’s where we’re going. Far away, over those hills and across a shining river. We shall find a little terraced cottage with a garden, my mum’s old place.’

  ‘Am I coming, Angie?’ asked Leroy, his face anxious as he sidled close.

  ‘Yes, you’re coming.’ Angie smiled. ‘And Timba and Vati. But we’ve got to cross our fingers and hope I get a job.’

  ‘Is your mum there now?’ Leroy asked. ‘She could be my nan.’

  ‘Sadly no, Leroy. She would have loved to be your nan, but she died three years ago, and left me the cottage. It was let to a young couple, but now it’s empty . . . so we can go there. We might have to decorate it . . . but you’ll help me, won’t you? It’ll be fun.’

  ‘Can I paint lions on the walls?’

  ‘Yes, you can paint one lion on one wall. I’d love that.’ Angie began to sparkle, like her old self.

  ‘What about my mum?’ said Leroy. ‘She won’t know where I am.’

  ‘Yes she will. We’ll write the address down for her . . . and she can come and visit you.’

  ‘IF she turns up.’ Leroy looked sad. He kicked at the frosty grass with his small foot. ‘My mum don’t want me, do she, Angie?’

  ‘She does, Leroy. She’s just stressed and needs to be by herself for a while.’

  Leroy shook his head. ‘She don’t want me. It’s true.’

  Angie gave him a cuddle. ‘I care about you, Leroy. I’m here for you, no matter what. OK?’

  ‘And Timba?’

  ‘And Timba . . . yes, he loves you, don’t you, Timba?’

  I did a purr-meow, and Leroy reached up to stroke me. We stood in the cold air, looking at those distant hills. Angie had given me a picture of our journey. Blue hills and a shining river, far away from where I was born. I didn’t want to go.

  ‘Don’t be scared, Timba,’ said Angie, reading my mind. ‘You and Vati shall travel safely in a beautiful padded basket in the back of my car.’

  A few days later Angie opened her laptop, her aura brightening. She stiffened, then stared at the screen. She leapt to her feet and shouted, ‘YES!’ and danced around the room snapping her fingers. ‘I got the job! Thank you, Universe!’

  On the day of the move, I was so angry with Vati that I attacked him . . . for real.

  ‘I’m staying with Graham,’ he said firmly.

  ‘You can’t do that!’ I argued. ‘We’re brothers. We need each other.’

  ‘Then you should stay.’ Vati gave me a kiss on the nose, but I didn’t respond. I was too angry for kissing.

  ‘But I’m your protector,’ I said, ‘and we made a pact . . . two black kittens against the world.’

  ‘That was kitten stuff,’ Vati said. ‘We’re cats now.’

  ‘Angie rescued you so that we could be together.’

  ‘We have been together. Now it’s time to move on.’

  ‘Graham won’t look after you the way Angie does,’ I warned, ‘and Lisa doesn’t like cats.’

  ‘She likes me. She thinks I’m cute.’

  ‘But she might do something terrible to you, Vati.’ As I spoke those words, I had a disturbing vision of Vati lying on the vet’s table, very sick. Then I saw him hunched miserably in the corner of the sofa, shocked and depressed, the way Angie had been. ‘Please, please don’t do this, Vati,’ I begged.

  ‘I’m staying with Graham,’ he said stubbornly, his paws locked neatly together, the tip of his tail twitching.

  I flew at him, my fury beyond words. We rolled on the floor, screeching and yowling. For the first time ever, our claws were out and we were hurting each other. I bit Vati’s ear and he fled upstairs. I thundered after him and cornered him on the landing. We faced each other like two furious dragons, our tails lashing. Vati’s pink mouth was open in a convincing snarl, but his frightened eyes were black with disbelief.

  Vati was lithe and strong, but I had the weight, and the fury, to dominate him. We might have seriously injured one another if Leroy hadn’t intervened.

  ‘Timba and Vati are killing each other!’ he shouted to Angie who was stacking books into boxes.

  ‘Oh they’re just playing.’

  ‘No . . . it’s for real. And Vati’s got a tuft of Timba’s fur in his mouth.’

  Leroy grabbed Vati and dragged him backwards. Vati struggled wildly, his claws out, leaving Leroy with long red scratches on his arms and hands. He chased Vati downstairs and lay on the floor, glowering at him under the sofa and cursing. ‘You are a horrible cat, hurting my Timba, and scratching me.’

  ‘Never intervene between two fighting cats,’ said Angie wisely as she once again patched Leroy’s scratches and calmed him down.

  Eat, I thought, and headed for the kitchen, meowing. Predictably Angie came and fed me. ‘Are you OK, Timba?’ she asked, running her fingers through my fur. ‘You look a bit ruffled. You’ve got such thick fur, you won’t miss a bit of it.’

  Vati stayed under the sofa.

  Soon it was time for us to go, and Angie put me in the luxurious travelling basket. There was plenty of room for two cats.

  Graham stood in the window silently, with Vati in his arms.

  I never even got to say goodbye to my beloved brother.

 
And Angie didn’t say goodbye to Graham, but stepped into the car with her shoulders back, and a brave smile on her face.

  The parting was painful.

  Driving down the lane we passed the gate to the horse field, and Poppy was standing there whinnying and kicking the gate with her hoof. Angie stopped the car and got out. ‘Stay there . . . I won’t be a minute,’ she said to Leroy, and bounded over to Poppy.

  The horse changed her shrill whinny to a soft whicker of greeting. She lowered her head, her chestnut mane fluttering like a flame in the breeze, her eyes loving and anxious. Angie flung her arms around the horse’s neck and clung there as if she’d never let go. I knew, from the way her shoulders were heaving, that she was crying.

  ‘Goodbye . . . darling, darling Poppy,’ she wept. ‘Laura will look after you, and one day . . . one day we’ll be together again. Thank you for all the rides.’ She paused, trying to breathe the tears away, and her voice cracked into fragments. ‘Angie . . . will always . . . always love you.’

  She might have stayed there hugging Poppy, but a car came along the narrow lane, and stopped, unable to get by.

  ‘Sorry, guys!’ Angie climbed back into the car and drove on, leaving Poppy watching us go, her dark eyes sad.

  The three of us, Leroy, Angie and me, set off on our journey. Over the dark blue hills and across the shining river. The brave half of a broken family.

  Chapter Twelve

  ACROSS THE SHINING RIVER

  The Spirit Lion managed to talk to me while we were bombing along in Angie’s car. I was meowing a lot, wanting to tell the world how sad I felt about parting with Vati, how I didn’t want to be a lonely cat and have to make decisions on my own. How frightened I was, despite the lovely travelling basket. How badly I wanted to go home.

  Leroy kept twisting round to talk to me. ‘It’s OK, Timba. We going to live in WALES,’ he said, ‘and there’s mountains and steam trains.’

  ‘Timba’s not impressed,’ said Angie. ‘It might be best to tell him we’ll have a cosy home with a fire, and a kitchen with dishes of tuna.’

  ‘Cheer up, Timba. You can have a massive dish of Whiskas chicken,’ Leroy said. ‘And there might be a cat next door you can play with.’

  I heard him, but couldn’t stop meowing. It was like crying. The contact with Leroy did help marginally, his big eyes looking at me in concern, and his finger pushed through the top of the basket. A tiny speck of comfort in my hollow cave of grief and anxiety.

  Angie had shown me the dark blue hills, but they didn’t seem to be getting any closer. As for the shining river . . . I’d never seen a shining river, but I knew rivers had something to do with water. Bad news for a cat!

  Exhausted from worrying, I quietened down and tried to go to sleep. When I closed my eyes, the voice of the Spirit Lion shook me. ‘Stay awake, Timba,’ he boomed. ‘Pay attention to this journey, for one day you will need to find your way back. Watch the hilltops for stone towers and lone pine trees. Remember the shape of the hills.’

  Even as he spoke, I remembered the hill with a stone tower that was visible from the top of the apple tree. We were driving close to it now. ‘Glastonbury Tor,’ said Angie.

  ‘Who lives in that tower?’ Leroy asked in a whisper. ‘Does a giant live there?’

  ‘No. No one lives there. It’s an old church tower.’

  ‘Does God live there?’

  ‘Nobody knows,’ said Angie.

  ‘Remember the shape of the hills,’ the Spirit Lion had said, so I stared, trying to imprint the hill with the stone tower on my memory. We drove on through the morning and the hills turned from blue to green as they loomed closer, and on top was a tall metal tower going up to the sky. I felt the earth energy changing. The air was colder, the land covered in scrubby brown heather, and sheep were grazing in bright green patches of grass. At the crest of the hill, I felt we had reached a point of no return, and I began to grieve for the home I had loved. For Vati. For Graham, and Poppy, and the warm rug by the wood burner.

  It wasn’t fair.

  I wished I was brave like Angie. She drove on, bushy and alert like a squirrel, ready to change, take risks and leap into a new space. ‘Home doesn’t have to be a place,’ she’d said. ‘Home can be who you’re with.’ And she’d shared her courage with Leroy. For him it was an adventure.

  ‘I’d climb up there. Right to the top,’ said Leroy as we drove past the metal tower, ‘and I wouldn’t be scared. Then I could see all the way to Africa and see the White Lions!’

  Angie smiled. ‘Maybe you could.’

  The precious poster of the White Lions of Timbavati was rolled up in the back of the car, on top of the bags and boxes of books, and Leroy’s toys.

  The Spirit Lion kept me busy noticing landmarks, but, tired from the stress, I did eventually nod off to sleep. The car droned on, and when I awoke the sun was higher in the sky, and the hills were a distant smudge of blue, behind us now. Leroy’s cry of excitement woke me.

  ‘Cor, that’s MASSIVE!’ he shouted. ‘Look at that bridge. Is that a suspension bridge, is it? Is it, Angie?’

  I sat up to see.

  ‘Look, Timba! That’s the shining river,’ Leroy said. ‘You could go fishing in there. Has it got tuna in there, Angie?’

  I saw the shining river, awesome, like a heavy snake of water, and the long, long bridge stretching over it. Beyond were more hills, dark with trees.

  ‘Don’t talk to me for a minute . . . I need to get this right,’ said Angie, and her face looked stressed as we joined a noisy stream of traffic.

  I braced myself, feeling the thunder of the lorries hemming us in as we hurtled towards the river. In the cold air the exhaust fumes were hot and poisonous. The howl of engines rang in my ears and my throat burned from meowing. Leroy turned his big eyes to look at me. ‘It’s OK, Timba.’ But I was crazed with fear. He touched me. ‘Timba’s fur is coming out!’ he said, but Angie clutched the steering wheel and drove on looking even more like a hyped-up squirrel.

  I meowed again; this time it was a loud wail of distress. My life was out of control. I was trapped. I was being taken into the blue beyond, without my permission.

  Leroy was squealing with excitement and bouncing around in his seat. ‘Can we stop . . . please, Angie? I want to look at the river. I want to climb up the bridge . . . I could go high up . . . oh please stop.’

  ‘I can’t stop. It’s the motorway.’

  ‘Please, Angie. You never do anything I want. It’s not fair.’ Leroy kicked his feet on the floor of the car.

  Angie spoke to him sharply. ‘Sit still, or you’ll make me lose control of the car. Just, for God’s sake, don’t have a tantrum right now, Leroy. Save it for later!’

  I saw the gleam of a tear on Leroy’s cheek, but he managed to keep quiet. Angie hardly ever shouted at him, and when she did he took notice.

  We sped on across the bridge. It was like a highway in the sky with the energy and power of the river surging far below. ‘Remember the bridge,’ the Spirit Lion said. How could I forget!

  Where was Vati now? How far away? If only Angie would stop and open the travelling basket. I’d jump out and head back home on burning paws, my tail kinked over my back. But what chance would a little cat have on that hectic road?

  My meows grew ever louder and more echoing. I was haunted by the thought that Vati, the wise one, had made the right decision . . . to stay at home . . . while I had made the wrong one.

  ‘You must learn to trust,’ said the Spirit Lion. ‘Trust Angie. She’s your earth-angel.’

  By now we were driving on calmer roads through a dark forest. I paid attention to that. Even from the car, I could smell the trees and the creatures who lived there.

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ Angie kept saying, and we emerged from the forest and headed downhill towards a town in a green valley. Angie drove on, but I wanted her to stop. I sensed danger. It came to me in a smell . . . of something that didn’t belong in this quiet green land. It got stronger a
nd stronger.

  ‘Timba’s really scared, Angie,’ said Leroy. ‘He’s got his tail bushed out.’

  Why didn’t Angie stop? Why was she driving on, into that unknown danger? It wasn’t the smell . . . it was a feeling. A sense of anger and displacement. It wasn’t human! It was animal. More animal than I’d ever believed existed in our quiet green countryside.

  ‘A zoo!’ Leroy shouted, and Angie did slow down. She wasn’t frightened like me, but she obviously didn’t like seeing the zoo.

  ‘Can we go in?’ Leroy asked, and then answered his own question with a big sigh. ‘I get it. Not now! But can we, one day?’

  Angie drove slowly past some high walls with wire along the top, and two tall iron gates.

  ‘I didn’t know this was still here,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe they haven’t closed it down. It’s a private zoo, and those animals are not happy in there. I can feel their desperation. Let’s get clear of it.’ She drove on very fast, and I relaxed a bit as the smell faded away. I hoped we weren’t going to live near that zoo.

  ‘You haven’t let me do anything I wanted.’ Leroy pouted and started to cry. ‘I wanted to climb up the bridge, and I wanted to see if there were fish in the river. Then I wanted to see if there were bears in that forest . . . and you wouldn’t let me.’ He kicked angrily at the car floor.

  Angie was kind. ‘Aww, don’t cry,’ she said. ‘Poor Leroy . . . I know it’s tough, and you’ve been SO good. We’ll do all those things when we’re settled in. I’ll need your help with Timba. He’s terribly frightened, poor love, and you’re so good with him now.’

  Leroy calmed down. He turned to look at me. ‘I’m good now, Timba,’ he said. ‘Don’t be scared. I’ll look after you.’

  Despite my plans to run away, I tried to settle down in the new house. Angie put my basket next to the Aga in the kitchen so I was cosy. It wasn’t quiet like Graham’s house. We could hear voices and traffic, and the rumble of huge shining aeroplanes which made the cups rattle. At first Leroy watched them constantly and asked Angie where they were going and why.