Inchworm

by Ann Kelley

  ‘Poor Rambo, did you miss me? I’m sorry we’ve been away so long.’ He purrs loudly, opens his big amber eyes and gazes lovingly at me. He’s so forgiving.

  ‘Gussie, come and see!’

  ‘Come and see the new kitten, Rambo,’ I whisper, and slowly stand up. ‘What’s the matter?’ I shout down to Mum.

  I practically fly down the stairs. Oh, it’s so wonderful to feel so energetic. I still can’t believe the difference my transplant has made to the way I feel and breathe. This must be what it’s like to be normal. If it wasn’t for all the drugs I have to take (only twice a day now, not five times as it was at first) and the various medical tests I have to record each day, and the monthly biopsies, I would be absolutely normal. Apart from the huge scar of course. But that’s nothing to bother about. It’s healed nicely, no more seeping. It’s rather keloid: raised and red, and itches still, but that’s a Small Price to Pay – as Mum says. If I hadn’t had the transplant I would probably have died within the year.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong, darling. Look at that.’

  Flo and Charlie are flat on their bellies peering under the sofa, ears back, tails flailing. Presumably Bubba’s hiding from them.

  ‘Oh no, they’re in hunting mode.’

  ‘They can’t get at her, don’t worry.’

  ‘But she’ll be terrified.’

  ‘Come and have supper, Guss. She’ll be all right. Let them get on with it,’ says Mum.

  Alistair, wearing Mum’s blue apron, puts the pie-dish on a breadboard on the table and goes back to the kitchen for the mashed potatoes.

  ‘Wasn’t it thoughtful of Mrs Thomas to prepare our supper?’

  ‘Mmm, smells good.’ I have a ferocious appetite since my transplant. At first I lost my sense of smell, so food didn’t taste of anything. But it’s okay now.

  Alistair has opened champagne and poured some for all of us. He’s good at champagne – always finding occasions to open a bottle.

  ‘New beginnings!’

  ‘New beginnings!’ we chorus, clinking glasses.

  ‘And thank you to my donor.’ I’ll always be thankful to her and her family. I know it was a female under the age of twenty, but I don’t know any more. Maybe the family will write to me, when the pain of losing their loved one has eased, but who knows when that might be? Maybe they’ll never want to contact me. I could write to them of course, via the transplant centre, but I don’t know what to say, except thank you.

  We are all quiet for a moment, thinking of what might have been.

  ‘Look!’ The new kitten has appeared behind the other two cats, who are sitting with their front paws curled under them, eyes closed. Bubba sniffs the black and white fur of Charlie’s huge bum. Her little black tail quivers in excitement. Flo opens her eyes and stares at the kitten. She doesn’t move though, just watches with amazement. Flo is quite old – well, older than me, so about thirteen, which is old for a cat, and hasn’t seen a kitten since Charlie was introduced to her, which was when I was ten. Bubba is patting Charlie’s bottom, and Charlie’s fur twitches. She turns suddenly and seeing Bubba, leaps backwards in surprise and takes off out of the room, followed closely by Flo, tail fluffed up again. They tear up the stairs, falling over themselves in terror of the tiny black kitten.

  We all laugh. Bubba goes to the open door and goes to follow them. I don’t think she can make the steep stairs and I get up to help her.

  ‘They’ll sort themselves out. Eat your nice pie before it gets cold.’

  I watch my mother and Alistair. They can’t stop smiling at each other. He’s looking at her as if he loves her, even though she is fifty-two and is pale and thinner since her hysterectomy. I think she looks old and plain but he doesn’t seem to notice. They laugh and chat and I’m content to daydream and eat.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE SUN ON my face wakes me – that, or Charlie mewing at the door. I let her in and get back into bed but keep my hands over my chest so she doesn’t step on my tender scar. She’s so pleased to see me. Flo is here too, sitting on the bedside table, trying to look cheerful. She usually looks cross, as she has black blobs each side of her nose by her eyes, which give her a permanently bad-tempered expression, but this morning she’s purring. Where’s Bubba? Have you eaten her? I ask Flo, and she smiles. Oh dear, I hope she hasn’t.

  Beelzebub, or Bubba as I call her when she’s good, was playing on her own last night, chasing a toy mouse, the two older females sitting high up out of her way on the sofa back, staring with disgust at this tiny intruder. Then in came Rambo, swishing his handsome tail like he does all the time, even when he’s pleased, saw the kitten, squinted at her, and solemnly sniffed her all over. She cringed from him, ears flat on her skull, back arched. Then he started to lick her tiny head with firm slow licks until she relaxed. He licked her all over, and then curled up with her to sleep on the rug. Just like that. He’s adopted her. The other two ignored them both, or pretended to. I bet they’re really fascinated though. A new kitten for Flo to bully, a companion perhaps for Charlie, and a surrogate daughter for dear old Rambo, who has always been treated with disdain by the two females. Can a cat be an underdog? Or last in the pecking order? Mixed metaphors, I think.

  I have to have my pills now and wait an hour before I have my breakfast. There’s no eating one hour before or one hour after the tabs. It’s a drag, but part of my PT (Post Transplant) regime. No probs, as Brett would say. I look at his card again. The loving swans. Swans mate for life and if one dies the other never mates again. I wonder if it’s a message. A sign of his undying love? Some hopes!

  Note: Mute Swan, Cygnus olor. Actually, they aren’t without a voice – they hiss loudly. Because they were all once the property of the crown, and prized food, their wing tips were clipped on one side to prevent them from flying, and the bell-beat of their wings was virtually unknown in Britain for five hundred years. Mutes have mainly orange beaks, Whoopers and Bewick’s have black bills with diagnostic patterns of yellow. Head on, the yellow of Bewicks forms a letter B, and the yellow of Whooper is a W. The semi-tame mute swan is known for its gentleness.

  Bewick’s swans’ calls are high-pitched and musical; in concert, can suggest the ‘baying of hounds’. Whooper swans make a ‘whoop-a’ call, and so the name. It sounds honking and goose-like, a bit like a trumpet or a child’s musical bicycle horn. Whoopers have deep strong calls. Apparently a dying bird makes a prolonged ‘final expiration of air from the convoluted wind-pipe, producing a wailing flute-like sound given out quite slowly’, hence the myth of the swansong.

  And here’s a quote from Cicero:

  Death darkens his eyes and unplumes his wings,

  Yet the sweetest song is the last he sings:

  Live so, my love, that when death shall come,

  Swan-like and sweet it may waft thee home.

  I have decided to write nature notes in my journal between pills and breakfast to stop me thinking about bacon and eggs, sausage and baked beans, not that Mum ever cooks all that. But we do go to the Cinema Café for a Full English sometimes.

  I like it there. It’s a microcosm of life in St Ives. Visitors and locals packed close together, and the family that runs the place – gran, mum, daughter – cooking, serving, chatting, laughing, arguing. And a little one, chirping like a sparrow to the customers. And sometimes, at the outside table, a bearded handsome man, who looks like a pirate, with a handsome, bearded dog.

  Note: 23 March 2000. Clouds build into massive grey hippos. The roof gulls bicker – one pecking at another’s wing as it takes off. So sneaky.

  Mum had a letter from the council yesterday that stated that our roof gulls have had no eggs for the last three years, so they won’t be coming to prick the eggs. Mum thinks there is a ménage à trois – whatever that is. I think it means that the gulls are just good friends. But, actually, there is nest building going on. If you can call it a nest – a few twigs and bits of moss from the gutters.

  I read for a while then go do
wn to find Mum drinking coffee with Alistair.

  ‘Fed the cats?’ I accuse her.

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  ‘And Bubba?’

  ‘Yes, Gussie.’ She’s in her tatty, tartan dressing gown. Her hair is dishevelled and fluffy and she has bags under her eyes. Alistair must have stayed the night. I don’t mind; I’m broad-minded. I realised when we were in London at Daddy’s, that Mum and Daddy weren’t going to get together again. He’s too young for her for a start. Mum says he’s a Peter Pan; he’ll never grow up. Alistair’s also younger than her, but then any single man would be – she’s in her fifties. She had me when she was forty-one. But Alistair’s more mature than Daddy. Because he’s a doctor. You have to be serious if you are a doctor. Except that once I saw a movie about an American doctor called Patch Adams who was a clown and made children laugh. He ran a free hospital in New York, I think.

  Medical care in America is not free. You have to pay lots of money for treatment. And if you are poor you don’t get cared for. Even if you have medical insurance you only get a small amount of the care that you get here without paying for it. I saw a film about it. If you have cancer they won’t pay for expensive drugs, they charge you extra. You get nice rooms though.

  To get back to Daddy. Mum says that Daddy was unable to cope with my illness when I was a baby, and escaped whenever he could, travelling for work – he’s a film archivist. I screamed a lot. She couldn’t escape and says she seriously thought about strangling me or putting a pillow over my face, so she could sleep. Even if she’d been sent to prison she would’ve been able to sleep, she said. And if I ever did sleep, she thought I was dead.

  She says that one night she woke with a shock to hear no screams and she thought I was probably dead, and she went back to sleep, because she knew that if she looked and I was dead, she wouldn’t be able to sleep the rest of the night. She’d have to phone for a doctor, and start being distraught, and the need for sleep was the most important thing in her life at that moment. There was plenty of time to be distraught in the morning.

  I think women should only have babies when they are young enough to stay awake all night and not mind. If they can dance all night then they can look after a baby that doesn’t sleep. Perhaps she should have tried dancing with me, maybe then I would have slept.

  ‘Mum, did you dance with me when I screamed in the night when I was a baby?’

  ‘Did I what? Don’t remember. It’s all a Dreadful Haze, Gussie. I’ve blocked it from my mind. Eat your porridge. Wait. What time did you take your medication?’

  ‘S’orright, Mum, I know what to do by now.’ I sit at the table with my dish of porridge, spoon in a little runny honey and some yoghurt and eat. ‘Alistair?’

  ‘Mmm?’ He is in his weekend clothes, not his suit, and is without a tie, for once.

  ‘Did Mum tell you about my exhibition?’

  ‘Exhibition? No, Gussie, what exhibition’s that?’

  ‘Daddy’s organising an exhibition of photographs. Mine and my great-grandfather’s.

  ‘Jeepers! That’s wonderful! Well done Gussie.’

  ‘I’ll believe it…’

  ‘When I see it.’ I finish it for her. She doesn’t trust Daddy to do what he’s promised. But he won’t let me down. It would be too hurtful of him. I know he’s let me down in the past, but this exhibition was his idea, not mine, and he is enthusiastic about it. I’ve seen some of the huge black and white prints of images I’d made of the old men in the fishermen’s lodges, and the staff in the transplant unit. He said they were good enough to exhibit. Good enough to be seen with a professional photographer’s work. It’s very exciting. I don’t know why Mum can’t be happy for me. Just because Daddy let her down, doesn’t mean that he can’t change. But she says, ‘Don’t hold your breath.’

  Bubba is eating with the other cats, pushing in to have her share of the fish. She looks so little, her ears flattened so’s not to touch the others. Rambo is, as usual, holding back until the females have finished. He’s always known his place. Flo comes first, then Charlie, then Rambo. But Bubba doesn’t know that. Suddenly Flo flies out at her, knocking her off her little legs.

  ‘Oh, Flo, how could you?’

  ‘Leave them, Guss. They’ll work things out.’

  Beelzebub cowers, going into reverse, and bumps into Rambo, who licks her protectively. She’ll be all right.

  ‘Flo – don’t push it, don’t push it, or I’ll give you a war you won’t believe.’ I say in a threatening voice to Flo, who ignores me.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Don’t push it, don’t…’

  ‘Yes, but…?’

  ‘Rambo, First Blood. Rambo said that when…’

  ‘Movie mad! How can I have brought such an eccentric child into the world?’

  ‘Rambo. A tad violent, I’d have thought, for a twelve-year-old?’

  ‘Oh, blame her father. He gives her all these Awful Movies.’

  ‘They’re classics. Classics! You have to see the classics.’ I shout.

  ‘Yes, all right. Don’t be so loud. We’re not deaf. Now go have your bath, there’s a good girl.’

  ‘Can I finish my breakfast first?’

  ‘May I, and Please.’

  ‘Please may I finish my breakfast first?’

  ‘Just do it quietly.’

  She’s got a hangover, I can tell. She hasn’t removed her mascara from last night and it’s in sooty splodges under her eyes.

  Alistair winks at me, smiles at Mum, kisses her on the head and leaves with three big shopping bags.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ he says, in a very good Arnold Schwarzenegger impression.

  He’s catching on.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘How I detest the dawn! The grass always looks like it’s been out all night.’ Lucille Ball, The Dark Corner, 1946

  I AM TRYING to use a relevant film quote each day. This one is apt, as the long grass is still dewy and Bubba is getting wet. I’m sitting on a cushion on the step outside the front door, watching Bubba explore the garden. It’s windy but bright and sunny. I have remembered to put sunscreen on. I’ll have to do it from now on, even in the winter, because transplant patients are prone to skin cancers. That reminds me of a conversation I overheard when I was with Mum in a pub garden. This man said to the waitress, ‘My wife is prone to white wine.’

  Rambo’s litter tray is put outside in the daytime, and she has already used it. (Bubba, not Mum or the pub wife.) The other cats aren’t around. Rambo never goes out anyway, he’s scared of the wildlife, and the two females are probably on my bed.

  So Bubba is on her own in the big jungle, with what must look, to a kitten, like pterodactyls screaming overhead. She ignores them. Instead she’s stalking a beetle. I don’t think much of the beetle’s chances. Yep, she’s got him. Yum.

  The gulls are already claiming territory ready for nesting on the roofs. The male on our roof has a particularly piercing scream. It must intimidate other male gulls though, because it works. He and Mrs Gull are on the lichened tiles, preening and making love. The same thing is happening on most of the rooftops. On a flat roof close by a pair of black-backed gulls have made their nest. They’re even bigger than herring gulls and are their sworn enemies. They steal herring gull chicks if they get a chance and swallow them whole. But here they are close neighbours. And on the roof of the house in front there’s a pair of jackdaws.

  Bubba doesn’t give a hoot about what is happening up there, she’s too fascinated by the scents in the garden. I wonder if she can sense Shandy’s ghost?

  Mrs Thomas’s cat, Shandy, died when Mum and I were in London having our operations, but I expect there are still wafts of his scent in the bushes. I must remember to say how sorry I am when I see her. I forgot yesterday. Not only is she a widow, she’s lost her only cat too. Poor Marigold. I do like that name. My name is horrible – Augusta – Ugh!

  A bee has landed on my knee and is carefully performing his toilet, ne
arly balancing on his nose to get the correct angle for washing his bottom with his back legs. Now he’s washing his face and head with his front legs. I like insects almost more than I like birds. They’re so extraordinary and there’s so many of them. I like spiders too, and bugs. Most people think that insects and bugs are the same thing, but it’s not so. Bugs have mouthparts that suck. What I mean is – sucking mouthparts that come out of the top of their heads. Bugs are from the Hemiptera family. They suck the life out of their prey.

  I’m going to do an ecological survey of this garden. Perhaps Mrs Thomas would let me do it in hers. There might be completely different species in the two plots, even though they are next to each other. Our gardens are very small, about four metres by five. Ours has a cherry tree and an apple tree and short grass, and Mrs Thomas’s has very long grass and a broken wooden bench and some straggly bushes.

  Ours has a metal tree where we hang bird-feeders, and a bird-table, so we get lots of little birds: greenfinches, blue-tits, great tits, starlings, sparrows, song thrushes, missel thrushes, chaffinches, blackbirds, and even jackdaws and doves. Herring gulls land in the garden sometimes to scavenge bread or cheese that we’ve thrown out. I’m going to keep a record of them all. I’ll start straight away. No time like the present – as my grandpop used to say.

  Anyway, there might not be a tomorrow.

  I keep forgetting that I’ve had a heart and lung transplant. Instead of only a year or so to live, I can look forward to maybe twenty years. It’s hard to take in. I’ve always lived for the day. Carpe diem – seize the day. I can actually plan for the future. Unless something goes wrong.

  A Snail’s Broken Shell

  For the first time in years Gussie can run, climb and jump. Every breath she takes is easier now, and every step more confident, but Gussie can't help wondering about her donor. Was she young? Had she been very sick or was there an accident? And with her new life comes a whole new set of problems. She is going back to school at last - but she doesn't know anyone her own age, with the exception of Siobhan, the girl she hates most in the world. With school not meeting up to her expectations, Gussie turns to her old pastimes of birdwatching and photography, but troubling news awaits her there too. And then lightning strikes and Gussie must act at once...