Inchworm (14 page)

The phone rings.

‘Gussie, it’s Claire. I’m coming up tomorrow to look after you.’

‘Oh, Claire, are you really? That’s wonderful. Does Mum know?’

‘Yes, I’ve spoken to her. Don’t do anything. I’ll look after myself. Sleep on the floor, if I have to. I’m catching the twelve noon from St Erth, so I’ll be with you about five. I’ll get a taxi from Paddington.’

As I replace the phone I discover that my cheeks are wet.

Mum phones: ‘Gussie, has Claire phoned? Good. I feel happier knowing she’ll be with you. I haven’t told your father, will you tell him, please?’

When Daddy returns I tell him about Claire. I think he’s relieved. After all, he has a full time job and can’t keep taking time off to look after me.

‘So, you’ll meet one of your relations soon. She’s not actually one of our blood relations; she’s only connected by marriage. Anyway, I know you’ll like her.’

‘
M’chutin
,’ he says.

‘Bless you.’

‘No,
M’chutin
. It’s a Hebrew word that means related by marriage.’

‘Oh.’ I didn’t realise Daddy was so knowledgeable about anything other than film.

‘How do you know Hebrew?’

‘Can’t remember. Willy? Jewish girl I used to know? Woody Allen movie? Can’t remember.’ He sniffs. ‘What’s that horrible fishy smell, Gussie?’

‘Tinned fish – I can’t get enough of it. It’s really good for me.’

Daddy sits on the sofa and gets bitten by a cat flea.

‘Where the hell did that come from?’

‘You must have picked it up at your girlfriend’s,’ I say spitefully. I make a mental note to buy a flea comb when we next go to the pet shop or I could get a nit comb from the chemist in the village.

‘Hope this Claire is good at housework,’ he grumbles, hoovering his suede upholstery. ‘It’s like the
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
in here.’

Willy and I walk to the Heath next morning. He is a quiet companion, a good listener. I tell him about the kitten.

‘What are you going to do with the
kleine Katze
? You can’t hide him forever.’

‘Yes, I can, I’ll take him back to Cornwall.’

‘But will your other cats tolerate a kitten?’

‘Rambo won’t mind. I don’t know about Charlie and Flo. They might be jealous.’

‘Yes, and they will be resentful of your attention to this kitty and maybe they will bully him.’

I hadn’t thought of that. All I had thought of was rescuing a poor lost kitten, but Willy’s right. Charlie especially will be very angry with me for forsaking her and having a new pet. I haven’t told Mum about him yet either.

At the bridge over the railway line Willy opens a gate.

‘Would you like to see my vegetable garden?’

‘Where? Here?’

‘Yes, my allotment.
Kommen sie hier
.’ I follow him along the path to a series of little plots alongside the railway line. In each one there is someone digging.

‘
Guten morgen
, Willy,’ shouts an old lady in red wellies and a long mac. I think she is German too.

‘
Guten morgen
, Anna.’

He greets and is greeted by the gardeners, who are mostly old and foreign. A man in a green bobble hat waves to us and says something in Italian. Willy introduces me to him. ‘This is my good friend, Julio. He grows the best potatoes and broad beans in Hampstead.’

‘No, no, I grow the best everything!’ Julio shouts. ‘Marrow, aubergine, fennel, carrot, tomato, oregano.’ Then he starts singing – something from an opera it sounds like.

Willy’s allotment has a little old apple tree on a rectangular vegetable plot, and a wooden shed with a real horseshoe on the door.

‘I make you a cup of tea, ya?’

‘Yes please.’ I don’t really like tea but any hot drink would be good, just to keep my hands warm.

Oh, the smell of it! Earth and onions. Willy’s shed is full of hooks with spades and forks and other tools hanging on them. There’s a string of onions and sunflowers drying upside down. He has a shelf of books in German, a pair of wellington boots, a dented kettle, a primus stove and two chipped enamel mugs. A solid lump of sugar sits in a torn paper bag. There are old shopping baskets under a table with bruised apples in them. It smells warm and leafy, like a greenhouse. It reminds me of my Grandma’s garden shed. Actually, it was Grandpop’s shed, not Grandma’s. He used to mend their shoes in there on a metal thingy that looked like three feet. I went in once looking for him and walked into two dead chickens hanging by their feet from the ceiling, dark musty feathers, black blood dripping onto the floor.

We sit on two wooden boxes against the sunny wall of the shed and dip wholemeal biscuits into hot sweet tea. Willy pours whisky from a hip flask into his. A thrush dips his beak into the dark earth and pulls on the tail of a long worm. The bird tugs and tugs and still the worm hangs on, but the worm loses the tug-of-war and the thrush beats it onto a stone, and when it becomes mushy and presumably dead, he swallows it.

Every creature hangs onto life. Even the kitten’s fleas, when I have maimed them between my finger nails, try desperately to hop or crawl away. They cling to life just as much as an elephant or a whale. Just as much as I do.

It is so peaceful here, even with trains going by. Commuters stare out of the dirty windows at us.

Willy takes off his coat and shoes and changes into his wellies. He rolls up his shirtsleeves and I see he has blue numbers tattooed above his wrist. My stomach drops suddenly and I see in my mind a picture of Auschwitz dead, piled together like the white bones of birds. The Italian man is still singing and the lady in red wellies is weeding with a long-handled hoe. I feel suddenly faint, so I sit down while Willy digs happily in his small patch of London clay.

‘Thank you for the tea and biscuits, Herr Weinberger. I do like your garden.’

‘Here, Gussie, you must take some apples. They are last year’s crop and very sweet.’

I can’t say no, even though I don’t really want to carry a heavy bag. He must have seen the reluctance in my face.

‘
Ach, nein
, I forget your operation. I will deliver them to you later, yes?’

Phew. That was a lucky escape.

I do like old people. Walking back, I think again of Grandma in their Essex garden. She grew most of the things she and Grandpop ate – potatoes, carrots, onions, runner beans (though Grandpop built the bamboo pole wigwams they climbed up) lettuces, radishes, raspberries, strawberries, blackcurrants, gooseberries and loganberries.

When I was told that Grandpop and Grandma had died I felt as if someone had struck me with a knife in my heart, and that sharp pain came back each time I woke and remembered, for a long time. But now the pain is familiar; I don’t think of it every morning. I have found a corner for it where I can take it out and look at it and then put it back again, like an old photograph or a movie that makes me cry even though I know what happens.

The French onion man is wheeling his bike along the road. I hope he doesn’t try to ride it, he looks like he’s spent the last three hours in the pub.

I go to the newsagent for some chocolate. (I am allowed chocolate, though I have to watch my cholesterol and sodium levels.)

There are two women with buggies in the shop and the babies are gurgling at each other, as if they are having a very interesting conversation. I’ve noticed that babies are always fascinated by each other; toddlers always look at toddlers and teenagers are mostly interested in teenagers. It’s as if humans prefer to tune in to others at their own stage of development. Maybe I could study anthropology at uni?

I can’t wait to go to school and meet other twelve-year-olds.

I’m a freak, always hanging out with adults and old people. It’s not normal. It’s not fair.

NO TIME FOR
new words today – too hectic.

The Snow Queen comes with Daddy to the flat to meet me. I have luckily just fed the kitten, he’s had a poo and now he’s asleep under my bed, hopefully, but I haven’t had a chance to clean his litter tray.

Annika is not the bimbo I expected. She’s a part-time model, yes, but also she’s training to be a lawyer and she’s from Sweden
.
She bosses Daddy terribly, making him get her a decaffeinated coffee and look for pearls she thinks she has left here. She opens the bedroom door and turns up her small nose in horror. I push in front of her.

‘Excuse me
, I’ll
look in
my
bedroom.’

The doorbell rings. The Snow Queen goes to open it, and closes it again.

She shouts something in Swedish to Daddy. Daddy opens the door and laughs.

‘That’s not a tramp, that’s Willy in his gardening gear,’ he says, kissing her. Willy has the apples.

Willy smiles scornfully at the Snow Queen and winks at me. I’d like to kill her. Perhaps I’ll start reading thrillers to get some ideas on how to perform the perfect murder.

I find the pearls under the bed and practically throw them at her. The Snow Queen has a sneezing fit and discovers a flea bite on her ankles. Is furious. Glares at me as if I am flea-ridden. Says Daddy should get a pest controller to clean the entire flat, and when he has he can call her. Slams the door on her way out. Well done, kitten.

‘Gussie, tell me the truth. Have you brought a cat into my flat?’

‘Daddy, where would I get a cat?’ Oh dear, what’s the matter with me? I should have confessed.

‘When’s this woman Claire arriving?’

‘Tea-time, I think. She’s going to find her own way here, don’t worry. And she’s not This Woman, she’s your relation.’ Oh dear, I sound like Mum.

Daddy makes up the sofa-bed with clean linen and puts his old sheets in the washing machine.

‘I didn’t know you could speak Swedish, Daddy.’

‘Oh, yes, comes from my Bergman era.’

He has to go to his office in the afternoon so I go to see Mum on my own.

‘Are you keeping your daily log, darling?’

‘Yes, Mum.’

‘How do you feel?’

‘Okay. Nausea, a bit.’ I don’t tell her I’m feeling practically suicidal. I know it’s one of the drugs and I just have to get on with it.

‘I had to keep a daily log when you were a baby.’

‘Did you?’

‘Yes, I had to give you Digoxin every four hours, night and day. If I didn’t write it down straight away after giving it to you, I wouldn’t know if I
had
given it. I was so exhausted I was hallucinating.’

‘Poor Mum.’

‘I don’t know how you survived. I was a hopeless mother.’

‘Well, I did, so you must have done something right.’

‘Yes, and look at you! I’m so proud of you.’

Horror of horrors! – When I was out the kitten escaped from the bedroom and scratched the back of the sofa-bed. He also vomited on the duvet and it dribbled onto the suede. I think I gave him too much pilchard in tomato sauce this morning. I don’t have the foggiest notion how to remove the stain. It’s really bad. It looks like murder has been committed.
St Valentine’s Day Massacre
. I try with washing liquid but the stain spreads. I scrub it with a nailbrush but that just makes it wetter.

When Daddy gets back, I say it was me who was sick. He doesn’t notice the scratches, luckily, as the vomit stain is so gross. He is very good about it. I suggest we cover it with a cushion but he says we’ll still smell it. He phones a caretaker or someone, to come and take the sofa-bed away, and orders another one which will take twelve weeks to be made and delivered, and only then thinks to ask me if I am all right now and suggests we go to the hospital – my hospital, not Mum’s. He assumes I have been vomiting blood. But I convince him I’m fine, say I had too many pilchards in tomato sauce.

‘Where will Claire sleep?’ I ask.

‘The surviving sofa.’ He gets out yet another set of bed linen, and has to go out to buy another duvet as the other one was ‘beyond salvation’. Mum would buy a second-hand sofa if we were at home, but Daddy only likes new things, apart from movies. He’s got to buy new towels too.

Now I’m in a flat with no bed for my mother when she comes out of hospital, my father is mostly absent and I’m looking after a destructive fleabag. Sunny has taken to climbing the blinds in the bedroom. They are white pleated fabric and he runs up the side of them and sits on the top. He is now called Fleabag or Bad Boy. He purrs at both names and climbs my legs. Luckily he doesn’t scratch through my combat trousers. Funny little thing, he still hisses and spits when I pick him up. He is so black – black paw pads, black nose, black whiskers, midnight coat, the darkest winter’s night on the Cornish moors with not even a sliver of moon; he is the total lack of light, the deepest lake, the darkest forest, the angel of darkness, Beelzebub. He is Beelzebub. Not sure how to pronounce that – is it Beel or Be-el? Anyway, it suits him. Beelzebub. You bad, bad cat. I like it. He likes it. It’s an important name. I think it might mean the Prince of Darkness, or the Devil.