Catcall (8 page)

‘Come on, you silly old lump! What’re you hiding for?’

I tried to pull him out. He shrank back, and I had to reach in with both hands. Eventually I had him in my arms, stiff and resisting.

‘What’s the matter?’ I said into his fur.

I wanted to take him downstairs and give him his dinner, but Splodge didn’t want to be carried. While I was awkwardly trying to stand up, he struggled free, scratching my arm hard with the claws of his back feet. Then he rocketed down the stairs. His tail was fluffed out, the way it goes if a dog chases him in the street.

I ran down after him.

‘Was that Splodge, or a piebald whirlwind?’ Mike was on his feet, looking behind the sofa.

‘Come out, scaredy-cat!’ I got down on all fours. Splodge was crouching there, between the sofa and the wall.

‘Come here, puss-puss-puss!’ Mike tried, from the other end.

Splodge was looking one way then the other, quick and scared, with his ears pressed flat back. He looked ugly like that, some terrified wild thing, not my usual silly, softy Splodge-Face. I could see his tail, fluffed out to three times its usual size.

‘Leave him,’ said Mum. ‘He’ll come out when he’s ready.’

Mike got to his feet. ‘Something’s scared him. His tail’s gone loo-brush.’

As soon as he’d moved away, Splodge shot out and streaked towards the cat flap. It swung in and out behind him, clattering. I hesitated, wondering whether to go after him. Now he was out in the darkness, part of it, swallowed up by it.

‘It’s Leo,’ I said. ‘Leo’s scared him.’

And me.
I’d
scared him.

‘Leave it now. At least you found him,’ Mum said. ‘I’ll put his food down and he can have it later. He’ll come in when we’ve all gone to bed.’ She gave a big yawn. ‘Gosh, I’m tired. Jennie had me up three times last night. Won’t it be nice when she sleeps straight through? And, Josh, look at the time.
You
ought to be in bed by now.’

We all heard the sound from the baby monitor. A few whimpers, a small hiccupping sound, a wail, then full-scale crying. So it
was
on, and they must have heard me with Jennie. Mum set off up the stairs, slow and weary like someone trudging up the last steps to the summit of Ben Nevis. I followed, too ashamed to say I was sorry, or even to say goodnight properly.

I’d said what I’d said, and it was impossible to unsay. But worst of all was that I hadn’t even
meant
it. For those few seconds, something had got into me, taken over.

15

T
IGER

O
n Thursdays, Mr Baynton takes our class for English. Really he’s a Geography teacher, and Mrs Lloyd’s our English teacher, but Mr Baynton has to do this one lesson a week because of a timetabling clash. He’s called Blinky because he always blinks a lot, especially if he gets wound up. Sometimes he takes off his glasses and dabs at his eyes with a hanky. First time I saw this, I thought he was crying.

He was doing Poems. Today he read us this poem called
The Tiger,
which is so famous that I’d heard it before–the one that goes:

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

When he’d read it to us, he told us what some of the words mean, like
symmetry
and
sinews
and
anvil,
and then he asked us some questions about it. What did we think of it? What did we like about it?

There was a silence. Then Toby said, without putting his hand up, ‘This William Blake bloke who wrote it, he must have run out of ideas.’

Mr Baynton blinked at him. ‘How d’you work that out?’

Toby did this wind-up thing, opening his eyes very wide, then blinking just enough to make his friends laugh, without making it obvious enough for anyone to accuse him of taking the mick. The weird thing is, I’ve noticed Mr Baynton blinks a lot less when he’s teaching Geography. It’s English, and specially poems, that make him blink.

‘Well,’ said Toby. ‘’Sobvious. The end’s exactly the same as the beginning. He couldn’t think how to end it, so he’s just copied out the beginning again.’

‘And what does that do?’ Mr Baynton was dabbing at one eye with his little finger.

Floss put up her hand, but before Blinky could ask her, Chad Wilkins joined in. ‘It doesn’t even rhyme. I mean,
eye
doesn’t rhyme with that word
symmetry,
does it? Unless you say
symmetr-eye.
Rubbish, isn’t it?’

‘It’s a sort of rhyme. A near-rhyme.’ Mr Baynton took off his glasses, rubbed the lenses with his hanky, and put them on again. ‘Poets do that, sometimes. Yes, er, Florence, isn’t it?’

‘Floss,’ said Floss.

‘Dental,’ muttered Bex.

‘See, Toby, I think you’ve missed the point of that verse,’ said Floss, turning round to explain. ‘It gives it a kind of frame. Brings us back to the start. Like we’re back where we were, still wondering.’

Toby made a
yeah, and?
face, but Blinky did a lot of nodding, and tried to get other people to join in. Course, now that Toby had rubbished the poem, and only Floss had put her hand up, no one else was keen, so he told us a bit about rhetorical questions and then asked us to make a list of adjectives. When we’d done that, we had to write our own poem about a tiger.

I didn’t like it. I couldn’t write about tigers
here,
in the classroom, with everyone else having a go at them. Cats are my private thing, and it didn’t feel right even thinking about them in a lesson, surrounded by other people. For a few minutes I considered doing a Jamie-like sulk–refusing to do anything at all. I could always say I hadn’t been able to think of anything.

Then I remembered doing list poems with Mrs Lloyd, last term. I could do one of those. So I wrote:

The Tiger (panthera tigris)

Tigers are immensely strong and powerful.

Tigers can bring down animals of ten times their own weight.

Tigers weigh between 130–189 kgs, and most of this is muscle.

Tigers grow to about 90 cms tall.

Tigers prey on herbivores, especially spotted deer.

Tigers eat up to 5 kgs at one meal and up to 25 kgs each day.

Tigers usually kill every 3–4 days.

Tigers live from 15–20 years.

Tigers breed at the end of the monsoon season and into winter.

Tigers (female) gestate their cubs for about 105 days.

Tigers give birth to 3–6 cubs.

Tiger cubs often don’t survive, though.

While I was finishing it, Blinky came and read it over my shoulder in the way I wish teachers wouldn’t (it’s even worse when you’re doing a test, and they sneak up silently behind you). ‘Did you really have all that information in your head, Latin names and all,’ he asked me, ‘or have you got an encyclopaedia in your bag?’

‘Doesn’t need one,’ Brody told him. ‘He’s got an encyclopaedia for a brain.’

‘That’s quite amazing, Josh, and I wish I had your memory,’ Mr Baynton went on. ‘But it’s not very–well–
poetic,
is it? Perhaps you could–er–add something. Try to use your imagination.’

He’s basically OK, Mr Baynton, but that thing about using your imagination really gets me. I mean,
how
do you use it? Where do you keep it, and where does it go when you’re
not
using it?

I started again. Five minutes later, Blinky called out, ‘Time’s almost up! Let’s hear a couple of your poems. Who wants to go first? Octavia?’

Octavia Foskett wears sparkly hair-slides and very shiny shoes and keeps her pens and pencils in a fluffy pink pencil-case. She’s got a little-girly voice that you can hardly hear, and the way she read her poem made it sound like a nursery rhyme.

‘Tiger, tiger, fierce and strong,

Tiger, tiger, striped and bright,

Tiger, tiger, rare and special

Tiger, run with all your might.’

Mr Baynton nodded. ‘Thank you, Octavia, that’s very good indeed, and you’ve even made it rhyme. Who next?’

‘Dental’s got her hand up,’ pointed out Toby. ‘Ask her, she knows all about tigers. She’s from Sarth Effrica.’

‘Who?–er, oh yes. Florence, er, Floss. Thank you.’

Floss gave Toby a withering look. ‘Tigers don’t come from Africa. Don’t you know anything?’ Then she looked down at her draft book. ‘I’m still working on it, but this will give you the idea.’ She read out, very clearly:

‘Who can know a tiger’s mind?

Who can pace on tiger feet?

Who can see the forest shadows

Through a tiger’s fiery eyes?

Who can know a tiger’s heart?

Who can dream a tiger’s dreams?

‘And that’s as far as I’ve got,’ she said, in a different, more ordinary voice.

‘Well,’ said Mr Baynton, ‘that’s certainly an original approach. Thank you, er, Floss, for sharing that with us. I hope you all noticed how she used rhetorical questions, just like in Blake’s poem. Well, time’s up now! You can finish these off for homework, and we’ll look at them again next week.’

‘I’ve got one!’ Toby’s hand was up now.

‘Go on then,’ said Mr Baynton. Honestly, some teachers never learn.

Toby paused to make sure everyone was listening. Then he read out:

‘Tiger, tiger, tiger rug,

Staring with your ugly mug,

There’s not a lot that you can do

When people wipe their feet on you.’

There was an eruption of laughing. Chad overdid it, rocking back on his chair and clutching his stomach. He overbalanced, then grabbed at Toby one side and the radiator the other, just about saving himself. I turned round to Toby, and said, ‘Tiger rugs? Yuk! And
ugly mug
? Look who’s talking!’ Only I don’t think he heard me–he was too busy lapping up the attention.

‘Fine, well, that ends the lesson on a lighter note.’ Mr Baynton was collecting his books together. ‘See you for Geography. And I don’t want any excuses about homework this time, Chad.’

As we made our way down to the Old Building for Art, Floss tagged along with Noori and Brody and me.

‘That was a crap lesson,’ she said. ‘He does try, that Mr Baynton, but he’s not good with poetry.’

‘What, you’re an expert, I s’pose?’ Brody huffed.

‘No, I mean, he didn’t even ask us what the poem was
about.
What it
said
about tigers.’

‘Tell you what, you take the lesson next time!’

Floss gave up with Brody, and fell into step next to me. ‘How come you know so much?’

‘I’m into animals. Specially big cats,’ I told her. I put some
what’s-it-to-you?
into the way I said it, but she didn’t notice.

‘Me too!’ she said, like that instantly made us best friends. ‘We spent three weeks in the South Kruger last year. It was brilliant! We stayed in a safari lodge. We saw lions and leopards and a rhino there, and all kinds of things.’

‘What, exactly?’

‘Oh–elephants, zebra, waterbuck–and hyena, and loads of birds, like bee-eaters and hornbills and stuff, and klipspringer. You know what, you should go!’

‘Some chance!’ What, did she think we were millionaires or something? I had about as much chance of going to the South Kruger as I did of going on a space-shuttle holiday.

‘You can look up the website––’

‘
Joshnfloss! Joshnfloss!
Arr, how sweet are you two!’

I turned round to see Bex making kissy-kissy faces, and Toby pretending to put his fingers down his throat.

‘What is it with those two? Why are they so stupid?’ Floss asked me, quite seriously.

‘Because they are. Look, see you later. Er, your, you know…poem. I thought it was, you know, good.’

‘Hey, thanks!’ She looked delighted.

I hurried to catch up with Noori and Brody, and made sure I got the seat next to Brody in the Art room. Floss went to sit with Sophie Cheung and Katie Williams at a different table, and I ignored her for the rest of the day.