Читать книгу Solomon’s Tale - Sheila Jeffries - Страница 10

Jessica hated the postman. She acted like a guard dog, lying in wait for him under the bushes by the front door, and pouncing on his shoelaces whenever he came near. On wet days she sat on the stairs glaring at the letterbox, and as soon as the postman pushed letters through onto the mat, she shredded them with ferocious claws. If Ellen didn’t get to them first, Jessica would then use the pile of torn paper as a litter tray. Her rage was infectious. Ellen and Joe, and even little John, screamed at her, and Jessica would disappear under the sofa at speed.

She’d got a private collection of toys under there, a dead mouse, a blue and yellow Lego man, a shoelace and a Dairylea cheese portion pilfered from the kitchen table.

One morning Jessica furiously attacked a crackly brown envelope that Joe obviously wanted.

‘You DEMON cat!’ he roared, purple in the face as he dangled the shredded letter in his hand. As usual, he turned on Ellen. ‘You would have to choose a manic moggy like her wouldn’t you? Well I tell you now, that cat is going down the RSPCA.’

‘No Joe,’ pleaded Ellen. ‘We promised to look after her, and anyway she can be a sweet little cat sometimes.’

‘Sweet little cat! She’s rubbish. And we can’t afford to feed one cat, leave alone two.’

They were chilling words. I gazed at Joe from where I was sitting quietly on the windowsill enjoying the morning sun. Keeping calm wasn’t easy, but I was managing, even when I heard the dreaded RSPCA word. Later I padded across to the sofa and coaxed Jessica out. Her eyes were huge and black, but she emerged and sat beside me in our favourite chair.

‘I love you,’ I said. ‘And Ellen does too. But why must you tear up letters like that?’

Jessica said something surprising.

‘I only tear up the brown ones. They’re bills, and they make Joe bad tempered. Actually he tears them up himself, I’ve seen him doing it. And he hides them from Ellen.’

Jessica fascinated me. One morning I sat and watched her in the garden. She spent half her time airborne, doing reckless leaps from the garage roof to the cherry tree, then clambering up through the branches. Next she sat on the high wall and batted at swallows. The tiny birds dive bombed her, almost clipping her with a blade-like wing as they twisted out of her reach.

‘Do you wish you were a bird?’ I asked her.

‘No.’ She waited until I’d climbed through a prickly bush to the top of the wall to be with her. ‘Tiresome teenage kitten,’ she growled, lashing her tail at me. She took off down to the lawn, leaving me marooned up there, meowing. She slipped through the cat flap and I figured she would be in the kitchen eating from my dish. Moments later she emerged with a big brick of cheese in her mouth.

‘YOU PIGGING CAT!’ Joe burst into the garden and saw Jessica’s tail disappearing under the shed. ‘Why do I bother giving you a home? I worked my hands to the bone to pay for that cheese and you go and nick it. Thieving moggy. You’re nothing but trouble.’

He seized a broom and banged on the shed with it. But Jessica didn’t come out. I saw Sue-next-door peering through her curtains, and I wondered where Ellen was. I felt scared on top of the wall, with Joe’s voice booming all over the garden. I wanted Ellen to come and coax me down.

Horrified, I watched Joe lie down and ram the broom handle under the shed. Jessica would be killed. The shed was creaking and rocking as Joe attacked it. I looked up at Sue-next-door, who was standing firmly at the window with her arms folded, and I sent her a silent meow. She responded by rolling her eyes.

Jessica popped out from the other side of the shed, still with the cheese in her mouth, and streaked across the lawn. I saw a flash of white paws and pink pads as she cleared the fence into Sue-next-door’s garden. Joe hurled the broom after her with such force that it snapped a row of tomato plants which Ellen had been growing against the sunny fence. A hot, dusty smell rose from them and green tomatoes rolled over the grass.

Joe stood there, his aura steaming. His face was red and his hands trembled. Slowly he walked over and picked up a green tomato, and looked at it in silence. He picked up the two halves of the broom, tried unsuccessfully to fit them back together, and stalked back towards the house. He walked right past me but didn’t look up, and I saw big fat tears on his furious cheeks. I sensed his pain.

I wished Ellen would come back. But she didn’t. Instead, a purple silence filled the garden.

Jessica had called me a ‘tiresome teenage kitten’ but that wasn’t true. I was a healing cat. If I saw tears on human cheeks I had to do something. So I climbed down through the prickly bush, and trotted into the house with my tail up. I could tell where Joe was by the sour smell of beer. He was slumped in a corner by a pile of magazines, wiping his tears with the back of his hand, sniffing and slurping from a can. I ran to him as if he was my best friend. Being careful not to scratch him, I walked nicely along his leg and up his torso to his heart. It was bang-banging in there, and his arms were shaking. He looked at me in surprise.

As soon as we had eye contact, I gazed into his soul and purred. I licked the salty tears from his face, but more of them came zigzagging down.

‘Oh Solomon,’ he whispered. ‘How can you love a bad-tempered bastard like me?’

I purred louder, stretching my paws over his heart, and rubbed my head against his bristly chin.

‘The truth is, Solomon,’ he said, ‘I don’t like myself one bit. Everything I do goes wrong. I’m no good. In fact, I’m bloody doomed.’

I pretended to go to sleep and let him talk, his hot hand smoothing my fur, and after a while he quietened down and my angel came close, shining her light over us as we dozed in the chair.

‘You’re doing a great job, Solomon,’ she said.

After Joe’s outburst I needed another cat to curl up with. Jessica didn’t come back until it was dark and everyone had gone to bed, even the swallows. Moonlight spilled in through the window and polished her sleek fur as she came in. I ran to meet her. She condescended to touch noses with me, and I got to look into her eyes. In the night they were deep saucers of green, and her whiskers glistened magnificently each side of her little pink nose. To me she was exquisitely beautiful. Why didn’t she want to be friends with me?

I followed her to her basket, but she wouldn’t let me in there. Sensing she was tired, I sat watching her. All I wanted was to curl up against her silky warmth.

‘Go away,’ she hissed. ‘You smell like that sour stuff Joe drinks.’

‘I’ve been lying on him,’ I said. ‘Healing him.’

Jessica looked at me out of slitty eyes.

‘Traitor,’ she said. ‘You should have been scratching him after the way he treated me.’

‘I don’t scratch humans. I’m a healing cat.’

‘Poof!’ Jessica curled up into a silken mound and closed her eyes as if I wasn’t there. Confused, I watched her go to sleep, and respected her peace. I didn’t dare to even put one paw inside her cosy basket; I spent the night hunched on the cold floor just to be near her.

In the morning her eyes were buttercup yellow again, and when she yawned, I saw the curl of her tongue and the pink roof of her mouth. She looked surprised and not pleased to see me there. We touched noses and it made me buzz all over with excitement. Her eyes hardened and she hissed at me, but not before I’d seen the sadness that lurked behind those golden eyes. Sadness – and anger. I wanted to know where it had come from, but Jessica wouldn’t talk to me.

I’d fallen in love with a cat who didn’t want me.

One evening Joe came through the back door with a bottle of wine and a pizza in a box. He had a rare smile on his face.

‘Where did you get this?’ Ellen asked.

‘Stop frowning, Ellen,’ Joe said, and he fished into his back pocket and took out some cash. ‘I’ve got a JOB!’

‘A job? Oh wow, that’s amazing.’ Ellen’s face lit up with a happy smile. She gave Joe a hug and pushed his hair out of his eyes. ‘Doing what?’

‘Don’t get too excited, it’s only casual work – in the bar at the pub. Three nights a week.’

‘Great,’ said Ellen, ‘but …’

‘Don’t give me that face, Joe said. ‘I won’t be drinking if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m going to look after my family.’

Ellen sighed and opened the big pizza box.

‘Hmm. Yum. Do you want a little bit, Solomon?’

The times when Joe went to work were peaceful for us, golden summer evenings in the garden, with John, Jessica and me racing around while Ellen worked on a little flower bed. On wet evenings I managed to persuade her to play the piano again. John got so excited, dancing and squealing and singing little songs. Even Jessica enjoyed it and she came and lay beside me on top of the piano, feeling the ripples of music and watching Ellen’s aura brightening as she played.

‘Will it be all right now that Joe has a job?’ I asked my angel. For a moment she was silent. Then she looked at me sadly and new colours flickered in the light that shone around her; deeper blues and purples.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s too little, too late.’

Summer passed and the lawn thundered with falling apples. Ellen and John walked round the hedges picking lush blackberries and putting them into bags, and I insisted on going with them, always with my tail up very straight.

‘Like a snorkel,’ Ellen laughed as I dashed through the long grass.

But she didn’t like me following her to the shop. After my trip in the lorry, traffic really scared me, and if I tried to follow Ellen along the main road it involved panicky dives into strange hedges and gardens. I followed Ellen everywhere. I would not let her out of my sight. Sometimes she shut me in and then I sat at the window like a sentry awaiting her return.

Ellen was changing. Often she was angry and frightened, and exhausted by the frequent rows with Joe. But she always welcomed my love, and the supply of Kitekat continued. I was cuddled and brushed and sprinkled with flea powder. She even gave me vitamins and the occasional egg. I grew into a glossy tomcat.

It was a cold winter night when Jessica finally let me into her basket. I held my breath and stepped in gingerly. Hardly daring to hope that this was happening, I silently eased myself close to her. She’d had a bad day and I knew she needed me, as I needed her. For once she didn’t push me away. She growled a little, and purred with me, and I sensed her silent need for a friend, a friend who loved her no matter what.

Blissfully, I lay against her warm silky coat and let the stars of happiness cluster around us. After that night we always slept together with our soft paws intertwined. Jessica liked to lie with her chin on my neck and I loved to feel her there. Together we made a kind of music, love music made of little purrs and sighs and squeaks. Sometimes I slid my paw around her glossy back, and when the morning sun shone through the window, I lay dreaming, watching the colours of the sun glint on her black fur.

Winter passed, and when spring came I was the boss cat. Jessica was now very flirty with me. She provoked me into wild chases, through the raspberry canes and up the cherry tree and over the garage roof. We mated all over the place, on the neighbour’s lawn, in the vegetable garden, even in the middle of the road. But the best time was on top of the tumble drier in the utility room, when it was running. Ellen opened the door and saw us. We froze, squared our eyes, and continued. Ellen got the message, smiled and left us alone.

A month or so later Jessica became fat and heavy with my kittens.

Soon she was too fat to crawl under the sofa. Being pregnant calmed her down. It calmed everyone down, including me. Jessica was contented. She left the postman alone, set up a new refuge for herself under Ellen’s bed, and on a hot night in June, Jessica gave birth all by herself to three silky kittens. My children.

Ellen immediately moved them all downstairs to a basket in the kitchen, but Jessica insisted on moving them back, carrying each kitten in her mouth carefully up the stairs. She always left the little tabby one until last. It was a girl kitten, fluffy and very beautiful with tinges of silver and gold in her fur.

‘This is a special kitten,’ said my angel, ‘she’s come here to heal, like you, Solomon.’ So, in those moments before Jessica came back for her, I gave the tabby kitten lots of love and purring. One day she opened her baby blue eyes and looked at me as if she wanted to fix me in her memory forever.

It was the last happy day I remember. The house felt sunlit and peaceful. Ellen and Joe were friends, and John was playing happily in the garden.

And that was the day the bailiff came.

I was feeling fragile because a few days ago Joe had taken me to the vet who had put me to sleep and done something to me to stop me making any more kittens. It was painful, and humiliating, and I felt depressed afterwards, despite understanding the reason. I’d agreed this in the spirit world. Being a full tomcat would distract me from my true path. I had agreed to love Ellen and help her through a difficult time, but if I’d known how difficult it would be then I might not have volunteered. Ellen had let me have my fling with Jessica first. She’d wanted Jessica to experience the joys of motherhood and for John to see the kittens born and growing up.

That was Ellen’s idealistic dream.

On that warm June day my angel had alerted me at dawn. She’d shown me a picture of a man in a grey suit inside a large building with ‘County Court’ carved in stone letters over the door. The man had been writing Ellen’s name and address on a form. My angel told me that today he was coming to our house. Ellen didn’t know. I had to be there. To stay calm and keep purring. ‘Remember you are a healing cat,’ she said.

Joe had gone out and I had to sit up all day watching, even though I wanted to lie down after what the vet had done. By lunchtime I was worn out. No one had come. Ellen was pottering about the garden while John was splashing and squealing in a big water tub on the lawn. Eventually I fell asleep, curled up on the sunny doorstep. In my dreams bees were humming over the flowers, swallows twittered overhead and the long grass at the edge of the lawn was full of chirping grasshoppers. As I dreamed about the spirit world another sound dragged me back, heavy footsteps coming nearer. I opened one eye and saw a pair of gleaming shoes on the doorstep.

‘Hello puss!’ A man’s hand reached down to stroke me. The bailiff!

Compared to a tiger a cat is very small. So it’s no good acting like a tiger and attacking people. Cats have to be subtle and artful.

I displayed my hostility to the bailiff, completely ignoring him by staring into the distance with no response to his attempt to stroke me. After what the angel had said, it was surprising to find the bailiff was an ordinary human. But he was acting sinister.

His neck was locked stiff, his eyes icy cold and his heart encased in metal. I could hear it ticking as he knocked at the door.

Ellen opened it, carrying John who was wrapped in a blue bath towel. Her innocent eyes looked enquiringly at the bailiff.

‘Double glazing?’ she smiled. ‘No thanks.’

‘Mrs King?’

‘Yes. That’s me. And this is John.’

John didn’t look happy, even though Ellen was bouncing him about to try and make him laugh. His solemn eyes caught mine. He knew. The bailiff’s frozen aura was obvious and menacing to him.

‘Mrs Ellen King?’

‘Yes.’ The smile was shrinking on Ellen’s face.

‘And your husband is Mr Joseph King?’

‘Yes?’

The bailiff showed Ellen a card.

‘I’m a bailiff from the county court. I have a warrant to enter your property and seize goods to the value of seventeen thousand pounds, a debt your husband owes to the bank.’

I watched Ellen’s aura splintering. It was alarming. John chose that moment to start crying, and this upset Ellen. She screamed at the bailiff and her eyes were two cracks of blue fire.

‘How dare you come here, threatening us? Can’t you see I’m a mother with a small child? It’s not my debt, it’s HIS! I know nothing about it!’

I wormed my way into the hall and sat at Ellen’s feet, puffing myself up protectively. How I wished I was a dog, an Alsatian or a Rottweiler. It’s terrible having to hiss when you want to bark.

The man kept coldly repeating the same words, his voice a monotonous chant against Ellen’s hysteria and John’s crying. However, as Ellen’s distress grew, it was John who calmed her down by putting his fat little arms around her neck.

‘Mummy, talk nicely.’

Ellen’s legs were shivering. The bailiff’s gleaming shoes were squeaking across the doormat. My angel stood in the hall with a golden sword in her hand but no one except me could see her. Jessica was bolting upstairs with yet another kitten swinging from her mouth.