Catcall Read online

  I knew what she was doing, with all this help me with Jennie stuff. It was a way of making Jamie feel important and responsible. I helped out too, but I’m older and don’t need such special treatment. Anyway, I was already interested. To me, Jennie was a baby animal, so she was nearly as fascinating as a baby gorilla would be, or a tiger cub. The thing about animals is, from the moment they’re born, or even before that, they’ve got all this stuff programmed into them. What to do. What to eat. What to be frightened of.

  Compared with most baby animals, humans are quite backward. A foal can run with the herd within hours of being born, and a duckling or a cygnet knows how to swim. But all a baby like Jennie can do is lie in her pram, and drink milk, and wee and poo, and cry and sleep. She’s pretty helpless really. A baby orang-utan or a chimpanzee would have been a lot more fun, or my first choice, a mountain gorilla (gorilla gorilla beringei), but since I wasn’t likely to get any of those, I’d make do with Jennie. I liked seeing how things changed from week to week. For instance, when she was first born she didn’t even know how to look at people’s faces. Now she could do that. And if you put your finger near her hand, she’d curl her tiny fingers round it. Actually, I know a lot about babies, from reading Mum’s books. Like, just before ours was born, I thought Mum ought to know that Jennie had hair about two inches long and her fingernails already needed clipping. Mum said the baby would have to wait till she was out in the world before she got her first manicure, but I could tell she was impressed.

  Jamie was a bit young to be interested. Some of the book was a bit yukky even for me, and I can take most things. I skipped all the ikky stuff about how babies get made–anyway, we’d got past that stage before Mike bought the book–and stuck to the facts about foetal development.

  By the time I went to bed, I was getting a bit fed up with Jamie, to be honest. I was quite sure he only wanted lots of fuss made of him. I nearly told him so. But I remembered that I was studying him, and that meant not interfering. What I wanted to do was catch him out.

  12

  MASK

  Next day, at the end of school, I went across to the juniors as usual, with Brody and Noori, to collect Jamie. Soon as I got to the gate, and all the mums waiting with their buggies, I heard, ‘Hey, Josh!’ and Jamie’s friend Arran ran towards me. He must have been waiting.

  ‘Mr Rose says can you come in?’ he panted. ‘Jamie’s been talking!’

  ‘What’s that about?’ I heard Noori ask Brody.

  ‘Jamie’s gone peculiar,’ Brody said. ‘They’re sending him to a psychiatrist.’

  Psychiatrist isn’t the same as psychologist, but I couldn’t stop now to put Brody right. I ran in with Arran, outpacing him.

  ‘Talking?’ I asked, turning to run backwards, so he could catch up. ‘What, just like normal?’

  ‘Well, no. It’s a bit odd, to say the least. He’s being a cat!’

  ‘A cat? How?’

  ‘We had these mime people in our class, and we’ve been making masks and using them to make up plays…’

  But now we were at Mr Rose’s door, and Mr Rose was waiting there.

  ‘Thanks, Arran,’ he said, and nodded for Arran to go into the classroom. To me, he said, ‘I’ve just asked Mrs Curwen to phone your mum–I think she’ll want to come straight away. It’s a bit odd, Josh. We’ve been making masks, and Jamie made a cat’s face. And as soon as he put the mask on, he started to talk. Only not as himself. As the cat.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  Mr Rose frowned. ‘He said things like I can see you,’ he went, in this strange drawly way. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

  ‘He said that? In that funny voice?’

  ‘Yes. Come in and see if he’s still doing it. Maybe he’ll talk to you.’

  I didn’t like what I saw. While Mr Rose had been out of the room, a crowd of children had gathered round Jamie. Most of them wore masks–blodgy clown faces or cartoon characters. Jamie, in a painted cat’s mask, was sitting at his desk, with his hands curled in front of him like paws. He’s quite good at drawing and painting, better than me. His mask was of a bold yellow cat, a lion, with sprouting whiskers and carefully-shaped eye-slits. I couldn’t see Jamie’s eyes behind, but the slitty shapes gave the face a cat’s fierce stare.

  His gaze was fixed on a little girl with hair in lots of little plaits that sprouted from her head like antennae. ‘You think you can hide,’ he told her, in the slow, yowly voice Mr Rose had tried to copy, ‘but I’ll know where you’ve gone. I can come and find you whenever I want.’

  For a few seconds the girl seemed hypnotised, then she ducked her face down and squirmed away, and some of the others squealed. A boy in an alien mask pushed forward, wanting attention. ‘Do it to me, Jamie!’

  Jamie was a freak show. A circus act. I wanted to shout at the children, tell them to leave him alone. I started to swish them away like wasps.

  Mr Rose’s big voice cut through the squealing and giggling. ‘Back to your own tables, everyone! Now! I want paintbrushes washed, everything cleared up, and all of you ready for home, in three minutes.’

  Now the room was full of the sounds of scraping chairs and running taps and chatter. In the middle of it all, I sat next to Jamie. He seemed even more silent than before, with the cat mask between him and me. On the table was a sheet of paper with lines of writing on it, set out in play script.

  ‘That’s what we’ve been doing,’ said Arran, seeing me looking. ‘We made up plays for our characters.’

  ‘So who were you?’

  His mask was face-down on the table, so all I could see was the elastic that would hold it in place. When he held it up to show me, I didn’t get it. Unlike the other children, who’d painted monsters or clowns, Arran had made an ordinary face. Smiley mouth, brown hair flopping in a fringe, round red cheeks.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘Can’t you tell?’ He sounded disappointed. ‘It’s meant to be him!’

  ‘You’ve made a mask of Jamie?’

  He pulled a face. ‘Well, tried. It’s not very good.’

  ‘Put it on!’

  Arran put the mask over his face, then pulled Jamie’s Chelsea hat over his head. He tugged it down over the top of the mask, making the cardboard crease and buckle. So now we had Jamie as a cat, Arran as Jamie.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked Jamie, all casual.

  Slowly he turned his head to me. ‘Leo. I’m Leo.’

  Leo for Lion, panthera leo, but also it’s his middle name. He was christened Jamie Leo Bryce, now Jamie Leo Bowman. Mum and Dad thought of that because Leo’s his Zodiac sign. Pity they didn’t think of it when I was born–instead of Joshua Paul, I’d be Joshua Scorpio.

  ‘Is Jamie in there?’ I asked, not sure whether it was the right thing to say. I didn’t know how to get through to him, this cat-stranger. But he was talking, for the first time in two days! I wanted to know everything at once–what’s happened to you? What made you lose your voice? Why have you started talking now, and in this cat voice–what’s that about?

  Jamie shook his head vigorously, pointing at Arran. ‘That’s Jamie. Duh! I’m Leo.’

  ‘Want to read me your play?’ I said. I didn’t think it could be very long, and we’d have a couple of minutes. Mr Rose saw what I was doing, and left us to it while he chivvied the rest of the class to finish at the sink and put books and pencils away in trays.

  This is what Jamie and Arran read out:

  Arran-as-Jamie:

  What are you staring at?

  Jamie-as-Leo:

  You. Because you have to follow me. I make you.

  Arran-as-Jamie:

  How do you make me?

  Jamie-as-Leo:

  Because you’re mine. I told you.

  Arran-as-Jamie:

  How did you tell me?

  Jamie-as-Leo:

  When I looked at you.

  Arran-as-Jamie:

  When did you look at me?

  Jamie-as-Leo:
>
  When I was a lion.

  Arran-as-Jamie:

  But you are a lion.

  Jamie-as-Leo:

  I know. I mean when you came to see me. When you looked in my cage and I looked back at you.

  Arran-as-Jamie:

  Yes?

  Jamie-as-Leo:

  I looked at you and I said–

  Pause.

  Arran-as-Jamie:

  Yes? What did you say?

  Jamie-as-Leo:

  I looked at you and I said–

  Pause.

  I sat forward, eager. ‘What? What did you say?’ I had to make myself speak calmly, when inside I was fizzing with excitement.

  Nothing. I’d pushed too far–spoiled it. Jamie had gone silent again. He turned to stare at me from behind his mask. And his stare seemed to say, But you know! Or if you don’t know, you ought to.

  I remembered him telling me on the Ridgeway walk that the lion had spoken to him, but he couldn’t remember what. I thought he was just inventing it–well, and of course he was.

  ‘That’s as far as we’ve got,’ Arran told me. ‘We’re supposed to finish tomorrow.’

  He took off his Jamie mask and walked across to put it carefully in his tray. I folded the play-script and put it in my pocket. I wanted to read it again later, and copy it out to keep. If Jamie had caught the Lion thing–only turbo-charged–and now he was a head case, it must be down to me to sort it out, mustn’t it? He must have got it from me. I’m always wondering what cats think and dream and fear. I’m always wishing I could get inside Splodge’s head to see what it feels like in there–to see what he thinks about me, and about other humans. But I’d never thought I actually was a cat or a lion.

  All the children were standing behind their desks now, ready to be dismissed. Jamie stood, too, still wearing the lion face.

  ‘You can’t go home wearing that, Jamie–you’ll scare the infants!’ Mr Rose joked. ‘Take it off and put it in your tray. Well done–you and Arran worked really well together.’

  But Jamie wouldn’t be parted from his mask. He insisted on wearing it all the way home.

  13

  LEO

  All evening, we had to pretend he was Leo.

  ‘D’you want the TV on, Leo?’

  ‘Milk-shake or orange juice, Leo?’

  ‘Shall I read you a story, Leo?’

  Some of the questions Jamie answered in his Leo voice. To others, he only gave a nod or a shake of his head. As Leo he was stern and kingly.

  Mum went into the kitchen to get the tea, leaving me and Jamie to keep an eye on Jennie in the lounge. Course, Mum was delighted that Jamie had started talking, but she didn’t know the half of it. I followed her to the kitchen.

  ‘Mum? You know this Leo thing?’ I said. ‘At school? It was weird. Jamie and Arran were making up a play together–Jamie was Leo, and Arran was Jamie.’

  Mum unplugged the kettle and took it to the sink. ‘A play? That sounds like fun. And that’s when Jamie started to talk?’

  I nodded. ‘But, Mum, you know we went to that wildlife park, with Dad? And saw lions?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Well, in the play, Jamie said the lion told him something. He said that before, too.’

  Mum stared at me, then jumped back as tap-water sprayed all over the lid of the kettle and soaked the sleeve of her jumper. ‘Oh, now look.’ She turned off the tap. ‘He said what ?’

  ‘The lion told him something. I was waiting for him to say what, but that was as far as they’d got, with the play.’

  ‘Oh, but he was just pretending, surely!’ Mum dabbed at her sleeve with a towel.

  ‘Well, course he was!’ I humphed. ‘I mean, the lion didn’t really talk! But––’ I stood by the draining-board, remembering the lion’s steady gaze, and the shudder that had gone through me. No, not really a shudder. I hadn’t been frightened, I’d been–hypnotised. I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to. I was held by that fiercely calm gaze like a hedgehog in car headlights. Perhaps the lion had told me something, too, sent me a message…if I could only understand…

  ‘But what ?’ Mum prompted.

  ‘Well, look at this.’ As soon as we’d got in from school, I’d typed a copy of the play-script Jamie and Arran had written, and printed it out. I took the page out of my jeans pocket and gave it to her. ‘Here’s what they did. See, Jamie was Leo, and Arran was Jamie–his mask was meant to be Jamie. But it’s not finished, Arran said.’

  ‘Arran was Jamie? Whatever made him think of that?’

  I shook my head–how would I know? Mum read the script, slowly, her lips shaping the words. Then she went back to the beginning and started again. I didn’t like what I’d just done–taking Jamie’s script without asking, using it as evidence. Too late, now. Mum had it in her hand.

  ‘Are they going to finish it?’ she said at last. ‘If only we knew what the lion said! I mean, what he thought it said.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I told her. ‘They’re doing more on it tomorrow.’

  ‘Can I keep this?’

  ‘If you want.’ I’d been going to put it in my Book of Cats, but I could print out another copy.

  ‘I’d like to show it to the–to the doctor,’ Mum said.

  What she meant was the psychologist.

  She tucked the paper into the rack where she keeps letters and vouchers and free offers. ‘Thanks, Josh. I’m glad you showed me. I wonder if I ought to speak to Mr Rose about this. Jamie needs time to finish this in his own way.’

  Suddenly a look of panic came over her face, and she rushed into the lounge. Maybe she’d heard Jennie crying, or starting to cry–she seemed to have developed extra-sensory perception since Jennie had been born. I followed, but Jennie was lying peacefully in her crib, clenching and unclenching her fists the way she did sometimes, and Jamie was curled up on the sofa, still with his Leo mask on, looking at my wildlife magazine. I looked at Mum. Had she thought Jamie might hurt Jennie?

  ‘Tea in ten minutes, boys,’ Mum said.

  She’d already forgotten that Jamie only answered to Leo.

  We were eating apple pie when I heard the rumble and clatter of Mike’s van on the driveway. He was late, because he’d been trying to finish a job in Cricklewood. I thought Jamie would have to take off his mask to eat–Mum hadn’t tried to make him, but had watched to see what he’d do. What he did, he pushed it up for each mouthful, then pulled it back quickly while he chewed and swallowed, hiding himself. He wouldn’t look at me or Mum, or join in the conversation.

  What if he really had been taken over by something, some spirit of Leo or Lion that had turned him into a different person? What if the eyes behind the mask weren’t Jamie’s, but the glaring amber eyes of a lion? I tried to concentrate on eating my pie and making things seem normal. This was just stupid. If I got frightened of my own brother, what use would I be?

  Mike came in, all dusty and cement-spattered in his overalls. Instead of giving us all a hug as usual, he stared at Jamie, surprised by the mask. Jamie stared back through the eye-slits. There was an odd stillness about him. A lion waiting to spring, I thought. There really was a stranger at our table. But Mike recovered quickly.

  ‘Wow, Jamie!’ he said. ‘That’s stupendous! Did you make it? You’ll scare Splodge–he’ll think there’s an intruder in the house!’

  ‘He’s Leo,’ I told Mike. ‘You have to call him Leo.’

  Mike looked astonished. He always goes upstairs to change out of his work clothes as soon as he’s home from work, but today was different.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ Mum told him. ‘We’re having tea–Josh, me and Leo. Say hello to Mike, Leo.’

  ‘I’m Leo. You can’t tell me what to do,’ said Jamie in his Leo voice.

  Very slowly, holding out his hands to the table to steady himself, Mike sat down. ‘Hello, Leo,’ he said.

  Jamie nodded his head sternly.

  ‘Have you come to live with us?’ Mike gave a quick glance at Mum to check he w
as doing it right.

  ‘I might stay for a bit,’ Jamie said. ‘I live wherever I want. I’m Leo.’

  ‘Well, we’re very pleased to have you here,’ Mike said. He looked at the plates on the table. ‘Have you had something nice to eat? What do you like, I wonder? Pilchards? Minced rabbit?’

  ‘I’ve eaten, thank you,’ Jamie said.

  ‘You mustn’t joke with Leo,’ I whispered to Mike. ‘He’s a lion, a proud lion, not an ordinary cat.’

  Mike nodded, then continued to Jamie: ‘How did you manage to eat your tea with the mask on?’

  Jamie showed no sign of having heard. I thought: while he’s Leo, it isn’t a mask–it’s him. That’s why he won’t answer.

  ‘He pushed the mask up to put food in his mouth,’ Mum explained. ‘And down again while he chewed.’

  ‘I eat what I like,’ Jamie said. ‘And I like baked beans.’ It was almost his normal voice.

  ‘Good, so do I.’ Mike darted another look at Mum. ‘Have you left me any?’ I could see that they both felt the way I had at school–fidgety with excitement, sure that we’d almost got Jamie back.

  We hadn’t. Only Jamie-as-Leo.

  When it was Jamie’s bedtime, I went upstairs to fetch my Book of Cats. With difficulty, Mum persuaded him to take off the Leo face. ‘You can wear it again tomorrow, if you want.’

  Reluctantly, Jamie lifted off the mask and put it on the low table between our two beds.

  ‘Have you cleaned your teeth?’

  No answer.

  ‘Would you like a story?’

  No answer.