Cat's Paw (14 page)

Kevin led him along the platform, through the Hermitage’s cardboard dormitory. Wind ruffled Ben’s hair and he heard a roar.

‘Train passing Platform 1,’ said Kevin. ‘They still go through that bit of tunnel. We sleep here on Platform 2, where it’s quieter. This’ll be your bed. It’s
just become free.’

Ben looked down at a nest of split grocery boxes.

‘Why has it just become free?’

‘Because no-one else needs it anymore.’ Kevin scratched a spot on his chin. ‘No blanket. Get one before bedtime. We dim the lights at eleven-thirty. After that, no talking.
Routine is important.’

Where would he find a blanket? It gave him an excuse to explore. Wandering the Hermitage, Ben found himself thinking of a crab he’d seen on a beach in Spain. Instead of a shell it had a
Fanta can. Funny – of course, that would have been a hermit crab. Yet it wasn’t the name that struck a chord. It was the way these kids had managed to make a home out of something so
wrong for it.

He climbed the stairs between the unfinished escalators and found what would have been the ticket hall. It reminded him of the one at Seven Sisters. The floor space formed a wonky crescent with
the stairways at one end and a tunnel at the other, blocked with concrete. There were two other exits, similarly sealed. Ivy-wreathes of electric wires wove along the skirts of the walls, feeding
the forest of brightly burning household lamps. Probably they drew power from the train tracks below. Here was a kind of leisure area, with a TV, stereo system, pool table, even a pinball machine
(for a moment he was tempted, then moved away with a shudder). He found a ticket office that was serving as a sort of kitchen, piled high with grocery boxes, a microwave and a fridge.

Another office had been turned into a wardrobe, or rather a mineshaft through a mountain of clothes, exposing seasons of fashions stacked in geological layers. A small blonde girl was working to
sort mounds of shopping bags into piles. Ben learned her name was Lisa. She unearthed some Calvin Klein pyjamas, still in their wrapper.

‘We’re out of bedding,’ she said, after more digging. ‘Use this.’

The angora shawls, silk shirts and fake fur coat that she gave him would have paid Mum’s housekeeping for months. Ben said an awkward thank-you over the bundle and took it down to line his
cardboard cot. The shirts would pass for sheets and the bundled up shawls could be a pillow. He had almost finished making his bed (another first for him) when he sensed a presence behind him.

‘You’re wanted,’ said Kevin. ‘On the training ground.’

The training ground proved to be the escalator hall. Most of the polecats were already assembled, among them Dean, Gary, Alec and the lad with the big nose whose name turned out to be Ritchie.
They had lined up in loose ranks, looking very much like the Cat Kin preparing for a pashki session. Except that these kids didn’t do pashki, did they? They learned mustel-id. Unsure of where
to go, Ben hovered at the end of the back row, next to Antonia. Kevin, up at the front where Geoff or Mrs Powell would have stood, put him straight.

‘Not you. You watch. Over there.’

He went to sit at the hall’s edge, his back to a wall of locked wooden doors, utility cupboards perhaps. Something troubled him about the group. He realised he was looking in vain for two
familiar faces. Thomas and Hannah weren’t here. He hadn’t seen them since he arrived, nor had anyone mentioned their names. Maybe there was an innocent explanation.

Kevin got the session going and Ben almost relaxed – it was so familiar. Those bends and balances, the stretches that made his calves ache in sympathy. Ritchie and Lisa were the wobbliest
ones but Dean was gifted, he could tell, and so was the spindly Alec. Jeep was one of the best.

As the lesson progressed he noticed subtle differences. A stretch like pashki’s Scratching Tree became even more extravagant, so that the wave of reaching bodies swelled even higher.
Coiled feline poises were replaced by looser, shiftier stances, and Eth walking had transformed into a frantic bounce. Most strikingly, no-one ever stood still, so that instead of pashki’s
weightless grace the polecats gave off a feverish giddiness. Mustel-id was like pashki, yet unlike. One was the flow of a gliding stream, the other, a water-tap turned full on.

Ben’s interest became fascination. He knew he had a nagging worry, something about two children who weren’t here, but couldn’t quite place it now. He saw Kevin make a gesture
like the AOK sign, but with the thumb to the middle finger, palm out. The straight fingers formed a W.

The crowd began to move as a single body. They swayed first one way, then another, resembling dancing cobras, though the only music was the shuffle of their feet on the concrete. Keeping track
of any individual was too hard. Now he would see them on the hall’s far side, then he would feel their draught as they passed close. He couldn’t tell if the swaying forms were near or
far, or both at the same time. The surrounding walls melted into darkness to leave only the figures writhing before him.

And a shadow.

That thought came from nowhere. He did not see it but he sensed it: another presence, bigger and bulkier than the rest, yet even harder to pinpoint. . . an extra figure gliding in and out of the
crowd. It wasn’t Kevin. At the same time there came a stir in the patterns of the dance, like the flurry through the pigeons of Trafalgar Square when a pest-controlling falcon crossed the
sky. In sudden fear he tried to stand and found himself glued to the floor. There was something else here in the hall, something
frightful
, and he couldn’t move.

Even as the dread ate him up, one corner of his mind held firm. It understood. This was no mere exercise. This was for him. He had read about how weasels danced to mesmerise their prey, muddle
their wits and break their will to escape. This must be how the polecats subdued their new recruits. Now it was hard to blink, hard to think. He saw the dance, the dance, only the dance. He stared,
helpless as a rabbit.

No
. His inner cat seethed indignantly.
I am no rabbit
.

His eyes finally got a grip on the tangle of bodies. They picked the vision apart with catty disdain, until the hypnotic patterns unravelled to become just a lot of clowns prancing about.

‘
Stop
.’

The polecats froze at a shout. He saw the new figure among them. It was tall, taller than Kevin, and oddly drained of light, so that at first he mistook it for someone’s elongated shadow.
Then he knew what it reminded him of. Mum’s best friend Lorelei had once kept a statuette in her living room, a man-shape twisted out of bronze wire. It had frightened him so much when he was
little that he wouldn’t be left alone with it. Now here it was, life-sized and alive.

The man’s arms were cables of muscle. Cropped hair, light brown, revealed the roundness of his skull. He turned into the light, but the shadow clung to his features. Was this some kind of
ghost? No. The face was tattooed with spectacled markings, so that it appeared to be wearing a hangman’s mask or weeping huge dark tears. The figure’s clothes, a sleeveless tunic and
trousers, were rags of fur stitched together.

Ben thought of a dark stinking shed, a starving child chained in the corner. He was looking at Martin Fisher.

The polecats shrank back as if from a fire. Fisher turned, his eyes sweeping over them, coming to rest on Ben. Fisher walked towards him. With every step he appeared to grow until the lofty roof
seemed too low to hold him. Leaning over Ben he cocked his head to one side.

‘Hello. How are you?’

‘Er,’ said Ben. ‘Okay.’

‘My name is Martin Fisher. What’s yours?’

‘Ben,’ said Ben.

‘I am very well, thank you,’ said Fisher. He frowned suddenly, as if someone had corrected him. ‘I am very pleased to meet you.’

Ben’s skin wanted to crawl away and hide. He had the feeling that a puppet was speaking, not a person at all.

‘Make yourself at home,’ said Fisher. ‘The Hermitage has everything you want. Kevin has looked after you well.’

Was that a question? ‘Yes. . . he has.’

‘Kevin has looked after you well?’ Fisher repeated. ‘Yes, he has.’ He nodded thoughtfully. Then, in a single movement, he stooped and lifted Ben to his feet. He was as
strong as a machine.

‘Kevin is my friend,’ said Fisher. ‘He told me about you. You are the cat child.’

Ben was too afraid to nod.

‘You are the White Cat’s child,’ said Fisher.

Ben steeled himself. Geoff had rigorously coached him on how to play this. He hoped Geoff was right.

‘He used to teach me pashki,’ said Ben. ‘Then one day he disappeared. That was last Christmas. I haven’t seen him since.’

‘Haven’t seen him since,’ said Fisher.

He circled away. Ben stared at the fur of his tunic, fearing to see tabby, calico, tortoiseshell. No, it was the warm, brown beige of mink. Mad Ferret wore the skins of his cousins. He
reappeared suddenly on Ben’s blind side.

‘I am very well, thank you.’ Again that frown, a facial tick. Then: ‘I am very unhappy.’

The air was as still as an exam hall. Ben could no longer hear the polecats breathing. The silence ruptured as a train passed Platform 1. Martin Fisher’s face twisted.

‘I am sorry about the noise. People are noisy. They go by in their trains. They trample everywhere. The streets. The tunnels. Their breath gets in my mouth. There is no hiding from them.
Not even here. Not even here.’ His voice rasped like a wheel on a rail. ‘Not even here.’

They were back in exam silence. Kevin coughed and Fisher snapped out of his trance.

‘Welcome, Ben.’ His mouth stretched in a smile. ‘Welcome to the Hermitage. The Hermitage has everything you want. Kevin has looked after you–’ The tilt of the head,
the frown. He dropped to one knee and took Ben’s hand in a painful grip. When he spoke next, the puppet-like manner was gone. It seemed for the first time that Fisher’s words came from
a living person inside.

‘The White Cat abandoned you, didn’t he?’ he whispered. ‘He abandoned me too, Ben. It is what those cat-people do. They always do.’ His eyes glimmered. ‘But I
will never leave you. Only turn around and I will be behind you. When you sleep I will watch over you. And wherever you are, I will–’ his voice rose to hiss, ‘I will
always
find you
.’

The rest of the day passed in a blur. At one point he imagined he was coming down with flu. He remembered eating a hamburger and fries, which Lisa reheated for him in the makeshift kitchen
upstairs. Then an evening that seemed never to end, sitting stiffly on a chair watching the others play pool and table football in the games area, while music hammered and consoles flashbanged
around him. He couldn’t have joined in even if he’d wanted to. He was too strung-up looking around for Fisher, and the fact that Ben never saw him didn’t mean that Fisher
wasn’t there.

Down on Platform 2 he queued for the toilet. Glad as he was of the flannel, towel and toothbrush that Kevin had pressed on him, telling him hygiene was important, he didn’t see anyone else
washing. He scrubbed his hands and face over and over, stopping only when someone thumped on the door.

He bedded down among his silk shirts and fur blanket, propping his boxes into a flimsy fortress of solitude. It was like camping, he persuaded himself, closing his eyes. He heard Antonia yell
that she’d lost a shoe. Next-door to him Dean and Gary were guffawing at a brain-dead joke. Alec and Ritchie played cards with someone else. Lisa sat rocking back and forth to tinny pop songs
from her phone. Other music blared from other players. And every few minutes Kevin yelled at them to go to sleep. Ben covered his ears. Camping? More like the sleepover party from hell.

It was pashki that saved him from going mad. Curled in a despairing ball, he slipped by accident into the Omu meditation. If cats had one great talent, it was sleep: any time, any place. He lay
in the O shape and a shell of calm coiled around him. The noise that continued to fill his ears no longer stirred his mind, so that he had the odd sensation of sinking into sleep while hearing
everything that went on. The thunder-gusts of night trains came farther and farther apart, the children’s voices grew wearier, falling away one by one, and the jumble of music petered out,
until nothing remained except a faint stain of sound upon the blackness.