Catcall (6 page)

11

S
ATSUMA
J
UGGLING

A
phone message was brought to our classroom at afternoon registration. It said:
Joshua Bowman 7SS. Your mum phoned. Jamie’s at school this afternoon so she’ll meet you 3.40 outside the primary school.

I thought this meant the doctor had given Jamie a pill or an injection and changed him back into Normal Speaking Boy. I was wrong.

We had PE last thing, so I was a bit later at St Luke’s than usual. Jamie was already by the gate with Mum, holding on to the buggy, wearing his no-one-at-home face. There was a chill in the air that felt almost dangerous, making me shiver at the thought of night’s cold grip and the darkness to come. Jennie, in the buggy, was zipped up in one of those all-in-one padded suits, with a hood, so all you could see was the pale little circle of her face.

‘Hi, Mum. Hi, Jamie.’ Then I remembered to say, ‘Hi, Jennie,’ as well. I waited till we were walking along the pavement before whispering to Mum, ‘What did the doctor say, then?’

‘We’re going back in two days.’ Mum darted an anxious look at Jamie, who trundled along beside us, his head round and neat in a Chelsea knitted hat. ‘Dr Awan thought he might as well be at school, as he’s otherwise behaving normally–it’s more stimulating for him than sitting at home. And he might just start to speak again, but Mr Rose says he’s not made a sound since I brought him at lunchtime.’

‘Didn’t the doctor give him any pills or medicine or anything?’

‘It’s not as simple as that, Josh.’

I kicked at a twig. ‘So it was useless, then, taking him?’ If doctors couldn’t do anything, who could?

‘Oh no, it wasn’t useless. She looked at his ears and throat and eyes, and at least she doesn’t think there’s anything physically wrong.’ Mum lowered her voice. ‘If there’s no change when we go back, she’ll refer us to a child psychologist. A specialist. Someone who’s used to this sort of thing, and can give us some help.’

‘This sort of thing?’

‘Yes. It’s unusual, but it does happen to other children. So, Jamie!’ Mum said, suddenly putting on a louder, cheerful voice. ‘Mr Rose told me you’re having a visit tomorrow from some mime artists–that’ll be fun, won’t it? I wish I could come!’

And she chattered away to Jamie, while it was my turn to fall silent. My brain kept circling round one word.
Psychologist.

Normal
people don’t go to psychologists. I mean, it’s not like the dentist or the optician. ‘I’ve got the psychologist this afternoon–just a check-up!’

No. Psychologists are for mad people, aren’t they?

S
oon as we got in, I Googled
psychologist.
Once I’d learned how to spell it right, a whole list came up. It was well confusing. From this list, I found out there are clinical psychologists, forensic psychologists, counselling psychologists, health psychologists and even industrial psychologists. There were lots of long articles with words I couldn’t understand. But nothing that said what to do if your brother suddenly stopped talking.

Then at last I found something that explained what psychology
is,
and it seemed quite simple after all:

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY?

Psychology is a science-based profession. It is the study of people: how they think, how they act, react and interact. It is concerned with all aspects of behaviour and the thoughts, feelings and motivation underlying such behaviour.

Well, I thought, is that all? Just study? Just behaviour? No electrodes, brain scans or impossible tests? I could do that! I’m good at studying, and after all, no stranger could study Jamie better than I could. I’ve known him all his life. I share a bedroom with him. I know all his habits: how funny he can be, how annoying, what he likes and doesn’t like to eat, what makes him laugh.

It seemed ages since I’d heard that funny hiccuppy laugh of his. I missed it. Mr Bean hadn’t managed to make him laugh, but maybe
I
could.

So I tried. I went down to the front room, and found him sitting on the sofa looking at the television, though it wasn’t even switched on. I’d give him something better than TV to look at. I told jokes, I did silly walks. I tried to walk on my hands, and nose-dived to the carpet.

Jamie stared, like I’d gone mental. Like
I’d
gone mental.

‘Oh, come on!’ I told him. ‘You could
try
joining in!’

Running out of things to do, I picked up three satsumas from the fruit bowl and started trying to juggle. It was harder than I thought. The satsumas were bashed and dented from rolling all over the floor by the time Mike came in and saw what I was doing.

‘No, Josh, no,’ he went, and I thought he was telling me off for wasting satsumas. But instead he collected them up, and said, ‘You don’t pass from one hand to the other. Juggling’s all about
throwing.’
And off he went.

How was I to know Mike was a secret juggler? He was good, even when I threw in an apple. Then he nodded for me to chuck in a banana as well, and they all went whirling round like an airborne fruit salad.

Course, Jamie couldn’t sit watching this without wanting a go himself. He wasn’t even as good as me, which wasn’t saying much, and soon Splodge got fed up with having to dodge flying fruit every few seconds and went to hide behind the TV cabinet, but the important thing was that Jamie was looking like Jamie. He was even doing a few
hic-hic-hics,
not exactly laughing, but sort of revving-up towards laughing, with all the effort of concentrating. We did this until Mum came down and asked Jamie if he wanted to help bath Jennie and put her to bed. It turned out that Mum didn’t know Mike could juggle either, so he had to do more demonstrating, and then she had a go. When they were all tired of juggling except me–if Mike could keep five things in the air, surely I could manage
three
–Jamie went upstairs with her quite willingly to see to Jennie.

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

M
ASK

N
ext 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:

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.