Pamela Wheeler's Birthday Present

Pamela Wheeler’s Birthday Present

Pamela Wheeler’s birthday present smelt the way it smelt because I had made it entirely from the skins of dead cats. It took more than a week to make but she was the prettiest girl in school and everybody knew when her birthday was. I only made her a present because I wanted her to speak to me. Everybody wanted her to speak to them.

***

I rode my bike without ever sitting on the saddle. I rode it on the grass and through the leaves and across the park to the docks by the river where I sat and watched as a slow wind grew and blew the water into ripples then to waves. The wooden framed sides of the sugar beet store threw shadows across the river and in the dark corners the movement of the mice seemed to echo in the moonlight. A shaft of that light lay on my face and it came to me then that this was the place to set the traps to catch the cats. I swung my feet so they scratched lines that vanished in the surface of the water. I smoked a cigarette that I had stolen and I waited until I hoped that Dad would be wondering where I was and then I rode my bike home, without lights, in the dark. I let the wheels roll inside the old tram tracks that ran along the quay side and I sort of hoped that I would fall and break my arm and have to wear a plaster cast that everyone at school could scrawl messages on. I let myself in through the back door and was straight into the kitchen.

The room was warm with the electric orange flow form two bars of the four bar fire. Dad has his comb in his hair and was brushing it back and singing Love Me Tender like he always did. A cigarette was stuck to his lower lip and each word of the song crept out with a puff of bitter smoke. It was like every Friday and he put his hand on my shoulder and said that that had been their song before she left and he would get some work on Monday and I knew he said it because Monday still seemed so far away.

Saturday was overcast and bleak. I went back to the docks. I walked because I couldn’t ride with the wicker basket and the reel of fishing line and the old lead weights and the book with the pictures that I needed to make the traps. The docks were always empty on a Saturday and full with the smell of the sugar beet. I hadn’t told my Dad that I had taken the book and I didn’t think he’d notice, though it was the only book he had. He said he kept it because it was the only thing his Dad had given him but I knew he was lying. Grandad always gave us money and stuff. I think he kept it because he’d read it. It was an Eagle annual. The stitching was rotten and green and the pages were falling out but the pictures were great though the colours had faded. One page said how to trap animals and kill them and skin them and eat them if you were lost in a jungle or somewhere like that. I didn’t want to eat the cats. I turned inside at the thought. I needed the fur.

It was the end of October and cold and wished that I had worn another jumper. I set the traps like the good book said. I placed some green bread to tempt the mice to tempt the cats into the back of the wicker basket and I rigged the weights and the fishing line so that the door would close. I was old enough to know that nothing ever happened until night time and so I went home and watched the wrestling and the football scores.

I sat around and read the book some more until it was dark enough to need a torch. I took the torch that I’d had for Christmas and I took some batteries from the corner shop because I hadn’t any money and because the ones I had run out because sometimes when I lay in bed at night I didn’t like to turn it off. I took the bread knife from the drawer of the Formica table in the kitchen. We only ate the sliced stuff anyway.

It was a starless night and the moon hung lonely like a cancer in the corner of the sky. The book said that the moon had no light of its own. It said that all I could see at night was a reflection of the colours of the sun. As I walked alone towards the docks and looked up at the sky I knew that this couldn’t be right. There were no stars reflected in the river that night. It was as though they were hiding, scared by the cries of the cat I’d caught. I could smell fear in the basket. I shut my ears to the hiss and turned the basket on its side and watched as the cat twisted and fell, unable to adjust to land on her feet in such a small space. All I could see were two eyes like green full moons set in the blackest face, shining back in the glare of the torch light. My fingers closed slowly around the plastic handle of the cold steel knife and slid it from my pocket. I was careful as I reached into the basket and pulled her out by the loose skin at the back of her neck. I held her above my head. She was blacker than the night. I cut the throat of the cat with the knife and I held her tight as she shivered and shook and came to a halt in my arms.

On Sunday I wished that my Mother was there. If anyone asked Dad, Dad said she’d run off with another man but if anyone asked me I said that she was dead. She would have known how to strip the pink of the meat from the skin of the cat. I had seen her do it to a rabbit one time. I did my best. I knew there wouldn’t be any sun to dry the skin so I put it in the microwave and that night I caught two more. A ginger and a tortoise-shell.

November came on Monday, carrying sunlight and a brittle wind that played games in the corners of the concrete school yard. I followed Pamela Wheeler across that yard to the grey concrete school building. I watched from behind while she shivered and shook and sent ripples down the hair that flowed like a river along the length of her spine.

The morning bell rang like an alarm. I followed her past the cookery room. I could smell them baking bread again. I hear a hundred first years in the assembly hall sing Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam and I saw the Indian kids lining up in the cold outside waiting for their different prayers.

All morning I went to the lessons. I tried to listen to the teachers but my eyes wandered beyond the windows and settled on the frosted grass that in the summer made the tennis courts. I watched until the sun had turned the frost to jewels of water drops that gave each blade a deeper green. There was a certain freshness to the air.

At dinner I stood on the opposite side of the canteen, in the free-lunch line. I watched the other children queue and shake their money in time, making a steady jingle behind their hungry chatter. I stood next to a boy who lived on the estate. They said he smelt, though I don’t think he did. I waited my turn and when my turn came I picked up my food and went to a table and sat down and played with my chips. Of course I wanted to talk to her but my head couldn’t think of the words that I wanted to say. Everyone laughed when she said that I’d have to leave because she could smell the sausage by my chips and she was a vegetarian and, though lots of girls from the rich streets were, I knew that she was lying because she had a chicken bone on her plate. I stammered and said this to her. She said yes but if I do eat a leg, well then I only eat one leg from each bird and I try never to touch the vital organs. She walked away with her turned up nose and when she walked away the other children followed, leaving me alone and glad that she had touched my heart and spoken to me.

That night I rode my bike towards the docks but then went left to narrow streets of the old town where the roofs of the strange shops almost touched across the road. They were the shops that sold one kind of thing only and though it was November they showed no signs of Christmas.

There was one shop that was about as wide as my bike that had a window full of trays of buttons and beads. Wooden buttons and glass buttons and silver buttons, too. And old bell rang when I opened the door. The stale smell of age, a smell of shabby greens and worn beige that was stronger than even the sugar beet, seemed to be locked deep inside the black-toothed woman who stared at me as if she had never seen a kid before. I thought her rude but when I said I needed buttons for a coat that I was making she showed me all she had. After what could have been an hour, but probably wasn’t, I picked a set and she said she’d keep them for me because I didn’t have any money.

It was dark when I came out of the shop and I went straight to the docks. I watched men with leather faces smoking and loading sugar beet in topless wooden crates onto the deck of a Panamanian ship. Sometimes, if they were caught by the cross breeze, the crates would shake as they hung suspended and individual beet would fall and hit the water with a thud like a bass drum and I wondered, because the docks were so old, what else had been swallowed into the mud of the river bed. It was raining now, though not hard, and the rhythm of the rain against the surface of the river was a back-beat behind the night. I checked the trap and the cat I caught had a deep rasp instead of a cry, like an old smoker singing the blues.

Our drama teacher had thin strings of hair that reached further than the collar of his red checked shirt. He thought he was young and he thought he was our friend and he was said that he understood though I was never quite sure what it was he thought he understood.

On Wednesday he asked where Pamela was and when no one in our drama class knew, he said he trusted us and he told us to be good and be quiet and maybe pretend that we were trees swaying gently in a breeze while he went to find out what had happened to her. He left his jacket at the front of the class to show just how much trust he had. So when he was gone I was this tree and it was the branches that were my arms and the twigs that were my fingers that took the tenner from the wallet in the pocket of his jacket.

Pamela’s friend, who was making bread in cookery on the other side of the school, said that Pamela had been like crying and had gone off to look for her cat that was like missing. Our drama teacher told us this as he slipped his right arm into the right arm hole of his jacket. When he didn’t know that I was still looking I saw him check his wallet and then he said, like only drama teachers can, that he had trusted us. He said that he would leave the matter there for now, with out consciences. I wasn’t quite sure just what he meant and though everyone knew that it was me that had taken the money, no one said. Maybe I would have said myself but I needed the buttons and anyway if he had trusted us he wouldn’t have checked to see if the money was there.

It will be a little while before I forget the black toothed smile of the old woman that smelled in the button shop in the old town when she sold me the buttons that she’d been saving. I don’t think she thought I’d come back. At least not with the money. I’d chosen the silver buttons stamped with lions’ heads. I put them in my pocket and enjoyed the weight of them as they rattled like marbles as I rode my bike to the park. I leaned my bike against an acorn tree and sat and watched the council men building the bonfire and setting the fireworks for the display on Saturday. With the small change I had from the buttons I bought hot chestnuts that I didn’t eat but held cupped in my hands for warmth. I held them until the smell had gone and then I went to check the traps.

When I got in Gran was sewing shiny sequins onto a large white suit and Dad had polish in his hair and had combed it back and he told me that he had a job singing Elvis songs for the customers in some drinking club in town. I had to listen to Hound Dog and Devil in Disguise all night but he sung them better than Love Me Tender and he was looking into my eyes and he was laughing and I was laughing too.

I didn’t go to school on Thursday because we had stayed up so late singing on Wednesday night and because I wanted to finish the coat. On Friday morning I saw Pamela Wheeler crying by the school gate though it was only a day before her birthday and I could see that she already had a bag full of presents. I stood on the edge of the crowd that had gathered and I heard her cry through a faceful of tears that she still hadn’t found the cat that she loved so much and the girl who did the cookery said that tomorrow, on Saturday, she would help her look for it and someone else said that yeah, they would help too, and when the bell went I took a chance and said to her that if she wanted I would like to help.

She looked through me in silence for I don’t know how long, and then she reached out and gently touched the side of my arm and she said, exactly: “Yes. Please. You’re very kind.”

I was sure that this was the first time that she had touched me and I was sure that it was the first time that I had touched her. I was warm all over and it seemed to take more than a week for the rest of the day to pass and Saturday to come round again.

We met by the twisted iron gates on the opposite side of the park from the docks because this was near to where Pamela said she lived though I had never seen her house. I had wrapped her present and hidden it beneath my jumper at the bottom of the black Adidas bag that hung from my shoulder and went down by my waist. There were six of us and Pamela’s Mum, who wore a coat of fur against the biting cold. I was sure that it was like the one that my Mum had always said that she had wanted but never had. She gave us each a copy of a photograph of the cat and said that we should split into twos and knock on the doors of the houses that bordered the park and ask if anyone had seen the cat. I looked at the photo and, though I didn’t say anything, I thought it looked like any black cat I had ever seen.

Because nobody really knew me, Pamela said I should split into twos with her and we walked up the long gravel drive of the nearest house together. She reached for the doorbell and then hesitated and so I knocked loudly with my fist on the brown wood and then the glass panel and she laughed slightly before she told me to stop. An old man answered with a sweet smile and we showed him the picture of the cat but he said he hadn’t seen it but then he said he didn’t see much these days on account of his eyes.

We must have asked at a hundred houses and every time someone answered their door they looked at us and shook their heads as if to say the cat was dead.

In the middle of the morning the rain started. At first there were just single noisy drops that seemed to cling to the sky before they fell. It was as if the metal-grey sky above was the tap in the kitchen that Dad never mended. By lunch the drops had turned to heavy rain that fell on the surface of the chicken soup that almost burned through the plastic of the cup that I held because Pamela’s Mum had smiled and handed it to me. She said I deserved it because of the time I spent. She gave me too a slice of fresh bread that was still warm and so thick that she must have cut it herself and it felt so good to look up at the sky and stand in the rain and know that I was sharing a meal with Pamela.

We are where we had stopped half way around the border of the park. The other children ate and then left because they had parents that they had to get back to and because it was Saturday and raining. I was with Pamela and it was her birthday and though it was cold and though it was raining I was as happy as I had ever been and I knew that I had her present in my bag that still hung from my shoulder and I knew that when we were alone I would give her the coat.

The rain stopped as the darkness of the winter night took control of the sky. The rain stopped because it remembered. Remembered that it was the fifth of November and it would never rain because of the fireworks and the fire.

Pamela’s Mum said that enough was enough and it was cold and it was wet and we wouldn’t be able to see the cat anyway and she said to Pamela that she was very sorry but we weren’t going to find her cat tonight and she looked at me and she said that she was sure that I must be wanting to go home and I said eagerly, no Mrs Wheeler, I’ve nothing to go back for. She smiled at me strangely. It wasn’t a happy smile.

It was Pamela, not me, that said but can’t we stay, now that it was dark, and watch the fireworks and she said it had been such a sad day because her cat had gone and it was her birthday. Pamela’s Mum said, to Pamela, but we have to pick your brother up from the Samuel’s and then we were going to have the steak I bought for your birthday meal and Pamela said but Mum, and I said it’s O.K. Mrs Wheeler, I’ll walk her back when the fireworks are over and she looked at me and she smiled again and well alright but don’t be late.

We walked across the park together, close but not touching. I didn’t say anything and Pamela didn’t say anything. The bag bounced against my hip and I was aware of the weight of the coat in the bottom. I thought that I would wait until we had stopped and were sitting and talking before I gave Pamela her birthday present.

The park was beginning to fill with excited children, dragging parents who had seen it all before, towards the acorn tree and the dip in the grass where I had sat and watched the council men building the bonfire. As we merged with the crowd Pamela turned to me and said that it would be nice for us to be alone a while. I said we could go and watch the fireworks from the other side of the river, sitting by the docks with out feet balancing on the water because I said I knew that no one went there in the evenings or on a Saturday. We would only be able to see the fireworks that flew high into the sky but that didn’t matter and I felt myself reach for her hand and then hesitate.

I picked up a handful of damp and rusty leaves that were dying with the last gasp of the autumn and rubbed them lightly into her hair.

I started running and laughing and she was laughing and running and I didn’t run so fast that I would get too far away though I knew that if I wanted I could run far faster than her. The bag and the coat still bounced against my shoulder. We ran all the way to the docks and in the darkness I felt her fall against me. We were breathing heavily and our mouths were close and the strands of her breath seemed to fight with mine before they tangled like a single we and froze in the cold outside.

We kissed. It was the first kiss I had ever had and her tongue moved like waves while behind us the fresh water of the river was still and reflected the colours of the fireworks. We looked at the night sky as the gunpowder fired and Pamela said that it was all too beautiful for words and it as against this backdrop that I saw that she was crying and I tasted the salt in her tears as they ran onto her lips and she said that she knew that she would never see her cat again. I held her and said that maybe she would and I slipped the bag from my shoulder and she said but I know that she is dead. She was shivering now and I wanted to hand her the coat that I had in my bag, to keep her warm and to show her what I had done for her. She said she teased me because she liked me and she would never forget her cat and she would never forgive the person that had taken her and she asked me what I had been carrying in my bag for the whole day and I could tell in her eyes that she knew that it was a birthday present for her.

***

And so I’m standing here with warm lips and in love and I think I can smell the coat in the bag that rests by my hips. It’s like Love Me Tender is playing full blast and it’s Elvis singing not my Dad and I don’t know what to do. I take the bag and I start to hand it to her and then I hesitate and I turn and I throw it as far as I can into the centre of the river and though we can’t see it we hear it hit the surface of the water and I imagine it falling slowly into the brown mud of the river bed and sinking with the sugar beet into the unknown history of the town.

Pamela laughs. “You’re mad. What was in the bag?”
“Just a piece of me,” I say mysteriously.
I kiss her on the lips. “Happy birthday.”
“That was the best present,” she says.

I start to walk her home and we walk against the crowds of young children and her hand covers mine like a glove and, above, the usual moon is warm with the company of the fireworks and the stars.