Cheshire Cat tattoo on upper arm

The sign over the Eastgate chandlers came down on Tuesday, and I should have guessed then what the cat was up to. Mr Pell had asked me to repaint the lettering, black on cream, nothing fancy. When I climbed the ladder at six with the size-two brush, the board was already wet with a purple wash nobody had mixed, and in the middle of it, where the shop name should have been, there was a grin.

It had eyes, two pale blue ones, and fur done in little grey strokes as if someone had been at it with a fine pen all night. I scrubbed. The purple only spread. By the time Pell came up the road with his flask, the whole fascia was splashed like a sky before a storm, and the grin had teeth.

Pell laughed until he coughed. He says the cat has been about the district since his father's day, and that you don't paint a thing like that out, you only ask it nicely to move along. So I asked. I said good morning, I said the rent was paid, I said the boy from the post office needed his parcels. The grin didn't shift. When I finally got the brush to behave, the lettering came out a touch crooked, and the S looks like a semicolon, which Pell says is an improvement.

I'm writing this from the back step with the shutters still down. The canal is the colour of old pewter and the light off the water keeps catching the corner of the board, and there it is, waiting. Don't tell Mother. I think I'm going to leave it up.