The Illustrated Child

by Polly Crosby

  There was an appreciative murmur from the audience.

  ‘Am I to take it that you’re making a sequel, then?’ said Mr Wogan.

  ‘Well, I’m hoping it’ll be the second book in a series, yes. If people keep buying my books, that is.’

  The audience laughed again, warming to him, and Dad beamed.

  ‘And I understand that some people think there is a treasure hunt hidden within the pages of your book. What are your thoughts on that?’

  ‘We’ve certainly met a few interesting people carrying spades and maps in the last few months.’ Dad’s eyes twinkled.

  At this Mr Wogan coughed and dropped his eyes. ‘But Mr Kemp,’ he repeated, ‘are there clues hidden within your book? Have you set up a treasure hunt, and if so, what is the treasure?’

  ‘There are things hidden in the book, of course.’

  ‘Told you!’ Stacey hissed at me. She wasn’t the only one: the audience had got noisier; a hum of excitement filled the studio.

  ‘For example,’ Dad continued, ‘I have painted a tiny mouse on each page to find, and there are countless pictures and words that are hidden throughout the book, for those who can’t get enough of searching. But I have not deliberately written a treasure hunt into my story. I have not gone along to a secret location and buried some gold for any Tom, Dick or Harry to find.’ He was enjoying himself now, warming to his subject, his eyes glittering. ‘If my readers have studied the books and found that x plus y equals z, then I think they have found their own clues.’

  ‘An interesting answer if ever I heard one,’ said Mr Wogan, his tanned face deadpan. ‘Do you think that with all that is going on in our world at the moment – take Terry Waite’s hostage situation in Lebanon, for instance – your books are some kind of distraction? A reprieve from the real world, if you will?’

  Dad considered this question. ‘If my books can offer any hope of a better world, then I must be doing something right. As Einstein said, “Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.”’

  Mr Wogan nodded as if he understood. I looked at Stacey, puzzled, and she shrugged.

  ‘Now,’ and here, Mr Wogan’s gaze became stern as he turned to face Dad again, placing his hands together and resting them on his knees, ‘I understand you have had a few issues regarding your privacy. I suppose when one paints one’s house and family into a book for all to see, one is bound to expect visitors.’

  Here, Dad looked down at his own hands held tightly in his lap. ‘This is really the reason I wanted to come on your programme tonight,’ he said. ‘I had not expected that people would actually buy my book, and I had not expected the fame that went with it, both the good and the bad.’

  ‘And is there something you would like to say to those who might be thinking of paying you a visit?’

  Dad looked up. He seemed to be scanning the audience, then he turned his eyes to the camera. He seemed to be looking straight at me.

  ‘Please give us our privacy,’ he said, his voice strained. ‘There is no treasure hunt. Please let my little girl live a normal life.’

  Wogan’s voice was soft as he began, ‘Do you not think, Tobias, that you have lost yours and your family’s right to privacy by using your child as the main character in your book?’

  ‘I think,’ said Dad, looking down at his hands again, ‘I think that in writing this book, I have provided for my daughter’s future in a way I could not have done if I had sat in my study painting pictures of flowers and landscapes.’

  When he looked up, I swore I could see the cameraman reflected in his eyes. The television studio audience were silent.

  ‘Thank you, Tobias Kemp.’ And Mr Wogan stood and took Dad’s large hairy hand in his own tanned one, as the audience clapped, and music swelled out from the TV and into our room.

  Nine

  Following the first book’s success, the second book, Romilly and the Circus, came out the next summer, just after I turned eleven. In this story, Montgomery had come to the circus with us, and there had been tigers, and elephants and a talking poodle called Tula. Dad held a joint birthday party for me and the second book. It wasn’t as much fun as my tea party the previous year: there were no costumes or funny names this time, and my birthday cake had a picture of his book on it.

  I noticed at once that even though Monty seemed to have changed into a full-grown cat in the second book, I still looked exactly the same. When I told Dad how unfair it was, he laughed, continuing to slap paint onto the canvas in front of him as if it was all a big joke. I went into the hallway and looked in the mirror, doubting for a moment that I was growing up at all, but the face that glared back at me was definitely different: it had lost its plumpness, becoming instead more angular and feline.

  With the new book’s publication there was renewed speculation that the books contained a treasure hunt. Occasionally people came and knocked on the door. Some wanted to look around, searching the house for clues. Others wanted autographs, or a photograph of me and Monty. Dad would answer the door and call me downstairs, chatting enthusiastically to them while he waited, cleverly dodging the question of whether or not there was any treasure.

  I observed these people silently from behind Dad’s back. Many of them were families with children, but quite often it was just a solitary adult, clutching a map or a copy of the book. To me, the treasure hunt felt the same as believing in fairy tales or ghosts – something you did as a kid. But when an adult so very obviously believed, I began to wonder just what Dad had put in his books to ensnare them.

  July was particularly rainy, and I spent long hours indoors, poring over the book’s contents, folding down significant pages, and making notes to try to crack the code hidden within.

  On the centre pages – a huge landscape depicting the circus on top of the hill, complete with horses and giraffes and a whole village full of colourful caravans – I found the ghostly lady again. She was far off in the distance, away from the crowds who were queuing to get into the circus. This time she had her hands to her face, as if she was holding onto an unimaginable sorrow. I stopped at the page and looked at her. She wasn’t scary in this picture, merely sad. I couldn’t understand how she could be so unhappy when all around her was colour and light and fun.

  My favourite page was a picture of the interior of the circus. It was the painting I had seen Dad working on in his study a couple of years ago. Cantering round the ring was a gleaming white horse, pink feathers crowning its head. A beautiful woman balanced on its back, one dainty leg lifted in a perfect arabesque, a feather headdress sitting jauntily on her head.

  It was the lady we had met at the circus, the one who had given me the feather to take home. I often thought about our outing there, the shyness I had felt when she plucked the feather from her hair and gave it to me, how awestruck I was by her beauty. With mortifying embarrassment, I remembered how I had asked Dad if she was my mum.

  I noticed something else in this particular picture, too: Monty was in the ring as well, getting in on the action as he always did in Dad’s books. He was galloping along behind the horse, the circus lighting giving everything a coal black shadow. I blinked when I first saw it, not quite daring to believe what I was seeing. For Monty’s shadow was huge and monstrous, the exact size and shape of a prowling panther, creeping stealthily across the circus tent walls. I thought with a shiver of the paw print under the willow. Did Dad put this picture in the book because I told him about the loose panther? Or was I reading too much into it?

  I thought about the day I broke my arm, when the panther visited me in the middle of the mobiles. I hadn’t told Dad about our encounter. I didn’t think even he, who was the most imaginative person I knew, would understand that.

  I studied the page again, searching for the swirling, camouflaged words hidden within the picture. I ran my finger over each one:

  Elephant, feather, horse, Lidiya.

  Lidiya. The unusual name registered somewhere at the back of my memory, alon
g with the taste of toffee apples and the smell of animal sweat. Lidiya, the pink-feathered horsewoman. I remembered when we first saw her in the circus ring, when Dad had leant over to me and whispered, ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’

  Where was she now? What town had the circus pitched up in this week? I hadn’t seen the pink feather she had given me for a long time. I hoped it hadn’t got thrown away by mistake. I looked at the version of Lidiya in the book. She seemed more mythic beast than human being, smiling wryly out at me from the pages like a siren, her glimmering sequins catching the bright spotlights.

  The rain that had plagued the beginning of July had finally ceased the day before, and it was a beautiful, sultry day. I reluctantly left the books inside and went out, onto the bridge, feeling the sunshine warm my skin. Dad was nowhere in sight – probably off for one of his bracing morning walks that often lasted well into the afternoon. Monty wove round my feet, leaving a slick of cat hair on my legs.

  In winter and spring, the moat sometimes flooded over the garden, leaving no room to play, but in the summer it receded to a still, glassy surface that encircled Braër’s walls. I looked down at my reflection in the water, as clear as if I were looking into a mirror. Dad had given me a nautical compass for my birthday. It was a beautiful old brass instrument with a flip-top glass lid and a star-shaped design on its face. I wondered if he had given it to me to help me search for the treasure, and if so, whether it was buried deep beneath the moat’s surface. I had plans to make a raft to use it on, and had hoped Stacey might come by to help now that the weather was improved. I hadn’t seen her for weeks. She knew the second book had come out, because whenever we met up it was all I had talked about. I wondered if she was avoiding me: if I had unintentionally bored her.

  I decided Monty would have to be my accomplice today. I had already wound long strips of willow round branches I’d broken off the fallen beech, pulling them tight and knotting them together, but still the raft sagged a bit in the middle.

  I lifted Monty up and plonked him onto it, and he stood like a worthy sea-dog, wobbling obediently. I glanced surreptitiously behind me: we had heard rumours of evil cat-hunters in the area, preying on beautiful felines and turning them into fur coats, and we needed to escape on the raft before they caught up with us. I took hold of the edge and pushed it towards the water.

  The gate creaked open, and a woman in a long coat and heels clicked into the garden. I eyed her suspiciously, grabbing Monty and hugging him close. The stranger stopped at the gate. She was carrying a battered leather case. Perhaps she was a cat-hunting version of Cruella de Vil, on the search for the perfect fur coat. Her case might be full of catskins, I thought, sending daggers at her.

  She took a few steps towards me, and stopped again, and the leather case fell from her hand and landed on the ground with a clatter. Monty jumped from my arms in panic, scratching the back of my hand in his haste to get away. I shot the woman an angry look. She was still standing there, staring at me. Close up, her long coat was definitely not fur. It was wool and quite scruffy. We observed each other in silence.

  She bent to pick up her case, and I noticed that she had long red nails. Something about them made my heart begin to stammer in my chest, and I put my hand to the mole on my cheek, wishing that I had Monty’s soft body back in my arms to cling onto.

  The woman straightened up, still looking at me strangely. She opened her mouth to speak.

  ‘Romilly?’ she said, and I swallowed and began to cry.

  Her name was Meg, and she was my mum.

  She was showing me the contents of her case, balanced on Dad’s bed. No furs or skins inside, but a shiny new school satchel for me, with my name written neatly on a piece of card slotted into the front. I hadn’t the heart to tell her I didn’t go to school.

  I worried where Dad would have to sleep if Meg was to stay in his bed. I didn’t quite dare call her Mum, as if I didn’t yet believe she was real. I decided to offer my bed to her. I had dreamt of having a sleepover for years, and a sleepover with my mum would be extra special. I opened my mouth to ask her, but no sound came out.

  She leant towards me and picked a white cat hair from the front of my T-shirt. I flinched as her red nails scraped against my ribs.

  ‘I brought you something else,’ she said. Digging around in her case, she pulled a pinafore out, the exact deep denim blue as the one I was wearing now, the one made famous in Dad’s books.

  ‘I thought this one might be getting a bit small for you,’ she said, stroking one of the patches Dad had sewn on, ‘and I was right, wasn’t I? Look at how you’ve grown.’

  I looked down. The dress was barely covering the tops of my legs. I tugged it down, embarrassed. The new dress had the same huge red buttons like flying saucers hanging from the straps. I stroked one of them, enjoying the shine of plastic on my fingers.

  ‘Do you like it?’ She was smiling at me. Her eyes looked sad, but maybe that was just their shape.

  I didn’t dare answer. I nodded instead.

  ‘It’s for you, go on, take it. I know it doesn’t have the patches on it like the one you’re wearing, but maybe we could do that together: a sewing project, just the two of us. And here, I brought some new tights too. It won’t be long until autumn’s upon us. Do you do that often?’ she said, nodding at my hand. I realised I was scratching my bottom without noticing it. It had started itching a few days before. I pulled my hand away, my face reddening.

  From the doorway, Monty chirruped nervously. He wasn’t used to strangers.

  ‘And who is this?’

  ‘Captain Montgomery of the Second Regiment.’ My voice came out all squeaky, and I blushed.

  A soft peal of laughter escaped her as she bent down and reached a hand out, coaxing him forward.

  ‘Well, hello there, little man. Have you been keeping my Romilly safe all this time?’

  My Romilly, I glowed at the term. Monty swayed his head drunkenly like a cobra, transfixed by the soft singsong of her voice, before flopping over to expose his belly, his whiskers gently pulsing.

  ‘Romilly?’ Dad’s bellow, newly energised from his walk, charged up the stairs, breaking the cat-spell. I stayed silent, looking at Meg. Her eyebrows were drawn together and a pink tinge had appeared at the centre of each cheek. She put her finger to her lips and winked conspiratorially.

  We went out onto the landing and looked over the banister. Dad was crouched in the hallway, untying his shoelaces. My mother began to descend the stairs so quietly it was as if she were floating. Monty trotted after her, but I grabbed him by the scruff and pulled him back. We hung over the banisters and watched.

  From here all I could see was the top of Dad’s head. As my mother reached the bottom she sat down on the last step and reached out a hand to him. He looked up and stopped. They observed each other, as still and calm as the moat outside. Monty wriggled in my arms and I clamped him tighter to me, somehow knowing that downstairs belonged to a different time now – one that stretched back to when Mum and Dad last saw each other, when I was four and small and unknowing.

  It felt very strange to wait for not one, but two goodnights. I lay in bed, imagining my mum curling up under the covers with me, the chocolatey promise of a midnight feast when we woke up. In my head she became a princess, waltzing into our lives to magic everything bad away.

  When she climbed through the doorway to say goodnight, I was surprised to see that she looked perfectly normal: no glass slippers, no sparkly tiara on her head. She lifted her head and craned her neck back, gazing into the shadows of the arched roof.

  ‘What a bedroom,’ she whispered, as if she were in a cathedral, and she lay down next to me, looking up at the vast space above us.

  A rhythmic clicking started up somewhere above our heads.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s Mr Deathwatch-Beetle. He’s chatting to his wife.’

  ‘Lord, we have those, do we?’ she said, as if she had decided to join us in this huge house, no
t aware that it belonged to Dad and me, and she’d need to ask first.

  ‘Dad says they make music to help me sleep. Once I woke up and one was extra loud because it was actually sat on my ear.’

  My mother shuddered and laughed all at the same time. ‘I thought they tapped on wood to make the sound?’

  ‘My ear must be made of wood then,’ I giggled.

  ‘When did you lose that tooth?’ She was looking at my smile strangely, as if it scared her. I ran my tongue over my teeth, and came to the gap where the toffee apple had pulled one out.

  ‘A while back,’ I said, tonguing the hole.

  ‘Oh.’ She patted my cheek, frowning as she did. ‘Well, goodnight, sweet,’ she said, leaning in to hug me. It was our first hug, and it felt right and wrong, all at the same time. She was a lot thinner than Dad, and a lot more brittle, and her chin clunked against my collarbone. But she smelt nice, like exotic flowers, and I thought of Jasmine the parrot, sitting on my desk, and the rainforest that she had come from.

  I lay in bed, my finger pressing into the hole where my tooth had been. It had never occurred to me that another tooth wouldn’t grow in its place eventually, but now I thought about it, it had been a long time since I lost the first one. My finger revolved around inside my mouth, finding rough bits on my other teeth. They swelled with pain when I pressed them, and I withdrew my finger quickly.

  I turned my attention instead to the itch that had begun in my bottom, enjoying the relief that raking my fingernails across the skin brought.

  When sleep had nearly found me, I heard their voices drifting up from downstairs, bringing me back to consciousness. I crept out of bed and tiptoed down the curved staircase onto the landing below, sinking onto the top step and rubbing my bottom against the carpet to sate the itch. Mum and Dad were in the kitchen, their voices quite audible.

  ‘Worms,’ I heard, and I wondered whether they were off for a late-night fishing trip in the moat, which was pointless because I’d never seen a single fish in there, but then my mother’s voice carried on, louder than before.