by Polly Crosby
‘No, no, Roe, once we get out from the moat and under the bridge it’s much clearer, I promise.’
Monty stood at the front of the canoe, his front paw poised on the helm, his tail erect. For once he was silent. As we approached the bridge, he bunched his body up and took a flying leap, just catching the wooden slats with his back claws. He pulled himself up almost unscathed, the end of his tail dangling pondweed.
‘Bye, Montgomery!’ I called as we drifted beneath the bridge, my voice echoing. His replying meow echoed back, louder than normal, and then we were out the other side, and the water was beautifully, fantastically clear.
‘What do you think?’ Dad said, propelling the oars with relish, his huge hands bunched like grappling hooks round their handles.
‘It’s like another world,’ I said, leaning over and looking deep into the water. Here and there, the setting sun pierced its depths, filtering through the weedy fronds and catching at the scales of a million fish. I crouched low in the bow, tingling as the tips of a weeping willow trailed its sad fingers over me. The wind rustled in the trees above our heads, and Dad sighed happily.
‘Psithurism,’ he said.
‘Sith-you-who?’ I said, not really listening. Early green conkers plopped into the water, sending crystal drops into my lap.
‘It means the sound of the wind in the trees. Ow!’ A conker landed on Dad’s head before rolling around in the bottom of the boat. ‘Your mum loved conkers,’ he said, picking it up and trying to prise the green shell away. ‘She used to collect them on Hampstead Heath. She said we would never have spiders in the flat as long as there were conkers.’
I hadn’t heard Dad talk about Mum for a long time. As soon as she left us, the subject of her quickly felt out of bounds. Yesterday’s gift of the earrings had unnerved me, plunging me back into the final days of her stay, but now my memories were beginning to blur, like the soft edges of an unfocused photograph, and I wanted to try to love the memory of her, to remember the good in her, whatever else she had done. I listened with rapt attention, clinging on to every word.
‘She’s a complicated woman, Meg,’ Dad said, more to himself than anyone, ‘but she could be so loving when she wanted to be. She adored you, Romilly. I’m sure she still does, in her own way. When you were little, you were her energy, her purpose.’ He began pulling harder at the shell. ‘I’m sorry she hasn’t been a better mother to you. Perhaps when you’re older you could have a better relationship with her, a more balanced one, if you wanted.’
The shell came away in his hands. A young white conker dropped to the floor of the boat. It looked wrong, obscene in its nakedness. Dad picked it up and let it fall over the side.
‘Do you know the story of the Crystalfish?’ he asked me, resting an oar and letting the boat drift perilously close to a sandbank.
‘Is it one of your stories?’
‘It is, but I don’t think I’ve told it to you before. Would you like to hear it?’
I nodded. Dad hadn’t told me a story in a long time. I thought that he might have stopped for good. It was a worrying idea, mixed up with the feeling that my childhood was nearing its end. Relieved, I settled back on the wooden seat and listened.
‘There used to be a fish that lived in this river. She was small and insignificant, except for one thing: she had a diamond growing on the side of her body, just beneath a fin.’ He picked up the oar and began pushing it into the sand below us, stirring it up until the water lost its clarity and we were floating on a cloud of glittering gold.
‘On grey days, the little fish was safe, but on sunny days the sun would find the diamond and set it sparkling.’
‘Was it some sort of treasure?’ I was getting too old to believe in Dad’s stories, but I couldn’t help be sucked in, especially when they contained treasure in some form or another, as they invariably did.
‘It was a treasure, but it was also a curse. On days when all the other fish would bask in the warmth of the sun, she had to hide in a rotten old boot for fear of being caught.’
‘What happened to her?’
Dad looked sad for a moment, dipping his finger into the settling water and sucking on it thoughtfully.
‘I’m not sure. I think that’s up to you. It’s your story, you know. How do you want it to end?’
Having ownership of the story felt like a big responsibility. I stared at the surface of the water. For a moment I thought I saw something glittering below. ‘Can I think about it?’
‘Of course.’ Dad lifted the oars and began to row. The water sped beneath us. A streak of electric blue flitted past us, and Dad lifted his hand to point.
‘Kingfisher!’ As he said it, the oar careered out of his grip and fell onto my outstretched hand, sending it smacking into the side of the boat. A dart of pain shot through my fingers.
‘Oh, Romilly! Oh, my dear!’ Dad looked wildly about as I stared, repulsed yet fascinated as blood spread along the lines in my hand like a flower blooming.
‘It’s OK, it’s only a small cut.’ I held my hand over the side of the boat, letting the blood drip into the water. The red dispersed into the gold, and I thought of the fish who would feast on it tonight.
The water beneath us was still as glass now. I leant over the edge, looking at my reflection, my hair so long now that it dangled almost to the water.
‘My hair’s tickling my twin’s face.’
‘What?’
‘Look, it’s me with my mole on the wrong side, just like the pictures of me in your books.’
Dad made to pick the oar up, and it tumbled out of his hands and into the water, sending my reflection into a thousand dancing particles. The girl in the water disappeared. I wondered if she’d swum down to search for the Crystalfish.
‘Hark,’ Dad whispered, reaching for the sodden oar and turning the boat around to start the journey home, ‘I think I hear monkeys.’
I smiled and closed my eyes, and sure enough there was a chittering in the trees that could be monkeys or could be crows.
‘Look,’ he said, pointing at a stick in the water, ‘a snake swimming to the mangroves!’ It was getting dark now, the sun almost gone, and it was very easy to believe we were on an Amazonian tributary, drifting through dangerous waters.
‘Do you hear that?’ I said, joining in. ‘A dangerous beast!’ Far away, Monty’s plaintive meows could be heard, welcoming us home.
I could see the lights of Braër now, and the silhouette of the bridge before it. Everything around us was familiar but oh so different.
‘I think I know how the story ends,’ I said, pulling my cardigan around me. Even now, in early August, the nights were drawing in earlier, bringing with them a cool wisp of the autumn evenings to come.
I cleared my throat, trying to form the ending in my mind. ‘Maybe one day the sun set and it was forever night,’ I said, ‘and when the moon was full, the Crystalfish came to the surface, knowing she was safe. She stared at the bright round light in the sky, and she was happy and sad all at the same time.’
Dad was silent for a long time, then he stretched as if he were coming out of a reverie, and nodded as we sped under the bridge.
‘We’re home,’ he said quietly.
Sixteen
A few weeks later, in the final days of the summer, I stood in the dining room with Monty in my arms, watching a group of sightseers walk past the house.
In July, Dad’s third book, Romilly and the Windmill, had been published. In the intervening weeks, more and more visitors had arrived at Braër, searching the village for the windmill in the book, in the hope that it contained unknown wealth and riches.
Dad developed an entry system to the garden on weekends, cordoning off areas with thick twists of red rope attached to golden balustrades, careful to keep the tourists away from the house. He sat at the gate, shaking a money tin as people filed in.
On busy days I often stayed inside, forced out occasionally by Dad as a treat for special customers. Sometimes I quit
e liked it: the people I met were on the whole friendly and interested. But at times the stares I got were too much, and I preferred the dark of Braër’s rooms, losing myself in the books, or playing with Monty, who, unnerved by the arrival of unfamiliar people on his territory, stuck to my side like glue.
The inspiration for the windmill in the pictures was a windpump on the edge of the village, far away across the marsh, surrounded by reeds. The reeds grew so tall in summer that I could hardly see the pump at all from my bedroom window, but when they were cut in the winter it stood, solitary and dignified, alone on the bare horizon, its sails stretching up to heaven and down to the ground.
Dad had told me that his editor said a windpump didn’t sound as romantic as a windmill, so for the purposes of the book, a windmill it had become. Why they needed to add romance to it I didn’t know.
Stacey hadn’t been around for a while – I supposed she was staying at her gran’s again. But she had kept me company many times earlier in the summer while I was trapped in the house. She always had great ideas to keep us busy: making jelly with coins in it and trying to fish them out with a spoon, or creating marble runs out of old loo roll tubes and racing them down the two flights of stairs. Without her the house was very dull.
I went over to the dining table where the new book lay. It was an old table, made of oak, and on one of its legs a little mouse had been carved, running up towards the top. It reminded me of the mice in Dad’s books, and I wondered if he had got the idea from there.
We had taken delivery of the proof copy of Romilly and the Windmill late last year. I loved the magic of seeing a book before anyone else: of being one of the first to try to decipher the codes within. Dad never let me see the paintings before the book came out, so when the proof arrived, it was the first chance I had to examine the pictures.
On the front cover was a majestic windmill, its huge sails made from stiff, gleaming cardboard, pinned to the book in such a way that you could make them turn. At each quarter turn, a different picture appeared in the window of the mill. It was my favourite book so far. Already the pages were looking tired from all the thumbing, the mill’s sails bent from the countless times I had pushed them round and round.
There was a picture near the end of the book that showed the inside of the windmill. But instead of the usual machinery for grinding flour, Dad had turned it into a mini circus ring. Little harvest mice dressed as clowns juggled acorns, and a large scrawny rat dressed as a ringmaster, with a sharply pointed nose and huge yellow teeth, had his hands in the air as if he were directing it all. At the centre of the ring, a pure white mouse in a glittering sequined leotard rode on the back of a lithe and elegant hare. Tiny pink feathers nestled around the mouse’s ears, and her tail was curled in such a way that it formed the shape of a heart.
I had thought Dad’s obsession with the circus would come to an end when Romilly and the Circus was finished, but here he was, creating a whole world within the windmill. I wondered what part the circus would play in the next book.
I turned the pages awkwardly, holding onto the cat with one arm and flicking through with the other. I came to a picture of me looking in a mirror. It was cleverly painted so that you could see the face of both the real Romilly and her reflection. Dad was still getting my mole mixed up, I noticed. He often painted it on the wrong cheek, even in this, his third book. The reflection Romilly looked out with the mole on the correct side, and I thought maybe that was the real me, hidden away in a mirror world, trapped behind glass so nobody could get at her.
Monty dropped from my arms to the table, landing on the book, and I ran my hand along his back, grateful for his constant companionship. He had healed well after his accident, and now walked expertly on three legs. He had grown into a huge cat, long-limbed with a tail as long again as his body. It was good for balancing, which was important because, inspired by Dad’s books, I had been trying to teach him some circus tricks. I had pilfered one of Dad’s red ropes from the garden and strung it from one side of the drawing room to the other, trying to make him walk across it like a tightrope. For a cat with four legs this would have been hard, but for Monty it was near impossible. Still, he tried hard, wanting to please.
‘Come on,’ I said, scooping him up with the book and carrying them back to the drawing room. I balanced him once again on the rope, his claws clinging tightly onto the twisted fibres. I stood at the other end, a piece of cheese in my hand, watching him wobble.
‘Come on, Monty, come on,’ I crooned. He took a step forward and immediately rolled over, swinging from the rope by his claws. I tutted and lifted him back up.
‘Romilly,’ Dad said, bursting into the drawing room. ‘There are people in our garden!’
‘There are always people in our garden. You invite most of them in yourself.’
‘No, no, you don’t understand, come and see.’ He bent to look out of the window, beckoning. ‘There’s more of them now, look!’
I peered out of the window. It was indeed very busy. A group of Japanese tourists were wandering around, looking lost. ‘They’re tourists, Dad. Beatrice says they bus them into the village now and again. It’s part of a quirky tour of Britain or something.’
‘Tourists? What do you mean, “tourists”? I don’t want any bloody tourists here.’
‘Really? You’re normally sat at the gate shaking a tin for admittance.’
He swung round and rushed to the front window, where a group of men were walking past, cameras hanging from their necks. ‘Am I?’ He looked back at me. ‘Since when have you been conversing with Beatrice, anyway?’
‘She left me her address when she came to visit,’ I said, unhooking Monty’s claws from the rope again. ‘We write to each other. You must know that – you open half of my letters before I get a chance, in case it’s someone sending me something weird. Beatrice is nice. She understands.’ My spelling had improved dramatically in the months that we had been communicating. ‘Dad, when can we see her again?’
But Dad wasn’t listening. ‘One of them’s digging up my garden!’ he said, dashing to the back window. ‘He’s ducked under the ropes! What on earth do they think they’ll find? I’d better go and see them off.’
‘Can I come?’ I said, picking the cat up.
Dad paused on his way out. ‘No, no, best not, Romilly. I think you should stay here.’
‘But…’
‘We don’t know who they are. Let me talk to them. You can watch from the window.’
I slumped down grumpily by the window. Dad pulled the netting across, covering the glass before running out of the room.
‘I can’t see now!’
‘Yes, you can, look through the holes!’ he called, already at the back door.
I peered through the lace. He had appeared outside now and was talking to a man who had a small spade in his hand. Dad was gesticulating wildly. Then he pulled the spade from the man’s hand, and started to dig. A group of tourists formed a circle around him so that he was hidden from view. Little flurries of soil were exploding into the air.
‘If you can’t beat them, join them,’ I said to Monty. He struggled in my arms and jumped down, running from the room, only to reappear outside a moment later, uncharacteristically friendly, winding round the strangers’ ankles. An old man bent down and stroked him. A woman lifted her camera and took his picture. Dad was shaking their hands now, nodding his head as they all dipped into little bows around him.
‘Bloody tourists,’ I said.
It was unfair that people could travel halfway around the world to look for the treasure, and yet here I was, the one the press had begun calling ‘The Illustrated Child’, shut in my house, unable to even go looking in my garden.
‘It’s not out there, you tomfools!’ I yelled through the glass, but they were so caught up in their conversation with my father that they didn’t hear. ‘I know more than all of you put together,’ I said quietly, watching as Dad led them down to see his mobiles. I went back to the
windmill book, spinning the sails, watching the pictures sweep in and out of view and thinking of the windpump, far across the fields.
Slamming my hand on the sails to stop them moving, I whisked to the front window and looked outside. It was still busy out there: a man spotted me looking and lifted a camera to his eye. I jumped away, the net curtain falling back into place.
In the hallway I found one of Dad’s caps on the floor by the door, filled with ripening conkers. Pulling my hair into a bun on top of my head, I emptied the cap and put it on, tucking the remaining strands of hair inside. I looked in the mirror, trying to see if I still looked like the girl in the books.
I liked how my eyes looked so much bigger with my hair tucked away, and my androgynous figure made me almost look like a boy. My mole stood out on my cheek like a clue. I found some face paint left over from Halloween and dabbed it on my skin. The person in the mirror gazed back at me, unknown and mysterious.
As I walked, I saw fewer and fewer people, and Braër got smaller and smaller behind me. Finally, I stood at the edge of the reed field, the beginnings of the boardwalk ahead of me. The reeds were tall, high above my head. From here I couldn’t see the windpump at all.
Dad and I used to walk this way when I was younger. More recently, Stacey and I sometimes ventured out along the planks that wound their way through the reeds, but we had never got as far as the windpump. There was something about the way the reeds closed over our heads, making us doubt which way was forward and which way was back. We always ended up coming jubilantly out of the reeds, certain we had found it, only to see the village coming into focus in front of us.
I met a dog walker and stopped to let them by, standing on the very edge of the planks, trying not to fall into the rainbow-lustred mud as she strode past. My head was getting hot and itchy under the tweed cap, but I kept it on, liking the feeling of being incognito.
As I walked, I thought about the sails on the front of the book: how if you lined two of them up with the clouds in the sky so that they weren’t symmetrical, a flower appeared in the window, so small its detail couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. For weeks I had assumed it was just a pale blue speck of dust, until I had been looking at the pictures with my magnifying glass, and enlarged it by accident.