The Illustrated Child

by Polly Crosby

  ‘Unsteady on his feet after being chained for five years,’ the reporter continued.

  ‘Who is he?’ I asked, perching on the arm of the sofa.

  ‘His name’s Terry Waite. He was taken hostage for years,’ Dad said.

  ‘How did he escape?’

  ‘They let him go.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe they ran out of reasons to keep him. Shh, Romilly, I’m trying to listen.’

  Mr Waite was making a speech. He was wearing a thick coat, but still he looked cold. ‘One thousand seven hundred and sixty-three days in chains,’ he said, looking around at his audience. Something about his eyes scared me. What had they seen?

  A picture of a postcard appeared on screen, a colourful stained-glass window. It reminded me of the circular window in my bedroom. The reporter explained how it had reached the hostage in prison, and on the back, the simple message, ‘We remember. We shall not forget.’

  ‘Sounds like they’d already decided he was dead.’ Dad chuckled. He had a sketch pad resting on his knee. He was holding a pen in his hand, absentmindedly tapping the nib against his head as he watched the TV.

  ‘Dad, you’re doing it again,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ He put his hand to his head and felt beneath his hair. His fingers came away inked in blue.

  ‘Damn,’ he said, ‘I’m so used to doing it with a pencil, I forgot it was a pen.’

  ‘How about if you stop stabbing your head with sharp implements altogether?’

  Yesterday I had come across one of his paintbrushes on the kitchen table, snapped in two. I had rolled it between my fingers, brushing it against my skin, dabbing it on my wrists like perfume. Essence of Tobias, I thought.

  I looked at my dad now as he touched his fingers to his scalp, frowning at the blue glint that came away on his skin, and I realised with a pang of sadness that I missed the dad from my childhood. The man sitting in front of me now was a different man to the one I remembered. His mood, always turbulent, changed now so quickly that it was like being caught in a storm that whipped up from nowhere. The father that drew me into his arms for a hug, that tucked me up at night, he had crept away months ago, stealing off into the night while I slept on, oblivious.

  ‘Do you like toffee apples or candyfloss best?’ Dad said, pulling me back from my thoughts.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Or those huge sweets that look like a baby’s dummy. The ones you hang around your neck?’ He was licking his lips now. ‘Or donuts?’

  As I watched him, he scratched his cheek with inky fingers, leaving a blue mark that looked like a bruise.

  ‘What do you mean, Dad?’

  ‘Romilly,’ Dad barked, looking at me as if he had only just realised I was there. ‘I wanted to ask you something. You know Picnic’s been out for a little while now? The Observer want to do a short piece on it to coincide with the paperback’s release. They want a photo of you.’

  He was referring to his latest book, the fourth in the series, entitled Romilly and the Picnic. In it, Monty and I took a picnic to a lake, where Monty fell into the water and I had to jump in and save him. I looked at Dad for a long moment, trying to work out if he was playing some macabre joke on me, but his face remained serious.

  ‘Can’t they just use a picture from the book?’ I said eventually.

  ‘That’s the thing – they are. But they want a comparison shot. It’ll be a nod to Lolita, I presume: I’m not sure whether to be flattered or disgusted. Anyway, it means you’d need to wear the denim dress again.’

  ‘There’s no way that dress would fit now!’ I shuddered at the thought of fitting into it. It might squeeze over my hips, but it would definitely not cover my bum.

  ‘I know, my love. But we can have a new one made.’

  ‘I’m not nine years old anymore. I’ll look…’ I searched for the word, ‘freaky.’

  ‘It’s what they want, and I must give them what they want. Especially if we want to fix the chimney before it collapses in the next high wind.’ He turned to me beseechingly, his blue-stained cheek glinting. ‘Will you do it, Roe?’

  It struck me that his eyes were a bit like the man on the telly’s – hollow, as if they had sunk into his skull.

  I sighed and nodded. If wearing a pinafore was all I needed to do to make him happy, then of course I would do it.

  Upstairs, I found Stacey lying on the bed, gazing dreamily out of the window. She often let herself in these days. She found the change in Dad’s behaviour a little frightening, and she rarely spent time in his company any more. I would find her instead up in my bedroom, flicking through a book or lying on the bed staring at the ceiling, waiting for me.

  I sat down at my desk and began a letter to Beatrice. We had kept up our correspondence, sometimes writing weekly. It had helped enormously with my handwriting and spelling. The letters often got lost in the sacks of fan mail we received, or else Dad opened them to check they were safe and forgot to pass them on straight away, but I always managed to extricate them sooner or later.

  I had noticed over the months that Bea’s writing was beginning to change, the words stretching across the page as if they were taking longer to leave her brain and travel down to the pen. Sometimes I could hardly read whole sentences, and I had to skip to the next line.

  You mentioned your father, and how he seems to be changing, she wrote in her last letter.

  I know it can be hard, finding common ground, especially as you enter your teenage years, but persevere. Your father is an unusual man, and he loves you terribly. It might not be him changing, but you. This is an important time in your life: you’re transforming from a girl into a woman, and fathers especially find it hard to let go.

  She was very good at advice, and I tried to take Dad’s strange behaviour with a pinch of salt. After all, I must be hard to live with, too.

  I finished my letter to her and licked the envelope closed. Stacey was still lying on the bed, her eyes closed, humming quietly to herself. I went over and sat next to her, holding my hand above her head, palm side down.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said, opening her eyes and batting my hand away from where it hovered.

  ‘You’ve had twenty-three boyfriends,’ I said. I’d seen it on Grange Hill the other day. The bullies were doing it to a new girl. They’d counted to fifty-five before she noticed. Half the class had been sniggering behind her back. I’m like that girl, I thought. Thank God I don’t have to go to school.

  ‘What’s the point of that?’ Stacey said. ‘Who cares how many boyfriends anyone has?’

  I shrugged. ‘Do you know who Terry Waite is?’ I asked.

  She shook her head.

  ‘He’s this man who was held hostage for four years, three years in solitary confinement. Can you imagine being on your own with no one to talk to for three years? And he didn’t even have a window to look out of.’

  ‘A bit like being stuck in your dad’s shed,’ said Stacey.

  ‘But at least Dad has his paper and his paintbrushes,’ I said, then I remembered the forlorn broken brush, and I thought that Stacey might be right.

  ‘What’s with your dad at the moment anyway?’ she said, as if she could read my mind.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s gone a bit weird, hasn’t he?’

  I thought of the Grange Hill bullies, how mean they could be. I thought of having to wear that stupid dress again. I was sick of being nice.

  ‘He’s probably got a brain tumour,’ I said, wincing inwardly, but Stacey laughed heartily. Guilty adrenaline surged through me, leaving my body limp and spent, and suddenly I had an acute and inexplicable urge for my mother

  ‘I wish Mum was here,’ I said, looking over at the portrait of Mary Mother-of-God, my mind mixing the two until the memories of my real mum all had a golden halo round her head.

  ‘I thought you didn’t get on?’

  ‘I just wish I had someone here who cared about me. Someone to talk t
o. Dad and I never talk any more, not about important stuff.’ I sighed.

  ‘You’ve got me.’ She sounded hurt.

  I reached over and wrapped my arms around her. ‘I know. And I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

  ‘Romilly!’ Dad’s panicked voice shot up the stairs.

  I sighed and got up off my bed. ‘Here we go again,’ I said quietly.

  Stacey giggled.

  ‘What is it?’ I said as I met him on the landing.

  ‘My mobiles!’ he said, bending over and gasping for breath. ‘They’re gone!’

  Panic shot through me. ‘How can they be gone?’ I said, running to the landing window.

  The mobiles were in the meadow, moving gently in the wind.

  ‘They’re there, Dad,’ I said, nodding towards them.

  ‘They’re… oh. Oh goodness. There they are.’ Dad sat down quickly on the window seat, narrowly missing a line of conkers, keeping his eyes on the mobiles. Or perhaps, I considered as I climbed back up my stairs to Stacey, he was fixing his eyes firmly on the horizon, as if he were on a listing ship, desperate to stay afloat.

  Twenty

  Over the following year, I made it my job to watch Dad, making notes of any unusual behaviour. But he spent so much time in his painting shed, it was hard to gauge. Dad had always been eccentric. Where do you draw the line between quirkiness and madness?

  Beatrice came to stay for a few days in the spring, and I watched her watching him, her eyes following him as he went about his day. When she left, she pulled me into a hug.

  ‘Keep writing to me,’ she said, her eyes flicking meaningfully towards Dad, ‘I’m there if you need me.’

  On the morning of my fourteenth birthday, the doorbell went.

  ‘Post!’ came Dad’s call from somewhere in the depths of the house.

  I opened the door.

  ‘Slightly more than usual this morning,’ the postman said, heaving a small sack over the bridge and dumping it on the doormat, ‘you’ve got a large amount from America in there too.’

  Stacey appeared behind him, edging across the bridge, her eyes popping at the bulging bag.

  ‘Are there any for me?’ I asked hopefully, ‘I mean any cards?’ I eyed the sacks warily.

  ‘Your birthday is it?’

  I nodded.

  ‘The top layer’s for you.’ He prodded the sack with his toe. ‘Happy birthday.’

  I sighed and pulled it inside, Stacey helping. Most people wrote letters to Dad, but sometimes I got some too. Mine were usually from children, whereas Dad’s were from the professional treasure hunters: those who had given up work to spend more time deciphering the clues in the books, or who were travelling round the world trying to find where x marked the spot. One man wrote every single day.

  I had always been allowed to open my own letters until Dad realised it wasn’t just kids writing to me. When I was eleven, a photograph had fallen out of a letter I was unfolding of something pink and squishy-looking. Dad had whipped it away before I could look at it properly, but from then on he took over the job of opening my mail.

  ‘Miss Romilly Kemp!’ My name unfurled out of Dad’s mouth like a richly embroidered royal banner. He was marching down the stairs, a loosely tied bow tie round his neck, but no shirt for it to sit on. ‘Like it?’ he said, pulling on it ever so slightly so it began to unravel, ‘It felt like an occasion. Fourteen years old: you’re in your fifteenth year. Ah, I see the post’s arrived.’ He bent down and scooped up a pile of letters, spilling the sack all over the floor. ‘What mad delinquents are wishing you salutations this year? Perhaps for your fourteenth birthday you’ll get more than a picture of someone’s flaccid penis.’

  Stacey giggled.

  ‘Dad! That’s really inappropriate. And can’t you put a shirt on? You look ridiculous.’ I grabbed a wrinkled shirt from the radiator in the hall and helped him on with it.

  ‘Sorry, daughter-mine. Manners.’ He turned around so that I could button it up. I could feel his gaze scorching my face as I was doing it. With a pang I remembered how he used to help me button my own shirt up for school. I reached up and lifted his collar, correcting the bow tie, teasing and tightening until it looked right.

  ‘There, all done,’ I said, stepping back and admiring my efforts.

  ‘I do wish my fans would send me pictures of their naked flesh,’ Dad said, almost to himself. ‘Well, the ladies, anyway.’

  I turned in distaste, shaking my head, and stalked up the stairs. This was not how a birthday should start. Stacey ran after me. When we were safely on our own, she said, ‘Do people really send you pictures of willies?’

  ‘Come and see.’

  We raced up to my room and re-formed around my loose floorboard. I opened it with the end of a ruler and pulled out a tightly bunched pack of letters.

  ‘I thought your Dad opened your letters?’

  ‘He used to, but sometimes he forgets. And in the summer he can’t burn them on the fire, so he just chucks them in the bin.’ I indicated a bit of egg yolk on the edge of one. Pulling the elastic band off, I eked out a photo and handed it to Stacey.

  ‘Whoa.’

  ‘I know.’

  We looked at the photo together.

  ‘What is it?’ said Stacey, turning the photo upside down to see if it made more sense.

  ‘I think it might be balls,’ I said, and we both dissolved into giggles.

  My birthday had fallen on a Saturday. Dad remarked that it was uncommonly hot, but when I thought back to past birthdays, they had all felt hot and sunny, draped in the sugary glow of birthday excitement.

  Stacey wanted to show me something for my birthday. Last year’s gift had been the lake in the circle of poplars. The year before, an oak tree with a type of fungus attached, a webbed nest below it full of gently pulsing eggs. The fungus had given us both itchy fingers for days afterwards. This year, she had a theory about the location of Dad’s treasure.

  ‘He started writing the books after he moved here, so something must have triggered it, and if we can work out what it was, we’ll find the location of the treasure. Come on!’

  As we walked south from the village, over the bridge and beyond, she was full of an almost palpable excitement, as if it would rip straight out of her at any moment and go shooting off into the sky like a firework.

  ‘Bodies,’ she said with glee as we perched ourselves on a fence that surrounded a small disused quarry. From this height the water below was a rich tan colour. Here and there you could see lumps in the water, floating lazily. They did look quite body-like.

  The quarry walls were a harsh orange threaded with chalk, sloping down into the water. A pipe stuck out halfway, dripping rust.

  ‘I was hoping we might spot the black panther,’ she said, ‘there’s been another sighting.’ She looked over her shoulder, ‘Maybe it’s stalking us right now.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ I said, but I glanced over my shoulder anyway. I hadn’t told her about my own sighting last year near the lake. I sometimes felt like Stacey knew all my secrets – it was nice to have something just for me.

  ‘You really think this is it?’ I said, changing the subject. ‘It doesn’t look like somewhere you’d bury treasure.’

  ‘But your dad isn’t a normal person, is he? He’d never just go to a field and dig a hole and shove it in. He’s more complex than that.’

  I looked down at the water-filled quarry. Stacey was right, there was something about watery places that always made me think of the treasure hunt. With a shiver, I remembered the gargoyle, buried in our moat. Why had Dad been so keen to sink it from view?

  ‘Look, see those trees?’ Stacey said. There were two spindly tree trunks on the far sides, bowing to each other high up over the water. ‘Wait till the sun comes out.’

  We sat and watched as the clouds scudded across the sky. As the sun broke through, she pointed down into the water. The trees’ shadows appeared across its surface, at angles to each other, crisscrossin
g in a perfect x.

  ‘That’s not possible,’ I said, trying to work out how they could be casting shadows in different directions.

  ‘It’s the reflection,’ she said, ‘the water’s reflecting the sun back again, like a reverse shadow.’

  She was right. I studied the cross on the water. It was just off centre. ‘That’s too clever, even for Dad. It’s just a coincidence, it’s got to be.’

  ‘It’s not!’ Stacey said angrily, pulling at my sleeve till I tumbled off the fence towards the quarry’s edge. I climbed back on quickly, the chemistry of my leg bones dissolving to liquid.

  ‘Come on, let’s go down and see.’

  I leant out a little, safe on the fence, and peered over. The drop was almost vertical. My feet tingled and I leant back quickly.

  ‘I’m not going down there.’

  ‘Come on, scaredy pants. Just follow me, it’ll be easy.’

  ‘No! We could break a leg, or… or fall in the water.’ I looked at the unidentifiable things floating far below and shuddered.

  But Stacey was already at the quarry’s edge. She was standing on the very brim, and I could see how soft and crumbly the ground was, like a crust, her toes pressing into it, sending motes of sand cascading down.

  ‘Careful, it won’t hold your weight.’

  ‘Wooo! Look at me! I’m going to fall!’ She giggled, and then her expression changed as she arced slowly backwards, dropping over the edge, her mouth a silent scream.

  ‘Stacey!’ I shouted, jumping off the fence and rushing to the edge.

  And she was there, crouched on a ledge a metre or so down, silently laughing.

  ‘That wasn’t funny.’

  ‘Yes it was.’ She uncurled herself and raised her hand for my help, but I turned back to the fence, anger boiling inside me.

  ‘Why can’t you be serious just for one day? It’s my birthday, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Can’t I have a joke now and then?’

  ‘You’re always having jokes.’ I rounded on her, anger bubbling inside me. ‘You’re always trying to frighten me or tell me about ghosts or murderers. Why can’t you leave it?’