Indigo's Star

by Hilary McKay

‘Stick it under the grill,’ suggested Sarah. ‘Like toast.’

  ‘No, no, Sarah darling,’ said Eve. ‘It would be much too hot. Don’t worry. I’ll think of something.’

  ‘Hair dryer?’

  ‘Fused,’ said Eve, beginning to dollop porridge into cereal bowls. ‘Never mind. I’ll put the oven on and open the door when I have got everyone off to school. And waft it…There’s your breakfast, Rose!’

  ‘It looks just like hot concrete,’ observed Rose. ‘I’ve got to describe a day in the life of an Ancient Egyptian. What shall I put?’

  ‘Is this your holiday homework?’ asked Sarah. ‘Don’t do it, Rose! Eve will write you a note to say it’s iniquitous to give eight-year-olds homework in the school holidays! You will, won’t you, Eve?’

  ‘I could never spell iniquitous, Sarah darling!’

  ‘Hot concrete,’ said Rose mournfully, prodding her porridge.

  ‘Write this,’ ordered Saffron. ‘“The Ancient Egyptians are all dead. Their days are very quiet.” Porridge is meant to look like hot concrete. Eat it up.’

  ‘Full of vitamins,’ remarked Eve hopefully, scratching another gluey chunk out of the saucepan and shaking it into a bowl. ‘Breakfast, Indy! Slice a banana on it! Caddy, pass him a banana! Any post, does anyone know?’

  ‘Daddy never writes,’ said Rose. ‘Ever. Never ever.’

  ‘Read the next question!’ ordered Saffron.

  ‘What would you say to Tutankhamun if you bumped into him in the street?’

  ‘ “Sorry!” ’ said Sarah at once. ‘Put that.’

  ‘We have to answer in proper sentences.’

  ‘ “Sorry, but it was your fault! You were walking sideways!” Can I have a banana too, please Caddy?’

  Caddy, who was trying to write a very difficult letter, passed Sarah a banana and read aloud:

  ‘ “Darling, darling Peter…” ’

  ‘Is it sensible to call him “darling”?’ interrupted Saffron.

  ‘He would notice if I didn’t.’

  ‘But he is supposed to notice. How can you dump him without him noticing?’

  ‘I’m not dumping him. Not exactly. Listen. “Darling, darling Peter…”(I can’t not call him that). “I am really sorry I did not get to see you again. I was…” What can I say I was?’

  ‘Out every night with Michael?’ suggested Saffron.

  ‘No!’ said Caddy. ‘Anyway, I wasn’t. Not every night. Eat up your porridge, Indigo, it’s fantastically good for you. Help me with this letter, someone!’

  ‘Tell the truth,’ advised Sarah. ‘It is kindest in the end. Put “Dear Peter, I was just trying you out because I am trying out a lot of boyfriends. As many as possible, in order to make sure that Michael is the one for me. I hope you will soon stop loving me. Yours sincerely, Cadmium Casson. ” Michael is the one for you! You might as well face it, Caddy!’

  ‘Michael is perfect,’ remarked Eve, and nobody disagreed. None of them could imagine life without Michael any more. He had become one of the family. Caddy had adored him (and told him so) the first time she met him. ‘Darling!’ she had exclaimed (loving his earring and his ponytail and his glancing black eyes) and Michael had replied, ‘Don’t call me darling, I’m a driving instructor!’

  For more than a year, while he heroically attempted to teach Caddy to drive, Michael had repeated these words, but each time with less conviction. He had known all along that they were meant for each other.

  ‘Like Romeo and Juliet,’ said Caddy happily.

  ‘Crikey, I hope not!’ said Michael.

  Despite (or maybe because of) being perfectly content with gorgeous Michael, Caddy could not resist dashing off from time to time in search of inferior comparisons.

  Peter had been a very inferior comparison.

  ‘Could I really put what Sarah said?’ asked Caddy. ‘It’s terribly tempting…No, I can’t! Let me get on…’

  ‘I never really managed to like Peter,’ said Eve. ‘I tried. But I couldn’t help minding that he took a ten pound note out of the housekeeping jam jar when he thought I wasn’t looking. After all, he only had to ask…’

  ‘It was the way he tucked those little bits of hair behind his ears,’ remarked Sarah. ‘Both sides at once, and a little stroke afterwards.’

  ‘He was here when my wobbly tooth came out,’ said Rose. ‘And he said was I going to put it under my pillow for the tooth fairy.’

  ‘And he was a bum-patter,’ said Saffron.

  ‘True,’ agreed Indigo.

  Caddy gave Indigo a startled look, grabbed another piece of paper and began to write very quickly.

  ‘What do you do with your fallen-out teeth?’ Sarah asked Rose.

  ‘Grind them up for witch powder,’ said Rose, calmly.

  Sarah snorted with laughter and said, ‘Hurry up, Indy, or we’ll miss the bus.’

  ‘I’m walking,’ said Indigo.

  ‘Oh, Indy!’

  ‘I don’t mind walking, and the bus takes ages, going all round the streets like it does.’

  ‘But look at the rain!’

  ‘I like rain,’ said Indigo stubbornly, ‘and anyway I said I’d go with Rose.’

  Saffron and Sarah gave up. They had to catch the bus because of Sarah’s wheelchair and also because of the huge bags of self-inflicted homework they insisted on dragging back each night. So they said goodbye to Eve, hugged Caddy, who would be gone by the time school was over, and handed over the packed lunch Sarah’s mother had made for Indigo.

  ‘She said to eat every bit,’ Sarah told him. ‘It’s full of vitamins and protein and slow release carbohydrates. She said. Stuff it in his bag, Saffy!’

  ‘I will!’ said Rose, grabbing, but she was too late. Saffron had reached into Indigo’s school bag and discovered the mobile phone. She held it up, her eyebrows raised and questioning behind Eve and Indigo’s backs.

  ‘It’s so he can ring for help,’ explained Rose in a fierce whisper. ‘If he gets bashed up like before.’

  ‘What do you mean, bashed up? Come outside with us and explain!’

  ‘They were horrible to him,’ said Rose, as she helped Sarah down the steps, while Saffy followed with the schoolbags. ‘He says it’s not true, but I know it is. A boy in my school told me. They flushed him down a toilet.’

  ‘That gang in his class?’

  Rose nodded. Sarah put her arms round her and murmured, ‘All right. I know who you mean. Me and Saffy’ll kill them.’

  ‘It’s no good killing them if they’ve already done it,’ pointed out Rose.

  ‘We’ll kill ’em first!’ hissed Sarah, ferociously. ‘Come on Saffy, or we’ll miss the bus!’

  By the time Indigo and Rose were ready to leave, the rain had steadied to a thin grey dampness. Just as they were going Eve produced a spare packed lunch for Indigo, in case the first one should prove to be inadequate. Cold sausages and an orange and a packet of chocolate Easter eggs.

  ‘You used to love them when you were little,’ said Eve, stowing the untidy package on top of Sarah’s mother’s immaculate lunch box. ‘Should you like me to come and meet you at the end of school, Indigo? Just, sort of casually, as if I was passing?’

  ‘No! Really, Mum, please no!’

  ‘I could make it look like an accident.’

  Indigo looked at Caddy for help.

  ‘It would be dreadful,’ said Caddy firmly to Eve. ‘You mustn’t. Promise you won’t.’

  ‘All right,’ agreed Eve, sighing. ‘You’d better go then, both of you. Rose darling, have you forgotten your new glasses? I thought I saw them in the cupboard a minute ago. Stuffed behind the jam.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes. Here they are! You wouldn’t like to take them with you?’

  ‘I KNEW,’ said Rose, in a loud, cross voice, ‘I KNEW SOMEONE WOULD TRY TO MAKE ME TAKE THOSE HORRIBLE GLASSES TO SCHOOL!’

  Eve hastily stuffed them back behind the jam.

  ‘They will be safe there,’ said Rose in her no
rmal voice. ‘Come on, Indigo!’

  Rose’s school was only a few hundred yards away from the one that Indigo and Saffron and Sarah attended. Eve and Caddy watched as they trudged off together. Eight-year-old Rose looked very small beside Indigo’s lanky new length.

  ‘She’s looking after him,’ said Caddy, and even as she spoke they saw Rose’s hand reach out protectively to steer Indigo round a puddle.

  Caddy was the last of the family to leave. She was being collected, she explained to her mother, by someone called Derek-from-the-camp.

  ‘Is Derek the one after Peter?’ enquired Eve, anxious to keep track.

  ‘After Peter, but parallel to Michael,’ said Caddy. ‘You will love him. In fact…Never mind! Here he is now!’

  A large mud-covered figure on a magnificent (but also mud-covered) motorbike had pulled up outside. Very soon he was in the house, where he shook hands politely with Eve. He was, she noticed worriedly, much older than Caddy. Still, he was very charming. While Caddy collected her things he drank scalding hot coffee in one unflinching swallow, beguiled Eve into signing a petition banning the activities of people she had never heard of, admired the sticky spaniel painting, and wrote down the name of a spray that Eve could buy which would harden it off enough to allow it to be packed. Finally he produced a newspaper from his pocket, demanded to know the star signs of each member of the family and then read out wonderful horoscopes for each of them in turn.

  Eve hugged him and Caddy goodbye quite happily, and went off to spend the morning painting. The shed at the end of the garden was Eve’s favourite place in the world. It was wonderfully quiet.

  Chapter Three

  At school the noise hit Indigo like a gale. He had completely forgotten the clatter and rumble of corridors. He had forgotten the school smell. He had almost forgotten the routine of the day. He had to remind himself, Find your locker.

  Because the school was overcrowded there were lockers situated in every available space, along corridors, at the backs of classrooms, in odd corners of entrances and washrooms. The boys in Indigo’s class had theirs in a room that also doubled as a changing room and lavatory. A line of coat pegs ran down the middle, dividing the room. It was chilly and damp-feeling, with a depressing smell of pine disinfectant, old clothes, and toilets.

  ‘Not an entirely satisfactory arrangement,’ said the Head, who always skipped this part of the school when conducting tours of the building.

  This unsatisfactory room was where every school day began and ended for Indigo. Also it was the meeting place of the gang. The gang were his enemies, and had been ever since the first week of term at this new school, when he had interrupted them just as they had finally succeeded in hanging a fellow classmate from one of the high iron coat pegs by his twisted sweatshirt collar.

  It was only a bit of harmless torture, pure routine. Indigo had been advised to stay cool. Nevertheless, he tried to interfere.

  This meddling did no good to anyone. For a start, to punish Indigo, the boy (who later turned into an enthusiastic gang member and expert torturer himself) was kept in his uncomfortable position for much longer than he otherwise would have been. This caused him great discomfort. Also it meant that for several minutes after he was at last cut down (ruining his sweatshirt) he bothered everyone by choking uncontrollably and writhing on the floor as though he were dying.

  ‘Go and get someone to help him!’ Indigo had yelled at this point (still not minding his own business), and one or two of the more faint-hearted spectators had to be forcibly restrained from carrying out his order. So they got hurt too.

  Then the hanged boy revived enough to sit up and take notice, and the red-headed gang leader explained to him that all the trouble he had suffered was the direct result of Indigo’s interference. The hanged boy was not stupid. He agreed at once that this was obviously true.

  Indigo did not take in that the gang leader and the hanged boy were now on the same side. Also, despite having had both arms twisted with excruciating efficiency behind his back during the whole hanging, writhing, choking episode, he still had not learned when to keep quiet.

  ‘You should tell someone!’ he foolishly advised the hanged boy. ‘You should tell someone what they did to you! I’ll come with you if you want me to…’

  ‘What’s going on here?’ demanded a teacher, barging in at that moment, right on time.

  Indigo paused, waiting for the boy he had tried to rescue to speak for himself.

  ‘Nothing,’ said the hanged one from his place on the floor, smiling and blinking like a cat in sunshine. ‘Nothing at all,’ he repeated, and was rewarded by a friendly hand from the red-headed gang leader, helping him to his feet.

  ‘They nearly choked you!’ shouted Indigo, who had been released when the teacher came in.

  The hanged one had looked at Indigo as if he was something scraped up off the dirty tiled floor, rolled his eyes to ceiling, leaned back on the red-headed gang leader’s shoulder, and grinned.

  ‘Relax, Indigo,’ he said.

  ‘No need to get all hung up,’ someone added, and then there was a great roar of laughter all round, and the teacher said irritably, ‘Outside, all of you!’ and the incident was over.

  It was over, but not forgotten. Indigo had criticised the gang, interfered with their business, almost started a rebellion in the ranks (those faint-hearted ones who had wanted to run for help), and finally tried to inform on them to a teacher. From that time onwards he was in the lonely (and often painful) position of gang enemy.

  Even after a whole term away, Indigo was still gang enemy. He knew it as soon as he walked through the door. Last night in the garden suddenly seemed a long time ago.

  The presence of this gang divided Indigo’s class into two separate groups.

  One contained nearly all the girls and a few nondescript boys. They were allowed to go their own way, half ignored, and half protected. They paid for their protection with silence. That meant they took no notice of the activities going on all around them. In return no notice was taken of them.

  The rest of the class were the gang members.

  Quite a large part of them were nothing worse than a noisy rabble.

  The rabble, when they were not clowning for survival, helped with the general pushing and shoving around of any chosen victims. This group was kept in order by the horrid and very real possibility of becoming victims themselves.

  They were led by an inner circle of decision makers. Risk-takers, heartbreakers, please-don’t-make-us-do-this-to-you-fakers. All hand-picked by the red-haired gang leader. It was strange the power they had, considering how little they actually did. No heavy thumping, or hanging, or tripping up. No messy toilet dunking. Perhaps a little gentle taunting now and then.

  ‘Hey Indy! We thought you’d died!’

  ‘You didn’t die, did you Indy?’

  ‘Feeling all right now, Indigo? Feeling good?’

  It was the leader of the gang who said that, the red-headed boy with the startlingly white and bony face. He asked again, smiling menacingly, ‘Feeling good, Casson?’

  Outside the window the sky was becoming lighter. The clouds were breaking up. A patch of blue showed. Indigo remembered Rose, wishing on aeroplanes.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ he said.

  ‘Glad to be back?’ The red-headed boy took a step nearer.

  Indigo did not reply.

  ‘Glad to be back? Casson?’

  Indigo glanced at the door, calculating the distance.

  ‘We asked,’ said the red-headed gang leader, with a quick look over his shoulder to check that his troops were in place, ‘if you were glad to be back? Casson.’

  Indigo thought that if he went home visibly thumped, kicked, hung or toilet dunked, Rose would not be able to bear it. The thought sickened him.

  ‘Casson? Are. You. Gla…’

  Indigo lifted his head and said, ‘No.’

  ‘You’re not glad to be back?’ repeated the red-headed leader, and the rabb
le gathered around began to hum with delight.

  Suddenly Indigo had had enough. He needed to be out of this room, and he did not care very much how he got there. He began to push his way through the rabble. They closed together in front of him without seeming to move.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going, Casson?’ asked the red-headed gang leader.

  ‘Out.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  ‘I am,’ said Indigo, continuing his stubborn progress towards the door.

  The rabble began to buzz angrily. Something was going wrong. Little by little, Indigo was making his way forwards, despite them. They looked towards their leaders for guidance, and the buzz grew louder. It was so loud it was heard in the corridor outside by Sarah and Saffron, who were not there by accident.

  Sarah and Saffron shot into the room where no girl had set foot before and they mowed down the rabble like skittles, Saffron with her knees and fists, and Sarah with her wheelchair.

  Indigo yelled, ‘Saffy! Sarah! Get out!’

  Sarah laughed and Saffron said, ‘Shut up, Indigo!’

  They headed straight for the white-faced, red-haired leader of the gang, bowling him backwards into a porcelain sink on which he cracked his head.

  Indigo shut his eyes and hoped he was having a terrible dream. He opened them, and there was the gang leader being hauled vertical again by a raging Saffron, while Sarah barred the door.

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ said Saffron, blazing like an angry comet, her fists twisted full of his orange hair, ‘ever touch my brother…Ever…’ (Saffron jerked his head, her fingers gripping tight).

  ‘Not you…’

  ( Jerk)

  ‘…or any of your gang…’

  ( Jerk)

  ‘Because if you do, me and Sarah…’

  ( Jerk, jerk)

  ‘Will finish you!’

  Saffron gave a final yank and dropped him.

  ‘Saffron,’ said Indigo into the appalled silence that filled the room, ‘Saffy. You didn’t need to do that.’

  Saffron ignored him. She said, ‘Get out of my way,’ to the rabble and they parted before her. They stared as she washed her hands. They saw red hair fill the plug hole of the hand basin.