Indigo's Star

by Hilary McKay

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Rose. ‘Why would Mummy want him? What for?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Caddy, soothingly. ‘He was mine. My mistake. It was his chinchilla I really fell for. Never mind, he’s gone now.’

  Rose asked no more questions, but late that night she switched on her bedside light and wrote another letter.

  Darling Daddy

  This is Rose.

  The shed needs new wires now it has blown up.

  Caddy is bringing home rock bottom boyfriends to see if they will do for Mummy. Instead of you.

  Love Rose.

  Chapter Eight

  On Saturday morning Rose was up and about very early, making lots of noise. Indigo woke and heard her, thumping and banging, down in the empty kitchen, complaining, ‘I’ve lost my shoes! I’ve lost my shoes!’

  The shoe hunting noises got louder and then stopped. Rose came marching crossly up the stairs, intent on getting her family out of bed to help.

  ‘Saffron, I know you are awake!’

  Saffron groaned and pulled her quilt over her head.

  ‘My shoes have disappeared!’

  ‘Go ’way! Ask Caddy.’

  ‘Caddy’s asleep.’

  ‘I was asleep!’

  ‘Caddy, have you seen my shoes?’

  ‘Shush, darling,’ murmured Caddy, deep in dreams.

  Rose pulled open the curtains and removed the pillow Caddy had dragged over her head.

  ‘What is the matter?’ Caddy moaned. ‘Don’t tell me Patrick has come back!’

  ‘My shoes are gone.’

  ‘Glasses?’ suggested Caddy dozily. ‘Perhaps if you had your glasses on? Yes? No?’

  Rose stamped out of the room, and returned to Saffron.

  ‘Aren’t you getting up yet? I need to go into town.’

  ‘Not with me! Never again! Ask Mum.’

  Eve was awake, blinking dopily in the middle of the big bed. Rose, who was used to finding her mother curled up very neatly on her own side, dutifully leaving space for an invisible Bill, noticed this, but made no comment. Instead, she flopped down grumpily across Eve’s legs.

  ‘Ouch!’ said Eve.

  ‘How can I go into town without my shoes?’

  Eve struggled out from under Rose and said, ‘Rose darling, if you go into town somebody will have to take you. And I don’t think anybody is ready quite yet, darling.’

  ‘I’ll go by myself, then. But I need my shoes.’

  ‘No, no, no, no, no!’

  ‘No?’ repeated Rose, astonished, because Eve hardly ever said no to anyone.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rose! You can’t go into town by yourself, and I can’t take you. I’m giving my special Art Class down at the college. Have you seen the new posters?’

  Rose’s mother pointed to the bedroom mirror, which had a large bright poster blu-tacked on to the glass.

  Paint the Dream!

  POSITIVE GRAFFITI!

  Saturdays 10.30–12.00

  ‘I thought you would like to come too. It’ll be fun. Lovely students, (court referrals mostly). Caddy will be there, she wants to meet them. And I could take you into town afterwards.’

  ‘Afterwards would be too late,’ said Rose discontentedly, and she slid off the bed and padded into Indigo’s room.

  Indigo had got himself up without Rose’s help, rummaged through the upside-down kitchen, and discovered the missing shoes behind the rubbish bin.

  Rose smiled for the first time that morning, and asked hopefully, ‘Would you mind getting dressed and coming into town really quick, Indy? I have to go to Tom’s black guitar shop and I don’t know what time it opens. I’m meeting him there.’

  ‘Does he know?’ asked Indigo, very surprised.

  ‘Yes. He said about it in that note you brought me. But he only said Saturday morning. He didn’t say a time.’

  Indigo still looked very doubtful.

  ‘Please, Indy.’

  ‘Could you have made a mistake?’

  ‘I never make mistakes,’ said Rose, impatiently. ‘You know I don’t! Hurry up and I’ll make you a sandwich while you are getting ready!’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Indigo.

  Tom’s grandmother said at breakfast time, ‘Please put that ball away before you knock something over! Shall you be around to help me this morning?’

  ‘I helped last night!’ protested Tom. ‘I cleaned out all those smelly runs!’

  Tom’s grandmother then delivered her Most Boys Your Age Would Jump At The Chance To Work With Animals speech, and while she tidied up the kitchen around him, followed it up with the one that began Most Boys Your Age Are Expected To Help Far More Than You Are Ever Asked To Do.

  Tom scooped up cereal and showed no sign of interest, waiting for the next paragraph (‘I Can See Your Father And Mother Have Spoilt You That Is The Trouble With Separated Parents. They Compete And The Child Ends Up Ruined…’). Anticipating the next line, he mouthed silently ‘…Or Is It Being Brought Up In America?’ with his eyes on the ceiling.

  ‘Or Is It Being Brought Up In America?’ said his grandmother. ‘I wish you wouldn’t shrug like that! Tom!’

  ‘You Haven’t Been Listening To A Word I’ve Said,’ recited Tom, in his best British accent, and his grandmother suddenly smiled.

  ‘Have you been climbing on the roof again? One of my customers thought she saw you up there last night. What will I say to your father if you fall and break your neck?’

  ‘Tell him “Good News. All your dreams have come true.” ’

  His grandmother sighed. ‘Have you something special you want to do this morning?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tom, taking his mug and cereal bowl across to the dishwasher.

  ‘Not in there! It’s full of cat dishes. Wash them at the sink. What happened to that friend of yours?’

  ‘What friend?’

  ‘He came here with his little sister. I liked him very much. Very nice to see a big boy taking care of his sister like that.’

  Tom’s mug slipped through his fingers and landed in his cereal bowl, smashing them both.

  ‘Sorry!’ he said, sullenly.

  ‘Oh, really, Tom! All right, I can see it was an accident! Never mind. What was it you were planning to do this morning?’

  ‘I just wanted to go to the music shop.’

  ‘I did ask you to put that ball away! Off you go then, if you must. Don’t forget to be back for lunch…Oh look! Wait, Tom!’

  She had followed him to the door, and discovered the post on the doormat.

  ‘One for you, from home…’

  ‘I’ll read it later,’ said Tom hurriedly, and fled up the drive and on to the long road into town.

  There was a part of Tom that wished that he had never, in his awful self-imposed homesickness, wandered into the market place and discovered the music shop and the black guitar. It was one more complication in his already far too complicated life.

  He began to calculate how many years he would need to go back to find his previous contented existence. He thought back a year at a time in his head.

  This time last year?

  That was awful, thought Tom firmly.

  This time two years ago?

  No.

  Three years then?

  That would make him nine years old. Tom decided he would be quite pleased to time travel back to nine years old. That year had been a good time. He had spent the summer with his mother, and when he came home again at the end, he had brought with him the old guitar. The following winter he had begun taking music lessons after school. By the time he was ten years old he was coming along well.

  Then followed the two years that had really turned him into a player.

  When Tom was ten years old he took to disappearing anti-socially up to his bedroom the moment he came home from anywhere.

  Once he overheard a conversation.

  ‘Where’s Tom?’

  His father had replied, in an I-am-at-the-end-of-my-patience kind of voice, �
�Hiding upstairs!’

  ‘I’m not!’ Tom yelled furiously (and untruthfully), ‘I’m practising my guitar!’

  ‘Sorry, Tom,’ they both called immediately, and they really had been sorry. They were always very respectful about his guitar. Louise had a theory that it mattered very much to Tom because it had been given to him by his mother.

  In the years that followed it had become the perfect excuse.

  ‘Tom, come and help us pick the colour of the new car! Come on! Your choice!’

  ‘I’m practising!’

  ‘Tom! It’s Christmas Eve, for goodness’ sake!’

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Tom. Look who’s come home at last! Please, Tom!’

  ‘I’m practising. Leave me alone.’

  All the while Tom’s fingers had grown stronger and quicker. They had learned to move across the strings faster than Tom could think them into their places. At first he had worked so hard because if he sat in silence they said he was sulking, but later on he played because it had become part of himself to play.

  The guitar that Tom brought back from his mother’s was an old Spanish one. It drove him crazy. The only thing right about it was that it was a guitar. Everything else was wrong. The back had a split in it and the neck was warped. The bass notes rattled. The tuning pegs were so loose that it went out of tune, said Tom’s father, every time Tom slammed a door.

  That was less than the truth. Tom was a frequent door slammer, but he did not do it every few minutes. That was how often his guitar seemed to go out of tune. It was just about worn out.

  ‘Tom,’ said his father, just before his twelfth birthday, with catalogues from a dozen guitar shops gathered on the table beside him, ‘Come and look at these. Come and talk to us about what you would like.’

  ‘I would like to be a million miles away,’ said Tom.

  This dismal English town was as close as Tom had been able to get to a million miles away.

  Tom turned off the main road into the little street where the music shop was and to his surprise saw Indigo and Rose, heading towards him from the opposite direction.

  Rose hurried to meet him at once. Indigo followed behind, grinning a little sheepishly, noticing that Tom’s eyebrows had risen as far as they could go.

  ‘Have you managed to get the four hundred and fifty pounds yet?’ demanded Rose, as she came running up.

  ‘No,’ replied Tom, and his eyebrows did not get any lower. ‘I’ll check if it’s still there,’ said Rose, and hurried off to squash her nose against the music shop window while Indigo said to Tom, ‘She said you wanted her to come.’

  ‘She did?’

  ‘And someone had to come with her. I’ll be in the library. Can you bring Rose across to meet me there when you’ve finished?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Indigo. ‘Or else I’ll have to come into the shop and wait. You won’t want a lot of people hanging round listening.’

  A lot of people hanging round listening would have suited Tom perfectly, and his eyebrows went up even higher, but then Rose called, ‘I can see it!’ and he passed his hand across his hair and suddenly relaxed.

  ‘Yes, I’ll bring her across,’ he agreed, and hurried to peer in at the window beside Rose. A moment later he exclaimed in horror, ‘It’s gone!’

  ‘No. It isn’t,’ said Rose calmly. ‘They moved it. It’s in the dark corner behind the counter now. I asked them to put it there.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘When we came to town with the school. I said couldn’t they put it where it wouldn’t show up so much.’

  Tom looked at her in astonishment. Rose said complacently, ‘It hardly shows at all.’

  ‘Well, come on then!’ said Tom, suddenly laughing, and he pushed open the shop door and Rose followed him inside.

  Indigo stayed where he was and watched through the plate glass window. Rose pointed to the black guitar. A man came forward and handed it over to Tom. Tom took it eagerly, strapped it over his shoulder, and began testing the strings. He plucked them one by one, and two by two, holding down a single note at a time, listening, adjusting the tuning pegs, listening again. His face took on a sealed, inward look. Indigo recognised the expression, he had seen it over and over again on Rose’s face when she was engrossed in some picture.

  Tom finished his tuning, looked at Rose, said something, and began to play.

  Indigo went across to the library and settled himself down with a book. He thought he would probably be there for quite a long time.

  ‘Guess who I went to see last week,’ said Caddy to her mother, as they drove to the college where Eve taught art to Young Offenders on Saturday mornings. ‘Daddy. I went to his studio.’

  ‘Goodness, Caddy!’

  ‘I suddenly wanted to see it. I never have before.’

  ‘I haven’t been myself for years and years and years,’ said Eve. ‘Did you tell him you were coming?’

  ‘No. I just went. And I found it quite easily and I rang the bell and there he was. Looking just like he always looks. You know, brown and posh and cheerful.’

  Eve sighed a little.

  ‘And he said, “Caddy darling, what a gorgeous surprise! Come in! Come in!” ’

  The last time Eve had visited Bill’s studio had been before Rose was born, but she still remembered very clearly how he had flung the door open and exclaimed, ‘Eve darling, what a gorgeous surprise!’

  ‘So I went in,’ said Caddy, ‘and it was all very beautiful and bare and shining and he made tea for me and we had it out on that tiny balcony where he grows mint and herbs and things.’

  ‘Oh yes. I remember.’

  ‘He has a table that is covered in photographs. Some I’d never seen. One of Indigo when he came out of hospital just before Christmas all thin and hollow-looking. And one of Saffy and Sarah in the garden. And a big one of Rose with her glasses on that he said he took in the shop when they were choosing frames. She’s looking into a mirror and there’s another mirror behind her so she’s reflected and reflected backwards and forwards, getting smaller and smaller.’

  ‘That does sound clever. What else?’

  ‘Nothing. He was just nice.’

  ‘Was he all by himself? No one else there?’

  ‘Yes, all alone. Poor Dad.’

  Caddy looked sideways at her mother, and caught her eye. They both laughed.

  ‘Oh well,’ said Eve. ‘Never mind. Here we are!’

  She turned into the college car park, looked around, and then swerved suddenly towards a group of waving students.

  ‘Spike and Lisa and Matthew,’ she explained to Caddy. ‘They always save me a parking place…Brace yourself now, Caddy!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, darling,’ said Eve, jumping out, and beginning to unload cans of spray paint and huge rolls of cardboard into the arms of her students, ‘I suppose Daddy would say it’s not exactly Art…’

  The man in the music shop was clearly on Tom’s side. He said, ‘I was thinking. Have you got a guitar you could trade in against the price of that one? I could arrange a part exchange. Would that help you?’

  ‘No,’ said Tom. ‘My guitar…I’ve got this old Spanish guitar…No. It wouldn’t help. Sorry.’

  The shop man said unhappily, ‘You know what it’s worth, that one. Four-fifty is a gift.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We gave three-eighty for it. Polished it up. Lemon oil on the neck, new strap, new strings. There’s an old case round the back we could let you have with it.’

  Tom spread his hands helplessly.

  ‘Could you bring someone in to hear it? How about your mother…’

  Tom shook his head, and began to walk towards the door.

  ‘Tom’s mother’s in America,’ Rose told the kind assistant, ‘looking after the bears in Yellowstone National Park.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And his father’s an astronaut,’ Rose continued. ‘On his way to a star. And his grandmoth
er’s a witch. I’ve seen her.’

  ‘Well,’ said the assistant, clearly bemused at this information. ‘I don’t know what to say. Perhaps it’s just not meant to be.’

  ‘It is,’ said Rose.

  ‘Thanks anyway,’ said Tom. ‘Come on, Rose.’

  He left the shop and walked away quickly, not looking back, but Rose, who had gone out with him, suddenly turned and dashed back in. The shop assistant had his back to her. He was hanging up the black guitar, not in the dark corner, but back in the place where Tom had first shown it to her.

  ‘Not there!’ hissed Rose, so ferociously that he nearly jumped out of his skin. ‘Not there! And don’t sell it!’

  Tom suddenly remembered his promise to take Rose to the library. He had never in his life escorted anyone anywhere, but he had seen it being done. Also he knew how recklessly Rose treated traffic. So when she caught up with him again at the crossing point on the main road he grabbed her very firmly round the wrist and did not let go until they had reached the central island, and were waiting for the second set of lights to go green.

  ‘Look what you’ve done!’ said Rose, displaying the purple marks Tom’s fingers had left on her arm.

  Tom did not reply. He was looking across to the far side of the road, where the red-haired gang leader and two of his friends were doubled up with laughter, pointing at him and calling.

  ‘Isn’t she a bit young for you, Levin?’

  ‘Your father fetch her back from some planet for you, Tom?’

  The lights went green and Tom seized Rose again and marched her across. The red-haired gang leader and his friends went on their way, still hooting and calling. Rose heard one of them say sneeringly, ‘That’s Indigo Casson’s sister.’

  ‘Are they the boys who put Indigo down a toilet?’ she demanded.

  ‘Probably,’ answered Tom, hauling her along the pavement to the library as quickly as he could.

  ‘Why?’ asked Rose.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh. Well. I think he annoyed them.’