Indigo's Star

by Hilary McKay

  ‘Couldn’t he come?’ asked the assistant sympathetically.

  ‘No,’ said Rose, strumming away. ‘But he still wants it so don’t you go selling it without him!’

  ‘I’m afraid we can’t promise…’ began the assistant, and then shut up because Rose was glaring so fiercely at him.

  ‘Are you thinking of learning to play yourself?’ he asked.

  ‘I am playing,’ said Rose, ‘aren’t I?’

  ‘Yes indeed. Yes, of course you are! American, isn’t he, your friend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Over here for long?’

  Rose stared at him. Until then it had not really occurred to her that Tom was not in England for ever and ever. But of course he was not. She knew it really, she just had not thought of it.

  ‘Till summer,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t realise he’d be going back so soon.’

  ‘Soon?’ asked Rose, startled. ‘Summer isn’t soon!’

  ‘Well, it’s June now, isn’t it?’ asked the assistant reasonably. ‘Not that it feels like it by the weather! Will you be all right there for a minute or two by yourself?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rose, but she bent low over the guitar so that he could not see her face, and she plucked the strings more and more slowly.

  Meanwhile, Eve had fallen completely asleep standing up, like a horse. She woke up when someone pushed through the shop door behind her, rubbed her eyes, and exclaimed in astonishment, ‘Rose darling! What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m trying out this guitar,’ answered Rose. ‘I’ve finished now, anyway.’

  ‘Well, give it back to the man and say thank you!’

  Rose did as she was told without protesting, but out in the street she could not help asking, ‘Have you got any money with you, Mummy?’

  ‘Mmmm,’ said Eve, digging around in her huge, painty canvas shoulder bag. ‘Yes, think so, darling. Yes, here’s my purse.’

  ‘I mean spare money. That you don’t want for anything else. Not the money that you need for food and things.’

  ‘I’m sure I have. We can’t possibly need food again! I seem to be always buying the stuff! How much do you want?’

  ‘How much have you got?’

  Eve obligingly stopped in the street and inspected. ‘Twenty pounds in notes,’ she said, peering into her purse, ‘and all this junk.’

  She tipped the purse to show the collection of coins, paint tube lids, beads and broken earrings that it contained, and then passed it to Rose, saying cheerfully, ‘There you are, darling! Help yourself.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Rose. ‘Would you say “Help yourself” if it was four hundred and fifty pounds?’

  ‘If I could. But I’m afraid it isn’t. Nothing like.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Rose sadly, and she closed it up again and placed it gently back into her mother’s bag.

  ‘What did you want four hundred and fifty pounds for?’

  ‘That black guitar.’

  ‘Goodness,’ said Eve. ‘Is that what it costs? That’s more than I’ve ever spent on anything in my life! That’s four hundred and fifty tubes of paint, if you buy squashed ones! It can’t possibly be worth so much!’

  Rose did not argue, because she knew she could never make her mother understand. Eve, who happily bought her clothes from charity shops and market stalls, painted her pictures on Bill’s old canvases, carted home furniture that people had dumped into skips to throw away, and measured her cash in terms of squashed tubes of paint, could not be expected to understand that one second-hand guitar might cost four hundred and fifty pounds. Rose found herself suddenly longing for her father. He was quite different. His wallet bulged with credit cards and he habitually carried around at least four hundred and fifty pounds’ worth of accessories in his jacket pockets.

  ‘When is Daddy coming home?’ she asked.

  ‘Goodness knows,’ said Eve casually. ‘He’s so busy. Paris this weekend, he says.’

  ‘I know. What’s Paris like?’

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Eve. ‘Perfect! I spent a summer there once. A lot of us shared a squat out of town (that’s a place where you can live for free, darling, as long as the owners don’t come home), and I used to do sketches for tourists outside this little cafe and they would buy me coffee and things in exchange.’

  ‘Daddy said Paris was very, very expensive,’ remarked Rose.

  ‘No,’ said Eve thoughtfully. ‘No. Well, I didn’t spend any money there anyway! Of course, it was before I met Daddy! Are you going to tell me what you wanted that guitar for?’

  ‘You’ll laugh.’

  ‘I won’t. Tell me.’

  ‘For Tom.’

  Eve looked at Rose, and she did not laugh. She understood about hearts, even if she did not understand about money. She put an arm round Rose and hugged her tight.

  While Rose and her mother were in the music shop Indigo was lurking around the main entrance of the town library, waiting for Tom to turn up and trying to look inconspicuous.

  He felt like a suspicious character. He felt as if the words LIBRARY CLIMBER were written across his head. For this reason, and also because the computer games shop along the road was a Saturday meeting place for the red-haired gang leader and his friends, he could not wait openly on the pavement. The gang and its accompanying rabble still gave him a sick, helpless feeling in his stomach, and it was worst of all the times he encountered them out of school. So Indigo kept in close to the library walls, and only went out into the open every now and then to crane his neck back as far as it would go, and look up. He pretended to himself that he was interested in the pigeons that circled overhead, but really he was measuring in his mind the height of the library roof.

  It was very high indeed, he decided.

  The library was a new building, and some people in town were very proud of it, claiming that it reminded them of Sydney Opera House. It was built of white slabs of concrete, with a flat roof from which rose seven large skylights of glass and steel shaped like enormous prisms. Indigo was gazing at them, and thinking how cold the pigeons looked when someone behind him demanded casually, ‘Feeling blue, Indigo?’

  Indigo jumped and spun round.

  Tom answered his own question, ‘Yes. He’s feeling blue!’

  Tom’s battered guitar case was strapped across his shoulders and he was leaning against a telegraph pole, watching Indigo watching the pigeons. He lifted his eyebrows at Indigo, and Indigo laughed and his spirits rose unexpectedly.

  ‘Look at that!’ Tom said, and swung round so that Indigo could see the back of his guitar case. It was dirty and splattered and stamped with a large muddy footprint.

  ‘One of those fools who trail round school thinking they are so cool came up behind me. Kicked as hard as he could.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Shoved him under a bus!’ said Tom sarcastically. ‘I didn’t do anything! What do you think I could do with this on my back and the whole crowd of them watching? I don’t know where they are now. They disappeared a while ago.’

  ‘They’ll be in the games shop,’ said Indigo. ‘Look!’

  He nodded down the street to where the red-haired gang leader stood smiling at them from a shop doorway. When he saw them looking he made a rude gesture and disappeared inside.

  ‘Hold this!’ commanded Tom, unstrapping his guitar. ‘It won’t take a minute!’

  ‘Tom, don’t…’ began Indigo, but Tom was already sprinting back down the street. As Indigo watched he stuck his head in the games shop doorway, and yelled, ‘Shop-lifting again, Red Head? You crook!’ so loudly that every single person within sight turned and stared.

  ‘Tom!’ exclaimed Indigo, in agony between laughter and fear. ‘He’ll have you for that!’

  ‘He’ll have to find me first,’ said Tom, taking back his guitar case and tenderly rubbing off the muddy marks. ‘Look what they did! They wouldn’t have cared if they’d smashed it!’

  ‘Thanks for bringing it.’

/>   ‘That was the bargain,’ said Tom. ‘Half the bargain! You’ve got to come on to the roof now! So let’s go! Before it rains and the glass gets all slippy.’

  Indigo glanced in horror up at the seven enormous skylights and hoped he had misheard. Tom was already leading the way inside, through the turnstiles, skirting the grubby seats where old men sat in cold weather, and then passing the ramp that wound down to the windowless basement where children’s books were kept.

  ‘These are the foothills!’ he told Indigo as they crossed the seething wilderness of Adult Fiction, ‘and that’s the summit!’

  He pointed upwards, to where far overhead, lighting the main staircase, the huge central skylight soared above them.

  Together they climbed the stairs to the first floor (Newspapers, Periodicals and General Reference) and then up again to the second floor (Reference Only).

  ‘Not so many people here,’ observed Indigo, looking back down the stairwell to the crowds below.

  ‘No,’ agreed Tom. ‘Shows we’re getting higher!’

  A friendly librarian spotted Tom’s guitar and smiled and said, ‘Hello boys! Music is up on level three.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Tom.

  The whole of the third floor was devoted to Music. Compact discs and LPs by the thousand. Manuscript music by the mile. Shabby instruments donated by dead musicians unguarded in open cabinets. Indigo thought if anything could slow Tom down it would be these, but they had no effect at all.

  ‘Very nice,’ he said, hurrying past. He did not pause to look at anything until a curling poster of a man in a hat caught his eye. Then he stopped and said, ‘Hey, see who’s here in England! It’s old Bob!’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Indigo, trying to sound as if he knew what Tom was talking about.

  Tom was not deceived. ‘That’s Bob Dylan!’ he told Indigo. ‘Have you never heard of Bob Dylan?’ And then, when Indigo’s face revealed that this was (unbelievably) the case, he continued, ‘That’s like not having heard of…not having heard of…’

  ‘Scotland?’ suggested Indigo.

  ‘No! Where’s Scotland? Star Wars! Yogi Bear!…

  Well, never mind! I’ll tell you who loves Bob Dylan. My father. He’s got that exact same poster! He’s this really old, really old, hippy old rock star!’

  ‘I thought he was a baseball-playing astronaut!’ remarked Indigo.

  ‘What planet are you on, Indigo?’ demanded Tom incredulously. ‘Bob Dylan is a hippy old rock star, not my father! My father…You were being funny, right? Come on! Where next?’

  They looked around them. The main staircase had stopped, but the central skylight was still high overhead.

  ‘There’s more rooms up there,’ said Tom, gazing upwards. ‘There must be another staircase somewhere. Through a side door, maybe…There!’

  He pointed to a door labelled with an upwards pointing arrow and the words To Lecture Room 1. Sure enough, there was another staircase behind it. They slipped through and climbed again and came to an empty corridor barred halfway along by a notice board that read:

  QUIET! EXAMINATIONS IN PROGRESS

  Tom and Indigo paused. There was a sound of voices and a violin being played.

  ‘Must be music exams!’ murmured Indigo.

  ‘Good,’ said Tom. ‘We have the perfect disguise! Now, how do they get out on to the roof?’

  ‘Through there, I bet,’ said Indigo, nodding to a door at the end of the corridor marked STAFF ONLY.

  ‘That’s it,’ agreed Tom. ‘We’re on our way now!’

  With Indigo following he tiptoed past the notice board, and had just got his hand on the Staff Only door handle when it was opened from the other side. A man came out.

  Tom gave a big sigh and the man said, ‘Why don’t musicians look out of their windows in the mornings?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Tom.

  ‘Because if they did they’d have nothing to do in the afternoons! You should be in here, young man!’

  He ushered them back along the corridor into an empty room.

  ‘Shouldn’t be too long!’ he remarked pleasantly. ‘Run through a few scales while you wait! Good luck!’

  ‘It’s all part of the journey!’ said Tom when his footsteps had died away. ‘Let’s try again!’

  This time they made it through the door unchallenged, past a small coffee room, past a fire exit, and past a cupboard helpfully labelled KEYS.

  ‘Tom!’ said Indigo shocked, as Tom opened the cupboard, pocketed the bunch of keys tagged Caretaker, and shut the door again, all in a second.

  ‘Trust me!’ said Tom. ‘I’m a musician!’

  ‘Then you are not where you should be!’ boomed a voice from behind, and they were swept down upon yet again, this time by a huge bearded man who whisked them back into their waiting room, and stood leaning on the door while he asked, ‘All tuned up?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Better get on with it then.’

  Tom’s face was so funny at this second setback that Indigo could not stop laughing. Tom ignored him, got out his guitar and solemnly tuned up.

  ‘Stop laughing!’ the bearded librarian ordered Indigo. ‘You’ll make him nervous! I’m going to have to leave you both. You stay put till you’re called and no messing about! Nice old guitar.’

  Tom looked up quickly to see if he was joking and said, ‘The neck is warped.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘And the tuning pegs slip and the back is split.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’

  ‘It got really wet one time you see.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said the librarian, edging away.

  ‘In a thunderstorm. And. See that mark on the back?’

  ‘I’m afraid I must leave you now!’

  ‘Lightning did that. It was struck by lightning.’

  ‘What appalling luck,’ said the librarian and nipped out of the door before Tom could tell him anything else.

  ‘Now!’ said Tom, and this time they managed it, through the staff door, past the key cupboard, and round a corner. Then up a narrow stair to a little locked doorway. Here Tom got out his stolen bunch of keys, found the one marked Roof, and a moment later they were out in the open at last.

  The library roof was flat, with the skylights crossing the centre like a range of glass mountains. A shifting, chilly wind was blowing, and the clouds, Indigo decided, were uncomfortably close. He backed against the little door they had come through and tried not to think about how high up they were.

  Tom was exploding with a combination of sky, success and anarchy. He yelled, ‘Whoo hoo! Here we are!’ and spun madly round and round. ‘See! We made it!’ he called upwards to the ragged clouds. He unstrapped his guitar case and lay spread-eagled on his back under the windy sky, and shouted, ‘Hello, airplanes!’ He ran around the parapet, high on height, scooting the pigeons off the edge, telling them, ‘Fly, little birdies!’

  Then he called, ‘Come on, Indigo! Let’s look down!’

  A knee-high parapet ran round the edge of the roof. Tom skidded across to it, and hung over to his waist, calling, ‘Hello, little people!’ to the passers-by down below. ‘I can see the music shop!’ he called over his shoulder to Indigo.

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘If I stretch over really far! There’s someone looking at the guitars in the window…Hey!’

  Tom jumped up so suddenly he nearly lost his balance, and Indigo felt his stomach turn over.

  ‘Don’t you buy my guitar!’ bawled Tom down to the street below, and to Indigo he explained casually, ‘They just went in!’

  ‘I wish you’d get away from that edge!’ said Indigo.

  ‘If he comes out with my guitar,’ said Tom, dropping back down to his knees, ‘I’m gonna jump off this roof and grab it out of his hands before he knows where I’ve come from!’

  Then for the first time Tom seemed to notice that Indigo was not enjoying himself. He looked more closely, and saw that Indigo looked…not worried…thought Tom…Not
worried…bored?

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, with his eyebrows lifted high.

  Indigo could not seem to speak. Also his knees felt terrible, and his head was swimming. The sight of Tom prancing about at the edge of the parapet made him feel as if cold water was pouring down his skin.

  ‘Come here and watch this ball,’ said Tom, ever the entertainer, determined that Indigo should not be bored. ‘See how high it bounces!’

  He produced a ball from his pocket, knelt down on the parapet, leaned over, dropped it, and then almost toppled over the edge stretching to see it land. Terrified, Indigo lurched forward and grabbed his ankles, pulling him backwards as hard as he could.

  ‘Ow!’ shouted Tom as his shirt rucked up and his bare stomach grazed the rough sill of the parapet. ‘Let go! Ouch!’

  His head came down with a crack on the stonework and Indigo stopped pulling. Tom glared at him and asked, ‘This you being funny again?’

  Then he looked properly at Indigo, who had turned a horrible clammy pale greenish-grey colour, and said, ‘You’re scared.’

  Indigo was hunched against one of the skylights with his head between his knees. He was breathing deeply, blowing in and out like someone who has nearly drowned.

  ‘Scared!’ repeated Tom, and he waited for Indigo to reply, ‘What me? Scared?’ and then perhaps describe all the higher, wilder, infinitely more dangerous heights that he, Indigo, had scaled in the past. That was what he would do, if he were Indigo.

  Indigo did not say a word.

  ‘Scared!’ said Tom for the third time, and this time Indigo looked up with dark, unfocussed eyes and said, ‘Yep. Don’t go near the edge any more, will you?’

  If any other person (except possibly Rose) had said that to Tom it would have been the signal for him to begin balancing tricks along the edge of the parapet. There was no need though, to pretend with Indigo. Indigo did not pretend with him.

  So Tom said (amazing himself), ‘I won’t go near the edge any more. Don’t worry. You’ll be OK.’