by Hilary McKay
‘You would not believe the words she says she has learned,’ he began, and read them out to her.
‘Oh,’ said Eve laughing. ‘I remember. My list of banned words! I wrote them on the board for my Saturday morning art class. We were designing T-shirts. She went to school in one of them this morning. Right down past her knees with CRIME PAYS in big pink letters across the front…’
‘Whatever did she look like?’ asked Bill, appalled.
‘Well, not terribly tidy,’ admitted Eve. ‘Although Sarah and Saffron had managed to stretch her hair into two very darling little plaits…’
‘Crime pays!’
‘Well, of course Rose knows that is not true,’ said Eve soothingly. ‘Or hardly ever. Not usually. Although I must say some of my students do seem to find…’
‘I wish you would not take Rose to your classes,’ said Bill irritably. ‘Look at the language she has picked up! And if you ask me what you teach is not exactly…’
Eve gently put the telephone receiver down and began to hum while she sorted through the contents of her handbag. After a couple of minutes she picked it up again, said quickly, ‘You are absolutely right, darling! Must dash!’ and hung up.
‘Who was that?’ asked Rose, coming in.
‘Daddy.’
‘Oh.’
‘He loved your letter,’ said Eve, improvising rapidly.
‘Loved it?’
‘He was very interested in the T-shirts. And the list of words (which I know you would never ever use, Rose darling).’
‘What else did he say?’
‘I didn’t quite catch the end.’
‘Is he coming to see us.’
‘Absolutely definitely,’ said Eve, hugging Rose.
Chapter Twelve
‘There are all sorts of families,’ Tom’s grandmother had remarked, and over the following few weeks Tom became part of the Casson family, as Michael and Sarah and Derek-from-the-camp had done before him.
He immediately discovered that being a member of the family was very different from being a welcome friend. If you were a Casson family member, for example, and Eve drifted in from the shed asking, ‘Food? Any ideas? Or shall we not bother?’ then you either joined in the search of the kitchen cupboards, or counted the money in the housekeeping jam jar and calculated how many pizzas you could afford. Also if you were a family member you took care of Rose, helped with homework (Saffron and Sarah were very strict about homework), unloaded the washing machine, learned to fold up Sarah’s wheelchair, hunted for car keys, and kept up the hopeful theory that in the event of a crisis Bill Casson would disengage himself from his artistic life in London and rush home to help.
Some of these things Tom understood naturally, and some were explained to him by Indigo, to whom they were a part of life. Indigo, Tom was beginning to realise, was no fool, even if he was afraid of high places and the red-haired gang leader and his rabble.
In those chilly, light, unsummery days the red-haired gang leader never seemed to be far away.
He was often unhappy.
One cause of the red-haired gang leader’s unhappiness was Tom. Tom’s arrogance hurt him like a pain in his heart. Another reason, even worse, was the fact that he had yet to win his long battle with Indigo. It seemed very unfair that he had tried so hard, and for so long, and yet he still had not won. He could not understand it. He could not understand how, even at the height of his power, when Indigo had walked among them as nervous and alone as a daylight ghost, he had not won.
The fact that Indigo, of all fighters the most hopeless, should endure for so long, tormented the red-haired gang leader like a fever.
He began to urge his rabble on to new levels of achievement.
This was hard work. The rabble needed far more encouraging than they had done in the past. Three of them, Josh and Marcus and David, were almost useless. They disappeared whenever there was any dirty work to be done. Also, it seemed to their leader that others were beginning to copy them.
In daylight the red-haired gang leader laughed at this ridiculous thought, but at night time he lay awake in bed, tossing and turning, reviewing the evidence.
There was very little evidence.
All the same, he began to hear mutterings behind his back.
Then he acted quickly, because his leadership meant more to him than anything else in his life. Discipline in the gang became tighter than ever, and there were many unpleasant incidents. On the other hand, loyalty was rewarded as never before.
In the past the red-haired leader had fastidiously avoided touching his adoring rabble: now he flung his arms across their dandruffy and shambling shoulders and told them they were heroes. He gave High Fives without flinching. For even the least colourful and enthusiastic he invented cryptic and flattering nicknames. His vigilant presence allowed no private meetings. He was everywhere.
When these tactics had brought his people a little more into shape again, he announced that Indigo Casson should no longer be ignored. Indigo and Tom, he explained, were now obviously a team. Indigo had been immune for long enough.
No one dared remind him of Saffron and Sarah’s visit on the first morning of term. Nobody muttered rebellious thoughts to an ally. There were a few furtive glances, which the red-haired leader noted with cold and furious eyes, but that was all. Things were not as good as they had been in the glorious old days of total power, but there were still enough brave and loyal rabble members to make life quite smelly and messy and painful for Tom and Indigo in the time that followed.
‘Feeling blue, Indigo?’ enquired Tom sardonically, as Indigo cleaned dog mess off his jacket in the washroom at the end of a school day.
‘Nope,’ said Indigo.
‘Well, you should be. Look at what you are doing!’
‘It’s clean again now.’
‘Listen. There’s two of us. Let’s take them on and see how many we can lay out before they knock us flat.’
‘It wouldn’t work,’ said Indigo, wafting the wet patch on his jacket under the hand dryer.
‘Explain! Explain! Explain!’ ordered Tom, pounding Indigo between the shoulder blades with a handy tennis racket.
‘The more attention you pay to them, the worse they are. I bet they’d love a chance to flatten us. They’d all join in. Rose would find out.’
‘So what?’
‘She’d be really upset if we came home flattened.’
‘I think Old Rose is a lot tougher than you know,’ remarked Tom.
‘Maybe.’
‘A lot tougher! Let’s take her with us when we go up the church tower.’
‘Are we going up the church tower?’ asked Indigo, surprised. They had tried to do this once before, and found it closed for repairs.
‘Absolutely we are going up the church tower,’ said Tom. ‘It’s open again. Three hundred and sixty-five steps, my grandmother says.’
He bounced a ball off the ceiling and caught it with his left hand. His right one was black across the back of all four fingers from being slammed in a classroom door.
‘Will you be able to play your guitar with your hand like that?’ asked Indigo, looking at it.
‘I think so. It’s a bit stiff though. I couldn’t if it was my other one.’
‘What’ll you tell Rose?’
‘I’ll say I got it slammed in a door of course.’
Rose finished her picture that week, adding the final touches, a glimpse of Derek-from-the-camp’s motorbike through an upstairs bedroom window, an engagement ring on Caddy’s hand (‘From Michael’), and even more cruising shark fins among the waves. Over the next few days everyone who came near the house was dragged in to admire it. The milkman said she was a clever little lass. The postman said, ‘Well I never!’ and shook her hand. Sarah’s mother said it was a remarkable achievement. Sarah’s father said, ‘Where’s Good Old Bill?’
Rose pointed to the sharks.
Eve said it ought to be sprayed with fixative, and one Saturday lunchtime she
came back from the college with three large tins of the stuff.
‘I should hate it to get smudged,’ she explained to Rose.
Michael said, ‘I suppose I’d better go and buy a ring then. What is it?’
Rose said it was a great big diamond.
Derek-from-the-camp, who had dropped in for coffee and (he told Rose) to see if Eve had fallen in love with him yet (advised by Rose, he had given up all hope of Caddy), said he knew fully paid-up artists who had never done anything to touch it.
Rose said so did she.
Then everyone helped to get the spraying done, which was an enormous undertaking. So large was the finished picture, that even with the doors and windows open, the fumes from the fixative caused Rose’s admirers to retire one by one, wheezing and rubbing their burning eyes, long before the work was done. It was left to Tom, as latest member of the family, to finish the job off.
‘Good man!’ said Michael, when Tom finally staggered into the garden, triumphantly waving the last empty tin.
‘So how long,’ asked Derek, draping a black leather arm around Eve and winking at Rose, ‘before you go back to the States, Tom?’
‘Not for ages,’ snapped Rose, before Tom could answer. ‘Get your arm off my mother!’
‘Not till summer,’ said Tom.
‘Any day now then?’ said Derek, planting a great smacking kiss on Eve’s ear. ‘OUCH! ROSE!’
‘Serves you right,’ said Rose, watching with pleasure as he hobbled in painful circles round and round the lawn.
Derek pulled up the leg of his jeans to inspect the damage. ‘Crikey, look at that!’ he moaned.
‘Hideous,’ said Saffron, giggling.
‘Couldn’t you shave them, or something?’ asked Sarah.
‘Look, Eve! Look where your daughter kicked me! A great purple bruise!’
‘Mmmm,’ said Eve, sidling into her shed.
‘Oh well,’ said Derek. ‘Rose is obviously right. Nobody loves me. Perhaps I’d better take off for America, too! Are you looking forward to getting back to civilisation, Tom?’
‘I told you,’ said Tom, a bit impatiently, ‘I’m not going for ages. Not till summer, I said.’
‘Summertime now, mate,’ said Derek.
‘Shouldn’t you be going back to your camp?’ asked Rose.
‘Maybe I should,’ agreed Derek. ‘Back to my nonviolent protest!’
He shook hands with Tom before he left, and said he hoped they would meet up again, and catching Rose alone for a moment, he squatted down to her height and asked very kindly, ‘You getting sad about Tom going home, Permanent Rose?’
‘No.’
‘That’s all right then. It’s a very small world, you know!’
‘Is it?’
‘Gets smaller all the time. You’ll see.’
‘Does your leg still hurt?’
‘Not a bit.’
‘Good,’ said Rose.
When Derek had gone Tom borrowed a handful of pastels from Rose, stood Indigo against the side of the house, and performed his ball-throwing trick. However, his heart was not really in it, his last ball nearly took off Indigo’s right ear, and he dropped the catch when it bounced back.
‘How could you miss that?’ asked Indigo, sweetly.
‘Lost concentration,’ said Tom, a little wearily.
Usually he was very good at distracting himself from the things he did not want to think about. This time it was not working so well. There was no doubt, he reluctantly admitted to himself as he watched Rose join the splodges of pastel on the wall of the house into an enormous looming skeleton, there was no doubt that time was passing.
That evening, back at his grandmother’s house, Tom climbed the now familiar route out of his bedroom window, and on to the porch roof. There he sat for a long time, hugging his guitar and thinking of home.
Nowadays, home seemed very far away.
Tom had switched lives as completely as if he had moved to another planet. He had sent no letters and answered no telephone calls. Completely deliberately, he had turned his back and walked away.
At the airport, on that last day in America, Tom’s father had said, ‘Nobody wants you to do this.’
Tom had shrugged.
‘Tom. Let’s talk. It’s not too late to talk.’
‘Talk then,’ Tom had replied, taking a ball out from his pocket.
‘Tom, will you come back with me and have one more go at working things out?’
‘No.’
‘That’s it, then? No? That’s all you have to say?’
‘You work things out,’ Tom told him stubbornly. ‘It’s your problem.’
His father began to speak, and then stopped. He touched a hand on Tom’s shoulder, very lightly, like a caress.
‘Any suggestions?’
Tom had not just a suggestion, but a solution. It was one he had thought of weeks before, but he had hugged it to himself and kept quiet, not wanting to be the one to put it into words. He knew his father had worked it out already.
In the old days, when Tom and his father had been a complete family to one another, they had understood each other. Tom did not know why it was not like this any more. He stood at the airport, fiddling with his ball while they queued to check in his luggage, and said silently to his father in his head, ‘You know the answer! And I know you know.’
‘Tom?’ his father said, ‘Tom, remember when we tried to do Christmas twice?’
That was an old joke between them. Tom had been six and it was February and snowing. Christmas had been spent on the Mexican coast, and from Tom’s six-year-old point of view it had been a total disaster. Sunshine and dolphins and presents on the beach were not his idea of Christmas.
Then they got back and late in the winter, the snow arrived. It seemed a waste to Tom. He had looked out at the big grey flakes tumbling past the street lights and asked, ‘Why can’t we do Christmas twice?’
‘We can,’ his father had replied grandly, and they very nearly had. They had wrapped up presents and bought a turkey. They had even, with immense difficulty, found a tree. But by the time they got the tree tracked down the snow was melting, and the place that was still selling trees was also selling Easter decorations. Tom’s father was all for decorating the tree with yellow chicks and painted eggs, but Tom said that this would be wrong.
‘Dad,’ he said reluctantly, after he had won the argument about the Easter decorations. ‘I don’t think this will work. I don’t think we can do Christmas twice!’
Then, from somewhere among the small crowd of people that had collected around them while they argued, a deep, deep voice had boomed, ‘The boy is right!’
Sometimes, for years after that, Tom’s father would boom out, ‘The boy is right!’ in just the same way.
That was the time they tried to do Christmas twice.
Remembering it at the crowded airport had done something to Tom. He had to turn away from the check-in queue and draw a forefinger under each eye in turn, casually, so that no one would notice.
‘Don’t go through with this,’ said his father.
At that moment Tom gave up waiting for him to put into words the solution to all the unhappiness that had brought them to this place. He said, ‘She could take it with her and go somewhere else. Anywhere. Just, not in our house…’
He paused at that point, because he could feel his father’s eyes, dark and penetrating on the top of his head.
Also shocked.
Perhaps, thought Tom, in surprise, this solution had not occurred to his father. Perhaps that was why he was suddenly so silent.
When Tom spoke again it was a little more kindly. ‘You could visit…Whenever you wanted. Whenever. That would be all right.’
His father did not get angry. Or sarcastic. Just quiet and thoughtful.
Thinking about it, Tom guessed.
‘It works with me and Mom,’ he had pointed out, but this was so untrue that he was forced to add, ‘most of the time.
�
�It would work,’ he amended, ‘if she didn’t keep hanging on to that crummy old boyfriend…’
His father said, as if he had not heard any of this, ‘No. That is not going to happen. That is not a solution. That is never ever…I can’t believe you’ve been thinking like that, Tom! No one is going anywhere.’
‘I am,’ said Tom, more angrily than ever, and then they reached the front of the queue and the first thing he handed over to be labelled and loaded on to the plane was his guitar. Then his big bag, and then his rucksack. He did not say another word to his father.
That was what had happened the day Tom flew to England. He sat on the roof of the porch at his grandmother’s house, remembering it all. He thought of home, and he thought of Indigo and Rose.
He said out loud, ‘I never want to go back.’
Chapter Thirteen
Rose was moping. She was hanging round the house, moping. She said she had not got anything to do.
‘What about painting?’ asked Caddy, telephoning from London.
‘My picture’s finished.’
‘Well, you could start another. The last one was so good, everyone said so.’
‘Horrible Daddy didn’t,’ said Rose gloomily. ‘Caddy?’
‘Yes?’
‘When are you going to marry Michael?’
‘What! How did you know? That was supposed to be a secret! Anyway, probably not for ages.’
‘Where will you live?’
‘Goodness knows!’
‘What will you wear?’
‘Probably something very tight,’ said Caddy, who had given a great deal of thought to this (but no other) aspect of marriage. ‘And totally silver with sequins all over.’
‘You’ll look like a fish.’
‘Or pink. Very bright pink?’
‘You couldn’t possibly,’ said Rose, and then suddenly brightened up because through the window she could see Indigo, and Tom with him, carrying his guitar.
‘Hello, Permanent Rose!’ said Tom, coming in.
‘Who are you talking to?’ Indigo asked.