Indigo's Star

by Hilary McKay

  ‘Caddy. Caddy, it’s Indigo with Tom! Caddy doesn’t know what to wear to marry Michael! Very tight silver sequins like a fish, or bright pink, but I said she couldn’t possibly.’

  ‘My mother wore a cowgirl dress,’ remarked Tom, getting out his guitar.

  ‘What did your father wear?’ asked Indigo. ‘His space suit? Or just his baseball cap?’

  Tom wrestled him to the ground and sat on him.

  ‘Tell her to wear that short black sparkly thing with long gloves that she wore to Granddad’s funeral,’ called Indigo, heaving Tom to one side.

  ‘Tell her a cowgirl dress!’ yelled Tom.

  ‘I heard them!’ said Caddy. ‘What awful ideas! You think of something, Rose darling!’

  Rose said she could only think of boring white lace, sticking out for miles. This exactly described the dress that Caddy had secretly longed for ever since she was five years old, so she said, ‘Perfect!’ and rang off before Rose could explain that she had been joking.

  Tom lay flat on his back on the floor with one leg bent up and the other crossed over it to rest his guitar on. He twanged the strings experimentally for a minute and then sang,

  ‘Woke up this mornin’

  And found

  I was wearing

  Boring white lace…’

  ‘Is that a real song?’ asked Rose incredulously, ‘Or did you just make it up?’

  ‘Both,’ said Tom, twanging away.

  ‘Not the short sparkly black

  With the gloves

  Indigo loves

  (Feeling blue, Indigo?)’

  Indigo dropped a cushion on his face.

  ‘Not silver like a fish, (sang Tom, through the cushion)

  Not pink

  Said Rose, who knows

  Woke up this morning

  With a bad case

  Of White Lace

  Blues’

  Then, while Rose and Indigo were still laughing, he wandered off into a melody.

  ‘It’s suppose to sound like a harp,’ he told them, as he played. ‘I learned it when I was just beginning to play, and added bits…I do wish this guitar would ever stay in tune for five minutes together!’

  ‘Perhaps it’s because you’re playing upside down,’ said Indigo.

  ‘It’s because the strings won’t stay tight,’ said Tom. ‘Not to mention the back is split and the neck is warped and it’s the wrong sort of guitar anyway…Still you better learn the right way up, Indigo. Come on, your turn!’

  It was not the first guitar lesson that Indigo had been given. There had been several, some at the Casson house, and some at Tom’s, up on the roof of the porch.

  ‘The perfect place,’ said Tom. ‘You can’t be worrying about the height if you’re playing the guitar, and if you’re playing the guitar, then obviously you’re not worrying about the height!’

  This was true, and it worked. Indigo grew quite comfortable with being on the roof, and he learned at a speed that astonished Tom. His fingers did not fumble, and he heard his mistakes as quickly as Tom did.

  ‘You need to practise,’ said Tom. ‘You’d soon be really good.’

  The drawback to Indigo learning to play was the difficulty of sharing one guitar between two people. It meant carrying it backwards and forwards across town. This made Tom an obvious target for the red-haired gang leader and his rabble. One evening he was spotted, and the next he was followed. On the third he was hunted through the streets, and arrived at the Cassons’ filthy and breathless and more troubled than Indigo had ever seen him before.

  ‘Two of them jumped me and some more came up behind,’ he said, as they examined the damage together in Indigo’s bedroom. ‘And they got my guitar case off me and started trying to open it. If they’d realised you have to push both catches at the same time they’d have managed to. I wish it had locks.’

  ‘How did you get it back?’ asked Indigo.

  ‘I grabbed the one trying to open it by the neck and I…Hello, Rose!’

  ‘What are you telling Indigo about?’ enquired Rose, suspiciously, ‘Why are you so muddy? And what happened to your face?’

  ‘Nothing much. I’m so hungry! Do you think you would make me a sandwich, Rose?’

  ‘Later.’

  ‘What about a drink?’

  ‘Why don’t you get some water out the bathroom?’

  ‘Rose,’ said Indigo. ‘Buzz off.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Rose.

  ‘So anyway,’ continued Tom, when she had gone, ‘I had hold of Jason and the others were pulling at me from behind and Jason was sort of coughing and struggling and then someone shouted, “Run!” And guess who’d pulled up beside us? The Head! He got out of his car and said, “What’s going on here?” and I looked round and it was just me and Jason. Everyone else had disappeared.

  ‘The Head just stood there, looking. Jason had terrible red marks on his throat, he looked like someone had been trying to kill him, and my nose was all bloody from where he had bashed it with his head.

  ‘Then the Head said to Jason, “How did you get those marks on your throat?” and Jason said, “Didn’t know I had any marks, Sir, ” like he couldn’t care less.’

  ‘Didn’t he notice your nose?’ asked Indigo.

  ‘Yes, he did then. He asked about it and I told him I’d probably been sneezing. So he said, really irritated, “Get off home, both of you!” Then Jason went one way, and I picked up my guitar and came here.’

  ‘Did they come after you again?’

  ‘No. I kept checking round. And every time I turned back to look the Head was still standing there, watching…He doesn’t like me.’

  ‘He doesn’t like anyone,’ said Indigo, who had been working as he listened. ‘I’ve cleaned up your case. It’s a bit cracked round one of the locks, though.’

  ‘That’s where they were kicking it. I know what they were going to do if they’d got it out. Drop it in the river. I heard Jason say. We were right by the bridge when they got me.’

  ‘I know that boy Jason!’ announced Rose, from behind the door where she had been listening all the while. ‘His brother is at my school. I could beat him up for you if you like.’

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ ordered Indigo. ‘You stay out of it. It’s nothing to do with you, or Jason’s brother!’

  ‘What about if I beat up Jason then?’

  ‘No, thank you, Rose,’ said Tom, laughing. ‘You leave Jason alone.’

  ‘I’m a brilliant fighter,’ said Rose sadly. ‘Why do you always leave me out?’

  ‘We don’t,’ said Indigo. ‘But you can’t just go around attacking people.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you are just a little kid,’ said Tom impatiently, and oblivious to Rose’s indignant glare he took out his guitar, and began tuning up.

  ‘I’ll show you a couple of chords,’ he said to Indigo, and began demonstrating to him how to hold his hands and move his fingers. He and Indigo soon became so absorbed that Rose grew restless. She had always assumed that playing an instrument came naturally to people, as painting did to her, and she found all this patient listening and practising very boring indeed.

  After a while she wandered off, and finding Sarah downstairs, enlisted her help to write another letter to her father.

  ‘I’ll tell you the words and you put them down,’ she proposed. ‘That’ll be much faster than me writing. And we can make it really long.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘You won’t add any on, or take any away?’

  ‘Of course not. Off you go!’

  ‘Begin, Darling Daddy,’ dictated Rose.

   Darling Daddy,

   This is Rose.

   Very good news Caddy is going to marry Michael. In case you have forgotten because you have not been home for so long he is the one with the ponytail and the earring that you do not like. But we do. And Caddy says she will have a white lace dress and three bridesmaids Saffron and Sarah and me and a big party for eve
ryone, all her old boyfriends too. Fireworks. A band. A big tent called a marquee. But where will we put it? Carriages with white horses for us all to go to the church. Afterwards Caddy and Michael will go for a holiday to Australia to visit the Great Barrier Reef. Caddy has worked it all out and Mummy says Yes She Can Of Course You Can Darling Of Course You Must Do That. Saffron said That Will Cost A Few Weeks Housekeeping and Mummy said Yes But We Do Not Need to Worry About That DADDY WILL PAY.

  Love Rose.

  Sarah, faithfully writing down every word, none added and none taken away, found this message so hilarious that Rose got cross.

  ‘It’s meant to be scary,’ she told her.

  ‘It’s scary,’ said Sarah.

  When Tom went home that evening he left his guitar in Indigo’s bedroom.

  ‘It’s stupid for me to keep carrying it backwards and forwards every day,’ he said.

  Indigo understood. He knew that however much Tom complained about his guitar it was still infinitely better than no guitar at all. After that it stayed at the Casson house, and Tom spent more and more of his time there.

  ‘I’m beginning to miss your playing,’ remarked Tom’s grandmother one evening, as they washed the supper dishes together.

  ‘I never knew you liked it!’ said Tom, astonished.

  ‘Of course I did!’

  ‘I could bring it back again, I suppose.’

  ‘No, no! Hardly worth it when you’ll be going back so soon. The time has gone so quickly. I must say, I didn’t expect it to when you first arrived.’

  ‘Neither did I.’ Tom paused, and then asked the question that had been on his mind for some time. ‘Gran, could I stay a bit longer? After term ends?’

  ‘Tom!’

  ‘I could help you. With the cats and everything.’

  ‘But Tom, it was only ever to be until the end of term! Your father is taking time from work to come over for you. And your plane ticket is booked…’

  ‘It could be changed.’

  ‘And it’s not as if…’ she paused, not wanting to say what she had begun to say, that it was not as if Tom had made a success of being in England. ‘Not as if you’ve been very happy here…’

  ‘I am now.’

  ‘Are you?’ Tom’s grandmother stopped washing dishes and looked at him carefully. ‘Yes, perhaps you are! If it was up to me, Tom, you could stay and I should be glad to have you. But you will have to talk to your father.’

  Tom’s face shut down as if a light had been switched off inside him.

  After that the days began to go very quickly. Caddy would be home any day, which brought Eve out of her shed for an orgy of house cleaning. She helped Rose to paint all the unused space on the kitchen wall around her picture a metallic dusky gold which beautifully set off the stormy waters and the sky. Also they pushed a great many things under beds and sofas, tidied the grass of the guinea pig graveyard, and at Rose’s insistence, went shopping for food.

  ‘Real food,’ said Rose sternly, when Eve, sent out on her own, returned with strawberries and cherries. ‘Supermarket food!’ she ordered, and dragged Eve out again.

  Then Caddy came home, loaded with presents, burdened with debts, and shortly after her arrival, ‘Glittering with diamonds,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Only one diamond,’ said Saffy.

  ‘But very large,’ pointed out Sarah.

  ‘So large,’ said Saffy, ‘it is hard to believe it is paid for. Unless it is just a biggish chunk of glass.’

  ‘It’s real,’ said Rose. ‘I chose it! I went with Michael to buy it! And it’s paid for. I saw him pay. So.’

  ‘So,’ agreed Caddy peacefully, and settled down for the holiday, spending her evenings working in a pub, and her days sunbathing in the garden.

  ‘Sunbathing!’ said Tom, looking up at the grey and white sky. He disapproved of the whole idea of sunbathing. He thought it was far too summery an occupation. A part of Tom was still denying that summer would ever come, and so far the English weather had been completely on his side.

  ‘It is getting quite hot,’ said Indigo.

  ‘Hot!’ said Tom scornfully.

  ‘It is though,’ said Rose, ‘we don’t need coats any more.’

  ‘You still carry them around all the time,’ pointed out Tom, and Indigo explained to him that in England summer was when you carried your coat around instead of wearing it. Only for a few reckless days in August, said Indigo, could it be safely left at home.

  ‘What a country!’ said Tom, tossing his ball to Indigo. ‘Catch! Hey, you caught it! When are we going up that church tower? Saturday?’

  ‘All right, Saturday,’ agreed Indigo, and on Saturday they went, taking Rose in her Permanent Rose T-shirt with them.

  ‘Why Permanent Rose?’ demanded Tom, as they climbed the worn stone steps of the narrow spiral staircase that wound to the top of the tower.

  ‘It’s a joke,’ explained Indigo. ‘It’s the name of a paint colour,’ and he recounted to Tom the story of how Rose had been given her name when she was a very small, very ill, very impermanent-seeming baby.

  ‘I had a hole in my heart,’ said Rose, over her shoulder. ‘I had to have it sewed up. Didn’t I, Indy?’

  ‘Yep,’ said Indigo.

  ‘I nearly died,’ said Rose proudly. ‘And when the hole was sewed up I got something else that I always forget the name of.’

  ‘Pneumonia,’ said Indigo. ‘Slow down a bit, Rose.’

  ‘And I nearly died again. I didn’t start getting well for ages. Caddy and Saffron and Indigo made me. They took turns.’

  ‘Took turns to what?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Make me get better. They used to stare at me and say “Getbettergetbettergetbetter.” All the time.’

  ‘Not all the time,’ said Indigo. ‘Just often. To remind you.’

  ‘You used to poke me.’

  ‘Only to check you were still alive.’

  ‘I know. I didn’t mind.’

  ‘How old were you?’ asked Tom.

  ‘One.’

  ‘You can’t really remember anything about it then.’

  ‘I can. I remember as easy as anything Indigo’s face looking through the yellow bars saying “Getbettergetbetter”.’

  ‘What yellow bars?’

  ‘Cot bars,’ said Rose, and Tom stopped suddenly, so that Indigo bumped into him from behind, and said, ‘Oh yes! Cot bars! I used to pull myself up and bite the top.’

  ‘See how far back you can remember,’ suggested Rose.

  Tom paused for a while to think, and then said triumphantly, ‘I can remember my mother saying “Walk to Mommy!” That must have been when she lived with us. She went to work at Yellowstone. Before I was even two.’

  ‘Gosh! Worse than horrible Daddy!’ said Rose.

  ‘I don’t remember minding her going at all. She told me she had to look after the bears. She used to send me pictures of them that she’d drawn. Getting tucked up and having their sneakers put on and stuff like that.’

  ‘Poor you.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Tom, starting up the stairs again. ‘I was fine. It was much more peaceful when she’d gone. And she still sends me bear pictures sometimes!’

  They reached the top after that, and had to concentrate on not letting Rose hang too far over the parapet. Indigo was pleased to find he felt surprisingly all right. Not comfortable, but not terrible either.

  ‘Don’t look down,’ Tom advised. ‘Look outwards. Look across. Look at that flat roof on top of the school! I bet no one has been up there for ages.’

  ‘How could anyone get up there?’ asked Rose.

  ‘Easy,’ said Tom. ‘Up that fire escape at the back, and on to the kitchen roof. Across the kitchen roof and round to where the porches begin. Along the porch to the bottom of the glass sloping roof of the art block. It’s not glass at the edges, it’s tile and metal. I checked. Then up the sloping roof, keeping against the wall where it meets the main tower block. Then up the tower block from there. It’s only one
more floor, and there’s climbing rungs all the way up. Must have been where a fire escape was before they built the art block alongside.’

  ‘You’ve got it all worked out!’ said Indigo in astonishment.

  ‘Been planning it for weeks,’ said Tom. ‘You coming with me, Indigo?’

  ‘Maybe one day.’

  ‘What’s the point of talking about one day?’ asked Tom, his mood suddenly swinging from up to down, as it too often did. ‘This time in two more weeks, do you know where I’ll be?’

  Talking to Tom’s father had not been a success. Tom’s grandmother had tried first, and when she had failed Tom himself had made an attempt. He had been met with cold fury.

  ‘In all the time you have been away,’ Tom’s father had said, ‘you have not contacted us once. Not a call. Not a word. Not a birthday card to your sister. Nothing. Also we have had three letters of complaint sent from the school that generously agreed to accommodate you. You have been a major nuisance and learned nothing. And I have decided, during your long and peaceful absence, that you have been indulged for long enough and IT IS TIME YOU CAME HOME AND STARTED BEHAVING YOURSELF.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Rose, ‘Where will you be this time in two weeks more?’

  ‘Flying home,’ said Tom.

  Chapter Fourteen

  For the first time since he started school, Indigo was not looking forward to the end of term. He ought to have been, because this promised to be a good summer. Caddy had spent her first three weeks’ wages on the remains of a car, and was promising to drive anyone anywhere. Eve was planning trips to London (‘Of course Daddy will be pleased!’). Derek had invited them to stay at his camp.

  Indigo would have exchanged all this for the chance to keep his friend. He ached at the thought of Tom leaving, missing him in advance.

  Rose was also desolate, but unlike Indigo, she did not try to conceal her feelings. With Rose, unhappiness always took the form of bad temper. She lashed out furiously at all attempts to cheer her up.

  ‘But Rose,’ said her father, tactless as ever, ‘I understood that Tom was actually Indigo’s friend more than yours! Let’s talk about something happy! What about Caddy’s wedding? It does sound fun!’