by Hilary McKay
“And tourists and fries,” agreed Binny. “And being able to put down both feet without freezing.”
“Overflowing trash cans and toddlers’ ice creams and sandwiches dropped in the sand.”
“Photo opportunities down at the harbor,” said Binny. “And when the rocks are warm to touch, and the water is so calm they can balance on the lobster pot buoys and stretch out a wing without wobbling.”
“Where’s your notebook?” asked her mother.
“At home somewhere.”
“Here’s a pen,” said her mother, scrabbling in her bag. “And here’s the water bill envelope. Find somewhere to sit before you forget and write down the herring gull dreams! I’ve got to rush.”
Binny didn’t rush. She made her way along the sandy, windy promenade that led to the harbor and hunkered down by the lobster pots and diesel cans, and then for ten blissful chilly minutes she recorded the herring gulls’ dreams of summer. Afterward she walked home again with the wind at her back and Max, warm and companionable against her bare leg, searching her mind for a word to capture the chilly, broken brightness of the sea, and so completely happy that she passed Miss Piper’s lace curtains without noticing or flinching.
Binny’s own home had no lace curtains. Nobody in the Cornwallis family minded who looked in their windows. Quite often they did it themselves, even James, standing on tiptoe to peer through the panes for another point of view.
That was how Binny came to see Pete.
Pete, alone in the living room, holding her mother’s bag, not the scruffy bright bag that she took to the old people’s home when she went to work, but the big squashy drawstring shoulder bag on the long strap that she loved, that she had had all Binny’s life, and before. Worn green leather, supple as velvet, lined with greeny blue watered silk, and smelling faintly of perfume spilled years before. Inside a Christmas stocking collection of treasures. Binny knew them well, having seen them produced so often: the silver comb, the small packet of photos, the pencil from her school days with her name, POLLY KNIGHT. The turquoise enamel compact with the silver bow catch, the dinosaur Band-Aids for when James fell down. And as well as these things, and others too, the housekeeping money in its much tried, overworked but never quite exhausted bulgy brown purse.
Just like their father’s briefcase, this bag was private. Even though they saw it every day. Nobody, not even James, had ever needed to be told that people who sleep on a sofa and keep their clothes in the cupboard under the stairs need some little space that is theirs alone.
The drawstring was loose. Pete’s right hand was in the bag. All this Binny saw in a moment, and her heart went still with shock.
She looked again, and the scene had changed. There was no one in the room. The bag lay undisturbed on the armchair in the corner. From somewhere very close behind, Miss Piper’s voice said, “I’m going to have to hurry you, Binny.”
Chapter Fourteen
Wednesday Afternoon
The whole of Binny leaped with shock. She launched straight into panic-stricken flight. Gareth’s father, opening his front door at the critical moment, took the impact directly in his chest.
“Oy!” he called, seizing Max’s leash as Binny pushed past him and shot by, but she was already in his kitchen. She tumbled to a halt in front of Gareth’s stepmother, dreamily smiling over her coffee and feeling much less wicked than usual.
“Binny!” she exclaimed.
Binny stared speechlessly into her face.
“Whatever is the matter? Come here, sit down.”
Binny felt a gentle hand between her shoulders, and allowed herself to be guided to a chair.
“Goodness, you look cold! I’m going to put Gareth’s jacket around your shoulders . . . like this . . . It smells a bit of burnt toast but never mind that . . . There now! I’m going to make you some hot chocolate. I’ve got milk heated already, so it won’t take a moment. Can you help yourself to shortbread? You won’t believe it Binny, but I was just thinking about you a moment ago. You’ve been such a help . . . I’ll tell you one day . . . Now then, drink this!”
Already Binny was thawing, inside and out. The unexpected welcome, together with Gareth’s toast-smelling, down filled jacket, was wonderfully comforting. The hot chocolate tasted of kindness. Binny hugged the mug in her hands, and breathed in the warmth.
“Thank you,” she said, and she was smiling over the rim at her when Gareth’s father came in, with Gareth behind him.
“Max is back at your house,” said Gareth. “I’ve just taken him round. Are you mad, bringing him here?”
“I’m sorry,” said Binny, looking apologetically at his stepmother, whose allergy to dogs and cats was so severe it could stop her breathing. “I didn’t mean to bring him in. I just ran without thinking.”
“Why?” asked Gareth.
Binny’s eyes spoke for her, I’ll tell you later, so plainly that Gareth’s stepmother laughed.
“We were just going out,” she told Binny. “We’ll leave you and Gareth to talk in peace. Come on, come on!” she added, pushing her husband toward the door. “Eat up the shortbread, you two, and anything else you like!”
“Great!” said Gareth, the moment the front door closed. “I’ve been wanting the place to myself! I want to see how much the pigeon can fly and I can’t risk it outside till I know. Wait while I fetch it, then you can tell me what’s the matter.”
* * *
“It was the way she said it. ‘I’m going to have to hurry you.’ So quietly. So . . . so . . . knowingly. I can’t explain.”
Binny became silent. The pigeon, released from its cage, stretched its wings, one, then the other.
“Okay, you’re right,” said Gareth, at last. “You were right all along. She guesses you took that money; she’s pretty sure she knows. I don’t believe in witches but I bet she does and I bet she’d like to be one! I’m fed up with her anyway. She’s asked my dad to stop me encouraging the local pigeons with food.”
“Did she? Why? What did he say?”
“He said he’d make it a priority but he winked at me while he said it.”
“She must have crept up behind me out there; that’s why I jumped so much. What do you think she means, she’s going to have to hurry me?”
“She’s giving you a day or two more before she tells,” said Gareth. “Come with me, while I think.”
He picked up the pigeon (transformed in less than twenty-four hours from a bundle of grubby feathers to a white bird that might fly) and carried it into the hallway.
“Don’t move,” he told Binny, then dropped yellow seed on the hall floor and lifted the pigeon and set it on the bottom stair. He and Binny watched while it considered the seed, angling its head, one way and then the other.
“Go for it!” encouraged Gareth, and as if the pigeon understood, it scrambled clumsily for a moment and then fluttered down.
“It used both wings, did you see?” asked Gareth, triumphantly.
“Yes. Both wings. Why doesn’t she tell now?”
“Because she can’t go witching up to your mum saying, ‘Saw Binny steal a pile of money,’ without being sure. Not if she wants to stay speaking to her. Which she does, because she’s after your house.”
Binny looked mutinous. Gareth picked up the pigeon so quietly that it hardly stirred in his hand, dropped more seed, an irresistible amount, replaced the pigeon on the stair, and hung like a hawk above it while it flew and then pecked and gulped.
“I’ll try it from the second stair next,” he said, recapturing it, and then looked up at Binny’s waiting face and asked, “What’s the matter?”
“Where would we live if we sold the house?”
“In another one of course. Bigger. Bet your mum would be pleased.”
“She likes sleeping on the sofa!”
“Yeah right,” said Gareth.
The pigeon flew from two stairs, and then took a practice flight of its own, into the sitting room and across to the sofa.
; “I’ve got to find that money,” said Binny desperately. “Gareth, please help me. I can’t bear Clem to have taken it. Or Pete.”
“James!” said Gareth. “I don’t know how I’ve forgotten to tell you about James. And have you seen Dill lately?”
“No.”
“It’s worth a look, if he’s still at it. We can cross James off the list anyway now. I should have told you before. I don’t know what he buried but it was something of Dill’s, and Dill’s furious.”
“I never thought it was James,” said Binny, loyally. “But what about Dill? He was round at our house every day until they quarreled. What did Dill bury?”
“James won’t say. He’s not supposed to know, but I think he does. Come on. We’ll go and drag it out of him. I’ll just put the pigeon back outside.”
To be doing something made Binny feel better. They inspected Dill, still glaring out of his grandmother’s window, and then went to look for James.
“I bet he’s still behind the sofa,” said Gareth, and he was, although now it was less of a refuge and more of a very comfortable cave, padded with cushions, decorated with daffodils and with a furtive view of the window so that he could watch for enemy attack. He lay amongst the cushions, drinking orange juice from a carton, and playing a Space Invaders game on Clem’s phone.
“She said I could,” he said, “to cheer me up. And Pete got me the daffodils . . .”
Binny averted her eyes from her mother’s squashy green bag, still on its chair, and said, “Lovely.”
“And I borrowed your quilt, Binny, in case I got cold, and I’m going to live behind here all day and go out and see my chickens at night when Dill’ll be in bed. So do you think that’ll be all right?”
In the dim light of the sofa cave his eyes looked dark and full of questions. He had done his best to make himself feel safe, but despite his cushions and daffodils, Binny could see that he was unhappy. Little James, still only six, she thought, and got down on her knees to comfort him.
“Don’t kiss me!” said James, retreating hastily.
“You’ve stopped saying that,” Binny reminded him. “James, Gareth told me a bit of what happened. Couldn’t you just say that you’re sorry you buried Dill’s whatever-it-was, and you’ll help him dig it up?”
“No.”
“Why not? You are, aren’t you?”
“It’s no good if I am because I can’t help dig it up. I didn’t make a map so I don’t know where it is.”
“But Dill made a map, didn’t he? That’s what you told Gareth. Wouldn’t Dill’s map help you?”
“Binny!” said James impatiently. “You don’t understand about treasure burying! Dill buried his in one place. I buried mine in another place with a feather stuck on top. Dill didn’t put my feather on his map. He only put his coffee tin of money.”
Binny suddenly clutched Gareth’s arm very tightly.
“Dill’s coffee tin had money in it?” asked Gareth, as casually as he could.
“Yes’n bare ladies on the outside. Gold bare ladies,” said James, “with very long hair. Everything is boring without Dill.”
Gareth took charge. He unclamped Binny’s fingers, dismissed the gold bare ladies with a wave of his hand, and became stern. “How d’you know about the money in Dill’s tin?” he demanded. “I thought you said it was a secret what he buried.”
“It is, but I heard when he made his map,” said James. “That’s how I know. He leaned on a rock to write and he spelled it to himself out loud: ‘m-u-n-n-y.’ Like that.”
Binny found herself suddenly trembly with relief. The money was safe. Not fallen irrevocably through the space between worlds. Not seized by Clem, restless, secretive, short tempered, and guilty though her sister seemed these days. Not filched by Pete. (Dismiss, then, from thought, the image of Pete, her mother’s bag in his large builder’s hands.) Nor had it been taken by anyone else. It had simply been lost in a game, by two very small boys, so little that they couldn’t even be counted as guilty.
“Binny!” said Gareth, interrupting these thoughts. “Binny, wake up!”
“What?”
“I’m going with James to see if he can talk to Dill . . . Shut up, James, don’t argue!”
“He might kung fu me,” said James.
“You’ll have to risk it,” said Gareth. “You want to be friends again, don’t you? Go and get your shoes and be fast!”
“I’ve just got used to living in my cave.”
“No you haven’t. You said everything was boring without Dill.”
“Well it is.”
“Come on, then!”
“I’ve got to tell Clem or Pete if I go out.”
“So do it. Quick!”
“If Dill starts kung fu-ing me will you and Binny grab him?”
“Definitely.”
“I’ll come, then,” said James, crawling out of his cave. “I’ll tell Clem and Pete now.”
“We’ve found it!” said Binny, as soon as he was out of the way. “Gareth! Gareth! We’ve found it! We just need that map.”
“Soon as we get Dill out of his house we’ll find a way to get it,” said Gareth. “Then we’ll just have to hope the tin’s still there.”
“It’s only been two days and there’s hardly anyone on the beaches.”
“As long as they buried it above the high tide mark,” said Gareth, but that was such an unbearable thought that Binny could not even consider it.
“Let’s go and get Dill,” she said, and led the way to the door.
Getting Dill was not a simple thing to do. James waved and signaled hopefully, but it was not enough. Dill, like other superpowers, preferred menace to negotiation, and it took a force from within to get him out into the street.
The force from within was Dill’s grandmother, angry at the loss of her ancient coffee tin, harassed by the need to explain her grandson’s window performances to passersby, and absolutely tired of having him under her feet all day. Dill’s grandmother was a superpower herself. When she saw James waving and beckoning in the street she picked up Dill under one arm, like a person might pick up a plank or a roll of carpet, and dumped him onto the doorstep.
“And mind,” she told him fiercely before she banged shut the door, “you stay away from that beach!”
On the doorstep Dill subsided, toes crossed, arms wrapped around his legs, his chin on his bony knees, and his eyes tight shut. He did not look dangerous. James inched closer and closer and at last, very cautiously, sat down beside him.
“Dill,” he said.
Dill unwrapped his arms from his legs, pushed his fingers in his ears, and continued sulking.
Nothing happened for what seemed like a long time. James became cold and Binny went back to the house to fetch him a jacket. Gareth began to sort through the collection of beach junk that had accumulated in his pockets. A plastic fork, some bottle tops, a baby’s pale blue sock. A black Lego dragon, waterworn and dull. A pen, a cigarette lighter, and a key ring with a one legged Spider-Man attached. Gareth tried the pen, flicked the cigarette lighter, balanced the dragon on his hand, and dangled Spider-Man by his chain.
James erupted from the doorstep.
He grabbed Spider-Man. He ran around in a circle. He jumped up and down, hugging himself. He shouted, “Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!”
Dill remained as unmoved as a limpet on a rock.
James set to work on him. He unclamped his chin from his knees, pulled his fingers from his ears, and pried open an eye. He pushed Spider-Man into his face, and he said, “Look, look, look, look! Spider-Man! Look!”
Then at last Dill looked, and after one enormous shout of “SPIDER-MAN!” lunged, grabbed, and then seemed to go into a trance.
“What’s happening?” asked Binny, back with James’s jacket.
“It’s his Spider-Man!” explained James, all radiant as a dandelion flower. “Dill’s Spider-Man! His Spider-Man key ring!”
“So what?”
“The Spider-Man key r
ing that he dropped and I buried. That I buried and was lost and I only put a feather. How did you know where to dig?”
Gareth said he hadn’t dug, he hadn’t had to, the key ring had not been buried and that he’d found it when he was picking up junk.
“Junk!” said James, aghast. “Junk! Did you hear that, Dill? He just called your Spider-Man junk!”
“Well,” said Gareth, “he’s broken. He’s only got one leg.”
“He’s got two legs,” said Dill, coming suddenly to life. “Two legs but one’s come off.”
“It’s stuck in a keyhole,” said James. “In his gran’s little cupboard keyhole because she always keeps it locked. Dill told me.”
“That doesn’t mean he hasn’t got two legs,” said Dill.
“One here, one there,” agreed James.
“If you didn’t dig him up,” said Dill, looking suspiciously at Gareth, “how did he get unburied?”
“Sand moves all the time,” said Gareth. “Gets blown about. Gets kicked up. Nothing’s going to stay buried in sand for long.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Not unless it’s very deep.”
“How deep?” asked Dill. “Deeper’n that?”
He held his hand at about knee height from the pavement to show how deep he meant.
“Ha!” said Gareth. “Just a bit!” And he tried not to look triumphant at the new expression on Dill’s face, which was the worried look of someone who wishes they had not buried their gran’s special coffee tin with real money inside, in a few centimeters of soft shifting sand.
James saw Dill’s face too, and understood his thoughts.
“Dig it up,” he said. “You’ve got a map.”
Dill looked nervously over his shoulder at his gran’s closed door.
“You’re seven!” said James.
Dill acknowledged this with a downward smile.
“Gareth’ll go with you,” said James. “Won’t you Gareth?”
The moment was coming that Gareth had been working for.
“Why not?” he asked.
Dill looked again at his gran’s front door and shook his head.
“Go for you, then, if you like,” said Gareth, and he spoke as casually as if he couldn’t care less if Dill agreed or not.