by Hilary McKay
‘Indigo!’ called Saffron very loudly. ‘Come and take this boy away before his eyes fall out!’
From another screened-off corner that David had not noticed, Indigo’s head emerged, wearing a set of headphones. Indigo did not seem to be at all disturbed by the presence of naked females. He was not, he was used to them, having lived with them all his life. Pulling his headphones off as he spoke, he said quite calmly, ‘Oh David. Hi. Didn’t see you!’
David lifted a shaking hand and pointed helplessly at Saffron.
‘Indigo,’ said Saffron furiously. ‘If you do not take this boy away I will get up and chase him away!’
Indigo grinned suddenly and said, ‘Come on, David! Let’s go to the house! I think you’ve probably seen enough!’
Then at last David moved, a lurching step backwards that brought him into collision with a home-made guinea pig hutch, all sharp corners and rusty catches and wobbly legs. He fell down on top of it, cutting himself in several places, annoying the resident very much and showering Saffron in hay, sawdust and guinea pig droppings. Behind him Rose said in a cold little voice, ‘It was nice before you came.’
‘It was nice before you came,’ repeated Rose, and she looked at the thick line of dark blood now trickling from his elbow and added, ‘Yuck.’
David hastily blotted the offending gore with his shirt front and then, anxious to repair the damage he had caused, picked up the guinea pig hutch, hesitated for a moment, glanced at Saffron’s gleaming-but-guinea-piggy back, rubbed his perspiring hands on the front of his shirt, and then bravely plunged forward, clearly intending to personally decontaminate her at once.
‘Touch me and I’ll slay you,’ remarked Saffron, as just in time, Indigo grabbed David from behind.
‘This way!’ he ordered, and began towing him towards the house, and by the time they had reached the doorstep David had come back to his senses again.
‘I’m sorry!’ he called huskily, in the general direction of the silent garden.
He waited, but no answer came. Obviously he did not rate high enough for even an indignant reply.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Indigo, confirming his feeling of utter unimportance. ‘She’ll soon forget! Wait in the kitchen while I fetch some plasters and stuff. Look after him, Rose!’
Rose looked after David by glaring at him and asking awkward questions.
‘Why’d you come here?’
‘To see Indigo.’
‘You were in that gang. You used to beat him up.’
‘I’m his friend now,’ said David.
David had a very basic understanding of life. If you were someone’s friend, he thought, you came to see them. You were on their side. Their battles were your battles. The things they cared about were the things you cared about. If you were not someone’s friend, you were their enemy. You would probably at some time find yourself beating them up. To become someone’s friend, even if you had been their enemy, was quite straightforward. You said, I’m your friend. It was possible to switch from being an enemy to a friend that easily.
Until this summer that was how David had always understood the world to be, but lately the uncomfortable feeling had been growing on him that things were not quite as simple as he had supposed.
Rose said, ‘I remember everything you did to Indigo. And Tom.’
David’s eyes turned down in shame. And also in disappointment, because he had secretly hoped that the time he and the gang had spent tormenting Indigo and Tom had been conveniently forgotten by everyone concerned. Sometimes he almost convinced himself that this was true, simply because it had to be true, or else how could he get through the days? Other times he thought it never would be forgotten. He did not see how it could be, when he could not forget it himself.
It made it very difficult to be friends with Indigo.
‘You were one of the ones that helped stuff him down a toilet,’ Rose continued relentlessly. ‘So I think you’ve got a big cheek coming round here and saying you’re his friend! Tom was his friend! Not you!’
‘I know,’ agreed David. ‘But Tom’s gone now.’
‘He hasn’t gone, he’s just in America! And anyway, even if he had gone you wouldn’t do instead!’
‘So I thought,’ continued David, after waiting patiently for Rose to stop shouting, ‘Tom’s gone. And it’s school again soon. And me and Indigo can be friends next term. We were going to be earlier anyway. We were going to go skateboarding only the park got vandalised…Were you joking about that tattooing? Do you really know how?’
‘You cut slits. And rub in ink.’
‘Crikey. Is that what you’ve done to yourself ?’
‘Of course not! This is just biro.’
‘It looks like real. It’s very good.’
Rose shrugged, but inside she felt rather alarmed. David’s approval was the last thing she wanted. She escaped upstairs to her tiny bedroom, planning to have a very hard think about her biro tattoos. None of her family liked them. Even her mother, the least critical person in the world, had said (as more and more of Rose became blotted out by blue and red ink), ‘I wish you wouldn’t do it.’ This had been very surprising, especially as Eve herself had a lovely branching tree on the top of one arm, and the words ‘Move Over’ in curly italics on her stomach.
‘But you don’t know how much I wish I hadn’t!’ she had said when Rose pointed this out. ‘Anyway, think what Daddy would say!’
‘Who cares what Daddy would say?’ Rose had asked. She had a very loving and hating relationship with her father. His artistic London life, with his artistic London studio and newly-admitted-to artistic London girlfriend named Samantha, made him seem very far away to Rose. The more often he told her how important she was, the more she suspected that he could do perfectly well without her.
Things were changing too fast in Rose’s world. Her father was gone, and Samantha had arrived. Tom had vanished. Indigo’s enemies appeared at the door and announced that they had become his friends. Caddy, who once had been hardly ever sad, was now hardly ever happy…
Caddy could not do without Rose. She called out to her as soon as she heard her come upstairs. Rose found her busy ransacking the tremendous clutter of the bedroom she shared with Saffron in search of her newly-acquired engagement ring.
‘I’ve lost that awful diamond again!’ she said, when Rose appeared at the door. ‘You are small enough to get under beds, Rosy Pose! Come and help me look!’
‘You shouldn’t keep taking it off!’ said Rose, obediently getting down on her hands and knees.
‘Well, I can’t wear it all the time, can I? Like a dog collar! Or a ball and chain!’
‘Don’t you want to marry Michael?’
‘Of course I do!’
‘Good.’
‘Although I do think it’s a lot to exchange for one miserable diamond.’
‘What is?’
‘Me.’
Rose reversed out from under the bed, sat back on her heels and looked thoughtfully at Caddy. ‘I like Michael,’ she said.
‘I adore Michael!’ said Caddy, hastily. ‘But I must admit he was more adorable still when he didn’t care so much about me! And I wish he’d stop talking about dates!’
‘What sort of dates?’
‘Wedding day dates!’ said Caddy, shaking out shoes in the bottom of her wardrobe. ‘For next year when I finish uni. Poor darling! Bonkers! Oh! Here it is! In one of those horrible clog things! Do you really think I should marry Michael, Rosy Pose?’
‘Yes I do,’ said Rose at once. ‘I think you should marry Michael and live in a house very close by and do loads of cooking and have a lot of children…’
Caddy had just pushed her engagement ring on to her finger, but now, looking absolutely appalled at this vision of her future, she pulled it off again.
‘…and I could come and baby-sit,’ continued Rose, not noticing. ‘It would be brilliant. I should always know where you were…Why are you putting your ring in that box?’
/> ‘To keep it safe,’ said Caddy, and then to change the subject asked, ‘Who is that I can hear downstairs with Indigo?’
‘Oh.’ Rose, who had cheered up at the thought of having Caddy reliably trapped close by for ever, became gloomy again. ‘It’s horrible rubbish David.’
‘Who is horrible rubbish David?’
‘He’s that fat boy that smells of sweets. He used to help beat Indigo up.’
‘What’s he doing here?’
‘He thinks that now Tom’s gone he can be Indigo’s friend. Instead of Tom.’
‘Ridiculous!’ said Caddy robustly. ‘Totally not possible! Or is it?’
‘Nobody can be instead of Tom,’ said Rose.
Chapter Two
The morning grew hotter and hotter. Saffron’s best friend Sarah arrived in her wheelchair (which she discarded along with most of her clothes), and joined Saffron in the garden.
Sarah came from one of the big houses down the road. Once she had been a lonely person, but now the Cassons’ muddled, welcoming home was as friendly to her as her own. She was very fond of the whole family, including Eve and Bill. It no longer surprised her that Eve sometimes spent whole days and nights painting and dozing in the garden shed, and she got on very well with Bill, who liked fast cars as much as she did, and sent her Ferrari magazines from London.
Most of all, however, she cared about Caddy, Saffron, Indigo and Rose. To Sarah they were the brother and sisters she had always wanted.
Like everyone else who had known Tom, Sarah was waiting for news. The first question she asked as she came into the garden was, ‘Has anyone heard anything from America yet?’
‘Not a word,’ answered Saffron, moving over to make room for her on the rug. ‘Nothing. Better put your top back on, by the way. That awful David’s about.’
‘Not David-the-enormous-vegetable-henchman?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘I wondered why you were wearing so many clothes!’ said Sarah, pulling her own back on as fast as possible. ‘I’d have brought a coat or two if I’d known! Fancy being ogled by David!’
‘It was accidental ogling!’ Saffron told her. ‘I don’t think he’s into bare skin. He saw too much of mine and collapsed on to the guinea pig hutch. Blood and sawdust everywhere…Sarah, you will roast if you get right under that rug!’
‘Better roasted than ogled,’ said Sarah firmly. ‘Collapsed! I don’t think so! Probably pounced and fell over! So anyway, nothing from Tom? He’s forgotten us then. Poor Indigo. Poor Rose. I thought they’d stay friends for ever and ever.’
‘Callous beyond belief,’ said Saffron.
Saffron and Sarah had a way of summoning up a subject, considering it, judging it, and dismissing it, all in a few moments. After they had agreed that Tom was callous beyond belief to abandon Indigo and Rose so completely, they went on to:
David (Wouldn’t trust him)
Global Warming (Gorgeous if this is it)
Eve’s summer job at the hospital (It gets her out of the shed)
Guinea pigs (No)
Rose’s biro tattooing (It’s a phase)
Bill and and his new girlfriend Samantha.
They slowed down when they reached Bill and Samantha.
‘Do you remember how Rose used to write him scary letters to try and make him come home?’ asked Saffron. ‘I bet he stays in London more than ever now.’
She sounded so untroubled that Sarah looked at her in surprise.
‘I should hate it if my father dumped Mum and me and never came home!’ she said.
‘You’ve forgotten,’ said Saffron. ‘You’ve forgotten like everyone forgets! He’s not my father.’
‘No I didn’t forget! But what’s the difference? You’ve lived with Eve and Bill since you were three years old, Saffy! Indigo can’t remember a time when you weren’t here. Rose wasn’t even born when you first came. Bill suddenly producing Samantha can’t feel any different to you than it does to the others.’
Saffron did not try to argue, but presently she said, ‘Sarah?’
‘Mmmm?’
‘I must have a real father somewhere.’
Sarah was so startled that she crawled out from under the rug and stared at Saffron.
‘I suppose you must!’
‘Do you think it matters that I don’t know who he is?’
‘Not a bit,’ said Sarah at once, and very firmly in case Saffron was feeling insecure.
‘Don’t you think I ought to know who I am?’
‘You are Saffron.’ Sarah pulled the rug back over herself again. ‘Nothing can change that.’
After that the garden was quiet for a long time.
‘I suppose you could find out who he was if you really wanted to,’ said Sarah eventually.
Then the garden was silent again.
David’s approval had been too insulting. Rose decided that her biro tattoos would have to go. However, deciding they would have to go and actually making them disappear were two different things. Rose scrubbed and scrubbed, but remained almost as brightly patterned in red and blue as ever. Eventually she gave up and went to get help from Saffron and Sarah. They prescribed nail varnish remover and Saffron went indoors to hunt for some.
‘Saffy told me that there was still no news from Tom,’ Sarah remarked sympathetically to Rose as they waited together. ‘Poor Rosy Pose. He’s a barbarian!’
‘He is not!’ said Rose, more for the sake of arguing than because she had anything against barbarians.
‘Who is not what?’ enquired Saffron, returning just then with her hands full of bottles.
‘Tom a barbarian,’ Rose told her.
‘Tom!’ said Saffron scornfully, unscrewing a bottle and slopping the contents on to cotton wool. ‘Keep still, Rose, and I’ll get that star off your cheek! You know, you should forget about Tom. Every time you remember him, you should tell yourself straight afterwards, Forgotten! Shouldn’t she, Sarah?’
‘Only thing to do,’ agreed Sarah airily, beginning on a blue butterfly on Rose’s left shoulder. ‘Hey, this stuff really works! Have a go at your knees, Rose, while I finish this arm! Yes, about Tom. It is a pity that you ever got so fond of him in the first place. It’s nearly always disastrous…’
Sarah paused, obviously remembering the last person she had become too disastrously fond of.
‘Yes, well,’ she began again. ‘Never again! In fact, Saffron and I have decided that the best thing to do with most boys (not Indigo, of course!) is to cultivate a heart of stone…’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, basically dump them first!’ said Sarah. ‘Instead of the horrible humiliating other way round! So, Saffy’s going to give a time limit (three weeks max and off they’ll go!) and I shall rank my feelings for them on a scale of one to ten (David would be zero, for instance, and Justin Timberlake eight), and anyone causing anything over six-point-five will be immediately discontinued. Would you rate Tom over six point five, Rosy Pose?’
‘No one can make me do maths at school,’ said Rose calmly, ‘and no one can make me do it at home either. So! I’ve finished my legs. What about the rest of me? Am I nearly done.’
‘More or less,’ said Saffron, looking at her critically. ‘Just a bit purplish and that will have to wear off. I’ve just used the last drop of remover. I shall have to buy some more. Come on, let’s go and find a mirror!’
Rose helped Saffron get Sarah to her feet, and they went indoors. There Rose inspected her new unembellished appearance, Saffron made sandwiches for lunch, and Sarah unpinned the artist’s colour chart from the kitchen wall and spread it out on the table. She hung over it, picking out the family names.
‘There’s Caddy! Cadmium Gold. Eve was good at names! Here’s Indigo. And here’s the Saffron Yellow they added for you, Saffy (but saffron is a spice, really)…It’s so not fair that you were all called after colours and spices and I was called after a dead old lady!’
‘What would you choose to be,’ aske
d Rose, coming to look over her shoulder, ‘if you weren’t called after a dead old lady?’
‘Scarlet,’ said Sarah, at once. ‘My favourite colour! What would you choose, Rose, if you weren’t Permanent Rose?’
‘Nothing.’
‘If you had to change?’
Rose remembered Tom saying, ‘Permanent Rose is the coolest name on the planet.’ If Tom was a barbarian she, Rose, liked barbarians.
‘I wouldn’t change,’ she said.
After lunch Caddy went off to work in her pub and Saffron and Sarah began collecting together their swimming things. A new outdoor pool had opened just down the road, and there Sarah daily transformed into a mermaid.
‘Come with us,’ they urged Rose, but she shook her head and disappeared upstairs until they were out of the way.
Indigo was in his room now. Rose could hear him pulling careful notes out of his old guitar, while the creak and drone of David’s voice went on and on in the background. Saffron and Sarah would be gone for ages. Eve, who was working at the hospital, would not be home for hours and hours.
Sometimes, for no particular reason, Rose’s spirits would rise, as if a breeze had lifted her high above the usual, consequential world. This was one of those times.
Permanent Rose, she thought, and slipped out of the house, past the fig tree, on to the empty sunny street, and then far along the street (where she was not allowed to go) until she reached the centre of town. There the sunlight was dazzling off plate glass windows, and the shadows were sharp and black, and the cobbled pavements seethed with people and Rose slid between them, as anonymous as a little fish in a shoal.
Rose had a new hobby that summer. Shoplifting. It was a game she played.
Long ago Rose had received a birthday present she liked very much. It was a tube of long, thin, wooden sticks, different colours. The challenge was to spill the sticks into a prickly pile, and then lift them up, one by one, without disturbing any of the heap underneath. Sarah had called it Spillikins. Rose called it Pick-up-Sticks, and she was very good at it.
Rose’s shoplifting was almost the same game. The aim was to move an object, not a stick of course, but something small, a chocolate bar, or a pencil sharpener maybe, without any disturbance. Without anyone noticing.