Permanent Rose

by Hilary McKay

  At first she had just moved little things within the shop, rearranging the shelves. That quickly grew too easy, so she started taking the things outside.

  In Rose’s mind this was not stealing because she did not keep the things. She never ate the sweets she picked up, nor took home the pencils, tiny notebooks, hair bobbles or whatever it happened to be that day. Always, very soon after they had been taken, they would be left behind, tidily balanced on a rubbish bin perhaps, or on top of a low wall. Not thrown away, but safely placed, the way passers-by sometimes leave odd gloves or baby toys they find in the street for the owner to come back and collect.

  This was Rose’s game, private, skilful, and a little tingly. It really was shoplifting: she lifted things out of shops. Sometimes she played it when she was out with her mother (which was easy because Eve never noticed anything), now and then with Indigo (which was harder unless he went into one of his dreams), once or twice she had played it when she was in town with Saffron and Sarah. This was the hardest of all; Saffron and Sarah’s quest for retail perfection was assiduous and untiring. They never went into dreams.

  Very rarely, when she could escape from home unnoticed (which was not allowed and not easy either), Rose played the shoplifting game by herself.

  This was one of those times.

  High overhead, the heat rose from the rooftops and rippled like water into the shining blue above. Below, the coloured canvas of the market stalls hung heavy in the windless air. A tide of people surged and poured across the cobbled market and in and out of the shops all around. Rose let herself be carried by their movement, swirled into sudden pools of sunlight, dropped to drift for a while in shadowy alcoves, and then picked up again and rushed to somewhere new.

  And then the movement paused and Rose was alone. Stranded like a starfish against a rock. Only it was not a rock, it was a display of make-up, skincare products, nail varnish and large blue bottles of nail varnish remover.

  Ha! she thought, seized one, and caught the next wave out.

  At that moment, for the first time, the game changed. Perhaps because it was nail varnish remover and Saffron had said, only an hour or two earlier, ‘I shall have to buy some more…’

  Rose took it home, although she knew perfectly well she was stealing.

  Nobody was watching, thought Rose.

  Then, just as she was safely back home, passing under the fig tree, two steps from the door, she met David, coming out.

  She had forgotten all about him, and he startled her so much that she jumped, and then said crossly, ‘I didn’t know you were still here.’

  ‘I’m not really,’ said David, sounding, as he always seemed to sound, half a beat behind the rest of the world. ‘I’ve nearly gone.’

  Between David and the fig tree there was quite a large gap. It looked like there was plenty of room for Rose to get by, if she had not minded stepping quite close to David. But she did mind, and so she stayed where she was.

  David didn’t seem to know he was in the way. He said, ‘We thought you must have gone swimming with Saffron and Sarah.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Me and Indigo.’

  There was an enormous, animal, solidity about David; he looked unshovable, like a walrus on a beach. Also he seemed to have forgotten he had been going anywhere. Rose thought (not for the first time) how unlike Tom he was. Tom would have said, ‘Hi, Permanent Rose! Thought you’d gone for ever!’ and vanished before Rose could say, ‘Stay.’

  David showed no signs of vanishing. If anything, he seemed to be swelling even larger. He said, ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Nowhere,’ said Rose, fidgeting from one foot to another.

  David looked at her more carefully. Clearly she had come from town. And what was she carrying? A bottle of nail stuff. Price still on it. No bag. David had done a bit of shoplifting in his time, and he knew the signs all too well. He said, ‘You’re going to get caught, you know!’

  Instinctively Rose’s hands clutched her bottle. ‘How d-do you…?’ she asked, stammering a little, and then began again. ‘You don’t know what I’ve been doing!’

  ‘I do.’ David glanced down at the bottle of nail varnish remover, and then up again to watch as Rose’s pale face slowly bloomed redder and redder.

  ‘Taking stuff,’ said David.

  Rose had recently taken to wishing people were dead. At that moment the longing for David to be dead was so intense it made her dizzy. However, it had no effect at all on David. He remained inconveniently alive.

  But he did not move. Not until they heard the sound of voices coming along the road; Saffron and Sarah, back from their swim. At the sound of those laughing voices a look of terror swept over David’s face, and all at once he jerked into action and began a blundering run which propelled him first into Sarah’s wheelchair and then on to Saffron’s chest.

  ‘Which one of us are you throwing yourself at?’ enquired Saffron. ‘Or is it purely random? Oh, he’s gone!’

  ‘Couldn’t face seeing you with your clothes on!’ said Sarah. ‘Flattering or insulting? Probably which?’

  Rose did not wait to hear any reply. She felt far from up to spending time with Saffron and Sarah. She escaped into the house and headed for Indigo’s room. All the Cassons were quite good at putting up with each other, but Indigo was the best at putting up with Rose.

  Right now, Rose felt like someone to put up with her was what she needed most of all.

  Indigo’s room was the tidiest in the house. It was also the smallest, just space enough for a bed, a chair (draped in clothes), and a huge wardrobe that contained everything he owned and quite a lot of things owned by other people too. Tom’s old guitar lay on the bed. It had been broken when he went home to America, but now it was repaired and on permanent loan to Indigo. Rose picked it up and asked, ‘Can I play it?’

  ‘Help yourself,’ said Indigo, and went back to the book he had been trying to read all afternoon.

  Rose picked at the strings, the way she had seen Tom and Indigo do, but it did not sound like either of them playing. She strummed hard over the sound hole, but that sounded worse. She changed her fingers in random patterns on the fingerboard. The bass strings buzzed horribly.

  ‘Want me to show you how to do it properly?’ asked Indigo, when the sound became completely unbearable.

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK.’

  Rose put the guitar down and began to fiddle with Indigo’s postcards. He had hundreds of them, old and new, photographs and paintings, adverts and jokes, not lined up in rows, but collecting and cascading all around the walls. Rose fiddled down three Harley Davidson motorbikes, a view of the Earth from space, instructions for what to do in the event of abduction by aliens, and an advertisement for cocoa. Then she stuck them back up in the wrong places.

  Indigo gave a big sigh and put down his book and asked, ‘What’s the matter then, Rose?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What’s that you’ve got?’

  ‘Nail varnish remover for Saffy. Because she used up all hers getting my tattoos off.’

  ‘Good old Saffy,’ said Indigo, took the bottle, looked at it critically, unscrewed the lid, sniffed, remarked, ‘Not very nice,’ and gave it back to her.

  Rose sighed with relief. She had shown it to him as a sort of test, half expecting him to say, ‘How did you pay for that? Where did you get it from? Shoplifting?’

  But there had been no need for her to worry. In the Casson family money was kept in a jam jar labelled HOUSEKEEPING on the kitchen mantel piece. Anyone of the family was free to help themselves, anytime they liked. So there was no reason that Indigo should say, ‘How Did You Pay For That?’ And even if the housekeeping jar had been empty he would not have thought of asking, ‘Shoplifting?’Nor would any of the family. They generally dealt with the ever-recurring problem of the empty jar by shaking it and staring hopefully at its grimy bottom, waiting for a miracle.

  Now that she had passed the test, Rose looked at th
e bottle of nail varnish remover with a sort of affectionate pride. She unscrewed the top and splashed some on for perfume because she liked the smell. Then she put the top back and shook it very hard to see if it would bubble. After that she wet her finger with a drop and tried squeaking it on the window. Indigo moved the guitar out of the reach of damage, and picked up his book again.

  ‘Read a bit to me,’ said Rose.

  Indigo obligingly read:

  ‘And then Sir Lancelot knocked at the gate with the pommel of his sword, and with that came his host, and in they entered Sir Kay and he.’

  Rose had read one book in her life, and when she finished it (dragged through it by her father in an effort to educate her) she had read no more. And in her opinion books were for those unable to entertain themselves in any other way. For those who could not draw, who had no ears, who had no one to whom they might speak, who could not switch on a television or walk out of a room or stare out of a window or daydream or suck their knees; these people, she thought, might possibly be able to find a use for a book. Someone stuck in an empty concrete cell with nothing they could use to write on the walls might be grateful for a book, admitted Rose, although even then if they had any imagination they would use the pages to manufacture paper boats and planes. Therefore, she had not hoped for much in the way of entertainment when she asked Indigo to read a bit, but even so, she had not expected quite such utter rubbish.

  She said, ‘That sounds so stupid! How are you supposed to know what a pommel is? It’s not even written properly!’

  ‘That’s just what David said,’ said Indigo.

  ‘You read it to David?’

  ‘Yep. And he said just the same as you. He thought it sounded stupid too.’

  Rose thought she had better give Indigo’s book another chance.

  ‘Read a bit more.’

  ‘All right,’ said Indigo. ‘Who does this remind you of ? “Sir,” said his host, “I weened ye had been in your bed.” “So I was,” said Sir Lancelot, “but I arose and leapt out at my window for to help an old fellow of mine.” Do you remember how Tom used to get out of his bedroom window?’

  ‘To play his guitar on the roof,’ said Rose.

  ‘That’s right. It made me think of him straight away. It’s not really stupid, this book. It’s just old. It’s got nice words in it. I keep finding more and more.’

  Indigo turned some pages and read:

  ‘Then the king looked about the world, and saw afore him in a great water a little ship, all apparelled with silk down to the water, and the ship came right unto them and landed on the sands.’

  For a moment Rose saw in her mind a little ship with shining sails moving across an evening sea, but she asked, ‘Who was Sir Lancelot?

  Chapter Three

  Indigo had discovered Lancelot more than five weeks before, the night that Tom flew back to America.

  A book had fallen on to his head.

  This was not particularly surprising: Eve’s housekeeping arrangements meant that things fell on people’s heads quite often. Earlier that particular day, in a burst of Bill-inspired tidying, Eve had stacked a pile of books on the top of Indigo’s wardrobe. She had done it rather haphazardly because she was crying a bit at the time, still being very fond of Bill and not as cheerful about being dumped for Samantha as she pretended to the children. It was a very wobbly stack of books that Eve made through her tears.

  In the night the top layer had fallen down.

  The one that hit Indigo was a thick shabby paperback with a broken orange spine. It had fallen open, and a sentence or two had caught his eye; the part where Lancelot jumped out of his bedroom window, the same little bit that he now read to Rose.

  When Indigo read those lines Tom did not feel a thousand miles away, speeding through the darkness to a country Indigo had never seen. Instead he suddenly seemed quite close. No one would have been more likely than Tom to leap from his window to help a friend in trouble.

  Indigo could not sleep the night that Tom went. The book had been company, its archaic language a code to crack, its green and ancient landscape a place where he would rather be, and its characters surprisingly familiar.

  ‘Who was Sir Lancelot?’ asked Rose, again.

  ‘He was the one they all liked best,’ said Indigo. ‘He was the one they all wanted to stay a bit longer. Lancelot did the bravest things (and the daftest things too). He had loads of friends but a lot of the time he just went off on his own.’

  ‘Why did he jump out of the window?’

  ‘Because three blokes had just chased his friend Kay through the forest and were about to slay him. He didn’t actually jump though! He used his sheet to slide.’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘It says.’

  ‘So then did Kay and him fight the other three?’

  ‘No. Lancelot fought them on his own.’

  ‘All three together?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Lancelot won. And then he and Kay went back into the castle together and had another supper. And after that they went to bed and in the morning Lancelot got up very early, and took Kay’s armour and his shield and his horse, and rode away with them while Kay was still asleep.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Joke.’

  ‘Did Lancelot always win?’

  ‘Not always.’

  ‘Let me look.’

  There was quite a lot in Morte D’Arthur which Indigo had no intention of sharing with Rose, but nevertheless he passed the book over with no hesitation at all. He guessed he would be quite safe.

  Rose was a terrible reader. The sight of printed words gave her exactly the same queasy feeling that looking down from a height gave to Indigo, and butchers’ shops gave to Eve. All the same she looked hopefully down, just in case this book should happen to be different from all the others she had encountered.

  But it wasn’t. It was hideous. It was the worst yet.

  The cheap paper was soft with age, and was a stale yellowish colour that reminded Rose of cheese. The print was grey and packed. There were no pictures. She turned a page and came across a block of italics blindly groping across the paper.

  Yuk, thought Rose, looking quickly away. She did not say it though, because she didn’t want Indigo remarking, ‘Exactly what David said!’ Instead she made herself look again.

  It was no good. No little ship came sailing out of the water towards her. No reckless knight leapt from a window to help a friend in the night. And all the bright riders and comrades and lovers, all the shadowy forests with their wells and glades and apple trees were hidden from Rose. The murky grey paragraphs of print concealed them completely.

  ‘I can see it’s written in English,’ she said at last. ‘But I can’t read it. I can’t make the words stick together to show me anything. They go all muddled and blurry, like a dream.’

  ‘It is muddled and blurry,’ agreed Indigo. ‘It’s like a dirty blurry window. But behind all the blur is another world I never knew about. And every time I get a new bit to make sense it’s like I’ve cleared another little patch of window and I can see a bit further.’

  Indigo picked up his guitar and began trickling up and down the notes of a chord.

  ‘What do you see through the window?’

  ‘People.’

  ‘Magic people?’

  ‘Mmmm?’ asked Indigo, head bent, listening to his guitar.

  ‘Were they magic people? Lancelot and Kay and the others?’

  ‘No, no.’ Indigo paused his playing to fiddle with tuning pegs. ‘This guitar slips out of tune all the time. Listen! That better?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘They weren’t magic people,’ said Indigo, trickling worse than ever now. ‘Their world was strange, all forests and lakes and enchanted castles…Actually, it was probably no weirder really than this one, I don’t suppose…

  Is this one weird? wondered Rose. Yes it is.

  ‘…but Lancelo
t and Kay and all the others,’ continued Indigo, carefully strumming his chord, ‘Lancelot and Kay, and the rest; they were just like us.’

  Rose waited. No more information came. Indigo forgot she was there and became absorbed in breaking down and building up another chord. He did not mean to get rid of Rose, but all the same it did get rid of Rose.

  Caddy had heard of Indigo’s people. She was back from the pub now, cleaning out the guinea pigs in a bikini that Saffron had discarded as too obvious, yellow rubber gloves and wellington boots. She was her usual cheerful self again and said she had once read a book about Sir Lancelot that was far too complicated to explain to Rose.

  ‘He went on quests,’ she said. ‘They all did. Questing all the time.’

  ‘What are quests?’

  ‘Dares. Or big searches for stuff. Right now I’m questing for my old address book. Tell me if you see it, Rosy Pose!’

  ‘What, in there?’ asked Rose, looking in disgust at the stuff Caddy was shovelling into a bucket.

  ‘No, of course not in here!’ said Caddy, laughing. ‘And don’t pull faces like that! It’s only poo! You have to get used to poo! Even gorgeous Lancelot pooed!’

  ‘No he didn’t!’

  ‘Of course he did…Gallop through the forest…stop for a poo…bash off someone’s helm, rescue a maiden…stop for a poo…Everyone does it. Unless they’re dead.’

  ‘Well, he’s dead!’ said Rose, triumphantly producing the only fact she knew for sure about Sir Lancelot. ‘So! Anyway, why do you want your old address book?’

  ‘Just to look at.’

  ‘Why did they go questing? What did they do it for?’

  ‘Love, nearly all the time,’ said Caddy, falling out of Saffron’s bikini and stuffing herself back in again with guinea piggy hands. ‘Love, the poor dopes!’

  ‘Oh,’ said Rose, but when Caddy was safely busy with her head stuck inside the hutch scraping away at the corners with a trowel, she asked very thoughtfully, ‘Dopes?’