Permanent Rose

by Hilary McKay

  ‘I do now! Oh well. I’ll cross him out then. I don’t want any more hamsters! Patrick?’

  ‘He was the one who never knew which day it was. And you were always calling him Peter by mistake. Peter was the one who patted Indigo’s bum…’

  ‘And mine,’ called Saffron from the kitchen.

  ‘I do remember Peter,’ said Caddy, scribbling vigorously. ‘He was a big mistake! Alex, anyone?’

  No one could remember Alex. Caddy scribbled again, and continued, ‘Jonathan, turned into a hairdresser. Derek, gave him to Mum and she dumped him…Sean…Oh, this is so depressing! I’m sure I never knew a Sean!’

  ‘I wonder,’ remarked Saffron, coming to join them on the stairs, ‘if my mother forgot who my father was. Or if he was just someone who passed anonymously by in the night. Like all these boyfriends of yours seem to have done!’

  ‘They didn’t pass anonymously,’ said Caddy indignantly. ‘I wrote them down!’

  Rose, listening thoughtfully, was feeling better and better about taking Caddy’s ring. She thought if Lancelot could steal a horse for a joke, then without question she could steal a diamond to help out a friend in need. It would be dreadful if Michael should become just another crossed-out name in Caddy’s address book. She asked, ‘Is Michael written down in there, Caddy?’

  Caddy said a little defensively that of course he wasn’t; as if she would need to write down Michael! She only wrote down the ones she might possibly forget.

  ‘But you have forgotten half of them,’ pointed out Saffron and Rose at once.

  Caddy said well then, that just proves, and before they could argue any more, announced that she was going shopping for Eve and would buy anything they asked for.

  ‘Lemons,’ said Rose at once.

  ‘Lemons,’ said Caddy and went, leaving Rose with Saffy and Indigo to look after her. A little later on Saffron went off to Sarah’s, so that left just Indigo and Rose.

  Indigo had been reading Morte D’Arthur again. He sat down with it in his hand a stair or two above Rose, admired her red and blue pictures and said, ‘I’ve found someone else you will like. Percival who got lost in the wilderness visiting his aunt. He made friends with a lion…Here they are! You read it! Look, Percival goes up to a rock…’

  Following Indigo’s finger Rose read, ‘…and found the lion which always kept him…’

  ‘…fellowship,’ said Indigo. ‘Go on!’

  ‘…and he stroked him upon the back…Caddy said they were dopes, Lancelot and Kay and all them.’

  ‘I quite like dopes,’ said Indigo. ‘What’s that horrible slime in the saucer?’

  ‘Egg white. Raw. To help glue the charcoal on. They used it in the olden days to stick the paint to the walls. Sarah told me about it. Have you got any more Lancelot bits I could draw?’

  ‘There’s one here. It’s a chapter heading. It says, How Sir Lancelot rode on his adventure, and how he helped a dolorous lady from her pain…’

  ‘What’s dolorous mean?’ interrupted Rose, using her fingers to smudge dark shadows under forest trees.

  ‘Moaning and groaning. Don’t suck your fingers, Rose, that’s disgusting! This girl was stuck by magic in a bath of boiling water for five years, until Lancelot came along and fished her out…’

  ‘Did she have any clothes on?’

  ‘What, in the bath? Of course not. She was…’ (Indigo paused to find the place in the book) ‘…she was naked as a needle!’

  ‘Naked as a needle?’ Rose repeated, smiling because the words gave her such a vision of sharp shining brightness. ‘Lucky it was Lancelot who came along then! Not someone like David! David wouldn’t have fished her out. He have just stared and stared!’

  ‘You never give David a chance!’

  Rose looked cross and did not reply. She really could not understand Indigo’s willingness to forgive David. She herself would happily have detested him for ever and ever and ever.

  ‘So anyway,’ continued Indigo cheerfully. ‘Everyone was very pleased with Lancelot and they said that since he’d got the girl out the bath with no bother he might as well kill the dragon that was hanging around too.’

  Rose had always liked dragons. They were her sort of animal. She had never cared much for the family guinea pigs and hamsters.

  ‘Were there truly dragons in those days?’ she asked, forgetting to be cross.

  ‘Yes, and dwarves and lions and serpents and enchanters and a hundred miles of forest in every direction…there will be again one day, when all the people go…It will all come back. Anyway, this dragon: it says, A horrible and fiendly dragon, spitting fire out of his mouth. Then Sir Lancelot drew his sword and fought with the dragon long, and at last with great pain Sir Lancelot slew the dragon.’

  ‘What happens to dragons when they get slain?’ asked Rose.

  ‘Oh,’ said Indigo. ‘They turn into comets. And sail among the planets on the trade winds of the stars.’

  ‘Always?’

  ‘Yep. Every single time.’

  The Lancelot in Rose’s picture looked just like Tom. Same dark hair and eyes. Same amused, couldn’t-careless expression. Same scuffed up trainers and grey denim jacket.

  Rose added a sign above his head. NEW YORK.

  After she had finished she sat thinking for a long time. She made no attempt to begin with drawing the dragon or the girl in the bath. She did not seem to notice when Indigo took his book upstairs again, but when he climbed over her, coming down, she said, ‘We should go back to his house. Where Tom stayed with his grandmother.’

  ‘I told you, Rose, I’ve been. It’s all shut up. His grandmother must have gone over to America too.’

  ‘She might be back now.’

  ‘Don’t think so, Rosy Pose. Here’s Caddy home again! Coming to help unload?’

  ‘All right,’ agreed Rose, and left her drawing to help heave shopping from the back of Caddy’s dilapidated car.

  ‘Lemons,’ said Caddy, handing her a bag.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Rose, and after a little puzzled thought posted both of them whole into her jug of lemon tea. After that, she went back and looked at Lancelot on the stairs for a while, and then called to Caddy and Indigo in the kitchen, ‘I’m going to Sarah’s for lunch. Saffy’s there. She said I could.’

  ‘OK,’ replied Caddy peacefully. No one had ever objected to Rose going to Sarah’s house alone. It was only a three minute walk up the street from their own home.

  It was not a three minute walk by the route that Rose took. Rose’s way took her halfway across town, to the house where, when Tom was in England, he had lived with his grandmother.

  By now the morning was bright with heat. Rose, who saw the world in terms of pictures, thought that if she had wanted to paint it she would need the sort of colours they were given to use at school. Flat yellows and oranges and hopeless, unshining greens. She squinted up at the sun as if to ask what it was thinking of to allow such unpleasantness. The sun glared back down at her like an overbearing adult who had done with pandering to the likes of Rose.

  She began to feel very little.

  Arriving at Tom’s old home made her feel even smaller, but that was because of the trees.

  They were huge dark yews, growing all round the garden and on both sides of the drive that led from the road to the shabby old house. The blinding sunlight cut black shadows across the grass, but it could not penetrate the darkness under those trees. Beneath them the air seemed heavy and very still. As if no one had moved through it for a long, long time.

  All the same, Rose hardly hesitated before she plunged in. Somewhere, she was hoped, would be a clue as to where Tom had gone. A message that would make a link. In Rose’s world people left messages for each other when they went away. Eve pinned pieces of paper on the door when she went out:

  KEY UNDER THAT FEAT STONE

  or

  COME IN DARLINGS BACK WHENEVER

  or

  SARAH’S LOVELY MUM COOKING TONIGHT

 
; Sarah’s mother was also a great message leaver. Notes in milk bottles saying:

  SEMI-SKIMMED ONLY IN FUTURE AS I HAVE ASKED MANY TIMES BEFORE

  or

  WE WILL BE AWAY THE FOLLOWING DAYS PLEASE DO CLOSE THE GATE THIS TIME.

  Even Bill left messages, Post-its on the fridge when he went back to London. There were several there right now:

  ANYTIME DARLINGS, ALWAYS

  WITH LOVE DADDY

  also

  DARLING EVE

  REMEMBER THE GOOD TIMES

  and

  0.25K IN HOUSEKEEPING JAR

  HAVE THROWN AWAY BUTTER, YOGHURTS AND CHEESE

  ALL PAST SELL-BY DATES

  ALSO SALAD

  DO TRY TO KEEP TRACK – XXX – BILL

  AS EVER.

  Those were the sort of things that Rose was thinking of as she tiptoed under the yew trees and along the dusty drive to the house. She told herself she was looking for an address, but really she was looking for proof. Proof that whoever had gone from here still cared about the life that they had left behind. Or even just proof that they had been there at all.

  It was amazing how unlived-in a garden could grow in just a month. Gazing round, Rose understood exactly what Indigo had meant when he said the wild forest of Morte D’Arthur would all come back one day. It had started here already.

  The grass was as long as wild grass, and weeds had spread across the gravel of the drive. Litter had blown in from the street and not been picked up. Even the trees themselves seemed to have stooped a little lower. A cat lay motionless with heat under the far hedge.

  ‘Puss,’ called Rose.

  Her voice came out thin and high. The cat did not move. Nothing in the whole garden moved. It looked a place that nobody cared about any more.

  Rose turned to the house. It had the same deserted look. There was a film of dust dimming the windows.

  How strange, thought Rose, touching the dust. The windows at the Casson house were hardly ever cleaned, but she had never noticed them being dusty. She wondered if windows that nobody looked through gradually became dimmer and dimmer. She wondered how the dust knew nobody looked.

  There was no message pinned on the front door, and no empty milk bottles to hold notes either. She looked up at the letter box, wishing she could peer through it to see if there had been any post, but it was an old-fashioned narrow one, and anyway too high for Rose to reach. Heavy curtains had been drawn across the windows.

  The whole place was as shut up as anywhere could possibly be.

  Still Rose did not quite give up hope. She set off round the side of the house to investigate the back.

  There was nothing there either, but the back door did have a small bottle-glass window. If Rose stood on tiptoe she could just see through this window into the hall. There at last she saw something moving, a tiny red light flashing on and off. Rose knew that it was the telephone, and the light was flashing to show that people had called and left messages.

  Indigo and me, thought Rose. And Mummy and Caddy and Saffron and Sarah. Michael too, and Sarah’s mother.

  After Tom had gone Rose knew that they had all tried at one time or another.

  Nearly all those messages are probably from us, thought Rose, peering through the little window.

  And then, standing there, looking at the telephone light flashing in the empty house, the back of Rose’s neck suddenly prickled with fright. Fear swept over her like a cold wave.

  Somebody was there, she was certain. Somebody was watching her.

  She did not know why she was so sure of it, but she was.

  Perhaps I heard a sound, she thought, listening intently.

  There was no sound now.

  It was a long time before Rose could summon the courage to turn away from the window. She did not like to take her eyes from the little red light. It was somehow like a tiny talisman, flashing its messages from home.

  It will still be there, Rose told herself.

  It will be right behind me, she thought, trying to be brave.

  Still she did not turn and look.

  Perhaps, she thought, in sudden hope, I heard the cat! Perhaps the cat is watching me!

  Cats do watch, thought Rose, and at last she faced round.

  There was sunlight and a ragged garden and the noise of traffic on the road beyond the hot dark trees. No cat. Nothing moved.

  There was nobody there.

  Chapter Five

  While Caddy was shopping for lemons, and Indigo was reading Morte D’Arthur and Rose was sitting on the stairs drawing pictures of her dreams on the wall, Saffron was at Sarah’s house. Sarah had a computer connected to the internet, and she had suggested that this might be useful in the search for Saffy’s father.

  ‘People do use the internet to find relations,’ she said, as she led Saffron up the stairs to her enormous bedroom. ‘Pity you can’t use it to lose relations as well. I have far too many…Come in then, Saffy! Welcome to the Shrine! Mind the icon! Oh, too late…’

  The icon, a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Sarah’s favourite pop star, fell on his face, revealing the price of his presence (£19. 99) unromantically printed on the back of his head.

  ‘I can’t think what you see in him,’ remarked Saffron, lifting him to his feet again. ‘Just look at him! What a poser!’

  ‘I know,’ agreed Sarah. ‘He’s a fad. I’ll grow out of him soon. Like all the others.’ She nodded towards an untidy stack of discarded cardboard heroes brooding disconsolately in a corner. ‘Mum (who is not very up on style) thought I should send them off for recycling. I had to explain to her that no Casson would ever dream of sending anything off for recycling! But she got it in the end. She said, “So they have to stay here for ever, gathering dust?” Clever old thing! Did you know dust is the new cool, Saffy?’

  ‘I can’t see any dust here,’ objected Saffron, who had long ago given up being impressed by Sarah’s bedroom, which contained far more of everything than any one person could possibly need. ‘No dust at all. Just piles and piles of loot!’

  ‘Well, there would be dust if it wasn’t for the cleaner,’ said Sarah. ‘Surely you can see that there is theoretical dust! And I can’t help the loot. It’s nearly all donated by relations, mostly due to my tragic need for a wheelchair…’

  ‘If much more piles up you will have a tragic need for a fork-lift truck and a warehouse,’ commented Saffron, prowling round to see what had been added since her last visit.

  ‘Oh well,’ said Sarah. ‘It makes them feel better, buying it, so I let them. Subtly guiding their taste, of course…Come on, let’s find your mysterious father! The blue computer’s the one with the phone line, the other one’s just for games…It would help if you knew his name.’

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to find,’ Saffron pointed out, clearing an armload of baseball caps off the blue computer’s desk and switching it on. ‘What do you want me to do with all these?’

  ‘Nothing. Dump them somewhere.’

  Saffron piled them on Sarah’s bed and then sat down at the blue computer and looked at it uncertainly, wondering what she might find.

  ‘Perhaps he’s somewhere looking for you,’ suggested Sarah encouragingly. ‘Some very rich Italian probably, since you were born there. Pity you don’t look Italian, Saffy! But you look like Caddy and Eve. Were your mum and Eve identical twins?’

  ‘Yes. No one can tell them apart on the old photos we have. Let’s put in my mother’s name, and Siena, because I was born there, and do a search on that.’

  They did, and to their horror found over five thousand websites containing those three words.

  ‘Going to be a long morning,’ commented Sarah, starting on page one, and on page three she said, ‘I hope he’s worth it.’ And on page seven she said, ‘Of course, if he is a very rich Italian he might whisk you off to his palace in Venice and we’d never see you again…’

  ‘You can come and stay,’ said Saffron kindly, and opened up a site on Venice to show S
arah where she would be coming to visit.

  They both looked at it thoughtfully for a minute.

  ‘Terribly wet,’ said Saffron at last. ‘In fact flooded! A bit scary to have a flood victim for a father. Good job you can swim so well, Sarah!’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Sarah, and then asked, ‘Do you want to see something really scary?’ and opened up a site where Mrs Warbeck, Sarah’s mother, beamed down from a corner of the screen, describing and commentating on pictures of radiant school interiors that faded in and out of view all around her as she spoke.

  ‘It’s her school’s new website,’ explained Sarah. ‘It’s just finished. Doesn’t she look exactly like an angel describing heaven? (Don’t forget she booted her own daughter out of that gorgeous place!)’

  ‘You forced her,’ said Saffron. ‘You deliberately allowed yourself to be reluctantly booted!’

  ‘You’re right. I did. But did you ever see anyone look so pleased with themselves!’

  ‘Yes I have,’ said Saffron, at once, grabbing the keyboard and beginning to type. ‘I found it at school last term. Bill Casson, Seriously Now.’

  ‘What?’

  Saffron pointed to the screen, where on a black background with an invisible gold pen the words:

  Bill Casson, Seriously Now

  were being slowly inscribed.

  ‘Welcome,’ said Bill’s voice from the screen (speaking casually-and-with-a-hint-of-laughter), ‘to Bill Casson. Seriously Now.’

  ‘I wonder how many times he practised that!’ said Saffron. ‘Do you think Samantha helped him?’

  ‘I bet she did! Wicked old Bill! Why do we still like him?’

  ‘Because he’s so civilised it’s hard to believe he is wicked,’ Saffron answered. ‘You know how he is! Always says the right thing, always wears the right clothes…’

  ‘And he’s kind,’ said Sarah, remembering her Ferrari magazines.