by Simon Mason
Lucy felt sad. She had a picture in her mind of Mum going down the street in her blue wool coat, looking tired.
‘I don't think we were very nice to Mum,' she said softly.
Will fidgeted with The Beano. In the end, they decided to give themselves a bath and went upstairs, and as soon as they reached the landing, they heard it.
‘Listen!' Lucy said. From Mum and Dad's room in the attic, they heard a noise.
Will frowned. ‘It sounds like that thing they use at school for getting rid of the vegetable peelings.'
‘Somebody's snoring,' Lucy said excitedly. They ran up the stairs to the attic and stood in the darkened room. Even in the dark, they could see the shape of Mum lying in bed, and could hear her breathing.
‘She's asleep, Will,' Lucy whispered.
‘I know,' Will said.
‘She must be very tired,' Lucy said. ‘Poor Mum.'
‘I don't suppose we have to have a bath now,' Will said.
‘I want a bath,' Lucy said.
‘So do I,' said Will, after a moment.
They sat in the bath talking.
‘It's not fair,' Lucy said.
‘I know,' Will said, half-heartedly starting to scowl again. ‘It's been an awful, awful day.'
‘No, I mean it's not fair on Mum.'
‘Oh,' Will said. ‘Why?' he added.
‘Because it's her birthday.'
He looked surprised. ‘Are you sure?'
‘Yes. Dad said. And she can't go to the ballet.'
Will looked at her suspiciously. ‘What ballet?'
‘The ballet she was going to for her birthday treat. She can't go because Dad's train's broken down. That's what he told me on the telephone.'
‘Oh.'
‘So it's not fair on Mum.'
‘You said that before,' Will said.
‘So what shall we do, Will?'
There was a longish pause.
‘Think of something, Will,' Lucy said.
‘We could make her something to eat,' he said at last. ‘She likes toast. And we could put chocolate spread on it for her.'
‘That's good. What else, Will?'
He screwed his face up and thought a bit more. ‘We could blow up some balloons.'
‘That's very good. What else, Will?'
‘Hang on a minute,' he said. ‘I can't keep thinking of things all the time, one after the other, just like that. You have to give me time.'
He frowned massively and jutted out his chin, while Lucy waited, gazing at him.
‘We can give her a glass of wine,' he said at last.
‘That's a very good idea indeed,' Lucy said. ‘Wine. And sherry.'
‘And other things like that,' Will said.
‘Wine and sherry and beer and that stuff in the green bottle with ice. She likes all that. She's always drinking them. We can give her all of them, because it's her birthday.'
In the kitchen, they found quite a lot of things in the freezer that you didn't really have to cook, and lots of different sorts of drinks, including some they hadn't seen before at the back of the cupboard where the baking things were kept, and they poured them all out, and mixed some of them, to make pretty birthday colours, and put the glasses on the tray.
‘I know what,' Lucy said suddenly. ‘We can do a show as well.'
‘What show?' Will became suspicious again.
‘A ballet show.'
Will looked doubtful.
‘Yes, we can, Will. Because Mum was going to a ballet show, and now she can't, so we can dress up and just before we give her the tea we can do dancing and sing something, and you can be the prince if you want to. Do you want to be the prince, Will?'
‘I'd rather be a wolf,' he said. ‘I mean, if I've got to be something. Is there a wolf?'
‘Yes, there's a wolf,' Lucy said.
‘OK then,' he said.
For a little time they practised in their bedroom with the tape recorder. Will wasn't as keen as Lucy, so she was very encouraging.
‘Good,' she kept saying. ‘Good, Will. But when you do your dance you have to put The Beano down.'
At last Lucy decided they were ready, and they got the tray of Mum's tea, and tiptoed up to the attic with it, which was quite difficult because they had the tape recorder as well, and their costumes kept tripping them up, but eventually they got there with most of the things still on the tray.
Then Lucy said, ‘Are you ready, Will?' And when he didn't say anything, because as soon as he'd put the tray down he'd picked up The Beano, she said, ‘You have to say “yes”, Will.'
‘Yes,' he said.
And then they switched on the light and went in.
It was nine o'clock when Dad got home, two hours late and soaked through. He had a wet bunch of roses in his hand. He'd been stuck on the London train. It had been an awful day.
He expected to find the children quietly sleeping in their room, and Mum quietly crying downstairs. But there was no-one downstairs, just a lot of mess in the kitchen, and, from above, the sounds of music and shouting and laughter. Frowning, he went upstairs.
When the children had first put the light on in the attic room, Mum had carried on sleeping. Lucy put the tape recorder on the small, round table, and Will put the tray on the floor.
‘Mum?' Lucy whispered. Mum grunted.
‘You have to get up now, Mum,' Lucy whispered.
‘Tell her it's her birthday,' Will said. ‘She might have forgotten.'
Lucy told her.
Mum didn't move.
‘Give her a little shake,' Will said.
Lucy gave her a shake, and Mum shrank deeper under the duvet.
‘What shall I do, Will?' Lucy said.
‘First you have to give her five minutes to come to,' Will said. ‘And then you have to pull her duvet off.'
For the first time Mum spoke. ‘Go away,' she said. She didn't move her mouth much, and she didn't open her eyes at all.
Lucy and Will whispered together.
‘Perhaps we should give her one of the drinks straightaway,' Will said. ‘That chocolatey one. It needs drinking. It's been in the cupboard a long time.'
‘No,' Lucy said. She knew about shows, and she knew that you have to wait for half-time for drinks. ‘First we have to do the dance,' she said. ‘I think that might wake her up. Put the tape on, Will. Not too loud.'
Will wasn't sure which way to turn the volume knob, but he turned it right round to be on the safe side, and switched it on.
At once a noise like a high-speed train in a tunnel filled the small room, and Mum leapt upright in bed, with her eyes wide open. Her mouth was wide open too, though she didn't actually say anything.
‘Oops,' Will said. ‘Sorry.'
He turned the volume knob the other way.
‘Now, Will,' Lucy whispered encouragingly.
‘What?' he whispered back.
‘Your dance,' Lucy whispered.
‘Remember to smile,' she added.
Will gathered himself, took a little run across the room, leapt into the air with a confident smile, and smacked his head against the sloping part of the attic ceiling.
When Dad got to the top of the attic stairs, he stopped and peered round the door. He blinked. Mum was sitting up in bed, laughing and drinking something brown from a brandy glass, surrounded by several balloons, and the remains of balloons. Lucy, who was dressed in a lilac tutu and the top half of her bee costume, was dancing the cancan, and Will, dressed in his football kit, was crawling after her, miaowing.
As she danced, Lucy shrieked, ‘A wolf! A wolf!'
Tchaikovsky blared from the tape machine. On the bed next to Mum, there was a tray with at least a dozen glasses on it filled with liquids of various colours.
Dad blinked again, and withdrew.
Mum began to clap to the music. Lucy span round three times, bowed elaborately, said, ‘Oops, thought it'd finished,' and carried on spinning.
Will headed a balloon against a Velux window and sho
uted, ‘Oh my god, it's a goal in the very last minute!'
Mum swallowed the last of the Cadbury's chocolate liqueur which had come free with a Christmas package of Dairy Milk the year before Will was born, and carried on clapping.
‘Bravo!' she shouted. ‘Bravo!' Her headache hadn't gone, but she wasn't thinking about it any more.
‘Are you having a good birthday, Mum?' Lucy asked.
‘I am,' Mum said. ‘I don't quite know why or how. But I'm having a wonderful birthday. I don't see how it could be any better.'
Suddenly, from nowhere, Dad sprang into the room, and it got better. Mum choked. He was dressed in his blue-and-red-striped dressing gown and a long blonde wig, and he carried a wet and broken bunch of roses in his mouth, and he high-kicked expertly across the room, grunting in time to the music.
‘If we can't go to the ballet,' he panted, trying not to chew the roses, ‘the ballet must come to us!' The children cheered, and as the music came to an end with a roll of drums, Dad and Will and Lucy linked arms and performed an energetic dance of their own invention, and Mum rose from her bed and applauded.
Afterwards, they all lay in Mum and Dad's bed, and recovered. Dad drank a little of the drink from the green bottle, which Will had mixed with Ribena.
‘It's quite nice,' he said. ‘It's a bit like eating very, very old sweets.'
‘Pass me some more pitta bread,' Mum said. ‘It might have thawed by now.'
‘Is this your best birthday ever, Mum?' Lucy asked.
‘Absolutely,' Mum said.
‘What was the best bit of your best birthday? Was it when Dad ate the flower?'
‘That was a very good bit,' Mum said. ‘But it was all good. It was good because you're all so good.'
‘Am I?' Lucy whispered.
‘And Will,' Mum said.
Will looked up from The Beano at the sound of his name, and grunted.
‘And,' Mum went on, ‘I learned something very important this evening.
Very important and very useful.'
‘What did you learn?' Lucy asked.
‘I learned what the quickest way to wake someone up is.'
Lucy smiled, but not very much. And without looking up from The Beano, Will said, ‘I told you it was an awful day.'
Will
It was nearly the end of August, and Timothy and Elizabeth were telling Will what they were getting for Christmas.
‘The new Playstation,' Timothy said.
‘Dad's promised.'
‘A bicycle,' Elizabeth said. ‘What are you getting, Will?'
Will, who hadn't thought about it, looked blank. They stared at him, shocked.
‘Haven't you asked for anything yet?'
‘Of course I have,' he said quickly.
‘What?'
‘A Harpy Eagle,' he said. It was the first thing that came into his head.
‘What's a Harpy Eagle?' ‘It's the dominant bird of prey in South America,' Will said.
Will had always been interested in birds. Even when he was small he preferred Dad's copy of Birds of the Western Palaearctic to Winnie-the-Pooh. Facts about birds stuck in his head the way other things didn't. For instance, he could never remember where he'd left his gloves, but he remembered that smews live in holes in sandy banks. Although he'd never dreamed of actually owning a bird, the more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. And a Harpy Eagle would be the ideal bird to begin with. By teatime he was impatient to let Mum and Dad know.
They were having cauliflower cheese, which Dad had made. Lucy hated Dad's cauliflower cheese. She stared at it angrily, as if trying to frighten it away.
‘Eat half of it,' Mum said.
‘I've been thinking,' Will said politely, ‘about Christmas.'
‘Christ Almighty,' Dad said. ‘It's only August.'
Mum frowned. Dad said sorry.
Will tried again. ‘You see, I'm not sure how long it takes to get what I want, so I thought I'd say now.'
‘Very thoughtful,' Dad said. ‘Come on, Poodlefish, you have to eat half.' Lucy snarled at the cauliflower cheese.
Will waited for them to ask him what he wanted, but they didn't.
‘The reason for asking now,' he began again, but Dad interrupted him.
‘Look,' Dad said. ‘It's the middle of the summer. I'm not having any discussion about Christmas presents till December.'
‘But I haven't even told you what …'
‘No,' Dad said. ‘And I mean no.' He used his angry voice. Dad could do angry quite well.
At school the following week, Will talked to Timothy again. They were walking round the edge of the field during afternoon break.
‘How did you get your dad to promise to buy you the new Playstation for Christmas?' Will asked.
‘Easy. He wants it too.'
‘Oh.' Will thought about this. ‘I don't think my dad would want a Harpy Eagle,' he said sadly.
‘They say if I get into trouble I won't get the Playstation,' Timothy said. ‘But I get into trouble anyway. Don't I, Will?'
Will nodded. Timothy was always getting into trouble.
‘What did they say when you told them you wanted the Hippy Eagle?' Timothy asked.
‘Harpy Eagle,' Will said. ‘That's the problem. They won't listen. And if I try to tell them, I'll get told off for pestering.'
They walked right round the field, and when they got back to the classrooms, Will said, ‘I know, I'll drop hints.' It was a phrase he'd heard Mum use.
‘What do you mean?'
‘I'll tell them without pestering.'
‘How?'
‘You know. Give them clues. Leave things round the house. Wink at them. That sort of thing. Mum said it's a way to get what you want without bother.'
‘I like bother,' Timothy said.
When Will got home that afternoon, he had his glass of milk and piece of shortbread, and went straight up to his room, and shut the door. Apart from once, when he went into Dad's study to ask how to spell ‘camouflage', Mum and Dad didn't see him until tea time. At tea he said hardly anything, and went back up to his room as soon as he could.
‘What's the matter with Will?' Mum said.
Dad said, ‘It's very odd. Earlier on, he kept winking at me.'
The following morning, when Dad went into his study, he found some sheets of paper on his chair. The sheets had been folded in half and stapled together to make a pamphlet. At the top of the front page was a headline – ‘New Eagle Gazette' – and, below, laid out like a newspaper, were articles and pictures. It had been done on the computer. The first article was headed: ‘Birds of Prey'. Dad sat down and began to read.
‘Eagles are the biggest birds of prey. Shrikes kill mice and sometimes rats, but they are no bigger than starlings. Eagles are the biggest of all meat-eaters. The South American Harpy Eagle is even said to take sloths which are as big as sheep dogs hanging upside down in the Brazilian rain forest.'
At teatime, Dad said to Will, ‘I liked your eagle newspaper, Will. Liked it very much. Are you doing a project on eagles at school?'
‘No,' said Will. ‘Not that.' He said it in a mysterious way he'd practised, so Mum and Dad would know to ask him more.
‘He's always been interested in birds,' Mum said. ‘Ever since he was small. I think it's a lovely interest to have.'
‘So do I,' Dad said. ‘I wouldn't know a golden eagle from a silver one.'
‘There's no such thing as a silver eagle,' Will said. They beamed at him and went on with their tea. Will caught Dad's eye and winked at him. Dad winked back. Will waited for him to say something, but he didn't. He didn't say anything about eagles for the rest of the meal, he just finished his cheese and apple and asked Will to help clear the table.
Other boys might now have made the mistake of pestering, or else have given up, but Will was cleverer than that, and more cunning. His face went flat the way it did when he was very determined.
A week or so later, Mum came down to find an elaborate, brightly-coloure
d map in the back room showing all the birds of the Accipitridae family.
‘That's nice,' she said. ‘What's Accipitridae?'
‘Eagles,' Will said.
‘Your knowledge of birds is really impressive,' Mum said as she loaded the washing machine.
‘There's one bird in particular I'm interested in,' Will said innocently.
‘Really?'
‘Yes.' When she didn't ask which it was, he said, ‘Happens to be called the Harpy Eagle.'
Mum ran the taps to start the washing up, while Will waited for her to say something else.
‘Does it sound like one?' she said eventually.
‘Harpy,' Will said. ‘Not harp.'
‘Goodness, you know it all,' Mum said, and turned on the radio to catch the news.
A little later, Will saw Timothy in the playground.
‘How's it going?' Timothy said.
‘Not so good,' Will said. ‘Dropping hints is a lot of work.'
‘How much does the Hopping Eagle cost?' Timothy asked.
‘Harpy Eagle. I don't know. About the same as the Playstation, I should think.'
‘And how big is it?'
‘Ninety centimetres from beak to tail.'
‘Is that big?'
Will laughed. ‘Of course it's big. It's enormous. It's the dominant bird of prey in the Brazilian rain forests.' Then he was silent. ‘Maybe it's too big,' he said. ‘Maybe Mum and Dad are worried about Lucy. She's frightened of big dogs. I didn't think of that. I'll have to ask for something smaller. Something friendlier to Lucy.'
Will was not only a determined boy, he was also adaptable and inventive.
First he tried macaws. Over the next couple of weeks, a carefully life-size papier maché model of a Hyacinth Macaw grew slowly in a corner of the back room.
‘Isn't it a friendly size?' Will said to everyone who looked at it. Lucy helped by painting the macaw's left leg hot pink.
‘You don't mind macaws, do you?' Will said to her. ‘You like macaws.'
Lucy looked at it.
‘I would,' she said, ‘if they came in smaller sizes.'