Fairy Dreams

by Gwyneth Rees

  ‘Of course it’s still in one piece!’ Harry scowled at his daughter. ‘My beds were made to last.’

  ‘Why don’t you come upstairs now and have a look at it?’ Evie invited him.

  Harry stood up straight away but Margaret replied, ‘I think we’d better check that’s OK with your mum first, Evie. She might not want Dad going tramping all over her house.’

  ‘It’s not her house, it’s Grandma’s house,’ Evie said. She shouted through to her mother in the kitchen, ‘Mum, you don’t mind if I take Harry up and show him Grandma’s bed, do you? He wants to see if it’s one of the ones he made.’

  Mum came back into the room. ‘Well, I don’t know how tidy it is up there.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Evie said, heading for the door.

  ‘Evie, what about the photograph Mr Watson brought to show you? Have you had a look at it yet?’

  ‘I’m just going to, but he really wants to see the bed first.’

  ‘Sentimental value, you know,’ Harry put in quickly. ‘I reckon it’s probably one of the first beds I ever made.’ He looked at his daughter. ‘You used to love coming and watching me in my workshop. Do you remember?’

  ‘Of course. You used to let me polish the brass bed knobs as a special treat. Child labour, I call it!’

  Harry chuckled. Mum smiled too. She told Evie she could take Harry upstairs and that she would sit down with Margaret and wait for the kettle to boil.

  As soon as Harry walked into Grandma’s bedroom and saw the bed, he smiled. ‘It’s one of mine all right.’ He went over and tenderly touched the bed-frame as if he was greeting an old friend. He walked around it for several minutes, admiring it, and it seemed to Evie as if he had temporarily forgotten why he was really there.

  ‘So if this is a bed that you made,’ she said pointedly, ‘then all we have to do is find the third person who slept in it.’ She frowned. ‘But I still don’t know who that could be.’

  Harry was about to say something when he noticed the tiny goody bag on Evie’s bedside table. ‘I see the fairies have been leaving you presents.’

  Evie nodded. ‘I was going to tell you about it. The fairies took me to their Blue Moon party last night and I met Twinkle and Sky. I went to Twinkle’s house and she had a photograph of you up on her wall.’

  ‘Never!’ Harry looked amazed. ‘A photo of me?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t you remember her taking it?’

  ‘I remember her messing around with that funny camera thing when she came to visit me one night, but she said she couldn’t tell if the picture would come out until she got back to fairyland.’

  ‘Well, it did. It’s a really nice one too.’

  Margaret was calling up to them that the tea was made, so they went back downstairs.

  ‘Did you make my mother’s bed then, Mr Watson?’ Mum asked, as Harry sat down beside Margaret on the sofa.

  ‘I certainly did.’

  ‘A lot of work must have gone into it.’

  Harry nodded. ‘I worked all on my own, too, in the early days. Later I got an assistant to help me, but I was on my own when I made that one.’

  ‘Well, it’s certainly lasted my mother a good long time,’ Mum said. ‘It must be forty years old at least.’

  ‘It should have been comfortable too. I only used the best mattresses, you see – that’s very important when you’re making a quality bed.’

  Mum smiled and Evie wondered if she was going to tell the truth about how uncomfortable she found Grandma’s bed. But instead she replied, politely, ‘I used to love sleeping in it when I was little. My parents weren’t ones to let me sneak into bed with them much, but I remember once when I had pneumonia I got to sleep in it with my mother for a whole week because she was so worried about me.’ She leaned forwards towards the coffee table. ‘We’d better drink our tea before it gets cold.’ She picked up a mug and handed it to Harry.

  Grandma would have made them tea in a pot, with a milk jug and a sugar bowl and proper cups and saucers, Evie thought, and she would have laid the biscuits out on a plate whereas Mum had just plonked the packet on the table. The biscuits were ones Mum had chosen, with currants in them. Grandma wouldn’t have liked those biscuits, Evie thought, because the currants would have got stuck in her teeth.

  ‘How long are you staying with your father?’ Mum asked Margaret.

  ‘A few days, I hope. If Dad’ll have me that long.’

  ‘I think I can just about put up with you,’ Harry joked, but he looked pleased really.

  Mum asked if Harry had any other children and he shook his head. ‘I was one of eight and my wife was one of twelve – so we decided Margaret was enough for us!’

  Mum laughed. ‘I’m an only one too.’

  ‘So am I,’ Evie said. ‘But once I made up a pretend sister, didn’t I, Mum?’

  Mum nodded, smiling at her. ‘When Evie was little, she had an imaginary sister called Angelina. Angelina had to come everywhere with us, didn’t she, Evie? Evie used to get very cross when people sat on her on buses!’ Mum smiled. ‘Mind you, I’m one to talk. I had an imaginary friend when I was little too.’

  ‘Did you?’ This was news to Evie. ‘What was she called?’

  ‘Buttercup.’

  ‘Buttercup? ’

  Evie hardly spoke for the rest of the time Harry and his daughter were there – except to pretend to be interested in the very blurry black-and-white photo Harry eventually produced, which showed the front of his shop forty years ago. Evie couldn’t wait to ask Mum if her imaginary friend was the same Buttercup that Grandma had told her about. But if so, that meant Mum’s friend had been a fairy. And how could she be, when Mum didn’t believe in fairies?

  As soon as their guests had left and they were alone together, Evie asked, ‘Mum, was Buttercup a fairy?’

  Mum nodded. ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘But I thought you didn’t believe in fairies?’

  Mum didn’t answer for a few moments. She looked as though she was thinking very carefully about something. ‘I did believe in fairies when I was your age,’ she finally replied, ‘and it got me into a lot of trouble. That’s why I get so cross when Grandma tells you that fairies are real.’ She sat down on the sofa beside Evie. ‘The thing is . . . I must have had a very active imagination when I was little, because I truly thought I saw a fairy in a yellow dress in our back garden. Grandma encouraged me by telling me how my fairy sounded just like a fairy called Buttercup whom she had met herself a few times. She even showed me a dried-flower bracelet that she’d pressed inside a book, which she said Buttercup had given her as a present. Of course, I kept imagining I saw Buttercup all over the place after that and I used to leave out treats for her at night, which were always gone in the morning. Then I made the mistake of taking the flower bracelet to school to show everybody. Some of the children used to tease me because I wore glasses, you see, and I thought they’d stop teasing me when they knew I had a friend who was a real fairy. But they made fun of me even more after that. They said I was a baby to believe in fairies because everyone knew that there was no such thing. They made my life at school miserable. Even the nicer children didn’t dare try to be friends with me in case they got picked on too. I was very lonely for a while.’

  ‘That’s terrible!’ Evie gasped, hating to think of her mum being so unhappy at school. ‘Couldn’t Grandma do anything about it?’ Mum had always told Evie that if ever she was being bullied, she must tell her mum or dad straight away.

  ‘I didn’t tell Grandma how bad things were. I just told her I didn’t want to wear my glasses and that I wasn’t going to believe in fairies any more because nobody else at school believed in them. Grandma said I had no choice about the glasses and that fairies were a fact, no matter what anybody else believed. She was wrong, though. Soon after that my eyesight improved, so I stopped needing the glasses. And as for fairies being real, all I know is that as soon as I decided to stop believing in them, I never saw one again. Gradually the o
ther children stopped teasing me and my life at school got easier.’

  ‘But you never saw Buttercup again?’

  ‘No. Like I said, I think she must have been a sort of imaginary friend, like your Angelina.’

  ‘But you actually saw Buttercup. I never really saw Angelina.’

  ‘I think having Grandma telling me so often that Buttercup was real made me think I’d actually seen her, when I can’t have done. And that’s why I worry when Grandma talks so much about fairies to you, Evie. I couldn’t bear for you to go through what I did.’

  ‘There aren’t any bullies in my class, Mum,’ Evie said, ‘so don’t worry about me. Anyway, a few of the other girls at school do believe in fairies too. I’m not the only one.’

  ‘Really?’ Mum looked sceptical.

  ‘Yes.’ Evie was almost bursting to ask her next question. ‘So when you were little and you believed in fairies, was that when you slept in Grandma’s bed?’

  Mum looked puzzled. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Did you ever sleep in Grandma’s bed at the same time that you believed in fairies?’ Evie repeated impatiently.

  ‘Well, I suppose I must have done. But what a strange question. Why do you want to know that?’

  But Evie decided it was best not to try to explain. The main thing was that she now knew the identity of the third person who had activated the bed’s magic. It was Mum!

  When Evie phoned Harry and told him what she had discovered, he promised to come to the hospital at visiting time that afternoon. He said he had just bought a box of violet creams for the fairies, but he would tell Margaret they were for the nurses, and that way he could get her to drive him up to the hospital.

  So that afternoon, when Harry put his head round the door of Grandma’s room, Evie pretended to be surprised to see him. Harry quickly explained to Mum that he had come back to the ward with a gift for the staff. ‘How is she?’ he asked, coming to stand on Mum’s side of the bed.

  ‘She doesn’t seem to be in any discomfort,’ Mum replied, looking tenderly at Grandma, whose face seemed to be getting thinner and less like Grandma’s face every day. Mum was already holding one of Grandma’s hands so Evie quickly picked up the other one and reached across the bed to take Harry’s.

  ‘Let’s all hold hands for a minute,’ Evie said. ‘Mum, you and Harry hold hands too and then we can . . . we can . . .’ She was put off finishing by the look Mum was giving her – as if she thought Evie had gone a little mad.

  ‘What a lovely idea!’ Harry said quickly, taking Mum’s hand before she could protest.

  Evie held her breath. They were all linked up now – Harry, who had made Grandma’s magic bed, and the three people who had activated it, Evie, Mum and Grandma. They were doing just what Queen Celeste had instructed them to do – holding hands together around the new bed – and any second now the bed should become magical.

  Evie waited for something to happen – for the bed to start sparkling like Queen Celeste had told her it would – but everything just stayed the same. Evie couldn’t understand it. She looked across at Harry in dismay.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Mum asked, seeing the look on Evie’s face and letting go of Harry’s hand.

  ‘Nothing,’ Evie replied, letting go too and stepping backwards away from the bed.

  ‘I’d better go. Margaret’s waiting for me in the car,’ Harry said. ‘Why don’t you walk along the corridor with me a little way, Evie?’

  As soon as they were out of earshot of Mum, Evie asked, ‘Why do you think it didn’t work?’

  ‘Maybe it did. Maybe there’s nothing to see when a bed becomes magical.’

  ‘Queen Celeste said that the bed would sparkle as the magic reaction took place.’

  Harry frowned. ‘Well, I don’t know what went wrong then.’

  Suddenly Evie thought of something. ‘Do you think it’s because Mum doesn’t believe in fairies any more? Do you think that’s why the magic didn’t work?’

  Harry frowned again. ‘I just don’t know, Evie. Why don’t you ask your fairy friends about it tonight? I’ll certainly ask my two if they come and see me – though I’m not sure they will, since I’ve given their chocolates away to those nurses now. I’d better buy some more before I go home.’ And as Evie went back to the ward, Harry went to see if the hospital shop had any violet creams left or, failing that, chocolate raisins, which he knew were Twinkle and Sky’s second-favourite kind of chocolate.

  Evie left what remained of her own violet creams on her pillow that night with a note attached saying, Dear Star and Moonbeam, Please wake me up as soon as you get here. I need to speak to you URGENTLY!

  Then she did her best to drop off to sleep, but she was so tensed up that it was very difficult. She tried to count sheep to make herself sleepy but that didn’t work. Then, just as she was giving up hope of ever falling asleep, a familiar tune suddenly popped into her head. It was the fairy lullaby she had heard in Queen Celeste’s palace – and again at the end of the Blue Moon party – and as she remembered it and started to hum it to herself she found herself drifting off.

  When she next woke up, her fairy friends were sitting on her pillow. ‘Star! Moonbeam! Thank goodness you’re here!’ she burst out, sitting up abruptly and turning on her bedside lamp.

  The two fairies blinked in the brightness. They had been trying to read her note and eat a violet cream at the same time, with only the light of their fairy lanterns to help them.

  Evie quickly told them what had happened at the hospital. ‘I don’t understand why the fairy magic didn’t work, because I got everyone together just like Queen Celeste said. The only reason I can think of is that my mum doesn’t believe in fairies any more. Would that make a difference?’

  ‘She did believe in fairies when she slept in the bed, didn’t she?’ Star asked.

  ‘Yes. She actually saw a fairy called Buttercup when she was little, but now she thinks she was just imagining her.’

  ‘It shouldn’t make any difference what she thinks now,’ Moonbeam said. ‘Once you’ve believed in fairies, you never really stop.’

  ‘Mum has.’

  Moonbeam shook her head. ‘She might think she has, but there’ll always be some doubt in her mind, no matter how hard she tries to tell herself otherwise.’

  Evie wasn’t sure that was true but she decided not to waste time arguing about it. ‘Why didn’t the magic work then?’

  ‘There must have been someone missing,’ Moonbeam said.

  ‘But we were all there: the person who made Grandma’s magic bed – that’s Harry – and the three people who activated it – Grandma, Mum and me.’

  ‘Were all the people who made the bed there?’ Moonbeam asked.

  ‘Harry made it by himself. He didn’t have anyone helping him. He told me that.’

  Star flew over to the bed and balanced herself on one of the bed knobs. ‘He put this huge thing together all by himself?’

  ‘It’s not that huge, Star,’ Evie said. ‘Not if you’re human-sized.’

  Star was trying to do a pirouette on the bed knob. As Evie watched her, she suddenly remembered something. ‘Harry’s daughter said that when she was a little girl she used to polish the bed knobs. That wouldn’t have counted as making the bed, would it?’

  ‘Of course it would!’ Moonbeam exclaimed, jumping up. ‘Polish is a very important part of a brass bed.’

  ‘But she doesn’t believe in fairies any more than—’ Evie broke off. She had been going to say, ‘any more than Mum does’. But what about when Margaret was little? Had she believed in fairies then?

  The sound of the telephone ringing made them all jump.

  ‘Quick!’ Evie said. ‘You’d better go. Mum will see the lights and come to find out what’s happening.’

  ‘It might do her good to find out what’s happening,’ Star said. ‘There’s a good chance she’ll actually be able to see us if she’s just woken up. It’s a funny thing, but even grown-ups who haven’t seen a fa
iry in years can be in the right mind for seeing one when they first wake up.’

  Evie heard Mum’s bedroom door opening and saw the landing light go on. Then she heard her go down to the hall and pick up the phone. She could tell from Mum’s side of the conversation that it was the hospital at the other end. She felt her insides go tight. They must be phoning about Grandma.

  She completely forgot about Star and Moonbeam as she went out on to the landing and sat on the top stair to hear better. Mum was saying she would get a taxi and come to the hospital straight away.

  ‘Is Grandma worse?’ she asked, as soon as Mum put down the phone.

  ‘Evie, you’re awake . . .’ Mum paused. ‘Yes, darling. I’m afraid she is. She’s not breathing so well and the doctor thinks I ought to go in. I can’t leave you here, so I’m afraid you’ll have to come too. I’m going to phone for a taxi and we’ll both need to get dressed as quickly as we can.’

  Evie said she was going to fetch a drink of water and waited in the kitchen until Mum had phoned the taxi firm and gone back upstairs. She was thinking very rapidly. If Grandma had got worse then there was no time to lose. She had to phone Harry and ask him to come to the hospital tonight. And he had to bring Margaret with him. She picked up Harry’s card from the mantlepiece and went out to the hall to phone him.

  ‘Evie, who are you calling?’ Mum shouted to her from the landing before she could even finish punching in Harry’s number.

  Evie put down the phone quickly. She knew Mum would have a fit if she found out she was calling Harry at this time of night. ‘I wanted to speak to . . . to . . .’ She broke off.

  ‘Were you phoning Dad?’ Mum asked. ‘I was just wishing he was here myself. But he can’t do anything from where he is, so I don’t think we should wake him up yet. I’ll ring him later from the hospital. He’s driving down here in the morning in any case.’

  Evie went back up to her room to get dressed, wondering if she would get a chance to phone Harry from the hospital. To her surprise she found that Star and Moonbeam were still in her room. They wanted to know if they could do anything to help. At first Evie shook her head, thinking it was a silly question – after all, they’d already told her that fairies couldn’t interfere in human matters of life and death, hadn’t they? But then she thought of something. ‘Could you get a message to Harry for me? Twinkle and Sky will know where to find him. I need them to tell him what’s happened and that he has to meet me at the hospital tonight with his daughter. Tell him the magic won’t work unless his daughter’s there too.’