by Hilary McKay
‘Do you mind,’ she asked her mother, ‘if I sell my skis? There’s a notice on the noticeboard at school. Someone wanting them for this year’s ski trip …’
There was no use pretending that Clem would be going on any more ski trips, so that was easy.
The skis paid for one term of lessons. Her bike for another. Clem said she didn’t care. She didn’t want bikes or skis; she didn’t want anything except flute lessons, and she wouldn’t have them if she couldn’t pay for them herself.
Bit by bit, Clem’s possessions began to disappear.
Ice skates. Camera. The collection of sparkling crystal animals.
‘What, even the panda?’ asked Binny aghast.
Charm bracelet.
‘It’s only until I’m sixteen. Then I can get a job,’ said Clem.
The half of the bedroom that she shared with Binny became more and more empty. Binny watched in silence as books vanished to the second-hand bookshop, CDs to classmates. A beautiful red woolly jacket left its hanger in the wardrobe forever.
‘Clem, that would have fitted Binny next winter,’ said their mother.
‘It had a Label,’ said ruthless Clem.
Then came the dolls’ house. One day Binny went into the bedroom to find Clem on her knees and dolls’ house furniture piled in a heap beside the painted rose that climbed the wooden walls. The dolls’ house occupants: Calypso and Mr Depp, Rosy Daisy and Timmy Green, the nameless baby who lived conveniently glued into a cradle, and their very large pet parrot, all cowered in silence on the roof. They were clearly in shock.
‘Hi, Bin,’ said Clem, squirting polish.
It was Clem’s dolls’ house; it had never been Binny’s, not even in an outgrown, passed on kind of way. At no time in Binny’s life had she ever been interested in dolls.
Yet now she began to howl.
‘Binny!’ said Clem, astonished.
Howl, howl, howl, went Binny, pointing at the desolation.
‘But you never ever looked at it!’ exclaimed Clem.
‘I know,’ sobbed Binny.
‘Well then? Oh, stop it, Bin! Stop it, Binny, please!’
‘I know I didn’t look at it,’ said Binny, sniffing and blubbering, ‘but I knew it was there. I didn’t mind about the CDs you sold. It was OK about the books. There’s books in the school library. I’ve got a jacket that will do this winter …’
‘Oh, Binny!’
‘But not Calypso and Mr Depp and the parrot and everyone, Clem!’
The dolls’ house stayed. Like a mutual reproach. Every time either Binny or Clem looked at it, they felt guilty. Nobody played with it ever again.
After a lot of desperate searching Clem found a paper round. Saturday mornings and Sunday mornings. Twelve pounds.
‘Not enough,’ said Binny.
‘No it’s not,’ said Clem. ‘I have to take out more papers than anyone else, yet we all get paid the same.’
Clem was good at her paper round. She always closed gates, and she pushed the paper right through the letterbox, and she never made mistakes and left somebody out. ‘Good girl!’ said the paper shop owner approvingly, but Clem did not want to be a good girl. She wanted fourteen pounds a week, and after a short fierce battle she got it.
‘Wow!’ said Binny. ‘That was brave!
‘It wasn’t,’ said Clem. ‘I had to. If you want something badly you have to fight.’
Would I get Max back if I fought Aunty Violet? wondered Binny, nearly asleep in bed that night. Would it work?
It would be like fighting a stone, thought Binny.
THE LAST MOVE OF THE CORNWALLIS FAMILY took them back to where they had started. The same town, but another flat, a different school, and all the familiar places vaguely distorted, like reflections in water. People had also changed. Granny was in a nursing home. Soon after the return of the family she turned eighty, and forgot their names. A few weeks later, in the coldest part of the winter, she died.
‘Pity it wasn’t Aunty Violet,’ said Binny when she heard the news.
‘You needn’t have said that, Binny,’ said her mother.
It was nearly two years now since Aunty Violet had flown back from Spain to banish Max. Binny hadn’t met her once in all that time, but she hadn’t forgiven her either.
‘Why can’t I say it if it’s true?’ asked Binny. ‘Everyone knows Aunty Violet is a—’
‘Binny, come with me for a minute!’ said Clem, suddenly, and she led the way into the bedroom they shared and shut the door.
‘Say everything you want to say about Aunty Violet!’ she commanded.
Binny said it.
Clem listened gravely, her eyes on Binny’s unhappy, indignant, furious little face. ‘Is that it?’ she asked, when Binny finally stopped.
Binny drew a deep breath and sighed.
Granny’s funeral was arranged for a Saturday. The children’s mother worried. A schoolday would have been easier. Saturday meant that either the whole family would have to go, or Binny and James be left at home, with Clem in charge.
‘I think all of us should go,’ said Clem.
‘I think we should too,’ her mother agreed, ‘but there’s James …’
‘James will be fine, won’t you, James?’
James sucked his fingers thoughtfully.
‘And Binny …’
‘I know.’
‘… and Aunty Violet.’
‘What about Aunty Violet?’ asked Binny, coming into the kitchen to see what all the whispering was about, and she could not resist adding, ‘Horrible old witch woman!’
‘Binny,’ said her mother. ‘Listen to me! Granny was Aunty Violet’s sister. At the funeral she will be very sad. If you come with us on Saturday I will be trusting you, trusting you, to be very polite.’
‘She gave away Max!’
‘Yes she did.’
‘Was that fair?’
‘No it wasn’t.’
‘He could be dead.’
‘I don’t think so. Can I trust you, Binny?’
‘Oh, all right,’ growled Binny. ‘If Aunty Violet is polite on Saturday, I will be polite on Saturday.’
Binny’s family looked at her. James spoke the question that was in all their thoughts.
‘What if Aunty Violet isn’t polite on Saturday?’
There was a rather tense pause.
‘If she isn’t,’ said Binny at last, ‘I will still try to be. I mightn’t be … but I’ll try.’
Saturday came, an icy day with a still grey sky that suddenly, just as they were starting out to the church, turned into tumbling white snow.
‘Snow!’ gloated James, zigzagging about the pavement with his mouth open, trying to catch snowflakes on his tongue. ‘Can’t we have one little play in it?’
‘Later. Not now. There isn’t time.’
‘We could be late and say “Oh sorry, we didn’t know!”’ suggested James, careering into a queue of people waiting for a bus.
‘Be careful, James! Say sorry to those people! Grab him, Binny, and make him walk properly!’
Binny looped her scarf around her little brother and drove him like a Christmas reindeer. He pranced along, enchanted, with Binny skidding behind. They didn’t look like they were going to a funeral.
‘Can we go to the park after we’ve done Granny?’ James demanded.
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ replied Binny, suddenly gloomy. ‘We won’t be able to just rush off. We’ve got to be polite. I don’t mind being polite to everyone else, but polite to Aunty Violet!’
James didn’t care about Aunty Violet. He cared about snow, and he turned his question on Clem.
‘Of course we won’t be able to go to the park,’ said Clem. ‘We’ve got to go to a hotel for lunch.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s what you do,’ said Clem briefly. She had been quiet since she got up, unable to eat, overwhelmed by memories of her father’s funeral. All the way to church, neither snow nor the need to be polite to Aunty Violet
touched her at all. Once there, she sat as if in a dream, while on one side of her James fidgeted and on the other Binny sat rigid, enduring the presence of awful Aunty Violet.
Aunty Violet was not at all polite. She sat beside Binny’s mother making rude remarks about the coldness of the church and the dismalness of the organ-playing. When the vicar got Granny’s age wrong she corrected him in a loud stern voice. At the end of the service she ordered Granny’s friends to get off quickly to the hotel before they dropped dead from hypothermia, but she herself refused to leave the church until she had dragged the vicar around all the radiators to prove that only half of them were turned on.
Outside in the churchyard she was even worse.
‘Friends’ funerals I can just about tolerate!’ she remarked to Binny’s mother, gulping on the cigarette she had begun the moment they emerged. ‘Like-minded people there at the very least. But family funerals! Oh sorry, Polly! That was tactless of me!’
‘Never mind,’ said the children’s mother.
‘Detest the damned things though,’ continued Aunty Violet loudly, ‘and there’s no getting away from it. That was the second and they come in threes. You can’t help looking around and wondering who’s next! Whatever is the matter? Whatever is the matter?’
What was the matter was that Binny, after a whole morning of being polite, was suddenly creating a scene. Right there in the churchyard. Clenched fists, and stamping angry black footprints in the snow, exploding at Aunty Violet.
‘What do you mean, saying things like that?’ she shouted. ‘What do you mean, they come in threes? What do you mean, who’s next?’
‘Good Lord, I’m thankful I didn’t have children!’ said Aunty Violet, staring at Binny through a mist of blue smoke.
‘I’m SICK of people dying! I’m SICK of funerals!’ raged Binny, as if she had attended dozens, instead of only two. ‘I hate them and I hate you!’
‘BINNY!’ cried her mother, and grabbed and missed as Binny dodged.
Aunty Violet lit a second cigarette from her first, stared at Binny with only a moderate amount of curiosity and asked, ‘Is she the backward one, Polly, or was that the boy?’
‘I know who should be next …’ Binny yelled, and then was seized by her mother and muffled with a hug.
‘I’ve gone dizzy,’ said Clem, very quietly, but nobody heard because James, very annoyed at so much attention being directed towards Binny, suddenly began demanding, ‘IS there a toilet? IS there a toilet? Or shall I just go ANYWHERE?’
It began to snow again, one flake at a time and a million more waiting.
The last of Granny’s friends, elderly people from her past, had all gone now, anxious to get out of the cold. Aunty Violet became busy with a largish hip-flask. Binny’s mother established a new grip on Binny. James joyfully began to prepare his next move.
‘Polly!’ snapped Aunty Violet, crossly. ‘For goodness’ sake attend to that boy!’
Nobody noticed as Clem went whiter and whiter, drifted quietly across to an ancient Victorian table-shaped tomb, and passed out, cracking her head on the stone as she fell.
The snow became blinding.
‘Wow!’ cried James, going anywhere.
It was a minute or two before anyone noticed Clem, pale gold hair spread across the pale grey stone of the old tomb, snow white beneath the falling snow, very quiet and very cold.
Looking rather like she might be Aunty Violet’s number three.
‘Clem!’ screamed Binny.
The vicar was very kind. By the time he discovered what was happening in his churchyard Clem had begun to come round and show that she was alive, but he insisted on driving her to the hospital anyway. He took her mother too, and James, who refused to be left behind. He would have squeezed in Binny as well, ‘although it would take some time to make the space,’ he admitted, having already shovelled a huge amount of junk from his back seat into his boot to make room for Clem and James. ‘Perhaps she had better go on to the hotel with her aunt. I really think we ought to get Clem to the hospital as soon as we can. That bump is swelling quite quickly.’
Which was how Aunty Violet and Binny ended up alone in Aunty Violet’s cold and snowy car, having one last cigarette and waiting for the windscreen to defrost enough for Aunty Violet to be able to drive.
While they waited, neither Aunty Violet nor Binny was polite.
First of all Aunty Violet (puffing smoke like a dragon) gave her unflattering opinions on English weather, English funerals, the heating system in English hire cars, the terrible upbringing of English children, and in particular, the shameful behaviour of James.
After which Binny (glaring at the ash tray) made a few frightening remarks on the probable state of Aunty Violet’s lungs, and then went on to add a great many more words about selfish disgusting old ladies who stole people’s dogs.
This led to a listing of all poor Max’s misdeeds as witnessed by Aunty Violet while visiting Granny. Smacking him, Aunty Violet added calmly, simply didn’t bother him and had done no good at all.
‘Smacking him?’ screeched Binny. ‘Smacking him! You smacked him?’
‘When I caught him chewing a mouthful of Euros I certainly did!’
‘I can’t believe it! That’s the worst thing I ever heard! I hope funerals do come in threes!’
‘Oh, do you?’
‘Yes, and I hope you’re next!’
To Binny’s rage, Aunty Violet burst out laughing, infuriating Binny so much that she pounded her seat with her fists. Clem had said that if you wanted anything badly enough you had to fight, and now she was fighting.
‘I hate you!’ she shouted. ‘I’ve hated you for years! I’ll hate you forever! What did you do with Max?’
‘Time we were on our way,’ said Aunty Violet.
‘Tell me!’
‘I wouldn’t dream of telling you,’ said Aunty Violet coldly. ‘Heaven knows how you would behave! He went to a very nice family. I met them only briefly—’
‘Only briefly! Only briefly! How could you tell they were very nice if you met them only briefly! They might have been murderers! Where do they live?’
‘This is ridiculous!’ exclaimed Aunty Violet, lighting yet another cigarette. ‘First that squalid scene with your brother. Now this. Not to mention your sister. Does she often draw attention to herself like she did this morning?’
‘Clem?’ demanded Binny, so breathless at this accusation that for a moment she forgot about Max.
‘Yes, Clem,’ said Aunty Violet, inhaling deeply.
‘What do you mean? Because she fainted?’
‘Mmmm.’
‘You make it sound like she did it on purpose!’ said Binny, outraged.
‘Didn’t she?’
‘Of course she didn’t! Clem? She never would! Clem is the most private, most brave … You don’t know her, so you’d never understand.’
‘Perhaps you’re right.’
‘She was probably just cold. It’s very cold.’
‘That’s true.’
Aunty Violet suddenly sounded less harsh. Almost as if she really was sorry. It was the undoing of Binny: tears spilled down her cheeks. Aunty Violet offered tissues. Binny pushed them away and used her sleeves, the seat belt and her funeral order of service.
‘Binny. Listen to me.’
‘No!’ said Binny, turned her face to the window, pulled up her hood, stuck her fingers in her ears. ‘I won’t listen. I can’t bear you. You should be dead, not Granny. Dead. In a coffin. I wish you were. And I’d be glad.’
‘Would you?’ said Aunty Violet quietly, and she nodded, and answered herself. ‘Yes.’
Outside the snow fell thicker than ever. Aunty Violet dropped her last cigarette from the window, sprayed on a vile flowery perfume, shook her hip-flask, sighed, and started the engine. Then she and Binny skidded and slipped their way to the hotel and neither of them spoke another word to the other, not that day, nor ever.
By night-time Clem’s memory of her grand
mother’s funeral was very vague, and mostly of the coldness of stone. James, in the blissful moment before sleep swept him away, recalled nothing more than the extreme pleasure of picking the right gravestone and going anywhere.
Binny, however, remembered every detail.
Do they come in threes? she wondered in the darkest part of the night. Do they? Do they? Please God, she prayed, daylight pagan though she was, please God, no. Not Mum! Not Clem! Not James! Not even Aunty Violet, whatever I said in the car.
Praying did not work. Aunty Violet went back to Spain and almost immediately died.
‘Binny’ll be pleased,’ remarked James cheerfully.
Binny began a time of ice-cold, car-bound nightmares.
It had been an odd day from the start, and not just because Binny had woken up in an apple tree. For one thing, it was the first time since she and Gareth had known each other that they had not been at war. It was not even a truce. It was an end, an unnaturally polite end that made the journey along the cliff paths like a journey with a stranger. Binny wondered if Gareth missed the warmth of battle as much as she missed it herself, but still, she kept up the peace. Many times she stopped herself complaining, ‘This was a stupid idea! We’ll never get there!’ Equally often Gareth had managed not to remark, ‘It would have been ten times faster if you hadn’t lost my bike!’ Once he actually paused to hold aside a barbed spray of bramble so that Binny could pass. In return, when he stumbled, she asked, ‘Are you all right?’ It was all very unnatural, and it seemed to make the way even longer. It was a great relief to climb the final rise and see the headland before them at last.
‘Good! We’ve got it to ourselves!’ said Gareth, hurrying to scramble down the steep slope that led to the rocky slabs beneath. ‘I didn’t want people around saying— Whoooahhh!’ He slipped and skidded and landed on granite and forgot what he didn’t want people around to say.
Binny arrived beside him a minute later, landing neatly between two rock pools. It was a rock pool landscape; a huge, almost level stretch of granite slabs, patterned in every crack and hollow with dozens of pools, each a small world of limpets, sea anemones, and transparent darting shadows.
‘Little fish,’ said Binny, kneeling to look.