by Hilary McKay
Late Cretaceous Ammonite
(Bostrychoceras)
Filey Beach, Yorkshire
1913
(Found by R. Smith, aged 14. Swapped for the pen Peter had from Clarry on his birthday.)
“I knew you were mad about me swapping that pen,” said Peter when he saw the label.
“I wasn’t,” said Clarry untruthfully.
“It didn’t write very well anyway.”
“I know. You told me before.”
Rarely did it dawn on Peter that other people had feelings as painful as his own, but now it did, and he gave her an awkward sort of pat and said, “Sorry.”
“It’s all right,” said Clarry, immediately forgiving everything he had ever done to her throughout the whole of her life. She hugged him, and was allowed to do it.
* * *
The frog was terribly difficult. In the end they laid it out on black cardboard, like a map of a frog, and fixed it into place with tiny dabs of glue from Clarry’s finest paintbrush.
Skeleton of Common Frog
(Rana temporaria)
Assembled July 1913
from a broken up skeleton bought by Peter
in a junk shop in Plymouth
(Incomplete)
“It looks completely complete to me,” remarked Rupe, who had been playing in a tennis tournament in town during the whole of the reconstruction.
“She lost two bones,” said Peter grimly. “Dropped them. And we never found them.”
“Well, who would know?” asked Rupe. “And who would care? Not even the frog! What’s two bones more or less, when you’ve lost your skin and stuffing?”
Peter began slamming furiously about the room.
“Now what?” Rupe asked him.
“Nothing. I’m going.”
“Oh, Peter,” exclaimed Clarry. “Rupe was just joking. He didn’t mean anything!”
Peter shrugged.
“Where are you going? Can I come too?”
“To the moor. No you can’t,” said Peter, and banged out of the room before she could reply.
Clarry and Rupe looked helplessly at each other.
“Come on then Clarry,” said Rupe. “Tell me what all that was about.”
“You laughed at him.”
“I didn’t. I laughed at his frog.”
“He wants it to be perfect.”
“The frog? You dropped the blooming bones, not me!”
“No, no. He was nice about the bones after he stopped being cross. He said as long as we said incomplete on the label it would be all right.”
“What, then? What’s got to be perfect?”
“The museum. This summer. Everything.”
Rupe, who had recently taken to raising one eyebrow, now did this.
“Don’t make everything a joke!” protested Clarry. “And don’t do that!”
“You smiled.”
“I didn’t.”
“Saw you smile! Now shut up, Clarry. Don’t talk. I’m having a good idea.”
He stood at the window, watching Peter haul his bike from the old building that had held the museum the year before. After a while he grinned very suddenly.
“What?” asked Clarry, who had been watching his face.
“Clarry, you like all this natural history stuff, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. Why?”
“Nothing, nothing. Just a thought.”
“Something for the museum?”
“Perhaps. Sort of. If I can manage it.”
“It’s something special for Peter, isn’t it?” asked Clarry, glowing.
“All these questions!” said Rupe. “If it’s going to happen I’ve got to go and see someone. Will you be all right on your own?”
“Oh yes! I’ve something special to do too. It will take me ages.”
Clarry’s something special was her most careful labeling yet. She spent the day drawing a plan of the butterfly case, with each butterfly in its correct place, outlined in Indian ink. Underneath the outlines, after a lot of anxious hunting in the butterfly book, she printed their names in English and Latin.
“I think they’re right. I’m almost sure they are,” she said, showing it to Rupe, who was home before Peter.
“It’s a work of art!” said Rupe. He was truly surprised. He looked at it again, and then at Clarry, as if she might have somehow changed while he had been gone. She hadn’t; she was the same round faced, shabby little Clarry, eyebrows too dark, hair too wild, clothes never quite right, no matter how often her grandmother took her shopping.
Also, as always, she was spilling over with questions.
“Did you see the person you wanted to see? Can you manage what it is you said you might manage? Will you tell me what it is? What else have you been doing?”
“Yes. Perhaps. No. Tennis in the park.”
“Oh.”
“Pete’s been gone ages now.”
“I know. Six hours and a bit. Do you think you could check the butterflies if I brought you the book?”
It had taken Clarry most of the six and a bit hours to draw and label the butterflies. Rupe checked them in three minutes, saying, “Yep. Yep. Perfect. Ten out of ten!”
“Thirty!” said Clarry. “There are thirty.”
“Are there really? Clever old you!” said Rupe.
“The brown ones were hard.”
“I bet they were. Hey, Clarry, have you got this right? Skipper? Dingy Skipper? Are you sure there’s a butterfly called that?”
“Yes. Definitely. I know Dingy Skipper is right.”
“Well, if you say so.” Rupe turned over the plan of the butterflies and wrote in curling flourishing letters on the back:
This case of thirty British butterflies was donated to the collection by Miss Clarry Penrose
(Who also drew the magnificent key!)
July 1913
“Rupe!” exclaimed Clarry. “You shouldn’t have put that!”
“Oh yes I should.”
“Not magnificent! What will Peter say?”
“Peter will love it.”
Clarry looked down at her cramped and inky fingers and hoped he was right. Her hand ached at the thought of doing it all again. Let Peter be pleased, she willed, and it worked and he was.
He was back too late for supper, but so bad tempered with hunger that the entire household rushed to feed him. Clarry sat and watched while he consumed ham and tomatoes, cold potatoes and lettuce salad, an omelette, a pint of milk, and half an apple pie.
“Now do you feel better?” she asked at last.
“There was nothing wrong with me. I was only hungry.”
“I made a key for the butterflies while you were out. Shall I show you?”
“I expect you will,” said Peter, yawning and lazy for once, from so much food and fresh air.
“There!” said Clarry, triumphantly handing over her masterpiece.
“Hmmm,” said Peter, and then, after several tense, wide-awake, scrutinizing minutes, “Clarry. Not bad!”
“Rupe checked it.”
“What, properly?” asked Peter. “Rupe? Oh well, it looks all right. Quite good actually! You’ve got the browns sorted this time. You called a Meadow Brown a Hedge Brown the other day when we were out.”
“They move so quickly, before I can tell.”
“And the three Fritillaries! Did Rupe help with them?”
“No. He was out doing tennis or something.”
“Tennis!” said Peter scornfully. “Anyway, well done! Really not bad. Thanks, Clarry!”
Clarry sparkled with pleasure, but felt compelled to say, “Rupe wrote on the back.”
“Oh,” said Peter, turning it over. “Well. Magnificent. I suppose . . .”
Peter looked up at Clarry with one of his rare, transforming smiles. “I suppose it is!”
He put it on the table (carefully, Clarry noticed with pleasure), picked up the butterfly book, and became lost. However, half an hour later, when he looked up and found she
was still sitting there he rummaged round in his knapsack and held out a small cardboard box.
“Look at this!”
Clarry lifted the lid. Another butterfly, dark wings above, bright jade underneath.
“Hairstreak,” said Peter. “Green.”
“What a funny name.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Where did you find it?”
“On the moor.”
“Dead?”
Peter rolled his eyes.
“It’s not as pretty as the Peacocks and Tortoiseshells.”
“It’s a lot more important than Peacocks and Tortoiseshells!”
“Is it?”
“Rarer.”
“I still like the Peacocks best,” said Clarry, and then she suddenly remembered. “Rupe’s getting something for us! Something really special. He’s trying to arrange it. He wouldn’t tell me what.”
“About time Rupe did something,” said Peter, hanging over his butterfly box.
“What do you think it will be? What would be fantastic, Peter?”
* * *
Peter was silent for so long that Clarry thought he had forgotten.
* * *
“A Purple Hairstreak. A Large Blue. A White Admiral. A Silver Spotted Skipper. A Swallowtail.”
They flitted before Clarry’s eyes, purple, blue, white, silver.
“What color is a Swallowtail?”
Peter turned to the picture in the book.
“Lemon yellow, edged with black,” he said, his voice husky with the thought. “Some blue. And a bit of red. Not much. See?”
“Like a ruby,” said Clarry, hanging over his shoulder.
“A dusty ruby.”
“Is a Swallowtail special?”
“Most special of them all.”
Chapter Six
When Binny appeared in the kitchen after her bath, clean but damp and smelling like a swimming pool, James pointed secretly at their mother and whispered a warning.
“She’s cross,” whispered James.
He was right.
“When Mrs. Tremayne has been so kind!”
The children’s mother was spectacular in her anger, her voice ice laden, her hair all vertical spikes. “Taking us in at such short notice. Worrying about curtains and bus timetables! Hot water bottles! Wine!”
“I never had none of that wine,” said James.
“I was ashamed of you both! Binny! Speaking to Clare like that! And as for you, James . . .”
“It was the sort of TV they had in the olden days. I was fixing it.”
“Was that what crashed?” asked Binny.
“Because I was putting it back, it crashed,” said James. “Because I wasn’t allowed to fix it.”
“Half your pocket money for the rest of your life,” said his mother. “That’s what it will cost you! And you can write to Mrs. Tremayne and apologize!”
“A sorry letter?” asked James, who although only six years old had had a good deal of experience with sorry letters since he learned to write.
“Yes, one of those.”
“Can’t I just say it?”
“No, you can’t just say it. You can write it down properly. But first you are going to clear up your bedroom. What on earth have you got under your bed? No! Don’t start telling me! Just go and get rid of it! Now! Go! Shoo! Close the door!”
She waited until his footsteps could be heard on the stairs and said, “Binny.”
“I just fell over, that’s all.”
“You know I’m not talking about that. The way you spoke to Clare in front of her mother! She was helping, Binny! Like you and Clem help me. Do you know, before you came in, her mother and I were saying how lucky we were to have girls that helped us out! And then you made that dreadful scene! What on earth was it all about?”
Binny thought of the friendless school, the slammed doors, shattered pencil case, kicked possessions. The whispers and glances. Clare, standing in the shadows of the tunnel as she, Binny, blundered into the treacherous dark. She thought of those things, but she did not want to explain them to her mother.
“It was because she said ‘actually,’ ” she said at last. “About my name. ‘Binny, actually,’ she said.”
“But what’s wrong with that?” asked Binny’s baffled mother. “She was explaining that your name was usually shortened to Binny.”
“It was the way she said it.”
“She didn’t say it like anything! I know. I was there. Well, you can apologize to Clare next time you see her. And this afternoon you can clean the bathroom, which is now knee-deep in mud. And while you’re busy you can think hard about whether you want Gareth and Max to visit us at Christmas . . .”
“Mum!”
“Because if you do, we need a new roof. And a new roof quickly costs more than a new roof slowly. So I will have to work extra shifts. Which will mean quite often leaving you and James here with Clem. If I can trust you to behave.”
“I don’t want you to have to do even more work.”
“Binny, that’s the least of my problems!”
“What’s the most?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you!”
Binny, problem child, cleaned the bathroom, the trail of mud up the stairs, and the kitchen floor. She vacuumed James’s bedroom carpet. She would have helped him with his letter but he did not want help.
“I’ve started liking writing sorry letters,” he said. “I’ve done two practice ones and two real ones.”
“Why two?”
“Because I was so sorry,” said James cheerfully, enveloping his letter very thoroughly with extra Sellotape and drawing on a stamp. “I think that looks good. I bet she’s excited. I hope she writes me one back!”
Letter writing, Binny noticed, seemed to have cleared James’s conscience of all traces of guilt.
“What are you going to do now?” she asked him.
“Build an avalanche down the stairs,” said James, and left the room as lightly and airily as a boy freshly made.
Binny did not follow. The morning still haunted her. She thought of the sharp sunlight and the half seen movements in the shadows. She remembered the urgent anger of Clare’s first screech.
I was just looking at the footprints, thought Binny.
* * *
Once again, she telephoned Gareth.
Gareth ignored all the Clare related stuff (“Don’t go on about all that again!”) and all the darkness-in-the-tunnel stuff (“What did you expect? Chandeliers?”).
“Tell me again about the footprints,” he said impatiently.
“Well,” said Binny reluctantly, knowing he would snort. “They were so big. Like a giant . . . oh, it doesn’t matter.”
“Giant what?”
“Chicken.”
Gareth snorted.
“I didn’t say they were a giant chicken,” said Binny with dignity. “I said they were like a giant chicken. What other big birds are there? A swan? An eagle?”
Far away in Oxfordshire, Binny heard Gareth sigh.
“Why not an eagle?”
“Bin, you wouldn’t recognize an eagle if it came down and sat on your head. Can you get hold of a mobile phone with a camera?”
“Yes, we’ve got a shared one now. We got it after you and me got stuck on that rock and nearly drowned.”
“Well, go and get it. Find a ruler. Go back to where you saw the prints. Put the ruler by the print. Take a photo. Send it to me. It’ll be a heron.”
“A fish?”
“Heron, not herring! Hurry up!”
“But . . .”
“Get on. I’m waiting!”
“My knees!” protested Binny. “They’ve just been all bandaged!”
“So?”
Gareth had gone, the mobile phone was lying on the kitchen table, Binny went.
HA HA. QUITE GOOD. ALMOST HAD ME.
That was the message Gareth sent in return for his giant chicken footprint. It was so typical that Binny could al
most hear his voice. Slightly triumphant. Never-to-be-caught-out.
WHAT DO U MEAN? she demanded in return. U SAID SEND IT. U SAID A HER . . .
Binny paused. Heron or herring? Better be on the safe side.
U SAID U KNEW WHAT IT WAS.
Gareth’s next message was equally unhelpful.
I BET YOU CAN’T FIND ANOTHER.
Binny found another giant chicken footprint easily, in seconds.
ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY? wrote the ungrateful Gareth.
What was the matter with him? complained Binny to herself. Here she was, doing just as he had asked, and was he pleased? No. He was in a mood.
U ARE IN A MOOD, Binny told him, and then waited and waited and waited and waited and nothing arrived.
* * *
Clem was in the kitchen when Binny got back to the house. Perhaps Clem noticed the mobile phone, dumped back on the kitchen table. Perhaps she noticed the way Binny checked it, every thirty seconds or so.
“Gareth?” she asked.
“I’m not calling him if he won’t call me,” said Binny.
“That’s the spirit!” said Clem.
Everyone laughed, and it became a normal Saturday again. James posted his sorry letter through the farmhouse letterbox.
“I’d tried to do it secretly,” he said, “but when I looked up Clare was watching out of the window of the room right over the door. She laughed.”
“She would,” said Binny grimly.
Clem went upstairs with her flute. Pecker produced another egg. Binny’s mother made soup and Binny learned to make cheese scones. They were golden and perfect and their toasted cheese smell seemed to warm the whole house.
James, for whom the novelty of homework had not yet worn off, bent busily over his newsbook.
My only chkn lade an egg, he wrote. It had a date on it. Soss pish os.
“What does that mean?” asked Binny.
“I know what it means,” said James. He drew a picture of the egg but it didn’t come out well so he added spots, purple and yellow and green.
“Horrible Gareth would say that wasn’t scientifically accurate,” remarked Binny, still conscious of the silent phone beside her on the table.
“Why is he horrible?” asked James.
“Because he’s in a mood,” said Binny, and just as she spoke the phone erupted into messages.