Magenta McPhee

by Catherine Bateson

  Lord Treece – Lady Tamsin’s paramour

  Ricardo – Lord Treece’s younger brother

  Echo – Rosa Burgundy’s hound and faithful companion

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘we’d better get busy.’

  ‘Still writing the Chronicles? Thinking of putting in a witch?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘There might be too many pages of description at the moment. I seem to have spent a lot of time describing clothes and things. I need some action.’

  Dad nodded. I didn’t show anyone the Chronicles, especially not my mother. She was an English teacher and I knew she’d try to correct my grammar and punctuation. Still, I didn’t mind talking about them.

  Dad sat down at the computer and I went into my room, retrieved the notebook and stared at the next blank page. I got up and rearranged the ornaments on my dressing table. I went back to my desk. I filled my fountain pen. I had got a special fountain pen for Christmas and I used it all the time for the Chronicles. Dad had bought it because he regarded fountain pens as sustainable technology, as opposed to biros which were throwaway consumer items. I liked trying different coloured inks. I had three bottles of ink but my favourite was an emerald green.

  I doodled on the blotting paper on my desk. I made some green flowers and some stars. Then I drew a face surrounded with tendrils of curls. I put a tall hat on her, a medieval hat with a wispy veil coming out of the top.

  What would I call my witch? I wanted a name that was sort of like Polly and sort of not.

  I wandered into the kitchen and opened the fridge door. What would we have for lunch, I wondered.

  ‘Hungry already?’ Dad asked. ‘Magenta, you’ve just had two crumpets.’

  ‘I was checking, that’s all. I think I have writer’s block.’

  ‘Ahh,’ Dad said, ‘try a glass of milk.’

  ‘Dad! As if. I probably need chocolate.’

  ‘There isn’t any, sorry.’

  ‘I don’t think I can work properly without chocolate.’

  ‘Well, Magenta, you might have to do something else then. I can’t go to the shops, I’m too busy.’

  It was no use arguing with him when he used that tone of voice. I sighed heavily so he had to hear me, but then I gave up.

  ‘Polly, Molly, Colly, Holly...’ Hmm. Holly sounded good and it had a plant reference, too. I turned back to the first page and added

  Holly – an apprentice witch

  to my cast of characters.

  Then I turned back to the blank page and wrote

  Chapter Two

  with some curly bits around the C and the T. The first chapter, which had taken me four Sundays, just introduced my central character and her dog. I described the castle in a lot of detail as well as the three changes of clothes Rosa tried on, in which she was to greet Lord Treece and, more importantly, his younger brother, Ricardo.

  Now I had to make her meet him and also meet the young witch, Holly.

  ‘Rosa!’ her mother called and Rosa sighed at her reflection. Perhaps she should have worn the midnight blue after all. The green velvet clung to her as she walked and the large collar, decorated with thousands of little pearls, framed her heart-shaped face, but did the colour make her look a little tired or even – horrors! – a little yellow?

  ‘Rosa!’ her mother called again.

  It was clearly too late to change. Green would have to do. She swept from the room and started down the main staircase which led to the entrance hall of the castle. All eyes were on her as she made her way gracefully down. She felt herself blush as she saw Ricardo among the onlookers.

  ‘There you are’ her mother said rather peevishly, ‘at last! Come and greet your stepfather-to-be!’

  Rosa held out her white hand and bent her head over a slight curtsy as she had been taught. ‘Lord Treece,’ she murmured in her pleasant, low voice.

  ‘Lady Rosa,’ Lord Treece barely clasped her hand, ‘you are looking very beautiful today.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Rosa turned to Ricardo but was afraid to look up in case her features betrayed her interest in the young man. ‘Ricardo.’ She extended her hand again.

  Ricardo grasped it in his and touched it with his mouth. ‘My lady,’ he said, ‘charmed again.’ His voice was warm.

  I won’t wash that hand, Rosa thought, not for days.

  I wasn’t sure that they washed much anyway in the Middle Ages. However, I decided to leave it. I wanted the reader to know how much Rosa is in love with Ricardo.

  That made me think of a great idea. What if Rosa seeks Holly out to buy a love potion? That would be a way of introducing the witch. Oh, I was definitely a genius!

  The thing I really like about fantasy is that you can put some real life into it without anyone knowing. No one would know that Polly and I had looked at love potions yesterday on the Internet. No one would know that the dashing Ricardo was based, just a little, on Trib’s nephew, Richard. Not that I had a crush on Richard. It was just that I liked seeing him. He was funny.

  ‘Show Ricardo around, Rosa. I have made up a room in the West Wing for him and his valet.’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’ Rosa’s heart beat so fast she thought she might faint. Her cheeks coloured and she couldn’t look at Ricardo but instead inclined her head and began walking towards the passageway that led to the West Wing. Despite her long skirts, she moved fast.

  ‘My lady,’ Ricardo said, ‘are you trying to lose me? You might slow down so we can talk. We are to be related in a day or two. We should become better acquainted.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’ Rosa slowed her pace.

  ‘These are beautiful hangings,’ Ricardo said, gesturing to the fine tapestries that lined the passageway hanging over the grey stone. ‘Your mother has fine taste, my lady.’

  ‘Thank you, my lord, actually my father had them made. Before he went away.’

  ‘Before his unfortunate death?’ Ricardo asked.

  ‘Before my mother declared him dead,’ Rosa said, a steely note coming into her voice.

  Polly had told me that if someone went missing for long enough you could legally pronounce them dead and remarry. It was one of her fascinating facts. This had started me thinking about writing the Chronicles. Rosa’s father, Lord Burgundy, disappears for years while on a voyage of exploration somewhere. Then her mother, Tamsin Burgundy, meets Lord Treece and falls in love. But in order to marry him she has to declare Burgundy dead. Rosa hates her for that, of course. She doesn’t believe her father is dead. The marriage goes on, anyway, and then, at some stage later in the story, Lord Burgundy comes home.

  It took a lot of writing to even get Lady Tamsin married. I’d slaved for four Sundays and she and Lord Treece were no closer to the altar. Which was just as well now I had a new character to put into the story.

  I wrote more about Ricardo and Rosa walking through the castle. I decided that the reader should know what he was wearing so I gave him some dark knee breeches and a shirt of the softest silk. I wondered if he should have a moustache – or even a little beard. How did men shave in the Middle Ages? Dad had kept his electric shaver even though he’d sold the microwave. He claimed the electric shaver was the only thing that could get rid of his whiskers. I had argued that the microwave was the only thing that could make popcorn, but then Dad had shown me the old-fashioned way of making it in a saucepan.

  Thinking about popcorn made me feel hungry so I went out to the kitchen again.

  ‘How’s it going?’ I asked Dad.

  ‘Not bad, not bad at all,’ Dad said. ‘There’s one job here I wouldn’t mind getting.’

  ‘That’s great, Dad! I hope you get it.’

  ‘They probably want someone younger,’ Dad said. ‘Everyone does these days.’ He seem
ed to be relapsing into pessimism.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ I said, ‘you bring experience to the job.’

  ‘Employers don’t seem to want experience,’ Dad said. ‘They want energy and dynamism, neither of which they detect in old codgers like me.’

  ‘Dad! Don’t get depressed.’

  ‘I’m not depressed,’ Dad said, ‘just realistic. How are the Chronicles?’

  ‘You know what I reckon about fantasy? I reckon fantasy books are always long because the people have to walk everywhere or go on horseback. They can’t drive anywhere, so it takes ages to just get them from one place to another. And the castles are big, too. I’ve just spent hours marching Rosa and Lord Ricardo through the castle to the West Wing. Did castles have wings? I don’t even know. I really need to visit a castle. For the atmosphere.’

  ‘Right,’ Dad said, ‘start saving your pocket money!’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘As if. The other thing is that you have to keep calling them my lady and my lord. That gets really boring. My lady this and that and the other thing. I wonder if they did that all the time in real life. I’m going to have to do some research.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Dad said. ‘I bet the library has some excellent books on this kind of thing.’

  ‘I’ll look it up on the Net,’ I said. ‘No one goes to the library anymore, Dad ... that’s so last century!’

  ‘As if,’ Dad said. It was his turn to roll his eyes. At least he didn’t sound depressed anymore.

  I was always worried on Sundays. As if job day wasn’t enough, Sunday was changing of the guard as well. It was the day I went to Mum’s. That was great in some ways. She’s got broadband, for a start, and because she’s a teacher, I’d have a lot of opportunity to get on the Net and check out any progress on Two’s Perfect while she was out. Also she’s a more consistent cook than Dad. Dad starts with great intentions, goes to the market, buys strange vegetables or picks some of our silver beet and borrows cookbooks from the library, but he’s into improvising. So, for example, if we’re out of ordinary potatoes, he’ll substitute pumpkin. Cheese, bacon and pumpkin pie turned out not to be as good as the cheese, bacon and potato pie from the fortnight before. I was getting sick of silver beet, too. Bitter melons were – guess what – bitter!

  I worried about Dad when I wasn’t there. How did he cope? What did he do all day?

  ‘What do you have on this week?’ I asked. ‘Anything exciting?’

  ‘Nothing much, might go and see a movie. What about you?’

  ‘Who would you see a movie with?’ I asked, curiously.

  ‘You can see movies by yourself, you know,’ Dad said. ‘It is allowed.’

  ‘But that’s so sad,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t have anyone to discuss the movie with.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Dad said.

  I knew he was lying. No one likes seeing movies by themselves.

  ‘Oh Dad,’ I said, and when we said goodbye at Mum’s I gave him a great big hug and told him I loved him.

  ‘I love you, too, Magenta,’ he said. ‘You have a good week, okay?’

  ‘You too,’ I said. ‘Don’t be lonely.’ I waved until his car turned the corner at the end of the street.

  Happily Ever Afters?

  ‘Congratulations!’ Mum threw her arms around me as I stepped through the door. She waved a photocopied page at me. ‘Great letter, Magenta!’

  ‘Who showed you?’ My heart sank. I hadn’t expected Mum to see it.

  ‘Some girl in my Year Seven class, of course. They were all huddled around Friday morning. Then one of the braver ones broke away from the flock and showed me. Great letter, darling, pity about the subject.’

  ‘Well, I am worried, Mum.’

  ‘He’s fine. I think I do know my ex-husband, Magenta. After all, we managed to live with each other for fifteen years. I probably know him better than anyone else in the world, given that his father is some introverted eccentric up the North Coast and his mother is dead. He’s fine. Not finding a job, of course, but other than that fine.’

  ‘The market’s tight,’ I said, repeating what Dad had told me. I clenched my hands in my jeans pockets. I hated it when Mum talked about all this.

  ‘Trib has managed to find three jobs in the time it’s taken your father to find none.’

  ‘Trib is younger than you and Dad,’ I said smoothly and then held my breath. Mum just gave me a look that said it all – a flash of anger followed by a cloud of disappointment with an edge of anxiety. Actually, to be fair, Trib wasn’t that much younger. It was just useful ammunition when she overstepped the boundary into Dad’s life with me. It pulled her up. I thought of it as Mum’s time-out.

  She visibly relaxed her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I just worry when you worry about Max. You shouldn’t have to and then it makes me mad that he’s letting you.’

  ‘He doesn’t want me to worry either,’ I said warily.

  ‘Well then, why doesn’t he do something about it!’ Mum glared at me. ‘God, he could get a job in a call centre or something.’

  ‘Mum!’ She knew this was out of bounds. She just knew it.

  ‘I’m the one paying child support, Magenta!’

  ‘Tell someone else, not me,’ I said and pushed past her to my bedroom, feeling the tears prickle at the back of my eyes. It wasn’t Dad’s fault. When Mum had left him first, I’d gone with her and seen Dad every second weekend. Then he got retrenched and put all his retrenchment and resettlement package into a small house with a reasonable-size yard that got a little sun. That was pretty important up where we live if you plan to grow vegies. Every second weekend I went there and we dug a duck pond and prepared the garden.

  When Mum met Trib she had one of her meltdowns. She stormed at Dad next time she saw him and said that she had no time of her own and did he know what teaching was like these days and how could she manage to parent me ninety-eight per cent of the time, maintain her professional standing one hundred per cent, and attempt to be in a new relationship as well. Something had to give, she said, and it wasn’t going to be her profession and it wasn’t going to be her new relationship because after all, she deserved that, didn’t she?

  So it was me.

  All that sounds much harsher than it was meant, by the way. My mother has been teaching for nearly twenty years and she knows how to use her emotions to get exactly the behaviour she wants. Except this time it didn’t work. She’d wanted a couple of extra nights off without me – I knew because she’d discussed it with me. She and Trib just needed a bit of extra child-free time to get to know each other.

  Instead my dad totally agreed with her and arranged to get me every alternate week. That was fine, until she realised she’d have to pay him child-support payments. Then everything hit the roof again.

  You can push Dad and you can push him but when he reaches his limit he is immovable. A mountain. I know.

  ‘You got what you wanted,’ he told Mum. I remember we were standing on her veranda and she was screaming at him. He held my hands warmly between his own two big ones and hugged me against him with his free arm.

  ‘You’ll leave me destitute!’ I remember that word because I’d only just found out what it meant and I couldn’t imagine it happening to my mother.

  ‘Hardly,’ he smiled. ‘I think you’ll find the government is reluctant to take more than they think people can afford. Get a good accountant onto it, Tammy. That will probably ease some of the burden.’

  ‘I did nothing dishonest.’

  ‘Did I say you did?’

  I should say that this was a stage of their divorce that was less than friendly. I didn’t understand and actually wasn’t even meant to hear what was said. But I eavesdropped because it was my life, too, and I hated the way they thought it had nothing to do with me. Or, rather, I eavesdropped until it made me too angry or frustrated or sad,
and then I’d plug in my mp3 player and play music.

  So, anyway, Mum does pay Dad child support and I live with Dad every alternate week. The duck pond is finished. We had a bit of landslide trouble back in the heavy summer rain, but it’s looking okay now. We just haven’t got the ducks yet. The vegie garden’s looking good, though. And Mum’s relationship with Trib flourished to the point that they are getting married in a few months’ time. That’s probably why the discussion has gone back to Dad’s failure to get a job. Weddings, as Mum keeps saying, are expensive.

  Apart from the financial flare-ups I don’t mind living in two places. I imagine I will later when I’ve got heaps and heaps of homework to do and a bag that’s bigger than me, but for the time being, it’s pretty cool. I almost get to be two different Magentas.

  ‘You’re breaking the rules,’ I told Mum, stuck my fingers in my ears and shut my bedroom door behind me. Everything here was neat. I had a bookcase-wardrobe-bunkbed unit that Mum had put together for me and that I had painted a deep green. My room had a forest theme. On the wall above my chest of drawers, Trib had helped me draw a huge tree with vines looped through the branches. It had taken us six months to get it absolutely right. Trib was patient with things like that, though. He said it was good therapy. Mum and I had painted the trees and some huge yet-to-be-discovered vine flowers that glowed in different colours. I had a collection of rocks piled up on top of another bookcase that held my fantasy reference material.

  It was the ideal room for Magenta, teenage fantasy writer.

  I threw myself down on the bed and pulled all the cushions around me until I was walled in with pillowed softness. My favourite cushion had a tapestry picture of a great antlered stag on it. Mum had made it for me and she was now making me one of a young woman dressed in medieval costume with a thin hunting dog at her feet. That was my dog – my fantasy dog, Echo.

  I expected Mum to follow me and began counting in my head. Usually I only got up to a hundred before my door opened and Mum came in to apologise. This time, though, the phone rang so it took up to five hundred.