Magenta McPhee

by Catherine Bateson

  ‘We could have a kind of spring theme,’ she said, ‘you know, everything yellow and cream.’

  ‘Yes, I see what you mean.’ Trib had ordered lemon cheesecake.

  ‘You could have chocolate,’ I said, hoeing into a slice of rich mud cake, ‘you know, you could both wear dark brown and the wedding cake could be chocolate. A bit like this.’ I held up a piece to show them, but unfortunately it broke and smudged the clean white tablecloth. Mum sighed and Trib looked away. So I knew it wasn’t going to be a chocolate wedding.

  I took the opportunity to ring Polly and open Dad’s email.

  ‘She’s replied,’ I said.

  ‘Of course she has, it’s been two days, Mags. Didn’t you check it yesterday?’

  ‘Nuh. Or the day before. I thought I’d give her a chance to slow down.’

  ‘What does she say?’

  ‘Well, she wants to know what Max is short for and then there’s a lot of stuff about him being understanding because he’s obviously gone through rough times. It’s all pretty boring. This is getting harder and harder.’

  ‘Oh stop whingeing,’ Polly said sharply, ‘you should be grateful your dad is actually talking to someone. More than what’s going on here.’

  ‘But he isn’t,’ I said, ‘my dad isn’t – I am. And it’s taking up a lot of my time.’

  ‘At least it’s short term. I reckon a couple more emails and we can ask her to meet him.’

  ‘Right.’ On the one hand this was good as I could stop faking it. On the other hand, I’d have to admit to Dad I had been pretending to be him to some strange woman who called herself Spookylianna. I wasn’t sure that Dad would be thrilled about being Greenman, either.

  It took me hours and several rounds of toast with Nutella to write Dad’s email back. When I’d finished I couldn’t bear to look at the Chronicles. On the plus side, Maths looked relatively easy. You didn’t have to worry about anyone’s feelings. The numbers worked or they didn’t. It was that simple.

  ‘We’ve got it!’ Mum rushed through the door as I’d finished working out the circumferences, ‘we’re going to have a garden party.’

  ‘A garden party? Oh, you mean a garden-party wedding?’

  ‘Yes,’ Trib beamed, ‘we had a vision.’

  ‘A vision?’ It was all a little sudden after circumferences.

  ‘Hats,’ Mum said, ‘hats and ribbon sandwiches on a trestle table covered with a white cloth. A damask white cloth, not a sheet, Trib. A vase of pink roses tumbling down in the centre, trailing around a tiered cake plate covered in cupcakes. I’ll wear a floaty skirt and top – nothing too formal. Trib can wear jeans and some kind of pale shirt.’

  ‘A metro shirt,’ Trib said, ‘I’ll be metroshirted.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to wear a metro shirt?’ I asked him. Trib’s idea of dressing up was to put on a different cartoon t-shirt, usually featuring some complicated computer-nerd joke.

  ‘For a change,’ Trib winked, ‘anyway, to marry your mum, of course.’

  ‘Sounding good,’ I said. ‘What about me?’

  ‘Floaty,’ Mum said, ‘floaty and coordinated with us, of course.’

  ‘Have we got a date on this?’ I asked. ‘Because you might want to fix up the backyard.’

  ‘Spring,’ Mum said, ‘late spring or early summer. We want to be sure of fine weather. But we’ll have a bad weather contingency plan, of course. A marquee or something. We’ll set a date, won’t we, Trib? Then we can do the invitations.’

  ‘We’ll do it whenever you like, baby,’ Trib said.

  I raised my eyebrows. I could not get used to the way Trib called Mum baby. She was a self-declared feminist. It was dangerous territory. Or it should have been. Mum just nestled up to him and smiled. ‘Oh, please,’ I said, ‘she’s old enough to be my mother!’ They ignored me.

  Was it going to be like this when Spooky and Dad got together? I’d be surrounded by kissing grown-ups. Gross. This wasn’t supposed to happen. By the time kids are my age adults should be over the kissing in public thing. They can do it privately but publicly it should just be a quick kiss and on with the business, nothing lingering. Now, if it was Richard and me that would be different. As soon as I started to think about that my mind shut down like Mum’s old laptop used to do when it over-heated.

  I stayed out of their way for most of the weekend. I wrote the Chronicles.

  Holly and Eclipse

  ‘And now,’ the Abbot said, patting his mouth with his napkin, ‘I invite the newly wedded couple to rise from their seats and dance as man and wife.’

  But before Lady Tamsin and Lord Treece could begin their stately dance, there was a clap of thunder and a light flashed in the feasting hall, blinding everyone except the already blind harpist.

  ‘Never,’ shrieked a voice, ‘they should never dance as man and wife!’

  Blinking, Lady Rosa beheld a girl, no older than herself, with dirty brown hair and a slightly grubby face. In one hand she held a staff decorated at the top with a great crystal and in the other she held a scrawny black cat. She looked somewhat familiar, but Lady Rosa couldn’t place her. She turned to see her mother’s reaction. Her mother was advancing on the girl, one hand extended graciously to greet the unexpected guest and her best hostess smile on her face.

  Polly’s hair is sometimes a little dirty – not that Holly is Polly, but I simply had to base my witch on someone, otherwise how could I write about her? I wasn’t sure yet why Rosa thought she was slightly familiar. I just threw that in for a bit of tension to keep the reader interested. The problem with that kind of thing, though, was that you had to remember what you’d thrown in while you wrote the rest of it. Perhaps Holly could be Lord Burgundy’s bastard daughter to some forest witch. That wasn’t a bad thought. I paused to write it down in my notebook and ploughed on.

  ‘I’m afraid we haven’t been properly introduced,’ Lady Tamsin said, delicately clasping the young girl’s hand in such a way as to mostly avoid contact with it and definitely avoid being in reach of the cat, who had flattened its ears at her approach and was flexing its paws to show off unnaturally sharp claws.

  ‘That’s right, we haven’t,’ the girl said, ‘but I’m Witch Holly and this is Eclipse.’

  Took me ages to come up with the name Eclipse. I tried all sorts of other names first but they’d all been used before. How many black cats called Midnight does the world need?

  ‘Welcome, my dear. This is my husband, Lord Treece.’

  Lord Treece stepped forward and bowed low over the girl’s hand. He, too, avoided the cat’s gaze and withdrew as soon as he could. He sneezed.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘allergic reaction. Nothing against Eclipse, just an involuntary reaction.’

  Did they know about allergies then? Well, it was a fantasy. I could bend the rules a bit. I liked the idea of Lord Treece sneezing away while Lady Burgundy frowned and the Witch Holly narrowed her eyes.

  ‘Your husband – which husband, Lady Burgundy?’

  ‘My second husband, of course,’ Lady Burgundy said. There was an edge in her voice that Lady Rosa recognised instantly. It was the same edge that sent her scurrying to her room to finish her lessons. Witch Holly seemed unaware of the danger she could be in. ‘My first has been declared dead. He has neither been seen nor heard from for the requisite number of years. I missed him sorely for the first decade, Witch Holly. But enough is enough, I’m sure you’ll agree.’

  ‘It would be, if your first husband wasn’t still alive!’ Although the girl scarcely raised her voice, all the wedding guests heard. The Abbot turned pale and poured another glass of wine. Lord Treece looked quickly at his new wife and took her hand in his.

  ‘How do you know?’ he asked simply.

  ‘I saw it in my scrying bowl,’
she answered, ‘and the Old Ones sent me here to tell you before it was too late. But I couldn’t find Eclipse. Looked for him everywhere. Blasted cat was hiding. He hates travelling. So I am too late, aren’t I?’

  ‘Not only too late, but your evidence is very slight,’ Lady Burgundy said smoothly. ‘I think we shall have to keep you here, until new evidence comes to light.’

  I was proud of the way Lady Burgundy just went on as though her party wasn’t ruined by this witch upstart calling her a bigamist in front of everyone.

  ‘You’re not putting me in...’

  But it was too late, guards had seized the young witch and grabbed her magic staff before she could use it against them. Without it she was powerless. Eclipse jumped from her arms and disappeared during the shouting and struggle. No one except Lady Rosa saw him go. She wondered if she should run after him and catch him but she loved animals and couldn’t bear the thought of the cat, too, being locked in the dungeon, so she let him go.

  If only she hadn’t. But she didn’t know about witch’s cats then.

  More tension added. I leant back in my chair. This was going better than it had for ages. I was on a roll. Thank heavens – I needed one!

  The dungeon was dark as night and the walls were as clammy as perspiring flesh but cold. Holly shivered.

  ‘They can see in the dark,’ one of the guards said to the other, ‘no need to leave a candle.’

  Poor Holly couldn’t. Without her magic staff and cat she was relatively powerless. She was only an apprentice witch, after all. Scrying and the lesser spells she could do with the appropriate equipment, but she hadn’t learnt the other magic. The Old Ones had noticed a definite talent in her for scrying, so they’d concentrated on developing that rather than the more useful things like night vision. She huddled in a corner listening to scrabbles she recognised as rats and wished she knew a lot more than she did.

  Meanwhile, in another part of the castle, the guests were dancing but there was a certain awkwardness about the festivities, despite Lady Tamsin’s graciousness, the blind harpist’s most soothing and jolly tunes and the quantities of ale and wine being poured.

  ‘I say,’ Ricardo said in Lady Rosa’s ear, ‘do you think this might be true?’

  Her heart was thumping so loudly she thought everyone would be able to hear it. My father, she thought, my father still alive! But, when she answered Ricardo, her tone was as quiet and calm as her mother’s had been. ‘I have no idea,’ she said, ‘really, these people come out of the woods and declare themselves servants of the Old Ones but half of them are just after money. You know how it is, I’m sure.’

  Ricardo looked down at her. She was paler than ever, he thought, but the slight smile that met his look betrayed nothing of her thoughts. She would make a wonderful wife, he thought – beautiful and clever. What more could a man want?

  ‘Shall we step outside?’ he asked. ‘The moonlight makes the parapet an inviting place to dally.’

  Lady Rosa swallowed. No man before had asked her such a thing. But it was a good time while her mother’s attention was diverted. It was really now or never. She bent her head and they walked slowly towards the great doors that opened on to the parapet.

  Actually, I wasn’t sure what a parapet was. I googled it and it turned out it was a narrow walkway around a wall. Perhaps a garden would have been a better place for them to pash? But I liked the sound of the parapet. Also, they could lean on the wall and see the castle grounds stretch out in front of them. The moon would shine on them. No, the moon would beam on them while they kissed.

  But how did I write about kissing? What would Lady Rosa feel? I’d never kissed anyone – not like that.

  I tried it on my hand. It just felt strangely as though I was sort of munching my own hand. Yuck. I could probably have gone into the lounge room and spied on some kissing. Trib and Mum were watching some romantic war film in there. But I could hardly go in there with my notebook and make notes.

  There’s always some hitch with writing. Like in the emails from Dad when I’d just think, yes, I’ve got it right, and I’d sail along confidently saying this and that. Then I’d realise Spooky had asked me an unanswerable question, like where do you see yourself in five years’ time, Max? What kind of question was that, anyway?

  Why did they have to kiss? Would Lady Rosa enjoy it? Would I enjoy it?

  ‘You are very beautiful,’ Ricardo said as they surveyed the view before them. It was full moon and the grounds were lit up as though specially for them. Further away, the forest was a shadowy mass of trees.

  ‘Thank you,’ Lady Rosa’s heart was beating wildly. She thought he might kiss her. The setting was right, the mood was right. Would he?

  As though he knew what she was thinking he took one of her hands and raised it to his mouth, looking at her the entire time. His mouth lingered on her hand. She didn’t try to pull her hand away.

  I left them there because Dad had driven into Mum’s driveway and was tooting.

  I’d decided to warm him up to the idea of meeting Spooky. I’d worked out my plan and put it into action practically as soon as I was in the car.

  ‘I’m sick of being an only child,’ I told him, ‘it’s boring. There’s never anyone to play with. Like this weekend – Mum and Trib did nothing but discuss wedding stuff. Boring.’

  ‘Well, I can’t do anything about that,’ Dad said, ‘and nor can your Mum, I wouldn’t think. She wouldn’t want to start a new family at her age. Babies and toddlers are hard work and kids are just plain expensive.’

  ‘But you could meet someone who already had a kid,’ I pointed out, ‘that would be ideal. I’d have a stepbrother.’

  ‘I’m not rushing into a new relationship just to satisfy your demands, kiddo,’ Dad said, ‘and anyway, it wouldn’t necessarily be a stepbrother. I might meet someone with a girl. How would you feel then? Not the only princess round the place!’

  I chose to ignore this remark.

  ‘I think you should start going out with people again,’ I said. ‘It’s not good being by yourself all the time.’

  ‘Is this another one of your campaigns?’ Dad sounded a bit cranky.

  ‘Not a campaign, exactly,’ I said, ‘just an opinion. There was an article in today’s paper about Internet dating.’

  Dad snorted. ‘I don’t think so, Magenta. Really!’

  ‘Don’t be such an old stick-in-the-mud. Everyone’s doing it. People are meeting really lovely people on the Net. They’re getting married and everything.’

  ‘Call me old-fashioned, but I like meeting someone face to face and feeling whether the chemistry’s right.’

  ‘Well, that’s tough,’ I said, ‘because where are you going to meet this chemistry experiment if you never go out?’

  ‘All in good time,’ Dad said, reaching over to pat my knee, ‘all in good time, Magenta.’

  ‘It’s not looking good,’ I whispered to Polly later on the phone. ‘He wants chemistry, not emails.’

  ‘He can’t get chemistry until he meets her,’ Polly said practically. ‘You’ll have to talk him into it. I’m sure when he hears the whole story, he’ll be game.’

  I wasn’t. Polly hadn’t experienced Dad’s stubbornness first-hand, the way I had. But she was right, I would have to talk him into it – sooner than we thought, because when I checked there was an email from Spooky suggesting they meet for coffee. She talked about chemistry, too. Why did adults harp on chemistry? I decided it could all wait until the next day. I was too stressed to deal with it. What with the kissing in the Chronicles, Trib and Mum’s wedding and Dad’s refusal to even read the newspaper article on Internet dating, I was almost looking forward to school.

  Spells and Sausages

  I’d completely forgotten that it was the cross-country
run the next day. Fortunately Mum rang me first thing to remind me to wear lots of blue (why couldn’t they come up with better house names – Dragon House, for example, Tiger House, House of Happiness – but no, we get boring old colours). Then Polly rang while Dad was trying to plait my hair into lots of little plaits so I could use all the blue ribbon we’d found from last year.

  ‘Look out the window,’ she said in a mysterious voice.

  Dad and I shuffled to the window and looked out.

  ‘So?’

  ‘The weather prediction today was for sun. Nothing but sun. See those grey clouds?’

  I looked up at the sky. There were more clouds than blue patches. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘My work. That’s all I’ll say. Oh, and bring a rain jacket. Over and out.’

  ‘What was that all about?’

  ‘Polly hates cross-country,’ I told him, ‘so she’s hoping for rain.’

  ‘Well it certainly looks as though you’ll get a few drops,’ Dad said. ‘Good for our vegies.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to meet someone who loved vegies as much as you do? You could both do the weeding together.’ I knew how corny it sounded. I just wanted him to think about it while I slogged out the cross-country. Actually, I like the cross-country – I don’t care about winning, I just like the whole running along the track thing. You see little wrens and butterflies and it’s a change from school.

  ‘I’m happy, thanks, Magenta. Hey, I’ll drive you to school today. I’m helping with the library book sale and sausage sizzle.’

  ‘The library’s having a sausage sizzle?’

  ‘My idea,’ Dad looked pleased. ‘Something different. Libraries need to lift their community profile. Get a bit more with the action. Offer something relevant.’

  ‘Sausages?’

  ‘Fundraising.’

  ‘Well, that’s good, Dad. I mean it’s terrific that you’re involved.’ I was delighted. It would be another topic of conversation with old Spooky. She’d be just the kind of person who would find that awesome, not just lame.