Magenta McPhee

by Catherine Bateson

  It started to rain almost as soon as we got in the car.

  ‘Good thing the sizzle’s under shelter,’ Dad said, checking out the grey clouds, ‘and it might clear up, too – look at the horizon. What time is your cross-country?’

  ‘About ten, I think. The buses leave school almost as soon as we get there.’

  ‘Well, good luck, break a leg – not!’ Dad kissed me goodbye. He was almost too cheerful.

  Polly was happy too. She kept looking at the sky and counting the grey clouds. She was wearing a raincoat even though it was just spitting. ‘Look at that,’ she hissed at me, ‘just look at it!’

  ‘Clouds, Polly, just clouds.’

  ‘My clouds,’ Polly said, ‘that’s the difference. I conjured these up with a spell.’

  ‘You what?’

  She nodded. ‘I’m getting better, aren’t I?’ She said it so smugly I wanted the sun to break through the clouds and shine right into her eyes. But it didn’t. Instead the rain got a bit heavier and everyone in the bus queue started to complain.

  ‘We’re not going to have to run in this?’

  ‘My runners will get soaked and Mum’ll kill me.’

  ‘So? Mine are suede.’

  ‘Ms Olley, we don’t have to run if it rains, do we?’

  ‘Call this rain?’ Ms Olley smiled in a way that meant she wasn’t at all amused. ‘This is just a mere pitter. Children these days. Wimps.’

  It rained the entire bus trip. It rained as the teachers put up the first-aid tent. The Red House crepe ribbons ran in the rain and left streaks of pink across faces, arms and white t-shirts, and dripped all the way down Ms Mann’s lace blouse. She kept looking down at the drips and trying to rub them off.

  ‘I can’t run in the rain,’ Polly approached Ms Mann, ‘I’m getting a cold and Jane expressly said that if it even looked like rain, I should just sit in the first-aid tent. She would have kept me home, but she’s doing cupcakes today for some celebrity thing and Marcus was busy finding his muse.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ Ms Mann glared down at another pink drop and at Polly, ‘that the first-aid tent is usually too full by the end of this run for us to take in onlookers. Anyway, I believe the rain’s clearing – look!’

  Sure enough, the blue patches now outnumbered the grey clouds and they seemed to be skittering away behind us. Polly frowned and I could see her lips move frantically.

  ‘Get in line then,’ Ms Mann fluttered her hands at us, ‘quickly.’

  Almost as soon as the starting pistol went the sun came out, as though it was blessing our run. The rain made the bush smell like lemon and eucalyptus and wet sand. Polly settled into a grumpy walk but I stretched out my legs and ran for a while. The sandy track was good to run on – not as springy as grass but not thuddy like the pavement. I kept running – even when my legs felt wobbly. I ran through that feeling and found my rhythm again. I didn’t care about winning. I was just enjoying it – it felt as though someone had let me loose after days sitting at a desk.

  ‘Well done, Magenta McPhee!’ Mr. Green gave me my raffle ticket. ‘This must be a personal best for you. You’d better go and get your ribbon. Third place!’

  Blue House kids I hardly knew slapped my back. I couldn’t believe it – third place! I didn’t think of myself as being one of the sport jocks. Well, I wasn’t. I was a fantasy writer. But maybe I could run, too. It felt good.

  About ten minutes later Polly shuffled bad-temperedly past the finish line. She was blowing her nose repeatedly and loudly into a clean tissue.

  ‘Jane will kill me,’ she glared at everyone. ‘I’m not allowed to get a cold. Marcus has his exhibition opening this weekend and they’re counting on me to be on deck to mind the brat, I mean Jeremy. She’ll kill me,’ and she blew her nose again. You could tell she was faking.

  ‘I came third,’ I waved my ribbon at her. ‘Third place, Polly!’

  ‘Good on you,’ she said sourly. ‘Next it’ll be the marathon.’

  ‘Well, hardly,’ I said, falling into step with her as we headed to the barbecue where Mr. Tanner was dispensing sausages and rissoles wrapped in white bread. ‘But I might do some training. See if I can get second next year. I mean it’s good for a fantasy writer to do something physical as well. It can help you write. I read that somewhere.’

  ‘I’m a vegetarian,’ Polly told Mr. Tanner. ‘I did inform the school of this at the beginning of the year and I was told that my needs would be catered for.’

  ‘Have a sausage then,’ Mr. Tanner said. ‘I wouldn’t guarantee there was any meat in these.’

  ‘The preservatives in sausages don’t agree with me,’ Polly said. ‘I would have thought it was easy enough for the school to arrange for some marinated tofu for the vegetarians. I can’t be the only one.’

  ‘The others provide their own lunch,’ Mr. Tanner pointed out. Most teachers would have already yelled at Polly by now but Mr. Tanner was only six months away from retirement and was determinedly cheerful under all circumstances. We knew this because he’d told us. Which was a mistake, really, because at first everyone had wanted to make him yell. We gave up though. His patience was simply greater than ours.

  ‘My mother is doing cupcakes for seventy today,’ Polly said. Her grumpiness had gone and she was just enjoying jousting with a teacher. ‘She didn’t have time to prepare a special lunch for me as well. Marcus, who is, as you probably know, a reasonably prominent sculptor, is looking for his muse. His exhibition opens this weekend and he’s worried that he’ll get artist’s block immediately after the opening and have to lie in a darkened room for a week like last time. So there was no one to make me lunch this morning, Mr. Tanner.’

  Mr Tanner flipped a rissole into a waiting bread wrap, topped it with fried onion, squeezed a dollop of sauce over it and handed it to me. ‘Congratulations, Magenta McPhee,’ he said. ‘Third prize for Blue House, that’ll boost our results, won’t it? Come back if you want a sausage,’ and he winked at me before turning back to Polly. ‘I wasn’t suggesting that your parents should prepare you alternatives to our traditional post cross-country fare, but rather that you were old enough yourself to anticipate hunger in the face of our carnivorous repast.’

  I wished I had my notebook with me. Listening to Mr. Tanner was like reading a fantasy novel. I should have been taking notes. Mind you, he only talked this way with Polly. Otherwise he was pretty normal.

  ‘Our fridge is full of cupcake mix,’ Polly said, ‘and wax castings, Jane’s white wine and the brat’s antibiotics. He has a middle-ear infection but went to childcare anyway this morning because he could actually stand up without falling over. I’m practically an abandoned child, Mr. Tanner.’

  ‘Then have a sausage, Polly,’ Mr. Tanner smiled at her. ‘Abandoned children sometimes must abandon their principles in order to survive.’

  Polly sighed. ‘I’ll have barbecue sauce, not tomato, thanks,’ she said.

  I pinned my green ribbon to my shorts. Everyone could see it and know I’d got third place.

  ‘So,’ Polly said, ‘well done, Magenta. I guess I could help you train. You’ll need a motivator.’

  The sausage had cured her bad temper.

  ‘That could be good,’ I said. ‘Like a personal trainer?’

  ‘More than that,’ Polly said, ‘a motivator is with you every step of the way. It’s a new American thing. I read about it on the Net. Did you see my rain? All I needed to do was spend a bit more time on that spell and I’d have it perfected. It was great, wasn’t it? Nothing on the forecast about rain today – that was all mine.’

  ‘You are getting better,’ I squeezed her arm, ‘well done, Polly! You have the third-prize rain-making ribbon – a new category in the cross-country!’

  ‘Thanks,’ Polly grinned at me. ‘Wait until I can make lurve potions. Who do you fancy? I’ve got my eyes on Adam Lister.’


  ‘Adam Lister!’

  ‘Why not?’ Polly stuck her chin out. ‘He’s only two grades ahead.’

  ‘But he’s hot, Polly. He’s hot and he’s with Katey and they’ve been together, like, for ages.’

  ‘I’ll wait until he’s free,’ Polly conceded. ‘I think it’s unethical to break people up – it’s against my feminist principles. Sisterhood is sacred. I’ll practise on Hentley, I think.’

  Hentley was a year above us. He wasn’t exactly hot but he had a good smile, great ears and clowned around as though everything was okay in his world when we all knew that his dad had walked out leaving his mum with three kids and no job. Hentley couldn’t afford to buy school textbooks but borrowed them from the library. He worked on weekends, mowing lawns and stuff, and gave the money to his mum. Hentley was cool in an uncool way.

  ‘I don’t think you should practise on anyone,’ I said. ‘What happens if Hentley falls head over heels and you’re just toying with his emotions? That’s not very ethical, Polly.’

  ‘I might fall head over heels, too,’ Polly said calmly. ‘I like Hentley. He has values.’

  There were times when Polly sounded as though she was someone’s mother. I put it down to her being the daughter of Jane and Marcus who talked about everything in front of her.

  ‘What about you?’ she turned to me. ‘Who shall you use my lurve potion on?’

  I shook my head. I wasn’t going to play.

  ‘Not still pining after Richard?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Magenta! It’s been years.’

  ‘Three years, two months, three weeks and one day,’ I said. I kept a record.

  Polly shook her head. ‘That’s crazy, Mags. You should get out more, live a little. You are too much your father’s daughter.’

  ‘Well that’s not true,’ I said, ‘I have to be my father’s daughter because I am. Anyway, constancy is a good thing. Everyone in fantasy books is constant as the day.’

  ‘Yes, but we aren’t living in fantasy, Mags, we’re in the contemporary world and it’s standard practice now for girls to have crushes on many boys, right through high school and university. We should probably all go out with at least ten different guys before we graduate. Then, eventually, when the biological clock’s winding down a little, we find the one and marry him. After eleven point five years we divorce him and find another Mr. Right. That’s the modern way.’

  ‘Jane and Marcus aren’t divorced.’

  ‘Marcus is too used to Jane’s cooking,’ Polly said. ‘He’d never leave Jane. Jane’s got this thing about happy families. She’d do anything to keep it together. And she does work at it – always pestering Marcus to do meditation classes with her and couples’ massage. Marcus goes along with it but you can tell he’s just zoning out.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ I said, trying to fray the bottom of my third-place ribbon. ‘I can’t help who I am.’

  Polly looked at me seriously and nodded, ‘No,’ she said, ‘you can’t. That’s true.’

  When I got home from school, Dad was sitting in the lounge room with curtains drawn listening to some mournful music.

  ‘I got third place!’ I said, waving my ribbon at him. ‘In the cross-country.’

  ‘Well done, Magenta!’ he said. ‘Let me see.’

  I turned on the light so he could admire the ribbon. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, stretching his mouth into a smile, ‘nothing at all. I’ve just been sitting here listening. You can hear better in the dark, you know.’

  ‘How was the sausage sizzle?’

  ‘The usual – the sausages sizzled. People bought them. Good thing, really, that the rain didn’t last all that long. It might have deterred people from coming out. We – the library – made quite a bit of money. I was personally thanked for my part in making it happen.’

  ‘So why are you sitting in the dark looking unhappy?’

  ‘I’m not – well, I’m not deliberately looking unhappy. I was just listening to some music.’

  ‘Mournful music,’ I said, ‘as if you wanted the music to cry along with you.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Magenta. Come on, now, how will we celebrate this wonderful ribbon?’

  We ended up having takeaway pizza for dinner and renting a DVD. I’d chosen, so it was a love story. I wanted to get Dad in the mood for my news. I’d decided that the best thing I could do was simply tell him the truth. It was something that Mr. Tanner had mentioned earlier in the day, comforting Josh Lynam who’d twisted his ankle on the last bend and missed first place for the first time in three years.

  ‘You did your best, Josh,’ he’d said, popping two sausages in the piece of bread, ‘that’s all you can do in this world. You did your best but the fates were against you on that last bend. Could have happened to anyone. You just tell your dad that you did your best and that’s what counts. Heavens, I saw you pick yourself and limp on – not all kids would have bothered. You’re a stayer, Josh.’

  I know that didn’t sound as though it was a very inspirational message for me. I mean, my ankles were fine and I wasn’t worried about running anyway. But what I thought when I heard Mr. Tanner say it was how I’d only done my best in the whole Spooky thing and what was the worst thing that could happen when I told Dad? He wasn’t going to kick me out of the house. He wasn’t going to hit me – like we all thought Josh’s dad might do, though no one knew for sure. He might yell for a while, or do that sighing I’m-so-disappointed thing they do. But I’d still be alive at the end of the night, and so would he. He’d come in, like he always did, to wish me goodnight, kiss me on the forehead and stroke my hair off my face. I might be grounded for a week, but so what? Things wouldn’t change all that much.

  I sat down at the computer and printed out all the emails between Dad and Spooky. I printed out the profile Polly and I had written for him and Spooky’s profile, too. I took them into the lounge room. Dad had put on more music, but it was a little happier this time.

  ‘Hey there, marathon girl,’ he said, ‘what’s up?’

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ I said, ‘or show you, really.’

  I handed him the wad of paper and sat down on the lounge, waiting.

  ‘What is all this?’ Dad asked. ‘Why is my photo on this?’

  ‘Just read it, please, Dad. And remember, I only did it to make you happy.’

  There was silence while Dad read the first couple of pages. I picked at the skin around my fingernails. I really wanted long fingernails I could paint with glittery colours but I always picked them when I was anxious, so it never happened. I tried to think what colours I’d like my fingernails to be. I imagined purple and orange. Then I looked at Dad. He was frowning. I stopped trying to think of other things and just wondered what he was going to say to me – and how I was going to persuade him to still meet Spooky.

  ‘Oh Magenta,’ Dad was about six pages in, ‘why on earth did you think this was a good idea?’

  ‘You aren’t meeting anyone,’ I said. ‘Mum’s getting married and you’re still drooping around. Everyone’s Internet dating these days – even Polly’s grandmother.’

  ‘I should have known Polly was in this! How long has this been going on?’

  ‘A few weeks. It’s been harder and harder to write the emails.’

  ‘I’m surprised you managed at all,’ Dad said. He came over to where I sat and ruffled my hair. ‘I guess this is just another facet of your writing career?’

  ‘So you’re not angry?’

  ‘Well, I’m not happy. I think this probably counts as identity fraud and could be punished by law. But I’m mainly sad that you’ve been thinking I’m so sad. There have been a few setbacks, I admit. Today I was feeling sad because ... well, never mind. Generally speaking though I’m okay, Magenta. It’s hard when everything you though
t was working goes bottom up, but it’s a good time to reassess and that’s what I’ve been doing.’

  I didn’t want to hear the reassessment speech – I’d heard it too many times before. ‘But you will meet her,’ I interrupted him, ‘you’ll have coffee with Spooky?’

  ‘I most certainly will not!’ Dad said. ‘You’ll email this poor woman and tell her the truth immediately, Magenta.’

  ‘But Dad, why? Why won’t you just have coffee with her? What harm would that do?’

  ‘It puts us both in a false position,’ Dad said. ‘She’ll think I’m interested in her and I’m not and I’ll know that this was your doing. No, Magenta.’

  ‘How do you know you’re not interested in her?’ I said desperately. ‘She’s really quite pretty in an old kind of way.’

  Dad looked at the photo I’d printed out in colour. ‘Yes, she is,’ he conceded. ‘She has warm eyes.’

  ‘So if you met her at a party or – a sausage sizzle, you might ask her to coffee.’

  Dad looked at me oddly and frowned, ‘What do you mean, if I met her at a sausage sizzle?’ he asked sharply.

  ‘Nothing.’ I didn’t understand. Why was he giving me The Look? Dad glared at me for a few seconds and then went back to studying the photo.

  ‘I might,’ he said slowly, ‘but it would depend on the chemistry between us. When men and women meet there’s a certain chemistry and I’ve always trusted that. Your mum and I had it. I had it with – well a couple of people.’

  ‘But Dad,’ I ploughed on, ‘how would you know if you had it with Spooky if you didn’t meet her? You might completely waste this opportunity and the chemistry might have zinged between you. She’s got a son, you know. Have you read that far?’

  ‘I’ll read them all,’ Dad said, ‘while you go and do your homework. Then we’ll talk about it.’

  I sat in my room staring at the English questions on our set book. It seemed to take Dad ages to read through the emails, though he sprinted through his library books. When he finally came into my room it was past my bedtime and I was yawning.