Magenta McPhee

by Catherine Bateson

  ‘You’d like to get her settled?’ I dried the plate mechanically.

  ‘Yes. Settled. I don’t mean married or anything, just settled down. Calmer. Happier. With a bit of a life of her own. If she had someone like your dad, she’d be all right. I wouldn’t have to worry about her.’

  ‘That’s why I went on the Net,’ I said. ‘For Dad. He seemed depressed. I’m not sure that I was right, though.’

  ‘He doesn’t seem depressed,’ Cal said. ‘He seems too energetic to be depressed. Aren’t depressed people supposed to sleep a lot and not want to go out? Or do you think meeting Mum has cheered him up?’

  I didn’t think Lianna had made the difference, but I couldn’t tell Cal that and I wasn’t sure. Maybe she had. Maybe they’d get to the hand-holding stage by the end of the weekend. What did I know? I couldn’t even write a kissing scene in the Chronicles.

  ‘We should give them some alone time,’ I said. ‘So they can get to know each other.’

  Cal looked at me, his eyebrows raised. ‘Why exactly did you think I offered to clear up?’ he asked, ‘because I love washing dishes in cold soapy water?’

  Mum had always told me that you could tell how a man was going to treat his girlfriends by the way he related to his mother. If that was true Cal would be the perfect boyfriend. Unless he was going to be my stepbrother. That would really mess up the boyfriend bit. I didn’t know what to hope for anymore.

  ‘You do like Mum?’ Cal asked. ‘I mean, I know she comes across as a bit hopeless, but really she isn’t.’

  ‘Yes, I like her,’ I said. ‘But anyway, it isn’t me liking her that’s important, is it? It’s whether Dad likes her.’

  ‘And whether she likes Max,’ Cal pointed out.

  Then there didn’t seem to be much more to say about it so we finished the washing up and played cards. I won five games out of seven. I liked Cal a lot, particularly when he told me Lady Luck rode on my shoulder. It was such a cool thing to think. I wondered if I could get Ricardo to say that to Rosa in the Chronicles. Would they play cards? They might even gamble. That would be a bit more action I could put in. What if he gambled for something really important?

  ‘Penny for them?’ Cal interrupted my thoughts.

  ‘Just thinking of gambling,’ I said to him.

  ‘Really? I don’t think you should at your age.’

  ‘No, silly, this is for the Chronicles. I’m having problems, because of the action. As in there isn’t much. But if I had this character gamble for something really important – I don’t know what – then it would be a bit more action and excitement.’

  ‘He could gamble for the hand of his lover,’ Cal said, without even stumbling over the word ‘lover’. ‘That would be pretty exciting. If he loses she has to go off with the villain. If he wins they live happily ever after. People still do that in fantasies.’

  ‘People still do that in real life. I mean, sometimes they must, don’t you think?’

  Cal shrugged. ‘Maybe the second time round when they’ve learnt how to do it better. Look, here they come. Do you reckon they like each other yet?’

  We watched Spooky and Dad walking down the road to us. They weren’t holding hands or even walking close.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said slowly. ‘They don’t even look as though they’re talking to each other.’

  ‘Blast it!’ Cal said. ‘I really thought ... oh well, maybe it’s still a little early.’

  I must admit, though, I felt a small shiver of pleasure at the thought that Dad and Spooky didn’t really like each other. That way there was the remotest chance that Cal and I might be able to get to the like like stage. If Lady Luck continued to ride on my shoulder.

  Confessions

  ‘Well,’ Dad said as they arrived at the tent, ‘what a treat, coming back from good coffee and a pleasant chat to discover the washing-up already done. Thanks, kids. What is everyone planning for this afternoon? Lianna and I thought we might walk over to Squeaky Beach. What do you think?’

  ‘That sounds great,’ I said.

  ‘Except that Magenta and I thought we might hang out at the river,’ Cal cut in smoothly, beetling his eyebrows at me, ‘didn’t we, Magenta?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said quickly. ‘Some kids were going...’

  ‘Fishing,’ Cal finished for me. ‘We thought we’d check out what they were catching.’

  ‘They had a canoe,’ I said, not to be outdone.

  ‘Cal,’ Spooky said, ‘you can always go fishing, but you mightn’t get another chance to go to Squeaky Beach for a long time. Please come.’

  ‘It’s only sand that squeaks,’ I said.

  ‘Cal!’

  ‘I really want to see the fishing,’ Cal said. ‘I mean, we do. Magenta and me.’

  ‘And the canoe,’ I added, in case he’d forgotten.

  ‘Cal, can I have a word in private?’ Spooky said and stepped forward to touch his arm.

  ‘No, Mum.’ Cal stepped back, away from her. ‘It’s just really simple. Magenta and I want to see the fishing and the canoe. You and Max can go to Squeaky Beach. You’re not kids. You don’t need supervision.’

  ‘Private?’

  ‘There’s no point, Mum.’

  ‘All right then, I’ll have to say this in front of everyone. I think it’s lovely that you’re trying to give Max and me some adult space but Max and I are just friends, Cal. That’s all.’

  ‘Yes, I know that, but you might...’ Cal was blushing to the roots of his dark hair.

  ‘No, we won’t, Cal. Max has made it quite clear that he’s interested in someone else.’

  ‘You’re what? Who?’ It was the first I’d ever heard of this.

  ‘So you’ve just been leading Mum on?’ Cal squared up to my Dad and for a ridiculous moment I thought he was going to offer to fight him.

  ‘I haven’t led her on,’ Dad said. ‘I just offered to take you both camping, that’s all.’

  ‘When you were interested in someone else? I call that a rubbishy way to treat someone.’

  ‘Cal,’ Spooky said, ‘adults can be friends, you know. That’s what Max said the first time we met. It’s not fair to accuse him of leading me on.’

  ‘You put yourself up on a dating site and you’re interested in someone else.’

  ‘He didn’t put himself up,’ I said. ‘Still, Dad, you could have said something.’

  ‘I have,’ Dad said. ‘I told Lianna over coffee. I’d been trying to tell her over emails but you know what emails are like. It always came out wrongly or something. So we’ve had our wires a bit crossed but no harm’s done, is it, Lianna?’

  ‘Of course not, Max.’ Spooky smiled but it was a sad kind of smile.

  ‘I think it’s despicable,’ Cal said angrily. ‘I think it’s just despicable. Camping is ... well, it’s intimate. You share space with people. It hints at a bigger relationship than friendship.’

  ‘We have separate tents,’ I pointed out. ‘Dad, why didn’t you tell me, not Spooky. You should have told me.’

  ‘Stop calling her Spooky!’ Cal shouted.

  ‘Sorry. Dad, why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure if it was going anywhere. It didn’t look as though it was.’

  ‘That’s when you invited us camping,’ Cal said, ‘as a back-up.’

  ‘That’s not really what happened,’ Dad said but he was looking at his shoes.

  ‘You don’t tell a girl you’re interested in that you’re just going camping with another girl, but it’s okay because you’re friends,’ Cal said stubbornly. ‘I may only be a kid but I do know that much.’

  ‘I think we should just stop all this,’ Spooky said, fanning herself with her hat. ‘It’s not helping, Cal, darling. The point is that Max and I are just friends and that’s all that’s going to happen so why don
’t we walk to Squeaky Beach, the four of us together, and stop this bickering over nothing.’

  ‘You aren’t nothing,’ Cal said, ‘you’re the most important person in my life, Mum. That’s not nothing. I want you to be happy.’

  ‘Cal, darling, that’s so wonderful of you. You’re the most important person in my life, too, and always will be.’ I thought Spooky was going to cry but she just sniffed and smiled a watery smile at us all. ‘I’m actually quite happy, Cal. I only went on the Internet dating site because you pestered me to. Of course, it’s lovely meeting new people and I like both Max and Magenta. There wasn’t that chemistry, though. Was there, Max?’

  He looked a little embarrassed and cleared his throat but didn’t actually say anything. It didn’t matter, though, because Spooky was going to say it for them both.

  ‘You know, darling, when you meet someone you really really like, you do know straight away. There’s this little frisson of ... well ... frisson.’ Spooky said the word with a French accent that made it sound very exotic. ‘I had it with your father. I can remember so clearly.’

  ‘It didn’t get you very far then, did it, this chemical reaction,’ Cal muttered.

  ‘On the contrary,’ Spooky said, ‘it gave us fifteen wonderful years together. That’s a long way, Cal. These days. It also gave us you.’

  ‘I want to know who she is,’ I said. If Spooky and Cal could stick to their argument, I could stick to mine. ‘Who is she, Dad? Have I met her?’

  ‘Oh yes, quite a lot,’ Dad said. ‘You know her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Sandra, the librarian?’

  ‘Not the grumpy one?’ I couldn’t remember which one Sandra was. I never looked at their name tags ever.

  ‘No, not the grumpy one. The smiley one with beautiful eyes.’

  ‘As if that tells me anything,’ I complained, but actually I thought I did know the one he meant. She’d let me off a couple of overdue fines.

  ‘It’s all very well to go on about chemistry,’ Cal said, ‘but when are you going to meet someone special, Mum? If Max can do it – no offence, Max – you must be able to.’

  ‘I’m sure there’s someone out there,’ Spooky said. ‘It just isn’t the right time yet. It is however the right time to head off to Squeaky Beach. Do let’s go. I haven’t been there since I was a teenager, about your age, Magenta. I remember loving it.’

  We walked to Squeaky Beach in two distinct pairs – Dad and me, Spooky and Cal. I didn’t hear what they were talking about because I was too busy asking Dad all sorts of questions about Sandra.

  ‘So was Cal right, did you just have Spooky as a backup?’ I couldn’t believe that Dad would suddenly have two women interested in him. I shot a sideways glance at him. He looked okay dressed, when you couldn’t see his little pot belly because his shirt hung over it. ‘You’d better not ask Sandra camping,’ I told him, ‘because then she’ll see you in a wetsuit.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘You’ve got this little pot,’ I said, patting it. Sometimes I rubbed it for luck, the way you’re supposed to rub a statue of the Buddha.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Dad said, sucking in his tummy. ‘Not as bad as some.’

  ‘That’s true. Does she know you’re going bald?’

  ‘It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? To answer an earlier question, Magenta, which seems to me more important than these superficial ones, I suppose there might be a tiny little bit of truth in what Cal said. I’d invited Sandra out a couple of times but she was always busy. I wasn’t thinking of Lianna as more than a friend but I did think that I should start living some kind of life, rather than hanging around hoping that Sandra was interested in me.’ Dad checked out where Spooky and Cal were and lowered his voice a little so I had to lean in to hear what he was saying. It was crazy because the wind was whipping around and the ocean was roaring off the rocks.

  ‘I was also a bit sorry for Lianna and I thought, well, we could teach them to go camping and then she might feel a little less hopeless. She doesn’t seem to have particularly high self-esteem. I kind of liked that, I suppose. Your mother was always confident and competent. I guess it made me feel a bit protective or something. Then, after I’d asked them, Sandra told me at the library that she was free this weekend. She’d been trying for ages to convince her mother to move into a nursing home and her mother had finally found somewhere she thought would be all right.’

  ‘That’s why you said it was bad timing.’ I remembered. ‘So are you going out with Sandra?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dad said and he couldn’t hide his grin. ‘Yes, we’re going out next weekend.’

  ‘I’ll be at Mum’s!’

  ‘That’s right. You’ll be at your mother’s.’ Dad didn’t sound at all remorseful.

  ‘So I won’t get to meet her or anything.’

  ‘You’ve met her already,’ Dad said. ‘Anyway, I hope there’ll be lots more chances.’

  Squeaky Beach seemed to cheer Spooky up. Actually it was strange. Now that it was clear that she and Dad would only be friends, she seemed more relaxed and more natural. It was as if she was able to be herself. She stomped up the beach making the sand squeak with every step. She grabbed Cal’s arm and they did it together. Then they did a fake tango, right there in the sand. It didn’t matter that the entire beach watched. Spooky was nearly falling over, she was laughing so much.

  ‘It’s just how I remember!’ she said. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’

  ‘It’s pretty good,’ I said carefully, ‘but it is just sand that squeaks.’

  ‘No, darling, that’s where you’re wrong. This beach was the thirteenth summer of my life,’ Spooky said, throwing out her hands. ‘It was my life that summer.’

  ‘A good summer, then?’ Dad asked.

  ‘A perfect summer,’ Spooky said. ‘A perfect summer, a perfect boy. I don’t think he even knew I existed but I wrote love poems to him the entire holidays. He was divine.’

  ‘Mum!’

  Spooky shrugged at Cal and grinned. ‘Just divine.’

  I looked at Cal. Was he divine? No. I wouldn’t have said that. Pretty good, but not divine. I wasn’t even perfectly sure that Richard was divine when I thought about it. What was that frisson? My heart sometimes leapt against my rib cage when I saw Richard. Was that a frisson? It had done it with Cal, too, though – when we accidentally touched hands as he dealt out the cards. Could you have frissons with two boys?

  We went swimming at Squeaky Beach and even Spooky tucked her skirt up and waded in to her knees.

  ‘I don’t like swimming in the ocean,’ she told me. ‘I find it a bit confronting. You never know what might be lurking underneath. I’m afraid I don’t give Cal all the opportunities he deserves as a boy. That’s why I thought this trip with Max was so important. I was prepared to make an effort, even without the chemistry. For Cal’s sake.’

  ‘You mean you would have gone out with Dad so Cal could go camping?’

  ‘Sort of,’ Spooky said. ‘Perhaps not quite as bluntly as that sounds.’

  I shook my head. It seemed to me a good thing that Sandra had sorted out all this before it got really messy. Otherwise Dad might have gone out with Spooky because he felt both that he should have a life (hello! what had I been telling him?) and sorry for Spooky and she would have gone out with Dad because she felt Cal should have a different life. This wasn’t getting things right the second time round as far as I could see.

  ‘This frisson thing,’ I said to her, ‘can you have it with more than one boy?’

  ‘At certain times in your life, of course,’ Spooky said. ‘Gosh, when I was in my teens! Even older. I guess the thing is that at a certain age you don’t act on it when it could hurt other people.’

  ‘So it’s normal to have it for more than one boy?’ I dragged her back to the topic. I wasn’t going to hurt anyon
e.

  ‘Perfectly normal, darling. Are they two boys from school?’

  ‘No. No, not all.’

  Spooky looked at me. ‘Do they like you back?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t think so. Not like like.’

  ‘Oh well,’ she touched my shoulder gently, ‘you’ve got years and years ahead of you. There are more things to life than just love, too. Don’t forget that, Magenta.’

  ‘I won’t. I’m going to be a famous fantasy writer. I’m in the middle of the first book of my first trilogy. I was just wondering. My mother doesn’t talk about frissons or chemistry. They’ve got it, of course, Trib and Mum, they spend enough time smooching, but she’s a teacher.’

  Spooky nodded. ‘Teachers have to be practical. It makes it harder.’

  By the time we got back to the campsite it was getting dark. A strange snorting kind of noise was coming from Spooky’s tent. She grabbed my arm, but only because I was closest.

  ‘There’s someone in my tent,’ she whispered. ‘Look!’

  Sure enough, we could see something bulging out at the side.

  ‘He’s very short,’ I said.

  ‘Or bent over?’

  ‘Lianna,’ Dad came up behind us making us jump, ‘you haven’t left food in the tent, have you?’

  ‘Food? Anything open is in the esky.’

  ‘Secured?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Why?’

  ‘That’s not a person in your tent, it’s a wombat.’

  ‘A wombat? Oh my heavens. My face scrub. I bet it’s after my face scrub.’

  ‘It’s more likely to be after food.’

  ‘The stollen! I made a stollen. You can’t put that in an esky. It’d go soggy. It was in one of the green bags. With my face scrub. What will I do?’

  Dad dealt with the wombat. He chased it out of the tent by banging the side it was bulging out of and yelling loudly. The wombat shot through the tent entrance. They can move really fast for such short, fat little things.

  Spooky went in and came out with shreds of alfoil in her hands. ‘The stollen,’ she said. ‘All gone. Nothing left. All that work. At least my face scrub’s intact. It has ground almonds in it and honey. Just like the stollen really.’