Time for Jas

by Natasha Farrant

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Honestly Mum, it’s fine. I know how busy you are.’

  She hugged me and said, like she always does, ‘Thank heavens for my sensible Blue.’

  My phone pinged as she left the room. It was a message from Skye, with a picture of a zebra baring its teeth and the caption bluebells are my favourite food.

  ‘Very funny,’ I wrote back.

  I really do hate it when Mum calls me sensible.

  The Film Diaries of Bluebell Gadsby

  Scene Two

  Flowers on the Way to School

  Blenheim Avenue, eight o’clock in the morning. Cars, vans, delivery trucks, taxis and red double-decker buses crawl through rush-hour traffic. Bicycles, scooters and motorbikes weave around them. The weather is fine again after a rainy weekend, but it is clear that summer is over. The sun is lower, the light softer. The sun shines but there is a chill in the air. People wear cardigans and jackets.

  The street is crowded with all manner of people: men in suits and overalls and hard hats, women in heels and sneakers and work dresses and jeans, women veiled, women in saris, black skin, white skin, everything in between skin, people talking English, Polish, French, Spanish, Hindi, Czech and Arabic, people pushing babies in buggies and dragging toddlers, crowding bus stops and disappearing underground to the Tube, with takeout cups and briefcases and dogs of all shapes and sizes, dachshunds and collies and spaniels and terriers, on leads, on chains, on pieces of string. Squirrels scoot along trees. Pigeons flap. Cats skulk.

  Today is the first day back at school. Children in different uniforms drag their feet in bundled groups along the pavement. Red and black, grey-tipped navy, bottle green. Primary kids in brightly coloured sweatshirts, Year Sevens squeaky clean with too-big blazers and skirts just the right length and brand new school bags, older kids looking scuffed and knocked about, with rolled-up skirts and battered rucksacks and buttons undone as far as they dare.

  DODI, TWIG and JASMINE walk along Blenheim Avenue, their lack of uniform marking them out as Clarendon Free School students.

  Dodi is impeccable as ever in her first day outfit of skinny jeans, suede sneakers and a flowery bomber jacket. Twig wears shorts, shiny new trainers and a hoody. Jas, inspired by Pixie, is wearing her favourite happy clothes: her ripped, too-short summer dress, freshly washed for the occasion, over purple leggings and silver high-tops and under an old lacy cardigan of Flora’s, her mane of wild black hair tied high on her head by a rainbow-striped ribbon.

  CAMERAMAN (BLUEBELL, in jeans, trainers and an oversized grey sweatshirt she thought was cute but is now worried just looks like it’s her dad’s) films as she follows, walking very slowly.

  Two primary school twin girls walk past in bright red sweatshirts and pigtails. One skips, swinging her satchel. The other scowls and shuffles, then stops walking completely.

  PIGTAILED GIRL

  Why do I have to go to school?

  Camera zooms in on her stamping foot, then follows pavement to where it opens into a narrow alley between two buildings, just wide enough for the blue transit van which blocks its entry. There is less than a foot of space between the sides of the van and the walls of the buildings, and that space is dark and full of shadows. Nobody would think of looking at it, but something – a flash of unexpected colour – has caught Cameraman’s eye.

  She crouches beside the van, adjusts lighting, zooms in on the wall on the left-hand side. She walks around the front of the van and does the same on the other side.

  Both walls are covered in chalk drawings of bluebells.

  Tuesday 7 September

  The first spring after Iris died, Grandma took me to see the bluebells near Horsehill. It was a special expedition just for me. She came to get me in London all the way from Devon, and she took me back with her on the train even though it was a school day, because she said I had to see them when they were perfect. ‘It’s like seeing the sea under the trees,’ she said.

  I had no idea what she meant until we got there, but then I understood immediately. It was like a whole ocean of flowers, a swaying cloud of delicate blue, bright and luminous in the gloom of the forest. ‘Every year, they come back,’ Grandma whispered as we watched, and I knew it was her way of telling me that life goes on.

  The bluebells on the walls were the same. Not so much ‘life goes on’, but ‘look how pretty even this old wall can be if you just try’. There are thin cracks along the bottom of the walls, full of earth blown in from the street, tufts of grass and weeds like dandelions. The artist has drawn the flowers like they’re growing out of them, following the lines of the real plants so it looks like the bluebells are growing up the bricks, before turning into a sea of blue like the flowers in the wood near Grandma’s. They looked so real I put down my camera and reached out to touch them. Blue chalk came off on my hand. I stared at it, my mind whirring.

  Bluebells.

  I could have stood there for ages, but Dodi marched back to get me and said she doesn’t want me getting detention for being late on the very first day.

  ‘If you’re in detention,’ she said, ‘I’ll have to walk home with Jake.’

  ‘Look!’ I pointed at the flowers, but she was already walking away. I wiped my hands on my sweatshirt and ran after her.

  We dropped Jas off at the primary school. Twig, looking a bit green, went off to the gym to join all the other Year Sevens, while Dodi and I stayed in the schoolyard to wait for Jake.

  We – me, Dodi, Jake and his best friends Colin and Tom – are all in the same form again. Miss Foundry is our form tutor and is teaching us English, but because this year we get to choose our own subjects, we’re not together for everything.

  Dodi, as usual, knows what everybody is doing.

  ‘All together for English,’ she announced at lunchtime, waving our timetables about. ‘And Maths. Jake and Colin are together for Geography, me and Tom and Blue have History, Jake and Tom have French when me and Colin and Blue do Spanish, and Tom is the only one doing art.’

  There’s a new boy in our form, and she grabbed his subject list as he walked past our table and worked out when we have classes with him, too.

  ‘We can show you where to go,’ she said kindly.

  ‘Ignore her,’ Tom advised him. ‘Or she’ll rule your life.’

  Jake, who had been gazing lovingly at Dodi all through her announcements, said not to talk to Poodle like that.

  I said, ‘Poodle?’

  Dodi glared at everyone like she was daring us to laugh.

  I didn’t recognise the new boy at first. His name is Marek Valenta and he is very pale with black hair perfectly parted on one side. He was dressed like a sort of expensive European model in pressed jeans, a soft leather jacket, a pale blue shirt and loafers. In form he sat right at the front, listened to everything Miss Foundry said, took lots of notes and didn’t speak to anybody all morning, except to Hattie Verney when she asked him where he was before Clarendon Free and he said ‘Prague’, which is in the Czech Republic.

  But then, at lunch, when everyone was laughing at Dodi and Jake and the whole Poodle thing, he quietly took back his timetable. His hair flopped forward as he shoved it in his school bag, and I remembered where I had seen him before.

  ‘You were in the square the other day!’ I said. ‘You’d been playing tennis!’

  The new boy didn’t look at me but stared at my chalk-covered, too-big sweatshirt in a way that made me worry all over again about how scruffy I looked.

  ‘There was a dog!’ I insisted to cover up my embarrassment. ‘A dachshund, going round and round, trying to do a …’

  Now the others were all laughing at me.

  Tom asked, ‘What exactly was the dog trying to do?’ while Jake and Colin started going round and round in circles pretending to sniff each other’s bottoms.

  ‘It was him,’ I insisted as the new boy walked away, and I think Tom felt sorry for me, because he told the others to stop.

  Tom has changed. He�
�s grown, for a start. He looks about a foot taller than before the holidays, and he’s got lots of spots, but he behaves like he doesn’t even know they’re there and also like he’s not just part of the Jake–Colin–Tom trio any more, but an actual separate person. He walked part of the way home with us after school. I thought of showing him the flowers, but when we went past they had already been washed away.

  At dinner tonight (scrambled eggs and mashed potato), Mum was very careful to ask me first about my day, and I was very careful not to tell her about the bluebell field. If I did, and she actually listened, I am almost sure there would be a fuss. That is the way with my family – all or nothing. Then, if I told her about the bluebells today, I would probably end up saying about the zebra, and even though I do often wish I got more attention, there is a strong chance that instead of saying, ‘Darling, how lovely,’ she would freak out about stalkers or something. And then Flora would chip in with either, ‘Ooh, Blue’s got an admirer’ or, ‘Why would anyone stalk her?’ and it would all be completely exhausting.

  So instead I said, ‘I got my timetable,’ and then she moved on to Twig and asked about his first day at school and he said ‘fine’, quite cautiously, like he hadn’t made up his mind yet if he liked it or not, and then Jas stuck her jaw out the way she does when she’s decided something and said, ‘There’s an art competition at school, just for Year Six. It’s got a theme and everything. The theme is: the Circle of Life.’

  ‘Like in The Lion King?’ Twig asked. ‘What does that even mean?’

  Jas said she didn’t know about The Lion King, but that Mr Boniface, the art teacher, says that it’s all about nature, and things dying but then coming to life again, like flowers after the winter.

  Like bluebells, I thought.

  ‘I didn’t know you were interested in art,’ Mum said.

  ‘I’m not,’ Jas said. ‘I’m interested in winning.’

  Thursday 9 September

  Pixie moved in last night. This morning, when I came down for breakfast Mum had already left for work, and Pixie was standing on a purple mat in the kitchen with her eyes closed and the baby monitor next to her and the palms of her hands pressed together in front of her chest.

  ‘It’s yoga,’ Twig explained. ‘Apparently she does it every morning.’

  Pixie let out a huge breath like a cat hissing, and folded in two, grabbing hold of her toes. Upstairs, Pumpkin was waking up. We heard him gurgle through the baby monitor. Pixie peered at us through a gap between her knees.

  ‘Should I go?’ she asked.

  The monitor crackled, and Jas begin to sing.

  Hush little baby don’t you cry-ooh

  Jas ain’t going nowhere

  She’s going to stay right here by-you

  If you say a little prayer

  ‘Bless.’ Pixie smiled, like it was the cutest thing ever.

  ‘She wrote that herself,’ Twig told her.

  Pixie said again how talented Jas is. My phone pinged. It was Dodi, saying we were late and she couldn’t wait for us. I looked at the time and cried, ‘We have to go to school!’

  ‘School?’ Pixie looked baffled.

  ‘We’re going to be late!’

  ‘Late?’

  I think maybe Pixie is only really good at looking after babies.

  The singing on the monitor started again.

  Jas is gonna stay home all day

  Looking after you

  We’re just gonna laugh and play

  Nobody’ll be blue

  ‘JAS!’ I went out into the garden and shouted up at Pumpkin’s window. The singing stopped. Pumpkin started to cry. Jas appeared, still in her nightie, and flung the window open.

  ‘Now see what you’ve done!’ she yelled. ‘He was happy a second ago.’

  Pixie and Twig came out into the garden. We all stood there in a row, looking up at Jas.

  ‘You’re not dressed!’ I shouted.

  ‘I’m not going to school today. Mum said I didn’t have to.’

  ‘Did she really?’ Twig asked. Pixie scrunched up her face and said she didn’t remember Mum saying anything about school at all.

  In my head, I heard Mum saying, ‘Thank goodness for my sensible Blue’. I shan’t say a word, I thought. It’s none of my business if she goes to school or not.

  ‘You can’t bunk off in your first week.’ Flora appeared at the window next to Jas, yawning, her curly hair standing up on end from being slept on, and said she totally sympathised with Jas, that only swots and idiots liked school but that it was less boring than staying at home all day, that Jas could borrow any clothes she wanted and when she was ready, Flora would take her in.

  ‘Any clothes at all?’ Jas asked. Flora said yes. Jas went inside to dress, and Twig and I ran all the way to school. By the time we arrived I was pink and sweaty and the tiny bit of eye makeup I’d put on this morning was running down my face from under my glasses. The new boy in his perfectly ironed jeans stared at me like I came from another planet. Dodi rolled her eyes, handed me a face wipe and a hand-mirror and said next time I should try using waterproof mascara.

  ‘I will never in a million years look as sophisticated as her,’ I complained to Skye this afternoon on the phone. ‘She’s my best friend, but she makes me feel like a scruffy little kid.’

  Skye said scruffy people were his favourite kind. I think he was trying to help, but it didn’t make me feel any better.

  Saturday 11 September

  Marek Valenta came to our house this evening for a drink with his parents. Mum met his mother in the supermarket and invited them.

  ‘I thought it would be a nice neighbourly thing to do,’ she said when I protested. ‘They’ve only just arrived here from Prague.’

  ‘But he’s in my form!’ I said.

  ‘All the more reason to invite him,’ Mum said. ‘You can be friends.’

  ‘He keeps looking at my clothes.’

  Mum said she had no idea what I was talking about and please could I go to the shop to buy crisps.

  Marek Valenta looks just like his mother, who is English and pale with dark hair and eyes, but you can tell he’s his father son just by the way he dresses. I think they are both a bit afraid of Mr Valenta, who looks like a robin and talks with a heavy East European accent and never lets either of them speak.

  Dad says Mr Valenta is tremendously rich, and has moved his company from Prague to London in order to get even richer. His trousers are perfectly creased, his shirt perfectly ironed under a navy blue blazer, he wears a maroon dotted cravat round his neck and he likes talking about how rich he is. Mum admired his hat and he told her it was custom made for him in Paris.

  ‘And my brogues were hand-stitched in Italy!’ Mr Valenta beamed, showing two gold teeth that are probably encrusted with diamonds. ‘Only the best will do!’

  Dad, who has come home for a few days from looking after Grandma in Devon, tugged at the sleeve of his cardigan to hide the holes at the elbows. Mrs Valenta, who looked very posh in a silk dress and heels but is much nicer than her husband, said how pretty our piano was and asked who played.

  Mum said, no-one since our ex-nanny Zoran moved out. Mrs Valenta said her husband used to play the violin.

  ‘Extremely well, actually,’ She said. ‘He was accepted at the Conservatoire in Prague. He wanted to be a professional musician.’

  A funny look passed between them at that moment. Mr Valenta looked annoyed, but also lost – like he hadn’t expected her to say what she did, and had no idea how to react. She gazed back at him looking nervous but also defiant, like she was daring him to react.

  It was so quick, I don’t think anyone else noticed. Then Mr Valenta laughed.

  ‘But there was no money in it!’ He waved his hand to dismiss all talk of pianos and violins, and went back to his lecture about clothes. ‘I see these young people at Marek’s school, with their dirty jeans and their hoods on their heads. How can you learn, dressed like that, hmm?’ He swept us with an imper
ious gaze. Dad tugged at his cardigan again. ‘I wanted Marek to go to the proper British boarding school, with suits and shirts and ties. St Llwydian. It is in Wales – do you know it? The pupils run ten miles every day before breakfast to be fit and strong. But he begged me no. I want to be normal, Tata. I do not want to do the running or wear the shirts and ties. I want to stay in London which reminds me of Prague. Fine, I said. Go to school with the hoody boys, but if your grades or behaviour are ANYTHING SHORT OF EXEMPLARY …’ – everyone’s eyes turned to his upheld finger – ‘it is off to St Llwydian with you! Eh, Marek?’

  ‘Yes, Tata.’

  I don’t think a single one of us would have stood Mum or Dad talking to us like that for one second, but Marek didn’t so much as blink.

  ‘Do you miss Prague, Marek?’ Mum asked gently.

  ‘Yes.’ Marek blushed as he replied, and didn’t dare look at his father. ‘Yes, I do. Very much.’

  ‘I would like to go to boarding school,’ Jas said thoughtfully. ‘If it was like the Chalet School or Hogwarts. I think it would be infinitely better than real school.’

  Mr Valenta squinted at her and asked what she was talking about. Mum explained they were boarding schools in books. Mr Valenta said he was pleased to hear that Jas was a reader, but he hoped stories didn’t get in the way of her schoolwork and said that Marek here didn’t waste his time reading for pleasure, did he?

  ‘No, Tata.’

  Jas glared at Mr Valenta. Upstairs, Pumpkin started to cry. Mum nudged her. Jas left, still glaring, but Marek’s father had turned his attention to Flora, asking if she was off to university.

  Flora said she was going to drama school.

  ‘There’s no money in acting,’ Mr Valenta declared. ‘Not unless you make it to the very top. Are you going to make it to the very top, young lady?’