I thought, I wonder what Marek would think of my film if I showed it to him?
I thought of his chalk ponies that looked like they were galloping to life underneath the motorway.
And I thought, I don’t want to make films that are as good as the real thing.
I want to make films that are better.
Why do you draw in secret?
And why does he target me?
Tuesday 26 October
Jas drowned the hair straighteners today. We all had to witness it. She made us process from the paddock to the stream, with her leading the way on Mopsy and Skye’s dog Elsie trotting beside her and her tiara on her head instead of a riding hat, like a princess setting out to slay a dragon, except she wasn’t carrying a sword but the hair straighteners on a ceremonial blue sofa cushion in front of her on the saddle.
She rode Mopsy right to the middle of the bridge over Grandma’s stream, and then she held up a hand to tell us all to stop on the banks, and stood up in the stirrups with the cushion held out before her and shouted, ‘I banish thee!’
Grandma asked, please could someone explain what was going on?
‘We are here to banish Jas’s demons,’ Pixie explained. She had changed out of her usual boiler suit for the occasion, and was wearing a sort of black witch’s cloak she had found in a charity shop in Plumpton, with a garland of ivy in her hair. Grandma said, please could someone else explain, because she failed to understand what demons had to do to with hair curlers.
‘They’re not curlers, they’re straighteners,’ I told her. ‘And they have been making Jas pretend she is something she’s not.’
Gloria remarked you could hardly blame the straighteners. Twig agreed but said we couldn’t very well drown Megan, Courtney, Chandra and Fran.
‘Apart from it being illegal,’ Twig said, ‘they are not actually here.’
‘Karma,’ Pixie murmured, but no-one answered because this was the moment when Jas brandished the straighteners over her head and hurled them over the bridge and into the water.
‘It’s not very ecological,’ Zoran said.
‘She just wants to blow the electrics,’ Twig said.
Then Jas recited a poem all about how bad straighteners are for hair, Twig fished them out of the stream, Isambard inspected them and said they were irreparable and they all went in for tea.
I didn’t go with them. Instead I walked out on to the moor, up and up until I reached the top of the hill. It was freezing and a fog was coming in. I shouldn’t have stayed – people lose their way and die on the moor every year in weather like that. But you feel so free, up there. I spread my arms and the wind rushed up and whipped my face, and my lungs filled with the damp, cold fog, and I ran in swooping circles pretending to be an aeroplane until I got dizzy, and crashed and lay on my back on the wet green grass alone in my whited-out world, laughing like a crazy person.
But then, when I’d finished laughing, I wanted to cry like I always do when I come here, because this was Iris’s favourite place in the world, and it was so beautiful, and even if I could capture it on camera or turn it into a picture as perfect as Marek’s, she would never see it.
Wednesday 27 October
I woke up before dawn to the sound of an engine outside my window, and when I opened my curtains there was Flora spilling out of a very old-looking car that was mainly blue but with one red door, dressed in her bunny rabbit onesie, snow boots, a duffle coat and a red tartan blanket. She saw me watching and waved. Other people started to climb out of the car after her.
‘What?’ I actually rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.
‘Open the door!’ she called up to me. ‘We’re dying of cold and I’m bursting for a pee!’
I tiptoed out of my room towards the stairs, but everyone was already awake.
‘Is something wrong?’ Zoran staggered on to the landing, rubbing his eyes.
‘What on earth is that racket?’ Grandma appeared in her dressing gown, clutching her walking stick like it was a weapon.
‘FLORA’S HERE!’ Jas’s bedroom door burst open.
In the dark behind, Twig groaned from under a heap of blankets. Outside, Flora and her friends were singing ‘Frosty the Snowman’ to keep warm. Pumpkin started to cry. In the bed next to his cot, Pixie started crooning. Gloria followed Zoran out on to the landing wearing her jodhpurs and muckingout sweater.
‘Might as well get up,’ she yawned.
There were four drama students singing on the step when I opened the door – Flora, a massive bearded boy called Peter who looks like a bear, another boy called Barney with wild curly blond hair, and a beautiful girl with copper hair down to her waist and an old-fashioned velvet dress who said we should call her Maud, even though it’s not her real name.
‘Because of Maud Gonne,’ Peter-the-bear explained. ‘She was an Irish actress married to the poet W.B. Yeats. We all had to pick someone we admired at the beginning of term and think about how we would act them. She’s been pretending to be Maud since September.’
‘I love her,’ Maud said simply.
‘And I’m starving!’ Flora cried. ‘Is there any breakfast?’
They ate, and ate, and ate. They finished all the eggs and all the bacon and all the bread. They used all the milk in big frothy cups of coffee and they devastated the fruit bowl and then, when they couldn’t eat any more, Flora announced they had to sleep because they had been driving all night and were fit to drop.
‘What are we going to eat?’ Twig peered crossly at the empty fridge.
‘We’ll go to the shops after we’ve slept,’ Flora promised.
‘But I’m hungry now.’
Zoran asked how long was Flora planning on staying and where was she intending to sleep? Flora said she hadn’t thought of that, she’d just come for a bit of a holiday and didn’t we all think it was a lovely surprise?
‘Are you on half-term?’ Jas asked. ‘We’re staying until Sunday.’
She drooped a bit when she said that, I think because she remembered that Sunday is Halloween.
‘We might be sort of just a tiny bit bunking off,’ Flora admitted. She put her arms round Grandma. ‘Don’t tell Mum and Dad?’
Grandma, who adores Flora and intrigue and anything rebellious, said of course she wouldn’t. Zoran gazed at her like he was saying please tell your grand-daughter this just isn’t possible. Grandma, who was listening to Maud recite the poetry of W.B. Yeats, said nonsense, of course they could stay.
‘Flora and Maud and Jas can move in with Blue,’ Grandma said. ‘And the boys can share with Twig. There’s plenty of bedding.’
‘But the cooking …’
‘I’ll help,’ Barney said. ‘I like cooking.’
And so they stayed, and took over the house. They slept all morning after breakfast, so Jas and Twig and I had to tiptoe in and out of our rooms to get dressed, and they never did make it to the shops. Instead when they woke up, they went to the pub, and they came back singing at five o’clock when it was getting dark, long after Zoran, Twig and I had been shopping and peeled a mountain of potatoes and chopped a tonne of onions and carrots and celery.
Barney didn’t help to cook at all. Instead he sat in the bath for hours, using up all the hot water and playing his violin. Peter, who has the most delicate hands for a person so big, left a trail of wood shavings all over the kitchen, carving a horse for Jas out of a piece of wood he picked up on the way home from the pub, and Maud spooked the real horses by practising the trumpet out by the paddock.
And nobody minded. How could we? After dinner, while the rest of us washed up, Zoran played the piano while Barney played the fiddle. And after the washing up, Maud said we had to dance. ‘Outside!’ she insisted. ‘By the light of the moon!’
We’ve danced outside at Horsehill, but never in winter, with the air so cold it burns your lungs and face and hands. And we’ve sung round the piano many times, but never so loud. It was two o’clock in the morning by the ti
me we finally went to bed, Skye wobbling away to the Hanrattys’ on his bicycle, Gloria grumbling that she had to be up again at dawn for the horses.
‘I’ll help you,’ Maud promised. ‘I’m good with horses.’
Gloria laughed. Maud tooted her trumpet, a single blast that made everybody jump.
I watched their faces, all of them, all through the evening. Peter, quiet and grave. Barney lost in music. Maud like some sort of ethereal, mischievous sprite. Flora quieter than usual. Skye for once not talking about horses. Gloria half asleep. Zoran thumping away at the piano. Grandma beaming. Twig laughing, his rugby bruises fading. Pixie with Pumpkin on her lap, clapping to the music. Jas with her curls bouncing back.
I wanted to film them, but I didn’t dare, not in front of Flora’s friends. But there was something in the air tonight, something I wish I’d caught. Something unreal and bigger than us all.
Thursday 28 October
It was raining this morning. Skye (who is paid) worked in the yard, and Maud kept her promise to help Gloria, but Barney and Twig stayed in bed while Flora, Peter, Jas and I drove round sodden country lanes and tramped the dripping streets of Plumpton, distributing leaflets for Gloria announcing that the Horsehill School of Riding would shortly be open for business. Afterwards we huddled …..into a café with steamed-up windows and lots of shivering, damp-looking tourists and soggy paper ghosts decorating the walls, where Flora ordered tea for everybody and asked what the plan was for Halloween.
Jas started stabbing the sugar bowl with her spoon.
‘What’s everyone going dressed as?’ Flora continued. ‘Have you got your costumes yet?’
Jas finished murdering the sugar and started shredding paper napkins as the whole Cupcake Crew story came out.
‘Why didn’t you tell me all this?’ Flora demanded again when Jas had finished.
Jas hung her head.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she demanded, glaring at me.
‘I tried to!’ I protested. ‘You were doing that stupid silent week.’
‘You put leaflets in everybody’s lockers? You wrote a poem?’
Jas mumbled that it was a good poem, and that it had taken her ages to write it. Peter laughed. Flora buried her face in her hands.
‘You told me to stand up for myself!’ Jas protested.
‘Not like that!’ Flora cried. ‘Anonymous leaflets … Jas, it’s so sneaky.’
‘The wings weren’t sneaky,’ I said. ‘The wings were brave.’
‘Yes.’ Jas had gone all droopy, and Flora’s expression softened as she looked at her. ‘The wings were brave. OK, let’s think about this. There has to be something we can do.’
She pressed her head in her hands again. We all watched and waited.
‘I’ve got it!’ Flora slapped the table, and we all jumped. ‘Jazzcakes, the wings were brave. The problem is they were also too small. They weren’t enough of a statement. Let’s go!’
We splashed after her down Plumpton High Street.
‘Where are we going?’ I panted.
‘In here!’ Flora stopped so suddenly we all crashed into her.
‘The charity shop?’
‘It’s where Pixie bought that cloak.’
She pushed open the door and waved us all in. We stood dripping in the middle of the shop. The sales assistant looked dismayed.
‘Jazzcakes,’ Flora announced, ‘we are going to get you the best flipping Halloween outfit those girls have ever seen.’
We put on a talent show this evening. We pushed back all the furniture in the lounge and Peter rigged up poles and sheets and bedspreads as a stage, and almost everyone took turns to perform.
Zoran played the piano. He opened with ‘Frosty the Snowman’, which made everyone laugh, then played some of his old ragtime favourites like ‘The Entertainer’, then he accompanied Jas as she recited one of her poems, and Pixie doing a series of acrobatic yoga exercises. Twig did a card trick, and Skye told a joke about a greyhound, a camel and a horse (even though I told him a million times it wasn’t funny). Barney played his fiddle and Maud played her trumpet, and Gloria sang a song in Spanish she said was all about gypsies and mountains and people murdering each other, and Isambard and Lizzie sang a duet from their favourite opera, and Grandma told a scary old Dartmoor story about a witch.
If Marek were here, I thought, out of nowhere, he would read Of Mice and Men.
Then Flora made everybody laugh with funny dances imitating different animals like penguins and elephants and even a sloth.
‘I didn’t know Flora could dance,’ I said to Peter.
‘She’s great, isn’t she?’ he said.
Peter and I were the only ones who didn’t have an act. He worked away quietly in the background all evening, changing lighting and moving furniture around so that everyone could do their turn properly, while I filmed everything. Then afterwards, while we were clearing up, he asked if I ever wanted to be in front of the camera rather than behind it.
‘It’s not my thing,’ I said, and then I started to blush, because he asked what was my thing, and I wanted to ask him if he agreed with Zoran, about film being like art and all that, but I didn’t know how without sounding totally up myself.
‘Can I see?’ Peter held his hand out to my camera, and I shook my head.
‘I don’t like showing my work,’ I said, and then we both burst out laughing, because that did sound up myself, and also because I realised as I said it how it didn’t make sense, because what’s the point of making films that no-one is going to watch?
It’s even more pointless than drawings that get washed away by the rain.
‘What sort of films do you want to make?’ Peter asked.
I have often noticed how laughing makes you not afraid any more.
‘Films that are better than real life,’ I said. I thought about what Zoran said about art, ages ago, when he was trying to help Jas with her art project. ‘Films that change people’s lives.’
Peter stacked the last sheet on top of its pile. He picked up the whole stack, but instead of leaving to take them upstairs he just stood there, staring out of the window at the night, and said, ‘One day, we’ll all make a film together. I’ll design it and that lot’ – he pointed at Flora and Maud and Barney – ‘will star, and your camera will turn the whole thing into a work of beauty.’
‘Work of beauty!’ I tried not to look too pleased.
Peter, who is a very practical person, said that if I really wanted to make films, I should apply to do a summer course next year at the South Bank School of Film Studies.
‘I’m not good enough!’ I protested.
‘You’ll never know if you don’t try.’ He nudged me, just like Zoran does. ‘You’ll see, Blue,’ he promised. ‘One day you’ll make history.’
He’s mad of course. There is no way I am good enough, but still … My mind is going crazy, shooting off into daydreams. Mum and Dad crying at my Oscars acceptance speech … A premiere at an Imax cinema, a red carpet and me in a glittering dress and journalists all whispering, ‘Who is she?’
‘Don’t you know?’ one of them will say. ‘THAT is the famous camerawoman, Blue Gadsby.’ My life, like a fabulous Hollywood movie.
You’ll make history. The way Peter said it, I almost believe him.
Friday 29 October
A parade. That is Flora’s plan.
Halloween is on Sunday evening. We go home on Sunday morning. Between now and then, it’s all about the costumes.
‘What about Zoran and Gloria and the stables?’ I asked.
‘Be reasonable, Blue. Do they need us?’
‘But I don’t want to be in a parade,’ Twig protested.
‘I’m supposed to be doing Halloween with the rugby team. It’s important. It’s like a bonding exercise.’
Flora said the rugby team could join us as long as they do exactly what she says, and that we all had to pull together. Even the drama students are involved.
‘Can Todd c
ome too?’ Jas asked, and Flora cried sure, the more the merrier.
I’m a little bit worried about this whole operation.
Peter has taken over the costumes. We found lots of stuff in the charity shop, and also in Grandma’s attic. We have a tutu and a top hat, Pixie’s cloak and a short scarlet cape, a man’s tweed suit and a Victorian lady’s riding habit, a bridal veil and a gas mask, a gold-fringed shawl and a length of purple velvet.
I don’t see how this all fits together, but Flora says we are going to put on the best Halloween display Chatsworth Square has ever seen, and show those cupcake madams once and for all just how little Jas needs them.
‘That way they will leave you alone for good,’ Flora said.
‘Are you sure about this?’ I asked her this evening, as Peter measured Pumpkin up for his costume (as well as being good at sets, he is excellent with a sewing machine).
Flora asked, ‘Sure about what?’ I said it just seemed like a lot. Flora said, ‘A lot of what?’
I thought of Dodi, who has still not answered any of my messages.
‘A lot that could go wrong,’ I said.
Flora said nonsense, and we had to stand united before the cupcake girls to show them Jas could not be crushed.
‘I’m just not convinced it’s always a good idea to stand up to people,’ I said. ‘I think sometimes it can backfire.’
‘The trouble with you, Blue,’ Flora said, ‘is you lack ambition.’
‘I’m extremely ambitious!’ I protested, but as usual she didn’t listen.
Sunday 31 October
It’s early in the morning, and I am writing from the train.
Flora made us leave two hours before we had planned this morning, to make sure we have plenty of time to get ready for the parade. She left even earlier than us in the car with the drama students. They are going to get ready at her friend Tamsin’s house, and meet us at five o’clock in our costumes in the mews by the church in Chatsworth Square.
‘Why don’t you get ready at home?’ Jas asked, but Flora said it was probably best if she came home later rather than sooner.
Time for Jas Page 9