Time for Jas

by Natasha Farrant

  Back home, I made hot chocolate, and then we wrapped up in duvets and went out on to the flat roof outside my bedroom window to watch the display, but there were too many trees and buildings in the way. In the distance, you could hear the music from the park, and all the bangs, and the air was full of the smell of gunpowder and smoke, but the only fireworks you could actually see were the really high ones, and I felt stupid because I was wearing Flora’s bunny onesie and Pixie’s tiara to try and cheer Jas up, but she just wore an old grey jumper of Twig’s over a pair of grubby leggings and only smiled once, when a pink rocket exploded right above our heads and burst into a thousand silver stars.

  Twig and Flora came back together about half an hour ago, raving about how spectacular the fireworks were. I can hear Flora now in her bedroom, talking on her phone. I’m sitting out on my roof again. All around me, the night is still full of explosions. Another rocket burst above me, blue this time, filled with golden spirals that fizzed then faded into the smoke, and I thought that firework is doing the same thing Marek does. It won’t last long, but for the time it’s burning up there, we are all watching it, and maybe that is why Marek draws in the street, why Zoran makes music and Flora acts and Jas and Nancy Chikado write poetry, and I want to make films – so people can see us.

  I wonder where Marek watched the fireworks from. I can’t imagine him in the park with everyone else, crowded on the muddy lawn, the gaudy lights of the funfair, the blast of the sound system. Maybe he went out on the streets, taking advantage of the fact that everyone else was staring at the sky, to draw another picture. Maybe he is working hard with a box of chalks, decorating a pavement, a wall, the side of a building with his own multi-coloured starbursts.

  I wonder what that would look like – the fireworks in Marek’s head.

  Monday 8 November

  He wasn’t in school today. It took me ages to work up the courage to do it, but this afternoon I went to his house.

  Marek’s house is different from ours. Our front garden is a mess, with weeds growing wherever the ground isn’t covered with ivy and a mass of dead roses that nobody has bothered to cut since the summer. The paint on the windows is flaking, and the front door is scuffed from where people kick it open when they come in with bikes and buggies and shopping. The paint on Marek’s house gleams. There are window boxes with plants clipped into perfect spheres. The front garden is paved, with olive trees growing in tubs. Even the letterbox looks expensive.

  I will just say I came to check he is OK, I thought. In my school bag, I had a new worksheet for Of Mice and Men. I will just say I brought English homework.

  I steeled myself and reached for the bell, but before I even touched it the front door flew open and I jumped about a mile into the air.

  ‘Quick,’ Marek hissed. ‘In case she sees you.’

  Without thinking, I darted forward. He reached out and pulled me in. I did think, even then, that he might be mad.

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘Violet!’

  ‘Um …’

  ‘Mrs Doriot-Buffet. Our neighbour? Your sister set fire to her hedge. Quickly!’

  The inside of Marek’s house is exactly what you would expect from the outside. Marble tiles in the hall. Shiny honey-coloured wood in the living room. The curtains are made of silk, the sofas are pale and unstained, the chairs are velvet and uncomfortable, all the books on the shelves are bound in leather. The chimney surround is decorated with carvings of ladies in flowing dresses carrying baskets of fruit, and in the middle of the mantelpiece there is a china lady with very big lilac skirts and a pineapple head. I mean, literally. Her head is fruit.

  ‘Tata gave her to Mum for her birthday,’ Marek said, following my gaze. ‘She’s very expensive. I think it’s meant to be art.’

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  We stood around for a bit. I don’t think I have ever felt more awkward.

  ‘You weren’t in school,’ I started saying, at the same time as he said, with his funny half smile, ‘She thinks your family is out of control.’

  ‘Sorry, who thinks that?’

  ‘Mrs Doriot-Buffet. Because of the fire. Look, my parents will be home soon. We’ve been away, they just went to the shops …’

  And then there was the sound of a key in the front door, and it was opening, and a woman’s voice was calling, ‘Marek, where are you?’

  Marek hesitated. Then another voice piped up – Mr Valenta.

  ‘Where is the boy? Where has he got to?’

  Marek hissed, ‘Hide!’ and pushed me to the floor behind a sofa.

  The Valentas argue differently to us. At home, people shout a lot and storm about slamming doors and saying things like they are going to run away because no-one understands them, but it never lasts very long and no-one ever holds a grudge. At the Valentas’, it feels more serious.

  There wasn’t a lot of room behind the sofa. It stood in a big bay in front of the window, and I guess that despite their perfect house the Valentas aren’t any better at housework than anybody else, because the floor was very dusty. I wriggled around to try and find a comfortable position that also didn’t make me stick out, being very careful how I breathed so I didn’t cough and sneeze. Really it’s a miracle that no-one heard me, but I guess that’s because they were all too busy being angry.

  It didn’t start with shouting. In fact, when Mr Valenta came into the room, I could tell he was in an excellent mood again.

  ‘Good news!’ he cried, and I could just picture him rubbing his hands as he spoke. ‘I have just taken a telephone call from St Llwydian. They have offered you a place!’

  Marek said, ‘Oh,’ and the way he said it I imagined him with all the air suddenly squashed out of him, like a cushion when you sit on it, or your tummy when you’re punched.

  ‘Oh? Oh! Is that all you have to say? One of the best schools in the country, and “Oh”? Why are you not delighted?’

  Mrs Valenta murmured, ‘Stefan, please, not again.’

  Marek mumbled something that sounded like ‘You know why.’

  ‘This is a magnificent opportunity!’ Mr Valenta’s voice was rising. ‘Do you imagine that I ever had such an opportunity when I was growing up?’

  ‘Stefan …’ Once again Mrs Valenta tried to calm her husband. Once again, he ignored her.

  ‘Presidents and ministers send their sons to this school! Heads of business! Royalty! Do you think I was offered the chance to rub shoulders with the sons of millionaires and princes? Not I! I began to work when I was fourteen years old!’

  ‘But I don’t care about any of that!’ Marek protested.

  ‘Look at this house! Do you think we could live here if I were a violinist? That your mother could wear silk dresses, that we would drive a big fine car? Ski in Zermatt, holiday on the Côte d’Azur? Do you? Do you?’

  ‘Why won’t you listen to me?’ Marek yelled, and there was an edge to his voice I’ve never heard from anyone at home – desperate and angry.

  ‘Because you do not make sense!’

  A door slammed. Mr Valenta bellowed, ‘Marek! Marek, I only want what is best for you!’

  ‘No you don’t!’ Marek’s voice sounded far away – upstairs, I think. ‘You want what is best for you!’

  Don’t leave me alone, I panicked, but maybe Marek was actually helping, because then there were more footsteps as Mr Valenta stormed out of the room after him.

  I should never have come. I was shaking as I prepared to creep out of my hiding place. Just a few steps across the hall.

  And then I froze at the sound of high heels tapping on wood, coming towards me.

  ‘You can come out now.’

  Mrs Valenta’s elegant face appeared over the top of the sofa.

  ‘I …’

  ‘Shhh.’ She put a finger to her lips, and nodded towards the door.

  I crept out from behind the sofa, tiptoed across the honey parquet and the marble hall and fled.

  *

  At home, Dad
and Jas were sitting together in the armchair in the study, watching Flora do a sort of moon walk. I squeezed in on the arm next to them.

  ‘What is she doing?’ I asked.

  Flora did what looked like a slow motion front crawl with her arms, raised her leg with surprising elegance almost to her shoulder, wobbled like she was falling backwards, righted herself with no apparent effort and resumed her swimming while shaking her head with a finger pressed to her mouth.

  ‘She can’t talk, because sound doesn’t travel in space.’ Jas looked mesmerised.

  ‘But why is she in space?’

  ‘She’s rehearsing her play.’ Dad was watching Flora with a mixture of bafflement and delight.

  Flora flipped on her back and waved her arms and legs in the air.

  ‘I thought the play was Romeo and Juliet?’

  ‘Angel has decided to set it in space.’

  ‘Why?’

  Flora sat up, back on planet Earth.

  ‘Because space is a giant metaphor for human alienation. It’s like, Romeo and Juliet are trying to reach each other, but the universe is between them.’

  ‘But how are you going to talk if sound doesn’t travel?’

  ‘We’ll be in space crafts, obviously. Romeo and Juliet each have their own spaceship, and they have to spacewalk between the two. The bit I just played is actually right after I kill myself. It’s super-powerful.’

  ‘I don’t understand either,’ Jas whispered to me.

  ‘That,’ Flora said, ‘is because you are very young. When you are older, you will appreciate Angel’s genius.’

  She swept out of the room. Dad and Jas and I burst out laughing, but I couldn’t stop my mind from thinking.

  Marek shoved me behind a sofa. A sofa!

  Imagine being so afraid of your parents you didn’t want to be caught with a friend. Maybe it’s because I’m a girl? Or because of Flora, and the fire? I felt sorry for him, for the argument with his father and the school in Wales he doesn’t want to go to, but mainly I felt humiliated.

  If you had to pick somewhere that was the exact opposite of the Valentas’ living room, it would be Dad’s study. Some people (like me) can’t work unless everything around them is absolutely tidy. Dad can’t work unless he is surrounded by absolute chaos. There are towers of books stacked on the floor all around his study with dust bunnies swirling around their bases, and you can’t actually see an inch of desk for all the papers that cover it, with his laptop balanced on top. His bookcases are so full it looks like the books might burst off the shelves at any minute, and the armchair is a disaster: it’s missing one leg, which Dad has replaced with a stack of dictionaries, and the back cushion doesn’t match the seat, and it has orange stuffing spilling out of the side where Twig once accidentally stabbed it with a pair of scissors.

  ‘Do you think we’re out of control?’ I asked Dad. ‘I mean, as a family?’

  Dad said he didn’t even understand the question.

  ‘Look around you,’ I said.

  Dad looked at his study like he was seeing it for the first time. ‘Do you mean this room?’ he asked. ‘Do you think it’s messy?’

  ‘It looks like a bomb exploded in it.’

  ‘I suppose it does.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘Do you think I should tidy it?’

  I snuggled into his shoulder. He was wearing the same cardigan he had worn when the Valentas came round, his favourite with the holes at the elbows.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I think you should keep it exactly as it is.’

  Tuesday 9 November

  It is very difficult to know what to say to a person when you have not only recently discovered he is a brilliant secret street artist, but also overheard him have a screaming row with his father while you hid behind his sofa. I think Marek felt the same because in school today we completely ignored each other until English, when Dodi passed me a note from him.

  ‘What does it say?’ she whispered.

  I didn’t want to laugh. I was still cross about the sofa. But when I looked at the note, I almost laughed out loud, because he had drawn it – the sofa, I mean, and my head poking out of the side, and underneath he’d written ‘I am so, so sorry’ and …

  ‘Blue!’ Dodi hissed.

  ‘He wants to meet me after school,’ I whispered.

  ‘Oh my God! Will you go?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I didn’t reply to the note. I do have my pride.

  But I did meet him after school.

  We took the Tube into town, but Marek didn’t tell me where we were going. On the train, we talked about Miss Foundry, Of Mice and Men, skateboards, and the beautiful architecture of Prague. We didn’t talk about secret chalk drawings, boarding schools in Wales, shouty parents or sofas.

  We changed trains at Tottenham Court Road and finally got off at Charing Cross.

  The other night, when we went to the theatre, London was all bright lights and traffic and people and noise. Today, just after four o’clock in the afternoon, it was completely different. The sun was going down and the sky was pink and blue like in Devon, and the winter light was soft and clear but sort of shimmering too, and it made it feel like we were in a film or something, and the tall buildings along the Strand, Trafalgar Square and the lions and Nelson’s Column and the big arch and Whitehall were all part of a giant, exciting, wonderful set.

  There was a street performer singing and that made it feel unreal too, like it was the music to the film, and all the business people rushing and the tourists milling and the old people sitting about were like extras in a weird story where Marek and I were playing the leads.

  It was beautiful.

  ‘Blue?’

  Marek’s voice brought me back to earth. We were standing in the middle of Trafalgar Square, with Whitehall behind us. He pointed straight ahead.

  ‘The National Gallery?’

  Marek nodded.

  Museums and art galleries are only ever things we do with Dad, who drags us round making us read every label and saying things like, ‘Look, children! This is a perfect example of …’ neo-gothic-classical-something or other none of us understands. Marek is the complete opposite. We swept through the gallery like the paintings on the walls were nothing more than the pictures we did when we were little that Mum used to stick on the fridge, until we finally stopped and Marek said, ‘Look!’

  The painting he chose was quite surprising. We passed lots of others that were way more interesting. There was a huge one of a woman about to have her head chopped off that was horrible but beautiful too, in a terrifying way, and there were lots of saints being tortured and ships tossed about on stormy seas and half-naked people dancing, but Marek’s painting didn’t even look like it was finished. In fact, it wasn’t even a painting, more like a rough brownish drawing of two women sitting close together with babies on their laps.

  We sat on a bench and looked at it.

  ‘This is my favourite thing in the whole of London,’ Marek said.

  I looked closer. I could see that it was good. I mean, you don’t get a picture in the National Gallery if you’re not good. It was done by Leonardo da Vinci around 1499. The women (who were the Virgin Mary and her cousin) and the babies (Jesus and his cousin John the Baptist) were beautiful, and if you looked for long enough it was almost like they were alive. But still …

  ‘Why this one?’ I asked.

  ‘Because it’s perfect,’ Marek said.

  Marek knows a lot about Leonardo da Vinci, who wasn’t just a painter but also a sculptor and a mathematician and an architect and an engineer. He designed flying machines and he painted the Mona Lisa, which is probably the most famous painting in the world, and one day Marek wants to be just like him.

  ‘Which bit?’ I asked, feeling dizzy.

  Marek said, very seriously, ‘I want to make something so good it lasts for ever.’

  Something happened to Marek in the gallery. His coat was bunched under his arm, and his shirt was untucked, with the sle
eves pushed up past his elbows. The laces of one of his expensive leather shoes were undone, and his hair stood up in all directions because he has a habit, when he is looking at pictures, of running his hands through it. He looked almost like a normal boy. Actually, he looked better than a normal boy. Scruffed up, Marek is disconcertingly handsome.

  We went to the café and bought tea in takeaway cups that we took outside to drink on the steps and there at last, in the dark in the middle of Trafalgar Square, Marek began to explain. He was so, so sorry about the sofa, he said again. It was like I thought – Flora, and the fire, and our out-of-control family. ‘I couldn’t risk upsetting Tata,’ he said. ‘We’d just been to see that stupid school in Wales, they had this open day … We were away all weekend. I think he thought it would impress me.’

  ‘That sounds … nice,’ I said. Marek scowled and said it wasn’t, it was horrible, and the last thing he wanted to do was go to boarding school in the middle of nowhere.

  ‘I’m just getting used to London,’ he said. Our eyes met for a second, and then we both looked away and stared at our feet.

  ‘I guess you want to know about the drawings,’ he mumbled, and I whispered that yes, sort of, I mean if he didn’t mind.

  ‘Tata doesn’t like me drawing,’ he said. ‘He was really proud when I was a younger because I was better than everyone else – that’s not me showing off, it’s just true. But then last year my art teacher told my parents he thought I had a real gift, and I should seriously consider going to art college after school, and he suddenly went all weird.’

  ‘Weird?’

  ‘Art is not serious!’ Marek said, imitating Mr Valenta. ‘You must concentrate on proper subjects that will make you good at business! Do you know why we came to London?’

  I tried to remember. ‘Something about your father’s business?’

  ‘Tata wants to expand it. He says he’s doing it for me – so after I’ve finished school, and whatever business degree he wants me to do, I can work with him.’