Time for Jas

by Natasha Farrant

  ‘Oh,’ I said. I tried to imagine Marek in a business suit. It should have been easy, given the clothes he usually wears, but all I could see was Marek in the alleyway near the theatre with a chalk in his hand.

  ‘You can see how wrong that would be, can’t you?’ Marek insisted.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I can.’

  ‘Mum says it’s because of what happened to him, because he couldn’t study music. She says it was a huge sacrifice for him, and he has to prove it was worth it by always providing the best for us. But if music was such a sacrifice for him, he’d let me go to art college, don’t you think? He knows what art means to me. It’s like … it’s like breathing. It’s like air. But he won’t even let me take Art GCSE.’

  Marek gazed at me, like he was begging me to agree with him, and I didn’t know what to say, because I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone be quite so passionate about anything, and also because I still had so many questions about, well, about me. I glanced at my phone, and saw that I had a load of messages from Pixie and Dodi, asking where I was.

  ‘I have to go,’ I said.

  We didn’t go back the way we came. Instead, when we got to Charing Cross, Marek led me down a cobbled street towards Embankment. Then, when I made to go into the station, he took my arm and pulled me on towards the river.

  ‘Just a few minutes,’ he said.

  We climbed up the steps on to the railway bridge and leaned on the railings, looking east along the Thames, and it was like we were looking at two Londons, because St Paul’s and the South Bank theatres and the embankment were all lit up and reflected in the dark, almost black water.

  ‘It’s not as pretty as Prague,’ he said. ‘But it’s not bad.’

  ‘About the drawings …’

  ‘He won’t let me draw at home,’ Marek said quickly. ‘And he made me leave Prague. The drawings, they’re like revenge, you know? Like I draw in secret, but where everyone can see me.’

  I didn’t say anything to that, because I’m not sure it’s a proper revenge when the person you are being revengeful towards doesn’t know that you’re doing it.

  ‘They’re like my way of claiming London,’ Marek ploughed on. ‘Like I’m making it mine.’

  The things we weren’t saying hung between us, so thick I felt I could touch them.

  The zebra.

  The bluebells.

  The ponies.

  ‘Marek …’

  ‘Do you know the first time I saw you?’ he interrupted.

  ‘That day with the dachshund,’ I said. ‘You’d been playing tennis with your dad.’

  ‘That was the second time. The first time, you didn’t even know I was there. I’d been in London for a week, and I was furious with Tata for bringing me here. I went out to draw in the garden in the square, and there you were, lying on the grass with your camera. I looked to see what you were filming and it was just a cat, staring at the ground. I couldn’t understand why you thought it was interesting. And then suddenly the cat pounced on something, and started going crazy, trying to catch a mouse or something, I guess, and I thought … it sounds stupid.’

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘I thought you were an artist. Because that is what artists do, isn’t it? They watch. They see things differently. They try to show things differently.’

  He ran his hands through his hair again. He was actually beginning to look less like a normal boy, and more and more like a mad person.

  ‘Don’t you think?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do.’

  ‘Violet told us who you were, your names and everything. Bluebell. I liked that so much. And I guess … what I’m trying to say is … the drawings. They’re not just about Dad. I sort of did them … what I mean is, they were for you too. Sort of … one artist to another. To … to introduce myself, I guess … I put them where I thought you might see them, so you could see the real me, because at school … and that terrible drink at your house … because usually, I am trying to please Tata, you know … so he won’t have an excuse to send me away … Because part of why I don’t want to go away is … well, a lot of it is because of you.’

  ‘Me?’

  Even in the dark, I could see that Marek was almost as red as I was.

  ‘You know, you could have just talked to me,’ I murmured.

  ‘I didn’t know what to say! I’m rubbish at words – I’m much better with pictures.’ He swallowed, stared down at the river. ‘I really like you, Blue.’

  Our hands were resting next to each other on the bridge’s parapet. I slid mine towards his, so close they were almost touching.

  ‘Your drawings …’ I said. ‘They make me see things I never saw before. They make me want to be a better artist myself.’

  He smiled properly then, the first time ever since I met him, and it was just … lovely.

  He tucked his shirt in on the Tube home, smoothed back his hair, wrapped his cashmere scarf carefully around his neck. By the time we came out, he looked exactly like he does every day at school, but as we parted on the Avenue he pressed a piece of paper in my hand. ‘My email address,’ he said. ‘Will you send me some of your films? It’s only fair, since you’ve seen all my drawings.’And then he kissed me. Just a tiny kiss, on the cheek. But enough to turn my legs to jelly.

  Wednesday 10 November

  Dodi messaged me approximately once every three minutes all evening yesterday, but I never answered her and when she finally called the house phone, I got Jas to tell her I was in the bath.

  ‘With her head under water,’ Jas said. ‘So she can’t talk.’

  The gallery, the steps, the bridge, everything we talked about. Marek’s kiss. They’re like this huge wonderful secret I don’t want to share with a single person.

  ‘Where did you go?’ Dodi asked this morning when we met on the way to school. ‘What did you do, what did you say and did he try to kiss you?’

  ‘We just went for a walk,’ I said.

  ‘Another walk!’

  ‘He needed help with his English homework. It wasn’t a big deal.’

  If I told Dodi my secret, it would spoil it. She wouldn’t understand, about going to galleries or looking at the Thames, or almost but not quite touching hands, or smiles so bright they were dazzling. She would want details of the kiss, and be disappointed it was so quick that afterwards, when I got home, I wondered if it had actually happened.

  Marek and I didn’t talk today, but all the time at school I felt my skin prickling, knowing that he was near and once, when we passed in the corridor, we half-smiled at each other and I thought I would burn up from blushing.

  I don’t think we’re going out now. I mean, he hasn’t asked me. And when he kissed me, it wasn’t a … well, it wasn’t a boyfriend kiss. And I’m fine with just friends, I honestly am. I think.

  ‘Send me one of your videos,’ he said, but I can’t – can I?

  What he says about me being an artist, it’s sweet but it’s not true – is it? I thought of Peter, saying ‘Your camera will turn it into a work of beauty’ and ‘One day you’ll make history’.

  Will turn into. One day. In the future.

  Not now. Absolutely not now at all.

  *

  When I got home from school, Pumpkin was spitting mashed carrots out at Pixie who was in full army fatigues, and the part of the kitchen table not splattered with his supper was covered in A3 sheets of drawing paper splodged all over with angry dabs of paint, with Jas standing at the head of the table jabbing at a fresh sheet and complaining loudly that it was no good, no good at all.

  ‘The despair of the artist at work,’ Pixie informed me as I came in. ‘She seeks the Muse, but the Muse eludes her.’

  ‘Stupid art project!’ Jas was flicking globs of red paint now. Some of it landed in Pumpkin’s supper. Quite a lot hit Pixie and also the table and the floor. A few specks landed on the paper.

  ‘So now you are doing the art project?’ I said.

  ‘
Mr Boniface says I have to. He says I’m very creative. He says if I don’t, he’ll be so disappointed.’

  She swept her arm across the page to her brow, in imitation of Mr Boniface’s disappointment. A jam jar full of red water and paintbrushes crashed to the floor. Pumpkin started to cry.

  ‘I can’t paint!’ Jas wailed. ‘I can’t draw! I thought flowers would be easy!’

  Twig came in wearing shorts and running shoes, red and sweating and looking like he was going to throw up.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I asked.

  Twig gasped a lot and said it was all part of rugby training, and Coach had said he needed to do more running because he’s too slow compared to the others.

  At that Welsh school, they do ten miles before breakfast, I thought.

  Twig staggered over to look at Jas’s drawing.

  ‘What are those supposed to be?’ Twig asked.

  ‘They’re GERANIUMS,’ Jas howled.

  ‘And they’re wonderful!’ Pixie cried. ‘So red! So colourful! So very like geraniums!’

  ‘I thought she was doing a poem,’ Twig said.

  ‘Mr Boniface says it doesn’t count,’ Pixie said. ‘He says poetry is not art, and she has to do a painting.’

  Marek could help Jas, I thought, and then I thought, I really am obsessed.

  Flora’s play opens tomorrow. That will take my mind off Marek. Dad has invited everyone, even though she keeps trying to stop him. Zoran is coming from Devon with Grandma and Skye and his parents. She says she doesn’t want anyone who knows her to go in case we put her off, but I don’t think she means it, because she never stops talking about it. And anyway, as Dad says, what use is a play if it doesn’t have an audience?

  It’s like Marek. What is the point of painting if people don’t know it’s him?

  Does Marek regret what he told me the other night? Is that why he isn’t speaking to me? I wonder what he would think of Flora’s play. We’re having a big dinner, all of us, the night before – should I invite him? Would he come? If he did, would he have to come in disguise so his father didn’t know he was hanging out with out-of-control pyromaniacs?

  Oh God, I have got to stop.

  The Film Diaries of Bluebell Gadsby

  Scene Ten

  A Party in Chatsworth Square

  Evening, inside the Gadsby kitchen. The table and work surfaces groan with food. On the stove sits a huge vegetarian casserole made by PIXIE. On the table sit the rice and chutneys to eat with it, together with MOTHER’s salads (green, mixed leaves) and the cakes brought by LIZZIE (Skye’s mother) and GRANDMA – brownies, shortbread, rhubarb crumble and gingerbread. In the garden, despite the cold, FATHER is firing up a barbecue with ISAMBARD HANRATTY on which to cook the sausages and potatoes brought from Devon by ZORAN. TWIG is showing SKYE a beetle he discovered yesterday in the garden. JAS, still spattered with red paint, sits on the swing reciting poetry to PUMPKIN in his buggy, who joins in with the occasional loud squawk.

  The doorbell rings and MAUD, PETER and BARNEY appear, bearing an entire salmon as a gift. Maud wears a long white nightdress over a polo-neck jumper, thick tights and leather boots. Her hair is done up in ringlets.

  MOTHER

  Goodness, more people!

  MAUD

  Didn’t Flora tell you? She’s invited us to stay.

  Mother says no, Flora didn’t tell her, and why is Maud dressed like that. Maud explains that she is performing Wendy Darling in the drama school’s Peter Pan. Father cries, the more the merrier! And the salmon gets thrown on to the barbecue to burn along with the sausages.

  Later, FLORA arrives back from her dress rehearsal. Barney seizes his fiddle and accompanies her into the garden. Maud goes one better and gets out her trumpet. Zoran (who is a little drunk) picks up the melody on the piano. And now the party is in full swing.

  Lizzie Hanratty, Mother and Pixie start to dance. Twig grabs Pumpkin’s tambourine. Pumpkin howls. The musicians all start playing their own variations on Barney’s melody. Zoran continues to thump away at the piano, while the portable instruments parade from the garden through the house, and spill into the street where the dancers twirl, laughing, in the front garden. Barney’s fiddle goes faster and faster. Maud, not to be outdone, leaps onto the garden wall.

  A car drives past, slowly and for CAMERAMAN (BLUEBELL) – time stops. Maud, on the wall. The breeze lifting her ringlets, her nightdress billowing behind her, the trees and gardens of Chatsworth Square in shadow behind her as she, only she, is caught in the car’s headlights with her trumpet raised to her lips. An angel in Doc Marten boots. Human, and superhuman. A creature of heaven risen from the streets.

  She is a work of beauty.

  But a figure is marching towards them. The figure is Mrs Henderson, and she is not amused by people playing trumpets and fiddles and guitars and tambourines under her window at ten o’clock at night.

  She is not interested in angels, however beautiful.

  Maud jumps down from her wall. The party disbands. Only Barney is left with his fiddle. He is lost to the tune he is playing and cannot leave until it is finished. Cameraman grows aware that the car is still there, the one which caught Maud in its headlights.

  It is a massive black four-by-four, and its driver is Mr Valenta. Cameraman expects to see anger, or outrage. Instead, all she can think as she looks at him is that she never saw anyone look so sad.

  The music stops. The car drives away. The last of the party goes inside.

  Friday 12 November

  Skye just leaned over my shoulder and asked, ‘What are you doing?’

  The house is full to bursting, with people sleeping on every sofa and blow-up mattress we can find. Skye and I are sharing with Twig and Jas.

  ‘She’s doing what she always does before bed,’ Twig said. ‘Scribble, scribble, scribble.’

  I closed my diary.

  ‘I’m writing down my film of the party.’

  ‘Can I see it?’ Skye asked. ‘The film, I mean, not your diary.’

  I hesitated. Then, feeling very brave, I handed over my camera. They are all piled on Skye’s mattress now, watching the film as I write, all laughing and, ‘Is that really what I look like?’ and commenting on the music and the singing. Any second now they’ll get to the bit with Maud.

  They won’t notice. Of course they won’t notice. I mean, they won’t think it’s that good.

  But there’s silence from the mattress on the floor. Silence except for the clear notes of a trumpet.

  Then Skye said, ‘Blue, that was amazing.’

  ‘You made Maud look like an angel,’ Jas said.

  Skye gave me back the camera. He took off his glasses and peered at me, and it was like he was seeing me properly for the first time. ‘You’ll win an Oscar one day, Blue.’

  ‘Flora’s the one who’s going to win an Oscar,’ I said, but I hid my face so they wouldn’t see how pleased I was.

  I did it, I did it, I did it! I thought, as they continued to exclaim over my video. Me! Me! I made something amazing!

  Everyone is asleep now and the house is quiet. I’m sitting on the landing so as not to disturb the others. I’ve loaded the film onto my laptop, and in my hand I’m holding the scrap of paper Marek gave me with his email address. ‘Send me one of your videos …’ Can I? Do I dare?

  What if he doesn’t understand it? What if all he sees is a girl playing the trumpet?

  Flora just got up to go to the bathroom, and came to sit with me a while.

  ‘I’m scared,’ she said.

  ‘For tomorrow?’

  ‘What if I’m not good enough?’

  And I don’t know what to think about anything now, if even Flora thinks she isn’t good enough.

  Quickly, without thinking about it, I opened up email, typed Marek’s address into the destination box, attached my file and pressed Send.

  The Film Diaries of Bluebell Gadsby

  Scene Eleven

  A Brief Description of Romeo And
Juliet (In Space) by William Shakespeare, Adapted and Directed by Angel De Castro and Starring Miss Flora Gadsby as Juliet

  A small theatre, painted black. A stage about the size of the Gadsby kitchen. Thirty rows of benches seating fifteen people each, of which about half are occupied, though audience consists almost entirely of friends and family of the cast, as well as two perplexed Japanese tourists and several journalists. The GADSBY FAMILY PARTY occupies all of the fourth row. The adults sit at one end, then SKYE, JASMINE, CAMERAMAN (BLUEBELL) and TWIG, with the DRAMA STUDENTS on the other side.

  The set is divided into three parts. On the left is Romeo’s spaceship, with furniture painted metallic gold and actors all dressed in yellow.

  On the right is Juliet’s spaceship, with furniture all painted metallic silver, and actors all dressed in grey. The middle section between the spaceships – outer space – has a backdrop of twinkling stars which are actually lots of strings of fairy lights. Inside the spaceships, the actors move about like they’re on Earth, but whenever they go into outer space, they have to pretend to float because they are in zero gravity.

  They use lightsabres for the sword fights.

  JASMINE

  (about two minutes in) I don’t understand.

  CAMERAMAN

  They’re in space.

  JASMINE

  I mean I don’t understand what they’re saying.

  CAMERAMAN

  That’s because it was written four hundred years ago.

  TWIG

  If it was written four hundred years ago, how come they’re in space?

  JASMINE

  And how long is it going to last?