But Pim, with his outer-space dreams, was way too big to make sense to Ellen.
If Molly was going to be a part of Ellen Palmer’s world of songs and pop stars—that glorious, up-front world that trembled with starlike explosions in pink, in plastic, in homely razzle-dazzle—then it was important that no one knew she was curious about Pim Wilder.
Molly’s mama was only slightly different from other mothers, but in Molly’s eyes she was very obviously different. When school was over and everyone poured out of their classrooms, the other mothers gathered in groups and chatted, but Molly’s mama stood alone in the shade of the buddleia bush. She looked to Molly like an owl, wide-eyed and wary, and so relieved to see Molly that she glided out of the bush as if the task of gathering Molly up and steering her home suddenly gave her the right weight in the world.
Molly and her mama rode home on the yellow bike. They always got off at the bottom of the hill and walked up to their house at the top. It sat beside a cluster of old pine trees that leaned dangerously and was home to a flock of cockatoos who flew shrieking into the trees, like white handkerchiefs toppling out of the blue sky.
As Molly and her mama walked up the hill, a large man came thundering toward them like a boulder rolling downhill, gathering speed as he neared them. His body pitched forward, his elbows flapped, and his hands bundled into fists and pummeled the air. Molly could tell that, like all big boulders, he meant to have an impact.
“Oi,” he shouted. The word seemed to fly out of him like a bullet. And then in a fury of panting, he miraculously ground to a halt in front of them. His face was red and gleaming with sweat, which he swiped at savagely with his forearm.
It was Ernest Grimshaw, squinting and sneering and puffing all at once.
“Hello,” said Molly’s mama.
“I went up to your house now, but you weren’t there,” Ernest Grimshaw accused, waving his finger toward the house as if they needed to be reminded where they lived.
Molly’s mama stared at him, a little amused. Then she remembered her manners and replied, “We’re on our way home now, Mr. Grimshaw. Is there something you wanted?” Next to the blustering, accusing, overheated boulder of a man, Molly’s mama seemed like a wisp of grass, straight and calm in the sun.
“I came to tell you to get rid of that blasted rooster. It keeps waking us up at dawn with its crowing. And if you don’t get rid of it, well, I warn you”—he gave a violent snort—“I’ll take an ax to it myself!” He shook his fists, as if he held the handle of the ax right then, and Molly’s mama ducked to avoid being struck.
Molly let go of the bike and stepped forward. “You can’t kill our rooster. He is a gentleman. That’s his name: the Gentleman. He’s sweet enough you can pick him up and cuddle him. So we won’t be letting him get the ax from you.”
Ernest Grimshaw’s mouth fell open. His little round eyes flared as if they were about to pop out of his head.
Molly’s mama clasped Molly to her side and glanced at her with a look of tenderness. “Mr. Grimshaw, how about we try to find some arrangement so that the Gentleman doesn’t wake you? You know, I actually find that after time the sound of crowing can become quite soothing and familiar and almost as golden as the dawn, and then it just seeps like a little song into my dreams….”
“What?” the man roared. A wind of hot breath grazed Molly’s face. “Are you mad? A little song? Crowing is crowing. Nothing musical about it. And I don’t care if he’s got a name or not. He could be Mozart for all I care.”
He turned as if this was the final word. But then he swiveled around and thrust his fat finger at Molly. “And tell her, tell that little upstart, she needs to show some respect for her elders. Or she’ll have something coming at her too.” Ernest Grimshaw nodded in agreement with himself.
Molly drew herself up indignantly to reply, but her mama held her back. And they watched as the barrel-like form of Ernest Grimshaw turned and marched toward his own house.
Molly’s mama whistled. “That poor man. How awful it must be to be him. I think you and I need an ice cream. And, while I think about it, do stay out of his way, won’t you? No point aggravating angry people. At least until I sort out this business with the Gentleman.”
Molly nodded, but only to please her mama. She had no intention of staying out of Ernest Grimshaw’s way if he came threatening the Gentleman.
Molly and her mama ate homemade banana ice cream on the seesaw. Molly’s mama liked to stand in the middle and tip it up and down. Molly sat on the edge and dangled her feet.
Sounds of banging from the Grimshaws’ house floated up toward them, but otherwise the world seemed to disappear, or at least to tilt away. Wafts of summer smells, squished grass and lavender, drifted over them.
Molly puzzled over what Pim Wilder had said about seeds continuing on forever. Perhaps he was marveling at how one small seed dropped on the ground, with only sun and water added, becomes a huge tree. This wasn’t something Molly had ever thought about, but Pim was right: a tiny seed contained the whole magic of a towering tree. Molly was about to point this out to her mama when a shrill, piercing voice rang out across the garden. Maude leaped up with a short, appalled bark.
Prudence Grimshaw’s head poked over the fence. “I’ll have you know that if it was you, you will be punished. We have called the police!”
There, thought Molly, there was nothing more prickly than that. She had been right about the vibrations. Molly and her mama both stared at Prudence Grimshaw in confusion. Prudence Grimshaw held a hammer in one hand and she gripped the fence with the other, while nosing the air as if sniffing for clues. Her eyes bore down on them accusingly.
“What are you talking about, Mrs. Grimshaw?” said Molly’s mama.
“I’m talking about our turtle. Someone stole it.” She gave the hammer a little jerk and looked over her nose at them with a suspicious stare; her voice was suddenly measured and low. “And whoever took it thought it was funny to leave a watermelon in its place.”
Molly smothered a giggle.
“Do you think that’s funny?” Prudence Grimshaw shrieked. “Because you won’t when we find out who did it.”
“It wasn’t me,” said Molly flatly. “I don’t like pretend turtles.”
“We hope you find it, Mrs. Grimshaw. It was probably just a joke and the turtle will be returned,” said Molly’s mama with a weary sigh.
Mrs. Grimshaw made a horsey sort of harrumph and disappeared. The sounds of banging recommenced.
This time Molly sighed. “Mama, she is more noisy than the Gentleman and Maude put together, and one hundred times nastier too. Let’s move our house to the other side of the pines.”
Molly’s mama laughed. “Houses are much too stubborn to be moved.”
Molly knew what her mama would be thinking. She would be thinking of other solutions, weird ones. “Mama,” she cautioned, “this isn’t a time for potions. You can’t stop nastiness in neighbors with a potion.”
“We have to look at it another way, Molly,” her mama replied. “What we have is a musical problem. We have to resolve it into a new sort of harmony.”
Molly squinted into the sun. She wanted her mama to be like Ellen Palmer’s mother, and to have apricot muesli bars put in her lunch box. Molly couldn’t even imagine what Ellen Palmer’s mother would do in this situation. But she knew that Ellen Palmer’s mother would not be thinking of a musical solution.
“I have an idea,” said her mama.
Oh no, thought Molly.
“We’ll grow a tree. That way we’ll have something beautiful to look at and the Grimshaws won’t see in when they poke their heads over the fence. That will be our new harmony. A very beautiful large tree. Perhaps a white cedar with the lilac blossom. Or a weeping myrtle. What do you think? Even an oak…”
“But, Mama, trees take a long time to grow.” Molly thought again of the seed in the ground.
“Yes, usually, but I think I can make it grow very quickly.”
&nb
sp; Molly said nothing. She stared gravely at the sky.
“We could get an acorn from that glorious tree in the gardens. The huge, spreading one near the playground. I’ll soak the acorn in a special decoction. And then, when we plant it, it should grow in a week.” Molly’s mama sat up tall and talked excitedly. “We’ll need to dig a big hole, though, one much bigger than we’d need for an ordinary acorn.”
“You hate digging, Mama. It makes your back ache.”
Though this was true, her mama ignored it. She jumped off the seesaw, waving her hand in the air. “Well, I can still dig it.”
Digging holes made them both think of Molly’s father, as her mama always famously claimed that digging holes was the most useful thing he’d ever done around the house.
Molly’s father was an adventurer and had disappeared somewhere in the Sierra Maestra, a mountain range in Cuba. Molly’s twin brothers had both gone to Cuba to look for him. Miro, however, had joined a mariachi band with his trumpet and bought a silver caravan, while Yip had met a peasant girl called Olga who lived in a hut in the mountains and who persuaded him to take her to Mexico, where she modeled bathing suits for a magazine.
Molly could barely remember her father. There was a photo of him stuck on the fridge with a frog magnet: a broad-shouldered and slightly podgy twenty-nine-year-old man, smoking and squinting, with his thumb tucked in his pants.
Molly would always remember when he left, though. She had cried until she felt so tired she couldn’t cry anymore, and then she lay quite still for as long as a week, as quiet and dazed as a little mouse. Her mama gave her herbal concoctions and wrapped her up and told her stories and slowly coaxed her back.
Molly had decided not to think about her dad again and never, never to cry again. And she never had.
She could be very strong about some things.
While lining up outside the school hall for assembly the next day, Molly tugged on Ellen’s hand and whispered, “Mama and I have a problem. We officially have the world’s nastiest neighbors. Ernest Grimshaw looks like a large puffer fish and he wants to kill the Gentleman with an ax. And his wife thinks we stole her fake turtle, and they’re constantly shouting things over the fence. Mama thinks we should grow a tree and block them out.”
Ellen’s nose twitched like a rabbit’s. “That’s silly. It will take forever.”
Molly didn’t want to tell Ellen that her mama intended to use a potion to make it grow fast. She wished Ellen hadn’t said it was silly, though.
“I think we should move the house,” Molly said.
“But you can’t just move a house.” Ellen shrugged. She did think about things in a relentlessly practical way.
Molly began to regret starting the conversation. Weren’t best friends supposed to be understanding? Weren’t you supposed to tell them something if it was on your mind? But telling Ellen made the situation seem hopeless.
“Nothing is impossible, just hard,” said Molly, plucking a piece of buddleia and pressing it soothingly under her nose. “If the Egyptians built pyramids by hand, surely we can move a house?”
Ellen frowned. “Easier to just ignore the neighbors, I reckon. How old are they? Maybe they’ll soon be shoved off to a retirement home anyway.”
Molly gave a limp nod. “I guess so.” She didn’t believe it, though. No one was shoving those Grimshaws anywhere.
After assembly, a strange thing happened. Hoisted up alongside the flag was a papier-mâché angel, with peach pits for eyes and yellow-tipped cockatoo feathers on its wings. No one usually noticed the flag, but everyone noticed the angel. And the angel seemed to know it was much more remarkable than an old flag. The kids laughed. The teachers frowned, except for the art teacher, who hid her grin behind her hand. Who had put it there?
Sinclair Jones threw a plum at it, but it missed. Molly and Ellen watched the commotion from beneath the loquat tree. A competition had sprung up as a result of Sinclair Jones’s plum. Kids threw shoes, tennis balls, stones, and seedpods, and one of the older boys even tried a can of baked beans, which missed, but smashed on the ground, spilling its guts very satisfyingly. The happy shouts caused Miss Ward to come clucking and calling for a stop to the game.
Though it had taken a hit or two, the angel held fast.
Molly watched Pim Wilder, who hadn’t joined in on the throwing, but then again Pim rarely joined in. He sat on a low brick wall, leaning back, arms crossed, with the usual dark gleam in his eyes and a small, mysterious case slung over his shoulder.
“Bet I know who made that angel,” said Molly, aiming her gaze directly at Pim Wilder.
Ellen looked over at him and nodded. “But why do you think he made it and how did he get it up there?”
Molly shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe it’s like a sort of talisman, something that brings you good luck or wards off evil spirits.”
“Do you believe in that kind of thing?” Ellen tossed her plaits behind her shoulders one at a time. Molly rubbed at her own hair, which was short, dark, and curly and wouldn’t go into plaits, as it was too disobedient. But she couldn’t quite find a finished sort of answer.
“Well, I don’t believe, but I don’t not believe either. And I like not knowing better than knowing.”
Before Ellen could decide whether she agreed or not, Pim Wilder got up off the wall and glided, as if drawn by other forces, to the base of the flagpole. Molly and Ellen watched him. Pim was tall and he usually moved in fits and starts. When he walked or ran, his arms and legs were flung forward, as if he wasn’t sure of the length of his own limbs. But now he moved without one fit or start, more as if he was in a royal procession, and, once arrived, he stood quite still. He craned his head upward and took a camera out of the case. He lifted it to his eye. It was an old-fashioned type of camera that needed focusing, and as he took the photo, he looked as if he knew exactly what he was doing.
Either he hadn’t even noticed that Molly and Ellen were still there, or he didn’t care.
Molly found it hard to concentrate at school. At home, her mama was building a dark, boxlike bedroom for the Gentleman, with curtained windows, so that he wouldn’t notice the dawn arriving and wouldn’t crow till they let him out, after Mr. Grimshaw was awake. Maybe her mama would focus on that and forget about her potions and the fast-growing oak tree. Molly was worried about this witchy interference, and now that she felt Ellen didn’t understand her worries, she had to keep them locked up inside her head.
Molly’s mama was waiting for her after school. She was flushed with excitement and a plan that they would ride home via the gardens so they could hunt for the right acorn for the tree-growing potion. Molly’s hopes fell. Not only had her mama remembered, but she also wanted to drag Molly along with her. The last thing Molly wanted was to be seen with her mama in the gardens examining acorns.
“Can’t I just go home and you go on your own?” she pleaded.
Her mama tilted her head and gave Molly a look of curious concern. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” she said softly, sweeping an unruly lock of hair from her eyes. Then she smiled at Molly.
Molly sometimes suspected her mama’s gentle smiles radiated their own magic, as Molly instantly felt that she should go. She heaved a big, grouchy sigh. “Okay, I’ll come, but I’m not looking at acorns; I’ll just wait while you do it.”
—
The gardens were large, with avenues of oaks and elms all the way around the outside. There was a small lake and a few flower beds, but mostly it was a sprawling lawn of all sorts of trees. The largest of all was a towering English oak, which had been planted by a duke more than a hundred years ago.
It was to that tree that Molly and her mama headed. They had just got off the bike to push it over the grass when Molly noticed Pim Wilder. He was squatting at the base of a large tree, examining something. He frowned slightly, but his eyes were bright, and he stared at the thing in his hand with such intensity that Molly wanted to run over to see what it was. But she also wante
d to hurry past in case he saw her and asked what she was doing there with her odd mama on a yellow bike.
Molly watched as Pim prodded and pushed the thing with his fingers and then stood up and stared into the leafy canopy of the tree. He was still holding what seemed to be a ball of dirt in his open palm. Molly craned her neck to look closer, and Pim Wilder suddenly turned around. He stared straight at her. She quickly looked away, but his eye had caught hers.
Pim looked at Molly without the least bit of surprise or interest. Then he lifted his head in a slight gesture of recognition, and a flicker of amusement passed across his eyes. Molly blushed as she pushed the bike onward.
She was perplexed. She hadn’t wanted Pim to see her, as his manner was unusual. But to have him notice her and show no interest had embarrassed her. The truth was that she found Pim interesting. Molly didn’t like to admit this, even to herself, but now it seemed well and truly proven, not only to Molly but to Pim as well.
But why wasn’t Molly interesting to him? He probably thought she was only interested in girlish things, which wasn’t true. She stomped ahead, way past Pim. In her head, she began to compose a list of all the very great things she was interested in. Tree houses, for one. She liked dogs too. And songs. And table tennis. Trampolines and stilts and handstands. Caravans. And anything mysterious. These were worthy things. Pim had got her wrong.
Molly watched her mama picking up acorns and examining them. The funny thing was, there was something about her mama’s complete absorption in the task that was exactly like the way Pim had been at the base of his tree. Molly shook her head. This was all very confusing.
Molly & Pim and the Millions of Stars Page 2