She came in and sat beside him.
“Who exactly is that old lady?” she asked. “She is the one who sent the card before, isn’t she?”
“Yes. She’s Stella’s next-door neighbor’s mother. She’s a friend of ours. Her name is Mrs. Kennedy. She likes fish paintings.”
“I see,” his mother said. “She seems nice. But she didn’t eat any Swiss roll, and neither did you.”
“Oh, I forgot,” said Jake. “She’s not supposed to eat cake. But she does, sometimes.”
“I see,” said his mother. “Listen, Jake,” she went on. “You know the poem about Daisy?”
“‘The Daisy follows soft the Sun,’” said Jake in a listless voice.
“Yes,” said his mother. “I want to tell you the rest of the verse. Listen: ‘The Daisy follows soft the Sun—/ And when his golden walk is done—/ Sits shyly at his feet.’ You know that bit, now listen to the rest: ‘He’ (that’s the Sun, Jake), ‘He—waking—finds the flower there— / Wherefore—Marauder—art thou here? / Because, Sir, love is sweet!’”
Jake looked at her uncomprehendingly. Everyone was speaking in riddles, and his head was too addled to decode them. The thing sitting on the back of his neck was still there. It had knotted all the muscles across his shoulders.
“The marauder is the daisy,” his mother explained. “Isn’t that an interesting word to choose? The sun is talking to the daisy, asking her why she is there, and she says, ‘Because, Sir, love is sweet!’”
“I don’t see…” said Jake.
“No,” said his mother. “But you might later. Just remember it. ‘Wherefore—Marauder—art thou here?’”
Jake looked at her blankly.
“Well?” she said.
“‘Because, love … something…’”
“Yes,” said his mother. “‘Because, Sir, love is sweet!’”
Jake stared at her. He wished his mother were an air hostess or a weather forecaster or a super market checkout person or an engineer—anything but a poet. Poets are daft, he thought. Maybe Stella should be a lexithingy after all.
“Now, help me to bring those tea dishes into the kitchen, and we’ll make some lunch,” she said. “I know a small marauder who is longing to see you.”
“I can’t eat,” Jake said miserably.
“You will,” his mother said. “You need to.”
CHAPTER
40
Daisy wasn’t the least bit pleased to see Jake. She started to whimper as soon as he came into the kitchen.
“There!” said Jake. “See?”
“I don’t see anything,” said his mother, “except that Daisy’s a bit fractious.”
“She doesn’t like me anymore,” said Jake.
“Will you stop feeling so sorry for yourself, Jake?” snapped his mother. “Go and talk to your father while I get the lunch ready. He’s in the garden. Weeding, I think. No, first have a glass of milk or you’ll keel over.”
“He’s not my father,” said Jake.
“He’s the best father you’ve got, Jake,” said his mother stiffly, and she poured him a glass of milk.
“Yeah,” said Jake. “Can we have tomato sandwiches for lunch?”
She nodded and Jake drank the milk, while she stood and watched, and then he went out into the garden. His dad was kneeling by a flowerbed, not weeding, just thinking.
“Hi,” said Jake morosely. “I’m supposed to keep out of the way till lunch. Then I’m supposed to eat lunch.”
“Wow, that’s tough, Jake,” said his dad. “Does this mean the hunger strike is over? Were your demands met?”
Jake couldn’t raise a smile, but he hunkered down beside his dad.
“No,” he said. “I wanted everyone to ignore me, but they wouldn’t. I thought if I ignored them, they’d ignore me.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” said his dad, starting to weed now that he had some supervision. “Here, are you up to a bit of weeding, Jake? I could do with a hand.”
Jake started to pull at a scrawny-looking weed. It resisted at first, but then he pulled nearer to the ground, a sharp tug, and the root came out of the dry earth with a satisfying squeak.
“The best way to be ignored,” his dad continued, “is to get on with your life exactly as always. It’s when you crawl into bed and face the wall that people start to take notice.”
“It’s funny, that, isn’t it, Dad?”
“Um,” said his dad. “Yeah. Funny.”
“That’s groundsel,” Jake said after a while, pointing to a yellow-flowered weed.
“Is it?” said his dad. “Horrible yoke.”
They went on weeding. Jake shifted along the garden path a little in one direction and his father shifted along in the opposite direction, but they were still within chatting distance.
“I hope she doesn’t put any lettuce in the tomato sandwiches,” Jake said. “That’s what we’re having for lunch. I like them soggy.”
They weeded a bit more.
Then Jake’s dad said, “Jake…”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Jake said.
“I wasn’t going to talk about it.”
“Oh?” said Jake. “Sorry. What, then?”
“You know how we haven’t been able to have a holiday this year?” his dad said. “Because of Daisy.”
“Oh, is that why?” said Jake.
“Well, yes, we don’t want to be carting a small baby around airports and train stations, do we? With prams and nappies and all the gear.”
“No,” said Jake. “We don’t.”
“And, of course, if Daisy stays at home, your mother has to stay at home too.”
“I suppose,” said Jake. “The milk supply.”
“But, hey, Jake, that leaves us men free, doesn’t it?”
“How?” asked Jake suspiciously. He’d never thought of himself as part of “us men” before. He thought it sounded a bit pally. He could sense another fish tank coming on.
“Well, we could go off on our own, couldn’t we?”
“You mean, like, camping? Fishing? Sort of father-son stuff?”
“Well, no,” said Jake’s dad. “I thought more like Old Trafford.”
“What!”
“You know, it’s a football stadium, in…”
“I know what it is! Do you mean … oh, Dad!”
“Well,” said Jake’s dad, “I got a couple of tickets for the opening game of the season, and I thought maybe you’d … you know … What do you think, Jake?”
“I think…” Jake hesitated. “Why are you being so nice to me? Is this because of…”
“Jake, are you never happy?”
“No,” said Jake.
“So you don’t want to come?”
“I do want to come. Thanks, Dad. Oh, yes!” Jake punched the air.
“You’re welcome.”
“Dad?”
“Hmm?”
“Do they have any art galleries over there?” asked Jake. “With seventeenth- and eighteenth-century paintings in them?”
“You’re pulling my leg, Jake.” Dad sat back on his heels and stared at Jake. His eyebrows had practically climbed up onto the top of his head.
“No, I’m not. That’s when they painted fish paintings. I need to look at some of those.”
“How do you know when they painted fish paintings?” Dad asked.
“Mrs. Kennedy told me. And then I looked it up, and she was right. I knew she would be.” He hadn’t had to look very far. The dates had been right there, on the backs of the postcards.
“Mrs. Kennedy is the old lady who was here just now?”
“Yes,” said Jake, and he went back to his weeding. “She’s got arthritis.”
“Why did she come, Jake?”
“She wants me to go to the funeral.”
“And you said…?” his dad asked.
“Nothing,” said Jake. “I didn’t say yes and I didn’t say no.”
“Hmm,” said his dad. “Can you not ma
ke up your mind?”
“No,” said Jake.
“Is it too sad for you?”
“No,” said Jake.
“So tell me, Jake,” Dad said. He sat back on his heels again and put on a listening face.
Jake couldn’t look at him. He went on weeding, ferociously.
“You said we wouldn’t talk about it,” he muttered.
“Oh yeah,” said his dad. “I forgot.”
“We had a row,” Jake said suddenly. “She said, Stella, I mean, that I didn’t like all her sisters and I wished she didn’t have so many … and now there’s one less, so she’ll think I’m glad.” A tear plopped onto the back of his hand. He stared at it. He hadn’t felt it creeping down his face.
“Oh my,” said his dad. “Oh, Jake, I see what you mean.”
Jake felt as if the thing on the back of his neck had got a little bit lighter. He wriggled his shoulders.
“But it’s not true, you know,” his dad went on. “She won’t think that. She’ll have forgotten all about that silly row.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I just think it won’t seem so important now, that’s all,” his dad said. “So much has happened that’s much more important.”
“And I’m not important,” Jake said softly.
“You might just be very important,” his dad said. “Only not in the way you think.”
“I don’t know what to do,” wailed Jake.
“Well, think about something else for a while,” his dad suggested. “That’s what I always do when there’s a hard thing to worry about, and then when you go back to thinking about the hard thing, sometimes it seems clearer.”
“OK,” said Jake.
There was silence for a few minutes, while Jake tried to think about something else.
“So are there any art galleries over there?” he asked after a while.
“I dunno,” Jake’s dad said. “I’m sure there must be.”
“Can we go?” Jake asked.
“Yes, if you want to, but there’s an art gallery in Dublin too.”
“Is there?” said Jake. “I didn’t know. With fish paintings?”
“I dunno,” his dad said again. “We could check, couldn’t we?”
“We could,” said Jake.
There was a bit more silence. Jake thought very hard about other things.
“Jake?” said his dad after a while. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I think you can walk the walk. Have you ever heard that expression?”
“No,” said Jake.
“Well then, you wouldn’t understand it, I suppose. Sorry I mentioned it.”
“That’s OK,” said Jake.
“I only like them with pepper on them,” said his dad after a while. “Tomato sandwiches. Do you think she’ll remember to put pepper on them? It’s not the same if you have to open them up and put it on afterward. I don’t know why.”
“Ah, yeah,” said Jake. “She will. She’s an ace cook.”
CHAPTER
41
Jake sat beside Stella at the funeral, because that’s where Mrs. Kennedy had indicated he should sit. He’d met her at the church door and she had caught him firmly by the wrist and marched him—shuffle, stomp, shuffle, stomp—up the aisle till they got to the top, where the family sat, and she’d pointed to an empty space, a long expanse of dark brown pew beside Stella, and nudged him into the seat. He’d slid along on his bottom till he was sitting next to her.
Stella looked like a ghost, her skin even paler than usual, her hair all loose about her thin shoulders, like a ghost girl’s, and she was wearing the kind of dress she never wore, in pale lemon with long sleeves and buttons all up the front and a turndown collar. She seemed like a character in an old movie. She reminded Jake of the portrait of the beautiful girl that hung on the stairwell in Mr. Kennedy’s house. She didn’t look like the girl, but she had the same expression on her face.
The other children sat in a row in the seat behind, with their parents. They sat unnaturally still, and all their hair was brushed, so that they looked like paintings too, paintings of themselves. There was a scent of lilies in the air. Nothing seemed natural, and everything was too calm. There was organ music.
Nobody explained why Stella needed a whole pew to herself, but then one or two people came and sat at the other end of it. They sat quietly and riffled through notebooks and prayerbooks and looked grave and important.
They said nothing to each other, Jake and Stella. They didn’t even look at each other. Jake thought he would burst if he caught Stella’s eye, and he imagined she probably felt the same about him, and neither of them wanted to burst and spoil everything.
He wondered if he should say he was sorry, about … whatever it was. Though he wasn’t. He was sorry about Joanne, but he couldn’t be sorry about the other thing, because he didn’t understand what he was supposed to have done. He wouldn’t mind saying he was sorry, though, if it would help. He wouldn’t mind doing anything if it would help. He felt as if his head was going to split right down the middle like a cracked-open walnut from the sheer pressure of how sorry he felt about Joanne and how sorry he felt for Stella and for her family. Sorrow was like a taut wire in his brain, and if he moved, he felt, it would slice right through and cleave his brain in two, the way the cheese cutter did in the supermarket—it sliced right through the cheese, even though it was only a piece of wire, but it was held very taut, and that was what made it so powerful.
It became clear later why Stella was in that special pew. It was for the people doing the readings and saying the prayers, so they could slip out easily and go to the top of the church when their turn came.
When it was her turn to go, Stella read, in a high, restrained voice, like a person reading the news, from Joanne’s favorite book, One Fish Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish, and Jake’s heart broke all over again. He could hear the little voice in his head, “One fiss, two fiss, wed fiss, boo fiss,” but Stella didn’t cry, and Jake didn’t either, though his head ached with the effort.
Even if it was my fault, he said to himself—which it wasn’t—it’s not my fault that it was my fault. It was a complicated thought, but it seemed to have its own comforting logic. He felt as if the cheese cutter in his head had slackened a little bit. He thought maybe his head wouldn’t burst now.
When Stella came back to her seat, Jake did dare to catch her eye, and he mouthed, “Well done.”
She looked away.
Just for a moment, Jake felt offended. Then he remembered who the important one was and he stopped feeling sorry for himself.
Later, when Jake was just getting into his dad’s car to go home and Stella was standing with a group of her cousins from the country, she waved to him. That was all. But it made him feel better.
On the way home, he tried to think of things that might make Stella feel better. But he couldn’t think of a single one. That made him feel worse.
It would probably go on like that for ages, he thought. Feeling better and then feeling worse. Only for Stella and the rest, there’d be more feeling worse and not much feeling better.
CHAPTER
42
The summer felt old. After the funeral came the football and fish paintings trip, and after that there was nothing to look forward to except school. To distract them from that terrible thought, Stella’s dad had suggested that they should build a tree house in the cherry tree. So that is what they were doing, building the tree house, and he was helping them.
The official line was that they were helping him, but it was pretty clear to Stella and Jake that he didn’t know the first thing about the requirements for a good tree house for the use of five children and their friends. But Jake had found a recipe, as he called it, for a tree house, in a library book. It looked unnecessarily complicated, but they could adapt it. They didn’t need a veranda, he reasoned, or an attic. And you could always put on an extension later, he and Stella had agreed, if necessary. Anyway, they didn’
t want to fill up the whole tree. They had to leave room for the cherries next year.
They were only at the stage of measuring up and planning. They hadn’t got as far as buying the wood yet, much less actually sawing and hammering. Stella’s dad said he’d do that part, and Stella wanted it finished quickly, so the children could play in it for at least a month before the weather started to get chilly and the evenings short.
“We’re all going to be Cotter Burkes,” Jake told Stella. He watched her spreading her arms across to see how wide the thing was going to be. “Did I tell you?”
“I thought you said you were going to be a fish painter,” she said. “I can’t keep up with you. Now you want to be a cotterberk, whatever that is. Hold your end of the tape steady, Dad, the measurements will be out if you let it bend like that!”
Jake snorted a small laugh. “It’s not a job, it’s a name. My mum’s a Cotter. So am I. That’s our surname. Dad’s a Burke. But now that we’re all an official family, since they got married and everything, we thought we’d join up the names so everyone could be the same. It was my idea.”
“We’re just Dalys,” Stella said. “But we don’t mind being friends with double-barrelled people, do we, Daddy? Will you have to change your passport, Jake?”
“I haven’t got a passport. I’ve never been abroad. Except to Old Trafford, but you don’t need a passport for England.”
“You should get one,” said Stella’s dad, sticking a pencil purposefully behind his ear. “In case you need to run away from home. All my children have them expressly for that purpose, or so they tell me.”
“I don’t think I will want to run away. Or not that far.”
“When I met you first,” Stella said, “—remember, in the supermarket?—you were a proper little bundle of misery. You looked then as if you wanted to run away, as far away as you could get.”
“Was I? Did I? I don’t remember.”
“Oh, yes. You didn’t like babies. And you didn’t like girls. You especially didn’t like me. Don’t say a word, I know you didn’t. I wanted you to be my friend because I thought you looked more interesting than most boys, but I had to work very hard at it. I had to follow you home to see where you lived. I don’t think you liked your dad too well either. You only liked fish and football. You didn’t even seem to like yourself very much.”
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