by Hilary McKay
‘Please, Louis!’
Louis sighed, and slumped down beside Max, who had found himself a sticky, squashy, plastic-covered seat and taken out his mobile phone.
‘Can I play a game on it?’ asked Louis, without much hope.
‘No,’ said Max, so Louis allowed his spine to become boneless, and trickled down the gap in the back of the chair.
Abi looked at the FOR SALE displays that they didn’t need to bother with, and found a house half built of leaves under a pointed roof.
‘I’ve found a house!’ she said again, and this time very much louder. ‘Here!’
‘Nope,’ said Theo after a single glance. ‘Not possible! It’s not for rent. Besides, look at all that ivy!’
The estate agent (who knew, by the condition of their shoes and the hunch of their shoulders, the exact income and state of mind of everyone who arrived through his door) now came over too. As a matter of fact, he said, the house was actually for sale or to rent, and the ivy made it a wonderful bargain. ‘Insulation,’ he explained (he had been trying to get rid of the house for a long time, and what with the ivy and other things, it was proving a very hard job). ‘Insulation,’ he repeated. ‘And – of course – green!’ Then he pressed a house brochure into Polly’s hand.
‘Oh no!’ she exclaimed after one startled look. ‘Too tall. Too narrow. Too many stairs. Rooms stacked like boxes on top of each other. And much too much money!’
‘Hear, hear!’ said Theo.
‘Oh dear,’ said the estate agent, and he gazed at them as if they were a problem family, so that Polly, feeling judged and guilty, looked at the brochure again and said, ‘Of course it would be perfect, in a way, but the cost! And anyway that ivy must be full of spiders!’
‘Not at all,’ said the estate agent, suddenly sounding as confident as David Attenborough, ‘because of facing north.’
Theo and Polly looked at each other with the faces of people who know nothing about spiders or facing north but are damned if they will admit it.
Louis demanded, ‘Are we staying here all day?’ from his carpet-smelling cave, and Theo said, ‘Absolutely not,’ so they went and looked at other places.
The other places were all so awful that by evening they deliberately drove home by way of Abi’s house to prove that it really was impossible.
It was at the bottom of a street that ended in a dark bank of yew trees and it was like no other house they had ever seen. It had coloured glass in the windows and an arched front door.
‘We might as well get out for a minute,’ said Theo, so they did, and stood with their heads tipped back, straining to see the peak of the pointy roof. The house was so tall and narrow that this was difficult.
Ivy covered the house, right up to the top. The front and the visible side were entirely green. Louis pushed his hand deep into the leaves to feel the warm brick underneath.
Beside the front door was a lantern straight out of Narnia: wrought iron and glass panels. Abi found a light switch, half hidden amongst leaves.
‘The electricity will be off,’ said Polly, but Abi tried it anyway, and suddenly the lamp glowed golden, like a promise or a blessing, shining down on their upturned faces, melting all their hearts.
There was a thin new moon in a pale green sky. Traffic whizzed past at the end of the road but the street itself was quiet.
‘It’s beyond us completely,’ said Theo and Polly sadly, and turned off the lamp, herded everyone into the car, and drove away.
There was nothing on the internet, nothing. They searched all evening, going mad. Then they went back to the estate agent and got the key to the ivy house.
‘How can we rule it out completely if we don’t look inside?’ asked Theo, excusing this insanity.
Inside, the air smelt of long ago. The stairs were the sort you fly down in dreams. The coloured glass in the hall windows seemed full of accumulated sunlight. In this house, thought Abi, it felt that nothing could be impossible.
Eventually, one by one, they drifted apart, exploring, opening doors, pausing by windows.
‘There’d be room,’ said Polly, ‘for Abi’s rocking horse.’ And she spoke like a very tired person seeing the end of a journey.
‘Room here,’ said Theo, ‘for half a dozen rocking horses! A flock! A herd! What’s the word for a lot of rocking horses?’
‘A rocketing,’ said Polly, and then she and Theo sat down on the stairs and began working out how much they could afford if they worked much harder and kept it up till they were ancient and never had any emergencies, holidays or extra children.
Abi went to count the rooms. The kitchen was the biggest, with old-fashioned cupboards and a huge battered table. There was also a sitting room with wooden panels right up to the cobwebby ceiling, and an instant waiting silence when she opened the door. She discovered the boys in the attic bedrooms, which were up two flights of stairs. Louis had spotted a wooden box in a corner. It was locked, but Max found a key on the windowsill.
‘Treasure,’ wondered Louis hopefully.
‘Books,’ Max said, disappointed, when he got it open. ‘This can be Abi’s room, because of the books.’
Abi’s room, Abi heard. A room of her own again, where she had a perfect right to be. Hers, because she liked books. ‘Yes, this can be my room,’ she said aloud. She turned the books over, one by one. They were old, faded hardbacks with mottled pages, about half a dozen, perhaps.
‘Nobody reads stuff like that any more,’ said Max.
‘I will,’ said Abi. ‘If we move here. I wish I could help.’
‘Help?’ asked Max.
‘With money,’ said Abi, and she began collecting together her treasures in her thoughts. How much were they worth, and could she part with them? Not Rocky, of course, but her silver charm bracelet (no, NO! But yes, if necessary). Her Lego pirate ship that had taken a whole year to assemble, her signed Harry Potter book, her collection of Jamaican seashells, her book token and her very small pine tree that she had grown herself from a pine-cone seed.
Max was not going to be outdone by Abi. He thought of his savings: nearly a hundred pounds in pocket money, birthday presents and uneaten school lunches. He’d known they would need it one day. And it would be worth a hundred pounds not to have to share with Louis.
Louis said urgently, ‘Listen!’
‘What?’
‘No, listen!’
The house with its ivy sighed and creaked around them.
‘Gone,’ said Louis at last.
‘What was it?’
Louis shook his head, not wanting to say, so Max finished giving out the bedrooms. Book room for Abi, and the one next door for himself. Square bedroom on the floor below for Polly and Theo, and smallest room next to it for Louis. The window of that room was particularly deep in ivy, and when Louis pushed it open to admire his view he heard a sound like a question: ‘To-who? To-who?’
‘There!’ breathed Louis. ‘That’s what I heard before! A nowl.’
Theo and Polly heard the owl too.
‘Is this house what you might call . . . eerie?’ asked Polly.
‘Yes,’ said Theo.
‘Yes,’ agreed Polly. ‘I’m glad it’s not just me.’
‘Bound to be,’ said Theo. ‘So old. The ivy. Nothing wrong with a bit of eer! It’s not like there’s poltergeists throwing things at your head.’
Polly shivered, and then got up from the stairs and went to peer at the garden. ‘It’s been let go wild. What’s behind those yews? Oh . . .’
‘Quiet neighbours,’ said Theo, who had already worked out that the churchyard was next door, and hadn’t known whether to mention it.
‘What?’ asked Abi, suddenly appearing, and Theo told her, ‘Just seen, behind the yew hedge . . .’
‘Oh,’ said Abi. ‘The old churchyard.’
‘Doesn’t it put you off, Abi?’ said Theo, raising his eyebrows.
Abi shook her head. ‘Could we move here?’ she asked.
‘We’ve
got to move somewhere,’ said Polly, clutching her ears, as she did in times of stress.
‘I can help. There’s my signed Harry Potter. We could sell it.’
‘Oh, Abi,’ said Theo.
‘You can use my hundred pounds if you need it,’ said Max, who had followed Abi down.
‘There was a nowl,’ said Louis, from the landing above. ‘A nowl,’ he repeated, pushing past them all, and tugging open the front door. ‘Listen!’
‘To-who?’ came the question again, faintly from beyond the yew trees, and Louis on the doorstep whispered, ‘To me! To me!’
Abi came to stand beside him. She heard the huff and whine of traffic at the top of the road, a faint radio from the noodle shop on the corner, the rattle of an empty crisp packet blown in a gust of wind, car doors, her own heart, a rustle from the base of the yew hedge and the slam of a door.
No owls (or nowls), but, once, a wheezy croak.
‘Would you like to live here?’ she asked Louis.
‘Not on my own,’ said Louis, alarmed.
‘No, no, with all of us.’
‘All right,’ agreed Louis, and then, without warning, took off and ran inside.
Abi lingered after he had gone, listening. The owl called again. The Narnia lamp shone on the breathing ivy leaves. There was a smell of flowers. Abi hunted in the half-light until she found them, white bells on thin wiry stems amongst spear-shaped leaves. She took a stem inside.
‘Lily-of-the-valley!’ exclaimed Polly when she saw them. ‘When I was little . . . Oh, let’s try for this house, Theo! I could work much longer hours! I’ve been longing to get back to it, ever since Louis started school!’
Polly worked for a charity. Before Max and Louis, she’d travelled a lot. She was wonderful at organizing people in crisis. Wonderful. Brilliantly bossy, resourceful and kind.
‘I loved it,’ said Polly, ‘and I’d be mostly in the offices here. It needn’t be lots of travelling. A week or two perhaps, now and then.’
‘OK. Listen,’ said Theo. ‘If I didn’t run a car. No petrol bills. No parking. Cycle lanes nearly all the way to the hospital.’
‘Could you really manage?’ asked Polly.
‘Course I could. Easy. I’d like a bike again. Pizza on the way home?’
Pizza was a celebration food. They bought it on the way back, with extra olives, mushrooms and chillis, and they parted with as many things as they could bear to let go, including Abi’s signed Harry Potter and half of Max’s savings, and they rented the house with the coloured glass in the windows, and the ivy and the arched front door.
CHAPTER TWO
Abi thought that now they had moved into a bigger house, they might have a pet. She mentioned it when they were in the kitchen, unpacking saucepans and china.
‘A dog?’ she asked. She had wanted a dog so much when she was little that she had given herself an invisible one. Roly. For two or three years, invisible Roly had slept on her bed, walked beside her to the park, shared her beanbag while she read her books. Granny Grace and Theo got used to stepping round him, and on journeys and trips out they asked now and then, ‘Will Roly be coming with us?’
There had never been a real Roly, though. ‘In this little flat?’ Granny Grace had said. ‘Not possible.’
There hadn’t been a dog, there couldn’t be a cat because of the traffic. There had been a hamster. A school friend had got tired of him, and Abi, despite Granny Grace’s horror of small creatures like hamsters, had smuggled him home. After a good deal of fuss she had been allowed to keep him – ‘But you can’t hug a hamster,’ said Abi, and, ‘Could we have a dog or a cat?’ she asked now.
Max and Louis both stopped what they were doing to listen to the answer.
‘Sorry,’ said Theo. ‘It’s a “no pets” lease. We can’t have anything like that.’
‘How would anyone know?’
‘We’re just not going to risk it,’ said Theo. ‘We’ve signed a contract that says we won’t, and we’ve paid a thousand pounds deposit . . .’
‘A THOUSAND POUNDS!’ repeated Louis, stunned. ‘A thousand pounds, which we can’t afford to lose. That’s one thing. The other is, it’s only a six-month lease . . .’
‘Does that mean,’ demanded Max, staring around at the chaotic kitchen, ‘that in six months’ time we might have to shove this all back into boxes and move house again?’
‘Not if the owners renew the lease,’ said Polly soothingly. ‘Which we are sure . . .’
‘Almost sure,’ said Theo.
‘. . . almost sure they will. If there are no problems.’ ‘So, that’s it, Abi,’ said Theo. ‘No smuggled-in surprises! We just can’t take the risk.’
‘No, we can’t,’ Max agreed. ‘Don’t forget my fifty pounds! Half my saved-up hundred pounds!’ He glanced at Abi so distrustfully that she lost her temper.
‘It’s my home too!’ she cried. ‘This time, it’s my home just as much as yours! I don’t want to lose it either. And stop going on about your fifty pounds! You can get another fifty pounds, but I can’t ever get another signed Harry Potter book.’
Bang! went the door as she marched out of the kitchen, and they were left with a horrible silence.
‘Good for Abi!’ said Polly.
‘I think you should be on Max’s side,’ remarked Louis.
‘Oh, do you?’ said Polly crossly.
‘Yes, ’n’ Theo on Abi’s side.’
‘And what about you?’ asked Theo.
‘He can be on Mrs Puddock’s side,’ said Max, and Louis flew at him in fury.
Louis did not like Mrs Puddock.
It was Polly who had introduced her to the family. ‘We’ve got a neighbour,’ she said, running into the kitchen to call people. ‘I found her on the path. I think she was waiting to meet us. Come and say hello to Mrs Puddock!’
‘Hello, Mrs P.,’ said Theo amiably. He was so tall he had to bend to look at her properly. ‘Keeping an eye on us all?’
Mrs Puddock crossed little starfish hands on her stomach, and looked around at them with bright, glinting eyes. She had a nice smile, huge, stretching in a wavering, rueful line from invisible ear to invisible ear. She dipped her head a little and shuffled.
‘Hello, Mrs Puddock,’ said Abi, but Louis edged away.
Mrs Puddock’s voice was hesitant, and a little creaky, and her movements were slow. ‘She looks ancient,’ said Max when they met her again, a day or two later. ‘Like a dead thing come alive.’
Louis stared at him in fear.
‘I’m going to make friends with her,’ said Abi, causing Max to roll his eyes and Louis to beg urgently, ‘Don’t!’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘Because it will start Louis off on one of his stupid fusses,’ said Max. ‘Just leave her alone, can’t you?’
Abi was not used to being told what to do, except by Granny Grace. Nor had she forgotten ‘Don’t forget my fifty pounds!’ and Max’s distrustful glance. After that she kept an extra watch out for Mrs Puddock, and met her quite often, mostly in the evenings, always close to the house. She seemed to like the shadows and the damp little path by the hedge, but the lighted windows clearly fascinated her. She would pause on her journeys to gaze.
‘Do you think she notices what we do?’ said Louis, and Polly said yes, of course she did, and Theo and Max should bring their bikes in properly, instead of leaving them slumped by the wall, and people should remember to take their shoes off at the door and the bins should be put out on time.
Louis looked at Polly carefully, checking that she was joking.
‘Mrs Puddock,’ said Theo, ‘is a flipping nuisance.’
‘Mrs Puddock,’ said Max, ‘is a really stupid joke.’
‘I saw her eat a beetle,’ said Louis.
‘You’re a good one to talk about beetles,’ said Max, looking meaningfully at Louis’ head, which had recently once again become home to uninvited wildlife, and he turned Louis upside down and held him by his ankles. He said he was shak
ing the beetles out of his hair.
‘Louis’ beetles are long gone,’ said Theo, turning him the right way up again. ‘I’ve checked. Right, I’m off to work. I’ll see you all later. Don’t drive each other nuts! Be happy.’
It wasn’t very hard to be happy in those first weeks. It was the school summer holidays. The days were bright. Sunlight chased Mrs Puddock away, polished the ivy leaves and found its way into the rooms, dappling them with greenish light. The last boxes were unpacked, and the rooms gradually organized, the kitchen first, then the bedrooms, and then they ran out of furniture. They didn’t care, because they had space. Where they had lived before they’d had so little space that everyone always knew where everyone else was to be found. Now they had room to lose track of each other.
‘Cuts down on the bickering,’ said Theo to Polly, and she groaned and nodded and asked, ‘Will they ever get on?’
Max spent a lot of time with his friend Danny, partly because they jointly owned a bike-repair and car-cleaning business, which was based at Danny’s house, and partly because Danny had taken a dislike to the ivy house the first time he’d visited.
‘Spooky,’ Danny had said. It was best that the bike-repair and car-cleaning business was at his house anyway, because he had four big brothers with broken bikes, as well as several kind neighbours with dirty cars. Some days the business actually earned money, or would have done if its owners hadn’t immediately rushed out and spent it on bike-repair and car-cleaning equipment. They told each other this was reinvesting, but really they enjoyed spending. It made them feel optimistic. Their conversations often began with, ‘When we get rich . . .’
Louis did not even go as far as the graveyard. He stayed at home. Those first warm nights, with his bed pushed under his window, he stretched his bare feet out into the thousand shining green leaves, and felt magic running through him like bright sap through the veins of a leaf. He had begun to know the ivy, its depth, its mysterious blue reflections, its iron smell of green and ancient botany, its sound of rain on turning pages, its strength and brittleness, and its flavour of cress and stone.
It was the first wildwood of his life, and it satisfied him all summer.