The Time Of Green Magic

by Hilary McKay

  Theo heard and turned his head to smile at her.

  Abi looked down at Louis. There was no substance to his curls, they were as light as feathers and his bones were thin. She wondered if Polly missed him, and thought she probably did. I would miss him, she thought, surprising herself. She surprised herself too, in longing for her book. The sea air had blown her thoughts back into a much more sensible state. She thought of her sunlit ocean and had a good idea. She would find the end, check and double check that the voyage had finished with no one drowned, and then go back to where she had stopped and begin again.

  Theo hummed as he drove, blurrily, like a weary bee. He thought that the seaside had been a good idea, and when he got his second wind he’d make a start on the ceiling. So far so good, thought Theo, and he smiled as he glanced at Max nodding beside him. Old Max, taking a break from the shock of Esmé. Nothing ever the same again, thought Theo, remembering the first girl who had stepped into his consciousness, stopped his heart and restarted it. Like stepping off a cliff into deep water, what with the plunge and the shock and the half-drowned scrabble to get your head above water again, and then the sun in your eyes . . .

  ‘Nearly home,’ he said, an hour later, and his carload of passengers began to shake themselves awake. It was dark, but the Narnia lamp was shining for them, gilding the shadowy ivy and spilling pale gold on to the steps. Hunger besieged them, so they ate scrambled eggs with buttered toast and tomatoes for vitamins. Then they staggered around the kitchen, loading the dishwasher while Theo got out brushes and paint in the rocking-horse room and climbed on to a kitchen chair. He’d vacuumed the ceiling, but even so the plaster leaves and roses were grubby and stained, grey from dirt, brown from spider nests. Theo painted one with thick cream paint, and it looked so good he painted another, and another and another.

  ‘Can I help?’ asked Abi.

  ‘Can you reach?’

  Abi stood on a chair to test, but she couldn’t.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Theo, busy amongst his roses.

  ‘Why’re you doing it so fast?’ asked Louis.

  ‘Want to get it done before your mum gets back.’

  ‘Soon?’

  ‘Soonish.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Tomorrow we are shopping so’s to stuff the cupboards with lovely food and then we’re cooking Granny Grace’s special coconut curry and I’m making ice cream after with deep-fried Mars bars like they eat in Scotland.’

  Louis asked him very doubtfully if he knew how.

  ‘Do I know how?’ asked Theo, scornfully. ‘I was born there! You’re yawning, Louis! What about bed? I’ll be up to give you a hug when I’ve done a bit more here.’

  ‘I will if Abi does,’ said Louis, and Abi went quite willingly because she wanted to read, and that left Max alone with Theo.

  Max had worked out that he could probably reach the ceiling if he tried, but he didn’t. He sat on the sofa and searched for Esmé on Facebook and found she didn’t exist. He did find a website where you could learn French for free and he studied it for several minutes in increasing despair, and then he watched Theo for a while. He felt the way a person does when there are two people in the room and one is being heroic and the other isn’t.

  Theo looked down at him from his ceiling and said proudly, ‘Looking good, you think?’

  Max nodded, and then asked, for the sake of something to say, ‘Shouldn’t you have got the chimney swept first?’

  The results were spectacular. Theo, an open tin of paint in one hand, a paintbrush in the other, stepped backwards off the chair in dismay, flung up his arms to save himself and created a deluge that splattered to the ceiling and covered most of the floor.

  ‘I’m glad I didn’t do that,’ observed Max, wiping paint blobs from his face.

  Theo’s expression changed from extreme surprise to sudden laughter. It was so infectious that Max could not help grinning too. The clean-up took them till nearly midnight and by the time the two of them staggered off to bed, the heroic levels were much more balanced between them.

  That night, Abi emptied her seashells into an old pencil case, sniffed the sea smell that came with them, and opened her book. Then, skipping the long damp passages scattered between sails and storms, encountering flying fish by day and phosphorescent whales by night, she crossed the South Pacific, was stranded on a coral reef and finally waded ashore to discover windblown palm trees beneath a brilliant blue sky.

  Deep in the dark she woke to find sand on her pillow and a new seashell in her hand, white, speckled with caramel markings, rose pink inside.

  ‘Did you find it yesterday?’ asked Louis, when he saw it the next morning.

  ‘Yes,’ said Abi, turning the shells, and admitting the magic at last. ‘Yes, I found it yesterday, but on a different beach.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Towards the end of Sunday, after the shopping (during which Louis wandered off so many times he came perilously close to being strapped into the trolley’s toddler seat), and the curry (broccoli instead of cauliflower was a mistake) and the deep-fried Mars bars (disaster) and the great washing of school uniforms (which had been completely forgotten and now would never be dry in time for morning) and a phone call from Polly that sounded like fragments of broken glass colliding on another planet – towards the end of that tempestuous day, Louis glimpsed Mrs Puddock and started screaming.

  ‘Louis?’ asked Theo, very gently, down on his heels so he could look into Louis’ face. ‘This is a bit daft, isn’t it?’

  Louis pushed Theo hard, so that he toppled over backwards, then ran up to his bedroom.

  ‘Louis?’ said Abi, a few minutes later, from outside his closed door.

  Louis opened his door just wide enough to look out at her. His face was white, with tear-stain blotches round the eyes.

  ‘I’ve brought you toast and chocolate spread. Pink milk and a banana.’

  Louis opened his door slightly wider.

  ‘And I’ve downloaded a really funny cartoon about frogs and toads and tadpoles.’

  Louis took the toast, the pink milk and the banana, and then he shut the door again.

  Iffen visited early that night. Iffen the hungry, the untamed, Iffen the great warmth when the shivers came. Louis opened his window and heard him. The sound of his arrival was like gusts of wind before a storm, and the feeling in Louis’ heart when he heard it was the moment before a firework rocket explodes into stars.

  Except for the sound in the ivy, his movements were silent. He prowled like an animated shadow. He smelt wonderful, part smoke, part caramel. His leaps looked like slow motion. When he turned his head to look at Louis, an amber power traced patterns on the nerves beneath Louis’ skin. From his very first visit he had taken ownership of Louis’ room, Louis’ bed and Louis’ mat (on which he sharpened his claws).

  ‘Iffen,’ said Louis. ‘What if Mrs Puddock grows?’

  Iffen glanced at him with contempt.

  Iffen banished loneliness. His arrogant sorting through the offerings on the windowsill made Louis smile. Either they vanished completely, or were flicked scornfully into the ivy. They were not enough. Lately Iffen had taken to bringing his own supplies.

  At first Louis had not understood. The night he found a squirrel in the centre of his patchwork mat, still warm, with surprised dead eyes and a bloody nose. He behaved very badly.

  ‘Yuck!’ said Louis, and picked it up and flung it out of the window.

  Then, right before him, Iffen swelled to twice his size: a monster cat-thing, arched back, flattened ears and a bottlebrush tail. ‘Tcha!’ spat Iffen, a furious sound that backed Louis flat against the wall.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ begged Louis, with his arms in the air like a boy held hostage, but Iffen was gone, back out through the window and running down the ivy wall as if it were not vertical. A minute or two later, Louis heard terrible crunching from the shadows beneath.

  I suppose he was very, very hungry, Louis had thought re
morsefully, and had redoubled his food offerings. This was so difficult, his family being vegetarian, and Iffen being quite the reverse, that he invested a vast amount of his pocket money in a box of dog biscuits, the large ones shaped like bones. These were well received. Iffen disappeared with the first under Louis’ bed, from whence came growls and munching.

  ‘Now you needn’t catch any more squirrels,’ said Louis, and was not pleased when Iffen appeared with one the very next evening, dangling from his jaws like a thin grey moustache.

  Iffen had put the squirrel in the middle of Louis’ pillow.

  Then they had both looked at it.

  In Louis’ head had come a sudden great longing to pick up the pillow, squirrel included, and hurl it into the night, to evict the murderer after it, to slam the window, draw the curtains and delete all memories of owls, nowls, squirrels, cat-things and pigeons. Louis guessed now who had left the two white feathers in the nest in the ivy, and he knew without doubt that the occupant had not, as he had previously believed, come alive and flown away.

  And now this squirrel on his pillow. His own private dinosaur pillow. Louis put his hands on his hips and glared at Iffen and commanded, ‘Take it away!’

  But Iffen had only rearranged the squirrel a little, like someone rearranging the bow on a parcel, and then Louis realized, all in a moment, that he had been given a gift.

  ‘Oh, Iffen,’ he murmured, melting with love, and he had picked up the squirrel and mimed eating it, beginning at the tail, like a long limp grey baguette.

  Now Louis had a surprise to offer in return. His starfish from the beach halted Iffen mid-prowl. He sniffed it with caution, ears laid flat, gave Louis a questioning, amber glance, and sniffed it again.

  ‘It’s a starfish,’ said Louis.

  Iffen hooked it up on one claw, held it enquiringly for a moment, then bent his head. His jaws moved twice. That was all.

  It had been a large and leathery starfish, bigger than Louis’ hand.

  ‘Gosh,’ said Louis, a little shakily.

  Later that night, lying cramped under the quilt, not quite daring to stretch out his legs, Louis looked at Iffen, outlined against the shadowy window. He wondered how he could ever have believed him to be a nowl.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Max was in his bedroom, talking to his mirror. It was Monday and he had rushed home from school, showered, cleaned his teeth and dug out his best jeans and T-shirt, the Snoop Dog one that Danny’s eldest brother had once remarked was cool. Now he was practising the words he needed for Esmé. He said to the mirror, ‘I’m sorry about dropping the pasta on Friday. It was stupid.’

  It had taken him two days and two nights to put these sentences together, and he still wasn’t sure they were right. Pasta or macaroni? Sorry, so sorry, or really sorry? To grin, as if it was almost funny? To look humble? To remark casually, as if he had only just remembered?

  Max tried again, with macaroni and grinning, and then with pasta and humble, and then macaroni and casual, and then with really sorry, pasta and slightly raised eyebrows. Max did this twice and thought it was probably the best. He wished he could have worn his sunglasses, because he felt much more confident with them on, but he couldn’t because it was winter and indoors. He tried the words through one more time and then went down and said them.

  Esmé had, as usual, walked Louis home, helped him find a snack, switched on the kitchen TV, watched five minutes of cartoons with him, and then opened her enormous art book and become immersed in her work. She looked blankly at Max after he had spoken, so he coughed, rearranged his eyebrows (which seemed to have stuck in the raised position) and attempted to juggle with two oranges from the fruit bowl.

  Esmé’s look became very puzzled.

  ‘So are we OK now?’ asked Max.

  ‘Pardon?’ asked Esmé.

  Max repeated his words again, quite loudly, with macaroni this time and no eyebrow control at all.

  ‘Ah!’ said Esmé, nodding to show she now understood (obviously, Max realized, her weekend had not been harrowed by recurring memories of dropped pasta). ‘I think next time you please stay and clear up.’

  ‘Definitely, definitely!’ agreed Max (in – oh, horrors! – a fake American accent), retrieved the oranges from under the table, held one each side of his head to make cartoon ears and then put them back in the fruit bowl.

  ‘Pas gentil,’ remarked Esmé, taking them out again.

  Max was very pleased to have been spoken to in actual French, although he had no idea what she meant. ‘Oui, oui,’ he said, suddenly wonderfully happy. ‘Can I see what you’re drawing? Louis, does she mind?’

  ‘She does not mind,’ said Esmé, rolling her eyes. ‘Voilà!’

  It was the first time Max had seen any of Esmé’s art. Looking at it made him feel sorry for her. It was so shabby: huge grey dusty sheets of paper, all scribbled in pastel and charcoal, orange and black, ochre and white. However, he tried not to let what he felt show on his face, and said, ‘It’s brilliant, what is it? Oh, I can see now . . . Horses?’

  ‘Esmé’s book is full of horses,’ said Louis. ‘Horses and bears, tous les animaux.’

  ‘Who taught you French?’ asked Max severely.

  ‘Personne,’ murmured Louis. For weeks now Esmé had spoken to him in French when she couldn’t be bothered with English, and he had soaked up the new words without noticing. He had learned to shrug too. He shrugged and began colouring the palm and fingers of his left hand bright orange with one of Esmé’s chalks.

  ‘Stop it!’ ordered Max, feeling very grown-up. ‘Don’t waste her stuff. She hasn’t got that much. Esmé, I’ve got a set of multi coloured sharpies you can borrow if you like.’

  ‘No thank you,’ said Esmé, laughing.

  ‘She doesn’t use things like that,’ said Louis.

  ‘You be quiet,’ said Max.

  ‘Is true,’ said Esmé.

  ‘She does cave art,’ said Louis. ‘Like cavemen did.’

  ‘Louis, just shut up!’ said Max, appalled. ‘What do you know about art? You don’t understand anything!’

  ‘Stone Age,’ said Louis. ‘I do understand. I help.’ He held out his orange hand to Esmé. She inspected it, frowning a little.

  ‘Water,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, and soap,’ agreed Max bossily. ‘Get to the sink and don’t touch anything!’

  Louis ignored him, dipped one clean finger of his right hand into his water glass and began swirling his orange chalk into paint.

  ‘Not too much,’ said Esmé, sliding her paper dangerously close to him as she spoke. ‘No drips! Where I say, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ agreed Louis, and then Esmé pointed, Louis reached over, and to Max’s absolute horror, slapped his bright orange hand flat on Esmé’s drawing and pressed hard.

  ‘LOUIS!’ yelled Max.

  Louis lifted his hand and showed a perfect print, four fingers, palm and thumb.

  ‘That’ll never come off!’ exploded Max.

  ‘Little more chalk, little more water, then again,’ said Esmé composedly. ‘Very good, Louis.’

  ‘All that fuss because I dropped the macaroni cheese,’ said Max, outraged, ‘then he makes a mess like that and you say very good!’

  ‘I didn’t fuss,’ said Esmé, and at last she stopped hanging over her awful artwork and looked up at him. Her eyes were dark, crinkled at the corners with laughter. She pushed her hair behind her ears, and he saw black crystal studs, very small. Around her neck a leather thong was threaded with a piece of stone, roughly pear-shaped, smooth and nearly white against her olive skin.

  Max’s eyes followed the line of the thong down to the stone and stopped. He became very hot. He thought, I must look somewhere else quick. He found himself juggling again, very recklessly, throwing the oranges much too high. It made Louis laugh and when Louis laughed, Esmé laughed, which was actually magnificent and caused Max to suddenly remember some French that he never knew he had. ‘Ça va? Je t’aime!’ he cried. ‘Is that rig
ht? Bien sûr! Voilà, les pommes orange!’

  His juggling ended abruptly with two hard impacts on the table.

  ‘Non!’ wailed Esmé.

  ‘Oh God oh God I’m sorry,’ moaned Max.

  ‘I’ll get a towel,’ said Louis.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  There was nothing magical about weekday mornings at the ivy house. The air was full of tension with the scurry to be ready for school and work. Max, stoking up with cereal, steeling himself for another day of Danny. Theo, drinking coffee, ironing school shirts that hadn’t quite dried, unloading the dishwasher, making banana toast, pumping bike tyres, bothering Louis with his reading book. One damp and chilly morning Abi was down in time to hear:

  ‘Just turn over a page, Louis, show me a word, any word, you don’t have to say it out loud. Point, and I’ll read it.’

  Louis, accidentally interested, pointed. Theo paused his ironing to look.

  ‘Elephant!’ he announced triumphantly. ‘What d’you know! It’s a book about elephants! Why don’t they put any elephants in the pictures? They should!’

  ‘It’s not a book about elephants, that’s why.’

  ‘Elephant! Elephant! Elephant!’ Theo declared, pointing at words between gulps of coffee and undoing the rock hard knots in the laces of Louis’ shoes.

  ‘None of those words say “elephant”!’ said Louis, dancing with impatience.

  ‘’Scuse me, Louis, but who can read, you or me? They all say elephant except that one there. That one says “sat”. Drink your juice.’

  Louis looked at Theo’s non-elephant word. He could not help himself. He read it.

  ‘It says “cat”.’

  ‘Why’d they put one cat in a whole crowd of elephants?’ asked Theo, and then Louis got really mad and shouted that there wasn’t a single elephant. It was a book about a cat, that cat in the picture, and it didn’t say ‘elephant’ anywhere. Theo had made it up. It said, ‘The cat walked out of the gate.’

  ‘Does it now?’ said Theo. ‘Is that the post?’

  It was. Louis raced to collect it, and came back into the kitchen, shining with pleasure.