by Hilary McKay
That was the grandparents’ favorite picture of the day. They wasted no time in having four enlarged copies printed for the girls, and added to the bottom of each cardboard photo frame a relevant and lovely quotation from Homer.
“Perfect!” they said, displaying them to Ruby.
Ruby inspected them doubtfully, chopped off the quotation, and took them with her when she went to meet her friends the next day.
They were gathered together in the storage part of Treacle the pony’s hay- and straw-filled stable.
“Oh,” they said when Ruby handed out the photographs, and “Thank you,” and “What was it you cut off?” but they did not say “Perfect.”
“Caddy looks awful,” observed Alison.
“That’s because I had hardly any time to get dressed!”
“You could have put something on . . .”
“I did!”
“. . . Anything except those jeans! Anyway, I didn’t mean that sort of awful. I meant miserable. Like you are about to burst into tears.”
“I don’t!” said Caddy indignantly. “I was a bit sad, that’s all. I kept remembering Lost Property. All those seagulls, and him dead before he had a single chance to fly.”
“Pigeons don’t fly,” said Alison. “Not if they can help it. They wobble round the streets eating chips and chewing gum. Anyway, it’s not just you who looks awful. I look terrible too!”
That was true. Alison, who loathed above all things having her photograph taken, had only joined the group at the last moment, after a good deal of lurking in the background looking stroppy. Never before had Alison spent a day in the company of four old-age pensioners. The photograph caught her in the middle of muttering, “I’ll die if we meet anyone we know from school.”
All the while that Caddy and Alison had been talking, Beth had been scrutinizing her copy of the picture. It filled her with dismay, and it confirmed a fear that had been growing in her mind all summer. She asked, “Do I really look like that?”
“What d’you mean?” demanded her friends.
“Enormous!”
“No!” exclaimed Caddy and Ruby at once.
“You’re not enormous,” agreed Alison (and Beth looked up in relief, because in matters such as this Alison could always be trusted to tell the unsoftened truth). “You’re just quite tall and so much riding has given you a bit of a big b—”
Caddy got to her feet, tipped Alison onto the floor, and piled hay bales on her stomach.
“You’re lovely and tall,” said Ruby comfortingly to Beth. “I wish I was. I don’t even come up to your ears. None of us do.”
Beth hid her face in hay and groaned. Alison sneezed and writhed until Caddy pulled her up again. Ruby climbed high above the rest of them on a wobbly pillar of bales and inspected her own copy of the photograph. She was in the center of the group, one arm around Caddy’s shoulder, the other clutching Beth’s. She looked like she felt she might be swept away if she did not hold on tight.
I do, thought Ruby, gazing at the picture. I do feel that.
The morning passed. One by one the photographs disappeared. Only Caddy’s made it home (where it was squirreled away at once by Saffron as an illustration to her favorite sort of stories). The rest were posted between hay bales, hopefully to be chewed up by mice. Ruby remained on her pillar of bales, silent and thoughtful. Caddy and Beth brushed Treacle, one each side. Alison picked hay out of her hair and said, “I’m bored. I hate this. And the whole summer’s gone. Do you realize it’s school next week?”
Ruby flinched.
“This is all we ever do,” continued Alison. “Last summer, and the summer before, and the summer before that, we were here just like this. Same old hay! Same old spiders! Beth, don’t you ever get fed up with brushing that horse?”
“No!” said Beth, clutching Treacle.
“Well, I get fed up with watching you! Caddy, aren’t you bored? Wouldn’t you like a change? Something different? Amazing or scary or awful? Anything but this!”
For a moment the cold breath of the genie touched the back of Caddy’s neck.
“No, I wouldn’t!” she told Alison. “I would like things to stay just as they are forever and ever and ever.”
“Boring,” said Alison. “Boring, boring, boring!” And she left.
Caddy, Beth, and Ruby looked at each other uneasily after she had gone.
“Why did she have to mention school?” asked Ruby, while Beth buried her face in Treacle’s silky neck and said, “I will never get tired of you! Never, never!”
Caddy rubbed the shivery patch on the back of her neck, jumped to her feet, and broke the spell. “Nothing need change!” she said. “She’s only being Alison-hates-everyone. She can’t help it. Come on, let’s catch up with her. We’ll take Juliet swimming and make Alison come with us.”
“She never will,” said Ruby, nevertheless beginning to clamber down from her tower.
“She will. She’s bored. She’ll do anything! Hurry up, Beth!”
Beth gave Treacle one last hug, and two minutes later they were tearing after Alison, encircling her, jumping round her, saying, “Come on! Come on! Just to please you, we’re taking Jools swimming! Scary and awful! That’s what you wanted! Go on, admit you’re scared now!”
“Shut up! Go away! I hate you!” said Alison, completely back to normal again.
In the last few days of the holiday, summer grew old. Dry leaves fell and collected in corners in the streets and gardens. The swifts that had swooped and screamed around the rooftops since April vanished in one windy night.
Beth and Juliet were hauled round the town in search of school uniforms.
Alison had a tantrum in a shoe shop.
Caddy’s mother said, “Goodness, school!” and gazed at Caddy, Saffron, and Indigo, and asked, “What about your hair?”
“We’re growing it,” they told her.
“Lovely,” said Eve. “Well. Can you still see out all right, Indigo darling?”
“Mmmm,” said Indigo. “Anyway, Saffy chops bits off when I can’t.”
“Does she?” asked Eve, rather taken aback. She wondered if she should try and stop this cheerful, cooperative, and economical behavior. How would one do that? Order “Never again!”? Lock away all scissors? Would the order be enforceable, or the lockaway practical?
“When I’m doin’ it,” said Saffy, reading her mind, “I use those scissors with round ends that don’t cut very well. And Indigo covers up his eyes with his hands. Next time you can watch if you like.”
“I should love to,” said Eve, hugging them both.
“Beth’s sister, Juliet, cut Beth’s hair the other day,” remarked Caddy. “In the night, really, though. Not the day. While Beth was asleep. For revenge, Juliet said.”
“Revenge for what?”
“For Beth making her feel guilty. Being so kind and taking her swimming when she’d been sick in the pool the time before. It made Jools feel awful, all that niceness, she said. It made her mad, too.”
“What did it look like?” asked Indigo, round-eyed at this story. “Beth’s hair, after Juliet cut it. Did it look good?”
“It did on one side.”
The kitchen filled with giggles. Saffy, who knew Juliet from school, told the story of her attempt to launch herself from the coat pegs and fly. Indigo remarked that he really could fly, down the staircase, in dreams, and was surprised and pleased to hear that Caddy and Saffron and Eve could do the same. It was decided to telephone Bill, to see if he also had the ability. They did, and he could.
“The whole family!” gloated Indigo, amazed and delighted.
“Let’s not ask anyone else,” urged Saffron, not wanting it to be a universal talent, and everyone understood, and agreed.
“When Aunty Linda and I were little girls . . . ,” began Eve.
“Did you fly down the stairs?”
“It was nearly as good as flying down stairs! What we did was to pile a whole lot of cushions and things at the bottom of
the stairs, and get our sleds . . .”
“We don’t have sleds!”
“Any big old tray would do, that metal one with the roses on it would be perfect!”
A noisy, bumpy, laughter-filled evening followed. Caddy went to bed happy and, finding Saffron still awake, began a story.
“AlisonRubyanBethanme . . .”
The world felt safe. Caddy completely forgot the memory of the genie’s chilly breath on the back of her neck that morning.
There was nothing to suggest or hint or warn that once again he was about to pick the world up and spin it on his finger.
Chapter Four
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT
THE GENIE STRUCK WITHOUT WARNING THE NIGHT BEFORE THE new school term.
It began when Eve insisted on early bed.
“For everyone,” said Eve. “You too, Caddy!”
Caddy looked at her in disbelief. The last hour of the evening was her most precious part of the day. Then Indigo and Saffron (aged six and not quite eight) were packed away upstairs, and for a little while she had her mother to herself.
“Peace at last!” Eve would say, and they would flop down on the sofa together with great sighs of relief. It was their time for doing nothing at all except enjoying the end of the day; fire-lit in winter, green-smelling in summer, now in September tingling and expectant with the spiraling winds of autumn. It meant a great deal to Caddy to have that little time of peace at last.
“You don’t really mean early bed for me, too, do you?” she asked.
“Just this once.”
“With Indigo and Saffron?”
“Yes.” Eve seemed preoccupied. “All of you together tonight.”
“But why?”
“I have so many things to do.”
“What things? I’ll help you! Don’t I always help you?”
“Don’t argue, Caddy darling,” pleaded Eve.
Caddy did not argue. Instead she became silent and stiff with indignation. Eve began hurrying Saffron and Indigo upstairs. Indigo looked back sympathetically at Caddy as she dragged slowly after them, but Saffron was bouncy with pleasure. Caddy and she shared a room, and she hated the dismal wait alone before Caddy came up to join her. Often it lasted so long that she gave up completely and left her bed to crawl in with Indigo instead. Indigo never minded that. Saffron was warm, her hair smelled nice, and she banished the dark with murmured stories that began “One-sapon-atime” and never, so far as Indigo knew, reached an end. He was always fast asleep long before the bears came home, or the prince found his way to the rose-hidden castle, or the dwarfs returned from the diamond mine.
The stories that Saffron told were always fairy tales. The ones she liked best, however, the ones she could not tell by herself, were the Caddy stories that began not “One-sapon-atime” but “AlisonRubyan-Bethanme . . .”
Usually, all Saffron had to do was recite the opening line and Caddy would begin, but this night it did not seem to work.
“AlisonRubyanBethanme . . . ,” began Saffron hopefully, the moment they were both in their beds.
Caddy growled and scrunched over to the wall, as far from Saffron as possible.
“You read a story, then, Mummy,” ordered Saffron. “Read to all of us. Indy can come in with his quilt.”
“Not tonight,” said Eve. “I have to telephone Daddy. Please be good, Saffron. Give me a kiss and say night-night!”
“Oh, well,” said Saffy resignedly. “Night-night. I love you. When’re you going to die?”
“When I’m a hundred and ten,” replied Eve, not flinching at this question because Saffy asked her every bedtime.
“How old will I be?”
“Eighty-two and a half . . . No more talking now. Good night, Caddy darling!”
“It’s not good,” said Caddy.
“I must go,” said Eve hurriedly, and turned off the light and left them. They heard her cross the landing to whisper to Indigo, and then the closing of a door, then nothing at all, only the traffic outside.
“Caddy?” said Saffron.
“Shut up!”
“AlisonRubyanBethanme?”
“NO!” snarled Caddy, then gathered herself in an uncommunicative ball, screwed shut her eyes, and became an absence in the room.
Saffron sighed, rolled out of bed, and headed for Indigo. Caddy heard him murmuring, “I been asleep for hours,” and Saffron, undaunted, “One-sapon . . .”
“Not the beanstalk,” protested Indigo sleepily.
“. . . atime . . .”
“Not the bears again, either.”
“No. Listen! One-sapon-atime in a land far away . . .”
“Mmmm,” agreed Indigo.
“There was a king and a queen. And there was a lot of fairy godmothers and one of them was a bad one. And she had black-and-green bony wings in the picture in my book, so they didn’t invite her to the party . . .”
“Was there a party?”
“Yes, because I forgot to say, one day the king and queen had a beautiful little . . .”
Caddy pulled her pillow over her head and started to cry.
That was how the night began.
Much later Caddy woke, or half woke, to the sound of footsteps. Heavy, crunching footsteps on the gravel path outside. Racing footsteps on the stairs. She struggled to understand through sleep that lay as heavy as a blanket on her face.
There were voices, urgent but subdued, and then:
“Absolutely nothing to worry about!” Caddy heard suddenly and quite distinctly.
It sounded like Bill, her father: his voice.
“Daddy?” wondered Caddy, and knew she was wrong, and it couldn’t be. Bill was in London, being an artist. He had a studio there, shared galleries there, schemed there, worked there, juggled his money there, had a whole life there that Caddy knew nothing about. At home he lived another life, quite different, another sort of juggling (and not nearly so much fun).
“Absolutely nothing,” repeated the voice, “to worry about, at all!”
It sounded exactly like Bill, and what was more, Caddy, struggling to emerge from the blanket of sleep, had a very strong feeling that the words had been spoken to her, in her room. Still, when she finally managed to open her eyes, there was no one there. What there was, transfixing, inexplicable, was blue light, pulsating on the bedroom ceiling.
And also sounds were everywhere, suppressed whispers, doors opening and closing, an engine, a sigh.
It was over so quickly that Caddy, who had never been properly awake, gave up the struggle and allowed sleep to engulf her once again.
Ages later, it was morning
“Absolutely nothing to worry about!” said the voice again, and it was daylight, and there was Bill Casson with his head round the bedroom door.
“Daddy!”
“I arrived in the night,” said Bill. “I—”
From the kitchen came the clatter of tumbling china, and shouts of warning from Indigo. Bill’s head vanished as quickly as if a string round his neck had been jerked.
“Don’t touch anything!” Caddy heard him call, and then his footsteps running down the stairs, a thump, a howl as he hit the loose patch of carpet on the third step (as familiar as their own skins to those who lived in the house), a crack (that was his head against the hall wall), the kitchen door, raised voices.
“What’s happened?” shrieked Caddy, suddenly frightened. “What is it? Why are you here? Where’s Mum?”
Indigo answered that, his clear little-boy voice floating up from the kitchen. “Mummy went away in the night.”
The clatter that had sent Bill running was a whole shelf of china, yellow with white spots, brought down in an avalanche caused by Saffy climbing the kitchen sideboard in order to find her mug. Now she was poised barefoot among the fragments, marooned in a sea of broken china.
“Good grief! Good Lord! Good Heavens!” complained Bill, on his knees with the dustpan and brush.
“Mummy went away?” repeated Caddy,
now at the kitchen door, her voice high and panicking. “In the night? Why did she? Where did she go?”
“She—”
“What’s happened? Is she ill? Have you had an awful row and she’s run away? Tell me!”
“No!” exclaimed Bill. “For goodness’ sake, Caddy! Didn’t I already tell you? There’s nothing to worry about. Really! I promise! Saffy! Stand still, can’t you, until I’ve got the floor clear. What on earth you had to climb up there for, I don’t know!”
“I was getting my strawberry mug,” said Saffron, holding it up so that Bill could see the strawberries, and then drinking air from it, to prove it was a mug.
“I always have my strawberry mug in the mornings, don’t I, Caddy?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” shouted Caddy. “Tell me where Mum is now!”
Bill, still on his hands and knees, spoke as if he was choosing words very carefully.
“She’s just had to . . . to disappear for a little while . . .”
“Disappear?”
“She didn’t feel too good after you’d gone to bed last night. So she telephoned me and I came back from London and then Mummy went off to good old hospital . . .”
“HOSPITAL!”
“. . . where she is now, feeling much better already . . . Saffron, please, don’t try to help. You’ll cut yourself. We don’t need any more bloodshed . . .”
“BLOODSHED!”
“CADDY! It’s a figure of speech! Stand still, Saffy! And explain to me if you can why of all the blasted mugs this family owns you had to go climbing after that one.”
“For my coffee.”
“You don’t drink coffee! You’re not allowed coffee! Does Mummy let you have coffee?”
“No.”
“Well, then!”
“You’re not Mummy.”
“TELL ME!” bawled Caddy, hating them both. “WHAT HAS HAPPENED?”
Indigo, who had been standing quietly watching all this time, said suddenly, “It’s the baby.”
“What baby?”
“The firework baby, of course.”
“The firework baby?”
“Caddy, Indigo, hush!” commanded Bill. “First we will clear up this mess. Then I will make hot chocolate for all of you. And after that we will talk very calmly about what happened, with nobody getting upset because there is nothing to be upset about . . .”