Caddy's World

by Hilary McKay

  “How many fireworks?” asked Juliet.

  “One,” said Indigo.

  “One!”

  “One bloody enormous one,” Saffron told her proudly. “Me and Indigo have seen it already. We found it yesterday. We were just checking to see if Daddy had locked anything new up in his ward-robe . . .” (Her father groaned) “. . . and there it was! Come and show Juliet, Daddy!”

  Bill was finding it difficult not to do as Saffron commanded that day, so he got to his feet as he was ordered and showed Juliet the firework. It was as big as Rose, and would fire off three dozen explosions, Bill promised, of increasing beauty and astonishingness. For safety and steadiness it needed to be half buried in a good, deep hole . . .

  “The hole’s all ready,” said Indigo with pride. “Daddy showed us how big it had to be yesterday, and me and Saffy dug it. It was a secret . . . Caddy?”

  “What?”

  “Did you wake me up in the middle of the night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you having bad dreams?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have they gone now?”

  “Yes,” said Caddy, with her arms around Rose.

  Whistling comets streaming colors, gold and pink and green. Rockets like dragons in claps of purple thunder. Silver stars that turned to flowers and opened over half the sky. Fire jewels in fountains: ruby, diamond, emerald, sapphire, falling like rain.

  “That’s it,” said Bill, when the last spark faded, and the guests had gone home. “Thank the good Lord in Heaven! Bedtime for everyone at last! The end!”

  The end? Caddy asked herself sleepily, later. The last quiet hour of the day had come and she was curled up on the sofa, waiting for her turn in the bathroom. Saffron and Indigo were already upstairs. Saffron was in the bath, with Bill to make sure she stayed there. Eve was reading to Indigo, and the words came floating down the stairs. “Once upon a time . . .” “Not the bears,” implored Indigo. “Not that beanstalk one. Not how-the-camel-got-his-hump, we did that at school.” “Once there was a genie who was trapped in a bottle,” read Eve. “And they put the bottle onto a ship and sailed to the deepest part of the sea, and when they arrived there they threw the bottle into the water. But the waves caught the bottle and carried it to a far-off land and flung it to the shore . . .”

  “And a boy picked it up . . . ,” said Indigo happily.

  “And a boy picked it up and he could hear a small voice crying, ‘I am the genie who can spin the world on its finger . . .’ ”

  “And the boy . . . !” shouted Indigo triumphantly.

  “. . . let him out!”

  “It used to be a girl who found the bottle,” objected Saffron from the bathroom.

  “Sometimes it’s a boy, sometimes it’s a girl,” Indigo told her.

  “Oh, all right.”

  That used to be my story, thought Caddy, and she thought, it really does feel like an end.

  Outside in the street in front of Alison’s house a Sold board rattled in the wind. Ruby had visited the academy, climbing with excitement the steps she had vowed she would never go near. Treacle the pony was going back to the riding stables.

  But, “The other side of the planet!” Alison had said. “Thank goodness for you, Caddy!”

  “Me!”

  “It was you who sold our house at last! If you hadn’t chucked that junk about, the silver-Ford man would never have met your dad! That’s what did it! He thought he was fantastic!”

  “Oh, Alison!” said Caddy, but she had to admit, she had never seen Alison so happy. Already the ropes of boredom that had bound her for so long had tumbled away.

  “You can still have friends on the other side of the planet!” said Alison.

  “Of course you can,” said Caddy.

  Soon Ruby would be leaving too. She had come back from the academy with a new prospectus, a file of practice exam papers, and shining eyes. Already she owned a new library card.

  “It was awful without one,” she told Caddy so solemnly that Caddy had to smile.

  Beth was to help out at the stables every weekend. “And they say I can visit Treacle every day if I like. And at the weekends I get paid!”

  “Paid!” said Juliet jealously, but all the same she refrained from adding, “Good, and don’t forget you owe me a Mars bar!” After all, she was Puss in Boots, with the boots to prove it, and besides she had a new interest.

  “Saffron Casson is bloody amazing,” said Juliet.

  It didn’t feel like the end to Juliet. Nor to Alison or Ruby or Beth. Nor to Eve, unpacking her bags, or Bill looking up train times. Nor to Saffy and Indigo, now in bed and planning their Christmas lists. (“What do we need, besides fireworks and spades?” “I think a hamster to keep the hamster company.” “YES!”)

  Downstairs the hamster, who had slept solidly since the moment of his arrival, got up to begin his night’s carousing.

  The baby gazed at Caddy and smiled her first smile.

  Not an end, a beginning, thought Caddy.

  Six Years Later

  CADDY AND ROSE

  “LOOK, CADDY! LOOK WHAT SAFFRON GAVE ME! IT’S YOU!”

  Caddy looked. An old photograph. Words on the back that she read aloud.

  Alison, Ruby, and Beth and me.

  Four girls at the seaside, arms around shoulders, sun in their eyes and wind in their hair.

  Summer 1996

  written underneath, in round, twelve-year-old handwriting.

  Rose said, “I wish I could remember you before you were grown up,” and Caddy laughed and asked, “Am I grown up?”

  “Compared to then you are.”

  Caddy looked at the picture again. “You’re right,” she agreed. “That’s when it started. For all of us.”

  “What started?”

  “Growing up.”

  Alison, Ruby, and Beth and me.

  Rose knew the names well. She had been hearing them all her life. They appeared on postcards and birthday cards and sometimes on the doorstep, bringing unexpected presents from the far side of the world. But “Summer 1996!” said Rose to Caddy. “That was before I was born! Did you really truly know each other before I was born?”

  “We knew each other much longer ago than that!”

  “How much longer?”

  Caddy didn’t answer at first. She was watching the road from the window. Any minute now a driving instructor was going to haul her away for her first driving lesson. She was very, very nervous. She was almost running away, and so to help, Rose was distracting her with questions.

  “Can’t you remember?” persisted Rose.

  “I can remember exactly,” said Caddy. “We were four-ish and five-ish. It was the first day at school. We’d never met before but the teacher sat us together at a little blue table, plonked down one at each corner . . . do I look all right, Rose?”

  “What do you want to look like?” asked Rose cautiously.

  “Safe.”

  “Like you won’t run anyone over?”

  Caddy moaned, and Rose hurried to change the subject.

  “Yes, you do. You look safe. Carry on! Plonked down one at each corner. Then what?”

  “Did I tell you about the teacher? She was quite old, with silvery hair all twirled in loops and very tall . . . All my friends’ driving instructors are ancient and awful. They have red, shiny faces and hot, twitchy hands.”

  “If he’s like that, you’ll see straightaway,” said Rose practically, “and then all you need to do is just say ‘Sorry’ and don’t go. Say you haven’t any money.”

  “It’s free. First lesson free.”

  “Well, we’ll check through the window and if he’s like that I’ll go out and tell him you’re dead.”

  That made Caddy laugh.

  “Tell me more about that teacher. So I can draw a picture.”

  “She had black beads. Dangly ones, and there was a sort of purple haze about her . . . it might have been a cardigan . . .”

  “Scary?”r />
  “A bit. She came over and looked down at us. Alison was sulking, and Ruby was sucking her thumb. I was all a mess because I’d rushed in late. But Beth was perfect . . . It was so good, Rose, because we were the ideal combination. If we wanted someone perfect we pushed Beth forward, and if we wanted someone clever we had Ruby . . . Should I take a hamster? Yes or no?”

  “No. You’ve forgotten Alison. What use was she?”

  “Alison was wonderful because she hated everyone.”

  “What about you?”

  “I was just Caddy, most of the time. Let me see your picture. . . . Yes, that’s what she was like! She stood gazing down at us, Alison, Ruby, and Beth and me, and she said, ‘You four will be friends!’ Just like that! Like a charm!”

  “She sounds like a witch.”

  “She might have been a witch,” agreed Caddy, staring from the window. “Rose! There he is! There he is! There he is!”

  “Awful?” asked Rose, and she put down her pencil, all ready to rush outside and explain that Caddy was dead.

  “No!”

  “No?”

  “Absolutely gorgeous!”

  “Caddy! What are you doing?”

  Caddy, at the speed of light, was undressing. Off came her safe blue jeans, and on went the tight black ones, still damp from the washing machine. Off came the sensible jacket and on went a tiny snow-white cardigan with most of its buttons undone.

  “Absolutely, absolutely gorgeous,” said Caddy, waving out the window with one hand and putting on lipstick with the other. “I’ll take the hamster after all! Oh, Rose! Say good luck! I may faint!”

  “Good luck!” said Rose. “Don’t faint! Don’t crash! Don’t run anyone over! You look lovely! Not safe at all!”

  “I hope he likes me!” said Caddy, hugged Rose, and was gone. She left the door wide open, a sparkle of glitter powder and a trace of perfume like flowers.

  “Don’t worry. He’ll love you!” said Rose.