The Tulip Touch

by Anne Fine

  She managed to look both shy and careless at the same time. I knew then it was going to work.

  ‘Tulip –’

  ‘Shh!’ she said to me sharply. And then, to Jamie: ‘Go on, then. Open it. It won’t bite you.’

  I could have said, ‘No, don’t. It’s not a real present. Just something stupid we did yesterday’ Then Jamie would have stuffed it back at her, and she’d have dropped it. And then, of course, she would have walked away. From him. From me.

  So I stood and watched as he tugged gingerly at the knotted silver thread, and unwrapped the glistening paper. He tipped the lid back. The little black curls of dried dog mess sat in their crumpled tissue nest.

  ‘Happy Christmas!’ crowed Tulip.

  ‘Happy Christmas!’ I echoed.

  Bravely, he tried to defend himself. ‘It isn’t Christmas any more. And so the joke’s on you.’

  And probably just about anyone else in the class could have carried it off. But not Jamie. Tulip knew how to choose her victims. From the moment she’d spotted the little desiccated pile beside the radiator, and sent me off in search of a flat-bladed knife, she’d had Jamie Whitton in mind. And she was right. He kept his end up gamely all day long. ‘I never even touched it.’ ‘I guessed what was in it, anyway’ ‘You two are just stupid.’ But after the last bell rang, Tulip hurried me across the playground and behind the wall.

  ‘Keep your head down.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just wait!’ she said fiercely.

  Obediently, I waited. Cars pulled up outside the school. Doors slammed. Cars drove away.

  ‘Now!’ she said. ‘Take a look!’

  She’d timed it perfectly. Just as we raised our heads, Jamie’s mother slid the car into gear and pulled out from the kerb. And though, when he spotted us watching, he turned his head away as fast as possible, I still had time to see, through the freshly washed windscreen, the first few fat tears of misery roll down his cheek.

  And, when I turned to look at her, Tulip’s smile.

  And there’s another time I shan’t forget, when I cut my knee, wading over to the stone boy in the lily pond. I was carrying a hat we had spent hours dressing with feathers, so I didn’t dare use my hands to save myself when I stumbled and fell against the sharp side of his pedestal.

  Blood poured from the gash. I looked down and felt quite frightened. With each step I took against the water, blood washed away, then welled again.

  ‘Hurry!’ yelled Tulip. ‘Walk faster! Run!’

  No one can run through water. By the time I got back to the edge, my heart was thumping. Tulip prised the hat from my hands. It wasn’t even splashed.

  ‘Good heavens, child!’

  One of the guests had strolled over to see what was happening. Scattering peacocks, she hurried me up the terrace and propped me against a ledge. First came a linen cloth from one of the bars. I soaked that scarlet in seconds. Then came the towels. And then my parents arrived.

  Tulip danced round, getting in everyone’s way as Dad went to fetch a car as close as he could without flattening the flower beds, and everyone else spilled out advice.

  ‘You realize she’ll need at least half a dozen stitches.’

  ‘I shouldn’t bother with the surgery. I’d take her straight to Casualty at the hospital.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Barnes. These things so often look a whole lot worse than they are.’

  Dad appeared round the corner. Behind him, a car engine throbbed. I was handed down over the terrace, and Mum ran to keep up as Dad strode with me in his arms towards the back seat. He tipped me in, and Mum threw herself in beside me and slammed the door after her.

  Someone opened the door again, to push in more towels.

  ‘Oh, thank you!’ said Mum. ‘Thank you!’

  I heard a sharp tap, and looked through the other window. Tulip was just outside, prancing about like a monkey. She made a stupid face, splaying her hands, tipping her head sideways and sticking out her tongue.

  Turning away, I caught the look my mother gave her in return. I shut my eyes then. I can shut them now. But I can still see both their faces.

  Tulip’s? Well, ugly and uncaring, certainly.

  But Mum’s?

  Far, far more disturbing, somehow. I can’t really explain. All I can tell you is that Mum was looking at Tulip the way no one normally looks at a child.

  12

  But Tulip was always doing stupid things. Soon she was spending as much time sitting outside Miss Golightly’s office as she spent back in class. And one day, chatting to Dad while he was doing the monthly cellar check, I very carelessly let this slip.

  Dad casually changed the subject. But I knew what I’d said struck home. For two days, nothing happened. But then Will Stannard came back into class from the dentist to report that my dad’s car was parked right outside the school.

  Next morning, Mr Barraclough walked in and said, ‘I think we’ll sit you next to Barney, Natalie.’

  Tulip was outraged.

  ‘Why does she have to move?’

  Mr Barraclough bit back a sharp response, and said instead:

  ‘We all just think that everyone might benefit from a little change.’

  Furious, Tulip swept everything off her desk onto the floor.

  ‘If Natalie can’t sit by me, then I’m not doing any more work!’

  If any of the rest of us had done that, we would have been in such deep trouble. But it was as if the staff were half-scared, half-despairing of Tulip. So Mr Barraclough let her be. She sat, stone-faced, arms folded, through the lesson, and he ignored her. When the bell rang, he sent her to the office as usual. And I spent yet another lonely break. None of the other children would come near me. Tulip’s sheer recklessness made them nervous, too. And if there was even the slightest possibility that she might be sent back out in time to join us, they’d always take the precaution of staying clear.

  In class time, to be fair, the teachers tried over and over to give me opportunities to make new friends.

  ‘Natalie, why don’t you pair up with Susan to put up the new corridor display?’

  ‘Marcie and Natalie, I’ll leave you here to set out all the chairs.’

  I’d chat to them, and they’d chat back. I’d even wonder what it would be like to have them as friends. But when we came back in the classroom I couldn’t help but glance across. And there was Tulip, seeking me out with her hard, hungry little eyes, as if she could actually see if I’d stayed faithful, if I still belonged to her. Back then, of course, I never thought to wonder what it was Tulip saw in me. But now I think, could some small part of it have been that, if she could keep someone as faceless and nondescript as me as her friend, then it really couldn’t prove so much that everyone else hated her?

  And hate her they did. Because she spoiled everything.

  ‘I’m afraid we can’t start until Tulip’s quite ready.’

  ‘If there’s any more messing about, then we won’t have the ropes out – Tulip!’

  ‘I’m sorry if it’s a disappointment to most of you, but after a certain person’s behaviour on the last field trip…’

  The staff lost patience with her.

  ‘Why do you make things so difficult for yourself?’

  She’d scowl, but not answer, making that old game of ours, Days of Dumbness, into a regular thing.

  ‘I’m still waiting…’

  Still no response. People from other classes would walk past in the corridor and eye her curiously.

  ‘You do realize, don’t you, Tulip, that this is just one more silly way of trying to grab everyone’s attention. But there are a lot of people in this school. Not just you.’

  Another few minutes of silence, and then whichever teacher it was would usually crack.

  ‘Well, you’d better go out for break now. And when you come in again, I expect you to be more sensible. Off you go.’

  Out in the playground, she’d run wild, swearing and shrieking, and cheeking the
dinner ladies, while I stood by, passively watching.

  One day a message came, bellowed out from the steps, and picked up excitedly by everyone round me.

  ‘Natalie! Miss Golightly wants you in her room. Right now!’

  ‘Miss Golightly wants Natalie!’

  ‘Natalie, you’ve got to go to the office.’

  ‘Not just to the office. Miss Golightly wants to see her!’

  ‘Hurry, Natalie!’

  The world drained of colour. I was terrified. I stumbled on the steps, and got lost round corners I knew as well as my own face. With the secretary watching, I tapped on the panels of Miss Golightly’s door.

  ‘Is that Natalie Barnes?’

  Timidly, I pushed. But already Miss Golightly was striding towards me. Thrusting the door wide, she caught me by the neck of my jersey, and hauled me across to the window.

  ‘Is that your friend?’ she cried, pointing. ‘Is it? Is it?’

  Tulip was running up to gangs of little ones, and stamping at their games.

  ‘Look at her! Spoiling things for everybody! Rampaging about!’

  She made a visible effort to calm herself.

  ‘Sit down, Natalie. It’s time that you and I had a little talk.’

  I don’t remember much of it. Only how very frightened I was suddenly to be put in a chair that had cushions, and talked to as if I were grown up. It seemed to break all the rules, and left me too rattled even to listen properly, let alone speak up with sensible answers. Only when Miss Golightly moved on from what she kept calling ‘Tulip’s real difficulties’ and her ‘influence on the people around her’ did I stop feeling like a panicked rabbit. By then, she must have been hinting at my parents’ concerns, because the first words I remember saying were:

  ‘They can’t mind Tulip that much, because they let her come.’

  She looked astonished.

  ‘What? To the Palace? Really?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said resolutely. ‘She comes a lot. Dad’s very nice to her.’

  This irritated Miss Golightly, you could tell. Clearly Dad must have given her a very different picture.

  Frowning, she said, ‘Perhaps they prefer to keep an eye on the two of you together. Have you thought of that?’

  Dutifully, I tried to look as if she might be right. But I knew better. I’d worked out long ago that Mum let Tulip keep coming because she couldn’t stand watching me mope round the Palace without her. It just got on her nerves to see me floating aimlessly through room after room. And Dad had a soft spot for Tulip. He knew her faults. And he may even have thought she was as bad for me outside school as she was in. But I’d seen the look on his face the day we drove round a corner to find Mr Pierce thrashing his dog in the shadow of a hedgerow. And I saw the extra gentleness and courtesy with which he always greeted Tulip’s mother when she tried creeping past us in the street. Dad didn’t say much. But I knew exactly what he thought of Tulip’s home life.

  And tell her she couldn’t come? Well, he just couldn’t do it.

  Perhaps Miss Golightly thought he’d not been straight with her, with his complaints. In any case, my ticking off was over. She rose to her feet.

  ‘Natalie, I hope you’ll think seriously about all the things I’ve been saying.’ This time the hand on my shoulder was almost gentle as she walked me to the door.

  ‘Because, I warn you, you’ll come to no good at all as Tulip’s hold-your-coat merchant. Think about that.’

  Tulip was lying in wait in the playground.

  ‘What did she want?’

  My heart was back to thumping.

  ‘Nothing much, honestly’

  Tulip was irritated.

  ‘Well, then, Birdbrain, what did she say?’

  Perhaps I was peeved with her for getting me into such trouble. Anyhow, just for once I managed to speak up for myself.

  ‘I don’t think that birdbrains are bright enough to remember what’s been said to them.’

  Furious, she lashed out at the nearest thing, which was a folding sign about the next parents’ evening. One of the dinner ladies bore down on her threateningly, and I vanished round the corner. I wandered nervously round the edges of the infants’ playing area. But by the time Tulip ambled back in sight, accompanied by Marcie, she was all smiles. I wondered if she’d forgotten I’d been somewhere of interest, though I had more sense than to resurrect the subject. But that night, when Mum sent me along to give George the barman a message, I sidled up to one of the guests I knew best on my way out, and asked him,

  ‘Mr Scott Henderson, what’s a hold-your-coat merchant?’

  Winking at George, he said to me, ‘Now don’t you tell me that you and your little friend are getting into fights!’

  I felt myself go scarlet.

  ‘Fights?’

  ‘That’s what it means,’ he explained. ‘A hold-your-coat merchant is a person who likes to watch someone else get into trouble.’ He made his voice sound like a little boy’s. ‘ “Go on!’ ” he squeaked. ‘ “You fight him! He deserves it! I’ll stand here safely and I’ll hold your coat.’ ”

  He took a sip of whisky.

  ‘Why are you asking, anyway?’

  I’m not allowed to linger in the bars, and just as I began to scour my brain for some likely story, George raised his eyebrows at me over the beer glass he was polishing.

  I danced away.

  ‘No reason,’ I carolled behind me. ‘It just came up at school.’

  Next morning, I learned the reasons for Tulip’s smiles. I kept my eyes peeled for her all the way from the nursery. But when I reached the school gates, she was already in the playground, locked arm in arm with Marcie.

  She greeted me coolly.

  ‘Marcie’s with us today. That’s all right, isn’t it?’

  I nodded. Marcie’s quarrels with Claire, though frequent and explosive, were famously short-lived. I thought that I’d have Tulip back by break. But Marcie stayed with us all day. I was upset. (Tulip kept calling me Birdbrain.) But still I tagged along, pretending I hardly noticed and didn’t care, till we drifted past Harry’s Supermarket after school.

  ‘Coming in?’

  You could tell from her eyes it was a challenge.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not today.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He watches us. I can feel it. He doesn’t like us in there.’

  ‘That’s his problem.’

  ‘But it makes me not want to go in there.’

  ‘Baby!’

  But Marcie was tugging on her arm, so she gave up and we went round the back. We started balancing along the low walls dividing the sections of the car park. Right in the middle of a wobbly arabesque, Tulip suddenly announced to Marcie that the manager of Harry’s had that very morning offered her a Saturday job.

  ‘Don’t be silly’ said Marcie. ‘Nobody gives that sort of work to somebody our age.’

  ‘It’s supposed to be unofficial. He said I remind him of his little sister, who choked to death on pencil sharpening.’

  On pencil sharpenings! The Tulip touch! I was so mad at her for the sheer stupidness of it (and for ignoring me so horribly) that when she took a gold chain I’d never seen before out of her pocket and twirled it round her fingers, I left it to Marcie to ask all the questions.

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘It’s mine.’

  ‘Is it gold, though? Real gold?’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘Can I see it?’

  ‘You’re looking at it.’

  ‘No, I mean, can I hold it?’

  Pleased with her interest, Tulip spilled the chain into Marcie’s hand. Marcie turned to the sunlight and studied it.

  ‘This is real gold. It’s got that funny mark.’ She raised her eyes to Tulip’s. ‘It can’t be yours.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘I don’t think so. It must be worth an awful lot.’

  The edgy tone I knew so well came into Tulip’s voice.

  ‘
Why shouldn’t it be mine?’

  Marcie said nothing, and, with Tulip standing there in her cheap clothes and worn jacket, there was no need.

  Furious, Tulip snatched back the necklace and hurled it, glinting and rippling, as far as she could. It flew across the car park like a live snake, and fell with a rattle into the huge rubbish drum beside the wall.

  We stared. Then Tulip said to Marcie,

  ‘I don’t want it any more. You can have it if you find it.’

  Marcie hesitated just a shade too long. And then, humiliated by the notion of scrabbling in a dustbin for something cast out by Tulip, she turned her back on us.

  ‘I don’t want it!’

  She strode away without another word. Part of me so longed to follow. I knew that I could catch her by the arm, and say to her, ‘I reckon Tulip must have stolen that,’ and in the sheer excitement of the moment, we could have become friends. I even thought that when she made up again with Claire, she very probably would let me stay.

  I was still staring after her forlornly when Tulip said,

  ‘I’m going home now.’

  I walked with her as far as the bridge. We still weren’t friendly. In fact, we hardly spoke. All I remember is that, at one point, she was struggling to find something at the bottom of her schoolbag, and things kept dropping, so she turned to me.

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Be some help, will you? Hold my coat.’

  Part Two

  1

  It was Julius who started it. We were sitting on the wall of the verandah one morning, poring over his spelling book, when he said suddenly,

  ‘Did you know Tulip was a witch?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘She is,’ he said stubbornly. ‘She always knows exactly what I’m thinking.’

  ‘No one knows what you’re thinking.’

  ‘Tulip does.’

  ‘Can we get on with these, please? Wheelbarrow.’

  He reeled it off, ‘W..h..e..e..l..b..a..r..r..o..w,’ and went on without a break.’She knew which cake I wanted yesterday. When Mum sent the plate round, Tulip was reading my mind to see which one I was after. Then she took it.’

  ‘I expect you were staring at it.’

  ‘No,’ he said gravely.’I used to be that silly. But I stopped doing that ages ago, and made it so I only thought.’ He shifted uncomfortably on the ledge. ‘Then she got good at that as well.’