The Book of the Banshee

by Anne Fine

  Muffy peeped through the stretched neck hole of my woolly like some little baby kangaroo peeping from its mother’s pouch.

  ‘What happened?’ Dad demanded.

  ‘Nothing happened,’ I told him. ‘Mum just picked up her bag and left.’

  ‘I didn’t hear her go.’

  I shrugged. If Dad hasn’t learned by now Estelle can slam doors plenty loud enough for two, he can’t have been paying attention.

  ‘When will she be back?’

  ‘The meeting will be over by nine.’

  ‘Nine!’

  He glanced at the ceiling. There was a look of terror on his face. It was a bit like a moment in a horror film where everyone trapped in the room sees the plaster bulging overhead from the gathering evil forces.

  ‘I suppose I’d better go up there and sort her out.’ He didn’t move. He seemed to need to convince himself first. ‘She did seem a little upset.’

  Then Muffy spoke.

  ‘Poor Stelly . . .’

  William Scott Saffery said he never knew how each man got himself over the top, knowing what lay beyond. In some, it looked like blind courage. Others, he suspected, still half-believed in what they were doing. For quite a few, it was the fear of being thought a coward, whether you were one or not. Some had their officers’ guns stuck in their backs, of course. But William thought the great majority ended up clambering over to their deaths simply because there were other men watching.

  We watched him watch us watching him. Then Good Old Brigadier Flowers pulled himself up and straightened his shirt in his trousers.

  ‘Right, then,’ he said. ‘I’m going up.’

  Muffy slid off my knee and padded across to him. He lifted her up, not even bothering to try and persuade her to stay downstairs with me, and listen to Rumpelstiltskin. There was no point. Muffy adores Estelle so much she’d rather know exactly what’s going on than sit imagining it. I understand that. And William Saffery says sometimes he thought that was the only reason he himself ended up putting his foot up on the ledge of mud he knew might be the last bit of the world he’d ever see, once signals ran down the line.

  With Muffy in his arms, Dad walked towards the door.

  I followed, and watched him climbing heavily up the stairs, with Muffy on his back. She might have been a rucksack, the way she kept her arms clamped round his neck, and her legs tightly drawn up.

  Upstairs, doors banged ferociously, and the house shook. But Dad pressed on, tread by tread.

  Over the top.

  Chapter 6

  YOU CAN’T BE blamed for your good spirits, once you’ve got out of danger. As Corporal MacFie said so many times that William itched to wring his neck: ‘Sorry it’s him. But glad it wasnae me.’

  I hared down the path, jumped the Muffy­proof gate, and shot off up the road, leaping at every overhanging tree to strip off a few leaves. I didn’t realize I was chewing them till I fetched up on a laurel. But by then I was too near school to spit them out without checking first that no one who gets to write in Wallace School’s Book of Sinners had got me in their sights.

  I looked around.

  There seemed to be an awful lot of faces I recognized, staring at me through car windows. Parents making their way to the meeting! I speeded up again, and nearly got run over several times, sprinting along the lane that leads to the car park. The tyre factory clock said ten past seven. I was late. But jumping for another leaf without thinking, I noticed Chopper snaking his way along the high wall behind Budgens. I did my Randy Cat, and he yowled back. But I carried on the long way. Personally, I’d rather get run down than fall off a wall into brambles. Everyone likes to do things in their own way. Obviously the parents weaving past in their cars prefer to get to meetings dead on time. My mum and dad leave home at the last minute and end up sitting somewhere in the four back rows, grumbling that they can’t hear.

  But not tonight. In her great hurry to get out of the house, Mum must have been one of the first. Certainly she’d managed to get one of the parking spaces near the gate, all set for her next speedy getaway. I made a point of sticking close to the wall, in case she was still about. But all I saw were other people’s parents slamming their car doors and locking up, and striding to the main entrance.

  I slid in the back way and made it down the stairs and along two corridors, leaping from the cover of one doorway to the next, before I heard footsteps and voices. I darted into the cloakroom, and when the voices seemed to come nearer, crouched on a bench and wrapped myself inside Marisa’s bright yellow cape. It reeked of perfume. You can take it from me – in a tight space, Soir de Paris is worse than the smell Mr Astley complains about when people skip showers, and Miss Adulewebe used to refer to loftily as ‘Essence d’aisselle’.

  The voices came closer and closer. I realized suddenly that I knew one of them.

  ‘This isn’t the right way at all!’ No doubt about it. No one complains like Mum. ‘You might teach orienteering and survival skills, but you’ve brought us down the wrong corridor. Surely the hall is on the other side.’

  Orienteering? Survival skills? Then I must know the other voice as well.

  ‘Sorry. All my fault. Losing my grip.’

  I nearly fell off the bench. Chopper’s dad! He didn’t have a child in Intermediates, like Mum, so what was he doing hanging around the school at this time in the evening? Not kicking off another of his fiendish ‘Start Orienteering’ courses, surely. It had been months ago, but I still hadn’t forgotten some of the bad times. Twice a week for a whole term, he’d fastened his fangs in the back of my legs for holding my map upside down when, to my mind, I’d already proved I wasn’t of sound mind by signing up for the course in the first place. Now the huge beefy bruiser was warbling soft apologies. It was a good thing Chopper wasn’t here, listening to my mum running his old man through her portable self-esteem shredder.

  ‘I thought you were a professional army man, Mr Chopperly! Surely they must have taught you how to find your way through deserts and swamps, and dropped you into jungles with no food and no maps. How could someone with your expertise get lost following a few cardboard “This Way” signs down a straight corridor?’

  You’d think a trained man could take it. But suddenly the bench on which I was crouching started to shake. Clearly he’d had to sit down. When the shuddering eased off, I stirred the folds in Marisa’s cape till I could see a little. He was slumped at the other end of the bench, head in his hands, the picture of despair.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ Mum was saying hastily. ‘Please don’t take on so. I didn’t mean what I said, honestly.’

  His shoulders shook.

  Mum patted him on the back.

  ‘Mr Chopperly?’

  The bench trembled again. I took the opportunity to slide my back down the wall and make myself a bit more comfortable. I had the feeling that I’d be nesting in Marisa’s cape a little longer than expected.

  ‘Sorry . . .’ I heard him croak. ‘I’ll pull myself together in a tick. I’ll get a grip.’

  Mum parked herself at his side.

  ‘What’s the matter? Why are you so upset? You can tell me.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Stupid . . .’ he muttered. ‘I have to get a hold on myself. I have to get on top of this.’

  ‘On top of what?’

  He raised his head. I was a little shocked, I can tell you. Admittedly the last time I saw Chopper’s dad he was dressed in his heavy-duty gear and herding me and the other victims out of the minibus after our ghastly weekend on Helvellyn. He looked hardboiled enough then. Now he looked pitiful, a shadow of himself, a trembling wreck.

  Mum clearly thought so too.

  ‘You look quite awful, Mr Chopperly. Are you ill?’

  Give him his due, he’s no self-pitying wimp.

  ‘No, no. Never fitter. All systems go, truly.’

  But Mum knows a broken man when she sees one.

  ‘Trouble at home? How is your wife? Is she well?’

/>   ‘Fine. Super. Tickety-boo.’

  Mum ran through a quick check-list of family trouble spots.

  ‘How about the baby? Is she sleeping?’

  ‘Out like a light at ten. Not a peep until six. We think they must have sent an angel by mistake.’

  ‘The twins?’

  ‘Blooming. Splendid. Happy as sandboys, both of them. And doing very well indeed at school.’

  Mistake! I expect, in the really crack regiments, they do a better job of teaching them not to get cornered so easily under skilled interrogation. The bench began to shake even before Mum slid her last little question home as quickly and cleanly as a knife between ribs.

  ‘And how is Chopper?’

  A look of terror passed across his face, as if she’d asked him: ‘How’s Beelzebub?’

  ‘Chopper?’

  She’d hit the spot.

  ‘Yes, Chopper. How is he?’

  The man did try. If ever the whisper runs around our school that Mr Chopperly’s chicken, I’ll tell them all this much: he had a go. His voice cracked, and he sounded like a liar. But he did try.

  ‘Chopper? No trouble! None at all!’

  If it hadn’t been for the look of sheer incredulity on my mum’s face, I think I might almost have believed him. Of course, I do know Chopper has his little troubles at home. In fact, practically every lunch hour I have to sit and listen to him going on and on about the giant great row he’s just had because he left the tiniest speck of oil on his carpet, or stayed out a minute too late. Poor Chopper’s problem is that, when his dad’s away, his mum can’t sleep until her precious son is safely tucked in bed. Since she works at the airport, starting at six, Chopper ends up arguing the toss for every last half hour out.

  My mother doesn’t know that. I’ve never really thought it all that wise to pass the message on. But still she didn’t look as if she believed that life with Chopper was nothing but sunshine and roses.

  ‘What? No trouble at all?’

  The first hairline cracks appeared.

  ‘Well, naturally, now and again we have a little spot of bother . . .’

  ‘Spot of bother?’

  Ex-army officer Chopperly raised his head and told my mother firmly:

  ‘Boys will be boys. It’s only natural.’

  Mum can decode messages without the cipher.

  ‘That bad? What on earth happened?’

  His face took on a hunted look. His eyes roamed up and down the rows of pegs. If I’d not known he was in another world, trapped in his nightmare, I might have felt unsafe wrapped in the cape, hearing him spill out his story.

  ‘It’s nothing important. Nothing at all. It’s just that when I came home last night I found Chopper stripping down his brand-new bike, the one we bought for his birthday.’

  He tried to rally.

  ‘Yes,’ he said proudly. ‘He’s pretty handy with the tools!’

  But Mum’s no slouch when it comes to homing in on the soft parts of a story.

  ‘A brand-new bike? Stripping it down?’

  The look of pride drained away. He shook his head, and stared with haunted eyes.

  ‘Yes! Stripping it down. It was a brand-new bike! Still shiny from the shop! And he was stripping it down!’

  The next words came out so soft and strangled I could barely hear them.

  ‘On . . . his . . . brand . . . new . . . carpet.’

  Mum gasped. I didn’t, since I’d heard Chopper’s side of this sad tale more than once over lunchtime. I watched Mr Chopperly swing round to face Mum, his eyes flashing.

  ‘Who asked for carpet in his bedroom? He did! He said it would make the room warmer. He wanted it.’ He scrambled to his feet, and his voice rose. ‘And who paid for it? Not him! It was his mother who worked overtime for two whole months to pay for that carpet. Two whole months!’

  Now he was striding up and down between the rows of pegs.

  ‘Guess how long it took to lay! Guess! I did it properly, you know. None of your shoddy DIY for me. I did a proper job. It took the whole weekend!’

  He wheeled round like somebody on a parade ground.

  ‘I’m a good army man. Twelve years I was with my regiment. Twelve whole years! I’m an experienced soldier. I’ve seen active service three times. Three! They don’t send softies into combat, you know. War is no picnic!’

  He stared into nothing and nowhere, remembering . . .

  ‘I’ve seen some ugly messes in my time. God knows, I’ve seen some messes—’ His voice broke. ‘But that carpet! You can’t imagine what it looked like!’

  Now I was gasping. I was astonished at the fuss he was making. Chopper had made a point of saying to me several times: ‘That oil was a speck. You could hardly see it. You practically needed a microscope to know it was there!’ And here was Chopper’s dad, the haunted look back in force, letting my mother pat him and whisper soothing things in his ear, while he rambled on like a madman: ‘Pools of oil,’ he was muttering. ‘Trodden in . . . splashed up the walls! Great big black footprints all over . . . ruined!’ And then the cry I’d heard so often before, in our own house: ‘It’s the senseless destruction of it! That’s what I can’t stand! The senseless, senseless destruction!’

  Really, they do exaggerate, these parents. I felt quite irritated on Chopper’s behalf. I was even considering rising from Marisa’s cape like Venus from the waves to defend my good friend, when Mum started patting the bench beside her.

  ‘Sit down,’ she told Mr Chopperly. ‘Sit down. I want to tell you something. Listen to this. Last week, Estelle dyed her hair in the spare room. Guess how many things she ruined. Guess!’ Like someone distracting a small child, she made Chopper’s dad sit down beside her again before she’d start ticking them off on her fingers. ‘I’ll tell you. Two snow-white bedspreads, a huge patch of wallpaper, one little furry rug, her sweater, two library books, two towels and a flannel.’

  Now I know for a fact this was unreasonable. The library books were perfectly readable if you didn’t worry too much about some of the descriptions. And I’d use that flannel again. (Well, I’ll have to. It’s mine.)

  Once again, I was about to leap up and argue, but I didn’t get the chance. For Mr Chopperly was off again.

  ‘That’s nothing!’ he scoffed. ‘Four girls came round for Chopper last Saturday. I went out for half an hour. Half an hour! When I got back, one radiator was away from the wall, the phone was cracked, and though Sadie and I have searched the house twice, we still haven’t found the extension lead for the radio.’

  Mum threw her head back and hooted.

  ‘That’s nothing! The day before yesterday I went into Estelle’s room, and there I saw . . .’

  I was beginning to panic. It was all right for these two, sitting here, exchanging Great Exaggerated Tales of War. I had a date with Chopper. If I could manage to lift the cape off its hook, it might be possible to keep it round me like a bilious tent, and shift my bum silently along the bench to the next peg, and on and on, till I reached the door to the showers. Time was getting on.

  I concentrated on the crucial unhooking of the cape, and more snatches of conversation floated my way. I was no longer listening, but I couldn’t help hearing.

  ‘Sick of not being able to hear a word he says. “Speak up!” I say a million times a day. ‘Don’t mumble at me! If you have something to say, open your mouth and say it properly” . . .’

  ‘Would simply never occur to her to ask if she could borrow it . . .’

  I managed to lift the loop off the peg. Cautiously, silently, I inched along the bench as more offensive snippets drifted over.

  ‘Absolutely no consideration. “Can you pick me up at nine?’’ Say yes, and it’s, “Well, if you’re picking me up, can you take Flora home too?’’ And if you agree, it’s, “Can we just drop Flora’s cello off at her dad’s place?’’ And after that . . .’

  ‘Never knocks . . . Simply barges in . . .’

  Was she complaining about me? Cheek! St
ill, it wasn’t the moment to get up and argue. Already I was halfway along the bench. Frankly, the two of them were so immersed in their Great Grumble Session, I don’t think they would have noticed if all the abandoned coats in the cloakroom had suddenly drawn themselves up on their pegs, and started making for the exits.

  ‘. . . always wanting things. Don’t seem to realize people can’t have everything. For one thing, where on earth would they put it?’

  ‘One minute they’re acting their age. The next, you’d think that they were only three!’

  Nearly there . . .

  ‘Have to tell them everything time and again. Do you find that? You wouldn’t think that they have any brains. You only have to tell me something once, and I remember it.’

  ‘Never thought I’d end up pinning notices on my own walls! Can you imagine? Yesterday I found myself taping a notice to the banisters. “No one is to muck about in the living room or in the hall or on the stairs.” I’d even put an asterisk against the words “muck about” and added underneath: “Mucking about is defined as any activity that is not being in simple transit between one room and another.” Can you believe it? Notices in my own house! I thought I’d left that sort of thing behind in the barracks!’

  I was about to fling off the cape and make a run for it, when I heard Mum say:

  ‘Oh, God! Look at the time!’

  They scrambled to their feet. Mr Chopperly, you could tell, was almost himself again. Without even thinking about it, Mum seemed to have sorted him out. I was pretty impressed when I thought about it. Clever old Mum. Knows nothing about the army, never touched a gun, and no experience at all of seeing men crack up under fire. And yet she’d managed to get Chopper’s dad back into fighting trim in almost no time at all. He was practically bounding ahead of her now, down the long echoing corridor. Even his sense of direction seemed to be back in force. She hurried along in his wake, and I followed after, till we reached the main entrance, where I peeled off silently.

  The clock on the wall informed me I was going to be as late for my date with Chopper as most of his girlfriends are. And I’ve heard him sounding off loudly and often enough about that over his marmalade sandwiches.