by Anne Fine
‘Better wait,’ I warned Chopper.
He snorted.
‘They’ll never notice us. Look at them!’
I looked. Chopper was right. I’d never seen anything like it. They were inspired, striding across to their cars with set faces and determined looks. One or two of them even seemed to be practising standing up to themselves in an argument under their breath. ‘Twelve o’clock is late. Late, late, late! Nobody smokes. Nobody drinks. And nobody goes to bars and clubs!’
Car doors slammed like machine-gun fire. Engines revved fiercely and tyres screeched. Mum was the first away, shooting off in a cloud of exhaust fumes. I watched the car disappear round the first corner of the narrow lane, and only turned when Chopper tapped my shoulder.
‘What’s her best time, from here to home?’
I shrugged.
‘I don’t know. Four minutes? Four and a half?’
He raised his eyebrows.
‘I reckon she’s going to shave a good bit off that tonight. She’s driving like Miss Adulewebe.’
‘Bye, Chopper!’
I was off. I didn’t fancy trying to explain to Mum exactly where I’d been, and practically my only chance of being in the house before she arrived was if all the traffic lights between school and Beechcroft Avenue miraculously turned red as she approached, and some huge lorry held her up while it backed into the unloading bay at Budgens.
Cars hooted furiously as I weaved down the lane. In fact I nearly got run over several times. The last I saw of Chopper, he was worming his way along the top of the wall, and doing his Randy Cat at me for a goodbye.
Still running like a madman, I yowled back.
Chapter 8
USUALLY I JUMP the gate. But you try a four-minute mile from Wallace School to Beechcroft Avenue. Wings on your feet as far as Acacia Lane, maybe; but after that it’s uphill all the way. By the time you get to our house you’re so exhausted you can barely pick the Muffy-proof lock on the gate and drag yourself through. Forget flying over it. That’s for the birds.
Muffy must have been listening for the click. For as I took my first steps across the lawn to peer through the filthy garage window and check I’d really beaten Mum back home, I saw a small bundle of yellow gnome suit hurtling through the back door and over the grass towards me.
I stretched out my arms to scoop her up and swing her around as usual. But, slipping underneath, she threw herself against me. Clasping me round the legs as if I were some giant tree trunk, she clung so tightly that I couldn’t move.
I patted her mop of hair.
‘Muffy?’
No words, of course. Just an even tighter grip.
‘Are Dad and Estelle still arguing?’
She nodded into my upper leg. It’s odd the way, though we both grow, we always keep in step. She gets a bit taller. So do I. Some day, of course, I’m bound to stop and she’ll keep right on going. But right now it seems that, as far back as I can remember, whenever I’ve peeled a weeping Muffy away to peer at her more closely, the little slug trails that she’s left on me run right across my thigh.
I wiped her nose with a bit of old tissue.
‘Is Mum back?’
She shook her head, and gripped me even tighter. Down from Estelle’s bedroom window floated the duet we’d heard so many times in the last year.
‘Be reasonable, Estelle! You must admit—’
‘Stop telling me what to think!’
I prised poor Muffy off and held her far enough away to drop on my heels in front of her. I put out a hand to lift her chin and take a better look. The tear tracks down her face had dried, but she looked pale and tense. I let her back in my arms, and squeezed her hard. She slid her arms in a stranglehold round my neck, and buried her face against me. She smelled of something milky and familiar. For a moment I couldn’t think what.
And then I realized. Those two up there had been so wrapped up in their wrangling, neither had even thought to give Muffy any supper. Muffy is four! She’s not allowed to light the stove, or open tins, or use a knife alone. So just like me on all those mornings everyone’s so busy arguing with Estelle they can’t look for lunch money, the poor thing had had to make do with more cornflakes.
And suddenly I was angry.
It came on in a rush, taking me by surprise. Anger’s not something I’ve felt much before, and so, like William Saffery on the day he finally lost his temper, it was a moment or two before I even recognized the growing ball of fury inside me, the tight feeling in my throat. My hands were trembling and my knuckles went white. I was so angry I had to make an effort not to squeeze Muffy so tightly I bruised her.
And I was astonished, too. For anger isn’t something I think of as a part of me. High feelings, high voices, high tempers – they’re things I usually sit and watch. The Other People Show. I’m certainly not used to them boiling up inside me, rattling me totally, making me wonder at myself and what I might say or do. Don’t forget, I’m the steady one, Dad’s good lad, Mum’s angel, the one on whom they depend. When it comes to flaming tempers, I have almost no experience at all. This is Will Flowers we’re talking about here. Yes, Will Flowers. The one you’ll usually find sitting quietly in the front stalls, admiring the tantrums of The Famous Estelle.
But ripping through me was a feeling so intense I was amazed at myself. Like Will in his trench, I could have kicked up a storm. Oh, he had better reasons, sure enough. He’d just found out he’d been betrayed in the worst way – by his own country. There he’d been, stumbling round the dug-out one night, chasing a rat, when a stab from his bayonet caught on the corner of a buried bag.
He’d ripped open the mouldering burlap.
‘What’s in here? Letters?’
In the dim light, he peered a little closer.
‘My God! They’re ours! Letters from weeks ago! They never even left the bloody trench!’
Hardly a man looked up. Streaky kept drying his socks over a candle. MacFie’s thumbnail closed imperturbably on the louse he’d just taken such care to chase up the seam of his shirt with heat from his own lighted stub. None of the men on the wire-netting bunks bothered to open their eyes. And all the rest, sprawled against heaps of equipment on the floor, carried on snapping their cards down on the biscuit tins they were using for tables, or dragging at their cigarettes and staring silently into space, as if they’d heard nothing more than the persistent drip, drip, dripping around them, or the thudding of shells through the tons of earth above.
Didn’t they understand? Or had they already guessed that this was just another of the tricks to keep them quiet before each attack? Give every man the chance to write a letter. He’d seen enough to know this could be his last letter ever. It would take thought. And thought was better spent on sweetheart and family and home than dwelling on what’s to be done, and what might happen in the dead of night, when orders run down the line.
‘The letters never even left the bloody trench!’
Somebody near him shrugged. For heaven’s sake! Either a man comes back – in which case he writes another – or he does not, and his family get a telegram with such grim news they’ll hardly care about a letter rotting in a bag somewhere in France. So why is Will beating the slimy walls of the dug-out with his fists, screaming and yelling:
‘Just shoved down here, out of sight! Not even sent back behind the line, where they’d be safe! How many more bags are there? How many more?’
He was tearing at the walls with his hands now. The sodden clods of earth showered on everyone.
‘Knock it off, Will!’
‘Settle down!’
‘Bad enough to be trapped in this stinking hole, without some fool fetching the walls down!’
‘Bet all the stay-at-homes are dry enough . . .’
The wave of grumbling swept through the dugout. And all at once it seemed that everyone had his grievance. ‘Rats in the bully beef!’ ‘Dragged through the mud for miles! Couldn’t expect it to work by the time it reached the unit!
’ ‘Never thought to send fuses with it!’ ‘Out of wire . . .’ But the soothing litany of further complaints did nothing to drain William Saffery’s anger. His shoulders heaved. His eyes burned as fiercely as the cigarette from which Asprey was pulling the last drag. And it was with real fury that he spat out the words:
‘They think of everything in this bloody war, except how to bloody well end it!’
And I felt just as angry. Angrier. All that was happening in our house might not be so earth-shattering as real war, but we were all miserable enough. My sister was making our home a shambles too! For months and months now we’d been putting up with her bad temper and her arguments, and the fact that she drains everybody’s crystals so dry that Muffy and I get scarcely a look in, let alone a fair deal. When was the last time anyone found five minutes to give me some lunch money?
Back in March!
Well, I had suddenly had enough. Call this Estelle growing up? It was more like exploding. I might be a bit of a pain every now and again, growing out of my trousers. She was growing out of herself. ‘Too big for her boots,’ as Gran says. And why should Muffy and I have to put up with absolutely everything in our house, morning till night, depending on the whims of Estelle? It was ridiculous. There was only one of her, but there were four of us. And look how we ended up spending our time! Mum trying to stiffen her resolve at a meeting, Dad upstairs battling for hours, me peering through peep-holes, and Muffy up well beyond her bedtime, ignored and unfed. I could tell just from looking at her face that she’d been lurking in that doorway, as desperate to hear the click of the garden gate as William Saffery always was to hear the grinding rumble from behind that promised reinforcements.
Well, it’s quite flattering to think that, to someone else, you are the cavalry.
Time to live up to the job. I hoisted Muffy in my arms to carry her into the house and plonk her down safely in front of Rumpelstiltskin. I was going to tell Dad and Estelle what I thought of them.
But just then, screeching to a halt on wheels behind came more fighting power than I could muster in a thousand years.
Mum.
The ferocious slamming of the car door told half the tale. And you only had to see the dark look on her face to know that every traffic light between here and Wallace School had turned red as she approached it, and the great Belgian lorry that delivers yoghurts to Budgens had got its back section jammed in the loading bay again, blocking the road at the corner.
Muffy didn’t mess around. She stuck her head straight up my jumper. And Mum didn’t bother with any amiable warm-up chat. She got straight to the point.
‘Where’s your sister?’
I nodded upwards to the open window. Phrases from the duet still floated down.
‘I can’t have a child of mine roaming the streets at that time of night . . .’
‘You’re not even listening, Dad!’
I turned to Mum. The anger hadn’t gone. It had got deeper, redder, wider.
‘This has to stop!’ I yelled. ‘We can’t go on like this!’
She turned and stared.
I was amazed at myself, but I kept yelling, really yelling.
‘It’s like a war! It just goes on and on. It never stops! One long battle going on, day after day, week after week, month after month! How long is it carrying on? Two years? Three? Four?’
If I was yelling before, then I was truly bellowing now. Even the voices from the bedroom had fallen silent. I didn’t lower my voice. Oh, no. I wanted my father and Estelle to hear. And in my fury, things I didn’t even know I thought came tumbling out.
‘We need some calm and order in this house!’ I was nodding at the bulge in my clothing that was Muffy. ‘We need a place to live where people don’t have to keep diving up other people’s jumpers just to feel a tiny bit safer – not even safe. I’ll tell you what we need. We all need peace.’
Under my jumper, I felt Muffy wriggling.
‘Sssh, Will. Ssshh! Doesn’t matter.’
But it did. Oh, I’ve felt a loyalty to Estelle all my life. She’s my sister. But right now I wanted to see her pushed well and truly back in line. I wanted to see her trounced. Like William Saffery, I’d had enough. And I wasn’t prepared to be fobbed off any longer.
‘We can’t go on like this,’ I yelled again. ‘I’m sick of it, and Muffy’s sick of it.’
I shook her head out of my woolly.
‘Aren’t you?’ I demanded, exactly the same way Estelle does.
For a moment I wasn’t sure of her support. But then dumbly she nodded, and her eyes filled with tears.
‘See?’ I crowed. ‘See?’
Silence. Mum didn’t speak. There was no sound at all. After a moment or two I heard a little cough from over in next-door’s garden. It seemed to break the spell. Mum took a breath and pushed her hair back from her face. She looked at Muffy, then she looked at me. Then, still without saying a word, she turned and walked quickly towards the house.
I shifted Muffy in my arms.
‘Come on,’ I said grimly. ‘We’ll watch from the back lines. That is the War Reporter’s job, after all. Count them out – count them back.’
I carried her through the kitchen after Mum. We caught up on the stairs. Mum hadn’t stopped to knock on Estelle’s door. She’d simply stuck out her fist and burst the door open. Muffy and I were just in time to see the look of pure astonishment spread over Dad’s face as Mum materialized in the doorway.
Mum spoke first.
‘What’s going on?’
Her voice was icy calm. Dad wilted visibly beneath her gaze. Estelle scrambled to her feet and glowered horribly.
Mum turned on her.
‘Are you still wasting your father’s time, going on about this party?’
Dad looked quite horrified. He likes to think that any problem in our family can at least be discussed. Before Estelle could even open her mouth, he’d broken in to defend her.
‘Bridget, please! Estelle and I are simply sitting here having a little chat—’
Mum wasn’t listening. She steamrollered over him. She mowed him down.
‘Because you’re not going to go to this party, Estelle. Do you understand? It’s as simple as that, and there’s no need for any discussion. The whole idea was insane in the first place, and no one in this entire family is going to waste a moment more indulging you by arguing about it. So you can just take off that—’
She pointed to the slinky black blouse that was slipping off Estelle’s shoulder. Words failed her.
‘That thing.’
She lowered her finger to the shredded skirt.
‘And that thing.’
Down to the fishnet tights.
‘And those! And you can just stuff them straight into Muffy’s dressing-up box, where they belong. And you can get into your nice warm dressing gown and slippers and come downstairs and have your supper before bedtime!’
Dad may have been pretty well speechless. But not Estelle. In her outrage she leaped on the bed. Her black suede boots were on the coverlet. She danced up and down in her rage.
‘You can’t do this to me! You can’t! I’m not a baby any more. You’ve got to stop treating me like a child!’
She turned to Dad for help.
‘Dad! Stop her! You’ve got to stop her! Nobody else’s mother treats them like this. Nobody’s! No one else gets stopped all the time. Other people’s parents don’t go on and on about how late twelve o’clock is, or things like smoking and drinking. Everyone else will be allowed to go to the club!’
I thought I’d been yelling earlier. But, believe me, till you’ve heard Estelle yell, you’ve only heard whispering. Estelle’s voice can fetch down plaster. She can split walls. Chopper and I aren’t joking when we cross our fingers against her for our protection. I tell you, Estelle in a temper is a fiendish sight.
But, just this once, she was outclassed by Mum. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was astonishing. I had a sudden vision of what Estelle will look like
in twenty years. The two seemed so alike. I don’t think I’ve ever really realized before that they share the same black hair, the same green eyes, the same witchy pointing finger.
But Mum’s still taller. And Mum’s got power. Raising herself to her full height, she turned on Estelle a look so withering I practically shrivelled on the spot, just from the fall-out. She looked for all the world like the Bad Queen in Snow White the day the mirror gives her the bad news. The scowl on her face could have cracked glass, the light in her eyes start a forest fire, the steel in her voice cut you down.
The witchy finger pointed deep into Estelle’s heart.
‘Nobody smokes,’ declared Mum. ‘Nobody drinks. And nobody goes to clubs like Fiends!’
Dad’s mouth opened – and then promptly shut again. He knows the terms of surrender when they’re announced.
So does Estelle. She bounced back down on the bed, muttering and grumbling like some bad fairy who’d been beaten in a skirmish of spells. Mum left her to it, spinning on her heel and sailing out of the door. As she passed me, she said:
‘And as for you . . .’
Even before Muffy clapped her hands over my ears so I couldn’t hear it, a dozen possible endings to her sentence were echoing in my brain:
‘And as for you, Will Flowers. Think yourself lucky you have a family at all. Why, there are children all over the world who . . .’
‘And as for you, don’t be such a wimp. Good thing you’re not in a real war . . .’
‘And as for you, if you had a bit more spirit yourself, you might understand what your sister’s going through . . .’
‘And as for you . . .’
I clutched the banisters, my head spinning. Was it guilt? It was my fault that Mum had squashed Estelle. Or was it that awful anger back again?
My hands were sweating and I was breathing hard. Even my knees were trembling. I sank down on the top stair, and Muffy slid from my grasp and moved a few steps along the landing, watching me in some alarm.
What on earth was the matter?
And then I realized. Suddenly it all became clear. I realized why, for months, I’ve been obsessed with William Saffery’s book, reading it over and over every night, reading nothing else. I realized why I’ve let my sister treat this household like a battlefield, and barely said a word when I’ve fetched up with no help with my homework and stale carrot sandwiches for lunch day after day.