Saffy's Angel

by Hilary McKay

  Saffron had lost her grandfather only the week before. She had lost her family twice, the first time in Italy, and the second time when she had discovered her name was not on the paint chart. She seemed to have been losing people all her life and she had no intention of losing the first proper friend she had ever made.

  Back down the road to Sarah’s home ran Saffron, and in at the drive of the house, without pausing once to look back.

  ‘Stop!’ roared Sarah, just in time.

  Saffron stopped so hard at the front door that Sarah was nearly catapulted out. There was a doorbell and a knocker. Saffron attacked them both. When Sarah’s mother arrived a moment later she thrust the wheelchair in past her legs, gasped, ‘I’ll call for you tomorrow!’ and disappeared before either of them could say a word.

  She was just in time. Running along the road towards her (as she had known they would be) were Caddy and Indigo and Rose, calling, ‘Saffy! Saffy! Saffy!’ like a flock of strange birds.

  Saffron hurried back to the Banana House, answering questions as she ran.

  ‘She had to go home. Her name’s Sarah. She’s got something wrong with her legs that she’s had from a baby. She can walk. She says a wheelchair’s faster. She goes to the private school where they have that blue and gold uniform. She’s thirteen.’

  ‘She could have come to supper,’ said Caddy, as they arrived back in the jumbled kitchen. ‘You should have asked her, Saffy!’

  ‘No I shouldn’t,’ said Saffron. ‘Anyway, what supper? Do you mean that stuff all over the table? Who’d want to eat that?’

  Caddy explained that the stuff all over the kitchen table was Rose’s Art, not supper, and that Indigo had said he would make toasted curry sandwiches, which were a speciality of his.

  ‘I’m putting banana in them tonight,’ said Indigo. ‘Banana, raisins, curry and chicken. Clear the table, Rose!’

  Rose ignored him and hung critically over her picture.

  ‘It’s the sort of thing,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘that I give away. Do you think the wheelchair girl would like it?’

  ‘Sarah!’ said Saffron. ‘Don’t keep calling her the wheelchair girl! Of course she wouldn’t like it! What could she do with it? You don’t know what to do with it yourself!’

  ‘You shouldn’t have used jam,’ said Indigo, coming over from his cooking to inspect it. ‘Jam’s too sticky. You’ll have to chuck it. How shall I make the curry? Very hot or very, very hot?’

  ‘Very, very hot,’ said Caddy. ‘Might as well. Perhaps you could take your picture to school, Rose. And give it to your teacher.’

  ‘She’d stick it on the wall,’ said Rose. ‘Flies would come and I’d have to look at it.’

  ‘I don’t see why you can’t just throw it away,’ remarked Indigo.

  Rose explained that she never threw her art away, any more than Indigo ever threw his cooking away.

  ‘We have to eat it,’ she said, ‘whatever it tastes like. And someone has to have my art, whatever it looks like. Or else it’s a waste.’

  ‘Post it to Dad!’ said Saffron, suddenly inspired.

  Arguing about whether or not this was a kind thing to do took up the rest of the evening. By the end of it only Saffron remembered their grandfather’s will, stuffed once again behind the kitchen clock. When she went up to bed she took it with her and read again the tattered note in her grandfather’s handwriting.

  For Saffron. Her angel in the garden. The stone angel.

  Sarah had said that everyone had something they ought to do, and Saffy ought to find her angel.

  That night in her dreams she was in the white stone garden again, with the little pointed trees and the sound of water. Once more she walked hand in hand with someone, but this time she knew it was her grandfather. When she looked up she could see his face. It was tired and sad.

  Saffron could also see her angel. It stood on a small white pedestal. She had known it all her life. It was her angel in the garden, and she had called it that in her mind ever since she could remember, long before she learned to say the words out loud.

  Saffron’s three-year-old world had fallen to pieces. Her mother had vanished, and everything she thought of as home was packed into her grandfather’s car. Everything, that was, except her angel.

  The dream went on, far past the point where it usually stopped, replaying in Saffron’s mind the events of ten years before.

  Saffron clings to her angel and cries and cries and her grandfather does something strange. He takes out a blue pencil and he writes on the angel. On the base, low down, so that Saffron can see.

  ‘Look,’ he says, and points and reads out what he has written.

  ‘For Saffron’ on one side of the base, and ‘Saffy’s Angel’ on the other.

  Saffron magically stops crying.

  Her grandfather sighs and puts the pencil away and hopes that she will forget.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Michael darling,’ said Caddy, dumping a very large box (which squeaked) in the back of Michael’s car, ‘Do not say a word! Ignore it! How is Droopy Di?’

  Michael said, ‘Mirror, signal, check your blind spot, and don’t call me darling, I’m a driving instructor. It’s another ruddy hamster, isn’t it?’

  ‘Nope,’ said Caddy, pulling away very neatly and not needing any of Michael’s instructions. ‘Guinea pig. Pregnant. Babies any minute. I feel I have to be there. Left or right at the end of the road?’

  ‘Left,’ said Michael. ‘Then we can do an emergency stop and drop it in the river. Indicate!’

  ‘I am indicating! Do you like my new top?’

  Michael allowed himself to look at Caddy for the first time since she had climbed into the car. It was a moment that he always put off for as long as possible because his concentration was never quite the same afterwards. He could not think of anything sensible to say about her new top. He bit back the words, ‘You’ll freeze.’

  ‘Where are we going today?’ asked Caddy. ‘What about the dual carriageway? We haven’t been there since I hit that squirrel!’

  Michael groaned.

  ‘You’ll have to face it sometime,’ said Caddy bracingly. ‘They take you there on the driving test. A friend told me. Girl friend! Don’t look like that, Michael! You know quite well there is only you!’

  ‘Keep checking your mirror!’

  ‘Only you,’ repeated Caddy, dreamily. ‘I knew for certain after the dual carriageway day. When you absolutely promised me that squirrels went to heaven…Are you sure squirrels go to heaven? Were you telling the truth?’

  ‘No,’ said Michael cheerfully. ‘I only said it to stop you crying…HOLD ON TO THE STEERING WHEEL…Yes, yes, of course it is true…obviously they go there! Where else? Change gear…that’s my leg…’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Caddy, recovering herself.

  ‘Concentrate!’

  ‘Yes, Michael. How’s the brainy girlfriend? You haven’t said a word.’

  ‘What?’ asked Michael. ‘Oh, her. Yes, fine, thank you. Great form. Turn right at the roundabout.’

  ‘What does she look like?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Michael, a bit taken aback. ‘Well, you know, blonde. Blonder than you. Tallish.’

  ‘Taller than me?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Fantastically beautiful?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Michael, getting into the swing of the conversation. ‘And, you know, intelligent looking. And (of course) rodent free. Otherwise quite like you. Follow the signs for the dual carriageway then, if you are totally bent on destruction.’

  ‘Darling Michael.’

  ‘Start to get some speed up now.’

  ‘If one of the baby guinea pigs looks like you I’ll give it to you for a present.’

  ‘Look for a gap in the traffic. Well done!’

  ‘You can give it to Diane if you like.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Beautiful Di. Tell me if you hear a squeak.’

  ‘Overtake that van in front now
, Cadmium.’

  ‘No,’ said Caddy firmly. ‘I can’t do it. I’m not the overtaking sort, and anyway I wanted to talk to you about my brother Indigo. He nearly fell out of the window yesterday. I forgot him. I was doing homework, and I forgot him. That was your fault too, showing off about your brainy girlfriend! So, did you sit on windowsills when you were eleven, and if so, how did you stop?’

  ‘I never did it. Sorry.’

  ‘Has Droopy Di got little brothers?’

  ‘Yes, but they don’t sit on windowsills!’

  ‘How many has she got?’

  ‘How many have you got?’

  ‘One. And two sisters.’

  ‘She’s got two,’ said Michael. ‘And four sisters!’

  ‘Gosh!’ said Caddy. ‘All right, I will overtake! There! Wasn’t that brilliant? Is she the eldest?’

  ‘It was very neat indeed,’ said Michael kindly. ‘Even Droopy Di couldn’t have done it better. Yes, she is the eldest. Takes care of them all. Mother’s useless.’

  ‘And she’s passed all those exams?’

  ‘Standing on her head,’ said Michael smugly. ‘She’s at university now.’

  ‘What doing?’

  Michael glanced sideways at Caddy and made a guess.

  ‘Zoology.’

  Caddy did an emergency stop on the fast lane of the dual carriageway. The guinea pig box fell off the seat and there was a tremendous hooting from behind.

  ‘WHAT THE…WHY THE…WHY ON EARTH DID YOU DO THAT?’ demanded Michael, making humble praying gestures to the driver that had missed them (now leading a long train of overtakers, all expressing their feelings as they passed). ‘Good grief, look at the traffic! Start the engine, Caddy! Start the engine! All right, stay there while I come round…Now slide over!’

  Caddy slid over and sat very quietly while Michael drove them away. He did not say anything, and neither did she, until they were nearly home.

  Then he said, ‘That was so stupid!’

  ‘I know. Sorry.’

  ‘What was it then? Another squirrel?’

  Caddy shook her head.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Droopy Di,’ said Caddy miserably.

  ‘Droopy Di?’

  ‘She is doing exactly what I wanted to do!’ burst out Caddy. ‘Before I failed all those exams! When I was still at school. When I was young…’

  ‘How old are you now?’

  ‘Eighteen. I was going to study zoology and then go to Africa and work in one of those national parks. People do. I thought I could.’

  ‘Lions and things?’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely?’

  ‘You’d have good weather anyway.’

  ‘Is that what Diane’s going to do?’

  ‘No,’ said Michael firmly, deciding that Diane had had enough good fortune for one afternoon. ‘She’s never mentioned lions to me. Never.’

  ‘She could do though, if she wanted.’

  ‘So could you,’ pointed out Michael. ‘Do your exams, get yourself into university. What’s to stop you?’

  Caddy looked at him in astonishment.

  ‘You want to get yourself thinking straight,’ advised Michael, pulling up outside Caddy’s house. ‘Same goes for your brother! There’s a climbing wall at the gym in town. Tell him he wants to go there and learn properly, instead of mucking about on windowsills!’

  ‘Michael darling,’ said Caddy. ‘You are a great brain! I’m sorry I stopped on the dual carriageway like that. It was shock.’

  ‘Shocked me too,’ said Michael. ‘If you do it again I will dump you. Somebody else will have to teach you. You’ll need to be able to drive in Africa. Land Rovers, probably. Somebody wants you! See them waving?’

  He watched as Caddy fished behind the seat for her box and climbed out of the car. Rose came running from the house to meet her, holding out a large wet picture that flapped.

  ‘Lovely!’ said Caddy, taking it carefully. ‘It’s me! Look, Michael!’

  ‘Lovely,’ agreed Michael, and drove away quite reluctantly thinking, lovely, lovely.

  Sarah’s mother opened the door to Saffron looking not at all pleased. She was tall and tidy and very, very efficient looking. She said, ‘Saffron, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Saffron, suddenly nervous. ‘I’ve come to call for Sarah. Is she in?’

  ‘You kept her out far too late last night,’ said Sarah’s mother, not smiling. ‘She gets tired.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘She’s doing her homework at the moment. Have you finished yours?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Saffron. ‘Homework. Well, no. I do it on the bus. Usually.’

  Saffron could feel panic setting in. There was something Sarah had told her about her mother the night before that she could not remember. Something important, to do with school.

  ‘On the bus?’

  ‘I go to the comprehensive,’ said Saffron meekly. ‘Not the rich ki…not the other school. So homework doesn’t matter. As much.’

  ‘It’s an excellent comprehensive,’ said Sarah’s mother. ‘Homework always matters. We think.’

  All at once Saffron remembered what it was about Sarah’s mother. She was Mrs Warbeck. The headmistress of the private school. The rich kids’school. That was it. Saffron had known it was something terrible.

  ‘Perhaps you would like to have supper with us?’ Mrs Warbeck was asking Saffron now. ‘After Sarah has finished her homework? You could telephone your mother from here if you like. Or pop back home. Would she mind?’

  Saffron shook her head.

  ‘We get our own supper,’ she said. ‘And anyway, it’s no good telephoning. She’ll be in the shed.’

  ‘In the shed?’

  The face of Sarah’s mother said as plainly as if she had spoken that Eve should not be in the shed. She should be cooking. This was the hour of the day when respectable mothers cooked for their respectable families, while supervising homework.

  Saffron, feeling hopelessly unrespectable, looked around for a way of escape. Astonishingly, she found one. It was on the wall. A picture by her mother. Town Bridge on a Bright Evening. She said, ‘My mother painted that!’

  ‘Did she?’ asked Mrs Warbeck. ‘Did she really? Why, of course! It’s an Eve Casson! How silly of me not to realise!’ and she looked at Saffron in quite a different, much more friendly, kind of way.

  ‘She paints in the shed,’ explained Saffron, and Sarah’s mother said, ‘Of course!’ and smiled at Saffron, and asked if she was artistic too, and wasn’t her father Bill Casson also an artist, and said how exciting it must be to be one of such a creative family. Before Saffron could decide whether to agree (Yes, very exciting!), or tell the truth (No, not at all, and they’re not my parents, I’m adopted), Sarah herself appeared, coming down the stairs.

  ‘My soufflé!’ exclaimed Mrs Warbeck, and disappeared through a door.

  ‘I heard her booming away,’ said Sarah, grinning. ‘I’d have come sooner if I’d known it was you!’

  ‘Shall I help you?’ asked Saffron shyly. Sarah on her legs, instead of in a wheelchair, looked terribly frail. She moved as if the world was in danger of slipping away beneath her feet.

  ‘Help me what?’ asked Sarah. ‘Oh, walk! No thanks. You can help me with my homework if you like though! Are you any good at French?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Science?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Maths?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Sarah cheerfully. ‘Never mind! Come back upstairs to my bedroom till it’s suppertime.’

  ‘But you’ve just come down!’ protested Saffron.

  ‘Don’t fuss!’ commanded Sarah. ‘Mum fusses, Dad fusses. They fuss at school, they fuss at the hospital. Everyone I crash into with my wheelchair fusses. Don’t you start! Have you found your angel yet?’

  ‘No,’ said Saffron, not fussing, as Sarah started on another flight of stairs, ‘but I think I know where it is. Italy. Siena,
where I was born. I had a dream and saw it there. Why is your bedroom right at the top of the house?’

  ‘That’s where I chose,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Do you always get your own way?’

  ‘Nearly,’ admitted Sarah. ‘My mother is tough, but I am tougher and Dad isn’t tough at all. So I win. You will have to get to Siena somehow then, if that’s where your angel is. Mind the drum kit!’

  ‘I’m trying to think of a way,’ said Saffron, stepping round the drum kit. ‘I’ve got a passport, that’s a start. Why have you got all this stuff ?’

  ‘Everyone’s got stuff,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Two computers!’

  ‘I only use one of them.’

  ‘Two guitars, and a keyboard!’

  ‘Well, you can’t play the drums all the time!’

  ‘TV, music centre, what’s that thing for?’

  ‘Lighting system!’

  ‘Why’ve you got kites hanging all over the ceiling?’

  ‘I just have. I like them.’

  ‘Ten thousand teddy bears!’

  ‘I used to collect them!’

  ‘Is that a fridge?’

  ‘Only a little one!’

  ‘Why do you need two beds?’

  ‘I get bored easily.’

  ‘And a hammock!’

  ‘I just use that for shoving things in!’

  ‘Have you read all those books? What do you look at with that telescope? I’ve never seen so many CDs!’

  ‘OK! Shut up now, Saffron!’

  ‘I’ve always wanted a chair like this! I love swivel chairs! Is that whole crate full of nail varnish? Nothing else but nail varnish!’

  ‘All right,’ said Sarah. ‘I’ve got a lot of stuff. Don’t look at it. It’s only stuff. Everyone has it.’

  ‘Not like this,’ said Saffron. ‘Where does it all come from?’

  ‘Parents, grandparents,’ said Sarah, a little impatiently. ‘Come on Saffron! Don’t pretend your family don’t give you stuff!’

  Saffron thought about what her family gave her. Food. Necessary clothes. Christmas dolls and teddies and books when she was little. The right sort of trainers for her last birthday, undoubtedly chosen by Caddy. Nothing at all like Sarah’s collection.