Saffy's Angel

by Hilary McKay

  Mrs Warbeck began to think she might be a suitable friend for Sarah after all. The day that Saffron, trying out the racing wheelchair for the first time, took a chunk out of the bottom of the banisters and sent a stand of plants crashing to the floor in the hall, she found herself quite liking her.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ wailed Saffron, kneeling in a sea of potting compost and scrabbling up crushed geraniums from the floor. ‘Shut up laughing, Sarah! It’s not funny!’

  Sarah was sitting on the bottom stair, howling with laughter.

  ‘Take no notice!’ said her mother, bending down to help Saffron. ‘I should think it is at least half Sarah’s fault. If not more. And don’t worry about the flowers. They were getting far too leggy. And it was only an old pot…Are you crying, Saffron?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s horrible smashing things in other people’s houses.’

  ‘I never cry.’

  ‘I once broke a mirror at a friend’s. Seven years’ bad luck.’

  ‘Who got the bad luck, you or your friend?’

  ‘She did. Fetch a brush, Sarah, don’t just sit there watching! Did you hear we were going to Italy, Saffron?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Siena was now an accepted fact. Sarah was going at half term and she had managed her parents so well that they half thought the whole idea had been theirs from the start. The journey had been planned, the hotel booked and it was just a matter of whether or not to invite Saffron to go with them.

  ‘I’m going one day,’ volunteered Saffron, as she brushed up spilt compost.

  ‘To Italy?’

  ‘To Siena,’ said Saffron.

  Mrs Warbeck very nearly did invite her then. The only thing that stopped her was the thought of how disappointed she and Sarah would be if Mr and Mrs Casson should say no. She thought she would talk to them first, and meanwhile she offered to drive both girls into town the next day, which was a Saturday. She would drop them off together, Sarah and Saffron and the wheelchair, to do as they liked for the afternoon. There was the cinema, she said, and shops, and a lovely friendly restaurant in the basement of the library, and Sarah could take her mobile phone and call whenever they wanted to come home. Saffron was flattered to be so trusted, and Sarah, who had never in her whole life been allowed into town on her own, was astonished and delighted.

  At first it went very well. They started with the cinema and went on to the shops. They skipped the friendly restaurant in favour of pizza slices and chips in the town square, and it was while they were eating these that a group of girls from Saffron’s school turned up and demanded to know what Saffron was doing with a girl from the rich kids’school. They all had brand new nose studs.

  ‘Mind your own business,’ said Saffron defensively. ‘She can’t help being a private school kid. She has to go there. Her mother’s the head.’

  ‘Shut up, Saffron!’ said Sarah laughing, and then she turned to the girls and asked, ‘Where did you get your noses done?’

  This question changed the atmosphere completely. The girls crowded round to explain how noses were being done that day in a very sterile van at the back of the market. Solid gold studs, said the girls proudly, six pounds a time, a never to be repeated bargain. Saffron, who was listening with growing alarm, was very relieved to hear that the girls had got their nose studs only just in time, the van was packing up right now, and the woman in charge had remarked only a few minutes earlier that she was about done for the day.

  ‘Oh no, she isn’t!’ exclaimed Sarah. ‘They look absolutely brilliant! I’m having one too!’

  Then to Saffron’s horror she set off at top speed for the back of the market, causing great trouble among the stalls with her wheelchair. All the girls from Saffron’s school, and Saffron too, ran after her reminding her that nose studs were banned at her school, as were dangling earrings, hair extensions, trainers, mobile phones and many, many other things loathed by Sarah’s mother.

  ‘Who cares?’ asked Sarah cheerfully, and to Saffron she said, ‘You’re scared.’

  This meant Saffron had to have a nose stud too, and during the process (at which Sarah did not flinch) she went sick and grey and dizzy. The owner of the mobile nose stud van, who had seen it all before, callously drove off.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Sarah. ‘I’ll ring my mother.’

  Sarah’s mother (who had been waiting by the phone all afternoon) arrived very promptly. She found Sarah and Saffron sitting among the litter of the market, surrounded by a gang of girls all equipped with dangling earrings, trainers, mobile phones and nose studs. At the sight of the private school head they melted away like snow in summer with calls of, ‘See you Monday, Saff!’

  ‘Get in the car!’ said Sarah’s mother, purple with fury, but determined not to make a scene in public. ‘Get in the car and we will talk about this on the way home.’

  Saffron had been dropped off at the Banana House in disgrace.

  Since then she had not seen Sarah once, although Sarah had telephoned and said how sorry she was. She had told Saffron how nearly she had been invited to Siena. She had promised to explain everything to her mother and get Saffron there yet, as soon as her mother would calm down and listen to explanations. If Saffron would just find out the address in Siena of the place where she used to live, said Sarah, she would bring home her stone angel herself, single handed if necessary.

  ‘No,’ said Saffron. ‘It’s my angel. I’ll get it myself.’

  ‘It’s only a few weeks till half term,’ said Sarah. ‘My mother might not come round before then. She is very mad.’

  ‘Whose fault is that?’ demanded Saffron, and Sarah admitted at once that it was hers.

  ‘I didn’t ask,’ said Saffron (shouted actually), ‘for you to stick your nose in my business! Or for you to get me to Siena! Or for your mother to go taking me into town! I can go into town whenever I like!’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Sarah meekly.

  ‘Or for this rotten nose stud! You made me!’

  ‘You like it though.’

  ‘I nearly died!’

  ‘Yes, but you like it now.’

  ‘That’s not the point!’

  ‘Saffron, please say you like it otherwise I’ll have got a hole in your nose for nothing.’

  ‘Yes, all right. I do. Quite.’

  ‘I knew you did. Saffron. I’ve got another plan. I’m working on it. I’ll ring you when it’s perfect…Here’s my mother coming! Should you like to talk to Saffron, Mummy dear?’

  ‘No,’ said Saffron in panic. ‘Don’t let her!’

  ‘It’s quite funny,’ said Sarah, in a loud, conversational voice. ‘Because of nose studs being banned at the rich kids’school, you know? I’ve had a Head’s warning! I may have to come to the comprehensive…There, she’s stamped off ! Don’t worry, Saffron! Wait till you’ve heard my plan!’

  Chapter Seven

  Caddy was in the front room, crouched on the carpet, laying out around her a complicated pattern of papers and books and files.

  ‘Now, don’t move anything!’ she said to Indigo, who was watching. ‘I have arranged them all in the order that I’m supposed to learn them. If I start at the sofa and work my way over to the window I shall know it all!’

  ‘What a brilliant idea!’ said Indigo.

  ‘People will just have to step over it all until after the exams.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Economics.’

  ‘What’s that stuff in your bedroom then? Rose was showing me. Sellotaped all over the ceiling.’

  ‘Biology. I’m putting a different subject in every room. Chemistry in the kitchen, with fridge magnets and blutack. French in the bathroom upstairs so I can write vocab. on the tiles and learn it in the bath. English literature will be fine in the downstairs loo, because it’s just reading. Physics I do at college because I’ve got a friend there who is very good at it, and you can’t revise English language. It’s instinct, English language. I only failed it before
because I turned over two pages of the exam paper at once and missed out all the middle questions.’

  ‘What about maths?’ asked Indigo, who had been keeping track of all this on his fingers.

  Caddy, who detested maths, pretended not to hear.

  ‘What about maths?’repeated Indigo.

  ‘Maths is instinct too,’ said Caddy rather defensively. ‘Anyway, what does it matter? I expect I shall fail everything again, just like last time.’

  Indigo looked at her in astonishment.

  ‘ ’Course you won’t fail everything!’ he said. ‘How can you go to university and do zoology if you fail everything? Don’t you want to do that any more?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘You were going to work in a game reserve in Africa and have me over for holidays to get warmed up from my polar expeditions!’

  This was a plan they had made together years ago, the Christmas they had both had chicken pox. Their father had come home from London and put them both into isolation upstairs, so that Rose should not be infected. They had been there for nearly two weeks, watching the rain fall past the bedroom window, and Caddy had longed for sunshine, and Indigo had longed for snow, and together they had planned out futures in lands where the weather was more enjoyable. Caddy had forgotten all about it, but Indigo, who never forgot anything, had been looking forward to his holidays in Africa with Caddy for years.

  ‘Can’t we still do it?’ he asked.

  ‘I wish we could.’

  ‘This time,’ said Indigo, ‘you won’t fail anything. I don’t believe you did last time! I think they just got the marking wrong!’

  ‘Oh, Indigo!’

  ‘And look how hard you’re working now!’

  Caddy groaned.

  ‘You can put your maths in my bedroom if you like. Because I don’t think it is instinct. So that can be your maths place.’

  ‘Indigo,’ said Caddy. ‘Do you truly think I will pass all these exams and go to university and study zoology and end up working on a game reserve?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Indigo.

  ‘And pass my driving test as well?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Indigo, slightly surprised that Caddy, the eldest and cleverest, and most beautiful member of his pack, should have so many doubts. ‘And I’ve been thinking if you didn’t mind working in Australia instead of Africa it would be much handier for the South Pole. Only I know there’s terrible crocodiles.’

  ‘Crocodiles,’ said Caddy, as she bent over the start of the economics trail to begin her revision, ‘wouldn’t bother me at all!’

  ‘I didn’t think they would,’ said Indigo.

  A week or two later Sarah telephoned Saffron with details of her plan (now perfect). It was that Saffron should become a stowaway.

  ‘A what?’ shouted Saffron.

  ‘A stowaway,’ said Sarah.

  It was so simple, she explained. Saffron needed to go to Siena, and why should she not? Stowing away would be the easiest thing in the world. There would be plenty of space in the car. It was simply a matter of Saffron remaining concealed on the back seat until Sarah’s parents had driven to the point of no return.

  ‘Probably the ferry,’ said Sarah. ‘But the further the better of course.’

  Then all Saffron would have to do (said Sarah) was emerge from her hiding place, and explain politely that here she was, after all. At which Sarah’s parents would probably reply, well, well, so she was, what an excellent surprise. Something like that, anyway. And Saffron must be sure to remember her passport and some money (in case as a last resort they had to actually buy the angel) (Don’t be silly, Saffron, English money will be fine! They’ll change it at the hotel for you!) and the address of her old home in Siena. Also she should leave a letter explaining where she was so that her family need not be worried.

  ‘I have thought of everything,’ said Sarah complacently, and went on to describe how Saffron’s clothes could be smuggled down the road to the Warbecks’ house and packed among Sarah’s own where they would not be noticed.

  ‘I will say I want to take my bean bag,’ said Sarah, ignoring Saffron’s squeaks down the phone. ‘I often take my bean bag on car trips. It’s enormous, and you’re not very big. I’ll empty it out and cover you in the cover and pile a lot of stuff around and they’ll never notice. They’re used to me having a lot of stuff. As you know. What do you say?’

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Saffron. ‘You have obviously gone mad.’

  ‘Get everything you want to bring with you sorted out right now and I will telephone you when it is safe to bring it down. This evening probably. The sooner the better.’

  ‘Bonkers,’ said Saffron, beginning to laugh. ‘Totally cracked. You are falling apart. I suppose I will get the blame for that too.’

  ‘Don’t bother with a hair dryer, you can share mine.’

  ‘I haven’t got a hair dryer. I have drip-dry hair. I am not a Private School Kid.’

  ‘Saffron, it will be fun! An adventure. And perhaps we’ll find your angel. It was there, wasn’t it? In the garden? In Siena?’

  Saffron did not say anything.

  ‘Pack!’ said Sarah. ‘Do it now!’

  Still Saffron did not reply.

  ‘Obviously,’ snapped Sarah, ‘you are scared of my mother.’

  ‘Obviously I am scared of your mother!’ said Saffron. ‘And your dad!’

  ‘Dad’s a pussy cat,’ said Sarah soothingly. ‘You wait and see! And Mum just pretends to be tough. It’s her job. She’s not really scary at all. Nothing compared to me!’

  ‘I never said she was,’ said Saffron crossly, putting down the phone.

  She turned round, and there were Caddy, Indigo and Rose, all shamelessly listening to her half of the conversation and eager to hear more.

  ‘Why did you say you were scared of Sarah’s parents?’ demanded Indigo.

  ‘Why were you laughing?’ asked Caddy. ‘Why did you say she’d gone mad?’

  ‘What did she want?’ asked Rose, coming sensibly to the point.

  Saffron explained that Sarah had arranged for her to stow away in the family car to Italy, in order to hunt out the stone angel that had been left to her in their grandfather’s will.

  She waited for them to gasp with disbelief, and to agree that Sarah must indeed be quite mad, bonkers, cracked and falling apart.

  ‘Absolutely fantastic,’ said Caddy. ‘Totally completely what you ought to do! Darling Mum will never agree of course, but I will cover for you until you get away.’

  ‘You’re not really scared of Sarah’s parents, are you?’ asked Indigo. ‘I didn’t think you were scared of anything.’

  ‘When are you going?’ asked Rose.

  Then all together they talked about how lucky Saffron was to have a friend like Sarah, and how much they wished that they could go too. Caddy found Eve’s address book and turned back the pages until she came to Linda, 16 Via S. Francesco, Siena.

  It was the last of a whole page of Linda addresses; there was Linda, Rome, Linda, Cambridge, and Linda, London. They had all been crossed out except the last.

  It startled them to see that last address still waiting on the page.

  ‘As if she was still there,’ said Caddy.

  ‘That was where you lived,’ said Indigo, and Saffron thought, Yes, that was where I lived.

  Just to see it written down was astonishing.

  Caddy began to talk about the time that followed the death of Saffron’s mother.

  ‘Grandad brought you to us,’ she said. ‘In his big green car, his Bentley. I can remember that. It was full of your toys and clothes and things. And you were crying. And Mum was crying. And me and Indigo were crying and Dad kept trying to make everyone be sensible.’

  Saffron could picture that very easily indeed.

  ‘Dad is very bossy,’ observed Rose. ‘And he is always trying to make other people be sensible but he doesn’t know what sensible is. That’s why he lives in London and paints rubbish pic
tures!’

  Caddy ignored all this and carried on.

  ‘Everyone was fussing around you. Grandad said you’d had to leave something behind and he ought to have brought it for you, that’s what you were crying about. He said he felt like turning right round and going back to fetch it. Dad said Grandad was being ridiculous and everyone should go to bed. I remember it was all very noisy and miserable and Grandad got mad with Dad and wouldn’t stay. He unloaded the car and went. But he said goodbye to me first.’

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Saffron.

  ‘He said, “Don’t cry, Caddy. Everything will be all right in the morning.” I remember that because later on Mum was looking after you, and Dad took me and Indigo up to bed. I was still sniffing a bit and Dad said, “Don’t cry, Caddy, everything will be all right in the morning.” Exactly the same.

  ‘We didn’t see Grandad again for a long time and when we did he was not the same person. He didn’t look the same, and he didn’t speak. But I didn’t know exactly what had happened to him for ages and ages. Not until I was nearly grown up.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ demanded Saffy.

  ‘He got very ill,’ said Caddy. ‘He had a heart attack, driving. In Southampton. A week or two after he brought you home. He was on his way back to Siena. He must have been. Mum and Dad guessed that. And now we know he must have been going to get your angel. He would have got it for you if he could, Saffy.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m so glad you are going. I’ll help you pack!’

  ‘Pack!’ repeated Saffron. She had completely forgotten Sarah’s terrible plan while she listened to Caddy’s story, and it was a bit of a jolt to come back into the present.

  ‘You can borrow any of my things you like!’

  ‘Or mine,’ said Indigo. ‘You can borrow my new sports bag. You will need to take something strong to carry it back. Stone’s heavy.’

  ‘But it might not even be there!’

  ‘Where else would it be?’

  ‘And that place in the address book will be someone else’s house now. And someone else’s garden. And perhaps their angel.’