Saffy's Angel

by Hilary McKay

  ‘It can’t be anyone’s angel except yours,’ said Rose.

  ‘Think about it, Saffy!’ said Caddy. ‘Think! A chance to go back!’

  Saffron looked again at the last uncrossed out address in the address book and thought about it. The place that she had remembered in so many dreams, the garden with the white stone paths and the high walls and the little pointed trees, was there.

  ‘Sarah said bring money,’ she remembered suddenly. ‘In case we have to buy it. I haven’t got any money.’

  Caddy turned at once to the housekeeping jar and Indigo pointed out that Rose had stacks of money.

  ‘I do?’ said Rose, surprised.

  Indigo reminded her that she still had her inheritance, one hundred and forty-four pounds.

  Rose said at once that the one hundred and forty-four pounds was no longer money, but art, and anyway all glued down.

  ‘And sprayed gold,’ she added unhelpfully.

  ‘Rose!’ whispered Indigo indignantly.

  ‘I don’t want Rose’s money!’ said Saffron. ‘And I don’t want that either!’ she added, as Caddy emptied the contents of the housekeeping jam jar out on to the kitchen table. ‘I don’t want to go at all!’

  Rose, who was quite aware that she was not coming up to the very high standards of behaviour that Indigo expected of his pack, decided to get away from the kitchen while no one was taking any notice of her. Just as she was going out of the door, however, the telephone rang. She picked it up, listened for a moment without saying a word, and then passed it across to Saffron.

  ‘Sarah!’ said Saffron, with a groan in her voice.

  Rose paused in the doorway. Sarah’s voice, very high and excited, was clear to everyone in the room.

  ‘Did you sort out your stuff ?’ she demanded. ‘You could come over right now! She’s just gone out. I found a little job for her. And brilliant news, Saffy, she says it’s too late to change the hotel booking! She’d got me a room with two beds in case you came, and booked for four of us on the ferry. She’s been trying to make me choose someone from school to ask…did you pack?’

  ‘No, I…’

  ‘Well, go and do it! I thought you’d have finished! Do it straight away!’

  ‘You are so bossy!’

  ‘Oh, Saffron!’ wailed Sarah down the phone. ‘I’m not bossy! I’m helping you! I’m very, very efficient! Now, quick, go and get your stuff!’

  A whirlwind of activity suddenly began around Saffron. Rose had a change of heart, fetched her golden dragon hoard from the windowsill and began levering off the first coins. Caddy hurried upstairs, and reappeared carrying her own new white jeans and her black denim jacket. Indigo emptied his football kit out of his sports bag and handed it over to Caddy.

  ‘Five minutes!’ he told Sarah, taking the receiver out of Saffron’s hand. ‘Don’t worry! She’ll be there in five minutes!’

  ‘No, I won’t!’ shouted Saffron, grabbing it back. ‘You know I can’t!’

  ‘Five minutes absolute max!’ said Sarah autocratically, and put down the phone.

  Five minutes later, with the sports bag full, Saffron was pushed out of the front door by everyone in the house.

  ‘Hurry back!’ said Indigo. ‘We’ve still got all Rose’s money to scrub clean!’

  ‘Ask Sarah if she knows what gets off Super Glue!’ said Caddy.

  ‘Run!’ ordered Rose, and Saffy found herself running down the road to Sarah’s house.

  Sarah was waiting by her open front door and she pounced on Saffron at once.

  ‘I can hardly wait until half term!’ she exclaimed, her face alight with plotting. ‘You’ll have to go in a minute though, Saffy, before my mother comes back. It took me ages to think of a job for her. She’s gone over to school to fetch my Latin book.’

  ‘Latin!’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Sarah airily. ‘All private school kids do Latin. It is ancient Italian. It’ll be useful, you’ll see! Now, listen! I’m working on how to actually get you into the car. On the day. I’ll let you know. I’ll think of another job for my mother and telephone again!’

  ‘You’re enjoying all this!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sarah, making her wheelchair spin round very fast backwards and then forwards again. ‘Just call me Mission Control! Any questions?’

  ‘Caddy said ask you what gets Super Glue off.’

  ‘Nothing, I don’t think. Why?’

  ‘Tell you another time.’

  ‘You’d better go now Saffy, you really had.’

  ‘All right. Shall I take my bag up to your room?’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘I’ll be much faster,’ said Saffron, and ran upstairs with it before Sarah could argue any more. ‘Sorry,’ she said seeing Sarah’s face as she came back down.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ growled Sarah, and then she said suddenly, ‘I do miss you,’ and rubbed the studless side of her nose.

  ‘So do I,’ said Saffron, quite touched. ‘Miss you, I mean. Bye bye, Mission Control!’

  ‘Bye, Super Hero!’ said Sarah.

  Chapter Eight

  Caddy’s exams were spread out over a whole month, the week before the summer half term holiday at the end of May, and the two weeks after it. Before they started she had the written part of her driving test, which she passed with no trouble at all.

  ‘Told you so!’ said Michael.

  Caddy hardly noticed she had done it. She had begun to spend her time in a trance of exam papers and revision, trekking from room to room in the Banana House in search of ever more knowledge. It became a sort of safari. She hunted down facts and theories, and was mildly astonished to find that once she had found them they stayed in her brain.

  Occasionally the safari was not successful and she stuck in a bog. English literature was a terrible bog, especially Shakespeare, especially, especially Hamlet, the play. For three years Caddy had owned a copy of Hamlet. Somehow, she could not read it. It numbed her brain. She still had not got through it the day before the English literature exam.

  ‘I will just have to skip all the Shakespeare questions,’ she told Indigo.

  ‘Like you did last time?’

  ‘Um. Yes.’

  ‘You’d better read it,’ said Indigo.

  ‘There isn’t time. I’ve got a driving lesson.’

  ‘Cancel it,’ said Indigo austerely.

  Caddy rang up Michael.

  ‘I have to read this totally boring play,’ she explained. ‘Hamlet. By Shakespeare. Droopy Di probably loves it.’

  ‘You are quite right,’ agreed Michael cordially. ‘Shakespeare. Oh yes. Reads it in the bath.’

  ‘How do you know? No, don’t tell me! Anyway, Michael darling, because of this terrible Hamlet that I have to know all about before tomorrow I’m afraid I won’t be able to come out with you today.’

  ‘Who was he, then?’ asked Michael. ‘I think I have a right to know. Since you are cancelling at such short notice, Cadmium dear!’

  ‘He was a Prince,’ said Caddy. ‘Of Denmark.’

  ‘I’ve been there,’ said Michael, sounding very pleased with himself. ‘I went to a concert in Denmark, years ago! In a sea of mud. Never stopped raining for three days. Terrible place, Denmark!’

  ‘Hamlet went mad.’

  ‘So did a lot of us.’

  ‘And his girlfriend drowned.’

  ‘Not surprised at all. Wettest place I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘She was called Ophelia.’

  ‘And she couldn’t swim?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Poor old Oph.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Caddy, beginning to feel a bit better, ‘and poor old Ham, in all that mud.’

  ‘Think of me, when you read it,’ said Michael. ‘My tent was pinched and my two best mates got food poisoning.’

  ‘Hamlet’s two best mates got murdered.’

  ‘Dear, oh dear,’ said Michael. ‘I’ll see you next week then.’

  That got Caddy out of the Hamlet bog quite
nicely. She substituted Michael for Hamlet, and herself for Ophelia, and she added the two best mates whenever the action got very slow, and somehow she got through the whole play in time to discuss it, quite intelligently, in the examination the next day. Still, it was a great relief to go back to Chemistry, which was written in plain English and full of familiar names from the colour chart, still pinned on the kitchen wall.

  ‘You are working too hard,’ remarked Eve, coming in from an afternoon with the local Young Offenders, whom she had recently been employed to turn into Young Artists instead. ‘I never did any work at all when I was your age!’

  ‘What did you do?’ enquired Rose.

  ‘I had a lovely time! I was a hippy!’

  ‘I bet Dad wasn’t!’ said Rose.

  ‘Don’t worry about Caddy,’ Indigo told his mother. ‘I am keeping her strength up with high energy food. Raisins and biscuits and corned beef for pemmican. Like the explorers had at the South Pole.’

  ‘They ate their dogs too,’ remarked Rose. ‘You told me. Is Caddy having dog?’

  ‘Captain Scott didn’t eat his dogs,’ said Indigo crossly.

  ‘But,’ pointed out Rose, who was in a rather awkward mood that evening, ‘he died. So!’

  Eve said that what Caddy needed was not raisins or biscuits or corned beef or dog, but a nice evening out with her friends, relaxing. She picked up Caddy’s chemistry notes and said she did not see how Caddy could possibly be expected to understand any of it.

  ‘Even my Young Offenders would make nothing of it,’ she said, ‘and they are quite extraordinarily bright. This afternoon one of them showed me how to unlock my car with a teaspoon and a freezer bag tie. He did it in seconds! I’d never have got home if he hadn’t. I’d locked my keys inside. Anyway, Indigo needn’t cook dog tonight. I was going to make everyone pancakes. What do you think?’

  ‘Lovely!’

  ‘Where’s Saffron?’

  Saffron was upstairs, wondering for the fiftieth time at least, if it was worth all the trouble of stowing away to Italy to find a stone angel that she had seen last when she was three years old. Once again she unfolded the little piece of paper that had been fastened to her grandfather’s will.

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

  The following Monday, having somehow survived the first week of exams, Caddy stuck her head through Michael’s car window and said, ‘Michael darling!’

  ‘Don’t call me that!’

  ‘I can’t come for this driving lesson unless you do me a huge enormous favour, which I know you will.’

  Michael screwed his eyes tight shut and waited.

  ‘Let me bring…’

  ‘No, no, no!’ shouted Michael. ‘Please no more livestock!’

  ‘They’re not livestock! They will be no trouble at all.’

  ‘Hamsters, guinea pigs, what next?’

  ‘Only Indigo and Rose.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Caddy!’ exploded Michael. ‘Have a heart! This is a driving lesson. Not Fun at the Zoo. Not Babysitters on Wheels!’

  ‘I can’t come then,’ said Caddy. ‘I promised I’d look after them. I was sure you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Why aren’t they at school?’

  ‘It’s half term.’

  ‘Why can’t your mother look after them?’

  ‘She’s working. She’s started teaching a crash course for Young Offenders. It’s called Art for Art’s Sake. They’re all very clever and they’ve taught her how to break into cars. Didn’t Darling Diane ever bring her little brothers and sisters with her on driving lessons?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Oh. All right then. Bye, bye Michael.’

  ‘Yes. OK. If they must I suppose I can stick it,’ groaned Michael, breaking down under this enormous pressure.

  ‘You are a darling, Michael,’ said Caddy, and turned and waved at the blank windows of the house. Indigo and Rose immediately appeared, both beaming cheerfully and looking not at all surprised.

  ‘Tricked,’ said Michael, as they scrambled into the back seat. ‘Conned, stitched up and taken for a ride! Mind, not a squeak out of either of you, however she drives. Grin and bear it like I have to. Now then Cadmium, start the engine. Mirror, signal…’

  ‘I know all that now, Michael darling.’

  ‘Just reminding you. I thought there were three of them.’

  ‘Three of what?’ asked Caddy.

  ‘Haven’t you got another sister?’

  ‘Oh yes, Saffron,’ said Caddy.

  ‘Saffron’s gone to Italy,’ explained Rose from the back.

  ‘Oh, very nice,’ remarked Michael.

  ‘She’s stowed away.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘In her friend’s car,’ Rose told him. ‘Yesterday. We saw them drive past.’

  Michael glanced at Caddy to see if this could possibly be true.

  Caddy nodded serenely.

  ‘We waved,’ Rose went on, ‘but of course she couldn’t wave back because she was hidden under the bean bag cover.’

  ‘She was?’

  ‘And Mum was very upset when she got home and found out. Very. Very bothered indeed.’

  ‘What about your dad?’

  ‘Haven’t told him. Caddy says he need never know.’

  ‘Which way at the roundabout?’ asked Caddy peacefully.

  ‘Right. Sorry, I was forgetting. You’re in the wrong lane! Indicate! Don’t barge in front…There…Missed the road…Take no notice of him hooting…You can’t stop here! Go round again!’

  Caddy went round again, and managed to take the right road the next time, frightening Michael, Indigo, Rose and a truck driver in the process.

  ‘I can’t believe you just did that,’ said Michael.

  ‘That was very, very brave,’ agreed Rose, unclamping her fingers from the edge of the seat. ‘Zipping in front of that enormous lorry. I’m sorry I screamed.’

  ‘Perfectly natural reaction,’ said Michael. ‘Have you seen those cyclists ahead, Cadmium?’

  ‘No. Oh yes. Sorry. Shut my eyes for a moment.’

  ‘Can you drive with your eyes shut?’ enquired Rose, with great interest.

  ‘No. No, I can’t. Missed. Good.’

  ‘Missed what?’

  ‘The cyclists.’

  Michael put a hand on the steering wheel and said Caddy should take the next turn on the left and then pull up and park. Caddy pulled into a bus stop and thirteen people waved her away. Rose waved back.

  ‘Count to a hundred,’ ordered Michael, when they had escaped from the bus stop and stopped again. ‘Get a grip. What’s the matter?’

  ‘I think it’s having Indigo and Rose in the back. I keep thinking I might kill them.’

  ‘So do we,’ said Rose. ‘I love it.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But Indigo’s gone green.’

  Caddy and Michael turned hastily round, and saw that this was true. Indigo was definitely green.

  ‘Sick?’ asked Michael.

  Indigo shook his head.

  ‘Terrified?’

  Indigo nodded.

  ‘Worse than the bedroom windowsill?’

  Indigo nodded again.

  ‘Wind your window down.’

  Indigo wound his window down as far as it would go, and leaned back rather wearily.

  ‘I think we’ll go back,’ said Michael, and proceeded to talk Caddy home, very slowly and patiently, leaving nothing to chance.

  ‘Aren’t we going to do any more speeding?’ asked Rose, rather disappointed.

  ‘No,’ said Michael.

  ‘Boring,’ said Rose, but brightened up a bit when, right outside the Banana House, Caddy pulled up and parked on a large dead toad. The toad went off with a pop, right underneath the open window on Indigo’s side. Rose jumped out to inspect the explosion and Indigo jumped out and was sick.

  ‘You were perfectly, perfectly safe,’ Caddy told him, mopping his forehead as he lay stretched out on the sofa. ‘Mi
chael has a brake on his side, you know. He could have stopped the car any time.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘And he could always have grabbed the steering wheel. He does, if he has to.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does he often?’

  ‘No. Hardly ever. And it wasn’t my fault about the toad.’

  ‘I know,’ said Indigo. ‘I know it wasn’t your fault about the toad, Caddy.’

  ‘I usually drive much better than that.’

  ‘Good,’ said Indigo. ‘Do you think Saffon’s there yet?’

  ‘Nearly, I expect.’

  ‘I keep thinking about her.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘Do you think she misses us?’

  ‘No. Not much anyway. She’s got Sarah.’

  ‘We don’t really know Sarah,’ said Indigo, a bit jealously, ‘I hope she hasn’t pinched Saffy for good!’

  ‘Of course she hasn’t,’ said Caddy comfortingly. ‘She’s just borrowed her for a bit.’

  The day before, Sunday morning, Sarah had passed a note to Saffron. It said,

  We are on the road to Siena!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Sarah had lifted a corner of the bean bag cover so that Saffron should have enough light to read by. The bean bag rustled authentically as it moved. A few handfuls of polystyrene beans had been left inside to give the necessary sound effect. Everything had been thought of.

  There had been no hitches. One difficult moment only, when, a day or two before they left, Sarah’s mother had come unexpectedly into Sarah’s bedroom and noticed the new sports bag.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ she had asked.

  ‘Saffron’s brother,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Rather nice,’ said her mother, and the moment had passed.

  On the morning of departure, while her parents were rushing round collecting last minute items, Sarah had deliberately got under their feet so often that they had begged her to leave them alone.

  ‘Go and sit in the car, darling. Just until we are ready. We won’t be long.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Ten minutes.’

  During those ten minutes Saffron (concealed in the bushes by the drive) had been smuggled on to the back seat and tucked carefully out of sight under the bean bag. Then a great many bulky items were piled around her, among them Sarah’s new padded jacket, two large teddy bears, and a fully assembled box kite.