Saffy's Angel

by Hilary McKay

  Rose was not even there to answer. She was back in her bedroom relating Indigo’s amazing new idea. Indigo could hear her.

  ‘Quick Caddy! Let’s go straight away! Before Saffy gets home, and before Dad turns up and stops us!’

  ‘Go away, Rose darling, please!’

  ‘Indigo might be right. Please let’s go and look.’

  ‘Another day.’

  ‘There isn’t another day. Come on, Caddy!’

  ‘I don’t know the way.’

  ‘Indigo is fantastic at maps. Come on Caddy, you’re a brilliant driver!’

  ‘You know that’s not true.’

  ‘Indigo!’ called Rose. ‘Indigo, isn’t Caddy a brilliant driver?’

  ‘Ah…er…er…’

  ‘See, Caddy!’

  ‘I can’t. Sorry Rose. I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Much too terrifying!’

  ‘You’re not scared!’

  ‘Of course I am! Anybody would be.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be,’ said Rose. ‘Nor would Indigo, would you, Indigo?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Indigo.

  ‘He means No,’ said Rose. ‘I know, Caddy! Just drive a bit of the way!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A tiny bit. And then if you feel all right, a tiny bit more. And a bit more if you want to. And go back if you don’t.’

  ‘I can only drive slowly.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘And I can only do left turns.’

  Rose ran downstairs, grabbed a road atlas and ran triumphantly back up again. ‘Wales is left! Look! It’s left all the way! So will you, Caddy? Try just a bit of the way? Going slow.’

  ‘Oh Rose!’

  Indigo knew then that she had given in, and that he would have to go with them and find the way by left turns all the way to Wales because that was where Saffy’s angel was. He was terribly frightened.

  Caddy, remembering her mother’s distress when Saffron had stowed away to Italy, said, ‘I’m not going anywhere without telling Mum,’ and went out to the shed.

  A faint hope had come to her that her mother might say she must not go. It was ridiculous really, Caddy knew. As far as she could remember, it had never happened before. Eve had, as far as possible, always let them do exactly as they liked. Sometimes she found it quite difficult to let them do exactly as they liked, when Indigo, for instance, took to climbing out of his bedroom window, or Rose deliberately wound her father up to fuming pitch, or Saffron ran away to Italy, or Caddy devoted her life to guinea pig breeding, as she had done two years earlier, and failed all her school exams. However, Eve always stuck out these grim times as bravely as she could. After all, she would tell herself, she had known from the day the children were born that they were in every way more talented, intelligent and wise than she would ever be. Remembering this was always a great comfort to Eve. She thought they probably took after their father.

  She was already at work when Caddy found her, surrounded by a muddle of Young Offenders art. Rose, who had followed after Caddy, at once bent down and began to examine it very critically.

  ‘Terrible!’ she said.

  ‘Rose, darling!’ protested her mother.

  ‘Birthday card pictures, that’s what they look like! Why are they here?’

  ‘We’re having an exhibition,’ explained her mother. ‘In the library. I’m hanging them this morning. I’m in an awful rush! Are you better, Caddy darling?’

  ‘Yes thank you.’

  ‘Lovely supper,’ said Eve. ‘Horrible Brain Juice for breakfast though. Don’t tell Daddy.’

  Brain Juice was a recipe invented by Eve years before, when she had had to stay awake all day to look after Caddy and Indigo and Saffron, and all night to take care of the fragile and impermanent baby Rose. It was Coca-Cola with a great deal of instant coffee stirred into it. It was black and frothy and gritty and it tasted like a primitive mediaeval poison, but it banished sleep like magic. The children’s father disapproved very much of their mother drinking Brain Juice. Bill explained to her many times (from the peace of his London flat) how destructive to brain cells it was sure to be, but she did not seem to care.

  ‘Can’t think how people manage without it,’ she said to Caddy and Rose, taking a huge, shuddering gulp. ‘Shall you be all right today, while I’m hanging my Young Offenders?’

  Caddy said she did not know, Rose and Indigo wanted her to drive them to Wales.

  Eve went very still for a moment, remembering Caddy’s tears after her driving test. Then she pulled herself together and said, ‘Lovely, lovely! Pass me that little one of the cat with the flowers, Rose. Isn’t it pretty?’

  Rose said it was yuk.

  ‘To find Grandad’s old house,’ said Caddy, ‘to look for Saffy’s angel.’

  Rose distracted her mother just then. She found a handy paintbrush and a palette of oils and began touching up a Young Offenders portrait of Eve.

  ‘Don’t, Rose!’ said Eve, distractedly, draining her glass of Brain Juice and immediately (with shaking hands) mixing herself another.

  ‘But he’s made your eyebrows meet in the middle!’

  ‘Perhaps they do, to him,’ said Eve. ‘Tell me again what you just said, Caddy darling.’

  ‘To look for Saffy’s angel. I passed my driving test yesterday.’

  Eve nearly fainted with relief.

  ‘Caddy, how brilliant! First time too! It took me eleven tries! You are clever…Rose!’

  ‘Can’t I just uncross your eyes?’

  ‘No, you really mustn’t!’

  ‘Michael has lent me his car, you see,’ Caddy continued.

  ‘Why do they sign their names so big?’ asked Rose. ‘Can’t they write small?’

  ‘Please put that down, Rose!’

  ‘Fancy being called Brain!’

  ‘Brian! He’s called Brian.’

  ‘He’s spelled it wrong then. He’s put Brain.’

  ‘He can’t have!’ exclaimed her mother, grabbing it. ‘Oh, the silly boy! Now I shall have to go all the way to the unit to get him to put it right! Caddy, darling, you will drive carefully, where ever you go? Because I know you’ve had nearly a hundred lessons and passed your test first time…’

  ‘I’ve done it for you!’ said Rose proudly, holding up the portrait, which now read:

  ‘I’ve crossed out the wrong bits,’ said Rose smugly. ‘And I’ve altered your teeth. No one has that many.’

  Eve grabbed the picture, took a terrible swig of turpentine and choked. ‘Never, ever drink turpentine, darlings!’ she said, when she could speak again. ‘It’s frightfully bad for you,’ she added, as she wiped her eyes and began frantically dabbing the picture with a rag dipped in Brain Juice. She counted quietly under her breath and when she got to thirty she managed to say, ‘Have a lovely day, darlings!’

  Eve always felt very sorry for mothers who hit their children. She thought they must feel dreadful afterwards.

  Rose sat in the back. She had with her a large drawing pad and a box of bright felt tips. She watched Indigo anxiously, afraid that his nerve would break before the journey had even begun. She need not have worried. Indigo had not spent so long training himself to deal with fear for nothing. He sat in the front beside Caddy, pale but certain. He had brought with him every map and atlas in the house, a box of tissues, and a blue plastic horror known to the family as the Sick Bowl.

  ‘It’s eighty miles,’ he said. ‘Show me the emergency brake.’

  Caddy showed him and he practised pushing it in and out a few times.

  ‘Are you sure you want to go?’ Caddy asked him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Indigo. ‘Because it’s there. The more I think about it the more sure I am. And Saffy needs her angel.’

  At first the journey seemed unreal. Caddy had driven the local roads and roundabouts so often with Michael that she almost forgot he was not beside her. Then gradually it all became less familiar.

  Rose said in an interested voice,
‘I’ve never been here before.’

  This frightened Caddy. She panicked in the middle of a roundabout. The car stalled and would not start. Gradually it began rolling slowly back towards the car behind.

  ‘Help, help!’ squealed Caddy.

  The car behind began to hoot. So did the lorry behind the car.

  Rose coped with that. She grabbed her paper and a red pen and wrote in large letters and held the message up at the back windscreen.

  The hooting stopped.

  Indigo stepped on the emergency brake and stopped the car rolling backwards. He began to speak just as Michael had spoken at the end of the awful driving lesson that had frightened him so much.

  ‘Hand brake on,’ said Indigo, and his voice even sounded like Michael’s. ‘Start the engine. Into first. Indicate.’

  It might have been Michael, talking Caddy home, at the end of a stressful lesson.

  Caddy said, ‘Indigo darling!’ and started the car, and they were on their way again.

  Rose took down her message and wrote another one.

  A stream of drivers overtook them, the ones who had hooted waving in a friendly fashion as they passed. Rose waved back and Indigo relaxed in his seat and Caddy began to sing. She sang a hymn she had learned at school when she was very little.

  ‘When a knight won his spurs in the stories of old

  He was gentle and brave (that’s you, Indy!),

  He was gallant and bold (that’s you, Rose).’

  There was another horrid moment when a dark shape on the road ahead resolved as they got closer, into all that was left of a run-over fox. Caddy swerved all over the road in her efforts to avoid it, tears rolling down her cheeks. The car behind swerved all over the road too, avoiding Caddy, and the driver shook his fist.

  wrote Rose indignantly, and then, with Indigo’s help, a whole series of messages:

  The driver of the car behind gave Rose a thumbs-up sign, to show he understood, and a few minutes later Indigo was able to stop passing Caddy tissues and they could write:

  ‘Everyone waves when they overtake,’ observed Caddy innocently, knowing nothing of Rose’s messages. ‘I wonder why.’

  ‘I make friends with them,’ said Rose, busy writing again:

  Caddy craned her head round to see how Rose did it.

  ‘Cadmium dear,’ said Indigo at once and very reprovingly. ‘Watch the road ahead!’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Caddy sadly. ‘That’s how he talks. Darling Michael.’

  ‘Don’t call me darling,’ said Indigo primly. ‘I’m a driving instructor.’

  Caddy began to giggle. ‘I didn’t know you could do people’s voices!’

  ‘Neither did I,’ said Indigo.

  ‘Do some more.’

  ‘Keep checking your mirror,’ said Indigo obligingly. ‘It is either start passing exams, or a career as a small scale guinea pig farmer living at home with no transport. Think about that, Cadmium darling!’

  Caddy had to pull over to laugh properly.

  ‘How do you know he said that?’

  ‘You told me,’ Indigo reminded her.

  ‘But how did you remember?’

  ‘I always remember everything people say,’ said Indigo, in his ordinary voice. ‘Didn’t you know I had photographic ears? We’ve done thirty something miles already.’

  ‘Come on then,’ said Caddy. ‘Let’s do a bit more.’

  They drove on again until Rose announced from the back that she was starving.

  ‘Me too,’ said Indigo, realising with a sudden rush of joy that his sickness had disappeared miles before.

  ‘I didn’t bring any money,’ said Caddy.

  ‘I did,’ said Indigo. ‘I brought the housekeeping jar.

  They stopped at a roadside van and bought bacon rolls and orange juice and had a very late breakfast in the morning sunshine. Indigo and Caddy bent over the road atlas and worked out a way of avoiding the next big town by detours down country roads.

  ‘It will be a bit further,’ said Indigo. ‘But I don’t think that will matter. It’s not as if we’re heading for the motorway.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Caddy solemnly. ‘I don’t think we are ready for the motorway yet.’

  They drove on again.

  ‘Fifty-five miles,’ said Indigo. ‘More than half way. Much more.’

  ‘Can’t we go faster?’ asked Rose.

  ‘No!’

  They made a new sign which Rose held up to the cars that came up behind them as they travelled along.

  ‘We’ll let them past at the next wide bit,’ said Caddy.

  they wrote.

  They stopped again for drinks and ice creams, and noticed how the countryside was becoming much hillier. They had not been back in the car for long when Indigo said suddenly, ‘Wales!’

  WELCOME TO WALES

  read a sign at the side of the road.

  wrote Rose triumphantly to the car behind.

  Then there was a fast wide road and exciting glimpses of the sea on the right hand side, and then a sign that might have been put up especially for them, the name of their grandfather’s old village, six miles along, the next turn to the right.

  It went very quiet in the car. It was so surprising to see it there.

  Indigo and Rose wrote another sign:

  The car that was following them obediently pulled back while Caddy accomplished this difficult manoeuvre.

  ‘Can you remember the house?’ asked Indigo.

  ‘Yes,’ said Caddy. ‘I remember this road too. Sea all the way along one side. The house isn’t really in the village. It’s before you get there.’

  A few minutes later Caddy stopped the car.

  ‘It’s that one,’ she said.

  Bill Casson had been nearly correct when he said that their grandfather’s house was tumbling into the sea. It almost was. It was afternoon by now, and the sun was hot and bright, but even in the sunshine the house looked forlorn, its windows boarded up, its roof half open, barbed wire tangled round the gate and a notice:

  DANGER

  KEEP OUT

  Several people had owned it since the Cassons’ grandfather, holiday companies who had rented it out season after season until it was too dilapidated for even the most robust holiday makers. However, to Caddy, Indigo and Rose it was still their grandfather’s house.

  ‘I wish we could see inside,’ said Caddy, wistfully, but that was impossible. The doors were all locked and the windows tightly boarded over. They walked all round and then picked their way back through the thick, uncared for grass.

  ‘I can’t see any angels,’ said Rose.

  In the shattered garage at the end of the garden was the remains of their grandfather’s Bentley, Indigo’s car. The garage door was padlocked but they scrambled in through the empty window one by one to gaze at it.

  ‘Fancy,’ whispered Caddy.

  The wheels were gone, and the windscreen was broken. The front was smashed. The seats were silted up with the dead leaves of all the autumns that had passed, blown in through the broken roof. It was no longer green, but grey with dust and cobwebs.

  Indigo went round the back to the half open boot. It too, was full of rubbish and leaves.

  ‘It’s got to be here somewhere,’ he said, scrabbling down among the dead leaves with his hands. ‘If the house is here and the car is here…’

  He bent down to look underneath, and then gave a shout. Pushed against the far wall of the garage, half covered in leaves, was a long wooden box. Indigo squeezed round and began to pull it out.

  ‘It’s heavy,’ he said, panting. ‘It’s got something in it…There! And see, it has writing on it! Is that Italian?’

  Caddy bent to look more closely. It was the address in Italy they had found in Eve’s book.

  16 Via S. Francesco, Siena

  There was no way of opening the box just then, it was nailed tight shut.

  ‘Still,’ said Rose, who could hardly lift it, ‘it doesn’t matter. It’s either Saffy’s an
gel or something just as heavy. Gold perhaps.’

  ‘It might be just a box of tools,’ said Caddy. ‘Car tools or something.’

  ‘Who would nail their tools up tight in a box?’ asked Rose scornfully.

  They carted it back out to the car, stowed it gently into the boot, and set out on the long drive back.

  Bill Casson was on his way home. He was looking forward to it very much. Sometimes, if he stayed away from the Banana House for long enough, it became the most desirable place in the world. Mysteriously, in his remembering mind, the rooms unmuddled themselves. Eve became organised and stopped painting pictures of mythical summers, and concentrated on improving her cooking instead. Caddy was still golden Caddy, but her dress sense improved and she became hamster and guinea pig free. Saffron was still his dear little Saffron, but she no longer had a nose stud and she smiled a lot more. And Indigo became interested in football and Rose in Barbie dolls.

  This family of children so like, and yet so unlike, his own were so real in their father’s head that he had actually bought a football and a Barbie doll and packed them up amongst his luggage to bring out as surprises.

  So it was very disappointing for Bill to come home to find the Banana House in darkness and a note on the kitchen table saying his wife was hanging Young Offenders in the library and didn’t know when she would be back.

  Bill looked up from reading his note and gazed around the kitchen. Last night’s disgusting, sausagey plates were stacked up unwashed in the sink. There were things all over the floor.

  He went into the living room and there were things all over there too. Hundreds of things. Piles. The room looked ransacked.

  Ransacked! thought Bill and turned and dashed up the stairs two steps at a time. There his fears were confirmed. Burgled. Ransacked and burgled.

  It was too bad of Eve, thought her husband, to go and hang Young Offenders in the library and leave him to come home to a dark and burgled house.

  He stumbled from room to room, trying to see what had been taken. Everywhere he fell over piles of things he did not know he owned. It occurred to him that it must have been an odd sort of burglar. The sort who brought things with them instead of taking them away. Boxes and boxes of things. Lorry loads.