The Changeover

by Margaret Mahy

  "Give me a kiss!" Kate commanded.

  "It might be setting a risky example," Laura said, making a joke of a serious thought.

  "That's cheeky," Kate said, without particular resentment, however.

  "And shrewd," Chris agreed.

  "I'll give you two tomorrow," Laura said, trying to be friendly though private, feeling they were laughing together at her, both happily retreating into an adult world where she could not quite follow them yet, even though she was the sort of girl a boy like Barry Hamilton could like from a distance. So she smiled politely and tried to mean it, going to bed because, after all, they did not really need her.

  4 The Smile on Jacko's Face

  Laura was talked out of sleep the next morning by her mother nagging back the shallow tide of retreating sleep, anxious because Jacko had had a bad night— a night of terrible dreams. Yet Kate was unexpectedly bouncy as if the day might hold something to be looked forward to. Sorting and cataloguing the various jumbled alarms of the previous day Laura washed herself awake and found an unexpectedly organized breakfast waiting for her— apple-juice, stewed apple and cornflakes, toast, and a cup of tea. She was at first taken aback, and then resigned, recognizing, by she knew not what clues, that Kate had managed her morning so well because of an energy of optimism that had nothing to do with her children.

  "You like him, don't you?" Laura asked accusingly.

  "Yes, I do," Kate answered at once without asking who they were discussing, and added, half pleadingly, "Don't you think he's nice?"

  "He's all right," said Laura grudgingly. All right, but unnecessary, she wanted to say — she did say — but managed to keep the words in her mind.

  "He's going bald," was the only criticism she allowed herself.

  "Yes, but he's got a nice laugh," Kate said. "A nice laugh is deadly. He looks really mischievous about solemn things, not just big, solemn things like politics which anyone can make fun of, but little ones like — telephone bills."

  They had had a telephone once, but Kate had been unable to pay the bill and it had been cut off and had hung on their wall like a petrified insect hibernating through a winter of cold debt until at last post-office men had come and taken it away.

  "Besides," Kate said, "he likes me, and, as far as I'm concerned, that shows he's a man of taste and judgement. All that stuff about Mrs Fangboner... it was a sort of line really. He just wanted an excuse to talk to me. Still, it was a cunning thing to pick on because it led to sharing jokes and that's a short-cut to getting to know someone. If your jokes match up, it's like being Alice in Through the Looking-GIass. Off you go through the third square by the railway and find yourself in the fourth square in no time."

  "He could have bought a book," Laura said. "That's a very attractive thing for a customer to do," and she carried her breakfast through to Kate's room where Jacko, recovering from nightmares, was still in Kate's bed. Immediately, she saw he was duller, quieter and greyer than she could ever remember him before and as she approached he immediately held his hands out, backs up.

  "Hey, how did you get the stamp off?" Laura cried, but Kate, dressing herself, was already beginning the patter by which she encouraged herself and Laura into a quick and occasionally competent morning, not realizing yet that this morning was twisting into a new and anxious form.

  "Come on — eat up, Lolly! Jacko darling, you're going to have to shift your precious bones. It's not Saturday yet. We've got to be off and away. What stamp?" she concluded, as if she were moving in a different time from Laura and the original question had only just reached her ears.

  "He had a stamp on his hand that wouldn't come off," Laura said, and Kate suddenly remembered back to yesterday, striking her forehead with the palm of her hand.

  "That's probably what's caused all these nightmares," she cried. "He was worried about his hand... I thought he must have a mosquito bite on it. Poor Jacko. Never mind! It's over and done with. The old dream's gone. Bright new morning! Look — the bad stamp's rubbed off over night."

  "No way!" Laura declared, staring at Jacko's mute hands, the right one haunted by the faint, purple ghost of Mickey Mouse, and the left hand slightly inflamed perhaps, but innocent of any stamp of any kind. "Listen! Let me tell you what happened."

  "All right, if you must! But be quick!" Kate said.

  However, it was not easy to tell after all. As Laura tried, the story, lively and indignant in her head, twisted itself in her mouth, limping out of her lips, sick and ashamed.

  "I know it sounds mad!" she cried despairingly, thumping the quilt with frustration. "I know you can't believe me."

  Kate rescued the almost empty cup and stared at her in surprise.

  "I'm sure you're partly right," she said. "Laura, I really am sure you're right about what actually happened, but I can't help questioning your interpretation. Come on, Lolly! Warnings one morning, wicked signs the next... it's not like you to come over all superstitious. I thought the stamp looked quite horrid. I thought it looked like some advertising gimmick that had misfired. But if it hasn't rubbed off, then where is it?"

  "I don't know," Laura replied gloomily. "Dissolved, I expect. Dissolved into Jacko's blood."

  "What a thing to say in front of a boy who's had nightmares," Kate exclaimed reproachfully. "Don't let's get carried away. Or rather do let's ... We're seven minutes late already, and empires have risen and fallen on being seven minutes late."

  Later, Laura watched her mother and Jacko drive away. With a sigh she turned into the school gate, looking forward to Nicky's cheerful, gossipy company, sure at least that no matter what the day had to offer it couldn't be as threatening as yesterday. No jaws closed over her, there was no prospect of anything but ordinary school with ordinary, and therefore welcome, boredom. Disturbing ideas pursued her and nothing was reliable and straightforward any more. Sorry Carlisle stood by the flagpole talking to a girl, a sixth former called Carol Bright, someone he was quite entitled to talk to, but Laura thought she detected on his mild face the light of an interest that was more than casual. She stared very hard at him, trying to confirm this, and thought, not for the first time, that he was almost good-looking, and wondered how anyone with eyes full of reflections and dark staircases could enjoy the thought of Carol — except, of course, that she had wonderful, smooth, long, black hair which she wore in many different ways. Today it was in a pony- tail — the tail of a circus pony, a curving fall of dark silk tied with school ribbon, inviting hands to stroke its shining descent. Laura, who had two ways of wearing her hair, long and woolly and short and woolly, now found she could actually be jealous of Carol Bright, and realized that, although she had never spoken to him, except as a fourth former speaks to a prefect and seventh former, in some ways she believed Sorensen Carlisle belonged to her because she knew what he really was and nobody else did. Almost as if in confirmation, he lifted his eyes directly to hers as she went by, and gave her a look of amusement, caution and something else ... a look so complex she could not unravel, in the second of its duration, all its elements, but thought perhaps Kate would have called it ironic.

  It was not usual for Laura to collect Jacko on a Friday since it was not a late night, for Mrs Fangboner did not mind having him until twenty-to-six, but Kate had suggested she might make an exception on this particular day when he was off-colour. So after talking to a mixed group of boys and girls, her usual acquaintances, and playing a game of tennis with Nicky who lived close to the school, Laura turned up on the Fangboner doorstep and was greeted with unusual enthusiasm by Mrs Fangboner, for Jacko had had an unhappy day and she was glad to be relieved of him.

  "... like a different boy," she said, sounding bewildered. "Poor boy, I think he's going down with something. What on earth will your mum do if he's sick? She'll have to take time off and her boss won't like that, will he? I mean, it's not like a big shop where there's plenty of staff to take over."

  Jacko sat on a Fangboner stool, Rosebud smiling pink as ever out of his Ruggie, sta
ring at Laura as if he could barely remember who she was. Then he got up and stalked over to her, stiff legged as a wind-up toy, dropped Rosebud and put his arms up, asking to be held. He wanted to be a baby again. Laura's eyes prickled with love, but it was of limited use, for he was too heavy to carry easily, and the walk to the shopping complex, usually gay and cheerful, was interminable today, for she had to make him walk at least part of the way and he grizzled in a dreary voice and continually dropped Rosebud who had to be picked up again and again. Laura struggled with her school pack on her back, history, maths and science, dragging at her shoulders, Jacko in her right arm, and his basket in her left. At last, in a moment of helpless frustration with the sheer difficulty of moving things around in the world, she gave him a small, sharp slap. He did not cry but simply bent his head against her.

  "Poor Jacko!" he said in a sad, hoarse voice. "Poor Jacko!"

  She meant to hurry him past the tiny, wicked shop with its miniscule objects in its cottage garden window, in case his nightmares revived, but Mr Braque himself was out on the pavement painting the words 'Brique a Braque' on the window, and doing it rather well, too. Laura crossed over to the other side of the road but was very much aware of Mr Braque. Even as she struggled not to glance at him, he was projected into her mind, an invader of inner space and, turn her head away as she would, she could still see him. Her eye had trapped his image, her brain would not release it, and she felt she was looking into his ancient eyes once more, crocodile eyes, tied to a crocodile mind, and seeing something that could wear a human body and make it move, as an entertainer might wear and control a puppet-glove. With a sudden flare of— of what? — she wondered, for it was gone before she could define it, the hidden computer wired into her everyday mind (the very one which had informed her that her father was going to leave her, had warned her of Sorry Carlisle and only yesterday of Mr Braque) struggled to inform her yet again. "Spirit!" it said. "Incubus! Demon!" She knew, without looking, that he had turned and stared at her across the street, knew that his skin was less shrunken, his smile a little less deathly. Something was changing him, and she hardly dared to guess just what it might be.

  It was late in the afternoon, but the bookshop was busy and Kate was selling a book to someone — a detective story.

  "It's quite intriguing, though I liked his first one better," she was saying, but the book was already sold and being slipped into a special paperbag printed with the bookshop's name so there was no risk in giving an honest opinion. Kate's eyes fell on Laura coming in at the door and her face lit up. Laura's heart warmed at the pleasure in her smile, but as it turned out Kate was pleased to see Laura for purposes of her own, with which Laura found it hard to sympathize.

  "Lolly!" she exclaimed her blue eyes shining with pleasure. "Lolly, would you mind if I went out tonight?"

  "You've had your hair done!" Laura cried, outraged. "I thought we were broke this week."

  "I've booked it up against next week," Kate replied. She looked less like a mother in real life, and more like a mother on television, keeping herself nice for husband and family, thrilled to death with her new soap powder. "I've fixed it up with Sally's mother to keep an eye on you."

  Kate was not to know how Laura had looked forward to arriving at the bookshop and giving part of the responsibility for Jacko over to someone else, and how dismayed she was to find Kate's concentration focused elsewhere.

  "I suppose it's that American," she growled.

  "It is Chris Holly — yes," Kate said. "He's asked me to go out with him." She spoke humbly as if Laura were bullying her. "Don't be sour at me, Laura. I haven't been out for ages and I'd love to go to a nice concert and just get lost in lovely music."

  "But look at Jacko!" Laura pushed him forward, disconcerted to detect a certain triumph in her voice, pleased to use Jacko's despair as a move in a complicated private game where the rules were barely understood. Now Kate did look at Jacko.

  "Oh dear!" she said. "What can be wrong?"

  She looked at her watch, a birthday present from Laura's father, still going, though the marriage had stopped ticking three years earlier. "I can't talk now. Take him to the tea shop down the Mall and buy him an apple-juice. Get him a cake, too, if there are any left at this time in the afternoon. They dust them and pack them away at four o'clock."

  "You're flinging money about," Laura grumbled bitterly. "It's funny the way it stretches when it has to take in a bit of classical music, isn't it?"

  She was not intending to be sympathetic, but Kate smiled warmly as if they were sharing a joke, hearing the words and ignoring the tone.

  "Bless you, Laura, isn't it just!" she said. "It's not long to closing time, thank goodness."

  Jacko really enjoyed his apple-juice, so Laura bought him some more with her own money and ate his cake herself thinking how awkwardly time was arranged so that there was either not enough of it or else great clots of useless minutes and seconds which it was impossible to use properly, and which had to be wasted.

  Kate called for them where they sat in the tea-room, the only customers left among a forest of chair legs, for Jill, the waitress, put the chairs upside down on the tables as she swept up before going home. In the car, Kate dithered wildly. She wanted to go to the concert — she wanted to take Jacko to the doctor, she wanted to stay at home and look after him, but then she had promised Chris Holly she would go out with him, even though they had already had lunch together. Discussing this, backwards and forwards, Laura and Kate wound up visiting the Gardendale Health Centre and were actually able to see a doctor — not their usual doctor but another man who began by being impatient with them because they had come in at the last moment

  just as he was thinking seriously about dinner.

  However, he became increasingly thoughtful as he examined Jacko, first frowning and then saying in a very puzzled voice, "Well, there's certainly something wrong with him but it's not anything I can put a name to. Has he had any bad falls? Has he been shocked or depressed lately?"

  "He's been fine," Kate said, "but yesterday someone played a trick on him that upset him. He had a bad night— a lot of bad dreams. Is it anything urgent? I might have to leave him for a little tonight — but his sister will be with him."

  "I don't think it's anything to be seriously worried about," the doctor said. "A good night's sleep might make a big difference. His reactions are very slow — you haven't given him any medication, have you?"

  "None!" said Kate. "I didn't think he needed anything this morning."

  The doctor looked thoughtful but not worried.

  "If he isn't any better by tomorrow, bring him in again. Who's your regular doctor? I won't prescribe anything for him just now and we'll see how he gets on. I'll leave a note for Doctor Bligh attached to Jonathan's card."

  Laura forgot for long stretches at a time that Jacko's real name was Jonathan and only remembered it when places like the Health Centre remembered it for her, being too serious for playful names.

  "Do you have to go out with this American?" asked Laura as they sat over a rushed and awkward supper of canned soup and toast.

  "He's Canadian," Kate said defensively as if being American was somehow a little disreputable.

  "Well, it amounts to the same thing, doesn't it?" Laura replied. "Canadians are Americans with no Disneyland."

  "It's not at all the same thing," Kate replied calmly, "and anyway I'm interested in Chris as a person, not as a nationality. He's not on the 'phone either, so I can't ring him."

  "You actually want to go out with him!" Laura said accusingly.

  "Actually I do," Kate said, and succeeded in smiling, though Laura's voice was not friendly. "Oh, Lolly, don't be cross with me. It's over a year since I went out with anyone even vaguely romantic and I enjoyed having my hair done at 'Hair Today'. Peggy came and watched the shop for me, and it only took a few minutes with the heated rollers."

  "Suppose Mr Bradley had come in?" Laura said sternly.

  "Well, he di
dn't," said Kate.

  "You wouldn't do that for Jacko and me," Laura said in a cruel voice. "All right! Go then! I expect you'll have such a good time you'll find it easy to forget about Jacko."

  Kate looked over the family table with a clear, cold expression.

  "Laura, you're not to speak to me like that," she said. "You've got too much good sense to imagine I'd have arranged to go out if I had known that Jacko was going to be sick, but the doctor did say it wasn't anything to be seriously worried about, and you're going to be home, and Sally's mother is right next door. I'll leave you the number of the Town Hall— it's in the phone book anyway, but it's a council number— and, if Chris has booked the seats, I'll leave the seat numbers, too. If there's an emergency I can be back here in twenty minutes. You're not to worry— and you're not to be mad at me for taking one evening off."

  She sounded firm and, on the whole, Laura had to admit, reasonable. She felt confused at her own resent- merit and somehow mean-spirited, so she half apologized with a look, and later, when Kate was dressed in her best dress, and stockings without mends, told her as warmly as she could how nice she looked. In spite of good intentions she was astonished to hear how grudging her voice sounded, as if it were acting on hidden ideas of its own.

  Nevertheless, Laura was even more astonished a little later to hear Kate say to Chris, when he came rather earlier than he needed to, that she could not go out after all because Jacko was ill and she would only worry about him and not enjoy herself properly. It would be a waste of a ticket, she said, because she would probably spoil things for Chris too. Kate had been thinking about Laura's protest and had changed her mind yet again. Chris, who had come in smiling and ebullient, was now uncertain whether to be sporting and hide his disappointment or honest and revengeful and display it openly.

  "That's quite a blow!" he said in a gentle voice, but what he did not say was, "That's quite all right, Kate. I know Jacko has to come first."