16. The Tree
“She let the bird fly free,” Becca told Jane. “She actually made it possible for it to fly free.”
But it wasn’t just about the kinglet flying free. It was about Auntie Clare trying and trying. And about the work she and Uncle Clarence did.
“She does a lot of work with grandmothers,” said Becca.
“That’s cool,” said Jane, looking at her list. “We’ve got stuff for costumes, but now we have to advertise. At the farmers’ market? Fish and chips stand? Ferry dock?”
“The grans look after their grandchildren,” Becca explained. “Because the mums and dads are sick.”
“Well, your gran hung out with you when your mum was having a baby,” said Jane.
“No, I mean really sick.” Becca stopped for a moment. “They have AIDS. Some of them are dying. Some are dead already.”
“Oh!” Jane stopped eating her toast. “You mean, it’s like the eagle and the fish? It’s like the bear?”
“Yes,” said Becca.
In the top of her mind there were costumes, props, lines, advertising and rehearsals. There was the problem of lighting, of finding time to rehearse when Lucy wasn’t with Annie the veg lady.
In the bottom of her mind there was something quite different.
“I thought about it all night,” she said. “Nature isn’t fair or not fair. But people can try to be fair. And the grans in Africa look after their grandchildren, but they need a way to make a living. So Uncle Clarence and Auntie Clare are part of an organization that helps them do that — get the money they need to set up a business or a garden or something.”
Auntie Clare had described it to her.
“So?” Jane asked, munching up her last bits of toast and marmalade.
Bye-bye, speedy new boat, Becca said in her mind. Hello, years and years of lumbering, clumbering Gull.
“What if we put on the play to raise money for Auntie Clare’s organization?” she asked. “Instead of buying a new boat, we could give the money to them. And it would be for grans. And grandchildren. It would help Auntie Clare’s friends. And Auntie Clare, too, maybe.”
It would be a bit like seeing the kinglet fly free, she thought. It would be a way to remember Auntie Meg’s and Uncle Martin’s baby, too, somehow — helping somebody else’s, even someone so far away who they didn’t know.
Carefully, Jane stood up and brushed her toast crumbs onto the ground.
“It’s a good idea,” she said. “I don’t think the others care about a boat, really. And we could make it donations, not tickets. That would be better.”
* * *
After that, the play seemed more serious — or perhaps it was just that Becca felt the day of the performance rushing upon them. The posters were up, and even though they’d decided to use scripts, they’d almost memorized their parts. Lucy’s scalp and forehead had mostly healed, and all the tricky changes of roles and costumes were resolved by having Alicia in the cast.
Merlin came by and finished their zipline. He said nothing about Ms. Spiky-hair, but neither did he ask about Aunt Fifi, who was out when he came. He seemed very caught up in Jane’s family’s plumbing.
* * *
Then came the dress rehearsal, and there were so many problems that Becca felt like sticking her head in the sea to clear her brain.
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s the dress rehearsal or not,” Lucy said that afternoon. “I have a job with Annie and I have to go now to pull carrots and pick zukes and cukes. And then the other stuff early tomorrow morning, and then selling at the farmers’ market and packing up in the afternoon. But don’t worry — I’ll be on Speed Queen so I’ll get back in plenty of time.”
“It’s cutting it tight,” said Jane, handing Lucy her helmet. She had woven seaweed into it for when Lucy was playing Ariel, flying on the zipline.
“I’ll put posters up at the veg stall,” said Lucy. “I’ll tell everyone who buys a zucchini or a carrot or a bunch of flowers that they have to come. And anyway, I’ll be home in time to dress rehearse the last act.”
Jane glued plastic dishes and fake fruit onto the tray Lucy would use when it was time for the magical feast to appear. Becca went to Kay-next-door and borrowed a sheet of metal to use for clashing thunder sound effects. At the last minute, Alicia stormed through the woods and all along the beach looking for the perfect staff for Prospero. Strong and magical looking, she said, but gnarled and seaworn.
Then, when she leaned on it in the middle of rehearsal, it cracked and she fell heavily into the salal.
“I’m fine,” she said, emerging with dirt on her face. “I didn’t break anything.”
Jane choked on a bit of flying moss and got blisters on her toes from the crumbling swim fins she wore as part of her costume.
“I’ll cut the foot part of the fins open,” she said, wincing. “So I can stick my toes right out.”
Becca forgot her lines and missed her entrance, and when Lucy finally showed up, she got all tangled up getting out of her truss on the zipline.
“If you’re going to swear it should at least be from Shakespeare,” Jane told her. “Insolent noisemaker! Pied ninny!”
Alicia tripped over her own woodpile and scraped her elbow on the slivery logs. Becca stood on her in the darkness and then she herself squashed her face into a prickly evergreen huckleberry bush.
It was a horrible night.
* * *
In the morning, there was a breeze from the northwest and the skies were clear.
The sun slipped up from behind the mountains, and there was Lucy, stuffing her ponytail into her seaweedy helmet.
“I have to leave,” she said. “Annie needs help with the last-minute picking.”
She was still yawning as she wheeled Speed Queen onto the path through the trees.
“Why can’t you get the day off?” Becca asked.
“That would be unprofessional,” Lucy protested. “Anyway, I love working for Annie.”
She straddled the bike and pedaled slowly up Gran’s trail, the seaweed bouncing.
Becca thought of Auntie Clare and Auntie Meg, and her Mum and Dad and Pin arriving, and all the people who would show up to see the play.
It gave her collywobbles, so she ran to get her bathing suit.
The mountains and islands were dark and sharp across the strait, and the water steely with blue and silver flashes. They would be that way tomorrow, no matter how the play went.
“Best way to begin the day of a performance,” said Aunt Fifi, striding into the waves. “Or any day. Come along, you lot.”
She dove in.
When they swam back, there was Merlin.
“Here for breakfast again?” asked Gran, sounding not at all welcoming.
Yes, what about Ms. Spiky-hair? Becca thought. Two-timer! Rat!
But then Merlin acted kind, the way he always did.
“I couldn’t stay away,” he said, “what with one thing and another. And I’m still deeply embroiled in the mystery that is Jane’s family’s plumbing, more’s the pity. But I think we’re coming to the end there.”
“Never mind,” he said when they told him about last night’s disasters. “Everything’s supposed to go wrong at the dress rehearsal. It’s a good sign.”
He turned to Becca.
“I thought you might like a hand with the lights.”
That would help, Becca thought, and went, dripping as she was, and got the wheelbarrow to collect the lights Mac was lending them.
“Merlin’s being very friendly,” said Jane in a low voice.
“I know,” muttered Becca. “And to Aunt Fifi, too.”
“If she’s not bothered, why should we be?” Jane wondered.
“She doesn’t know!” Becca said. “It’s not fair.”
But she didn’t want to spoil
the day of the performance.
Merlin knew all about how lights should show the actors without shining in their faces.
“And the string of fairy lights will be good, too,” he said. “Just the right amount of sparkle. And of course you’ll have the light of the sea shining through the trees behind you, and the glory of sunset for a while. We’ll double-check it all before the performance, when the sun’s low in the sky.”
Then he looked at Lucy’s zipline.
“It’s still stable?” he asked. “We don’t want anything to happen to her.”
He pulled on the line and spent a long time making sure it hadn’t loosened.
“Now, anything else you’d like me to do before I head off?” he asked.
“We’re okay,” Becca said. “But could you put up a few more of our signs?”
“Sure,” said Merlin. “I’ll put one at the crossroads where everyone can see it. And one near the ferry, too. I have a job over there today.”
He drove off.
* * *
“We’re ready,” said Becca at last. “Except for the chairs. And Lucy.”
“Where is she?” asked Jane. She was practicing changing costumes fast, so she could go from Caliban to Ferdinand in an eyeblink. And back.
“She’d better be here soon,” Alicia said.
She dumped a load of lawn chairs out of the wheelbarrow.
“These are from Mr. and Mrs. Keswick,” she said. “And the Henges, and all the people on that side of the bay, and Bill-and-Kay-next-door. We have to take them back when it’s over. And you and Jane can get the next load. I’m going for a swim.”
It took Becca and Jane ages to collect chairs. Alicia had already been to all the nearby neighbors, so they had to take the wheelbarrow all the way around the corner and down the hill to Dr. and Mrs. Ross’s house, and even beyond.
“Where’s Lucy?” Becca wondered. “She said she’d be here by now.”
“It would be a lot easier if we had three people to do this,” said Jane.
She balanced the last chair on the top of the pile. Becca heaved up the barrow handles and they tottered along, the whole load swaying like a top-heavy trailer in a stiff wind.
Jane had to walk with her hand on it to keep it from crashing to the road.
“Oh — !”
The Rosses’ chair from the ancient ocean liner Queen of Constantinople threatened to jump out on its own.
Of all the chairs they’d borrowed, that was the fanciest. So why had they stuck it on top?
Becca’s wrists quivered.
“I can’t hold it any longer!”
The barrow keeled over with a crash.
There went a cascade of chairs, right into the stinging nettles by the side of the road. And the Rosses’ beautiful teak one on top.
“Oh!” said Jane. She actually kicked the wheelbarrow.
“That sounds almost like Shakespeare,” Becca said when Jane had stopped yelling interesting words.
“And besides, a pox on Lucy! May a foul wind blow and blister her all o’er!” Jane finished off. “Where is she?”
Becca sat down in the road to rest.
“Oh,” she said. “There she is.”
Lucy hove into view like a ship making its way in a difficult sea. A few tired strands of seaweed flopped from her helmet.
Speed Queen’s handlebars were hung with bags of stuff, and there was something on the rat-trap, too.
Becca got ready to be seriously annoyed. Lucy should have been in a tearing rush. Instead, she was pedaling so slowly she could have had a little sleep between one push and the next.
Didn’t she care about the play?
Then Becca saw her face. Blood oozed from her nose and mouth, dripped off her chin and stained wetly, gorily, down over her favorite T-shirt.
Her favorite T-shirt! The one she chose specially to wear at Annie’s vegetable stand. And it would probably never wash clean again!
Lucy was sobbing, crying so that tears streamed down her cheeks, mixed with blood and her runny nose, flowed down her chin and swung by red, stringy strands of nose stuff before they dropped onto her hands, her T-shirt, her knees, her bike and even the road.
“I ran in’oo a ’ree,” she said.
She sounded strange, and it wasn’t just because she was crying. When she opened her mouth to speak, Becca saw dark nothingness. Nothingness! Where Lucy’s front teeth should have been!
“Lucy, where are your teeth?” she asked.
Now she and Jane ran to hold the bike, and Becca saw that Lucy was covered with dirt, with scrapes and scratches. And her mouth looked terrible, all slobbery and bloody, her lips swollen and gashed. And her nose, too!
Lucy said something then, as Jane helped her off Speed Queen.
“What did you say?” Becca asked. “What?”
“In my ’ermos!” Lucy answered with effort.
Becca looked at Jane.
“In her thermos?”
“In my milk.” Lucy uttered every word with great slowness and concentration.
Becca was sure she hadn’t heard properly. Jane looked at Lucy intently.
“You put your teeth in your thermos with your milk?” she asked.
“Doo dee’!” Lucy said, pointing at her mouth dripping with blood, snot and tears.
“Two teeth?” Jane translated, and Lucy nodded. “In your thermos? Why?”
“Mum,” Lucy said, quite clearly.
“We have to take her home,” Becca said. “She isn’t making sense. Leave the chairs.”
“Bring uh wejable!” Lucy said.
But Becca and Jane left Speed Queen and the vegetables with the chairs, all collapsed together in the stinging nettles like the aftermath of a tiny hurricane.
“Just climb into the wheelbarrow,” said Becca, helping Lucy, who clutched her thermos like it was a favorite stuffy. “We’ll get you home in a jiff.”
Nothing mattered but Lucy now.
They pushed the wheelbarrow so fast that strings of Lucy’s bloody runoff spattered back with the wind of their going, flicking onto Becca’s arms and T-shirt.
And we are not going to capsize this barrow on Gran’s bumpy path, Becca thought ferociously, as they fancy-footed their way around the roots and stones at breakneck speed.
“Lucy, what happened to you!” cried Auntie Meg.
“Your teeth!” exclaimed Aunt Fifi. “Oh, Lucy, the play!”
At Aunt Fifi’s words, Lucy burst into a noisy, wet storm of crying.
Aunt Fifi was thinking of Merlin, Becca knew, and of the accident that he had told them about once — an accident that had knocked out his teeth and ended his acting career, turning him towards plumbing.
Couldn’t Aunt Fifi have said something else?
But Alicia was quite practical.
“Where are her teeth?” she asked.
“In her thermos,” Becca said. “In her milk!”
That’s what had made Becca think Lucy was really and truly concussed.
“Perfect,” Alicia said, reaching for the thermos.
“What do you mean?” asked Jane.
“Milk will keep them fresh and alive,” said Alicia.
“How do you know?” Becca asked. “What kind of milk? Two percent or skim?”
“Mum told us once,” said Alicia. “We have to get her to the dentist.”
“Doo percen’,” Lucy mumbled. “I ha’e ’kim.”
“The Dental Bus is parked down the road and we’re to take her there at once,” Gran said, putting down the phone. “Where are my keys?”
“Meg and I will take her,” said Auntie Clare. “We may be some time.”
They escorted Lucy towards Aunt Fifi’s car.
“Make sure you’re back in time for the play,” Becca said.
“Bu’ I can’ ’alk properly wi’ou’ ’ee’!” Lucy wailed.
Merlin had said that once, long ago, and it was true. You couldn’t talk properly without teeth. Lucy sounded much, much worse than Jane with anemone lips.
“An’ I really like uh zipline!” Lucy went on, speaking slowly and carefully even though Auntie Meg and Auntie Clare were hurrying her to the car.
“I’m very sorry, but you probably won’t feel like it when you’ve finished with the dentist,” said Aunt Fifi.
“But the play!” Becca said. “Everybody will be here in a couple of hours!”
“What are we going to do?” asked Jane.
“I have no idea,” said Becca. “None.”
17. Salvage
“The Rosses are very nice people,” Gran said quickly when she saw the condition of the heritage deck chair. “A few scratches won’t bother them. And the tear in the cushion is hardly noticeable.”
“I can’t believe Lucy brought all these vegetables home after the accident,” Alicia said. “This zucchini’s the size of a small pig.”
Becca could only think of the play.
They set up the chairs. It was four o’clock now. The play would start at eight, but how? What were they going to do about Lucy’s roles?
“We could double up,” said Jane. “More than we are now.”
“Triple up,” said Becca. “Quadruple up.”
“We could do it with hats,” said Jane. “Lots and lots of hats.”
“It would make it confusing,” said Becca.
“What about Merlin?” Alicia suggested. “He’s got all that experience.”
Becca thought of something Jane had told her, that all the time Merlin had been working on Jane’s family’s plumbing, he’d been singing Shakespeare songs and even saying some of the speeches from Shakespeare plays.
But Merlin was a rat.
She thought of Aunt Fifi’s Complete Works of William Shakespeare, the one Gran had given her.
Becca Fair and Foul Page 12