“You told? About this?” He suddenly slammed his palm down on the table; a couple of loose feathers jumped off the edge. Then he turned away.
“I trust her!” I said. It was like an echo of something someone had said before. “I’d never tell people at school, but Maisie’s different. She used to live here before we moved, before you came. Now she lives in a Home.” I paused. “She never gets out, but she used to. Before you came.”
It sounded like I was accusing him. Like it was all his fault, about Maisie. It wasn’t, of course, but I’d had enough. I would say what I liked.
“Maisie’s unusual.” His back was still turned, so I carried right on. “Like you.”
He spun round. “What d’you mean?”
There was no going back.
“She doesn’t see things in the same way as other people. Her world is different. I think you’d—get along.”
I thought he was going to laugh or be angry, but he showed no emotion at all when he looked me straight in the eye and said, “No.”
I am a cautious person. Don’t know if you’ve noticed. Timmy takes risks (and they often work out) but I don’t. I like to play safe. As we walked up the path to Bogsy’s front door (which used to be mine) and rang the bell, it didn’t feel safe at all.
Safety in numbers, they say. There were three of us waiting on Bogsy’s doorstep, me and two others, but that was the point: I’d taken a massive risk, bringing them here.
Being in a Home must have weakened Maisie’s legs. She needed help getting out of the car; she needed support to walk from there to the house. By the time we reached the gate, we’d arranged it so Donald and I were on either side and Maisie could hold Donald’s arm with one hand and clutch my shoulder (I wasn’t as tall as Donald) with the other. The path was barely wide enough for the three of us, but we managed. We must have looked pretty extraordinary, though, and this was reflected in Bogsy’s mum’s expression when she opened the door.
“Oh!” Then she focused on me. “Oh, Alex! It is Alex, isn’t it? Yes, of course. How nice. I’ve been saying for ages how nice it would be if … But who … ? Why … ?” She stopped in confusion. That was okay. Even if I’d told Bogsy, Bogsy probably wouldn’t have told her. Maisie and Donald would guess that was it.
“Sorry to bother you,” said Donald. “I’m Donald Brett. I grew up next door.” He held out his hand and almost caused Maisie to fall over. She tightened her grip on my shoulder and took charge.
“What my son’s trying to say is we won’t inconvenience you. We’ve come to see David.”
I’d never used his name with her. It was clever of her to know it—and use it now. But his mum looked frightened.
“Oh, dear, has he done something? What? I’m so sorry. I knew things were … But … I’m so sorry … ”
“No, no!” said Maisie. “He’s done nothing wrong. They’ve been working on something together, he and Alex, down in the shed. You’ll know about that. It’s nearly finished. They’ve invited me here for a private view.”
I almost wished Bogsy’s mum would object. No, sorry, I can’t allow this. But of course she didn’t. She didn’t stand a chance against Maisie’s determination. Poor Mrs. Marsh.
“Oh, but I didn’t … ” She didn’t know anything. Not about Maisie, not about Donald, not about Bogsy down in the shed. “You’ll come in for a cup of tea first?”
“I will not,” said Maisie. “If you don’t mind, I’ll go straight through.” We were moving forward as she spoke.
“You’ll sit down for a minute?” said Mrs. Marsh helplessly.
“Alex, is there a chair in the shed?” Maisie asked.
I said there was.
“I’ll sit there, then,” she said, and we kept on going.
I was surprised how little they’d changed things. All their furniture was in, of course, but the carpets and wallpaper—even the curtains—were ours. Then I remembered Don’s shed, with all Don’s stuff all over the place and Mum and Dad’s stuff shoved into a corner. Don’s shed was still Don’s. (That’s why I liked it.) Perhaps it wasn’t so surprising that Bogsy’s family hadn’t redecorated. Things take time to change.
There didn’t seem to be anyone around. Bogsy didn’t have brothers or sisters—or cats or dogs—but he’d got a dad, I knew. I’d seen his dad carrying boxes into the house, the day they moved. I’d noticed him especially because he’d looked unusually tall. I wondered what his job was. Whatever it was, it must be where he was now.
Then, as we stepped outside the back door, Mrs. Marsh shouted, “Mind the sand!”
A massive mountain of sand was blocking our way and our view down the garden. We stopped in time, of course, and went round it, but I was shocked. What would you want with a massive mountain of sand?
Mrs. Marsh didn’t come round the mountain. She stayed in the house. Maisie and Donald and I went on alone.
When I knocked on the door of the shed, Bogsy said, “Yeah,” as he always did. And, as always, I turned the handle. Maisie and Donald peered in. Maybe one of them said something, I’m not sure. I’m not sure what it was that alerted Bogsy to the fact that something was wrong. But he looked up.
For a moment, he looked like a creature surprised in its lair. A fox run to earth. Then he sprang to the door and grabbed it and banged it shut.
That was it.
Donald said, “Oh.”
I didn’t dare look at either of them. Now they knew.
There was no invitation.
I’d been trying my luck, and my luck had run out.
But Maisie stepped forward and rapped on the door with her sharp, bony knuckles.
“David!” she said. “Open up at once! Do you hear?”
Silence.
“Open this door!”
“Go away.”
“David, you must open up. I’m old and tired. I have to sit down.”
She made it sound like something awful would happen if she didn’t. Perhaps it would. We never found out because Bogsy opened the door.
Maisie let go of Donald and me and made a break for inside. She surged past Bogsy and sank down into his chair. She was breathing hard. Donald and I stepped in, too, so there we all were. “Now!” Maisie said.
I couldn’t look at any of them. So I looked at the wing, which was out on top of the freezer—yes, pretty much finished. I waited for them to start shouting at me. I waited years. But they didn’t. So I looked up. There was something strange going on.
Bogsy was staring at Maisie. Maisie was sitting in Bogsy’s chair with her arms on the armrests, just like him. Bogsy was staring at her as he’d once stared at me. I felt sorry for her. But when I looked into her face, I saw it was fine: She was staring back!
Maisie was sizing him up! Working him out! You wouldn’t have thought two people so different—a boy and a frail old woman—could be so alike. Yet I’d been right. They were more than alike. They were kind of the same.
Then Donald caught sight of the wing—“Gee!” he said—and the spell was broken. “That’s fantastic! Look, Ma!”
But she wouldn’t.
She knew it was there, but she would not look. “He’s a clever young man,” she said. That was all.
Another Greek myth we’d done at school was Medusa, who, if you looked at her, turned you to stone. Maisie not looking was like a person protecting herself. I was so disappointed. I’d brought her to look (not be turned to stone, of course, just impressed). But she was too clever. She raised her hand to her necklace in the old familiar way.
And Bogsy said sharply, “What’s that?” He was peering intently at the necklace, stretching his own neck out to see.
Rats’ teeth and razor blades.
His kind of thing. He could ask where she’d gotten it and get one himself.
But she didn’t say what I’d expected.
“I made it.” She watched his expression. “When I was a girl. About your age.”
Well, I never guessed that!
I could not imagine Maisie as a
girl. I could not imagine her making the pendant.
But perhaps Bogsy could. Because now it was he who said something surprising.
“Here. Put this on, if you like.”
His expression hadn’t changed, but he was offering her a feather.
I couldn’t believe it! He’d not allowed me to do anything other than chew.
But she wouldn’t take it.
“No,” she said and then, oddly, “I don’t agree.”
Bogsy shrugged like he couldn’t care less.
“Have it your way,” he said. “I’m still gonna fly.”
It was like the end of an argument they’d had, but no words had been spoken. They’d met for the first time two minutes ago and yet they were acting as if they’d been talking for hours.
“Silly boy!” exclaimed Maisie. Which got him going, good and proper.
“Silly? You calling me silly?”
“I am.”
“Well, what about them? Everyone else?”
“What about them?”
“D’you know what it’s like when everyone’s stupid? There’s no one to talk to!”
“And you think the solution is … ”
“Fly away. Yeah. Too right!”
Then Maisie was angry. “No! Not right: wrong! If you can’t see that, you’re more stupid than them!”
None of it made any sense—and then it got worse.
In a quieter voice, Maisie went on: “But there was someone, wasn’t there? Someone who proved they were not quite so stupid … ”
Who? I wondered.
“Somebody clever enough,” said Maisie, who seemed to be able to read my thoughts, “someone clever enough to work out who Icarus was.”
I stared at her then. Then I stared at him. Then I stared at the light streaming in through the shed’s one window.
“So you can’t say everyone’s stupid, can you? You can’t say you’re all alone anymore!”
Bogsy laughed, but not in the way a person would laugh if their problems were over.
I knew why.
He was puzzled. There was something he couldn’t work out.
And that something was me.
I looked at Maisie. She knew. What if she told him? Told him I’d gotten the answer not by cleverness but by chance?
What if he asked?
I remembered seeing my name in great big letters on the duster handle. I was as stupid as anyone else! More stupid. Bogsy suspected as much, but the evidence was confusing.
He only need ask.
But then Maisie changed tack. “Anyway, cleverness isn’t the be-all and end-all, you know. If you’ve not found a genius, just be grateful you’ve found a … somebody who’ll stand by you. Anyone’s lucky if they’ve got that.”
I thought she meant Donald, standing by her. Donald had gone to Australia and come back. She might have meant Donald, but she was looking at Bogsy. Bogsy and me.
The two of them, Bogsy and her, had been talking as if me and Donald weren’t there. I didn’t mind, I was happy to listen (or, more like, I was stunned), but Donald was different. He’d had enough.
“So, Dave,” he said suddenly, “how long did all this take? How many feathers? Where did you get them?”
By the time Maisie said she wanted to go, Bogsy was looking like he’d had enough. When Donald asked what kind of glue he’d used, I said, “Beeswax!” as a joke, and to shut Donald up.
“Come again,” Bogsy said to Maisie. Which was the last thing you’d think he’d have said.
But Maisie said, “No, I won’t come again.”
He was about to say something more, but she interrupted. “You don’t need me. You think you do, but you don’t. You’re going to be fine.”
Again he began to object, and again she went on.
“You’re lucky,” she said. “Think about it.”
I don’t know whether he did or not. But when Donald took one last look at the wing and spotted a green feather near the top and asked where it had come from, Bogsy said something under his breath: I think, that he’d gotten it from a friend.
He never did ask how I’d worked out who Icarus was. (And he never realized my name on the feather duster had been a mistake.) I think he was way too proud to admit there was something he couldn’t understand. He was a very proud person. I learned that.
Then again, perhaps Maisie’s words had sunk in and he just didn’t want to know. Either way, he seemed more relaxed with me, less suspicious.
Maisie and Donald had come on Monday. Now the half-term week stretched ahead, free from school, free from Alan’s Battalion. It turned out to be the best week I’d had since starting at Lambourn.
We finished the first wing and moved to the second. Wing number two. Bogsy began at the tip (not the top), which wasn’t what I’d have expected—but I could see why. That way, each new row of feathers naturally overlapped the ones he’d already put on. He’d worked it all out.
And we talked about stuff, as we worked. On Tuesday, Bogsy suddenly said, “How old is she?”
Because he so rarely asked questions, I was taken aback. Of course I knew who he meant. But this was a good excuse to take out my gum (my jaw ached constantly now) and I wanted to make the most of it. So I said, “Who?”
He shot out a hand and deliberately knocked mine back against my chest. Which meant the gum got stuck to my jumper.
“Get off!” I said, pulling it free. It was covered in fluff. “Maisie, d’you mean? I don’t know.”
“I reckon she’s old. She could die.”
“Don’t be stupid!”
“What happened to her husband?”
“He … ” I stopped. I had no alternative: Quickly I made a lunge with the gum, trying to stick it on him. He dodged, lost his balance, and fell over. But as he went, he grabbed my leg. And then we were skirmishing on the floor, among all the rubbish. It was great.
I was trying to stuff chewing gum wrappers and dried-up orange peels in his mouth. I don’t know what he was trying to do, but as we were both as useless as each other, it was fine. We carried on till we heard a knock on the door.
Bogsy’s mum made it her business to bring us cookies and punch all the time, but she always knocked first and we always had time to slide the wing back in the freezer. We quickly got up and slid it back now, and then Bogsy opened the door.
“What have you been doing, David?” He was gasping for breath and there was stuff in his hair.
“Fighting!” he said.
“Oh dear!”
“Don’t worry, just messing about,” I put in.
“Thank goodness!”
She liked me, I knew. Bogsy said she’d never brought cookies to the shed before I came.
When she’d gone, and we’d downed the punch, I said, “Why’s your dad never here? What’s he do? What’s his job?”
“He’s in the construction industry,” Bogsy said grandly.
I waited. “And?”
“He’s a brickie. Builders get him to build walls.”
“Oh.” Why didn’t they build their own walls? What did they do? I thought about asking. I thought about Daedalus, Icarus’s dad, who built the Labyrinth—and I asked something else.
“What’s your dad’s name?”
He gave me a funny look. “Colin.” Then he went on.
“I was going to be a brickie,” he said. “When I grew up. Like Dad. I was Dad’s apprentice. I was good.”
I waited again. “So what happened?”
“Lambourn,” he said shortly.
As an answer, it didn’t really work. I mean, I could understand that Lambourn had spoiled things—it had for me—but not everything. When you go to Lambourn, the non-Lambourn things become more important. Not less.
“Yeah,” I said. “I know. But why give up building with your dad? I don’t get it.” Alan Tydman could wreck your life between half past eight and five past three, but not all of it. Why chuck the rest of it away?
Bogsy fiddled with the handle of the
freezer. We hadn’t gotten the wing back out. He started lifting the lid, as if to now, then shut it again.
“Dad left,” he said. “He gave up on me.”
“Oh.”
“At the start of term. He went. He didn’t come back.”
I thought of the mountain of sand outside their back door. When people leave, they don’t just leave, they leave problems to be gotten round.
“Oh, there you are, Alex,” said Mum, as soon as I walked in through the back door. “We’ve been looking for you. I suppose you were down in the shed?”
“Which shed?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“I’m not. I was in a shed, actually, but not ours.”
“Oh! Next door, were you? With your friend? David, is it?”
“Why were you looking for me?” I asked crossly.
“We’re all going to Lampwick’s for lunch. For a treat. You need to get ready.”
Dad had taken time off work to be with his family over half-term—and their idea of a great day out was to go to a garden center!
Mum coughed. “Why don’t you see if David would like to come, too?”
They’d never met Bogsy, but I knew they were pleased I’d been going round his house such a lot. I knew Mum’s casualness was fake. It was really annoying.
“He wouldn’t want to come,” I said rudely. “I don’t want to come! You can leave me here.”
Dad walked in, looking smug. “It’s not what you think,” he said meaningfully, and raised his eyebrows. “Your mum and I have got something important to tell you. When we get there. Your friend might be interested in it as well.”
“He wouldn’t,” I said.
“Oh, don’t be silly, Alex,” said Mum for the second time in two minutes. “You don’t even know what we’re going to say. If you won’t invite him, I’ll do it myself … ” She reached for her coat.
“No!” I said very loudly. “I’ll ask him, okay?”
“Lunch?” said Bogsy. “In Lampwick’s? Why?”
“It’s their idea of fun.”
His mouth twitched. He was trying not to smile.
“They’ve got some big announcement to make. A surprise.”
“Nice or nasty?” He was serious now.
The Icarus Show Page 9