by Dyan Sheldon
I didn’t get involved because I reckoned that it didn’t really matter. My mother was happy because she was sure the Council would side with the Greeners on Thursday, but I was even happier. I didn’t have to stand on any more street corners.
My father gave Gertie a piece of biscuit. “What I still don’t understand is what Elmo was doing in the dustbin,” said my father.
“I told you,” said my mother. She gave me a big smile. “He was rescuing a cat.”
My father removed his finger from Gertie’s mouth and looked at me. “You? Since when have you been interested in animals?”
This was a valid point. Because my mother brings home any stray animal she finds, especially if it’s bleeding, we’d had everything from an escaped parrot to the baby fox. The parrot bit me. You already know about the fleas. I’d sort of officially gone off animals after that.
My mother said, “Fuller, please. Who cares? Elmo’s safe and the petitions are safe … thank God he went into that dustbin, that’s what I say.” She got this soppy look on her face. “It really is a miracle. I mean, what are the chances of that happening?”
About ten billion to one, was my guess.
My father said, “About the same as Elmo risking his life for a cat.”
My mother laughed as if she thought he was joking.
“Well, all I know is that Elmo’s saved the day. Mr Bamber doesn’t stand a chance against us now.”
“What a relief,” I said.
Which it was. Now Kuba would leave me alone.
Because my mother was so grateful to me for the part I’d played in finding the missing signatures, she invited me to join her and the other Greeners when they presented the petitions to the Council on Thursday morning.
“After all,” said my mother, “you’re the hero of the hour. You have to be there for our moment of triumph.”
Normally the idea of going anywhere with the Greeners filled me with horror. They were unreliable companions for a small child because you could never be sure when something was going to upset them and they were going to start a fight. My own mother had once humiliated me so much by lecturing a woman in the shopping centre about wearing a fur coat that I locked myself in my room for a whole day. But to tell you the truth, I was pretty chuffed about finding the petitions for her, and I was pleased that she’d asked me to go to a meeting that was so important. It sort of made me feel like I was taller than I really was.
“I’ll be there,” I promised. “Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.”
“Me neither,” said my mother.
On Thursday my mother wrote a note for me so I could get out of lessons. Because my school wasn’t far from where the Council meeting was being held, my mother was going to meet me at the main door at 11 a.m.
I was dead on time.
I reckoned the rest of the Greeners and Mr Bamber and his lot must have gone straight in, because there was no one hanging around outside. I chained my bike to the railing and sat down on the steps to wait for my mother.
At about eleven-fifteen, I stood up, walked to the middle of the pavement and looked as hard as I could in both directions. There was a familiar-looking red blur coming from the left.
I waved.
The blur waved back.
“Hurry up!” I called. “They’re going to start without us.”
“Where’s your mother?” asked the red blur.
Only it wasn’t a red blur any more; it was Kuba. I didn’t want to believe it. I took off my glasses, rubbed them on my shirt and put them back on. It really was Kuba.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded. “How did you get out of school?”
“I’ve got a dentist’s appointment.” Kuba pointed down the road. “I have to come past here to get there.”
I nearly laughed with relief. For one terrible minute I’d thought she was up to something.
“Oh,” I said, not trying too hard to hide my happiness. “My mother’s not here yet.”
“I thought the meeting started at eleven-thirty,” said Kuba.
I scowled. I hated the way she always knew everything.
“We still have fifteen minutes,” I said sourly. “Something must have held her up.” I looked up and down the road again, but there was no sign of Grace Blue and her bicycle.
Kuba took hold of my arm. “Come on,” she said, “I think you and I should go for a ride.”
“A ride? Are you mad? I thought you had a dentist’s appointment.”
Kuba shrugged. “Mrs Bamber made a mistake, the appointment is for tomorrow.” She smiled brightly. “So we’ve got time for a little ride.”
I stood up as tall as was possible for me and looked her in the eye. “For the last time, will you just leave me alone? I want you to stop helping me.”
The bright smile turned sour.
“That’s gratitude for you. If it weren’t for me you wouldn’t have found the petitions.”
“If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t have been up to my waist in rubbish.”
She made a face. “That’s what you say.”
“Yes, that is what I say. I don’t know why I had to go through all that when you could have told me exactly what bin they were in.”
She sighed impatiently. “Because if I told you it would be interfering, that’s why. Some things you have to discover for yourself.”
“Right,” I said. “And now I’m waiting for my mother by myself.”
“We can ride while you wait,” said Kuba.
I had no intention of going for a ride with Kuba, then or ever. And I told her so.
“We’re not going anywhere,” I told her firmly. “My mother’s expecting to meet me right here. And here is where I’m going to be. Besides, you don’t have a bike.”
“I don’t need one,” said Kuba. “I’ll ride on your crossbar.”
I was a bit surprised to realize that, while I was telling Kuba very firmly that I wasn’t going anywhere, my bike had somehow found its way to where I was standing and I was already climbing on.
I gave Kuba my sternest look.
“We’re only going once round the block, right?”
“Right,” said Kuba. “Once round the block.”
I have a very vivid memory of holding the bike steady while Kuba slipped on to the crossbar. She was big, but she was unexpectedly light, which was a bit of a blessing.
“I wish you were shorter,” I complained. “It’s hard to see where we’re going.”
“Don’t worry.” Kuba rang the bell. “You’ll be fine.”
I also have a very vivid memory of pushing off, and wobbling as I slowly pedalled to the corner.
“Are you sure you can’t see her coming?”
Kuba nodded. “I couldn’t be surer.”
When we reached the corner, I carefully turned into Pembroke Road.
So far so good.
But that was as far as the good went. And that’s all I remember that followed the rules of the real world.
I was the only person except for the Greeners who knew the secret route my mother was taking that morning. At least I was meant to be the only person. But obviously I wasn’t.
I turned into Pembroke Road, but it wasn’t Pembroke Road that lay ahead of us. It was the back road that ran from behind our house into town. I recognized the field of cows and the huddle of trees just before the bend.
I wanted to turn round. Wanted to? I’d have given away my computer to turn round. But I couldn’t. It was as if my bike was attached to an invisible rope that kept pulling it along no matter which way I turned. I wasn’t even really pedalling; it was more like the pedals were moving my feet.
“I want to go back!” I shouted to Kuba. “Make us go back!”
Kuba shook her head and her hair flew between us like a scarf. “Isn’t this fun?” she cried happily. “I haven’t done this for decades.”
“Well, I wish you hadn’t picked now,” I screamed. The brakes weren’t working, either.
We pass
ed the cows and the trees and turned into the bend.
I started to repeat my wish to go back, but I got no further than “I want”. The words disappeared from my mouth.
Just ahead of us, my mother’s bike was lying at the side of the road, its front wheel twisted and the trailer on its side in the ditch. Dozens of sheets of paper were scattered along the hedgerow like weird flowers. My mother was picking them up.
She stopped when she spotted me and Kuba steaming towards her.
“Elmo!” She came running over to us. In twelve years, I’d never seen her so happy to see me before. “Thank God you’re here!” She was so happy that she didn’t even ask us why we were there.
We screeched to a halt.
“What happened? Were you hit by a car?”
My mother looked a bit wild-eyed and shocked. She pushed a strand of hair from her face.
“You’re not going to believe this,” said my mother, “but it was horses. They came out of nowhere.”
She was riding along, thinking about the meeting, when she suddenly saw two horses charging down the road towards her.
“They must have been runaways from one of the farms. I thought they’d break apart when they got closer to me, but if that was what they intended to do they left it too late.”
My mother swerved to miss them and landed in the hedge. The petitions were in two cardboard boxes that weren’t as secure as they should have been. When the trailer toppled over, the petitions all went flying.
“It’s almost as if they were waiting for me round that bend,” my mother said. “One minute they weren’t there, and the next minute they were. I didn’t have time to stop.”
My mother and I picked up the rest of the petitions while Kuba stayed at the side of the road and examined my mother’s bike with a serious expression.
“It’s fine now,” said Kuba when we came back. She moved the front wheel back and forth. “See? It was just a little bent.”
“Elmo,” said my mother. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”
As if I had a choice.
“Mum,” I said, “this is Kuba. Kuba, this is my mother.” I gave my mother a little nudge. “Shouldn’t you be getting into town? The meeting’s star—”
My mother gave me a curious look.
“I’ve been wanting to meet you for ages,” said Kuba. “But Elmo wasn’t really keen.”
I could have kicked her. As if she’d been begging me to introduce her to my mother! As if what I wanted counted for anything!
“You really are a strange child, aren’t you?” said my mother.
It took me a second to realize that she wasn’t talking to Kuba.
“It isn’t that nonsense about you living with the Bambers, is it?” my mother was saying to Kuba. “Because I told Elmo that you’re welcome in our home any time you like.”
“I’m so glad to hear that!” Kuba gave my mother a hug. “Really. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.”
And I couldn’t tell her how unhappy it made me.
“So how are you getting on?” asked my mother. “Are you settling in all right?”
Kuba shrugged. “So-so. Mrs Bamber is very nice, but Mr Bamber is very busy.”
“Yeah,” said my mother, “busy destroying the planet.”
My mother took Kuba and the petitions in the trailer and I followed on my bike. Kuba sat facing me, but she rested her head on her arms so that all I could see was the top of her hat.
And on the top of her hat I could see the Council meeting. It had already begun.
The Council meeting was being held in a large, high room with old photographs of historic Campton on the walls. There was an enormous wooden table in the centre of the room that took up most of the floor space. Sitting round the table were the members of Campton Council, the Executive Committee of Keep Our Planet Green (Mr Meadows and Mrs Ludgate), and Mr Bamber and a couple of other people in expensive suits with briefcases and mobile phones.
The image was so clear I almost felt as though I was sitting at the table, too. Or I would have if the wind hadn’t been blowing my head back because we were going so fast. I couldn’t help wondering if television had actually been invented by angels. They obviously had it first.
The members of the Council were sipping water and tapping their pens on the table. The chairman of the Council was looking at his watch.
Mr Bamber cleared his throat.
“This is preposterous,” said Mr Bamber. He smiled almost sadly. “We’re busy people. And time, after all, is money.”
Mr Meadows said, “We have to wait for Mrs Blue. She’ll be here shortly. She must have been delayed.”
The chairman looked at his watch again.
“We’ve already been here half an hour,” he said. “The Council does have other things on its agenda.”
“But that’s not fair!” Mrs Ludgate was another person who knew what it meant to feel aghast. “We were told the meeting was to begin at eleven-thirty, not eleven. Grace is only a few minutes late.”
One of the councillors, Mrs Marklew, looked up from doodling on the pad in front of her to raise an eyebrow in Mrs Ludgate’s direction.
“You were told eleven o’clock, just as the rest of us were.” She said it in the way God might have reminded Adam that he knew he wasn’t meant to eat that apple.
Mrs Ludgate spluttered, but whatever she was trying to say was drowned out by Mr Bamber.
“Mr Chairman,” said Mr Bamber, “with all due respect, if I might remind the members of the Council, my firm has complied with every regulation and has the full support of the Chamber of Commerce as well as most of the local residents.”
“Not quite most of the local residents,” Mr Meadows corrected. He turned to the members of the Council. They looked as if they were trying not to yawn. “When Mrs Blue arrives with our petitions, you’ll see for yourselves just how many local residents are in favour of Mr Bamber’s proposal.”
Mr Bamber laughed. “This meeting was already cancelled once because of these mythical petitions of yours.” He smiled knowingly at the chairman of the Council. “If you want my personal opinion, I shouldn’t think they have enough signatures to get them into a charity walk.”
Everyone except Mr Meadows and Mrs Ludgate chuckled over that.
“That’s not true!” cried Mrs Ludgate. “We have thousands. We—”
“Lost them all is what I heard,” cut in Mr Bamber. He didn’t sound like he believed her. “But even if you did have them and lost them, I find it difficult to believe that you’ve made up for them in a week.”
“But we did!” Mrs Ludgate protested. “We found them again!”
“Found them again?” Mr Bamber gave her a you-poor-mad-thing sort of look. Then he turned to the chairman with another knowing smile. “It’s all a little too convenient, if you ask me.”
“I agree with David,” said the man on Mr Bamber’s right. “If you ask me, this whole thing is just a stalling tactic.”
The man on Mr Bamber’s left snapped his briefcase closed. “I’m afraid I have to be in court in an hour,” he informed the Council. “Either we continue with the meeting or I’ll have to leave.”
I was still staring at the top of Kuba’s head as we pulled up in front of the Council building. She was back to wearing just an old felt hat.
My mother blinked and looked at her watch.
“Goodness me,” she murmured, “I feel as though I’ve been asleep or something. I can’t remember how we got here so fast.”
I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her. I looked at Kuba.
Kuba smiled. “I think you should step on it.” She gave my mother a gentle shove.
My mother immediately stopped being curious about how it took us less than a minute to ride three miles and grabbed the box Kuba was handing her.
“You’re right,” she said. “Come on, Elmo. We have a meeting to attend.”
If we’d been in a film, my mother and I would have raced
into the building and thundered through reception and up the stairs to where the Council was meeting on the second floor. Clerks and secretaries would have pressed themselves against the walls to let us pass. At last we would have reached the door we wanted. We’d have heard angry voices coming from inside. Mr Bamber would have been shouting. “I move that the Council votes now.” Mrs Ludgate would have been pleading, “Mrs Blue is on her way. Just give us a few more minutes.” That was when my mother and I would have burst triumphantly through the door with the petitions in our arms. The Council would finally have understood how many people were against Mr Bamber’s houses and they’d have refused him permission. Everyone but Mr Bamber would have cheered. My mother and I would have had tears in our eyes.
With a wave to Kuba, my mother and I locked up our bikes and hurried inside. We didn’t have time to wait for the lift; we ran.
“We can still make it,” my mother kept mumbling as we pounded up the stairs. “We can still make it.”
Up until that point, what happened was pretty much what would have happened if we had been in a film.
But when we got to the second floor Mrs Ludgate and Mr Meadows were sitting on a wooden bench in the corridor and the meeting room was empty.
“What happened?” shrieked my mother.
Mrs Ludgate and Mr Meadows gazed back at her with stunned expressions.
“We were going to ask you the very same thing,” said Mr Meadows.
To say that my mother was disappointed would be like saying you might get a little damp if you fell into the sea. My mother was beside herself with anger and frustration.
“But why didn’t they wait?” she wailed. Her eyes darted from Mrs Ludgate to Mr Meadows and back again. “Didn’t you tell them I had the petitions? Why didn’t they wait?”
“Of course we told them,” said Mrs Ludgate indignantly. “But Mr Bamber convinced them that we were stalling.” She moistened her lips and avoided my mother’s eyes. “He seemed to know about the signatures I lost,” she went on softly. “Nobody believed we’d found them again.”
Mr Meadows patted my mother’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Grace,” he said. “Tomorrow is another day. I’m sure we’ll have another chance to come up against Mr Bamber, and next time we’ll win.”