by Hilary McKay
“Good man!” exclaimed Grandfather, smiling like a harbor seal, but Clarry retreated backward across the room, and then went to find Rupert.
“He’s pretending he doesn’t mind,” she told him.
“He might as well,” said Rupert unhelpfully. “They won’t let him off, so why fight it?”
“He used to say he would die if he had to go. People don’t die at boarding school, do they?”
“Never,” said Rupert. “Well, hardly ever. Stop worrying about it! Come on, we’ll go and catch Lucy and you can see how long you can stay on!”
Clarry fell off Lucy several times and cheered up. After all, they were back in Cornwall with summer all before them. The swallows’ nest was where it had always been, her bedroom floor still dipped and rose like the deck of a ship, and the secret treasure box she had hidden up the chimney was still intact. Clarry counted her hoard: twelve pale pink cowrie shells, a lock of Lucy’s mane, a rock containing crystals of gold, and a very small penknife with a pearly handle and a blade that didn’t cut. Before she went to bed she added the gold birthday sovereign, and a white heart-shaped stone that Rupert had produced, saying, “Look what I found on the beach for you!”
“That’s nice,” the new unknown Peter had remarked (he who would previously have said, “That’s quartz”) and then he had gone to ask his Grandfather if he needed any help with putting away the pony trap for the night. Clarry had looked after him, absolutely baffled.
In church the next day Peter’s transformation continued. Clarry observed him praying as if he meant it, putting a whole precious shilling in the collection plate (she was so shocked she took it out again and smuggled it back into his pocket), and asking the vicar about the age of the font, which turned out to be sixteenth century.
“I thought it might be,” said Peter.
“M’second grandson,” said Grandfather to the vicar, his hand on Peter’s back. “Very promising scholar!”
“Thank you, sir,” said Peter, steady as a rock. (He had taken to calling his grandfather “sir.” It was delightful to hear him.)
“He can’t possibly keep it up,” whispered Rupert to Clarry, but at Sunday lunch, the once-a-week meal with the grandparents, Peter showed no sign of flagging. During the course of roast beef and jam sponge he correctly identified a landscape Grandmother had painted in her youth, demonstrated an intelligent knowledge of the headlines in the day’s papers, retrieved Clarry’s napkin from underneath the table, and said at the end, “Come on Rupert, we’ll take the plates out to the kitchen!” After that he vanished until Clarry tracked him down reading under the apple trees. He smiled when he saw her and called, “Hullo! Coming to join me? That’ll be nice!”
“Peter, Peter, please stop it!”
“Stop what?”
“Being so nice and kind.”
“I’m sorry. Aren’t I usually nice and kind?”
“OF COURSE you’re not!” said Clarry, beating him with her fists.
Peter flopped on his back laughing and said, “You know what? This tree would be a really good place for a hammock.”
“A hammock!”
“You could stretch it right across between those two big branches. Or would it damage the apples? I don’t see why it should if we were careful. I’ll ask Rupert what he thinks. Would you use it, Clarry, if I fixed one up for you?”
“No, I wouldn’t!” shouted Clarry, and ran sobbing into the house and collided straight into her grandfather, who said, “Hey, hey, what’s this?”
“Nothing. Peter.”
“What about Peter?”
“He said the big apple tree would be a really good place for a hammock . . . ,” said Clarry rather damply.
“Yes. Go on.”
“If it didn’t damage the apples.”
“I fail to see cause for tears,” said her grandfather. “However, I’m too old for tree climbing. Tell him to ask Rupert to give him a hand.”
“He is asking Rupert.”
“Beyond me what the problem is, then,” said her grandfather. “Unless you are ill? Are you not feeling well? You’d better go and have a word with your grandmother.”
Clarry shook her head, but later she overheard him having a word himself.
“Surprised it’s not the girl who causes all the problems we hear about at home! The boy’s no trouble at all. If you ask me his father has no idea how to handle him. Great improvement on last year! Perfectly charming.”
Peter was perfectly charming all the next day too.
It’s being here, thought Clarry, trying to explain it to herself, and not arguing all the time with Father, and having so much space outside.
Outside was limitless, garden and fields, moorland and sea. There were no rules, only consequences. The year before, Rupert had picked up an adder which had bitten him and left him with a very sore arm for a week. They had all three regretted eating the mushrooms that they had so confidently gathered. Clarry once freed a dozen trapped bullocks that were pushing at a gate and then could not prevent them following her home.
“You were lucky not to be trampled,” said the farmer who came to collect them from the remains of the front lawn.
“I know,” said Clarry, still trembling.
“How else can they learn?” asked their grandparents, after all these happenings. “Can we follow them about the countryside saying, ‘Don’t touch the snake! Leave the bullocks! Those are toadstools, you foolish child!’? At our age? No!” Whichever it was, the freedom or the peace, Peter’s transformation continued. On the third day of his new personality, he asked to borrow his grandfather’s binoculars to watch kestrels over the moors.
“If you break them I’ll flog you,” said his grandfather, but he handed them over quite cheerfully, Peter being his new favorite person.
“Thank you, sir,” said Peter.
“Would you like my bike too?” asked Rupert, but Peter said no, he’d probably be walking most of the time.
This did not happen.
Five
WHAT PETER DID, AFTER SETTING out with his grandfather’s binoculars and his wonderful new manners, was buy a shilling ticket for the branch line train that ran through the valley at the bottom of the grandparents’ garden, and step off it as it rattled and puffed its way across the moor.
Nobody knew this for ages and ages, not until the return train went past, and someone happened to notice him lying by the track.
“I thought he was dead until he raised his arm,” said the passenger, explaining afterward. “Lying there, half buried in the bracken, white as a sheet. Whatever happened?”
No one could answer that. Peter was retrieved by stretcher, transported to the nearest town by train, hurried to the local hospital, diagnosed with bruises, shock, and multiple fractures of the left leg, knocked out with chloroform, woken (screaming), dosed with morphine, and very luckily identified by his grandfather’s name inside the binocular case. When he finally came round and was well enough to talk, he said he couldn’t remember anything after leaving the house.
Two days afterward he recalled getting on the train, and as the days passed, more of the journey came back to him.
“I remember standing up,” he said cautiously. “And then I think I opened a door to look at something.”
He was home now, after nearly a week in hospital, propped up in bed with his leg in plaster from heel to hip and his bruises as purple as plums.
“You might have died,” said Clarry. “Then what?”
“Died!” said Peter scornfully. “I didn’t even break the binoculars!”
“And you hate trains! Why did you go on one when you didn’t have to do?”
“I found a shilling in my pocket and I thought I might as well.”
“Oh, Peter!” wailed Clarry.
“What?”
“I put it there! After church, that first Sunday.”
“Well, then, stop blaming me for everything! It’s half your fault!”
Rupert, who was leaning
against the doorframe, looking thoughtfully at Peter, said, “Oi!”
“Why did you have to open the train door?” persisted Clarry. “Couldn’t you have just opened the window if you weren’t feeling well?”
“Look!” snapped Peter, for since he had so illogically opened the door of a moving train, his perpetual irritation with the world had returned as if it had never been lost. “Who said I wasn’t feeling well? I was on a train! I got off a train! The end!”
“But the train was going!”
“Not very fast.”
“And you just stepped off on purpose?”
“It was much higher above the track than I realized.”
“What was it you saw, anyway?”
Peter did not reply, and Clarry saw that his eyes were closed. He had turned his face toward his bedroom wall and she noticed how shabby his old striped pajamas looked, how limp the thin brown hair. “Are you hot?” she asked, reaching out a hand to check his forehead. The doctors had told them that he mustn’t be hot; it meant infection from the broken bones.
“No!” Peter pushed her hand away. “I’m just tired. Clear off, and leave me alone. I’m supposed to be resting. I didn’t get much sleep last night.” He yawned a large fake yawn, and closed his eyes.
“You’re an awful actor,” said Rupert, grinning.
“Just get out!” howled Peter, sitting up furiously. “Aaaaah, no! I’ve yanked it again! Clear off with your rotten questions! It’s your fault! It’s all your blasted fault! Hell.”
He pulled a pillow over his face, but not before Clarry had glimpsed a glitter of tears.
“Peter . . . ,” she began, but from under the pillow came a tremendous angry growl.
“Pete, we’re going,” said Rupert, reaching out for Clarry and steering her toward the door. “Leaving you in peace. I’ll be back in a while in case you need anything. Come on, Clarry!”
“But . . .”
“Let him rest.”
Out in the garden, Clarry said, “Poor, poor Peter. I don’t believe he saw anything special from the train. I expect he was just sick, like always, and couldn’t get the window down, and then he must have fallen.”
“Yes, perhaps,” agreed Rupert.
“And now he’s miserable and his whole summer is spoiled.”
“Do you always worry about him this much?” asked Rupert, amused.
“Yes, of course I do.”
“Well, don’t. He’ll soon be able to get around a bit, and then he’ll cheer up. Stop fussing him, though. No more questions! We’ll find something ordinary to talk about. What does he like to do at home? Does he paint things, like you do?”
“No.” Clarry shook her head. “He likes looking things up in books,” she added, after some thought.
“We’ll find him some things to look up, then. We’ll go foraging for mysteries! Now then, I’ll fetch my bike and you can ride on the crossbar and we’ll whiz into town for ice cream!”
“And bring some back for Peter?” asked Clarry.
“It would melt,” said Rupert, and then, seeing her disappointed face, added, “We’ll bring lemons, to make him lemonade,” and watched it shine again.
Clarry took the lemons to the kitchen and was shooed away while the lemonade was made. To pass the time she went hunting outside. Very soon she found a great number of things that could be looked up in books, including a two-headed dandelion, a crystal of pink quartz, a miniature wasp’s nest, light as a paper shell, and a metallic blue feather, barred with black.
“I found something too!” said Rupert, and held up a yellowing sheep’s skull with gray teeth still intact.
“Yuck!” said Clarry.
“Nonsense, he’ll love it! The teeth are loose. He can pull them out and stare into the holes!”
“It’s horrible,” said Clarry, but Rupert was right and Peter did love it, so much that he inspired Rupert to search for more excitements.
“We could start a museum,” Rupert said, emptying a pocketful of stones and seashells onto Peter’s bed, and Peter, who liked nothing better than organizing things into straight lines and lists, began cataloging at once.
This was how Peter’s recovery began, although the doctors explained that he would be on crutches for months. Even after that, they told him, his left leg would never straighten properly at his knee, and would be at least an inch shorter than his right.
“I don’t suppose that will matter much,” said Clarry hopefully, when she heard this news. “Nobody will notice.”
“They say I’ll need to wear a special shoe,” said Peter. “Built up. And do exercises. They said they nearly took it off!”
“Peter!”
“So I suppose I’ve been lucky.”
He was so calm about it that his grandfather said gruffly, “Good lad.” The grandparents treated the whole affair in much the same way as they had the misadventures of the past. Clarry had learned to leave field gates closed, and Rupert no longer picked up snakes. Mushrooms were gathered with caution. In future Peter would be more careful with train doors.
Peter did not complain very much. The pain became less, until it was just an uncomfortable stiffness and a mostly ignorable ache. Quite early on in the summer it was decided that he could not be sent to boarding school with Rupert that September.
“What a pity,” said Rupert blandly.
“Yes,” agreed Peter.
Six
“AND WHAT WILL YOU DO with yourself while your brother’s laid up?” Clarry’s grandfather asked her.
“I thought I might learn to swim,” said Clarry, and he burst out laughing and said, “Ha, ha, very good!” and later told her grandmother that she was “quite a little character!” as if she had proposed to take up golf or arranging the flowers in church.
However, Clarry was quite serious. For a long time she had envied the boys their swimming. They went almost every day.
“Well, you’re a girl and they are boys,” Clarry’s grandmother had said when Clarry first mentioned it, a year or two before, and at the time Clarry had nodded, disappointed but accepting. There were a lot of things to accept, she found, about the differences between girls and boys. That boys had pocket money and girls didn’t. That boys needed to learn things at school but girls just had to be quietly occupied. That Peter had a bicycle and could ride all over town, but that her own boundaries were school (two minutes’ walk away) and Miss Vane’s house (across the road).
And most of all, that the boys knew best. And boys were best. It was fact. It was life. It was natural history.
Rupert had learned to swim when he was eight, in the concrete tank at boarding school (unheated gray water, six feet deep, straight in and no shrieking). Every boy in the school learned to swim; it was the only sensible thing to do, the alternative being to drown.
After the school swimming tank, the buoyant blue and green waters off the Cornish coast were easy. A foaming translucent element of liquid airy joy.
Rupert, on a hot summer’s day, would leave his grandparents’ house to run across field and moor, racing along narrow fox paths between bramble and gorse, and galloping quaggy stretches of bog. Not pausing for thorns, nor the fiery patches his sandshoes rubbed on his heels, shoving aside fat sheep, to where the cliff dipped down to the sea. Here, high tide or low, there was always water. In the last few yards of his race, he shed shirt and shoes, and when he reached the edge he leaped without pausing. Each time it was the best moment of life. One element to another. One world to another. Escape.
It was not the same for Peter. Even before he broke his leg, he wasn’t much of a runner. The first time he saw Rupert leap from the cliff he assumed his cousin would drown. He shuffled to the edge and peered over, down into the blue water. There was Rupert, only a few feet below him, laughing and blowing like a human porpoise.
“Come on!” called Rupert.
Every now and then Peter was struck by a mood of reckless madness. It hit him then. He also dragged off his clothes and, in a skinny
tangle of shoulders and shinbones, hit the rocking water. Peter could swim too; twice a week in summer term the boys from his day school were marched down to the town pool. In water Peter was as agile as Rupert. He could dive as well. He was the first to take off from the cliff in a swooping header, but it was Rupert who had said, the year before, “We should bring Clarry.”
“She can’t swim,” said Peter.
“She’d soon learn, like we did.”
Clarry, when asked, said, “Yes! Yes, please! But how could I? What would I wear?”
They looked blank.
“What do you wear?”
“Bathing suits or we don’t bother.”
“I can’t not bother and I haven’t got a bathing suit,” said Clarry.
“Ask Grandmother,” suggested Rupert, but that was no use. Clarry’s grandmother said that little girls paddled. They paddled in their summer dresses carefully at the water’s edge, having left their shoes and stockings neatly on a rock. This behavior entirely prevented any risk of drowning, said Clarry’s grandmother, and closed the sitting-room door.
Clarry (in private) contemplated her reflection in her knickers and her liberty bodice. It was awful. She tried on Peter’s old bathing suit and it hung in great black loops from her shoulders to her knees. And so she gave up hope of swimming with the boys that year, although she often sat on the cliff above, watching as they dived and porpoised through the blue and green water.
And then the next summer, there was the sovereign!
It was agony to part with, but she did it, and for ten shillings bought a black bathing suit from a dismal little shop near the marketplace. It was made of wool, rather rubbed up because it was not new, baggy around her knees, and gathered with large bright blue bows at the shoulders. Clarry didn’t like the bows, but the bathing suit was the lightest thing she had ever worn. She put it on and pranced into Peter’s room, saying, “Look! Look! Look!”