by Hilary McKay
“Do you know what it is?” she asked.
“It’s the spare key to the cricket pavilion. I gave it to Simon at the end of our last term. It’s the Penrose Bonners Award for Sticking It Out at School, with Special Commendation for That Time He Didn’t Climb out of the Window!”
“Oh, Peter!”
“He wore it always,” said Peter, taking it carefully into his hand. “He put it on as soon as . . .” For a moment, the memory of Simon’s incredulous beaming smile as he saw what his friend had given him caused Peter to have to press his fists to his eyes.
“He put it on straightaway,” he continued, after a minute. “As soon as he got it. He was the best. . . . It wasn’t a joke. There were lots of jokes, but that wasn’t one of them.”
Then, still holding the key, he told Simon’s mother about clearing the common-room chimney with the rocket, and the way they had sung together in chapel, and the beer bottles under the floorboard, and how Rupert had taught them the fan dance for “Three Little Maids from School,” and the way Simon used to laugh until tears ran down his face. And how they had stuck out school together, and how Peter couldn’t have done it without Simon at his side, and that’s why he had been given the award.
“You should put it on a new string and wear it sometimes,” he said, as he very gently gave the key back and stood up to go, and she said, “Yes, I will. I will do. I will.”
After Peter had gone that day, Vanessa and Simon’s mother and father (whom Clarry had named Odysseus) told each other how thankful they were that Vanessa was marrying Peter, and how good it would be to have him and Clarry in the family forever, and after that they began to get better.
There were lots of weddings. Violet borrowed Clarry’s pink hat again. It was her “something borrowed.”
“I looked washed out in white and I’m not wearing a veil!” she said, very jaunty in pink and high heels. Miss Vane, however, had snow white silk, with Clarry and Violet for bridesmaids and she invited Mrs. Morgan. Mrs. Morgan rose magnificently to this peace offering, and gave the bride a lucky horseshoe, one of the collection of those she had made herself.
She gave another one to Peter, when he and Vanessa married.
“I never thought I’d see the day!” she said as she handed it over, and Peter said neither had he. He and Vanessa nailed their horseshoe over the door of their small cheerful house in Oxford. There, they lived together very happily, with a room for Clarry in the attic whenever she wanted it, and a great many books, the most wonderful being the one that Peter and Clarry wrote together. It was called:
Origins of Nomenclature in the Animal Kingdom
Clarry Penrose, MA (Oxon) and Peter Penrose, D.Phil. (Oxon)
It was a book that they had planned to write together when Clarry was eleven.
Clarry was a teacher. She loved it, as she had done ever since the first Grace twin had exclaimed, “Now I understand!”
Peter eventually became a professor, which did not surprise anyone. His home was filled with children, as well as books—first Janey after Peter’s mother, and then Beatrice after Vanessa’s, and then, at last, little Simon, who came with a surprise twin brother. The moment Clarry heard of the second baby’s arrival, which was about three minutes after he was born, she exclaimed, “You will have to call him Rupert!”
And Vanessa and Peter, still blinking with shock, recovered and agreed.
The arrival of a new Simon and Rupert for the world to enjoy caused Vanessa such pride and delight that she put a notice of their birth in the Times in the hope that Rupert might see it.
PENROSE, TO PETER AND VANESSA (NEE BONNINGTON). TWIN BOYS, SIMON AND RUPERT (CLARRY SAID WE HAD TO CALL HIM RUPERT). JUNE 21, 1924.
Vanessa went to this expense in the hope that somehow the news would reach Rupert in India.
At this time Rupert was working on a tea plantation at the foothills of the Himalayas. It was very beautiful there and he thought how much Clarry would love it. He thought of Clarry often, more and more of the happy times, and less and less of their last dreadful day together when she had begged him not to go back to France and he had told her to stop clinging and walked away and left her.
In those days, for the British in India, a large amount of the news from home came via the the Times newspaper. It was read and passed around, ringed in pencil and underlined, and scrutinized for familiar names by everyone from England who got hold of it.
So it wasn’t surprising that someone said to Rupert, “Oi, is this you?” and there, circled in blue, was his name, with Peter and Vanessa, and Simon, who had loved him, and Clarry, who it seemed had forgiven him after all.
So he sent a telegram back to England saying,
Congratulations, and love to everyone.
Re Simon and Rupert
Perfect.
Fifty
NOT LONG AFTER THE BIRTH of the latest Penrose baby (Charles, after Charles Darwin), Peter and Clarry’s grandmother died. For the last few years she had lived in Oxford, within reach of Clarry and Peter and the children, and with Lucy, now age twenty-nine, in a small field close by. From the very beginning she had loved being a great-grandmother. She had named herself Great-Granny and adored her great-grandchildren so completely and uncritically that she had astonished herself. I never used to be like this, she thought sometimes. I’ve mellowed!
But now she was gone, and she had left the house in Cornwall to Clarry and Peter. It hadn’t been lived in for years and years and it was still full of her things, not just furniture, but all the letters and clothes and old-lady belongings that she hadn’t wanted to bring to Oxford.
“I shall have to go and sort them out,” said Clarry unhappily to Vanessa. “And don’t say Peter will help because he’d be useless, and anyway Great-Granny would hate him poking through her things. She was a very dignified old lady.”
“I’ve never been to Cornwall; there was never time after the babies started arriving,” remarked Vanessa. “Peter said you used to love your summers there.”
“They were perfect,” said Clarry, her voice a little unsteady. “Perfect, from the moment we arrived.”
“What made them so wonderful?” asked Vanessa, who was always on the lookout for ideas to make life wonderful for her own children. “I hope whatever it was is still there. Perhaps one day we could . . . oh, I’m sorry, Clarry!”
For Clarry, quite suddenly, was rubbing tears away.
“I’m an insensitive hag,” said Vanessa repentantly. “Poor Great-Granny. But she was very old, Clarry darling, and happy, right to the end.”
“I know. It’s not Great-Granny,” said Clarry, sniffing damply. “I was just remembering. Everything. Everyone . . .”
Vanessa looked at her thoughtfully and, when Clarry did not continue, picked up a child from the floor and handed it to her to cuddle. Then she waited a tactful minute or two before asking kindly, “Is it Rupert?”
“No,” said Clarry miserably, after glancing down to look. “It’s darling Bea.”
“Thank you very much, Clarry! I can actually tell my children apart. And you know quite well what I meant!”
“Yes, I do. Yes, it is. Rupert. All right there, Bea?”
Bea nodded. All Vanessa’s children were used to cuddles, especially at times like this: the sleepy end of the day between supper and stories. Bea put her thumb in her mouth, and tucked herself comfortably under Clarry’s chin. She was a warm, solid child, very comforting, and Clarry hugged her as she continued slowly, “Cornwall and Rupert are all mixed up together, and it was so long ago, and magical. It’ll be all changed now, but it was the best place in the world. We longed for it all winter, the moorland and the sea and the little town, and the train pulling into the station.”
“That will still be pretty much the same, Clarry.”
“And Rupert, waiting there.”
“Blooming Rupert!” said Vanessa.
Clarry did not argue, just dropped her head a little.
“Did he always matter so m
uch?”
“Yes,” said Clarry. It was very difficult to describe what Rupert’s sunlit welcome had meant after the long unloved winters of her childhood, but nevertheless, she tried. “The grandparents were so remote, you see. Most of the time Peter lived in his own world too. And Father . . .”
“Neglected you completely,” said Vanessa calmly. “According to Peter.”
“It wasn’t that bad. But it was lonely, and then Rupert, every summer, so pleased to see us. Such a welcome. Laughing. Kind, and funny and fun. It was so blissful to be talked to, and teased, and hugged and bothered about. I was a bit invisible, I suppose, and Rupert made me visible. And it wasn’t just being kind because he was sorry for me. We were proper friends.”
“You were. I remember you both at that Christmas party. And afterward through so much. Girlfriends, war! Even me!”
Clarry laughed, lifting her face from Bea’s red curls.
“That must have stung.”
“A bit. Mostly for Peter.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was nothing. Not compared to the day that telegram came. Or when I found him in France, so broken.”
“But you got him home again, and he got better.”
“I thought so, but I was wrong. Inside he wasn’t better. He couldn’t live with himself.”
“There were a lot like that, Clarry,” said Vanessa, who never had a day without thinking of the boys in the beds. “They felt guilty for surviving.”
“He told me he was going back, and then we stopped being friends. We smashed it all up.”
“How?”
“I didn’t try to understand. I argued. I fought him. I cried. He said I clung. He shouted, ‘Leave me alone! Leave me alone!’ and shook me off and ran away, stumbled away, with that stick.”
“Oh, Clarry!”
“So I did leave him alone. I helped Peter write to him, after Simon, but I didn’t sign my name and we didn’t hear back. Simon must have been very hard for him. Rupert knew why he was there.”
“Simon was an idiot,” said Vanessa crossly. “No, he wasn’t. He was just terribly young. They all had to grow up too soon.”
“Yes,” said Clarry. “You must keep yours little forever and ever. And put books on their heads when they start to grow tall.”
Bea looked up at her in surprise. Clarry slid her to the floor, reached for a book, and balanced it on her own head, to show her. Bea copied, with Peter Rabbit. Janey, who was her father all over again, said, “I don’t think it will work,” but all the same picked up a book herself and tried it, just in case.
Bea laughed and her book slid onto her lap.
“You have to not laugh,” said Janey solemnly.
“No!” said Clarry, tipping her own book off at these words. “I was wrong. No books on heads! You have to laugh! You have to grow! And I have to go to Cornwall.”
“What is Cornwall?” asked Janey, and so Clarry told her about the blue and green sea, and the house on the moors, and how she and Janey’s daddy had traveled there every summer on a train, all by themselves, with no grown-ups.
“Can I go?” asked Janey.
“One day, perhaps.”
“On a train with just Bea and no grown-ups?”
“Do you think you’d like that?”
“Yes!” said Janey, jumping up and down. “Who would meet us at the station?”
“That’s the thing,” said Clarry. “You have to have someone very special and wonderful to meet you at the station.”
“Did you?”
“Yes,” said Clarry. “I did.”
Later Vanessa said, “Listen, Clarry, leave the sorting and things a little while longer, and when Charles is bigger I’ll come with you and help.”
“Would you really? It would be better with two.”
“As soon as he’s a bit less nocturnal,” said Vanessa, looking across at Charles, tight asleep in his cradle, collecting his strength so that he would be able, explained his parents, to stay awake all night imperiously demanding milk, songs, walking up and down, trips to look at the moon out of the window, and as many people as possible to keep him company.
A month passed, and then another; Vanessa’s parents agreed to come and babysit. Charles’s nighttime revels grew no less wild (worse, according to his mother), but suddenly she gave up waiting for him to change and said, “Never mind, Peter will cope, he’s brilliant with the children. It’s amazing how he knows how to manage.”
“It’s not,” said Peter. “I just think of my own father and do the exact opposite.” (Peter’s father, when invited to visit his grandchildren, always blanched and said, “Good Lord. Very kind. I don’t think so.”)
So it was arranged, and a date was chosen, and everything planned except that Vanessa changed her mind over and over between going by train (“Such bliss to just sit”) and driving down because a car would be so useful when they got there. But at last she decided on the train, and their bags were packed and their tickets were bought, and the grandparents installed, and Peter drove them to the station. Clarry and Vanessa found an empty carriage and put their bags on the saggy string luggage rack overhead, and the doors began to slam all along the train, and the guard raised his whistle to his lips and Vanessa said suddenly, “You know, Clarry, I think I should drive after all!” and before Clarry could say a word, she’d jumped off, and a second later the train pulled out of the station.
Clarry sat quite stunned staring out of the window, and outside the half-familiar landscape went floating by, and she fought back tears as the memories came pouring in and filled the empty carriage with their clamor.
At first they overwhelmed her, but as the journey passed she untangled them one by one and held them in her thoughts.
Her father, handing her the sovereign, stepping back with relief into his solitary world.
Peter, white faced and enduring. Happy now at last.
Simon.
Dear, gallant Simon.
Rupert, the bravest and the kindest. Who all through her childhood had never failed her once. For years she’d believed she would never see him again, but since the arrival of the twins she had known he still thought of them. Perhaps one day, thought Clarry, remembering the telegram he had sent back to Oxford.
Congratulations, and love to everyone.
Love to everyone, love to everyone, love to everyone, echoed the train, and Clarry drifted into sleep.
“Got her off?” Peter asked, reappearing on the platform as soon as Clarry’s train had disappeared.
“Yes, but her face! I had to leave it to the last half second in case she ran after me.”
“I’ve just telegraphed that she’s on time.”
“This is easily the most difficult cheer-up yet! The lies we’ve told about poor little Charles! For months he’s been the best behaved of them all!”
“Doesn’t matter. Worth it.”
“Is it going to be all right, Peter?”
“Yes,” said Peter. “It’s going to be all right.”
Clarry awoke with a start. They were nearly there. There were glimpses of sea, brighter even than she’d remembered, and red rooftops in the distance, coming closer, and the train was slowing with great gusts of steam, and despite all that had happened, the familiar joy was growing and growing, so she could hardly wait to tug down the window and open the door, and jump out at the little station.
And there was someone hurrying over the footbridge, and he reached the train in time to swing her down onto the platform. She could feel him laughing as he held her, and he said, “Clarry. Darling Clarry!”
And it was Rupert.
THE WORLD BEHIND THE STORY
Peter, Clarry, and Vanessa. Simon the Bony One. Rupert, Odysseus, Mrs. Morgan. Violet and Miss Vane. Mr. King the rag-and-bone man. They came so alive for me writing this book.
I think that was because their world was true. It gave them such a solid background that they could stand out against it as real people.
The time
is the very beginning of the twentieth century: 1902. Queen Victoria has recently died, and her eldest son, Edward VII, is surprising everyone by turning out not quite as useless as his mother had predicted he would be. There are bicycles (nearly all for men and boys, though), steam trains, a very few cars, and a great many horses. There are no airplanes or antibiotics, Everest has not yet been climbed, and the South Pole has not been reached. There is no plastic. Einstein is beginning to have ideas about relativity, but hardly anyone knows about this yet. Probably a good thing; the general public is only just getting over Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. People are reading books (although not paperbacks yet), and education is no longer just for those who can pay for it. Poor children can still leave school at nine or ten, but now they often stay on until thirteen. After that, for most students, their formal education is over. But for some there are boarding schools, as there have been for centuries, and the new secondary schools are beginning to open. Once again, these are mostly for boys: there are three or four schools for boys to every one school for girls. Clarry and Vanessa are lucky.
Money is different. Money is real. The coins are made of copper, silver, and gold. Top quality silver and twenty-two karat gold! There are twelve big copper pennies to a shilling. Twenty silver shillings to a pound. A pound is a golden sovereign, a very beautiful coin. Clarry has one from her father for her birthday one summer. I don’t think it is a planned present: I think Peter has just hissed at him, last minute, on the railway station platform, “Of course, you’ve forgotten her birthday again!”
The background to the second half of Love to Everyone is World War I. This terrible war began in the summer of 1914 and carried on until late in 1918. The suffering of those fighting, the occupied countries, and the families left behind who sent the soldiers off to war is beyond my ability to describe. So I will stick to plain facts.