by Hilary McKay
Saffron dried her hands and looked around the room, memorising faces. Sarah said, ‘I know all their names.’
The room was completely quiet. Saffron and Sarah were the most noticeable girls in the school. Everyone knew Saffron with her long legs and long gold hair and legendary exam results. Everyone knew Sarah and the story of how she had been expelled from the private school of which her own mother was Head, after breaking every rule, deliberately, one a day, until the battle was finally over.
‘See you later then, Indy,’ said Sarah, and swished out of the room, Saffron stalking after her. Nobody looked at Indigo and nobody looked at the bony-faced leader of the gang who was smoothing down what remained of his hair. Nobody spoke, but across the room somebody laughed.
It was a rude, loud, scornful laugh.
The bony-faced one stopped smoothing his hair and straightened up and looked. Indigo looked too. A dark-haired, brown-eyed boy, whom he had never seen before, was leaning against a wall, watching them. He was smaller than anyone else in the room, but he did not look like he knew this. He raised his eyebrows at Indigo, amused and contemptuous, and said, ‘Now I’ve seen everything.’ He told the red-haired (what was left of it) gang leader, ‘You lost that one. Baldy.’
The red-haired gang leader knew he must re-establish his authority at once, or else it would be gone for ever. He glanced briefly across to the rabble, checking his troops were still with him, and then looked coldly over to the boy who had called him ‘Baldy’ and said, ‘Him.’
The inner circle nodded.
Indigo felt a sudden weary feeling inside. He remembered when they had looked at him in just that way, and nodded, in that same way.
The rabble, however, relaxed into sudden happy relief. For them order had been restored. The gang was still in power. Its leader was still its leader. And they were safe. They were still the comfortable rabble. There was a new victim.
The leaders were leaving the room. The rabble followed riotously, taking care to jostle the new victim on their way. In seconds his book bag was on the floor, and its contents kicked casually to the dampest parts of the tiled floor.
At first he seemed stunned by the suddenness with which they had turned on him. Then he began to shout and run at them, lunging from one kicker to another, but in moments the room was empty.
Only Indigo remained.
Indigo picked up the scattered books, wiped them as well as he could and unfolded the creased pages. He said, ‘You shouldn’t have made them mad.’
‘I shouldn’t have made them mad!’ repeated the boy. ‘It was your crazy sister and her friend made them mad! Rescuing you!’
‘I know. But they don’t like being laughed at.’
‘This place stinks!’
‘Yes,’ agreed Indigo. ‘Sometimes.’
‘Sometimes! This place stinks forever!’
‘There’s all your books. I think they are OK.’
The boy rolled his eyes upwards as if in disbelief, his look saying, They are not OK.
In the corridor outside a bell rang. Indigo said, ‘We’d better go.’
The boy took a rubber ball from a pocket and squeezed it hard. Then he bounced it against the tiled floor. He bounced and caught it, over and over, his face tight with anger.
Indigo said again, ‘We’d better go.’
The boy bounced the ball, caught it and flicked it hard at Indigo’s head. It hit his cheekbone with a pain like a burn. In a moment the boy had caught the ball and thrown it again. This time it caught Indigo on the ear.
‘Well, don’t just stand there!’ exclaimed the strange boy. ‘You just stand there! Why’d you just stand there?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Indigo.
The ball came at him again. This time Indigo was ready and he caught it. He held it for a moment, then tossed it gently back to its owner.
‘I’m not fighting you,’ he said. ‘Come on. We’ll be late.’
Chapter Four
After Caddy had gone, Eve made coffee in the quiet kitchen and sat down at the table. There she found herself gazing at the artist’s colour chart on the kitchen wall. All the children’s names had come from that chart. Cadmium Gold, Indigo and Rose each had their own little blocks of colour, and long ago another had been added for Saffron, (Saffron Yellow). Saffron had been adopted into the family when she was three years old and her own mother, Eve’s sister, had died.
‘Darling Saffy,’ Eve said, looking at the little square of yellow.
Saffron was the only who did not need worrying about.
All the others did, and in between phone calls and painting and trying to get the car to start, Eve spent the day doing just that, going from Caddy tearing back to London on the back of someone’s motorbike, to Indigo who looked as thin as a paintbrush and as white as paper, and then on to Rose, who was permanently cross with her father.
Worrying about Rose’s father, Eve had fallen asleep. She had stretched out on the old pink sofa that she kept in her shed, closed her eyes, and forgotten them all.
Rose was the first of the family to arrive home from school. She found the house unlocked but empty, no sound from anywhere and the kitchen full of shadows. However, a light was shining in her mother’s shed. Rose picked her way down the narrow garden path and peered in at the window.
Eve was still asleep, and Rose was disappointed. She would have liked a little company, but she knew from experience that it was no good trying to wake her mother. Eve, emerging from sleep, was a terrible nuisance. She flailed around with her eyes screwed shut, groping for coffee and knocking things over. She moaned ‘Darling, darling!’ and walked into walls.
Asleep, her mother looked rather like Caddy, Rose thought. A blurry version of Caddy. Caddy painted with not quite such good colours and a slightly worn brush.
‘Caddy,’ said Rose aloud, already missing her. She tried to imagine Caddy in London, but she could not. London always seemed to belong to her father, who had rented a studio there since before she was born. Rose had never been to London, so she had never seen her father’s studio, but she had seen the pictures he painted there. He brought them home sometimes, to show to the family.
‘Darling, how wonderful,’ Eve would say, whenever he produced a new one, ‘I don’t know how you do it!’ and Bill would be pleased, and know it was true, and she didn’t know how he did it.
Caddy, Saffron and Indigo made comments like, ‘Gosh, how huge!’ and ‘Brilliant! As good as a photo!’ and Bill, who had long ago decided they were immune to all forms of culture, did not mind a bit.
Then, (unless she had managed to sneak off before her turn came), Rose’s father would say tensely, ‘Rose? Painting here for you to criticise!’
‘You always get mad, whatever I say.’
‘Just tell me what you think, Rose darling.’
‘Oh. Well. It’s very nice.’
‘Rose!’
‘I can see what it’s meant to be.’
Rose’s father would bury his face in his hands.
‘I didn’t say I didn’t like it!’
Then Caddy and Eve and Saffron and Indigo would all have to interfere and be tactful and point out that Rose was only eight and knew nothing about Art. They were never very successful, and Rose’s father was never very convinced. Everyone knew Rose had an unerring eye for perfection. Bill had tested her once, with a catalogue brought back from a gallery in Italy. ‘Which is the best?’ he had asked her, and Rose had flipped back and forwards through the pages, and ended up with a drawing, a reddish, brownish sketch.
‘Oh,’ said Bill, ‘Michelangelo.’ He had been quite depressed.
Rose’s own pictures drove her father mad. She only used paper as a last resort. Like Michelangelo, she preferred walls. The desert landscape with red gloss highlights that she had painted on the upstairs landing when she was not quite seven years old, still persisted in reappearing, despite three coats of magnolia emulsion. Right now, she had in production her biggest work to date. It
was done in coloured pastels on the kitchen wall, which was very handy for Rose because she could alter it whenever she wanted. It was a picture of her family sitting on the roof of their house, like animals on the top of a sinking ark.
Out in the garden, Rose watched her mother sleeping for a little while longer. Then she turned away, and went back to the house and began to draw. She added extra gold to Caddy’s hair, and closed her mother’s eyes so that now she was asleep on the roof, slumped against the chimney. Dreaming, thought Rose, and sketched a fragile circle of dreamy purple smoke around her head.
Eve smiled, dreaming against the chimney pot.
Rose smiled back and began to draw herself in, close against Indigo, who was anchored very firmly in the middle of the roof, his feet resting in the guttering so that he could not possibly slip. She became so absorbed in this that she did not notice when Indigo walked in, until he came up right behind her and made her jump.
‘Are you all right?’ she demanded, flinging herself on him. ‘Was it as horrible as you thought it would be? Did they stick your head in the toilet again?’
‘I was perfectly all right,’ Indigo told her, disentangling himself. ‘I told you I would be. Hey, look at your picture! I like Mum! What’s happened to Dad?’
‘He’s behind that cloud,’ said Rose, pointing to a grey and thundery shape, hovering low over the roof.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Rose, sounding a bit forlorn. ‘I don’t know why he does anything.’
Indigo dropped the subject and began to unpack his school bag. ‘Look what Sarah’s mum gave me for my lunch! Nuts and raisins and bananas! She must think I’m a monkey.’
He did a few monkey steps to make Rose laugh, and she stopped drawing white lightning daggers shooting from her father’s cloud, and took a banana instead. While she ate Indigo told her about the new boy who had appeared in his class.
‘He’s called Tom. Tom Levin. He’s from America. He’s staying over here until term finishes.’
‘Why does he have to do that?’
Tom had attracted a great deal of attention with his explanation of why he had happened to be in England. Also a great deal of ridicule, which had not caused him to change his story in the slightest.
‘He said,’ began Indigo cautiously, ‘that his father is an astronaut…’
‘A space astronaut?’
‘He just said an astronaut.’
‘Is he in space now?’ asked Rose, looking out the window. ‘What about his mother? Is she an astronaut as well?’
‘No. She does something else. She’s away too, Tom said. Looking after bears…’
‘Looking after bears?’
‘In Yellowstone National Park…’
‘Oh, Yellowstone,’ said Rose nodding wisely, as if she went there often. ‘Yogi Bear lives there.’
‘So he’s stopping over here with his English grandmother until school finishes…’
‘Then will he go and help his mother with the bears?’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘Or maybe his father will be back.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Does he like it here?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Indigo, remembering how the rabble had imitated everything Tom said all afternoon, and the way the red-haired gang leader had looked at him. He had looked at Tom in a way that stopped even the lucky ones in the ignored-but-protected group from attempting to make friends.
‘I wonder if Daddy ever thought of being an astronaut,’ remarked Rose. ‘We could have gone and watched him being blasted off. Do you mind if I have some of your peanuts?’
‘Help yourself! Hello, here’s Saffy!’
Saffron came bouncing through the door looking very pleased with herself and asking, ‘Has Indigo told you how Sarah and I saved his life, Rose?’
‘No I haven’t, and anyway, you didn’t!’ said Indigo. ‘And don’t you ever come barging into our washroom like that again! It was awful!’
‘Had to be done!’ said Saffron cheerfully. ‘And me and Sarah enjoyed it, if you didn’t. It was lovely the way that boy’s hair came out! It was terribly loose, I hardly had to twitch it.’
‘You told me you were fine at school, Indigo!’ exclaimed Rose. ‘Perfectly all right, you said!’
‘I was,’ said Indigo. ‘Perfectly. I promise I was.’
‘He was,’ Saffron told Rose. ‘You needn’t start worrying. Sarah and I just checked up on him, that’s all. Where’s your glasses? I promised Caddy I’d remind you.’
‘Well, you have reminded me.’
‘Where are they?’
Rose opened the cupboard door and pointed, so that Saffy could see where her glasses were, barracked in a corner by a pot of apricot jam, gone mouldy on the top.
‘Are you going to leave them in there?’
‘Yes. Unless there’s any stars I need to look at.’ Rose suddenly remembered some news she had to tell. ‘Caddy telephoned while I was here on my own. She says she got back OK, and she’s looking after someone’s chinchilla. She’s got it in her room. What’s a chinchilla look like?’
‘A sort of catty rabbity squirrelly koala beary thing,’ Saffron told her. ‘Where’s Mum? I’m starving to death.’
‘She’s in the shed,’ said Rose. ‘Asleep. So not cooking. I’m hungry too. I should like something hot.’
In her picture a catty rabbity squirrelly koala beary thing had already begun to materialise on the roof beside Caddy. Saffron and Indigo watched in admiration as Rose rubbed silver highlights into its fur with spit and the corner of a tea towel.
‘I should like soup,’ Rose remarked hungrily.
She finished the highlights, scratched in delicate curling whiskers with her fingernail, and added two bright reflections to the eyes. The chinchilla came suddenly to life, as all Rose’s pictures did.
‘Hot soup,’ said Rose, and began to shade in the deep water lapping around the walls of the family home.
Saffron and Indigo looked at each other, and then out of the window towards the closed door of the shed. There was no sign of anyone hurrying out to prepare hot soup, or anything else for that matter.
‘I suppose we could make soup…’ said Indigo doubtfully, ‘but it would take ages. And anyway we would need the stuff to make it with…vegetables and things…’
Rose interrupted to explain that she meant proper soup, out of tins.
‘Tins!’ exclaimed Saffron, all at once remembering they had that very thing, tins of soup won by Sarah’s mother in a raffle and donated to the Cassons the year before. It took a little while to find them among the enormous clutter of the Casson kitchen, but they were unearthed at last from behind a box of Christmas decorations.
In no time at all hopeful smells started to fill the air. Rose sniffed them happily and read the labels. ‘“Minestrone.” Lovely! Why didn’t Sarah’s mother want it?’
‘She doesn’t like stuff out of tins.’
‘What’s the matter with stuff out of tins?’
‘She says it’s not proper cooking. Dad is just the same.’
‘Is he?’
‘You must remember.’
‘Why do you think Daddy never comes home any more?’ asked Rose, and Saffron and Indigo looked at her in surprise.
‘He comes home!’ said Saffy, at once. ‘Of course he comes home! Doesn’t he, Indy?’
‘Yes,’ said Indigo, although he did not speak quite as certainly as Saffron had done. ‘He does come home. Not as much as he used to. But he comes when we need him.’
Rose snorted.
‘He does rush home in an emergency,’ agreed Saffron. ‘Sometimes he makes an awful fuss, but he always does it. Like he did to get your glasses, Rose.’
‘That wasn’t an emergency.’
‘Well then, like when Indy had to go to hospital last term and have a blood transfusion. And when Caddy ran away from University after she’d only been there a week, because she was so homesick.’
‘And when the car got wheel-clamped and taken away and the guinea pig was still in the boot,’ said Indigo. ‘He came home all those times.’
‘Those times were all ages ago,’ objected Rose. ‘Do you think he would come home now if we needed him to?’
‘Of course he would,’ said Indigo and Saffron.
Rose thought about that, on Tuesday evening when they had soup again, and on Wednesday, when the soup was all gone. That evening, on the way to the chip shop, Eve’s car hiccuped and stopped only a few hundred yards from home. Rose and her mother, who had climbed in with high hopes only a minute or two before, climbed out again very dejectedly and plodded home. There it soon became apparent that the only possible hot food was jacket potatoes.
‘Daddy is the one who is good at supermarkets,’ said Eve apologetically, as she switched on the oven. ‘Never mind, Rose, you like jacket potatoes.’
This was true, and Rose tried not to think about the endless hungry time that would have to pass between the potatoes being put in the oven, and them being taken out again, ready to eat. She occupied a part of it by writing to her father.
Darling Daddy,
Poor Saffy. She had a big fight in the boys toilets on Monday did you know? A very big fight and Sarah helped and it was terrifying. Said a boy in my class who has a brother who was there.
Rose was not at all sure that Indigo and Saffron were correct when they agreed that their artistic but absent father could be relied upon to rush home in times of crisis, but she thought it was worth a try.
Saffy washed her hands and said Never Ever Never Dare You Touch My Brother. (Indigo). And the plug holes were blocked with hair.
Love from Rose.
Rose read it through and decided it needed something more, a homely touch, so that it was not all crisis. She looked around the kitchen for inspiration and then added another few lines.
Sarah’s mother has given us soup. Soup soup soup and then it was all gone.
L.F.R.
She scribbled a row of kisses across the bottom of the page, found a stamp and an envelope, addressed it, and pushed her letter inside, hammering the stamp down hard with her fist.
