Love From Joy

by Jenny Valentine

  Claude gets back just after five, in a bad mood. She sits in the kitchen, staring into space and eating biscuit after biscuit. When she asks me where the fascist dictators are, I say, ‘I think they went to do a food shop.’

  She rolls her eyes extravagantly. ‘See? They even control what we eat.’

  I ask her how her day has been, and she says, ‘As rubbish as yesterday.’

  ‘Was yesterday rubbish?’ I ask, because I really don’t think so, and she says, ‘Yes, Joy. And before you ask, tomorrow will be as well.’

  ‘Why will it?’

  Claude’s shoulders are as high up as her ears. ‘It just will.’ Then she sighs dramatically and says that Riddle is a mean rubbish person with an ego problem and she only stops sighing when she has another biscuit in her mouth.

  ‘What did he do this time?’ I ask her.

  Claude starts counting Riddle’s crimes on her fingers. ‘He said I ate too much and he didn’t like my trainers. He ignored me at first break. He will not stop looking at his own reflection. He is in love with the sound of his own voice and he thinks he’s right and I’m wrong. All. The. Time.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I say. ‘He doesn’t sound like much fun.’

  ‘I have dumped him,’ she says. ‘He is history.’

  ‘Well, good,’ I tell her. ‘That’s very clever of you.’ And I swear I see the tiniest glint in her eye which is the start of a smile.

  I am just about to go out to the corner to post my letter to Fedor when I see Grandad strolling down the front path, whistling. This is not a thing I have ever heard him do before. When he comes into the kitchen, he takes off his hat and bows with a flourish like a prince in a cartoon.

  ‘Hello, fair maidens,’ he says, and Claude looks confused and says, ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I am better than all right,’ says Grandad. ‘I am tickety-boo.’

  ‘You’re what?’ Claude says.

  ‘Tip top,’ Grandad says. ‘A-okay. I am the bee’s knees.’

  I think he has a leaf stuck in his hair. His cheeks are pink from the cold and I swear his eyes are twinkling.

  ‘Have you been somewhere nice?’ I say, hoping that I know precisely where.

  ‘Just out,’ he says, winking at Claude, who shudders and grabs a handful of biscuits and starts going upstairs to our room.

  I think it is a very good time to see if I can dig a hole in Grandad’s garden to bury Benny’s birthday present. All signs point to YES. And in fact when I ask him, he waves his arms around and says, ‘Wonderful idea. I’m going to take up that concrete and dig the whole thing over and plant vegetables anyway.’

  ‘What’s got into him?’ Claude says, coming back into the kitchen for her school bag just as Grandad goes out of the back door into the garden, twittering like a songbird.

  I say nothing, because even though I’m hoping that he has been struck by a lightning bolt of love-at-first-sight for a certain green-fingered, cat-kidnapping neighbour, I don’t actually know the full story. I think I’ll sleep on it, and wait to find out if it might be true.

  There is one thing I know I’m not going to be able to sleep on, because if I try, it will only keep me awake. So at supper, I ask Mum and Dad if they are splitting up. I just come out with it. I sit up straight and say it quickly before I have time to change my mind.

  Mum blinks before she answers me. Dad has trouble swallowing his rice. Claude’s face goes purple with the effort of not talking, and when Buster disappears through the kitchen window, Grandad looks like he wants to disappear with him.

  It is quiet for so long that I am starting to wish I hadn’t asked.

  Then Mum says, ‘No, darling.’

  ‘What gave you that idea?’ Dad says, and I look at Claude, who says nothing. Her eyes are two ping-pong balls, but her mouth is a tight full-stop.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Dad says. ‘We are very busy and distracted.’

  Mum joins in. ‘With really boring grown-up stuff.’

  ‘Like what?’ I say.

  ‘Banks,’ Dad says. ‘And job interviews and night shifts.’

  ‘Medical records,’ Mum says. ‘And birth certificates and credit cards.’

  ‘Not with divorce,’ Dad says, and Mum nods. ‘Not with splitting up.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I say. ‘Do you promise?’

  They hold hands with me over the salt and pepper, and they speak at exactly the same time and they are smiling. ‘Yes, we’re sure, and, yes, we promise.’

  Then Dad says, ‘Not this week anyway,’ and Mum laughs.

  ‘GOOD,’ I say, and Grandad starts breathing again and I ask Claude to pass me the mustard.

  ‘Here,’ she says, and her voice is a bit wobbly, and when I look at her, her eyes are filling with tears.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I say, and she shakes her head and her eyes fill up a bit more.

  She takes a bite of a mushroom. She has difficulty chewing it. I don’t think it is easy to chew anything while you are trying your absolute hardest not to cry.

  ‘Claude?’ Mum says, and my sister looks at her.

  ‘What’s wrong, darling?’ says Dad, and she looks at him too.

  I am crossing everything that she is not going to start her answer with, ‘Joy, please tell Mum and/or Dad…’ and I am in luck, because she doesn’t.

  Instead she says, in a very small voice, ‘I’ve been worried,’ and saying it is like opening the door in the dam to let all the water flood through, and she is nothing but tears.

  Mum and Dad get up at the same time to give her a hug. They wrap their arms around her at the dinner table, like half a giant octopus. All I can see of Claude is her red hair.

  On the other side of the window, Buster sits and licks his lips in the night air.

  I look at Grandad. His top button is undone. His hair is bordering on what he would call scruffy.

  And I can feel it in my bones, that everything on my list is about to change for the better.

  This change happens pretty quickly, before even I am expecting it, because it turns out that my sister has been doing some digging of her own.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ she says, when we are cleaning our teeth and getting into our pyjamas. ‘I think you might be right about Benny and Clark Watson.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I’ve been asking around at school.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘First of all,’ she says through her toothpaste, ‘I spoke to Sam.’

  Straight away this makes me nervous. ‘Sam Hooper?’ I say. ‘Benny’s Sam?’

  ‘Yes, Benny’s Sam.’ Claude smiles at her own reflection in the mirror. She shows her teeth to herself and grins. ‘He’s nice,’ she says, without moving her mouth. ‘I like him. He said you are all planning a surprise party for Benny’s birthday and he said I could help.’

  I am not enjoying this conversation as much as Claude is. This is not a thing I can say very often. ‘What else did he tell you?’

  ‘He didn’t know anything about any bullying. He was very surprised and he said he thought Benny was being all serious and secretive about your tree.’

  My best friend’s secret is out and I find myself behaving quite like him, and staring at the floor. There is a hole in my sock and my little toe is poking out of it. For some strange reason, I think it looks frightened and alone. ‘Benny didn’t want to tell Sam,’ I say. ‘He didn’t want him to know.’

  Claude scowls and spits into the sink. ‘Well, that’s ridiculous. If someone was bullying you, I’d want to be the first to know about it.’

  ‘You would?’

  ‘Of course I would. You’re my little sister. The only person who’s allowed to be mean to you is me.’

  ‘Thanks, Claude,’ I say. I hug her really quickly, before she has time to stop me, and then I let go.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she says. ‘Just don’t make it weird.’

  ‘I won’t. I promise.’

  ‘Anyway,’ she carries on talking and te
eth-brushing, ‘Sam won’t be saying anything to Clark Watson.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She smiles at herself again. ‘Because I told him what Jojo told me.’

  I don’t know who Jojo is, but I am in too much of a hurry to ask anything else except, ‘Which was what?’

  Claude says that according to this person called Jojo, Jet and Clark’s mum is not very well. ‘Like a lot not very well,’ she says. She looks serious and I know she means it.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Like off the charts, Joy.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  She says that Jojo says that Jet Watson has had to get a job after school to help with money problems. ‘And Clark has to do everything at home, all the cooking and cleaning and shopping and the trying to look after their mum.’

  I don’t know what to say yet so I keep quiet.

  ‘It’s a LOT,’ Claude says. And I know she is right. I am sure that this is much closer to the full story, which is that Clark Watson is sad and tired and lonely and worried and jealous of people like me and Benny who can walk home and up the stairs at Sunningdale without carrying four heavy bags and can sit on the swings eating crisps or go to the fair or try to feed parakeets or watch cartoons or dig for treasure, because we have all the spare time in the world. I am convinced that this is the main reason why he has stopped being friends with Benny and started throwing stuff and being mean to him everywhere instead.

  Clark Watson needs some help. And even I can see that it is more help than Benny and I can give him.

  The banner from Year Five’s assembly is still burning my eyes and reminding me that the best way to deal with difficult things is to go ahead and say them.

  SPEAK UP, BE KIND AND TELL THE TRUTH! HELP SOMEBODY TODAY.

  The very least we can do, tomorrow at school, first thing, is start.

  As soon as I see Benny, I tell him the new information about Clark that I found out from Claude. I don’t tell him that she has spoken to Sam. I do say that what’s going on in Clark’s family must be the reason he is being so mean and angry. Benny doesn’t shrug and read the blurb on my juice box, but he also doesn’t say much. I’m sure it must be hard for him to understand his own bully, or feel even a little bit sorry for him, but I am hoping this will happen sooner or later. I am leaving these new facts to filter down through the rock of Benny’s brain, the way rainwater gets filtered by rocks until it is sweet and clean enough to drink.

  While it is filtering, I warn him that something strange is probably going to happen in the very near future, but please can he trust me when I say everything will be okay.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he says.

  ‘I’m talking about the Clark Watson problem,’ I tell him, and he looks at me out of the side of his eyes and just about mumbles. ‘Oh. Okay.’

  I say that I am determined to be nice to Clark, given the circumstances, the first chance I get, and that even though it might not seem that way to Benny, he is still my absolute all-time favourite best friend ever, and I am one hundred per cent doing it for him.

  Benny nods quickly, but he doesn’t meet my eye.

  And when Clark comes up right behind us on the way back to 6C, I take the leap and say, ‘Hello, Clark.’

  Even with my special warning, Benny is not prepared for that. He stops dead in his tracks. He shudders to a halt like a sleeper train. His eyes are big and round and the scar on his forehead has completely vanished.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he hisses at me out of one side of his mouth.

  ‘Are you talking to me?’ Clark asks in his quiet playground voice.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, and I smile as hard as I can. My face feels like it is frozen. Clark Watson makes his way round Benny like he is a bollard. I notice that he does not smile back.

  Benny still hasn’t moved. He looks at me like I have betrayed him. He says in a fierce whisper, ‘What is going on?’

  ‘Trust me,’ I whisper back, and when he follows me into the classroom, I cross my fingers and I really hope I have got this right.

  * * *

  It actually isn’t long before my next chance happens. In fact, it is miraculously quick. This term, we have been learning about the Victorians. Mrs Hunter is reading to us about the life of a scullery maid. This is a girl not much older than Claude who sleeps under the kitchen table and scrubs floors and cleans fires and does laundry in a big sink and heats water for other people to have their baths. I am keeping it zipped about how that still happens in lots of places, even now, and isn’t just a thing from two hundred years ago, and I am doing this because I know it’s what Mrs Hunter wants from me.

  She says, ‘Most Victorians didn’t have showers and all the modern conveniences you all take for granted. They used a jug and basin to keep themselves clean. And went to the public baths. And would have maybe had a tin bath at home less than once a week.’

  ‘Ewwwwww,’ says half of 6C. And then Bailey Parker, who is a big boy with freckles like grains of sand, says loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘That’s more baths than Clark Watson has,’ and he holds his nose and wafts the air like he is waving a bad smell away.

  One half of 6C giggles. The other half looks shocked, and a bit glad Bailey Parker isn’t talking about them. Mrs Hunter’s lips go tight like they are stuck together with glue. This usually happens before she says something very cross and sends someone to the headteacher.

  Clark Watson is wide eyed and as red as a berry. This is the first time I have noticed that his jumper is grubby and his trousers have a hole in them and his shoes look as muddy as if he came to school through a swamp. He stares at the ground like he is wishing the swamp would appear right now and swallow him whole.

  I don’t have a moment to waste. I look Mrs Hunter straight in the eye and I say, without putting my hand up, at the top of my voice. ‘Oh, that’s NOTHING. When we went trekking in the Himalayas I didn’t see a bath for ONE WHOLE MONTH.’

  I look over at Benny and open my eyes really wide. I am silently willing him to join in, but he doesn’t. He looks scared and lost and a bit angry. Now, both halves of 6C are pointing at me and laughing, which is fine with me, because it means they have already forgotten about how many times Clark Watson might or might not be washing in a week, and that was my plan.

  Mrs Hunter nods at me. It is very quick and almost unnoticeable. For the first time in my school life so far, she does not tell me off for calling out and interrupting in class. She makes everyone close their mouths and sit on their hands, and for the rest of the time she is reading, we are quieter than mice.

  When the bell goes, Mrs Hunter asks Bailey Parker to stay behind, and the rest of us file out one by one and in silence like a snake in the long grass. In the lunch queue, Benny and I are perilously close to Clark Watson, and I can feel Benny being very uncomfortable about it. He grips onto his packed lunch extra tight. It is egg and cress, his favourite, and I am guessing he doesn’t want to lose it.

  ‘What was that all about in class?’ he asks me.

  ‘Bailey Parker shouldn’t have done that,’ I say. ‘It was unkind. It was mean.’

  ‘Yeah, but Clark’s mean too,’ Benny says. ‘Why did you stick up for him?’

  ‘I told you,’ I said. ‘I’m going to be Clark Watson’s friend however I can, however mean he is being.’

  ‘Ssshhh,’ Benny says, because he doesn’t want Clark to notice we are talking about him. He doesn’t want us to be noticed at all.

  I whisper back, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What do you think being out-of-the-blue nice to him is going to do?’ Benny says. ‘Make him instantly stop bullying me?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I tell him, and Benny clamps his jaw shut and nods his head, like what I’m doing is useless, and he is right and he has made his point.

  ‘It can’t hurt, though,’ I say.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, being kind to him might not make things better straight away, but it definitely won’t make things wor
se.’

  Benny mumbles. ‘They can’t get much worse.’

  ‘Exactly. So next time it’s your turn.’

  My best friend looks at me like I have been replaced by a replica and he is only just realizing it.

  ‘My turn?’ he says. ‘My? Turn?’

  ‘Yes. If you feel like it, I mean.’

  Just then, one of the boys from 6F comes past us with Bailey Parker and when they see Clark Watson they hold their noses and the boy from 6F whose name is Steven Richards says something about raw sewage and Bailey laughs and Clark turns red as a berry again and frowns at the floor.

  I look at Benny and Benny looks at me.

  The banner is right above our heads. It runs the length of the room from the door to the lunch counter. SPEAK UP, BE KIND AND TELL THE TRUTH! HELP SOMEBODY TODAY!

  Benny swallows. He clenches his fists. I swear his feet push into the floor and he gets a tiny bit taller.

  ‘BAILEY,’ he calls after them, and Bailey and Steven Richards turn and smile. They both like Benny, because he is so good at running and football, and because he is just so completely easy to like.

  Clark Watson stops frowning at his shoes. He is watching. I know this because I am watching him back. Quite a few people are. The queue is quieter than normal. Bailey and Steven Richards are starting to look uncomfortable.

  Benny takes a deep breath. ‘Not kind,’ he says.

  Bailey acts confused. ‘Huh? What?’

  Benny shrugs. ‘You heard me.’ He is pointing up at the banner. ‘Leave him alone.’

  Now it is Bailey’s turn to glare at his own footwear. He looks ashamed. Steven Richards puts his hands in his pockets and sort of edges away from him. And before Bailey can say anything back to Benny, the queue moves and it is our turn to go and sit down at a table and so we are gone.

  I haven’t taken my eyes off Clark Watson. He looks like he has just woken up somewhere and isn’t sure where that somewhere is. He doesn’t speak to us, but he is staring at Benny sort of like he hasn’t really seen him before. Benny nods at Clark, the way Mrs Hunter nodded at me, and Clark nods back. It isn’t a sorry or a thank-you, but it does feel like something. It definitely feels like a start.