Permanent Rose

by Hilary McKay

  ‘Rose!’ said Eve, kissing her. ‘And MarcusJoshPatrick…Which is it? I always forget.’

  ‘David,’ said David.

  ‘David. Look where you are walking, David darling! Those things are very special.’

  ‘They are not,’ said Saffron loudly, over the sound of the telephone which had begun again. ‘They are not remotely special! David can walk over them as much as he likes. There was nothing in that box worth saving for so long! They made me feel like I was no one at all!’

  ‘Oh Saffy!’ exclaimed Eve. ‘After darling Daddy saved them so carefully for you!’

  ‘HE IS NOT DARLING DADDY!’ shouted Saffron. ‘Answer that telephone someone, for goodness’ sake!’

  David, feeling tremendously important, picked it up and said, ‘Hello, hello! This is David! To whom do you want to speak?’

  ‘To Caddy of course,’ snapped Michael on the other end of the line. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She’s here,’ said David. ‘Shaking her head. Saying no no.’

  Caddy rested her head on a sticky patch of table and moaned.

  ‘Ask her what she has done with her ring!’

  ‘What ring?’ said David.

  Caddy grabbed the telephone from him and banged it down.

  ‘What ring?’ asked David again, goggling at her in surprise.

  ‘My ring!’ shouted Caddy, irritated beyond endurance. ‘My diamond and platinum engagement ring! That’s what ring!’

  ‘I’ve always liked the look of Michael,’ remarked Sarah to no one in particular. ‘I’ll have him if you like, Caddy!’

  ‘Oh no you won’t!’

  ‘Well, you don’t want him! Saffy doesn’t want him! Rose is still getting over that loser Tom…’

  Rose picked up the plastic bowl of cake mixture (double quantities of everything, beaten egg white just stirred in) and dumped it upside down on Sarah’s head.

  Caddy ran upstairs.

  ‘If anyone wants me,’ said Eve, ‘I shall be in my shed. I am tired of being a single parent and I’m not surprised Bill left.’

  Sarah wiped chocolate cake mixture out of her eyes and said, ‘Sorry, Rose.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Rose.

  ‘Come on,’ said Saffron to Sarah. ‘I’ll help you wash your hair.’

  Indigo made tea and took it out to Eve.

  David and Rose found themselves alone together. David stared round. He felt as if something should be said to sum up this enormous mess of paper and shouting and cake mixture and emotion. It seemed wrong that it should pass with no comment at all.

  Rose began to doodle in a patch of spilled flour. David groped in his mind for words that might do. He was dreadfully hot.

  ‘It’s the weather,’ he said, and was immediately surprised that the words he had wanted had somehow found themselves.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Rose.

  ‘I wonder what will happen next.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Rose.

  Saffron and Sarah knew what had to happen next the moment they came down from the bathroom. It took two bottles of detergent, a whole roll of paper towels, a great deal of hot water, and ages of Radio 1 turned up very loud.

  Caddy decided that what should happen next should be a phone call to London. She made it, and Samanatha answered and listened with surprising understanding while Caddy tearfully explained that there were too many people at home, and that Michael came round every day, and that she, Caddy, could no longer bear the thought of being married to anyone, no matter how gorgeous, if it involved settling down for ever with a house full of children and learning to cook. And when Caddy stopped talking to blow her nose Samantha said sympathetically, ‘Perhaps you need to get away for a while.’

  ‘I do, I do,’ said Caddy, and afterwards began to pack.

  Indigo decided that food should happen next, and he cooked a strange meal of egg and chips and jam sandwiches for everyone except Rose who said she wanted porridge.

  ‘Porridge,’ said Indigo, and cooked that too.

  Evening came, and David remembered his promise to Rose. He took himself off to visit his grandfather, who he thought might lend him a spade.

  Indigo went up and sat on the end of Rose’s bed. She was curled up there, looking a little grubby and forlorn, but she brightened up at the sight of him.

  ‘Thank you for the porridge.’

  ‘That’s OK.’

  ‘Did you bring your book?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is there any more in it about Lancelot that I haven’t heard?’

  ‘Yes. But a lot of it is sad.’

  ‘Sad a long time ago isn’t the same as sad nowadays,’ said Rose.

  ‘That’s true. Well then. Lancelot had a friend called Sir Ector. They fetched Sir Ector when Lancelot died. He was very fond of Lancelot. This is what he said.’

  Skipping bits to make it easier for Rose, Indigo read, ‘“…and now I dare say,” said Sir Ector, “thou Sir Lancelot, there thou liest, thou that were never matched of earthly knight’s hand…And thou were the kindest man that ever struck with sword…And thou were the truest friend that ever bestrad horse…And thou were the goodliest person that ever came among press of knights.”’

  Indigo stopped and looked across at Rose.

  ‘People were good at being friends in those days,’ said Rose. ‘Better than now.’

  ‘What about Saffy and Sarah?’ asked Indigo. ‘They are friends like that. And Michael and you. And Tom. And David. I told you before, these days are the same as those days.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Rose was quiet for so long that Indigo thought she had fallen asleep, until she said drowsily, ‘Tell me their names. Lancelot and Kay. Percival. Arthur. The girl in the bath…What was she called?

  ‘Elaine. And there was Tristram and Isoud. Guinevere. Balin and Balan and Bagdemagus.’

  ‘Bagdemagus is a lovely name.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘And did they stay together always?’

  ‘No, no. Some of them went off for ages and ages.’

  ‘Then what did the others do?’

  ‘Waited till they came back.’

  ‘Like you and Tom?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I hate waiting,’ said Rose. ‘I would have gone to look!’

  ‘Some of them did that too.’

  ‘On their horses?’

  ‘Yes. Or on their ships maybe.’

  ‘I would need an aeroplane,’ said Rose.

  Chapter Nine

  All that week the heat had piled up like a curse and by Wednesday evening it was heavy with menace. Clouds began to build, shutting down the sky like a blanket. All afternoon people had said, ‘Listen! Was that thunder?’

  Everywhere that David had ever itched began a simultaneous itching. Flies continually lost their sense of direction and hit him in the face. David ground his itches absent-mindedly through his clothes as he walked along. He was thinking about spades, and he was rubbing his itches, and he was feeling, on the whole, pretty good. He always felt good going to his grandfather’s house.

  David’s grandfather was (to David’s continual surprise and pleasure) one of his very few relations who actually liked him. And, what was more surprising, had always liked him.

  David’s grandfather had stubbornly liked David all through his shoplifting, bullying, bus-stop vandalising, banned-from-the-swimming-pool, disgraceful-and-not-too-distant days. Remarking, at each new awful revelation (none of which was ever spared him), ‘I daresay.’ And adding, as often as not, ‘He gets on very well with me.’ (Which was quite true, although surprising.) Saying also, ‘He’ll come through a very nice lad,’ (which, even more surprisingly, also seemed to be turning out to be true).

  He’ll not mind lending me a spade, thought David.

  Even as he walked the clouds grew darker and heavier. Then the light changed. It became yellow and alien. It was like the world was being given one last chance to look around before the sky fell down.

  There wer
e a few drops of rain and then nothing happened.

  The rain excited people. They talked about it to each other. They noticed that it had an incredible smell, a mixture of spice and dustbins. They saw how it left reddish marks on white surfaces. A gusty wind had come up from the south. Someone said, ‘That rain was full of dust from Africa,’ and this exotic but unfounded story spread through the town by a network of old men at bus stops, shop girls travelling home, mothers lamenting the cost of back-to-school shoes, boys on skateboards, buskers packing up for the day and swifts screeching low over the rooftops like mini jet planes.

  The news reached David as he sneaked out of his grandfather’s shed, spade in hand, and bumped into his grandfather.

  ‘That rain was straight from Africa,’ said David’s grandfather, who had never been further than London in his life. ‘Africa!’ He took out a handkerchief, wiped a dusty splodge off the bonnet of his car, and inspected the faint redness almost reverently. ‘Think of that! And I daresay they could have done with it there themselves. What are you planning to do with my spade?’

  ‘Bury a cat,’ said David, and his grandfather said, ‘Good lad,’ and let him go.

  David made his way to Tom’s old house in the darkness of the edge of a storm. It broke as he arrived, flinging the tops of the yew trees like black brooms against the sky. The rain began again and this time did not stop. David buried the sodden cat in a downpour of cold water that seemed wet beyond anything he had ever experienced, and he dug up Caddy’s ring by pink and purple lightning.

  Bill was not pleased when he heard that Samantha (in his absence) had told Caddy that his beautiful, shining, minimal-junk-containing London apartment (where even Samantha was only allowed to visit, not stay) was Caddy’s for as long as she liked.

  ‘She needs to get away for a while,’ said Samantha serenely. ‘I told her she must come at once.’

  ‘But we will be in New York!’ Bill protested. ‘There will be no one to keep an eye on her. And all her friends will be round as soon as they hear she is in town! She will probably have half the under-twenty-fives in London sleeping on the floor!’

  ‘Gosh, lovely!’ said Samantha.

  ‘Not to mention she is the most untidy person on the planet, except possibly Eve…’

  ‘I thought you said I was!’

  ‘I shall not be able to relax for a minute!’

  ‘Who goes to New York to relax?’ asked Samantha.

  ‘Samantha darling,’ said Bill crossly. ‘I am going because of my work but you are coming purely for pleasure! I was thinking of it as a sort of second honeymoon!’

  ‘Second?’ asked Samantha. ‘Second!’ And she added that she had been thinking of it as a free trip and shopping and she wasn’t sure she wanted to go now at all.

  Then they had a quarrel which Samantha won.

  Afterwards Bill sat down to write out a long list of instructions for Caddy on how not to destroy his flat.

  Followed by an equally long list of numbers she could ring for help if she accidentally did destroy it anyway. Samantha watched him writing with a very thoughtful expression on her face.

  ‘Planning your shopping list?’ asked Bill.

  ‘No,’ said Samantha, and continued to look thoughtful.

  David was very tired by the time he got home, and his mother was very cross. She said she’d been thinking any minute the police would ring up, and she would have to go trailing out to collect him from the cells again. This was not fair at all; she made it sound like she had had to do this dozens of times, instead of only once. It hadn’t been a cell even then (nothing so glamorous). It had been a waiting room.

  David was too weary to point this out. He said, ‘Sorry Mum,’ and staggered dopily up to bed. But before he went to sleep he took Rose’s ring out of his sodden pocket (where it had become embedded in a dissolving strawberry bubble gum), wrapped it in a paper handkerchief, and stowed it carefully under his pillow.

  By morning the ring was part of a gluey bundle of tissue and mud and bubble gum. David took it to the bathroom and began to scrub it clean with his toothbrush. And as it grew cleaner it began to dawn on him that this was a very solid, sparkly, real-looking sort of ring. It did not look like anything from a toy shop, or a comic, or even an exceptionally lucky Lucky Bag.

  I wonder where Rose got it, thought David, and as if in answer he seemed to hear again the voices in the Casson kitchen the day before.

  ‘What ring?’ he had asked.

  ‘My diamond ring!’ Caddy had shouted. ‘My diamond and platinum engagement ring! That’s what ring!’

  ‘Crikey, Rose!’ whispered David as he stared at the ring. He was torn between horror and admiration. He himself had never pinched anything to touch it.

  However, he knew exactly what would have happened if he had. He had not forgotten, and never would forget, the morning his own mother had shopped him to the police. Nor the hideous afternoon going through his bedroom, producing stolen goods. Nor the even worse day, spent apologising to store managers. Or the pocket moneyless weeks that followed, the letters he had to write, and the horrible, still-present feeling of everyone knowing and remembering, every time they saw him.

  The thought of these things happening to Rose was awful.

  I should have stopped her as soon as I knew, he told himself. I knew about that bottle of stuff. I saw her take that guitar pick. I let her get away with it, and now this! Diamond and platinum!

  And what else? wondered David.

  That day the Early Morning Rose Delivery Service brought Rose a whole bunch of roses, damp and sweet from the rain the night before.

  ‘We couldn’t choose,’ said Michael. He was grinning at her out of the car window, and Rose saw that he had someone with him.

  ‘My mate Luke,’ said Michael. ‘Luke, Permanent Rose! Luke’s just back from a trip round the Pacific Ocean on his motorbike, Rose.’

  ‘Why didn’t he sink?’ asked Rose.

  ‘The edge of the Pacific Ocean!’ explained Michael, while Luke said, ‘I edge round edges! I’m doing Europe next.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Rose. ‘Do you go very close?’

  ‘Close as I can get.’

  Rose had a quick vision of a motorbike steering very carefully round the extreme edge of a cliff.

  ‘Can you swim?’ she asked politely.

  ‘Like a whale.’

  ‘Oh good.’

  The postman was coming nearer and nearer. Usually he just strode by as if he didn’t see her, but this morning he looked at Rose as if he had something to say. Rose held her breath and forgot about Michael and his friend, and motorbikes and whales.

  And then suddenly he was past, just like all the other days. Rose stared after him in disbelief.

  ‘One day Tom will write,’ said Michael gently.

  ‘Saffy says he’s forgotten about us.’

  ‘Never,’ said Michael. ‘Not possible! I should know!’

  ‘Should you?’

  ‘Think I haven’t tried?’ asked Michael, starting his engine up. ‘How’s Caddy? Bearing up? No, don’t answer! I shouldn’t have asked. Bye, Rosy Pose!’

  Rose watched them go with relief. She was very glad she had not had to talk about Caddy, because Caddy was on her way to London. She had hugged them all as if she was going away for ever, and wandered off to the railway station with her old rucksack on her back.

  ‘Let me drive you,’ offered Eve.

  ‘No, no,’ said Caddy. ‘I’ve plenty of time and walking is so peaceful. And I hate station goodbyes! I’ll come back as soon as I’ve thought what to do. Don’t tell Michael the telephone number!’

  She had gone, and two minutes later returned again.

  ‘Promise to tell me the second it happens if anybody finds my ring?’

  Rose did not like to think of that second goodbye.

  She looked up from her roses, and there was David, puffing up the street towards her.

  David had hurried all the way, thinking as he jogged and
rested and jogged again, What else has she taken? As soon as he came up to Rose he dragged the diamond and platinum ring out of his pocket, held it in front of her eyes and demanded, ‘What…’

  Rose grabbed at the ring but missed.

  ‘…else?’ asked David sternly. ‘Rose! You’re going to get into such awful trouble you don’t know! That guitar pick! That bottle of stuff! Tell me the rest!’

  ‘I won’t tell you anything,’ said Rose.

  ‘I’m telling Indigo then!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I have to. Where is he?’

  ‘Inside. Don’t tell Indigo, please, David!’

  Something in her voice caught David by surprise. He seemed to hear himself begging, ‘Don’t tell Grandad, please, Mum!’

  His voice softened a bit.

  ‘I won’t if you tell me what else you took.’

  ‘There wasn’t anything else,’ said Rose sulkily. ‘Just that bottle of nail stuff. And little things from shops.’

  ‘You’ve got to give them all back!’

  ‘I didn’t bring them home. I just left them in the street.’

  ‘In the street?’

  ‘Tidily in the street!’ said Rose, as if that made it completely reasonable.

  David gave up trying to understand. He said, ‘I’ll give you back the ring and I won’t tell Indigo if you promise never to take any more stuff. Not to leave in the street even. Not for anything. Promise?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘And you’ve got to give it all back! The bottle and that guitar pick and the ring!’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Starting with the ring! Go and take it in to your sister!’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I will then!’

  ‘You can’t either. She’s gone. She’s gone to London. She’s catching the train. She went just a while ago.’

  ‘Walking or in her car?’

  ‘Walking.’

  ‘Come on then!’ said David, and he grabbed Rose’s hand and ran her down the street, right at the crossroads, past the park, over the town bridge, and then along the road that ran by the river and led to the railway station.