by Hilary McKay
(I am lost in brackets.)
‘What time does Buttercup wake up?’ asked Tom.
‘Sevenish,’ I told him.
‘Sixish, then,’ said Tom.
Sixish! But here I am, waiting and looking at the photos I took last night on my phone. Buttercup and David building a snowman. Caddy watching a squirrel. Indigo with Sarah balanced in front of him, swooping down the hill in a blur of snow. Michael, leaning against a tree and smiling as if it was summer while Molly and Kiran and Tom pelt him with snowballs which never seem to find a target because Michael is, and always was, part magic.
Here I am, but where, in all this overcrowded and unheated house, is Tom? And I suddenly wonder, was this all an awful joke, to see if I would do it?
This horrid idea sent me creeping upstairs, to the attic where Tom has a nice cosy patch of floor between Indigo and David as a temporary home. And there I found him, snuggled up to David’s monster rucksack, under a pile of old quilts, fast asleep.
The snowball, with which I had fortunately provided myself, got the back of his neck.
Then very slowly Tom opened one eye, yawned one yawn, reached out one hand and pushed away the snowball, blew one kiss in my direction, and snuggled down again.
So I went back to bed.
24th January 2010
Kiran said, very dismally, ‘How unattractive would you say I was, on a scale of 10?’
So Molly said zero and I said ten, and then we sorted out the maths and explained that we both meant the same. Not unattractive one bit. Very funny and cool and quite pretty too. Very pretty in fact, and clever and good clothes.
‘Except you shouldn’t wear orange bras under white shirts,’ said Molly. ‘Because they show through.’
‘That’s the whole idea,’ said Kiran, more gloomily than ever.
‘Oh,’ said Molly and me.
‘It’s not fair,’ said Kiran. ‘You’ve got Kai, Molly, and Rose has Tom but I haven’t got anyone.’
I straight away offered the ever-available David who lives in our attic.
‘No thanks very much,’ said Kiran.
‘Borrow Kai,’ said Molly generously. ‘Keep him if you like him. He hasn’t grown a millimetre since Year 6.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Kiran.
So then Molly and I offered every single boy we knew and had control over (and that comes to quite a lot) and Kiran said, ‘Too thin. Too much into football. Too grotty. Too much Lynx. Talks a lot about himself. Keeps walking into things. No thanks, I’ve seen his scary dog. No thanks, I’ve seen his scary mum. No thanks, I’ve seen what he wrote on the bus shelter. He’s got a weird laugh. He writes his own rap and sings it in assembly so you must absolutely be joking. He wears white socks. He hasn’t grown since Year 6 either.’
So we took her to the cinema to cheer her up and it worked. She came out in a daze, all dreamy and humming. Molly and I gave each other significant looks.
‘So now we know,’ said Molly.
‘Yes.’
‘Poor Kiran.’
I nodded.
‘A vegetarian would be easy,’ said Molly.
‘A vampire wouldn’t be impossible,’ I agreed. ‘I bet my brother Indigo could find one. He was saying only yesterday that there’s still quite a few goths about, if you know where to look.’
‘It’s the combination, isn’t it?’ asked Molly solemnly. ‘Especially round here. Although I suppose …’
What? What? What can Molly suppose that makes her eyes sparkle like that? ‘… she could always make do with a poster,’ said Molly.
‘Like everybody else.’
Genius!
‘They are three for two on the market,’ said Molly. ‘You and I could have one as well!’
And so that’s where we all rushed next.
Because Tom lives in New York, and makes his little sister write his valentines. And Kai really hasn’t grown a millimetre since Year 6. And there just aren’t any vegetarian vampires. Not, as Molly says, around here.
So we are making do with posters, till something better turns up.
26th April 2010
The latest news, working backwards, starting with volcanoes.
The volcano in Iceland that made all the dust happened while Caddy and Michael and Buttercup were in Australia. They went there more than a month ago to visit Caddy’s friend Alison, and they have been there ever since. Trapped by dust. They say. Even though the clear blue skies are full of planes and everyone has decided that volcanic dust is okay to fly through after all, as long as the pilot can see out of the window. I don’t think they are trying very hard to get home, but Mum says maybe they are just waiting until the weather warms up. ‘That will be easier for all of us,’ she says, and I know what she is thinking of, she is thinking of her NUDES.
Because they are Mummy’s latest way of keeping the wolf from the door. Ever since her last exhibition which was called Skin Deep she has been painting them by the dozen, out in the shed with the calor gas fire roaring because it has been such a cold spring.
‘What about global warming?’ asked Molly in anguish, and Mum said, ‘Darling, as soon as I’ve a moment I will plant a tree to make up.’
But she never will have a moment, because her supply of models is endless, and in between real people she paints celebrities from pictures off the internet. Simon Cowell and Lady Gaga and people like that. They are not rude nudes because they have newspapers or hats in all the critical places, but all the same poor Daddy cannot walk past the market stall where she sells them without nearly dying of shame. Some of Mummy’s Skin Deep celebrities are so popular they have to be painted over and over again, and it was quite interesting the other week to go to the cinema and see Johnny Depp, for once, so completely dressed.
After having seen him so often from so many angles wearing nothing but Indigo’s old electric guitar.
‘It won’t last,’ says Daddy hopefully. ‘And I’m not even sure it is legal. Let the wolf come.’
But Mummy and the wolf are old enemies, and she will not let him come.
Before the volcano and the nudes there was Easter.
Saffron and Sarah came home from University, and David, who lives in the attic and has a hamburger van, scrubbed out his deep fat fryer and bought some new baseball boots to celebrate. Red and yellow, size thirteen. Saffron and Sarah were very careful to admire them, and to say how much the deep fat fryer looked like new, it was so clean. But they were more careful still not to be left alone with David for a single moment, because he is in love with them both equally and cannot resist blurting out this inconvenient fact whenever he gets the chance. And then as soon as he has blurted it he goes and hides in the attic and plays sad music on his drums and it is all very difficult to bear, and in the end Saffron and Sarah toss for who will go upstairs and sacrifice themselves, just to put him out of his misery.
This time it was all right though, and they escaped back to Uni with no dreadful scenes in the attic.
Not like on Valentines day …
Valentines day. I think it should be banned.
‘Rose,’ said Indigo to me, on that hideous occasion. ‘I have to talk to you about Tom.’ And a bit later on he said, ‘Shut up and listen.’
So just for a change, I did.
‘Tom is eighteen,’ said Indigo. ‘And you are thirteen. And Rosy Pose, think about it. It is a long five years in between.’
So I did think about it. And for quite a long time nothing could cheer me up.
And then I got over it.
And wrote this blog.
2nd July 2010
‘Have you got a boyfriend?’ asked Kate who is a very nice girl in my class. ‘Or would you like to come to my brother Ollie’s birthday thing? It’s swimming at the Big Splash and then pizzas. Say you will! Say you will! He doesn’t know I’m asking you. It’ll save me getting him a proper present too.’
‘How?’ I asked.
‘If I can get you,’ Kate explained, and then she sai
d, ‘Don’t look like that! Of course I’ll get him something! It just won’t be as huge as you!’
‘WHAT!’ I said.
‘Probably a make-your-own-birdbox kit,’ said Kate. ‘He likes birds.’ And then she guessed that perhaps I hadn’t said ‘WHAT?’ but ‘WHAT!’ and added, ‘Don’t be silly, Rose! You know I didn’t mean you were huge!’
So I explained that I didn’t say WHAT meaning ‘What present?’ or WHAT meaning ‘How huge do you think I am?’ but ‘WHAT? Me! A present! Your brother’s birthday present? Do people still give humans to other humans as presents then? I didn’t know.’
‘They should,’ said Kate, getting the giggles. ‘I’d like Dr Who. I got a goat in Africa once but it wasn’t the same.’
Then we both couldn’t stop laughing.
I like Kate, and I like Ollie too, and I said I would go to the birthday thing, and Kate said Ollie would be really pleased. ‘He thinks you’re absolutely … Oh never mind! I’ll let him tell you himself,’ she said.
That was in May. It’s July now.
Six weeks.
I haven’t forgotten Tom. I haven’t, I haven’t. But Ollie makes me laugh. He never gets stressed. Or goes off in a huff. He never says, ‘I must have that guitar and only that one though it costs a million pounds.’ In the park, when we found three little boys bellowing, ‘Kill stingers! Kill stingers!’ and stamping on bees, he didn’t get mad. But he stopped them stamping on bees, just the same. ‘They don’t sting,’ he told them. ‘Only for their lives.’ Then he started looking over the flower beds, counting the bees, and with the boys helping he found five different sorts. I didn’t even know there were different sorts, but Ollie did, and all the names and which was the rarest. He left the boys on bee guard, patrolling the flowers.
‘Tom would just have killed those kids,’ I said without thinking afterwards.
‘Who’s Tom?’ asked Ollie. ‘Oh. Don’t tell me. I think I probably know.’
‘Is it possible,’ I asked my best friends Molly and Kiran, ‘to be in love with two people at once?’
‘Oh Rose!’ said Kiran, reproachfully, but Molly said, ‘Of course it is. Look at me and Kai and David Attenborough!’
So that’s all right.
9th September 2010
Michael chose the twins’ names all by himself. He refused to be hurried. ‘They have to be perfect,’ he said. ‘Nothing to do with paint. Nothing to do with Patgonian sea lions …’ (That was Buttercup.) ‘Perfect. It may take some time.’
It took three weeks, but finally there came an afternoon when everyone was at our house, including Saffy’s best friend Sarah, and Tom over from America, and David and Buttercup, dragged in from the garden and one of their endless games of football.
‘Now,’ said Michael, in his best driving instructor’s voice, ‘concentrate and no complaining! That one Sarah just grabbed …’ (it was the pointy eared silver topped one) ‘that’s Jassy!’
‘JASSY?’ repeated everyone. ‘JASSY!’
‘And the other one that Rose is sitting on,’ continued Michael serenely. ‘That’s Juniper!’
‘Jassy and Juniper?’ we kept exclaiming. ‘Jassy and Juniper! JASSY AND JUNIPER!’
There was no complaining, but there was a lot of surprise even though, as Sarah said, Jassy was gorgeous and Juniper perfect for the little dark one.
‘Where did you get those names from then?’ asked Indigo.
‘Old girlfriends,’ said Tom.
‘Never had any,’ said Michael, grinning. ‘They were all young. Every one of them. Mind your own business where I got them from!’
But I dragged it out of him, in private, in the kitchen, after promising never ever to tell.
‘Jassy was my first car,’ admitted Michael. ‘VW. Dark cherry. I loved that car! Juniper …’ he yawned enormously because he was on his fourth week without sleep, ‘Juniper I saw on a bottle of shampoo. Juniper and Mint, but you can’t call a baby Mint, not even in this family. Stop squeaking, Rose!’ he ordered, and fell asleep with his head on the kitchen table.
There is no one like Michael.
I folded up a tea towel for a cushion.
The sounds of this family fill the house. Caddy’s laugh. Saffron and Sarah telling stories in duplicate. ‘Juniper!’ I hear my father say proudly. ‘Look at her hands!’ ‘Jassy is Caddy all over again,’ replies Mum.
David’s voice is the deepest. ‘Penalty shoot-out?’ he asks. ‘T’cup? What about it?’ A moment later they hurry through the kitchen together, hand in hand.
Buttercup and David. They are each other’s heroes.
Indigo is finger picking on a guitar. Tom is humming a bit. Next week he is off to South America. ‘That’s a long way,’ I say when I hear, and Tom looks and looks at me, looks until I cannot look away and says. ‘Yep,’ and asks, ‘So what’s it to you, Permanent Rose?’
31st October 2010
Oh dear, it is Halloween and all my friends are too old and cool for trick and treating and I suppose that means I am too. Still, I have got dressed in my blackest things and a witch’s hat and I have put cobwebby stuff all around the door. Also I have hung a bleeding corpse from the fig tree by the kitchen window and I have a recording of a scream ready for when someone knocks on the door. And there are sweets. And trick apple ducking (blue bowl of apples - blue food colouring in the water) and a pumpkin light in the window. All ready for the trick and treaters that might come here.
I hope.
But when?
I keep looking up down the street. Nobody. And big spots of rain.
‘Rosy Pose,’ says my trying-too-hard-mother, ‘I would love a go at your apple ducking.’
‘Gosh, Rose,’ says my useless father, ‘That thing in the fig tree frightens me every time I walk past!’
Then they play the scream and say ‘Oooh! Awful!’
So what I do is this. I pick up the pumpkin lantern and I fling it as hard as I can into the garden, and all the apples, one after another, I hurl away as far as I can. And I rip off my witchy stuff and kick it around. And I yank the bleeding corpse down from the tree and bury it in the rubbish bin and I shout ‘I hate you! I hate you!’ at my astonished parents and I rush upstairs to my room and pack the stuff I will need for the rest of my life.
I think I will go and live at Kiran’s house.
‘What again?’ asks Kiran when I bang on their door. ‘Oh, alright. You can test me on my German and then we’ll make toast.’
So I calm down. And gradually I tell Kiran about the apples and the pumpkin and the corpse and everything. And she gets the giggles.
And so do I.
Then we both dress ourselves up as undead mummies with lots of white loo roll and brown sauce blood and terrible grey faces and glow in the dark hair spray and we go round to my house and creep into the kitchen and flick the mains switch in the fuse box so the lights all go off. And when Mum and Dad come groping their way through the door intent on getting the TV working before David Tennant we howl and are there.
And we frighten them half to death.
Good.
19th December 2010
Three o’clock in the Morning.
Where are all my family?
I will tell you. Caddy and Michael are in London and they cannot get away because of too much snow.
Mum and Dad are at the zoo, babysitting Jassy and Juniper. They are snowed up too.
Indigo and David and Saffy and I are here at home, taking care of Buttercup because Michael said that if four people with a combined age of seventy seven could not manage to take care of one person with a solitary age of three then those four people had serious problems.
We have serious problems.
Buttercup, for those who have forgotten him, is my nephew. He is three and a bit. His real name is Carlos (after a Patagonian sea lion that my sister thought a lot of at the time). Buttercup is a joke that stuck too well.
Three years ago Buttercup was baby Jesus in my school Christmas play. Oh,
how sweet he was! The angels whispered and scratched their itches. The wise men fought and the shepherds sniggered. Joseph sulked and Mary flounced and the donkey lost his ears, but Buttercup lay quietly in his manger of hay and gazed at the star above the stable with dark, dark, eyes.
And afterwards everyone said that Buttercup stole the show.
That was a lovely Christmas.
Tom came over from New York.
Tom.
I haven’t spoken to him for months. For hours and days on end I manage not to think of him at all. But sometimes, I can’t help it. Sometimes, at my weakest times, like at three o’clock in the morning when my resistance is low, I think about him much too much.
Are we still friends? Or not?
But I was writing about Buttercup, not Tom.
Buttercup has changed a lot since he lay so quiet and sweet in that Christmas manger. He is not quiet. He is not sweet. And he does not like Christmas anymore.
The reason he does not like Christmas is Santa. ‘That big red man,’ says Buttercup.
They told him at preschool that Santa would come down the chimney with presents.
‘We haven’t got a chimney,’ said Buttercup thankfully (and really, who would want such an invasion in the middle of the night?).
‘Never mind about no chimney,’ said preschool to Buttercup. ‘Lots of people have no chimney. He gets in anyway.’
Poor old Buttercup was very unhappy to hear this, and the more he thought about it, the more unhappy he became. Until at some time after one in the morning, sleeping on his little blow-up bed on my bedroom floor for a treat, he became very unhappy indeed. Very noisy too. Absolutely howling.
Howling and shrieking, and soon my bedroom was filled with people (with a combined age of seventy-seven) being no use at all.
