by Hilary McKay
“It makes it more interesting,” said Clarry.
“It’s not the sort of thing we need. It’s not as if we are going to forget.”
“But in a hundred years’ time,” said Clarry, “when somebody is looking at the things and wondering . . .”
Peter snorted.
“Put it on the back of the card,” suggested Rupe, and after a minute or two of arguing, this was agreed upon.
“In case she rushes away and cuts off any more hair,” said Peter.
Skull and wing feathers of male Kestrel
(Falco tinnunculus)
July 1912
Found by Clarry Penrose on the tideline
(but Rupe picked it up)
“Does it matter who picked it up?” asked Peter.
“Well, she wasn’t going to,” said Rupe.
“I noticed it, though,” said Clarry. “I saw it first!” She was proud of the kestrel skull, and once she had got used to it the horror faded from the empty eye sockets and thin stained bone. “It’s beautiful,” she said. On a blank museum card she drew the fragile curves and the small hooked beak, and wondered how it had come to be there on the edge of the sea amongst the bladder wrack and empty mermaids’ purses.
* * *
The museum was a wandering institution: It started off in Peter’s room, because his broken leg fixed him there. Then, when he was well enough to hop, it moved to the dining room, which was so cold that it was hardly ever used. It stayed there until the smell (some seashells and a mole that no one had quite summoned the courage to stuff) penetrated to the more inhabited parts of the house. After that it moved to a cobwebby outhouse, where it remained for the rest of the summer.
“It ought to have a name,” said Clarry. “We could paint it on a signboard and put it on the door. THE MUSEUM OF THE PENROSE COUSINS. What about that?”
“Inside would there just be me and you and Peter?” asked Rupe, laughing. “All neatly labeled and sitting on a shelf?”
“I didn’t mean that!” protested Clarry. “You know I didn’t! I just thought it would be nice.”
“Nice!” said Peter scornfully.
Clarry said no more about a notice on the door but later that day, carefully lettering a card for a very large cobweb that filled a window corner, she remembered her idea.
Web of Common House spider
(Tegenaria domestica)
August 1912
wrote Clarry on the front and she added on the back:
The Museum of the Penrose Cousins
A World Famous Collection from All Over the World
Collected by
Rupert Penrose
Peter Penrose
Clarry Penrose
Clarry nodded with satisfaction. It does look nice, she thought.
* * *
Once the museum was established in the outhouse Peter tackled the mole. He sat at the window shelf and worked with his pocketknife, his face very determined, his too long hair in his eyes. Rupe watched critically, with his hands in his pockets.
“You might help him, Rupe!” said Clarry from the doorway (she wouldn’t come farther) and Peter, knowing he was being pitied, gave her one of his furious glances, bent closer, jerked harder, and after an unpleasant interval which Clarry could not watch, succeeded in separating the mole from its skin. Or most of the mole from most of its skin, as Rupe pointed out.
The other exhibits were less shatteringly biological. Fossils, feathers, crystals. An antler from a roe deer, a wasp’s nest, a butterfly.
Small Tortoiseshell
(Aglais urtica)
September 1912
Last day of the summer vacation
Chapter Three
Binny loved the storm. The little sitting room was like a cave, and the wind outside was a wild friendly beast, a wolf or a tame dragon, defending her from the perils of the day to come. Curled up on the sofa she dozed and woke and dozed again, comforted by the racket and the warmth of Clem, drowsing beside her. By daylight the worst of the gale was over. Tiles stopped falling, the rain ended at last, and the power came back again. With the return of power came the lovely news that all the schools were closed.
“That was a brilliant wishing leaf you gave me, Clem!” said Binny.
As soon as the rain stopped, the indignant population of the town emerged to look at the damage. Everywhere were broken branches, flattened fences, tumbled chimney pots and torn roofs.
“Our house,” said James proudly, “is one of the worst!”
It was true. There were two great holes in the roof. From Binny’s room and from the bathroom they could look straight up into the sky. So much rain had poured in that the bedroom ceilings had either fallen completely or hung low and menacing, like great sagging clouds. There was a terrible smell of oldness and wetness. Many things were ruined, although James’s homework was discovered safe and only slightly damp under his pillow, and out in the garden Gertie and Pecker were found not only to be safe, but also to have produced two warm brown eggs.
“Two!” said James. “They’ve never done that before, not two.” He gloated, an egg in each hand, like an unexpected millionaire, and his only worries were those of all unexpected millionaires: “Shall I have to share?”
“’Course not,” said Binny, who was out in the garden with him. “Your chickens, your eggs!”
“What do you think made them do it? Was it because the roof blew off?”
“Bet it was,” said Binny.
“Fantastic, then!” said James, looking around at the devastation, and Binny completely agreed.
“I bet it will take ages to mend,” she said, and borrowed the family cell phone to send Gareth an extremely gloating text:
AMAZING STORM! ROOF BLOWN OFF!
NO MORE SCHOOL! HOPE YOU HAVEN’T 2 MUCH HOMEWORK BINNY
and she got one back almost straightaway saying
DON’T SEND ME MESSAGES IN MATH! GARETH
“Math!” she told James. “Poor old Gareth is doing math!”
“We do math at my school,” said James. “We did it yesterday. In blue books, drawing things, like nine apples in the bowl and the other half of the rabbit.”
“Well, you’ve escaped now.”
“I got a star. Green. For my Star Card. Are we going to have to live in the garden?”
Binny had been so pleased to have school put safely out of the question that she had not thought of the problems that having no roof would cause. No one but James seemed to have done either. Their mother was next door, making urgent phone calls from their neighbors’ much-less-damaged house, but Clem was inside, emptying the fridge into a cooler. Binny went in to see her.
“James says, ‘Are we going to have to live in the garden?’ ” she said.
“I’m not!” said Clem decisively.
“So what will we do?”
“Something,” said Clem, “and definitely not living in the garden!”
“I’ve got these eggs,” said James, appearing beside Binny. “Where shall I put them to be safe? I can’t keep carrying around eggs and eggs and eggs.” James yawned; it had been a long night. “What next?” he asked. “Something’s got to happen next,” he said.
James was right. By the end of the day, bright blue tarpaulin had been spread over the broken roof. Clothes had been retrieved and packed. A friend of a friend knew of a house on the other side of town. It was rented in summer to holidaymakers. It was empty. It would do.
All in one exhausting afternoon, they moved house.
“Thank goodness that I bought a car!” said the children’s mother. She nearly hadn’t—they had managed for years without one, only the weight of shopping had persuaded her to do it—but now it was necessary. It took three trips, including the chickens, who didn’t enjoy it at all.
* * *
After the narrow friendly streets of town, this new temporary home seemed a bare sort of place, especially to the Cornwallis family, city people all their lives. It stood on a road that was so deep in trees that th
e buildings were lost amongst them. On one side were fields of scrubby grass. On the other, farther along, was a farm. Even Binny, still giddy with relief at the success of her wishing leaf, said “Oh,” at her first sight of their new home. When she had climbed so cheerfully into the car she had not imagined quite such a chilly ending to the journey. The house was tall, and granite gray, with high, cold chimneys and empty windows. A long, wild garden stretched out behind, and a steep slope led down to a disused railway line.
The family were peering into the windows when the woman who owned it appeared to show them round.
From the very beginning she seemed to not quite trust them.
“There was no wind here that would have taken off a roof,” she said. “Not a roof! A few tiles maybe. I did hear of people who lost a tile or so, but a roof . . .”
“The rain made it so much worse,” explained the children’s mother.
“Oh, rain!” said the woman, as if surprised to hear of such a thing. “Well. You’d better come in.”
They found themselves in a place of large bare rooms with high ceilings and heavy, old-fashioned furniture. There were also unwelcoming locked doors.
“When we started renting the house out we locked the good furniture in that back room,” the woman explained. “The attic is locked too, and the key’s gone missing but you’d have no call to be up there anyway. There’s nothing to see but junk. The cupboards I must keep fastened or I have all the cleaning stuff used. People will meddle, especially when the weather’s not good for the beach. Children meddle,” she added, giving James a look.
James, who certainly was a champion meddler, smiled serenely back at her. Binny glanced up at the woman, wondering if she guessed how little he could be relied on to leave a locked door locked. Already she didn’t like this determined, uneasy woman, but she had to admit that she was probably right about James.
* * *
“It’s not forever,” said the children’s mother, when they were finally alone. “And it’s not really so far from everywhere. It only feels like it because of the long road and all the trees.”
“And no streetlights,” said Clem.
“Aren’t there?”
“No. I noticed. It’s going to be really dark at night.”
They both looked anxiously at Binny.
“It’ll be exciting,” said Binny. In her mind, school was receding further and further into impossibility. No streetlights just added to the remoteness. “Like in the old days,” she added cheerfully. “A hundred years ago. When nobody went to school.”
“I think you’ll find they did,” said her mother, but Binny shook her head as if to scatter away such an idea and went to look for James. She found him peering through the keyhole of the locked back room. He jumped guiltily at her approach and began, “Hello, don’t kiss . . .”
“When did I ever?” demanded Binny. “When did anyone ever?”
“People have,” said James, rubbing his cheek as if those unwanted kisses still lingered. “I can’t see anything through this little hole.”
“Let me try.”
They took turns peering at lumpy dark shadows until their mother called, “Binny! James!” She set them to finding supper for everyone while she and Clem made beds and searched for the central heating switch, which did not exist because there was no central heating.
“Who needs heating in September!” said the children’s mother, but the evening was cold and the sight of Cinderella, stalking disconsolately through the unwelcoming rooms, did not make it feel any warmer.
“Poor Cinderella!” said Cinderella’s family, bravely not saying, “Poor us.” They were glad when it was time to eat Binny and James’s supper: hot chocolate, hot soup, toasted cheese, and chocolate cookies.
“It was just about this time yesterday that you gave me that leaf!” remarked Binny to Clem as they washed the dishes together afterward. “What’s that?”
It was a sudden rattle at the back door and there stood their landlady again. She held a bottle of wine, a spare door key, and four hot water bottles. These things she dumped on the kitchen table as if they were insults she’d forgotten to give the first time round. She ignored the chorus of thanks.
“You said pet. I thought dog. I didn’t know you were bringing a cat,” she said, catching sight of Cinderella. “White. The hair will get everywhere. However. What can I hear?”
It was a sound from above. The merry bong of bedsprings. James, trying out the beds.
“James!” called his mother crossly.
“I should have thought you’d had enough,” remarked the woman rather grimly, “of ceilings coming down!”
“You’re absolutely right!” agreed the children’s mother, and shouted again, “James! Stop that at once!”
Bong! went another bounce and Clem turned, whisked upstairs, and brought James down by the scruff of his neck.
“Oh, you’ve come back!” said James, looking at the woman with interest. “Are you going to live here too? That’ll be weird.”
“James, you know you are not allowed to jump on beds,” his mother told him severely. “Not at home, and not here.”
“I didn’t know about not here,” said James. “Where am I allowed to do it, then?”
“Nowhere, and please say sorry!”
“Sorry,” said James, and the woman said, “Yes,” and then added, “You might find it useful to know buses go into town every hour on the hour from the end of our road. And back on the half.”
“Half road?” asked James. “Or half bus?”
Clem took him away again.
“How useful about the buses,” said the children’s mother. “That will be such a help! We really do appreciate you taking us in so quickly. And James won’t be jumping on the beds again.”
“He’s only six,” explained Binny, making the all-too-often used family excuse for James.
“Old enough,” said the woman. “Well. Good night.”
She was gone at last.
“Old enough for what?” asked Binny.
“And who is she?” demanded Clem, reappearing the moment the door was closed. “We don’t even know her name!”
“I know,” agreed her mother. “It’s so awkward. I must find out as soon as I can. We’re renting through an agency and she didn’t introduce herself. What have you done with awful James?”
“He wanted to play hide-and-seek so I counted to a hundred and then came away and left him.”
“What a brilliant idea!” exclaimed Binny. “Where is he?”
“Top shelf of the linen closet.”
“James! James!” called Binny, dashing up the stairs. “Come on! I’ve found you! Now you count for me! Let’s go outside.”
“Not outside!” called her mother, but too late, Binny had pulled the door open. There was a smell of damp autumn air, a squawk in the gray twilight, and a rustle on the doorstep. Then Pecker appeared, all in a rush, right into the kitchen with all her feathers flurried.
“Pecker!” exclaimed Binny.
“Pecker?” echoed James, coming into the kitchen.
Pecker flapped with difficulty up onto the kitchen table, scattering knives and spoons. She pecked at a hot water bottle in a distracted kind of way.
The family stared and said, “But, Pecker!” puzzled, pleased to see her, moving the wine before it was knocked off the table.
“See if you can pick her up without frightening her,” said the children’s mother. “James. James?”
But James was not there.
They found him in the garden, shouting in the dark. “Gertie! Gertie!”
“Has Gertie escaped too?” asked his mother. “Binny, I saw a flashlight in one of the kitchen drawers. See if you can find it!”
Binny ran back into the house. She heard Clem say, “Don’t worry, James, she won’t have gone far!” and her mother call, “James, come down from that wall!” Then she heard James cry, “It’s gone! It’s gone! Gertie!” She found the flashlight, grabbed it,
and rushed back out again.
“Give it to me!” begged James, and shone the flashlight on bushes and trees, and the old stone wall, and then the overturned hen run and long autumn grass.
Rusty orange feathers were caught in the grass.
“Look what it did!” wailed James.
“What did? What are you talking about? What did you see?”
“It ran off with Gertie! Like a dog, only it wasn’t a dog . . .”
“Oh no! A fox!”
“It went over the wall with Gertie flapping. She was trying to fly. Come on!”
“No, James!” His mother caught him as he ran. “Not now. Not in the dark.”
“Yes,” insisted James, who was accustomed to being obeyed, but his mother’s grip only got tighter, and after a short struggle he was taken indoors, given hot chocolate and toast, and allowed to call out of the kitchen window. “Gertie! Gertie! Come back!”
But Gertie didn’t come back.
* * *
By bedtime James had a name for Gertie’s capturer.
“A jagular,” he said.
“I don’t think so,” said his mother, hugging him. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of jaguars in England.”
“You didn’t listen!” said James, wriggling free from her arms. “Jagulars! Lars! Lars! Lars! Like on TV!”
“There’s polar bears on TV,” said Clem, laughing. “Polar bears and jaguars! You’re mixing them up!”
“It’s not funny!” roared James, tired and cross and unhappy, and for about the tenth time that evening, he opened the door and peered into the garden.
“I bet we find her perfectly safe in the morning,” said Binny, coming to stand beside him. “She might easily have got away.”
“Might she?”
“Think how fierce she was when you tried to get an egg she had laid!”
James looked at his small brown hands, which had suffered many indignant beaky jabs, and nodded.
“And her feet!” said Binny. “When she kicked. Like talons!”
“Binny!” interrupted her mother, meaning, Do not let James hope things that cannot be true.
Binny said no more. James closed the door and sighed. Clem hugged him as she went past carrying the hot water bottles to take the chill off the beds upstairs. The children’s mother unpacked and unpacked and unpacked. Despite all that had happened, Binny felt smooth with peace. She listened to the wind outside and asked, “What makes it blow?”
