Binny in Secret

by Hilary McKay

  “Leaves,” said James.

  “How?”

  “They flap it.” He pulled open a drawer beneath a cupboard, found a piece of ancient card, and flapped it in Binny’s face. “Like that,” he explained. “Like Gertie’s wings.” Very soon afterward he fell asleep with his head on the table.

  His family looked at him regretfully. He would have to be woken, and he would be awful when he was.

  “We can’t leave him there, though,” said his mother bravely. “Come on, James, bedtime!”

  “Get off! Not now!” James flailed at his attackers as they carried him away. “Let me stay where I was! I want my old toothbrush! I don’t like blue toothpaste, that towel smells funny, my pillow feels awful, I can tuck myself up. Don’t laugh and don’t kiss me!”

  “Phew!” said everyone when he was finally disposed of for the night.

  “We’ll all go to bed,” said the children’s mother. “I’ll just tidy the kitchen and see Pecker is safe. Poor Pecker. Poor Gertie. Off you go and get ready, Binny, then you can listen out for James for me while I’m downstairs.”

  Binny always enjoyed the adventure of going to bed in a new place. She opened the long narrow window to listen to the wind. It billowed the curtains and lifted her heart and smelled of smoke and leaves and rain.

  James was fast asleep when she peeped round his door a few minutes later, sprawled over his pillow like a red and white pajama–striped star. He looked like he hadn’t a sorrow in the world, but deep in the night Binny heard him crying.

  Never, ever, could Binny resist James’s rare tears. She crept into his room and knelt by his bed to comfort him.

  “Hullo,” hiccupped James. “Don’t k . . . k . . .”

  “It’s all right, I won’t.”

  “Gertie!” said James.

  “We might find her in the morning.”

  “Do you bet we will, or bet we won’t?”

  Binny drew a deep breath.

  “Won’t,” said James, and did not resist Binny’s hand when she rubbed him between his small shaking shoulder blades.

  “I’ll look for her,” promised Binny. “I’m good at looking for things. Remember how I found Max? No one could have been more lost than Max.”

  “Yes.” James gave one last great gulp and turned his face into his pillow. Binny patted his back, the way they had done when he was much smaller, and needed to be patted to sleep. He allowed the patting as he had allowed the rubbing.

  “Binny? Bin . . . ?”

  “I’m still here.”

  James said something, all blurry into his damp pillow. “I love you.”

  Why did she argue with him? Binny wondered. Laugh at him? Think it was a good idea to leave him on the top shelf of the linen closet? The light from the landing shone dimly in at the doorway. It made smooth feathers of his hair and curved shadows of his eyelashes. He was enchanting. Perfect. How odd that she had never realized before.

  “I’ll look and look,” she whispered. “I’ll start tomorrow.”

  “Mmmm,” murmured James, and he slept more deeply.

  Summer 1913, Part 1

  Even before the train had quite stopped, Peter and Clarry were worried.

  “He’s not here,” said Peter, already at the carriage door, and Clarry, crowding against him to see out of the grimy window, said, “He must be! He promised! Who’s that running over the bridge?”

  “Someone else completely.”

  “Oh. Oh yes. But they’re looking this way.” Clarry leaned past him to wave, just in case.

  “Stop it!” snapped Peter, shoving her aside. “There’s people waiting to get on! Move out of the way!” Clumsily he pulled open the door and climbed down onto the familiar platform.

  “Pass me the bags!” he ordered.

  “Peter, turn round and look! I’m sure that person is waving to us.”

  “The bags!” repeated Peter. “Come on! Where’s the coats? You’ve left them on the seat! Oh, let me past!”

  Peter clambered up the step again and hurried back to the carriage. He returned in time to hear Clarry give a small squeal. “Peter!” she said. “It is! It’s Rupe! It really is!”

  “It can’t be,” said Peter, staring blankly over his burden of coats at the stranger hurrying toward them, but it was.

  “Hello kids!”

  For a moment Clarry was utterly silent. Rupe, six inches taller, with a new voice. Also a summer blazer, long white flannel trousers, and . . .

  “A hat!” said Clarry.

  Rupe slowly closed one eye, tipped his hat to Clarry, and pretended to reel backward when she flung herself upon him.

  “Rupe! Rupe! We couldn’t even tell it was you! Peter said . . .”

  Peter rammed her hard with the corner of his bag.

  “Can you manage there, Peter?” asked Rupe, disentangling himself, tucking Clarry’s hand under one arm and scooping up her bag with the other. “What did he say, Clarry?”

  “He said you were someone else completely!”

  Rupe grinned.

  “I was joking!” snapped Peter furiously. “She never understands.”

  “You haven’t changed a bit!” Rupe told him. “Poor old Peter! Hurry up, I’ve got Lucy with the trap.”

  “You came with Lucy on your own?”

  “Why not? There she is!”

  The small boy who was holding the pony’s bridle let go and stepped back as Clarry unhooked herself from Rupe and ran to put her arms around Lucy’s satin neck. “Lucy, Lucy, Lucy,” she murmured, and breathed the sweet warm pony smell.

  “Same old Clarry,” said Rupe.

  “I know,” said Peter crossly. “And I have to lug her around with me everywhere I go!”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “You’ve changed. You’d have minded last year!” Peter suddenly shoved his armload of coats into Rupe’s arms, pushed past him, and dived into the station flower bed.

  “I told him he’d have to do that,” said Clarry, looking at her brother’s heaving back, and wincing for the flowers. “It’s the only way to get better. He’s been holding it in since Plymouth. Had I better go and hold his head?”

  “I think he’s managing quite nicely on his own,” said Rupe, grinning.

  “It’s why he’s been so nasty. And then seeing you. When he’s only got knickerbockers.”

  “Shush!”

  “When did they let you have long ones? When did they let you start driving Lucy? When did your voice go like that?”

  “Did you expect me to stay twittering like a swallow forever?”

  “Yes,” said Clarry, and Rupe laughed. Even his laugh was different from the summer before, but he was nice to Peter when he finally emerged from the splattered fuchsia bushes, calling him Pete, and telling him that his bicycle, sent on in advance, had already arrived.

  “The chain was off, so I shoved it on again. I hope that was right?” asked Rupe, as if Peter was the expert.

  “Thanks,” mumbled Peter, thawing a little.

  “Your busted leg all right again now?”

  “What? Yes fine. Bit stiff.”

  “You must have a whacking great scar,” said Rupe, which was clever of him because Peter did, and took a bleak sort of pleasure in startling people with it.

  “Nothing much,” he muttered.

  “Nothing much!” exclaimed Clarry from her seat behind the boy in the pony trap. “It’s enormous! It looks like someone tried to cut his leg off with a wobbly knife. Show Rupe, Peter!”

  “He doesn’t want to see it.”

  “Yes I do,” said Rupe. “Go on, show me! I promise not to faint!”

  “Oh all right,” said Peter, and rolled down the top of his stocking. Rupe peered over and whistled with shock, and Peter had to turn his face away, in case anyone saw how pleased he was.

  “Is it as bad as you thought it would be?” asked Clarry.

  “Worse. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Rupe, and he shook his head so that Peter once more h
ad to bite his lip not to smile.

  After that the drive was much better, until toward the end, when Rupe happened to mention school. That autumn Peter, who so far only went to day school, was supposed to be joining Rupe at his boarding school.

  “You won’t be able to escape it this time!” said Rupe cheerfully. “You can’t jump off a train twice!”

  “Peter did not jump off that train to get out of school!” said Clarry. “He just jumped off because he wanted to. To see if he could.”

  “Oh did he?” asked Rupe.

  “Yes. For fun!”

  “Ah.”

  “Don’t say ‘ah’ like that! You’re not so grown-up yet! You did jump off for fun, didn’t you, Peter?”

  Peter said nothing.

  “Didn’t you, Peter?”

  “Didn’t you, Peter?”

  “Didn’t you, Peter?”

  “No I didn’t!”

  “Peter!” cried Clarry, and knelt up on the seat and beat on her brother’s back. Peter swiped backward and Rupe said, “Stop it, kids!”

  “And you stop calling us kids!” snapped Clarry, and turned her fists on him so hard that Lucy felt the blows through the reins and skipped sideways with her ears flickering.

  “Steady Lucy, steady Lucy, steady Luce, good girl,” Rupe called to her, as well as he could whilst laughing so much. “Don’t upset poor old Lucy, Clarry!”

  “Stop calling people kids, then!” said Clarry. “And you made that up about the train, Peter. I know you did. Anyway, Rupe will look after you at school.”

  Peter flinched, and Rupe noticed and took pity.

  “That time we nearly drowned her teaching her to swim,” he said to Peter. “Were we right or wrong to fish her out?”

  The sounds were a few sleepy midday birds, the rattle of hay cutting in a nearby field, the silky swish of the new rubber tires of the pony trap on the dusty road, and Lucy’s hooves, lighter than a clip-clop, more of a trip, trip, trip.

  “I suppose we were right,” said Peter at last.

  “Nearly there,” said Clarry happily. “I’m so hungry. Miss Vane, you know Miss Vane from Sunday School who lives across the road, she made us sandwiches but they were egg and Peter couldn’t bear the smell of them. So we dropped them out the window for the seagulls when the line went next to the sea.”

  “Poor Miss Vane!”

  “I know. But egg. She didn’t ask, she just made them. Like she did this dress.”

  Clarry looked down at her dress, which was green and brown check and very bunchy round the middle.

  “You should have dropped that out of the window too,” said Rupe.

  “I’ve got two other ones so it doesn’t matter that it’s so horrible. A blue one, and a whitish. The whitish for Sundays. It used to be bright, proper white. Oh Rupe! Peter and me’ve brought some lovely things. Wait till you see! Some fossils from Yorkshire. A little case of butterflies that our next-door neighbor was throwing away. He was just about to put them on his bonfire, he said! And a frog skeleton, all jumbled up. We’re going to make it back into a frog shape again, but we waited for you so you could share. I haven’t done proper labels for anything yet; I was saving it for here . . .”

  “Oh!” said Rupe like he had suddenly understood something. “For that museum you made!”

  “We made!” corrected Clarry. “We! All of us!”

  “That’s right, I helped, didn’t I? I’d forgotten all about it.”

  “You’d forgotten!” repeated Clarry, shocked.

  “I’ve been doing other things.”

  “I’ve been doing other things,” said Clarry severely, “but I haven’t forgotten the museum! And neither has Peter!”

  “Shut up, Clarry!” snapped Peter.

  “For weeks and weeks it’s been the only thing he . . .”

  “God!” exploded Peter, which made Rupe grin and Clarry wail, “Why has everything changed? What’s the matter with everyone? Aren’t we doing the museum this year?”

  “No!” snarled Peter.

  “Yes,” said Rupe.

  “All of us? You too?”

  “Unless Pete’s had enough of it.”

  “Of course he hasn’t.”

  “Well then.”

  Chapter Four

  Morning came in the new bare house. Binny woke, wondered, blinked a bit, and turned comfortably over as she remembered. She had made a wish, the roof had blown off, and she had been delivered to a new world. She pulled back the curtain to inspect it, and found it was all leaves and sky. It looked chilly, and her bed was very warm. She let the curtain fall again, and burrowed back into her pillow.

  “Binny, what are you doing?” demanded Clem, arriving in her doorway ten minutes later, all harassed and groomed, as if it was any other weekday. “Up! Up! Up!”

  “Has something happened? What’s the rush?”

  Words floated up from the kitchen. Her mother’s voice.

  “School, of course!”

  “School!” exploded Binny, outraged in her pajamas at the top of the stairs.

  “SCHOOL NOW THE ROOF’S BLOWN OFF OUR HOUSE!”

  “Yes, what else did you think?” Her mother appeared briefly in the hall below to reply. “I’ll drive you all in together and then go on to work. And don’t start, Binny!”

  However Binny, well known for starting, was already well on her way.

  “But we only missed one day! I thought we were going to miss weeks and weeks! What about teaching myself with library books? What about looking for Gertie? What do I need to know anyway that I don’t know already?”

  Binny’s mother ran her hands through her hair so that it stood up in spikes as she protested, “Binny, not now!” and disappeared again before Binny had even half finished begging, “Can’t we even just talk about it?”

  “I don’t believe it!” complained Binny, back in her room, scrambling through the boxes they had packed so hurriedly the day before. There was her uniform. Horrible stuff! Why hadn’t she the sense to leave it behind? Binny washed minimally, dragged on her clothes, and stamped down the stairs to find Clem in charge of the kitchen and super efficient.

  “Toast,” said Clem, handing her a plate.

  “No thank you,” said Binny.

  “Eat and shut up!”

  “Sorry, Clem.”

  “And don’t be humble! I’ve enough to worry about without you being humble!”

  Binny drooped before her sister. Clem had everything. Beauty, brains, and a perfect boyfriend, at present away. In another life, in another world, Binny wouldn’t have minded him for herself. Half jealous, half sympathetic, she asked Clem, “Are you worried because Liam’s at university?”

  “Liam?” asked Clem, sounding surprised. “Liam? He’s not a problem. As long as he doesn’t come home till the end of term I won’t have to think about him for weeks.”

  “Well, I don’t see what else you’ve got to worry about.”

  Clem, who had been cutting carrot sticks for James’s lunch box, put down her knife and took a deep breath, counted to ten, and breathed out again, once more serene. “Pass me an apple for James’s lunch!” she said to Binny. “Ham roll, carrot sticks, cheese cubes, ginger cookies, apple, that’ll have to do. Look at my hair! All ends!”

  “Ends! What ends?” Binny looked with envy at the silky silvery gold on the top of her sister’s head. Her own hair was terrible stuff. It broke combs, scattered clips, and tangled around buttons. Once they had cut it short, which led to the discovery of vertical tufts and unmatching ears. “Imagine if you had mine!” she said.

  “You could always brush it,” said Clem unsympathetically. “Hello James!”

  “Hello, don’t kiss me,” said James, appearing in the doorway with his mother behind him. “Is that my lunch? Can I look?”

  “Nope. What are you having for breakfast?”

  “Pancakes, with my two eggs from yesterday, and Binny can have some too because of in the night.”

  Binny blushed with gratit
ude.

  “What happened in the night?” asked his mother.

  “He cried,” said Binny.

  “Nobody heard and nobody heard and nobody heard,” said James, “and then Binny came in. Pancakes with golden syrup and orange slices.”

  “I suppose I’ve got five minutes,” said his mother, flinging flour into a mixing bowl, eggs into the flour, milk into the eggs, and heating a frying pan. “We do have golden syrup; I brought everything out of the kitchen cupboard. Knife!” She sliced an orange while the first pancake cooked, flipped it, passed it to James, and began a second for Binny.

  Pancakes restored James. He ate three, and somehow, during the third, his sadness changed to indignation. Gertie was lost and he wanted her back. Or as much of her as possible.

  “She can’t have just vanished,” he said in the car on the way to school. “Even if she got eaten there’d be bits. Legs,” he added ruthlessly. “Nothing could ever eat Gertie’s scaly old legs!”

  “James!”

  “Or her beak. Or,” he added as they passed a squashed squirrel on the side of the road, “her horrible inside bits. Or . . .”

  “Here we are!” said his mother extremely briskly, pulling up outside his school. “Everyone out! Clem and Binny, you can walk from here, can’t you? And this afternoon either come home with me, or catch the bus. Come on Binny! Courage! Courage! It can’t possibly be that bad!”

  Binny climbed out of the car. On the pavement she wavered as if hit by a sudden strong wind, recovered, and walked bravely toward the seething landscape of school.

  It really did take courage to push her way through the turmoil in the entrance hall, locate the small grubby locker they had given her on her first day, retrieve the timetable she had hoped never to see again, and to begin the journey to her classroom.

  “Oh, it’s you!” said Clare as she walked through the door. “Ella, look! She’s come back!”

  “God,” said Ella unenthusiastically.

  Binny forgot all Clem’s peacemaking advice. “I don’t see why it bothers you,” she said defensively.