Caddy's World

by Hilary McKay

  “You’d think you didn’t want to go and see Mummy!” he had exclaimed, which surprised them very much.

  “We do!” said Saffron.

  “We do,” echoed Indy. “And the firework baby!”

  It was true. They wanted to go very much. They were seething with excitement. Yet that seemed to make no difference in the efficiency with which they got ready. The job of getting them both into the bathroom, out of the bathroom, into their shoes, and into the car had astonished poor Bill, and it had been nothing compared to the problem of keeping them there, once they were in. Indigo had needed a drink, and Saffron had forgotten the card she made at school. Then Indigo had wanted pencils and paper to very quickly make a card of his own. Also an eraser. A pencil sharpener. And felt pens. And no sooner had Indigo been equipped than Saffron’s socks had begun to feel funny. She had pulled them off, posted them through the car window to her father, and demanded other, normal-feeling ones instead. Not white. Nor stripy. Nor boys’ ones. Nor the last pair that Bill produced, which had Christmas puddings on them and played a tune.

  “Pink ballet socks,” said Saffron.

  “But you don’t do ballet!” protested her father, and Indigo spilled his drink and then Caddy came dreaming down the road and Bill lost his temper.

  “Do you know how long we’ve been waiting here for you?” he demanded.

  Caddy bent down to peer into the car.

  “Why have you locked up Saffy and Indigo?” she asked, reaching for the door handle.

  “Don’t let them out!” roared Bill, pulling her away. “They’ve been out about forty thousand times already! Just go into the house and get yourself sorted and we’ll be off.”

  “Off where?”

  “Good Lord in Heaven! To the hospital, of course!”

  “Oh.”

  “So don’t just stand there! Pop inside. Put something clean on. Get back out here as fast as you can.”

  “I was going to have a sandwich. I usually do. We all do. After-school sandwiches.”

  Bill squeezed his eyes tight shut and beat his forehead against the roof of the car. While he was doing this, Saffron (who had miraculously heard the word “sandwich” from inside and was suddenly famished) climbed over Indigo and succeeded in escaping by the front passenger-seat door before her father had time to open his eyes.

  “I want a sandwich, too,” she said. “So does Indy. We can eat them while Caddy gets ready.”

  “Right!” snapped Bill. “I’ve had enough. Caddy, indoors, upstairs, come down clean! Saffy, in the car! Indigo, stay where you are! I am going into the kitchen and I will make sandwiches for anyone who manages to behave, which will only be Indigo so far, because he is the only one not being an absolute pest.”

  Saffron scrambled back into the car ordering peanut butter and jam.

  “You’ll have what you’re given,” said Bill. “That’s a lovely picture, Indigo! What is it?”

  “Oh,” said Indigo, looking suddenly absolutely heartbroken. “Can’t you tell?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “What, then?”

  Indigo’s father, who hadn’t a clue what his son had drawn, changed the subject very cleverly.

  “How would you like,” he asked heartily, “to look after the car keys for me while I make the sandwiches? Do you think you could manage that?”

  Indigo, very bright-eyed, pushed aside his picture and nodded enthusiastically. Thankfully, Bill passed the car keys through the window and escaped, herding Caddy in front of him.

  “Why’d you draw a swimming pool?” asked Saffron, inspecting Indigo’s picture.

  “Tisn’t,” said Indigo, climbing into the driving seat.

  “Why’s there a diving board, then?”

  “S’not a diving board, it’s God,” said Indigo, flicking on first the radio, then the windscreen wipers, then the lights.

  “God looks like an old man, not a diving board,” objected Saffron.

  “It’s not a diving board,” said Indigo, turning on the engine. “It’s steps”—he stood on the accelerator—“and that’s God on the top of the steps.”

  “S’got his arms up to dive,” said Saffron very loudly over the roaring of the engine.

  “Those are wings!” shouted Indigo, putting on the hazard lights and leaning on the horn, and then Bill ran out of the house swearing, with his hands full of sandwiches, and Caddy came after him and left the door open and didn’t remember until they were halfway round the big roundabout on the other side of town.

  “You three kids are beyond belief!” moaned Bill as he headed back the way he had come, “and now there’s another one of you!”

  “You don’t sound very pleased,” commented Caddy. “I knew you wouldn’t be. I remember when Indigo and Saffron—”

  “Caddy!” protested Bill, giving her a very pained look over his shoulder, and then said in a completely different voice, “Indigo, take your hand off the gear stick NOW!”

  “Mummy lets me change gears for her,” said Indigo.

  “I don’t think that can be true.”

  “She does,” said Saffron. “She does me, too. Else how’ll we ever learn to drive?”

  “Good Lord in Heaven!”

  “That’s what I drew,” said Indigo. “What you say. Good Lord in Heaven . . .” He nodded forward suddenly, sighed, and fell asleep.

  By the time they reached the hospital Saffron was also asleep. She and Indigo had to be shaken awake, guided groaning through the enormous car park, and prodded along miles of corridors. Then suddenly their mother appeared, almost unrecognizable, with bruised-looking eyes, wobbly lipstick, and a new dressing gown.

  “Darlings!” she exclaimed.

  Saffron screamed and hugged her as if she had not seen her for weeks. Indigo beamed and presented his card. Caddy said, “Hi, Mum,” and then found herself speechless.

  Tears began, unromantically affecting (as they always seemed to do in the Casson family) noses more than eyes. Bill handed out tissues. A nurse hovered, raised her eyebrows at Bill, and looked at a door labeled WC.

  Bill ordered hand washing for everyone.

  This caused Indigo to lie on the floor and wail, “But when are we going to see the firework baby?” so pathetically that when they were clean again it was he who was the first to be led into the special-care baby unit, where the latest member of the family had taken up residence.

  He became perfectly quiet.

  Saffron pulled away from Caddy and Bill to catch up. The watching nurse stopped hovering and walked purposefully after them.

  Saffron was the next to see, and she made a noise like a gasp that was half indignation and half intense disappointment, as if Father Christmas had come and gone and taken the presents with him.

  “Is that it?” she demanded, turning to stare incredulously at her parents.

  Eve gave a great sigh.

  “Why’s it look like that?” demanded Saffy. “Why’s it all tied up in a machine? Why’s it not like a proper baby? Are you sure,” she asked the nurse, glaring through suspicious, half-closed eyes, “that’s not somebody else’s?”

  “Quite sure,” said the nurse, smiling with a lot of very white teeth.

  “What a rip-off!”

  “Untie it!” commanded Indigo.

  “We can’t do that just now,” said the nurse. “All those lines and tubes and wires you see are what we use with very small babies. They need them to help them breathe and feed, and monitor their hearts . . . Listen!”

  The baby was making a sound. A wheezing cry so like the sound that the late Lost Property had made that Caddy winced to hear it.

  “Isn’t that cute?” asked the nurse.

  Indigo, still speechless, looked up at her as if she was insane. Saffron, deep in shock, said, “It’s awful!”

  “Saffron!” moaned Bill.

  “Awful!”

  Indigo nodded mournfully.

  “Of course she’s not awful,” said Eve. “She’s wonderful! She�
��s going to be wonderful! Look at her tiny hands!”

  They were purple claws, waxy and ancient-looking.

  “Awful,” said Saffron. “She’s hairy, too. Hairy shoulders even! That’s a bit yuck!”

  Bill moved forward and grabbed. Saffron suddenly found herself out in the corridor.

  Indigo could not bear it. He sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve, then his eyes, and then his nose again. His sleeve began to look damp.

  “What is it, Indy?” asked Eve, holding him in a gentle hug.

  “Babies don’t look like that.”

  “Very small ones do.”

  “Let’s just unplug all that stuff and get her out of that box and go home and not come back.”

  “We will, one day.”

  “Now.”

  “Not now.”

  “Else would she die?” asked Indigo in much too loud a voice, and then he too was magically teleported to the corridor.

  “I have never been so ashamed,” Caddy heard her father say, and Saffy’s voice, very stroppy, “Let go! I don’t like it here . . . Indy, come on!” and running footsteps, three sets, two escaping, one in pursuit.

  Caddy wished with all her heart that she too could run away. Nothing she had imagined in the summer past was as bad as this reality. The arrivals of Indigo and Saffron now seemed trivial in comparison. This baby, this calamity, that Eve thought so wonderful, was an impossibility. No need to fear, as she had earlier in the summer, that it would come home and drive her father even further into the distance with its wails. This baby would not come home. It was the human equivalent of her poor fallen baby bird, as helpless and hideous and doomed.

  Even its cry was the fledgling’s cry.

  Caddy reached for Eve’s hand and took a deep breath (because what would happen to her mother when the inevitable came about if she was not warned from the start?) and began bravely, “Mummy. Remember Lost Property?”

  “Mmmm?” said Eve, bending over her fledgling.

  “And how you said you knew, right from the beginning . . .”

  “Caddy darling, this is a baby!” said Eve, laughing a little.

  “Knew from the beginning he just couldn’t . . . And it was horrible when he died, and I had tried so hard. Awful. Because I had got so fond of him.”

  Eve was humming very softly. She said, “Look, Caddy, she knows my voice. See how her breathing changes when I sing.”

  “It doesn’t really,” said Caddy. “I thought Lost Property knew his name, but he didn’t really. I just wanted him to.”

  “I think her hair is going to be dark, like Indigo.”

  “I thought Lost Property was growing feathers!” said Caddy. “Can’t you see? She hasn’t got any hair.”

  “When the light is behind her you can see she has very fine, dark, silky hair,” said Eve, patiently but insanely. “A little bit wavy, too.”

  “Mum!” groaned Caddy.

  It was no good. It was hopeless. Eve would not listen. She said, “We’ll have to find her a wonderful name.”

  The baby wailed again its heart-tugging wheezing cry.

  “Poor little thing!” said Caddy. “You can see it’s in pain! It’s miserable! Can’t they do anything?”

  “They can do lots of things when she’s a bit stronger,” said Eve. “Don’t look so forlorn, Caddy darling, please.”

  “Can I touch her hand?”

  “Of course you can.”

  For a moment Caddy’s finger stroked a mottled purple fist. It felt hardly warm, hardly alive, but it did something strange to Caddy. It made her tremble with fear. Hurriedly in her mind she began the familiar reviewing of her assets, preparatory to the usual bargains with God. That was no use. She was overspent already that summer. She could think of nothing she had not offered for the life of Lost Property.

  “What can I do?” she asked hopelessly.

  “You don’t have to do anything,” said her mother, hugging her. “Just be Caddy. Can I hear the others coming back?”

  She could. Bill and Saffy and Indigo reappeared at the door, and Caddy was thankful to see them. Even the horrible scene that followed, when Saffron realized that Eve had no plans to abandon the baby and come home and light fireworks, was a relief.

  “But Daddy PROMISED!” shouted Saffron. “PROMISED! This morning! Before breakfast! Didn’t he, Indy?”

  “He promised,” agreed Indigo.

  “Eve darling,” said Bill earnestly. “I swear I didn’t . . .”

  “You sweared about me driving the car,” interrupted Indigo.

  “. . . say a word about bloody . . .”

  “Swears a lot,” said Saffy vindictively.

  “. . . fireworks. I shouldn’t have brought them . . .”

  “Bloody shouldn’t,” agreed Saffron.

  “I’m taking them home. They’re tired. Everyone’s tired.”

  “I’m not bloody tired,” said Saffron, but all the same, after a kiss from Eve she was hauled away.

  “About bloody time,” said Saffron.

  Caddy was glad to go, too. Only Indigo darted back into the baby room for one last look at the thing that had caused so much trouble.

  “Get better!” he whispered. “Getbettergetbetter!” and dashed away.

  Chapter Ten

  THE NEWS

  DURING THE NEXT FEW DAYS, AS THE ARRIVAL OF THE NEW baby became general knowledge, cards and flowers began to appear at the Casson house. Not many flowers, but a lot of cards. Some said “Congratulations.” More said, “Thinking of you.” One or two remarked that the family were in their prayers.

  “What a cheek!” exclaimed Caddy, who did not like the idea of being prayed for willy-nilly, whether she needed it or not.

  Another person suggested that the children might like to start putting together a memory book.

  “What’s a memory book?” asked Saffron suspiciously, because it sounded like homework.

  Indigo, surprisingly, knew the answer to that. His class at school had made a memory book for a classmate who was going away.

  “But no one’s going away,” said Bill firmly, and after that he began checking the insides of cards before he allowed them on public view.

  Beth’s mother was more practical. She appeared with a large lasagna, which even Saffron consented to eat. Ruby’s grandparents sent round a lot of back copies of National Geographic and a chocolate cake with a dip in the middle. Alison’s mother produced a beautiful arrangement of fruit (which pleased Bill) and the unfortunate remark that it was lucky he was able to take so much time off work so easily (which didn’t).

  Away from home things were different. Caddy, once Ruby, Alison, and Beth knew the bare facts, said, “I’d rather not talk about it. At home it’s the only thing.”

  That was all right, until school heard the news. Someone had a parent who cleaned at the hospital. Rumors began of possible death and probable brain damage.

  Caddy became very upset.

  Alison imposed a news blackout on the subject of babies, explaining that she was perfectly willing to pull off the head of anyone who did not comply.

  This worked.

  Everyone returned to their own preoccupations, except for Beth’s mother, who sent round two more lasagnas before she ran out of dishes to send them in.

  Then she stopped too.

  And that was the end of the news.

  Chapter Eleven

  WHAT THE NORMANS ATE

  BETH HAD A GOOD IDEA. IT CAME TO HER AT SCHOOL, DURING history, when the history teacher announced to her unelectrified class that for the first half of term they would be doing the Normans.

  “We’ve done them!” moaned the class on hearing this news, and as if to prove it, people added, “We did them ages ago in year six!” “We did the Normans the same term that we did growing-our-own-beans-and-carrots, only it didn’t work!” “The term we did nothing in art but draw the same chair!” “The term we had three substitute teachers because our real one had stress!”

  Ev
eryone, it seemed, in all their various junior schools, had done the Normans so thoroughly that they never wanted to hear of them again. And yet, when questioned by the history teacher, no one could remember a single thing about them, so mixed up were they in their minds with beans and carrots and chairs and other unhistorical things. Not even Ruby could (or would) contribute a clue to their existence. And this despite the fact that she had been taken all the way to France to see the Bayeux Tapestry, had walked its entire length, and had the postcards to prove it. Nothing relevant to the Normans could the history teacher prod from the class until a pale, thin boy, with much smirking, at last put up his hand and announced, “They had very small doors.”

  It was the very small doors that gave Beth her good idea, because she knew it was true: She had seen them. Or one, anyway. There was a church in the center of town that, sooner or later, every schoolchild in the area was taken to visit. It had Saxon foundations, Elizabethan carvings, Victorian windows, a crypt so full of mildew and the aroma of old graves that it caught in the throat, and a Norman doorway.

  The Norman doorway was so small that it fitted ten-year-olds better than teachers (who had to duck). Nor was it built especially for Norman ten-years-olds, schoolchildren were told, class after class, year after year, generation after generation, going back goodness knows how long, almost as far as the Normans perhaps. Not at all: It was a full-sized adult door. People were smaller then. Healthy. Healthy enough to conquer England, for instance, which no one had managed since.

  But smaller.

  They ate much less.

  If I was a Norman, thought Beth, I would probably not get any taller than the height I am now. I’d be thinner, too, if I was a Norman . . .

  Norman breakfast was easy. Only Juliet was there to notice what Beth ate, and she was far too busy eating herself to see what anyone else consumed. Norman lunch was no problem either: just a matter of eating the apple and passing the sandwich to whoever held out a hungry hand. Even Norman supper, with the family altogether, was not too hard. You could say “I had toast after school,” without saying how much toast. Or: “I thought it was better to have an enormous breakfast and a very big lunch and less at night,” without actually eating the breakfast or the lunch.