by Hilary McKay
‘I’m calling the fire brigade,’ muttered Michael to Caddy, searching feverishly through his pockets. ‘Where’s my mobile? Are you sitting on it?’
‘No, and calm down! Michael darling,’ said Caddy, soothingly. ‘You don’t need to call anyone! Indigo often sits up there. He is curing himself of vertigo for when he becomes a polar explorer. It’s a big wide windowsill and he has the curtains to hold on to. They’re very strong. I tested them. He’s waiting for me to talk him back. He freezes.’
‘Freezes?’
‘With fear. So I’d better go. Thank you for the lovely lesson. Bye bye, Michael.’
‘Bye, Caddy.’
Michael waited as she disappeared into the house and reappeared at Indigo’s window. He watched Indigo slowly defrost and begin to move. One leg swung back inside. Caddy’s voice came floating down.
‘Now the other leg. You’re perfectly safe. Don’t look down. Look at me!’
A moment later, and Indigo was back inside and was waving cheerfully from the window with Caddy and Rose, who had also appeared. Michael suddenly felt very left out, and drove quickly away.
Chapter Three
For nearly ten years the Casson children’s grandfather had lived in his nursing home. When he first moved in there had not been space in his little room for all his belongings, and a lot of them had been stored in the Banana House.
One of these was a small box of books, about half a dozen. They were pushed under Indigo’s bed (with a lot of other stuff) and they stayed there untouched for several years.
They were all books on the same subject and the subject was polar exploration. They were old, old books, with black and white photographs as illustrations. The photographs were of ice and cliffs, penguins and huskies, churning seas, deep snow, and wide horizons. There were also pictures of explorers, strong as steel and brave as tigers. When Indigo was little he used to drag the box out from under his bed and look at the photographs. He used to look at the polar explorers and think about his father.
None of the polar explorers were anything like his father.
Later Indigo learned to read. He managed this much faster than Saffy because he had a reason for wanting to learn. Soon he could read the titles under the pictures. Then the chapter headings. Then all the short paragraphs in the pages opposite the pictures. By the time Saffron was reading the paint chart, Indigo (two years younger) was reading the books.
At first he read them very slowly, skipping huge chunks of text and all the footnotes, backtracking, misunderstanding, taking hours sometimes to sort through a couple of pages. It took him nearly two years to read the whole box.
The second time through was much faster. The third time was no struggle at all. The fourth and fifth and sixth times were as easy as breathing. He cross-referenced and checked maps and not a footnote escaped him. The polar world became as familiar as the Banana House.
Right from the beginning Indigo was fascinated by the lives of the polar explorers. Their cold, limitless world was the exact opposite of his own muddled home. Nobody Indigo knew had such adventures. He used to go through all the people he could think of, and picture them out on the ice, and reluctantly conclude that not one of them could stick it. They were none of them as strong as steel and as brave as tigers, and the least strong and brave of all of them (as Indigo knew only too well) was Indigo himself.
Indigo thought about it, and it seemed to him that he had been born afraid of almost everything.
He made a list. He wrote down on a piece of paper all the things that frightened him most, and he set about to cure himself.
That was why he sat on his bedroom windowsill, frightening Michael and worrying Caddy, who only partly understood.
‘I have to stop being afraid of heights,’ said Indigo, trying to explain to her when Michael had been waved out of sight, and Rose had disappeared to visit Eve in her shed. ‘In one of my books it says you should always do the things that frighten you most, and if you do them enough, they stop being scary. And I think it’s true. So that’s what I do. Listen! There’s the telephone!’
‘Perhaps it’s Michael,’ said Caddy hopefully, starting down the stairs to answer it. ‘Perhaps he’s found his mobile and suddenly remembered he forgot to ask me out! He’s got our number…I keep giving it to him…Hello! Hello!…Oh!’
‘Is it Michael?’ asked Indigo, who had followed her down.
‘No. It’s Grandad’s nursing home. Oh Indigo. Run out to the shed quickly and fetch Mum.’
Once again the children’s father was forced to rush home from London midweek. This time (and it could not have been more inconvenient) it was because the children’s grandfather, Eve’s father, had died. Bill was not pleased to be summoned home, and although he would never have been tactless enough to say so outright, he could not see the urgency at all.
‘He’s dead! He’s dead!’ moaned Eve down the phone.
‘Well, exactly,’ said her husband. ‘If you had let me know sooner…although even then I don’t know what I could have done…but I really can’t see, Eve darling, how me rushing away can be of any help…Are you listening?’
‘Yes,’ sobbed Eve.
‘Good,’ said her husband, and went on to explain (very patiently and kindly) how difficult it was for a real artist to prepare for an exhibition of their work, if they were constantly dragged away to deal with every minor crisis.
Eve could not seem to understand. She wailed down the phone, and Caddy wailed too, and so did Rose. Indigo would only say, ‘When are you coming? When are you coming?’ and Saffron refused to speak at all.
‘Darling Eve,’ said Bill patiently, ‘it’s not as if there was any great hurry any more!’
Of course, after that unfeeling remark he had to come home. The studio was shut up, the answer phone switched on, the milk and cream out of the fridge poured away, and all upright wine bottles were laid down on their sides (so that their corks did not dry out). Then e-mails needed to be dispatched to friends and fellow artists explaining that Bill Casson was out of town midweek, and a note written to the cleaning lady (who did not have e-mail) to remind her to water the plants. After that there was the two hour train journey home. Bill Casson grimly got out his lap-top and did his accounts and they made him even more depressed than ever. He decided Eve would have to pull herself together and economise.
There was no one to meet him at the station.
‘Naturally I am sorry!’ he said, when he arrived home to no supper, no hot water and his last week’s laundry still untouched. ‘Naturally I am sorry the poor old boy has gone. At last. But some people might see it as all for the best. I think we should all try get this in perspective. And be sensible.’
Unfortunately his family had never been sensible. Far from it. They took no notice of his advice at all, and made no effort to get anything in perspective. Their grandfather was dead, and they had loved him. They felt as if they had lost a battle they might have won if only they had tried a bit harder. Not one of them would listen to reason, not even Indigo. Indigo’s father thought that Indigo really might have had more sense, being a boy.
Indigo said, ‘He wasn’t even ill! There was nothing wrong with him!’
‘Good grief, Indigo!’ said his father in astonishment. ‘He’d had two huge heart attacks! He hadn’t spoken for nearly ten years…’
‘He had!’ interrupted Saffron, angrily. ‘He said, “Saffron”. Everyone heard!’
‘It was amazing he carried on as long as he did,’ continued Bill, tolerantly ignoring Saffron’s rudeness. ‘Anyway, he would not want you to be sad…’
Caddy, Saffron, Indigo and Rose stared at him as if he was mad.
‘…and I am here now. You have me. I understand completely how you are feeling. I have closed up the studio and will stay until after the funeral…’
Eve put her hands over her ears, and Caddy said dolefully, ‘I hate the thought of Grandad’s funeral. I wish we could just bury him in the garden like the darling gui
nea pigs.’
Her father said not to be ridiculous, and anyway, she did not have to think of the funeral, no one expected her to go…
Saffron looked relieved and Caddy began to argue, and Eve wept, ‘Whatever will we do without him?’
‘Oh really, Eve!’ snapped Bill, cross at last. ‘You never did anything with him! You know as well as I do that the poor old chap had totally lost his marb…’
He was stopped by Saffron, who launched herself upon him, beating his chest with her bony fists while tears streamed down her cheeks.
‘Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!’ he exclaimed, detaching her before she could do any damage to his jacket (pale grey suede and very easily marked). ‘Just a slip! I shouldn’t have said that! Now, I think you people would all feel better with a good night’s sleep! Why don’t you take them up, Eve darling, while I find myself some supper. Where’s that big apron I got you for Christmas?’
That was a good question to ask. It brought Eve to her senses. She jumped guiltily and pulled herself together enough to tell a small white lie for the sake of peace and quiet.
‘Bedside table,’ she said, even managing a sodden but definite smile. ‘In my special drawer. Too pretty to mess up.’
‘Silly Eve,’ said her husband indulgently and Eve sighed with relief. She had given her Christmas apron (Monet’s Lily Pond and waterproof) to Caddy, who had used it to control the seepage from her largest guinea pig hutch.
Upstairs Caddy said with great determination, ‘I shall go to the funeral. I don’t care what anyone else expects. I expect me to go.’
‘Oh Caddy,’ said Saffron miserably.
‘I know. It’s awful. But I’m going. We all should.’
‘It will be so sad.’
‘You have to be sad sometimes,’ said Caddy. ‘Whatever Dad says. He may be right. Grandad probably had totally lost his marbles, but I am still sad and I’m going to the funeral. I shall be as unhappy as I like and I shall wear black.’
All at once Saffron realised that Caddy was right. They should go, all of them. She said, ‘I’ve got a black skirt. The one with the bead fringe that I got sent home from school in. And Indigo’s got a black tee shirt, and his old black jeans. What about Rose?’
Rose, who had been pretending to be asleep, bobbed up and said, ‘I shall wear my party dress.’
Caddy and Saffron nodded. They approved of Rose’s party dress. They had chosen it themselves and bought it out of the housekeeping money, which in the Banana House was kept handily in a jam jar on the kitchen mantelpiece.
Caddy had said, ‘Rose ought to have a proper dress.’
They had chosen sequinned black velvet and silver taffeta. It cost one hundred and ten pounds.
Bill Casson, who had gone ahead to the church to make sure that everything was arranged to be as efficient and unexciting as possible, nearly passed out as his family filed in for their grandfather’s funeral.
Rose in her silver skirts led the way, followed by Indigo in faded jeans, and Saffron, tinkling with beads. Saffron’s bright gold hair streamed down her back like a tangled fleece, but Caddy’s was piled high and bravely on the top of her head, and her dress (bought after all for driving lessons, not funerals) was very tight and very, very short. Eve staggered after them, clutching a box of mansize tissues, a hip flask of cough medicine, and a large bunch of daffodils which she intended to scatter in the grave.
‘Eve darling!’ hissed her husband furiously.
‘Don’t they look beautiful?’ said Eve, taking a swig of cough medicine and then dragging a mansize tissue out of the box and wiping her eyes. ‘Rose says we must all sing very loudly so that Grandad can hear us in heaven.’
They did sing very loudly, dark Casson eyes glued to the coffin, clear, unmusical Casson voices defiantly quenching the mumble of the rest of the congregation and the drone of the traffic outside. Saffron found herself unexpectedly happy. For a little while, a few minutes, she felt part of the family. Not an outsider. It didn’t last long.
Their grandfather’s will had been sent to the house, but no one except the children’s parents had seen it.
‘No reason why they should,’ said their father briskly.
‘It’s a nice will,’ said Eve.
‘It’s a very nice will,’ agreed Bill kindly. ‘Put it somewhere out of sight.’
Eve stuffed it behind the clock, which was only a small one and already expected to conceal an unreasonable number of brown envelopes. The will bulged out on either side, far from out of sight. On the Sunday after the funeral, in the empty spell between Sunday lunch and the arrival of the taxi that would take Bill back to the station (never Eve’s most sensible time) she made the huge mistake of fishing it out.
‘I suppose the children might as well hear what he wrote,’ said their father. ‘Even though it means nothing. It’s out of date. He hadn’t a bean by the time he died. Went through the lot. Poor old boy.’
Saffron stared at the will with a strange sort of beating in her heart. She had not thought of such a thing existing. Of all of them, she had felt their grandfather’s death the most. He had been especially hers. He was the one who had brought her from Siena. Hers was the name he had remembered, when everyone else’s had been forgotten.
Perhaps it held a message from him. Saying not just ‘Saffron’, this time, but, ‘Saffron. I loved you best. Here is the proof’.
That was what she longed for. Proof.
The will was ten years old. Caddy had been eight when it was written and Indigo a baby, just able to stand and wave out of the window at his grandfather’s car. Rose would not arrive for another five years.
It was a will for the grandchildren.
To Cadmium Gold, my eldest grandchild, my property in Wales.
‘That was the house on the cliff,’ said Eve. ‘We used to go there for summer holidays. You loved it Caddy. Your grandfather promised it to you even then…’
‘He was joking, Eve,’ said her husband patiently.
‘Anyway, it went a long time ago,’ said Eve sighing. ‘We had to sell it after he got ill…’
‘It was crumbling away,’ said Bill. ‘And so was the cliff it was standing on. Nobody has ever really lived there. It was worth next to nothing. I told him so when he bought it but he took absolutely no notice of me…Never did.’
To Indigo Charles, my car.
‘His Bentley,’ remembered Eve. ‘Indigo could pick that car out from any other car in the road when he was only ten months old!’
‘What happened to it?’ asked Indigo.
‘Wrote it off when he had that first heart attack,’ said his father. ‘I saw it myself afterwards. They took it back to his house. Absolute wreck. We couldn’t claim a penny. It wasn’t insured as it should have been. I did warn him, several times. History now.’
To any further grandchildren, born to Eve and Bill Casson after the date of this will, my remaining capital to be divided evenly between them.
‘That’s Rose, you see,’ explained Bill, ‘because it says “After”. Grandchildren born after the date of the will. If there was any remaining capital it would go to Rose. But unfortunately…’
‘Capital,’ remarked Rose from under the table where she often took refuge in times of crisis. ‘What’s capital?’
‘Money,’ said Indigo. ‘You’d get money.’
‘Money!’repeated Rose in disgust. ‘I’ve got money! I’ve got that money Dad gave me when he came back from America. It’s no use at all!’
‘I explained to you, Rose, that it was American money,’ said her father patiently. ‘And I brought you back that lovely rabbit. Anyway…’
‘That rabbit had pants made out of a flag,’ said Rose scornfully.
‘The American flag,’ said her father. ‘That was why. I’ve explained before, Rose! I don’t know how many times! Anyway…’
‘Flags are flags and pants are pants,’ said Rose.
‘Anyway…’
‘Flag pants!’
�
�ANYWAY…’ Bill said very loudly, ‘that’s the end of your grandfather’s will. Such as it was. Except for some odds and ends…’
‘But what about Saffron?’ demanded Caddy.
‘There’s a note about Saffron. I was coming to that next.’
Saffron’s note was not part of the will at all. It was a sheet of notepaper, pinned to the back with a rusty pin. Bill unpinned it and handed it to her.
It was not typed, but written in black ink, in handwriting that Saffy did not recognise but guessed must be her grandfather’s. It was very shaky.
For Saffron. Her angel in the garden.
Then there were three more words, not very clear.
‘For Saffron,’ read Saffron. ‘Her angel in the garden. The stone angel.’
‘Well,’ said Bill, getting up very briskly. ‘There we are. Very kind. He thought of you all. But there’s nothing. House went years ago. He finished off the car himself. Absolutely no capital. Poor old boy. Still…’
‘But what about my angel?’ demanded Saffron, clutching her note, the words bursting from her. ‘My angel. The angel in the garden. The stone angel. Where’s my angel?’
‘Saffy, Saffy, Saffy,’ said Bill, laughing. ‘That was just a note. Wandering. Not even witnessed. Wouldn’t be legal whatever it was…’
Eve did not laugh. She put an arm round Saffy and said, ‘I suppose he was thinking of a sort of guardian angel, Saffy darling. Because I think he must have written that note just after your mother had died. Don’t you think so? Something like that…Not a real angel. Well, yes, a real angel…But not a thing. That’s what I mean. Not a thing. A thought.’
‘A stone angel, it says,’ said Saffron. ‘Anyway, Caddy had the house. That was real.’
‘Yes, but it’s gone now,’ said Eve.
‘But he thought it was real,’ persisted Saffron. ‘He meant it to be real. And Indigo had his car, and that was real as well. And I suppose he thought there would be some money, even if there wasn’t, so Rose’s bit is real too. So there must be an angel! He was my grandfather too! He wouldn’t leave me out!’
