Saffy's Angel

by Hilary McKay

  ‘Super Hero,’ said Sarah, a long time later, back in the little square. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Saffron. ‘Yes, thanks, Mission Control. I am all right now.’

  Then it was time to go home, and Saffron was still all right. Happy even. How strange it was, she thought, to have come so far, and found so little, and feel so contented. She did not understand it at all.

  ‘Worth coming,’ said Sarah’s father cheerfully, driving across Italy very fast on the wrong side of the road. ‘If only to get that fountain in the square fixed. What’s the matter with those girls in the back? Take nothing seriously! That fountain was potentially lethal! One good hard frost and there would have been a sheet of ice all over the square! All right! All right! You laugh! Who wants to see me overtake a Ferrari?’

  ‘NO!’ said Sarah’s mother.

  ‘Too late! Look at that! He never knew what passed him! I’ve told the hotel manager we’ll be back next year, Liz. Edward. That’s his name.’

  ‘Eduardo,’ contradicted Sarah’s mother.

  ‘So he told me. “Edward”, I said to him. “That’s your name then.” Very nice bloke. Showed me his office system. Absolutely up to date! Couldn’t fault it.’

  ‘Oh good,’ said Sarah’s mother sarcastically.

  ‘Tried to be kind about English football. “Spare me!” I said. “A washout!” What’s the Italian for a washout?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

  ‘Couldn’t find it in that phrase book. Not that it mattered. He understood. So anyway, I said we’d be back next spring. All right, Saffy? You on for another trip under the bean bag?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  ‘See your nice old lady again.’

  ‘I said I’d write to her.’

  ‘Good gracious, Saffy!’ exclaimed Sarah’s father, genuinely shocked. ‘What’s the matter with e-mail? How can I drive if everyone’s giggling? Of course she’ll be online. It’s a mistake to treat people as if they’re out of the ark, just because they’re foreign. You’ve got to e-mail Edward when we get home, Liz. Promised you would.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Sarah’s mother, suspiciously.

  ‘Said you’d send some English recipes over for the kitchen. Fish pie. Yorkshire puddings. That sort of thing. Can’t imagine what you girls find so funny. Make yourselves useful and look behind! That Ferrari’s creeping back up on us!’

  ‘Ignore him!’ said Sarah’s mother. ‘He probably never even noticed you! Anyway, I think he’s very silly, going so fast.’

  ‘Really, Liz, you do talk some rubbish! Best drivers in the world, Italians! Everyone knows that! Watch his face when I put my foot down! When did you tell your folks you’d be home, Saffy?’

  ‘Sunday morning,’ said Saffron.

  ‘Saturday night at this rate,’ said Sarah’s father happily.

  Before they had left Siena Mrs Warbeck told Saffron to telephone the Banana House, just to let her family know they were starting for home. Saffron had done this, and as usual the call had been answered by Rose. Also as usual nobody else had been given a chance to speak and the news had to be dragged from Rose, bit by bit, by Caddy and Indigo.

  ‘Did she sound happy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh Rose!’

  ‘She sounded like she’d just been crying. And she didn’t find her angel. It’s gone. Grandad took it.’

  ‘Rose! Did she tell you that? How do you know? You should have let someone else talk to her.’

  ‘I can talk,’ said Rose with dignity, levering open the lid of a large tin of brick red paint and looking speculatively inside. ‘Look at this! I thought it’d do to brighten up my camels. I got it out of a skip.’

  ‘Rose darling, tell us about Saffy.’

  Rose poked a finger into her paint, lifted it out, and watched the silky drips fall with mesmerising slowness back into the can.

  Caddy tried a different approach.

  ‘You shouldn’t take things out of skips.’

  ‘Have to,’ said Rose.

  ‘But it is a perfect red for the camels.’

  ‘Grandad took Saffy’s angel,’ said Rose, now stirring the paint with her finger as she spoke. ‘He went back to Siena and fetched it for her. He brought it to England. Saffy said. Years ago, before I was born. So.’

  ‘Saffy told you Grandad brought her angel back to England?’ asked Indigo. ‘Then what did he do with it?’

  ‘Lost it,’ said Rose. ‘Saffy said. When he crashed his car probably. On his way home. Saffy says it doesn’t matter any more. She’d been crying, though. I could tell.’

  ‘Don’t eat paint, Rose darling. Especially red. Poor Saffy.’

  ‘But I thought,’ continued Rose, only tasting a tiny bit of red, ‘it wouldn’t just disappear. And all Grandad’s stuff is here. And Saffy’s not back till Sunday so we’ve got ages to find it for her.’

  ‘Here?’ asked Indigo and Caddy, astonished.

  ‘Course.’

  ‘You think Saffy’s angel is here? In this house?’

  ‘Mmmm,’ said Rose, fitting the lid back on to the paint tin and whacking it down hard with her fist. ‘All we have to do is find it.’

  They were interrupted at that moment by a loud banging on the door. Caddy opened it and there was Michael on the doorstep, looking very impatient.

  ‘Michael darling!’ exclaimed Caddy.

  ‘I hooted,’ said Michael. ‘I’ve been sitting there hooting for the last ten minutes. Are you ready?’

  Often and often in Caddy’s daydreams, Michael had appeared on the Banana House doorstep, asking impatiently ‘Are you ready?’ Caddy had been prepared for this moment for months.

  ‘Absolutely,’ she said at once, beaming happily at him. ‘What for?’

  ‘Driving test.’

  Caddy stopped beaming.

  ‘You forgot,’ said Michael in disbelief.

  Caddy nodded limply.

  Michael began to beat his head against the doorframe.

  ‘She’s been working very hard,’ said Indigo, appearing beside Caddy. ‘Chemistry, Physics, Biology. All sorts.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Rose, pushing in beside Indigo, ‘she’d never have passed.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Caddy, beginning to edge gently away from the door. ‘I think I shall have to cancel it, Michael darling. Because my mother is very busy painting in the shed and I have to look after Indigo and Rose. And hunt for Saffy’s angel. And all these exams…’

  Michael stopped beating his head, grabbed Caddy firmly by the elbow, marched her down the steps, opened the car door and pushed her into the driving seat. Indigo and Rose had one glimpse of her horrified face as she turned to look back at them and then there was a terrific roaring as Caddy started the engine in her usual frightening fashion. An assortment of lights flashed, the horn sounded, the car seemed to jump in the air like a cat, all four wheels off the ground together, and then Caddy and Michael were gone, leaving a patch of silence in the road where they had been.

  ‘Oh well,’ said Rose.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Indigo, and added, to comfort himself more than anything, ‘He’s got an emergency brake on his side. He can stop her if he has to.’

  ‘Let’s find Saffy’s angel before they get back. Where shall we start looking?’

  ‘There’s a lot of Grandad’s stuff under my bed.’

  ‘Come on then,’ said Rose.

  The Banana House had always had a slightly magical feel about it and this was because it was one of those places that appear to be bigger on the inside than they do on the outside. It seemed this way because of the amount of things it contained, far more than it was possible to imagine fitting into a house of even twice its size.

  The contents of the Banana House were divided into three distinct levels, like geological ages.

  The top level was made up of the stuff that was used every day. This included everything belonging to Rose, Indigo’s Antarctic books, Caddy’s hamsters, Saffron’s hair
brush, nothing of Eve’s, and a variable mixture of saucepans, paintbrushes, magazines and potted plants. Whenever tidying up was carried out it was this top layer that was tidied.

  Beneath the top layer was a second, deeper one. Nearly everything belonging to Eve was there, along with a great many other things belonging to everyone else (except Rose). Sometimes from this depth forgotten objects would rise spontaneously to the surface, where they would be welcomed with cries of astonishment.

  The third and deepest level was almost impenetrable except by using enormous effort. It was mostly made up of very heavy boxes and bulging bags.

  It was this level that Rose and Indigo started to excavate in their search for Saffy’s angel. They began under Indigo’s bed.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Rose.

  That was not exactly true. There had been eleven boxes of books under Indigo’s bed, a roll of old carpet and the stuffed panda everyone supposed had been lost in the park eight years before.

  Indigo and Rose left it all where it was and began on the two old suitcases that had been on the top of the wardrobe for so long they had almost become wardrobe-coloured. After the suitcases they went to the pile of boxes in the corner, and then they dragged everything out from under the chest of drawers.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Indigo, straightening up at last and rubbing his knees.

  ‘Where next?’ asked Rose.

  ‘Bathroom,’ said Indigo, and had soon moved the bathroom chair and the linen basket and become deep in the contents of the little box-like cupboard under the hot water tank.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Rose a few minutes later.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Indigo, who was beginning to enjoy himself very much. ‘We’ve only just started.’

  ‘We’ve blocked ourselves in,’ observed Rose, looking at the pile of stuff between themselves and the bathroom door.

  ‘Shove it in the bath!’

  Hurriedly they piled everything they had discovered (an alternative set of Christmas decorations, Rose’s old potty, seven hot water bottles and a lot of shoes) into the bath, and cleared a way on to the landing.

  ‘Where next?’ asked Indigo.

  ‘Airing cupboard,’ said Rose. ‘Then those boxes in the corner. Then the other bedrooms, one by one.’

  ‘As long as we don’t muddle up Caddy’s exam notes.’

  ‘We won’t,’ said Rose.

  The tremendous search went on and on, and the longer it lasted, the more gripping it became. Nothing so strenuous, so bold or so ruthless had ever before been attempted in the history of the Banana House. Together Indigo and Rose probed the darknesses of forgotten cupboards. Together they climbed on boxes balanced on boxes balanced on wobbling chairs and investigated the tops of high furniture. In their parents’ bedroom they opened ancient trunks that had been closed for years and years.

  Their arms ached and their eyes smarted with dust. They banged their heads and trapped their fingers and broke their nails. They stopped being surprised at anything they found. They almost stopped speaking to each other. Anyone listening from outside would have heard no more than thuds and dragging sounds, the occasional gasp of pain, and a few murmured words:

  ‘There’s another, further back.’

  ‘Pull.’

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Sometime late in the afternoon Caddy came home, buried her head in a pile of chemistry notes, and burst into tears. Nobody heard her.

  Later still Eve wandered in from her shed in a daze of Art. She put her arms round Caddy and sat rocking her saying, ‘Darling, darling. There, there. Darling, darling,’ until Caddy stopped sniffing and allowed her mother to bathe her face with cold water and a painty towel.

  ‘There!’ said Eve, when Caddy was better again. ‘There, darling! Sit still and I will cook supper!’

  Caddy sat still while Eve began peeling an enormous saucepanful of potatoes, frying sausages and onions together in a cloud of blue smoke, and opening tins of peas. This was an astonishing effort on Eve’s part, and Caddy was very touched, especially when Eve began preparing the favourite pudding of her childhood, bananas split lengthwise and stuffed with chocolate, before being baked in their jackets in the oven.

  Indigo and Rose, filthy and ravenous, came sniffing into the kitchen as soon as the smell of cooking drifted up the stairs. They noticed Caddy’s red eyes, but kindly did not mention them, and ate their unexpected supper almost silently, still in a daze of adventure.

  ‘What have you been doing?’ Eve asked Rose.

  ‘Finding things,’ said Rose vaguely.

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Saffron will be back on Sunday morning,’ said Eve, feeling like a proper old-fashioned mother as she stacked up the sausage plates and began to hand out baked bananas, ‘and Daddy’s coming tomorrow…I wonder what we ought to tell him about Saffy going to Italy so unexpectedly…Stowing away. Not what Daddy would call a good idea.’

  ‘Don’t let’s get Saffy in trouble,’ pleaded Caddy. ‘Just say she rushed off at the very last minute.’

  ‘He won’t like that either,’ said Eve, worriedly. ‘He likes things done properly. Planned. And talked over.’

  ‘Say nothing,’ suggested Indigo.

  ‘But he’ll wonder where she is on Saturday night.’

  ‘Say she’s with Sarah,’ said Rose, ‘and will be back in the morning. That’s true. She will.’

  ‘Do you really think that would be best?’ asked Eve doubtfully.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Rose.

  Her mother still looked bothered.

  ‘Darling Daddy,’ said Rose cunningly.

  This made up Eve’s mind for her completely, and she said ‘Clever Rose!’, handed Caddy the last banana, smoothed a cobweb out of Indigo’s hair, and left to spend the evening in her shed with an unusually free conscience.

  ‘Come on!’ said Indigo, as soon as the door had closed behind her. ‘Saffy’s angel!’

  ‘Have you been looking all afternoon?’ asked Caddy.

  ‘Yes,’ said Indigo. ‘Nothing so far. But there’s still all of downstairs. You can help.’

  They began at once with the tops of the kitchen cupboards. Then there was the cupboard under the stairs which had been filled up years before and never opened since. Followed by the living room dresser (inside and underneath), the coal hole and the space behind the sofa. They found canvases and books and boxes of photographs, an old typewriter, another set of Christmas decorations, bundles of curtains, a sewing machine, bags of clothes, a violin in a case, Caddy’s dolls house, a baby carrier full of baby clothes, a tin of shells, flower pots, a cat basket and Eve’s wedding dress.

  Then finally there was nowhere else to look.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was Saturday morning. Eve had spent the night in her shed, as she often did, alternately painting and dozing and trying to make up her mind to go back to the house and go to bed properly. Caddy and Indigo and Rose, dropping with tiredness and disappointment, had struggled up the stairs, clambered over the great number of obstacles between themselves and their bedrooms, and collapsed, fully dressed, into immediate sleep.

  Indigo slept, but his unconscious mind did not. All night it searched, as Indigo had searched, to find Saffy’s angel. It ransacked his memories as Indigo had ransacked the house, and at the end of the search it woke him up.

  Indigo sat up in bed and he was utterly astonished. He knew suddenly and as certainly as if he had seen it there himself, where Saffy’s angel was.

  Rose woke up, bounced from her bed, looked out of the window, and saw, with great surprise, that Michael’s car was parked outside.

  ‘I know, I know,’ groaned Caddy sleepily, when Rose tried to force her to get up to see for herself. ‘It’s been there all night.’

  ‘Crashed?’ asked Rose.

  ‘Of course not crashed!’

  ‘But where is Michael?’

  ‘Gone off to Spain with Droopy Di,�
� said Caddy miserably.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He told me he was going. And she collected him. On her motorbike, when he got back here. At least, I think it must have been her. Long gold hair.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Long gold hair trailing down from her crash helmet. And incredible legs. And black leathers…’ Caddy paused to blow her nose and wipe her eyes. ‘…I don’t suppose I shall ever see him again. Or not after he’s collected his beastly car! I’m not driving it!’

  ‘What happened, Caddy?’

  ‘I don’t know! I don’t know what went wrong. I’d worked out a plan to make sure I’d fail. I reversed up a kerb and the rotten examiner let me off…’

  ‘Caddy,’ asked Rose, light dawning at last. ‘Did you pass your driving test?’

  Caddy nodded, her face buried in her pillow, her shoulders hunched.

  ‘We were sure you’d failed,’ said Rose. ‘That’s why we never said anything yesterday. Now you won’t have any more driving lessons.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And no more Michael?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But he said “Caddy darling” that time you told us about.’

  ‘Yes, well, he’s gone to Spain with Droopy Di.’

  ‘The rotten pig!’ said Rose.

  She and Indigo met at the bathroom door, both bursting with news.

  Indigo won.

  He said, ‘I’ve found Saffy’s angel!’

  ‘What!’

  ‘At least, I’ve found where it is. It’s in Wales. I’ve worked it all out. Caddy’s house is in Wales. My car’s in Wales. Saffy’s angel’s in Wales. Obviously.’

  Rose’s mouth fell open. She jerked it shut again.

  ‘Wales,’ said Indigo. ‘That’s where we need to look.’

  ‘Michael,’ said Rose, ‘has gone to Spain with Droopy Di. And he’s left Caddy his car to practise in. She wasn’t crying because she failed her driving test, she was crying because of no more Michael. She’s passed her driving test. So.’

  Indigo felt suddenly ill. He felt like a stone falling from a precipice. He felt like a light blown out. He felt like a lump of ice dissolving into water. He fumbled for his voice and croaked, ‘So what?’