Plum Puddings and Paper Moons

by Glenda Millard

  ‘You mean it? Really?’ Scarlet made her eyes the shape of sardines and looked hard at Superman’s face to see if she could tell what he was thinking.

  Superman nodded again. ‘It’s good,’ he said. ‘I really like it.’

  Scarlet turned back to her poem and read it quietly to herself. She sighed. Being Scarlet Silk wasn’t easy.

  9. Peace Talk and Pinking Shears

  Scarlet decided that if she was going to change the world, she needed a list. There was nothing unusual about that. Scarlet had always been a keen list maker.

  Amber didn’t mean to peek. It happened by accident when she was making her bed. Unlike Scarlet, Amber enjoyed bed making. Holding the quilt by its bottom corners, she’d toss it high into the air where it billowed like a yacht sail for a few seconds, before floating gracefully down and falling neatly into place on the bed. It had taken Amber lots of practice to be able to do this. Some days she did it twice. Other days she made Scarlet’s bed, just for the fun of it.

  That was how Amber saw Scarlet’s list. On Monday morning before they went to school Amber made her own bed, then she sailed Scarlet’s quilt into the air. She saw something flutter and fly. When the quilt came to rest on Scarlet’s bed, Amber picked up the sheet of paper from where it had fallen on the floor. It wasn’t much of a list, just a bold red-lettered heading, too big and bright for Amber to miss.

  SCARLET SILK’S STEPS TO CHANGE THE WORLD

  Amber might easily have mistaken it for the title of a book except Scarlet walked into the room and said, ‘What are you doing with my list?’

  Then she remembered that the first item she planned to write on her list was to be nicer to her family. At the same time Scarlet noticed Amber had made her bed, Amber handed her the list.

  ‘Sorry,’ they both said at once.

  ‘I just picked it up off the floor,’ said Amber.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Scarlet. ‘And thanks for making my bed.’

  She sighed and flopped down onto her perfectly made bed.

  ‘I really am sorry, Amber. I want to change the world but I can’t even change myself.’

  ‘Why would you want to do that?’ said Amber trying not to be disappointed about Scarlet’s bed being messed up. ‘Change yourself, I mean. I think you’re exactly right the way you are.’

  Scarlet looked at her sister. ‘Do you really?’

  Amber nodded. ‘You’re pretty and funny and smart and you’re … interesting.’

  ‘Interesting?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know anyone else who’s fifteen and wants to change the world.’

  ‘Hurry girls, the bus is coming,’ Annie called.

  Scarlet hauled up her holey black tights, stuffed her feet into her laced-up shoes and grabbed her bag with one hand and Amber’s hand with the other. Amber looked wistfully back at Scarlet’s untidy bed, but there was no time to fix it.

  The radio was playing on the bus. The news broadcast had just begun. Anik was waiting at stop seven, outside the Colour Patch Café. The driver pulled the bus in to the kerb as the radio announcer began an interview with someone from the government about sending soldiers to a war overseas.

  Over the past two days, the people of other lands had become real to Scarlet. They had jobs, names, families and faces like Anik’s or one of his aunties’, his uncle’s or his grandmother’s. The bus brakes squealed, the door slapped open and the queue of passengers stepped up the silver steps.

  Then the driver tuned the radio to a music station and Scarlet felt guilty and glad at the same time. She didn’t want to hear about soldiers and fighting and she didn’t want Anik to hear it either.

  But after Social Studies, Scarlet asked Mrs Ogilvy about what she’d heard on the radio news.

  ‘Why is the government sending our soldiers?’

  ‘It’s been a long war,’ said Mrs Ogilvy. ‘There are soldiers there from many countries. Our soldiers are going to help out, that’s all. There’s nothing for you to worry about, Scarlet.’

  ‘What about the people who live there?’ said Scarlet. ‘The ordinary people, the families and children? Shouldn’t we worry about them?’

  ‘There’s nothing you can do about it,’ said Mrs Ogilvy, shrugging.

  ‘Yes, there is. My grandmother says there is,’ said Scarlet.

  ‘There’s no need to be rude, Scarlet,’ said Mrs Ogilvy.

  ‘I’m not being rude. I’m just telling you what my grandmother said. She said I can change the world and Nell never lies.’

  Mrs Ogilvy had grown up without a grandmother. She had never heard of left-over magic or tried to see the world through someone else’s spectacles.

  She gave Scarlet lunchtime detention, which was very helpful. By the end of it Scarlet had decided on a small step to change the world. She had declared peace on Cameron’s Creek.

  Anik wasn’t on the bus going home. He went to his Advanced English class instead. Scarlet sat by herself and wondered what Anik would think of her idea. Would he understand? Should she ask him first? Would he be pleased or not? When the bus pulled in to the stop opposite the Colour Patch Café, Scarlet told her sisters she had to talk to Mr Kadri.

  ‘Tell Mama I’ll walk home later,’ she said.

  Mr Kadri was very busy, too busy to stop and talk but never too busy to greet anyone who entered his shop.

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Crimson,’ he said, smiling widely at Scarlet as he rushed by with a tray of tall glasses, ice-cubes clinking. Scarlet put a spare apron on over her school uniform, wiped some tables, carried some dishes to the kitchen and even made two raspberry spiders while she waited to speak to Mr Kadri about her big wish and her small step.

  Mr Kadri knew how important big wishes are. If you never wished them in the first place, how could they possibly come true? Of course, like everyone, Mr Kadri had wished red-kite kind of wishes, too. A silver-backed brush for his wife’s long hair, a holiday by the sea and a paintbrush as fine as a walrus’s whisker. But his big wish had taken many years and many small steps to come true.

  Mr Kadri had stowed away, hungered and thirsted, lived in fear, was found and fenced in. He waited and waited, then worked all day, wept all night and learnt a language. At last Mr Kadri bought an old shop in Cameron’s Creek and painted its walls all the colours of paradise. He called it the Colour Patch Café and sent for his brown-eyed wife and their three curly haired babies to come and live with him in peace and safety and freedom. But Mr Kadri’s wish had grown even bigger. Now he wished those same things for all people.

  At last all the customers at the Colour Patch Café had been served and Mr Kadri stopped. In front of him stood one of the colourful daughters of Benjamin Silk, telling him, Kassad Kadri, about her own very big wish. And Mr Kadri was feeling utterly astonished. He clasped his hands together, tipped his head back and gazed towards his upstairs paradise thinking to himself, ‘Here is a girl whose life has always been beautiful and peaceful and safe and free and yet her very big wish seems so much like my own.’

  And then the girl whose name means red was telling him about her one small step to change the world — her declaration of peace on Cameron’s Creek. Mr Kadri closed his eyes and wiped the tears that dribbled from their corners.

  Scarlet wasn’t sure if this was a good sign. So she asked very quietly, ‘Do you think Anik and his family would mind, Mr Kadri?’

  ‘Oh, Miss Crimson,’ said Mr Kadri, ‘I am weeping tears of joyfulness and I am thinking Anik and his family will be greatly honoured.’

  That night, Scarlet cut up all her black tights with pinking shears. When Annie saw what she’d done and asked why, Scarlet said sometimes you had to make sacrifices for the things you believe in. She told Annie and Ben how she wanted people everywhere to live in peace and how she was planning on changing the world one step at a time. Then she gave them the note from Mrs Ogilvy. Ben and Annie gave Scarlet their blessing to change the world, but asked if she could please try to do it without being rude to people.


  Next morning at breakfast Scarlet was wearing a strip of her sacrificed tights around her arm and a tear-shaped rhinestone stuck to her cheek. She made an announcement to her family that the black armband was a sign of her sadness for all the innocent people affected by war. By wearing a black armband, Scarlet hoped other people would think about them too. It was a small step towards making a wish come true. A wish for wars to end. A wish for peace.

  It was also two weeks until Christmas.

  10. Black Tights and Band-Aids

  After breakfast Scarlet borrowed Amber’s bicycle and went riding with a chocolate box under her arm, her bare legs pumping up and down and her insides doing loop-the-loops. Mr Kadri had agreed to sell her armbands at the Colour Patch Café.

  Griffin had released his crickets into the wild, put his chocolate-wrapper collection between the pages of The Comprehensive Illustrated Ornithologist’s Bible and donated his Black Magic chocolate box to Scarlet. Now it was filled with armbands and Indigo had painted a sign on the inside of its lid — Wishbands: fifty cents each.

  As she neared the café, Scarlet grew more and more nervous. Anik would be there. She wondered if Mr Kadri had remembered to tell him about her plan.

  But it wasn’t Anik she saw first. It was his grandmother and his two aunties and his one uncle, all standing straight and tall on the grey slate flagstones under the striped awnings and the switched-off neon sign outside Mr Kadri’s café. They were waiting for the bus to take them to work at the smallgoods factory. Their heads turned at the sound of Amber’s squealing bicycle brakes. They recognised the colourful daughter of Mr Benjamin Silk. Mr Kadri had told them that this girl who made spiders to drink and Anik to smile, also made very big wishes. She was their true friend. They dipped their heads to her and Scarlet dipped hers in return and then Anik came.

  ‘You honour my people,’ he said softly. ‘My grandmother Mosas, Auntie Shim, Auntie Janda and Uncle Tansil.’

  One by one, Anik’s family offered their hands and shy smiles to Scarlet. Then the early bus arrived and the aunties and uncle got on and the grandmother stayed and watched and watched as the bus took them away from her.

  Scarlet’s wishbands were a great success. The Rainbow Girls and Griffin wore one each to school. Amber was especially excited. She was so proud of her interesting sister she stopped off after school and told Elsie all about Scarlet’s big wish.

  For months, Elsie-from-the-post-office had seen Mr Kadri’s friends catching the early bus to the smallgoods factory and she knew Anik’s grandmother bounced babies on her knees in the Kadris’ upstairs paradise. The quiet people didn’t buy stamps or string. They had no words to ask for them, no need for them, no-one to send letters or parcels to. And they didn’t need a post box with a small black door and a silver key, because no-one sent them any letters. Elsie was seventy-two years old and after Amber’s visit, she felt slightly disappointed in herself. She had never visited Anik’s family and had never wished a wish as big as Scarlet Silk’s.

  Layla bought a wishband because of John William. She and Griffin once had a dear old friend named Miss Amelie. John William was Miss Amelie’s sweetheart. He went away to war and Miss Amelie waited for him until the day she died, but John William never came back. Layla wanted Scarlet’s plan to work so that what happened to John William and Miss Amelie would never happen again.

  Mr Davis, the bus driver, asked Annie about the wishbands she and Nell were wearing. Then he told them about the olden days when he wasn’t much older than Scarlet. He said he’d been sent to jail because he wouldn’t fight in a war and he said he’d rather wear one of Scarlet’s armbands any day, than a shiny golden medal.

  Small things happened at Cameron’s Creek that week. Scarlet Silk had lunchtime detention five times for being out of uniform. Elsie put a box of wishbands on the post-office counter next to the balls of string and books of stamps.

  Bigger things happened, too. Ben used the timber from the old bridge at Gypsy’s Bend to build a table. It was so long he had to open the doors at both ends of his shed and his secret men’s business wasn’t secret anymore.

  Scarlet’s tights were being worn on the arms of all sorts of people. The Lollipop Lady, Constable Wilson, Mr Davis, Mr Jenkins, Miss Cherry and the preacher from Saint Benedict’s Church. But by far the most wishbands were worn by children.

  By Friday afternoon, Scarlet had enough money to buy six new pairs of tights and a packet of Band-Aids. She put the Band-Aids on her feet where her shoes rubbed and cut the new tights into armbands.

  On Saturday morning, Indigo and Annie set up a silk screen in the studio and printed the flyers Indigo had designed for the next small step in Scarlet’s peace plan.

  Scarlet rode Amber’s bicycle to the charity shop and found a rack of brand-new blue T-shirts. They were seventy-five cents each but the lady let Scarlet have eleven for the price of ten because the sleeves were sewn on inside-out. That afternoon, while Annie, Perry and Indigo printed a white dove on the front of each T-shirt, Griffin and Layla and the other Rainbow Girls cycled all over Cameron’s Creek, poking flyers into letterboxes.

  As Christmas drew closer, red-kite kind of wishes seemed less and less important to the people of Cameron’s Creek. They didn’t think about what gifts they would receive or worry about what they would eat or wonder what to wear. When they met at the post office or the bus stop or the school, they talked about where they could buy more wishbands or discussed the flyers they had found in their letterboxes. And whenever they read the word peace on Christmas greeting cards, they thought about children who didn’t know what it was like to live in peace.

  On Monday during lunchtime detention, Scarlet Silk from the small town of Cameron’s Creek began the next part of her plan to change the world. She wrote a letter to the Prime Minister of Australia.

  11. The Rearrangement of Mrs Ogilvy’s Face

  This is the letter Scarlet wrote:

  Dear Prime Minister,

  My name is Scarlet Silk and I am fifteen years old. I live in a small town called Cameron’s Creek with my grandmother, my mother and father, five sisters and two brothers.

  My sisters and our friends go to school in the next town because there is no secondary school here. One of my friends is Anik. He has only lived at Cameron’s Creek for a few months. He comes on the school bus in the morning and then goes to Advanced English classes after school. Then he teaches what he has learnt to his grandmother, aunties and uncle. They all live together in a flat above the Colour Patch Café. The flat and the café belong to Mr Kadri. It was Mr Kadri who got Anik’s family jobs at the Cameron’s Creek Smallgoods Factory. Mr Kadri used to work there a long time ago. He knows what it’s like to leave everything and everyone you know and love on the other side of the world. That is why he lets Anik’s family live in the flat with him and his wife and three children.

  I know this is a long letter and I know you are a busy person, but it is important you get all the facts. The other day when I was going to school in the bus, they said on the radio news you were sending some more soldiers to the country where Anik and his people come from. My Social Studies teacher says there has been fighting there for a long time and people get killed there every day. Not just soldiers, ordinary people. The people in Anik’s village are ordinary people. Some are fishermen, some are basket weavers. None of them are soldiers. They have no guns, but they still get killed. Anik doesn’t know what has happened to his parents and sisters. I think it would be a good idea if you didn’t send any more soldiers until we find a better way.

  I am not the only one who thinks this. My grandmother, Nell Silk, believes ordinary people like me can change the world. The thing I want to change most of all is for people to stop fighting each other. Ten days ago I declared peace on Cameron’s Creek. Since then my family and friends and I have been doing things to spread the word. I have discovered there are a lot of other people like me in Cameron’s Creek, who want to change the world. We know it might take a long tim
e, maybe even years, but if we can get enough people to think like us, then there will be no one left to fire guns or drop bombs.

  In my family we call wishes that don’t matter Red-Kite Wishes. Wishing for peace is not a red-kite kind of wish. It is important. You are an important person and I think you could help us make our wish for peace come true. We have arranged a peace march to be held in Cameron’s Creek on Christmas Eve and I would like you to come along.

  I don’t know if you have ever heard of Cameron’s Creek. You will know you have come to the right place when you see a sign that says, ‘Welcome to Cameron’s Creek, Home of the Big Ham’. We are famous here for the Christmas hams made at the smallgoods factory. They also make sausages and bacon but we are not so famous for them. If you accept my invitation, you might help the people of Cameron’s Creek to become famous for something else. We have asked the Daily Beacon newspaper to send someone along to take photographs of the event.

  I have enclosed your official invitation to our peace march with this letter. Also enclosed is a wishband in case you are unable to attend. I hope you will wear it when you go on official business to England or the United States of America or other overseas places. We want everyone to know the people of Cameron’s Creek have declared peace on the whole world.

  Yours sincerely,

  Scarlet Silk

  On the last day of term Scarlet knocked on the staff-room door. Mrs Ogilvy looked through the glass pane in the top of the door. Her eyes took in Scarlet’s bare legs, the rhinestone teardrop on her cheek, the red poem on the pale skin of her arm and her mermaidenly hair spilling free over her shoulders. She opened the door.

  ‘I’d like to make a copy of this letter before I send it away, please,’ said Scarlet.