Up on Cloud Nine

by Anne Fine

  “Stolly! The driver had to stop four times. There was mass hysteria! By the time the bus reached the Toy Museum, everyone was in shreds!”

  To look at him, you'd never think he'd cause such chaos. Mum said he was cute as a button when he was little.

  “Cross-eyed,” she said. “Or so I thought. Strapped in that giant great tank of a pram of his in their front garden, picking away at his damsons.”

  “Picking away at his what?”

  (I thought it might be Mum's old-fashioned way of saying something rather unsavory.)

  “His damsons. Oh, that fancy French nanny of his certainly knew a good trick or two to keep him quiet. She'd dump him in his pram and give him an unripe damson plum and he'd spend hours trying to peel off its skin. Totally absorbed.”

  “I thought you weren't supposed to give babies things with stones and pips and things, in case they choke.”

  “He wasn't a baby, Ian. He must have been at least four.”

  “Four? In a pram?”

  I tackled Stol on the matter once, and all he could say was that he supposed he had found the pram comfy. And high, to see over the garden hedge. “After all, that's how I met you.”

  “No, it isn't. Mum said we met in nursery school.” Stol had a tantrum and went blue, and I was fascinated. It seems I spent the next year and a half holding my breath in front of the mirror, seeing if I could go more blue than Stol had before I fell over.

  “Didn't you worry about me?” I asked my dad once.

  “What do you mean, worry about you?” he responded, outraged. “Your mother took perfectly adequate precautions. She put down a mat.”

  the only child club

  That was before Stol started the Only Child Club. That club kept us happy for months. We spent the best part of our time deciding the rules. As it happened, for the whole length of our joint membership, no one else asked to join. But we still spent weeks mulling over details, in case they did. Like whether someone would be able to join us if they'd lost their brothers and sisters.

  Or killed them.

  “That would depend,” said Stol, “on whether or not it was a proper accident.”

  So we worked out a whole graded scale that took in how many brothers and sisters the applicant used to have, how long the applicant had been alone, and whether or not they had deliberately murdered their siblings in order to be free to apply.

  “Suppose it was half an accident?” I might suggest. “Like taking a stupid younger brother along a cliff path in a gale-force storm.”

  “What, no actual pushing?”

  “No. Not sensibly making sure to shout, ‘You stay away from the edge' every five seconds. But no actual pushing.”

  “Tricky …”

  We chewed these things over for hours. Sometimes we'd check with Dad when he came home. (No use to talk to Mum. She used to take the line that she was too busy to listen to drivel.) Dad would peel off his overalls and look down at Stol, standing clutching the grubby sheets of paper on which we were stubbornly drafting our rule book.

  “This sort of thing is a lot more up your dad's street than mine, Stol.”

  But we all knew that Mr. Oliver wouldn't be home for hours. And if Stol phoned him at work, Jeanine would say it wasn't quite the moment. So Dad would wade in and have a go.

  “So this hypothetical person who might—someday— possibly—want to join your Only Child Club didn't exactly force this poison down their brother or sister's throat, then? They just left it lying rather temptingly on the table?”

  “That's right.”

  “But not entirely by accident. I mean, they were really secretly hoping their brother or sister would take it?”

  “That's right.”

  Dad scratched his head. “Well, I think they should be turned down.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. I honestly believe that if you can't make a bit of an effort to act decently toward your little brother or sister, you don't deserve to be in such an exclusive club.”

  “Goody!”

  Later, when Stol had gone home—if he had gone home—Dad would say, “You know that friend of yours is touched with the feather of madness, don't you?”

  “The teachers say he's just ‘a little bit eccentric.' ”

  “Teachers are paid to be polite about other people's children, Ian. You mark my words. That boy is bats.”

  Then, as often as not, he'd go off muttering, “Takes after his parents.”

  Quietly. But not quite quietly enough.

  talk about quiet

  Talk about quiet, this place is giving me the creeps. From time to time, I hear a rise of soft chatter from the nurses at the desk at the other end. A few of the monitoring machines from the other beds are ticking or shlupping. And I can hear Stol breathing now.

  But only just.

  In the end, it got on my nerves so much, I went off to the lavatory. On my way out, I found a man in overalls just like my dad's looking thoughtfully at a fire extinguisher leaning crazily away from the wall in its bracket.

  “Excuse me,” I mumbled. “You don't happen to know anything about being in a coma, do you?”

  He looked down at his janitor's overalls as if to say, Now why on earth, in all this enormous hospital brimful of doctors and nurses, would you pick me?

  “Please,” I begged.

  “Coma?”

  “Just lying there.”

  “What's wrong with … ?”

  “Him. He fell out of a window. He broke his collarbone, both arms in several places, six of his ribs, one leg, an ankle, and he has concussion.”

  “And how long has he been—just lying there?”

  “All morning.”

  “All morning?” The baffled look cleared a bit. “You mean they've only just got done with—so to speak— pinning him together again?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Doesn't sound like a coma to me,” said the janitor. “It sounds like someone taking his time to come round from the anesthetic.” He turned back to the fire extinguisher. “And if you want my opinion, if he's broken all that lot, when he finally does wake up he'll be glad he didn't hurry.”

  I cannot tell you how cheered up I was. I knew he was the one to ask.

  ghost in the coat closet

  We grew out of the Only Child Club. Or maybe I should say the Only Child Club grew into something else.

  Séances. They began because Stolly was given a Ouija board for Christmas.

  “For heaven's sake!” said Mum. “As if the boy wasn't already bad enough!”

  She meant about ghosts and creepy stories. He'd always been that way. As young as four, he'd strolled in the kitchen one evening when she was making supper, slid up on a chair, dipped his hand in the cheese she'd been grating, and said conversationally,

  “I was very nearly caught by a ghost in your closet.”

  “Nonsense,” Mum told him, swatting his fingers away from her ingredients. “No such thing.”

  He didn't argue. But he was good on ghosts. And telling creepy stories. My favorite was the one about a blind man who bumped into a plump young lady in the middle of a blackout and asked her the way to Tannenbaumstrasse.

  “Funny name for a street.”

  “This was Germany, dumbo. At the end of the war. When they'd run out of food and everything.”

  “So how come she was still plump?”

  “I don't know. Maybe she was really, really tubby to begin with. Anyhow, this blind man showed her some letter he had to deliver, and what with the streets being such a mess after the bombing, she said she'd do it for him. But when she looked back to check he was all right, she saw him picking his way perfectly nimbly over the heaps of rubble and got suspicious. So, instead of delivering the letter, she took it straight to the police.”

  Stol's voice took on that bloodcurdling tone I so adored.

  “And it was just one sentence. All it said was This is the last one I'll be sending you today.”

  “Ju
st that?”

  “Just that. The police asked the plump young lady, ‘Wasn't there any package to go with it?' and she said, ‘No, just the note,' and they thought, ‘Curious!' So they went round to this address on Tannenbaumstrasse, and guess what they found.”

  “What?”

  “Dozens of dead people, hung up on hooks like pigs in a slaughterhouse. Some of them already half cut up and put in packages.”

  “What, ready to sell?”

  “And eat. Black market, see?”

  I shuddered deliciously. “And she'd have been next!”

  You can see why I liked him sleeping over. And you can see why Mum was never quite so keen. But when he came round clutching the Ouija board, she tried to put her foot down.

  “No.”

  “I thought you didn't believe in ghosts and spirits and things.”

  “No more I do.”

  “Well, then,” he said. “It's just a game, isn't it? I mean, if you won't even let us play a silly game, you must believe there's something in it.”

  “Don't try your father's lawyer tricks on me, young Stol!”

  But he could always work his way round Mum. And Dad was keen.

  “Brilliant! We used to do this all the time when I was young. We didn't have a proper board like this, though. All we had was a circle of scrappy bits of paper with the letters scribbled on them, and an upside-down glass on the table.” He tugged Mum down beside him. “Don't be a spoilsport, Sue. Let's get started.”

  I don't know who was pushing it. But off it went.

  “Who is there?”

  “N.A.P.O.L.E.O.N.”

  “Bonaparte?”

  “Y.E.S.”

  “Who do you want to speak to?”

  “A.L.L. O.F. Y.O.U.”

  “Do you have a message for us?”

  “Y.E.S.”

  “Tell us.”

  “Y.O.U.R.”

  “Go on.”

  “T.U.F.F.Y.”

  “Go on.”

  “B.P.”

  “Are you saying ‘B.P.'?”

  “N.O.”

  “Did you say ‘Tuffy'?”

  “N.O.”

  “Did you say ‘Your'?”

  “N.O.”

  “You do not have a message for us, then?”

  “N.O.”

  “Are you Napoleon Bonaparte?”

  “N.O.”

  So you can see why Mum stopped worrying. And after that, whenever she saw us bent, giggling, over the Ouija board, I don't think she gave it a thought. And we had good fun. (Far more than in that stupid, rulebound Only Child Club.) For one thing, Stolly conjured up whole cupboardfuls of spirits to amuse us. There was a dead baby who made up endless soggynosed poems about having being robbed of her full life. We found a sullen washerwoman called Florrie who claimed to have washed royalty's underwear, and tied herself in knots for several hours, trying to explain “stays” to Stol. My all-time top shade was the Abyssinian horseman Tarafou, who even sent through this noise spelled “HE-UGH!” that he finally explained was his regular spitting. (“Disgusting!” said my mother, and forbade us to say the word out of my bedroom.) Stol favored the Black Fairy of the Glen, an excitable spirit who was forever picking quarrels with some poor churchwarden called Albert, who kept having to rush back to wherever spirits come from to get his chapel bells rung on time. The Black Fairy's sister was another favorite. She was called Tangerina and once gave me an excellent idea for my homework.

  Dad used to pop his head around the door. “Just let me know if Count Vacquerie's wife drops in. I have a soft spot for her.” And if she came, he'd bring his coffee over to our table to flirt for a while.

  “So, Lizzie, did this murderous Count Vacquerie of yours have one of those great hairy beards?”

  “A. F.I.N.E. R.E.D. B.E.A.R.D.”

  “And have you gone off them a bit, what with the black-hearted fellow stabbing you to death while you slept in your bed and all?”

  “N.O.”

  “Would you like me to grow one?”

  “N.O.”

  “Why not?”

  “S.I.R. Y.O.U. A.R.E. M.A.R.R.I.E.D.”

  “Not half,” he'd sigh. “And if I don't get that lawn mowed before lunch, won't I soon know it?” He'd tip back the last of his coffee and off he'd go. I'd slide off in his wake to cadge a snack, and Stol would sit alone at the table, his finger resting lightly on the wobbly little wooden arm, chatting to some incoherent Visitor from Beyond who he might later claim had been speaking Egyptian.

  Once, there was almost a punch-up. It was Stol's fault. First, he told Zool, God of Tempest, about some upstart little ocean spirit called Napley's rather unlikely claim to be “M.O.R.E. P.O.W.E.R.F.U.L. T.H.A.N. N.A.T.U.R.E.” Zool wasn't pleased and showed up next time Napley was about. The argument raged. We were confused because it wasn't clear where one spirit's insult ended and the other's began. But those two seemed to know, because they kept at it hammer and tongs till Mum called us at lunchtime.

  “I'll say this much for that stupid Ouija board. It certainly keeps the two of you quiet.”

  “Fairly quiet,” said Dad, who'd been trying to read the paper while the God of the West Wind had pitched in on Zool's side. “Who was that boastful one who kept banging on about having the power to unknit the very entrails of the earth?”

  “That was the Ocean of the Deep.” “It's a pity,” said Dad, “that we're miles from the sea here. If I'd thought he lived that tiny bit closer, I'd have asked him to pop in to sort out that tangle of wiring in my mower.”

  the world of esme

  A doctor came along the ward, her shoes squishing worse than mine on the gleaming-bright floor tiles.

  “I understand your mother wants a little word.”

  I nodded. “She went that way.” I pointed to the swing doors at the end.

  “Oh, right.”

  She didn't look as if she were inclined to follow. I suppose you don't spend years and years studying textbooks to waste time trailing up and down hospital corridors, looking for patients' friends and relations.

  “Tell her I'll be back this way after I've been through Tanner Ward.”

  “Right-ho.”

  She turned away. Then she turned back. “You do know you can get coffee and stuff downstairs in the restaurant?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Tell your mum, will you?” She glanced at Stol. “Grim as he looks, I always think, at times like this, it's worse for the mother than the patient.”

  I had a sudden vision of Esme, hunched in her mulberry poncho in the forest damp and knowing nothing, peacefully watching the raindrops roll and hearing leaves rustle. Esme is good at slipping into the mood of things. She's always the one who gets people at Halloween parties to act that little bit creepier or more forbidding in their bedsheets or plastic sharpened teeth. And if she joins in with charades, then suddenly everyone's trying harder, acting funnier.

  I've only watched her at one of her “shoots” once. It was in Bermondsey. Esme was doing her new “Sin in the City” summer nightclub look. She stood beside the photographer, watching the models strut their stuff, from time to time calling out things like “Midriffs ablaze, girls!” or “Squint with a teensy bit more cool!” while Stol and I sat in our beanbags, sniggering.

  Not that he generally scoffs at the things his mum does. He's proud of Esme—claims that she single-handedly rescued metallic technofabrics from the fashion wilderness. But back in those days, each time Mrs. Oliver was short-listed for Designer of the Year, I'd overhear Mum muttering to Dad that, in her own view, Esme might do better to spend a bit more time helping her very sweet son learn to knot his own school tie. It wasn't that Esme didn't realize. It was just that she always seemed to have a reason why she couldn't take the time. If Mum said anything to her when she was on the doorstep, she'd look aghast and start on about how her personal voice could not be replaced by any hired design group, and while she was lucky enough to sit at Fashion's High Table and all h
er new autumn surprises were “hot, hot, hot!” then couldn't Mum, just this once, just this week, just till she'd got her new orange-and-silver snakeskin look properly launched in the glossies, give her a hand looking after young Stolly?

  “Esme, he's been practically living here as it is!”

  “Nonsense,” said Esme, hitching her gigantic ragged faux-chinchilla purse higher up on her shoulder. “He may have slept over once or twice while I was pitching my new sleepwear range to those few leading Japanese conglomerate buyers. But usually I wouldn't dream of asking you a favor.”

  “But, Esme, a boy of Stol's age needs to spend some time at home.”

  Stol poked his head out from behind the door, where we'd been listening.

  “I don't mind,” Stolly said. “I like it here.” He beckoned Mum, who dropped her head to hear him whispering, “Oh, please! If you're not careful, she'll send me off to the mad aunts!”

  Mum dropped the whole business at once. (She's heard more than enough about Great-aunt Dolly's apocalyptic visions.) She left it a week; then, when he'd been with us overnight three nights in a row again, she tried tackling things differently. “Esme, I do wonder if you and Franklin shouldn't be putting aside a little more time for—”

  Esme threw out her arms. “Susan! It's not as if clothes are just something that people put on in the morning! That's the trouble with being successful. My time isn't simply some cheetah-print polyester halter top I can conjure from nothing.”

  Once again, Mum gave up. “Well, Esme, if you really must get back to the design house, Stol can stay over. But you and Franklin must promise you'll come for supper tomorrow, so we can discuss this.”

  (Without these two behind the door, earwigging, is what she meant.)

  Esme scribbled in her daybook. “Supper. Susan and Geoff 's tomorrow.” She looked up hopefully. “Who else is coming?”

  “No one!” said Mum, exasperated. “It's to talk. And don't start wondering what to wear, Esme. This is just casual.”

  Esme gave her a very beady look, then hurried off.

  Mum turned to Stolly. “What was all that about?”

  “All what?”