Up on Cloud Nine

by Anne Fine

“That look.”

  “Oh, that. Well, I just think she thought you weren't being very helpful.”

  “I like that!” Mum was outraged. “You're still here, aren't you? And I invited them for supper.”

  “Not that,” said Stol. “The ‘just casual' bit. You didn't give her much of a clue.”

  “Clue as to what?”

  “What sort of casual.” He reeled them off as if his mother had been chanting them over his cradle since he was born. “Did you mean dressy casual? Or smart casual? Snappy casual? Or active, rugged, or sporty casual? Or even business casual, straight from work?”

  “Oh,” Mum said, chastened. “Oh, I see. Well, that was very bad of me.” And she went off to tear her hair in the privacy of her bedroom.

  They never came, of course. Esme called to cancel at a quarter past six. “Susan! Disaster! Poor Taran's been peeking round his camera, shrieking ‘More waiflike, if you would, dear!' at the model all afternoon. But so far all the benighted creature is managing to give us is bury-your-babe-on-the-trail grim. I'm never going to make it.”

  Mum stared down at the piles of onions and cucumbers and green peppers that Stolly and I had been slicing and chopping. “Well, what about Franklin?”

  “Franklin? No chance. He says he'll be banged up in chambers for hours yet.”

  “So supper's off, then?”

  “If you don't mind. I hope you haven't started cooking.”

  “No, no.”

  “And you can keep Stol, can't you? Since it's an emergency.”

  “No problem.”

  Mum put the phone down. “Well, Stol, don't say I didn't try to get you raised right.”

  “I don't mind,” he assured her. “I prefer it here.”

  And I shouldn't think either of us thought he was lying.

  speaking of angels

  Next time the nurse came round to check—what? that he hadn't died without my realizing?—she told me, “Someone called Jeanine phoned with a message for your mum. It's: ‘Are you sure?'”

  “ ‘Are you sure?' ”

  “Yes, that was it. ‘Are you sure?' From Frank, she told me.”

  “Franklin.”

  “Not one to waste words, clearly.”

  Nor his time. He's no slouch, Franklin. Sometimes, when he was ordered to drop by to pick up Stol on his way home, he'd leave his finger on the doorbell longer than was strictly polite, and when Mum went to let him in, she'd find him lolling against the door frame as if just standing still doing nothing for these first few seconds in his day had reminded him he barely had the strength to stand upright.

  “Stol ready? Can I take him?”

  Stol would start gathering his gear, fussing about lost shoes and plastic fangs or chocolate buttons. He'd fly upstairs to find his precious Captain Blood Talking Cutlass. Mr. Oliver would get rattled. “Don't take too long, Stol. I'm a bit pushed tonight. My client claims God told him to slay his family, so I'd quite like to brush up on The Crown v. Harmer.

  “I talk to God quite often,” Stolly informed no one in particular as he sat on the bottom stair, tugging on his shoes.

  “Really?” Mum asked politely.

  “Yes,” Stol said. “He has quite a lot of really interesting information.”

  “I wonder if he's hot on tort,” said Mr. Oliver. “I have a really rather unusual case in the offing whereby—”

  “I never knew you prayed, Stol,” Dad interrupted hastily. “Except, of course, when you are forced to, in Assembly.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Stol. “In fact, when I grow up, I would quite like to be an angel.”

  “Who would have thought?” said Dad, dropping to his knees to help with the laces. (Stol took an age to get on top of tying bows.) “As far as I recall, we've never had any theological discussions at all—except for those times, of course, when we've forced you to lend a hand with the cleaning, and you've kept grumbling that you don't think the Little Lord Jesus ever had to wash up the dishes, or clean the gunk out of the sink.”

  “Speaking of angels,” Mum said to Franklin, “will you be fortunate enough to get along to this year's school Nativity?”

  “Not with Old Hornchurch fumbling his weary way through a cut-and-dried family ax murder. Not a chance.”

  Mum looked as sympathetic as she could. But after he and Stol had gone off, hand in hand, she turned to Dad.

  “Well, if the Olivers end up having to do the same as last year, our PTA will be quids in again.”

  I stuck my nose in. “Why? What did the Olivers have to do last year?”

  Mum looked embarrassed. I don't think she had realized I was listening. “Well, Franklin couldn't make it, so Esme brought someone along with her to video the whole thing, so Franklin could see it later.”

  “So?”

  “Well,” Mum admitted, “she was world-famous, this video maker. Won whole strings of international awards. And you don't suppose we sold off the copies for nothing?”

  stol ties his laces

  I said to Mum, “You realize that's your fourth cup of coffee. You'll soon be on the ceiling.”

  Mum dropped the sugar packets on the cabinet beside Stol's bed. Then she dived into the shelf beneath and pulled out his sneakers. Each was still knotted with one of Stolly's fearful messes, with great cuts down the side where someone in Casualty must have snipped them off his feet, rather than waste time trying to unfasten them.

  Mum started picking at the claggy knots, though it was obvious the shoes were ruined.

  “Message from Franklin,” I told her. “ ‘Are you sure?' ”

  “Sure about what? His coming? His not coming?”

  “Jeanine didn't say.”

  Mum dropped the filthy sneaker in her lap. “It doesn't matter either way, since I'm not sure about anything.”

  “Perhaps he meant about you and me staying here all day.”

  “Oh, well,” she said, cheering rapidly. “That is about the only thing that I am sure about.”

  And she went back to Stol's tangle. “Remember those endless lessons?”

  Who wouldn't? Stol on the bottom stair, fretting, and Mum trying for the millionth time. “Ready? Now take it slowly, Stol. The bunny rabbit pops out of his hole.”

  Stol stuck his thumb up.

  “Then he runs round the tree trunk.”

  Stol made a loop.

  “Then he runs round the other tree trunk and pops down the hole again.”

  Stol's shoelace bow fell apart.

  Mum patted his knee. “Don't worry, sweetheart. We'll have it all sorted out before you move up to the big school, I bet you.”

  “We'd really better,” Stol said gloomily. “There's only three more weeks to go.”

  devil on his shoulder

  He had something else on his mind too—the devil he believed to be living on his shoulder.

  “Stol, this is nonsense!” howled my dad. “What sort of devil?”

  “A tiny one. One that can move fast.”

  “And what does this—I stress—purely imaginary fixation of yours happen to look like in your poor deluded brain?”

  “I don't know. I've never managed to turn my head fast enough to see him.”

  “Because he isn't there!”

  “Not necessarily. It might be because he moves so fast. Perhaps by the time I look over that shoulder, he's hopped to the other.”

  Dad made the curly-wurly cuckoo sign. Mum said, “I know what we'll do, Stol. We'll settle this by taking a quick look in the mirror.”

  “You can't see devils in mirrors,” Stol informed her irritably. “I thought everyone knew that.”

  Dad made an exploding noise. Hastily Mum told him, “Geoff, would you slip out and make sure I fastened the lock on the toolshed?”

  Dad rushed from the room and Mum turned back to Stol. “No need to be a crosspatch. You know I'm only trying to be helpful.”

  Stol made a face. “I'm sorry. I just feel so ratty.”

  “Not sleeping properly?”


  “Hardly at all.”

  “You do know it's ridiculous, don't you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you still can't stop thinking about it.” Mum sighed. “Stol, nobody has a tiny devil on their shoulder, invisible or otherwise.”

  “I know, I know! I just still think he might be there.”

  Mum pulled him onto her knee. (As late as a couple of years ago, Stol was still happy to sit there, so long as she made a pretense of really pulling.) “Stol, have you told your parents about these … these …”

  “Obsessive thoughts,” Stol offered helpfully.

  “Little worries,” Mum corrected.

  “No.”

  “Well, you must. Tell them as soon as you get back tonight.”

  “I'd rather hoped I might be staying,” Stol said mournfully. “Mum's in Colombia, doing a shoot on the mysterious allure of the fedora. Dad's working late. And Anna Maddalena was hoping to go bowling.”

  Mum cracked, as usual. “Well, when you next see your father. Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  Next time Stol came, she asked him, “What about that devil of yours? What did your dad say?”

  Stol looked quite sour. “Well, first he put me through the third degree about exactly what I thought this devil could and couldn't do, how fast it could jump, and that. And then, when I asked him what he thought, he tapped his pencil on his teeth and inspected me over his spectacles.”

  “And said … ?”

  I can't think what Mum was expecting. After all, she knows Franklin.

  “He said, ‘In the context of your postulates, I suppose it's quite possible.' ”

  Tough talking, n'est-ce pas? But it did the trick. From that day on, there was no talk of devils. I got the feeling Mr. Oliver had somehow irritated Stol out of obsession. All I know is, each time I woke in the night, worrying about more down-to-earth things like having ripped the back off my geography textbook, or spilled permanent ink down my new jeans, I'd look across and see him in the other bed, dead to the world, and snuffling very softly.

  new school, new passion

  Mum might have lost the bet about Stol learning to tie his shoelaces properly. But she did set him off on a brilliant new passion. In our first week at the new school, Stol started the Betting Book. First, he bet me that Mr. Hepzerley's hair was dyed. Then he bet Iolanthe's brother he'd grow three inches by the end of term. Then he bet anyone who'd take him on that Mrs. Warren, our teacher, would be dead before Christmas.

  Before you knew it, the whole class was at it. Stol kept the book about as neat as books can be. There were four columns. Who made the bet. With whom. One wide one, to describe the bet itself. And a space on the end, to explain what had happened.

  So George bet Maria he could break his ruler simply by throwing it at the ceiling. (Lost.) Iolanthe bet Henry that the hairy thing buzzing in the window was not actually a hornet. (Won.) Stol bet Luis that the chemist on the corner had only one thumb. (Lost, though there was quite a bit of argument about how much stump made a thumb.) By half term we were on the seventh page, with Arif betting Turner his big toe was longer than Stolly's. (Lost.) Amanda bet us all that Mrs. Warren, far from being at death's door, was pregnant. (Won.) Stol bet me that the shadow over the laundry basket outside my bedroom was not caused by the streetlamp. (Won—can't believe I took that one!) And Jim McTaggart bet he wouldn't lose as many bets as Maria before Friday. (Lost.)

  “Keep on with this gambling, Stol,” Mrs. Warren warned, “and I shall put you in charge of the Christmas school raffle.”

  I think she meant it as a punishment. But Stol had a good time. He went round flogging tickets off to anyone in sight, break after break, and got into some huge conversations with people about why they were too poor to buy more than a couple.

  By the last week of the term, he knew everyone. Everyone.

  And everything about them. Which led to trouble because, when I went round to his house the night before the Christmas Fayre, I found him checking off his ticket stubs against a master list. Some of them he was simply crumpling up and tossing in the wastebin. Others he was folding to drop in the raffle pot.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Fixing the raffle.”

  “You can't do that!”

  “Why not? I'm in charge, aren't I? She put me in charge.”

  “She didn't mean for you to cheat.”

  “I'm not cheating. I'm working on a perfectly good principle.”

  “Whose? Bill the Burglar's?”

  He was quite put out. “Not at all. Karl Marx's. Jesus Christ's. And Robin Hood's.”

  “Your dad says every burglar and embezzler he's ever prosecuted has claimed all they were doing was shifting stuff from someone who didn't really need it to someone who did.”

  “Does he?” Stol's voice was light-years away. “I don't remember that.”

  “Yes, he does. And then he tells us how many of them are in jail now, and laughs like a drain.”

  Stol couldn't have looked more indifferent. “Oh, really?”

  I watched him toss away more stubs. “You'll be in big trouble, Stol.”

  “No one will ever know.”

  And no one did. We sat there half the evening picking out the tickets of the folk Stol deemed unworthy. I filled the bottom of the pot with crumpled paper to hide the fact that most of the raffle stubs had vanished, and covered it with a rather fine false cling-film bottom. Next morning, at the Fayre, Stol had the sense to invite the Turkish janitor to pull out the winning tickets, knowing full well his English wasn't good enough to explain that the inside of the pot felt peculiar.

  And Christopher Tanner won the bike. Den's family won the hamper. The other prizes spread good cheer where it was needed most, and Mrs. Warren confiscated the Betting Book and never gave it back again.

  thank you so much for the lovely …

  Stol spent so much time at our house, my mother pretty well ran his life. I would have hated it if Esme and Franklin Oliver had given me orders. But, though Stol often argued, he did it in a way that made you feel he was just family.

  “Oh, no! Not thank-you letters!”

  “Stol, it's New Year tomorrow. Leaving them any longer is rude.”

  “But I hate writing thank-you letters.”

  “Fine,” Mum said. “Your decision. I can come back with you to your house and help you gather up all your presents and return them to everyone who sent them.”

  “Not likely!”

  “Or you can write and thank them, just like Ian.” He'd sigh. “Oh, all right.”

  Mum put the paper in a pile between the two of us, and found us pens and stuff, and one or two not quite driedup felt markers. We'd muck about for a bit, drawing cars racing round the margins and corpses lying at the bottom of the page. Then we'd get started. I'd write the usual: Thank you so much for the lovely blah-blah-blah you sent me. I especially liked it because blah-blah-blah. We had a really nice Christmas, with blah-blah-blah. I also got blahblah-blah and bleh-bleh-bleh. If it was a really good present, Mum made me put in an extra chunk about what we'd been doing last term, or in the holiday, so the letter would stretch over the page. Then, at the end, I'd go So thank you again for the blah-blah-blah and that one would be over.

  I got quite good at it. I'd churn them out at some swift rate, once I got going. Stol, though, would take forever. He would get sidetracked straightaway. Every few minutes, I'd notice his hand reaching out for a fresh sheet, and I couldn't resist reading his letter upside down across the table.

  So Mum said, “And what time do you call this?” Dad must have been in tip-top fighting mood because he told her, “Eight o'clock, Esme. Don't tell me you've lost your watch.” Mum gave him her swallowed-a-scorpion look, and told him, “Don't you be flip with me when you come home this late.” Dad dumped his briefcase on the kitchen counter. “For pity's sake, Esme! I'm this late every night!” and she hissed, “Not the Saturday before Christmas! Not with the Feltherams and the Harrison-
Turners in there, making icy conversation over their third drink because the half-wit who forgot they hate each other and invited them for the same night hasn't thought to get home in time.” Dad looked a bit guilty and said, “Well, no need to get your knickers in a twist. I'm back now, aren't I?” And Mum shoved her hands on her hips and said, “Don't think you're going to slide out of it quite that easily, Franklin Oliver. I'm not one of your—” And Dad interrupted, “All right, all right. I'm sorry!” and tipped a load of olives in the dish he had to buy her after that rocket she gave him about eyeing the beach girls in Tarasalina. He said, “Let's not waste time standing here spatting. Let's get this grim show on the road. Who did you say I was idiot enough to invite? Not those ghastly Harrison-Turn—?” Then, seeing the look on Mum's face, he spun around to see Mrs. Harrison-Turner in the doorway, looking flinty enough to slice steel. She said something unlikely about having a headache, and—

  “Mu-um! Da-ad!” I'd call. “Stol's telling his aunt Eva exactly what happened at his house the Saturday night before Christmas.”

  Dad strolled across to take a look. “Blimey! Hairraising stuff!” He reached for the next page. “Struth! Did your mother really call him that? In front of you?” Mum prized the pen from Stol's hand and scanned the pages he'd finished. “This one's all right,” she told him after a moment, handing the top one back. “And you can send these next two just so long as you black out what Esme called your father.” She shook her head. “But this one won't do at all.” Her eyes widened. “Good Lord! Who would have thought it?” She read on, still shaking her head. Then, “As for these last three pages, you can't send them, sweetie.”

  Stol was completely mystified. “Why on earth not?”

  “Because it's supposed to be a thank-you letter, not the script for a five-act tragedy. Now, pick up again at the top of this page, and try to turn it back into something more normal. You know the sort of thing. Thank you so much for the simply lovely bleh-bleh-bleh… .”

  “It was Fireside Football,” sighed Stol. He reached out for my last effort and started copying, muttering, “Bleh-bleh-bleh.”