by Hilary McKay
“Only if it wasn’t someone else’s,” Nick answered.
“How could you tell if it was someone else’s?” demanded Kathy.
“Everything is someone else’s,” said Harriet.
Nick sighed and said no more. He led the way home, with Kathy glaring furiously at his back and Harriet sniffing and mutinous beside her. Charley deserted them and raced on ahead, but when they reached Porridge Hall and Harriet turned to go her own way, he reappeared and pushed something in her hand.
“It’s for you,” he told her. “To keep, not to borrow. To do what you like with. It’s my little amber cat. You said before an amber cat would be real treasure.”
Harriet looked at the little cat. It was much more beautiful than anything she had ever seen. It sat on its haunches and smiled at its thoughts, its tail was a sleek curving wave around its paws and it gleamed with a golden fire.
“Did you really give Harriet your little amber cat?” asked Nick, when he and Charley were in bed that night.
“Yes,” said Charley proudly.
“To keep for ever?”
But Charley was not vain enough to expect people to keep his presents for ever.
“To do as she likes with,” he replied.
Nick did not ask any more questions, but he reached across in the darkness and rubbed his brother briefly between his shoulder blades.
“You’re a hero all right,” said Nick.
“I wish I had an amber cat,” said Sun Dance. “What did Harriet do with it?”
“Kept it, I suppose,” said Mrs Brogan.
“Who did she get her treasure from?” asked Robin.
“She never would say,” his mother told him, “and we let the subject drop. It only upset her.”
“Did she give it back?” asked Dan.
“I’m sure she did,” said Mrs Brogan. “At any rate, I never saw it again. Come on, Sun Dance! It’s nearly dark! Time you were home, and we have to get Dan’s things together before his father comes to collect him.”
Sun Dance left and Dan began reluctantly collecting his possessions together and squashing them into his bag.
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” said Robin.
“So do I,” agreed Dan, “but Mum says the house is too tidy and they’ve nearly forgotten what I look like.”
“They’ve seen you nearly every day and anyway, they must have photos,” said Robin.
“’Course they have,” said Dan. “And it’s not as if they even like the way I look. They’re always trying to change it!”
“Come on, Dan, cheer up!” said Mrs Brogan. “It would be worse if they didn’t want you. Then you would have something to grumble about. Anyway, I expect we’ll be seeing you tomorrow morning.”
This hope was dashed almost immediately when Dan’s father arrived to take him home.
“Son,” he said. “Bad news!”
“What?” asked Dan.
“All good things come to an end,” said Dan’s father solemnly. “Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return. Tomorrow is Gran’s birthday, as I assume you had forgotten. She’s coming to spend the day and Auntie Rose and Uncle Bob are coming too and I am sorry to say they are bringing the twins.”
“Oh no!” moaned Dan.
“Well, at least you’ll have company,” said Mrs Brogan cheerfully.
“There’s company and company,” remarked Dan’s father, “and there’s howling chaos which is what our house will be tomorrow. The twins are two-and-a-half and the last time they spent a day with us three carpets and the sofa needed shampooing.”
Mrs Brogan laughed.
“Still,” said Dan’s father, picking up his son’s bag and climbing into the car, “man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upwards! And speaking of trouble, I hope you haven’t forgotten my brace-and-bit!”
“We need some long screws,” said Dan, skilfully ignoring the question. “I was wondering if you had any you didn’t want.”
“Were you now?” asked his father. “Thanks for the warning! I shall get a new lock put on my shed door before I’m a day older! Roughly how many were you wondering if I didn’t want?”
“As many as possible,” answered Robin and Dan together.
“Oh,” said Dan’s father. “Well. Say goodbye then, Dan, and see you again if I’m spared!”
“Goodbye,” said Dan. “ ’Bye Robin, ’bye Mrs Brogan, I’ve left you a thank-you present in the shed!”
“Oh Dan!” exclaimed Mrs Brogan.
“I hope you like it,” said Dan.
“I shall,” said Mrs Brogan. “Thank you very much.”
The car drove away and Porridge Hall suddenly seemed very large and empty. Robin took a torch out to the shed and managed to drag Dan’s thank you present to the back door, so that his mother could inspect it.
“He thought flowers were too soppy,” he explained.
“Good old Dan!” said Mrs Brogan. “I shall miss him! What have you two been up to in the shed that requires so many screws?”
“Come and see,” said Robin, only too glad to have an excuse not to go back into the empty house for a few more minutes.
“Just for a moment,” agreed Mrs Brogan, who quite understood.
Chapter Eight
“What is it?” asked Mrs Brogan, surveying with interest the remains of her summerhouse, now transformed into a pile of planks, all neatly trimmed and labelled with white chalk numbers.
“Can’t you tell?” asked Robin, slightly disappointed.
“Not really,” admitted his mother, shining the torch around the shed in search of clues. “A sledge?”
“We never get enough snow for sledges,” Robin reminded her.
“True. And it can’t be a kennel for Friday because he would never use it, and, anyway, you would never let him. Well, whatever it is, it looks very efficient, all in numbered sections.”
“That’s so when we put it together the screw holes will be in the right places. It’ll make it much easier when we get it down to the beach.”
“Down to the beach?” asked his mother.
“It’s a raft,” said Robin proudly.
“A raft!” repeated his mother. “Good grief, Robin! I must say I’d have given you credit for a bit more sense than that!”
“Mum!” protested Robin.
“I can’t believe you’ve been building a raft!” continued his mother. “Of all the idiots! Well you’re not building a raft! You’re not owning a raft! You’re not launching a raft and you’re certainly not sailing a raft! And that’s that. No arguing.”
“All right,” said Robin.
“A nice fool I would feel,” continued his mother, hustling him out of the shed, locking the door and pocketing the key, “having to ring the coastguard and tell him my eleven-year-old son, brought up all his life within yards of the sea, supposedly of sound mind, has got himself washed out with the tide like some silly holidaymaker!”
“We’ll build something else then, if you mind so much,” said Robin.
“I know what you’re going to say!” continued Mrs Brogan, ignoring him. “You wouldn’t go out far! You only want to float along the coast a bit. You can swim perfectly well. People take rafts right across the Pacific without drowning …”
“Do they?” asked Robin.
“More fool their mothers,” said his mother crossly, herding Robin into the house and slamming the door behind him. “What with Sun Dance planning to visit the moon and you and Dan building suicidal rafts, I think having chickenpox must have addled your brains!”
“We’ll make something else instead,” said Robin. “We couldn’t decide between a raft and a tree house. Dan wanted a tree house really, I think. He won’t mind.”
“I wish you’d stop arguing and listen!” said his mother.
“I am listening,” said Robin patiently. “We could build it in that old apple tree that only ever has scabby little apples.”
“What on earth have apples to do with anything?”
“You always say they’re no good from that tree. They nearly always drop off before they’re ripe. It would be a perfect place for a tree house.”
“I’m sorry Robin,” said his mother, calming down as suddenly as she had blown up. “What did you say?”
“I said the raft doesn’t matter. We’ll use the wood to build a tree house in the scabby apple tree. Dan won’t mind. We just wanted to build something. It doesn’t really matter what.”
“Oh,” said Mrs Brogan. “Oh well, sorry then, Robin! I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that! But I’ve watched one home-made raft drift out to sea from this beach and once is enough for me!”
“You never told me about that before.”
“You never tried to build a raft before.”
“Who was on the raft that drifted out to sea?”
“Who do you think?”
“Harriet?”
“Harriet?” repeated Mrs Brogan, slightly surprised. “No, not Harriet. Harriet wasn’t born lucky. Nick was on it. It was his raft,” she started laughing. “Poor old Nick! He called it The Monarch of the Seas!”
“Where did he get it from?”
“He made it. Harriet helped him. It was just before the end of the holidays, after she had shown us her ten gold coins. It was after the ten gold coins that everything began to change.”
“Everything belongs to somebody else,” Harriet had said, and although she had always made it perfectly clear that she wanted nobody to feel sorry for her, all the same they could not forget her words and it made a difference.
“Three, three the pipers!” sang Charley. “We are three. Two, two the lily-white boys (that is Nick and me!)”
“Speak for yourself!” snorted Nick.
“Dressed all up in green yo ho! One is one and all alone …”
“Oh, shut up!” interrupted Nick rudely. Recently it had begun to dawn on all of them that Harriet was growing more alone than ever. Charley had noticed and had immediately given her his amber cat; Kathy did nothing as dramatic as that, but always at the back of her mind she had worried about the state of Harriet’s clothes and since she could do nothing to improve them, she set about making her own just as bad. In no time at all her trousers were in tatters, her jumpers in lumps, and she had more or less given up brushing her hair. The consequences of this were quite appalling; scruffiness, Kathy discovered, was so time-saving and comfortable that she never completely managed to give it up again and for the rest of her life she was never quite tidy. Also, her gran stopped knitting her jumpers and her mother took her to the hairdresser’s where they cut off most of her hair and discovered, too late, that when it was short it grew in natural vertical tufts.
“You look like a frightened clothes-peg,” said Nick, who had also adopted a policy of extreme tattiness, but got away with it because he was a guest. Soon, of the three, only Charley looked anything like respectable, and even he had lost so many socks and shirts and jumpers since he arrived, that he was down to one set of clothes that grew more and more dilapidated every day. Harriet’s faded dress and borrowed jumper soon stopped standing out at all.
“Where do you live, Harriet?” asked Charley one day.
“Summerhill,” said Harriet. “That house behind the fields at the back of the cliff path.”
“I didn’t think anyone lived there,” remarked Kathy.
“Why not?” asked Harriet.
“It’s much too …” began Kathy and broke off just in time from saying that it was much too tumbled-down to be a home, “too far away,” she said, instead.
“Far away from what?” asked Harriet.
“The town, I suppose,” said Kathy.
“It’s perfect for the beach, though,” said Harriet, as if that were all that mattered.
“Can we come and see you there?” asked Charley.
“No,” replied Harriet and blushed so red that Charley stared at her in astonishment.
“Charley!” exclaimed Kathy reprovingly.
“Why don’t you wait till you’re asked?” said Nick.
Nick had almost stopped teasing Harriet. He no longer mentioned her alarming borrowings, often he even defended her, but Harriet had not forgotten his rude remarks about horse stealing and burglars, her name was still unfinished in the cave and she refused to borrow his knife to complete it.
“You said ‘Remind me never to lend you anything,’” Harriet told him.
“That was only a joke,” replied Nick.
“All right,” said Harriet with dignity. “I’ll borrow your knife when I start thinking it’s funny.”
“I just didn’t want you turning up again with someone else’s horse.”
“It was a boat you wanted, not a horse,” Harriet reminded him. “I don’t know any boats I could borrow.”
“Good,” said Nick but he did not sound particularly pleased. “It does seem a waste to spend all summer living beside the sea without ever going out on it.”
“Couldn’t you build a boat?” asked Harriet, but even the optimistic and born-lucky Nick had to admit that boat-building was beyond him.
“What about a raft, then?” asked Harriet.
“What a brilliant idea!” exclaimed Nick admiringly, and Harriet blushed again, this time from pleasure.
Kathy was not present at this conversation. She heard about it much later from Nick. Right from the beginning, Kathy was kept out of the raft-building project. In comparison to Nick and Charley, Kathy was quite an expert on nautical matters. This fact caused her to swagger slightly from time to time and annoyed Nick, who did not enjoy being second-best at anything. He persuaded Harriet and Charley that the raft should be a secret, a sort of thank-you surprise for Kathy, to be left behind for her private use at the end of the holidays.
“Will she like it?” asked Charley doubtfully.
“Wouldn’t you?” asked Nick.
“No,” said Charley bluntly. “I’d rather know what everyone was doing. I should hate to be left out.”
“Don’t you like surprises?” asked Nick.
“Of course I do.”
“Well then,” said Nick impatiently. “There wouldn’t be any surprises if nobody was left out, now and then.”
Harriet and Charley looked at each other and withdrew to discuss the matter.
“Let’s ask her,” suggested Harriet finally, and the next time she saw Kathy she demanded, “What do you like best, Kathy, surprises or knowing before?”
“Surprises,” said Kathy instantly.
Nick smirked and Harriet and Charley said, “Oh.”
“All right?” asked Nick.
“All right,” they agreed.
“Promise?” asked Nick and they both nodded.
“Promise what?” asked Kathy.
“Nothing,” said Charley. “It’s a secret.”
To his dismay Kathy did not react at all correctly. Instead of smiling and looking excited, she got up and marched away. Charley ran after her.
“I thought you liked surprises.”
“You’re all pigs,” said Kathy.
“It’s something nice,” Charley told her.
“Having secrets without me!” said Kathy bitterly. “I never thought you would!”
“It’s not my secret,” said Charley, horribly bothered. “It’s Nick and Harriet’s really. Harriet thought of it.”
This explanation only seemed to make things worse.
“As if I cared about their beastly secrets,” exclaimed Kathy.
“I bet Nick would tell you if you asked him.”
“I’d rather die,” replied Kathy briefly.
“I’ll ask him, then,” offered Charley.
“Don’t you dare!” said Kathy. “Everything’s going wrong! Everything! Why has everything changed?”
“Nothing’s changed,” said Charley. “Well, nothing except perhaps your hair.”
“Yes, look at my hair! Awful!”
“I think it looks quite nice,” said Charley.
“Oh, C
harley!” exclaimed Kathy, completely exasperated.
“Well,” said Charley honestly, “I know your hair looks awful chopped off like that, but more of your face shows now. And your face is nice!”
“Charley!” said Kathy and suddenly hugged him tightly. “Promise you won’t tell Nick and Harriet?”
“Tell them what?”
“Anything,” said Kathy.
“Promise,” said Charley.
Nick acquired a hammer and saw (“Borrowed?” asked Harriet, slightly bitterly, and was told there was a great deal of difference between borrowing a rusty old saw and hammer and borrowing a horse.) and bought as many nails as his pocket money would stretch to, and Harriet’s cave was turned into a carpenter’s shop. The building work progressed very quickly. At first, Nick had thought that the greatest difficulty would be to get hold of enough suitable driftwood, but he had reckoned without Harriet, who had an uncanny ability to find exactly the right piece. There was soon a large heap of flotsam and jetsam piled up outside the cave, including lengths of rope and empty oil cans.
“Have you ever read a book called Swiss Family Robinson?” asked Harriet.
“No,” said Nick, who was not fond of reading.
“It’s about some people who get shipwrecked,” said Harriet, undeterred, “and the ship is full of useful things. Food and spades and books and animals. Pigs and goats and dogs and a donkey and they build a raft to take them ashore …”
“Couldn’t they have swum?” interrupted Nick.
“Some of them swam,” said Harriet. “They swam the pigs and the donkey, with barrels tied to them to make them float …”
“How did they tie a barrel to a donkey?”
“Round its middle. And they tied empty barrels all round their raft as well …”
“They must have had plenty of barrels,” commented Nick.
“And I thought oil cans would do just as well,” finished Harriet triumphantly.
“Oil cans would be just as hard to tie as a donkey.”
“Oil cans for our raft,” said Harriet. “Just as well as barrels to make it float.”
“We should need an awful lot.”
Harriet found an awful lot.
