Forever Rose Read online

  Then she bit off her angel’s head and cheered up.

  ‘Still, there may be a hurricane. Or jellyfish. Or land crabs. I’ve heard that one falling coconut can lay you out flat!’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure it could,’ agreed Molly comfortingly.

  ‘Personally I wouldn’t say thank you for the Caribbean at Christmas!’ said Miss Farley (cheering up very rapidly as the chocolate molecules soaked into her brain).‘It’s not traditional, for one thing.’

  Then she gobbled up the rest of her angel and shooed us outside.

  ‘Miss Farley is the best teacher in the school,’ said Kiran. ‘You can learn more in five minutes with her than you can in a week with any of the others.’

  The Mr Spencer news was fascinating. Kiran, Molly and I walked home together talking about hurricanes and things with such concentration that we did not notice anything unusual until Kiran asked, ‘Did you book another driving lesson, Rose?’

  And there was Michael.

  ‘It has taken me twenty-four hours to work out what you were talking about yesterday,’ he said. ‘Have you still got that ring, Rosy Pose?’

  ‘What ring?’ asked Molly and Kiran, but I knew what ring. The beautiful platinum and diamond one that he bought for Caddy nearly three years before and had later given to me for safe keeping.

  ‘Of course I have still got it,’ I said. ‘Wait and I will bring it. I have put it away in a very safe place.’

  There are many very safe places in my bedroom, and with Molly and Kiran’s help I searched them all. I found a bundle of dead roses, a home-made CD from America, several guitar picks (how I wish I could see Tom again), a photo of me on Grandad’s knee, a sponge shaped like a dinosaur, a T-shirt with the sleeves chopped off and CRIME PAYS in iron-on letters across the front, a hat which I had when I was five and which was exactly like a hat that Sarah used to wear, a packet of banana flavoured chews (why did I keep them?) and a picture of our house that I drew long, long ago on my first day at school. And it is very funny because Mummy’s shed is there, all rainbow coloured, and the garden streams away from the roof like a banner in the wind. And I found, last of all, in the pocket of a jacket that used to be Indigo’s, the diamond ring.

  ‘Wish me luck,’ said Michael as he drove away.

  ‘Good luck! Good luck!’ shrieked Molly and Kiran. ‘Tell us what happens! Hurry back soon! Listen out for the tiger! Rose says nobody could not love Buttercup!’

  And when he had gone they said, ‘Oh, I wonder what will happen! I wonder if it will be all right!’

  You would think that neither of them had ever read a book in their lives.

  Friday 22nd December

  All This Was Meant To Be

  ‘Your house seems different,’ remarked Kiran when she called for me this morning.

  ‘What sort of different?’

  ‘Bigger,’ said Kiran.

  She is right, the house does seem bigger. It has been growing ever since Daddy came home.

  Daddy keeps having mini-conferences. They go like this:

  ‘While I have got you all together,’ says Daddy, leaning against the living-room door so we are trapped, ‘I would just like a quick opinion on the optimum number of vacuum cleaners necessary in a house this size. Eve?’

  ‘Darling, I understand what you are saying,’ says Mummy, who is now well enough to arrange ivy leaves very carefully round the fireplace. ‘They disappear, I know they do. But there must be one somewhere about because it really doesn’t seem that long since I bought the last…’

  ‘It was when Rose’s beanbag popped,’ said Indigo.

  ‘Popped, or was snipped open to see what was inside?’ asked Saffron. ‘Why’ve you got the angel down off the tree, Rose?’

  ‘I’m making her some proper knickers.’

  ‘Tighten up her wings then, while you’ve got her down.’

  ‘How’s she going to fly with tight wings?’ asked Indigo.

  ‘Did she fly before, then?’ asked Sarah. ‘Without proper knickers?’

  ‘Two,’ said David. ‘Vacuum cleaners,’ he added, seeing everyone except Daddy looking completely baffled. ‘One for upstairs and one for downstairs. And if one went wrong you’d have a spare.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone could disagree with that, David,’ says Daddy warmly. ‘Eve?’

  ‘Two would probably be perfect,’ agreed Mummy, gilding ivy berries with a tiny paintbrush dipped in gold.

  ‘Not eight, then?’ asks Daddy.

  Eight.

  Daddy has done it again. Eight is the number of vacuum cleaners he has found, and we cannot hide our surprise, even though he has already confronted us with eleven sleeping bags, five sets of Christmas lights, too many steam irons and hairdryers to contemplate, and several similar shameful accumulations. Our habit of dealing with malfunctioning, inadequate, or just plain lost items by rushing to the shops has been exposed, as Saffron says, in all its profligate disgracefulness.

  But where did all the zip-up fleeces come from?

  And two bin bags of wellington boots?

  ‘We may never know,’ says Daddy.

  The charity shops are being restocked at a tremendous rate.

  David has been very useful to Daddy in his excavating and redistributing activities. A strange sort of friendship has grown between them. I think this is partly because David takes Daddy seriously, and partly because Daddy understands what David is up against.

  Daddy found out what David was up against the evening he telephoned David’s mother on her mobile for a Quiet Word.

  I think he picked a bad moment. David’s mother was not having anything like as good a time in sunny Spain as she had expected to enjoy, and yet was trapped in the place for another week and a half. I do not know exactly what she said to Daddy when he started to explain his theories on Successful Family Life, but I do not think she was polite.

  Daddy was very nice to David afterwards. He fixed him up a bedside lamp and asked for a drumming demonstration and had a go himself and behaved so well that we were proud of him, even when he offered rubbish drumming advice. And Mummy said to Sarah’s mother on the phone, ‘We are counting on having David for Christmas at least, and we hope for New Year too,’ and she made sure David overheard when she said it.

  We are doing our best.

  I am going to give him the peppermint creams I made at school for Christmas. I nearly ate them, and then I thought of it. I have made them a new box painted to look like a drum. Kiran was a bit unencouraging about it though.

  ‘I hope he gets more than peppermint creams for Christmas,’ she said. ‘Peppermint creams isn’t much.’

  How true.

  I stopped right there in the middle of the street and borrowed Kiran’s mobile phone and texted Saffy and Indigo and Sarah saying:

  v v urgent 4 u 2 by xmas present dvd not pppmt crms lv rose

  After that I rang home and explained the same thing to Mummy and she said, ‘What David needs is Love, Rosy Pose, but I will pass on your message to Father Christmas next time we have a chat.’

  So I asked to speak to Daddy and he said, ‘I’m on to it, Rose.’

  ‘I wish I could boss my parents around like that,’ said Kiran enviously. ‘I can’t even make mine use ecofriendly washing powder.’

  ‘Buy them some for Christmas,’ I said. ‘Then they’ll have no choice.’

  Buying ecofriendly washing powder for Kiran’s parents’ Christmas made us very late for school. Mrs Shah was waiting for us in the entrance hall brandishing the register and saying, ‘One more minute and I was going to ring your families. Where have you been?’

  ‘Only buying ecofriendly washing powder for my parents’ Christmas,’ said Kiran soothingly. ‘Then they will have a present each to unwrap because I have already got them a solar powered doorbell which requires minimal fitting. I am turning them green.’

  ‘You are turning me grey,’ said Mrs Shah, crossly. ‘I shall be glad when All This Performance Is Over. Anything loses
its novelty after two thousand repetitions. Off you go into the hall and try not to be silly.’

  I think Mrs Shah is a bit stressed.

  Tonight is the school Nativity play performed by Class 1 with an awful lot of help from the rest of the world because Class 1 can do nothing unaided. Mary and Joseph are the worst of the lot. If the real Mary and Joseph were anything like our Mary and Joseph there would be no Christmas because Christianity would have got no further than a big fight over who got the donkey somewhere along the road to Bethlehem.

  This Friday morning was the dress rehearsal. That meant assembling on stage the angels, the shepherds, the inn-door-that-really-opens, the stable and the star and the manger (glitter free), Mary and Joseph and the much fought over two-dimensional cardboard donkey.

  And, of course, Baby Jesus.

  In our school version of the Christmas story Baby Jesus makes his first appearance when he is passed (fully dressed and fast asleep) by the angel Gabriel into the eager grabby little hands of Mary. (Who is forced to let go of the donkey at last and for ever – the donkey at once being seized by Joseph with an unholy cry of ‘Miss said now I could keep him till the end’.)

  But what has happened to Baby Jesus?

  Baby Jesus is no longer pink and girlie. He is a beautiful brown. I suppose this is slightly my fault for suggesting we paint him, but it is much more Kai’s for doing it. Yesterday Kai covered Baby Jesus (who used to be Baby Annabel) with Golden Oak wood preservative and today he is sticking to everything. Gabriel has brown gluey patches all down his front, and Mary had a terrible job laying him in the manger because he stuck to her hands. And now he looks more like a porcupine than a baby because he is bristling with hay.

  You would have thought the Class 1 teacher would go mad, but she didn’t. She has taught Class 1 for years and is therefore immune to disaster and hardened to calamity.

  ‘Who can supply a new Baby Jesus in time for tonight?’ she asked, not a bit flustered.

  Then there was a sound like excited chickens as Class 1 all offered at once to supply the manger with Action Man, Barbie, an immense variety of dinosaurs and several varieties of fake human babies with unhygienic battery-powered abilities and very loud voices.

  ‘We don’t want anything like that,’ said Class 1’s teacher firmly. ‘We want a nice quiet Baby Jesus with no added burps, guns, disco moves, horns, scales, lasers or wind-out multicoloured grow ’n’ style hair. Molly, do you think you…’

  But I, whose thoughts had been filled for hours with Caddy and Michael and most of all Buttercup, said, ‘Oh let me, let me, let me, let me!’

  Why?’ asked Molly and Kiran in surprise.

  Because I have a feeling.

  A sudden wonderful feeling.

  That

  All this was meant to be.

  Saturday 23rd December

  Once in Every Generation

  David’s drum kit is now in the shed. He and Indigo put it there last night when we got home from the superb best ever end of term Nativity play.

  I crept past Saffy’s door and downstairs very early today. Last night when Michael drove away he had called, ‘Back in the morning!’

  I didn’t want him arriving and finding no one awake, but I need not have worried. Daddy was already in the kitchen. He was twisting about in front of the mirror trying to see the top of his head. The bald bit.

  ‘You can hardly notice,’ I told him, to comfort him.

  ‘Notice what?’

  ‘The bald bit.’

  ‘Thank you, Rose,’ said Daddy sadly.

  Then we helped each other make some tea and I had a banana and Daddy didn’t and it was very quiet except for the clock, ticking once a second, to prove it was still there behind all the writing. Daddy sighed.

  ‘Rose,’ he said. ‘I feel suddenly old. I did not realise how the years had gone by. Do not try to look sympathetic because you cannot possibly understand.’

  Yes I can. I have just spent a week with Class 1 and they are like people from another planet but really they are just me, five years ago. Indigo and Saffy and Sarah and Caddy have changed too. They are turning into the sort of people I used to call Grown Up and I cannot stop them, although I would if I could. I would slow them down anyway. Sometimes I want to shout, ‘Wait for me! Wait for me!’

  Like I did when I was little and they walked too fast.

  They always turned back then, however much of a hurry they were in, but I do not think they can turn back now.

  So I do understand.

  While I was trying to think of a way of telling Daddy how clearly I comprehended the relentless sweeping of the years through time he was on the telephone booking a year’s membership of the gym. He booked Platinum Level. Very expensive indeed because it includes the pool and the squash courts and the sauna and the sun rooms as well as unlimited access to all the treadmills and rowing machines and bikes that don’t go anywhere.

  Spending so much money cheered Daddy up.

  ‘After all,’ he said, gently patting the place on his head that had been worrying him so much, ‘you are only as old as you feel.’

  Poor Daddy. But he got the biggest surprise of anyone yesterday, because he was Christmas shopping all afternoon (as ordered by me) and he went straight from town to school for the Nativity play. And he walked in a cool snappy shopper laden with iPods and earrings and cashmere and book tokens and was instantly transformed into Baby Jesus’s Grandad.

  Buttercup was a perfect Baby Jesus. Caddy (hastily dressed as an extra angel and hovering at the side of the stage) need not have been there at all. I think he may grow up to be a very talented actor because although it was quite a simple thing he had to do, just lie nicely on some hay, he managed it very well indeed. Class 1 had just as simple things to do, but they didn’t manage them half as well. The Wise Men had to be asked in front of everyone to settle down and leave the presents alone. And we will need a new donkey next year. With stronger ears.

  None of that really mattered though. The only truly important thing was that it was nearly Christmas, and Buttercup had arrived in time to be Baby Jesus. He was there when I got home and I had no problem persuading Caddy to lend him to me.

  ‘He is used to being worshipped,’ she said, and in no time at all we were all rushing back to school together, Mummy and Caddy and Michael and Saffy and Sarah and David and Indigo, too. All of us except Daddy, whom we completely forgot. He arrived a little late, when everyone was sitting down, and the recorders were taking enormous breaths, about to start the Overture.

  Miss Farley recognised him.

  ‘We must find you a seat near the front!’ she cried, loud enough for the whole school to hear and abandoning her raffle tickets in her excitement. ‘Recorders! One moment please while we find a place for Baby Jesus’s grandad!’

  ‘I beg—’ began Daddy, but what he begged was never heard because the recorder players found they could hold their breaths no longer and the ‘Sans Day Carol’ erupted almost simultaneously from both sides of the stage.

  I turned round to smile at Daddy and he looked like he had been hit on the head with something hard.

  Although so did quite a lot of the audience so perhaps it was only the music.

  ‘In the New Year,’ said Daddy, measuring out oats for porridge and bouncing a little on the balls of his feet because he was now a Platinum Level gym member, ‘I shall go for a jog every morning.’

  ‘What, outside?’ I asked, astonished.

  ‘Yes, of course outside,’ said Daddy.

  ‘Maybe you have not seen outside lately,’ I suggested, and I switched the kitchen lights off so that the windows were no longer full of reflections and Daddy could get a good look at the mid-winter grimness of our orange lit black puddled car splashy street.

  ‘Well, maybe not every morning,’ he said. ‘Stop laughing like that, you’ll disturb the whole house. There is one rule you might as well learn about living with babies, Rose, and it is that you must never ever ever und
er any circumstances wake them up.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Daddy. ‘I never worked it out. But it’s true. You wait and see.’

  (I am rather worried. I hope Daddy likes Buttercup. He was so quiet last night that I got Indigo outside to whisper.

  ‘It is only shock,’ said Indigo, who had laughed himself double at Daddy’s face.)

  ‘It’s a whole new world,’ said Daddy. ‘Start living on tiptoe. Who did you think he looked like then, Rose?’

  What! Did Daddy not even glance at his grandson last night? Were the exclamations not loud enough? Was Michael’s smirk not wide enough? Were the lights not bright enough? How could Daddy possibly not have noticed what I had seen by shaky torchlight in an arctic foxes’ den?

  ‘Of course, superficially, he is very like Michael,’ said Daddy. ‘But his hands, I looked particularly at his hands, his hands are exactly like mine! Once in every generation. You’ve got them too.’

  Oh.

  I looked at Daddy’s clean brown hands, with the gold ring and the little finger ring and the smooth bones at the knuckles and I looked at mine, still scratched from brambles, not very washed looking, pinkish grey and rough on the backs, and I thought of Buttercup’s which were very like Baby Annabel’s.

  ‘You see,’ said Daddy smugly.

  Indigo was quite right. I need not have worried.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do see.’

  Christmas shopping again today. Daddy has very kindly given me three months’ pocket money in advance and Molly and Kiran are coming to help me. We have reluctantly decided against gold, frankincense, myrrh and live sheep. Drums and guitars are ruled out because Indigo and David are also rushing into town this morning. And Saffy and Sarah have been looking at the labels in his clothes to see what size he is. Obviously they will be buying him something to wear. But when Michael arrived for breakfast this morning I asked him very privately (because of course he has seen Caddy’s flat at the Zoo) if he had noticed whether Buttercup owned a teddy bear.