Forever Rose Read online

  Good thing we don’t put Mummy off her Art too, or else we would be orphans.

  Artistic orphans.

  Luckily Mummy is the opposite to Daddy. She doesn’t think London is magic and she needs us very much, Caddy and Saffron and Indigo and me. We are her best thing in the world. She would never paint another brush stroke if it wasn’t for us; she actually said that, not very long ago. We are her inspirations. And so are the bills.

  Soon after Saffron and Sarah left Mummy came back from her trip to Boots, so I got dressed as quickly as I could and went out to the shed to see how she was getting on.

  She was getting on very well. She had brought back a bagful of little bottles and the air was fantastically alive with lavender and tea tree and eucalyptus and rosemary and basil. You would not believe such an enormous smell could come out of such tiny bottles. I did not know flowers could be so strong, my eyes felt quite stingy from them.

  ‘Now it is just a matter of waiting for it to work,’ said Mum through the germ-proof hanky she was holding over her face like a mask. ‘Aromatherapy! Isn’t it gorgeous? Goodness, my head!’

  ‘What is the matter with your head?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh nothing, nothing,’ she said, squirting disinfectant spray into the air between us, her eyes very bright over the top of the hanky. ‘Lovely and floaty, Rose darling. Just right. I am feeling so well already.’

  She did look better. Her cheeks were pink and she had stopped sneezing completely, which was a good job because you cannot sneeze and draw at the same time. She had been drawing when I arrived, St Matthew’s Church.

  Mummy has done a lot of churches this year, pen and ink sketches painted in afterwards with sploshy water colours like pictures in a colouring book. Nearly always there are people in the picture, tiny groups in the church porch. They have not caught on for funerals (can’t think why) but are very popular for christenings and weddings.

  An Original Work of Art, and a Personal Memory of Your Most Special Day

  People buy them in bulk for weddings, one each for the bridesmaids, one for the bride’s parents, one for the groom’s, one for Great-Granny because she is very old and might not make it to another Big Day…The tiny figures in the porch (sketched from photographs) shuffle into new positions depending on for whom the picture is intended. One moment poor old Granny is centre stage, the next the Littlest Bridesmaid. Sometimes, for a surprise to the bride, an extra guest is painted in who never actually made it on the day (hurray, hurray it is Gandalf/Madonna/ the cat!).

  The skies are what you notice most. The skies and the mounts. Pinkish skies in pink mounts, pale blue skies in pale blue mounts, golden in golden.

  I am sorry to say that Mummy colours the skies to match the bridesmaids’ dresses.

  Once someone had multicoloured bridesmaids.

  So Mummy created a rainbow.

  The picture on the drawing board today was of St Matthew’s in the marketplace. That is the church where my sister Caddy once nearly got married, except that at the last minute she was saved. (‘For another fate’ as Saffron remarked at the time.) And so the wedding did not end as well as it had started. However, other people do manage to get married quite successfully in St Matthew’s. Mummy often has to draw it. (She has got very good at reducing the huge looming gravestones which pack the churchyard in all directions to a sort of cobbled glow.)

  Recently a very large family had had a wedding there, very successfully indeed, and they ordered and paid for a huge number of works of art to commemorate the day with all different combinations of bridesmaids, cats, old grannies etc. centre stage. And they wanted all these masterpieces painted, framed, packed and delivered by Christmas, when they would be handed out at a family mass reunion from under the Christmas tree.

  So poor old Mummy was slaving away like mad.

  Today’s St Matthew’s was not Mummy’s usual style at all. There was something terribly exciting about the steeple. It was whizzing backwards into space like a rocket.

  It was magnificent; it made me giddy, just looking at it.

  ‘It is your best St Matthew’s ever,’ I told Mummy.

  ‘Is it?’ asked Mummy, sounding very surprised and twisting the drawing board about a bit to try and see what I meant.

  ‘Stand back and you will see properly,’ I suggested, so Mummy pushed back her hair and got to her feet to have a look herself.

  ‘See?’ I said. ‘Isn’t it brilliant?’

  Mummy swayed around, admiring the brilliantness. Then she said, ‘Lost my vanishing point,’ in a very surprised voice, and lay down suddenly on her old pink sofa.

  So I said, ‘Mummy?’

  For a little while Mummy did not reply. Then she said, ‘Aromatherapy is a wonderful thing,’ and sat up, and staggered back across to St Matthew’s again.

  ‘I shall have to redraw,’ she said, after blinking at it for a bit. ‘And I can’t even begin to think of the colours. The bridesmaids wore jade green with white lace…What are you planning to do this morning?’

  ‘Kiran said could I go round to her house?’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘Are you going to paint a jade-green sky?’

  ‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t,’ said Mummy, inhaling neat lavender and tea tree, one bottle to each nostril in a slightly cross kind of way. ‘I’ve been asked to slim down the bridesmaids, and pump up the groom and work in Wayne Rooney with a football for Granny, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t have a jade-green sky. And don’t look so shocked, Rosy Pose! After all, we both know, this is not exactly Art!’

  I can’t believe Mummy said that.

  When Molly Said, ‘Promise You Will Help, Please Promise You Will Help!’ Kiran and I Should Not Have Said, ‘Of Course We Will!’ We Should Have Said, ‘Help You With What?’

  Anyway, I went to Kiran’s house.

  Molly was there. Molly, with her long straight no-coloured hair in a very tight ponytail, freshly ironed Saturday jeans, anorak, Barbie pink trainers and library ticket. Molly, with her anxious eyes, list of emergency phone numbers and chewed finger ends. She and Kiran were messing about in Kiran’s front garden when I arrived, waiting for me. I saw at once that Kiran was in a lovely silly mood and Molly wasn’t.

  ‘Kiran,’ said Molly to me, ‘thinks I’m boring.’

  ‘I never said that!’ said Kiran, hanging herself by her knees from a thickish branch of the lilac tree by the gate. ‘Push me, someone!’

  I pushed her gently in the stomach so she swung like washing.

  ‘You’re getting tree-green on your jeans,’ Molly remarked. ‘And we can see your underwear.’

  ‘You can’t!’ said Kiran.

  ‘We can!’

  ‘Which underwear?’

  ‘The whole of the tops of your socks,’ said Molly, ‘are showing. Aren’t they, Rose?’

  Um. Yes.

  ‘Socks aren’t underwear,’ said Kiran. ‘Are they, Rose?’

  Um. No.

  ‘Say something, Rose!’ said Molly and Kiran.

  So I told them that they were both right, Kiran’s socks were showing, but socks weren’t underwear, and I gave Kiran an extra hard shove to create a diversion.

  ‘Oh, this is bliss,’ said Kiran happily. ‘I can see lovely floating silver stars. Can anybody else?’

  Then she went smashing to the ground.

  ‘Silver stars, looping round and round,’ said Kiran, showing no emotion at her sudden change in position. ‘I’ve got a wonderful blurry feeling too. It is better than being drunk.’

  ‘Lie still in case you have broken your back,’ said Molly. ‘We did it in the Brownies. Socks are underwear, why do you think everyone keeps them in their underwear drawers and I didn’t say you said I was boring, Kiran.I just said you thought it. And I expect Rose thinks I am too. And so does everyone…’ (Molly paused to cry two round shiny tears.) ‘Can you move your arms and legs?’ she continued. ‘Can you turn your head? You may have concussion. I should wrap you in a space
blanket but I don’t see what good it would do.’

  The tears splashed on to her anorak.

  ‘It’s washable,’ she said. ‘At forty degrees.’

  Then all three of us laughed so much it hurt.

  ‘Bonkers,’ said Kiran, flat out in the place where there are daffodils when it is daffodil time (not now). ‘Mollipop’s gone bonkers. What do you think, Rose?’

  I said I thought we should all hang upside down because the stars sounded so good and I hoped they would be visible to someone like me who could only usually see stars with glasses. And at night.

  So we did. And you could. Even with your eyes shut you could see those stars. Also we could hear the sea thumping in our heads. I said, ‘We should do this always, every day. Like owls…’

  ‘Bats,’ said Kiran. ‘And not day. Night.’

  ‘Owls. They cough up bones…My stars leave trails, like sparklers do on firework night…’

  ‘My stars…’ began Kiran, and then slipped off again, and I fell too, from watching her.

  ‘…are fizzy,’ said Kiran. ‘Fizzy stars…are you all right up there, Mollipop?’

  I looked at Molly too. She was quite silent, upside down in her clean jeans, with her arms tidily folded and her feet crossed so the top of her socks didn’t show.

  ‘Are you my friends?’ asked Molly.

  ‘You know we are,’ answered Kiran and I.

  ‘Proper friends?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ we said a bit crossly, because she sounded so doubtful.

  ‘There is this one thing that I have always wanted to do…’

  Kiran and I waited.

  ‘I am boring,’ said Molly. ‘I knew I was.’

  We on the ground made moaning noises.

  ‘If I wasn’t I would do it…’

  Molly is quite able to twitter on like this for hours and hours and hours, round and round a decision she cannot make, or a secret she dare not tell. She sometimes needs a decision maker. You could see she was relieved when Kiran helped her out.

  ‘Do it!’ ordered Kiran, addressing Molly’s upsidedown head in a very bossy voice. ‘Whatever it is, do it! You must, mustn’t she, Rose?’

  I said I did not know.

  ‘Come on, Rose,’ whispered Kiran. ‘It can’t be that bad! It’s only a Molly-idea.’

  Kiran said afterwards that she did not think Molly would hear her, being upside down. But of course Molly did.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and cried a tear or two more. They ran up her forehead and got lost in her fringe.

  ‘I thought you were my friends,’ she snuffled.

  ‘We are, we are,’ we groaned. ‘Stop it, Moll!’

  ‘I want to do it.’

  ‘Good,’ we said. ‘Good. Do it! Brilliant! Not boring at all! Do you want us to help?’

  ‘Yes, but you wouldn’t,’ snuffled Molly.

  ‘Of course we would!’

  ‘Promise?’ asked Molly, suddenly flipping off her branch and standing over us pink faced, eyes gleaming, fists in tight balls. ‘Promise you will help! Truly promise you will help!’

  ‘Of course we will!’ we said.

  ‘Absolutely we will,’ we said (foolishly).

  Not, Help you with what?

  Sunday 3rd December

  I had two phone calls today (telephone calls are cheaper on Sundays). They were from Daddy and Caddy.

  That is the first time I have noticed that Daddy and Caddy rhyme. I could make a poem out of that if I wanted.

  Only I don’t.

  The first thing Daddy said was, ‘You are quite right,

  Rose! There is scaffolding everywhere…’

  ‘I told you so!’

  ‘I know you did. How are things at home?’

  Things were fine, I said, much tidier than the last time he was here (Daddy likes things very tidy). Saffron and Indigo were at Sarah’s house having a Homework Mass Attack to which I also had been invited (No thank you. I will turn up some time much nearer lunch) and Mummy was very busy with a DARLINGS DO NOT DISTURB notice on the shed door. The shed itself smelled wonderfully of lavender and tea tree and 99.9 Per Cent Effective in 30 Seconds disinfectant spray, and that was all the news.

  ‘Disinfectant spray?’ repeated Daddy. ‘Is Eve ill?’

  ‘She had a cold,’ I told him. ‘But she is getting better every minute.’

  ‘What is she doing now?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Working, I suppose. She has a lot of churches to draw and she says she has lost her vanishing point.’

  ‘Lost her what?’ he demanded. ‘Rose? Rose, are you still there, Rose?’

  I had forgotten Daddy for a moment, because out of the window I had seen a surprising sight. David. Lumbering down the road towards our house, lurching from side to side like it was all he could do to stay upright. And whatever had happened to him? David had always been fat, but now he looked immense. He had doubled in size overnight.

  I hardly ever wear my glasses, because in my opinion the world looks better slightly blurred, but now I reached them out of the cupboard where they live behind the jam, dusted them off, and had a look.

  David hadn’t doubled in size. He was carrying a drum kit.

  ‘Rose!’ yelled Daddy down the phone, very cross that I had suddenly abandoned him.

  So I had to talk a bit longer about Mummy and vanishing points and he kept saying, ‘How exactly did she say it? Was it a joke? You must have noticed if it was a joke! Did she mention anything else? Did she mention me at all? What did she mean?’

  I did not know it was humanly possible to carry a whole drum kit, and I watched until David came close enough for me to see how it was done.

  Very disappointing. He had it in a wheelbarrow. And, very alarmingly, he was getting along quite quickly. Soon he would arrive at our back door, and then I would be STUCK.

  So I said, ‘Sorry, darling Daddy, got to go,’ and put the phone down and rushed upstairs and did not answer the doorbell which made me feel very mean.

  Poor old David. He did look gloomy walking away.

  But perhaps he was only busking.

  Caddy!

  Amazing!

  It is months since we heard from Caddy; Saffy was the last person to speak to her and she wrecked it right from the start by saying, ‘Caddy! Where are you? Are you all right? What are you doing? Did you ever find Michael and have you had a row because he is back in town doing his driving lessons again and he goes around looking like thunder and won’t speak to any of us and it really upsets Rose.’

  ‘Absolutely typical of this family,’ said Caddy. ‘You call to say hello and before you know it you are up to your neck in emotional blackmail and third degree cross-questioning. Goodbye!’

  For months after that we had a sticker on the phone saying: DON’T ASK CADDY ANYTHING.

  It peeled off long ago, but the faint sticky mark it left was enough to remind me to be very careful. So I said, ‘Hi Caddy…’ (as if I’d spoken to her only yesterday instead of a year ago) ‘…I’ve just not answered the door to David. He came round with his drum kit in a wheelbarrow. What do you think?’

  ‘What size wheelbarrow?’ asked Caddy, sounding so bouncy and interested she might have been just up the road.

  ‘Very small. You could hardly see it under all the drums.’

  ‘I wonder if he was busking,’ said Caddy. ‘Perhaps he wanted Indigo to help. I hope not. It isn’t exactly busking weather.’

  ‘What’s busking weather?’

  ‘Well, summer,’ said Caddy, laughing.

  (Hurray, I thought. She is laughing. I am getting on brilliantly. And I began to listen out for clues to where she might be.)

  ‘Perhaps David thinks it’s late summer. Very, very, very, late summer.’

  ‘Well, it’s not,’ said Caddy. ‘It’s winter!’ (Ah ha! So she’s in the Northern hemisphere! Now to narrow it down!)

  ‘Do you think it’s too early in the day to ring Tom in New York?’

  ‘Much too ea
rly! They’ll not even be awake yet. In fact, I bet it’s still dark over there.’

  (So, Northern hemisphere, but not America.)

  ‘Are you missing Tom, Rosy Pose?’ asked Caddy.

  ‘I am always missing Tom,’ I said, before I thought, and then I said, ‘Don’t tell anyone I said that, Caddy! Caddy, promise you won’t!’

  ‘Relax, Rose,’ said Caddy, very kindly. ‘Everyone knows you don’t give a toss!’

  ‘Do they? Do you think Tom thinks that?’

  ‘NO!’ said Caddy. ‘I was teasing! I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. Tell me about school.’

  (Listen! Caddy is obviously on location at some wildlife park. There is definitely an animalish background noise. Squeals and snuffles and grunts and wails. Hungry animals, by the sound of it too. I hoped Caddy had not noticed them, because she is very soft-hearted about starving animals, and now that I had got her talking I wanted her to stay for a while. Not rush off and start dealing out lunch.)

  At first I did not know where to begin telling Caddy about school. So much has changed since I last saw her. However, once I got started I enjoyed myself. I started on a super big moan about Mr Spencer and it was brilliant because it made Caddy groan and laugh and ask silly questions. When I got on to Mr Spencer and shoe boxes she was so absolutely fascinated you would have thought she was hoping to be given one herself. And she said Mr Spencer sounded an ogre and she never ever had had a teacher as terrible as that herself. (I do love it when people say things like that. Instead of saying, as so many do, ‘Yes, but if you think that was bad I know something far worse.’ And then you have to think of something worse than their something, and it all ends up big lies.) But it was the opposite with Caddy. I do not often get encouraged to go on and on in such an unlimited kind of way but in the end I had to stop. The cries of the starving animals were too furious to ignore.