Saffy's Angel Page 4

  ‘He didn’t know you as well as he knew Caddy and Indigo,’ said Eve, choosing her words very carefully. ‘Not at first. Not when he wrote that will. You were in Italy, you see, and they were in England. That visit he made to Siena when your mother died was the first time he’d seen you…don’t cry Saffy…’

  ‘It’s always different for me!’ sobbed Saffy. ‘It’s not fair! He was my grandfather just as much as theirs!’

  ‘Saffron, it’s just the same for all of you,’ said Bill as patiently as he could manage. ‘Look at Caddy and Indigo and Rose! They’re not getting upset like this. Nor your mother…’

  ‘She’s not my…’ began Saffy stormily, and then swallowed the words. After all, it wasn’t Eve’s fault.

  Bill was looking at his watch, the way he did on Sundays. He had a special manner of doing it, sweeping his arm in a circle, shooting up his shirt sleeve, raising his eyebrows, and sighing. It was the signal for the official end of Sunday afternoon. Normal life was about to resume.

  ‘Saffy darling, Daddy’s got to go very soon,’ said Eve. ‘For his train. Poor Bill! So why don’t we all…’

  Saffron sniffed and pulled away…

  ‘…wave?’ said Eve, hopefully.

  Rose, (Permanent Rose, heiress) came out from underneath the kitchen table and said very cheerfully, ‘I love waving bye bye to Dad!’

  ‘Rose!’ said Eve reproachfully, and tried to push back her happiness at the thought that she would soon be in her lovely shed.

  ‘I’ll get his bag!’ said Indigo, as relieved as everyone else that the tension seemed to be over. ‘Caddy can look out the front for the taxi. Go and look for the taxi, Cad!’

  ‘Come on, Saffron!’ said Caddy, jumping up. ‘When he’s gone we can be properly miserable again. If we want to…’

  Saffron looked around, and it seemed to her that the Cassons were shaking off sadness like a dog shakes off water. Bill was saying,

  ‘Well, well, back to the hard life! Give me a kiss, Rose! Jacket…wallet…mobile…lap-top…bag (thank you Indigo)! Sandwiches, Eve darling? How sweet…’

  ‘Taxi’s here!’ shouted Caddy from the front room window.

  ‘Waving! Waving!’ exclaimed Rose, and sped upstairs with Indigo after her.

  ‘Saffy, be a good girl for your mother and give your old dad a kiss!’

  ‘She’s not my mother!’ hissed Saffy, wriggling in his arms and furious with him because he was so cheerfully escaping them all. ‘And you are not my dad and I hate you and I hope you never come…’

  It was no good. Bill was not going to be provoked at his moment of release.

  ‘You are our darling girl and we love you!’ he said, laughing and picking up Saffy to swoop her down the front steps, just as he used to do when she was little and cried because he was leaving. ‘And I know you don’t hate me…’ (He gave her two huge kisses, one on each cheek.)

  ‘…and I will always come back!’

  He had a charm about him sometimes, a warmth that was irresistible, like sunshine. He planted Saffy triumphantly on the pavement, opened the taxi door, slung in his bag, gave a huge film star wave, called, ‘All right, Peter? Good weekend?’ to the taxi driver who knew him well and considered him a lovely man, and was free.

  ‘Back to the hard life,’ he said to Peter, and stretched out his legs.

  Back to the real life, he meant. The real world where there were no children lurking under the tables, no wives wiping their noses on the ironing, no guinea pigs on the lawn nor hamsters in the bedrooms, none but the most respectable of funerals, and no paper bags of leaking tomato sandwiches.

  Saffron had the sandwiches. She stood in the street, lost between laughter and tears and found that at the last moment, after the darling girl, and the swoop down the steps and the hug and the film star wave, he had planted his sandwiches on her. He hated sandwiches. He always managed to leave them, and he always made it look like an accident.

  Far down the road she could see the taxi, crawling along behind a milk float. There was still time to catch him.

  Saffron began a sandwich chase. She began running after the taxi, tearing madly along the pavement, scattering sandwiches. This time, she thought, he would not escape.

  He was still waving. He must have seen her. There was his head, leaning across to Peter, saying something.

  The taxi went faster. It overtook the milk float and whizzed through the orange-turning-to-red traffic lights at the end of the road.

  ‘I hate you! I hate you!’ wailed Saffron, and flung the last of the sandwiches at the final glimpse of her father as he disappeared from view.

  The milk float trundled past, rattling with empty bottles. It rattled over the tomato sandwiches so that they plastered themselves on to its wheels. Then the road was quiet again.

  Saffron said aloud, ‘I don’t want to go home.’

  As she spoke she became aware of a humming sound, getting louder. Next there was a flash of silver. Then something knocked into her, very hard, from behind.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ asked Caddy, when Rose came downstairs from waving.

  ‘Mum, shed,’ said Rose. ‘I expect. Indigo, windowsill and you’re not to go up to him yet, he said to tell you. He is dealing with extremes of fear.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what he said,’ said Rose, getting out mustard, tomato ketchup, curry powder and her paint book. ‘ “Tell Caddy I’m dealing with extremes of fear and not to come up till I shout.” I’m painting an eatable picture. What can I use to make blue?’

  ‘Blue Smarties,’ suggested Caddy.

  ‘Haven’t got any.’

  ‘You could mix blue paint into something. Like mayonnaise.’

  ‘Blue paint’s cheating.’

  ‘Toothpaste,’ said Caddy triumphantly. ‘Blue gel toothpaste. We’ve got some in the bathroom. And red wine makes a lovely purple. There’s still a bit left in that bottle by the sink. You could use that.’

  ‘Marmite for brown,’ said Rose. ‘Toothpaste and mustard for green.’

  ‘Do you know where Saffy is, Rose?’

  ‘Mmmm?’

  ‘Saffy. Do you know where she is?’

  Rose was already half lost in her painting, but she dragged herself far enough back again to answer Caddy.

  ‘Run off,’ she said, poking a large paint brush into the Marmite. ‘After Dad. Chucking sandwiches. Screaming. Got squashed flat by that girl in the wheelchair.’

  ‘Is she hurt? Is she OK?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Rose. ‘Anyway, you can’t go out, Indigo might fall out of the window. She looked all right to me.’

  Chapter Four

  Saffron sat up on the pavement and rubbed her knees. Then she pushed up her sleeve and twisted her right arm round to inspect her elbow. It was bleeding a little. She felt very tired. As if she had been running and shouting and crying for a long time.

  The girl in the wheelchair who had knocked her over was watching intently.

  ‘Speak!’ she ordered at last, when it seemed that Saffron intended to sit there for ever.

  Saffron folded her arms across her hunched up knees and rested her head on them.

  ‘I know you,’ said the girl, spinning backwards on one wheel like a gyroscope. ‘You come from that house where they’re always waving. Did I hurt you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to get up?’

  ‘Soon I will.’

  ‘Why are they always waving from your house?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Why were you shouting at your father like that? Do you really hate him?’

  ‘No,’ said Saffron, and then added, ‘he’s not my father. I’m adopted.’

  ‘Are you all adopted?’ asked the girl, still revolving, but more slowly now. ‘The others, too? The grown-up girl who looks like you, and the little one and the boy?’

  ‘No,’ said Saffron. ‘Only me.’

  The girl in the wheelchair took a long look a
t Saffron. It was a very careful look. Her eyes, silvery green like light on deep water, were wide and intense.

  ‘I know your name,’ she announced. ‘You’re Saffron Casson. Saffron. And you’ve a sister called Caddy…’

  ‘Cadmium. She’s my cousin really.’

  ‘…and another called Rose. The little one. And the dark-haired boy is called Indigo…’

  ‘How do you know our names?’

  ‘…and you’ve all been walking past me for years and years and years…’

  ‘Is that why you bashed me over?’

  ‘…without saying a word…’

  ‘Is that why?’

  ‘…without even looking at me…’

  ‘I didn’t think it was an accident!’

  ‘…just as if I wasn’t there!’

  Saffron thought about that and then said, ‘Sorry,’ which was not a word she used very much. ‘What are we going to do now?’ she asked, and inside she wondered, Friends or Enemies? Obviously it would have to be one or the other. She was quite sure this girl who had knocked her over would never settle for anything in between.

  The girl suddenly smiled and her face became lit and sparkling. Saffron felt her friendliness like the warmth of a fire.

  ‘You could just keep on walking past, not looking at me.’

  ‘No,’ said Saffron at once. ‘I’ve done that. Something else.’

  ‘You could chuck sandwiches at me and I could bash you over.’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ said Saffron, and she felt happier than she had for ages.

  She had never had a proper friend. There had been girls she got on with at school but outside school they had never bothered about her much. Saffron had managed without being too lonely because at home she always had Caddy, who was friends with all the world, and Indigo, who cared for no one but his pack. Those two, with Eve and Rose and her grandfather and Bill (now and then) had been all the people with a place in her life.

  ‘I don’t know your name,’ she said, as they went along the road together.

  ‘Sarah,’ said the girl, and Saffy said, ‘Oh yes,’ as if it was a name that she had known all along, but forgotten for a moment.

  Now that they were friends she could look at Sarah’s wheelchair properly for the first time, and she realised that it was not the one she had carefully avoided seeing for so many years.

  ‘You’ve got a new one,’ she said, surprised. ‘A new wheelchair. Haven’t you?’

  Sarah looked pleased.

  ‘It’s a sports one,’ she told Saffron, and rushed off ahead for a minute in a series of swerving swoops.

  ‘I can do skids,’ she said, swooping back again, but not knocking Saffron over this time. ‘And hand brake turns. Nearly. And I can go fast…have you got a bike?’

  ‘No,’ said Saffron.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like one?’

  ‘Yes. So would Indigo.’

  ‘Have you got roller blades?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A skateboard?’

  ‘No,’ said Saffron regretfully.

  ‘I would like all those things,’ said Sarah. ‘Fast things. You wait till I learn to drive! I’m going to have a bright red open-top two seater sports car.’

  Saffron opened her mouth to point out the probable impossibility of this and then shut it again.

  ‘There’s no reason why I shouldn’t,’ said Sarah crossly, guessing Saffron’s thoughts, and then went very fast for a bit so that Saffy had to run to catch up.

  ‘I didn’t say anything!’

  ‘You were going to, though!’ said Sarah. ‘Tell me why you chucked sandwiches at your dad.’

  ‘What, right from the beginning?’

  Sarah nodded.

  Saffy began with the most important thing, the stone angel, the angel in the garden. Sarah, recognising its importance, listened without interrupting, taking it all in.

  Encouraged by her attention, Saffron went back a bit to describe her grandfather. Then forwards to the funeral. Then back again to Rose’s party dress. Then on to Caddy and the exams she had failed and her guinea pigs and hamsters and the way she had copied the picture of Rose’s Banana House, stolen by Indigo on Rose’s first day of school.

  ‘Indigo’s a funny name,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Paint,’ said Saffron, and then went far, far back, to the day she had finally learned to read and discovered her name was not on the colour chart on the kitchen wall.

  ‘But are they all called after paint?’ demanded Sarah. ‘Caddy and Rose? Are they paint names too?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Saffron, ‘Caddy is Cadmium Gold. That’s a real colour. And Rose is a proper colour too. Permanent Rose and Rose Madder. They’re both on the paint chart.’

  ‘Permanent Rose!’ said Sarah, beginning to laugh.

  Saffron explained how impermanent Rose had seemed when she was born, and how she had eaten the paint (Yellow Ochre. Non-poisonous, now a family legend) when she was ten months old, and how they all thought it must have done her good because from that day onwards she had grown stronger and stronger.

  ‘And more and more permanent!’ said Saffron.

  ‘Could it really have made her so much better?’ asked Sarah in such an intensely interested voice that Saffron said hastily, ‘No, no, no!’ and hurried on to describe Eve’s shed, but not Bill’s studio, because she had never been there. However she did mention his pale grey suede jacket and that brought her very quickly back to the sandwiches.

  ‘I know about them,’ said Sarah impatiently. ‘Tell me about the angel again. The angel in the garden. The stone angel.’

  ‘I don’t know any more about it, except what I’ve already told you.’

  ‘Well, tell me about the garden. No, not the guinea pig garden! The angel garden!’

  ‘There isn’t an angel garden,’ began Saffron, ‘there’s only the guinea pig garden…’

  Suddenly Saffron stood still in astonishment. All at once she understood. Of course there was an angel garden. She had known it for years. It was the one she remembered in her dreams.

  She began to tell Sarah about the white stone garden with the little pointed trees in Siena, a long time ago.

  Bill Casson left the train at King’s Cross station and stepped into his London life as easily and contentedly as he would have stepped into a pair of old shoes (if he had had a pair of old shoes). Without knowing he was doing it he began to hum a song that he never hummed at home.

  At the bottom of the Banana House garden, in her lovely shed, Eve was stretched out on her shabby pink sofa gazing at her latest painting (Post Office on a Sunny Morning). She was thinking of nothing. She was falling asleep.

  In the kitchen of the Banana House Rose was totally absorbed in edible art. When Rose was engrossed in a picture the world could tumble to pieces around her head and she would not notice. Caddy was doing her college homework, sharing the kitchen table with Rose, and the entire contents of the fridge.

  Indigo sat on his windowsill not coping with the extremes of fear very well at all. It was getting dark and his feet had gone to sleep from dangling too long. He knew by now that he had been forgotten. He was Indigo in the indigo dusk and he felt lost.

  He thought, I should shout.

  A proper shout meant taking a deep breath. He was much too frightened to do that. For a long time he had been so motionless it seemed to him the slightest change of position would throw him off balance. It occurred to him that he might have to stay there all night.

  ‘Caddy!’ he called, only it wasn’t a call, it was just a small high sound like a bat might make.

  ‘Caddy!’ cried Indigo again.

  No one could have heard it, and yet suddenly there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Caddy grabbed him by the waist and pulled him inside so vigorously that they both went sprawling backwards on the threadbare carpet.

  ‘Indigo, Indigo!’ she wailed. ‘I forgot you!’

  ‘I thought you must have,’ said Indigo, and he began to tremb
le.

  ‘You’re frozen! You must have been there hours.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I was doing homework. That’ll teach me! I am so, so, sorry!’

  ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘I should have looked after you! I forgot! I don’t know where Saffy is either! Do you?’

  ‘No,’ Indigo started to say, and then realised that he did know, and had known all the time that he had been sitting on the windowsill, unsuccessfully dealing with the extremes of fear. ‘Yes I do! She’s outside, with the wheelchair girl! She’s been there for ages, going up and down. First to her house, then back to ours, then to hers again. They’re talking and talking…Listen!’

  Words were coming up through the open window. A clear voice saying:

  ‘You ought to have it! You will have to find it! Think! Think where it could be!’

  Caddy and Indigo looked at each other in astonishment.

  ‘I wish I could remember better,’ they heard Saffron reply. ‘I wish I could remember more! Sometimes in dreams I do, but I forget again. And nobody thinks there ever was an angel…’

  ‘Everyone has something they have to do,’ the clear voice interrupted firmly. ‘And you have to find your angel. It’s perfectly obvious. I will help you!’

  ‘I’m going to fetch them in!’ said Caddy. ‘The wheelchair girl is absolutely right! If there really is an angel for Saffron somewhere, she ought to have it!’

  Hurrying to the window she stuck her head out and called, ‘Saffy! Saffy! Both of you! Come in!’

  Saffy gave one startled look up at the house, seized Sarah’s wheelchair and ran.

  She knew quite well what would happen the moment she let Sarah meet her family. She would lose her. Sarah was just the sort of person that Caddy and Indigo and Rose would like. They would make friends immediately. Then Eve would come out of her shed and be sweet and useless and friendly, and she would like Sarah too. And sooner or later Bill would reappear from London and be efficient and handsome and make excellent jokes. Sarah would be swept away on a wave of Casson charm.