Forever Rose Read online

  ‘Poor Mum!’? That would have been even better, but he didn’t say that either.

  No. He cried out, ‘Where’ll I keep my drum kit? Where’ll I keep my drum kit?’

  Which was about the worst thing he could have said and proved to his mother that he was all she had long suspected: Heartless, Shameful, Disgraceful and Utterly Selfish.

  At this point in the story Saffron and Sarah looked at one another, and their looks said as plainly as if they had spoken, We think David’s mother is right.

  David did not see their looks. He went on remembering his grandad.

  ‘He always knew the weather forecast,’ he said. ‘He liked weather because it came from Abroad. He was very interested in Abroad. He read the labels on things to see where they’d come from and he could always find the places on a map. He liked daft jokes. I used to fetch us both curry while he made tea. When I was little he caught me pinching five pounds from his wallet. “Nay, David,” he said. “You’re saving me a job there. I was going to give you that.”’

  David put his face in his hands.

  Now Saffron and Sarah looked at each other again, but this time it was a different sort of look.

  ‘Your grandad sounds lovely,’ said Sarah. ‘Drink your tea.’

  David took the mug Indigo handed him and immediately spilled half of its contents on the sofa.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Saffron kindly (which is not what she would have said if I had done it) and she did not even flinch when David made it much worse by scrubbing the dampness in with his grimy sweatshirt sleeve.

  David looked gratefully from her to Sarah, who were now one each side of him, patting his back, and he began to perk up. You could see it happening. He unslumped, his tears stopped and he began to look pleased. This is such a weird thing about David that I nearly cannot bear it, the way he can transform from sad to happy so quickly.

  I have heard that dogs are the same.

  It seems all wrong to me. I think David should have been sad about his grandad for about a year, and worried about his drum kit for about six months, and bothered about spilling tea all over the place for at least a couple of days, and then he should have started perking up.

  After a decent length of dismalness.

  However, David, cosily sandwiched between the two most cool and gorgeous and brainy girls in the school, did not seem to feel the need for dismalness at all.

  And of course nobody even hinted that a more sensitive person would no way have revived so unnaturally fast.

  We were all very well behaved indeed.

  In the living room, all together.

  Around the edge of the drum kit.

  The enormous drum kit.

  Wednesday 6th December

  Today began with Harry Potter and Mr Spencer and it ended with Saffy and the Drum KIT.

  Harry Potter and Mr Spencer

  ‘Look what I’ve brought for you!’ said Sarah, coming round before school while I was still eating breakfast (muffins and honey. They need using up).‘I meant to give it to you last night, but I forgot – the drum kit saga drove all lesser matters from my mind. I am sure you will like HP. It is the absolute opposite to everything real life and pink.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen the films.’

  ‘This is the adult edition. Sophisticated black cover, you see. Dad bought it to take on holiday…’

  ‘Yes, but I told you, Sarah. I’ve seen the films.’

  ‘So no excuses this time! If Dad can read it, anyone can. You know yourself that he is a cultural wasteland (look at his golf picture!). And please stop telling me you’ve seen the films! I know you have! I took you! Seeing the films has nothing to do with reading the books! Anyway, there isn’t time to argue. Where’s Saff?’

  ‘She took Mummy up some tea.’

  ‘I’m here now,’ said Saffron, appearing as I spoke. ‘Are you ready? Can you get the door, Rose? No, forget it! You’re covered in honey! Come on, Sarah, let’s go!’

  With that they whizzed away, rushing for the school bus like it was some new exciting adventure. Saffron and Sarah love school. They have been going for more than twelve years, and the novelty still has not worn off. Not like me. I was bored with school by lunchtime on the first day.

  But you have to go. It is the law in this country.

  So I washed off the honey, said goodbye to Mummy, and left the house. I took Harry Potter with me and Kiran and Molly pounced on him the minute I walked through the playground gates. After that, even though they have both read the book before AND seen the film they spent the rest of the day grabbing it off each other and hunting for their favourite bits to read aloud to anyone who would listen.

  ‘How utterly quaint!’ remarked Mr Spencer, creeping up on them, and Molly, not recognising sarcasm, asked, ‘Have you read any of the Harry Potter books, Mr Spencer?’

  ‘I am happy to tell you my life has not yet reached such a level of desperate futility,’ replied Mr Spencer.

  ‘Lucky you,’ muttered Kiran, causing Mr Spencer to exclaim, ‘What was that, Kiran? What did you say? Give me that so-called book, please! Give it to me now!’

  ‘It’s Rose’s,’ said Kiran.

  ‘Rose’s?’ asked Mr Spencer, suddenly very happy. ‘Then give it back to Rose, please, Kiran! At least in her keeping I can be sure it will remain unread.’

  (Oh.

  We will see about that, Mr Spencer.)

  ‘He really isn’t very nice,’ remarked Molly, gazing after Mr Spencer as he strutted away, and this made Kiran and I laugh and laugh.

  ‘Well, he isn’t,’ said Molly.

  ‘No,’ said Kiran. ‘You are quite right, Mollipop! In fact he is so monstrously not very nice that I am surprised he is legal.’

  Mr Spencer was in a particularly frightful mood that morning because he had just discovered that although he had successfully cancelled Christmas, he could not get out of the Christmas Class Trip. It is going to happen. Hurray, hurray. On Monday, December 18th. There is a list on the BIG NEWS BOARD (most important notice board in the school) of places where we can vote to go. We have got one day to vote. Also (says the BNB) there will be No Hot Lunches served that day, the car park will be closed to make room for the coaches, the school has a wonderful record of good behaviour on these occasions and finally would anyone who has lost items of school uniform in the last few weeks please check out Lost Property which is overflowing with expensive unnamed belongings…

  ‘I have done something naughty,’ said Molly, as we read all this information to each other at afternoon break (better than going out into the rainy playground).

  ‘What? What?’ we asked, but she would not say.

  Mr Spencer’s rudeness about HP made me absolutely determined to read it myself. On the way home, I tried.

  I tried and I tried, but I couldn’t do it. Reading the books after seeing the films felt like going into black and white slow motion with the sound turned off.

  Why?

  Molly and Kiran can do it.

  Perhaps I really am thick.

  As soon as I got home I went to see Mummy in the shed to see what she thought. When she understood what I was talking about she explained it straight away.

  ‘It is because you are a very visual person, Rose darling,’ she said, holding her chest a bit but looking otherwise fairly well. ‘It is all part of the reason that you are so very good at Art. You are so quick at noticing and you have such a good memory that I am not a bit surprised it is hard to make the transfer from film to book. It is like asking Tom or Indigo to ignore the tune of a song they have heard and just concentrate on the words…’

  !!!

  In our family we have always assumed all the brains came from Daddy. Obviously not quite.

  ‘…and if you are comparing yourself with Saffron,’ continued my new-revealed-as-intelligent-mother, ‘(which you really shouldn’t because you and Saffy are very different people) don’t forget she could hardly read a word until she was e
ight. In fact she was quite a lot older than you before she settled down and started working at school…’

  Yes! Yes! That is true! I had forgotten! Hurray! I knew I wasn’t thick.

  ‘And yet look at Saffy now!’

  One day I wonder if Mummy will say, ‘Look at Rose now!’

  ‘I say it already,’ said Mummy, tipping instant coffee into a can of Diet Coke, swirling and swigging. ‘And so does Daddy.’

  ‘Who do you say it to?’

  ‘We say it to each other,’ said Mummy.

  I went back into the house feeling very happy and I had a muffin and some instant hot chocolate to celebrate. Those muffins are definitely getting old.

  Saffy and the Drum Kit

  After my muffin, and before anyone else was home, I went and had a go on David’s drum kit. I don’t know how he got it all in that wheelbarrow, five drums and three cymbals and stands and pedals too. The cymbals are very crashy, and the drums, especially the big sideways one, are enormously loud. The air shakes when you really wallop them. I can see why David’s mother complained. And why his uncomplaining grandad had a heart attack (although maybe he would have had one anyway). (But perhaps not so soon.)

  Oh well, he has had it now, and I know it is sad, but at least he has escaped the drums.

  Drum kits are not one solid lump: they come apart. They unclip and unscrew. I was very, very tempted to see if I could make David’s drum kit any smaller, but I did not quite dare. I once took a guitar to pieces and the results were not good. And even if I had got it apart, what then? I do not think that you can let the air out of a drum and fold it flat.

  Or can you?

  NO, said Indigo and Saffron when they came home at last, but they agreed that the drum kit could not stay where it was.

  Unless we did not mind never having a fire or watching TV and could put up with not sitting down ever, unless on the sofa with our knees tucked under our chins.

  And we did mind. Very much indeed.

  So, after soup and scrambled eggs (Mummy just had soup) we began the Great Drum Kit Removal.

  There is not one room in this house where that drum kit will fit.We know because we tried them all.

  It could have fitted in the kitchen because our kitchen is big, but we would have had to take out the table and never use the back door, and we would have had to cook very carefully indeed. Saffron and I were sure it could never work, but Indigo said we were just being negative and he went and fetched Mummy out of the shed to see what she thought. Mummy did not come in, but she peered through the window and said she thought she could manage if the worst came to the worst and she would love a cup of tea with sugar but no milk.

  Even making a cup of tea was not easy with the drum kit blocking the way to the taps. Sugar was very difficult because it meant opening a cupboard door and that involved pushing everything right up to the cooker and squeezing around. Sarah came to see us while we were in the middle of all this but she had to stay outside until we could open the door. We got her in when we took the tea out and she said (when she had stopped laughing enough to speak), ‘What about upstairs on the landing?’

  So we tried that next.

  It was a dreadful job to get the drum kit up the stairs, and when we finally made it we found the landing had shrunk. The drum kit only fitted there with the bathroom door wide open and the bathroom itself blocked off.

  ‘Fuss, fuss, fuss,’ said Sarah. ‘I don’t see why you can’t wash in buckets and go to the loo in the garden. It is only a matter of flexible thinking. You’d better try the bedrooms.’

  We started looking in bedrooms.

  Mummy’s was full of the big bed and about ten million boxes of stuff nobody wants anywhere else.

  I would not let them try mine. Anyway, it is the smallest room in the house.

  Indigo’s contains a wardrobe so huge that the door does not open more than halfway, so you have to slide in sideways like a picture on an Egyptian painting.

  And then we ended up at the door of the room that Saffy and Caddy used to share.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ said poor Saffy, but of course we did. We had to, there was nowhere else. We piled the beastly drum kit up on Caddy’s bed and it sort of fitted.

  In an awful kind of way.

  ‘How do you actually feel about it?’ Indigo asked Saffron very guiltily indeed.

  ‘I hate it and I am furious,’ said Saffron, ‘but thank you for asking.’

  Thursday 7th December

  Communication and Listening

  Today’s morning assembly was about Communication and Listening. It was really good. It had a Christmas theme.

  The Head said, ‘Think of the shepherds on the hillside like in the hymn we have just sung. Think of the Wise Men bumping along on their camels through the night. What do you imagine they talked about?’

  Classes 1–5 yawned and wriggled. Obviously they did not want to encourage the Head with any hint of interest. None of them had a single suggestion. They could not wait until they were back in their highly decorated classrooms watching School TV. However, we in Class 6 with only Maths and Mr Spencer to look forward to had lots of ideas. We guessed the shepherds probably talked about…SHEEP!

  ‘Can we expand on that?’ asked the Head hopefully.

  Class 6 can expand on anything if it means putting off the evil moment when we have to get down to some work. Kai (especially considering his seat by the bins) is a particularly quick thinker and he immediately asked several intelligent questions which were:

  How did the shepherds watch their flocks by night?

  Wasn’t it dark?

  How did they know which flock was which in the dark?

  Do sheep go to sleep at night and if not how do they manage to stay awake?

  The Head patiently told him (after establishing that he was not trying to be funny) that some sheep go to sleep at night and some do not and that flockwatching was probably a shared occupation so it wouldn’t matter which flock was which. (This is not something that I am sure is correct, and the Head himself admitted he was no sheep expert.) He did not attempt to explain the difficulty of the dark, but hurried us on to the Wise Men bearing gifts.

  I was a Wise Man when I was in Class 1, and Mummy made me a costume of such travel-stained sumptuousness that when I put it on the other two Wise Men looked like tramps. So she made them costumes too, and then the shepherds cried and had to be cheered up with carved wooden staffs and plaited sandals and shepherds’ pipes that really played. After which the angels and Mary and Joseph looked simply dreary until Mummy organised her Art class of Young Offenders into stringing harps and gilding wings and halos. One Young Offender, who had recently had an unexpected baby, even agreed to lend it for the final scene.

  We still have all the things Mummy made at school: every year Class 1 get them out and use them for the Christmas play. Even though they are not as bright as they used to be, and Baby Jesus grew up and we never found another, I still like to see them. My red silk turban is still wonderful with rubies, and the Wise Men are still my favourite characters. They are the only ones in the story who did not have to be organised by angels.

  While I was thinking about all this the others were talking about the subjects the Wise Men would have discussed on their long, long plod to Bethlehem. Kiran nudged me awake when Molly joined in to say (blushing) that she thought they would have talked about Presents. Because, said Molly, when you go to a party you always wonder about the present you are taking, and if it is going to be all right and not exactly the same as someone else is bringing. Or boring.

  The Wise Men’s presents were definitely not boring. Gold and frankincense and myrrh! I bet Mary didn’t even know what they were when she unwrapped them.

  ‘Shops in those days must have been a lot more interesting than shops in these days,’ remarked Kiran. ‘I can’t think of anywhere you could buy gold and frankincense and myrrh any more.’

  ‘Maybe the health food store,’ suggested Mol
ly, but the boys thought eBay and the Head said they were probably right.

  That assembly on Communication and Listening was the best we ever had and we all (that is Class 6 I mean, Classes 1–5 were nearly dead with boredom) left the hall feeling very communicative and friendly.

  A pity Mr Spencer missed it.

  Mr Spencer spent the time we were away rearranging our classroom.

  Now all our tables are separated, and not one person sits with a friend. In fact, it looks to me that we have been deliberately placed with our enemies. Kiran is with Ravi who is going to be a surgeon and reads books about the insides of people and cannot wait to start slicing us up. Molly, who has no enemies, has been given a table on her own at the back. And other sufferers are similarly arranged. Only I am lucky. I am with Kai, probably because Mr Spencer remembered how we fought in PE. But ha, ha, Mr Spencer, we have since become good friends! Kai and I have agreed to conceal this though, and every time Mr Spencer glances our way we take care to look sullen, and now and then we give each other nasty hard shoves. (This causes happy twitches to Mr Spencer’s moustache but no other reaction.)

  For the whole morning our classroom was very quiet. Not surprising: nobody had anyone to talk to. At lunchtime things became a little better. It was too wet to go outside, and we stayed in the classroom and talked. The class Christmas trip had to be decided upon that day.

  This was our list of choices:

  1. The pantomime (Dick Whittington).

  2. The Ice Rink.

  3. London, to look in the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum and the V & A afterwards if there is time.

  4. The Zoo.

  ‘The Zoo, the Zoo, the Zoo! Please the Zoo!’ begged Molly.

  Groan.

  I have been dragged round that zoo at least a thousand times. It is only a few miles away. When Caddy lived here it was her favourite place, her home-from-home. She knew all the staff and all the animals. When she was little she got a season ticket for Christmas every year, but by the time she finished school she did not need tickets any more. They let her in like they did the postman. Later, when she was a student she had holiday jobs there. (Hence Molly’s laminated autograph.)