Callie Read online

  Callie ran. The conductor knew the Old Pittwater Road and promised to set her down at the right stop.

  As the bus whirled through strange shopping-centres and across a long glossy tentacle of the harbour, Callie became more and more nervous. Her idea seemed so mad she became quite cold and sickish. She would have got off the bus except that she knew she’d be completely lost. And so she sat until the conductor came along, pulled the cord, and pointed out the street she wanted.

  ‘Up there, love. You can’t miss it.’

  Callie stood at the bus stop and tried to be calm. Now she had a new fear. Suppose Grandpa didn’t remember her! But a year wasn’t as long to an adult as it was to a child. She had often heard people say that. How could Grandpa forget anyone who looked like his son Malcolm?

  ‘And I do,’ thought Callie.

  Grandpa’s street ran along a green slope above a huge shopping complex that squatted on acres of concrete. Very soon Callie came to the right house. Shyly she went to the front door, but nobody answered her knock. Timidly she went around to the back, through a large and beautiful garden, and found a woman washing a dog in a tub of suds.

  ‘Hullo, puss, looking for someone?’

  ‘Does…Mr Cameron live here, please?’ stammered Callie, feeling dismayed and lonely.

  ‘Yes, but he’s at work today. Won’t be back till I don’t know when.’

  The woman looked kindly at Callie, meanwhile pushing the dog’s miserable hindquarters down into the tub.

  ‘Important, is it? Well, why don’t you go down and see him on the job?’ She turned to the dog. ‘You get out of that tub, and I’ll skin you, hear? Now then, come here, love. See the Warringah Mall down there? See the Grace Bros sign? Well, old Mr Cameron is working at the back of Grace Bros. You can’t miss him. Just cut across the road here and go down to the back of the building. You can’t miss him. Off you go.’

  Callie ducked across the road, and wandered slowly towards the building. She felt dreadful,

  unsure and awkward. Perhaps Grandpa would hate being visited on the job. Perhaps he was working among lots of men, at a big machine, or packing parcels. People would look at her, ask questions. Callie hesitated forlornly. Perhaps it would be better to go back to school. She wouldn’t be terribly late, even now. Her whole idea had been nutty.

  Then she saw an old man with a sunburned neck and a red woollen cap, sawing away nearby. He was making shelves.

  ‘I could ask him if he knows Mr Cameron,’ thought Callie. She was ashamed to return home without even asking, so she paddled through the shavings towards the old man. And when he looked up, she saw that it really was Grandpa, though she hadn’t remembered his hair so white or his back so rounded.

  ‘It’s never Carol!’ he said in amazement. ‘It is! But you’ve grown so, lassie! And you’re the dead spit of poor Malcolm.’

  Enfolded in his arms, Callie smelt again the familiar and particular smell of Grandpa, sawdust and sweat and carbolic soap and sweet-scented pipe tobacco. It was so good that she whuffled against his old workshirt as though he were a flower.

  He said in his bear’s voice, ‘But what are you doing here, Callie? There’s nothing amiss back home?’

  Callie shook her head. She thought she might cry and disgrace herself, and give Grandpa wrong ideas besides. She put her face against his shirt again. ‘Can you stay awhile?’ he asked. ‘I’ll just be an hour finishing up here, and then I’ve the day off. You could come back to the house with me and have a bite.’

  When they reached the house, the dog was dry, and greeted them excitedly. Callie’s Grandpa lived in a little cabin at the end of the garden. Perhaps it had once been a toolshed. It was clean and snug, fixed up in a man’s kind of way, with a clean scrubbed bench that served for a table, a small electric cooker, a narrow bed with a tartan rug on top and a big carpenter’s toolbox under it, and a picture of a racehorse tacked on the wall. There was a half-darned sock on the table, with the needle still sticking in it.

  ‘It’s a comfortable wee place,’ said Grandpa proudly. ‘Just the thing for an old buffer like me. I keep the garden tidy for my rent, see? Now then, Callie, sit down and tell me all about running away from home.’

  Callie gave an astonished giggle. Was that what she was doing? No, it wasn’t.

  ‘If I am running away, it’s only for a little while,’ she explained. Grandpa took off his woolly cap and hung it on a nail. His head was bald and freckled on top.

  ‘It’s often a fine idea,’ he agreed, putting on the kettle meanwhile.

  It was the easiest thing to talk to Grandpa. Callie felt as Gret probably did when she chatted to herself. She explained how things had been different in the other house, even though it wasn’t as lovely a place as the new house. She’d been able to get on with people there, even Gret, who was such a fiend, and Dan, who was such a spooky kid nowadays. She told Grandpa about falling out with Frances, and getting poor marks in class, and beginning to hate Mrs Wheeler.

  Grandpa nodded thoughtfully. He had made gigantic tomato sandwiches that Callie could hardly get her mouth over, but somehow between bites she kept on talking.

  ‘The new house must be different in some way from the old one,’ he commented. ‘Or you are.’

  Callie didn’t notice that. She rushed on. ‘Gret and Rolf have done awful things to me before, like throwing my clothes around so they could play house in the wardrobe, and Rolf tipped orange juice on my homework, and oh, lots of things. But yesterday they ruined my treasures. It was awful. Rolf squeezed paint all over my diary and I had to put it in the incinerator, it was so messy and disgusting. And then I stood on my glass turtle. I jumped on my glass turtle,’ she amended.

  ‘Haven’t you anywhere to put your treasures safe from the children?’

  ‘There’s nowhere private at all. Not for my things and not for me.’

  ‘What about when you want a bit of a think, or have a cry, without people butting in?’

  ‘You have to lock yourself in the loo,’ said Callie. Her voice sounded so tragic she couldn’t help giggling. It all sounded so mad now that she was here with Grandpa, who loved her and was interested in her troubles. And, no two ways about it, he was.

  While they drank their tea he thought about it deeply, now and then making a comfortable Scottish sound that Callie thought might be spelled something like: ‘Mm—mphm!’

  A little later he said, ‘And now I’ll take you home. It’s a long time since I saw your mother and the children, and I’m ashamed of myself for it.’

  ‘I’m going to get into trouble,’ said Callie with dread.

  ‘You won’t, for I’ll explain.’

  Meanwhile, Heather Beck had kept putting off her phone call to Mrs Wheeler. At first she thought playtime would be a suitable moment, then she recalled that perhaps Callie’s teacher would be on playground duty. Then she felt that it would be uncivil to interrupt Mrs Wheeler’s lunch.

  ‘But the truth is, Rolf,’ she said sadly to the little boy as she washed his face after the midday meal, ‘I don’t really know what to say about Callie. I just didn’t know that she ever thought about her own father.’

  Rolf looked up with sea-blue Danish eyes and his mother sighed. ‘Still, I must do it,’ she told herself.

  A few minutes later she knew that Callie had not gone to school at all. She flew into a panic and rang Laurens at the private house where he was paperhanging.

  ‘She took her school-case, but there aren’t any of her clothes missing. But if she didn’t run away, where is she, Laurens!’

  ‘Run away! Little Callie! But whatever for, dear Heather? Perhaps she’s gone to someone’s home. Ring the mother of Frances.’

  ‘Oh, Laurens, I have already. She isn’t there. Where could she be? Oh, do you think someone has abducted her?’

  ‘Ssssh, ssssh!’ soothed Laurens. ‘You must be calm. And I shall try to get away and come home. Try not to worry.’

  A few minutes later, while Heather Beck was tr
ying to decide whether she should notify the police, Grandpa and a very nervous and self-conscious Callie came up the stairs.

  ‘Now Heather!’ said Grandpa in his bear’s voice. ‘No doubt you’ve had a bad hour or two, but she’s safe and sound and you’re not to be too hard on her.’

  ‘I just wanted to see Grandpa, that’s all,’ trembled Callie.

  Her mother tried to be severe. ‘I’d better ring Mrs Wheeler that you’re all right, and try to stop Daddy from leaving his work,’ she said coldly. But she was not a cold woman. A beam spread over her face, and she gave Callie a great hug. ‘Oh, darling, I’m so happy you’re safe!’

  When all the phoning was done, and Callie had left the room to keep an eye on Rolf, her mother confessed to Grandpa. ‘The trouble is, the child has started to resent Laurens.’

  ‘Away with you!’ scoffed Grandpa.

  ‘It’s true,’ Heather Beck told him. ‘I had no idea. I thought she loved him as he loves her. But accidentally I saw a page of her diary, poor little thing. I can only suppose she gets cross and resentful with the other children because they’re only her half-brothers and -sister.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ rumbled Grandpa. ‘Cheer up for the moment, girl, and show me about the new house.’

  Grandpa was really a retired builder—he only worked off and on nowadays—so he was immensely interested in the house, its sandstone foundations, and the quaint cupola. He peeked under the padded cover which shrouded the old Cadillac in all its sad ruin, and smiled.

  He examined the window-frames and the flashings, admired the silvery shingles, looked for dampcourses, and was amused at the bloodthirsty porch tiles.

  ‘It’s a grand house,’ he said at last. ‘It will stand another hundred years. Laurens has made a good buy. Now then, Heather, back to Callie. I don’t believe for a minute that she looks upon your man as anything but her own father, and a dear father, too.’

  ‘But the diary,’ Callie’s mother objected.

  ‘Toots!’ grunted the old man. ‘What nonsense goes into diaries! I’m surprised at you, lass. Did you never write for your own sake something that was nothing but a romantic fancy or a passing whimper of self-pity or vexation, not true except for the moment?’

  Heather Beck laughed. ‘I certainly did.’

  ‘There’s not a thing the matter with Callie except that she needs a place of her own, a private place to keep her things and be by herself when she needs to be.’

  ‘But she shared a bedroom with Gret last year, a much smaller bedroom!’

  ‘Aye,’ said Grandpa. ‘But now she’s older. There’s a difference in her. Tell you what, Heather, if I can find a place around this house that Callie can have all for herself, her very own castle, will you let the child have it?’

  ‘Oh, Pa!’

  Suddenly Mrs Beck recalled how good and kind this old man had been to her nine years before, after Malcolm had been killed, and she had been so alone in the world except for a baby not yet walking. She had leaned on his practical good sense, his constant strength, and never remembered that he too had been heartbroken by the death of his only son.

  And since then, since her happy marriage to Laurens, she had seen him so rarely, almost forgotten his existence except at Christmas.

  ‘Oh, Pa, why haven’t I seen more of you? I’m ashamed. You mustn’t think I’ve forgotten Malcolm. No, never. It’s just that I’ve been run off my feet with the younger children. Oh, dear, now I’m crying, it’s so silly.’

  ‘There, there, you’re a good lass, don’t greet!’

  At these Scots words, which Heather Beck hadn’t heard for years, she began to smile and hastily wiped her eyes. Just in time, for she heard Gret stumping up the stairs, and Dan coughing dramatically behind her.

  3

  Grandpa was a great success with the younger children, who scarcely knew him at all. Gret and Rolf leaned on his knees, staring with great satisfaction at his new kind of face, seamed and brown, with interesting teeth that had gold bits in them. Dan was guarded, but informed the old man: ‘My name isn’t Dan for Daniel, you know, it’s Dan for Dane. Perhaps you’ve heard me coughing. I’ve had virus ‘flu, acutely.’

  Acutely was his new word. He said it again. Then coughed, with his mouth politely half-closed.

  ‘You don’t want to do that too often,’ rumbled Grandpa, ‘or you’ll blow the back of your head off.’ He felt the back of Dan’s frail skull. ‘Feels a shade loose already.’

  Dan was alarmed, but too fascinated by the old man to withdraw. They all followed him around as he and Laurens searched the house for some unconsidered nook which could be Callie’s. Laurens was not optimistic. The top floor had already been so rebuilt by previous owners that carving out another bedroom would be an expensive and awkward renovation. Even the bathroom was what once had been the blind end of the upstairs hall.

  ‘I could set up a partition in the girls’ bedroom,’ pondered Grandpa, ‘but then Callie would have to walk through Gret’s room to get to her own.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ cried Callie eagerly.

  ‘No, but Gret would, when she’s a little older,’ pointed out Grandpa. ‘We’ll not do that unless we can’t help it.’

  ‘There’s just nowhere!’ said Callie in despair.

  ‘It’s a great pity so much space was wasted on the landing,’ said Laurens.

  Grandpa took his rule from his back pocket and began measuring that generous Victorian landing. It was as big as a small room. On either side it was lined with floor-to-ceiling linen-presses—huge, spacious old cupboards with movable rack shelves. On one side they had been converted into an airing cupboard which contained the hot-water heater; on the other they were still filled with household linen, books, suitcases, baby things, and everything else that had not been sorted out since the removal.

  ‘Mm—mphm!’ Grandpa kept grunting, so that Callie said hopefully, ‘Can you turn the big cupboard into a kind of cubby for me?’

  ‘I’d like a cubby,’ remarked Dan plaintively.

  ‘Sleeping in a cupboard! Don’t be a little dope!’ laughed the children’s mother. ‘Besides, it hasn’t a window.’

  Grandpa moved a few heaps of sheets, tugged out a rack, and got inside the cupboard. It was over a metre deep. ‘Mm—mphm! Mm—mphm!’ They could hear him grunting in the twilight within.

  ‘Pass me in a broom, someone. It must be about three and a half metres to the ceiling. Mm—mphm, mm—mphm!’

  Knock, knock. Now he was banging on the ceiling with the end of the broom. He had wriggled up onto the next shelf. Suddenly Grandpa jumped down. Without a word he thudded down the stairs with Callie after him and everyone else streaming behind. Laurens laughed heartily.

  There was Grandpa standing in the middle of the lawn squinting up at the roof.

  ‘What are you thinking about, Grandpa?’ cried Callie.

  ‘Would you just look at what’s over the big linen-press!’

  Callie looked. ‘The cupola!’

  Outlined against a sulky red western sky, with dry leaves blowing about it, the cupola looked black, mouldering, and spooky. It was manysided with a conical roof, like a little turret on a Saracen fortress. The weather-vane, which was a rooster with one metal feather dropping down, stood immovably, rusted forever to the east.

  ‘But there’s no access to it, Mr Cameron,’ said Laurens.

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Grandpa. All at once he seemed tired and grumpy. ‘Going home now.’

  ‘But you must stay to tea!’

  ‘We want to hear more about the cupola!’

  ‘Tell us a story,’ said Gret.

  ‘No,’ said Grandpa crabbily.

  Laurens ran him back to Brookvale in his shabby work van that carried around his ladders and paint tins. Laurens was excited, too, but all Grandpa said as he climbed out in the Old Pittwater Road was: ‘That’s a grand old buggy of yours, lad.’

  ‘She needs a year’s work on her.’ Laurens smiled. ‘But I’ll wi
n a veteran car rally with her one of these days, just you wait.’

  All weekend Callie waited, at first excitedly, and then anxiously, for Grandpa to come back. But he didn’t. By the time Monday arrived, she was downcast. Perhaps she’d misunderstood the whole thing. How, anyway, was Grandpa going to fix up the cupola, and what had the big linen-press to do with it? Once she got into the cupboard and sat on the floor in the dimness, which smelt sneezingly of mothballs and mustiness and long-ago woodsmoke. Then she spied a blue eye, very low down, gazing through the crack in the door.

  ‘When Grandpa makes your cubby-house, can I come and live there, too?’ asked Gret.

  ‘It’s being made to keep you out. On purpose!’ said Callie crushingly.

  Gret’s face turned a burning pink. ‘Aw right then. Rolf and me’ll kick the door down.’

  Beyond Gret, Callie could now see Dan wavering around on his spindly legs. He was in one of his persistent teasing moods and reminded Callie every half-hour that Grandpa hadn’t come back.

  ‘Grandpa did mean it, didn’t he?’ Callie asked her mother as she dried the dishes.

  ‘Yes. Grandpa never broke his word in his life,’ she replied.

  ‘But don’t build up your hopes too much, Callie,’ Laurens said gently. ‘Maybe Grandpa won’t be able to do what he plans, and then you’d be disappointed.’

  ‘He’s so old he’ll probably die before he can do anything,’ said Dan, rattling out a taunting wheeze.

  ‘No more of that, boy!’ Laurens broke in sharply. ‘Be ashamed to be so jealous!’

  Callie saw from Dan’s thin flush that he was indeed jealous, and in a strange way this seemed to make the idea of the cubby in the cupola more real.

  Callie’s absence from school that Friday had easily been explained. Wires had been crossed, she’d just gone to visit her grandfather, nothing was wrong. So Mrs Wheeler hadn’t asked any questions. But often, as she worked, Callie felt her teacher’s gaze on her, and boiled in resentment. And if it wasn’t Mrs Wheeler’s searching, stickybeak stare that bothered her, it was the total lack of any stare from Frances, who looked up into the sky or anywhere rather than glance at her ex-best friend Carol Cameron. By the time Wednesday came, Callie had given up hope of ever seeing Grandpa again. She was so disappointed and sad, her breakfast wouldn’t go down.