Callie Page 4

  She felt part of it all, and at the same time very much her own person. It was a feeling she’d never had before, a kind of daybreak of her own complete and singular self. She wondered if the cupola had done the same thing for the Captain and Benjamin and all the others.

  Grandpa’s ladders stayed in place against the east wall of the house, and all his gear had gone in over the slates. Already he had renewed the flashing where the cupola met the house roof, so that now there’d be no risks of leaks. He had insulated the cupola’s own roof, and jacked up and levelled the cedar floor. Callie’s first and most awful job had been to scrape nearly ninety years of dirt and stains off that floor, and then sandpaper and wax it. She worked on it before and after school, with Grandpa cracking the whip all the time.

  ‘Ah, where’s the elbow grease today?’ he’d mourn. ‘You’ve run out of steam, no doubt about it. Mm—mphm!’

  For a little while Laurens was working so hard at his decorating contracts, and Mum so busy getting the rest of the house straight, that they let Grandpa and Callie get on with things in peace. But after the third week Callie’s mother often came into the cupola.

  ‘It’s going to be such a lovely place in the evening, with the city lights shining,’ she said.

  Callie knew very well she was supposed to say, ‘You come here whenever you like, Mum,’ but she didn’t, though she felt ashamed. She just ground away with her sandpaper at a dark patch in the floor under the red window.

  Her mother sat gingerly in the swivel chair.

  ‘This chair doesn’t seem in bad order. Could I paint it for you?’

  ‘No, Mum. Grandpa is just going to fix it up and polish it again. It’s a real mahogany sea-going chair, Grandpa said.’

  ‘Then I’ll make a new cushion!’ said her mother gladly, and she looked so pleased to be able to help that Callie felt lower than a worm. But she really didn’t want a new cushion.

  But Laurens never came into the cupola unless he was invited.

  One of Grandpa’s many mates had put electricity into the cupola, though Callie longed to have a tall kerosene lamp, as probably the other occupants had had. But her parents thought that too dangerous. When they tried out the electricity at night, the cupola’s thick coloured windows beamed with a gorgeous syrupy light.

  ‘Like jelly babies,’ said Dan, and that was exactly right.

  The more that was done to the castle, the more fretful and mischievous Dan became. Like many other frail children, he was a champion pesterer. Though he had not the heft and vigour of Gret, his voice had the penetrating quality of a cicada’s in January. Grandpa could handle him, and did.

  ‘Will you stop the argle-bargle, you wee smatchet! And get off my ladder before I peel ye! You too, Gret! Two fleas with the itch are no worse than you!’

  Sometimes Mrs Beck awoke in the night and fancied she could hear Dan still shrilling away in his sleep.

  ‘Why should Callie have a castle all to herself? I have to share my bedroom too, and I share with a horrible baby who’s much worser than Gret. Rolf writes on walls, and he spills things, and he tears things, and he cries and gives me an acute headache, you know he does, Mum. Why can’t I have a little bit of the castle, just a little bit?’

  Of course he said things like this to Callie as well, and although she knew very well it was all part of the pester campaign, she also admitted that what he said was true.

  ‘I don’t have to share, do I, Grandpa?’

  Grandpa straightened up painfully. He always said he had bottle-tops in his hip joints.

  ‘I’m here to build you a castle, love, not to say who shares it. Don’t get me involved. You make up your own mind and stand on your dig, and never mind what anyone says.’

  So Callie hardened her heart, though she wasn’t good at it. Already the castle had changed her life. The thought of it waiting for her to come home from school was the most joyful thing. In a month she climbed back to eighth place in class. Once she wrote a little about her castle in an English project, and Mrs Wheeler read the piece out, telling the class she’d always been interested in Victorian architecture, even though she herself lived in a tall, skinny unit block like a spaghetti packet.

  The girls, who were about Callie’s age, declared they’d sell their right arms for castles of their own. Most of them had younger brothers and sisters who were terrible pests. Callie said that they could come and visit when the castle was finished, three at a time, because it was so small. She caught a glimpse of Frances looking wistful, and added, ‘You’d love it, Frances.’

  Frances’s face went red, and everyone could see she was searching for something disdainful to say. But all she could think of was, ‘I don’t believe it, Carol Cameron, you’ve made it all up.’

  But everyone else believed it, and was envious and full of advice. ‘Don’t let the little kids in. Give them a bash. Yell at them. When I yell at my sister, the teacups jump off the table.’

  But Callie wasn’t much of a yeller, and not a basher at all, unless she was driven to it. Her only way of keeping Gret and Rolf and Dan in their place was to be curt and snippy.

  And then came the day of the rooster.

  5

  The inside of the castle was almost ready, and Callie began to move in her treasures. It was a great moment of triumph. She knew exactly where to put everything. The trolls and the Gutless Wonder sat on the bench under the green window, Callie’s favourite picture of a baby gorilla hung on the west wall. Captain Frazer’s book, which was a very dull one on navigation, went into the bookshelf beside her own very special books, Brown Mouse, The Lord of the Rings and The Dragon Masters.

  Grandpa had built in many drawers under the bench, and into these went her painting and writing material, her school requirements and even clothes which she loved but had grown out of. The swivel chair stood before the bench, so that when all the castle windows were open, she could spin around to see the distant mountains, the harbour, and even the back garden, if she wished to. The old leather chair-cushion had been replaced by her mother with a gay modern one.

  Things were almost complete.

  ‘Now let us come up, Callie. Go on,’ urged Gret.

  ‘When it’s finished. I’ve told you a hundred million times. Then you’ll be invited.’

  ‘Oh, pooh, stupid,’ growled Gret.

  ‘And when we do visit,’ observed Dan bitterly, ‘if we do one tiny thing wrong, you won’t ask us again.’

  Callie, who had been planning this very thing, looked away guiltily.

  One scary day Grandpa decided to get down the weather-vane. He extended his ladder to the fullest, so that it looked taller than the house, then up he went.

  Callie was terrified. ‘You won’t fall off, Grandpa?’ she entreated.

  ‘Not if you hold the ladder firm, lassie.’

  But she was still afraid, not wanting to look as he teetered up there in the wind, his red woollen cap showing so brightly against the tiny brown Dutch tiles that covered the roof of the cupola like lizardskin.

  After a long time and many exasperated bellows of ‘Dod, it’s screwed down like hell’s hob!’ a reassuring ‘Mm—mphm!’ floated down. And down climbed Grandpa with the rooster in a sugarbag over his shoulder.

  Seen close to, the weather-vane was sadly derelict. The rooster was plastered with seagull droppings, his spread toes invisible under ugly humps of mummified moss. Lichen spores had lodged in the fine striations of his copper plumage, now blackish-green, and the loose tail-feather hung like a gum-leaf. One of his bossy red eyes had gone altogether.

  ‘However will I clean him?’ asked Callie in dismay.

  ‘I want him, I want him!’ shrieked Dan. ‘Let me have him, Grandpa!’

  ‘What do you want with a dirty old weather-vane?’ rumbled Grandpa, smiling.

  ‘Callie has the castle, why can’t I have the rooster?’ shrilled Dan.

  ‘Now, Dan!’ laughed his mother. ‘Don’t be silly! An old metal chook!’

  �
��I never have anything!’ wailed Dan.

  ‘Dan never has nothing,’ sympathised Rolf.

  ‘Don’t be such a baby, Dan!’ said Grandpa tartly. ‘The weather-vane has to be cleaned and mended, and then back it will go on top of the cupola. Off with you now, and no more squalling, a big lad like you!’

  Dan stopped whimpering. ‘You aren’t my grandpa,’ he said in a resentful croak. ‘My grandpa is a nice kind man, only he’s dead,’ and he blew away sidewise, like a leaf.

  “Spect he’ll chuck up now,’ observed Gret placidly, and she ran off singing.

  Grandpa stumped off early that day. Callie was worried lest he had been offended and would never come back. She was further upset and puzzled when her mother said, ‘Do you ever think of your real Daddy, dear? Grandpa’s son?’

  ‘I look at his picture sometimes,’ admitted Callie, wriggling restlessly under her mother’s embracing arm.

  ‘Why, darling?’

  Was there a sigh in her mother’s voice? Callie nearly came out in goose-bumps at the thought that her mother was going to tell her something personal about that other marriage.

  ‘I like his face because it’s like Grandpa’s,’ she replied truthfully, then swiftly squirmed free. ‘I have to start cleaning this rooster, Mum.’

  ‘Dan would love to help you clean it!’ said her mother, but Callie pretended not to hear.

  Dan, however, sitting under the nearby table, was greatly encouraged. He went to find Gret. She was digging in her garden, her skin sheeny with sweat. Gret never planted anything. She was a digger. Rolf, on the other hand, was a planter. His mother had given him an onion and he had planted it simply everywhere.

  ‘Want to tease old Callie?’ asked Dan.

  Rolf dug up the onion and tried it up the other way.

  ‘Come on, Gret, we could besiege the castle like knights and things.’

  Gret considered. ‘Can I bite Callie if she gets mad and hits me?’

  ‘Course. Come on, Gret.’

  Callie was sitting on the cupola floor cleaning the rooster. She’d been hours at it. Newspapers were carefully spread over the glossy red floor. Callie scraped and scrubbed, and then began to clean the metal with a weak chemical solution Grandpa had made up for her before he left.

  ‘Easy now, lass,’ he had warned. ‘It’s right vicious stuff.’

  Callie wore rubber gloves and was very cautious. Soon the lively colour of the copper began to show, bright as new. Grandpa had said not to worry about the dangling feather, as he could fix it in a jiffy. Callie pulled it from its ruined socket, cleaned it, and put it aside. She looked thoughtfully at the eyeless side of the rooster’s haughty wattled face. With a red bead and some golden paint she could give him another eye very quickly.

  She heard the muffled giggles from the cupboard below a moment before the trapdoor flew up and crashed back against the wall. The newspapers slid everywhere, the chemical bottle tipped over, and the remains of the solution spattered against the bookcase. One drop fell stingingly on Callie’s wrist. She shrieked with surprise and pain, and then shrieked again with rage as Dan popped grinning through the trapdoor.

  ‘This is an invasion!’ he said. ‘Hands up, you’re our prisoner!’

  Callie saw the brown blotches already defiling The Lord of the Rings. She scrubbed at her wrist with the hem of her jumper, sobbing.

  ‘You awful pig, you’ve tipped it over. Look at my books! It’s even on the floor!’

  The hours and hours of backbreaking work scraping that floor! Callie grabbed the new cushion from the chair and swung wildly at Dan’s head. He ducked and retreated down the ladder a rung or two. Gret squawked loudly as her hand was stepped on.

  ‘Get out, get out! You’ve no business touching the trapdoor…I’ve told you and I’ve told you…’

  Dan’s face turned patchy scarlet. What had been a joke turned into a real siege. Again and again he grimly thrust a leg over the edge of the trapdoor. Again and again Callie beat him back. Suddenly he slipped. There was a crash, a loud howl from Gret, and a shriek from Rolf. Callie stared through the trapdoor. In the greenish dimness of the linen cupboard she could see Dan still on the ladder, but Rolf and Gret in a heap at the bottom. The cupboard door opened, the bright light of the hallway poured in, and there was her mother, very shocked and distressed.

  In the awful time that followed, no one stuck up for Callie except Gret and Laurens. Rolf had come a cropper. They had to get the doctor to look at the huge puffy welt on his silky head. Gret had scraped the side of her face and bumped her elbow.

  ‘I think I broke my foot’s neck, too,’ she announced. She examined her ankle carefully. ‘No, didn’t.’

  Dan himself was very frightened and upset, but no more so than Callie.

  ‘You hit Dan with that cushion!’ accused her mother.

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t mean to knock him down the ladder, you must see that,’ said Callie tearfully.

  Laurens quietly undid the fingers that were holding her wrist. ‘What made that burn, Callie?’

  Callie choked out about the acid solution, and The Lord of the Rings, and her spoiled jumper where she had mopped the acid from her wrist, and, worst of all, the ugly spatter across the cedar floor. Then she could say no more, but buried her face in Laurens’s shirt and sobbed.

  ‘Callie didn’t knock me off the ladder,’ said Gret. ‘Dan did. And I knocked Rolf, because he was down below me. Not Callie’s fault, Mum.’

  ‘I don’t care whose fault it is,’ Heather scolded. ‘All I know is that somebody might have been badly hurt. Just look at that big blue lump on Rolf’s little head.’

  Gret inspected her wounds, decided they should best be forgotten, and gave Rolf a sunny smile. ‘Come and finish your gardening, Rolfie.’

  But Rolf preferred to sit on his mother’s lap and be petted. Dan stood by, white and shaken.

  ‘We were besieging Callie’s castle,’ he said sulkily. ‘It was only a game. She’s gone acutely mad about that cupola. It’s all her fault for being so silly.’

  ‘And your fault for not being polite,’ said his father. ‘Callie said, many times, she would invite us all when the castle was finished, but you were not content to wait. In this world always wait politely for the invitation, or perhaps someone will poke you in the nose.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Mrs Beck, ‘it’s obvious that ladder in the linen-press is dangerous for children. Oh, why did I let Pa talk me into it? We’ve had nothing but trouble since he started work on that wretched cupola.’

  ‘What we really need is a tiny circular stairway,’ said Laurens absently.

  ‘No staircase could possibly fit in a cupboard,’ his wife said, ‘and we couldn’t afford it, anyway, so that’s that. Oh, stop crying, Callie. You too, Dan. Cheer up, the pair of you!’

  ‘Imagine Callie flying into such a rage over a game!’ her mother said later to Laurens. ‘I just don’t understand that child any more.’

  ‘I think I do,’ said Laurens. ‘You know my sister Mette? She is older than us, Borgny and me, you remember. She too had a special place—it was inside an old box-bed in the attic. You know what I mean, a bed with a high side. One day Borgny and I raided that bed, and we stole Mette’s most dear doll, a Dutch doll as long as her finger. We chopped off its head.’

  ‘Poor little Mette!’ said Heather.

  ‘Yes, she was so angry she jumped in the canal.’

  ‘Heavens!’

  ‘Our father fished her out very quickly, but still she was sad and angry enough to throw herself in the canal. Mette was in such disgrace. And yet it was all our fault. The older child is always blamed. It is very unfair.’

  On Monday Grandpa was back bright and early. Callie told him of the invasion. It seemed rather amusing as she told it, though Grandpa was very grumpy about the spatters on the floor. Callie longed for him to say that she had done absolutely the right thing in beating off the besiegers, but he didn’t. The girls at school, however, thought it was hilarious
. Mrs Wheeler told Callie she would show her how to patch and re-cover The Lord of the Rings.

  So Callie felt better and even enjoyed all the interest her defence of the castle had created. But still she would have liked Grandpa to say something.

  Now Grandpa had almost finished his work. The rooster’s tail-feather had been fixed, and Grandpa attached him once more to the weather-vane rod. Eagerly the Becks waited for the first breeze. It turned out to be a westerly, cold and leaf-laden, whooshing across the city from the Blue Mountains until it ruffed through the high camphor-laurel and over the roof-top, sending the rooster spinning until his tail pointed due west.

  The children were delighted, especially when they noticed that the weather-vane shone so grandly red that people going by on buses pointed it out to each other. Grandpa was quietly satisfied.

  ‘Oh, Pa,’ said Mrs Beck, ‘we’ll miss you so much when you’re no longer coming every day. How I wish that we had room enough for you to live with us. You get on so well with Laurens.’

  ‘Ah, I’m better by myself,’ said Grandpa.

  ‘You must be lonely,’ said Heather, out of her warm family feeling.

  ‘Not a bit of it, Heather, no indeed. I’ve come back to Callie’s stage in life, you understand. I need privacy. Oh, aye, you don’t know about that yet, lass, but you will. Everything changes, and people most of all.’

  ‘It must be sad,’ Heather said. ‘Growing older.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, lass,’ said Grandpa. ‘You kind of get used to it on the way.’

  Callie, remembering Grandpa’s bare room and the half-mended sock, tried to understand and couldn’t. However, she knew Grandpa was to be trusted, so she took his word for it.

  These days, Laurens and Grandpa had many private conversations.

  ‘It’s something about the loft ladder, making it safe and all that,’ explained Dan, who had ears like a hawk.

  One day a tradesman arrived, a thin little man who answered Mrs Beck’s questions in the sparest way, and then got into the cupboard and spent two hours in almost complete silence. He and Grandpa were two of a kind, always measuring things and scribbling figures on an offcut of timber. At last the figures were transferred to a notebook, and the rule returned to the back pocket. Mrs Beck was amazed to hear the little man say, in heartfelt tones, ‘I wish I had one for myself.’