Callie Page 8

  At the close of class one day Mrs Griffith said to Dan: ‘You’re to go to Mr Berry’s office. Your parents are there.’ She hesitated. ‘Dan, we all want the best for you, remember that.’

  When Dan slipped politely into Mr Berry’s office, Dad and Mum had almost finished their discussion with the Principal. They looked at him nervously. Mr Berry said kindly but bluntly:

  ‘Dan, I’ve told your parents that another seven weeks’ absence would be the end of the bursary for you.’

  ‘Couldn’t he sit for it next year?’ asked Laurens hopefully.

  Mr Berry shook his head. ‘No, he’d be too old. Rudyard, after all, is for precocious children.’

  ‘I’ll study while I’m away,’ blurted Dan. ‘I’d catch up, truly I would.’

  Mr Berry smiled. ‘Yes, I can see you’re willing, but it’s too much to ask. It wouldn’t work. Never does.’

  ‘What do you want to do, Dan?’ asked Mum sympathetically.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he choked, and ran out of the room.

  ‘Let him go,’ he heard Mr Berry say matter-of-factly. ‘I’ve great faith in Dan. He may be young, but he’s exceptionally intelligent.’

  Dan perked up at once. The corridor was empty, so he listened at the half-open door.

  ‘All I’m asking is that you think it over,’ said Mr Berry. ‘If Dan continues as he’s been going this year, he’s a certainty for the bursary. Think what Rudyard could do for a brilliant boy like Dan. Three years at the college could shape the course of his future life and career.’

  Dan had never thought of his future career. Now he did. It was a magic word. In a flash he was a barrister, a heart-transplant surgeon, a dazzling physicist. The famous Dr Beck.

  ‘Denmark won’t sink, Mrs Beck,’ urged Mr Berry. ‘He has his whole life ahead of him for visiting Denmark!’

  ‘That’s what Callie said,’ sighed Mrs Beck.

  Dan heard a chair leg squeak as someone in the office stood up. He skimmed across the corridor and pretended to look out the window.

  ‘Dan, dear,’ said Heather hesitantly.

  ‘We think that maybe we should…’ began his father.

  Inside Dan was simmering with pride and pleasure. He was a cert for the bursary; he was brilliant!

  The Principal had practically begged to keep him at school. Those were great things for a boy to hear.

  For a little while at least, Dan felt strong, certain of himself, a boy with a great future.

  He put a special expression on his face. It was disappointed and courageous and intelligent all at once. It wasn’t at all hard to do, because he half-felt those things anyway.

  ‘Dad,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking. I was so excited about going to Denmark I forgot about the bursary. Mr Berry is right. I ought to stay home.’

  ‘You’re so sensible, Dan,’ said Mrs Beck gratefully.

  Dan turned to his father. ‘Gret will have to go with you, Dad,’ he said.

  3

  ‘No, thank YOU!’ said Gret.

  Heather could scarcely believe her ears. Pretty Gret, friendly and lively, would be such a success with Laurens’s family.

  Not at this moment perhaps, she thought. Glowering at us. Moody. Sulky. But perhaps it’s only worms, as Callie thinks.

  ‘But why not, Gret?’ asked Laurens, bewildered.

  Gret look at the ground, turned red, stared at the ceiling.

  ‘I’m scared of flying!’ she mumbled.

  ‘Ah, come on!’ scoffed Callie.

  ‘I won’t go!’ said Gret defiantly. ‘No way!’

  The whole family coaxed and persuaded, but the girl would not budge. It was true that she had never flown anywhere, but the idea of Gret’s being afraid of anything at all was something Callie could not accept.

  ‘You’re up to something, Gret,’ she teased, as the girls undressed for bed. ‘Come on, Gret, tell me.’

  Gret uttered a word Callie hadn’t known when she was her sister’s age and jumped into bed, slamming the pillow over her head. Callie heard a kind of snort. Gret couldn’t be crying, thought Callie, because she absolutely never did. Even when she was five and broke her toe, she uttered a lot of bloodcurdling noises but you could not say that she had cried.

  ‘Gret,’ said Callie shyly, ‘are you upset because Rolf has to be the one to go with Dad now?’

  Silence. Callie got into bed herself. She thought about the best way to handle the problem. Rolf and Gret had always been the closest friends. They hardly ever fought and never told on one another. From the time Rolf could crawl it was the pair of them against the world.

  ‘You can tell me,’ said Callie across the darkness.

  ‘Quit being a big sister, will you?’ yelled Gret. ‘Yap, yap, yap! Mind your own business!’

  ‘Okay, I will!’ yelled back Callie.

  Rolf himself needed no persuasion. The only person he cared about leaving was Tad. As for Tad, his life collapsed in ruins the moment he saw the suitcases coming out of the boxroom. He followed Rolf around, his nose bumping on the back of the little boy’s legs.

  ‘Tad’s going to be a good useful dog,’ said Rolf. ‘He’s going to look after the house and be a watchdog.’

  ‘Not that Bulgarian mousehound,’ Dan scoffed.

  Rolf paid no attention. ‘Don’t you worry, dear dog,’ he said. ‘Gret will look after you. Gret will do everything for you, won’t you, Gret?’

  ‘I said I would!’ said his sister gruffly.

  ‘And I’ll write you a letter too, Taddy,’ promised Rolf.

  ‘Will you write me one as well?’ asked his mother. But Rolf thought he mightn’t have time.

  The day everything was settled something happened to time. The weeks began to rush past, flick, flick, flick. Soon it was winter, the trees bare, all the talk in class about football and netball and Belinda McKay. She was now on Young Talent Time and could get her friends autographs from the soapie stars. No one remembered Denmark or Callie’s lost dream.

  Callie was not at all jealous of Rolf. She hoped he’d have a great time, as much as a child of five could have, of course. She was very glad she had told no one of the burning jealousy she had felt for Dan. She looked back with wonder and shame at that jealousy. It had been like some disgusting sickness.

  Though he hadn’t known about it, she tried in an awkward way to make it up to Dan. When he was unbearable about giving up the trip in order to study she said nothing, even though she sometimes had to choke back the words.

  Dan soared up to first place in class once more. He was such a student hotshot that he was excused from all sports, much to the relief of the other boys, for he was good at none of them. Dan didn’t care at all.

  ‘When you have a high IQ you don’t need to rush around chasing a ball,’ he said, pulling in his nostrils conceitedly. Gret growled under her breath, hoping that one of Dan’s classmates would sooner or later pull that high IQ down over her brother’s ears.

  Laurens took a big contract painting the interior of a new unit block. He wanted to leave as much money as possible with the family. So the downstairs flat at the Becks’ house remained half-renovated and unoccupied.

  ‘I’d rather have it that way,’ said Heather. ‘I don’t want to have to get used to new people while you’re not here, Laurens. We’ll just leave it locked up until you come home.’

  Then, all at once, it seemed, it was time for the airport. Out at Mascot, amongst the noise and bustle, silence settled over them all.

  It seemed so strange and awful that they would not see Dad or Rolf for seven weeks. In spite of the crowds the airport suddenly became very lonely.

  After the final call for boarding, Laurens said to Dan: ‘You’re the man of the house now. Look after things for me until I come home.’

  Dan could not summon up one of his special expressions, he felt too miserable. All he could do was to nod glumly.

  The family waved and looked cheerful until Laurens and Rolf disappeared through the Passengers O
nly door. Then they went home, and the house was even lonelier than the airport.

  It was creepy without Dad and Rolf. No one wanted to watch television, and Tad gave them all the jimjams, wandering around moaning, looking under beds and into cupboards and warbling at the door to be let out. Gret watched him through the window.

  ‘He’s mooching around the garden,’ she reported. ‘Searching in corners and under bushes. Dumb dog!’

  She stalked out.

  ‘Oh, Lord, I can’t stand this,’ burst out Heather dismally. ‘And when I think of being alone in the house all day! I’m going to get a job, that’s what I’ll do. They might even need another hand at the nursery.’

  Mrs Beck had trained as a horticulturist, and before she married, worked in a large native plant nursery. Dan and Callie thought that a super idea, and Heather became enthusiastic.

  ‘I’ll go and see them tomorrow!’ she said.

  Suddenly everyone was yawning.

  ‘Bed!’ commanded Heather.

  ‘Mum,’ asked Dan rather shyly, ‘what’s man of the house mean?’

  ‘Oh, you know, sort of look after things,’ said Mum sleepily. ‘Be responsible. Rescue me if there’s a fire…’

  ‘I can just imagine!’ scoffed Callie.

  ‘Here,’ said Mum, waking up. ‘If you’re going to be the man of the house, Dan, you can begin right this minute. Get Tad in and check the doors and windows to see they’re properly locked.’

  So Dan did. He even went downstairs and tried the doors of the empty flat to see whether Dad had forgotten to lock them. It was dark down there. A rainy wind brustled through the big trees; shadows danced and stretched out long trembling arms. Dan was glad he had Tad with him for company.

  He went to bed thinking about being the man of the house. He could see Mum hadn’t taken it seriously, but he did. Dad relied on him. He felt pleased and proud.

  Dan was a fidgety sleeper. He always had an ache, an itch or a tickle somewhere. Now he lay awake in the dark bedroom. He missed Dad. Somehow the house seemed safer with Dad in it. He missed Rolf in the other bed. Rolf always sang himself to sleep. For ten minutes this deafening moo went on, then silence fell like a dropped rock. If rocks could fall without sound. Also, now that his brother had flown away to Denmark, Dan realised how much he had wanted to go himself.

  ‘But I chose not to go,’ he reminded himself. ‘I really, really want to win that bursary to Rudyard. But suppose I die before I can sit for the exam! I might get run over, or have a heart attack. There’s a funny feeling in my chest right now.’

  Fortunately the funny feeling was caused by the pencil sharpener shaped like an anteater which he kept in his pyjama pocket. It was enjoyable to lie there imagining his family’s grief, his class attending his funeral (the whole school, actually), and Mr Berry saying in a choked way: ‘We have lost the most brilliant student I have ever known.’

  He let his thoughts play over that funeral, until suddenly it seemed a happening he didn’t really want. His throat ached. The house was very black and silent except for eerie little squeaks and cracks that were either the old timbers settling or a sinister stranger stealing along the hall. Tad, sleeping on Rolf’s bed, went on snoring.

  ‘Some watchdog you are!’ said Dan. He felt that even if Tad heard a burglar, all he’d do would be to go out and greet him, wagging his tail.

  Dan wondered whether the man of the house was supposed to get up and fight burglars, and so wondering, he fell asleep.

  At breakfast everyone looked pale and sulky and grumpy. Except Dan.

  ‘Don’t forget Dad said I am the man of the house now,’ he chirpily reminded the others. Gret banged down her spoon.

  ‘What’s he mean, Mum?’ she demanded.

  ‘It means he has to put the garbage out,’ said Mrs Beck cheerfully. ‘And you’d better hurry, Dan, or you’ll miss the collection.’

  ‘That’s not what Dad meant,’ protested Dan, but he ran. Gret looked at her mother in consternation.

  ‘Dad didn’t mean Dan can boss us around, did he?’ she asked.

  ‘For goodness sake,’ chided her mother, ‘whenever did Dad try to boss anyone around? And he’s the man of this house when he’s home.’

  ‘Dad just meant Dan to feel good,’ explained Callie.

  ‘He’d better not try feeling good around me,’ said Gret grimly, ‘or I’ll total him.’

  ‘Oh, come off it, Gret,’ said Mrs Beck good-humouredly.

  Gret seized her lunch and stumped off.

  ‘I told you, didn’t I? Worm medicine,’ advised Callie. ‘Good luck for the job, Mum.’

  Gret always walked to school with Rolf. Other girls hated tagging around with younger sisters or brothers, but Gret liked it. Rolf was her best friend, and she didn’t care who knew it.

  Now she felt exposed, as though the world was coming at her, and looking fierce, too. Mum getting a job! Dad and Rolf away! Callie growing up and being sloppy over Cousin Marius. Gret knew Callie kept his photo in the cupola, and she could just imagine Callie gooping at it. Oh, Marius, you’re sensational in your drippy little cap with the tassel! Callie having the nerve to talk to her, Gret, like an old granny. There were changes everywhere, and Gret did not like changes.

  She was not afraid of anything either. She certainly was not afraid of flying; she had told her parents that fib because it seemed a sensible reason for not going to Denmark. The truth was that Gret couldn’t bear to leave home. Every time she went to school she had an uneasy feeling that when she came home at the end of the day everything would be gone—the house with the cupola, the big trees, her family, Tad. There’d just be an empty space.

  Gret hadn’t been like that once. She’d been a sunny child like Rolf, bothered by hardly anything. Then Grandpa Cameron had died. She hadn’t really understood that a person could just vanish like that. A person you loved and needed. Callie, or Mum, or even Rolf. Grandpa’s death had made Gret feel quite different. Outside she was as hardy and blooming as ever. But inside she was not certain of anything any more.

  Gret had been sure that when Callie couldn’t go with Dad, and Dan said he wouldn’t, and she just plain refused, Dad would fly off by himself. She hadn’t dreamed he’d take anyone as young as Rolf.

  ‘He doesn’t want to go,’ she had said.

  But Rolf longed to fly in a jumbo jet.

  ‘He’s too little, he just hates strange toilets, you know that,’ she protested.

  ‘Never worry,’ said Laurens. ‘Rolf’s as easy to handle as an apple.’

  And so Rolf had gone. Maybe never to come back. And Dad mightn’t come back, either. And if she ran home right now the house would have vanished, and if she asked about it people would look astonished and say: ‘But there’s never been a house there, never.’

  She stepped off the footpath and a passing van almost collected her. She felt the wind of its passing and heard the fading howl of the driver.

  ‘Margrethe Beck,’ said Gret sternly to herself, ‘you’d better watch it.’

  She cast around in her mind for something to cheer her up, and for the first time in months she remembered the Secret.

  ‘Well, I got the job, kids,’ beamed Mum that evening. ‘And they said they were delighted to have me back! Full-time while Dad’s away and then part-time if I can manage everything else. I start on Wednesday and I’m thrilled!’

  Callie’s mother was quite old, almost thirty-four, but she was slender and pretty. Lately, Callie had started looking at her mother as a woman, not just a mum. Frances said that happened sooner or later. Callie’s mum looked the way she did because she was happy, Frances said. And when Callie thought of it, that seemed to be right. With the kind of work Dad did he was always popping in and out of the house and every time he did he gave Mum a kiss and a cuddle. Callie thought it great that Mum had landed the nursery job. Now she wouldn’t be so lonely with Dad away.

  ‘We’ll have to organise things. I mean about the work,’ she reminded the others.<
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  ‘I’ll do that!’ said Dan importantly.

  ‘Listen, bighead!’ Callie protested.

  ‘We’ll all do it,’ said Heather comfortably.

  After dinner they drew up a list of new duties. Callie had to cook dinner twice a week.

  ‘Ugh!’ said Gret, hanging out her tongue.

  ‘And Dan will cook Saturday lunch,’ went on Heather calmly, ‘and Gret will help me with the vegetables and stuff for Sunday lunch and dinner.’

  ‘But I’ve got Tad to look after, his fleas and everything,’ protested Gret.

  ‘And I have all Dad’s silver cups to polish,’ pointed out Callie. In his time, Laurens had been a junior ski champion, and two whole shelves in the master bedroom twinkled with his trophies.

  Callie was delighted when she was given this special job. It seemed she was doing something personal for Laurens, who so treasured his ski trophies. She promised herself those cups and shields would dazzle as never before.

  ‘Oh, okay,’ said Gret reluctantly. She and Callie had to clean the bathroom by turn, and they all vacuumed the floors and loaded the washing machine by turn as well. Dan did most of the shopping. Callie thought it was all quite fair.

  ‘I’ve got too much to do,’ complained Dan. ‘Garbage and the doors and windows to check, and the paths to sweep and now the supermarket. You know I have to study, Mum.’

  ‘In spite of everything, I believe you’ll live,’ replied his mother smilingly. ‘Let’s finish the dishes. Dad’s ringing tonight, remember?’

  They all spoke to Dad. No one could understand a word Rolf said. He sounded like a canary, shrilly chirping.

  ‘I guess he’s all right though,’ said Heather happily.

  Callie was so thrilled her ears buzzed. ‘Oh, Dad, are you really there?’

  ‘Of course I am, dear Callie, and Aunt Mette is here but too shy to speak, and Marius too. Marius, come and speak to Callie.’

  The next moment Callie was speaking to Cousin Marius. Rather, Marius was speaking to Cousin Callie, for Callie was so nervous she