We all agreed we had to mark the next day down as a cross day again as soon as Mum got out of bed. I didn’t think I’d done anything bad in my sleep but I must have, because Ruthy and Caleb agreed there wasn’t anything else happening that could have been what Ruthy called ‘causal’ except for me starting things rolling by falling off Mr Driver’s fence. We checked my pillow but there were no scabs we could see or bits of blood on it, so it wasn’t that.
We took some paper down to the tree house and decided to each make a list of why we thought Mum was unhappy again.
Caleb’s list said: sixpens is a rat and mum hats rats.
Ruthy’s list said: Dad had to come home from work and this will make Mr Bednarski upset. Also, Mum will have to have a guinea pig in the garden and she will be worried about mess and Caleb’s asthma.
My list was the longest. Mum doesn’t like other people knowing her business and now the whole street will be asking about Mr Johnson, Dad and Mr Driver meeting in the middle of the day. Also, Mum will think Mrs Johnson won because I get Sixpence and she hates Mrs Johnson. Also, Dad will think he has to do a good thing for Caleb and Ruthy now and that might mean football and writing school and Mum will think I have won and turned us into Catholics or people of the world but not in the world. And this will mean Aunty Maisie has won because she believes Mum is full of vanity and does not love God enough. And this will make Dad very sad because Grandpa might find out and think he is not following the Ways of the Lord.
Ruthy was very impressed with my list. She said she’s never seen me choose to write so much, and I think that was actually true. She also liked it because she and Caleb started to cheer that they might get their wishes too, and I had to remind them the only thing we knew for sure was that Sixpence would come to live with us this very day, and we would have to wait to see about the other hopes and prayers. Ruthy said a prayer might be a very good idea, so we sat on the edge of the tree house platform and joined hands and closed our eyes and Ruthy prayed for us.
‘Dear Heavenly Father, we come before you today, your humble servants, strong in the sure and certain resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. We beseech thee, Father, to hear our prayers and grant your humble servants Caleb and Ruthy their wish to be famous footballers and writers, now that you have granted our sister Dorcas her greatest wish to have her baby guinea pig come to live with us.
‘Dear Heavenly Father, please make Mum continue in the way of happy and Jesus days, and make Caleb’s lungs very strong so Sixpence can’t cause him a mucus build-up in his bronchiole. Please ask Mr Bednarski to send Dad home for chocolate and tellie on Fridays, and bless Mr Driver’s stump so it doesn’t itch in the heat. Please also stop Aunty Maisie from scaring Caleb when he goes to her toilet so he doesn’t wet himself instead. And if possible, make sure Grandpa has plenty of butterscotch lollies because he really likes them.
‘Grant us Thy grace and mercy and hear our prayer. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, Amen.’
Caleb and I both congratulated her on a very grownup and fairly comprehensive prayer, and Caleb asked if she could just add a football jumper to the list, and if she could explain what a bee’s itch had to do with anything.
We went in for breakfast and Mum was up with Dad, who was about to leave. What happened next occurred so quickly and in a blur that was sort of slow motion but also like a roller-coaster.
Dad asked if he could see my sore hand and did a lot of tut-tutting noises because it was still very sore and swollen. He asked Mum if I should stay home again today but she said not on your life; I’m not having her under my feet again today. Hadn’t I caused enough grief yesterday?
Dad asked what grief I had caused and Mum said if I’d done as I was told and had stopped going over to the Johnsons, none of this would have happened. And if I thought deliberately hurting my hand would mean I didn’t have to do the Sunday school exams, I had another think coming.
Dad turned to me and asked if I had deliberately hurt my hand, and for a minute I was quite confused because I didn’t think I had but so much had gone on that I forgot for a minute how my hand got hurt.
And then Caleb said I didn’t do it deliberately because Mum threw the potato masher at me and I didn’t make her do that.
And then Dad asked, ‘Agnes, is this true?’ And Mum said Caleb wasn’t even in the kitchen when that happened so how could he possibly know. And Dad turned to me and said, ‘So she did throw the potato masher at you?’ And I said, ‘No, she didn’t,’ because I was worried that they would change their mind about Sixpence and then Dad told us all to leave for school right away because he had to talk to our mother and off we went.
I was furious with Caleb all the way to school and made him cry, but I didn’t care. I told him he was a stupid little boy who had no idea about how families worked, and because he’d told Dad Mum hit me, I probably wouldn’t get Sixpence, and he wouldn’t get to go to football and Ruthy wouldn’t get to go to the writing class. I called him flat-nosed rude, double bum, snot-nosed six-toes, and further selections from our swearing list. Caleb said, ‘Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me,’ but I told him that was only true in the last century and that the rules had changed along with the introduction of decimal currency in 1966 and now names could actually puncture your lungs and make your poo turn to cement in your bowels and never come out and if you didn’t poo, you died. I told him if it was between Mum and me, Dad would choose Mum and I would probably have to go to live in the children’s home now and they would never see me again. I said Daniel would be very upset when he found out that Caleb was the reason I was now an orphan, and Ruthy said I couldn’t be an orphan if I had parents and to leave him alone.
Caleb said I was just being mean and we had prayed to God and God would make sure we all got a happy thing. He asked Ruthy what she thought, but Ruthy was very quiet and stuck out her chin and walked a bit ahead of us. She usually defended Caleb more, but I think she realised what I was saying was true – Caleb might have queered all of our chances to get what we wanted. And because she wasn’t looking out for him, I didn’t seem to be able to stop. So much angry stuff came out that I really, really wanted to hit him too. Caleb was pretty hysterical by the time we got to the school gate, and Ruthy said she’d take him to his class and tell the teacher he wasn’t feeling well, and I said good riddance to gumbies and spittlebombs and left them to it.
I had a lot of mixed feelings going on all day. Part of me was very happy about Sixpence coming home, but the other part of me was worried that Caleb’s revelation might somehow wreck it all. I couldn’t quite see how. Once Sixpence was home it should be okay. Mum might be cross for many days in a row, but we had managed that in the past, and at least I could stay in the garden with Sixpence now, even if it was hard in the house.
At the break I filled Maynard in on everything that had happened. He said it was sensible that I had told Mr Driver what had happened, and it would all work out for the best now, he was sure. In the lunch break he brought out paper and pencils and we did some designs for Sixpence’s hutch to help Dad work out what might be the best home for her. I was starting to feel quite excited and wondered what time Sixpence would be dropped over from the Johnsons. I was hoping it was straight after Mr Johnson got home from work, which would be while it was still light and I could play with her for quite a while before teatime.
But at the end of the lunch period one of the prefects came to fetch me from our seat under the gum tree. She took me to the office of the headmistress, Miss Lillicrap, and I waited outside wondering what I’d done this time. I went through a list in my head. It could have been that I didn’t finish my maths homework. It might have been that I had been asked to revise my latest English essay and had just added three words to it – ‘very’, ‘enormously’ and ‘hugely’. It could have been that I was told off for talking several times that morning, because I had been desperate to tell Venita about Sixpence. I thought the best guess was about rewriting words to Gilbert and Sullivan.
Every morning we had to take out our Gilbert and Sullivan songbook and follow along while the headmistress piped in ten minutes or so of one of the operas. She was the head of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society, and thought it was an important part of our education to learn the classics. Maynard said there was nothing classic about Gilbert and Sullivan, and that his mother said the headmistress had a voice like a strangled monkey.
At the moment we were doing HMS Pinafore. I made up a play where we sang: ‘She always swears a big, big B. So give three cheers and one cheer more for the strangled monkey on the Pinafore.’ My class teacher, Miss Thompson, had heard it and asked what it referred to and I said, ‘Nothing,’ but I worried she might have guessed. The next day she caught us singing my version of the words to ‘Little Buttercup’:
‘I smell like my name – that’s crap –
Poor Missus Lillicrap,
Though I could never tell why,
But still I’m called Lillicrap – poor Missus Lillicrap,
Stinky old Lillicrap I.’
She pulled me aside and said she hoped she had misheard what we were singing, and that if she heard one word that didn’t match the songbook, it would be down to the headmistress’s office for me. Actually it was just as well she hadn’t heard what I’d done with ‘We sail the Ocean Blue’ …
But it wasn’t that after all. Miss Lillicrap called me in and told me Caleb had been taken to the children’s hospital with an asthma attack. She said it was serious. His teacher had rung Dad who had come to pick him up, and Mum and Dad had also taken Ruthy with them. I didn’t know why they hadn’t asked me to go too, but I guessed it might have been because Ruthy told them I was mean to him on the way to school. She said he was stable but very unwell, and that I was to go to Mr Driver’s house if they were not home when school was over. Then she sent me back to class.
The bell had rung so I couldn’t tell Maynard what had happened, but he was waiting for me when home time came and walked home with me even though it was in the opposite direction from his own house, which was very nice of him. I was worried Mum and Dad might have asked Mr Johnson not to bring Sixpence over today because Caleb was sick, but Maynard suggested I didn’t raise this with anyone because they would think I didn’t care about Caleb, which wasn’t true, but in a little way was true. I was still very cross with him for telling Dad about the potato masher and now it seemed he had taken all the attention again by being sick. Aunty Maisie said he was a sensitive child and that, in her opinion, half of the asthma was in his mind. There were days I thought this might the case, although I had sat with him when he couldn’t breathe, and I don’t think you can make that up. Certainly when he coughed up lots of green and yellow stuff, that wasn’t anyone’s imagination.
When we reached our place, Maynard said he’d come in with me to make sure everything was okay. We walked down the side path to our back door. On the step was a little cardboard box. I wondered what it was and we both crouched down to take a look. Sometimes the local chemist left medicine for Caleb in a box at the back, so I thought this might be something he needed in hospital and was wondering how I could get it to him.
We lifted the lid.
And there was my Sixpence. My dear little baby. And I knew straight away she was dead. She was just lying there in that little brown box with nothing else in it. It was just a bit bigger than she was. There was no bedding or food or water or air holes or anything. I screamed out and took her out of the box and cuddled her to me. She wasn’t warm and she didn’t come back to life. Maynard said, ‘Oh no,’ and put his arm around my shoulders. I cried and cried and cried. I rocked my baby and cried. My mouth formed a wide O but I couldn’t speak. My Sixpence was dead.
Maynard must have been talking to me but I didn’t hear him. All I could think was, How did this happen? Was she alive when Mr Johnson put her in the box, and then died because she couldn’t breathe? Did he kill her and put her in the box to teach me a lesson? Why would anyone do such a thing? Did she know what was happening to her? Was she frightened? Why? Why? No!
Then I realised Mr Driver was squatting down near me. Maynard must have gone in next door to fetch him. Mr Driver was talking quietly to me. He helped me stand up but he didn’t try to take Sixpence away from me. He led us both into his house and sat me in his reading chair in the corner of his kitchen. He made me a cup of instant coffee with lots of sugar and even though I shook my head no thank you, he made me have a few sips.
He asked me to tell him exactly what had happened when I got home. I tried to tell him but I was hiccupping too hard. Maynard filled him in and then said he had to go because his mum would be worrying, and Mr Driver shook him by the hand and asked if he would like him to ring his mother to explain. I don’t know what Maynard said. I sort of went away from the kitchen for a while in my mind, just trying to talk to Sixpence and stroking her and telling her it would be okay, even though I knew she was dead and wouldn’t ever play with me again.