Aliens In The Family (16 page)

"What's been going on, anyway,?" asked David. "What have you done to the world?"

"We went back to the days of Sebastian Webster," said Lewis. "We had a turn at being ghosts." The mountain roared and great rivers of incandescent fire began to wind down its sides. They shone like great tears, destroying everything in their path. "It feels so old." Lewis sighed. "We went back in time with Bond and the ones that were after him."

"Bond!" Philippa cried in sudden recollection. "Where is he? I can't imagine what's happened to him."

"It isn't a thing you can imagine," explained Jake. "Bond wasn't a real person. He was something else, but he said we weren't to worry. He said time would go faster and faster until whole years went by in seconds and we would end up in our own time—exactly when we left it—and we'd go on from there."

"We'll wait then," said David, "because I for one don't want to find myself wandering too far away from where we left the horses. So... let's just sit here and talk about the weather!"

Lewis laughed at David's joke. "There isn't any weather here," he said. "No sun, nothing but the light of the volcano."

"But the sun's rising, I'm sure of it," Philippa said. "There's a glow in the sky over there—away from the volcano. I'm sure it's the beginning of a new day—or should I say an old one."

"An old,
old
one!" added Lewis.

They sat and watched for a while in silence. The sky began to change colour before their eyes. It was the most brilliant sunrise any of them could remember seeing. It looked as if the surface of the sky was polished and was reflecting the volcano's glow in pink and gold so brightly it seemed as if it might suddenly burst into flames and burn up overhead. When the sun did rise it moved so rapidly that Lewis felt an angel was drawing an arch over their heads with a felt pen that left a line of fire.

"It's so scary," said Philippa in wonderment, "and yet—look Dora—it's beautiful too, in a frightening way. Like a film that's been speeded up."

"I'm never going to be frightened of anything again," remarked Dora. "So many frightening things have happened today, I've used up all my scaredness!"

They were in a barren world. Although there were a few trees, they looked distant and stunted. They were the only living things in a landscape of stone mottled with yellow sulphur. Steam rose from crevices in the flank of the mountain, and the air was filled with a burnt chemical smell.

"Isn't it funny," reflected Dora. "David wished we could get back to some beginning place and here we are!" She looked respectfully at David as if here was a man whose wishes, no matter how unlikely, had a chance of coming true.

"Yes, David, it's all your fault," said Philippa good-naturedly. Cooney, his lead rope tucked under a heavy stone so that he couldn't wander away, snorted as if he agreed.

"I actually rode him," said Jake to no-one in particular. "I stuck on for quite a while."

The sun moved faster and faster. "It's making me dizzy," complained Lewis. "I can see the shadows spinning around."

"It's true!" said Jake suddenly, but without saying what it was that was true. "Dora's still got the same hair of course, but it's very untidy..."

"I don't care," Dora butted in, touching her head anxiously all the same.

". . . and I haven't got my cowboy hat," continued Jake. "Lewis hasn't got his felt pens or eagle feathers, and there's no new house and no red car."

"But we've got each other!" declared Philippa.

"That's right," David agreed. "Remember how we wished we'd get back to a place where there was nothing to hide behind, no props and no history? Then we'd be able to talk to each other, ask questions, give honest answers..."

"O.K.," said Jake. "So why didn't you ask me to your wedding?" She directed a penetrating look at David who considered his reply carefully.

"Jacqueline—Jake," he said at last. "I
did
invite you. Your mother wrote back saying you didn't want to come. I had written a long, careful letter because I knew it might be awkward, even upsetting for you, but I wanted you to be there. I was very happy and wanted to share it with you if possible—but Pet said you didn't want to come."

"Oh," said Jake. It was her turn to be silent. Dora opened her mouth to say something but Philippa caught her eye and shook her head. "She reads the letters you write me," Jake said after a while. "She's frightened I might want to live with you for always and then there'd be no-one to look after things at home."

"Look after things?" asked Philippa, puzzled.

"Jake's grandma and grandpa aren't very well," said Dora, secretly pleased that she knew something her mother didn't, "and her mother wants to be looked after."

"It isn't her fault!" Jake cried defensively. "It's just that she never learned to look after herself, and slowly she grew more and more disappointed and can't see any reason to try hard."

"Do you have to do all the dishes?" asked Lewis aghast at the thought. "Dry them too?"

"Uh-huh. I help cook, and peel the veggies and things like that," said Jake. "And I do the washing and cut the wood, and sometimes do a bit of gardening, and remember to put out the milk bottles, and dress my grandpa. I have to learn how to look after myself and it's all good practice."

"You should come and live with us forever," Lewis offered generously.

Jake looked at David. "I have a pretty good time in a lot of ways," she continued. "I have some good friends at school. And I know Mum really does love me, even if she doesn't want to look after me the way other mothers look after their children."

"I know," David said in a gentle voice.

"She says that I need her, but really she needs me."

"I know," repeated David sadly.

"We have some good times. Sometimes she'll say, for no reason at all, 'Let's have a party!' and we do. It's a lot of fun but the trouble is we spend all the housekeeping and have to live on mince for a week. I still like things like that though."

"What if she marries Manley?" asked Dora.

"I think she's got too much sense for that," Jake replied. "I mean she knows Manley would never look after anyone but she likes having someone to go to the movies with. They go to films that I'm not allowed into."

A rapid night fell over them. They sat quietly watching as the stars moved like glittering moths blown over the sky by a high wind.

"The thing with me," said Dora, encouraged by Jake's disclosures, "is that I'm always afraid someone will come in when I'm not expecting it and catch me out looking awful, and then he'll go away again."

"Your father perhaps?" asked David, probingly.

"i don't know," said Dora looking puzzled. "Sometimes, perhaps. Not that I want you to go away, David," she added quickly.

They could all see David's funny, sad smile by the light of the volcano. "We can all tell a secret or two at the beginning of the world," he said. "Life's very mixed up, Dora. It's just the way it is. There's no need to worry too much about it. There are times when your mother misses your father too."

"Yes, every now and then something happens which I think is funny but David takes it so seriously," said Philippa. "I don't exactly miss Joe at times like that but I do think of him because I know he would have thought it was funny too. And every now and then David thinks of Jake's mother in the same way."

"Mmm. Like, as Jake was saying, sometimes Pet would say 'Let's have a party!' and she'd spend all the housekeeping," said David. "And we had some wonderful parties. Even if we did have to live on mince for a fortnight. It's hard to say these things under a family roof, but it's different under a volcano."

The days and nights shivered around them. Months and years flickered by. Whole summers went past like the flashes of a distant mirror. The volcano climbed higher while they watched, then it grew darker and slower.

Rain and frost worked on it but the small family group were not touched by wetness or by cold. The crater began to crumble at its upper edges and at last everything ran into a strange twilight just as Bond had predicted—no sun, no moon, no day, no night—only their five faces looking at each other and the nervous stamp of Cooney's hooves on the stones.

"You'll be able to learn to ride when we get back," said Dora, already imagining herself teaching Jake to ride and how grateful Jake would be to her forever after, and somehow this thought turned into a dream. She sighed, leaned against David and closed her eyes. "I'll never throw books at Jake again," she promised drowsily.

"Even if you do, I suppose we'll get over it sooner or later," Jake said smiling, but Dora did not hear her. She was asleep.

"Don't you believe in happy endings?" David asked his daughter.

"I suppose I do," replied Jake yawning. "Sort of. For a while anyway!" She lay back against Philippa. "Do you think this is a happy ending?"

"It's hard to say," David answered. "Funnily enough, I do feel happy, but I'm not sure if it's an ending or a beginning."

"Maybe it's both," said Philippa wisely. "A circle."

Each one of them gradually drifted off to sleep, Dora and Lewis snuggled up to David, and Jake leaning against Philippa. When at last they awoke, they opened their eyes to a world of dappled shadows and patches of sky seen through green leaves.

"This is where we started from," said David. "Let's see if we can find the rest of our poor horses."

The creek flowed along murmuring to itself. It sounded as if it had always been there and always would be. It was hard to imagine a time when there had been no creek, and no trees, only stones. A time when the ridges of the eastern hills had glowed and overflowed with the burning gold of molten rock. Yet the land had made itself before their eyes.

The five people and a horse wandered along the creek bed until they came upon a place where they saw, with astonishment, their own footprints on the bank of the creek. They scrambled up the slope with Cooney following them obediently, and found all the other horses standing quietly on the open ridge that overlooked Webster's Bush. Cooney flicked his tail and went to join them.

At the sight of the horses David stopped, perplexed. "One horse too many!" he exclaimed, then frowned. "Wasn't there someone else with us?" he asked vaguely.

Philippa and Dora looked at each other, puzzled. Jake was silent.

"I think there was," Lewis said. "A sort of brightly-coloured person." He looked around as if expecting a brightly-coloured person to step out of the clear air of the valley.

"I think he went the long way home," said Jake, half remembering. "He met friends unexpectedly and went home with them instead."

"We'll have to lead the extra horse," Philippa said. "It's just as well they know me at the riding school."

"I'll lead it," volunteered Jake. "But go slowly, so that I can get a bit more used to the feeling of Cooney."

"If you want to practise trotting, I'll take a turn," Dora offered generously. "It's funny, though! I have the feeling that everything's changed, yet when I look around everything's the same."

"I think things have changed," commented Jake, "but I don't mind. They're better than they were before."

"He was a sort of eagle," Lewis said, still looking around, "and then he flew off." But he no longer remembered quite whom he was talking about. His memory was crowded with images of trees growing, volcanoes spouting fire, and years flickering by like pages swiftly turning. His head felt as if it was filled with dreams—but then it often felt like that.

"The extra horse can be a packhorse," Philippa said, putting the pack with the lunch and the spare jackets and other necessary things over Scoot's back.

"He went the long way home," Jake repeated, frowning as if she was trying hard to remember more, "but he didn't need to stay any longer."

Nobody heard her.