The Listmaker (9 page)

‘Well, I've only really been around at weekends and holidays,' I pointed out. ‘The rest of the time I'm away at school.'

‘Which is something I've
never
approved of,' Aunty Nat said frostily. ‘You could just as easily have lived with
us
all this time, instead of being shunted around like a parcel when it wasn't even necessary. There are
oodles
of schools just as good as that one. Not that there's ever any arguing with that father of yours once he's made up his mind! The number of times I've just wanted to –'

‘Well, I won't be boarding any more,' I said quickly, because although she hardly ever criticised Dad, it always made me feel troubled. I suspected that, deep down, Aunty Nat didn't really like him very much. There was the opal brooch he'd given her a couple of birthdays ago; although she loved opals, that particular brooch never seemed to get taken out of her jewellery box. And sometimes there'd be a coolness in her voice when she'd say, ‘Your dad rang, Sarah. He's had to cancel this weekend, I'm afraid, but he'll try to take you out next Saturday instead.'

You'd have to be an awful kind of person to be in Aunty Nat's bad books, because she liked practically everyone. But Dad wasn't awful, I thought, suddenly feeling cross and muddled. He was
charming
to the aunts whenever he came to visit. The week Aunty Nat was in hospital having her varicose veins done, he'd sent the most enormous basket of flowers. He'd sent flowers to Mrs H. at the boarding house, too, once when I'd had to stay at school during a long holiday weekend. It was when the aunts were in New Zealand. The arrangements were that I'd be spending those four days with Dad, but unfortunately he'd been delayed in Perth, so it all fell through. Even though it must have been a pest for her, Mrs H. had been really nice to me. (Maybe it was because of the magnificent flowers.)
Everyone
thought he was charming – especially Eileen Holloway. That was because when he was visiting me at the aunts' one day, she happened to pop in, and he'd admired all the fairy greeting-card designs she insisted on showing him. (Eileen hadn't guessed he'd just taken his new contact lenses out to rest his eyes and couldn't see a thing up close.) Kids at school were impressed because he was so much better looking than their dads. The term I'd somehow managed to fluke top marks in maths, he'd given me a portable CD player to show how proud he was.

‘No more boarding at school,' I said, turning my head for another look at the apartment block. ‘The fortnight when they're away doesn't count, it will be over in a blink. After that, that's where I'll be – up there! It shouldn't take more than twenty minutes to get home every afternoon, so I'll be lazing around on the balcony before I do my homework. Then if it's one of Piriel's days when she gets home early, we'll be nicking down to the pool together.'

‘I hope you'll be happy there, darling,' Aunty Nat said, giving me a little squeeze. ‘You're a lucky girl, moving into such a posh place. My word, I'd better make sure I do a good job on the curtains when we track down that material!'

We had a long search for it, because scattiness seemed to run in the Gibbs family. (Mrs Gibbs's directions for finding the shop turned out to have as many mistakes as Belinda's homework.) But when we found it, they still had plenty of the cloud material left, and Aunty Nat bought extra to make a matching doona cover. She wouldn't let me pay for it from my special holiday allowance, either.

‘This can be a kind of New Year present from me,' she said. ‘Your dad meant that holiday money for outings and such like, but you've hardly touched any of it yet. Why don't you go out somewhere with Corrie?'

‘She's got her own friends,' I said. ‘There's always kids popping in and out of their place. Or piling into the back of that rusty old four-wheel drive.'

‘I'm sure Mrs Ryder wouldn't mind one more passenger when she drops them off to wherever they're going. Nor would Corrie.'

‘They'd only be talking about their school and Parchment Hills stuff. I'd feel dumb, tagging along.'

‘Well, maybe you'd like to invite some of your own schoolfriends out to Avian Cottage. If it's a long trip from where they live, they're more than welcome to stay the night.'

‘I'd rather wait …' I began, but because it sounded rude to say I'd prefer to invite kids from school to the wonderful new apartment instead, I covered up with, ‘It might be best to put that off until Ed Woodley finishes all the repairs. We'd only be getting in his way.'

Actually, there weren't any girls I
could
invite. Lots of people in my class got together in the holidays; I knew that from hearing them natter about various places they'd been to. Somehow, though, no one ever seemed to ask
me
along. All that would change, of course, when I moved into the apartment. Everything would automatically change for the better, because I'd be part of a real family group. Piriel's sparkle would rub off on me. I'd become so confident and popular …

‘Oh look, there's a place that sells wedding-cake decorations,' Aunty Nat said when we finished at the material shop and went back into the arcade. Even though Piriel didn't particularly want one, Aunty Nat was determined to make a special cake. The best I could do now was to coax her out of buying a miniature bridal couple under an icing archway, and into choosing something plainer. While that battle was going on, we lost Aunt Dorothy. One minute she was there, elbowing marzipan wedding bells off the shop counter, then she just disappeared. We had a long search for her up and down the arcade.

‘Holy mackerel!' Aunty Nat spluttered, sounding as though she really meant something much stronger. ‘She
knows
we have to allow time for dropping the key off. Piriel made such a point about it. Darn that sister of mine! Sometimes, Sarah, I just wonder how Dosh ever manages to hold down a welding job in a factory! You'd think they'd be worried about her sticking all the wrong parts together.'

‘There she is, coming out of that end shop,' I said, wondering why Aunty Nat seemed so jittery about the key being returned as soon as possible. It was almost as though she thought Piriel might be unpleasant if it wasn't.

‘Of all the eccentric places to vanish into, Dosh – a
camping-gear
shop!' Aunty Nat scolded. ‘We just about took this wretched arcade apart looking for you, but we never thought to check in
there
. You've never shown the slightest interest in tents, not even when you were in Girl Guides all those years ago! I seem to recall you kept wandering off and getting lost on hikes. And
that's
something that certainly hasn't changed.'

‘I just went in there to get a Swiss army knife,' Aunt Dorothy said evasively.

‘That's just as peculiar as tents! What on earth would you need one of those for?'

‘It's not actually for
me
. It's … well, a little present for someone else. Theirs kind of got broken carving something.'

Aunty Nat still thought it was peculiar. She muttered all the way back to the St Aloysius car park, and kept it up on the drive to Piriel's office. Aunt Dorothy didn't defend herself or offer any more explanations. She just listened in a guilty pink-faced silence, opening and shutting all the Swiss army knife attachments.

Piriel was out, but as the receptionist expected her back soon, we were allowed to wait in her office. There were only two visitors' chairs, so I sat reverently at the gleaming desk, wishing Aunt Dorothy wouldn't slip off her shoes and massage her feet. (Maybe that was partly my fault for making her wear respectable shoes to town in honour of our apartment visit, but it looked peasant-like in such surroundings.) I glanced at the glossy folders on the desk, half pretending that I was Piriel and that I'd just clinched an impressive sale which had defeated everyone else in the firm. There was a grooved slab on the desk, holding three slender gold pens. Her name was on the door in gold writing. The chair I sat in was made of beautiful dark leather, with armrests. I could have sat there forever admiring all those wonderful things, but Aunty Nat began to look at her watch.

‘We should be heading back to Parchment Hills now,' she said. ‘I told Ed we'd be home before he left, to decide once and for all about the laundry floor tiles.'

‘But I wanted Piriel to see the cloud material …'

‘I know, dear, but if she's out showing someone over a property, there's no telling exactly when she'll be here. You'll catch up with her soon, anyway, because she'll be wanting to make a start on your dress for the wedding. We really can't hang around – Ed wanted to get cracking on those tiles first thing tomorrow. Just pop the key in the desk drawer, and we'll let the receptionist know on our way out.'

I slid open the top right-hand drawer. It contained only a box of tissues, a comb and mirror, and something wrapped in beige paper and raffia string. It was disappointing that Piriel hadn't had time yet to unwrap the paperknife I'd given her for Christmas, and put it out where everyone could see. I would have done it for her, finding a place of honour next to the exquisite gold pens, but somehow I didn't quite like to.

1. Practise eating restaurant food, like lobster and oysters. (Yuk!)
   
2. Find out how fax machines work (so I can help Dad and Piriel when they're busy).
   
3. Learn how to leave messages on answering machines without feeling stupid.
   
4. Somehow get a lot better at tennis.
   
5. Learn how to make interesting conversation with people.
   
6. Work really hard at that theatre workshop when I get there. (So Piriel won't think she's wasting her money.)
   
7. Try to get top marks for everything at school. (So Dad won't think he's wasting
   his
   money.)
   
8. Stop biting my nails!
   

∙ ∙ ∙ ∙

I certainly wasn't next-door from
choice
. If I'd been given one, I would have stayed home and practised computer keyboard skills. (I wanted to be expert by the time Dad got back, so he wouldn't regret buying me such an expensive Christmas present.) But Aunty Nat and Mrs Ryder, gabbing as usual, had decided to go to an evening floral-art demonstration. It wasn't in Parchment Hills, so they wouldn't get back until late. The snag was that Aunt Dorothy had already taken off somewhere else on her own, and wasn't available as a minder. (Which was unusual, because she hardly
ever
went anywhere in the evenings. She'd announced that she was going to meet a friend, have dinner and then maybe see a film, but didn't give any more details.) Because Aunty Nat would never leave me at home by myself at night, I was bundled next-door with Mr Ryder and Corrie for company.

Corrie was down the street buying lemonade, so I had to sit in the living room for a little while making conversation with her dad. My voice felt stilted, but I tried my best. (Piriel didn't have any patience with people who claimed they never knew what to say. She said it was really just a lazy excuse for not bothering to learn adequate social skills.) So I made polite comments about the cricket, which he was watching on television, even though I didn't know anything much about it. (I can't say Mr Ryder had many social skills, either. He just sat there grunting at all my remarks and even turned the sound up quite loud at one stage.) I didn't think I'd ever be delighted to see Corrie Ryder, but it was certainly a relief when she came back with the lemonade.

‘Dad always goes off into a coma when the cricket's on,' she said. ‘Though it's pretty hard to tell the difference from how he is the rest of the time. The only way you can check up is by plonking an icy-cold bottle down on his bald spot. Like this …'

I glanced at Mr Ryder nervously, because my own dad wasn't a jokey kind of person, and I wouldn't have dared stir him like that, especially not in front of visitors. Corrie's one didn't seem to mind. He just told her he'd found a slab of cooking chocolate hidden away in the kitchen, and if she'd take half the blame when its rightful owner came back, he'd split it in two. Plus we could have some of his chips – but only if we both scrammed and left him in peace to watch the Windies get slaughtered.

Corrie put everything on a tray, saying we'd have a picnic in her room. It sounded very unhygienic to me, but when we got there, it was obvious that a few more stray crumbs on the floor wouldn't really make much difference. As well as crumbs and apple cores, there was a tree growing up out of the floor, reaching to the ceiling. It wasn't a real tree, but
knitted,
with a crochet possum hanging from one branch. Corrie said it had taken two whole years to make, and the wool had come from worn-out sweaters collected from everyone in the street.

She seemed besotted with making things. The room was cluttered with glue bottles, paint brushes, stacks of paper, cardboard, matchboxes, cotton reels, bits of chicken wire, and lunch-wrap cylinders. The only chair was piled high with empty ice-cream containers. Corrie tipped them carelessly onto the floor so I could sit down, then dumped herself and the tray on the bed. The bedspread was made from denim patches sewn together, as though she'd also scrounged worn-out jeans from everyone in the street.

Imagining my own beautiful sky room at the apartment, I began to feel sorry for her.
Everything
in the room seemed to be recycled from something else. She didn't even have a proper bedside table, just a battered two-drawer filing cabinet. All her shoes, instead of being paired neatly in a special wardrobe rack like mine, were stored in a frayed wicker basket – maybe because the wardrobe was really a skinny metal gym locker. The strange thing was that Corrie didn't seem the least self-conscious about taking me into her room!

‘Don't let me hold you up, if you want to be getting on with anything,' I said awkwardly. ‘I could just as easily have stayed home by myself. It never gets dark till really late in summer, but Aunty Nat's always so clucky.'

‘No worries,' Corrie said. ‘I never plan what I'm going to do after tea, anyhow. It's a case of whatever comes along – people dropping in, whatever's on the telly, or just mucking around. That's what I've been doing over at my Nan's place the last few days, mucking around. She got spooked when she read that newspaper thing about holiday crime figures. Her suburb was up near the top of the chart, so she asked me to go and stay while Pop was off on his fishing trip. It's okay over at her place, and we went into town and watched the New Year fireworks, but I was glad to get back home. Hey, while you're here, want to see what everyone gave me for Christmas?'

Most of her presents seemed to be stuff like T-shirts and gym shoes, the sort of ordinary, everyday things you'd just buy during the year when your old ones started to get shabby. None of them could compare with my computer, I thought, though Corrie seemed happy enough with them. She'd also been given a book about theatre costumes and make-up. It certainly wasn't the kind of present I would have liked, but she was pleased about it. She said it would come in handy for some puppets she wanted to make, and I almost told her about the theatre workshop Piriel had enrolled me in. But somehow, even just thinking about having to attend that workshop made my stomach feel like a coffee grinder. Besides, looking at Corrie's modest little paperback book, I thought it might seem like bragging to mention it.

‘There, that's the lot, except for this wall-diary thing,' she said. ‘I think it might be meant as a hint to get more with-it this year. I kind of let things happen.'

And that, I thought disapprovingly, was a very sloppy habit to get into. Dad had shown me how to draw up a chart for school, to make the most of my spare time in the evenings. (Though I'd learned to keep it out of sight, because Tara McCabe couldn't be trusted not to sabotage it. For instance, if I wrote down ‘extra piano practice', she'd cross it out and scribble things like, ‘Get a life!'.) But because I'd become used to following a worthwhile evening routine at school and not wasting time like Tara and everyone else, I automatically kept to one in the holidays, too. Tonight, for instance, if I hadn't had to come over to the Ryders', I might have got my stamp album up to date as well as practising computer keyboard skills. (That stamp collection was larger than anyone else's at school because of Dad having so many overseas contacts.) After doing all that, I could have played the game that had come with the computer. In spite of always feeling a bit guilty after what Piriel had said, it was a
fantastic
game. It was called
Rulers of Cedrona
and I was slowly working my way through level one. Next level up, I might have enough gold hoarded to train a more powerful army.

Corrie Ryder was inspecting the empty lemonade bottle as though
it
was made of gold. ‘Just what I'm after for the bottom part of my lighthouse!' she crowed. ‘I could paint it white and sprinkle sand on while it's still wet … Go ahead and have that last bit of chocolate, Sarah. Mum's not likely to go mad at
you
, anyway; it's that cricket freak out there who'll get clobbered. He was the one who nicked it in the first place.'

‘Thanks … that's if you're sure you don't want it,' I said, ashamed of looking greedy. I'd never eaten cooking chocolate before, except melted down in recipes, and thought it was delicious. ‘What do you mean – lighthouse? How could you make one out of a lemonade bottle?'

‘Easy. Pebbles stuck on a board might do for the base, though I haven't figured the sea out yet. Blue paint never really looks much like water. The top's one of those glass baby-food jars with a torch globe wired inside, so it can turn on and off.'

It seemed a lot of trouble to go to when you could
buy
miniature lighthouses. There'd been some in the toyshop where I'd gone Christmas shopping with Aunt Dorothy. Because I'd been thinking of a ship's-cabin theme for my apartment room round about then, I'd almost bought one to use as a decoration. They'd just been made out of painted wood, though, and didn't have lights that could be switched on and off.

‘Maybe you could use real water and set the whole thing up in a cake tin or something,' I said, mildly interested.

‘Now
that's
not such a bad idea! I don't think I'd better pinch any more stuff out of the kitchen cupboard; Mum's getting a bit fed up. But there's an old baking dish in the yard somewhere, from when I was making a plaster mould of my foot one time. Let's scoot down and get it.'

Corrie slid back the flywire screen and vanished through the window. I stuck my head out cautiously and saw that she'd run across the flat section of roof outside her room, and was climbing down a tree into their garden.

‘I've got my good jeans on …' I called after her, but she either didn't hear, or didn't think it was important. I followed unwillingly, not being very keen on scrambling about in trees, or on carport roofs, either, no matter how flat they were. I stopped halfway across it, noticing all the improvements to our place next-door.

Aunt Dorothy had been toiling away outside just about every day since we'd moved in and the garden had lost some of its wild look. Parts of it were even quite impressive now. The summerhouse, repaired and freshly painted, sat on the terrace like a replica of the wedding cake Aunty Nat had made. In a few weeks' time, I thought happily, Piriel and Dad would be standing there for the marriage ceremony – that's if Aunty Nat didn't change her mind again and decide that the willow tree might be a more picturesque spot. She had half a dozen likely picturesque spots picked out. If it rained on the day, for instance, she planned to transform the living-room door into a kind of ornamental archway. (Eileen Holloway had already been organised to make a lot of paper rose garlands just in case.) But it couldn't possibly rain for Piriel's wedding! It had to be a perfect blue-and-gold day, just like this one had been.

The air today was so clear that you could decipher the tallest city buildings far away on the horizon. They looked magical, as though they were carved from blue glass. (Which wasn't the sort of thing you could have said to Ed Woodley. He claimed you could
always
tell where the city lay – you just had to hunt around for a layer of smog like thick brown gravy.)

‘Hi, Piriel! It's
me
…' I whispered, imagining her somewhere over in that direction, amongst the blue glass buildings. Perhaps she might even have called in to inspect our apartment and was standing on its balcony at this very moment, somehow sensing my greeting. She'd gaze across the wide landscape in between and suddenly think, ‘
Sarah
. I could have sworn I heard her voice just now …' It
could
be happening like that. People who were emotionally close were supposed to be able to tune in to each other's thoughts and feelings. Telepathy, that was the correct name for it. The first time we ever met, Piriel had said that she knew we'd get along very well indeed. That
meant
she felt close to me – or at least I hoped it did.

Telepathy might work with the aunts, too. Once I'd actually moved into town, I could make a point of standing on that balcony every evening and sending a private message in
this
direction, to Avian Cottage. To Aunt Dosh, watering the garden late in the evening, murmuring to some plant, ‘There, didn't I
say
your health would pick up if I moved you over to that corner?' Bumping her head on the hanging basket of ferns which she always forgot about when she turned off the hose.

To Aunty Nat in the kitchen, humming along to one of her daggy tapes, wiping tears away with a floury potholder if it was a sentimental song, remembering a phone call she had to make and whisking into the hall to do it, forgetting about the phone call because she'd just noticed the linen cupboard could do with a good tidy.

Suddenly, the idea of sending secret messages to Avian Cottage wasn't warm and fuzzy any more. It was somehow
sad
, like the lost feeling that usually hit me after being dropped off at school by the aunts after a lengthy holiday break. Or even after an ordinary weekend. Mrs H. would be hovering around somewhere on the front steps to welcome everyone back. Tara McCabe said it was only to give a good impression and suck up to all the parents, but I was always grateful for Mrs H. being there on the steps. It meant a person to chat to about what I'd done over the break, an impersonal face to focus on, instead of having to watch the aunts' car disappear down the long, gravelled drive.

‘Come on, Sarah, that tree's a cinch. It's safe as a ladder,' Corrie yelled.

I climbed unenthusiastically down into their yard. It was hard to keep up with her, because instead of keeping to the paths, she seemed to like plunging through shrubs and jumping over flowerbeds. I followed, wishing I hadn't made the suggestion about using real water for her ridiculous lighthouse.

‘Could have sworn that old dish was lying around here somewhere,' she said, hunting along the back fence. ‘Or maybe it was down by the creek where I last saw it. That little creek's
fantastic
, isn't it?'