Binny for short, p.10
Binny for Short, page 10
“You’ve got all those sheep.”
“Plastic.”
“And the toad,” said his mother.
“Still free-range,” growled James.
“What about your snails?” asked Clem.
“I made them a field but they got over the walls.”
“There’s the chickens at the old ladies’,” Binny reminded him. “Can’t you pretend with them?”
“I’m not a pretend farmer,” said James huffily, “and it’s not fair that the old ladies have all those chickens and I don’t have a single one.”
“Old ladies aren’t fair,” said Binny. “Think of awful Aunty Violet!”
Binny’s family groaned. Nobody wanted to think of awful Aunty Violet. As the summer progressed, as Clem’s flute was heard more and more often, and as the worried look on the children’s mother’s face appeared less and less frequently, they were forgetting about awful Aunty Violet. In their minds she became a very different person. Perfectly-all-right Aunty Violet. Unusual, perhaps. Eccentric, even. Quick-tempered, possibly. Definitely reckless: all that smoking. Still, she had thought of them. They had the house. Their own front door, their own solid walls. James looked so well. The sea air was wonderful. It was so much what they had needed. It was going to work out. And, old and ill in Spain, she had planned it for them. She had even sent to Binny her particular regards.
Dear old Aunty Violet.
Not awful at all.
Don’t be silly, Binny!
* * *
Aunty Violet, age sixteen, watched from her photo frame to see how Binny was taking this transformation. Binny marched upstairs with her, dumped her on the bathroom windowsill (with a direct view over the toilet), and took her troubles to Kate.
* * *
That was what everyone did, because Kate was interested in people. One day, when she had cleared enough tables and served enough coffees to finish paying her way through medical school, she would be a doctor, and everyone who knew her said she would be a very good one indeed. She was kind and she was clever, and she always, always listened.
She was stacking a dishwasher with thick white china when Binny arrived. The clatter was so loud that Binny had to shout.
“Kate!”
“If you’d like to earn yourself a milkshake, Bin, there’s two sticky highchairs out the back need scrubbing.”
“Are you very busy, Kate?”
“Sorry, Bin, you’ll have to shout louder,” said Kate, dealing plates like playing cards into the rack.
“ARE YOU VERY . . . oh, it doesn’t matter.”
Matter fell into a moment of silence between crashing crockery. Kate looked up for the first time and saw Binny’s face.
“Of course it matters,” she said, and took Binny to wash salad, a much quieter job.
“Tell me all your troubles,” she ordered, and when Binny was silent, lost for how to begin, she added, “alphabetically. A?”
“Aunty Violet.”
“B, Binny,” said Kate. “C, Clem?”
“Not really, except . . .” Binny halted again.
“D, E, F?”
Binny shook her head.
“G? H, I, J?”
“James is all right.”
“James is adorable,” said Kate. “K? That could be me.”
Binny rubbed her head affectionately against Kate’s shoulder.
“L?”
“Liam,” said Binny.
“What’s he done?”
“Nothing.”
“You still crew, then? No walking the plank or anything?”
“No. Has Liam got a girlfriend, Kate?”
“Girls on their vacations,” said Kate. “That’s the sort my brother likes. Fast turnover, no commitments, and they don’t know his sister. He’s got it all worked out!”
Binny smiled.
“Not L then,” said Kate. “M?”
“Max,” said Binny.
Most unexpectedly her eyes filled with tears. Worse, her nose became runny. Kate supplied her with paper towels, industrial-strength, and took her away from the lettuce.
“I need a private detective . . . Don’t laugh, Kate!”
“I’m not laughing. Come outside, and we’ll get on with those chairs. Now then. Go on.”
“I used to have a dog. Max. Did Clem tell you?”
“You tell me.”
“Max, and he was my dog, not everyone’s, just mine.”
“It never really works out like that with dogs and cats, though, does it?” remarked Kate mildly. “They don’t seem to understand it, that they’re not everyone’s, I mean.”
“Max did.”
“Oh.”
“Max knew he was mine, even after Dad died and he had to go and live with Granny. He still knew. Poor Max.”
“Poor Binny,” said Kate, and she handed Binny another square of paper towel.
“You haven’t heard yet what Aunty Violet did.”
“This is Aunty Violet who left you the house?”
“Yes, her. Who everybody thinks is lovely now. Except me.”
“Right.”
“She came back from Spain to visit Granny,” said Binny, beginning to use the kitchen roll very vigorously, even though it was so stiff it hurt her nose. “To visit Granny. And Max was there. And we were in another town where one of Mum’s friends said she could have a job.”
“It’s a pity you had to move away from Granny.”
“Yes, it was. I wanted to stay with her, but they wouldn’t let me. Granny was very old.”
“Oh dear,” murmured Kate.
“So anyway, while we were all miles away and didn’t know anything about it, Aunty Violet visited Granny. And she met Max. She was horrible about Max. She said he was terror . . . terrorizing Granny!”
“Terrorizing?”
“ ’Course he wasn’t. He was still only very young. Not even one.”
“Bouncy, probably,” suggested Kate.
“Yes. Just bouncy. All puppies jump about and bark and bite a bit. Everyone knows that.”
“Pass me that sponge, Binny, and tell me what Aunty Violet did and why you need a private detective.”
“She got rid of Max.”
“Without telling you?”
“Yes. Granny told us ages later, when Aunty Violet’d gone back to Spain.”
Kate shook her head to indicate sorrow. “Did you ever ask her where Max went?”
“Yes, I did, at Granny’s funeral, just before she died.”
“Granny had her funeral just before she died?”
“No, no! Just before Aunty Violet died! Granny was dead already and it was her funeral and it was snowy and Clem fainted so there was just Aunty Violet and me in the car.”
“This is a terrible story,” remarked Kate. “Tragedy upon tragedy. Go on. You asked Aunty Violet and Aunty Violet wouldn’t tell you?”
“How do you know that?”
“And she wouldn’t tell you because she knew if she did you’d give no peace to anyone until you found him again? Just guessing.”
Binny nodded.
“How long ago was all this?”
“Last winter was Granny’s funeral, in all that snow. But it’s more than two years since Aunty Violet got rid of Max.”
Kate said very gently, “Don’t you think Max will have found a new life in more than two years, Binny?”
“No.”
“I don’t know, but I’m guessing private detectives cost a fortune.”
“A quarter of the house is mine. That would be enough.”
“But you would have to sell it,” said Kate. “Sell the house, where you are all so happy.”
“We could buy another, with the leftover money. Smaller.”
“Not much smaller,” said Kate thoughtfully, “or else your poor Mum would probably end up sleeping in the street.”
Binny gave a small grin.
“You’ve done so well, Binny,” said Kate. “You’ve managed without Max all this time.”
“Not really, I haven’t.”
“You’ve managed since I’ve known you. Happy enough. Now, do you want to know what I would do if I were you?”
“What?”
“I’d start writing letters. People take notice of letters. Phone calls vanish. E-mails disappear when you turn off the screen. But letters are real. They have a shape. They stay around. So if I were you, I’d begin writing them.”
“Who to?”
“All the RSPCA branches in the town where Granny lived. All the vets. All the rescue places and animal shelters.”
“He won’t be in those places now, though, Kate.”
“No, but somebody might be who remembers him. You could try anyway. You can be your own private detective!”
Binny suddenly smiled a real smile.
“Thank you, Kate!”
“Hop off and clear some tables for me. You need to start saving up for stamps.”
“It’s a brilliant idea!” said Binny, and two minutes later had forgotten she had ever been in need of industrial-strength paper towels and was racing around outside, swishing bubbles over the tables and stacking turrets of glass and china.
“Drop that lot and we’re bankrupt,” remarked Liam, visiting between seal trips to scrounge a free coffee. “Hang on, I’ll get the door. Coming out with me when we go again?”
“She’s doing the tables first,” said Kate, overhearing.
“Whose crew is she, mine or yours?” demanded Liam. “You’ve already grabbed Clem! You leave Binny to me! Hurry up out here, Bin, and come down to the harbor. There’s a pound coin under that menu, by the way! I’ll have it if you don’t need it!”
“I do! I do! I need stamps!” said Binny, dumped her tray, grabbed the coin, hugged Kate, and hurried after Liam, running to keep up.
Happy, thought Kate, smiling after her.
Or happy enough.
Chapter Twelve
“That Gareth comes round nearly every day now,” remarked Clem one morning as she and Binny washed the breakfast things together. “Over the fence and straight into the house like he owns it.”
“I know,” agreed Binny, “and then he stares around like a visitor at a zoo or something.”
“He’s very polite,” said Clem. “Too polite.”
“Only to you. But he’s nice to James. He eats his lettuce.”
“I know. Did the dandelions work?”
“Hope so,” said Binny.
They both laughed callously.
“What did he water it with this morning?” asked Clem.
“Old sneaker soup from the old sneaker he found on the beach. He soaked it in bath water and strained off the juice.”
“You should warn Gareth, Binny. That’s the worst yet.”
“Mmm,” said Binny. She had no intention of warning Gareth. He had not warned her the day before when he had given her a chili to munch. Besides, what use was an enemy that you had to look out for? She and Gareth had been excellent enemies since their trip to the gorse moor. Perhaps because they had shared a secret. And perhaps also because they had both realized how very differently they each saw things. (Binny’s long look at a huge tame dragon. Gareth’s glimpse of a small wild adder.) Somehow they were bound even closer by mutual misunderstanding.
It led to a lot of testing.
Every day there was something new. Gareth had kindly loaned Binny his giant water squirter, and encouraged her to lie down on her back and fire it up the chimney.
“It’ll clean it, you see,” he explained, and added, having begun to understand the state of the family’s finances, “That will save you having to pay someone to come!”
Gareth’s method had cleaned the chimney beautifully, mostly all over Binny, who had had to be hosed down in the garden. It took three washes to get the soot out of her hair and because of this, before she handed the water squirter back, she had topped up its reservoir with duck-egg blue paint.
“Did it work, then?” asked Gareth, as innocently as if he had not witnessed the hosing in the garden.
“Not very well. I thought it would be more powerful, being so big.”
“More powerful?” asked Gareth indignantly. “It’s only the biggest you can buy!”
“Well, it doesn’t seem to work very well when you fire it straight up,” said Binny, and prudently retired to the shelter of the apple tree while Gareth pumped the water squirter to exploding point, fired it upward, and turned duck-egg blue.
No one except Binny witnessed this pleasant event (although it was very obvious to Gareth’s family that something catastrophic had occurred on their patio). Binny’s family knew nothing about it at all, which was why Clem asked, “Why don’t you ever go to Gareth’s house instead of him always coming here?”
“I don’t want to, that’s why,” said Binny. The patio had scrubbed clean quite well, but there was also the day of the helicopter flight on her conscience.
“James doesn’t ever go there either.”
“That’s because he’s mad at them because they called him a girl.”
“They did?”
“She did. A little girl! Poor James!”
“I suppose he was wearing that wetsuit? What happened then?”
“You remember Mum sent him into the garden to be out of the way while we cleared up all the soot and water?”
“Go on.”
“And it was a really hot afternoon?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Really hot and quiet and James heard pigs.”
“Pigs?”
“Through the fence. So he climbed up the apple tree to look because he couldn’t see over. He said he thought if wild pigs had come to live in Gareth’s garden, he would make a hole in the fence and get them for his farm. But when he got up the tree, it wasn’t pigs. It was Gareth’s father, snoring, right under our apple tree on one of those posh stripy sunbed things.”
Clem, who had finished washing the dishes, found a tea towel and began to help dry.
“Thanks,” said Binny gratefully and dropped a mug.
“Binny!”
“Shall I keep telling you about James?”
“Yes. But quickly! Gareth’s father snoring. No pigs. Hurry up!”
“Yes. And you know how little hard apples fall off our apple tree if you joggle the branches a bit? Well, they did. An apple fell straight into Gareth’s father’s wide-open mouth!”
“Binny! He could have choked!”
“He did choke, and he rolled around with his eyes all bulgy and then Gareth, who must have been watching, ran out of the house and tipped him off the posh sunbed thing and hit him really hard on his back and the apple shot out and James laughed so much he slipped out of the tree onto those frilly pink flowers they’ve got growing round the edge of their grass. And, she must have seen James fall because she came rushing out of the house too, and she said, ‘Gareth, Gareth, is the little girl hurt?’ ”
“What about Gareth’s father being hurt?” demanded Clem.
“Oh, he was all right. But James was really annoyed. Do you think we should get his hair cut?”
“What?”
“Do you think we should get James’s hair cut so he doesn’t look so much like a girl?” asked Binny. “Why are you staring?”
“Am I staring?” asked Clem. “I’m sorry. I must learn to take you more casually.”
“So anyway, that’s why James doesn’t go round to Gareth’s. Nothing to do with the fence. They didn’t notice. It was hardly scorched.”
But Clem had gone. With her hands over her ears. Begging, “Don’t tell me about the fence, don’t tell me about the fence!”
“Weird,” said Binny.
* * *
They had to keep making new rules for James.
No taking money from the old ladies.
No hunting in trash cans.
No taking off that wetsuit in shops to show people you are a boy.
No more stealing lettuce seeds from the supermarket.
In fact no more stealing anything from the supermarket.
No crabs in your bedroom.
Or Binny’s bedroom.
No tormenting the neighbors.
No matches. No unsupervised hotness of any kind.
“He’s only six,” said Clem, because it seemed such a long list for a very small boy.
* * *
Because he was only six, they (most confusingly, no wonder he hardly ever knew right from wrong) tolerated:
Wearing the things he found in trash cans.
Growing the stolen lettuce seeds.
Trying to make the lettuce grow poisonous.
Testing it on Gareth.
The crab in the kitchen if he kept the lid on the box.
Sucking his fingers when telling lies.
Occasional record-breaking attempts on the garden fence.
“But only sometimes,” they added sternly, splash marks on the fence ranking in all their minds far worse than poisoning the neighbors with stolen property.
“Sometimes,” agreed James, amiably accepting this madness.
“Not all the time.”
“For a treat,” said James, contentedly sucking his fingers.
“But why?”
James could not say why. He had no idea of the reason for half the things he did. Sometimes it was as if the fence whispered “Find a match!” “Taste me!” ordered hard green apples, seaweed, soap, and cobwebs. “How awful would it be,” questioned the house key, foolishly given to James to hold on a family trip to watch the sunset over the sea, “if you dropped me in the harbor?” James looked at the cold reflecting water, knew it would be truly awful, and dropped the key.
The old ladies at the old people’s home said:
Little devil.
Take no notice, my lovely!
He’s got it all worked out.
Butter wouldn’t melt.
It doesn’t mean a thing at his age.
They understood him down to his bones.
* * *
The combined ages of all the old ladies in the home came to almost four thousand years. Almost four thousand years of undemanding tolerance bathed around James like sunshine whenever he appeared. No wonder his eyes sparkled when he stepped through the door.
