A Midsummer Tight's Dream (2 page)

I can’t wait to get to Skipley. I’m so excited. This is going to be my Winter of Love, I can tell.

I stayed with Cousin Georgia on my way back from summer school and it was brilliant. I haven’t really spent a lot of time with her before because of being in Ireland and having crap parents who actually do stuff. Not just bake tarts or DIY like everyone else’s parents. Not good old boring stuff. My mum goes off and paints and my dad goes off exploring to find endangered things. He collects mollusks mostly but last time he found a rare hairy potato. He’s like a cross between David Bellamy and … a Labrador. That is not a proper dad in anyone’s language.

That’s a Labradad.

Hee. I think that might very nearly be a joke.

I’m going to put it into my performance-art notebook that I will be keeping.

I’ve got a special new notebook with a black glossy cover and some plums on the front of it.

It’s really arty, and er … fruity.

I’ve already made my first entry.

It says:

Winter of Love.

I’ll just add my “Labradad” idea.

Labradad. A portrait of a dad who is half pipe-smoking bloke and half Labrador. He’s confused between the two worlds. Between pipes and sticks. I’m thinking an improvised dance piece. Perhaps the Labradad fetching sticks. Or pipes?

Or ducks?

Hmmmmm.

I love my parents but they’re not normal. Or around much. But they have let me come back to Dother Hall—even though I have to stay with the Dobbinses. My mum said I was too immature to board but she doesn’t seem to mind that I’m staying with a family where the mother is a Brown Owl and the father goes to “inner woman” groups. Which is not to mention the idiot twins.

It was great staying with Cousin Georgia. It was brilliant on the boy front as well.

She got her Ace Gang round to teach me “wisdomosity” and also “snogging techniques.” We all tucked up in her bed, which was cozy.

Georgia said, “Have a jammy dodger and give us the goss snogwise.”

The Ace Gang were wearing false beards to help me get into the mood.

So … I told them about going to the cinema in Skipley with some boys from Woolfe Academy and about my first kiss. With floppy Ben. And how it was like having a little bat trapped in my mouth.

The Ace Gang looked at me and Georgia said, “Tallulah, are you a fool with just a hint of an idiot thrown in?”

But they gave me their wisdomosity about boys. And snogging.

Gosh, Georgia knows a lot.

About varying pressure of the lips, what to do with your tongue (don’t waggle it about like a fool), the scoring system for snogging. (Number 1 to Number 10, I can’t remember all of them but I do remember Number 4 is “a kiss lasting over three minutes without a break.” You need a mate for that one, so that they can time it for you.)

Honestly. I couldn’t believe it.

I’m dying to try out my new skills.

The amount she knew, she must have spent all of her time doing snogging research.

I said that to her and she said, “I do, my strange gangly cousy. But I have put aside snogging to teach you the ways of boydom. I do it because I luuurve you. But not in a lezzie way.”

Which is good.

I think.

What is a “lezzie way”?

I think it’s to do with girl snogging.

But I didn’t ask.

Oh chuggy-chug-chug. Come on, train!!!

I wonder what time the rest of the Tree Sisters will arrive tomorrow?

Oh, here we are at the train station. Hurrah!!! There’s its sign swinging in the biting gale force wind. Just as I remember:

Skipley

Home of the

West Riding Otter

Hang on a minute, some Northern vandal has painted a “b” and a “y” over the otter bit. So now it reads:

Well, here I am, back where I really belong. I have just got off the showbiz express and crossed to the other side of the station and now I am getting on the bus of hope. Which will transport me to … The Theater of Dreams.

I can see the bus driver through the closed door, sitting in the driver’s seat. I recognize him from last term. I wonder if he recognizes me?

As I hauled my bag on board up the steps he put the pipe to one side of his mouth and shouted, “Stop messing about and get on if you’re getting on, merry legs. It’s bloody parky with that door open.”

I said, “Why did you call me merry legs?”

He said, “Because you’re lanky and your legs are all over the shop.”

As I paid my fare he said, “Come back to prat around like a fool at Dither Hall again, have you?”

Before I could say “It’s Dother Hall, actual—” he accelerated off so violently that I shot down to the end of the bus and almost ended up in a small child’s pushchair. Luckily there wasn’t a small child in it, just a pig.

The woman with the pushchair said, “Mind my pig.”

I am huddled up well away from her, but I think I can still smell pig poo.

We bumped along the road to Heckmondwhite. The driver is careering along sounding his horn whenever there is anything in his way on the road. Pedestrians. Bicyclists. A cow pat. But he slowed down behind a lollipop lady who was walking home. With her sign. She tried to let him pass but he cheerily waved her on and drove slowly behind her. Then for no reason when we got to a sharp corner he revved up and blasted his horn and she fell into a hedge. He was laughing so much I thought he might swallow his pipe.

I couldn’t help being excited. This is like a postcard of a winter scene in Yorkshire. There is even some snow on the top of Grimbottom Peak. And I shivered as I thought about Fang up there. Raising his fictitious children as fictitious puppies.

A
S THE SKY DARKENED
and we bumped past isolated farms and little hamlets, we arrived at the bus stop in Heckmondwhite just when the street lamps were lighting up. In my Dother Hall brochure it says, “Heckmondwhite has its own ‘zany’ cosmopolitan atmosphere.”

I don’t know that most people would call a village green and a post office and a pub called The Blind Pig “zany.” Unless you counted the knitted flags over the village hall.

I bet the Dobbinses, my substitute parents, have got something to do with that.

Maybe I should just nip quickly over to the pub and see my fun-sized friend, Ruby, and my four-legged mate Matilda, her bulldog? I could give her the lipstick I’ve bought her. Not Matilda, Ruby. Dogs don’t wear makeup. But what they do wear is the little ballet tutu I have got for her from Pets Party shop. I hope it will go round her waist. She is quite porky in the middle.

And anyway, even if Rubes is out I could leave the presents with her older brother, Alex. Alex the dream boy. Alex with his long limbs and his longish thick chestnut hair. And his two eyes. And his back and front … and everything. And we could chat about performing arts. He’s gone off to Liverpool to do drama there and I could chat about my performance plans. Maybe tell him about my Labradad idea.

Maybe not. I want him to think of me as an attractive thespian.

Yes, I will pop to see Ruby. And whilst I am popping about maybe Alex, her very gorgeous brother, will pop up and that will be poptastic and I will say, “What a surprise, Alex, I was just popping by to …”

“Lullah! Lullah, yoo-hoo, it’s me!!!! And the twins!!!”

Dibdobs. In her Brown Owl uniform, coming toward me. No, not just coming toward me. Skipping toward me.

The twins were wearing knitted yellow knickerbockers.

I bet Mr. Dobbins (Harold) knitted them at one of his “inner woman” groups. Harold goes to a men’s group and they try to find their hidden feminine side.

Uuuumph. She almost crushed me to death with her bosom and her badges. And her new whistle. As I have said before, I am sure Dibdobs has got a “hugging” badge. She’s got badges for everything else, moth conservation, vole watching, pond life, etc.

I couldn’t actually see anything when she was hugging me, but I could feel hugging going on around my knee area as well.

That would be the twins, Max and Sam.

They love my knees.

Probably because that is as far up as their toddler arms can hug.

I don’t get a lot of hugging at home.

My little brother, Connor, likes kicking mostly. I hugged him when I left and he said, “Don’t be so gay.” Grandma does a lot of patting. But quite often she’s off target with that and thinks she is patting me when actually it’s the cushion next to me.

Dibdobs was talking really loudly and quickly like she does. She’s so keen on everything.

It’s nice really. Just odd.

“Oh, Lullah, it’s sooooooo lovely to have you back. I’ve missed you. We’ve all missed you. Haven’t we, boys?”

The boys stood there blinking from underneath their pudding basin haircuts.

And sucking their dodies.

They don’t get any less odd.

Dibdobs said, “The boys have made something for you. Haven’t you, boys?”

She adores the twins. She thinks they are covering up their cleverness. She thinks they are like tiny little brain surgeons in tiny twits’ clothing.

Max and Sam blinked at me. And kept on sucking.

Then Max (or Sam) took his dodie out and said, “Sjuuuuge one for ooo.”

I said, “Oh, well, that’s nice, I …”

Dibdobs said, “Tell Lullah what you’ve made for her.”

Sam said, “Sjuuuuge.”

Dibdobs started slightly losing her rag. “Yes, yes, it is quite big … but TELL Lullah what it is.”

Sam blinked and looked a bit cross, like he had suddenly realized he had a Brown Owl for a mother. He put his hands on his hips and stamped his foot and said, “SJJJJUUUUGE.”

And Max shouted, “BOGIES!!!”

Dibdobs went even redder.

She bent down so she could look them both in the eyes and said sternly, “Now, that is a silly, silly word that big boys don’t say anymore.”

Max and Sam blinked together and smiled. Great Jumping Jehovah, they look like sock animals when they smile.

Dibdobs took their hands and we all walked back to the house. She was chatting on sixteen to the dozen. But I could still hear Max and Sam softly singing, “Bogie, bogie, bogie, bogie, bogie.”

Dibdobs said, “Harold is so looking forward to seeing you. He’s out tonight with the interknitting group. After the success of the communal skipping rope, you know, the skipathon when the whole village skipped?”

Oh yes, I remembered that.

She was chattering on.

“Well, he’s got big plans for knitting the village together for Christmas. Won’t that be fun?”

I don’t know what to say to that because she hugged me again and my mouth was in her muffler.

When we got back to Dandelion Cottage the twins’ present turned out to be some bits of feather stuck into a potato.