Andie's Moon (11 page)

Down to Earth

“Don’t go out after tea, girls,” Mum said, with her head in the larder. “We need to sit down and talk.”

Andie was feeding the cats, Prune helping to put the shopping away. Andie glanced at Prune for a reaction, but got only a shrug in reply.
Sit down and talk?
Last time that happened, it was to tell the girls about the move to Chelsea. Now? Was it about
staying
in London? Had Mum and Dad found their dream flat or their perfect house? But Mum didn’t sound joyful or excited. It was more the tone of voice she’d used after reading Andie’s school report – disappointed, resigned.

They had to wait till Dad was home, and they’d eaten ham salad with pickle, and tinned pineapple with cream. Then, when everything was washed up and put away, and the kitchen wiped and scoured to Mum’s satisfaction, and coffee made, they all sat round the dining table.

“I’m sorry, girls, but this is going to be a big let-down,” Dad began. “Things aren’t working out quite as we hoped.”

They’d obviously planned this. Dad sounded as if he’d prepared a speech; Mum sat gazing sadly at the tablecloth.

“Your mum and I have been to lots of estate agents and read all the property pages,” Dad went on, “and been to see some flats, as you know. There’s no way round it. We’ve had to realize that we just can’t afford the sort of place we’d like. Either we’d have to settle for some tiny flat, far too small for the four of us – or live so far out that we may as well stay put, in Slough.”

“What?” Prune burst out. “You mean we’re just going back home?”

“But what about your job?” Andie asked her father. “That was the whole reason for coming here, wasn’t it? You’re not going back to your old one?”

“No, no.” Dad shook his head. “I’ll stay with the new job.
That’s
going well, any rate. I’ll just have to commute from Slough every day.”

Prune looked disgusted. “But I don’t want to go back to boring old Slough! I like it here!”

“I know, love – we all do,” said Mum. “But we’ve got to be practical. We can never afford a flat like this. We’ll just have to enjoy staying here, while it lasts. We’ve got another two weeks.”

“It means there’s no need to change schools,” Dad added, “and you’ve both got your friends back at home—”

“I’ve got friends
here,
now! So’s Andie. I want to stay. It’s not fair, bringing us here and letting us get used to it, then dragging us back to that dismal dump of a house.”

Mum straightened. “Dismal dump? That’s our home you’re talking about, Prue. Dad and I worked hard to get it. It wasn’t easy. We used to
dream
of having a home of our own—”

Prune sighed. “Don’t let’s start on ancient history!”

“Shut up, Prune!” Andie kicked her under the table; Prune gave a yelp, and glared back. “What’s the use of whining?”

Mum sighed. “I did think we could have a sensible
discussion
.”

“What’s the point?” snapped Prune. “You’ve made your minds up, haven’t you?”

Dad shook his head. “It’s more a question of having our minds made up for us.”

So, Andie thought, everything will be back as it was. She’d be back in the navy uniform of Hillsden High, waiting at the bus stop for Barbara each morning. It would be nice to talk and giggle with Barb again, and sit at the back in Maths where they could pass notes to each other, and take their packed lunches out to the bench by the netball court when it was sunny – but what about Kris and Ravi? They were her new friends. She wanted to see Barbara, but she wanted Ravi and Kris as well, that was the problem.

“You’re quiet, Andie,” said Dad. “What are you thinking?”

“I – I was thinking about school. I quite liked the idea of going to the same school as Kris.”

“But, Andie,” Mum said gently. “Mary Burnet is a fee-paying school. We could never afford for you to go there. It would have been St. Dunstan’s for you and Prue.”

Andie hadn’t even thought of that. Everything around her had flumped into dullness – but still, she couldn’t see the point of going into a Prune-like sulk. It wasn’t Mum and Dad’s fault. If they couldn’t afford to live in London, they couldn’t afford it, and that was that. She glanced around the dining room – at the table that was polished by Maria once a week, at the glass-fronted cabinet full of crystal glasses, at the elegant chairs they were sitting on. We just don’t belong in a place like this, she thought. We’ve only been kidding ourselves, pretending.

“Tell you what,” Mum said brightly, “why don’t we plan a nice day out for tomorrow? The four of us?”

“Good idea.” Dad was trying to sound bracing. “There are lots of tourist things we’ve not done yet. How about Madame Tussaud’s?”

“I don’t want a nice day out.” Prune sat hunched and defiant. “And I’m definitely not trudging round staring at a lot of stupid waxworks. What’s the point?”

Only two days ago, Prune had told Andie that she
wanted
to go to Madame Tussaud’s. In this mood, she wasn’t likely to be pleased with anything.

“Come on, Prue,” Mum tried. “You’re not being fair. It’s not just a whim, you know, this change of plan – Dad and I are disappointed too. We really thought we could live in London. But it’s just not possible.”

“It’s not
my
choice, commuting,” said Dad. “Setting my alarm for the crack of dawn – waiting for trains – getting home late and tired. But let’s be positive. I’ve still got the job.”

“It’s not good enough, though,” Prune huffed. “It’s always money, isn’t it? Why’s there never enough?”

“Prue! Let’s keep a sense of perspective, shall we?” said Dad. “We won’t be begging on the streets! We’re lucky, when you think about it –
more
than lucky. I’m bringing in a reasonable salary with this new job, your mum’s got the skills to find work anywhere, we’ve got a roof over our heads and a home of our own, and we’ve got each other. Let’s be grateful for all we
have
got, instead of pining for what we can’t have.”

“Have you finished the lecture?” Prune was getting to her feet. “I’m going to see Sushila.”

How was it, Andie wondered, that the moon was a short rocket-hop away, but the move from Slough to London was too far to be managed? She went down to find Kris, and tell her the news.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Kris sympathized. “But surely there’s some way round it?”

Andie couldn’t think of one. She didn’t understand money – how, for people like Patrick and Marilyn and the Kapoors, it didn’t seem to be an issue. They just had plenty of it – enough not to be always talking about it, anyway.

“I’ve never not lived in a city,” Kris said. “London or New York. Can’t imagine anything else.”

Patrick was downstairs in the cellar, working; classical guitar music floated up the steps. I’ve been living in the same house as an artist, Andie thought, and I’ve hardly spoken to him. What was he working on? In a brighter mood, she might have asked if they could go down and see – then, maybe, she might mention, or Kris might mention, her own ambitions… “I want to be an artist – I really, really want it, more than anything in the world,” she could say, “but my parents don’t think I can. What should I do about it?” Whenever she’d imagined this, she’d decided that it could wait till later – till she felt more confident, or had more pictures to show. But now there wouldn’t be much later; it was all coming to an end, and soon.

She felt weighed down with gloom. Her dream seemed as unreachable as the most distant stars. In just a few weeks’ time, she’d be back in Miss Temple’s dreary lessons, in that dull room where even the air seemed grey and tired. Back to the scrubby brushes, the spongy paper and the colours drained of life.

Chapter Fourteen

One Giant Leap

Andie had never stayed up so late – it was past three o’clock in the morning! – and was now watching the TV screen through a haze of tiredness. They were all in the Kapoors’ flat, clustered round the television in chairs and on floor cushions. Everyone was there – Marilyn and Patrick, Kris, all the Millers and all the Kapoors.

The lunar module had landed, and now everyone was waiting – “the world waits”, as the TV commentary kept saying – for the astronauts to emerge, and the first pictures.

“Do you realize,” said Mr. Kapoor – he’d asked them to call him Amit, though Andie couldn’t quite bring herself to; he was such a quiet, dignified person and seemed to know so much – “that never before have so many people watched the same event at the same time, all around the world?”

“But only those with access to television and electricity,” said his wife. “Hundreds of thousands of people haven’t got these things, and to those people – if they hear of it at all – this must seem completely irrelevant. But I have to admit, it’s very exciting.”

“We’ll remember this, for the rest of our lives,” Dad said solemnly. “It’s history in the making.”

Ravi, of course, had gone into the shyest of silences, hiding inside himself, the way he did. No one would guess that he had more than a passing interest in what was happening. Why did he have to be so secretive? Andie wondered. But, when she considered it, lots of people had secrets –
she
did. Perhaps everyone needed a secret self, one that was more real and true than the outside everyday self, that other people saw.

“I bet this’ll be commonplace by the time you kids are as old as I am,” Patrick remarked. “This is the Space Age. There’ll be regular sightseeing trips to the moon. Space cruises.”

“Holidays on Mars,” said Kris. “Vacations on Venus. Count me in!”

“The Russians won’t want to be outdone,” Dad said. “I bet they’ll have men on the moon before long.”

“Or women,” Sushila added. “One of the first Russian cosmonauts was a woman – Valentina someone.”

“Tereshkova,” Ravi put in.

“Valentina Tereshkova. That’s right.”

Kris said, “Who’s going to be the first woman on the moon? Why should men have all the fun?”

“I don’t agree with all this women’s lib stuff,” said Mum. “Women wanting to be just the same as the men. Where’s it all going to lead?”

Did she
have
to come out with such squirm-making remarks? “Mu-um!” Andie reprimanded, out of the corner of her mouth.

“You’d better not say that too loudly in the upstairs flat,” Patrick said, smiling at Mum. “The ghost of Edwina Rutherford might come back to haunt you.”

“Edwina Rutherford?”

“Jeremy Rutherford’s aunt. It used to be her flat – she left it to him when she died. She was a suffragette – went to prison for it, more than once – very formidable lady, she must have been—”

“Shh! Something’s happening –”

Everyone watched the screen, listening, waiting. Andie thought of all the attention focused on these men – Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the two who were in the Eagle, and actually on the moon’s surface, while Michael Collins stayed in the command module. Poor him! To go all that way, and not make the final descent to the moon! It must be like not being picked for the netball team, only thousands of times worse. But what if it all went wrong, and he had to return to Earth alone? What if the other two, down on the Moon’s surface, couldn’t take off again, couldn’t get back to the command module? What if the first men on the moon were also the first to
die
there? They must be so brave, accepting the huge risks. Like the crew of Apollo 1, who had all died when their rocket exploded on the launch pad…

Snatches of fuzzy conversation could be heard, or sometimes not quite heard, between the module and mission control at Cape Kennedy. Crackly voices – sounding far away, though certainly not a quarter of a million miles away – exchanged remarks and sometimes even jokes. It was Neil Armstrong whose voice had said calmly, “The Eagle has landed”, from what was now called Tranquillity Base, and who came slowly, blurrily into focus, as
FIRST LIVE PICTURES FROM MOON
came up on the screen. On leaving the capsule, he had lowered a TV camera, which was now – amazingly – sending back images! At first, Andie couldn’t tell what she was seeing; it looked like a snowy landscape with some sort of building in the foreground. Then she realized that it was a ladder, and a part of the spidery module, and that the large pale shape moving slowly down was Neil Armstrong himself, stepping carefully just like Dad had done when he wallpapered the lounge. “I’m at the foot of the ladder,” he said, speaking to them live from the moon – from the moon itself! “The surface appears to be very, very fine grained as you get close to it – it’s almost a powder.” He hesitated on the lowest step. “I’m going to step off the ladder.” A bigger drop, some fuzzing and blurring, and his voice again: “That’s one small step for man, a giant leap for mankind.”

Everyone was talking at once. “That’s it! Man on the moon!”

“Wow! Unbelievable!”

“They’ve done it! They’re there!”

“The moon’s a real
place
! He’s standing on it –”

“How must that feel? To stand where no human being has stood before, ever?”

“Amazing! Incredible!”

“
A
man, he must have meant to say,” said Sushila. “One small step for
a
man, a giant leap for mankind. Doesn’t make sense, otherwise.”