Second Fiddle (6 page)

I met Tim the day after I'd finished it. Some mornings, I would see that the door to the foresters' hut stood open. That usually meant he was in there, making the morning tea. There never seemed to be any other foresters about, though I could sometimes hear the whine of chainsaws in the distance, so I suppose they were off somewhere cutting trees down or planting them up or whatever they do. I think Tim was in charge of making the tea because of being the youngest, but they never seemed to come for it once he'd made it. Or maybe he took it to them and they had picnics out in the woods. When it was sunny, Tim took his chair and his mug out onto the porch, and then I could wave at him as I went by, on my way to the clearing.

This time I met him on the woodland path. He was carrying an axe or some sort of weapon like that—something to do with woodcutting—and I just blurted it out: “I've made a tunnel.”

He lowered his weapon and looked down at me.

“A tunnel? You haven't been going tunneling in the woods, Mags? You can't do that, you know, it's government property.”

“No, no,” I reassured him. “Not a tunnel in the ground, just a sort of—oh, I suppose you could call it a den. Here, tell you what, I'll show you.”

Tim wriggled his way in. His feet stuck out, and part of his legs too. I giggled at the sight of his shoes waving in the air. A space opened up between the tops of his socks and the bottoms of his trousers, revealing very white skin covered in sparse but very long brown hairs. He called out something to me, but his voice was muffled.

He worked his way out again.

“It's like a big damp lumpy duvet with stones in it in there,” he said. “It's not very comfortable.”

“But it's a good hiding place.”

“Only for short people,” he said.

“Well then,” I said happily.

I didn't think to make him promise not to tell anyone. I thought he'd have known, but he's probably too old to understand that sort of thing. So that was obviously how Gillian came to hear about it.

Today (we're in the future now, I mean, the future from the point of view of the bit we've just had, but the present from the point of view of the main part of the story; I hope you can follow that—if you can't, you should go back a bit and read it again, most things come clearer if you just read the stuff carefully) I could see her shoes sticking out, runners with mauve stripes. They looked as if Zelda might have bought them.

“What you doin' in thar?” I called, hunkering down to talk to her, putting on my gruffest woodland voice. It was bad enough having this girl invading the woods with her violin, but here—in my private place, in the tunnel I had made myself, to fit my own body. It was too bad.

“I'm running away from home,” said Gillian's muffled voice.

“You can't be,” I said, wriggling my way in past her mauvey runners to join her. “You haven't got your underwear tied up in a spotted hanky like Dick Whittington going to London.”

There wasn't really enough room for two. We had to sit—well, recline, really—very close together, so that we could feel each other's breath on our faces. Gillian's smelled of mustard. It made me sneeze. I managed to catch most of it with my fingers, but some of it escaped and made a strangled wheezing sound out of the sides of my nostrils.

“Why are you running away?” I asked, after I'd elbowed my way into the pocket of my jeans to get a handkerchief.

“I need to find my father,” said Gillian.

“I didn't know he was lost,” I said.

“Har-har,” said Gillian.

“Anyway, he's definitely not in here,” I added grumpily. “This is a private place.”

“I'm sorry. But I couldn't think of anywhere else.”

“To look for your father?”

“No, to think in.”

I remembered Gillian's unspeakable mother and I felt sorry for her. Also, you certainly couldn't sit and think in that bilious yellow bedroom. You'd get heartburn.

“All right,” I said forgivingly. I am actually a very kind person, in case you haven't noticed.

I lay back and looked at the leafy roof of the tunnel.

“What happened to your father?” I asked. “Are you a love child?”

Gillian giggled. “I hope so,” she said, “though it's hard to imagine anyone loving my mother, isn't it?”

“That's not what a love child is,” I said. “It means if your parents aren't married, or they're living together, I suppose, and you are a shameful secret.”

But, of course, there's Tim, I thought. A love child is something you're only allowed one of. After that, it starts to be something you have to explain.

“I know what it means,” said Gillian. “I wish I was. It sounds so romantic. Your father might turn out to be a prince, like in a story.”

“Or, of course, a criminal,” I said thoughtfully. “Your father might turn out to be a criminal instead of a prince. That's more likely, really.”

“What do you mean?” asked Gillian, offended.

“Considering there are more criminals than princes in the world,” I explained. “Statistically, it is more likely. But how come you're looking for your father? Are you adopted?”

“No,” said Gillian, wistfully. “Nothing as interesting as that.”

“My father's dead,” I said.

I hadn't told many people. It was hard to say, but this seemed a good moment to drop it in. I don't like telling people, but you have to mention it sooner or later, before someone says something really embarrassing.

“Oh—my—God!” said Gillian. Her hand flew to her mouth. “I'm … I didn't mean.… Oh!”

“It's all right,” I said, not meaning, of course, that it was all right that he was dead, but that it was all right for Gillian to have gone on about her own father. I was glad all the same that I was lying back, staring at the top of the tunnel. It meant I didn't have to look Gillian in the eyes.

“Do you…?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course I do.”

“How did you know what I was going to say?”

I shrugged. What else was there to ask, except whether I missed him?

“I think we should get out,” I said. “I'm starting to hyperventilate in here.”

“OK,” said Gillian, “only you have to go first. Last in, first out. Seeing as it's a cul-de-sac.”

She pronounced the last three words in a French accent.

“
Cul-de-sac
is not the French for ‘cul-de-sac,'” I said.

“Of course it is,” said Gillian. She has this very adamant way of going on sometimes, just because she's older.

“No, it's not, it's ‘blind alley.'”

“It can't be,” said Gillian. “‘Blind alley' is English.”

“I mean, the French for ‘blind alley' is what the French call a ‘cul-de-sac,'” I said. “They never say ‘
cul-de-sac.
' My father told me.”

That was true, but I said it to finish the argument. I knew Gillian wouldn't contradict a dead parent. Not even she would be that insensitive. I suppose I shouldn't use my dead dad like that, to score points, but you have to have
some
compensation.

I crawled backward out of the tunnel. There were bits of greenery in my hair and it felt as if there were ants running down under my collar. I scratched my scalp as I stood up.

Gillian came out bottom first. She was wearing more suitable clothes for the woods today: jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. She didn't look quite so peculiar in them. She scratched her scalp too as she stood up.

“Feels as if you're being eaten alive by very tiny creatures, doesn't it?” I said.

“Yeah,” said Gillian, plonking herself on the smooth rock that I used as a table.

“Where's the violin?”

“At home.”

“Why didn't you bring it?”

“I couldn't. It might have gotten damaged.”

“Pity,” I said. “Would you like some lunch?” I asked with sudden generosity. I am actually a very generous person, in spite of the small episode with the Kit Kat earlier, which may have given you the wrong impression.

Gillian looked at me curiously and nodded.

“It's squashed,” I warned, fishing my usual tuna sandwich out of my pocket, “because of crawling into the tunnel, but it'll taste the same.”

Gillian nodded again and held her hand out, palm upward, for her half of the damp sandwich.

“If we ran away from home together, they'd put us on the news, like those girls who got murdered,” I said as we munched. “There'd be reconstructions with young actresses and people ringing up with false sightings. And all the time we could be in a B and B in Bundoran, watching it on the telly and eating icepops.”

“That's horrible!” said Gillian.

“Yes, but we have to face these things, my mother says. She always expects me to be murdered; it's her big fear. She has the guards' phone number written down by the phone for when it happens.”

“Why does she let you out on your own, then?”

“She can't keep me locked up, can she?” I said. “I'm not allowed to talk to strangers, though.”

“You talked to
me,
” Gillian said.

“I don't think girls my own age count,” I said.

“You talked to Tim,” Gillian said. She didn't mention that she is older than me, which she is, but only by a year or two, I would say, though maybe I mentioned that already.

“Is he a murderer?” I asked.

Then old porridge-faced Gillian really surprised me. She made a joke. I didn't think she knew how.

“Yes!”
she hissed, and made her eyes bulge. “I can't keep it a secret any longer. He's a child-murderer. Eeek! All that tree-surgeon stuff, it's just a front, just an excuse to carry chainsaws and hatchets around, but
really
.…”

Just for a split second there, she got me. Something icy had raced up my spine before I realized she was joking. That was the moment that I thought maybe I might get to like her after all. Possibly we might even get to be friends.

“Shu-ut up,” I said with a grin. “You're not really running away, are you?”

“I was,” said Gillian. “I thought I was. Sort of.”

“You couldn't go without your violin.”

“Oh, I wasn't going for
ever.
Just to find my dad and then I'd go home and get the violin. I'd need it for the audition.”

“Is there some connection between your father and the audition?”

“Money,” she said.

“I see. Is he rich?”

“I don't know. I mean, it depends what you mean by rich, doesn't it? Not really, I wouldn't say so.”

“Only, that's sort of vital information,” I pointed out sensibly. I am a sensible person, in case you hadn't noticed. “There's no point in going looking for him if he isn't, is there? Since it's money you need.”

“He doesn't need to be rich,” Gillian said. “Just solvent.”

“I thought that was something you sniffed,” I said.

“It's another kind of solvent. It means not bankrupt.”

Gillian was clearly pleased with herself. She'd got me back for the cul-de-sac episode. Of course, her vocabulary is not generally as extensive as mine. That was just a lucky break.

“What about your mum? Has she not got any money?”

“No. She's always moaning about it. But even if she had … well, you know what she's
like.
”

“Well then,” I said. “Come back to my house,” I added on a sudden impulse.

“Why?” Gillian asked.

“We need a strategy,” I said. “And a table. You always need a table for strategic planning. To put our elbows on while we think, and to spread things out on.”

“OK,” Gillian said. “Lead the way.”

That sounds like she thought it was a good idea, doesn't it? That's what I thought, anyway. Seems a reasonable assumption to me. But then, I'm a reasonable sort of person.

Gillian

I would like to make it quite clear that I don't usually tell people my life story, because the last thing you want is some well-meaning stranger clumping around your family, especially when things are a bit delicate, as they are in my family. So I really don't know how I got into all this playing detectives stuff. When Mags said we should try to find Dad, I sort of went along with it. To be fair, it was sort of my idea to start with. I did want to find him, because I needed to touch him for some cash, but I hadn't really thought it all through. It was only a half-formed notion that just happened to be on the top of my mind when old Mags came ambling along, and so I blurted it out, and next thing we were planning a manhunt, for all intents and purposes. As I say, I didn't really mean it to happen.

Mags

That's quite enough from her for the moment. Of course she meant it to happen. She just got cold feet later and now she's trying to justify it, that's all. You don't need to take any notice of her. I'm the one telling this story. Well then.

It was interesting doing the strategic planning, what Gillian so snootily calls “playing detectives.” It was quite like being a detective, actually, only not a real one like on boring TV programs about the police where it's all Identi-Kit pictures and forensic evidence, but the kind they have in books: amateurs with inventive ways of viewing the world.

I got out the atlas and a lot of paper and pencils and a railway timetable and as many phone books as I could find and piled them all up professionally on the dining table.

“This'll do for the moment,” I said. “Later, when we actually do the looking, we'll need the other sort of stuff: string, you know, and matches.”

“Will we?” Gillian asked.

“Of course,” I said. Clearly, Gillian hadn't read anything worth reading—always a bad sign. “Now, what's his name?”