words in red or blue till kingdom come. They were big, fat, round sticks, those—the real thing, they were; our own thin, hexagonal pencils looked kind of mingy in comparison, even if they were now honed like daggers. And that was what really counted, we assured one another, for you never knew when you might need a weapon to defend yourself. Take Lucy’s mum, for instance.
She hadn’t set foot outside the house since the engagement party. That was because, Lucy reported, the Ten of Swords had suddenly turned up on the Tarot table—the dude with all the swords stuck through his gut, the card of catastrophe and ruin. Which was why her mother had wisely decided to stay indoors. Better safe than sorry; no need to throw yourself deliberately in danger’s path! Danger could be lurking anywhere, really—behind Mr De Vries’s counter, on any of the four streets of the village, or even out here on the green, right at her own front door.
We spread the word, increasingly concerned. Thomas was especially worried. According to him, the circumstances called for drastic precautions. But there was no need for him to go around acting as if putting the rectory on heightened alert had been his idea; we had all arrived at the same conclusion. Not long now, and we’d be at school all day; we could hardly be expected to keep an eye on things from there. When and if the danger foretold in the cards finally did show up, Lucy’s mother would have to face it on her own. What we had to do now was help her arm herself to the teeth. She’d be so grateful that she’d gather us up in a great big bear hug. Her shirt partly unbuttoned, the red scarf wound around her head like a brilliant flame. We would clamp our legs around her hips and get all woozy from the patchouli smell.
The trees in the rectory’s front garden were already turning colour. We were pelted with shiny chestnuts as we darted up the gravel path. Scattering in alarm, we ducked, prowling like tigers, keeping in touch by walkie-talkie. We looked left, right, and left again, because that’s what our mums had drilled into our heads, and, doubled over, sprinted to the front door—those heavy, banged-up, scratched double doors.
It was Duco who opened the door.
He wasn’t shaved.
He looked surprised.
So did we. Our fathers had been at the office for hours; they were probably sitting in an important meeting, or dictating a memo to give someone a good dressing-down. It worried us that Duco wasn’t at work; fathers were supposed to be in the office, but on the other hand, the Luducos weren’t fathers, they didn’t do real work, just something to do with stocks and shares or something. Once we had that straight, we felt right as rain again.
‘Have you come to play with Lucy?’ Duco asked in an unusually dull voice, as if he couldn’t take it any more.
For appearance’s sake, we nodded.
It wasn’t until we were inside that we could tell how right the Tarot cards had been. There was an uneasy atmosphere in the house that smacked of whining and moping, quarrels, sulks, and negotiations. In the corridor the pictures hung all askew, as if when nobody was looking they’d been trying to shake their way out of their frames, in case they had to beat a hasty retreat. Instead of the usual enticing aroma of the Luducos’ breakfast, the only smell coming from the kitchen was the sorry stench of cold ashes. Alarmed, we thundered up the staircase with the creaky treads.
Lucy and her mother were sitting in the first-floor studio among a jumble of papers, paint jars, and Tarot cards. The curtains were drawn and there were barely any lights on, which made the room seem murkier than usual. Even the cool drawing of Clara 13 over the mantelpiece looked as if someone had smudged mud all over it.
Lucy, seated on a stool at the drawing table, was just cajoling, ‘But Mum, why don’t you just stop reading the cards?’
‘As if that makes any difference,’ said her mother. ‘Don’t be silly.’ With an irritated sigh she rolled her eyes up at the ceiling festooned with plaster grapes and curlicues.
Our ceiling at home had designer fixtures, lighting fixtures that cost—well, our fathers said, don’t even ask, you don’t want to know. In our homes everything was different. And suddenly, out of the blue, we felt as if we had landed in a strange country with all sorts of edicts we didn’t know, where ornate plaster and darkness were the rule, not polished steel or halogen. Panicked, we all started talking at once.
Lucy’s mother stared at us, baffled. ‘What are you talking about?’ she asked. ‘What about them, my pencils? Why do I have to sharpen my pencils?’
We were so excited, we were ready to burst. There was danger lurking right outside those drawn draperies! Skulking always, maddeningly, just out sight, which only made it even more chilling! But wait a minute, wait, slow down: what good was a pencil, actually, in the face of real danger? What had we allowed ourselves to be talked into? Only your little sister would fall for something this lame. ‘It was Thomas’s idea!’ we yelled, stammering with shame.
Lucy’s mother whipped around to look at Thomas. ‘Okay. I don’t get it,’ she said crossly. ‘What is this famous idea of yours exactly, what is this racket about?’
Thomas clasped his arms behind his back and puffed out his chest. Eagerly, he began: ‘Well, say you run into the enemy.’
‘What enemy?’ She stared at him as if he were one of the arthropods in his father’s book, one of the creatures that came way before the mice. ‘I thought you were talking about my pencils.’
‘I was,’ said Thomas, his big head wobbling from side to side. ‘’Cause, let’s say you don’t want the enemy to see you. Well, then all you do is, you poke him in the eye with your pencil. Then he’s blind as a bat, see? And then you make a run for it.’
It was brilliantly put. We had to hand it to him. We all looked at Lucy’s mum expectantly.
She seemed to be thinking it over, doodling on a piece of paper with a piece of charcoal. The marks on the paper kept getting darker and uglier.
Lucy stood up. ‘Well, we’ll just go up to the attic, then,’ she said uncertainly.
The charcoal snapped in two. ‘No you won’t,’ said her mother. ‘I have been giving you the benefit of the doubt, Thomas, but now it seems that you’re not only a little sneak, you’ve got a screw loose as well. You do come up with some sick ideas, don’t you, Thomas. Don’t you understand how dangerous that is? Why, it was just recently all over the newspapers, somebody was murdered that way! With a ballpoint pen in the eye!’
She was steaming mad now; we could practically see puffs of black smoke coming out of her ears. ‘I said to Duco just the other day, how can that happen? How is it possible—that an ordinary, everyday object like a ballpoint pen could actually kill someone?’ She looked back at Lucy. ‘Okay, that’s enough. I won’t have you hanging around with that little creep anymore, Lucy. Do you hear me?’
‘But Mum!’ Lucy started protesting.
We tried to look deeply preoccupied with pious, virtuous thoughts. Just remember, they used to tell us at home, life doesn’t come with a user’s manual. You could never tell what tomorrow would bring, but if things were going your way, you might as well make the most of it.
But nothing stands in the way of true love. That very afternoon we saw the two of them going off together, hand in hand. With her long, skinny legs and her shoulders indignantly hunched, Lucy looked just like a strutting heron. To keep up with her, Thomas had to take two extra skips for every one of her strides.
They made straight for Shepherd’s
