supper for telling stories. Go and comb your hair and put on a clean dress this moment. I want you back downstairs and looking respectable in ten minutes! So hurry!”
Hayley sobered up. She saw she had been stupid to mention Flute to Grandma. Flute was – if ever anyone was – a person who overflowed Grandma’s boundaries. Flute didn’t do walls. And Grandma did walls all the time, Hayley thought as she scurried away down the passage to the stairs. She was halfway up the stairs when she heard Grandpa and Uncle Jolyon coming out of the map room, arguing. It was funny, she thought, peeping over the banisters, the way unusual things always seemed to happen in clusters. Uncle Jolyon only visited here about once a year and when he did, Grandpa was always very, very polite to him. But now Grandpa was shouting at him.
“You just watch yourself!” Grandpa bellowed. “Any more of this control-freak nonsense and I shall walk away! Then where will you be?”
As Hayley scudded on upwards, Uncle Jolyon was making peace-keeping sort of noises. She took another peep at them on the next turn of the stairs. They were both big, stout men, but where Grandpa was grey, Uncle Jolyon had a fine head of curly white hair and a white beard and moustache to go with it. He backed away as Grandpa positively roared, “Oh yes, I can do it! I did it before and you didn’t like it one bit, did you?”
“Hayley!” Grandma called. “Are you changed yet?”
Hayley called out, “Nearly, Grandma!” and pelted on up to her room. There she flung off her grubby dress, flung on a new one and managed to make her hair lie flat by pasting it down with the water she scrubbed her muddy knees in. Then she went demurely down to the parlour, where Grandma was pouring tea and Grandpa and Uncle Jolyon were drinking it, all smiles, as if neither of them had just been quarrelling in the hall.
Nobody took much notice of Hayley. She sat on an embroidered chair nibbling at a hard rock cake – which made her feel like a rather small squirrel – and listened to the three adults talk about world affairs, and science, and the stock market, and some prehistoric carvings someone had found in a cave near Nottingham. If Uncle Jolyon had specially wanted to see Hayley, he showed few signs of it. He only looked at her once. Hayley was struck then at how dishonest the crinkles round his eyes made him look. She thought it must be because she had just seen Flute. Flute’s green eyes looked at you direct and straight, without any disguising of his feelings. Uncle Jolyon’s eyes calculated and concealed things. Hayley found she distrusted him very much.
When the tea was drunk, Uncle Jolyon leaned over, grunting a little, and pinched Hayley’s chin. “You be a good girl now,” he said to her, “and do what your grandparents say.”
The way he smiled, full of false kindness and hidden meanings, truly grated on Hayley. And the pinch hurt. “Why are you so dishonest?” she said.
Grandma went stiff as a post. Grandpa seemed to curl up a little, as if he expected someone to hit him. Uncle Jolyon, however, leant his head back and laughed heartily.
“Because I have to be,” he said. “Nobody expects a businessman to be honest, child.” And he shouted with laughter again.
Uncle Jolyon went away after that – with Grandpa seeing him into his waiting taxi in the friendliest possible way – and Hayley was left to face Grandma’s anger.
“How dare you be so rude to poor Uncle Jolyon!” she said. “Go up to your room and stay there! I don’t want to set eyes on you until you’ve remembered how to behave properly.”
Hayley was quite glad to go. She wanted to be alone to digest all the things she had seen that afternoon. But she could not resist turning round halfway upstairs. “Uncle Jolyon isn’t poor,” she said. “And he orders Grandpa around.”
“Go!” Grandma commanded, pointing a strong finger upstairs.
Hayley went. She went into her room and sat there for a long time, staring at the photo of her parents on the mantelpiece. So happy. That was what Hayley had expected the mythosphere to be like, full of happiness, but it seemed to be full of tragic things instead.
After a while, though, it occurred to her that in a way it was full of happiness. The hunter in the leopardskin had been happy, until he saw the ladies and turned all mean. The ladies who turned into swans had been happy as they ran down to the water. And that boy with the dogs had been happiest of all until he was stupid enough to annoy a goddess.
“It’s silly to let the bad things come out on top!” Hayley said aloud. “The good, happy things are just as important. They just don’t seem to last. You want to catch them at their best and keep them if you can.”
She looked hard at the photo and wished she had another photo to put beside it, of the boy and his dogs. They had been having such fun chasing through the budding green woods. She began to imagine them, not as she had seen them, but before that, running in an eager line, with the boy at the back of them, cracking his whip and laughing at their mistakes. She remembered that each dog was slightly different from the others. Snuffer had one brown ear. Chaser was all white, while Doom was nearly black, with yellow speckles. Bell had a pale brown patch, like a saddle, on her back. The brown-and-yellow one was Pickles, the one with the white ears was Flags and the other dark-coloured one was Genius. Then there were Rags, Noser, Wag and Petruvia, all of whom were greyish with black bits in different places. As for the boy, he had been wearing baggy clothes rather like Flute’s, only in brighter colours, blues and reds. His whip had red patterns on the handle.
Hayley could really almost see them, rushing along, tails up and waving. She could hear their pattering and panting, the occasional yelp, and the boy laughing as he cracked his whip. She could smell dog and leafy forest. So happy—
Grandma came in just then, saying, “Well? Have you remembered— Hayley!”
Hayley came to herself with a jump to find the boy and his dogs really and truly rushing through her room in front of her, soundless now and fading as they ran, while Grandma stared at them in grey outrage.
“I have had enough of you, Hayley,” Grandma said. “You’re a wicked little girl – quite uncontrollable! Haven’t I taught you not mix There with Here?”
The dogs faded silently away and the boy melted off after them. Hayley turned miserably to Grandma. “They were happy. They weren’t doing any harm.”
“If that’s all you can say—” Grandma began.
“It is,” Hayley interrupted defiantly. “It’s what I say. Happy!”
Hayley hated to remember the next bit. Grandma refused to explain or speak to Hayley. She simply rammed Hayley’s clothes into a suitcase and made Grandpa phone Aunt May to send Cousin Mercer to fetch Hayley away. Hayley was locked into her room until Cousin Mercer arrived the following morning and nobody came near her, even to bring food. That was bad enough. So was the journey that followed, long and confusing and full of delays and rain. But the worst was that Hayley was sure that Flute would turn up in the garden and find her gone, and be terribly puzzled. She was sure she would never see Flute again.
She sat beside the pretend cat, trying not to think at all. She could hear the running and shouting again in the distance but it did
