Up on Cloud Nine Page 11

  My mum said that, and I felt ten feet high. This book I'm writing is Stol's photograph. Picture of Stol.

  So I knew what to answer. Only me. “I want you to see yourself,” I told him. “That's all. From outside. How the rest of us see you. I think, if you read it properly, and think hard about everything in it, then next time you come so close to doing something so stupid, you'll think what it would mean to the rest of us.”

  He looked so weak, I thought I might as well put the boot in properly.

  “Not to mention the fuss you'll cause. Think! This time you're safe, and still your mum's in a dead panic on a plane. You've ruined her shoot. You've probably blighted her poor photographer's career. And you've ruined what may be some poverty-stricken young fashion model's only big chance. Your dad's so distracted, he's probably not prepared for tomorrow's court case. Because of you, some brutish murderer may well get off scot-free. You'll be responsible if he kills again, you know. The deaths will be on your head. Or, if your dad's defending and does a rotten job because he's been too busy worrying about you, some poor innocent bloke might fetch up in jail for practically the rest of his life, for doing nothing.”

  I wasn't sure Stol was still listening, but I was so fed up I just kept on.

  “And that's just your family. You should see mine. My mum's in a terrible state, bursting into tears every five minutes. And my dad says—”

  Since Dad had not said anything, I made it up.

  “My dad says if there is anything—any bone at all—you haven't broken for yourself, then as soon as you're better, he'll make damn sure he breaks it for you—and properly.”

  A nurse strolled past. “Your friend cheering you up, dear?”

  Stol whimpered.

  And maybe, I thought, even if I wasn't exactly making the world's greatest effort to lift his spirits, I was doing him some good. I did distinctly get the feeling that if he could have raised himself on his pillows—if only to glare at me properly—then he would have done so.

  As it was, he just winced and fell back.

  I sat in silence for a while. Then I said: “So?”

  His face crumpled. Two fat shining tears seeped out. “I am sorry,” he said in a voice that was even more trembly. “I'm really sorry. Especially about your mum.” He thought for a bit. “And the murderer, or innocent man, or whatever.”

  I felt a heel then, and confessed. “Actually, that bit's all right. Your dad was so relieved to see that you'd still got a working brain that he went back and won his case in less than an hour, then hurried back here and did most of my homework.”

  A suitably shocked look crossed Stol's face. “They never gave you homework?”

  And our quarrel was over. One of the things I've always loved most about Stol is the way he's so outraged when I'm treated unfairly.

  Cheered, I said, “You were dead lucky, you know. If it weren't for that jasmine bush—”

  He grimaced. “Don't feel lucky.”

  Hearing the swish of the swing doors at the end of the ward, I turned to see Dad and Franklin strolling through, practically arm in arm.

  “Here they come,” I warned Stol. “Don't forget we have a deal. I'll save your bacon, but you have to pretend that you're totally dopey. Don't even open your eyes unless they prod you with sharp sticks. And even then, don't admit anything. Just mutter feebly, ‘I've already told Ian what happened, and I don't want to talk about it anymore.' Got that?”

  “Right.”

  “And you do promise you'll read the book I've written? Properly?”

  Either our conversation had exhausted him, or he was doing an excellent job of sounding fainter already.

  “Oh, yes. I promise.”

  saving stol's bacon

  Dad dropped a hand on my shoulder. “Your mum's on her way up, lad. We just spotted her making for the stairs from the car park.” With a glance toward Franklin, he added slightly uneasily, “Perhaps there's no need to mention we took a quick break from being here.”

  Quick break. They'd been gone forty minutes or more. But “Righty-ho,” I said. Usually I'd leave it at that. But knowing I might want to have him in my power, I gave him a wink, just to make sure he'd grasped that I knew it was a favor.

  Franklin looked down at Stol. “So how's he been?”

  Enter the plan! Courtesy Stol's One Thousand and One Tall Stories, garnered over years. After all, there's no point being sensible all your life if all you do with the life you've kept safe is to keep being sensible. That would be rather like staying prepared for a giant great party, yet never actually having it.

  So, I thought, Time to take a risk. Like Stolly, see if I can fly.

  “Bit of a rally,” I told them casually. “Woke up for a good five minutes and told me exactly what happened.”

  “Really?”

  Franklin slapped on his cross-examiner's expression and was about to start grilling me when the doors swished again.

  In rushed my mother. “Careful!” she warned Franklin. “That woman who—”

  She got no further before the doors swished a third time and in came the lady who'd been studying Stol's File of Hospital Horrors, followed by the police officer I personally suspected of having swapped her uniform for civvies in the hope of encouraging everyone to incriminate themselves more promptly.

  Over they came, while Franklin displayed yet another of the skills he'd honed in the courtroom. Without even moving his lips in the slightest, he muttered, “Now everyone leave the talking to me, please.”

  “So,” said Our Lady of the Depression Leaflets, when she got closer. “How is Stuart now?”

  I tell you, disobeying Franklin takes some bottle— especially when you have to do it in a bright young voice that pinpoints you for an idiot. But this was no time to toss away the one and only real advantage of my plan.

  Surprise.

  “Well,” I said. “It turns out the whole catastrophe was my fault.”

  From Franklin, I only got a glower. But from the rest, there was a chorus of blatant disbelief. “Yours?” “But you weren't even there!” “Ian?”

  “Yes,” I said, keeping my voice verging on smug. “It was my fault.”

  “How come?” Mum asked sharply, and I could see the policewoman's fingers itch for the pad and pencil in her jacket. “Would you care to explain that?”

  I knew it was going to have to be good, to fool those two. And running rings round one of Britain's cleverest barristers is scarcely a picnic. But you don't hear all Stol's outlandish tales without picking up some hints. So, giving myself time to think, I began cheerfully, “Well, it seems it all started because of a giant great row I had with Mrs. Hetherington in class yesterday morning.”

  That bit was thanks to Franklin. I've heard him complaining about it often enough. “It's always the mix of fact with fiction that confuses a jury.” And that part was true. I'd had a mild run-in with Hethers. “There she was, standing by her desk, pointing at her boring old Table of Elements, droning on about the properties of something. And I was thinking, if I ever really needed to know it, I could just as well look it up. So instead of listening properly, I was narrowing my eyes at her huge dangly rhinestone earrings to amuse myself making them flash. And she picked a fight.”

  “What sort of a fight?” Mum asked.

  “She said, ‘Ian, I don't expect you to smile at me right through the lesson with all a television presenter's charm and polish. But there's no need to glower as if I just strangled your cat and hurled its poor body on a bonfire.'”

  “Seems reasonable.” Mum defended Mrs. Hetherington against her own family. But Franklin was getting impatient. “So how's the whole business your fault?”

  “Well, when I explained that I was only trying to make her jewelry wink, Stol started wondering how people tell the difference between diamonds and fakes.”

  They were all watching me so intently, none of them noticed Stol open one eye.

  “Yes?” prodded Officer Suspicious.

 
“And that set Stol thinking about real pearls and fake pearls. So he'd gone up and found Esme's pearl necklace. He'd read that, if you hold them to the light …”

  Not knowing the first thing about pearls, I thought it safer simply to wave an airy hand at this point.

  “Well, Stol did try to explain, but he was a bit woozy so I didn't get that bit. But it does seem that holding them up to sunlight is one way of checking.”

  Stol's other eye snapped open. Fearing he was about to rally enough to deliver a short lecture on the testing of pearls, I swept on with my story.

  “So, thinking the nanny's room window might be getting sun—”

  Now I heard Franklin's brain begin to tick. Quickly I checked it out. The bypass runs south of Stol's house. The sun sets over the park. So, yes, the old nanny's room faces east and would definitely get sun in the morning.

  Phew!

  “So, Stol leaned out—”

  “To hold the pearls in sunlight?”

  “But he couldn't see what this expert was on about. So he was just leaning his elbows on the window ledge, whirling the necklace round and round one of his fingers—”

  The policewoman glanced toward Stol, who, with his eyes shut again, looked, and probably was, back in his deep healing sleep. “He told you all this?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You ask the nurse. She'll tell you. He woke up for quite a few minutes. She said I was ‘cheering him up.'”

  True!

  I picked up the story. “So he was just sitting there happily whirling the necklace round and round on a finger—”

  “That is so Stolly,” interrupted Mum. “He does that all the time with jewelry. Do you remember when he sent my jade bracelet flying halfway up that haystack?”

  Collateral evidence! It gave me the confidence to press on with my lying. “And the pearl necklace suddenly flew off his finger and backward over in this giant arc, out of sight above him.”

  Franklin was horrified. “What, onto the roof ?”

  (Real pearls, then.)

  “Yes. He heard a rattle as they hit the slates and slithered down. He says he thought he might be lucky enough to catch them as they slid over the edge.”

  “So that's how he leaned out too far?”

  “No.” Remembering what Franklin always said about liars always sounding too glib, I shook my head. “Stol isn't stupid. And anyway, the necklace had stuck in the gutter. So he had a think, and decided the safest way of getting it back was to knot one end of a rope round his body and the other to the rafter. Then, when he stood on the windowsill and tried to reach up in the gutter above him, he'd still be all right even if he slipped.”

  Mum turned pale and sank down on the end of the bed. Dad put his arm around her. Even hard-boiled old Franklin looked a bit bilious.

  But the other two stared hard at each of us in turn, still all suspicion. And though, till then, I'd felt a bit uneasy about telling such whoppers, I suddenly realized that everyone else who was standing round the bed knows Stol and loves him. And cares about him.

  And these two were both simply doing their jobs. (And still calling him Stuart.)

  So, not feeling guilty any longer, I pressed on. “But you know what he's like about knots. So he needed his tea towel.”

  My mother helped then. Turning to the suspicious pair as if she'd single-handedly saved Stol's life, she told them proudly, “I gave him that.”

  Unsolicited corroboration! The best sort, says Franklin.

  “He found the tea towel—says he made a bit of a mess looking, but he was in a hurry to get the pearls back before it was time to leave for school. He wasn't sure he'd done his Flemish loop knot properly.”

  “It is a hard one.” (Dad was being kind.)

  “But he just risked it. He was very careful, he says. All he was doing was getting balanced on the windowsill when …”

  I stopped. Stol's eyes were closed, but I could see the glint of tears beneath his lids. I couldn't carry on. I just felt awful. After all, behind this tower of lies there is some truth he'll have to tell me and we'll have to face. Mum is quite right. Each day Stol stays alive and safe is practically a triumph for everyone around him.

  My voice was trembly. “And then he fell.”

  We were all shaken at the thought of it. Everyone was quiet. Then the policewoman spoke up.

  “So the pearls are still up on the roof, then?”

  My heart thumped. (Always one tiny mistake, jeers Franklin. Always one pesky little detail the criminal forgets …)

  The only thing to do was brazen it out. “Well, no. You see, I didn't actually go swimming when I was told to take a break. Instead, I waited till Mum had driven away, then ran over to Stol's house to find them and put them back.”

  The moment the words were out of my mouth, I realized I'd blown it. Wrong timing! Stol was supposed to have told me his story while Dad and Franklin were having their drink.

  But there was no going back now. Even as Franklin took his breath, I was eyeballing the two of them. “I think it's very easy, on a day like this,” I told them threateningly, “to slide off where you're not supposed to be for half an hour or so, without anyone noticing.”

  Dad clearly knows when he is onto a good thing. He didn't just keep quiet. He helped. Stepping on Mr. Oliver's foot, he told him firmly, “Well, Franklin, I expect you've been a barrister long enough to recognize the absolute truth when you hear it.”

  Franklin didn't quite go so far as to perjure himself in front of a serving police officer. But by dropping his hand on my shoulder, he did manage to create the impression he thought I was a fine, upstanding lad, most unlikely to end up in any nearby courtroom dock, telling great porkers to everyone.

  The policewoman wasn't giving up quite yet. “How did you get the pearls back, Ian?”

  And that's the moment Franklin proved to me, once and for all, that though his salary arrives in truckloads, he deserves more.

  “I'll bet the boy dragged the hose round the front and flooded the gutter!”

  She fought back. “Wouldn't the necklace have shot out the drainpipe and gone through the grating?”

  “I expect he put his swimsuit there to act as a sieve.”

  She turned her back on Franklin. “Where are the pearls now?”

  I picked it up from there. “Back where they belong. I used the spare key from the greenhouse.”

  The policewoman folded her arms. “It's quite a little story, isn't it?”

  “That's Stolly for you,” Mum said. “He must have a file in this hospital ten inches thick. And people worry every time. But all of them have turned out like this— extraordinary accidents.”

  I put my oar in. “As I told you earlier.”

  The two of them gave up then. I know they'll be back. But with a bit of luck, Stol will be more on form. If he decides to tell the truth, that is his business. After all, nobody pushed him out the window. That fact alone will see off one of them. And, frankly, I think the other might learn a lot from listening to Stolly talk about his thoughts and his feelings.

  I certainly know I have.

  When they were gone, there was the longest silence. I'd had enough of lies. Mum was exhausted. And Franklin and Dad weren't quite sure who knew what.

  “I'm off now,” I told everyone. “I'm actually envying Stol for lying on a bed. I'm going home.”

  Franklin rooted in his briefcase for his telephone. “Can someone sit with Stol for just five minutes, while I try one more time to get through to Esme?”

  Whoops!

  “Sorry,” I said. “Forgot to tell you. She's on her way home.”

  “Really?” Franklin was obviously thrilled. But it's all right for him. He'll be away in court. And it's all right for me. I'll be in school, taking plaudits for my excellent homework. Mum is the one who'll have to be here, trying to stop Esme driving the nurses so crazy they unplug Stol's machines or overdose him in the hope Esme moves on to make her pesky suggestions in the mortuary. (“Black! So uncompromis
ing. Had you considered a more gentle mix? Fawn, maybe? Or light tan? And less bleak coffin linings? I could run you up samples in houndstooth or tartan. Or even a nice cheerful tangerine chiffon.”)

  Content that his wife was no doubt already getting back on form, criticizing the cut of the air stewards' trousers, Franklin lifted a file from his briefcase. “I suppose, since I'm staying, I may as well seize the opportunity to brush up just a fraction on Crown v. Bellingham.”

  We took the hint. Dad put his arm round Mum and, saying goodbye to Franklin, led her to the door. I picked up my Life of Stolly. I wasn't going to leave that lying in Franklin's sight line, risking a writ for libel.

  Beside me, I heard scrabbling. When I looked down, I saw that, though Stol's eyes were firmly closed, the end of one of the fingers peeping out from a plaster cast was pointing to his cabinet. Clearly he wasn't yet feeling tough enough to face a grilling from his fiend of a father on that—or any other—story. But he was offering to keep his promise. Read his Life.

  I took it with me, though. It wasn't finished yet. There were one or two more pages to write. And there'll be time enough. Stol will enjoy it more when he is chirpy and can sit up and turn his own pages. By then, of course, he will have told me what did happen. There'll be a new page on his hospital file. And another whole chapter in my book of his life.

  Another Stol story.

  Onward and upward. But that's how we go.

  Published by Dell Yearling an imprint of Random House Children's Books a division of Random House, Inc.

  New York

  Copyright © 2002 by Anne Fine

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address Delacorte Press.