The Tulip Touch Read online

  Wary, would you say? Or something even stronger? One look at that pale and apprehensive face, and you might even think haunted. But there’s something else that springs to mind. I turn the photo in my hand, and try to push the word away. But it comes back at me, time and again. I can’t get rid of it. If you didn’t know her better, you’d have said she looked desolate.

  And yet Tulip loved the Palace. Every inch of it. I’d watch her endlessly running her fingertips along the swirling banisters and gritty stone ledges and dimpled bar tops as if, by sheer touching, she could make the whole place hers.

  ‘Natalie, you’re so lucky.’

  I’d shrug. I knew it, but it seemed rude to agree; as if, in admitting it, I’d be halfway to saying that I would have gladly died a thousand deaths rather than swap my life with hers. And these days Tulip rarely hung around the cornfields. She came as often as she could, sucking up to Mum, flirting with Dad.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Barnes.’

  ‘Morning, Tulip, my flower. But I do have to warn you that no one gets late breakfast in this hotel, even here in the kitchens, without first settling with the Manager.’

  ‘What’s the price today?’

  ‘Let me see… It’s Saturday, isn’t it? And High Season. So I’m afraid it’s going to be – a hug and three kisses.’

  He’d take off his glasses and she’d count the kisses out onto his cheek.

  ‘One. Two. Three. And the hug. There!’

  ‘Right,’ he’d say. ‘Now that you’ve paid, you must have another sausage.’

  He’d flip it on her plate, his party trick. But she’d be watching, not the arc it was making through the air, but the sausage itself. For Tulip loved the food. I was forever losing sight of her for a few minutes, only to find her in the kitchens, her mouth stuffed with something she’d already begged, staring at treats to come: the creamy trifles and the chocolate roulades; the cherry meringue pies she loved above all else.

  ‘Want to come up to the toy room?’

  ‘In a bit.’

  A few minutes later, she’d trail up the last of the steep wooden stairs and join me, rooting through drifts of abandoned games and toys. The sort of people who bring children to the Palace have never been the types to go scouring the grounds on their last day for lost rounders bats and mislaid dolls. So if we were bored with hurling hard apples at the stone boy in the lily pond, or racing up and down the gravel paths, then we’d go up and find something different in the toy room. We had a craze on the pogo stick, and learned to fly the battered kites. Tulip mastered the fretwork saw, and we even had short passions for the faded old sewing cards and the prissy little flower press.

  ‘What do you think? Dress-ups?’

  The trunks were brilliant, spilling with feather boas, and muffs, and tunics with military frogging.

  ‘Do you suppose the people who owned all these really old things are dead?’

  I held my favourite taffeta frock against me.

  ‘They must be. Most things get sent on now. Dad says he spends most of Tuesday posting packages to careless people.’

  She jammed a brown felt hat down hard on my head.

  ‘Now you’re Miss Henson’s mother.’

  I threw a velvet cape around her shoulders and handed her a tattered parasol.

  ‘And you’re Mr Barraclough’s great aunt.’

  We minced round the attics in our ill-fitting high heels.

  ‘Did you see my nephew’s splendid recent production of Cinderella?’

  ‘Indeed I did.’

  ‘And did you notice those two astonishingly talented young actresses, Tulip and Natalie? I thought that Tulip was by far the best.’

  ‘I preferred Natalie.’

  ‘No. Tulip.’

  ‘Natalie.’

  ‘Tulip.’

  We fell, wrestling, onto the heaps of old clothes. My nose filled with the stink of mothballs.

  ‘Even-stevens?’ I panted.

  She let go of me.

  ‘Even-stevens.’

  The hours spun past. Time had two speeds for me. The racing kaleidoscopic tumble of days spent with Tulip, when the first of the peacocks’ bloodcurdling evening shrieks made me look at my watch with astonishment. And then the endless drag of days alone, when only a few miserable minutes crawled by between each desperate inspection of the clock.

  There was scant sympathy at hand.

  ‘If you’re bored, play with Julius.’

  ‘I’m not bored.’

  I was, though. Not bored enough to play with my brother, but bored enough to feel that every minute spent away from Tulip was not real living, just a waiting time.

  ‘Well, play with Julius anyway’

  And so I did. Sometimes with good grace, sometimes with bad. But always feeling there was something missing, and that the real day I should be having was taking place somewhere half a dozen fields away, beyond the spinney.

  With Tulip.

  9

  She bought Julius a plastic toad for his birthday. We stood in front of it in the charity shop.

  ‘It’s a bit scratched,’ she worried.

  ‘He won’t mind that. He probably won’t even notice.’

  ‘You don’t think he’d prefer something furry?’

  ‘No. I think he’ll like this.’

  Like it? He fell in love. He instantly named it Mr Haroun (after a recent guest who’d spoiled him rotten) and carried it round all day. At bathtime it disappeared under a towel, and when one of the Austrian ladies staying a week had to wait twenty minutes for a drink because half the hotel staff were searching for the toad, she persuaded her sister to lay aside the rose tapestry she was working on, and run up a sort of baby backpack that kept Mr Haroun safe, but left Julius’s hands free. Julius’s loyalties were fierce. The Austrian guests moved on (though not before appliquéing Mr Haroun’s name in glossy silk letters on the tie-down flap). And Tulip reaped all the credit. Everyone who passed through the Palace admired the way the backpack was designed to keep the toad safe, but let him see and breathe. And, if we were around, Julius inevitably pointed to Tulip and said proudly:

  ‘She gave it me.’

  Guests would fall over themselves to congratulate Tulip. They admired everything about the backpack: its design, the silk lettering, the beautiful stitching. Tulip soaked up the praise, grinning modestly and flapping her hands in an embarrassed fashion. It never bothered Julius that Tulip was accepting compliments for someone else’s work. Why should it? To him, only his precious toad mattered, and Tulip had definitely given him that. But what is strange is that it never bothered me. Guests would lean forward on sofas to flatter Tulip, and their companions would turn aside and tap me on the arm.

  ‘Now, isn’t your friend clever?’

  And so in thrall to Tulip that everything she did was fine by me, I’d feel as proud of her as if she could sew.

  10

  One of my jobs was taking Julius to nursery on my way to school. Down the drive, over the bridge (walking on the side with the pavement) and up the path to the porch, where all the others were struggling to get out of their brightly coloured wellies and raincoats.

  For a goodbye, Julius would lift his face and purse his lips to give me a giant smacker.

  ‘Kissypots!’

  He’d turned from a sleepless monster into an easy and affectionate child. ‘Devil to angel’ said my parents. And even I enjoyed his constant stream of bright prattle as we strolled along together, hand in hand. I’d been forbidden to make arrangements to meet Tulip on school mornings because I’d been late so often on days when she didn’t show. But, as often as not, out she’d jump from behind someone’s front wall, or one of the pillars of the bridge, startling me every time.

  She’d fall in step.

  ‘Want to play Stinking Mackerel?’

  ‘All the way? Even the people at the bus stop?’

  ‘All the way. Everyone. Even Mrs Bodell.’

  So everyone who passed got enough of the
game to unnerve them. We weren’t rude, exactly. It was all done with a wrinkle of the nose, a tiny sniff, maybe even a fleeting look of disgust. Some days, with everyone bent double against the wind, it didn’t work. On others, we must have left a trail of worried people. Often we’d turn and catch them plucking at their clothes, trying to look as if they were simply pulling a jacket straight, or tightening a belt, when we knew they were anxiously checking for odours.

  Mrs Bodell, though, rumbled us thoroughly. She took no cheek, and some of her threats were awesome.

  ‘I’m catching the bus into Urlingham now. But as soon as I get back I shall speak to your head teacher. Don’t think I don’t know your parents, Natalie Barnes. And how ashamed they’ll be to hear of your behaviour.’

  So we’d do Mrs Bodell. But only half-heartedly, safe behind her giant rump. And even then I’d cheat, unwrapping my lunch bag as I walked by the stop, and lowering my nose to it as though to imply that all the sniffing and nose-wrinkling was nothing to do with her, but because of my sandwich.

  Safe in the playground, I’d start to moan at Tulip.

  ‘You’re ruder than I am. How come it’s always my name she broadcasts to the world?’

  But I knew the answer, anyway. Mum wasn’t the first to point out that games with Tulip had a habit of starting well for two, and ending badly for one. I was the usual victim. But once or twice she tried her luck with Julius. I called a halt to Putting On The Bag. But then she started something called Babe in the Wood. One after another, while we were walking him, we’d vanish into the trees. Soon he’d be fretting. Then I’d materialize as calmly as if I’d never been gone. He’d spin round, and there was Tulip, back without a word. Somehow she’d distract him, and I’d be gone again. He’d turn, upset and confused, to find that Tulip had disappeared as well. The game used to drive him wild with fear and rage. And why are my memories of it so strong, unless we played it for weeks? Maybe we only stopped because Mum caught us at it. She heard the screams, and running up, found Julius with tears spurting from his eyes, spitting a blaze of gibberish.

  ‘Out here, right now! Both of you!’

  I stepped out at once. But this time Tulip had vanished for good and proper. That didn’t bother Mum. She raised her voice and warned her anyway.

  ‘You listen to me, Tulip Pierce! If I ever catch you tormenting Julius again, you’ll be in trouble! And, as for you, Natalie!’

  As for me, I was sent upstairs earlier than Julius for a whole week. Whichever of them it was, Mum or Dad, deliberately called out ‘Bedtime, now, Natalie!’ in front of the guests, who looked up in astonishment from their first gins and tonics. You could almost hear them whispering to one another: ‘Bedtime? Surely the child must be ten years old, at least!’ From that day on, I wouldn’t join in games with Julius unless he quite enjoyed them. But Tulip didn’t mind because, what with Christmas coming up, she was happy to be on her very best behaviour. Tulip loved Christmas at the Palace. At her house, we knew, the decorations amounted to little more than a set of chipped Nativity figures and some wobbly-headed Santa she never properly described. The wrappings for her presents were ironed over from last year. And the only special foods were the turkey and Christmas pudding.

  Still, Tulip’s pleading made my parents uneasy at first.

  ‘Can I come early? For breakfast?’

  ‘But, Tulip, won’t your parents mind? Won’t they want you at home with them?’

  Tulip put on her false face.

  ‘Oh, no. They don’t mind. They say it’s just a shame I don’t have any brothers or sisters to share the day, and if I want to be with Natalie, they’re happy for me.’

  It didn’t sound all that likely. But Mum allowed herself to be convinced.

  ‘In that case, I’m sure we’d be delighted to have you.’

  I look back now, and wonder what price Tulip paid for Christmas at the Palace. More than the other guests, I’ll bet. I knew that even back then. For once, as we were strolling home together after school, I heard a vicious bellow, and looked up to see Mr Pierce leaning out of his truck window.

  ‘Better get home before me, Tulip, or I’ll snatch you bald-headed!’

  I stood, rigid. Snatch her bald-headed? But Tulip had already fled. I followed her as far as the corner, picking up things that spilled out of her schoolbag, and thinking about the odd things I’d heard her saying in our games. ‘I’ll peel you alive, like a banana!’ ‘Smile at me wrong today, and I’ll crush you!’ ‘I’ll make your eyes look like slits in a grapefruit!’ I’d always put them down to Tulip being clever – good with words. But was I wrong? Was it Tulip I’d been hearing, or her terrifying father?

  No Christmas on earth would have been worth it for me. But I’d been spoiled. As long as I could remember, every December had blazed scarlet and gold. Bright coloured lanterns winked along the terraces. There were at least five decorated trees. Everything glittered and sparkled, and the food was amazing.

  ‘Can we have pies with battlements?’

  ‘Natalie, when did we ever not have pies with battlements at Christmas?’

  ‘And will there be some of those great long pink fishes on a dish?’

  ‘Salmon, Tulip. Yes, there’ll be salmon.’

  ‘And wine jellies, like last year?’

  ‘Yes. Wine jellies.’

  ‘And can I turn on the blinking lights?’

  Dad grinned.

  ‘Yes, Tulip. You can turn on the blinking lights.’

  We all indulged her at Christmas. It was, my father said wryly, the only time Tulip ever acted her age. Her eyes kept widening. Her mouth kept falling open. And once, like Julius, she was even found scrabbling under the tree, shaking all the empty wrapped boxes, just to be sure that what she’d been told was true, and they were really only there for show.

  Each year, Mum found some way to smarten her up a bit.

  ‘Here,Tulip.This dress belongs to Mrs Stoddart’s Cecily. But she’s wearing her green one, and we think this will fit you. It’s just for today, mind. You mustn’t run off with it.’

  There was a sticky moment, but Dad managed to save it.

  ‘And Mrs Stoddart mustn’t run off with you!’

  So Tulip pretended that she hadn’t heard, or didn’t mind, and let herself slip into enchantment. She cuddled the frock till Mum pushed her into the office. There, Tulip raised her arms and Mum lifted off her thin, mock-crochet top, and unhooked her cheap skirt. The deep blue velvet of the frock tumbled all over her, falling in folds that turned her spindly thinness into height, and hid her battered shoes.

  ‘And can I wear it all day?’

  ‘All day.’

  And all day we caught her stroking invisible puckers and creases out of the velvet, and seeking out mirrors. Time and again she’d think of clever ways of getting rid of me for a few minutes. And when I rushed back, she’d be smiling at herself in the glass as she watched the reflection of her solitary make-believe dance swirls and curtsies.

  Dad kept creeping up on her from the sides.

  ‘Unbutton your beak, Tulip.’

  Her eyes closed. A blissful look stole over her face as she opened her mouth as wide as a young thrush.

  He popped in the canapé, or vol-au-vent, or whatever. She learned the hard way about spoiling her appetite for lunch. And when, after dinner, it was clear she’d given no thought at all to getting home, Dad pulled her aside for a moment.

  ‘Tulip, aren’t you going to get into hot water if you’re late?’

  On went the false face.

  ‘They know I’m probably going to stay the night.They said I could.’

  His troubled eyes met hers. He looked down first.

  ‘All right, then. If you’re sure.’

  And he took Tulip by one hand and me by the other, and with Julius leading the way on his brand new tricycle (indoors for one day only, all guests warned), he marched us towards the piano. I expect we were dreadful at singing. But they would have drowned us out, that strange and he
arty assortment of people who choose to spend Christmas in a big hotel. Some patted our shoulders and pointed to the place on the carol sheet. And others, who had no idea how much we’d already eaten, slipped unwrapped sweets into our hands. I remember the blue-rinsed ladies had gold teeth that winked in the candlelight. And the men often stank of tobacco. Mr Hearns’ hands swept effortlessly up and down the keys. And if you looked sideways at Tulip in her beautiful blue dress, chirruping out Good King Wenceslas and Silent Night, her face radiant, you would never have thought that she’d have to go home, and face a very different, more ugly, sort of music in the morning.

  11

  Not that she couldn’t hand it out herself. Dad said it first.

  ‘I reckon some mean thoughts go on behind those pretty smiles of hers.’

  And he was right. On our first day back at school after the holidays, Tulip was waiting for me at the gate.

  ‘You’ve got it, haven’t you? You didn’t forget?’

  I handed it over. Her eyes sparkled, and she went dancing off in search of Jamie Whitton. She thrust the little box into his hand.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘What does it look like? It’s a Christmas present.’

  He shook it suspiciously. ‘It’s a bit late for that.’

  If she’d said anything, he would have been even more wary. But she just shrugged. She had a gift for making people believe her.

  He glanced round. Miss Henson was standing on the steps. The bell would go any minute.

  ‘Why did you get me a present?’

  ‘I just did.’

  ‘I didn’t get you one.’

  ‘That’s all right.’