Andie's Moon (14 page)

Mum turned round and smiled. “Oh, you’re here, love. That’s good.” Behind her back, Kris handed a glass to Andie; she took it, feeling tiny sparkles sputtering over her hand. Dad was there as well, tie loosened, suit jacket slung over the back of a deckchair. Music floated up from the basement – something electronic and spacey that sent tingles down the back of Andie’s neck.

“What’s going on?” she asked Kris.

“It’s fantastic! Patrick’s got a contract to do album covers for Legend
–
you know? – to give them a special look that everyone’ll recognize. It’s big money – the record company’s really investing in them –”

“– yes, there’s a feature on them in the
New Musical Express
– they’re playing at the Isle of Wight next month – that’s right, the rock festival – then touring the States –” Patrick was telling everyone.

“Is this them?” Andie asked Kris, meaning the music.

“Yes, aren’t they fab? We’ll go inside in a minute, and I’ll show you the artwork. You’ll love it.”

In all the excitement, Kris seemed to have forgotten entirely about showing Andie’s paintings to Patrick. Andie nursed a small ache of resentment that promised to swell into a rage of self-pity as soon as she was alone.

Now everyone had a glass, and Marilyn called out, “Here’s to Patrick – and Legend!”

“To Patrick!”

“I’m so proud of you, darling –”

“Congratulations – well done!”

Andie took a glug of champagne, too much at once – the fizz erupted sneezily in her nose, and she doubled over, spluttering. Mum looked at her in dismay, and reached across to take the glass.

Only now, for the first time, did Patrick look at her. “Here she is! When she’s quite finished choking – give her back that fizz, Maureen – we’re all going to raise our glasses again, to this young lady here.”

Andie recovered enough to look round the group for a young lady she couldn’t have noticed, then realized with a jolt that he meant
her.

“Andie.” Patrick raised his glass to her. “You’ve certainly got a future as an artist, if you choose to take it. To Andie Miller, everyone – a name you’re likely to hear more of –”

Kris was grinning widely. “Told you!”

“Oh! You really think so, do you?” Dad said to Patrick, looking bemused. “I always thought she was quite good – but what do I know? Art, these days – but she’s never without her sketchbook and her paints –”

“She’s always wanted to be an artist,” Mum said doubtfully, “ever since she was little –”

“Well,” said Patrick, “she
is
an artist.”

Now all the faces were turned Andie’s way, and it was like blinking in the beam of a spotlight.

“Are you sure?” Her voice came out as a squawk.

“Sure? I’ve got final-year students with less talent.”

“That’s very kind of you, Patrick.” Mum was prim and pink, though there was no mistaking her look of pride.

“No, he’s not being
kind,
” Marilyn told her. “He’s never kind. You should ask some of his students, the ones who crawl away in tears and shred up their work into microscopic bits. He never praises anyone’s work unless he really means it.”

Andie’s head was afloat with shock and champagne. “I’d love to be an art student. More than anything in the world.”

“No reason why you shouldn’t,” Patrick said.

Andie shot a defiant look at Mum, who registered it, and explained to Patrick, “We’ve always encouraged her to think of it as a hobby, haven’t we, Dennis? But, well –”

“There’s obviously money to be made – prospects – if you know your way around,” Dad said. “It doesn’t have to be starving in a garret.”

“There’s plenty of us have done a stint of
that,
before making much progress,” said Patrick. “I’m not saying it’s easy – but if you’ve got talent, and determination – and it seems to me that Andie’s got plenty of both – then good luck to you.”

Now
everyone
wanted to see Andie’s pictures. She had to bring them down, and suffer the embarrassment of having them looked at and exclaimed over: “That’s fantastic, Andie!”…“What an imagination – I feel like I’m actually on the moon –”…“Well! We’ve always known she
liked
painting, and her teacher says she’s got talent…”…“Talent! I should say so!” So many compliments! She thought her head would burst.

Needing to recover, she went inside with Kris to look at Patrick’s artwork for the album covers.

Kris opened a portfolio – larger and smarter, as well as much fuller, than Andie’s, but she didn’t mind that now.

First, there was just the word
LEGEND
, in letters that twined through and round each other like sinuous plants.

“That’s going to be their logo – it means like a trademark,” Kris explained. “It’ll be on the record labels, and on all their posters. They haven’t decided which colours yet. And here are the sketches, and this is what they’re most likely using for the first album.”

Andie looked. It was a fantastical landscape – the sort of thing she might try to paint herself. Picturesque, but also faintly sinister, with towering cliffs and the black clefts of chasms, and precipitous paths, and dark forests. She imagined herself walking into it, and wondered who she might meet.

“It’s kind of fairy-tale,” she said at last. “Only a
serious
fairy tale.”

“What’s to say,” said Kris, “that fairy tales can’t be serious? Some of them are
very
serious.”

Chapter Eighteen

We Are Stardust

On Wednesday, the Millers’ last night at Chelsea Walk, Mum finally plucked up courage to invite everyone in. She had finished her agency work on Friday, and spent the whole of Monday cleaning the flat. Tuesday was for shopping – Andie helped – and Wednesday for packing and cooking. They prepared sausages on sticks, quiche and salads. They made egg mayonnaise and filled vol-au-vents with mushroom and ham; Mum made her speciality, lemon meringue pie.

Being so busy – even if she thought Mum was going to far more trouble than was necessary – stopped Andie from feeling too sad. All the same, several times she found herself thinking,
This is the last time. Tonight will be the last time I sleep here. The last time I live in the same house as a real artist, and Ravi and Kris. The last time I swing from the walnut tree.

“Do you think there’s enough?” When everything was ready, Mum stood back and surveyed the dining table.

“Mum! If fifteen extra people turned up, we’d
still
have enough.”

Mum laughed. “It’s fun, though, isn’t it? I know I get myself too wound up, but I
like
this. We ought to do it more often, have people round. People at home, I mean. They’ve been so friendly, haven’t they, Patrick and Marilyn and the Kapoors? I hope you’re not too disappointed, Andie, this not working out.”

Sometimes Andie felt that Mum was too busy fussing to take proper notice of her; but now Mum had stopped folding napkins, and was looking at her very seriously.

“Well, a bit,” Andie said. “But there are nice things about going back home. There’s Barbara, and not having to share with Prune. Even not having to change schools.”

“I know. I like it here, but I’m looking forward to being back in our own home. But it hasn’t been a wasted summer for you here, has it? Making friends with Kris and Ravi, and Patrick thinking so highly of you. He obviously knows what he’s talking about. The thing is, me and Dad don’t know anything about painting and art. It’s another world, to us. But we shouldn’t stand in your way, if that’s where you want to go. We were talking about it last night. We’re very proud of you.”

She gave Andie a hug. Automatically, Andie wriggled away; she managed a gruff, “Thanks, Mum. That’s great.”

Had Mum really said that? What was going on – everyone saying such nice things? Andie thought of Patrick’s words as fantastic shiny presents which she could keep unwrapping over and over again.

Wasted summer? How could it have been? Not only had an artist – a real artist – admired her work, but these few weeks had shown her the moon and the stars, the immensity and the mystery. The wonder. And she would always have that, whenever she looked up at the sky on a clear night.

It wasn’t as if she was losing her new friends, either. “Slough isn’t a million miles away,” Ravi had said. “You can come up on the train, can’t you? We’ll go to the Science Museum again, and the Planetarium, and Madame Tussaud’s, and the Geological Museum, and the Zoo.”

“Come on a Saturday, and we’ll all go see a film,” added Kris.

And Prune would be here for another two weeks. Now that they were going to be separated, Andie felt – rather to her own surprise – that she would actually
miss
Prune.

“Prune? If you want to do any more fashion designs, I don’t mind drawing them for you,” she offered. “As long as – you know.”

“Thanks,” said Prune, “but I’m going to be a bit busy for now, with my job and everything. Still, that’s nice of you.” After a moment, she added: “Do you think you could stop calling me Prune now? You know I don’t like it.”

This seemed fair enough; Andie agreed. “It’ll be hard. But I’ll try.”

Ravi had spent the last two weeks making a cassette tape of all the songs he could find that were about space or the moon, and it was playing now: “Bad Moon Rising”, “Space Oddity”, “In the Year 2525”. As usual, the grown-ups ate and drank and chatted, but there was only one thing Andie really wanted to do.

As soon as it was dark enough, Ravi fetched his telescope, and he, Kris and Andie went up to the roof.
One last time,
went through Andie’s head like a refrain, as they climbed the narrow stairs and went through the storeroom and out.

There it was, the moon. Alone again. Pale, almost transparent, above the glow of London. But of course it wasn’t really transparent. It was a place.

“It’s still hard to believe, isn’t it?”

They were taking turns with the telescope.

“From now on,” said Andie, “it’ll be Dad’s binoculars in the back garden. But at least I’ve got my skymarks.”

“Your dad’s binoculars are probably as powerful as Galileo’s telescope,” said Ravi. “And with that he saw the moons of Jupiter.”

“What would he have thought of people flying to the moon?” Kris wondered.

“What would my great-grandmother have thought?” said Ravi. “When she came from India, Queen Victoria was still alive and there were horse-drawn carriages in the streets. But that’s like a split second ago, when you think of stars shining at us from hundreds of thousands of light years away.”

“It makes us seem so tiny and unimportant,” said Andie. “Like specks of dust.”

“We
are
specks of dust,” Ravi told her. “That’s what we’re made of. Stardust.”

“Oh! You mean, like in the ‘Woodstock’ song?” Kris started to sing it, in a warbling voice.

“That’s right! We’ve got to be made of the same stuff as stars – whatever it was that exploded when the universe began. Because what else
is
there for us to be made of?”

“But – all of this?” Andie stretched out her hands – to the street below, the traffic, the Albert Bridge, to the rest of London on the other side of the river.

“Everything. Everything there is. The same beginning,” said Ravi. Then he clapped his hands over his ears and turned on Kris, who was pulling a contorted face as she strained for the highest notes. “Is someone strangling a hyena? You’re making my brain hurt!”

“See, Andie?” Kris broke off singing. “You don’t have to want to be a star, with your painting. You
are
one, already. We all are.”

Andie had been about to say, “It’s impossible! Everything made of stars?”

But
lots
of things seemed impossible, and not all of them were. Humans had been to the moon, and left footprints, and come back again. There were two people alive who had stood on another world.

If that was possible, who could say what wasn’t?

Author’s note

Having so much enjoyed writing
Polly’s March
, my first
Historical House
novel, I was delighted to have the chance to return to Number Six, Chelsea Walk, this time for the summer of 1969. Not only was this the time of the Apollo 11 mission, the first moon landing, but it was the era of “Swinging London”, an eruption of young fashion and music and hipness – and Chelsea, especially the King’s Road, was at the heart of all this.