The Red Judge
Authors: Pauline Fisk
For Laura
Also by Pauline Fisk for Bloomsbury
Zed for Zachary
I'll tell you when it all began. It was the day my sister Cary came home from her first term at university with a forty-watt light bulb superglued to the top of her head. I'd been out on a Christmas shopping spree, in a panic because it was the night of our annual Christmas party for my father's ghastly relatives, and I didn't have a clue what to buy for them.
Cary â I had no doubt â would have sorted herself out already with the perfect gift for every member of the family tucked away in her luggage. Not only that, but her train out of London would leave on time, and would arrive in Pengwern on time too. Trains always did, when Cary travelled on them. She was the princess of the family â a golden girl with golden curls to match, and brains as well, and a charmed life that ran as if by clockwork. If I'd been her, I would have stayed in London to avoid the party, but our father had persuaded her that it wouldn't be the same without her and she was actually coming home a day early.
Cary fitted in with the Fitztalbot family. That was the thing. She wasn't like me, who hated them. They didn't make her cringe. They didn't make her flesh creep. She didn't wish, like me, that she belonged to any other family. As far as she was concerned, they were all right as long as you worked out how to handle them.
But as far as I was concerned, they were the pits. I couldn't stand the way they stuck their noses into my life, always wanting to know what I was doing and suggesting ways that I could do it better. Or the way they swaggered around, thinking they were a cut above everybody else. They were an embarrassment. People in Pengwern bent over backwards to avoid them, but they didn't even know it. They were too busy boasting about their cars and houses and careers and children to see the effect they were having on anybody else.
And that was where I fitted in â or where I would have done if I'd only achieved anything to boast about. Unluckily for me, my father was the eldest son and, even more unluckily, I was his only son. In fact I was the only boy amongst the younger generation of the family. Anywhere else, this would have passed unnoticed, but it was a big deal to the Fitztalbots.
I was the one, you see, who was guaranteed to carry on the family name. The one upon whose shoulders hung the weight of history. The one through whom the Fitztalbot family name stood or fell, and they expected great things of me. But all I ever did was let them down.
âHow's the dear boy getting on?' my father's sister, Aunt Decima, would whisper as if she thought I
couldn't hear. âHow's his school work coming on? Are the grades any better? And the problems with the maths? Given the money you've poured into his education, I hope he's getting there at last.'
âHas he been selected for the team yet?' my father's brother, Uncle George, would ask about the rugby, cricket, tennis, badminton and rowing teams of which he had been school captain in his day. âWell, never mind. Another term, maybe. There's lots of time yet. He's still young.'
The one who didn't skirt around the subject, however, was my grandmother. She was always direct and to the point. âIs he pulling round at last, and behaving like a Fitztalbot?' she'd ask in a booming voice that was loud enough for the whole of Pengwern to hear. âSuch a lucky boy, to have his advantages in life. I hope he knows it. It could have been so different. He could have grown up in an ordinary family, never knowing any better. I hope you've told him how lucky he is. And I hope he hurries up and starts making something of himself!'
How to buy presents for a family like that? I mean, what would
you
do? In the end I bought a fart cushion for my windy uncle, a joke book for my humourless aunt, a collection of surprisingly realistic-looking plastic turds for my ghastly Barbie-doll cousins, Frieda, Lottie and Claudia the Clod, and a bag of lemon drops for my grandmother, who always looked as if she was sucking lemons anyway, her cheeks drawn in, her lips tight and her eyes watering.
For my sister Cary â who might have been the Fitztalbot princess but was still the nearest in the family that I had to a friend â I bought a nice silver
ring with a turquoise stone. For my mother I bought a diary, because I couldn't think of anything else. And, for my father, I bought a print of Pengwern's old town gaol, hoping he would get the point.
Then last of all, but definitely not least, I bought a present for myself. It was a can of spray paint and, with it, I sprayed zeds all round the town. Zeds for me, Zachary Fitztalbot. I sprayed them anywhere that I could reach without being seen â down the medieval shuts and alleys in the wild west end of town; on the backside of an empty bus; even in the modern shopping mall, taking a risk because there were people about.
Finally I faced the supreme challenge of the railway bridge. I climbed up on to its girders â which was no mean feat, I'm telling you â and worked my way along until I was out over the river. Every time a train went over, the whole bridge roared and startled pigeons flew overhead, nearly knocking me off my ledge. But I clung on tight and, at long last, reached the middle of the river.
It ran full and fast beneath me, rippling with dangers that were known to every child in Pengwern. If I fell off my girder, I wouldn't stand a chance. There were hidden currents down there in those rushing waters, waiting to pull me under.
But I'd never been one to mind a bit of a challenge. In fact, I'd always seized the chance to give myself a fright. I was the sort of boy who'd lie awake at night, telling himself that he could hear the hounds of hell out there in the darkness, baying at the moon. The sort who'd scare himself silly watching horror films that no one else could bear, staring without blinking
while his cousins hid behind the sofa, praying that their mothers would come and turn the telly off.
And I wasn't blinking now, high on the girders, spraying a massive blood-red zed on the central iron panel on the bridge. Then I stood back and looked at what I'd achieved, challenging anybody walking on the river path to see me. It was a good moment. There was something clean about it, somehow. Trains rumbled overhead but I stood undeterred, watching the river flowing out of town, wishing that I could go with it and leave my old life behind.
Just for a crazy moment, I imagined that I could â that it was possible to stop being a Fitztalbot and be some nameless boy instead. One who wasn't expected to be clever and do great things.
In the end, however, I gave up dreaming and went home. I had promised my mother to help decorate the house for our party, and I was late. I reached Swan Hill just as the streetlights came on. It was the grandest of Pengwern's streets, with all the biggest, oldest houses, and ours was bigger than the rest of them, set back behind cobbles. Iron gates swung open automatically when cars went in and out, but I slipped through a side gate, entering the house through a scullery door that led to a back staircase.
This enabled me to reach my bedroom before anybody saw any tell-tale signs of red paint. I changed my clothes, scrubbed my hands, and packed my presents quickly and clumsily, using lashings of sellotape. Downstairs, I could hear my mother moving from room to room, getting ready for her big night. She was famous for her entertaining, which always beat everybody else's hands down. I could hear the
kitchen full of cooks, shipped in for the occasion, and the dining room full of waitresses laying tables.
When I'd finished with the presents, I took them down to the drawing room to slip under the Christmas tree. Here I found my mother decorating it with pinprick fairy-lights, strands of silver, velvet ribbons and a collection of priceless Venetian spun-glass baubles. For a moment, I stood in the doorway watching her. She was an older version of Cary â same cheekbones, same golden curls, same violet eyes.
Then she looked up and saw me, and the eyes clouded over. âAh, Zed,' she said. âSo you've finally decided to honour us with your presence! What time do you call this?'
I muttered something about crowds in town, and the difficulty of finding presents. My mother fixed me with a knowing look and said she hoped I hadn't been getting into trouble. I looked straight back and said I hadn't. Then, to change the subject, I offered to finish off the tree.
My mother shuddered at the thought of what my hands might do, especially to her precious spun-glass baubles. âYou know how clumsy you are,' she said. âBut you could go round the house instead with this sack of greenery. Decorate anywhere that looks a bit bare. And hurry up about it â Cary will be home soon.'
The unspoken word between us was that everything had to be perfect by the time my sister walked through the door. I took the sack and made off with it, hurling holly and ivy everywhere, bored before I'd even started. It didn't take long for the sack to empty. With just a few sprigs left, I sneaked into my father's study,
which my mother had left out because he hated anybody going in there, even her.
My father's study was his
inner sanctum â
the place he went to get away from the whole wide world, including us. Even the cleaning lady wasn't allowed in there unless my father was present to supervise her movements. The only times I'd been in there were when I was in trouble, and he'd called me in.
Now I marched in recklessly and started chucking about my last few sprigs of holly. Even though I knew my father hated Christmas decorations, I still did it, climbing on to his desk to hang up a bunch of mistletoe and sending half its contents flying in the process. Notepaper, fountain pens, ink, pencils, diaries and even a couple of photographs crashed to the floor, the glass smashing in their frames.
One of them contained a photo of my mother, and the other a photo of Cary. I picked them up and threw them in the bin, along with the broken frames, knowing that I was in trouble anyway, and telling myself that I didn't care. Then I put everything else back, including a photo of my Fitztalbot grandmother, realising, with a little stab of pain, that my father didn't have one of me.
I looked around the room, but there wasn't one there either. My Uncle Henry was there, in his youth, and so was my Aunt Decima. There were even photos of Frieda, Lottie and Claudia, but there wasn't one of me.
Perhaps that was the moment when my life started changing. Perhaps it didn't happen when Cary walked through the door with that light bulb stuck to the top of her head. I stood looking round the room, feeling
shocked by my discovery. I knew I shouldn't be, and yet I was.
Then I left my father's study without a backward glance, and returned to the drawing room. Here everything was as it always had been, and yet it all felt different. My mother was just finishing the Christmas tree, tying on the last glass bauble. It looked just like the trees you get on Christmas cards with Victorian families standing round them drinking punch.
âWhat do you think?' my mother said. She looked across the room and smiled at me, but I couldn't bring myself to smile back. It could have been a nice moment between us, but I wouldn't let it happen. And then the chance was gone for ever, and I didn't even know it.
