From the Cutting Room of Barney Kettle (30 page)

‘Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s that time in assembly –’

The School Song. Perhaps his very best, and certainly Ren’s favourite, take-off: Ms Quinn’s
molto
hilarious, stomach-clenching, face-raking singing along to the Kate Sheppard School Song.

Un-der sprea-ding sky-eye-eyeeees

We-eee lift owwwww-er eyeeeeees

Ren was six rows ahead of Barney, with the rest of Ms Temple’s class. Barney could see her ponytail, tied high, at its most defiant and perky. The set of her shoulders suggested she was singing with commitment. The School Song was nuts, but it was also true that
when Mrs Newberry began banging away at the hall piano, with the trumpet accompaniment blaring on the CD player, it was somehow difficult not to sing as if you really meant it.

Too-eee and be-e-e-el-buuuurd

Kore-fi and daff-oh-diiiil

Plains and braaay-did

Rivers and hi-i-i-i-ls

The School Song had been written in 1979 for the centenary of their school, which had apparently been known for its first hundred years by the confusing moniker South Normal School. It had been renamed Kate Sheppard on the hundredth anniversary. Sally had been a pupil at the school under its old name. For most of her childhood she had thought this meant only normal children could attend. She had been secretly relieved that she had passed whichever test it was that had measured her normality.

‘And then I grew up,’ she said, ‘and realised that, happily, there was no such thing as normal!’

Sally had told this story at the opening of the Living History Museum, to enthusiastic applause. Barney had been just ten at the time and had been greatly impressed by Sally’s comment. He had only recently formed Kettle Productions (an inaugural meeting at the kitchen table with his soon-to-be trusty Arch-Slasher and her pencil case in attendance). Any doubts about what ambition it was normal for a ten-year-old to harbour had been instantly laid to rest. Barney had marched into his great and famous future, accruing
confidenceandpurposeandvisionandactionandinstruction
from that very moment outside the Museum in Luna Square.

Kauri and ooooak

Sheeeeep and har-pook-oooo

Villa and cottage and bung-a-loooooow

The Untold Story
had certainly confirmed what Sally had said, thought Barney. Ms Quinn’s eyes rolled upwards as Mrs Newberry and the unseen trumpeter scaled dizzy heights on their
instruments. The Street and Square, they had agreed, were filled with many apparently normal people who were also all a little bit batty, in one way or another.

Perhaps the Street attracted a certain sort of person. Even the more or less ordinary people had curious ways. Albert Anderson was awesome, of course, but wasn’t he also a little bit unusual for an adult, reading mostly comics, and playing chess much of the day? And what about Dad? Surely most men did not regularly search the net for vintage, and headless, dressmaker’s dummies to add to their collection? But Sally had said there was no such thing as normal. Anywhere. Perhaps every street in their city hummed along in an outwardly ordinary way, but in fact harboured innumerable citizens with mad passions and habits.

‘What a truly great bit of barmy,’ Mum said, when Barney and Ren showed her extracts from Sunday’s rushes – Mia and Marcel, at the counter of Toto’s. Mia in her Princess Leia wig – which Barney had requested for the interview – and Marcel, stiff and silent, beside her.

‘High Street Gothic,’ said Mum. ‘That is quite marvellous. You have a good eye for barmy!’

Barney had been very pleased to hear this. He had favoured Mum with a Barney hug. She was very un-barmy, herself, on the whole. Perhaps, actually normal. But could that be possible, according to the Sally-view of things?

In the gaze of the snow-topped A-a-a-a-lps!

In the g-a-a-a-a-ze

Of the

Snow

Topped

Alps.

Well, that was over for another week.

But, Barney felt excellent after the bellowed School Song. And his thoughts about normal and barmy.

It was 9.30. Maths with Nick. Science. Reading. Ms Bloodworth had said audio books
did
count, so he was listening to
Treasure Island
with headphones. He was developing quite a bond with Jim Hawkins. Blimey, did he have his fair share of weird adults.

During maths with Nick, while Barney was measuring an isosceles triangle, Ren elbowed her way back into his thoughts.

Perhaps he should find her at lunchtime after all and tell her his plans.

Nick was reading
Advanced Applied Maths
by Kristina Polaschek.

Barney wrote down the measurements. Geometry was bonkers, too, though apparently necessary for architecture.

He thought some more about Ren.

In a nutshell (as Dad liked to say) Ren had done a complete 180 (look, Nick, use of geometry!) on their secret world. She had become – quite suddenly, it seemed to Barney – very displeased with Obi and Girl.

Barney supposed he knew this straight after they had watched The First Post Office Interview, when Ren had been fish-eyeingly offended by Obi’s comments, and not at all impressed by Obi and Girl’s declaration that they wanted to make friends.

He knew it even more when Ren declined to come back to the Post Office, and when they argued after The Second Post Office Interview, about meanness, art and artistic signatures.

He knew it when they got up from the Busby’s sofa on Saturday and went their separate ways: Ren to her bedroom, Barney to the Post Office alley.

He knew it all, yes yes, but he had decided not to think about it, which was his tried and true method of dealing with troubling matters.

And then, on Saturday evening, he had come home, buoyant
again, to find on his pillow
Orange Boy Lives VI
and the four beribboned packages containing the other five
Orange Boy
zines.

It was not at all a pleasant sight. It was like a present returned on the doorstep. It was like a rebuke. Or a smack.

Barney barged down the hall and into Ren’s room.

‘What the
hey
?’

He shut the door and leaned against it, his arms folded in what he hoped was a severe older brother stance.

Ren was reading
Hark! A Vagrant
. She was always reading
Hark! A Vagrant
! She was
infatuated
with that book, thought Barney. He liked it okay. The Nancy Drew strips were pretty funny, and Aquaman’s, but well, so?

He felt suddenly enormously
cross
with Ren.

‘What?’ said Ren.

She knew what.

‘You know what!’

‘I don’t want them in my room.’

‘I thought you were all,
we have to have everything in different rooms for safety’s sake
.’

‘Did you know that you sound exactly like Mum when you’re mad?’

Now he really was mad.

‘
Why
don’t you want them in your room? What is the
matter
with you?’

Ren went back to reading
Hark! A Vagrant
. She smiled privately and maddeningly at some mirthful piece of Kate Beaton genius. Barney did not like Ren’s method of fighting one little bit. But also, he was not exactly sure why they were having a fight.

‘So are they still there?’

‘Why do you even want to know?’

‘I don’t.’

‘Well, then.’

But that was no good because he needed to know why she had
given back the zines, why she had shunned the very things they had both so gleefully embraced over the last six glorious weeks.

They both loved the zines. That was an actual fact.

Barney unfolded his arms. He didn’t really know what to say next.

‘So, what should I do with them?’

Beyond lame.

‘They’re yours now,’ said Ren, ‘you can do what you want with them.’

He really hated it when Ren used a logical tone of voice.

‘But
why
, Ren?’ said Barney, not cross so much now as a little desperate. ‘I don’t understand.’

It made Barney feel slightly unbalanced, not having his Slash at his side in this adventure. It upset his very sense of the rightness of things, the way his world worked best.

‘It’s
Orange Boy
, Ren.’

‘No,’ said Ren. ‘It’s not. That’s the problem.’

She flung
Hark! A Vagrant
away from her. Now she folded her arms.

‘He’s not really Orange Boy. Not the Orange Boy in the zines. He’s someone else. Someone not nice. And so is Girl.’

Barney moved closer to Ren’s bed. She was staring at him fiercely. Her eyes were huge.

‘He’s still a bit Orange Boy,’ he said.

A tear fell out of Ren’s eye and slipped below her glasses.

Blimey
. Ren crying. That hardly ever happened. The last time had been when her glasses broke at the School Fair, in a pile-up on the Skid-Slide.

‘I wish we’d never met Obi and Girl,’ said Ren, a small sob-hiccough on the last word. ‘I wish we were still just getting the envelopes and we didn’t know about the Post Office.’

How
interesting
, Barney thought, instead of looking at the tear. Ren liked it better when they didn’t know the real Obi and Girl,
and he, Barney – on the whole – liked it better when they did. The envelope chase was great, of course, but it had been
molto
excellent being initiated into the Post Office, meeting the real people.

‘Nothing
matches
,’ said Ren. She sounded about five. Like Bingo.

‘It’s so disappointing,’ she said. ‘The not-matching. And I don’t trust Obi. And you shouldn’t either, Barney. I’m glad they’re going.’

What could you do? He certainly didn’t want to see another tear.

‘
Okay
!
Okay
!’ Barney said, pressing his hands against the air in the way Dad did when he was trying to finish an argument with Mum. ‘Point taken, point taken. I bow to your steel-trap brain.’

Ren huffed, a fifth-cousin to a laugh.

There was no point telling Ren about the Tuesday appointment. He would get it in the can and show her when they were gone.

‘But big day tomorrow!’ said Barney. ‘Mia the Magnificent and Marcel the Mute.’ He stood in the tentative, dazed, hovering way Marcel did. He held his hands up like a wall, peeked his face around the side of them, like Marcel looking nervously around the office door.

Ren giggled.

In science they did photosynthesis and chlorophyll again.

Clever old plants, doing that thing with the sun. Personally, Barney was sick and tired of the sun. It had pretty much cooked everyone and everything for the last six weeks, including the grass on Little Wilt.

It had felt good making Ren laugh on Saturday night. Perhaps he
should
consider a career in front of the camera as well as behind. He had made her laugh again several times on Sunday, too, and while they filmed on Monday afternoon.

Neither of them had mentioned Obi and Girl again. Which was strange in itself, since it had been their main topic of conversation for so long.

Restoring Ren to her cheerful-and-organised-Slasher self had cheered him up too. It made Barney feel that life was running on its proper track, the two halves of Kettle Productions firing fully, getting stuff in the
can
.

It distracted him from thinking about things coming to an end.

Thinking about the editing of
Untold Story
was also a good distraction. It would be a big job. Huge. But you could
live
in the film while you edited. It still wasn’t over while you were editing. And then, if thethrillingalchemy was doing its thing – which indeed it seemed to be – then, just as editing was ending and the première looming, you could start obsessing about your new idea, so that by the time the première was over – a time when the disappointment worm could really dig in – you had a shiny new project to fill your head and your future.

It was a good system, all things considered.

Much like photosynthesis.

And spellcheck. He was very glad it had the spelling of photosynthesis and chlorophyll under control.

In silent reading, Barney plugged into the continuing adventures of Jim Hawkins. Jim was in an apple barrel just now, rocking gently, along with the
Hispaniola
, thinking about Long John Silver and his disturbing ways.

Imagine being at sea with a pack of pirates. One kid and some seriously unreliable adults.

But it was hard to concentrate on the story today. Only forty minutes to lunch. He
would
tell Ren he was going to the Post Office. That it would be the last time. Though he had no idea where Obi and Girl were going. They had contacts, Obi said. He would say no more. Girl said nothing, full stop.

Obi and Girl’s life was a bit like Jim’s. (The Post Office was the
Hispaniola
.) They had each other, but in every other way they were on their own. There were homeless pirates to watch out for. Street pirates, too. Maybe even police pirates.

Barney tried to imagine it.

He had never before thought about being on his own – being a kid without adults. Not really. It was difficult to imagine because he had never experienced it. He had nothing to go by.

He had never really
been
by himself.

Benjamin, Jack and Barney had once made an elaborate plan for a trip to the North Island, involving buses, boats, trains, hitchhiking and sleeping under the stars. They had made food and equipment lists. They had plotted how to get money. But they had all been nine years old and had known perfectly well that the trip would never happen. It was very pleasantly imaginary. Storybook imaginary.

Now that he thought about it, Barney figured there were really only two places he’d ever felt even faintly alone. In bed. But that didn’t quite count. Mum and Dad and Ren were just down the hall. And it was only ever for a minute or two: he usually fell asleep immediately.

Once, in the country, at South Island Gran and Granpa’s, he had spent half a day on his own. Ren had been in bed with a stomach bug. Barney had taken the video camera and a backpack with snacks. He had wandered along the road, crossed paddocks, wound his way eventually to the river.