Pip: The Story of Olive (11 page)

Olive smiled. ‘When I was little I always imagined that he chopped wood and that he had a tummy slung over his belt.’

Pip jumped out of the chair. ‘I bet he has scruffy boat shoes that are so worn down if I hopped in them, I’d walk like he does.’ Pip lolloped about the room with a wide-legged stride.

Olive laughed. The tempo of the desk-clicking increased as her legs swung faster. ‘Boat shoes? Do you think he’s a sailor?’

‘Look, I have no idea whether he’s a lawyer, a locksmith or a lobster-catcher, but we need clues, and Mog’s the only one who’s got them. I think we should ask her.’

Olive turned back to her work.

‘So, can we?’

Olive trailed the calligraphy pen up and across her page, concentrating on relaxing her shoulders, trying to let the ink glide, run free, as Mrs Kato insisted they should. ‘Well, I guess I could try tonight.’

Olive felt Pip’s smile before she saw it. Pip hooted. ‘I’ll start writing a list of questions.’

‘But only if Mog’s not too tired,’ said Olive, horrified.

‘Sure.’ Pip swung her plait back over her shoulder. ‘I’m starving, by the way.’

Olive pointed Pip in the direction of the cheesy rolls at the tuckshop. They were bright orange and the melted cheese was so perfectly cooked that you could pull it into strings a metre long. ‘Make sure you push,’ Olive called after Pip. ‘That tuckshop can be a jungle.’

‘Olive-
san
? How are your characters progressing?’ Mrs Kato was at the front of the room doing remedial work with Nut Allergy, who was humped over the desk. Lim May Yee and a couple of other boarders were comparing chocolate crackles down the back.

‘I’m nearly done.’ Olive went back to her calligraphy. She became so completely absorbed by the curving lines and flickering images of WilliamPetersMustardSeed that she didn’t hear anyone approaching.

WilliamPetersMustardSeed
did
think of her – Pip had to be right. Olive thought of him, and had thought of him for as long as she could remember. Even when she was doing something else, he was always there: a bit of him just sort of hung around, standing stage-left of her thoughts. It made sense that he would also—

Snip.

Olive started when she heard the crisp metallic slice. She felt a breeze on the back of her neck. Before she could register what had happened, one of her fish-spine plaits lay across her lap. Puny and white-blonde, it curled up at the end like baby hair. Her hair. Her hair like Mog’s. Her hair like Pip’s.

The room was silent. The chocolate crackle girls had stopped comparing. They looked at Olive and then at Mathilda, who was brandishing a pair of scissors. Mathilda looked at Amelia, standing beside her.

‘My teeth are
not
brown,’ said Amelia.

Olive yelped. The chocolate crackle girls yelped. Mrs Kato, who had been packing up her class materials, saw Olive’s lopsided hair and yelped. ‘Mathilda Graham, this is quite intolerable. You will come with me to see Mrs Dalling
ima
.’

‘Amelia made me—’

‘
Ima,
’ barked Mrs Kato.

Mathilda was marched out the door by Mrs Kato, in the full knowledge that she would probably be marched out of the Joanne d’Arc School for Girls.

Amelia turned her nose up to the sky, pirouetted, and walked out behind them.

It was a short battle. The stakes were high, but in her own wonky-haired way, Olive had won; well, at least she wasn’t in the headmistress’s office. There was no getting around it, though: her plait was a clear loser.

Pip, returning from the tuckshop, stopped in the doorway. ‘Oh, Ol, what has she done?’ She raced over to her one-plaited sister and stroked the stumpy knob of hair that spiked out from its elastic. ‘That bully.’

‘It was
Mathilda
,’ said Olive, showing the first signs of recovering from shock. ‘Mathilda did it?’ Olive posed the last statement as a question. She was confused. Big tears streamed down her face, joining tributaries of watery mucus.

‘Mathilda? That pig is so spineless. I have no doubt that Amelia was behind it, though. I hope they’re both throttled for this. In fact, I hope they’re both reincarnated as weevils.’

Olive shook her head and sniffed.

Pip sat back. ‘It’s very modern,’ she said. ‘A bit sort of punk.’ She stroked Olive’s head.

‘I don’t want modern hair.’ Olive started to weep again. ‘I don’t even like uneven hems.’

News about the slaughter had shot outside the classroom and around the school. Year 7s were very efficient conductors of information. Girls stood at the door of the classroom, holding back but peering forward, trying to catch a glimpse of Olive and her plait stump – like pedestrians at a car crash.

‘You could bob it,’ said Lim May Yee, coming over. ‘I think your hair would look great bobbed.’

‘I agree. I think your hair will look much better bobbed. I was thinking of doing it to mine, too.’ Pip handed Olive a piece of origami paper. ‘Here, blow your nose.’

Olive blew her nose all over Pip’s crane.

‘My cousin says that hair carries memories,’ said Lim May Yee.

‘Then I guess that half of mine have just been butchered.’ Olive pulled gently on her blunt plait-tuft.

‘Let’s hope it’s the half with Mathilda and Amelia.’

Olive managed to smile. Lim May Yee handed her a sweet. It was chewy but spicy. ‘Indonesian Ginger. Mum sends them from home.’

‘It’s delicious,’ said Olive. ‘Thanks, Lim May Yee.’

‘My pleasure.’ She paused. ‘You can just call me May, by the way. That’s actually my name. My surname’s Lim, and in my culture, because family is the most important thing, the Lim bit goes first. That’s all.’

‘Oh,’ said Olive, chewing. ‘Were you born in May?’

‘Nope. September. And if you think that’s weird, my sister’s called Sunday and she was born on a Thursday.’

Olive laughed. May smiled and walked back to the boarders.

‘She’s nice,’ said Pip. ‘A bit bow-legged, but funny.’

‘No memories.’ Olive twirled her remaining plait around her finger. ‘It’s probably not a bad time for a fresh start.’

‘There’s no doubt,’ said Pip. ‘Those old memories were starting to wilt like carrots left too long in the crisper.’

13

Bury Him

Olive sat in front of the mirror while Pip attempted to even out her hair. The second plait lay on the kitchen table like a dead animal. Olive watched as her sister waved the scissors around her face. ‘Pip, concentrate! It’s not straight!’

‘First I putta da towel, then I cutta da hair.’ Pip was doing a lousy impersonation of Pirelli from
Sweeney Todd
and it was making Olive edgy. For a girl who was so condescending about
The Little Mermaid
, Pip had managed to work an awful lot of musicals into her repertoire.

‘Pip, please! Careful! Here, give me the scissors – I’ll do it.’

‘Olive, you are such a worrywart. It only has to get you through until tomorrow.’

‘Well I don’t want to look like a freak.’

‘You don’t want to look like everybody else, anyway – not with a name like Olive.’

‘Olive’s not that weird.’

‘No, but you’re the only one in the school.’

That was true. ‘Whenever I complain about my name, Mog says that when I was born, there were seven other babies in the house – three called Sunny, three called Rainbow and one boy called Rani. Poor Rani really lucked out. His name means Indian Princess.’

The girls laughed, and the scissors veered north. Pip looked at Olive’s face. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said and scuttled out of the room.

After Pip had left, Olive ran a brush through her hair. It jolted when it came to the ends and she combed the air. Short hair was going to take a bit of getting used to. Olive flattened her bob and examined the cut. It was a teensy bit longer on the left than the right, but it would do until she went to the hairdresser.

Mrs Graham had booked Olive in. She had been so appalled by Mathilda’s behaviour that she had rung Mog at work that afternoon to apologise. Then Amelia’s mother had rung Mog to apologise, too. Well, sort of apologise.

‘We are obviously very upset, but furious that the school has let things disintegrate to this level. This is not the Joanne d’Arc School for Girls that I know. They have suspended Mathilda Graham for one day and given both girls two Saturday detentions. While Mathilda is clearly a very bad influence on Amelia, Luke and I were not certain that Joanne d’Arc was right for our daughter anyway, and we have been investigating other possibilities. It must be said, strictly off the record, that the facilities at Paronton are now infinitely superior.’

‘Strictly off the record,’ Mog had replied, trying to reformat a document.

‘But it is a difficult choice,’ Amelia’s mother had continued, ‘and not one we take lightly. We’ve got three generations of Joanne d’Arc girls in this family. You weren’t at Joanne d’Arc. Where were you? They certainly didn’t have that terrible outdoor programme when I was in Year 9. One semester in the bush – no phones, no electricity. Dreadful. How will Amelia blow-dry her hair?’

‘Three generations! No hairdryers!’ Mog had laughed later on the phone to Olive.

Mog was still laughing when she walked into the kitchen. Olive glanced at Pip, who had been using her bare feet and hands to shimmy up the doorframe for the past hour. Pip started giggling too.

‘So is Amelia leaving school?’ Olive leant forwards to give Mog a kiss hello and Mog sat down next to her.

‘No. Liz Forster went through all of that laborious detail to tell me that “on balance” they’ve “decided against a transfer”. On balance?! I bet she’s the kind of woman who irons tea towels.’

‘She is!’ laughed Olive. ‘She has them ironed. And underpants.’

‘Oh dear.’ Mog shook her head and smiled. ‘She really is the pits.’ Mog stroked Olive’s freshly cropped hair.

‘Do I look like a freak?’ Olive nuzzled against Mog’s shoulder like she used to when she was a baby.

‘Olive Garnaut, no! You do not look like a freak!’ Olive could smell smoke and toothpaste on Mog’s breath. ‘But you do look exactly like your mother.’

‘Exactly?’ Olive pushed her head further into Mog’s arm. Mog was trying to flick through the post over Olive’s shoulder.

‘Exactly. I’ll try to dig you up an old school photo of mine.’ Mog looked down at Olive’s face. ‘Is that such a bad thing?’

‘No. But don’t I look even a tiny bit like . . . WilliamPetersMustardSeed?’ Olive mouthed his name with her lips.

‘Like whom?’ Mog peered under the edge of an envelope. Olive took a deep breath.

‘Like WilliamPetersMustardSeed.’

Olive held her breath. Pip had said it, really said it. His name stained the air.

Mog’s lipstick-smile dropped. She stopped flicking. Pip was still. Mog exhaled, and her shoulders dropped down after her smile. She held Olive out from her chest. ‘You know I don’t like that name in this house, Olive. We have no secrets here, but trust me, this is important.’

‘But why don’t I see him? Ingrid, Louisa and Lisa all have divorced parents and they see their dads every second weekend and go to the football and the zoo and get show bags. And Melody Moore lives with her dad.’