Magenta McPhee Read online

  ‘Golf’s expensive,’ Polly said, ‘and boring.’

  ‘Dad says he only played it for business but I think he’s lying. He had his own set of golf clubs. He sold them. Sometimes I think he’s sold his life.’

  ‘Well, we’ll clean this up. It’s not quite as bad as I thought it might be, although whatever was in that lunch box has become a health hazard.’

  ‘Oh that,’ I looked at it with interest. ‘I think that might have been dip once.’

  ‘It’s disgusting.’ Polly pulled her bandanna down over her nose and carried the lunch box into the kitchen. ‘You can borrow my gloves to wash it.’

  ‘Can’t we just chuck it?’

  ‘Magenta! We’re Green, remember. It’s a perfectly good lunch box underneath that mould.’ She peeled off her gloves and I put them on, reluctantly.

  Finally my room was neat enough. I drew the line at Polly organising my books into alphabetical order or tidying any drawers that could just be closed on the mess inside.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, propping Teddy up against the pillows so he looked uncomfortably straight, rather than his usual slumped self, ‘now we work on your other problem. Get a piece of paper, Magenta, we’re going to do this scientifically.’

  By the time Dad came home from the library, we had googled ‘depression’ and written our list:

  Problem: Depression

  Signs: Being alone, not going out, not getting a job, getting rid of stuff, not having a girlfriend

  Cause: The Divorce, The Retrenchment

  Solution: Get interested in life again.

  How?

  ‘Well, you have a good time, girls,’ Dad said as he dropped us off at Polly’s house.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be okay?’ I asked for the third time. I felt bad leaving him all alone on a weekend after we’d written about his problem. He’d probably be twice as depressed – all alone on a Saturday night.

  ‘What’s all this sudden concern?’ Dad dropped a kiss on the top of my head. ‘Think I can’t order takeaway noodles without you?’

  ‘See,’ Polly hissed as he drove away, ‘reliance on fast food. Jane says interest in food wanes with depression – either that or binge eating.’

  ‘Dad likes takeaway noodles,’ I said. ‘We had them on Saturdays even when Mum and Dad were still married.’

  ‘Well, there you are, he’s not moving on, is he? I bet your mum doesn’t still have them.’

  ‘No, we go out to the Thai because Trib loves it.’

  ‘See, your mum’s moved on – Thai and Trib. What more evidence do you need?’

  ‘That’s true, but the noodles told us nothing.’ Sometimes I have to fight hard against Polly’s mania for evidence. She can get things wrong, but it’s hard to remember that because she’s so smart most of the time.

  ‘Whatever. They are part of a pattern. Patterns are important. I’m exploring patterns at the moment. I’m ... but this is a dark secret, Magenta, you mustn’t tell anyone.’

  ‘You’ve got a secret you haven’t told me?’

  ‘It’s very recent. I only started doing it last night and I could hardly ring you at ten o’clock, could I?’

  We sat down on Polly’s bed. She had a purple doona with silver stars scattered over it. There were no teddies or stuffed toys. They were just traps for dust mites, Jane said. A large bookcase on one wall had books in it two deep. They were all arranged, first by category and then by alphabetical order of author’s surname. She had a big, L-shaped desk with a computer, printer and scanner on it and nothing else except for a dozen tea light candles. Nothing had changed.

  ‘What’s the secret, then?’

  ‘I think I’m a witch!’ she said, paused and then looked at me, her brown eyes so wide I could see the whites all round them.

  ‘A witch?’

  She nodded. ‘I don’t see why patterns in words can’t be as important as patterns in numbers. And patterns in numbers make things happen. Take your times table, for example. All that is, really, is a pattern of numbers, right?’

  ‘I guess...’

  ‘Well, the same with words. If you start repeating words in spells, then the pattern itself might be enough to make it happen. If you have the right kind of brain.’

  ‘The right kind of brain?’ I knew I wasn’t sounding particularly smart but this whole conversation was bizarre.

  ‘I may have the right kind of brain,’ Polly said, smoothing the doona under her fingers. ‘Last night I put together my first spell – a simple pattern of words, repeating one main word in different combinations. Want to hear it?’

  ‘I guess...’

  ‘Okay, but I’m going to say it normally rather than as a spell because it’s worked once and that’s enough.’

  ‘Okay...’

  ‘Jinx Jeremy, Jeremy Jinx. Bitter is the taste he drinks. Jinx Jeremy, Jeremy Jinx. Drinks he bitter inks. Inks Jeremy Jinx. Bitter is the taste he inks. Jinx Jeremy, Jeremy Jinx.’

  ‘Right.’ It sounded good, even when said normally. I didn’t know what it meant, except that Jeremy was Polly’s little brother and sometimes he got too much for her, so I assumed the spell was against him in some way.

  ‘So, I said that, right? But in the spell way, as an incantation, if you want to know. I looked it up on the Net. And guess what happened?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Jeremy Drank The Ink!’

  ‘What ink?’

  ‘The ink on the kitchen bench.’

  ‘Why did he drink ink?’

  ‘Because of the spell, you twit.’

  ‘Did he know it was ink?’

  ‘I told him it was ink and not to drink it. Then I said the spell in my bedroom where he couldn’t hear me. And he drank it. Against my express instructions.’

  ‘Was it in a glass? Or in the ink bottle?’

  ‘I’d put it in an ice-cream sundae glass.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t think it was ink?’ I was feeling confused. First Polly had told Jeremy not to drink the ink, but then she’d told him to drink it in a spell he couldn’t hear. ‘Maybe he thought you were trying to trick him into not drinking something that was good, by calling it ink? What colour was it?’

  ‘Violet,’ Polly said, ‘Jane’s violet ink. It’s very beautiful. Jeremy’s tongue went purple. Probably his pee did, too, but he wouldn’t show me.’

  ‘Euch, that’s disgusting.’

  ‘Anyway, there you are. I think I might be a witch. So I’m going to practise a lot. Jane’s having a barbecue tomorrow and I’m doing a rain spell. I hate barbecues. They just don’t cater for vegetarians, I don’t care what Jane says about fake sausages.’

  ‘But you aren’t a vegetarian.’

  ‘I am mostly. I’ll become a total proper one if I’m a witch. Except for Hawaiian pizza. It’s to do with loving all nature. You can’t kill your familiars. Anyway, this isn’t solving your father’s problem. Let’s get down to business.’

  ‘If you were really a witch,’ I said, ‘then you could just cast a spell for my dad and he’d be fine.’ A bit of me didn’t like the idea of Polly being a witch. It gave her a lot of power, somehow.

  ‘I’m not that powerful yet,’ Polly said quickly. ‘I think against something like depression – which is like an epidemic in today’s world – you’d have to be a very experienced witch. I’m just a beginner. No, I think we have to use twenty-first century remedies for your dad.’

  ‘And they are?’

  ‘Well, I asked Marcus if he’d ever been depressed and he said he was all the time.’

  That didn’t surprise me. Polly’s father was an artist.

  ‘So I asked him what he did to get over it,’ Polly continued, ‘and he said work, but your dad doesn’t have any work, so I asked him what else and he said, love.’

  ‘Love?’


  ‘That’s right,’ Polly nodded, ‘and he must mean Jane because he’s always cursing me and Jeremy – in an interesting way, of course, and not to be taken seriously. So I don’t think we can save him from depression. In fact, we probably plunge him into it, more than anything else.’

  ‘How can we find Dad love?’

  ‘Easy peasy,’ Polly said triumphantly, ‘the Internet, of course!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh come on, Magenta, everyone’s doing it these days. There are newspaper articles all the time – I met my husband on the Internet, romance on the Net, finding a partner online, cyberlove. You can’t pretend you haven’t heard of online dating!’

  ‘But Dad’s too old!’

  Polly crossed her arms and looked at me. ‘My grandma’s on Two’s Perfect,’ she said slowly, ‘and she’s talked to lots of guys ... I mean, men. She’s had five dates in as many months and she’s in the Really Old bracket.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I didn’t realise. I thought it was all ... you know...’

  ‘There are genuine lonely people out there looking for soul mates.’

  Polly should have been aiming at advertising as a career rather than changing the world. She could be annoying.

  ‘Okay, okay, forget the guilt trip. How are we going to find my dad an online date when he hates technology these days?’

  ‘Simple.’ Polly was utterly confident. I stared at her. ‘We set it up,’ she said and spread her arms out wide as though I should have guessed that was all we needed to do.

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  Polly had already moved to her computer, turned it on and was typing in the password as I spoke. ‘We log into an online dating site pretending to be him and then engage some likely partners in conversation.’

  ‘So we’re matchmaking? On the Internet? For my dad?’

  ‘Yes, that sounds about right.’

  ‘It sounds awful,’ I said, thinking about it. ‘Polly, it sounds really awful. As though he isn’t old enough to make his own decisions. And as though we are. We can’t pretend to be him. It’s ridiculous. Also, it’s probably illegal.’

  ‘Either this or he goes downhill. That’s what is causing his depression, Magenta, it’s lack of love. Look at it. When did your mum leave – about three, four years ago? Yes? She’s got Trib. Your dad has no one and he’s recently been retrenched from his job. He needs someone to love. He’s lost it all.’

  ‘He’s got me,’ I said indignantly.

  ‘You’re around no matter what,’ Polly said coolly, ‘you’re a given. That doesn’t mean you’re not important,’ she said quickly, catching my gaze, ‘just that you don’t necessarily alter the outcome.’

  ‘Gee, thanks.’ I’d hoped she would catch the sarcasm in my tone, but she didn’t look up from the keyboard.

  ‘Now we have to create his profile. You know, work out what makes him attractive to women.’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s kind of disgusting, isn’t it?’

  ‘Head out of the gutter, Magenta. It means, is he kind to animals? Does he love his children? That kind of thing.’

  ‘I don’t like it and I don’t think he would either.’

  ‘Well, what are you going to do then?’ Polly asked reasonably. ‘Wait until he’s a basket case and it’s too late, or strike while the iron is hot?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said reluctantly, ‘what do we write?’

  ‘You’re the writer,’ Polly said, ‘that’s your job.’

  ‘You’re joking! How would I know what to write?’

  ‘We’ll do some research,’ Polly said, sitting down in the computer chair. ‘It’s got to be simple, thousands and thousands of people do it.’

  Suddenly we were on an Internet dating site, watching photos of random people popping on to the screen. Some of them in couples with big smiles, others were single, but still smiling. ‘Meet Melissa or Joe or Bridie,’ the captions read. ‘Click here.’

  ‘We do a search,’ Polly said, ‘for men your dad’s age.’

  ‘This is tacky,’ I said, watching her fill in the details. ‘Really, Polly.’

  ‘Are you calling my grandmother tacky?’ Polly was too busy typing to be really annoyed.

  ‘No – us doing this is tacky.’

  She shrugged. ‘You won’t be saying that if we find your dad someone,’ she said.

  ‘They all more or less say the same thing,’ I said, reading over her shoulder.

  ‘Then it should be easy to write. You ready?’

  Actually, it was harder than we expected. Finally we decided that we’d be halfway honest and I’d write up Dad’s profile as though he’d asked me to.

  ‘Decided to get my daughter to write this,’ I wrote, ‘after all, she’s known me for the longest time.’

  ‘What about his mum?’ Polly said. ‘She’d have known him for longer.’

  ‘She’s dead. Anyway, you wouldn’t want your mum filling in this kind of stuff,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, that’s true. What are you going to say?’

  ‘Okay – how does this sound? My dad’s a terrific friend, always good in a crisis. He’s someone you can tell anything to because he really listens. He’s into important things like saving the planet and gardening. But why don’t you see for yourself and contact him? Do you think I should say something nasty about him so it sounds more real?’

  ‘No, none of the others we’ve read have. I think it sounds great. Now, let’s fill in the rest. What kind of music does he like?’

  The rest was surprisingly difficult. For a start we just said old music and hoped that would work. I had to skip the book section altogether because I couldn’t remember anything Dad read, except books on World War Two and we both thought that would be against him.

  ‘We can always go back and change it,’ Polly said, ‘when we do more research. Plus, we’ll need a photo and we’ll have to set up a Hotmail account for him.’

  ‘We won’t be able to contact anyone,’ I said after we’d gone back and looked at the rules. ‘We can’t afford to buy these stupid stamps or whatever they are.’

  ‘No, we can’t, but if someone sees your dad and likes the look of him, she might contact him.’

  ‘I don’t think this works,’ I said gloomily, ‘it’s just stupid to think that there are people checking into this every day hoping they’re going to meet someone. I mean, your grandmother’s one thing, she’s really old. But anyone else? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Don’t you ever read the paper?’ Polly asked. ‘There have been articles on how many people have met online and got married. Got married!’

  ‘You know I don’t read the paper. Anyway, half the stories are exaggerated.’

  ‘Look,’ Polly said, sounding exasperated, ‘you have to have a bit of faith, Magenta. You’re getting as gloomy as your dad. In fact, you’re the one sounding depressed, if you ask me.’

  ‘I’m not, honest. I just don’t see how...’

  ‘Have some faith,’ Polly repeated. ‘Come on, Magenta. Let’s look up love potions – just in case.’

  The Chronicles of Forrdike Castle

  By the time I got home from Polly’s the next day it was raining. I was going to ring and congratulate her but didn’t want the power going to her head. Still, it was uncanny.

  ‘Do you believe in magic?’ I asked Dad after breakfast.

  ‘Magic?’ Dad repeated. ‘As in magicians?’

  ‘As in witches.’

  ‘That’s a tough question. I do think strange things happen that defy logic or science. Perhaps there are people who can focus these events in some way. Of course, in the old days people were called witches just for having some herb lore or healing skills. Mainly women. They burnt them at the stake.’

  A brilliant idea came into my mind. I could include a witc
h burning in my novel. Perhaps Lady Rosa would intervene at the last moment. It would add drama. My novel lacked drama.

  ‘Of course, some would argue that women have always been punished for exercising any power...’ Dad was still talking. I stifled a yawn and tried to look as though I was paying attention. I could make the witch a little like Polly, I thought. She’d be an apprentice witch, rather than a real one.

  ‘You can look up the Salem witch trials on the Internet,’ Dad was saying, ‘and the library would have material on them, too.’

  ‘Great,’ I said, tuning in. It could be useful if I wanted historical accuracy.

  ‘Job day,’ Dad said, and he sounded a little gloomy. Dad spent Sunday applying for jobs. It was his system. Dad loved systems. He reckoned they made life work. I didn’t think that was necessarily true. I’d overheard Mum telling Trib that Dad even had a system for keeping their marriage together. That clearly hadn’t worked.

  Back in those days all Dad’s gadgets had beeped and buzzed at regular intervals, keeping his systems intact. These days, of course, he had downsized and our house was mercifully quiet. He wrote important dates in the Guide Dog calendar that hung in the kitchen. I suppose that counted as a low-tech system of sorts. He had a high-tech watering system for the vegie garden that involved the bath water and the rain tank. A library book rotation system that kept the overdue fines at bay, too.

  I also had a system. While Dad spent Sundays applying for jobs, I wrote my fantasy novel. I was handwriting it in a great thick notebook my mother gave me. On the front page I had written in my best writing:

  The Chronicles of Forrdike Castle: A Fantasy Novel in Three Volumes

  Volume One

  And on the first page inside I had written the cast of characters:

  Cast of Characters

  Rosa Burgundy – sixteen years old and the main character

  Lady Tamsin – Rosa’s mother

  Lord Burgundy – Rosa’s father, missing somewhere in the Southern Isles, presumed dead