Dappled Annie and the Tigrish

  For my dappled children.—M.M.

  For my family…everywhere.—A.H.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1. A leaf

  2. The nest

  3. Robbie

  4. The wind

  5. Finding your feet

  6. The tigrish

  7. Through the hedge

  8. Taking to the air

  9. The Giant Woods

  10. The shinies

  11. Escape

  12. A hedge can fly

  13. To the lighthouse

  14. Hickory dickory

  15. The lamp

  16. Finding Bud

  17. What Hedges do

  18. Dappled Annie

  Thanks To —

  Copyright

  List of colour illustrations

  “This is dappled?”

  Annie ran out of the house

  It was darker here

  Annie stopped at the next window

  CHAPTER 1

  A leaf

  A leaf is just the beginning. Look closely and you will see it is leading you to a branch, and from that branch to another branch, and from a branch to a face. Annie had seen the faces in the hedge at the end of her garden since her father had brought the family to live in Winding Cottage. It was winter then, so she hadn’t gone for a closer look, but when it got warmer she found herself walking past the hedge one day and, without meaning to, she was inside it. That’s why she knew about the faces.

  Now it was summer and hot. The sun made her feet heavy and her head droop like a sunflower. Annie knew if she didn’t move quickly she’d be made to lie down inside and read a book, which was like being four again. Robbie, who was four, was asleep on the couch, his mouth wide open, a half-eaten honey sandwich squeezing through his fingers. It was the earthquake that had made them tired, shaking them awake just as the sun was coming up and the first birds were starting to sing.

  It was a rattler, not a roller—not big enough to break anything, but big enough to get them all out of bed and standing under door frames in case the roof fell in. Annie had been woken by the knives and forks chattering in the drawers in the kitchen and Robbie’s Matchbox cars making noises as if they were about to drive out of his bedroom and along the hallway. But it all stopped quickly enough and the birds started up again, and Annie and Robbie went yawning back to bed. Or rather they went back to their mother’s bed. With their father working up at the lighthouse, there was plenty of room there.

  Annie wasn’t tired now, she was hot. What she needed was to be somewhere cool.

  “I’m going to play in the hedge,” she said, leaning around the kitchen door, both feet on the porch outside, ready to go.

  Annie’s mother was sitting at the kitchen table, knitting socks for Annie’s dad to wear at the lighthouse in winter. They needed to be warm and they needed to be red. Red wool kept your feet warmer, said Annie’s mother. So a ball of raspberry-colored wool sat in her lap like a raspberry cat and on the table in front of her was a large pink teacup. Beside the teacup was a teapot with a knitted cover and a crossword-puzzle book.

  “Here’s one for you, Annie,” she said without looking up, “12 across: celestial body starting with s—four letters.”

  “Star.”

  Annie’s mother smacked her lips like a kiss. “Star,” she said, and wrote the letters into the boxes one by one. “Okay, 4 down. Eight letters and e is the second letter—”

  Annie started to move but her mother held up her hand: “Stop.” She wasn’t looking at Annie, she was looking at the kitchen clock. “Your dad should be back from the lighthouse by now.”

  “Oh,” said Annie. She was torn now between waiting and not waiting. She looked at her toes: go, not go, go, not go…one of them wiggled, all on its own.

  “He’s late. I wonder if the earthquake caused problems.” Annie’s mother put down her pencil and looked at the clock again, then picked up the knitting. Annie watched her fingers: under-over-through-and-off.

  “It was a rattler, Ma. Nothing big. He’s just busy.”

  Go, not go, go, not go…wiggle. Could toes move without being told to? Under-over-through-and…wiggle. They were telling her something.

  “A lighthouse shakes more than the house, especially up at the very top,” said Annie’s mother. She was looking towards the window as if she’d heard Annie’s dad wheeling his bicycle in through the gate. Annie listened, too. There was definitely something—the sort of thud-kerplump of his boots on the path—but it stopped as soon as it started.

  Her mother was looking straight at Annie now. Her eyes were so green it looked like she’d been swimming. Some days they didn’t look green at all. “You must be missing him,” she said. Which made something inside Annie go thud-kerplump.

  “I am.” She hadn’t thought about it, but now Annie realized it was true. Since Lew, the assistant lighthouse keeper, had broken his leg, her dad had to spend all night at the lighthouse doing his job and Lew’s job, and all day asleep. Usually he worked for only half the night, and then he’d come home and sleep for a while. Just a while, not all day. There’d been a problem with finding someone to do Lew’s job and it had made her parents cross.

  Annie couldn’t see her father in the day now, so she’d sneak in and watch him sleep instead. It would be dark in the bedroom because there were two layers of curtains to keep the sun out, but if she stood long enough she could see his sticky-up hair against the pillow and hear the snuffles of his breathing. He made her think of a hedgehog.

  Thing was, Annie’s father always thought of interesting things for her and Robbie to do over the summer: they’d help him paint the door of the lighthouse or collect flotsam on the beach or go on expeditions. But Annie’s best sort of expedition was just two of them: her and Dad. It could be anything, really, as long as Robbie didn’t come. Walks were good. With sugar sandwiches. She liked the quiet way they did things together. It felt like being wrapped up in a big blanket made of wind and grass and clicking cicadas. When Robbie came, it got noisy and worrying. He always seemed about to fall down steep banks or be chased by a bull.

  This summer, Annie had spent a lot of time in the hedge and learning to knit, and Robbie had played commandoes on his own or, now and then, with his friend Tom. Although even on his own, Robbie sounded like a whole army.

  Explosives in place, it’s about to blow.

  Roger that.

  K-K-K-Kapow.

  Dad was good at commandoes. He’d make lightning raids into the kitchen for sugar sandwiches and rig up complicated tents. Without him, Robbie spent a lot of time blowing up the clothes line, which Annie’s mother didn’t like because it got dirt on the sheets.

  “I miss your dad, too,” she said, “but we’ll have him back soon, don’t you worry. Lew’s replacement gets here tomorrow.” She stopped looking at the window in a wondering way and looked at Annie instead. “Off you go then and play in the hedge, but don’t climb through to the other side. Mr. Gregory moved the bulls into the back paddock yesterday.”

  “Okay.”

  “And when you get back, can you play with Robbie for a bit?” Her mother’s face had that I-know-I’m-asking-a-lot look. “I’ve just got the bit around the windows to do…” She was painting the bathroom aqua blue. It was taking forever. “Then we can plant some lettuces if you like.”

  Annie made a noise like air coming out of a balloon. “Do I have to play with him? He’s always so sticky.”

  “Just take him outside for a while—it doesn’t have to be commandoes—throw a ball or something.”

  “A sticky ball. Throw a sticky ball.”

  Annie’s mother lifted her eyebrows
. “Easier to catch?”

  Under-over-through-and-off.

  With off, Annie’s body, all of its own accord, slipped out the door, down the steps, into her waiting boots, and across the lawn. She felt like a ball of wool running away under the table but still attached to its needles. She looked back at the cottage while she ran—it was almost the exact same blue as the sky and the reflecting windows, so if she scrunched up her eyes it wasn’t there any more. Then she was almost at the hedge, and the house had disappeared completely behind a rose bush. Annie liked that feeling of being the only person around.

  Even though her mother couldn’t see what she was up to, Annie would still do what she’d been told. Not because there was anything to worry about on the other side (she’d watched Mr. Gregory shift the bulls out of the paddock first thing in the morning), but because the hedge wasn’t something to climb through, it was an adventure in itself. Ten small trees in a row—what her mother called shrubs—and Annie knew every one of them by name.

  There was Russell who rustled even when there wasn’t a breeze, Holly who was shy and spiky and tried not to rustle in case she scratched herself, and Sprout who had orange berries the size and shape of Annie’s thumb and yelled “hah!” every time a bird took one. Sid and Hog and Manny and Sylvie and George were there too, and, tucked in the middle, Mr. and Mrs. Hedge. They had first names like the others, but since they were the oldest shrubs in the hedge and therefore the most important, they’d asked Annie to call them Mr. and Mrs. Hedge. So she did. They called each other that, except sometimes when there was a particularly beautiful sunset or a new nest of eggs to look after, and then he’d call her Pitty and she’d call him Tup.

  So here’s Annie at the end of the garden in her garden boots—loppity loppity loppity—and Russell says, “Annie’s coming,” all airy and rustly, and his leaves shiver and show their pale underneaths. Being on the end of the hedge by the gate, he always rustles more than the other shrubs, especially when there are people and animals about.

  “Hi Russell.” Annie ran her fingers through his leaves, making him giggle. Holly was nodding “hello,” and Annie nodded back and kept her fingers to herself. Pale green leaves with soft edges frilled out of Holly’s dark spiky ones; behind them, her eyes shimmered in the gathered dark. Annie wasn’t close to Holly in the way she was to the other hedge plants, but one day soon she planned to put on gardening gloves and a cardigan and spend time with her.

  Sprout was waving, and his waving dislodged an enormous wood pigeon that flopped past Annie’s face—foomp foomp foomp—and the other trees waved, too: Sid’s red flowers with the yellow tips, George’s blue flowers, Sylvie’s skinny leaves that flashed silver. Then there was Manny with leaves like pins, and Hog who was busting out all over with skinny branches and water shoots.

  In the middle of the row were Mr. and Mrs. Hedge, beckoning for her to come. They had the knobbliest trunks of any of the shrubs and the strongest branches. Once upon a time when the garden had begun, they’d been on their own, just the two of them side by side—Tup’s shiny leaves as bright as mirrors reflecting Pitty’s wavy leaves on twiggy branches. That’s how Mrs. Hedge told it to Annie, anyway—how the two of them stood there looking straight ahead for months, then finally started looking sideways at each other (shyly, as she tells it), and then one day they said their names to each other.

  Pitty.

  Tup.

  After that, seedlings had been planted beside them in a line, one by one, year by year. Sylvie. Hog. George. Sid. Sprout. Holly. Manny. Russell. No plan to it, just shrubs chosen by the lighthouse keeper who lived in the cottage back then. Eventually Tup and Pitty began to lose their edges and become…well, it has to be said, a hedge.

  “I prefer hedgerow,” Mrs. Hedge said to Annie once. “A row of trees—all individual specimens. That’s us. Hedge sounds so ordinary.”

  But look, Mr. and Mrs. Hedge are still beckoning. They have something special to show Annie. They always do.

  *

  “Be quiet or you’ll scare them,” said Mrs. Hedge in a “be quiet” sort of voice which was actually quite loud because the cicadas were arguing again—whose suit? whose suit? whose suit?—through the hedge. Annie had looked for them as she’d climbed in, but as usual she couldn’t see a single one. She wondered if Robbie had thought about cicada camouflage. If he dressed like that, Ma wouldn’t be able to spot him out by the clothes line. She’d hear the noises but by the time she turned around it would be too late.

  Kapow.

  What Annie could see was a raggedy row of ants making its way up one of Mrs. Hedge’s branches and down the other side.

  “I bet they tickle,” said Annie.

  “Not really, love,” said Mrs. Hedge. “I barely notice them.”

  Annie had pulled herself on to a lower branch which was as thick as both her legs and both her arms put together, and she was standing now, trying to avoid the sharper branches. As she stood, she turned her head in the direction of Mrs. Hedge’s voice and found herself looking straight into a pair of eyes: green like her mother’s, but a speckled sort of green that quivered before darting back behind a leafy fringe.

  The faces in the hedge weren’t like human faces with one shape that stayed that way; they shifted depending on the time of day and what the wind and the sun were doing. And they kept to themselves, looking at people sideways and talking behind a handful of leaves. The quieter Annie was, the more she saw and heard—which suited her just fine. Today, she was being shown the nest.

  Annie had watched the fantails build it with grass and sticks and cobwebs, using their beaks for knitting needles and making the same noises her mother made: rustles and clicks. The nest was a small and perfect circle with a tail underneath, and as neat as a pair of wool socks. When it was ready, she had been allowed to climb up to see the small speckled eggs. Five! Like toes.

  Today, they’d hatched.

  CHAPTER 2

  The nest

  The hatchlings were difficult to see in the patches of shadow and light inside the hedge. It was the father bird darting in with an insect in his beak that made them spring up so Annie could see them properly. She watched the five tiny beaks pop open, greedy and yellow, and shout something that sounded like “pick me!” over and over, as loud and as fast as they could. But the father bird didn’t stop to choose. He shoved the squirming insect into the closest beak and left—not flying off in a straight line like other birds, but using his black and white fan to zig-zag through the branches and out over the lawn.

  The shouting in the nest died away, leaving only “pick” and “pick” and “pick” and a very quiet “me.” By then the cicadas had stopped arguing and were joining in: pick-pick-pick-meee, they said, on and on.

  Annie moved her hands up the thick branch, which looked rough but was in fact fuzzy like her dad’s face when he got home in the morning, and pulled herself closer to the nest. She laid her cheek against the branch and watched. The hatchlings weren’t pretty like human babies—they were ugly, their eyes covered by eyelids that looked like giant bruises, and they had orangey fluff on their naked heads.

  “Where’s their mother?” she said.

  “Probably gone off to make another nest,” said Mrs. Hedge. “It’s what fantails do. I’m here, though, and I haven’t lost a baby bird yet. They’re safe with me. I take great care to shelter them from rain and sun, and when the wind comes I hold tight to the nests to stop them falling. Not all shrubs take that trouble.”

  “Absolutely,” said Mr. Hedge. “She hasn’t lost a bird yet. People think hedges—”

  “—hedgerows—” said Mrs. Hedge.

  “—hedgerows are here to stop the wide world getting in and girls getting out, but we’re more important than that. We are the place between what is known and what is unknown, we are protection—”

  “—and shelter—” said Mrs. Hedge.

  “—and shelter, and we’re r-r-ready, Annie, whatever happens. R-r-r-ready for anything.”
He had a way of saying an r that sounded like marbles rolling around inside a jar. Annie caught a glimpse of his mouth. It was big and spiky with thin sticks at all sorts of angles—just like a nest.

  “Ready,” said Mrs. Hedge firmly, as if she were writing the word down with a very sharp pencil.

  “For tigrish,” said Mr. Hedge, nodding, “for example.”

  “Tigers?” said Annie.

  “Tigrish,” said Mr. Hedge, louder.

  Grish-grish-grish, said the cicadas.

  “Tigrish,” said Annie, laughing, and she let the word roll around in her mouth too. “I like the way you say it, Mr. Hedge, it sounds more exciting than tiger. It sounds as if it’s roaring and about to bite.”

  Mr. Hedge nodded more vigorously this time. “R-r-r-roaring,” he roared, and his breath smelled like her father after he’d mown the lawn. Annie heard Holly gasp and Sprout say “hah!” and “hah!” again.

  “They are more exciting than tigers, Annie, and more scary too,” said Mr. Hedge. “They do all sorts of things tigers can’t do—they’re bigger and stronger for a start. They could, if they wanted to, bite a little girl in two with one snap of their jaws—”

  “I’m not a little girl,” said Annie. “I’m nearly ten years old, which is like ten shrubs in a row, and that means I’m not scared of tigers or tigrish either.” She said it again. “Tigrish.”

  The cicadas joined in like an echo. Or a spell. Grish-grish-grish.

  Her mother told her that when she was uncertain about something, she should say the name of the thing out loud to herself to get a better understanding of it. A name has its own magic, she’d say. When you say it the right way, you learn what that magic is.

  “I dream about tigers sometimes,” Annie said. “Last night, I was in a circus and I held up a flaming hoop for a tiger to fly through.”

  “Are you sure it was a tiger?” said Mr. Hedge in a low sort of voice that made her feel like she’d done something wrong.