Farrant All About Pumpkin

COSTA AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR
Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-29800-6
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 3, 240 Seiten

Reihe: A Bluebell Gadsby Book

It's the summer holidays and Flora has gone off with Dad to the exotic set of his new film and Mum is at home having a much-needed rest with baby Pumpkin. Bluebell, Twig and Jas have been sent to stay with Grandma at Horsehill in the countryside. With Grandma keen that the children get as much fresh air as possible, they are sent off on bikes to go wild swimming and befriend the boys next door. With so much freedom, they can't help but get into trouble, and Grandma doesn't seem to be as capable as looking after them as she should be...

Natasha Farrant is the author of the Costa Award winning novel, Voyage of the Sparrowhawk, bestselling middle-grade novel, The Children of Castle Rock, the acclaimed Bluebell Gadsby series and Carnegie-longlisted and Branford Boase-shortlisted YA historical novel The Things We Did For Love. She was shortlisted for the Queen of Teen Award 2014. She lives in London with her family.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Farrant, Natasha

Leseproben

The Film Diaries of Bluebell Gadsby

Arrival

Plumpton railway station. A single track, an old stone platform, a bench, a low white building housing a ticket office (empty), toilets (closed), a café/newspaper/sweetshop (also closed). On the railway side, overgrown hedgerows bursting with cow parsley and brambles. On the Plumpton side, a road stretching one way into town, the other out towards the Devon countryside. The car park, mostly made of potholes, is empty. The whole scene bakes in the afternoon sun.

Two children sit in the shade of the station building. JASMINE (ten years old, long tangled black hair, sparkly flip-flops, not very clean dress) sits on top of her suitcase, eating chocolate biscuits and scowling. TWIG (twelve years old, skinny, brown hair flopping into his eyes) sits on the floor, reading Victor Hugo’s one-thousand-three-hundred-and-seventy-six-page novel Les Misérables. He mouths the words as his eyes follow them across the page. Their sister BLUEBELL (aka CAMERAMAN, fourteen) is off picture behind the camera she uses to record her family. She wears denim cut-offs, a purple T-shirt, faded green sneakers and tortoiseshell glasses. Her long brown hair hangs past her shoulders in two neat braids.

They are waiting for their grandmother.

JASMINE, to CAMERAMAN

Try calling her again.

CAMERAMAN (BLUEBELL)

I told you, there’s no signal. There’s never any signal here. She’s probably just stuck in traffic.

TWIG

She’s over an hour late.

JASMINE

What if she never gets here? What if she’s had an accident and died?

TWIG

We’d get the next train home.

JASMINE

(ignores him) What would happen to us without a telephone? We’d be stuck here for ever!

CAMERAMAN

(sounding a little disapproving) If Grandma died it would also be very, very sad.

TWIG

And a little bit our fault, seeing as she was driving here to pick us up.

JASMINE

But I don’t even want to be here!

Jasmine’s wails are cut short by the sound of an approaching engine. Camera turns to entrance of the car park. A Land Rover (the really old kind like you sometimes see in films) bounces towards them across the potholes, and stalls in front of them. Grandma waves cheerily out of the window.

Saturday 19 July

It was meant to be the four of us and Mum coming to Devon in the car, but then Twig dropped the baby on his head.

He was just trying to pick Pumpkin up from his cot because he was crying, but Pumpkin is really wriggly. It wasn’t a big drop. He only bounced a tiny bit on his mattress, but he howled for ages, it was five o’clock in the morning and Mum was even more tired than usual because Zoran and Gloria came for supper before he went to Bosnia to visit his sister, and they stayed for ages.

‘I was trying to help,’ Twig explained when Mum staggered into Pumpkin’s room to see what all the noise was, but she told him to just go back to bed.

‘I have had the most shocking night,’ she told Grandma on the phone this morning. ‘I am thoroughly exhausted and it’s not safe for me to drive. I’m afraid we shan’t be able to set out until I’ve had a nap.’

Grandma, who is often quite tactless and who shouts so loudly on the phone that everyone can hear her, yelled ‘REALLY, CASSIE, I SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT AFTER SIX BABIES YOU WOULD BE ABLE TO COPE!’ and Mum hung up and called Dad on his film set in New Zealand.

‘We’re about to start shooting,’ he told her.

‘I don’t care,’ she said.

She waved us out of the room. We tried listening at the door but we couldn’t hear anything except for when Mum shouted, ‘Why do you think I’m tired, David, I’m looking after four children single-handed; one never sleeps more than two hours at a time and the others are trying to kill him!’

Jas and I looked at Twig.

‘I was trying to help,’ he repeated.

‘I don’t care if it’s too much for your mother since her fall,’ Mum was yelling. ‘If she can’t cope with three responsible children without me there, then they can stay here. I can’t look after an old lady, three kids and a baby.’

‘Is Grandma the old lady?’ Twig whispered.

‘I suppose so,’ I said.

‘And are we the responsible children?’

‘You’re not,’ Jas said. ‘You’re a baby dropper.’

‘Shh,’ I said. ‘I think Mum’s crying.’

And then we all jumped up and pretended to be very busy on the landing as Mum came out of her room, sniffing a little bit and saying that if we hurried, we just had time to catch the 10.46 from Paddington.

‘I thought we were driving,’ Twig said.

‘I’m not coming to Devon.’ Mum couldn’t quite look at us as she said that, but I could see her eyes were red. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just for a little bit.’

‘But what about Pumpkin?’ Jas cried.

‘Also staying in London with me.’ Mum smiled, the way people do when they really hope you’re not going to make a fuss.

‘For how long?’ Twig asked.

‘A couple of weeks.’ She still couldn’t look at us. ‘Maybe three? I’m sorry, darlings. Just think of it like any other year. You always go to Grandma’s on your own.’

‘This is my first summer holiday with a baby brother,’ Jas declared. ‘If Pumpkin’s staying, so am I.’

Mum closed her eyes and said very calmly, ‘You are all going to Devon.’

Jas complained all the way to Paddington, but it didn’t change a thing, not even when she started to cry.

‘Be good for your grandmother,’ Mum said. ‘And I’ll see you soon.’

It’s not true that we always come to Devon on our own. Before Iris died, Mum and Dad always used to come too. This was supposed to be the year when Mum finally came with us again, and she was going to stay all summer because she’s on maternity leave until September.

She looked relieved as the train pulled out of the station. We all saw it. The train doors closed, and she held Pumpkin up and waved his little hand at us, and then her whole body relaxed as she buried her face in his neck.

‘Your fault,’ Jas snapped at Twig.

‘IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!’ he roared.

‘Please shut up,’ I said.

‘You can’t talk to us like that,’ Jas informed me.

‘I can, because I’m the oldest.’

‘You are not the oldest,’ Twig pointed out.

‘I am for as long as Flora’s with Dad in New Zealand,’ I said, and everyone sulked.

Grandma’s Land Rover has room for three in the front, with two benches facing each other in the back. It used to be blue, but over the years it’s faded to a sort of dark grey. The engine makes a rattling noise like it’s dying, you can’t lock the doors and there’s a hole in the roof, but Grandma loves it. Years ago, when she and Grandpa still had dogs and sometimes sheep, they put a dog guard separating the front from the back, and they never took it away. The result is that anyone who goes in the back always ends up feeling like they should really be an animal, especially as Grandma has never bothered to clean it up. There are still dog blankets all over the floor, and a stainless steel water bowl, at least four leads and quite a lot of straw.

When we were little, we used to curl up on the floor and pretend to be puppies.

‘Get in, get in!’ Grandma cried. ‘The sun is shining and the garden awaits!’

‘You’re late,’ Jas informed her, climbing into the back.

‘Only a few minutes!’ she carolled.

‘Over an hour.’

‘SHALL WE GO CROSS COUNTRY?’ Grandma didn’t wait for an answer, but veered suddenly off the road onto a farm track.

Bowling across the countryside with the windows wide open, hedgerows bursting with flowers, the bright blue sky above and the wind whipping through my hair, I almost forgot about everything – Mum not coming, and Pumpkin, and Iris. The track came to an end and we were back on the single-track road across the moor. The landscape opened up, the moor spread out on either side as far as we could see, and despite everything I felt a bubble of excitement at being here. I peered through the dog guard into the back. Jas was still sulking. Twig was hanging on to a hand strap with his eyes closed and his face turned into the wind.

‘Woof,’ I said. Twig opened his eyes and smiled.

‘Woof woof,’ he replied.

And then we turned off the road onto the private lane down to Horsehill. The trees thickened as we came off the moor, and the lane became less tarmac and more grass and moss, and we were driving through the old white gate into the gravel courtyard and there was the house, all grey stone and big windows, and we were here.

‘Home!’ Grandma stalled again and pulled on the handbrake. She clambered down from the Land Rover and reached under her seat for a walking stick.

‘Since when do you use that?’ I asked.

‘Just get those cases into the house,’ she said, and hobbled away from the car.

‘Why’s she walking like that?’ Jas asked.

‘She had that fall.’ I frowned, remembering. ‘Right after Pumpkin was born. It was raining and she slipped. Mum was upset because Dad spent all the Easter holidays shuttling between London and here.’

‘But that was ages ago,’ Jas said.

‘She seems...