A Clock or a Crown?

By Caroline Logue

Illustrated by Sarah Bowie

SUITCASES: A CLOCK OR A CROWN?

First published in 2015 by

Little Island Books

7 Kenilworth Park

Dublin 6W

Ireland

Text © SP McArdle 2015

Illustrations © Sarah Bowie 2015

The author has asserted her moral rights.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in a retrieval system in any form or by any means (including electronic/digital, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise, by means now known or hereinafter invented) without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1910411-29-2

A British Library Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image by Sarah Bowie; designed by Martin Reilly.

Printed in Poland by Drukarnia Skleniarz.

Typeset by Martin Reilly in Merriweather (by Ebin Sorkin) and Elsie Swash Caps (by Alejandro Inler).

Little Island receives financial assistance from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaion and from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

The Very Beginning

The Middle Beginning

The End Beginning

Chapter One

Chapter One-and-a-half

Chapter Two

Chapter Three-and-rewind

Chapter Three-back-again

Chapter Four

Chapter Four-and-more

The Beginning End

The Middle End

The Very End

The History Bit

The Thank-you Poem

For Carolines and Johns,
Emilys and Matthews,

and the rebel-yell
children in all of us.

Acknowledgements

Many people helped to get A Clock or a Crown? into print, most particularly Siobhan Parkinson, publisher and editor at Little Island. Thanks also to Grainne Clear of Little Island and Yasmin O’Grady of A Country House Writers’ Weekend. Thanks beyond thanks to all my friends for their unswerving encouragement, especially Colleen and Ros. And eternal gratitude to my maternal grandmother, Caroline Logue, who died when I was six. By all accounts she was an amazing teacher, so I really hope she would have approved of this book and been proud that I borrowed her name for it.

About the Author

Caroline Logue lives in Dublin and has a secret life as a journalist and travel writer. She also writes short stories, poems and radio plays, but this is her first proper bit of writing (because it’s for kids!). When she needs an extra lick of inspiration she asks her tiny dog, Roly, as she seriously believes he’s magic.

The Very Beginning

As Jenny skipped into the wide hallway of the solid old farmhouse, her left hand began to tingle. It was as if it could already feel the doorknob heat off the Best Bedroom of All – the place where beginnings began.

They had arrived with a rasp of car brakes and a scrunch of garden gravel, followed by Mum and Dad’s soft voices being glad those windy lanes were behind them.

Aunty Jasmine had appeared straight away, framed in the double doorway, her toasty-brown skin making her teeth look even whiter. Her welcoming smile for Jenny was wide and her arms were wider still. She hugged her beloved niece.

Uncle Donal was so tall that Jenny had to crick her neck to look at him. But he quickly crouched to embrace her, making his thin legs superhero-bendy, like in cartoons.

As the four adults did smacky mwah-kisses on each other’s cheeks and their conversation buzzed like bees, Jenny stood apart and breathed deeply to quell the tingling that had spread from her fingers to everywhere else. A question mark was forming in her mind:

But Jenny didn’t dare gaze up the stairs towards the Best Bedroom of All. She always left That One for last. Other places had to come first, before the special adventures could begin.

Each time Jenny arrived at Aunty Jasmine and Uncle Donal’s country house, she greeted her least favourite creature – toothy old Mrs Croc – with two stubby kicks. So that’s what she did this time too. Duff! Duff!

A great-great-great explorer uncle of Aunty Jasmine’s had wrestled Mrs Crocodile to the ground in the steamy jungles of Africa years and years ago. These days the front half of Mrs Croc’s scaly body squatted silently in the hall outside the dining-room door, her savage teeth bared in a permanent snarl.

Owww, yelped Jenny (but only in her head, so as not to startle Mum) after her sharp kicks to Mrs C. She hopped from foot to foot in front of the empty fireplace until her burning toes cooled. I won’t do that so hard again!

If the black snoozy cat wasn’t on the massive red rug, and no-one was there to tell you to stop, you could do a long whooshy slide towards the bottom of the stairs. If you did it hard enough, you could get the whole way. And, luckily for Jenny, the black snoozy cat had just wandered off the rug.

Jenny glanced at Mum and Dad and Uncle Donal and Aunty Jasmine. They were wired deep into fast circles of conversation and taking no notice of her at all.

Whoooooooo-ssssss-hhhhhh!

As soon as she’d hopped from the scrunched-up rug to the first stair, Jenny turned to wave and catch her dad’s eye.

‘Upstairs.’ She pointed and mouthed at the same time.

Her father’s eyes crinkled in an encouraging grin. He gave her a high thumbs-up and then patted down his spiky fair hair.

‘See you later, Dad.’

In no time at all Jenny had reached Mr Leopard, who lay spreadeagled at the wide turn half-way up the staircase.

Mr Leoparg had had his sleek spotty coat sliced off by Aunty Jasmine’s bloodthirsty several-greats uncle, which Jenny often thought must have been really painful. Still, at least he didn’t hurt now, even when Aunty Jasmine and Uncle Donal and their friends and relations walked all over him. Years of feet had flattened Mr Leopard into a proper rug, although his ears still popped up, and the end of his raggedy tail, after the Sellotaped part, was oddly fat.

At the top of the staircase a landing with wooden railings went all the way around inside. Jenny wanted to say the highest part of the ceiling there was a rectangle shape, but it had curves at each corner so she knew that wasn’t quite right.

‘When you’re older and wiser, you’ll know a lot more words,’ Mum often said, as she helped Jenny find ones to match her thoughts. ‘Especially if you keep reading all those books you love so much.’

If you lifted your eyes to the place that was softer than a rectangle and then tilted your head, you could see the sky sideways through a joined-up necklace of windows.

Jenny was on the top stair now. Where It Happens was getting closer.

When she reached the wooden landing, Jenny always turned left.

The Middle Beginning

The tingling had been replaced by fluttery yawns and wake-up stretches in Jenny’s stomach.

Not tooo sooon. When her Sensible Self spoke in Jenny’s head she was hooty, like an owl. But soothing too, the way Mum sometimes spoke when Jenny felt sick or couldn’t sleep. Visit the other bedrooooms first. It might not haaappen this time. Not tooo sooon.

Take a step back and then run, run, run around the landing until you Get There, urged roller-skating Risky Self, Jenny’s impatient-opposite headstrong voice.

With a deep breath – nearly a sigh, but not quite – Jenny decided to be sensible. People somehow seemed to expect it, even if they hardly knew her, and Jenny had learned that if you do what people expect, they stay nicer for a lot longer. So, once again, her feet danced slowly – more slowly than she wanted – towards Where It Happens.

In and out of the bedrooms she went, peeking but being careful not to poke. Her girl cousin’s long pink fairy tale room was behind the first door, with lots of odd curly paintings in it that were stuck onto a sparkly silver notice board with funny-shaped magnets. Next door, Jenny’s boy cousin’s bedroom was papered with posters and posters of the same football team dressed in red, with their redder-faced manager always standing at one end, and wearing the same scruffy anorak to boot.

Hurry up, hurry up. It might have changed before you get there. Her Risky Self was getting restless, twirling her roller skates into bored circles in Jenny’s head.

Be quii-et, hooted her Sensible Self calmly. Only one raoom to go-o-o.

Jenny carefully shut the door on the red posters and walked on.

Aunty Jasmine and Uncle Donal’s bedroom was a lovely roomy room with shiny-knobbed brown furniture, a tall fabric headboard, splodgy curtains in the same material – and a rug that could never match anything. Aunty Jasmine had once told Jenny she absolutely adored that rug because Uncle Donal’s mother had made it with her very own hands. But her eyes had gone up towards the sky and rolled around in her head while she said it. The rug was stripy yellow and blue and green and red and black, and reminded Jenny of tropical fish colours.

The Beginnings had almost ended. At last Jenny stood in front of the Best Bedroom of All.

The doorknob felt fizzy and hot in her hand. She turned it to the left.