Dizzy Read online

  When I’ve got the base sorted, Storm moves in to do the fiddly bits and I move on to sponge yellow and orange all over a would-be tiger. I get better, faster. There’s no time to be shy, and the kids aren’t picky, anyway. They smile, they wriggle, they ask to be turned into cats and lions and witches and flowers.

  ‘What a team,’ Storm grins, setting loose her third butterfly of the afternoon. ‘Way to go, Dizz, babe.’

  We paint for hours, until just about every kid at the festival is bold and bright and beautiful. We charge a pound a face, 5op for arms and tattoos, free for anyone who knows Storm or anyone who hasn’t got the cash on them right now. We make £3.50.

  We stop for orange juice and Storm paints a curling, sweeping vine with soft, green leaves and tiny blue flowers spiralling round my arm. The brush tickles my wrist, then moves up to flicker softly across my face. When I glance in the cracked mirror, I see green lips, blue flower cheeks, emerald eyelashes spiralling out from around my eyes.

  ‘My turn,’ Storm says, presenting her thin, tanned face to be painted. I sponge it purple, adding swirls of pink and white, like the paisley-patterned quilts in the tepee.

  The adults are stopping by now, some for a painted tattoo on a cheek or arm or shoulder blade, some for a full-face fantasy, a bird of paradise, a field of flowers, a summer sky.

  I see Mouse watching from a distance, his pale face pinched and serious. I wave him over, but he blanks me.

  Little girls start to appear with crowns made of willow, wildflowers and ribbon. Tess says they’re selling them over by the other tepees, a quid a time. She’s got one, a bright halo on her long, dark hair. I dive into the tepee and grab my camera so I can capture first Tess, then Storm.

  People are spreading blankets and rugs across the centre clearing, bringing picnic baskets, cool boxes, carrier bags of food for the solstice picnic. A couple of blokes are selling lager, crisps, lemonade, bottled water, chocolate. Another slowly pushes a wheelbarrow laden with slabs of beer and bottles of cider up from the car park.

  Tess has changed into a green velvet dress, and Storm appears in a white vest and pink crinkly trousers that billow down to her feet. When she moves, a million tiny bells jingle – she has soft cotton bands stitched with tiny silver bells tied round her ankles.

  She scoops the face paints into a bag and heads off up the hill. She doesn’t ask me to come. She leaves behind the cracked mirror, a gleam of silver in the yellowed grass. I pick it up.

  The drumbeat is back, a low, steady pulse. The beardy guy, Carl, tunes up his fiddle. People sit down to eat and drink, because it’s evening now, and the celebrations are about to begin.

  The eldest neon sister, now a pink and blue butterfly in a pink embroidered dress, appears at my side.

  ‘Shall I do your hair?’

  She slips her hand into mine, and we sneak into the cool twilight of the tepee.

  I change into clean jeans and a fresh T-shirt, taking care not to smudge the face paint. She unravels my plaits, spreading the hair out across my shoulders.

  ‘My name’s Cara,’ she says as she brushes it smooth. ‘I’m eight. How old are you?’

  ‘Twelve,’ I tell her.

  ‘Can you sit on your hair?’ she asks.

  ‘Almost.’

  She bites her lip and studies me seriously, like I’m her favourite Barbie doll. Then she pulls off her flowery crown and unknots two of the ribbons from the back, one red, one green. She combs out a slim hank of hair at the front, holds the red ribbon tightly at the top, and tells me to plait. I weave the ribbon in and out, making a long skinny plait, then do the same to the other side.

  ‘I do this for my sister,’ she says.

  ‘You’re very clever,’ I tell her, and mean it. I pick up the cracked mirror and peer into it. I can hardly recognize myself beneath the swirls of face paint. Thick, mouse-brown waves fly out around my face. I will wear my hair loose more often. I look different, older, wilder.

  I don’t look scared any more.

  By the time the picnic’s over, it’s almost dark. We trail up through the woods carrying lanterns, the drumbeat pounding and the fiddle singing squeakily as we crunch through the bracken and dead twigs. Cara and her little sister, Kai, hang on to my arm, dragging me forwards, pulling me back.

  We leap the stream, and minutes later we’re out of the woods again, on the hilltop.

  ‘Wow!’

  Huge rainbow flags and pennants flutter from tall poles, and a low boom of music floats down towards us from a cluster of rocks where someone has set up a generator, a CD player and a tiny stage made of planks and pallets. Two small dome-tents sit slantwise on the grass, looking like they’re about to slide downwards. And on the hilltop stands the bonfire, a towering mound of logs and branches and boxes and splintered, smashed-up wood, silhouetted against the evening sky.

  Suddenly the music dies and the drumbeat starts again, building slowly to a loud, thumping beat. A tall figure appears round the side of the hill, carrying three blazing sticks. His face and arms are painted with leaping flames, overlapping colours of red and orange and yellow. It’s only because of his hair and his tattered jeans that I know it’s Zak.

  He lifts the three firebrands high and hurls one upwards, then all three are flying in perfect, swooping curves, through the air and down again to his waiting hands. I see Mouse watching, his eyes shining.

  Zak juggles the firesticks higher and higher, on and on, until at last he throws one burning stick after another into the bonfire. As the flames lick gently around the scrunched-up newspaper and dry moss stuffed in among the wood, there’s a huge bang behind us and the darkening sky explodes into millions of soft white stars.

  ‘Fireworks!’ shriek Cara and Kai, jumping up and down.

  That’s what was in the flat boxes Zak and Mouse were carrying.

  There are rockets, fountains, screamers, even Catherine wheels tacked to the flagpoles. Someone’s given sparklers to all the kids, and they write their names in the air, drawing zigzags, spirals, stars. The lanterns glow in stained-glass colours and the bonfire is blazing now, a roar and crackle of flames above us.

  As the fireworks end, the music starts up again, and Storm swirls past me, a small, skinny whirlwind, grabbing my hand, dancing me round. Cara hangs on to my other hand, and everywhere now people are putting down their lanterns and joining on till there’s a big line of people dancing, snaking round the hill, closer and closer to the big bonfire.

  Carl runs along the line in the opposite direction, squealing his fiddle, raking the bow back and forth across the strings as his fingers fly. After him come the drummers, then a woman with a guitar, Zak juggling, Amber shaking a tambourine that trails ribbons.

  I see a boy playing a tin whistle, his face painted with dozens of curling green leaves, dark, mossy, dreadlocked hair flopping forwards across blue-grey eyes.

  Finn.

  I dance until my breath is ragged, until we’ve circled the hill three times at least, until the line is breaking up and Cara and Kai and countless others have peeled away to find a drink, catch their breath, recover.

  Those of us who are left drift up to the plank-and-pallet stage, where a CD player is belting out Oasis. For a while it’s just Storm and me, our feet stamping a path round each other, our bodies arching, swerving, arms stretched out, fingers splayed, circling each other, laughing, gasping, dancing. Then Zak whirls in and grabs her hands and I back off, slow down and go in search of water.

  It costs me a quid for what’s meant to be fizzy spring water and turns out to be the warm, brackish stuff from the standpipe down at the camp. At least it’s wet. I look for my lantern and find a different, abandoned one. I rescue it and sit down by the stage to watch Storm.

  She’s like a beautiful, exotic stranger. She’s small, lean, brown, her shaven head thrown back as she dances, eyes closed now, lips parted, blissed out. The stud in her eyebrow glints in the light from a dozen tissue-paper lanterns. Her elbows jab and her arms flail
as she twists and turns.

  She’s incredible, electric, unstoppable. Her energy could fuel this whole festival for a week.

  The kids shimmy round her and beam when she touches their hair. The men watch her, too, their eyes held captive by her smile. Some of them dance near her, flirting, showing off, and she rewards them with a wink, a grin. Zak lets his hands skim over her face, staking his claim, but even he can’t keep up with her. A few minutes later, he’s picking up his juggling batons, heading back into the darkness, and Storm dances on.

  She’s my mum, although I’m not allowed to call her that, and I don’t really know her, not yet. But I will.

  Finn sits down beside me in the dark. ‘Like it?’ he asks, his face a dark shadow, forest green.

  ‘Love it,’ I say. ‘It’s unreal. I didn’t know you played the tin whistle.’

  Finn shrugs. ‘I like music – and at a festival, anyone who plays anything gets roped in. You play guitar? I saw you carrying one yesterday.’

  ‘I’m not very good yet,’ I admit. ‘I’m learning, at school.’

  ‘Maybe I could show you a few chords.’

  ‘OK, great. D’you play anything else?’ I ask.

  ‘Piano, a bit of flute,’ Finn says. ‘It’s what I want to do, music. Go to music college, or start a band, or both.’

  ‘That’s what you’re going to do when you’re through with festivals.’

  Finn laughs. ‘I will,’ he says. ‘You just wait and see.’

  I believe him.

  ‘Your hair looks way better, loose,’ he says, sipping a can of Coke.

  ‘Your face looks way better, painted,’ I retort.

  ‘Watch it. I asked for that, I s’pose. It’s just, you look older, y’know?’

  ‘I know. You look – well, sort of greener. Like you’re…’ I search for something clever to say. ‘Branching out?’

  ‘OK, OK,’ he says. ‘Enough. Let’s just leaf it…’

  ‘Ouch. Truce?’

  ‘Truce,’ he agrees.

  We wander over to the giant bonfire, watching the flames leap upwards into the night. It’s so hot, you can’t stand too close, so we sit side by side on a fallen tree, cheeks burning, backs shivery.

  ‘There’s baked apples for later,’ Finn says. ‘You know, with raisins and honey where the core should be, all wrapped in foil. Tess put them in the embers earlier on, fifty or so of them.’

  ‘I like your mum,’ I say.

  ‘I like yours.’

  Before I can interrogate him on the subject of Storm, though, a small, pale-faced child moves round the bonfire in front of us. Mouse is staring into the flames, transfixed, his eyes huge, his mouth open.

  He’s far too close, but he doesn’t seem to feel the heat. As we watch, he picks up a long, charred stick and prods it into the depths of the fire. The burning logs shift, crackling, the topmost branches collapse inwards and a blazing pallet crashes forwards, within inches of Mouse. A fresh wave of flames and sparks flare up, hissing.

  ‘Mouse!’

  Finn’s on his feet in a second, pulling the stick from Mouse and throwing it into the fire.

  ‘Mouse, that’s not safe, pal,’ he says, bending down. ‘Fire’s dangerous, you could hurt yourself. You have to treat it with respect.’

  Mouse glares, his bottom lip jutting.

  ‘You scared us, Mouse,’ I chip in. ‘Those burning branches could have fallen on you.’

  He doesn’t even look at me.

  ‘Want a drink?’ Finn asks gently, offering him his Coke. Mouse snatches the can and walks away.

  ‘That kid has a problem,’ I say to his retreating back.

  ‘More than one,’ Finn agrees.

  I’m all partied out. I’ve danced so much my feet are aching, even though the music is soppy and ancient and sometimes seriously dodgy.

  Finn gets to play the tin whistle some more, up on the makeshift stage with Carl the beardy guy, the guitar woman and the drummers. It isn’t exactly a band, and it’s a million miles from being cool, but it’s fun and it’s loud and everyone is dancing or watching or singing along.

  Later, Finn borrows the guitar and sits on the edge of the stage to sing a few songs I don’t recognize. Nobody pays much attention, just me and Tess and a couple of blitzed-looking crusties. I see Mouse, sitting to one side of the stage, his arms round Leggit, his little face pale and intense in the moonlight, watching, listening.

  When I look round again, he’s gone.

  Further up the hillside, a few bodies lie flat out on the grass, staring at the sky or snoring loudly where they’ve fallen. The music gets slower, softer. The dancing stops. Tess sits by the stage with a blanket wrapped round her, telling bedtime stories to a knot of kids too stubborn or too stoked up on the E-number punch to give in to exhaustion.

  Storm sits by the bonfire, watching the stars. She points out the Great Bear and the Little Bear, telling me how the Roman god Jupiter made them when he bewitched a beautiful woman and her son and threw them up into the sky.

  ‘See those bright stars along the tail of the Great Bear,’ Storm says softly, ‘like a saucepan with a crooked handle? That’s the Big Dipper. If you line up the two stars at the end of the Dipper, they point to a big, bright star at the tip of the Little Bear’s tail. That’s the Pole Star, the most magical star in the sky. You can always see it, anywhere you are in the northern hemisphere. I’ve seen it in Nepal, and in Morocco. Wherever you are, Dizz, make time to look at the stars.’

  ‘They don’t have stars in Birmingham,’ I tell her. ‘The sky’s all orange from all the millions of streetlamps. You can’t see anything else.’

  Storm ruffles my hair. ‘Hey, the Pole Star is always there,’ she says. ‘Even in Birmingham. Even if you can’t see it. Might be too bright from the streetlamps, might be too cloudy, but that star is always there. Remember that.’

  ‘I will.’

  When the sun finally comes up, it’s like someone’s spread a bright tie-dye quilt all over the valley below us. The sky is streaked with pink and mauve and soft, pale yellow, and then the sun appears, a big circle of shimmering pink and gold.

  ‘That’s it, then, for another year,’ Finn says. ‘You tired?’

  ‘Mmm,’ I say dreamily, but I’ve gone past tired, past hungry, past everything. My eyes are wide open, gritty, aching. My bare feet are stained green and brown from the grass and mud, because I took my trainers off hours ago to dance, and now I can’t find them.

  I look at Finn, his face-paint streaked into a mess of smears.

  ‘Your leaves are falling,’ I tell him.

  ‘You can talk,’ he counters. ‘You look like you’ve had a fight with an extra-large pizza.’

  ‘I wish!’

  We mooch around the hillside, looking for my trainers. I find one stranded in the middle of the grass and one, slightly singed, at the edge of the smouldering bonfire.

  A convoy of hippy blokes head off down the hillside with the amps, speakers and generator. Clumps of people head back down to the camp, trailing tattered lanterns.

  Finn and I wander downhill, picking our way around the diehard revellers who just can’t leave. Carl is still playing the fiddle, a mournful salute to the rising sun. Halfway down the hill, Storm and Zak sit sharing a ciggy, squinting into the distance, holding hands.

  ‘Dizzy, babe,’ says Storm sleepily as we go past.

  I turn back on impulse and duck down to plant a quick kiss on her neck. My mum, human whirlwind, dancing queen, total party animal.

  Her face-paint tattoos are streaked and smudgy, and there are wrinkles around her eyes, across her forehead. She looks small and tired and vulnerable, but the stud in her eyebrow gleams golden and proud.

  Down by the dome-tents, Cara’s mum is trying to shake her awake.

  ‘Want a piggy-back?’ Finn asks gently, and Cara nods, bleary-eyed. He squats down and Cara climbs on, arms hooking tightly round Finn’s neck. We go slowly through the woods, splash across the stream. I t
ake a detour to peer into the little den, and there’s Mouse, collapsed on top of his sleeping bag, Leggit’s hairy face snuffled into his neck.

  We reach the camp and Finn finds a last burst of energy from somewhere, galloping down through the trees, leaping guy-ropes and racing around the tents whooping while Cara screeches with delight. A crusty bloke with bloodshot eyes crawls out of a tent and lets loose a torrent of swear words. Finn skids to a halt in front of him, dropping a deep bow and letting Cara slip gently to the ground.

  ‘Idiot,’ Tess says, affectionately. ‘People are trying to sleep.’

  ‘But it’s morning! Time to get up, get moving, get happy!’

  ‘No,’ says Tess firmly. ‘Time to wash, eat and go to bed. Don’t argue.’

  Cara wanders off to find her mum, and Finn and I flop down next to Tess. There’s a bowl of warm, soapy water and a flannel, and I wash my face as best I can. Tess takes the flannel and wipes the bits I’ve missed, then scrubs at Finn’s face like he’s six years old. He grins at me, brown and shiny and dripping wet.

  Tess makes mugs of hot apple juice. We scoff down muesli and chopped bananas, and then I’m yawning, fading fast. I say goodnight to Tess and Finn and drift over to the tepee.

  I pause for a moment in the doorway, looking out across the camp. The multi-coloured tents are sleeping now, and it’s quiet except for a distant drumbeat and the sound of a dog barking, up in the woods.

  The morning light is thin and pink and dappled, like the world is all brand new.

  I sleep all day, wake up in time for a bowlful of Tess’s vegetable soup, and then sleep again. Staying up all night is pretty exhausting. The camp is full of sleepy, lazy people, smiling, smoking, trying to recover.

  The day after, Finn and I scour the hillside around the embers of the solstice bonfire, filling bin bags with cans and bottles and rubbish. The bottles go into one bag, the cans into another, the rubbish into a couple more. We find dead fireworks, lost ribbons, sweet wrappers, cigarette stubs, smashed willow lanterns, scorched jam jars.