The Key to the Indian Read Free

that if there really was a camping holiday in prospect, they’d better do some serious planning, not go at it half-cocked like last time. Gillon was already leafing through the Yellow Pages looking for suppliers of camping equipment, and Adiel was asking if they could go as far as Dartmoor, where they could really feel they were away from civilisation. Their dad was giving every impression of being absolutely serious about the whole project. Only Omri hadn’t joined in.
    “When could we do it?” said Adiel, who seemed quite fired up now.
    “Oh, I thought in the half-term holiday,” said their father.
    “Great! Let’s go for it!”
    “There’s a firm here says they do luxury tents,” said Gillon. “No point spending money on some ratty old tent that’ll drop to pieces or let the rain in.”
    “No point spending money on some palatial tent that you’ll only use once, if that,” said their mother. “I’ll believe allyou laid-back city types are going camping when I actually see it.”
    “Well, you won’t see it, Mum,” said Adiel reasonably. “You’re not coming, are you.”
    Their mother stopped in the doorway with a pile of dirty plates and there was a moment’s silence. Then she turned and regarded them all with narrowed eyes.
    “Well now. Maybe you’d better not count on that. I happen to be the only one in this entire family who has actually had some camping experience. Oh yes!” she added as they all gawked at her, “I was quite the little happy camper when I was in the Girl Guides.”
    “Mum! You weren’t a Girl Guide ! You couldn’t have been!” they all – even Omri – yelled.
    She drew herself up. “And why not? As a matter of fact I was a platoon leader. I had more badges than anyone else.”
    “How many?”
    “Eleven and a half. So there.” She turned, walked out, head in air.
    “What was the half-badge for?” their dad called after her.
    “Making a fire without matches,” she called back. “Only it went out.”
    They were all silent for a moment. Then Gillon went back to the Yellow Pages. “ Five -man tents, five -man tents,” he muttered.
    “I wish I were a cartoonist,” said their father. “I would love to draw your mother smothered with badges, lighting a fire without matches.” He winked at Omri. It was one of his slowwinks, a wink that said, You and I know what this is all about . But Omri didn’t. All he knew was that he couldn’t wait to get his dad alone and find out.

2

The Wrong Shape
    “O f course we’re not really going camping, Dad?”
    Omri had managed to get his dad to himself by following him out to his studio across the lane. His father was putting the finishing touches to a large painting of a rooster. He was very into roosters since they moved to the country, but they got weirder and weirder. This latest one looked more like an armful of coloured rags that’d been flung into the air. But Omri liked it somehow. It was like the essence of rooster – all flurry and maleness – rather than the boring, noisy old bird itself.
    “Well,” said his dad, tilting his head to one side andstanding back with his palette. “I hadn’t planned that we should. I didn’t think the boys would go for it the way they did. Never mind your mother! Really, she is full of surprises…” He stepped up to the easel and put a streak of red near the top of the canvas, like a cock’s comb while the cock is in flight. “… so I’ve changed my plan. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll arrange that Gillon and you and I will go on a preliminary trip, a sort of dummy run, to Dartmoor to pick out a suitable site and so on, while Adiel’s away at school, and then we’ll do it on a weekend when Gillon won’t want to come.”
    “Why won’t he?”
    “We’ll fix it so he won’t.”
    “How?”
    “Watch the forecasts. Pick a very wet weekend when there’s something good on the box.”
    “And then?”
    “And then, my hearty, outdoor lad, you and I will go off