“The old man won’t like it,” said Zak again to no one in particular as he stopped to stare around him. “His butterflies are being disturbed.”
Chapter Three
Hyslop and Vanessa leave Italy
“Get all your things together, your clothes and the books. Everything.” Vanessa appeared suddenly in Hyslop’s bedroom, pulling a jacket over her shoulders. “I’ve packed everything else. We’re leaving for the airport in an hour, so hurry up.”
This was how the flight to England was announced to Hyslop. She did not even have time to say goodbye to her friends at school, or to the teacher, Signora Zanetti. It had happened before when they had moved around in France and Italy to stay with the various Uncles. There was no point in complaining about it, however. Her mother’s decisions were like the weather; you might not like them but they were a fact of life, and you had to accept them. Protesting of any sort would be punished. There was, however, a new and terrifying aspect to this move: flying. She had never had to cross the sea in an aeroplane before. She had no memory of ever being in a plane and Hyslop felt uneasy. She needed someone to explain to her about flying, to tell her it would be all right. What were the statistics about plane crashes? She tried to conjure up a Nonna hug, but then remembered that she was leaving Italy, the land of Nonna, behind. Would Nonna be available to her in an aeroplane?
They were going to the land of her Godmother, Sandy.
The thought of meeting her Godmother was worrying enough, but first of all she had to survive the flight.
“Are there many accidents in aeroplanes?” she asked her mother from the back seat of Uncle Massimo’s red sports car as they headed for the airport. “I mean… you know… plane crashes.”
“What?” Vanessa stopped applying lip gloss and met Hyslop’s gaze in the car mirror with a scowl of irritation. “Accidents? What do you mean accidents? Oh my God, it’s your first flight isn’t it, Hyslop? Well, well! I hadn’t thought of that!”
Her mother’s tone was both amused and scornful. She explained the situation in Italian as if it were a joke to Uncle Massimo, but he just growled in reply. He was hunched over the steering wheel and he was not in a good mood.
“I was just wondering,” said Hyslop, “about accidents in aeroplanes. I don’t suppose they happen very often.”
“Well, of course there are accidents,” said Vanessa, reverting to English again. “Accidents happen all the time. Life is an accident, my dear. One enormous unpredictable great big accident. You and I are accidents… ” she paused, then gave a joyless laugh: “especially you, Hyslop.”
Hyslop was silent. She should have known better than to have shown fear to her mother. She dug her thumbnails into the flesh of her fingers and said nothing more.
The car stopped at a taxi rank with a squeal of brakes, and Uncle Massimo began talking rapidly in Italian to her mother. He seemed angry, not at all happy that they were leaving him and going to England. He thumped his fist on the roof his car, and cursed loudly. Hyslop was pleased that her mother had lied to him and said they were going to a place in the north of England called Newcastle, when in fact she knew that they were going to stay with the Sandy person somewhere about thirty miles from London. Her mother had told him they would only be gone for two or three weeks but Hyslop suspected that the move was more permanent. She had come to recognise the signs of her mother’s restlessness, the endless need to move on. The only good part about moving was that the Uncles always got left behind. They got left behind, but Hyslop never did. Massimo, his face dark with displeasure, went round to the boot to get the luggage out. He cursed at the weight of the cases and tossed Hyslop’s case at her, almost knocking her over. Then he and Vanessa began kissing and Hyslop walked away from them. She wanted to get as far away from Massimo as possible in case he wanted to kiss her goodbye too. She looked down at her feet for any sign of a dead wasp to protect her, but there were none. She did not think she would need any, however, as Massimo was so busy saying goodbye to her mother he seemed to have forgotten her.
“Once it is all sorted out over there, you come straight back,” he was saying, twisting a lock of her mother’s hair in his hand. “Telephone me every day. I won’t be happy until you are back here with me. Phone me as soon as you land. Remember I love you.”
Hyslop felt a little surge of triumph. “You may love Vanessa,” she thought, “but she doesn’t love you. She’s leaving you behind. She’s taking me, only me, with her.”
Finally Uncle Massimo called out “Ciao, bambina!” to her and drove off, with a great deal of noise, in his expensive shiny car.
Hyslop muttered a rude word after him in Italian. It was a word she was not allowed to use (though adults often used it), but her mother did not hear as she was heading for the glass revolving doors ahead of them.
The airport was enormous and full of people rushing around, all with a sense of purpose and all in a hurry. It was a bit like an ants’ nest, but not so orderly, and with no apparent teamwork. Her mother handed their luggage over to a lady in a green jacket and it disappeared on a moving conveyor belt. Hyslop felt rather bereft once it had disappeared from sight. Then her mother bought a magazine and drank an espresso. She plonked a glass of orange juice in front of Hyslop.
“Drink that,” she said. “It’s very dehydrating in the plane.”
This was the only information that Hyslop had to go on. She wasn’t sure what dehydrating meant, but knew it was something to do with being dry. Her mother talked a great deal about feeling dehydrated after she had been drinking wine in the sun. Why would the plane be like that wondered Hyslop, as she drank the orange juice. Was it because they would be flying close to the sun, like Icarus in the legend, and it would get very hot? Was it because there wasn’t enough air for everyone on the plane? There were so many questions buzzing around in her head, but she kept quiet as usual.
When they were shown onto the plane her mother made her sit on an aisle seat away from the window, which was a pity as Hyslop would have liked to have seen the clouds. A girl at school had once shown her a photograph on her phone that she had taken of clouds from a plane window, and they had looked amazing.
“If you’re going to be sick by the way, aim over there, not near me,” said Vanessa, settling back in her seat with her shiny magazine.
Hyslop did feel sick and nervous. There was a lot to think about. Ladies in green jackets were wandering up and down the aisle smiling at everyone. Little television screens appeared and boomed out instructions in both Italian and English about what to do if there was an emergency. It was serious stuff. Lifebelts were mentioned. Hyslop could not see where the lifebelt was, and did not want to poke around searching for it as no one else was. They were not that near an emergency exit either. She glanced round anxiously at her fellow passengers. No one was paying the slightest bit of attention to the instructions. Lifebelts were all very well anyway, but what if they crashed on land?
Hyslop tried to conjure up Nonna, but it was difficult to be soothed as she imagined Nonna would be pretty scared in a plane too. She knew that Nonna would have been saying her Ave Maria and fingering her rosary. She said the familiar words to herself in her head: “Ave Maria, piena di grazia… ”
The plane was moving faster and faster along the runway. It was taking off. The wings did not flap, but there was a huge sense of power from the plane’s engines. It was incredible! People still flicked through newspapers and magazines in a bored fashion or chatted with their neighbours. The safety talk was finished now and the ladies in the green jackets had gone to sit down and fasten their own seatbelts.
“Il Signore e con te,” murmured Hyslop to herself. She had not been to church since Nonna’s death, as her mother said all religion was a load of rubbish. Actually she used a ruder word than rubbish, but Hyslop tried not to think of that. She often muttered the words of the Ave Maria in secret to remind her of Nonna: “Tu sei benedetta fra le donne… ”
Her ears felt strange, and sh
e shook her head to clear them. In her head she continued in Italian, though the last line was more alarming than comforting: “Prega per noi peccatori, adesso e nell’ora della nostra morte… ” Hyslop had muttered it so often to herself as a sort of magical mantra, not considering the meaning of the words, that it was only now when she was afraid of the plane crashing that she translated the ending to herself in her head: “Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of death.” She shouldn’t be drawing attention to the hour of death in her prayers, she decided. It could be dangerous. Maybe she should try the Lord’s Prayer instead. Was there much about death in that? She screwed up her face as she tried to remember it all.
“Try and have a little nap, Hyslop,” said her mother suddenly, in a tone that was kind and concerned, patting her on the arm. Hyslop look up in astonishment. Her mother was smiling over her at a man in the seat across the aisle. “It’s my daughter’s first flight,” she said. “She’s a little bit nervous, aren’t you, darling?”
“Back home to England?” the man asked, nodding briefly at Hyslop, then turning to Vanessa in open admiration. Hyslop could tell at once that this man was of no interest to her mother, but still she had to ensnare him. She had to keep making sure that no one was immune to the power of her smile.
“Yes,” sighed Vanessa. “Back home after a long time away.”
“Oh, that sounds interesting!” said the man. He was leaning forward now. The poor fool was well and truly caught.
For much of the journey her mother and this man talked. Vanessa had shown him her smile, and she made him go to great efforts to amuse her, in order to make her flick the smile back at him again. His silly stories soon ended up with the stupid things that men always said, about how she didn’t look old enough to be Hyslop’s mother, how beautiful she was, and could he perhaps take her out to dinner in London. Hyslop could tell that her mother had no intention of meeting the man again, but she allowed him to buy her a drink and to compliment her. Vanessa, it seemed, had to make everyone acknowledge her power. No one was allowed to escape. It made Hyslop yawn in boredom as she listened to it all. This proved to be fortunate, as she found that loud yawning helped the funny sensation in her ears so she carried on doing it. The conversation over her head was so monotonous that eventually, despite her anxiety, she fell asleep.
Chapter Four
Arrival in England, a Godmother and a Bumblebee
Godmother Sandy met them at the airport near London. She was smaller than Hyslop had expected, with a bare scrubbed looking face. It took Hyslop a moment to realise what was unusual about this, before she decided that she had never met a friend of her mother’s who did not wear high heels and whose face was not orange with make-up. Her jeans were rather grubby looking, and there seemed to be some sort of dusty white powder in her hair. Instead of a designer handbag she was carrying what looked like a supermarket carrier bag.
“Sandy, darling!” Air kisses were exchanged. “Long time no see!”
“Oh my goodness, Vanessa!” exclaimed Sandy. “Look at you! As gorgeous as ever! Do you have a portrait in the attic or something!”
Hyslop was not quite sure why a portrait in the attic would make her mother laugh and shake her head. It had to be a compliment about her beauty though. It always was.
“Hardly, Sandy, I’m such an old bag now! Surprised you knew me!”
“You look younger than ever, you lucky thing! And slimmer – it’s not fair on the rest of us. And Hyslop!” said Sandy turning to Hyslop and beaming at her. “My dear girl! I last saw you when you were a baby. At your Christening. And you must be eleven now!”
Hyslop wondered if Sandy had given her a gift at her Christening but didn’t like to ask. Her mother had warned her about asking questions. It felt good but strange to be addressed as “My dear girl!”
“In case you were wondering why I said your Mum must have a portrait in the attic,” Sandy said, still addressing Hyslop, “it was just a way of saying she looked so young. It’s from a story you probably haven’t read, a book by Oscar Wilde, where the portrait in the attic ages but the person remains young and beautiful!”
“Oh,” said Hyslop.
She was astonished at hearing her mother referred to as “Mum” and also at being provided with an explanation. Most of what Vanessa’s friends said was weird or stupid but generally no one took the trouble to explain anything to her. Adults laughed at things that were not funny and became angry about things that Hyslop loved (like insects). She could have told Sandy that Vanessa stayed young because she was always on a diet, spent a fortune at the hairdresser, and used expensive cleansers, toners and moisturisers. To Hyslop’s knowledge there was no portrait in the attic. It was always best to say nothing, however. Her mother had told her not to “give away any information”. Luckily Hyslop had learned the art of slipping invisibly into the background when adults were about, so she did not find it difficult to avoid talking. She stared down at her feet, and waited for her mother to claim her share of attention.
“Darling, do fill me in on the set up where you live!” Vanessa gave Sandy the heavier of her two cases to carry. “Now, did you say you live in a barn conversion?”
“Yes, I live in a barn with a pottery attached where I have my own workshop.”
“How wonderful! And we are to be in a little cottage nearby, is that right?”
“Yes, Keeper’s Cottage.”
“How perfectly sweet! It sounds delightful. And what about neighbours?”
“Oh yes, you’ll meet the neighbours. There’s the main house, Hemmingswood House, where Uncle Northy – he’s my Godfather – grew up. It’s been in his family for generations – a real old country house, full of dark wooden panelling and antiques, lots of atmosphere. A huge old pile! Penny and Hugo live in it now. They are dear friends. Then there’s the Dower House, where Uncle Northy lives – he’s a bit of an eccentric by the way and he… ”
“Tell me about Penny and Hugo in the big house,” said Vanessa. “Do you see much of them?”
“Oh, all the time,” said Sandy. “We’re very close. Quite a little community. There’s Penny and Hugo and Uncle Northy and then there’s Ilga and Malcolm. You’ll like them all, I’m sure, and they’re dying to meet you!”
“Darling, whatever have you been telling them about me?”
Sandy turned round suddenly and looked at Hyslop struggling along behind them.
“Hey, let me take that brown bag, Hyslop,” she said, her face creasing into a smile. “It looks pretty heavy to me.”
“Oh, Hyslop likes to be independent,” said Vanessa. “She doesn’t need help.”
Hyslop walked a few paces behind them as they chattered away. She felt cautiously optimistic about Sandy. She had a smile that came from deep inside her and sparkled through her eyes. She was also a sort of relation in a way: a Godmother. In a world that seemed to be made up of other people’s families, of brothers and sisters and grandparents and aunties and cousins, Hyslop had a serious shortage of relatives. There was only her mother, nasty Uncle Carlo and the even nastier string of fake Uncles they had been living with over the years in France and Italy. Of course there were Papa and Nonna in heaven, but they were not much practical help to her.
“Come on, Hyslop,” said Sandy, stopping to turn round again. “You really are struggling with that.”
“I’m fine thank you, Sandy.” She had been taught to answer politely and not draw attention to herself.
“No, no, hand it over,” said Sandy. “I insist! It’ll help me balance this thing of your mother’s that weighs half a ton!”
Hyslop looked ahead at her mother to see what she should do, but Vanessa was busy with her mobile telephone. Hyslop handed the bag over to Sandy. It was rather heavy as she had been given the books and the dictionaries to carry.
“Goodness me, you’re stronger than you look, littl’un!” laughed Sandy. “This is a ton weight too. Come on, the car’s not too far away.”
As they emerged out int
o the fresh air a bumblebee appeared. It flew in a clumsy circle around them as if to welcome them. Hyslop was delighted to see her first English insect.
You could never trust first impressions, but if there were fat furry bumblebees and Godmothers who carried your bags, then maybe England would be bearable. Just as long as there were no Uncles.
Chapter Five
Hyslop explores an English Garden
In the night Hyslop dreamed she was back in France, in the Normandy chateau of vile Oncle Xavier. He was definitely the worst Uncle. It was the dream where she was trying to escape from the horrible journey upstairs, past glassy-eyed boars’ heads, past endless pictures of dead animals, up, up, up to the wooden door into the haunted attic room. Oncle Xavier’s mocking laughter echoed hideously in her head as dream-Hyslop struggled to get away from him.
She found herself muttering Nonna’s Ave Maria as she woke up, her heart pounding, and wondered where she was. The sun was sneaking in to her room through a gap in the curtains. The English sun was different from the Italian sun. That was her first impression: it was more polite, less brashly insistent. “You might just want to get up and come outside,” it seemed to say. “But in your own time of course.” The Italian sun was an attention seeking shouter, who would burst in rudely unless forced out with wooden shutters.
It was a gentle relief to find that it was morning, that she had survived the plane journey, and that she was in England, the Land without Uncles. She had the tiny upstairs part of the cottage all to herself. Her mother had the big bedroom downstairs with French doors that led onto a patio, and Hyslop’s room was up in the eaves, all snug and private, up some worn wooden stairs.
The Summer of the Mourning Cloak Page 3