“It’s looking rather promising, Hyslop’s little coil pot,” said Sandy, coming over to join them. “Mind you, I have warned her never to get too excited about things in pottery until they’re safely fired. I guess things can go wrong with wood at times too, Malc.”
“Oh yes,” said Malcolm. “Things can go wrong with wood.” He looked at Hyslop and spoke to her in a normal sort of voice, as if she were an adult: “What sort of stuff do you like to do in your spare time, Hyslop?” She stared down at her feet. Usually at these drinks parties the deal was that she wandered around on her own while Vanessa and her friends drank more and more wine and shrieked with laughter at nothing. Sometimes she stayed home alone, which she preferred. Why was Malcolm bothering to talk to her unless it was to ingratiate himself with Vanessa later? That had to be the explanation. Men had used her before as a means of approaching her mother. How long would it be before he was flying to Vanessa’s side to pay silly compliments? She turned her back on him and did not reply.
“Hyslop, dear, what can I get you to drink?” said Penny, suddenly appearing. “We have all the usual soft drinks in cans or there is orange juice or lemonade. What would you like?”
“May I have lemonade please,” said Hyslop. Penny seemed a friendly person, even if she did have a very posh accent. The lemonade came in a crystal tumbler with a bendy straw.
“Sandy, I cannot imagine you two at school in the same class together!” called Ilga from the other side of the room, switching back to English again. “I shall need to ask Vanessa to divulge some tales from the classroom. She can tell me her secrets in German!”
Hyslop sat in a corner of the room and watched them all. Malcolm and Vanessa were shaking hands now and to her astonishment he did not gush and fawn over her, but seemed to be calmly asking her about which part of Italy they had been living in and how was she finding the English weather. He then drifted back to talk to Sandy. Ilga, on the other hand, seemed to be the one enslaved by her mother. Hyslop knew the symptoms and wondered if Ilga were very rich. Was it possible that she was the target? A woman? That would be a new development.
“If you have no plans, I insist you all come round to ours on Saturday night for dinner,” Ilga beamed round the room at everyone.
“How very kind,” said Vanessa.
“More kind than you know,” said Sandy. “Ilga is a fabulous cook. Though perhaps unkind would be a better word – it will be death by calories.”
“Quite!” agreed Penny. “Ilga doesn’t do small portions.”
“Vanessa looks as if a few large portions wouldn’t do her any harm!” said Ilga. “Are you on any sort of diet, Vanessa? How do you stay so slim?”
“Heavens, no!” laughed Vanessa. “I eat anything and everything I’m given. Can’t be doing with diets. Far too boring!”
Hyslop frowned at the lie. Her mother picked at fruit and salads, and never cooked proper meals. She spent her life on a diet, and often Hyslop had to go hungry too.
“And of course Hyslop must come,” said Malcolm. “We have two cats, Hyslop, that you can look after if you get bored with us lot at dinner. We can get pretty boring I’m afraid.”
Hyslop hesitated. Usually she preferred being left at home, but the thought of large portions and two cats was very tempting. If Sandy was there she would feel safe enough. She wondered what her mother wanted her to do.
“Can I come?” she asked.
“Well, of course, darling,” said Vanessa. It was the warm loving-mother tone that she only ever used when other people were present. “You must come if you want to!”
“That’s settled then,” Ilga clapped her hands. “Sevenish at our place. Hyslop – I can’t get used to this strange name – is there anything you don’t like to eat, child?”
“Oh, Hyslop will already have eaten,” said Vanessa.
That was unlikely and Hyslop thought longingly of the good cooking and the large portions.
“Well, when I was her age I could eat two meals quite easily,” said Malcolm, “so you can decide if you want to eat or not when you come, Hyslop.”
Hyslop did not look at her mother.
“Thank you very much,” she mumbled politely.
Already she liked Sandy and Penny, and Malcolm, though she was suspicious of him, did not seem like obvious Uncle material. Ilga was becoming one of her mother’s fans, with all the familiar signs of enslavement, but she did not seem to present an immediate danger to Hyslop. It was a shame that Penny’s father, old Sir Northcote, wasn’t around, though she couldn’t imagine him at the drinks party with his funny head slappings and mutterings. Perhaps he was in his own home, looking at his butterfly books. The only one they hadn’t met was Hugo, Penny’s husband, and how bad could he be?
Chapter Eleven
Too Late for Orange-Tips
Hyslop was out in the garden again before her mother was up.
She had encountered the old man several mornings in a row now. Despite being the strangest old man, indeed the strangest person, she had met, he was also turning out to be the most interesting. He wandered around with a dirty old hat on his head, and a cardigan with leather patches at the elbows which was often not buttoned up properly, and – even on the hottest day – a tartan scarf around his neck. He did not behave like other grown up people. He spoke in a posh voice, but muttered swear words to himself, and sometimes shouted out his funny word: “Dunderheids!”, in what she now recognised was a Scottish accent. He contorted his face into peculiar expressions and sometimes slapped his head, which looked painful at times. Hyslop decided that he was like a child in an old man’s body. She, on the other hand, sometimes felt like an old person in a child’s body.
What was most exciting about him, however, was that he was the first adult she had ever met who was interested in insects. He wasn’t just vaguely interested in them, or mildly curious. He was obsessed. He seemed to spend all his time hunting for them, and he knew the answers to all her questions. Butterflies were his passion and Hyslop was happy to concentrate on those too. After all, of all the insects in the world, butterflies are the most beautiful.
With Sir Northcote she quickly learned that she did not have to think before she spoke. He certainly didn’t. She also didn’t have to ration her questions. If she asked him twenty questions in a row about a particular butterfly he never tired of answering. She was sure, in fact, that the more questions she asked, the happier he was.
“How many butterfly species are there are in Britain?” “Have you seen all of them?” “How long do they live?” “How do caterpillars actually turn into butterflies?” “What do they do in the winter?” “How can they fly to different countries over the sea?” “Do birds ever eat them?” “How can you tell the difference between males and females?”
At first she paused between questions to be polite, but after a while she let the questions come rushing out of her mouth as they occurred to her. This was a novel sensation. Usually it was safest to be silent in front of adults, and to think carefully before speaking. As for asking questions, it was something she had not done since she had lived with Nonna, when she had chattered away non-stop in Italian. Nonna had never tired of listening to Hyslop, and even if she did not have answers to all the questions, she had called Hyslop a clever bambina to be asking them. Then everything changed : her mother came, and it was no longer considered clever to ask anything at all. It was best to be quiet, and to keep all thoughts and questions locked inside her own head.
She realised how tiring it had been, having to be careful what she said, always having to watch out for impatience and bad moods, always living in fear of what would happen next. Here in the old man’s wild and beautiful garden she could speak her thoughts out loud. It was restful.
She once apologised for asking so many questions, and he turned on her, his eyes flashing : “Quite frankly, any child who does not want to know the answers to all these questions is a very tedious child indeed. Certainly not the sort of person I’d want to be
around.”
“What’s your favourite butterfly of all?” she asked him.
“Now, that is a difficult question,” he said. At last she had asked something that made him pause. “Hmm. Very difficult. I have many favourites. My grandfather and I particularly liked the Orange-tip. The male Orange-tip is a splendid fellow. Yes, I rather think he is my favourite British butterfly. He is white with bright orange tips to his wings. In parts of Europe they call the species The Sunrise Butterfly.”
“Can I see one round here?”
“No, I’m afraid you cannot.”
“Why not?”
“Well, it’s too late in the year. Read about them in your book. Our Orange-tips appear in April and they don’t hang around for long.” He paused then spat out the word: “Dunderheids!” several times, with a particularly violent slap of his head.
Hyslop waited until the shouting session was finished then resumed her questioning. She knew he was not referring to the Orange-tip butterflies with his funny word. He behaved as if nothing had happened, and so did she.
“Do they come here in this garden?” she asked.
“Oh yes,” he said. “But you’ll need to wait until next year now. The Orange-tips are a great joy when they appear I can tell you. The garden here is particularly lovely in the spring, and those Orange-tipped chaps seem like heralds of the summer ahead. You’ll see what I mean next April.”
Hyslop felt a happy shiver at his assumption that she might still be around next year, but this was followed by a dropping down into sadness as she reflected on how unlikely this would be.
“I probably won’t be here next year,” she said. “I don’t know where we’ll be. We may have to go back to Italy. Or somewhere else.”
There was a long silence, broken only by snorting noises caused by the old man puffing his cheeks in and out in a peculiar fashion.
“Well,” he said after a while, “you can see plenty of butterflies in Italy. Oh yes, Italy has more sunshine and more species than we do here in England.”
Hyslop knew that this thought should have comforted her, but somehow it did not. For the first time, ever since she could remember, she wanted to stay in one place. She knew she wanted to be around to see those Orange-tips the following April. She knew she wanted Sir Northcote to be there to point them out to her.
“It was the twenty sixth of March when my grandfather died,” said the old man. He slapped his head once, and looked around wildly almost as if he expected to see his grandfather. Then his voice grew softer again. “We wheeled him outside in a wheelchair. He was too weak to walk by that time. He could hardly stand up. We all knew he was dying but no one would admit it. He knew it too – he said he wanted to be taken out into the garden one last time. It was a warm spring, one of the warmest I can recall.” He nodded his head, and his eyes narrowed as he peered over the unseeable hill in his mind where the past lay hidden. “Warm and sunny, and I hoped, gosh, how I hoped, that we would see an Orange-tip for him. It was earlier than they normally appeared, but it was so warm that we thought we might be lucky. For a long time there was nothing, and then he saw one, yes, it was him who spotted it, the first of that year – a fine bright specimen it was – and he said to me: “All is well with the world. I can go in peace now, my boy.” He died later that night.”
“What age were you when he died?” This was the first personal question she had asked him. She wondered if she were trespassing again.
“Oh, I was nearly twenty, quite old really,” he said. “It’s a long time ago now, but I still miss him. He was like a father to me more than a grandfather, and we did everything together. My parents died out in India, and I was brought here with my nanny when I was six. Dear old Nanny McDonald. She was a funny old Scottish lady – she liked butterflies too. Anyway, I’ve lived here ever since!”
“Oh,” said Hyslop. She then added, without thinking: “That’s the opposite of me. I lived with my grandmother in Italy until I was six, then my mother came for me and I lived with her after that.”
The old man nodded and seemed to be consulting thoughts in his own head. He then slapped his head a few times. Perhaps he did it to make the thoughts clearer.
“Dunderheids!” he said again, in that strange Scottish accent. Was it a word that he had learned from his funny old Scottish nanny? Hyslop decided that “Dunderheids” must be a sort of clearing-of-the-mind word. Maybe it helped him to think more clearly. And maybe you had to do it in an accent that was not your normal way of speaking. It was an interesting technique, not one that she had witnessed in anyone else of her acquaintance.
“My grandfather was an eminent lepidopterist,” he said after a while. “Do you know what that is?”
“I know what an entomologist is,” said Hyslop. “I’m not altogether sure what a lepidopterist is.”
“You’re on the right track,” he said. “An entomologist studies insects, and a lepidopterist specialises in butterflies and moths.”
“What is the difference between butterflies and moths?” asked Hyslop. “Is it just that moths come out at night?”
“Well, there are plenty of moths which hang around in the daytime,” he said. There was a pause and then a particularly long bout of swearing began with a few violent head slaps. He seemed to be trying – and failing – to say “Dunderheids” instead of a swear word.
At this point they were interrupted by the loud barking of dogs, and the rather stern tone of Sandy.
“Uncle Northy!” She put her hand on her Godfather’s shoulder. “What are you trying to say?” Hyslop realised that she was concerned about the old man swearing in front of her.
“And Hyslop!” Sandy beamed down at her. “I didn’t know that you and Uncle Northy were such good friends!”
Hyslop was troubled by the use of the word “Uncle” – it always made her shudder – but she was soon caught up in a boisterous greeting from Sandy’s two large dogs, Sasha and Skye. They were beautiful creatures, Bernese Mountain Dogs, and Hyslop leaned down to fuss each one in turn.
“Sandy, my dear,” said the old man, his face crumpling into a wrinkly smile. “How are you this morning?”
He gave Sandy an affectionate kiss, and Hyslop felt a stab of pain. She was used to the sensation: she had often witnessed friends being kissed by their mothers and fathers, and had felt angry and sad at the same time. It always made her aware of what was missing in her own life. She tried not to scowl.
As if in some way catching a hint of this secret pain, Sandy put a hand on Hyslop’s arm.
“Don’t tell me!” she laughed. “Don’t tell me you are into butterflies, Hyslop!”
“Into butterflies!” spluttered the old man, his voice rising to a shout. “INTO butterflies! Why, this child has learned more about butterflies these last few days than you and Penny have learned in a lifetime!” Spittle flew from his lips: “Into butterflies indeed!”
“Well, I’m pleased to hear it,” said Sandy. “I’m well aware that Penny and I were a great disappointment on that front. You’ve found an ally at last, Uncle Northy. I couldn’t be more delighted for both of you!”
The strange thing was that Sandy seemed to mean what she said. As she and the old man looked at Hyslop, she could feel some of the warmth that they had between them, radiating out towards her. They were sharing with her.
She was included.
Chapter Twelve
The Bad Dream with a Happy Ending
That night Hyslop dreamed about the haunted cupboard again.
Something was different, though. The dream did not follow its usual pattern.
There was Oncle Xavier, the worst of all the Uncles, and there was his horrible French chateau. It was the familiar scene of her worst nightmares.
He was leading her up the stairs as usual to The Cupboard.
Hyslop had experiences of Italian cupboards too, but this cupboard – so large it was almost a room in itself – was the worst of them all. It contained the ghost of an eyeless little
girl, a girl with bleeding stumps for fingers…
Oncle Xavier was laughing, as he always did, when he took her upstairs. His laughter, echoing and exaggerated, sounded as hideous as ever. The glassy eyes of the dead boars and stags on the walls looked on impassively. They had never been able to help her despite her pleas over the years. Up those endless dark wooden stairs past the gold framed pictures of Oncle Xavier’s ugly big-nosed ancestors. They all seemed to be laughing at her too.
“Oh, Eezlop!” She hated the way he said her name. “I like it when you struggle. You are like a leetle fish on the end of my line… ”
For once Hyslop stopped struggling. She knew only too well what happened next.
“Have I ever told you the story about the naughty girl who lived here two hundred years ago?” She made no reply, as she knew he was going to tell her anyway. He always did. “A very naughty, stupid little girl, who annoyed everyone!” He stopped laughing and pulled her hair viciously. He always did that on the second landing, right in front of a picture of dead deer piled on top of each other. Hyslop loathed that picture and tried not to look at the poor broken bodies of the deer.
“Oh, yes, she was a nuisance to everyone, this stupid little girl.” He was marching her up the next flight of stairs, to the top of the house. “So they decided to take her up to the attic, up here, Eezlop, where we are going now!” She waited for the burst of laughter at this point. “Up to the dark cupboard where nobody ever goes. And they shut her in!”
She did not struggle, and for once she did not cry aloud in terror as she saw the hated wooden door of the cupboard before her. Oncle Xavier shook her, as if in disbelief.
“They shut her in,” he said again. “They locked her in!”
His horrible face was right next to hers now, and he stopped laughing, as if he were puzzled at her lack of response.
The Summer of the Mourning Cloak Page 8