“You ungrateful little witch!” she shouted.
Hyslop put her hand to her cheek and felt the heat from it. It felt as if it had been set on fire. Without a word, she walked over to the where the book lay upside down and broken-looking, and picked it up. The damage was not as great as she had feared : the spine of the book was slightly damaged, but it was still in one piece. The cover had half come off, and there was a tiny tear in it now. Hyslop carefully replaced it.
For a moment mother and daughter stood and surveyed each other. Vanessa’s eyes were still flashing and her cheeks were flushed with anger and alcohol. Hyslop’s face was devoid of any expression at all.
Eventually, with a curse, her mother stomped off to her bedroom and Hyslop heard her crashing around noisily.
Hyslop went upstairs and lay on her bed, examining her book for any more damage. She smoothed the covers which were marked and crumpled. It would never be quite the same again.
Tunelessly humming to herself, Hyslop turned back to the page where she had been reading about the Clouded Yellows. She put a hand to her cheek, and her humming grew louder as she read on: “… immigrant butterflies often arrive in mint condition, having perhaps flown hundreds of kilometres… It is when butterflies pursue, court, or reject mates among tangled vegetation, or when females scrabble around for egg-laying sites, that the scales fly, and the butterflies lose the pristine appearance of the new arrivals.”
Chapter Twenty Six
Zak Gets Some Good News
Zak had been kept in for most of the morning by his grandmother who made him mow their tiny back lawn and clean the car, whilst she kept up a constant background chorus of scolding and criticism. The jobs themselves wouldn’t be so bad if she would just leave him alone, but she had to stand near him, pointing out how he was too slow, not thorough enough, or doing something wrong. There was nothing he did that merited praise. Her only form of praise was temporary silence. Zak kept himself focused on the task at hand, and tried to pretend that he was deaf.
Every so often a phrase would penetrate his efforts at not hearing: “Wait till your father sees the way you’ve cut that bleedin’ lawn!” “A dog’s hind leg would be straighter than those lines!” “Put some elbow grease into your polishing, boy!”
He tried several times to finish, but each time his grandmother’s critical inspections made him redo a bit here, polish a bit more there, until he was red in the face and hot. He did not attempt to answer her back, though. It was never worth it, and it would only result in his grandmother shouting and getting mad at him. That would mean more time wasted when he could be watching Hyslop.
Finally, after he had obediently done whatever she asked without answering back for nearly two hours, he declared that he needed a cold drink.
“Well, it’ll have to be tap water,” she said, waggling a gnarled old finger at him. “And you can get it yourself, Zachary. I’m not one of them mugs who spends hard earned cash on fizzy drinks and expensive fruit juices. Load of old rubbish! If you’re properly thirsty, then water will do. When I was young, there was none of this cans of this and bottles of that. We had to make do… ”
She was suddenly distracted by the telephone ringing, and went indoors, grumbling but still keen to see who it was. Zak decided to forget about the tap water and set off for the Braithwaites’ estate as fast as he could. When the phone rang in the morning it was often someone who happened to be in their area trying to sell windows or kitchens, and these people always made his grandmother cross. She would return to him to regale him with a word by word account of what she had said, and what the man had said, and then what she had said in return. He had no desire to hang around to listen. In any case, he would be able to get a drink of water from the tap near the greenhouse.
He ran as quickly as he could, and in a short time he found himself at his usual destination: the vegetable garden. He glanced around but there was no sign of anyone, and he drank some water straight from under the greenhouse tap.
On such a hot day, the girl Hyslop could just about be anywhere. There were butterflies flying, so she would probably be out with her book. She could be in the main garden, in the fields or in the woods. Zak tried to place himself in the mind of a butterfly. Where would he go on such a hot day if he had wings to fly?
He frowned at the effort. It wasn’t at all easy, because of course different butterflies went to different places. Here in the vegetable garden there were lots of white butterflies that the girl Hyslop told him shouldn’t be called Cabbage Whites, but he did anyway. Over the bramble patches in the woods were the brown ones with the spots, and in the fields there were lots of chequered black and white ones. She had seen all of those many times, though. What he needed to do was to get himself into the mind of that red-black butterfly she wanted to see, the special one that she had told him to look out for.
Zak couldn’t remember the first part of its name, but he knew it was some sort of Beauty. He couldn’t recall ever having seen a black butterfly, so he didn’t know where to look. It probably didn’t like to eat cabbages and nasturtium leaves so the vegetable patch wasn’t the best place. The trouble was, what did it like to eat? If it was that easy to find, surely Hyslop and the old man would have found it by now.
He remembered Hyslop saying that some butterflies weren’t even born in England, but flew from across the sea, and he suspected that The Beauty was one of those. None had been seen for years apparently, so there really was little chance of seeing one. He kicked a stone in frustration and then stooped to pick a weed from the edge of the lettuce row. There was so much chickweed that it made little difference just plucking out one random plant but it meant that he could now say, with some degree of honesty, that he done a bit of weeding. His father and grandmother always wanted him to account for his time. They wanted to know what he had done in the whole hours he was on his own. It puzzled him sometimes. He had no interest in knowing what they had done when he wasn’t around. Why couldn’t people just leave other people alone?
Such thoughts did not apply of course when it came to Hyslop. He would always be interested to know what she had been doing in the whole hours of the day or night, when he wasn’t with her. He closed his eyes and pictured the girl Hyslop’s shiny red-black hair and her oil-black eyes. He had never felt such a longing to see anyone before in his life. The hours and minutes away from her felt like time wasted.
When Zak opened his eyes he saw a black butterfly. For a moment he did not react, then, oddly enough, his legs reacted before his mind understood why and he began to run. It was a large dark-winged butterfly and not like any he had ever seen before. The brief glimpses he had of its wings seemed to show the creamy yellow borders he remembered from Hyslop’s book. Could this really be The Beauty? Zak ran faster than he had ever run before, even when being chased by Tristan Pringle’s gang.
It dipped and soared, and sometimes did little circles in the air, always just too far ahead of him. He could never see it properly to ascertain if it was the butterfly in the book, but he could see it shining purply black in the sun. For a moment it landed on a plant just a few yards in front but when he ran towards it, as if to tease him, it flew off and then soared high up towards the trees and away. He lost sight of it altogether, and wondered whether to head off for the woods after it.
“Hello, Zak.” Suddenly the girl Hyslop was there ahead of him.
“I saw it!” he cried, slightly out of breath, his eyes shining. “I saw the Beauty! It was here a minute ago!”
Hyslop frowned.
“I’m not lying,” said Zak, as he could see what she was thinking. “I’m not. Honest.”
She looked right at him with her spooky eyes.
“No,” she said. “I can see that you are not telling a deliberate lie.” How on earth could she see that, he wondered. “But I think that you are probably mistaken. Where was it?”
He felt a little stab of happiness like a physical pain. She had believed him.
“It
flew over there, towards the woods,” he said. “I can show you.”
They fell into step together and walked for some time in silence.
A fluttering dark butterfly appeared suddenly from behind a tall hedgerow.
“Ah!” cried Zak. “Look, there! Is that it?”
“No,” said Hyslop. “That’s a Red Admiral.”
Sure enough, the butterfly stopped and landed on a nettle just beside them and he could see that it was a familiar red and black one that he had often seen before.
“Oh,” he said. “No, that’s not what I saw earlier.”
“It can be hard to tell what they are when they’re flying,” said Hyslop.
Zak was puzzled. He had been so sure earlier that he had seen the Beauty, but now he began to have doubts. They were tricky things, these butterflies. How were you meant to memorise all their different wing patterns, and what they looked like when they were flying? It was too much information to hold in your head at once. This red and black one, however, this Red Admiral, was certainly one he had often seen before. Perhaps he had imagined The Beauty because he wanted to see it so much.
For some time they gazed at the butterfly together. Hyslop seemed entranced by it, and Zak sneaked little sidelong glances at Hyslop who was much more interesting than any insect could ever be.
“By the way,” she said after a while. “I have checked with Sir Northcote and he says it’s all right if you come on the Emperor trip with us.”
She looked at him again, and her eyes almost seemed to be laughing at him. Zak found himself unable to speak.
“That is if you want to come,” she added.
“Yes,” he said quickly. “Yes, I want to come.”
Chapter Twenty Seven
Hugo meets a Hornet
“Oh, Sands, I think I get worse every week!” Penny turned a rather wonky looking bowl round and round in her hands. “Not sure it’s worth painting this one.”
Sandy raised her eyebrows and smiled: “I’ve seen worse, Pen.”
Hyslop liked it best in the pottery when she had Sandy to herself, but at least Ilga wasn’t there, and neither, thankfully, was her mother. Penny was having her weekly pottery class, but said she would have to rush off soon. Penny tried hard to be friendly, but there was something reserved, something held back, that Hyslop recognised only too well. Penny gave little snippets of herself to others, and kept most of herself private, and this Hyslop suspected was because she was unhappy inside. All her bright smiles and jolly comments could not conceal it from one who was used to concealing her own emotions. Hyslop also felt uncomfortable in Penny’s presence because she knew that her mother was plotting something underhand with Hugo, perhaps marking him out as a future Uncle, and that did not bode well for either Hyslop or Penny.
It was difficult, therefore, to meet Penny’s eyes and accept her friendly overtures.
Sandy’s open nature was laid before all of them like a butterfly with wings outspread in the sunshine. Sandy may have had troubles in her life, but she did not seem weighed down by secret sadness. Hyslop felt sure that Sandy could just get up in the morning, stretch out her arms and be herself, not fearful of displeasing people, not to blame for someone else’s violent mood swings. Hyslop longed for such freedom, to fly away from the constrictions of her mother’s control. Yet, how was such a state to be achieved? Vanessa was never going to change.
“You OK, Hyslop?” Sandy plonked a glass of lemonade and a little plate with some chocolate squares on it in front of Hyslop.
“You have to try some of Penny’s wonderful chocolate tiffin. I only allow myself one piece or I’ll explode out of my jeans, but you’re a growing girl, so do eat it up on behalf of all of us. Have it now before you get clay over your hands.”
Hyslop, hungry as usual, took her first piece. It was chocolatey, crunchy, biscuity, buttery, sugary and slightly salty all at once. She glanced down at the three remaining pieces on the plate and felt a shiver of delight. The only question was whether another three pieces were going to be enough.
“Mmmmm,” she said, the tiffin giving her courage to look Penny in the eye. “This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
“Oh, Hyslop,” said Penny with her sad smile. “I shall make you some to take home next time.”
As Sandy and Penny fell into conversation, Hyslop took her second piece. She knew by now that with no Vanessa around, there would be no criticism of her table manners or comments about greediness and chocolate giving you spots, and there would be no problem if she made crumbs. The second piece was just as heavenly as the first. She decided that it was sometimes good to feel really hungry as things tasted so wonderful when your tummy was rumbling and empty.
Penny beamed over at her as she took her third piece.
“How lovely to see a good healthy appetite!” she said. Hyslop felt a slight pang of guilt, as she wondered if Penny would be so pleased with her appetite if she knew that her mother and Hugo were seeing each other in the evenings. She assumed that Penny didn’t know anything about it, but then again, adults were so complicated that you never knew what was normal and what was not in their world.
Sandy brought out the first completed coil pot, the dark green one that Hyslop had made for her bedroom, and also the biscuit fired one, destined to be Malcolm’s pencil pot, which she was to paint. Hyslop surveyed them both with delight.
As she decided that even she could not manage a fourth piece of tiffin without a pause, she heard Penny sigh: “Ilga seems to have given up our little pottery class, Sands. What’s she up to today?”
“I hardly see her,” said Sandy. “She always seems to be driving Nessie around somewhere these days. Today though I think she’s with a client in London. Some rich banker’s wife who wants to change her whole kitchen though it’s only two years old and I don’t think the woman ever cooks anyway!”
Penny laughed. The three of them settled down into a quiet and peaceful rhythm of shaping clay, painting clay or occasionally commenting on what the others were doing with their clay.
“If you want a really deep shade of blue with that glaze you’ve chosen,” Sandy bent over Hyslop’s pot, “you’ll have to give it lots and lots of coats. Lay it on as thickly as you can.”
Hyslop felt pleasantly full of chocolate tiffin, and enjoyed painting the coil pot for Malcolm. When Penny had to leave early, she even felt sorry to see her go.
“Thanks again for the tiffin, Penny,” she called after her.
She and Sandy looked over the table at each other, and Hyslop felt a connection between them, an invisible silken thread. Neither of them said anything, but Hyslop was sure that Sandy felt it too.
For some time they worked in companionable silence and for Hyslop this feeling of connection, of being with an adult who was not going to find fault or sneer, an adult who was, moreover, a sort of relation, made her feel warm inside. If only she could stay forever with these safe, kindly people who fed her delicious food, and never got cross with anything she said or did.
“I’m going on a trip with Northy,” she informed Sandy. “We’re going to Bernwood Forest.”
“Ah, the Forest of the Emperor,” said Sandy. “Yes, dear Uncle Northy – he took me there with my father when I was about your age. My father and Uncle Northy were best friends. Daddy and I weren’t really that interested in butterflies, I am ashamed to admit, but even we found the Purple Emperor rather special. We went a few times without seeing any, but when we finally saw one it was well worth the wait.”
“Is your father dead now?” asked Hyslop. She liked hearing about other people’s families.
“Sadly both my parents are dead,” said Sandy. “I was very close to both of them, but especially close to my father. When I was left on my own, and frankly feeling pretty sorry for myself, not coping at all, Uncle Northy suggested I come and live here near him and Penny. He encouraged me to set up my pottery. It was something I had only dabbled in beforehand.”
“He likes to encoura
ge people, doesn’t he?”
“Well, yes, if he thinks they’ve got a talent, he does.” Sandy nodded. “I had no confidence in my work until I started here. He made me believe I could make a living as a potter. And he encourages you, Hyslop, because I know he thinks you could be a proper lepidopterist.”
“Did he really say that?”
“Hi Sandy!” a voice boomed into the room as the door burst open.
Hyslop jumped in her seat and frowned as she saw that it was Hugo. What could he possibly want?
“Why, Hugo!” said Sandy. “This is an honour. I don’t know when you last visited my humble pottery!”
“Looks like you’re busy,” said Hugo, though he was not looking at Sandy at all, but round the room as if he was searching for something. Or someone.
“Are you looking for Penny?” asked Sandy. “She left about half an hour ago.”
“Umm… no,” said Hugo. “No, I was actually looking for Vanessa.” He paused. “Bit of… um… business stuff to discuss with her. Do you know where she is, Hyslop?”
Hyslop scowled and said nothing. Hugo had never addressed her directly before.
“Hyslop’s been here for the last hour or so,” said Sandy hurriedly. “But I think Vanessa was going in to the village last I heard. She had to go to the Post Office to post a few bits and pieces, and to sort out new passport forms or something.”
“Oh,” said Hugo. “When was that?”
“Well, I’m not sure,” said Sandy, looking at Hyslop who was now hunched over her coil pot, and pointedly not looking at Hugo at all. “But I know she went on foot because Ilga’s busy today and my car’s being serviced. So if you took the car into the village you might catch up with her.”
The Summer of the Mourning Cloak Page 16