by Polly Crosby
I sniffed, wiping my nose on my sleeve, and nodded.
‘Good, ’cause you’re my friend and I don’t ever want to upset you.’
I smiled, and squeezed her hand back.
‘I’m going to come and watch. If I ask, they might let me hold him while they do it.’ Stacey’s eyes glittered. ‘Do you want to come?’
‘No,’ I said, shaking my head vehemently as I looked into his huge, treacle eye. The whole of the farmland behind me was reflected in it, stained brown like an underwater world. I could see my own tear-filled eyes reflected there too. Billy had stopped chewing. He was looking at me. Carefully I pulled the blade of hay from his mouth and tucked it into my pocket. His warm, sweet breath lingered with me all the way home, and it wasn’t until I was curled up in bed that I realised that I hadn’t asked Stacey where she’d been all summer.
A week later, I opened the back door of Braër House, and even from this far away I could see something had changed down in the meadow. In the grey dusk, a tall pole stretched up to the sky. It was moving slowly, like the pendulum of a clock.
I ran to the meadow. Close up, the pole was bent slightly like a giant tusk. Dad was standing next to it, gazing upwards, his face sweaty and earth-covered. I watched for a moment, then backed away, not sure I wanted him to know I had been there.
Over the next few weeks, as the leaves turned yellow and red and began to fall from the trees, more giant metal structures appeared in the meadow: great swinging pieces that whorled and arced above your head in the slightest of breezes. Some resembled animals and birds; others were strange collections of metal that looked lighter than paper when they skimmed the grass.
‘What are they, Dad?’ I finally asked, staring up at the huge structures apprehensively one evening.
‘They’re mobiles,’ he said.
‘What are they for?’
‘They’re not really for anything. They just are. You mustn’t go in there, Romilly, not without me. They’re dangerous. They could flatten you in an instant.’
I nodded, staring in awe at the huge mobiles. I wasn’t sure if they were the sort of thing that could fix the boiler or feed us more than jacket potatoes and beans, but I was happy Dad was busy. I couldn’t wait to show Stacey.
Six
Dad was watching the weather forecast. A man named Michael Fish was gazing sternly out of the television.
‘Earlier today, apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said there was a hurricane on the way. Well, if you’re watching, don’t worry, there isn’t.’
‘Well, that’s good,’ said Dad, looking out nervously towards his mobiles. They were whirring noisily, racketing along in the dark. ‘Should have fitted a braking system,’ he mumbled, ‘hindsight, hindsight.’
‘A girl at school said there’s been a sighting of a panther near the village,’ I said, peering out of the window at the dark garden. The nights were closing in earlier now. Soon it would be bonfire night, and then the run-up to Christmas would begin.
‘I don’t envy it out there tonight,’ Dad said, pulling the curtain closed so I was hidden behind it. I leant my forehead on the glass so I could see through my reflection, expecting to find a huge cat curled up in the grass outside, meek as a domestic tabby.
‘She said it escaped from the circus in the summer.’
‘That’s odd,’ Dad said, ‘I didn’t see one when we went, did you?’
I shook my head. ‘Are they dangerous?’
‘Could be. Probably not for adults, but maybe little children…’
‘I bet it couldn’t eat a whole one.’
‘No, but it could split you down the middle with its sharp claws and siphon off your insides.’ He picked me up, unravelling me from the curtain and hefting me over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift.
‘Now, a boa constrictor, that could swallow you whole. You’d be stuck in his stomach, shouting to get out, his digestive juices working overtime to dissolve your bones.’
We were halfway up to my bedroom now. On the landing Dad tipped me off his huge shoulders and we climbed up my little staircase.
Up in my bedroom it was even wilder.
‘It’s like being at sea, this,’ Dad said, nodding appreciatively at the flurry of wind. It felt as if the whole room were rocking gently. The usual chorus of starlings in the eaves was silent, as if they were listening too.
‘Batten down the hatches.’ He grinned, pulling the curtains together. They lifted gently, the wind forcing its way through the cracks in the frames.
I had a moment of panic. ‘I will be OK up here, won’t I?’
Dad chuckled, sitting down on the bed next to me and pulling our game of chess towards him. We had been playing the same game for months now. Most nights I came to bed and found Dad had made his move while I’d been away. Dad studied the pieces.
‘You’re perfectly safe,’ he said, touching a knight, ‘the rigging’s well and truly tied down.’
‘Did you used to be a sailor?’
He laughed again. Getting up, he lifted the stuffed parrot from where she sat on my desk, and placed her next to me on the bed. I had taken the glass dome off weeks ago, disappointed that it had come apart so easily, without the need for an axe. I pulled her to me and Dad tucked us into bed together, her beady eye glaring at him all the while he was doing it.
‘Can’t I stay up for a bit longer?’ I said, yawning. I didn’t want to be on my own, stranded at the highest point in the house while Dad was cosily anchored far below me. What if the roof got whipped right off and went whizzing away with me inside it?
‘No, Roe, it’s very late.’ Dad tucked me in and kissed me goodnight, his stubbled beard tickling my skin. Monty jumped up too, somersaulting onto the duvet, tucking his paws beneath him.
After Dad had gone I turned on my side, pulling Jasmine the parrot close for a cuddle, and saw that one of my pawns had been caught. It lay defeated on its side as if the wind had snuck into the room and blown it over. I looked up at Dad’s little portrait of me and Monty, the picture within a picture stretching back for all eternity. It didn’t look as if the wind was blowing quite so ferociously in their world. In the half-light I thought I saw something else in the picture, a pair of eyes watching me, but then they were gone.
I woke up in the dark, hours later. The room was wracked with noise. It felt like the whole house was swaying. Beneath the wind I thought I heard Monty scream, a pitiful thin wail, dissolving into a sob. I sat up. Monty was sound asleep beside me on the bed. The sound had come from downstairs.
I got out of bed, clutching Monty to me unsteadily as the floor buffeted beneath us. We descended the steps carefully, clinging to the brickwork, the house quaking all around us. On the landing, the crying changed, ebbing and flowing through the house. I peeped into every room in turn, grateful for the cat’s warmth in my arms.
In each room the crying sounded different. In the drawing room there were huge, wracking sobs; in the bathroom quiet little whimpers. It was as if a ship full of sad ghosts had been blown through the village and landed, marooned in our house. It wasn’t a scary sound, but a sad one, and I came back to the landing heavy with sorrow. I sat down at the centre of the noise, hugging Monty to me fiercely, and with a deep, unknown grief, I began to cry. I curled up on the floor, tears coating my face as I listened to the keening of the thousands of people all around me.
I awoke to Dad’s touch, stroking my forehead. I was lying on the landing, my bare feet frozen. A pale sun was beginning to peep round the edge of the window. Something looked different outside. I sat up, trying to work out what it was.
‘It’s the poplars,’ Dad murmured, following my gaze. ‘All of them have gone. Completely gone.’ There was quiet surprise in his voice.
I looked again and he was right: where a line of tall trees had stood in the distance, now there was only sky. The beech tree in the garden was still standing, but it was like a giant octopus, its branches thrashing like tentacles in the sky.
The
electricity was off. With mugs of sugary tea heated on a camping stove we listened to the radio, waiting to hear if my school would be open. I really didn’t want to go. Some of the girls had cornered me in the toilets last week and demanded I take off my new shoes, before throwing them in the toilet and pulling the chain. I had told Dad, but he’d just laughed. ‘Japes,’ he had said, his eyes twinkling.
The radio sounded crackly as if even the radio waves were being pounded by the wind. We both hooted with excitement when my school’s closure was announced.
I sat on the low window seat in the drawing room, watching the assault of the hurricane on the village. Not many people had dared to leave their houses, but those who did were walking at a peculiar angle, the wind lifting them on invisible wings.
Stacey turned up at lunchtime wearing her usual shorts and T-shirt, wind-hardened drizzle spattering the denim.
I pulled her inside, away from the beginnings of a hailstorm, and we ran up to my bedroom and knelt by the open window. Stacey put her arm out to try and catch the hail.
‘Where’ve you been?’ I asked her.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I haven’t seen you in ages.’
She brought her hand in and licked the little balls of ice from her palm, crunching thoughtfully. ‘I was at my gran’s house,’ she said. ‘She says it gives my mum a rest. I’ll always come and find you when I get back.’
‘Promise?’
‘’Course. Here, this is better than a promise.’ She put her hand out of the window again and kept it there until it was full of hailstones again.
‘Shake hands,’ she said, slapping her hand into mine without warning and shaking it vigorously. The cold stones crunched between our skin.
‘Now we eat whatever’s in our hand.’ She licked at her palm, slurping up the slush that had stuck there, indicating I should do the same. ‘It’s like blood brothers,’ she said. ‘Snow sisters.’
I looked at my palm. Most of the hail had stayed on her hands, but for a fine icy imprint covering my own. I put my tongue to it. It tasted cold and gritty.
‘What’s this?’ Stacey said, wiping her hand on her shorts and picking up a little picture on the window sill.
‘It’s Mary Mother-of-God.’
The picture had arrived a few days earlier in an envelope addressed to me. It was a present from my mother. Except for the pinafore dress in the summer, she had never sent me anything before. I wondered if this was to be the start of a magical ritual: a gift from mother to daughter every few months.
The letter that had come with it was very short.
‘Mary is the mother of all of us,’ my mother had written, ‘and while you have this picture you will never be alone.’
Why does she think I’m alone? I had thought at the time, I have Dad.
I read and re-read the letter often, running my fingers over the last two words, ‘love, Mum’. Her writing was very pretty. I had taken the picture into bed with me, hoping for comfort, but it had sharp, cold edges, and had ended up back on the window sill.
‘Is Mother-of-God her surname?’ Stacey said.
I nodded. I didn’t tell her who had given it to me. It felt nice to have a secret.
Stacey stood the little picture back on the sill. It was bright and colourful, with a silver frame. Mary Mother-of-God was very pretty, and had a golden circular hat on her head.
‘Is your school closed today, too?’ I asked.
‘I don’t go to school.’
I turned to her, ‘Really? How do you learn?’
‘Mum home schools me.’
‘Wow, that’s so cool. I wish Dad home schooled me. I asked him but he says he’s too busy.’
‘It’s OK, I suppose. It can get a bit lonely.’
‘You can come round here any time you want. If I’m still at school, you can just come and play in my room. Or Dad could draw you.’ Dad was always looking for fresh subjects to draw. ‘Except he’s obsessed with kittens and circuses at the moment, so unless you dressed up like a clown or a cat, he might not want to.’
Stacey laughed.
‘Hey, they’re saying there’s a man-eating panther on the loose,’ I said, remembering, ‘apparently it escaped from the circus.’
‘Who says?’
‘People at school.’
‘Did you see it when you went to the circus?’
I tried to think back, but Dad’s stories were already mixing with the truth, and I couldn’t separate what was real and what was fable. ‘I don’t think so. Dad says he can’t remember it, anyway.’
‘Maybe it had already escaped,’ she said. I could see the excitement building in her eyes, ‘wanna go look for it?’
‘Nah,’ I said, spotting the tops of the mobiles out of the window, ‘I’ve got something even better to show you, come on.’
We ran down the two flights of stairs, the back door slamming forcefully behind us as we went out into the garden.
‘This way!’ I shouted above the wind, and then I was pushing past her and running down to the meadow, the grass rushing beneath my feet, and she was behind me, unable to catch me up. I was as fast as her now, I realised with a flush of jubilation. We flew over the grass, the gale pushing us onwards. Coming to a stop at the edge of the meadow, we beamed at each other, the wind stealing our voices.
Still grinning, Stacey turned and saw the mobiles, and her smile faded.
‘Dad made them,’ I said proudly, looking at them with relish. Some had stopped moving, wedged and jammed by the wind, but others were rotating faster than usual, screeching painfully in disharmony. I ducked as a huge steel disc came whirling towards me, missing me by inches.
‘They’re monstrosities.’
‘No, they’re not,’ I said, ‘they’re beautiful.’ Remembering Stacey’s nettle dare, I said, ‘I dare you to go in.’
But she shook her head, taking a step back, a look of horrified fascination on her face as she stared at the swinging pieces of metal. A plastic bag flew through the air, catching her shoulder for a moment, making her jump. I laughed.
‘You go in if you’re so brave,’ she said.
‘OK, I will.’ I shot a guilty glance at the house, but Dad was nowhere to be seen. Taking a deep breath, I stepped in between the structures, my heart hammering.
The roar of the wind in here was like the whistle of an overboiling kettle. The mobiles surrounded me like a pack of hungry wolves, moving stealthily as if they were hunting me. As I reached the middle of the meadow the sound of the wind disappeared altogether. The mobiles were close now, blocking my path at every turn. Across the meadow, in a shadowy corner, something crouched, watching me.
Stacey was shouting. With a shiver, I tore my eyes away from it and looked at her. She raised her arm, pointing behind me. I turned to look, and something slammed into my shoulder, knocking me to the ground.
I lay, pinned to the earth. Slowly, helplessly, the mobile began to drag me along the ground, my face scraping against the soil. My hands scrabbled to grab hold of the grass, my fingers slipping against something shiny in the ground, and then the propulsion stopped and I was being hopelessly, piteously pressed into the earth, an insistent hand driving me deeper into the meadow.
With a crack, a searing pain shot through my arm. The mobile above me came to a stop, whining and creaking, eager to be moving. All the wind in the whole of the Suffolk sky was rushing toward me. I looked for Stacey, but she was gone.
I lay on the ground, the scream of bone juddering in my arm, and I screwed my eyes shut. Something was tickling my face. I squinted upwards. A huge black cat was sniffing me gently, pressing its nose into my ear, its tongue smoothing my forehead with gentle wet laps.
‘Do not worry,’ it said, its gruff voice full of hurricane. I closed my eyes. A day, a week, a month later, I opened them again. Two faces appeared above me, Stacey’s small muddy one stained with tears, and Dad’s huge bristly one, white under his dark beard.
I came home from hospit
al the day after the hurricane. The sky was lemon pale, as if the wind had cleared not only the clouds but had sucked up all the water too to make a weak cordial of the sky. As we walked delicately through the gate, my arm heavy with plaster and bandage, I stopped. Where there were usually branches, gesticulating in the breeze, there was only a vast expanse of sky. Our huge beech tree lay across the garden like some great slain beast, its topmost branches reaching up to my bedroom window as if pleading for help. I tiptoed up to it and laid my hand on a thin branch, marvelling at how quickly things can change: how only a few hours ago it had been high up in the sky, dancing in the wind, far, far out of reach.
In the house, Stacey stroked my white fingers. My arm was broken in two places and the cast was tight on my skin.
She wrote and drew all over the cast, making use of my felt tip pens until a riot of colour gambolled across the white plaster, words hardly readable and definitely spelt wrong, but I loved them. Best of all, Dad said Stacey was allowed to visit me whenever she wanted. I wanted her to come every day.
On the night of my homecoming, Dad didn’t come to tuck me in. I whispered to Stacey as she gently fussed around me, tightening the duvet round my body, ‘Do you think my dad is going to leave like my mum did?’
‘Nah. He’s got nowhere to go.’ She pulled a tatty pack of Parma Violets out of her pocket and offered me one. I shook my head, remembering their cloying taste and the nauseous feeling it had conjured in me.
‘But he’s angry with me,’ I said.
‘No he’s not, idiot. He’s angry with himself. What sort of dad lets their daughter go into a field of moving metal? It’s like something out of Indiana Jones.’
‘Then why doesn’t he come and see me?’
‘Grown-ups deal with angry feelings differently to us. He’ll come soon, I’m sure.’ She lifted my cast gently to tuck me in better, placing it carefully on the bed.
I looked down at it. It was very itchy. I caught sight of a red heart on the white plaster.
‘Did you do that?’
Stacey reddened.