The Boy Who Flew

by Fleur Hitchcock

  “What?” I ask, dreading the answer. I take a piece of orange peel and and crush it between my fingers. The kitchen fills with the sharp sweet smell.

  “Well, this man came to the house, with Mrs Love—” starts Polly.

  “He’s going to rent Mr Chen’s house from Mrs Love. Ma was thinking him ever so handsome. She put on a new dress, one she didn’t wobble in,” finishes Beatty.

  Polly goes on, “And Ma gave him coffee, and while he was here, Samuel Parfitt came to say that Uncle had been found near death on the road home.”

  “And the man took Ma over to Uncle’s in a proper shiny carriage. He’s a soldier, he’s fought against the French and everywhere in the world, and he’s called Colonel Blade. And that was hours ago.”

  I shake my head at them both. “But Uncle, what happened to Uncle?” I ask.

  “They’ve stitched him up proper,” says Beatty. “Like a pudding.”

  “Beatty!” says Polly. “Shhhh now.”

  “Do they know who did it?” I ask. I say the words, but somehow I know what happened. I’ve seen it.

  “We don’t know that, boy.” Grandma shuffles down the stairs and into the kitchen. She holds her hands in front of the range and coughs like a horse. “Only the Lord knows that. Perhaps it was divine intervention, your uncle’s part in that godless house across the road.” She pauses and her eyes grow with thought. She glances over to Beatty. “Or perhaps it was the fairies.” She helps herself to the last piece of bread and hoists herself back up the stairs, farting and groaning.

  Polly looks at me. “What are you doing today?”

  “Looking for a job. Beatty can come too.” I hoist her on to my hip. “Would you like to come and help me find work?”

  “Is the snow very deep?”

  I shake my head.

  “Then you can take me with you, Athan, and you can teach me to make snowballs.”

  “Deliver this to Mr Katz, will you?” Polly throws a parcel at me and a heavy coat of new blue wool. She rummages in the store cupboard. “Here, have these – they’re Pa’s. And this…”

  She ties a silk cravat around my neck.

  “Now don’t come back till you’ve got a job.”

  Chapter 12

  “Do you think they might be angels, Athan?” Beatty asks, holding her mittens up to the snowflakes circling around her head.

  “Angels?” I ask, pulling the wheeled chair out of the gutter and skirting a large patch of ice. It’s not very far to New King Street, but with Beatty flinging handfuls of snow into my face it feels like miles.

  “Or the dead? Thousands of lost spirits, laid to rest at last?”

  I laugh. “Mr Chen once told me that if you look under a glass, you can see that every snowflake has a different pattern. They’re made of ice crystals, not angels.”

  A sedan chair goes past, carried by two men, swearing and red faced.

  “Can you do that?” Beatty asks.

  “I should think so.” I watch the chairmen slide off around the corner. “It looks easy enough.”

  We’ve reached the house and I hammer on the door.

  Mary answers. I brace myself for an insult but instead she smiles at me. I wonder if she might be pleased to see me.

  “Is Mr Katz at home?” I ask.

  “Indeed.” She curtseys. “Hello, Beatty, how are you? Come up into the hallway – I’ll ask him down.”

  “I’ll wait here if I might. We’ve that chair.” I point at the huge wheels of Beatty’s chair, spotted with packed ice.

  Mary waves at Beatty and vanishes up the stairs.

  “She’s extra pretty, you know she is, she’s got chocolate eyes and caramel skin – lovely,” Beatty giggles. “I ’spect you’ll marry her next week, then she’ll be taken ’way by a cloud devil and magicked into flowers.”

  “Beatty!”

  Mary returns with a tall man with a long duck nose and a serious mouth. He’s holding a thick piece of glass, rounded and polished.

  “For my telescope,” he says, a very slight smile on his lips.

  I shake my head. I have no idea what a telescope is.

  “I show you some time. On a clear night.” I’m still staring at the glass when I realise that he’s holding out some coins in his other hand.

  “Oh – thank you,” I say, taking the money as he heads towards the stairs.

  “Excuse me, sir – have you any jobs going?”

  He wanders back towards me. His eyes run over my clothes and my face and I feel well and truly examined. “What work have you done before?” he asks.

  “I used to work for Mr Chen.”

  “Oh, how interesting – the one who—”

  “Died horribly,” Beatty yells from her chair behind me.

  Mr Katz raises his eyebrows. “I might have. I will think on it.” He dips his head in parting and walks back into the house.

  I glance back up at Mary and she smiles. Beatty’s right, she has dark-brown eyes, warm with flecks of black, like a fresh eel.

  “I don’t know if you’d want to work here. He’s a bit odd,” she says. “Plays music in the assembly rooms in the day, and makes things or stares at the sky all night. His sister’s the same; they’re from Germany.”

  “C’mon, Athan,” says Beatty. “I want to play in the snow.”

  “Off you go then,” says Mary. “Enjoy yourselves.” She looks out at the street as if she’d like to play in the snow too, but she closes the door and I hear her footsteps clunk on the wooden boards.

  “Can we go and see the people, Athan?” says Beatty, pulling the blanket over her arms.

  “Really? You want to go into the middle of town?”

  “I want to see the people. I never get to see the people. It’s too far for Poll,” she pleads.

  It occurs to me that I might be able to get some oil of vitriol in town. Me and Tod are going to need it.

  “All right then.” I fight through the streets, pushing the wheeled chair. As we get closer, the pavements fill with traders slipping about.

  We skim the market. Cabbage leaves spew from the back of a cart and catch the wind, barrelling down the street, bursting through the snowflakes and pasting themselves across the fish market. The Quality struggle out of the hot Baths into the blizzard, their hats close to their wigs, searching for sedan chairs while the traders call and haggle, ignoring them completely.

  I can’t help feeling there are two types of people in this town. Us and them.

  Beatty points at a group of women, all wigged and powdered, picking their way through the slush and market rubbish. Because of their silly shoes, they walk like ducks, sliding on the cobbles.

  “Why do they come here?” Beatty asks.

  I’d wondered this myself when I was little. “Because of the waters,” I answer. “The waters are warm and healing. They cure people.”

  “Can’t I go in them?” asks Beatty. “Can’t I be cured?”

  I shake my head. Beatty’s legs can’t be cured. There’s nothing of them. It’s as if she didn’t really have any proper legs when she was born, but I can’t say that to her. Instead, I say, “I think they’re for rheumatics and gout and that kind of thing.”

  A small tear trickles down Beatty’s cheek. She wipes it away with her red blanket but I see it before she does.

  “Stop, I want to look there, please, Athan,” she says, pointing at a shop to our right. Struggling over the cobbles, I heave the chair on to the pavement and drag it alongside the huge shop window. It’s a fancy shop, it smells of sugar and violets. Tod and I have spent our lives staring hopelessly through the glass but this time, I actually have a little money in my pocket.

  “Oh!” Beatty draws in her breath.

  It glows and it glitters. More so with the snow falling around our heads. Inside the window, golden trays on mirrored shelves, heaped with sugar mice, and liquorice, and chocolates dusted with sugar. Marzipan fruits, and candied orange cluster together with a pile of glacé cherries.

&nbs
p; “Oh,” she says again.

  I reach into my pocket. It’s heavy with coins, although I was going to spend them on chemicals.

  A couple of sugar mice wouldn’t hurt.

  “Stay here,” I say.

  “I might grow wings and fly away,” she says.

  Kicking the pads of snow from my feet I push the door open and stand on the mat watching the ice crystals melt off my shoes. The shop is warm and smells richly sweet, hot caramel and oranges thickening the air.

  “Sir?” says the woman behind the counter.

  I look around and realise she’s talking to me. “Oh – two sugar mice, if you please. And two of those red things.” I point into the window. Through the glass Beatty’s eyes are wide and amazed as she watches the woman pick up two sugar-tossed jellies with silver tongs and drop them into a small paper bag.

  “One shilling and sixpence,” she says, twisting the bag.

  Fumbling in my pockets I count out the exact money, I drop my best low bow, take the bag and swing back out on to the street as if I bought jellies every day.

  “Beatty?”

  The pavement outside the shop’s empty.

  “Beatty?!”

  Frantically I scan the people rushing through the market, and catch sight of a tall man with a glimpse of Beatty’s red blanket just in front of him. Jamming the paper bag in my pocket I throw myself through the crowd to arrive by the side of the chair.

  “Ah, Mr Wilde.” It’s Mr Katz. “I saw your sister shivering on the pavement, so I thought I would show her something more interesting.”

  “Oh!” I say. “I wondered where she’d gone.”

  Mr Katz does a deep bow. “So sorry if I alarmed you,”

  “Thank you for looking after her,” I say, holding out the paper bag to Beatty who lets out a gasp as she peers inside.

  “Watch,” says Mr Katz. “These people are very clever with their selling.” He points to a man behind a small wooden stand and positions Beatty so that she has a ringside seat.

  “Now, madam,” says the man, turning towards a woman in a bloodstained apron. “What are life’s greatest pests?”

  “Ooh, my,” says the woman, placing one raw hand on her hip, the other on her forehead. “You got me there. Seagulls? They’re terrors, take lamb chops right off the stall, they do.”

  Everyone murmurs and nods. “Squirrels,” calls someone else.

  “Rats – rats everywhere.”

  “So rats, seagulls, squirrels – all of them fear me,” the man cries, taking a small catapult from a sack and a felt ball from the bucket. “And this is why.”

  He holds up the catapult and takes aim. I don’t see the felt ball fly but I do see the man on the other side of the square look around in amazement as the cap from his head leaps sideways and flies apparently unaided across the square.

  The crowd laughs and we join in.

  “You see the power unleashed, and imagine what a dried pea – yes, a dried pea, ladies and gentlemen – could do to vermin.”

  “Very good,” mutters the meat woman.

  “I think,” says Beatty, “that it might be a waste of a good dried pea.”

  “Shh, child,” hisses a woman with a basket of pigs’ ears.

  The meat woman glares at Beatty.

  The showman presses a catapult into the meat woman’s hand. “Would the young lady like to demonstrate?”

  The meat woman flutters her eyelashes and picks a felt ball from the bucket. Scanning the market, she looks for a target, fixing on a strolling seagull.

  “Do you like marzipan?” Mr Katz asks Beatty.

  Beatty flushes. “Yes – of course I do.”

  “Here.” Mr Katz snaps a piece from a bar in his pocket and hands it to Beatty. She sticks it in her mouth and glows.

  He hands me a piece half the size.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “Ladies and gentleman,” says the showman. “Watch.”

  The meat woman plays the tension, obviously waiting until the crowd’s grown. She pulls the leather back and fires, catching the seagull on the beak and sending it squawking into the air.

  “Isn’t that marvellous!” she cries. “What a wonderful thing!”

  “Fine shot, ma’am,” says the showman.

  “Very good,” says Mr Katz.

  The crowd clap and rush forward to buy the catapults, and it suddenly occurs to me that something like a catapult might launch the flying machine. I wish I could ask Mr Chen.

  ”Perhaps I will buy one,” says Mr Katz. “Here, boy, pay for me, will you?”

  When I get back with the catapult and Mr Katz’s change, he is bent over Beatty, telling her a joke, making her laugh. Her eyes shine and she takes another piece of marzipan.

  The showman comes over to sell a catapult to Beatty.

  “Sorry,” I say, swinging the chair round so that we can get out of the crowd. “No money.”

  He scowls.

  “Sorry, sir,” yells Beatty over her shoulder. “Thanks for the show. Your friend you gave the thing to was a very good shot. I expect she’s had a lot of practice.”

  But even as the people laugh we wriggle among them. Behind us I hear squeals and complaints but push on and on until we pop out the other side of the crowd with Mr Katz following.

  Chapter 13

  Mr Katz walks back with us across the square. He chatters to Beatty and asks me a few questions about what kind of work I did for Mr Chen.

  “This and that, polishing, distilling, manufacturing.”

  “So he thought well of you? He trusted you?”

  “I don’t know – he used me quite a bit, most days.”

  “Ah. And what was he working on?”

  It’s on the tip of my tongue, but I let it slide and say, “Oh! Little machines for this and that, you know, rat traps, sundials. That kind of thing.”

  Mr Katz nods his head and smiles to himself. Grandma shuffles off down to the kitchen as we return, and I stoke the little fire in the shop grate until the shop becomes almost snug.

  Beatty sits next to it, playing with paper and folding birds nearly as good as the ones Mr Chen had.

  “So when you are a stinking man, Athan, will you still visit us?”

  “Yes, of course, but I won’t be a stinking man.”

  The bell on the door rings and a woman comes in. I bow deeply and my eyes trace up from her delicate little feet. It’s the sharp-faced woman from the auction. What’s she doing here?

  “Ribbon,” she demands.

  “For what purpose, madam?” I ask, pretending I’ve never seen her before.

  “For my bonnet,” she says, looking around the room, taking in the doors, the window, everything. She grabs at the bonnet balanced on her shoulders and swings it around.

  It looks perfectly ribboned to me, but I glance at Beatty, whose finger creeps out of her scarf and points to a set of drawers under the counter. I don’t work in the shop often enough to remember where everything is.

  With a flourish, I pull the top drawer open, revealing row after row of neatly folded ribbons arranged in a rainbow. I set it three inches open, and pull the next one six inches open and the third, nine inches open, just as my pa did when I was little.

  “Hmm,” the woman says, pulling out one, then another, then a third, and taking each one to the window before discarding them on the floor. “What do you think? Boy?”

  Beatty raises her eyebrows and clamps her hand over her mouth, but a snigger sneaks out. I tilt my head this way and that, giving the ribbons a good look. Beatty’s right to laugh; I don’t actually have a clue.

  The woman looks over to Beatty by the fire. “Well, you’re a very…” Words fail her. “Child,” she says.

  “Yes,” says Beatty through her fingers. “I am a child.”

  “The yellow is very fresh,” I say, dragging the woman’s attention back to the ribbon. “And the orange.”

  “Only the mad wear orange, boy,” says Grandma, appearing in the doorway, short
ly followed by the smell of mothballs. She grins horridly at the woman.

  “Oh!” says the woman, obviously shocked by the appearance of this witch from the basement. “Perhaps I’ll take a little purple.” She takes a lilac ribbon from the drawer and drops it on the counter top. “A yard will do.” Suddenly she’s in a hurry. Never did I think of Grandma as a guard dog, but perhaps in her horrible way, she is.

  I measure out the ribbon against the brass yard on the counter, nip it neatly and drop it into a paper bag.

  The woman throws a coin on the counter, grabs the ribbon and swings out of the shop.

  “Ooh!” says Beatty. “What on earth did she really come in for?”

  Polly’s still out, and there’s only Grandma asleep in the kitchen.

  I go out to check on the hens. They’ve gone to roost, and I hang sacking over the front of their boxes, to keep at least the snow out, and slam the kitchen shutters closed.

  Building up the kitchen stove, I put the kettle on and brew a pot of tea. I check the back door and the shutters again, thinking of Uncle and wondering why Polly isn’t back yet.

  “Are you afeared of the bogeyman?” asks Beatty, sipping at a cup.

  “No – I’m not – but I’m afraid of foxes.”

  “Was that woman a fox?” asks Beatty.

  “She might be either,” I say, thinking of her with the scarred man, wandering around the auction, bidding against me.

  “Is she to do with the thing you’ve got, the round thing?”

  I kneel down in front of Beatty. “You don’t know anything about that, do you?” I say. “If anyone asks, you’ve never seen it, have you?”

  Beatty shakes her head.

  “Because it’s not safe for you to know anything at all about it. Poll doesn’t know, nor Ma – so you shouldn’t either.”

  “But I always feel safe with you, Athan.” A smile spreads over her little face. “Do you always feel safe with me?”

  “Yes, Beatty, I do,” I reply.

  “Will you always look after me, Athan?”

  “Yes, always,” I say. “I promise.”

  From upstairs, the door knocker echoes through the house. We run up together, her on my hip, and peer out into the gloom.