The Boy Who Flew

by Fleur Hitchcock

  He’s a real gent and he makes Blade look tatty.

  I follow.

  The room’s set out with card tables and Blade sits down at one with his back to me. There are four fireplaces, four mirrors and some portraits of fat men in waistcoats. The ceiling’s murky and coated with candle soot, but I think it’s one of those grand ones with pictures and lumpy plaster.

  I peer at myself in the mirror and see that my hair, normally dark, looks like I’ve seen a ghost, thanks to Polly’s talcum powder. I wander over to a fireplace and brush as much powder into the fire as I can. It burns with a pop, so that the people in the room turn round to see what’s caused the noise.

  I pretend it has nothing to do with me.

  I turn my back on Blade, keeping my eyes on him using the mirror that hangs over the fireplace. He never takes his eyes from the table, never moves out into the shadows.

  I want to listen to their conversation but there’s no cover. Perhaps I could try earwigging from the hallway and I head towards the doorway as calmly as I can but a man with a tray of drinks trips on the step and blunders into me.

  “Oh my goodness. Oh I’m so terribly sorry,” hoots the man who has poured hot dark chocolate down my sleeve. “Oh damn – blast.”

  Now everyone’s staring at us. Including Blade.

  “Let’s mop you down,” says a large woman sailing in our direction, brandishing a cloth.

  “Lad.” Blade’s suddenly at my elbow, smiling. “How pleasant to see you. A little accident with your nice coat?” He tugs at me. “We’ll sort him out,” he says to the woman as he pulls me from the crowd. “Have a drink.” He pats me on the back.

  I follow, wondering if I could bring him down now.

  He steers me over to a table. He presses a cup into my hand and dabs at my jacket with a grubby hanky. Unsure of what to do I down the cup. It’s like tea, only not.

  A second later, another cup appears in my hand. I empty it in one gulp. It’s nice and sweet, and I feel ready and bold. I laugh.

  My mouth opens. “Colonel – I want you to, I want to tell you to—”

  Blade lets go of my shoulders and sits down. “No need to talk now. Watch the game, lad.” He’s got a smile on his face. “Don’t take your eyes from the game.”

  Somehow I feel as if I’m watching myself from the outside. Surely these heavy arms don’t belong to me – or these useless legs? The useless legs fold and I sink to a chair. Cards come and go in front of me; piles of money go back and forth across the table.

  Someone makes a joke, and I look up at my neighbours. The other men all wear uniform, but they’re not smart. One of them’s missing a finger, the stump’s bound with a dirty bandage; another’s unshaven, the third’s got no teeth. Where’s the man in the expensive clothes?

  I drink another cup of the thick sweet tea.

  The Colonel writes something on a piece of paper and gives it to the most toothless one, who leaves the table and disappears into the crowds. I try to follow, but my legs have gone soft.

  “We’ll play a round, no stakes. Or tell you what, lad, I’ll lend you a guinea. Use it, see if it gives you any luck.” They all laugh. This time their eyes seem darker, their mouths wider.

  Hearts, clubs, diamonds, clubs, diamonds … pretty pictures in my hand.

  I gulp down tea. The stump-fingered one fills my cup from a teapot. I drink that too. I’m thirsty; why am I so thirsty? And the room seems very full and very noisy.

  “Why am I here? I can’t remember why I’m here.”

  “Don’t know, lad,” says the Colonel.

  I begin to feel very hot. My cheeks are burning and my cravat’s digging into my neck so I pull at the pin until the brooch gives up and falls out. The brooch feels cold and heavy in my hand, as if it disapproves of me.

  It takes me two goes to get it in my pocket.

  Somewhere I must have some feet. There’s the floor, wooden, jagged, going in all directions like my head. Experimentally I see if the foot I can see is mine. It’s at an odd angle, and it moves, but not how I expect. If I walk now, the floor will come too. If I stand, perhaps the floor will come to meet me. I try to stand but my head feels so heavy, it tries to dive all on its own.

  “Carry him … lift … no one’ll notice…” My legs slide over the floor. Someone grabs me under my arms and pulls. Something’s happened to me. I’ve got no strength.

  “Shocking at this time in the afternoon. I shall have to complain.” A high voice rings in my ears, a woman sweeps past us, trailing sickly perfume.

  “So sorry,” I mutter.

  “Try walking, lad. Try using your legs.” The Colonel’s on my left.

  “Z’bones! Mordecai, he’s heavy.”

  Who’s Mordecai?

  “Excuse us, miss.”

  My feet get caught in a dress.

  “Don’t come back for that job, boy – I don’t employ drinkers,” the man in the suit barks at me as we pass him.

  I try to say, “I don’t drink,” but we don’t stop for long enough for me to meet his eye and instead my useless legs catch in something that rustles. It lets out a squawk and the Colonel’s arms get me outside. The rush of cold air hits me and for a moment I know where I am. Outside the assembly rooms.

  I make an attempt to run but my legs fold and I sag back into his grasp.

  “Why not do it now?” one of the soldiers asks.

  “Not yet.” Coins change hands and the Colonel mutters something about waiting for someone.

  “If he spews here in front of our customers, it’ll cost you twenty shillings,” shouts the man from the doorway as a carriage pulls to a halt. I look up at him and vomit on his shoes.

  Somebody in a yellow dress opens the door from inside and the Colonel shoves me up the little steps.

  Something yelps as I climb in.

  A dog.

  I slump to one side, my face pressed against the glass. Blade says something to the driver then clambers up, wedging himself next to me.

  “Dear God, what a smell.” From the shadows comes a woman’s voice, and a hand that flaps a white handkerchief.

  “Open the window then,” says Blade. “It’s him and his vomit, they go t’gether.”

  We begin to move and the carriage groans over the cobbles.

  The world spins back and forth so I close my eyes, but it just moves faster.

  Something rustles on the seat opposite me. I prise my eyes open to look. It’s the dog, clambering on to the seat. It growls at me and I nearly throw up again.

  “Hold on to it, lad – have a sip on this.” The Colonel passes me a silver flask. I put it to my lips and a burning stream of something pours down my throat. I cough and nearly retch, and sink against the side of the coach.

  Perhaps I sleep, perhaps I stay awake, but I know he talks to me, talks in his soft coal town voice. And she stays quiet, her powdered face a white oval in the darkness, the man beside her no more than a square of handkerchief. They all ask questions, but I don’t think I answer them, I don’t think I can do or I’ll be sick.

  “What did you find at the old man’s ’ouse?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “Was there owt there?”

  “No.”

  “Are you and your uncle th’only ones who went there?”

  “Going to be sick.”

  I think we go round by the river then. I sleep, but when I wake the world’s still going round.

  “What was he working on?”

  I don’t answer. I’m sure I never say anything. “Was it a flying machine?” asks the woman. “Actually, we know it was a flying machine so there’s no need not to tell us.”

  I don’t answer.

  “You see, he told us quite a lot, that last evening,” says the woman. “It was a long night. A bloody night.”

  “Aye,” says the Colonel, a grin creeping across his mouth. “There were plenty of blood.”

  The carriage lurches, and all the cups of tea that haven’t already left me lur
ch too. “He lived a long time, that old man,” she says almost regretfully.

  “He cared about you,” says the Colonel.

  “He did,” the woman says.

  “Called out for you, he did,” says the Colonel.

  “Touching,” says the woman.

  “It was,” agrees the Colonel.

  “It’s nice to see a soul caring about another soul. Shame we didn’t get to you first. He’d have done anything for you.”

  “What’s your greatest fear, boy?”

  I don’t answer.

  At least, I don’t think I do.

  What seems like hours later, the Colonel asks, “Where d’you keep your secrets, lad?”

  “Down my breeches.” I laugh at that one.

  “Is it under the bed, lad? Is there something special under your bed?”

  “What? My thunder mug?” I giggle. I can’t stop.

  He smiles; he goes on smiling at me, his heavy hand resting on my knee. His head shakes up and down in the carriage, like a puppet.

  I think I’m asleep when the woman says, “I think you need to understand, Athan, that there’s a great deal at stake here. Not just a little misplaced loyalty – we need to know what you know – and we will. Whether or not you want to tell us.”

  I know we stay in that carriage for a long time, rattling over the streets, passing door after door, the snow on the pavements, the door again, the pavements, the voices all going on and on, on and on, on and on.

  “He’s asleep,” says Blade.

  “We’re going to have to get it somehow,” says the woman.

  We swing right.

  “Do you think he knows much?” she asks.

  “Enough,” says Blade. “More than anyone else.”

  “How are we going to find out?”

  We swing left. There’s a really long silence. I might even fall asleep.

  “I know. I know exactly how to get it,” says the Colonel with a smile in his voice.

  And I never say anything, I don’t think.

  I really don’t.

  Chapter 19

  I dream of foxes nipping the necks of hens. Hens wearing dresses and running, laughing, playing with the fox just before he kills them. Running and running. I try to stop the fox, catch him, trap him, and then he turns on me and his jaws open.

  I wake suddenly.

  The thing beneath my ear is not a pillow and the stinking thing over my shoulders is not a blanket.

  I turn and my head creaks.

  This is not home.

  This is a stable?

  I try really hard to sit up but there’s something holding me down, which is when I realise that I’m tied to a bench and that my hands have fallen asleep by my sides and I can’t feel my legs.

  Perhaps it isn’t a stable.

  Above me, in the roof gable, a broken tile lets in a wash of morning light.

  By tilting my head I can more or less see the whole room. It’s probably an attic space; no proper windows, no real furniture. No stairs. Just very cold.

  So how did this happen? I crawl through my memory. The assembly rooms, the questioning, the awful coach journey, the sharp woman, the dog.

  The smell of vomit is still lurking in my nostrils. They gave me drink; it must’ve been in the tea and now I’m wrecked. My clothes are wrecked and I don’t even know where I am. I don’t even know what I said. But I’ve got that feeling of dread again. As if something’s happened, or happening, and I’m not there to stop it.

  Voices rumble beneath me, and something scrapes metal on wood.

  “Let’s take a look at him,” says a voice I recognise.

  The floor trembles against the bench and two shapes emerge from a trapdoor near my feet.

  I close my eyes, pretending to still be asleep.

  It’s the Colonel and another man. He could be one of the men from the assembly rooms, but then again, he might not be.

  They stand looking down on me. One on either side.

  “Pitiful,” says the Colonel in the end.

  The other nods his head in agreement.

  “What’ll you do with him.”

  The Colonel rocks my head from side to side. I keep my eyes firmly shut. “Not sure,” he says. “But I’ve an idea or two.”

  The other man giggles. “Like that auctioneer fellow?”

  Blade clicks his tongue. “Mebbe, just like that auctioneer.”

  Their boots clunk on the boards and down the stairs and I listen to them disappearing, step after step, until I think they finally hit a stone floor. Mumbling floats up to me, a door slams and soon the house goes silent. So silent, I wonder if someone’s sitting downstairs waiting. But then the light fades through the hole in the roof, and my bladder fills and I decide there’s no one here, they’ve gone out.

  They’ve left me.

  Either because they want me to escape – or because they’re sure I can’t.

  My head’s clear now. But my arms have died on either side of me, so I begin to shift them, my elbow twitching, my wrist flicking, until the pins and needles race through my elbows and my hands begin to sting.

  Keeping the movement going, I discover that my hands are tied together under the bench. I pull one; the other bumps into the wood under my thigh. If I stretch one arm under the bench, the other becomes looser, so I pull my shoulder blades together and bring my hands closer, until I feel the tension go out of the rope.

  When we were little, Polly used to tie my hands together with the braid from the shop, and I would practise getting free in a matter of moments. It gave me hours of fun, and it drove her mad that she couldn’t keep me out of the way.

  I do the same now, twisting my thumb right inside my palm, until my hand becomes as thin as my wrist and slips out of the tie. The rope slides to the ground and my other arm bounces free.

  Straight away I sit up, bringing my hands round, so that I can undo the remaining knot. The moment I’m free I reach for my feet, scrabbling with the rope, rubbing my ankles until I can move them again.

  If I’m supposed to escape, then I’ll do it as quickly as possible because I’ve just remembered something the Colonel said last night.

  I know exactly how to get it.

  He knows there’s a way to crack me open, get me to give him the plans.

  And I’m frightened that he’s going to use it.

  Shoeless, I pad over to the wall. Above me is the hole in the roof, black sky above, letting through a steady drizzle of snowflakes. Moving silently, I carry the bench over and stand it under the hole.

  As I settle my foot on the bench, something about the house creaks and I pause, listening, but all I hear is the scuttling of rats. My fingers on the wall, I balance on the bench, sticking the top of my head through the hole. I can’t see much, except blizzard, and the snow lands thickly on my eyelids, until I can’t even see how much there is. Using my fingers to hold on to the shattered tiles on either side of the hole, I haul myself up until my head and shoulders are out and caught in the wind. I was cold already, but the wind is icy and I’m tempted to go back and find another way out.

  But then, there could be someone downstairs.

  One knee and then the other make it through the hole and I kneel sideways on the slates, looking over into a pit of swirling snow.

  I sit for a minute trying to work out where I am. That might be a church tower over the right. And that dark shape to the left could be the top of the Octagon chapel. But it could be a tree.

  Lying on my back, I reach my arms across the expanse of the roof and discover that there’s a ridge above me, which I can just reach if I jam my feet against the hole and stretch.

  It’s cold – very cold – but my fingers grasp the ridge tiles and, thinking of my family, I pull myself backwards, up the roof, to the top and slip down the other side, against a chimney and out of the wind. Tugging my sleeves down, I pull up my collar and hunch my shoulders against the cold. I don’t feel safe, I just feel safer. At least I can see anyon
e coming to get me through the hole in the roof, and I don’t think there’s any other way up here.

  But I wonder if there’s any way down.

  Leaving the shelter of the chimney, I explore more of the roof. The snow drives at me, stinging my ears and slipping down the back of my neck, but I crawl over the slates until I find a small square flat area. Dropping down on to that, I find another roof. Larger and lower and suddenly I realise where I am.

  New King Street. Near Mr Katz’s house. Not far from home but I know from getting stuck up here a few years ago that it’s not easy to get down off these houses, which is why Tod and I avoid them. Crouching, I map out the streets in my head.

  There’s a farm nearby with hayricks where I’ve bought feed for Uncle’s horses in the past, and I’ve got a feeling I’m very close by.

  They keep horses there too, and a few cows, and I’m sure there’s a dung heap. There has to be a dung heap.

  Gusts of snow-filled wind sweep over the roof again so I turn my back against them and for a moment I’m lost; I can’t work out which way I was going. I stumble about, blinded by the snow, my hands already so cold I can’t feel them and my feet burning from the frozen tiles. My brain has frozen, thoughts barely moving.

  A lump of ice from my stockings snaps off and falls, skittering across the slates and plummeting off the side of the roof.

  I listen to hear it fall, but it doesn’t make a sound.

  Either it’s so far down, the sound won’t reach me, or there’s something soft down there.

  Lowering myself to my knees I peer through the snowstorm. Shapes and sounds.

  Horses? Could that be horses stamping their feet in stables?

  And could that mound covered in snow be the hayrick, or the dung heap?

  I sniff the air – beyond the cold and fire soot, there’s the smell of horses.

  So I let myself go.

  Chapter 20

  Falling through the snowflakes, I wonder if I’m already dead.

  That’s all I’ve got time for.

  Chapter 21

  “Ugh.”