Absolute Hush

by Sara Banerji

  Bruno finished his tea, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, pointed to the loosebox and said ‘Me? You?’

  He caught Sissy by the wrist and looked into her face. There was a sort of wildness in his smile which suddenly frightened her. ‘You? Me?’ he said.

  Tossing the empty mug on to a pile of nettles, he stood up and began jerking her towards the stable. ‘Pretty me, pretty you,’ he cried, pulling at her as though suddenly time was short, as though there was somewhere they had to reach in a moment or the chance would be lost. The front of Bruno’s trousers had risen to a peak, as though the animal inside was fully awake now and ready to leap out.

  Sissy began shivering with panic instead of excitement and tried to pull away, but he was much too strong.

  ‘You me pretty pretty,’ he babbled. He began to draw her across the chopped nettle stumps. ‘Pretty pretty me you,’ he chanted as he hauled her towards the stable door.

  As the Italian prisoner slid the bolt back, George was racing towards the house, already shouting, ‘Mummy, Mummy! The Italian prisoner’s grabbed Sissy!’

  ‘Quick! Quick! Do something, Mrs L,’ cried Elizabeth faintingly.

  The charlady was off in a moment. As she raced through sorrel and coltsfoot, holding her skirt high, she imagined returning to an awed and grateful Elizabeth, holding on to the damaged child like a guardian angel bringing back a penitent soul.

  When she reached the stable, she heard sounds of struggle and panting.

  She thrust her body as silently as she could through nettles and docks and became filled with courage and ambition as she reached out for the door, but Sissy ruined everything. The moment Mrs Lovage flung open the stable door, she sprang out from among the apparently bare thighs of the Italian prisoner and rushed away.

  Mrs Lovage wasted moments shouting after Sissy before turning back to shut the bolts. By then, Bruno had already got his trousers back on and was at the door. Mrs Lovage tried to thrust him back in, but without much conviction, for she was a small scrawny woman and he a big muscular young man and he strode out, probably not even aware of Mrs Lovage’s efforts.

  He came into the sunshine still buttoning his flies, stopped, turned, and looked at Mrs Lovage in a way that made her think for a moment that he might be going to finish on her what he had started on Sissy. He paused, kept his eyes on her face and, holding his fist to his groin, tilted his enhanced pelvis towards her. Then, leaving Mrs Lovage trembling, the Italian prisoner strode out of the yard.

  Elizabeth, sitting at the window of her little sitting-room and trying unsuccessfully to keep her mind on her silken threads, heard Sissy come crashing in.

  ‘Are you all right, dear?’ she called cautiously, trying to keep reality at bay.

  ‘Of course!’ screamed Sissy, reassuring Elizabeth by the aggression in her tone.

  Sissy’s feet thundered on up the stairs.

  Elizabeth looked on to the soothing garden, and instead saw the Italian prisoner pass along the drive, towards the road. His hips swung jauntily, his head was high, and his trousers were so tight they revealed the totality of his manly parts. A sweet shiver flickered through Elizabeth’s body.

  Then, with shrill cries of outrage, Mrs Lovage appeared, gasping.

  ‘Oh, my God, mum! He nearly raped our Sissy.’

  ‘Raped?’ gasped Elizabeth. She had imagined the girl had got in the gardener’s way, or teased him, as she had often done to Burdwell before the war, and that, like Burdwell, the prisoner had smacked out in irritation. She had not expected anything like this.

  ‘He kissed her, at any rate,’ amended Mrs Lovage, aware that this was not quite as good.

  Elizabeth relaxed a little, feeling she was starting to understand. Mrs Lovage must be suffering from one of the symptoms of the change. She had heard that women, at this time, become inflamed with sexual imaginings.

  Elizabeth had, in spite of the broken cup – nervous awe from her lovely home no doubt – thought Bruno a charming young man. For instance, how willing he had been to help with clearing away. Her own children never lifted a finger. She felt sure that the Italian prisoner was not the sort of man to go kissing children.

  ‘Ridiculous,’ she said firmly. ‘One of George and Sissy’s stupid jokes, and now you’ve gone and upset him. He’s left and there’s no one to do the garden.’

  ‘But mum, but mum,’jabbered Mrs Lovage.

  Elizabeth had sung aloud the morning Bruno arrived because the young man spoke no English so would be unable to lecture her, and was a prisoner-of-war so would be easily disciplined and even sent away if he was any sort of a nuisance. She had anticipated the fun, after the children had gone to bed, of having a drink with the good-looking young man and had decided that, once he settled down, she would not expect too much gardening from him. Instead she would get him a bicycle, and the pair of them would roam over the summer countryside while Mrs Lovage gave the children lunch. She and the young Italian man would sit by the roadside, eat sandwiches, and drink some of the elderberry wine Mrs Lovage had made last summer. She, Elizabeth, would train her handsome young gigolo in manners, would teach him to be attentive to her, would show him how to treat a person with her sensitive nature. And now the young man had left because of the lumpy child. As usual, Sissy had gone and spoilt everything.

  In their sleep Sissy and George would often pass their limbs across each other’s bodies. Sissy’s foot would linger ticklishly against George’s tummy button. George’s fingers would knuckle up against Sissy’s neck. These physical explorings sometimes led to unexpected discoveries. A few months earlier, George, half awake, had drawn his palm across Sissy’s chest and had woken utterly on encountering a small soft swelling. He had shaken her in panic.

  ‘Don’t be so silly,’ she had snapped with sharp embarrassment. ‘Haven’t you ever heard of bosoms? Well, that’s one.’

  ‘But only one!’ George had wailed, sitting up and gazing at his sister anxiously. ‘Shouldn’t you have two?’

  ‘I suppose the other will come in due course,’ Sissy had told him, without letting him see that she, too, felt concerned. The second did in fact arrive two weeks later.

  In their sleep the brother and sister would press their cheeks together, wind their arms round each other’s waists, and throw their legs over each other’s bodies.

  But, after the Italian prisoner’s kiss, Sissy no longer wanted to go to bed early and explore with George. She turned her back on him, and shrank away, out of reach of his arms.

  If George felt abandoned at night he felt even more so by day, for Sissy would not talk to him but stood looking out through the great wrought-iron gates for hours on end.

  He said, awkwardly addressing her back, ‘Lucky I ran for Mrs Lovage in time.’

  Sissy did not answer.

  ‘I expect you are glad I got her,’ he tried again.

  ‘You are a filthy interfering little sneak!’ Sissy shouted suddenly and her shoulders began to shake so that for a horrible moment George thought that she was crying. But that was impossible because Sissy never cried. George stared at the quivering shoulders helplessly.

  ‘How was I supposed to know you liked being dragged into the stable, Sis?’ he said at last.

  Sissy let out a sound that sounded like a horse snorting.

  In the end George tramped wearily away, wondering if he even wanted Sissy to talk to him now that she had become so odd.

  Sissy stared through hearts and spears of iron and thought about the desire she had seen in the Italian prisoner’s eyes. At the time it had frightened her, but now she was full of regret that she would not see it any more.

  The episode had changed Sissy’s perception of herself. For the first time she saw herself as someone adult men found attractive. Testing her new theory, she watched men go past the gates and pondered on their reactions to her. She had to admit that these were not favourable. Most were rather old, so perhaps past being attracted to thirteen-year-old girls. But the few young ones,
mostly airmen from the base, did not seem inspired by Sissy either. In fact they hardly glanced at the pale-faced girl in her faded Officers’ Families dress.

  With a chill of fear she began to wonder if any man would look at her with desire again.

  Chapter 6

  When George went to light a fire he would slip away, shoulders hunched, adopting a shuffling gait that Sissy had learnt to recognise. She never suggested accompanying George on these occasions. She knew, without his telling her, that he did not want her.

  He and Sissy had only twice watched a fire together, once when the High Street cottage burned, and once when they had been picking mushrooms near the airbase.

  The steady roaring sound of a plane passing overhead turned to a gappy stutter. The plane began to dip and tilt. It toppled about in the air for a few moments and then began to fall swiftly towards the field in which Sissy and George stood. They clutched each other’s hands as the plane plunged into a haystack.

  There came a moment’s silence. The birds stopped singing. The breeze dropped. The river seemed to cease to flow for a moment.

  Then a great plume of black smoke began to pour out of the stack and hay and plane vanished from sight. Sissy and George began to choke and cough as smoke filled the field. With a roar the plane exploded and the smoke became rosy with the light of the fire. Great lumps of burning hay and bits of aeroplane went circling into the sky, and burning stuff began to rain upon the children’s clothes with a scorching smell. Their nostrils became filled with other smells, burning oil and hay – and roasting meat. Clots of red hot char began to sting Sissy and George’s skin and made them leap.

  Then Sissy began to scream. She threw back her head and let out enormous shrieks that were almost silent because of the noise of the fire, and George knew that it was not pain or shock that made her shout but exhilaration. Then he began to scream as well.

  Though they did not watch any more fires together, George and Sissy did everything else together. Until the Italian kiss. After the kiss, George wandered alone. For days he ambled along high-hedged lanes, slashing at marestail that was already unfurling.

  He regretted now that he had never allowed Sissy to light fires with him, for he had seen excitement light her eyes when he had described flames roaring and smoking rafters falling. George chopped another marestail and watched with satisfaction the hollow stem snap and the proud plant fall. He had rejected Sissy, he decided, because fires were something else, not part of ordinary life, not something he did for fun or excitement, but a sacred activity that transformed him. Fire placed George in another kind of consciousness. As he began to gather suitable matches, to store away newspaper sheets, to steal little jars of paraffin, he would feel his usual heavy George personality begin to rise and lighten like yeast in the warm; like balloons being blown. He transcended his everyday self and turned into Loki, god of fire, walker of destruction, changer of the universe. Even his face became more spiritual in the presence of fire. His heavy eyes would glitter and the flesh of his cheeks shrink and harden. While the fire was burning, George would be filled with a wonderful bliss that was beyond excitement, beyond satisfaction, beyond thought. George had almost envied the pilot burning to death inside his plane in the haystack for if just watching fire could fill one with such glory, imagine what being consumed by it must do.

  For George, Hell was a place of agonising ecstasy, and those in Heaven did not know what they were missing. George knew the pain of fire for he had been often burnt, yet so wonderful was the bliss that accompanied it that it was worth even ferocious pain.

  At the very height of the burning, George never felt pain. Red hot matter could cling to his arms without him noticing, though later he would be in agony with weeping sores and scabs sticking to his shirt-sleeves. He would walk over blazing boards without noticing, and then, for days after, limp on blistered feet.

  Although George never told anyone about his injuries, Sissy always knew.

  ‘Why did you go and do it, stupid? Do you like hurting all the time?’ she would scold savagely. The sight of George suffering always made her cross especially when she was unable to help him.

  One afternoon when her mother was on her sofa, going through her magazines, Sissy sneaked into Elizabeth’s bedroom.

  It took her half an hour and a dozen sheets of lavatory paper to give herself a new mouth with her mother’s lipstick. At last, equipped with a dear little cupid’s bow reaching nearly up to her nostrils, she slipped softly downstairs and left the house.

  The bright red mouth had taken up a lot of Sissy’s face, but if it was mouth that was wanted then it was worth sacrificing a bit of face for, she decided.

  She left the garden, tiptoeing quietly, like a bird leaving its cage after a lifetime of captivity. She had hardly ever gone into the High Street without George, and she felt quite nervous. But it was essential that she made this trip on her own. Sissy, feeling vulnerable and shy, threw back her shoulders, arranged her expression into its most bright and uncaring, and stepped out of the sunshine and into the pub. The men in the bar turned to look, and fell silent at the sight of Sissy with her enormous scarlet mouth. There rose a swiftly suppressed chuckle. Two old men playing darts turned, looked, then quickly – as though the sight appalled them – went back to their game.

  Mr Lovage emerged out of the gloom.

  Taking Sissy’s hand, he said, ‘Kiddies not allowed in here, my darling.’ His breath was heavy with the smell of beer.

  Sissy’s cheeks went nearly as red as her mouth. Everyone in the bar seemed to be staring at her. She tried to say, ‘I am not a kiddy. I am thirteen,’ but the words wouldn’t come out at all at first, and, when they did, her voice was terribly hoarse, so that Mr Lovage had to ask, ‘What’s that, ducks? What did you say?’ He was propelling her towards the door as he spoke, and they were both outside by the time he had understood her answer.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said soothingly. ‘We all know you’re a little lady now. But ladies don’t go into the bar on their own, you know. Not nice ones that is.’

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ muttered Sissy, catching sight of her blazing lips in the window glass.

  Mr Lovage pushed her gently on to a wooden bench by the wall.

  ‘Sit there, ducks,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring you a fizz.’

  While she waited, she examined her reflection in the pane and could not decide if she looked desirable.

  She was sitting there, still drinking something almost as scarlet as her mouth, when George appeared, shuffling along the road, shoulders hunched, eyes down, lips pursed in a soundless whistle.

  He pretended not to see her until almost the last moment, then he gave her a sideways glance and muttered, ‘Hello, Sis.’

  ‘Why can’t you ruddy well leave me alone?’ hissed Sissy furiously. ‘Why do you have to spy on me the whole time?’

  ‘I just happened to be passing,’ lied George hollowly. He did not know what to do now that he had found her.

  He sat down. ‘Like old times, isn’t it, Sis?’ he observed cautiously. ‘Sitting side by side and drinking fizz.’

  ‘Huh,’ said Sissy, but she did not seem as furious as before.

  Encouraged by what he felt was a softening of her mood, George reached out and took her hand. It was warm and a little damp.

  They sat like this, silent, for some time, while passing people looked at the queer kiddies from the big house and smiled with sympathy and contempt.

  George said, after a while, ‘Could I have a sip, Sis?’

  Sissy passed her glass to him.

  ‘They wouldn’t let me in,’ she told him suddenly, with sobbing anger.

  George shrugged. ‘You are too good for them, that’s why,’ he said firmly. Then, looking at her closely, asked, ‘What did you put that ghastly stuff on your mouth for?’

  Sissy bristled. ‘It’s to make men feel attracted to me,’ she snapped, recovering some of her old form.

  George gave her hand a squeeze and said, ‘I�
��m a man, and I don’t find it at all attractive. I find it absolutely hideous, in fact.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Sissy, shuddering with some wild emotion that might have been fury. But she did not stir or pull her hand away from his.

  ‘I love you, Sissy,’ said George. ‘No one loves you as much as me.’

  She turned and looked at him, her eyes wide with surprise. ‘But you’re only thirteen. And you are my brother.’ George nodded wisely.

  He pulled a filthy handkerchief from his pocket, and gently began to wipe raspberry fizz and lipstick from Sissy’s mouth.

  ‘I am old enough,’ he said. ‘And who could possibly love you more than your brother?’

  They stood up, still holding hands.

  The men began to come out of the pub.

  Mr Lovage passed them. ‘That’s right,’ he said to George. ‘You take your sister home. You’re a big boy now and old enough to look after her,’ and told the others, ‘That’s a nice young boy, and I don’t believe a word of what the wife says about him.’

  ‘I love you, Sissy. I love you better than anyone or anything in the whole world,’ said George to Sissy.

  ‘I am a man now, so you don’t need to look for anybody else,’ he whispered as he closed the Plague House gates behind them.

  Then all Sissy’s disappointment floated away and she became filled with relief at not having to go around the village searching for a man, and with happiness because George had grown up just in time. She put her arms round his neck and kissed him on the mouth in exactly the same way as the Italian prisoner had kissed her, and George’s mouth felt and tasted nicer.

  An airman cycling past saw them kissing and, not knowing that this was a brother and sister, let out a wolf-whistle and shouted, ‘Could I have a turn too, darling?’

  ‘Nobody but me is ever going to have a turn at kissing you again,’ whispered George to Sissy.

  Chapter 7

  Elizabeth, standing by the Rose Room window, watched her children coming through the Plague House gates and thought there was something odd about them but, no matter how hard she looked, could not make out what it was.