‘Why do you burn the guy?’
‘Guy Fawkes blew up the Houses of Parliament,’ said Angela. ‘Or tried to. They caught him, tortured him and burned him for treason.’
‘In the war?’ I asked, confused.
‘No, centuries ago. I can never remember dates. That’s why we have Bonfire Night, with fireworks. Remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot.’
Later I looked up the word plot in my dictionary.
The last plot I remembered was when someone tried to blow up Hitler. When the news leaked out the Trautweins could talk about little else. I crouched in the wardrobe, listening for details. Eventually I heard the Führer’s voice on the wireless, crackling and weak. It took more than a bomb to blow up Adolf. When he killed himself at the end of the war, his corpse was doused in petrol and burned outside his bunker – that’s what I heard.
Somebody should draw a Hitler moustache on the bonfire guy, I thought. Later, I saw that somebody had.
‘Hey! Wait for us!’ Colin and Poppy Oakley spilled out of the shop. I went to post the letters, whispering good luck to mine as I dropped them into the red pillar box. Colin showed Angela something wrapped in brown paper. She whistled.
‘Catherine wheels! Look, Brigitta – you hammer these on a fence and light them, and they spin round and round with sparks.’
‘Named after some stroppy woman who didn’t behave nicely so got tortured on a wheel,’ said Colin with enthusiasm. ‘Come on, let’s get some more pennies.’
‘Don’t ask our mum,’ said Poppy. ‘She’s got crab apples ready instead of pennies.’
Angela said Andrew could go knock on village doors to ask. ‘Because he’s soft in the head so people feel sorry for him.’
Andrew said I should go. ‘Because she’s pretty.’
Colin snorted but he didn’t argue. In fact he winked at me. I remembered how it had felt to dance to Connie Snow’s amazing music with him. My fingers tried out jazz-rhythm notes against the side of my leg. I suddenly felt very alive.
It was a fine, cold evening, so Sophie Rover said we could carry a table outside for the bonfire-party food. ‘I reckon the whole village will turn up to have a nosy how things are in Summerland now the young master’s back and my lady’s fixing the place up. We’ve apples to dip in toffee, potatoes to bake, onions to fry and toad-in-the-hole to mix.’
I had a quick scan of my dictionary. Toad. Kröte? For tea? Never in all our wanderings had Mama caught toad for us to eat. The English were mad. There was no other explanation.
The bonfire was at the side of the house, not far from the terrace. It was built of junk wood dragged down from the attic, all laced with cobwebs, as well as garden rubbish and moth-eaten curtains. I’d enjoyed piling it up over the last few days.
Sophie Rover had said, ‘You’ll have muscles on your muscles at this rate, Brigitta, and nothing wrong with that.’
‘A waste of fuel,’ was all Miss Baggs had to say. ‘We’ll regret burning that wood come winter, mark my words. It’s going to be a bitter cold one.’
Twilight thickened to full dark, with dots of stars tufted by cloud. Lady Summer came out to watch us light the bonfire, wrapped in a glossy fur coat, with fur-lined boots and a silky scarf. Her face was utterly expressionless when the guy on top of the bonfire began to smoulder.
Villagers walked up to the house, slicing the avenue with flashlight beams. Mr Oakley from the shop nodded hello as I carried out trays of something called bonfire toffee. Mrs Oakley sniffed at me, especially when Colin smiled and waved my way. I recognised Mrs and Reverend Goose, Old Rory the farmer, a couple of his Land Girls, and Tim Rover, Sophie’s husband. He had quite a collection of empty beer bottles around him. A friendly drunk, but drunk all the same. He looked up like a hopeful puppy every time he saw his wife. I could tell she liked him. She was friendly with him. But it was different from how my parents had been – or at least how they were in my wispy memories of before the war. Mama and Papa adored each other – that’s how I remember it. Then he left us. Then she died. Then there was just me left.
There were lots of other people at the bonfire that I didn’t recognise. They all knew each other. They belonged.
Vera Baggs oozed around everyone, soaking up gossip. Quite a few people had asked about the Master Joseph. That poor boy, as they called him. He didn’t appear. I looked up at his windows a few times, wondering if we’d ever get the chance to speak again.
Constable Ribble was chatting with Mrs Rover. He had a newspaper in his hand. He saw me and tapped the side of his nose. What did that mean? A secret? A warning? I kept out of his way.
Flames leaped high on the bonfire. Children began to dance round it, dodging in as close as they dared, then darting away. I did not join them. I remembered the smell of charred flesh and singed hair after the bombs on Berlin, when the wreckage burned people trapped inside. Just beyond the circle of light, a row of eyes twinkled. When I went to investigate, the eyes blinked and little figures skittered off into the woods.
‘Varleys,’ said Mrs Rover, as if that explained everything. I remembered the gypsy girl on the bicycle when I first came to the village. Weren’t they invited to the bonfire?
Out came trays of hot toad-in-the-hole. It wasn’t baked green amphibians after all, just fat sausages in lovely crispy batter.
Colin nailed a Catherine wheel to a gate-post and lit it. It fizzed once and fell off.
Then – a bang!
I crouched down, arms over my head, but everyone else was saying, ‘Oooh!’ and clapping. I slowly uncurled. It wasn’t Russian rockets or British bombs. Not gunshots even.
‘Rockets!’ shrieked the children.
After that came firecrackers, squibs and fizzing sticks called sparklers. ‘Make your name, like this,’ said Angela, scrolling her spitting stick into a pattern of light.
I hesitated, then wrote Brigitta in the air.
Angela dragged me away. ‘Oh that’s disgusting, did you see? Colin’s just drawn a kiss with his sparkler and he was looking right at us! Come on, let’s play games. Anyone for Hide and Seek?’
I nearly laughed out loud at that. I was a world-class winner in hiding and seeking.
‘I’ve got a better idea,’ shouted Colin. ‘Who wants to play Murder in the Dark?’
Murder in the Dark
The words were ominous, but in England, it seemed murder in the dark didn’t mean watching your neighbours getting dragged out of bed and shot at three in the morning. Colin explained the rules. All players were to draw a card from a pack. The cards tagged you as detective, murderer or victim. The detective – in this case, Poppy Oakley – stayed in place. All the other players then scattered and hid … or hunted, if they were the murderer.
Could I just stay gazing into the glowing heart of the bonfire? Should I escape to the kitchen to do the washing-up? I felt eyes on me. It was Lady Summer, staring through the heat of the fire.
Best to blend in. Be like normal people. ‘I will play too,’ I said. I took a card and saw my role: victim.
‘Ready everyone?’ said Angela. ‘One, two, three – go!’
Where to run? Most players had scattered among the statues and potting sheds of the garden. Someone rattled at the locked door of the garage. Outside was safer because you were less likely to be trapped. Inside was warmer. I ran inside. It was strange hearing living people in the house after dark. There were echoes of running feet and slamming doors. Rugs were rucked up. Curtains shivered.
My heart was pounding.
‘Think of it like a game,’ Mama had said, when we first went on the run. That was before we hid in the convent but after Papa was arrested. ‘Just a game. You don’t need to be frightened. Hold my hand. Let’s see if we can find somewhere so safe no one will ever find us …’
Colin and Angela went straight behind a sofa together – both victims, I presumed, from the way that they were giggling, not killing each other. Andrew and some others thundered towards
the ballroom. I knew of hundreds of hiding places in the house; I just couldn’t bring myself to fold up small into any of them – not wardrobes, cupboards or even attics. For a while I just stood in the centre of the Blue Room, watching a pale ghost sway like spider silk in the breeze of my breath.
Footsteps. I hid behind the door. A girl I didn’t know came in. While she looked in the mirrored wardrobe I slipped into the corridor, meaning to nip down the servants’ stairs and along to the kitchen. Down on the ground floor I could hear the doors of fifteen military toilets being flung open.
My feet didn’t move. What was wrong with me? There was someone coming up the main stairs. Fear had me gripped. At the far end of the dark corridor I heard a bolt click and a door handle turning.
‘Brigitta? Is that you? Ow!’ It was Colin on the stairs. He’d reached the first-floor landing and stumbled into the table with the bowl of glass oranges.
As he crashed about, cursing, I heard a another voice whisper, ‘Brigitta? Is that you?’ This one was faint, familiar. The patient’s door opened a sliver.
I took a deep breath and slipped inside.
The room was dark, with just a square of dim orange light at one end, where the window looked out on the bonfire. The patient was on the other side of the door. He drew the bolt as soon as I got inside. We both stood with our backs to the door, just breathing.
Eventually he said, ‘I was watching you at the bonfire. It’s all I see when I close my eyes. Fire and smoke and the sky spinning round. The same dream of burning and falling over and over.’
‘Brigitta?’ Colin tried the door handle. I think he stayed there a while then moved away. I was alone with …
… with Joseph Summer. Not a ghost. A warm body. Someone who breathed like me. Someone who was ever so slightly trembling.
‘Brigitta?’
I couldn’t look at him. I inched nearer. Our shoulders were close. I felt his warmth even through our clothes. My right hand almost touched his left hand. Our fingers were almost laced.
I swallowed. ‘Joseph?’
Could a smile be heard? If so, he was smiling. ‘Call me Joe. My friends used to.’ His mouth was next to my ear, lips almost brushing my skin. My hair felt electrified. I closed my eyes. There was a blood-boiling scream.
‘Murder in the dark! Murder in the dark!’
Andrew discovered the body. His sister Angela had been killed. Interrogation of all players – with threats of tickling torture – revealed that Colin had been the murderer. We celebrated with chunks of Mrs Rover’s bonfire toffee, a dark, sweet mass that stuck your teeth together and made you wish it was 5th November every night of your life.
The bonfire dwindled. The night grew colder. Inside Summerland, ghostly airmen settled down to read in ratty armchairs, or to smoke and chew pencil stubs over faint crossword clues. When I eventually lay in bed to try to sleep, it was with the knowledge that in a bed on the floor below was living, breathing Joe. Was he as restless as I was?
Lemon-Curd Tarts
I fell in love with winter.
Living in a wardrobe, I hadn’t savoured seasons so much. It was cold and cramped or hot and cramped. Now, at Summerland, I had so much fun kicking up dead leaves, crunching the ice on frozen puddles and studying ice patterns on the inside of my bedroom window.
There were days when I forgot about my one grey glove, because I now had a pair of my own gloves, knitted and gifted by Mrs Goose. They were the first thing I’d ever had new, since the war at least.
‘That’s a fine, warm coat you’ve got,’ commented Sophie Rover one day, as I came in with a pile of logs. ‘One of the first things I noticed about you, your coat. It’s so distinctive.’
There was more to her words than she was letting on. I said nothing, just set the wood in the log basket and went to hang the coat up. I thought about the secrets that crackled inside the coat lining. Were they safe? Should I put them on the fire along with other waste paper? I’d carried them with me all the way from Berlin. Was it time to let go?
We were silent for a while as I helped her make pastry for lemon-curd tarts. Apparently these had been one of Master Joseph’s favourites before he went away and Mrs Rover’s husband had managed to acquire a couple of lemons from a mate at the pub. ‘All very under-the-counter,’ said Mrs Rover, ‘What with lemons being rarer than hen’s teeth.’ I planned to take a tray of the tarts up, to see if Joe would open his door to me again.
‘Anything to get that boy eating again,’ Mrs Rover sighed. ‘I wish you’d known him before the crash. A proper daredevil he was. He climbed the clock tower once, to see if he could touch the sky. Now he won’t even leave his rooms.’
It was a bittersweet recipe. After squeezing lemons, I stupidly rubbed my eye and nearly blinded myself. After measuring the sugar, I licked a finger and let a few crystals sparkle on my tongue.
‘What’s that tune you’re whistling?’
I stopped cutting pastry rounds. ‘I was whistling?’
‘It was nice.’
‘It is a song my mama liked – “It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow”.’ As soon as I said the words I wanted to bite them back.
‘Of course! I recognise it now. Your mum was a Vera Lynn fan then?’
I hesitated. What harm was there in revealing a few innocent things? This was Sophie Rover after all, not the Gestapo. ‘We heard Vera Lynn sing it on the BBC, when we listened to the radio in secret. Mama loved music. Piano mostly.’
‘Can you sing?’
Sing? I wouldn’t know. For years I’d barely spoken above a whisper.
‘Only whistle,’ I said. I began the song again.
Mrs Rover began to sing along, awfully out of tune. Maybe it was her singing that soured the tarts. Maybe it was my secrets. Either way, the lemon curd was too bitter to eat. We had a funeral procession and buried the first batch in the back garden. Even the chickens wouldn’t touch it.
‘Cheer up,’ said Mrs Rover. ‘We’ll make some more.’
What a nice idea: move on from past mistakes. If only it was that easy.
Sophie Rover’s main philosophy in life was that everyone should be well fed and comfortable. If only she had been leader of the Third Reich, not Adolf Hitler. Meatuntooveg instead of mass murder, misery and world war. Heil Rover!
So much food was making me bigger. Mrs Rover said I must be getting stretched on a rack each night, I was growing so much. I felt it too, all the unwelcome changes – taller, wider, with hair in strange places. Not good. The worst embarrassment was when she collared me washing my smalls in the laundry. Smalls was her word for underwear.
‘D’you need anything for your monthlies, Brigitta?’ she asked. ‘You know – rags, pads, whatever you use? Oh, your face is a picture! Haven’t you started yet? You’re a late bloomer then.’
‘Mrs Rover, I haf … have no idea what you are talking about.’
‘Bless. You will soon enough. The curse comes to all girls in time. Come and see me when it does – let’s just say it’s red and it’s messy, since you’ve no mother to explain your body plumbing.’
She was right there. No mother could explain how my body felt these days. Like my skin was too tight and my limbs were too loose. As if I could kill the world or dance around it or throw it high in the air like a balloon. I’d had a balloon once, before the war. Had there been a birthday? I remembered a boy cried when the balloon popped unexpectedly.
I knocked at Joe’s door, holding a plate piled high with lemon-curd tarts. When the door stayed locked, I got so mad I kicked it hard – stupid stuck-up toff, skulking in his rooms as if that would solve everything! – and stormed down the main staircase instead of the backstairs –
Vera Baggs was in the entrance hall, snooping through the post as usual. She jumped when she heard me and quickly set the letters down on a sideboard. ‘What do you mean, creeping up on me like that? I may look the picture of health but my heart isn’t what it ought to be, you know. No wonder, when the world’s gone so mad serva
nts forget which stairs to use! Don’t think I don’t know about you, sneaking about the place, little Miss Foreign Muck. One word to Lady Summer and I could have you booted out like that!’ She snapped her fingers.
I eyed the letters. ‘There is something for me?’
‘Expecting something, are you?’ She made a big play of sorting through the envelopes again. ‘No, nothing. How disappointing for you.’
I should have had a reply to my enquiries by now. I stormed back to the kitchen and began banging pans around, swearing in German under my breath. Stupid woman, stupid house, stupid country, stupid everything.
Mrs Rover lost her temper too. ‘Brigitta, you’re a nightmare. Clear off outside. You’ve been cooped up for far too long.’
‘Cooped?’ The word came out as a bit of a squeak. My voice kept doing that, or going gruff. I swallowed and tried again. ‘Cooped?’
‘Like a chicken. Shut indoors.’
For more years than she could possibly know. ‘What shall I do?’
‘I don’t know. You’re young. Go play.’
‘Play?’
‘Play. Run around. Climb trees. Have fun.’
I thought about that. I had climbed trees before, once, in a winter forest when there was a search party out looking for us. It had been cold and we worried about wolves as well as police. Winter is a problem – snow shows your tracks. Sounds carry further on a chill, still day. Water freezes. The ground’s too hard for digging roots to eat or a hole to hide in. There were no wolves on the Summerland estate at least. No dogs or hunters with guns and farm tools. It couldn’t happen here, people said.
‘I will go and chop wood.’
‘You’ll do no such thing! I’m not letting you loose with an axe, the mood you’re in.’
‘Then I will go and play if you like.’
I marched out in such a temper I forgot my coat and my gloves. It felt good to slam the back door. I tried doing the same to the garden gate, but the hinges were rusty and it just squeaked at me. I took off across the lawn, past the lake and into the woods, not bothering to look up at Joe’s window. Who cared about him? Who cared about any of them?
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