‘Thank you,’ Stormy mumbled.
‘How many ounces of suet in a sponge for six?’ Otto roared. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. What’s the best flour for pancakes? How many mice in an apple pie?’ Everyone laughed.
Tex pulled him into a corner. ‘Get an apron on quick,’ he said. ‘Blend in. They’ll soon forget.’
And he was right. Within half an hour Stormy might never have been away. He slipped into the routine again quickly. He watched the potatoes being lovingly mashed to within an inch of their lives; the carrots sprinkled with chopped parsley, the sauce being sieved and stirred until it gleamed like molten gold. He sniffed the wonderful scents longingly; a meagre helping of porridge and soup and bread were all he’d ever eat now. But those two up there would eat what they wanted. He’d like to tell Otto what went on up in the Academy, how his food was mistreated and wasted, but he wouldn’t. He would never tell tales on anyone ever again.
When a call came down to the kitchen for Purbeck to go and see Mrs Cathcart, everyone knew who had been chosen to replace Stormy at the Academy.
Purbeck took off his apron slowly, watching Stormy all the time. He didn’t want to go; and he knew how important the job was to Stormy.
‘Sorry, mate,’ he whispered as he passed him.
‘But shall I tell him what I know?’ Stormy whispered to Tex.
Tex shook his head. ‘He’ll learn for himself.’
And Purbeck didn’t care about spitfyres, so perhaps it would be all right for him. He would do exactly what Al ordered him to do without question.
Mindlessly, Stormy scraped and peeled and chopped. It was hot and steamy and everything seemed dreadfully normal and dull. He had a terrible premonition that he would glance up at the window and see Araminta’s haughty face staring in at him. She would be so proud and so beautiful and he would have pastry mixture up to his elbows or worse. It was unbearable. Dreadful.
He couldn’t work out how his life had been turned upside down so quickly and so enormously.
‘I’ve thrown away my one and only chance,’ he whispered to Tex. ‘I’m finished.’
Tex grinned back. ‘Nah, you’ll soon get over it.’
That night he went over it again and again with Tex. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong, Tex, I didn’t. I was doing well. I was helping. I was having such a good time. I was going to help the spitfyres.’
Tex could only shrug and pat his arm in sympathy. ‘Least you came back, mate,’ he said. ‘No one else has achieved that!’
Stormy now slept in a bottom bunk that shook and rattled as John, the boy above, snored. He hated looking up at the mattress, which seemed to sink lower and lower the more he stared at it, until he thought he would suffocate. He lay awake for a long time thinking about the spitfyres, thinking about Hector and Araminta and the space that he had left behind which Purbeck was now going to fill.
He took the three white ribbons from beneath his pillow and held them tightly in his hand. They evoked such clear memories of the Academy. Araminta must have liked him to give him these odd tokens, if it was she and not Al or Ralf playing silly tricks on him.
Nobody seemed to care about the yellow powder and what it was doing to the spitfyres. Stormy rolled over and stared at the wall. How had it all gone so terribly wrong?
The days slipped one into another like water filling a hollow. Stormy could not stop time passing. He could not change anything.
At first, he always had an audience greedy for stories about the Academy and the spitfyres, but as the days went by he talked less, finding he wanted to keep it to himself and that way keep it safe; keep it his.
He didn’t tell a soul about the sick spitfyre. He could hardly bear to think about her, knowing she would think he’d abandoned her. If only he’d been braver. If only . . . well, he planned to change. Even here in the kitchen, he was going to be different.
He couldn’t stand looking at his useless face in the mirror. He hated himself, and just about everyone else too.
He shrank further and further into himself. The quieter and more inward-looking he became, the fewer people wanted to be with him. In the end even Tex got fed up with him.
‘You were only up there at the Academy for a while – you talk about it like it was a lifetime!’ Tex said.
And that’s how it felt to Stormy. A lifetime. An absorbing, exciting, strange, yet complete lifetime. And he was now committed to spending the rest of his life, a life years and years long, in the steamy old kitchen being shouted at by Otto and without a spitfyre in sight.
Something had changed between him and Otto. He often found the cook staring at him questioningly, and although he still shouted at him and threw things at him, Stormy knew it wasn’t done maliciously.
One day Otto took him aside to talk to him.
‘So, tell me, how is Al?’ Otto asked.
‘Do you know him? I never thought . . .’ It was a relief to speak to someone who knew people ‘up there’. Stormy felt something quietly pop inside him, like a cork from a bottle, setting him free. Now the Academy could be real again, just as it, and all the people and spitfyres inside it, had been beginning to take on an unreal, dreamlike quality.
‘Oh, Al! Al isn’t happy,’ Stormy told him. ‘He drinks a lot. He’s miserable.’
‘He drinks? He drinks a lot, does he? He was always one for the bottle.’
‘I think his past makes him unhappy.’
‘Whose doesn’t?’
‘He –’ Stormy stopped. No, it would be a mistake to tell Otto too much. ‘He said you were a fine cook.’
‘Did he? You’re a good boy, Stormy. I’m putting you in charge of knife sharpening, as from today. OK?’
‘Thank you, Otto. Yes. Deal.’ There, already things were moving. He was going to be different, better, stronger.
So Stormy became the knife sharpener and every day he took all the knives out into a back larder where he could work alone, honing the blades on a stone wheel that he turned with a foot pedal. It was useful for getting rid of his bad temper. He pounded the pedal furiously, making the wheel hiss and the knife blade spark and smoke against the stone. The smoke and sparks reminded him of the flying horses.
The kitchen had never had sharper blades.
Time passed quickly like this: days into weeks, into months and then a year.
In all that year a day never passed without Stormy being tormented by thoughts of Al’s spitfyre. And there was nothing he could do about it, that was the worst. He couldn’t avoid settling back into his old life in the orphanage and the kitchen, but he never quite settled back into his old friendship with the other skivvies. They called him a snob.
‘You’re no fun, Stormy. You’ve changed.’
Stormy wasn’t happy. He knew he’d been wronged and he wished there was a way to put things right and clear his name. Sometimes he dreamed that he was walking up the steps to meet the Director and receive a prize. ‘We mistreated you, Stormy. You are a hero. I want you to enter the Silver Sword Race. You’re sure to win.’
And the Director shook his hand and everything was wonderful.
21
Break-out
Stormy was perhaps the first to hear the alarm ringing from the Academy that morning, because these days he was usually the first to wake.
Soon all the other boys awoke too and rushed to the windows, chattering. Instantly he was transported back to the time, over a year ago now, that the alarm had rung to announce the escape of the grubbin convict he had helped.
He got up quickly, dressed and was first in line for his porridge.
By the time he was down in the kitchen working his shift, the Academy guards had arrived and were searching for an escaped convict; he watched their tall figures criss-cross the windows. Tex said he’d seen a swarm of spitfyres searching the hillside. Stormy wished he could go out and see them; although every sighting of a spitfyre caused him anguish, he craved a glimpse of them.
In the middle of the morning, ju
st as the Academy lunch was ready to be sent up, two damp, muddy guards strode arrogantly into the kitchen.
‘Morning, Otto! Morning, boys!’ said the first guard. ‘Did a convict drop by for breakfast this morning, by chance?’
‘Of course not!’ Otto snapped. He quickly swished away the plate of cheese scones that were cooling on a wire grid on the table before the guards could touch them. ‘Hands off!’
‘Well.’ The guard held up a rusty pair of pincers. ‘D’you recognise these?’
Stormy’s insides caved in: he recognised them.
‘Those are mine!’ Otto roared. ‘They’ve been missing for ages! Where did you find them?’
Stormy remembered very clearly that cold night he had taken the pincers out to the grubbin. He remembered his terror, the freezing air, how the little man quaked with cold and how he, Stormy, had quaked with fear.
‘Found them down by the compost heap. Believe they’ve been used for cutting . . .’
‘These,’ said the second guard, brandishing a pair of leg irons from behind his back as if he were doing a magic trick. He rattled them noisily. ‘Are these yours too, Mr Otto?’ he asked.
‘No. Of course they aren’t.’
‘It is most weird,’ the first guard said. ‘We found the pincers down by the compost heap, but these here leg irons were hanging on the apple tree just outside that door.’ He nodded to the kitchen door behind him. ‘And if you look closely, you can see that there is an old cut, mended, and a new cut, done just recent, I would think.’
‘You’re talking in riddles. Say what you mean, can’t you?’ Otto said.
‘I’m saying that this convict that’s escaped is the same as the one that escaped before and took your coat, and he used the pincers last time he escaped and hid ’em and then used them again this time he escaped,’ the guard said. ‘At least, I think that’s what I’m saying. You’ve got me confused.’
‘And why would he hang the blooming shackles outside my door?’ Otto bellowed.
‘Now we was wondering that too,’ the guard said. ‘Any ideas?’ He cast his eye over the crowded kitchen. ‘Anyone?’
Stormy did have an idea: his grubbin had hidden the pincers in case he ever got free from the prison again, and now he had got free and he’d used them again to cut his chains a second time and he wanted Stormy to know it too.
Getting no answers from the skivvies, the guards left at last and the kitchen returned to normal.
‘Always did wonder where those pincers had gone,’ Otto said to Brittel. ‘I saw they were missing, but it was long after the convict business. I never linked the two together. Thought it might be Purbeck that had taken them – just in case he ever got that big head of his stuck somewhere again.’
‘Wonder what this dirty grubbin has done,’ Brittel said. ‘Probably on the steal, or worse, maybe come to murder us in our beds. Inbred, they are, and it makes for bad blood. Shouldn’t be allowed to live amongst us humans, in my opinion.’
Otto looked at him sharply. ‘No one asked for your opinion. I don’t like that sort of language here. A grubbin is a living thing, just like us all, even if they do prefer the dark and the underground. Don’t you go jumping to conclusions just because they don’t live like us.’
Brittel sneered. ‘I’d prefer to pass my time with a slimy worm,’ he said, nodding at Stormy. ‘Though don’t know if I’d notice the difference!’ He wiped his stained fingers down his apron. ‘Disgusting.’
‘Heavens, Brittel! How much of my precious saffron are you putting in the spitfyre food?’ Otto said, pointing at Brittel’s fingers. ‘Or are you washing in the stuff?’
‘That’s turmeric and sulphur,’ Brittel said huffily. ‘Good for their ignition. Gets the sparks flying.’
Otto gave him a dark look.
‘Well, don’t be too generous. It’s expensive.’
Sponge followed Stormy into the back larder and lay down on a mat beside him while he began on the pile of knives. ‘You’re a good old dog,’ he told Sponge, stroking his grizzled head and fondling his ears.
He took up the first knife and set the wheel spinning. The noise filled the small room.
‘Fancy that grubbin putting his leg iron in the tree, Sponge.’ Thud, thud went the dog’s tail on the floor. ‘Why would he do that, d’you think? Did he mean me to see it, Sponge?’ Thud, thud. ‘A sort of remember me or a thank you. What do you think?’
Sponge, dozing, rolled over onto his side with a groan and stretched out his legs stiffly.
‘I wish you could tell me something interesting, Sponge. Wish you could tell me what’s going on up at the Academy. What Al’s up to. How thirteen is doing. You’ve no idea how I long to be back there.’
‘Stormy!’
Stormy jumped. ‘Otto!’ His foot slipped off the pedal and banged on the floor, waking Sponge.
Otto looked round the room. ‘Who were you talking to?’
‘Just Sponge.’
‘Sponge is as deaf as a post,’ Otto said.
‘Makes him a very good listener,’ Stormy said, picking up another knife.
Otto stood there, nodding at him for a while, rubbing his big hands over his potato nose and watching the spinning stone. Stormy began to dread what might be coming next. He couldn’t have been more surprised when Otto said, ‘It was me that got you that place up in the servery.’
Stormy dropped the knife with a clatter and stared round-eyed at Otto.
‘I fixed it,’ Otto went on. ‘Those names in the box? Every single paper had yours on it. Mrs Cathcart never checked – why would she? I knew you wanted the chance.’ He sighed. ‘Now I’m wondering if I did you any favours . . . You liked it up there, didn’t you?’ He nodded to the ceiling. ‘At the Academy?’
‘Yes. I did. Did you really do that? Thank you, Otto. I never thought – not for a moment,’ Stormy said. ‘Really, thank you.’ He quickly took up the next knife and wiped the blade down his trousers. ‘Thank you.’
‘You saved my half-baked Sponge from that snake, and you are a good worker. It was the least I could do. The least . . . Did Al ever mention me?’ Otto asked.
‘I told you he said you were a good cook – a fine cook. That was all.’
‘I was the chef for Cosmo’s Circus,’ Otto said, ‘just for a while.’
Stormy dropped the knife again, this time narrowly missing Sponge’s nose.
‘You were in the circus?’ He let the wheel slow and stop.
Otto nodded. ‘Cosmo liked exotic food and I provided it.’ Otto perched his large behind on a wooden bench. ‘I quite enjoyed circus life – until the accident. Did he tell you about Mayra?’
Stormy nodded. ‘A little.’
‘Mayra was my sister, did he tell you that?’
Stormy shook his head.
‘She ran away. At last I tracked her down working in the circus. I went to bring her back, but she wouldn’t come, absolutely refused to, so I stayed too.’ Otto picked up one of the knives, a great thick-bladed, wooden-handled thing, and began to twist it round and round in his big hands. ‘That Renaldo calls himself Al now. He drank those days too. He ate like a pig and I fed him like a pig.’
‘Why?’
Otto shrugged. ‘I hoped if he got fat my sister would stop loving him . . .’ He paused for a moment. ‘Al used to sleep with his spitfyres, eat with them, discuss politics with them . . . but not on the day of the accident, he didn’t. Didn’t see them at all. Not once. I know,’ Otto added, seeing Stormy about to question him, ‘because I made it my business to know. On the day of the accident someone had told him Mayra was leaving him for Cosmo. He abandoned his spitfyres – didn’t even feed them and got totally drunk.’
‘He did admit he was drunk the night of the Spin.’
Otto nodded his great head and rubbed his big nose. ‘It was all his fault.’ He stepped round his sleeping dog and twirled the stone knife grinder round slowly, thoughtfully. ‘The spitfyres were crazy without Al’s care and attention. May
ra was killed instantly. The spitfyre didn’t have bad thoughts towards her, I’m sure, but it was confused. I lost my sister, my dear little Mayra.’
‘I’m really sorry, Otto,’ said Stormy quietly.
‘That’s why Al dare not come down from up there,’ Otto said. ‘I watch the path. I know who passes here. My Sponge watches too.’
He picked up a knife and set it against the stone wheel and let it turn gently. The noise was hideous and Sponge woke with a start and blinked up at Otto.
‘Al dare not come near me.’
22
Mr Topter
One morning a few weeks after the escape of the grubbin, Mrs Cathcart spun into the hot kitchen like a tornado. ‘Otto! Stormy!’ she shrieked, whirling around as she looked for them. ‘Come quickly! Come!’
Otto frowned at her and slowly wiped his hands down his apron. ‘Woman! Stop your screaming! And shut that door!’ he said in his deep voice. ‘You’ll deflate my soufflés!
‘But, but, there’s a man to see Stormy!’ she cried. ‘You won’t believe what he says. Come quickly both of you, please.’
Otto slowly turned to the silently watching kitchen staff. ‘Brittel. Jones. You’re in charge. No slacking. No wasting time. No touching. I will be back and I know how much there is of everything. Stormy, come with us.’ He pushed Stormy out ahead of him. ‘Brittel’s up to something; using my kitchen for it too,’ he said quietly, half to himself. ‘Got to keep an eye on him.’
‘Brittel?’
‘Yes, got to watch him, watch him like a hawk,’ Otto muttered as they went up the stairs.
Mrs Cathcart led them to her office, where a stranger was sitting on the edge of her small armchair. He was middle-aged, ugly as a pug, with tiny bright eyes behind minuscule glasses.
‘Is this the one?’ he said, pointing at Stormy.
Mrs Cathcart ushered Stormy forward. ‘Yes, this is Stormy. Stormy, this is Mr Topter. He’s a lawyer. He’s come all the way from Stollenback.’
‘Hello, sir,’ Stormy said, holding out his hand.
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