Sugar Hall

by Tiffany Murray

  Fire Lantern

  23

  Lilia watched the fire lanterns go up into the night.

  Alex was sitting next to her out on the metal bench by the overgrown tennis courts and they sipped a little of John’s home-made Damson wine. The wine was so sweet and syrupy she thought of cough medicine.

  ‘He is a good man,’ Alex said.

  ‘Who?’ Lilia turned to face Alex, and smiled. The late and golden sun caught her and she squinted.

  Alex took her hand; she felt how her chilblains pressed her flesh out around her wedding ring and she tried to snatch it away. ‘Don’t,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘My hands are so ugly.’

  ‘Silly girl.’

  ‘But it’s true, Alex.’ She held both hands up, splayed. Swollen, they looked at odds with her thin wrists.

  ‘You should take the ring off. It might hurt you.’

  Lilia didn’t react. She accepted the truth of this. ‘It is so strange. I remember in London I worked so hard. I scrub, I clean, but always, always I am losing this ring. It just falls off. I would sit and listen to the wireless, and I would turn and turn that ring on my finger. I would turn it when I waited for Peter to come home. I would turn it when Peter was alive. I would turn it when he was dead. Now I can no longer turn it.’

  ‘It’s the cold.’

  ‘The damp. English damp.’

  They both stared at Lilia’s pitifully swollen hands, golden sunlight shafting through the fat fingers.

  ‘Chill-blains,’ Lilia said. ‘Juniper, she told me the name. Chill-blains. For so long I thought it was “chill-blades”. That made more sense, because the pain, you see?’

  ‘Frostbeule.’

  ‘Chilblain.’

  Lilia took a deep breath of the golden air: night jasmine, she thought. There was humming and singing coming from the gardens, from Dieter and John, and everything seemed alive now: birds, insects, trees, plants; the air itself. Butterflies still fed on the buddleia and robins fought. She breathed deeper. It was lovely to be out of the house. It was another world. A ladybird landed on her thumb and she stared as it twitched its back, trying to get the very tip of its wings folded in. It tickled. What was that rhyme? She tried it.

  ‘Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children are gone.’

  Miraculously the insect opened its back, and thin wings took it off, quick, into the sunlight.

  Lilia laughed, shocked.

  ‘Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children are gone,’ she repeated, and felt her heart drop. The words were terrible. She was sorry for the poor insect, as if her saying those words had made it true, her chest heaved, a little sore. Alex moved along the bench, and put his arm around her.

  ‘Silly Lily,’ he said and sighed. ‘Liliana, you know I must go soon. I have work waiting for me.’

  She straightened up. ‘Then you must go.’

  ‘Will you come back with me?’

  She looked at him and she laughed. It wasn’t a cruel laugh; it was because his question came too easily. She watched his forehead crush into a frown and immediately she wanted to rub it away.

  ‘Think, Lily. Think about it. You have one life.’

  ‘One life.’ She laughed again, and her laugh was joined by the laughter of Dieter and John beyond the ha-ha.

  ‘If you came to America, you could have everything, Lily.’

  ‘And what would I do with everything? Where would I keep “everything”?’

  ‘I’ve told you, you can get a coffee at 3am.’ He smiled.

  ‘And I’ve told you I can have my own coffee at 3am, here, Alex.’

  ‘Not like this coffee.’

  She folded her hands on her lap. ‘I cannot.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I cannot.’

  ‘Lily…’

  ‘Sh, Alex. Don’t spoil tonight. It’s so pretty.’

  She could feel him stare at her as she gazed up at the rising fire lanterns: Dieter and John had been making them all day.

  ‘But, Alex,’ she suddenly turned to him, ‘do not go yet. Saskia is leaving tomorrow. Dieter has John. You and I, we could…’

  ‘We could what, Lily?’

  She smiled, ‘We could have a picnic.’

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘Don’t you laugh at me!’

  ‘Oh, Lily.’ He sat back; she thought he looked rather crumpled. ‘I never forgot you.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘But you married, you had a family…’

  ‘And you married, you had a family…’

  ‘You have a divorce. That’s terrible, Alex…’

  ‘Lily!’

  She giggled.

  ‘You always teased me, always. I’m the older one, I am meant to tease.’

  Suddenly Lilia was serious again. ‘Is your daughter very pretty?’

  ‘Peggy’s cute, sure.’

  ‘I think she would be very pretty.’ Lilia pointed as another lantern rose.

  They both watched it shuffle up on the wind in front of the large oak.

  ‘They are like wishes,’ she said.

  ‘They are lanterns, Lily, just lanterns.’

  It stopped rising.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘it’s stuck.’ And it was, in the highest branch of the oak. The flame pulsed and the branch caught a little.

  ‘Oh,’ Lilia cried, ‘it will burn the tree.’

  ‘No…’

  ‘But look.’

  The lantern was flaming now, the paper puffing smoke and fire. The dead branch of the oak flickered, too, and Lilia held her breath: one-two-three.

  There was something about it that was so pretty to Lilia; she wanted to cry. She thought of Jane Eyre, that novel that stayed with her. She thought of Alex Behr reading to her when she was nine years old, even though she could read herself. Yes, fire could come, it could swallow them all up, purge them, and there’d only be the ruins of this horrid old house. Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home…. Lilia watched the fire in the tree heighten and then just as suddenly die: it was over.

  She looked up past Alex’s face to the other lanterns her son was lighting; the orange glow of fire through the paper, the little trails of black smoke coming from their tails in the evening light. One or two caught alight high up in the air, and she watched the flames, so pretty in the sky, and the slow drip-drip of scorched paper falling back down to the ground.

  ‘She is leaving tomorrow, my girl,’ she said. In fact Saskia was inside packing. Lilia had never seen her so focused on a task and in truth she couldn’t blame her.

  ‘She will be back in two weeks, Lilia.’

  ‘I know, but she is still my girl.’

  ‘She thinks I am her father, you know.’

  Lilia froze.

  ‘This is what she thinks, Lily. Ridiculous. Miraculous.’

  ‘She asked you this?’

  ‘Constantly.’

  ‘Oh.’ She went to stand.

  ‘Don’t Lily, stay. She’s packing. She’s trying on her new clothes. Let her come down when she wants.’

  Lilia settled.

  ‘Is her father English?’

  ‘I don’t think of it. Neither should you.’

  She felt Alex fidget on the bench. ‘I’m sorry, Lily, I don’t mean to make you angry.’

  ‘You don’t.’

  Alex had her hand again. He was turned towards her, one knee pointing out as if he might kneel and for a terrible moment Lilia thought he might propose. She put a swollen hand on Alex’s cheek. It looked so strange, his white cheek and her awful red hand. He had such a pretty face for a full-grown man, and his hair; so thick and dark.

  ‘Lily, I…’

  ‘Sh, Alex.’

  ‘You make me feel like a boy again. A stupid, stumbling boy. It’s crazy.’

  ‘Sh,’ she repeated, soothing him, ‘sh.’

  ‘I’m a man, Lily, and you will listen to me.’ Alex leant into her hand. He
was quiet.

  John lit the rag stuck on the wire, he marvelled as the hot air made the big paper bag float, higher, then higher, black soot coming out. He liked standing in the Hall’s garden, his fingers a little burnt and his matches nearly gone. It was a grand evening, the sky red and a little pink like the ploughed earth here.

  ‘Look at that one,’ Dieter said, pointing into the dusk. The lantern rose above a far tree and made it glisten. ‘And another, John, and another!’

  John thought how it was good they’d become proper friends.

  ‘And another!’ Dieter jumped up and down, pointing.

  He’s a boy at last, John thought, a proper boy jumping and laughing like that; he can’t keep his legs still. It was good to see, though the lad did look tired in the half-light. Still, he was jumping on the spot and John couldn’t help but laugh.

  ‘I’ve got a plan, John!’ he said.

  ‘And what’s that then?’

  ‘I have to get away. I do, I really do.’

  The boy was wild-eyed for a moment, feverish as a cornered rabbit.

  ‘I’m going back to London, John. I’m going in the air balloon!’

  John relaxed a little; the boy was just playing. He smiled though he knew not to laugh. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t breath a word to anyone, don’t tell…’ he looked back at the house, it seemed like he was checking the attic windows, but John couldn’t tell exactly.

  John decided to humour him. ‘Better take provisions then. A good pork pie. A flask of tea. You’ll need it.’

  ‘Will you come with me? You can help with all the flying.’

  John coughed in the damp summer air. ‘Always wanted to go to London, I have.’

  ‘There’s smog. Smog will be bad for your lungs.’

  ‘I’ve had worse.’

  ‘My friend Jim Foley was killed by the smog. He’s Billy’s brother. That was three years ago now.’

  John looked down at him. ‘Sorry to hear that, lad.’

  ‘Jim was a Wee-Hoo.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I told you, my gang. We’re the Wee-Hoos, we’re the best gang on the Wasteland and I’m the leader. If you came to London, John, I’d let you join the Wee-Hoos. We’d have to take a vote, but I bet they’d like you as much as I do.’

  ‘Well,’ John laughed, ‘I might be a bit old.’ He coughed and it cut into him.

  John had to sit on the stone bench. He wiped his brow and felt his chest tighten. It would pass. He watched the last fire lantern rise up into the red sky and then he looked back up at the house, at the high, black windows of Sugar Hall. They were blank in the growing darkness and John was glad. Then he looked down at Lilia and that man, Alex. John’s fingers picked at the dead lichen on the stone bench as he wished for something he knew he’d never have, but it was nice to wish all the same.

  Set Them Free

  24

  The dark panels that lined the crowded walls in this upstairs room were cold as ice sheets. The oak floor creaked beneath Dieter’s footsteps as the boy switched on the overhead chandeliers. Dieter shivered in his dressing gown. He didn’t want to be here in the middle of the night, but like every night this week the boy had woken him.

  This was the room Ma had locked all those months ago, the room filled with animal heads, animal skins, wooden masks, moths and butterflies. On the wall Dieter saw a lion’s face creased into a roar, above him a rhino was dusty, and opposite him frightening wooden masks made his lips shiver some more. He glanced at the floor; it was patterned with animal skins and he stepped between them on the oak floorboards.

  Dieter was so tired he thought he might be dreaming; he thought he might be going mad.

  More lights flashed awake above glass cases of specimens, and the room was suddenly bright.

  ‘Please…’

  ‘Shhhh!’ said the boy.

  All Dieter wanted to know was, why were they in here? He knew there was little point in asking why was he awake, why did the boy want to play in the middle of these awful nights, or why had he come back. Dieter walked between the pinned displays of moths and butterflies, animal skins dry and crunchy under his feet.

  This room smelled like the Natural History Museum in London. He wiped the dust from the glass of one case to see four huge butterflies in sparkling blues and purples and greens.

  Blue Morphia. Black Swallowtail. Appalachian Azure, the labels said.

  He wiped the dust from the next case; these were moths and they had hairy heads and antenna that looked tickly. They were as big as small dogs, or big cats.

  Giant Leopard Moth, Atlas Moth.

  He imagined his Grandpa Sugar up in that balloon above Africa, China, India and Sumatra. He imagined him with a telescope and a big net, scouring these lands for giant butterflies in the daytime, and giant moths at night. When he glanced up at the animal heads he imagined Grandpa Sugar with a huge blunderbuss gun, shooting and chopping off the heads of all these animals, dragging the heads back home on the ropes of the balloon.

  ‘Grandfather Sugar is dead and this house is mine because I am the last Sugar left,’ Dieter murmured.

  The boy was standing by the tall sash windows. Dieter noticed the windows were all open now. Out above the cedar, Dieter saw a red moon.

  When he looked back down into the next glass case and saw skulls on the backs of a line of moths, he jumped back.

  Death’s Head Hawksmoth, the label said.

  ‘Please,’ Dieter cried, ‘can I go back to bed?’

  ‘Watch me, Dee-tah,’ the boy was saying and then another sound tickled Dieter’s ears. The boy was stretching his arms out at his sides by those open windows. ‘You must lie down now, Dee-tah,’ he said, ‘be quick.’

  The boy began to hum. It was quiet at first, a low murmur, but the sound grew, climbing higher, then higher in seconds. The boy opened his mouth wide and suddenly the sound hurt so much Dieter had to put his hands over his ears. Then the sound got to Dieter’s bones and he didn’t have any choice: he felt his knees give and he fell on a zebra skin.

  The boy’s cry grew even higher in pitch: the air in the room seemed to tremble then boil. The boy pushed out more sound until Dieter felt his eyes turn back in their sockets and the glass in the room smashed. It was an explosion, like a bomb. The display cases, the windows, the glass panes, the cut-glass crystal droppers and the arms of the grimy chandeliers: they all cracked then shattered. Dieter cried out and crawled beneath a display case as glass shards fell around him.

  The boy went back to a lower register then, and that was when the insects twitched.

  If Dieter could have seen them, he would have seen their veins grow fat, their thin wings shiver; the tiny hairs on their legs stand on end, the silver heads of the small pins begin to tremble. He would have soon seen them wriggling in their pinned positions, working themselves free.

  The giant butterflies were the first to detach – the Swallowtails, Blue Morphos, the Monarchs – their large abdomens pulsed and pulled away from the pins in one tug: their wings shuddered, ready to fly. Slowly – the Helliconians and Fritillaries, Hairstreaks and Coppers – they were all wriggling and crawling up over the broken glass.

  The moths were slower; their fat bodies took a few seconds more to twitch into hairy life; it took a few more tugs to pull away from their pins.

  Most fell to the floor, and when they did they crawled over Dieter’s feet, over his body, his face, in his hair. ‘Make him stop,’ Dieter gasped as the insects crawled up his pyjama legs, tickling his skin with their thrumming legs, some scratching him with the silver pins still stuck through their bodies. They felt his warmth and they tried to burrow into the warm corners of his eyes, his mouth, into his ears.

  The boy laughed as the butterflies and moths animated: crashing against the cracked chandeliers and the black panels of the room.

  ‘Make him stop,’ Dieter repeated but as he opened his mouth again moths flew in until he spat and screamed.

/>   The boy clapped his hands and suddenly the swarm of insects moved with one jerk towards him. They poured around him, wings purring, greeting him, and he smiled. Then they flew out of the gaping windows, and out into the summer night.

  Dieter felt a hand on his; he yelped.

  ‘Come along now, Deee-tah. We’re going to play more games tonight.’

  Saskia Says Goodbye

  25

  ‘You look tired.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Well you should get some rest.’

  Dieter yawned.

  Brother and sister stood on the tiny station platform: it was open to the air, pitted with yellow-headed weeds and bouncing crows. They could hear the forest plantation whisper around them and they tried not to listen.

  ‘Are you sure you feel OK, Dee?’ she asked, surprised at her concern: the black rings beneath his eyes had returned. He seemed thin again. He looked up at her, hands in his pockets; he truly did look ill and something pulsed in her.

  He shrugged, ‘I’m OK.’

  Saskia turned away; she didn’t like that feeling scratching at her belly, this melting concern for her baby brother, and he really was a baby, Ma still had him in short trousers. Saskia wondered when he would ever grow up: she wondered if he’d be Lord of the Manor when they were older and if she would visit. She pulled up the netting on her new hat and as the white handle of her handbag swung on her wrist, Saskia knew she was ready for London: she knew this creeping concern for Dieter would soon evaporate.

  ‘You’re not coming back, are you, Sas?’ he said.

  She froze; Saskia smoothed down her new skirt and tugged at her kidskin gloves. ‘Don’t talk nonsense, Dee…’

  ‘It’s OK, if I was going I wouldn’t come back. Sas?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Give this to Cynthia Nurse will you?’

  She risked a look at him, his cheeks were so white and hollow. He was holding out a letter and suddenly she couldn’t say no. She unclasped her new white bag. ‘Of course, Dee. She’s number 43, right?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You’ll look after Ma, won’t you?’ she said, her voice odd. She coughed and Dieter shrugged. He really was a pest. ‘I mean it. You’re the man of the house now, don’t forget.’

  He looked down at his sandals. ‘Ma doesn’t care, Ma’s too busy with Mr Behr…’