The Tender Moments of Saffron Silk

by Glenda Millard

  8. The Loud Silence of Saffron Silk

  Saffron rode home in the cabin of the old Bedford, sandwiched between Annie and Nell. Colleen called a taxi-bus for the rest of the family. If it hadn’t been raining Saffron would have sat in the back of the truck with Blue and Barney. They didn’t speak English, they didn’t ask questions, but Saffron was certain they understood how she felt.

  Nell didn’t ask questions either. She said, ‘Doctor Larsson’s just being careful. He’s making sure there’s nothing he’s not aware of, that’s all.’ Nell was being careful too.

  He doesn’t know everything because I didn’t tell him everything, Saffron thought, then wondered if she’d made a mistake not mentioning the firebirds. She closed her eyes, soaked up the comforting warmth of her mother and grandmother and tried to guess by the motion of the truck how close they were to home. There was no hammering, no candles, no questions, just the slap of the wipers, the hum of the engine and the crackle of the radio as they drove over potholes and puddles towards the Kingdom of Silk.

  Dinner that evening was Saffron’s favourite: pumpkin soup with crusty rolls, and apple pie for dessert. But Saffron barely touched hers and asked if she could be excused.

  ‘Stay with us a while,’ said Annie, ‘even if you don’t feel like eating.’

  So Saffron stayed. She quietly arranged grains of spilt salt into snail-shaped spirals and checked her fingernails. She did not look at Griffin, taste the sunset-coloured soup, pass the rolls to Scarlet, or smile. Not once, to anyone.

  The people who knew Saffron best were used to her long silences and understood there were many reasons for them. Good reasons, like reading about gods and mortals, designing and sewing costumes, imagining life in ages gone by, filling entire rolls of lunch-wrap with fake hieroglyphics or painting leather sandals on her feet with brown boot-polish.

  Some of her more complicated projects involved many hours of silence. For example, a stage production of Anne of Green Gables. Saffron had read the book over and over to make sure she knew it by heart. All the details were in her head. She’d hire the school hall. There would be red carpet to cover the cracked cement path, deep purple curtains to swish open and shut. She wanted footlights and spotlights and flashing bulbs around the billboard like Mr Kefalas had on his fish and chip shop sign. Nell would play Marilla and Mr Jenkins would be Matthew. Scarlet with her dark hair would play Anne’s ‘bosom friend’, Diana. Layla’s brother, Patrick, would make a very handsome Gilbert Blythe and she, Saffron, would play the part of Anne. Violet would write the script.

  But tonight Saffron’s silence was different. The reason behind it was not good. It was a silence that everyone seemed to notice. It was wide and deep and long and weighed heavily upon their shoulders. It was a loud silence. It shouted.

  Perhaps Griffin noticed it more than the others. It squeezed his heart to think of Saffron so full of unasked questions, for there had been a time when he was silent. It began when his baby sister was born. Before that Griffin was the full stop at the end of the Silk family, the pot of gold at the end of the Rainbow Girls, the icing on the cake. His daddy said so in his Naming Day speech. But then Tishkin came and Griffin was no longer the youngest, no longer special. He was lost somewhere in the middle of his big busy family. He loved his baby sister and didn’t mean to be jealous, but he was. He didn’t want her to die, but she did. Griffin was afraid she had read his jealous heart and that hers had broken because of it. He was afraid of what people would think of him if they found out.

  So Griffin became silent. He dared not ask if there was something he could have done to prevent Tishkin’s death or why Annie had to stay in a hospital for very sad people and if she would ever come home again. The silence grew, as though it was an infectious disease or an evil enchantment that prevented the Silks from talking about Tishkin at all.

  Then one daisy-filled day Griffin met Layla, Queen of Hearts, and the spell was broken. Ben used to say that Layla had been sent to comfort them after Tishkin went away. He said she was like an arm around their shoulders, a candle in the dark. And it was true. Layla shone so brightly that there was no room inside Griffin for fear to hide. Like a true friend she comforted him, made him feel he wasn’t alone and helped him discover it was normal to feel guilty even though he wasn’t.

  Tonight Griffin watched Annie trying to include Saffron in the conversation and saw how stubbornly his sister stayed silent. She was making Annie sad, making them all sad, not looking at their faces, not seeing their hurt or their love. She had shut herself away from them in a tower of silence. Every kindness bounced off the high stone walls of her imaginary castle. Something had to be done about Saffron.

  Griffin was a thoughtful child who enjoyed the company of animals. A patient person who would wait quietly for hours to glimpse an eagle soar above the hills, a kind boy who saved snails from certain death in Nell’s vegetable patch and re-housed them in rushes near the dam. Griffin was definitely not a loud person. But he hated what Saffron’s silence was doing to them all. His hate and rage quickly grew so powerful that he couldn’t sit at the table a moment longer. He sprang to his feet. His fist came down like a sledgehammer beside his soup bowl. His chair toppled backwards and crashed loudly onto the wooden floor and he shouted into the shocked silence, ‘You’re not being fair, Saffron! We’re worried too, but it’s not fair what you’re doing to us. You won’t let us be kind. Tell her, Nell, tell her it’s not fair to shut us out!’

  As Griffin ran towards the door, Nell opened her arms like wings and gathered him in against the Queen’s diamonds.

  ‘Tell her what you told me. Tell her about the silence and the candle and the sledgehammer. Please, Nell!’ He buried his face in her apron and sobbed.

  Saffron had never wondered how much her brother loved her. She was old enough to know that love is elastic, that there is always enough to go around, to hold families together. She had never bothered to ask herself, how wide, how deep, how strong. Knowing it existed was enough for her. But that evening she learnt something else about love. It can transform people. Love had made a lion of Griffin. It gave him courage and made him roar.

  9. Saint Lucy’s Cats

  Doctor Larsson didn’t usually make house calls. His only exceptions were when they involved matters of the heart or a member of the Silk family. On this occasion it was both.

  He put his favourite jumper on. The cobalt blue one with cables down the front that Hilde knitted when they first became sweethearts. The frayed cuffs had been darned to keep them from completely unravelling and Charlie’s dog hair wouldn’t come out no matter how many times it was washed. He’d nursed Charlie in it when he was old and dying. The dog was buried under the silver birch where the clump of pink nerines grew. Doctor Larsson didn’t mind the mends or the hairs: they brought back treasured memories.

  The doctor grew up in a family that had everything it needed. There was a house with seven bedrooms, a grand piano, a crystal chandelier, a fountain in the front garden and roast beef every Sunday. Everything, except tender moments. He knew Nell Silk specialised in tender moments and was sure she would approve of a jumper like his. He was pleased she’d telephoned. A doctor can only do and say so much at an appointment. There is no time for stories. Doctor Larsson kissed Hilde, who had been his wife for fifty-three years now, and told her not to wait up for him. He stepped into his gumboots, checked his pocket for the recipe and rehearsed the story of Lussekatter all the way to the Kingdom of Silk.

  Barney and Blue were huddled together on the red vinyl couch when the doctor arrived. They watched him read the note pinned to the veranda post, warning him to avoid Golden Orb’s masterpiece. The front door was open. He stepped inside, paused to read the poem painted there, then walked slowly down the passageway, admiring the portraits Annie had painted of her children. Above him a flock of paper birds wheeled and a galaxy of tart-tin stars cascaded like a spangled chandelier.

  The doctor was almost seventy-three and he wondered, as
he walked beneath the stars, if age was the reason for the feeling. He’d noticed that it came to him whenever he visited the Kingdom of Silk or when he put his cobalt blue jumper on or when Hilde held his hand as they went walking. Simple things.

  The aroma of sunset soup mingling with notes from Ben’s harmonica beckoned Doctor Larsson to the kitchen. But suddenly he stopped and turned to look again at the stars, the birds, the portraits and the poem. At that moment he understood what they all were, what they meant, why they made him feel the way he did. The contents of the house were a collection of tender moments lovingly gathered by its occupants.

  After Doctor Larsson had sampled Nell’s sunset soup he began to tell the story he’d carried in his head and his heart for many years. Tonight would be the first time he had told it to anyone other than his own family.

  ‘My youngest daughter’s name is Pia,’ he began, ‘and when she was five years old, we discovered she had a disease. There was treatment, but it involved many, many visits to the hospital and no-one could say for sure if it would cure her.

  ‘Sometimes she had to stay there for days or weeks. Sometimes it seemed like the treatment was worse than the illness. Pia begged us not to take her back to the hospital, and Hilde and I wondered if we were doing the right thing.

  ‘Often we would read to Pia, sometimes almost all the night. We found this was one of the few things that stopped her thinking about her illness and the treatment. A couple of weeks before Christmas, in the year Pia turned six, she was back in hospital. Christmas in Sweden is a dark cold time of the year. One evening as we sat by Pia’s bed I heard singing. I thought it might have been carolers, so I went to the window. The street lights were on and snow was falling, but I couldn’t see anyone. After a while the singing seemed to be getting closer. So I went to the door of the ward and looked through the glass. The corridor was long and the lights were dim so the patients could sleep, but at the end of it I saw flickering yellow lights, like a halo of fire, moving slowly towards the children’s ward.’

  Saffron had been enjoying Doctor Larsson’s story and trying to imagine what it would be like to celebrate Christmas in winter. But she was shocked when he mentioned the lights. They sounded so like her firebirds that she wondered if he had known about them all along. Perhaps other people could see them too. The doctor continued his story.

  ‘As they came closer I could see a girl wearing a long white dress. On her head was an evergreen wreath lit by lights that looked like candles. She and the other singers came and stood by Pia’s bed where we could see them clearly. All the girls wore white dresses and red sashes and the boys wore cone-shaped hats decorated with gold stars.

  ‘I’d been so worried about Pia that I’d forgotten what day it was. In Sweden it’s traditional to celebrate Saint Lucy’s Day on the thirteenth of December, which is about the time of the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere. We celebrate the end of darkness and new beginnings with street processions, lights and bonfires.

  ‘Stories about Saint Lucy and her good deeds have been told in Sweden for hundreds of years. One of the loveliest, often told to children, is that Lucy would secretly visit people who were forced to hide in caves under the city of Rome because of what they believed. Lucy would come to them at night, wearing candles on her head to light the way so her hands were free to carry food. Lucy means “light”, so it was a very good name for her.’

  Saffron tried to imagine living in a cave because of your beliefs and how wonderful it would be to see the golden halo coming towards you through the dark.

  Doctor Larsson was enjoying telling his story of Pia and Saint Lucy. Saffron, with her eyes big and bright, reminded him of Pia all those years ago: listening, watching, imagining and forgetting for a while what was happening to her.

  ‘Before the children moved further on into the ward, they gave Pia some Lussekatter to eat next morning. Lussekatter means Lucy’s Cats,’ explained Doctor Larsson. ‘They’re special buns flavoured with saffron and shaped like curled-up cats. Pia went to sleep holding her Lussekatter.

  ‘It wasn’t the last time she had to stay in hospital, but from that night onwards she never seemed to get as upset as she once had. Eventually she got well again. Many years later she told us that every time she had treatment Saint Lucy would come to her, walking through the dark with candles in her hair and Lussekatter in her hands. She would stop by Pia’s bed and tell her that the longest night was almost over.’

  Silence fell again at the Kingdom of Silk.

  At last Nell found her voice. ‘Thank you, Doctor Larsson,’ she said. ‘That was a beautiful story.’

  The doctor fished in his pocket then and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

  ‘Hilde made the best Lussekatter in all Sweden and now in Australia she still makes them for our girls and their children. She wrote out the recipe in case you’d like to make some.’

  When the doctor arrived home, his wife was in bed. But she opened her eyes and watched him carefully fold his cobalt blue jumper. As they lay in bed he told Hilde about Golden Orb, about Blue and Barney, about the poem on the open door, the portraits on the wall, the paper birds and the tart-tin stars. He told her how he’d shared sunset soup, Pia’s story and afterwards a seat on the old red couch. There wasn’t much room for them all: Blue and Barney, Annie, Nell, Saffron and the doctor. Ben sat on the veranda boards softly playing a lilting love song to the moon while Saffron told them about the firebirds.

  Hilde Larsson smiled and held her doctor’s hand until they went to sleep.

  10. Farewell to Little Petal

  Saffron was leaving on the 6:00pm train on Sunday. Her photographs would be taken on Monday. Nobody really knew what would happen after that.

  On Wednesday morning, before she left for school, she made her family promise that until the moment she stepped on the train everything would go on as usual at the Kingdom of Silk. Of course they agreed, but that didn’t stop each of them wanting to do something special for her.

  Even Scarlet was making an effort. She hadn’t been able to think of anything useful that she could do well. Amber could cook, Violet could write and Indigo could paint and draw. According to Violet, Scarlet was flamboyantly untidy. Scarlet secretly consulted the dictionary where ‘flamboyant’ was defined as ‘having a very showy or colourful appearance’, a fairly accurate description of the state of her bedroom. But flamboyance isn’t all that useful when you want to do something nice for your youngest sister. The simplest thing seemed to be to ask Saffron what she would like.

  Saffron didn’t hesitate. ‘Could you look after Barney and be especially nice to him in case he misses me?’ she asked. She almost mentioned adoption, just in case, but decided not to.

  Scarlet promised faithfully that she would and immediately decided to ask Mr Kadri if she could take Barney to work with her on Sunday.

  Layla was waiting at the school gate when Griffin arrived. She wanted to know what Doctor Larsson had told them about Saffron’s dizziness and headaches.

  ‘She does have to go to hospital for tests,’ Griffin said.

  ‘Did he say what he thinks is the matter?’

  ‘Not really. He said headaches can sometimes make people feel dizzy and sick. But he wants to get photographs of the inside of her head to make sure there’s nothing that shouldn’t be there.’

  ‘Is Saffron all right?’

  ‘I think so. She’s gone back to school today. But that’s what usually happens. She gets the headache and the dizzy spells and feels sick. Then if she lies down in the dark for about a day, she’s normal again.’

  ‘Is she scared about the tests?’

  ‘I didn’t ask her. But Doctor Larsson came to our house last night. He told us a story from when his daughter Pia was in hospital. Afterwards Saffron went and sat on the veranda with the doctor, and Nell said she talked to him about things she didn’t say at the appointment.’

  The bell for going inside rang then, but at recess Layla asked G
riffin to tell her Pia’s story.

  ‘Oh Griff, it’s beautiful!’ said Layla when he’d finished. ‘It makes me feel kind of peaceful inside. Do you think that’s how Saffron felt when she heard it?’

  ‘I hope so,’ Griffin said.

  Time seemed to pass at twice the speed of light that week and suddenly it was Sunday. Everyone at the Kingdom of Silk was busy trying to keep their promise to Saffron, to be as normal as possible. It seemed harder at weekends when they were all at home.

  Scarlet left for work half an hour early because Barney didn’t understand about punctuality. He strolled and she let him on account of her promise to Saffron. Mr Kadri agreed to allow Barney to come to the Colour Patch Café as long as he didn’t come inside. Mr Kadri had a soft spot for Saffron. He was born in a country where the fields were covered in crocus flowers, the plant from which a spice called saffron is harvested. He called her Little Petal, and it made him sorry inside to know she wasn’t well.

  When Scarlet and Barney arrived, Mr Kadri made a chocolate-flavoured milkshake with an extra scoop of ice-cream. He served it in a soup bowl because Barney wasn’t used to drinking through a straw and his nose wouldn’t fit inside a paper cup. Afterwards Mr Kadri’s curly-haired children wiped Barney’s milky chin with paper napkins. Then they led him to the courtyard and drew crayon portraits of him on butcher’s paper and sang sheepish songs to him.

  At lunchtime some visitors to Cameron’s Creek arrived at the Colour Patch Café. When Mr Kadri brought them their mint tea, they enquired if it was common in the country to see a sheep asleep under a bus stop seat.

  ‘No, no, not at all common,’ said Mr Kadri. ‘But you see Barney is the black sheep of Little Petal, who is the sister of Miss Crimson, who is the daughter of Mr Benjamin Silk and his lovely wife with all the many children and the grandmother. Little Petal is going to the city to have her photograph taken and we are taking very good care of Barney until she is returning to us.’