by Peter Bunzl
Her father’s housekeeper leaned forward and gave Lily a wan smile, half-hidden under a black gauze veil which covered her face. “Bonjour, chérie.”
“Madame Verdigris has some news about your father,” said Miss Scrimshaw.
Straight away, Lily sensed it was something bad. So much black taffeta and poised concern: it was like the months in London, after Mama’s death. Surely it couldn’t be that, could it? Not Papa too? She felt bile rise in her throat, and dug her nails into her palms.
“What’s happened?” she asked.
Madame Verdigris shook her head sadly. “Ma petite, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your father is missing. His airship crashed yesterday, flying home.”
“Perhaps you’d better take a seat?” Miss Scrimshaw suggested, but Lily ignored her, gasping for breath.
“C’est terrible,” Madame’s melodious voice continued. “The police, they have investigated the scene: but there was no body, only the remains of his ship. He has disparu, and we have now to presume he is…dead.”
“Oh no…” Lily grasped for the chair, but it seemed to slide sideways. The women’s concerned faces swept away in a blur and the floor lurched up to meet her.
Silence.
A square wooden box.
A flash of white melting snow.
The crack of breaking glass.
A sharp pungent smell, mixed with a brittle perfume.
Lily opened her eyes and the haze coagulated into Miss Scrimshaw’s office. She must’ve fainted.
She was lying on the carpet, with Madame Verdigris kneeling over her, clutching a vial of smelling salts. She coughed and sat up, rubbing the sting from her eyes.
“Bien, chérie,” Madame said. “Lucky, I had these.” She wiped her hands on a lace handkerchief and stuffed the vial away in her clutch bag.
“Why you?” Lily asked woozily. They’d been halfway through some sort of conversation. “Why have you come?”
“We can discuss this on the journey.”
“Journey? Where are we going?”
“Why, home to Brackenbridge, bien sûr,” Madame said sniffily. She stood and brushed down the front of her dress.
“But I was to meet Papa,” Lily said, “and Malkin.” A sickening dizziness swirled around her once more, until she felt terribly confused. “Papa promised to take me flying…on Dragonfly.” Tears came to her eyes, and she pulled the oily hanky from her cuff to wipe her face. “At the end of term, they’re coming…he wants to fly me home.”
“Mais non,” Madame said, “obviously such things won’t be happening. We are going home by public zep, aujourd’hui and we will have to hurry to catch the late one. And you will wait at the house with me until we receive news of your father, or until his body is discovered at the crash site.”
“Good. That’s settled then.” Miss Scrimshaw took up the bell from her desk, and rang. Within moments the door opened and the Kraken appeared.
“Ah, Mrs McKracken,” said the headmistress, “please could you ask Matron to help Lily and Madame Verdigris pack her things? I think her travelling trunks are in the storage room on the third floor.”
Madame stood and adjusted the ruched sleeves of her dress. “Ce n’est pas nécessaire, Miss Scrimshaw. Lily has plenty of clothes at home, don’t you, Lily? She can just take a case and what she’s wearing.” She glanced at Lily’s dishevelled coal-covered dress. “Though perhaps something neat and black would not go amiss now, eh, chérie?”
As they left the room together Lily’s mind was awash with fuzzy thoughts, but she couldn’t help overhearing Madame tell the Kraken how, if the expense of forwarding Lily’s things was too much, they should feel free to divide them up between the other girls.
“I’m not sure that they’d want that, Madame,” the Kraken replied.
“Perhaps the poorhouse then,” Madame muttered. “Or burn them.”
And Lily had a sudden devastating inkling of what her new life without Papa would be like.
The landing lamps of the descending airships glinted off the glass panes of the airdock’s vaulted roof. The building towered above the sprawling city of Manchester like a giant steel ribcage. In its frosty forecourt, lines of steam-wagons, and the occasional horse-drawn carriage, queued to drop passengers and cargo under the columned portico of the main entrance.
Attached to the side of the building was a zeppelin-shaped billboard, painted with the livery of The Royal Dirigible Company’s fleet, and the slogan: The Modern Dirigible – Travel that’s lighter than air.
As Madame Verdigris and Lily stepped down from the steam-wagon, Madame almost slipped on the frosty cobbles of the road. She clutched Lily’s arm, her nails digging through the wool of the school coat. Lily waited, clutching her small case and shivering in the biting wind, while Madame smoothed out the silk of her black dress. Finally, when she was ready, she took Lily’s hand once more and ushered her into the terminal.
Crossing the marble foyer, they passed rows of commuters waiting for their evening flights. The buzz of people was so overwhelming Lily thought she might faint once more. The space held too many memories. She’d stood on this spot with Papa countless times, seeing him off on his trips.
She glanced at the brass clock tower at the centre of the concourse, craning her neck to see its spire, which rose towards the lobby’s ceiling. Here she had kissed Papa goodbye, and here he had left her with the Kraken and the other girls at the start of the autumn term. She gazed past the pinnacle of the clock to the extravagant fresco of a zeppelin stamped with Queen Victoria’s crest: Victoria Regina. It was surrounded by angels and cherubs and tiny clouds, scudding away across the cracked blue plaster. At the corners of the lobby, four oval gilt-framed portraits of the old Queen faced each other across the expanse of painted sky. Was Papa up there now, Lily wondered, lost somewhere in the wild blue yonder, with all the other disappeared aeronauts?
She stifled a sob and blew her nose with her oil-stained hanky.
Madame Verdigris was consulting the overhead chalkboard filled with flight numbers, her bag held tight to her chest. “C’est ici – quai numéro un.”
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Lily said. “Take a zep today, I mean.” Her legs were buckling and her case felt heavy in her hand; she took a deep breath to steady herself.
“It will be fine,” Madame said. “Commuter zeps are a most safe way to travel. Not like private airships.” She pursed her lips together – she seemed to have realized she’d overstepped the mark with that one. “Allez!” she said finally, and took Lily’s arm and marched her to the gate.
On the platform they joined a line of people queuing to board the tethered passenger zep. Behind it, Lily glimpsed a bloated dirigible waiting for its cargo.
“Welcome to the Damselfly, an LZ1 model zeppelin.” A stocky mechanical porter in a blue uniform displaying the gold insignia of The Royal Dirigible Company jumped down from their zep’s doorway.
Lily brightened at the sight of him. He had a funny-looking thick moustache, made from a tufty old clothes-brush, buckled under his polished nose, and when he ran down the gangway his leg-pistons clacked together and his long iron arms swung through the air. He reached the edge of the platform and, gathering the heavier trunks – two under each arm – carried them like they were the lightest parcels, and stowed them neatly in stacks in the hold of the airship. Then, collecting the ticket stubs, he chatted with the passengers in turn, as if each were a bosom pal who he hadn’t seen in years.
When he finally arrived at the spot where they were standing, he gave a creaky little bow and tipped his hat to Madame, so that Lily saw the polished brass top of his bald head. “Ladies, might I see your tickets, please?”
“First class section,” Madame Verdigris said, handing them over.
He checked the scrawl. “Miss Lily Grantham.”
Lily nodded, looking down at the tickets in the mechanical’s hands and spotting a gleaming brass plate on his forearm.
“
But, oh! You were made by my fa—”
Madame Verdigris pinched the top of Lily’s arm, hard.
“By John Hartman, the famous inventor,” the mechanical said proudly. “Are you any relation?”
“None whatsoever,” Madame Verdigris replied, before Lily had even opened her mouth. “Perhaps you should get on with your job?”
He gave her a curt nod. “Of course, Madam. Very good. Hand luggage only? May I show you both to your seats?”
He took Lily’s case and winked at her – or was it an error in his blinking?
“This way, please. Mind your step.” The mechanical ushered them along the gangplank towards the Damselfly, and Lily glanced back one more time at the airstation.
As she did, she noticed a man clutching a lacquer walking cane arrive and join the back of the queue of boarding passengers. His razor-thin figure was clothed in a dark wool suit and tall stovepipe hat, and he wore silver reflective O-shaped spectacles. Something about him seemed oddly familiar; he was, she thought, somehow connected to Papa – but she couldn’t quite place him. She was still trying to put a name to his craggy face when she stepped into the corridor of the airship’s gondola and he disappeared from sight.
In the compartment Madame installed herself by the window while Lily waited for the mechanical porter to stow her suitcase. When he’d finished, the mechanical man doffed his hat to her, and Lily shook his hand before he slid the compartment door shut and left.
Madame Verdigris settled back in her seat and tutted under her breath. “I don’t know why you shake hands with them, Lily. You’ll end up covered in engine oil, or worse.”
“It’s good manners,” Lily said. “They only want to be treated like people.”
“Mon Dieu. Where do you get these notions? Certainly not from that school of yours.” Madame opened her carpet bag and took out some embroidery, a picture of Botticelli angels. In the confines of the cabin her perfume was almost unendurable. Lily reached for the window latch.
Madame put out a hand. “Arrêtez-vous.”
“Why?”
“I cannot stand the sound of propellers and I hate to be battered by cold air when I travel. Not to mention the evil stink of smoke you’ll let in.”
Lily bristled. Why was Madame making such demands? And why had she asked Lily to deny she knew Papa – now, after everything?
“Why did you tell the porter I wasn’t related to John Hartman?” she asked.
“Your father never liked revealing your identity.”
“Does it matter now?”
“Do you want everyone knowing our business? Especially mechs, and especially now your father’s gone.”
Lily shook her head, but she felt a pang of pain in her chest. “I just don’t see how it’s your right to answer questions addressed to me,” she said.
“Well, I do,” Madame replied. “I’m your guardian, maintenant. Albeit temporarily. And until we find out what’s been decided, I suggest we stick to the old rules. So please, sit back and try to keep quiet. We have a long journey ahead.”
Lily did as she was told; though she would’ve preferred it to be someone more pleasant doing the telling.
She ignored the housekeeper and contented herself with staring out the window at the view. Damselfly’s engines shuddered to life and it was winched by two large steam-wagons to the centre of the landing strip. They positioned it over a big X, directly under the take-off skylight, then the mooring ropes were unclipped, and the zep rose through the centre of the building, aided by gigantic wind pumps in the walls, pushing it upwards.
Lily watched through the compartment’s porthole as the zep drifted past the metal struts that held up the glass-paned roof, and the roosting pigeons, who barely shifted as they floated by.
Last time she’d flown with Papa she’d been arriving here for the start of the autumn term. Then the evenings had been light and long, not dark and heavy as they were now.
Lily was flying without him and she felt danger at every turn. As the public zep swept into the starless sky, she wondered what had happened to Papa and Malkin. How, with such an unfeeling guardian as Madame watching over her, would she ever find out? Suddenly, she felt very alone and scared about her future…
They’d not been travelling long when a knock at the corridor window made Lily glance up from her penny dreadful.
It was the thin fellow in the mirrored spectacles from the airstation platform, with a copy of The Daily Cog clasped under his arm. When he slid open the door and peered in, Lily gave a loud gasp, for the mirrors were not glasses as she’d supposed, but lenses sewn into the raw red sockets of his eyes. The man had no eyeballs!
He stared at the ticket in his black-gloved hand, then examined the brass numbers above the seats, his mirrors reflecting everything. “Excuse me, Madame, Miss, I appear to be allocated this cabin. May I come in?”
Lily shook her head, but Madame Verdigris replied: “Certainly.”
“Thank you, much obliged.” The thin man settled himself in a spare seat and leaned his walking cane against the wall. Lily noticed its silver skull handle. He took off his hat and gloves, and placed them on his lap. “Sorry for the disturbance, ladies.”
“Please, pay it no mind.” Madame Verdigris returned to her embroidery, absently poking her needle through the eye of an appliquéd cherub.
The thin man unfolded his newspaper and smoothed the wrinkles from it. He opened it to arm’s length and began to read the inside pages.
Lily could not stop staring at his face. Perhaps he’d been in an accident, for the rims of his eye sockets, around the mirrors, looked red with damage, and his cheeks were scarred with jagged marks. She decided he must be a hybrid – part human, part machine. She’d never seen one before – until now she’d never even been sure they existed. Underneath her revulsion she felt a little sorry for the man. It must be a difficult life to be singled out as different like that.
She was probably looking too much. She turned her attention to the paper instead. It was the evening edition. Lily scanned the front page and gave a gasp. The lead article was about Papa’s disappearance. She read the first two paragraphs.
A lump welled in Lily’s throat and she stopped reading. It was all true then: written there in black and white. She glanced at the thin man; his head lolled against the headrest, his chin tipped back. Was he watching her or sleeping? So hard to tell behind those lidless mirrored eyes.
She gave a cough, but he didn’t move. Perhaps he really was asleep? He wasn’t reading the paper any more – it drooped now in his hands. She stuck her tongue out at him and he flashed her a smile, sharp as a shark’s.
“I must apologize again,” he said, folding The Daily Cog and setting it aside. “I know how frustrating a stranger in one’s cabin can be on long journeys.”
Lily gave a timid nod, which he seemed to take as an invitation to continue.
“Odd they put us together, when the zep’s so empty. Must be a mechanical error.”
Madame Verdigris set aside her embroidery. “Was it the same mechanical porter who showed you aboard? I find these primitive mechanicals, with their synthesized emotions, most disagreeable, don’t you? They make so many clerical mistakes. And with the back talk they give you, and all the winding… I’m often surprised they function at all.”
“Quite true, Madame. You’ve hit the nail squarely on the head there.” The thin man smiled. “Or should I say, got to the heart of the matter?”
Madame Verdigris gave her tinkling cut-glass laugh – though Lily saw nothing funny about either of their remarks. It occurred to her that the thin man had twice addressed the housekeeper as Madame, not Madam, and she wondered how he knew the woman’s preferred title.
The thin man leaned forward, his silver eyes flashing in the light. “Ladies, please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mr Roach.”
Madame Verdigris nodded to him. “Bonsoir, Mr Roach, I’m Madame Verdigris and this is my charge Miss Hartman.”
“Ah, like the article?” Mr Roach asked, tapping the newspaper.
Madame Verdigris sombrely inclined her head in the affirmative.
Lily ground her teeth – hadn’t the housekeeper just told her not to let people know who she was?
“You look upset, young lady,” Mr Roach said, “and no wonder.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
“I’ve something here might cheer you up.” Mr Roach put a hand in his pocket and pulled out a paper bag, which he held out to Lily. She peered inside. Striped gooey sweets were fused to the paper; they must’ve been in his pocket for weeks.
“No thank you, Sir.”
“Go on, they’re humbugs.” He thrust the paper bag at her, but she shook her head. “What’s the matter? You don’t like humbugs? If I wasn’t such a mild-mannered fellow, I might be offended. Perhaps you think I’d be better off eating carrots. Good for the old eyesight.” He laughed and tapped the centre of one mirrored eye with a finger.
Lily felt a shiver rise up her back. “No,” she said. “It’s not that, only…” She studied his unreadable expression. She didn’t even know how to put it politely; but she needn’t have worried, Madame Verdigris stepped in on her behalf.
“I’m afraid, Sir, one rule of Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy, where Miss Hartman is a pupil, is never to accept sweets from strangers.”
“Sorry,” Lily added.
Mr Roach frowned, the silver orbs of his eyes narrowing; he clutched the paper bag in a gaunt hand. “You could hardly call me a stranger, Miss Hartman – we’ve just introduced ourselves. I must say, I don’t believe your rules apply in these circumstances. And one should never be without a humbug when one takes a long journey. I find they help with travel sickness on these commuter zeps.”
Lily relented and took one, and Mr Roach gave a small victorious grin.
The humbug tasted delicious, but after a while her eyelids drooped and she felt rather tired.
She put her head against the frosty window, which thrummed and rattled with the zeppelin’s engines, and watched her breath cloud the glass. Before she drifted off, she heard Madame Verdigris say: “I don’t know why these zeps are so loud always. Where is the refinement one gets with an old-fashioned horse and carriage or a hot-air balloon?”