by Peter Bunzl
Robert gasped.
“Boy, are you there?” Mr Roach shouted. “Answer me.”
“What have you done to him?”
“Come out and see. I’ll give you to the count of three. One…”
Hot tears streamed down Robert’s face.
“Two…”
How had things come to this? He should never have let his da face those men alone. He desperately tried to move the wardrobe back, while Lily stumbled about behind him, frantically yanking open drawers in the workbench, searching for a weapon.
“Three…”
Lily grabbed a hacksaw and a screwdriver and tucked them into her belt. She tried to hand him something but he brushed it aside. He felt dizzy, spinning with sickness. He never would’ve believed the men could take things this far.
“Time’s up,” Mr Roach said. “No more negotiations. If you won’t come of your own accord, then we’ll have to smoke you out.”
There was a fizzing hiss and an orange glow flickered under the door.
Fire!
In less than a minute it would start to lick round the edges of the cupboard. Then it would engulf the room.
Malkin scurried in frantic circles, whining and yapping at them both. Jumping onto the workbench, he pointed up with his nose at the only way out.
“The skylight!” Lily seized Malkin by the scruff, and climbed onto the bench.
Robert couldn’t move. He stared at the dazed boy in the mirror, framed by the bubbling veneer of the cupboard.
Behind him, Lily hammered on the skylight with her palms. Stiff with age, it refused to open.
Out in the corridor the crackle of flames exploded into an inferno, and beneath the noise he heard the men’s bickering.
“Out of control…”
“Idiot, you let it run wild.”
The back door banged. They’d left. With a roar of air, and a blast of intense heat, the flames broke through the wood panelling and began licking across the room.
Smoke swirled around Robert’s feet. He glanced once more at the boy in the mirror, so far back it seemed he was in the corridor.
He should’ve been there. It should’ve been him, not his da.
“Help me with this, would you?” Lily hacked away at the skylight with her screwdriver.
The paint was softening in the heat and she hit the frame with her palm until it grumbled open, letting in a tiny chink of the night.
She forced the screwdriver into the gap, pushing until it widened.
Robert watched her shove her bundle and then a yelping Malkin through the opening. He thought she was going to climb up behind the fox, but she didn’t.
Instead, she put her face to the gap and sucked in a mouthful of fresh air; then she jumped down and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Robert, please.” Her voice was strained and fierce. “I’m so sorry about your father. But you must come with us now.”
Robert’s eyes smarted and his chest ached. His guts and lungs and head and heart were filled with burning fire, and an intense shocked sadness.
“Why?” he asked finally.
Lily wiped the smears of soot and tears from her face. “Because he told you to. He told you to get away.”
The smoke had risen above his nose. It drifted between them, fogging his view, confusing him. He fumbled with the buttons of his jacket, and took one last look at the workshop as it melted around him. Lily stood waiting until he was ready. “I’m coming,” he choked, the words spiky in his throat.
She nodded, and they climbed onto the bench together.
Now the smoke had reached the roof. It rolled along the blackening ceiling, engulfing everything in dense clouds.
“Where’s the skylight?” Lily’s voice cracked with panic.
Robert shook his head; he couldn’t make it out in the choking haze.
Then, from somewhere above, a little red snout appeared, snuffling at them.
“Thank God! Out of the way, Malkin.” Lily pushed the skylight wide.
“You first,” she said, and shoved Robert out into the night.
The roof tiles steamed and meltwater rushed along the lead-lined gully, streaming over their shoes. Malkin whined softly, and Lily gulped in great gasps of air. They were at the base of a slope with eight feet of roof above them and a row of adjoining terraces on the other side of the summit.
Robert leaned forward and coughed up wads of black mucus. Watery flakes were settling on his head, dripping through his hair, and running down his cheeks in rivulets.
Da was gone. He felt empty. A numb mess of skin and bone. As if his insides had been scooped out with a spoon. He grabbed a handful of mush and rubbed it roughly across his face.
“We have to keep going,” Lily said, picking up her bundle.
With Malkin at her heels, she started to climb. When she reached the apex of the roof she leaned against a chimney stack and glanced back at him.
Robert wiped a sleeve across his face, brushing away snow and tears.
He had no choice but to follow. He set off after her, numb fingers searching through the steam and cold for holds among the broken slates. His leather shoes slipped as he clawed his way forward. When he was within reach of the chimney, Lily clasped his hand and pulled him up.
Wind and snow whistled round the stacks, knifing and cold in Robert’s throat. Another wave of sickness washed over him. He caught his breath and stared down into the street at a fiery orange glow. Neighbours, wrapped in cloaks and coats, scurried from their houses with tin baths and buckets, shovelling snow and throwing it on the fire. A knot of men, their clothes and hair steaming with black smoke, wrestled his da’s body through the melted shop window.
Robert slumped forward, tumbling into the slush. His fists met the tiles, and his mouth fell open, letting out a shrill cry that joined in the roar of the wind and fire. There was nothing he could do any more. His life here was over.
Robert’s scream cut Lily to her bones; it was as if it were coming from somewhere inside her. She shuddered and slid down next to him; reached out a hand to take his, but he brushed her away.
“Please,” she whispered, “I know what it’s like, that hurt, but we’ve got to go—”
“Why?”
“Because,” Malkin interrupted, “if we don’t, those men will kill us.”
“This is your fault!” Robert aimed a kick at him. “Get away from me, both of you.”
“I’m sorry,” Lily said. “We should’ve helped. I…I didn’t realize how far they’d go to try and get what they wanted.” She glanced at Robert. His face was puffy with pain and his numb gaze had turned inwards. He had scraped at the tiles until his fingers bled, but was barely aware of it.
Lily hugged her bundled box tight under her arm. “My family,” she said, “I mean, I…I’m involved in this. But you, and your da, Robert… He’s innocent. He saved us. If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t be here.”
Robert let out a loud sob. “And if it weren’t for you, he would be. This,” he hissed, “is all because of you. Look after number one: that’s what you’re about.”
“No,” she sputtered, “it’s not true.”
But maybe it was? She had brought the box here, and Malkin had come. She’d decided it was safe to stay with them, despite all she now knew. That thought made her queasy. She tried to think of something else to say, something comforting, but the words dried in her throat. So instead, she took off his da’s coat and draped it over Robert’s shoulders. “There,” she said. She felt the cold now, in only her thin jacket, yet she knew Robert needed the coat much more than she did.
Malkin shouldered his way between them and licked Robert’s bleeding fingers with his rough pink tongue.
A minute passed, and though Lily dearly wanted to let him sit, to comfort him, they couldn’t afford to stop. Not now. There was still so much danger.
“Robert?” she said quietly.
He glanced up and seemed to finally see her, for he wiped away an angry tear.
“Should we go back?” he asked them.
“I don’t think so,” Malkin said softly. “What would we be going back for?”
And Lily knew in her heart of hearts he was right. They couldn’t really, not as things stood. What had Mrs Rust said? Life can be painful. And if you can’t change what’s happened today, bide your time, until you’re strong enough to fight tomorrow.
Over the roof’s edge she glimpsed a row of searchlights in the lane. Mould and Roach’s harsh voices echoed up to her. Malkin’s black-tipped ears pricked up – he’d heard them too. “Time to move on,” he said.
“Yes.” Lily nodded. She shifted her hold on the box and put an arm around Robert. Malkin tugged at his sleeve, while she nudged him to his feet. As he leaned against her, she felt the ragged sobs on his breath.
They slid down the far side of the rooftop and, in the next dip, Robert stumbled forward into a crawl. Lily and Malkin crawled beside him.
Robert moved carelessly, barely taking in what he was doing. He was about to put his palm on a protruding nail, when Malkin yapped him a warning, and he shook his head and seemed to come around.
They crossed three more summits this way before they found a place to descend – a yard piled high with packing cases, where a low outhouse, ending in an overhanging roof, met a high brick parapet, covered with a thick layer of snow like icing.
Her heart racing, Lily stepped forward and peered down. The white ground seemed to spill away beneath her in the dark. She lowered herself over the edge, and when she felt the tips of her toes graze the snowy parapet, she closed her eyes and let go.
The wall met her body with a mushy thud; Malkin jumped down beside her as she steadied herself. “Now you,” Lily shouted to Robert.
He stared down at her. “I can’t do it,” he mumbled. “It’s too high.”
“Come on,” she said. “You’ve got to.”
She took his hand and he eased himself over the roof’s edge, collapsing into her arms. When she looked down, Malkin was already in the yard, standing at the gate, his head cocked, listening.
Lily held on to Robert and they scrambled down a mountain of damp boxes to join him.
“It’s clear,” the fox yipped as soon as they arrived.
Cautiously Lily opened the gate and the three of them tumbled across the road and ducked into the hedgerow opposite. They brushed through the snowy branches and into the dark field beyond, and Lily let out a sigh of relief. They’d escaped – or three of them had. And at least for now, they were safe.
They ran with stealth; not stumbling or stopping, just fleeing into the night. Dark as the Devil’s mouth it was, and the wind was sharp as vinegar. Lily could not see her hands in front of her face and was forced to listen out for the ticking of Malkin’s limbs as he made his way along the snow-covered path.
The blizzard of flakes eased, and they were halfway up Brackenbridge Hill when the clouds parted and a milk-faced moon, one day’s wax from full, appeared. The wind battered the frosted tips of nearby gorses and whipped cold air in through their clothes as they pushed their way up a slope of deep drifts.
They ran up the bank until a tangle of thick thorny underbrush stuck up from the smooth white surface of the snow, blocking their path. Malkin led them around it, bounding through the white dust that came practically to his chin.
Robert was fading fast, stumbling in and out of drifts, kicking at fallen branches until they showered snow. Lily could sense the anguish flooding off him. Water had soaked through the toes of her shoes, and her feet had started to numb; worse still, her gloveless fingers were beginning to seize up with the cold. She stopped for a moment, and pushed back her cap to look around.
“We should rest,” she said. “The trouble is, I don’t know where.”
Malkin shook a flurry of flakes from his snout, and licked his whiskers.
“I came this way before. It looks different under all this white stuff, but I think I can find a place for us to stop.” With that, he slipped off ahead, into the undergrowth.
Lily and Robert stood leaning against each other, waiting for his return. Lily realized Robert hadn’t spoken since they’d been on the roof.
“That was a narrow escape,” she said suddenly, “back there at the shop… Look, Robert, I’m sorry for what happened. If I’d’ve known—”
“It’s not your fault,” he muttered. “Not really.” He glanced at her, as if he wanted to say more. Lily felt her weariness lift for a moment, but when his face fell, it seeped back in with the cold.
Another few minutes passed in shivering silence, then Malkin returned with news of an empty building ahead, where they might bed down for the night.
“Fine,” Lily said. “Let’s go there.”
Hidden behind a copse of tall larch trees, the derelict mill straddled one end of a frozen pond. Its upper half was clad in moss-covered planks of wood that ended halfway down its height, like a skirt. Under this, fat red legs of brick, banked with snow, waded in the ice-cracked pond. An outhouse arched over a waterwheel, whose uppermost lattices were covered in dripping stalactites.
Malkin slunk across an iron-railed bridge and approached the building. He slipped between two planks of wood nailed over the entrance, and through a rotten gap in the base of the door itself, his tail flicking as it disappeared into the dark.
They stood at the end of the small bridge, waiting for him to return. Lily jigged, and clapped her hands to keep them warm, and Robert brushed a shower of snow off the length of handrail.
Malkin’s nose poked back out through the hole. “It’s clear,” he barked. “I don’t think anyone lives here any more.”
“Well, now we do,” Lily said cheerfully, trying to give them hope.
It was almost as cold inside the old watermill as it was outside. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, Lily saw a space filled with gigantic cogs. Wooden workings spanned the room, connecting to a grindstone at the far end. A chain led up and up to a wooden trapdoor set into the roof above. In between the planks of the ceiling, weeds grew like a blackened upside-down garden.
“It’s like crawling inside the chest of some gigantic broken mechanical,” Lily whispered to Robert.
“Or the heart of a clock tower,” Robert said.
“My papa would probably know how it worked. Be able to explain it all.”
“Mine too.” Robert patted a cog, connected to a shaft of wood. “These must’ve all turned once to grind the corn, driven by that waterwheel outside.”
She nodded. In the corner, against the driest wall, she spotted a pile of empty flour sacks, and they settled down on them to make a camp for the night.
Lily dropped her bundle and watched Robert slump to the foot of the wall. Then she collapsed down next to him. She leaned back against a rough post, shivering in her shirt sleeves, and loosened the laces of her shoes.
“Do you want the coat back?” Robert asked her suddenly.
She shook her head. “No. You keep it. I’ll use my blanket.” She unknotted it from around the box, and opened it out, spreading it across her legs.
“We could share them both,” Robert said, and he shuffled towards her and tucked the coat around their shoulders. Lily dragged the box between her feet, and threw the blanket across his legs too.
The silk lining of the coat gave off a sharp whiff that reminded her of Thaddeus’s tobacco and the blanket smelled of Papa and her home. Lily missed him, and her mama too. Tiredness seeped through her bones. She took off her cap and put it against the wall behind her head to make a pillow, then shut her eyes and waited for sleep to take her.
But, instead, only a sickly feeling of emptiness came, and a slow nagging despair. She tried to concentrate on the night noises – she ought to listen out anyway, just in case.
The wind was up and she could hear the creaking of the old mill…the strange distant squawking of birds…Malkin’s cogs gradually ticking to a standstill as he wound down for the night…and Robert’s breathing soft and steady…
Soon the sounds fell away, and she drifted into a deep sleep.
She dreamed once more of the accident. The snow falling. The stone in her hand. Mama’s laughter. The box at Papa’s feet. The two vehicles colliding with an earth-shattering crash that split the night in two. Her mother’s body tipping forward, flying through the carriage windscreen, and her own tiny frame tumbling after it.
City lights smudged the sky. Blood and water smeared across her face as her body broke against the kerbside, crumpling into the white drifts; inches from her mother’s frozen form.
Snowflakes coated her hair. Cuts seared across her scalp; pain bloomed in her chest. Unstoppable.
Then, another new part of the dream: she seemed to leave her body, and she watched from on high, floating above her static six-year-old self as Papa clambered out from under the overturned steam-wagon, still clasping the box. She heard his hoarse screams whipped away by the blizzard.
Another man appeared, limping through the fog, and he wrestled with her papa, trying to take the box. Lily recognized his red sideburns, his fat cheeks, and his silver shining eyes – it was Mr Mould.
Papa fought him, screaming and shouting into his face, never letting go of the box, until Mr Mould seemed to take fright and ran off. Then Papa battled towards the bodies of his loved ones: Mama and Lily, lying side by side like rag dolls on the road.
Tears melted the snowflakes on Papa’s face. He threw down the box and dropped to his knees in the snow. Then he scooped up his two girls in his arms; cradling them against his chest.
Lily wanted to stay, watch more, but she felt herself waking, detaching from the dream, as if an umbilical-line of mooring had loosened inside her, and she floated off. She tried to call to Papa, but no words came. Tried to swim back, but a blizzard of snow pushed against her, spiralling her upwards; melting the accident into a flurry of flakes. A cold blank whiteness seeped into her bones and she heard the thud of her pulse, ringing in her ears…
Lily woke with a cold gritty taste in her mouth. The interior of the mill had grown lighter. A rising sun split the slatted boards of the wall with orange stripes. Lily’s thoughts flashed straight from her dream to the burning shop. She glanced at Robert and was shocked to find him awake and watching her.