by Pauline Fisk
'I've brought you a present, actually,' Maybelle said. 'I couldn't wait for Christmas.'
She disappeared into her bedroom. Bonnie heard her rustling and thumping and the bedroom clock chiming. She reappeared, looking slightly embarrassed, with a ridiculous plant in a pot - a huge thing with green floppy leaves that drooped all over the place.
'I bought it this morning,' she said, 'when I went to get the stuff for the pancakes. Isn't it nice?'
She dumped it on the kitchen table. 'It'll go with the yellow walls,' she said. 'I know I shouldn't have, but it was reduced. Perhaps if we can't afford a Christmas tree, it'd do instead. If you look after it properly, we could use it every year.'
Bonnie stared at the plant, knowing she couldn't possibly have afforded it. ‘Oh, Maybelle, it's lovely,' she said.
'Put it in your bedroom,’ Maybelle said. 'Let's see what it looks like.'
Bonnie tried to pick up the plant but immediately started staggering beneath the weight. Maybelle helped her haul it down the hall. The doorbell rang. Maybelle helped her sidle the plant into the bedroom, then turned towards the unfamiliar shape beyond the frosted glass of the front door.
When she came back, Bonnie had shifted the plant over to the window and started painting again. 'You'll have to be careful not to splash it,’ Maybelle said.
'Grandbag would tell you off for spoiling me.'
They both grinned. Then Maybelle gestured towards the hall. It was next door, she said, wanting to know if they'd like a cup of tea. Bonnie said she'd rather get on. 'Suit yourself,’ Maybelle said. 'I think I’ll go. Get to know the neighbours. After all, we're going to be here a long time.’
When she'd gone, Bonnie sat on the bed and looked beyond the plant and the yellow walls and the red doors and skirting-boards. It was a relief to be quiet and on her own. Memories of last night, pushed away by the day, crowded back again. She thought of Michael's fire tonight and the big monster of a bag which he'd fill with smoke to lift him through the sky. She thought of the darting shadowboy. She thought of the inkspot in the sky — the experimental balloon. Where was it now? Had it passed through the veil, exploded in the atmosphere?
'At least we know it really can be done,’ Michael had said. 'We can, like the ancients, send bags of smoke up into the sky.'
'I wish I could go with him,' Bonnie thought.
The doorbell rang again. She supposed Maybelle had left her key. It rang again, impatiently. It wasn't like Maybelle to be impatient.
'All right, all right, I'm just coming… '
Grandbag stood on the doorstep in her black-and-bead coat, with Doreen behind her, clutching a suitcase. 'Don't just stand there. Let us in.'
As if in a dream, Bonnie stepped aside. Grandbag marched past her and down the hall towards Maybelle's bedroom. Doreen hauled the suitcase behind her.
'What are you doing, Grandma?'
'What does it look like?' Grandbag opened Maybelle's bedroom door and Doreen pushed the suitcase in. 'I've come to stay,’ Grandbag said. 'I've never been one to turn my back on my children when they needed me. Doreen, put my umbrella over there. Hang up my coat. Now you can go. Don't stand around there. Don't forget to feed the bird, will you?'
Doreen slunk down the hall and outside. Bonnie's abiding final memory was of her backing, all bony arms and legs and drab print frock, along the covered walkway towards the stairs. Her voice faded as she said, and said again, that she hoped she'd manage all right on her own, that she was sure she'd be all right really, that Grandbag mustn't worry about her.'
'Silly woman,' Grandbag said. 'Of course she won't manage. She never does. I suppose she'll have to move in too. Where's your mother?'
'She's next door,' Bonnie said. 'Having a cup of tea.'
'Well, get her.'
Bonnie stumbled along the walkway to the next flat. She thundered on the door and tumbled in. 'Maybelle, Maybelle, Grandbag's here! She's come to stay! She's brought her suitcase!'
'What!'
Maybelle dropped her tea on the carpet, and there were apologies while they tried to clear it up. Then they were outside, with a white-faced Maybelle muttering parting pleasantries. Then they were at their own front door, hand in shaking hand.
'You've got to make her go,' Bonnie said. 'If you don't do something now, we'll never get rid of her. Even if we move, she'll follow us. We won't ever escape!'
Grandbag opened the door before Maybelle could answer her. 'What have you done to that poor child's room?' she said. 'Those horrid colours - what can you have been thinking of?'
Maybelle let go of Bonnie's hand. 'I just thought… '
'Never mind what you thought. Make me some tea.'
Meek as a lamb, and ghastly quiet, Maybelle went into the kitchen and filled the kettle and plugged it in. Bonnie followed, hurling piercing, desperate looks at her, which she ignored.
'If you get a move on,' Grandbag said, 'you'll have time to go down to the shops and change the rest of that paint for white.'
Bonnie gave up, turned away. She crept along the hall into her bedroom. She shut the door, sat on the bed. She stared at the plant. Her foot felt something underneath the bed. It was her little cardboard suitcase, the one she'd always kept her night things in when Grandbag had, reluctantly, let her spend odd nights with her mother. She pulled it out. She thought of Michael. She'd ask him to take her too. It was timed just right. As if she were meant to go.
Grandbag called her. She pushed the suitcase under the bed again. Grandbag's voice informed her that there was some shopping for her to do.
5
A cream-coloured cat rattled the window-pane. Bonnie sat up, consulted her watch and got out of bed. The flight would be at dawn, but Michael said it would take all night to fill such a big bag with smoke. She looked out of the window. The cat had gone. She could see the light of fire already, over the wall.
Bonnie dressed, crept into the kitchen and helped herself to a small, light breakfast. On the way back to her room, she paused to look at sleeping Maybelle in her bed, her face pale against Grandbag's arm, which was slung across her like a shadow. Grandbag snored contentedly. Maybelle tossed, helpless to get free.
Bonnie turned away to her own room. She made her bed and packed her suitcase as she would for staying away overnight. She looked about her, at the plant and the yellow walls and the raggedy doll that had followed her everywhere else, but not this time. Then, clutching her suitcase, she opened the window and climbed out onto the balcony and down to the ground.
The cream cat was waiting for her. It strutted across the tarmac and disappeared among the hollies. Bonnie followed it. An eruption of red, volcanic cinders rained gently down around her. Smoke filled the air. The atmosphere seemed more intense, explosive, urgent than it had the night before. Bonnie hurried on and wondered how the people in the flats could sleep through it all.
She found the wall and struggled through. The fire was enormous. It crackled and roared. Even from this distance the heat hit her. She pushed between the trees and entered the clearing. The dark bag, too, was vast, many times the size of last night's balloon. Bonnie saw the shadowboy. He was one boy. If she really strained her eyes, she could see that now, although he moved like twenty. He opened the balloon's mouth wide to catch the smoke; he shook out its cloth to help it fill; he clutched it as it grew, straightening it as it toppled from side to side. He seemed to be everywhere. He seemed to have the strength and speed of a whole team of men. He wasn't an ordinary boy at all. Just what was he?
'Hey, Bonnie. Over here… '
Michael's voice came to her above the roar of the fire. She looked up to the veranda and he waved to her. Forgetting the shadowboy, she put the suitcase down, and climbed the steps. Michael was tying something together with rope.
'What's that?'
'It's the gondola. It'll go beneath the balloon. It's what I'll travel in.'
Bonnie touched the wicker hammock. Michael tied the last knot and threw it down. That's done,' he said. He loo
ked beyond the veranda, at the balloon towering above the tree-tops now. The shadowboy had tethered it all down. 'Good, that's done,' he said. 'Just look at it!' They both watched it bounce against the ropes. 'I've given it a name,' Michael said. 'I'm calling it Midnight Blue. It looks black now, but you wait till the sunlight's on it. It'll turn the darkest, richest…
'Michael.'
'Yes?'
'I want to come too.'
Turning from the balloon, he saw the suitcase behind her on the ground. He sighed. 'Come and sit down.' He led her to the chairs and, sitting opposite her, eyed her gravely. 'How do you think Maybelle would feel,' he said, 'if she woke up and found you gone?'
'You don't understand,' Bonnie said. 'Things are different now. Grandbag's come to live with us and it's awful. It won't spoil things if I go. It won't make any difference at all. They're already spoiled.'
'But how would she feel?'
'Oh, Michael. Please let me come. I'm packed. Besides, it's what I've always dreamed about.'
'What would she do if you didn't come back?'
'I will come back.' Bonnie almost shouted. 'It'll be like stories in books when people return to find they were only gone for a moment in time. Nobody misses them. It's always like that.'
Michael shook his head. 'Oh, Bonnie, sometimes they come back a hundred years later and everyone they knew is dead and the world's completely different. This is an experiment, Bonnie. We've never done it before. We don't know what to expect. All we know for sure is that it's not a story in a book.'
'You mean..?'
'I mean if this were a story, it wouldn't matter what Maybelle thought. You could just go. But it's real life, and it does matter, and you can't.'
Michael looked up. It was getting light.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I really am. But the weather's right. The time's right. The balloon's ready. I've got to go now or I've lost the chance.'
Bonnie hung her head.
'You're still a part of it,' he said. 'I hope you'll be here to share it with, when I come back. Maybe we'll go together another time.' He got to his feet. 'I'm sorry. Come on. Let's fix the gondola.'
Hardly aware of what she was doing, Bonnie followed him down the steps. He dragged the wicker hammock towards the balloon. As they passed the fire, she put up a hand to protect her face from the heat and to wipe away the tears. They came close to the balloon. The shadowboy circled round it, struggling with the ropes that held it down while its grasping mouth drank the last of the smoke.
Michael attached the gondola, which was hard work, cursing himself for leaving it until now instead of doing it first. Without the heart to help, Bonnie stood to one side. She looked up, as she always did in times of trouble. The sky was delicate and light. Last bright star-drops melted in the morning. They called to her and she sighed. All she had now were the old daydreams, poor, empty things that would never be the same again. She lowered her sights. The balloon stood, a moon-shaped monster, bursting its cords in eagerness to get free. She lowered her sights again. The shadowboy was watching her.
'That's it,' Michael said. 'We're ready.' It was very quiet. The struggling seemed to be over, the fire to have burned low. 'Won't be a minute,’ he said. ‘I'll just get my things.'
Michael ran back towards the house, up the steps and inside. Bonnie looked up at the balloon towering like a giant above the tree-tops. It was an awesome sight. She wondered if anybody out there beyond the walls looked through their windows and saw it too. And then she heard something.
The first note of it she thought was birdsong, the dawn chorus. But the second note sang out, and she knew that it was not. Then the third note rang. She knew what it was. The lonely piper called her with the slow, compelling music of the high sky.
Bonnie picked up her suitcase. Her heart thumped, but her head was clear. She passed before the fire. The shadowboy seemed to be waiting for her. The balloon towered above them both, its gondola swinging like a cradle beneath it. He took her suitcase and threw it up and took her hand and lifted her in. Then he jumped up beside her, light as air, and began to tie her in. She felt his hands flickering across her body till she was secure. Then something strange began to happen.
'What's going on?' Bonnie asked, but the boy didn't answer. 'The ground's running away.'
She saw ropes hanging loose, poles falling away, tree-tops sinking beneath her. It was flight. She saw Michael on the veranda with his bag in his hand. Then she was over the tree-tops and the flint-faced, mushroom-shaped little house disappeared between the closing trees. She could see the tarmac forecourt and her bedroom window and even a flash of yellow wall. She could see the road with its street lights fading in the morning, and the tops of the shops and the roof over the flats.
As they rose, the sun rose with them, as if they were racing for the top of the sky. Its warmth welcomed them, turning the dark skin of the fiery balloon, as Michael had named it, midnight blue. They flew straight up. Above them, the sweet, clear music of the lonely pipe, the only sound left in the whole world, drew them on until they prepared to hit the very roof-top of the sky itself. Then the smooth sky puckered into cloth-of-blue and drew aside for them, like curtains parting.
The music called again, and they passed straight through.
PART TWO
The House on Highholly Hill
6
Arabella dangled her legs out of the bedroom window and closed her eyes. She felt a butterfly brush against her knee, rubbed her heel against the mortar and bricks, drank in the warmth of the morning sunshine on her face, her arms, her feet. She heard dogs barking down in the valley and the rumble of tractors in fields and the curling cries of Florence in her pram as she talked herself to sleep. She heard the steady pulling of sheep at the orchard grass at the side of the house, the swish, swish of footsteps through the long grass, the clicking of the little side gate. She heard the pattering of Jake's restless paws upon the terrace beneath her, and opened her eyes. He and Mum were back home.
'Arabella, you'll fall and break your neck! I'm always telling you that. Get back through that window. What can you be thinking of sitting out there like that?'
'I'm bored. I don't know what to do.'
'Come and help me make a chocolate cake.'
'Cakes are boring.'
'Come and arrange these flowers.'
‘Oh Mum, must you, flowers.'
'I'm going to make lunch for the workers. You can take it up to them.'
Arabella looked at the valley and the hills beyond, patchworks of field that were in the midst of being harvested, pale in the hot sun and woven together with ribbons of river and road. She looked at Mum, who removed the sunhat from her head and fanned herself gently with it.
'Oh, all right then…' She climbed back through the window.
'Pull the curtains across, will you?' Mum called after her. 'Make a bit of shade.'
Arabella looked across the room, from the paisley curtains and sunlight on the wall, to the bed beneath the sloping window, with its crisp, white, turned-down sheets. Bright particles of dust hung immobile in the air. Last winter's ashes lay still in the fireplace. The dolls sat in a row upon the mantelpiece, ancient dolls that had belonged to Mum and Grandma and unknown little girls before them.
She sighed. 'It's like it's all frozen in time, and me with it,' she said out loud. 'Like this is how things have always been and always will be. Oh, how boring.'
She drew the curtains and crossed the floor, pausing beside the bed to look up through the sloping window at the hawthorn hedge, the meadow and the craggy white standing stones on what everybody called ‘the top’.
'Nothing ever changes.'
Down the corridor, the staircase was decorated with paintings of them all - her and Mum, Grandma and Grandad and countless other faces that all stared at her and reminded her, as she climbed down beneath them, that men and women may come and go, be born and die, but the family goes on and stays the same for ever. She made her way past them all and through the
door at the bottom. Here she found herself in the kitchen with its hissing stove which Mum kept going even on the hottest days, its open windows with their little breeze and its cool flagstone floor.
'There you are. Pass me the butter. Good girl. It's over there.'
Mum was slicing bread and chopping up salad. Arabella brought the butter out of the pantry and slapped it down on the table. Mum indicated that she should sit down too and help.
'I guess it’s always been like this,’ Arabella sighed.
'What's that?' said Mum.
‘Lunches being made for the workers,’ Arabella said. ‘Baskets being filled with food to take out to the harvest. The stove hissing like this. The little breeze at the window. Cats all over the floor hoping somebody’ll drop crumbs for them.'
She sat down and began to butter the bread, which Mum filled with wedges of crumbling cheese and thin, moist slices of cucumber. The cats rubbed against the table legs and waited patiently. Mum put the sandwiches into a large basket, along with a handful of sweet red tomatoes and a small, nutty fruitcake. Then she disappeared into the pantry and brought out from the cool shelf some bottles of beer and a large, cold meat pie.
'Put these in too, will you?'
Arabella thrust them in. She looked up, and Mum was watching her. 'I'm sorry you haven't got brothers and sisters nearer your own age,' she said. 'I'm sorry life's so dull for you. I know Florence is only a baby, but she'll be some sort of company one day.'
Arabella fiddled with the handle of the basket. Mum always seemed to know.
'I had the strangest dream last night,’ she said. 'I dreamt I was lying in bed looking up through the window. It was early, getting light. A dark blue moon fell out of the sky into the holly grove.'
'The holly grove?' Mum tilted her head to one side. 'I used to have dreams about the holly grove, when I was young. How strange that you should too.' She put the last things in the basket. 'You can take it up now. It's ready. And they might need help up there. Perhaps you could stay.'