The Yellow Glass

by Claire Ingrams

  17. The Third Uncle

  I screamed and a hand came from behind and clamped itself so hard on my open mouth that I nearly swallowed my tongue. A knee stabbed into my lower back, pushing me flat against the wall of the shed and holding me there while he unlocked the padlock. His hand travelled from my mouth to my hair, gathering up a great clump of it and yanking.

  “Ow, ow, ow!”

  “Get in there, snoop.”

  He flung me inside so violently that I went flying into the far corner and dislodged a shelf-full of paintbrushes and screwdrivers. Nuts and bolts rained down on top of me, then made a pinging sound as they scattered far and wide over the steel floor.

  “Ow!”

  He slammed the door shut and I heard him lock it again from the outside.

  I uncurled slowly, bruised in all known parts of me. Shaking my hair from my eyes, it dawned on me that I, too, had begun to glow fluorescent green. My spread fingers waved like starfish in an aquarium, my hair cleaved to my shoulders like fronds of seaweed. On top of a rough table cobbled together from planks of wood, the pile of glass pulsed, as if it were alive. Sentient. Fear swooshed in like the tide - not the Big Dipper fear, that unstable, gulping panic - but something so much worse; as if my lungs were collapsing under the pressure created by fathoms of water.

  When I managed to stand up, I saw his face in the window, squinting through the bars at what he’d caught. The milk-white of his pupils looked like empty craters gouged over that fleshy mouth. How could I have forgotten Arko’s mouth? Then he was gone, leaving me to the poisonous glass, which appeared to shimmer between green and yellow, changing as I watched, waning under the brief magic of twilight. I glanced around the interior of the shed. He’d wrapped it up in sheets of steel, as if it were his strong-box. All was so terribly silent, sliding back into the dark . . until a breath of sea wind sighed through the gap beneath the steel door and Mr Dexter’s corpse shifted on its hook once more. Tears sprang to my eyes and I threw myself down at the foot of that door, mouthing at the gap. I didn’t want to die; oh, how I didn’t want to die!

  Lying there in the dark, I sobbed and howled myself into near stupor. (I’d imagined how brave I’d be if ever an occasion such as this arose, but it was all pie in the sky because I hadn’t an atom of bravery in me; was nothing but a useless, selfish, blob of incoherent matter.) Would he come for me and finish me off, or leave the glass to do it, radioactivity seeping into my pores, drip by deadly drip? Maybe it had already entered every cell I possessed. Maybe I was already dead. The wind shrieked under the door and something struck me on the back of my neck. I raised my head and rubbed my swollen eyes. It was Mr Dexter’s foot, still clad in a nice, brown loafer. I hiccupped and got up.

  Poor Mr Dexter was so very, very, dead. There was a neat hole through his heart and his clothes were rusty with dried blood. This was death and it looked nothing like me. I reached up and unhooked him from that foul hook; it was the least I could do, to stop him looking like a slaughtered pig in an abattoir. I wrenched at the stiff rope around his neck and took his weight in my arms, before I laid him on the floor, to rest. I sat down next to him, in a strange way glad of his company. I wished, with all my heart, that he were here to tickle my neck; whatever other misdeeds he’d performed in his relatively short, but handsome, life, that had been such a little one. I could have allowed him that. I let out a rueful sigh and rubbed the remains of my tears away with the tail of my shirt.

  I don’t know how long I sat by him, but long enough to grow accustomed to the dark. In time, I got myself up and began to look around the shed, sniffing. Amongst the paintbrushes and everyday tools were glass-maker’s instruments that I took to be blowpipes and pontils, bags of salts, some test tubes sitting upright in a rack and a basket full of Swedish-made brass blow-torches with the name ‘Sievert’ engraved on their handles. I found a number of rolled-up scrolls of paper, secured with lengths of raffia, standing upright in a basket and I felt the beginnings of my old interest stir. I lifted them out of the basket and knelt on the floor, to get a better look.

  The first chart I unscrolled was of the English Channel, moderately large-scale - I peered at the corner, but the scale print was too small to read in that light - and included Dover and St Margaret’s Bay. There were a lot of dark patches in the sea and minuscule numbers that I hadn’t a hope of making out. I let the chart roll itself up and tried another one. The second was of the Pacific Ocean, centring on the Channel Islands; not our Channel Islands, but those islands off the coast of Los Angeles, in the Gulf of Santa Catalina. The third was further north up the Pacific coast of America, near San Francisco; another thickly hatched and patched area of sea. Peering intently, I could just make out the tiny word ‘Farallon’. I ran my finger over the dark areas, wondering what they could be; what was hidden beneath the sea there. Might they be wrecks, or particularly deep trenches in the ocean floor, sea-beds that were geologically rich in oil, perhaps, or gas, or various minerals? And what connection did they have with the Bering Strait . . ? I was reaching for a fourth chart when I heard the wind call my name.

  “Rosy?” It called under the door. “You there, Rosy?”

  I jumped up and ran to the window, thumping on the thick glass.

  “I’m here, Uncle Albert! It’s me! I’m here!”

  His dear, round face appeared on the other side of the window, as pale as the moon. I pointed to the door and flung myself down at the gap.

  “At the bottom of the door, Uncle Albert,” I cried, “it’s the only way we can hear each other.”

  “’elp?” he asked, as if from a great distance away.

  “Yes, you can! You’ve got to get me out of here as soon as possible, do you understand?”

  “’elp?”

  “Yes, yes, yes! Fetch the police!”

  “Coppers?” He sounded doubtful and I remembered that he didn’t like the police.

  “Major Dyminge, then. Fetch him straight away, Uncle Albert. As fast as ever you can.”

  “Oh, the old Major!” He was relieved. “Impendin’ Danger she come in at twenty to one!” And he chuckled.

  “That’s good,” I said, “but . . what’s that noise?”

  An odd, rhythmical clanking was distinctly audible at ground level, faint at first, but growing louder by the second. The earth shook with it. I froze with fright. Something beyond my comprehension was heading for Uncle Albert. Something terrible. I could scarcely think for the waves of terror and pity that swept over me; was knocked sideways by the most unusual sense of how somebody else might feel besides myself.

  “Run, Uncle Albert!” I screamed. “Save yourself!”

  I cannot say exactly what happened after that, just that I heard my uncle wail, softly, like a small child waking in the night and I thought it the most terrible sound I’d ever heard . . until I registered the unmistakeable whip crack of a pistol. I flew to the window and pounded on it with my fists, goggling into the dark, unable to see or understand. Minutes passed and nothing happened, while I ran between the foot of the door and the barred window and then back again, trying to see and then trying to hear and managing neither. I felt as if I might explode with frustration and dread, with trying to block out what I knew in my heart must have happened; knew with as much certainty as I’d known anything about another human being in my entirely self-centred life. The most appalling thing had happened to somebody I loved.

  I was weeping, uncontrollably, when the key turned in the padlock and the thick chain plummeted, clanging against the steel frame of the door as it fell.

  Arko’s padded radiation suit filled the doorway, an apparition from a tale of horror. I was rooted to the spot. His face was concealed behind a mask, the bottom half distended into a ridged, snorkel-like apparatus that snaked into a cylinder attached to his back. His feet looked to be encased in metal and he walked towards me, treading heavily - clank, clank, clank - as if he were a deep sea diver negotiating the ocean floor. In one gloved hand he held a small pis
tol.

  I came to my senses, grabbed an iron blow-pipe and swung it at him before he had a chance to take aim, but it made little impression against the protective layers of his suit. His arm jiggled, momentarily, then he pointed the gun straight at me, but, even as he did so, he set his right foot down on Mr Dexter and was thrown off balance; unnerved by the sudden appearance of a corpse at his feet, when it should have been hanging from a coat hook by the door. The bullet hummed across the shed, pinged smartly against the steel-clad back wall and rebounded straight into his mask. He toppled over backwards under the sheer force of it.

  I leapt over him, and through the shed door. There, lying outstretched on that mean, concrete passageway, was my Uncle Albert. I ran at him, scooping him up into my arms, trying to contain the awkward, bird-boned entirety of him, but a gangly, flannelled leg flopped from my embrace. I rocked him and kissed his cheek - as if to galvanise him into resistance by doing things he so hated in life - but he did not respond.

  “Rosa, thank God!”

  Major Dyminge burst around the corner of the bungalow, hatless and breathing hard. He had a gun in his hand.

  “We’ve been hunting high and low for you. Where’s . . ?” Then he saw the contents of my arms and came to a grinding halt.

  “Mr Smith. What . . ?”

  I pointed to the shed, scarcely able to speak through my tears:

  “Help me,” I sobbed. “Arko shot him. I th . . think he might be dead. Please help me, Major Dyminge.”

  His face was entirely expressionless; an old soldier’s face. He whipped a linen handkerchief from his pocket and flung it at me.

  “Staunch the flow of blood,” he ordered. Then he nodded at the shed door:

  “Still in there, is he?”

  “Ye . . yes.”

  He cocked his pistol and ran straight into the shed without a moment’s hesitation, while I dabbed, uselessly, at Uncle Albert.

  “Flown the coop,” he came back out. “There’s a suit affair on the floor, but nobody in it. There must be a back door hidden somewhere, I can’t see in this light. Did you know there’s a dead body on the floor? What in damnation has been going on here, Rosa?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer, but bent to look at Uncle Albert, his face grim. He felt the pulse point on Uncle Albert’s neck and then he sighed.

  “Let’s get out of this hell-hole and call the police. I’ll take Mr Smith, shall I?”

  He laid his hand, lightly, on my shoulder and looked at me with his kind eye.

  “B . . but should he be m . . moved?”

  “I’m afraid it will make little difference at this stage, my dear.”

  He patted my shoulder and began to pry my hand from my uncle’s body.

  That night was all weeping. The Major hadn’t wept on the journey home, but the sound of him repeating, over and over again, “I should not have let him come. I should not have let him come”, was almost worse than any storm of tears. When my mother came to the door of Shore House, she didn’t hear the news from me, for I was quite incapable of speech by that time, but from him, standing back as she held me while I shook, his head bowed low.

  “I found him hiding in the back of the car. He knew Rosa was missing and was determined to come. I don’t know how he knew. I should have turned back there and then, but I didn’t. I made him promise to stay on the road and come for me if he saw anything. But I should not have let him come.” His gruff voiced cracked. “Oh, Millicent, I should not have let him come.”

  My tiny mother had never looked taller than that night, supporting her daughter with one arm and taking Major Dyminge’s hand in the other.

  “I won’t have you blaming yourself, Major, do you hear me? You’re not to do it.” She was as fierce as I’d ever heard her be. “You were our Albert’s friend; the first real friend the poor boy had. Don’t you ever let me hear you blame yourself again.”

  But, deep into the night, I heard her voice through my bedroom wall, keening softly to my father.

  “I kept him safe after Mum died. All those years I kept him safe by me, Jerzy, and she had to bring this to our door.”

  And I knew that it was me she blamed.

  Policemen came to the house in the morning and I suppose I must have squeezed out some words for them, but I can’t remember what they were. I wasn’t interested any more, you see, not in the yellow glass, or HQ, or any of it. There was nothing left to be interested in, not in the whole, wide world. I lay on my bed and pulled the covers over my head and wept.

  Every now and again, people would come and tell me things, as if they thought I was the same person I’d been before; that person who had been interested in everything. Somebody told me that they couldn’t get hold of Uncle Tristram and asked me if I knew where he was, but I knew nothing and I wasn’t interested. Then Sam rushed in, bubbling over with excitement that our Aunt Kathleen had arrived, expecting me to be interested, but I . . just wasn’t. I refused to talk to her when she knocked on the door. After all, what could I possibly say? I got your brother killed? If it wasn’t for me, he’d be here? Sorry? Days passed and I wasn’t interested. I was much too busy weeping.

  But then . . there was the funeral at the local church, and I couldn’t get out of that. It was drizzling with rain and we hung about outside - just us, the Dyminges and the Hawkings - all dreading going inside that empty church. Eventually, my father put his arm around my mother and steered her in and we had to follow. I dragged in last, head down. Only the sound made me lift my head.

  The light hum of chatter. It was as if the church were full of birds. As if a great flock of tropical birds had alighted on the pews, feathered shocking pink and violet, netted and beaked with copper and silver. They strained their delicate necks to look at us and hummed amongst themselves. For the first time in days, I felt my interest stir. I followed my parents down the aisle and sat down beside my mother.

  “Who are they?” I whispered.

  “His hats,” she whispered back. “Your uncle was a master at his trade. It’s a grand tribute to our Albert that they’ve worn his hats.”

  When the service was over, we walked back down the aisle together and the hats nodded as we passed; as if all of Uncle Albert’s birds had flown home to roost together.

  That night - the night after my uncle’s funeral - my mother came into my room without knocking and sat down on my bed.

  “What’s all this, Rosa?”

  I’d stopped weeping, but I had nothing to say.

  “We want to see you,” she said. “We need to be together at this time.”

  “Be together without me,” I rolled my face down onto my pillow, choking out the words. “I don’t belong with you, anyway. I don’t belong anywhere.”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “What utter nonsense you can talk, my girl.”

  I started to cry again.

  “How can you bear to look at me? Knowing it was all my fault? I hate myself! Why didn’t he kill me, instead? I wish I was dead . . .”

  She let me bawl and then she picked up my hand, and held onto it with a vice-like grip when I tried to pull it away.

  “Bear to look at you? My beautiful, clever girl that I’m so proud of; that we’re all so proud of. Even your Uncle Albert . .”

  I flung the pillow off my bed and sat up.

  “But I got him killed, Mum. It was all my fault.”

  “You didn’t do it; you must never, ever, take that on yourself, Rosa. An evil man killed my brother, not you. Albert got in the way of a chain of events . . somebody else’s plan . . story . . call it whatever you like. It was terrible, but terrible things do happen, you’ll discover. They happen, and we can’t hide away from them because they come and find us whatever we do . . . You only did what any of us would have done in your place (and did do in our time, believe you me; even your tiresome, old mother). Come on, now, love . . .”

  She pulled me off the bed, towards the door:

  “It’s hard enough missing our Albert; we can’t
miss you as well.”

  18. The Arms of Morpheus

  A spy came to talk to me early one morning; a stranger with owlish, black-framed glasses and a shiny, grey suit, a mackintosh over one arm and a briefcase in the other. I didn’t like him, but that was neither here nor there. I offered him a cup of tea after his travels, but he would only take a glass of water, so that was all he had. We sat down at the dining-room table, underneath the ceiling of painted stars, and he began to de-brief me once again, asking me questions about Magnus and the Arkonnen family, about the platter and the contents of the shed. I forced myself to think of my country - to answer as best I could - and I think I was making a relatively decent fist of it until he asked about Uncle Albert.

  “What made Albert Smith come after you, Miss Stone? Had you informed him of your plan to visit the bungalow?”

  I gulped nervously, trying to see my way clear, because a change had come over me since my uncle’s death and, instead of the flowing stream of fact after fact that had always come so easily, I’d become quite clogged up with anxiety. What should I say? Should I mention Major Dyminge, or would it be kinder to leave him out of it? I couldn’t bear to do any more damage, you see.

  “I . . I . .”

  The dining-room door flew open and Aunt Kathleen appeared, her face all high cheek-boned and white against her black, silk dress. (My mother and father were at work and Sam was at school, so I was alone in the house with my aunt that morning.)

  “I think that’s enough, don’t you?” She said.

  The spy glanced up at her and his mouth, literally, fell open.

  “She’s told you all she knows and you’ve had your money’s worth out of the poor girl.” She had her hands on her angular hips and looked just like a photograph by Richard Avedon in Harper’s Bazaar. “Just take yourself back up to London, why don’t you? You can give Hutch the latest and let my niece get on with her life in peace. She never should have been involved in the first place, it was absolutely criminal, and if you see my impossible husband you can tell him that I blame this entire, ghastly tragedy on him . .”