“Sir.” One addressed himself to Hutch, breathing hard, as if he’d been running.
“What is it? What are you boys doing in here?”
“Sir. We wouldn’t interrupt, sir. Only, the prisoner’s gone missing, sir. We put a man on the gate after the other one escaped that way, but he swears he hasn’t got past him, sir.”
“What? It’s not bloody Upshott, is it?”
I was pleased to note that Hutch sounded as riled as I’d ever heard him. It wasn’t much, but his smooth feathers had been ruffled.
“Yes, sir.”
“Find him, do you hear me? I’ve underestimated that spy; he’s a cleverer bastard than I took him for. Oh, and change of orders, lads. I calculated I had enough on that ponce to contain him, but it’s much too late for that now,” he stirred himself just enough to squeeze out a final, lacklustre, suggestion. “Shoot to kill.”
——
Jay and I were in the Crossley with my parents and we took the lead on the road to Crab Bay. Major Dyminge and Mr Piotrowski followed in the Hillman Husky with my Aunt Kathleen at the wheel. I turned to wave at them from the back window, but torrential, driving rain had obscured the rest of the world.
“This is exciting,” I whispered to Jay, beside me.
“No, Rosa,” he replied. “You are not to leave the car. This I have promised Mr Upshott and I always keep my word.”
“Oh, Jay, don’t be such a wet blanket.” I was beginning to wish I’d gone with the Major.
“Mr and Mrs Stone,” Jay said loudly, “please assure me that Rosa won’t be allowed to leave the car.”
“Certainly,” agreed my father. “You should have stayed at home when you were told to, bubuleh.”
“But that’s not fair!” I protested. “You’ve got no faith in me, none of you! Not Uncle Tristram, nor Magnus . .”
“Magnus Arkonnen!” Jay exclaimed.
“Yes, that traitor,” I replied.
“Traitor!”
“Yes. Why do you keep repeating everything I say?”
It took him a while to answer, but when he did his tone had completely changed.
“I can’t believe that I forgot all about Mr Arkonnen,” Jay muttered under his breath.
He had shifted along the back seat until he was as far from me as it was possible to get.
“I didn’t know you two knew each other . . but what’s to remember?” I whispered back at him. “Magnus is best forgotten, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” he bowed his head. “I have done a very bad thing.”
What on earth was the matter with him now? Jay Tamang seemed to possess a whole set of standards to which I’d never even attempted to aspire (it wasn’t often that I’d glimpsed the moral high ground, never mind set foot on it).
“I’m sure you haven’t done anything bad in your entire life, Jay.” I tried to pat his hand, but he yanked his palm away rather rudely.
“Mr Arkonnen is a good man,” his voice broke with emotion. “He saved your life when his relative shot at you. That is the truth. I must tell you that he broke both arms and both legs while he was doing this. He cares for nothing in this world as he cares for you, Rosa. So you see, I am a very bad man indeed; one who has taken advantage of a young girl in a time of terrible trouble. One who has thought of nothing but himself and brought dishonour to the name of . .”
“Stop it, Jay.” My cheeks flamed.
I was beginning to feel strangely sick; trapped at the top-most point on the Big Dipper, buffeted by the wind.
——
The Monk stood up. He’d donned safety glasses and a pair of silver-coloured gloves that reached up beyond his elbows.
“Yes,” said Hutch, as if a question had been put to him. “I think it’s time, don’t you.”
The Monk picked up a gigantic pair of what looked like out-sized sugar tongs and disappeared around the back of the apparatus.
“Time for what, Godfrey?” Arkonnen asked.
“Oh, time to get the poker out, old boy. Stoke the flames and so forth.”
Reg Arkonnen gazed up at the monstrous distillery and I thought, for one heart-stopping moment, that he’d seen me. But no.
“I can’t believe the job your scientists have done, Godfrey,” he marvelled. “Would you take a look at this bloomin’ great contraption! It’s bloody mind-boggling.”
“Mmm.”
“I’ve just got one question, though. Well, two questions if I’m honest.”
“Oh, please be honest, Reginald.”
“Well . . where’s the glass? I mean to say . . I’ve not seen them put it into the glass. Where do they do that, then?”
“Eh? You’d like to see that, would you? Well I’m sure that can be arranged. It’s only fair after all the hard work you’ve put in. For which we will be eternally grateful.” He strolled round the back with his hands in his pockets, following the Monk. “Come on, Reg. This way, old boy. Let me show you the business end.”
It took so little time. Yet he must have realised what was about to happen and that may have been the worst of it. There was a falsetto scream - no, less than that, a squeak - before they pushed him in. The distillery gave an almighty whoop and a stinking gust of putrid heat burped upwards. My eyes watered and stung, but I was completely unable to look away. For there, within the glass, emerging from the churning, brown weed like a swimmer from the sea, I saw Reg Arkonnen. For one split-second his entire body glowed, converted into radiant, yellow flame, before he atomized to dust.
“That’s for my little sister,” I heard Hutch say, conversationally.
I swayed, tried to right myself, swayed some more and pedalled in thin air, even as I plunged downwards.
29. Burn in Hell
Jay told us to park at the end of a country lane. When the headlights were switched off, blanket darkness descended. The sea was so wild that Mr Piotrowski had to rap several times on the car window to get our attention, and, when he did, he looked so uncannily like a wraith emerging from the mists that I think we all blanched with fright.
“Sorry, Mr Piotrowski,” my mother wound down the passenger window. “What was that?”
He pointed in the direction of Crab Bay and then at himself, mouthing his intention to proceed first. At least, I think that was what he mouthed; the wind whipped his words off him before we could grasp anything of his intentions. I tapped my mother on the back:
“Surely he’s not going first?”
But he’d already disappeared. She rolled the window back up and we sat quietly in the dread dark, docile and somewhat subdued. I wondered whether the gale might scoop us up and deposit us into the sea; the old car rocked back and forth on its axles in a fashion that was far from reassuring. Mr Piotrowski seemed to be gone for an interminable length of time. Trepidation mounted. Well, it certainly did for me.
“I hope he hasn’t been blown off the cliff,” my mother said, suddenly. “Do you think we ought to . . ?”
The car door slammed beside me and I jumped.
“Jay?” I asked. “Jay?” And then, “I don’t believe it! He’s gone without us! How could he?”
“I have a torch in the glove compartment,” went my father. “Pass it to me, will you, Millicent?”
She found it and passed it over and my father pushed his beret down over his forehead and put a hand on the door.
“I’m coming with you, Jerzy,” she said. “Don’t ask me to stay.”
He sighed. I knew he didn’t want her to.
“I don’t think you would listen if I asked that, my love.”
“No. I’ve got to come. For Albert.”
They actually began to get out of the car as if I wasn’t there.
“Hey! What about me?”
My father mouthed something at me through my window, something authoritarian and deeply unfair; something patriarchal and rooted in the dim and distant past. Whatever it was, the wind snatched it away. It was welcome to it. I counted to twenty and then I opene
d my door and got out. Major Dyminge came up behind me carrying a torch.
“They’ve let you come, then?” He shouted into my left ear.
“Oh yes,” I shouted back.
“Kathleen’s on standby in the car, in case we need to make a quick getaway.”
I nodded, vigorously and took his arm, following the powerful beam of the torch down the lane, cleaving through hummocks of gorse and sea buckthorn. Brambles lunged at my legs, maddened by the gale, and I fancied I heard horses whinnying somewhere nearby, frightened. The faint glow of my father’s torch, some distance up ahead, bobbed about in black space.
“Stay by me, won’t you Rosa?” Major Dyminge said. “I’ve got the gun and I’ll use it if I have to.”
I shivered. What would we find?
——
The rack snagged at my fingertips, catching me seconds before I hit the ground. I swung, madly out of control, smashing into the wall. A small avalanche of dried seaweed flakes whirled into my mouth and eyes before they settled over me.
“Guards!” Screamed Hutch.
But nobody was around. I jumped down and squared up to him:
“You’re not acting under orders, are you, you filthy bastard? You’ve gone solo.”
He tried to run, but I caught him by his shabby suit and pinned him against the glass wall of the distillery.
“Aargh!” He screamed. “It’s burning me! Help! Help!”
“Hot is it?” I held him firm. “I saw what happened to Arkonnen. May you burn in hell for it.”
His grey face had turned bright red and sweat streamed off him.
“Help! Help!”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the Monk creeping round the distillery with those bloody great sugar-tongs still in his hands.
“Oh no you don’t!”
I punched Hutch hard in his paunch, let him slide onto the floor and sprang at the scientist. He may have known how to distil uranium, but he didn’t know the first thing about a brawl. I went for him with nothing held back, pummelling the living daylights out of him until he was an unconscious heap on the floor. I didn’t care what I did, I was so furious at what that pair of murderers had done. I’d seen war and I’d seen men die in appalling ways, but I’d never seen anything as cold-blooded as what they’d done to Arkonnen. I was still going at it, hot and strong, when the shadows shot me.
——
When we got to the gate we found a body slumped on the ground. Major Dyminge aimed his torch at him and bent to feel his pulse.
“That’s odd,” he whispered, “he’s breathing steadily, as if he’s asleep and I can’t see a mark on him. I wonder how he did that?”
“Who?”
“Kathleen’s friend, I presume. Come on. I’m going to hold the torch down low, so the beam’s by our feet and we don’t announce our arrival.”
The field was full of caravans - a few quaint, painted ones standing amid the modern, white variety - and electric lights shone through the small, square windows of the more up-to-date models: yellow dabs of domesticity pointing all the way down the field to the edge of the cliff. The caravans shuddered in the wind, altogether too close to the sea for a night like that. I saw a pole that held a washing-line yank clear out of the earth and fly into the air, before smashing back into the side of one caravan. The uncanny sound of terrified horses - whinnying and snorting and trampling at the ground - was all around us now, rising and falling through the wind.
“What do we do?” I asked the Major, still clinging to his arm.
“We find Tristram,” he replied, matter-of-factly. “He’ll be here somewhere.”
But what if he wasn’t? What if they’d killed him and thrown him off the cliff and he was tossing about in the waves, broken to bits by the storm?
“Ah, there they are.” He lifted his torch, briefly, to illuminate my parents and Mr Piotrowski standing among a group of men. “They seem to have found a welcome party.”
We ran over and my father turned at my approach, looking daggers.
“What’s happening?” I asked my mother.
“Mr Piotrowski speaks Romanian, or Roma, or whatever language it is these people speak. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on, but they seem to have taken to him.”
She was right. Several men were clapping Mr Piotrowski on the back, while they all gabbled and gesticulated wildly.
“Where’s Jay?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.”
A tremendous fork of lightening ripped along the length of the sky, followed by the loudest rumble of thunder I’d ever heard. Moisture slapped me in the mouth and I tasted salt; not rain, then, but sea. Major Dyminge pushed through Mr Piotrowski’s admirers to get to him and grabbed him by the arm.
“This is becoming dangerous,” he shouted. “Can you tell them to vacate the field? Put it to them in no uncertain terms, will you? If the waves are reaching over the cliff, it’s time to go.”
Just then - as I turned to assess the cliff - I saw a woman dash out of a caravan and run over to where a car was parked. The woman had one of those transparent, plastic head-scarves on and was holding the edges of her white cardigan up over her shoulders, as if it could protect her from the rain. I hadn’t expected hooped ear-rings and multi-coloured scarves, but she really didn’t look remotely like a gypsy. Not only that, but the car she’d run over to inspect was a long, fat number. It was some way off, but I’d have said it was a Rolls Royce. I slipped away from the group, ran down the field and peered through the window of her caravan while she was preoccupied.
Crumbs. No, honestly. I’d found Magnus.
——
The storm was walloping at the caravan that hard I could feel the mattress shake under me. Pablo paused in his marathon washing project for a moment and gazed off into thin air. I’d imagined I could hear animals screaming. Did he hear them, too? There was an almighty clap of thunder and he spat in disgust and leapt off the bed.
“It’s alright, boy.”
The tempest chucked stones at the window like it wanted to break the glass. Like spatters of gunshot. What a night! I looked up and saw Rosa Stone.
——
I climbed down the lift shaft with the container grasped between my knees. I had not thought to put that radiation suit back on, but was wearing Mr Stone’s clothes; it was too late for such matters now. Perhaps it was too late for everything. What had made me wait so long? (She had. She hadn’t meant to - I knew that - but she had simply gone to my head.)
I’d searched for him in the caravan, but found it empty, the door un-locked and banging in the mighty winds, beginning to come loose at the hinges. I couldn’t search the entire field, not in that weather. There was much that was beyond my control - a scientist must be able to admit that, or he is a dangerous man - and yet, all was not lost. I’d strayed; had forgotten the right way to go. But, as long as there remained one honourable path left to follow, all was never lost.
I had just jumped down through the broken roof of the lift and into the power-house within the cliff, when, behind me, the lift began to ascend to the top of the shaft.
——
It was a flesh wound to the shoulder, but it was enough to bring me to my senses. They pulled me off the scientist and one of them stuck a gun to my head, while another stuck his in my back. A face I knew all too well leered at me; young, sleek, swollen with contempt.
“Permission to finish him off, sir,” said Joe, breezily, as if he were doing a wounded dog a favour.
“One minute,” Hutch murmured somewhere in the background. “Interesting to see what he knows.”
I struggled against his thugs, but it was just a gesture. They had me hog-tied and we all knew it.
“Everything,” I spat. “I know every bloody thing and so does Tamang and he’s spreading the word and you haven’t a hope in hell of containing this, whatever you do to me.”
“Now, now, Upshott,” said Hutch, drifting into view. “Surely you’ve worked with me
long enough to know better than that.”
He came up close, so close I could see the grey hairs sprouting in his nostrils. The freckles on his pale, nebulous face were liver spots. Patches of pink scalp shone through his sandy-grey hair. The man was older than I’d thought; much older.
“Burn in hell, Hutch,” I spat. “It’s the only place they’ll have you after this.”
A smirk travelled over his mild face and was gone.
“Funny you should mention burning, Upshott old boy.”
——
Even as I pulled faces through the window at Magnus, a wave broke over the cliff-top and frittered itself away over the caravan roof. I waved goodbye and peered up the field to where Mr Piotrowski was directing the Romanies, rather as if he were their long-lost leader come to reclaim his men. Major Dyminge, too, was rushing about giving orders, helping calm the horses and hitch them up, or directing cars one by one through the field gate, so that a queue of caravans built up, waiting to depart.
My mother came running up to me. Under her belted mackintosh, her skirts were still ebullient, dipping up and down despite the driving rain.
“I’ve found my friend Magnus,” I shouted at her. “But where’s Uncle Tristram?”
“They say he’s still alive,” she shouted back. “According to Mr Piotrowski, he escaped earlier this evening and they think he’s inside the cliff.”
Another wave sloshed over us and Magnus’ caravan nearly toppled over onto its side.
“Come on, Rosa! We can’t stay. If we do, we’ll be drowned.”
We ran, hand in hand, up the field, the full force of the wind bearing down upon us.
The Yellow Glass Page 30