Absolute Hush (20 page)

Elizabeth and Beattie sat side by side, very upright, like two country ladies, and went spankingly through the frosty countryside that sparkled and glittered with shafts like broken glass. Elizabeth did not feel like talking, so kept her eyes on the pony's bouncing black shining bottom.

After a while Beattie said, as though there was nothing extraordinary in the outing, ‘Shall we go to my cottage for tea? I've got jam. With real fruit. Not coloured turnip. And real pips. Not wood.'

They passed Mrs Lovage's cottage. The charlady saw them. ‘She doesn't feel so bad about the baby now she knows I'm not
shocked. She'll be asking me round to work tomorrow, you'll see!'

When they arrived at Beattie's cottage a young woman brought them tea and scones. Putting down the tray, she said to Elizabeth, her accent French, ‘Beattie risked her own life to rescue my son and me from the gas chamber.'

‘Oh, Rosa! So silly!' laughed Beattie, going red.

‘You can't count how many she has saved. When the war is over everybody will know about Beattie,' Rosa persisted.

Beattie poured tea and said, ‘Sometimes I feel that we see things from so close up we aren't able to understand their meaning. That which from our lowly level appears to be absolute disaster, to the gods may be a marvellous development.'

‘Deformity?' burst out Elizabeth. ‘Someone hopelessly wrongly made?'

Beattie shrugged. ‘Who among us can judge what is wrong,' she said.

‘You know what a person should be like,' Elizabeth burst out. ‘Arms, legs, eyes, that sort of thing, the right shape. In the right place.'

Beattie shrugged once more. ‘Have another scone,' she said.

‘There are certain things that have to be wrong,' cried Elizabeth.

‘That's only cultural, dear,' murmured Beattie soothingly. ‘Take incest for instance and think of the Pharaohs of Egypt.'

Elizabeth gave a start and wondered if Beattie knew about Lump or was thinking about herself and Tim.

There fell a long silence during which each sipped their tea, then Beattie said, ‘Have you noticed how often that which is a sin for one generation is a virtue for the next. Take pride for instance. Nowadays we go to Heaven not to Hell for our pride.'

Sissy fell asleep in the end and George sneaked back to his cellar, though even there he now felt nervous and insecure because of Mrs Lovage's terrible threat.

When he saw his whisky bottle he became more depressed than ever. ‘Not enough to numb a fly,' he moaned. He had not even had time to sip this, however, when he heard Sissy calling him, saying she was hungry. He had never known anything like Sissy's hunger since Lump was born and began to feel like the mother of a baby cuckoo. Sighing and groaning, he tried to get up, but could not. After a while, and several more calls, he heard her on the stairs, then things being moved in the kitchen.

All his troubles, he saw now, would vanish if Lump didn't exist. He would be spared ceaseless trips to feed Sissy, be able to fuck her whenever he wanted, and would no longer be in danger of going to prison for twenty years or, worse still, having his willy chopped off.

No matter what Sissy said, George did not think Lump was all right.

How strange that another person should take it on himself to decide whether I would be happier existing or not existing. Stranger still because, wise and ancient though I am, I don't even know myself. Once I knew everything, but flesh is hampering me and dimming my bright thoughts. I am tired. I am about to be lost in sleep, though I used always to be aware. Perhaps the stressed people of my family are draining me, instead of me filling them with glory.

George swallowed the last of his whisky straight from the bottle. Once Lump was gone he would not need the whisky half so much, and anyway he would have the energy to steal more. From under old newspapers he drew out a tin of paraffin that he had been collecting through the winter, draining it from a paraffin heater his mother had bought for the hall.

Mrs Lovage had said, ‘I've never known such a heater for consuming. I think you ought to complain, mum,' but even she never suspected George.

Filling the bottle with paraffin, he slipped it under his jersey and set off. His energy had returned.

As he passed the kitchen he heard Sissy cooking. George went on silent feet to the Hairy Petal Bedroom.

Lump was asleep in the centre of the bed. Very softly, George trickled paraffin over the bed curtains, ceremonially laid Teddy's lighter on the bed, then took out his last match.

It was the most perfect match he had ever had. He had even examined it through the magnifying glass that Elizabeth used for her finest sewing and had found no blemish in it. The head was round and glossy and the wood unsplintered. It was a fitting match for Lump, he thought.

Just as his fingers tightened for striking, Lump woke and looked at him. And smiled.

Later it occurred to George to wonder what smiled, for the child's hideously distorted features seemed incapable of such a muscular contortion.

I have approached his mind directly and breathed into it, and that is better than any smile of the lips, for it cannot lie.

For a moment George felt as though his heart was being warmed by the fanned fire of the blacksmith's forge, forgot his hurry and just stood, smiling back goofily, the unused match forgotten in his fingers.

‘Hello, dear,' he said sillily at last.

And he could have sworn that, inside his heart, he heard a small gruff voice that made his nervous system vibrate.

‘I came to save the world,' said the little voice in George's heart.

George, hesitated, pinching the match of death. Then he heard voices. With the blood draining from his body, he recognised five of the airmen who had been at Elizabeth's dinner, whose laps he had ignited. They had come to get him! Terror driving out sense, he rushed to the window, climbed out and hid, shivering, behind the chimney.

The airmen had not come for George at all. They were drunk, and felt angry with Elizabeth. That morning they had stood among the pillars of the Plague House porch offering, out of admiration and gratitude, her favourite scent. Even after the work on the shattered dining-room had been completed they had continued to visit, and sometimes Elizabeth would invite them in for sherry. They would have liked the company of Sissy, too, but there always seemed to be some reason for that to be impossible … gone to bed, doing her lessons … out with her brother …

In exchange for the welcome episodes of graciousness, the airmen did little jobs around the house, helped Elizabeth with the worst of the garden, and brought her gifts. This morning's had been Chanel, acquired with great cost and difficulty. Elizabeth had taken the package with barely a glance, her attention apparently behind her, inside the house. She had seemed nervous and there was dismay in her eyes. They were giving her something their own girlfriends would have loved and all she said was, ‘Thank you so much,' as though she did not know them, adding, ‘I'm afraid I will not be able to ask you to visit me again. For some considerable time, perhaps.' Then she had closed the door on them.

Toppling into increasing drunkenness in the mess, they decided to go back to the Plague House and extract proper gratitude.

Sissy, when George had not responded to her cries of hunger, had run straight downstairs, not bothering to put her clothes on. She was standing naked by the stove, stirring porridge for
her supper, when she heard the sound of slurred men's singing in the garden and, leaving the saucepan to boil over, went to the window. She rubbed the misted panes, pressing her hot, milk-packed breasts to the cool glass, filled with tingling anticipation, feeling sure that, whoever it was, it would be exciting. Then, just as the great bell began resounding, she remembered she was naked and began rushing in little whimpering darts, grabbing at dishcloths, tea cosies, table napkins, to wrap round herself.

By the time the five young men had forced their way into the house, she had managed to remember what composure was like and mimic it. She stood in the middle of the kitchen, hand graciously extended in a gesture of welcome, squat body leaning forwards in anticipation, and wound in a tea towel just too small.

Robert and Billy, after a single glance, let out guttural shouts of lustful joy and made a rush for her. Lewis and Charles held back for a moment before following them. James was sober enough to shout, ‘Hey! Watch it, chaps!' before, infected, leaping for Sissy too. They had caught a tantalising glimpse of Sissy's podgy little nubile body once before, when her clothes had burnt off at her mother's dinner party. Now there was no auntie to protect her.

Sissy had been going to say, ‘How do you do?' and ‘Do come in,' or even ‘Was wollen Sie?' and ‘Guten Tag, meine Herren,' if the intruders turned out to be invading German soldiers.

She was taken by surprise as the men came at her as though she was not a person at all but a raspberry crop and they a flock of starlings.

Shouting, with a dotty look of excitement in their eyes, and making grabbing gestures, they came through the kitchen, their boots ringing on the flagstones, and with a yell of horror Sissy turned and ran, the little tea towel falling off like Eve's figleaf before she even reached the door.

As Sissy leapt three at a time up the stairs, with five drunks
bawling like huntsmen at her heels, she reflected that this was the worst example of people affected by Hitler's Potty Powder that she had ever experienced.

George, certain now that they had come to get him, peed hotly into his pants as he hugged the cold rough brickwork of the chimney.

Sissy tried to get to Lump and bolt the door, but the men were too quick. She had got into the Hairy Petal Bedroom when they grabbed her and began pulling her this way and that, like a bone between five disputing dogs.

‘On to the bed!' cried Robert.

‘Here! On the floor!' said James.

Lewis's hands were fondling her bottom, Billy had his between her thighs, Charles tried to snatch at her heavy breasts.

Then James said, ‘Into the car! Quick! Before the mother or somebody else comes!'

They were really getting their revenge.

Sissy screamed for George.

Outside the window he could hear her breasts smacking against her ribs as she was swung, heard gasps from her and grunts from the airmen as they tussled for her. George shivered with a pounding heart and couldn't move.

I can hear my mother's spittle bubble as they smother her. But flesh and blood and bone have shackled me, the mother milk in my belly weighed me, the knobbled clothes my father made pinioned me, so that I have become imprisoned. Far from rescuing the world, I cannot even save Sissy.

The airmen probably never knew, even as they ran with my mother down the stairs, that I was on the bed.

Four rush with Sissy. The fifth, Billy, lingers a moment to light his cigarette.

Sissy tries to scream and cannot, tries to breathe and chokes.

She has fed me with her body, smiled at me with love, and has been captured because she tried to save me.

I realise that, however weak I have become, I've got to help her,
although I have only one thing left to save with now and that is the little bit of body on the Hairy Petal Bed.

I put all the tiny powers I still possess into the wrist of Billy.

Drink has numbed his nerves and he does not feel the flame flare in his fingers. He has drunk too much to even notice the smell of paraffin.

‘Throw it, airman, throw it!' I say into his soul and, although he does not hear me, his body knows and he flicks the burning match forward into the paraffin drenched velvet. He does not even see the little gush of fire or hear the burp as the hanging catches.

George, hearing Sissy's muffled yelps receding, held on to bricks, moaned, felt horrified, and did not know what to do.

Then he became aware of the familiar sound and smell of burning. He felt in his pocket, found the perfect match, and knew it had not been him.

Anticipation of pain leached away yet more of my spirit before my body was even touched and, as I began to scream, heat and smoke met over me like a canopy. I could feel the heavy ancient bedding belly out as it filled with hot air. It was the discomfort that made me yell. I did not need to be saved. There was no purpose in me. I knew that by now. The screams were involuntary because I was choking and felt afraid. Later I shall try to recollect my feelings, for what a spicy sensation fear is! One never gets it outside the body when, like a suit in a cupboard, one is waiting for a life. The greatest sensation one can expect is diluted bliss.

George struggled over the tiles, thrust head and shoulders through the window, peered into the room, eyes watering, nose running, breath going fast from excitement now, not fear. The room was black and glowing with fire but, through the crackles, he could hear Lump screaming.

There was something about fire that always transformed George, and, filled with a glorious joy, fear scalded from his system, he leapt into the room just at the moment when, with a whoosh, the heat overwhelmed the smoke and roared up in flame. As George reached the bed the hairy petals began to
explode in puffs of hot plaster, dust then rained down like scalding devil's ears.

The hangings of the fourposter bed were blazing now, while the baby bawled in its centre. A beam caught fire and began to crack and buckle as George threw his fat cool body through a wall of fire to get at Lump.

The airmen carrying Sissy heard the roar, turned, saw fire leaping from the Hairy Petal Bedroom window, and letting out yells of horror dumped Sissy on the grass. Lump's plan had worked. In the shock of seeing the fire, they forgot they had even been carrying her.

The moment her feet were on the ground she began to run, screaming, naked and white, slack belly that had two days before been full of child, breasts leaking, thick thighs trembling.