The Boy Who Flew

by Fleur Hitchcock

  He swings back and shares a joke with the woman.

  “Four,” says Mr Haddock, bowing to the woman. She bows back.

  “Go on then,” whispers Tod. “Five?” He jogs my elbow up to make the bid.

  The woman holds up six fingers. She’s laughing.

  “Six,” shouts Mr Haddock.

  I glance towards the woman. Her face holds a pinched little smile. She doesn’t want the cloth. She’s playing a game – she just wants to bid against me, stop me getting it. The scarred man laughs too.

  “Seven,” I say, oddly angry and, for some reason, slightly scared.

  The woman waves a glove at Mr Haddock.

  “Does that mean she’s stopped?” asks Tod.

  “Seven shillings to the young man over there!” Mr Haddock slams his hammer down on a chest of drawers.

  My face flushes. I’ve done it. I’ve bought Polly a big pile of cloth; there must be yards in that bundle. It’ll pay for itself over and again.

  “Well done!” says Tod. “I’ve never bought nothing at an auction.”

  I pat my pocket. Six shillings of Polly’s and one of mine; nineteen shillings left.

  “Pay now, boy – over by the clerk.” Mr Haddock leans down from his cart and points towards a man sitting behind a table filling in a ledger.

  “Held your nerve then, lad?” A soft voice at my ear makes me jump. The same northern tones I heard outside Mr Chen’s house yesterday morning. The voice that called me “just a boy”. I look up. The scarred stranger stands beside me, holding a purse. “Some fine kit in this sale, for them as have an idea of what they wants.”

  I freeze.

  He winks at me.

  The breath stops in my throat.

  For a second I hear blood pumping in my ears and think it’s drums.

  Then I throw my coins on the table, grab the cloth and run.

  Chapter 4

  Tod helps me get the silk back into the shop. I slam the door and lock it. A thick smell of fresh bread and old soup fills the air.

  “He was a bit terrifying, wasn’t he?” says Tod.

  “Not joking!” I reply. An imaginary hand touches my spine and I shiver and feel glad that there’s a door between us and him.

  “How you going to get the stuff I hid out of the house before Mrs Love rents it out again?” asks Tod.

  “I’ve an idea,” I say. “I think there’s a way.”

  “Dinner, Tod?” asks Ma as we burst into the kitchen. She smiles at him but looks right past me. I don’t know if she’s still angry about the rooftops or perhaps she’s found something else to be cross about.

  “This looks good, Athan.” Polly drags the green silk over to the window.

  The rest of us sit down. Tod and I settle at the other end from Ma.

  Grandma says grace.

  “For the multitudinous curses that are heaped upon this household, we ask forgiveness, oh Lord. From the duplicitous changeling child in our midst we ask release; for the idiot boy, we ask sense; and for the pig that gave its life that we might eat, we give thanks. Amen.”

  Polly unravels the cloth.

  “Pretty colour,” says Beatty.

  “Loads of it too,” I say, helping myself to a bowl of broth.

  “How much d’you pay?” says Grandma. She shifts in her chair. I guess it’s to cover a fart and, sure enough, a cabbagey smell soon drifts across the room.

  “Seven shillings,” I say.

  “Seven shillings? For that heathen’s stuff? Shocking!” She sucks on her soup spoon. She’s almost toothless except for one long yellow fang at the front. “Green’s unlucky, only the Irish and the fairies wear it.” She pauses to fart again. “The saints never wore green,” she says with certainty.

  Polly’s still sitting on the floor, the silk spread out around her. “Beautiful silk, but what’s this, Athan?” She holds up a handful of the cloth, a thin bamboo stick caught up in it.

  “What?” I say, and pull at the stick. It’s attached.

  “And another, and more…” she says, pulling the cloth through her arms.

  Ma crosses to Polly and together they stretch out the cloth. It’s not a roll, as I thought, it’s a huge triangle with a bundle of sticks glued to it. In fact there are more sticks than fabric.

  It’s Mr Chen’s flying machine. Not the real one, but the first one he made. He said it wouldn’t fly and now the silk’s glued to the canes, it’s no good for lining coats.

  “Oooh!” says Tod.

  “Idiot,” says Grandma.

  “What is it?” asks Beatty.

  “Nothing,” Tod and I say together.

  “I’ll take it away,” I say, grabbing it from Polly. “Pay you back.” She stares at me, mystified, and I bundle the cloth and drag it through to the yard door and out to the henhouse.

  When I come back in, Tod is still sitting at the table and I can see the giggles burning up through his face. He’s trying to hang on to himself, but a little like Grandma’s farts the laughter won’t be contained. I’d laugh too if I wasn’t cross.

  “So has Mrs Love asked if Uncle can clean up Mr Chen’s house,” I say, kicking him under the table, which just sends him into more shudders of silent laughter.

  Ma takes her time to answer. “She has, as a matter of fact.”

  “Can I help him?” I say.

  Ma slices a piece of Cheddar from the block. “It’s not a gem of a job – don’t expect he’ll be able to pay you much. He’s doing it tonight.”

  “But it’s the house where Mr Chen died horribly, with spikes through his heart,” Beatty says.

  “D’you know that?” I say.

  “She’s making it up,” says Polly.

  “That’s what she said,” Beatty points at Grandma.

  “Stuff, stuff,” says Grandma, flapping Beatty away. “Devil child.”

  Chapter 5

  The stories about Mr Chen’s death ring in my ears. “He was strangled, throttled by his own guts.” “Run through with the devil’s pitchfork.” “Kept alive by imps for three days, skewer’d to the ground.” Grandma and mad Columbine Good came up with most of it. Ma went out to do some measuring and Grandma let Columbine in through the back door. They sat by the stove and whispered to each other – inventing horrors over some disgusting brew of Columbine’s that’s supposed to help Grandma’s old joints.

  “Murdered by Beelzebub himself, roasted in the fires of hell and rubbed in the quicklime of purgatory, before putting his head on a spike,” hissed Columbine.

  “Left hanging from the meat hook, a pentangle marked out in hen’s blood beneath his feet on the holy book,” suggested Grandma.

  “Boiled in bile and roasted on a skeleton!” screamed Columbine.

  They laughed and cackled and hooted. And Grandma laughed louder and wasn’t a bit sorry for scaring Beatty and upsetting Polly.

  I know it’s all invented rubbish, but I half expect to find Mr Chen’s tortured body in his kitchen. Instead there’s a hurricane mess of boxes and packing, broken china and cobwebs. I’m leaning over a large sheet of wood that covers up a dark stain on the flagstones when Uncle touches my shoulder, making me jump.

  “Come up, boy, we’ll start at the top, sort this out later.” I follow him up the narrow stairs. Like Ma, Uncle’s as wide as two men and he jams on the corners. Both of us carry buckets, mops and plenty of Ma’s tea leaves. By the time we’ve reached the top floor he’s panting and has to sit down to loosen his neckerchief and suck in some air.

  He waves his hand across his face as if to get more of a breeze. The house seems chill to me; each hollow step just proving how cold and empty it is.

  I hadn’t expected that.

  “Tall, these houses. Not used to it, not used to it.” His cheeks turn from purple to white. “When I was a nipper, they was just being built – used to run all over the building site with the foreman shouting at us. Just like you and your friend Tod.” He winks.

  “Ma told you?” I say.

&nbs
p; “She has. I’ve told her it’s high spirits but she’s still hopping mad with you both.” He heaves himself up and after scattering the tea leaves across the floor to gather the dust, begins to sweep away the shadows of Mr Chen’s rugs and furniture.

  I glance up at the trap door we made in the ceiling for the wings of the machine. It seems untouched, and I know that the cloth part is still out there. It’ll have to stay there for now.

  Instead I shuffle the dirt into piles and from those into waiting pails and lug them down the stairs, checking cupboards and nooks and crannies on my way.

  Pieces of the machine are scattered all through the building, and on each trip I take a little time to run across the road and drop them over the wall into our yard alongside the hens. I lower the big brass engine down among them with a tatty shawl and they peck at it, their beaks ringing on the metal.

  We move down the house, scouring and collecting on our way. On the second floor, in a wall cupboard, I find some fire sticks, two jars of scarlet dye and a pile of folded paper birds. Nothing to do with the machine, but I pocket them. Beatty’ll like the birds. Polly’ll like the dye.

  “Athan boy, spot of dinner?” Uncle calls up the stairs. “Come down a floor.” I trot down the staircase to find Uncle leaning heavily on the wall, his shirt damp with sweat. I’m still cold.

  He drops an onion into my palm. I settle by his feet and begin to gnaw at it.

  Uncle wipes his mouth with a handkerchief, then says in a quiet voice that echoes around the empty room, “Your Gran’ma’s asks me to get you a job. Seeing as Mr C’s dead.”

  “Has she?” I peel a layer from the onion.

  “With the nightmen.”

  “What?” I drop my onion and it rolls across the floor. “The nightmen?”

  “Yep.” He won’t look me in the eye. “’Fraid so.”

  “She won’t, Ma won’t … surely?”

  He looks down at his onion as if it was very interesting.

  The nightmen are the sewage clearers. They travel in foul wagons that go around in the night, stinking, splatting all over the roads collecting up the contents of the cess pools and privy pits. They’re only allowed to clear the pits at night, so that the roads are clear of the smell during the day, but the rumours of half-dead white-faced madmen were the fuel of my childhood nightmares. For months Grandma said there was one living at the bottom of the stairs, that he’d eat me alive if I came down and bothered Ma in the evenings.

  I believed her until Polly told me it was rubbish. I must have been about seven years old.

  “A nightman?”

  Uncle nods.

  The nightmen don’t even live in the town, they live out by their seeping ponds.

  I sit and stare at the wall.

  “I’m sorry.” He stands up, his belly blocking out the light. “You’re going to have to join them, boy, if you haven’t got better work by the new year.”

  “Can’t you wait until the summer? I’ll have something by then.”

  He pulls a string of cobwebs from the shutters. “It’s what your ma and grandma want. There’s no more to be said.” He sighs, as if real life is exhausting. “Come on now, up you get. This horrible house won’t clean itself.” He sets off down the stairs to get more water.

  Chapter 6

  I clean and I search and I try to think of a way of not being a nightman. There must be other Mr Chens out there. Other people who believe in science. People who need a handy boy around. While I think, I peer under every shelf, beneath every loose floorboard, checking for the plans.

  By the time I reach Mr Chen’s kitchen, night’s almost set in. Uncle’s taken all the rubbish and shoved it into his wagon standing out front. He’s even stripped the bottles from the larder. I look up. There’s no sign of the oil of vitriol, but the electric box is still there, lurking on the top shelf. Grabbing a stool from the wagon, I slowly lower it.

  With it hanging low between my knees I stagger over the road, and with all my strength lift it on to the wall behind our yard, nestling the blackthorn around it. It’s black and dirty. Hopefully no one’ll notice it above their heads.

  “Boy?” Uncle’s voice rings over the empty street.

  “Here,” I call, racing back across the road.

  “Thought you’d run off,” he says.

  I follow him back down the stairs.

  In the kitchen there’s nothing except for that pool of black between the hearth stone and the fire. I walk around it. I can guess what it is.

  A small knot of fear forms near my heart as once again the rumours clamour and awful fire and brimstone images invade my head. Long shadows hide the corners of the room. It smells of Mr Chen’s experiments, and ginger and sulphur – just as it should. But something else too. It smells of the butcher’s.

  Uncle whistles noisily. I join in, and we clean, picking the dark stain from between the flagstones, washing and scrubbing with soap and soda until the cracks are clean and the smell’s gone. Only then do we stop whistling.

  “Glad that’s done. Bad – horrible way to go.” Uncle points at the back door. “I’ve a little job for you outside.”

  He undoes the bolt and pushes me into the darkened yard. To the west under the clouds, a slash of rosegreen sky still glows. Above that, night.

  “Privy next.” He claps me on the back. “Lovely job, bit of practice.”

  “Really?”

  Uncle laughs. “You’re not digging it out, not the muck – Mrs Love’ll get the proper nightmen to come and do that. She just wants it mopped up a bit.”

  “What will you be doing?”

  “Polishing the taps.” He looks at me, a little smile on his broad face. “Surely you’re not scared of a bit of manure, boy?”

  As I step into the yard, my lantern flickers. No one’s cleaned out this yard for a very long time. Things crunch under my feet and other things slither off to darker corners. I’m not scared, as such, but I don’t much like deep shadows.

  The lantern light plays across the walls and as I get closer to the privy door, my shadow shrinks. I stop with my hand on the latch, unsettled by the flickering and rustling of the yard creatures.

  I’ve never much liked the dark places. Grandma used to shut me in the cupboard in her bedroom when I misbehaved. Which I did all the time.

  According to her.

  Back in the house I can hear Uncle climbing the stairs and I take a deep breath and pull the door open.

  It stinks, but then all privies stink.

  I check the eaves for the plans but there’s no sign, and I realise that if they aren’t in here, it may be that they’ve come out of the house and on to the wagon already. But I’d have seen them. Surely?

  I lift the cover of the dunnaken and place my lantern on the hook in the ceiling, so that I can see just enough but not too much. The smell almost makes me vomit, but I gulp it back and breathe thinly through my mouth. Armed with a bucket and plenty of soda I wash and mop and sluice. Then I lift the seat to peer underneath. Blackness. Then, just to be sure, I take the lantern from the hook and look down into the drop. The smell catches in my throat and I choke. Staggering back to breathe outside the door I knock my elbow on the doorframe and the lantern slips through my fingers and down the hole.

  “Strewth!” Those big lanterns cost ten shillings each. I squint down the hideous pit.

  It’s resting on something vile and brown.

  I’ll have to get it back.

  Out in the yard, I fumble about in search of anything I can use to fetch it out. I need to be quick or the flame’ll die and I’ll never find it.

  From the doorway of the kitchen I spot a window hook. I take it and fish down the hole, hooking the lamp on my second go. As I bring it to the surface, my eye catches sight of a round shape lodged in the side of the pit. I hold the light next to it. It almost looks like a pipe, but not quite. It looks more hidden than built.

  Oh! Mr Chen, you clever man.

  Moving smoothly I bring the lamp to t
he top and hang it above me on the hook so that the whole space is dimly lit. I lean forward to look down.

  Even with the light shining above, I can just make out where the shape is tucked into the side. It’s no more than an arm’s length but spattered all round with stink.

  If I take off my shirt and jacket and take shallow breaths, I can reach down to that thing. If Mr Chen put it there, then I can get it out no matter how disgusting.

  With my chest bare, I stretch my arm down the privy pit, and my head gets closer and closer to the seat, and the stench. My fingers brush the cold slimy sides of the pit before I can feel something different.

  Oil cloth?

  Flakes of something fall around my wrist, I can’t see them but I can guess what they are. Gently I close my hand around the thing in the side of the pit. It’s cold, hard, damp. It feels like a ball. A wrapped-up ball.

  Back in the yard, I fill a bucket with clean water and wash myself, the lamp and the packet. I dry myself with my already filthy shirt and put it back on. The shirt’s damp; my skin’s damp and goose pimples rise as I rub the coarse linen over it. I drag my jacket on and examine the parcel’s wrappings in the lantern light.

  “Athan boy?” Uncle stands at the kitchen door, peering out into the yard.

  Pulling my woollen jacket over the top I slip the damp packet under my armpit. It’s heavy and it slides around but I find if I clamp my elbow by my side I can keep it steady.

  “Here,” I say.

  “All done?” he shouts.

  “All done,” I reply.

  “Let’s get out of this godforsaken house.” Uncle’s loaded everything on to his cart outside the front of the house. “Tell your ma I’ll be round later on – I’ll just get rid of this lot.” He stops to survey me in the near blackness. “S’teeth, boy, look at you, you been swimming in it?”

  Chapter 7

  The moment I enter the shop Ma grabs me by the wrist and drags me down to the kitchen.