Sun Child

by Angela Huth

  ‘Mrs Harris,’ he said, his eyes purposefully avoiding Miss Burrows’ chin, ‘hadn’t we all better have napkins with this stew?’

  As Fen jumped up to get them, all apologies, so great a spasm of relief surged through Miss Burrows that it revealed itself in a blue-mauve flush on her pale cheeks. The next problem, therefore, so minor in comparison to the last one that it made her quite lighthearted, was how to disguise this blush. But this time the solution came to her quickly. Between courses-if there was to be a sweet, that was-she would make use of her compact.

  Once again, she was saved by an outside force. The telephone rang. Fen left the room to answer it. Miss Burrows took her plastic tortoiseshell compact from her bag, and set about tidying up the dreadful redness of her chin. Then she patted the small floury puff over her cheeks and nose, rubbing at the hard edges of the bluish flush as if by so doing she could exchange them for a more admirable pink. She was closely watched by Emily and Wolf.

  ‘Why do you wear that stuff?’ Emily asked.

  Miss Burrows widened her eyes at herself in the mirror. Wolf thought that if they stayed that shape they would be remarkable. People would say: What big eyes you’ve got, Miss Burrows.

  ‘When I was a little girl like you I had lovely skin, fresh as a daisy. Nothing but soap and water in those days.’ She sighed, and snapped her compact shut. ‘But when we get older our skin gets tireder and not so – well, not so pretty. So we have to go on making them look as nice as we can with make-up, don’t we?’ She smiled and braved the carrot with the fork in her right hand, while in her left she clutched the secure-making clump of her paper napkin. ‘I expect even your Mummy, with her lovely skin, wears a little something, sometimes.’

  ‘She doesn’t,’ said Emily. ‘Except at night. Then she puts stuff on her eyes. She lets me put it on for dressing up.’

  Miss Burrows fluttered her own pale lashes.

  ‘Unfortunately I’m allergic to mascara. I’m afraid that’s one thing I’ve never been able to wear.’

  Wolf was leaning forward, hunching his shoulders against the table.

  ‘I think you’ve got nice eyes, anyhow, with nothing on them,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘Oh thank you.’ Miss Burrows felt the rising heat of the blue blush again. Strange how two children could be so unnerving.

  ‘Actually,’ Wolf went on, boldened by his successful flattery, ‘I’ve been thinking, and I can’t imagine what sort of place you come from.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Miss Burrows shifted a little in her seat.

  ‘Well, I mean, where do you live ?’

  ‘I have what they call a little terrace house near Olympia. But my family comes from Edinburgh.’

  ‘What’s your house like ?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Well, how can one describe one’s own house?’ With all this talking Miss Burrows wondered if she would have managed to finish her stew before Mrs Harris came back. She didn’t like to be the only one left eating. ‘It’s a very manageable little house. One bedroom and a bathroom upstairs, a nice sitting room and kitchen downstairs. Then out at the back there’s a small courtyard, no bigger than a pocket handkerchief, really. But I like to call it my garden.’ She smiled. ‘I put out crumbs for the sparrows in the winter, not that there are many sparrows in the Olympia district. And next summer I’m going to try my hand at planting a tub of geraniums. But I’m rather afraid I haven’t very green fingers.’

  ‘And do you live there all alone?’ Wolf rather liked the sound of her house.

  ‘Quite alone, yes.’

  ‘No brothers or sisters?’

  ‘Two sisters, but they’re in Edinburgh. Married sisters,’ she added.

  ‘Heavens,’ said Emily, ‘that must be lonely.’

  ‘Oh no. I have my work. I’m kept very busy. In fact sometimes I hardly have a moment to myself.’ She sounded quite brusque.

  ‘What do you do when you do have a moment to yourself?’ Miss Burrows turned to Wolf, a little suspicious. But the child wasn’t merely being polite. His face was intent with curiosity. She would answer this one last question.

  ‘Well, what does anybody do? I go for a stroll in Holland Park-it’s lovely there in the Spring. Or I read my library book or do a little shopping, or go to the Odeon in Kensington if there’s something I want to see.’

  Nothing else immediately came to mind.

  ‘Nothing very different from anybody else,’ she said.

  Fen came back into the room fast, glowing, smiling, the gold of her shirt reflecting up into the brown-gold of her face. She began to sweep away the plates, apologising for her absence.

  ‘Who was that on the telephone?’ Emily was still resentful of people ringing her mother up, though here the calls were far less frequent than they had been in London.

  Fen laughed. ‘Nosey. You wait till people start ringing you up. You’ll hate it if I ask you who it was each time.’

  ‘I won’t,’ said Emily.

  ‘You wait,’ said Fen. She brought a bowl of trifle to the table, its custard top encrusted with an extravagance of silver balls. ‘They all came out of the tube in a rush,’ she explained. ‘I tried to put them back, but I couldn’t.’ The children laughed.

  ‘It looks delicious: I’ve always loved a trifle,’ said Miss Burrows, entering into the spirit of the thing, and half-stifled her own delighted laugh with her paper napkin.

  Idle arrived back just as they were finishing lunch. As always, he seemed huge in the kitchen. He carried a large brief-case and bundles of papers: he looked tired. His silver hair and the velvet collar of his dark coat glowed with the damp. Emily threw herself upon him, smelling station platforms and dark, city cold.

  ‘Why didn’t you come earlier?’

  ‘I missed the train.’ He smiled wearily. ‘I’m sorry, Em.’

  ‘But this afternoon you can help Wolf and me make things for our bird table.’

  ‘Bird town,’ Wolf corrected. ‘It’s even going to have a Piccadilly Circus.’

  ‘Maybe later,’ said Idle. ‘But first I’ve got to work with Miss Burrows. There’s a lot to do.’ He tapped his papers, avoiding the disappointment on Emily’s face. ‘But I tell you what …’ He paused. ‘I tell you what. After tea we’ll light the bonfire we made in the orchard. We won’t wait till tomorrow. It’ll be more fun, when it’s getting dark, than in the morning. How about that?’

  ‘Yes …’ Emily had a high-pitched scream in moments of delight.

  Fen cleared a place for Idle, but he had no wish to eat. Just coffee. He seemed melancholy, preoccupied. He watched the children play noughts and crosses on a paper napkin. The fire took the chill off his clothes. Eventually, he told his news.

  ‘They want me in Africa again on Monday.’ Emily, looking up from the game, watched his eyes on Fen’s face. Miss Burrows gave a little cough.

  ‘Oh, darling, not again. Not so soon.’

  Fen was behind his chair, arms round his neck, head bent over his for a moment. Miss Burrows looked away.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘How long for, this time?’

  ‘Three or four weeks, I should think.’

  Fen straightened herself up, her body a little slacker, less alert than it had been before the news. She sighed.

  ‘That means you’re only with us tomorrow. And we had so many things planned for next week.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re away too much, Papa,’ said Emily.

  ‘One day I’ll retire, then I’ll be here all the time. Promise.’

  ‘Will you send me a postcard every single day?’

  ‘Every single day, starting with the airport.’ Emily smiled. That would be some compensation. At school her father’s postcards from distant lands earned her a certain notoriety.

  ‘My father,’ said Wolf, ‘wouldn’t think of sending a postcard, if he ever went away, that is. He hasn’t got that sort of mind.’ Idle raised his eyebrows and glanced a
t Fen. She responded with the flicker of a smile. ‘On the other hand, Coral, my stepmother, only has to go as far as Paris, and she comes back with a whole load of rubbishy old souvenirs nobody could possibly want. She brings me back hideous badges to sew on my anorak. I’d rather die.’ Wolf knew when he had an audience with him. Their laughter stimulated him, spurred him to think of a dozen more anecdotes to keep them happy. He could have gone on all afternoon. But Idle had to go off to his study to work with Miss Burrows. Fen began to peel large yellow apples from the orchard, in preparation for apple jelly: she had mastered the art of slicing off their skins in one unbroken snake. There was a certain satisfaction watching the cold yellow ribbons try to curl back into their old apple shape as they dropped into the sink. Wolf and Emily brought out paints and cardboard boxes and pots of glue. They cleared a space among the chaos on the table and began their work. Soon, from Idle’s study, came the monotonous tap of the typewriter.

  The church clock struck six. In the orchard, an unplanned gathering of apple and pear trees between the barn and the meadow that sloped down to the stream, the mists of the day gathered more thickly among the greenish branches, flaky with grey lichen. For all Fen’s fruit gathering, the grass was scattered with large, chrome apples, many of them seared with soft brown patches, and smelling faintly of rot in the dew. In a clearing among the trees Idle and the children had raked a pile of dead branches and leaves. At the time they had collected them these multicoloured leaves had been crisp, frail, newly dropped from trees on a sharp dry day. Now, affected by their wait in the damp, they had become soft and floppy, unresilient in their pile. But the mists had not managed to suck from them their testudinarious colours. In the smoke-colour of the air, they made a still-life bonfire of unflickering flames.

  Emily came out of the house, Wolf close behind her. She shivered: the inarticulate pleasure of knowing that after the adventure into this ghostly mist was over, the warm life of the kitchen awaited their return. Fen and Idle followed, Fen in a long football scarf and a torn old mackintosh, Idle still in his incongruous London coat, its small velvet collar turned up round his neck. He carried a box of matches, looked pessimistic.

  ‘I think it may be too damp after all.’ He kicked at the pile of soggy leaves.

  ‘Oh, no, Mr Harris. Leave it to me.’ Wolf took his own box of matches from his pocket. He was a proud and able Cub.

  ‘Leave it to Wolf, Papa. He can do anything like that.’ Confidence made her warm, warm and shivery. She watched Wolf bend down, light a match. Its flame sizzled out. He tried again, and a third time, with no luck. Fen and Idle remained silent, side by side. Wolf stood up.

  ‘Tell you what, Emily, you go into the house and get some fire-lighters and dry kindling,’ suggested Idle.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘That’s hardly the point of a bonfire,’ said Fen.

  ‘It’ll never get going, otherwise. Go on, Em. You might as well.’ Idle gave his daughter an affectionate shove. She ran off, brought back a bundle of dry sticks and a couple of firelighters. Then, it was easy. Two small flames, hesitant at first, wavered up, grasped at the apple branches, ate into the soft lichen, and increased their strength. There was a creak of twigs, a movement among the dead leaves. A spire of smoke rose into the mist: smoke, mist, smoke, blue unfurling into grey. The two became indistinguishable.

  As the flames increased and cast their heat, Idle, Fen, Wolf and Emily stood back a little, staring, solemn, transfixed as people are by a peaceful fire, fascinated by the slight element of danger. In one pocket of her duffle coat Emily’s fingers twiddled with a piece of fluff, and she thought that when she grew up she’d have a dress the colour of a flame. Fire colour was her best colour. Not orange, but definite fire colour which sometimes surprised you with a twinge of purple or green or blue, but was never pure orange. She wondered if Wolf would bother to say, as he nearly always did when they were by the kitchen fire, that if you looked hard enough you could see dragons in the flames. Of course there weren’t dragons: anyone knew that. But he liked to tease her. The first time he’d said it, very seriously, she looked at him wondering how to react. If she’d agreed, or even pretended she could see dragons, he might think she was silly. If she contradicted him he might not like it either. In the end she said nothing, just laughed. Luckily, Wolf laughed too, and explained it was the kind of rubbish Coral expected him to believe. Now, when he referred to dragons, he imitated Coral’s voice and it always made them both laugh. A pretty soppy woman Coral must be, really. She’d like to meet her one day.

  And one day she wouldn’t mind seeing another real fire, like the one they’d seen in Norfolk a few summer holidays ago. They had come across the fire driving along a small country lane, and were held up in the congealed traffic for a long time while more and more fire engines, sirens screaming, raced to the flames with their useless hoses. A whole forest was on fire. The tall black evergreens had melted into one gigantic tree of flames: they were all bent to one side in the wind, flapping at the edge of the evening sky, much taller than the tallest fire-engine ladder, and puffing huge clouds of black smoke at the poor firemen. In the back seat of the car, Emily had whispered to Angelica that it was the most exciting thing she’d ever seen, and Angelica had said: how could you say that? But then Angelica never liked anything out of control. She missed all sorts of excitements, Angelica did, what with not liking strong winds or Big Dippers or dogs that jumped up at you. She would have got on very nicely with Coral, from what Wolf said.

  Wolf nudged her. He was squinting up at the darkening starless sky. He gave a little leap towards the fire, making his fingers into the shape of a nozzle, and letting off a hissing water sound from his mouth.

  ‘Careful,’ said Fen.

  ‘Wouldn’t mind being a fire fighter,’ said Wolf.

  ‘You want to be something different every day.’ Emily was half scornful, half admiring.

  ‘Not true. I’d still like to have a traction engine museum, but I could be a part-time fire fighter as well.’

  Emily bent down and picked up a couple of apples from the grass by her feet. She threw them gently to the edge of the fire. Wolf wasn’t the only one to have ideas.

  ‘Roast apples,’ she said. ‘They’ll have a lovely smell.’

  ‘They’ll burn,’ said Fen. Her eyes were staring far past the apples, a tiny flame in each pupil, a bigger flame flickering on each cheek.

  ‘Bet they won’t,’ said Emily.

  ‘Bet they will,’ said Idle. He put his hand on the back of Fen’s neck, tugging at the clump of hair tied back with a scarlet ribbon, which fell over her scarf. But his gesture didn’t stop her eyes staring. He said he’d go and get a drink to christen the orchard, and wandered away.

  He came back with two glasses of champagne on a tray, and two bottles of coke. This made Fen laugh. She laughed a lot, a marvellous sound, bending over at the waist, teeth glinting. When she straightened up again, she took one of the glasses in her hand and smiled as she sipped, trying to control herself.

  ‘You’re mad,’ she said to Idle. The champagne made a small arc of gold bubbles beneath her nose.

  ‘Probably,’ said Idle.

  ‘It’s my champagne era,’ said Fen. ‘You’re always suddenly producing champagne as if you were a millionaire.’ Idle laughed, then, too, and kissed her on the forehead.

  ‘What’s so funny between them?’ Wolf whispered to Emily.

  ‘Grown-up jokes.’

  ‘Barmy.’

  ‘Barmy old grown-ups.’

  ‘Coral can only laugh through one side of her mouth. The other side’s paralysed.’

  Emily giggled, making the coke in her straw bubble noisily. Her knees, unprotected by boots and coat, felt hot.

  ‘Here, Em. Come and have a try.’ Fen was bending down, pushing away the long dewy grass, offering her glass.

  ‘Hate the stuff.’

  ‘Come on. Don’t be silly.’ Near to her mother, Emily took the chilly glass. Through the
wood smoke she could smell stephanotis. She sipped cautiously: her parents loved giggled.

  ‘Run and fetch the rest of the bottle for Mama and me, then,’ said Idle. ‘It’s on the kitchen table.’

  Inside, the warmth was quite different, Emily noticed at once. Still and flat rather than glowing and shifting, like it was round the fire. No cold edges. She intended to hurry back, and snatched at the icy bottle on the table. Then she became aware of the ceaseless, muffled tap of the typewriter. Miss Burrows! Poor thing: she must still be working.

  Still holding the bottle, Emily crept to the study door. Quietly, she turned the handle. She had no idea what she would say if Miss Burrows saw her, but some instinct made her continue to push the door.

  Miss Burrows was sitting, back to her and very upright, at her father’s desk. A pale blue cardigan, to match her blouse, hung over the back of her chair. Like the blouse, it had pearl buttons. At the back of her head her greyish hair watching her try their drinks. It made her sneeze. She ended in a neat roll. If she let it all fall down, Emily thought, the back of her head, at least, would look much younger.

  Although Emily made no noise, Miss Burrows suddenly stopped typing and turned round.

  ‘Oh, hello dear, ’she said. ‘It’s you.’

  ‘We’re all outside by the bonfire.’ Emily leant on the doorpost. ‘It’s lovely out there.’

  ‘Mind you don’t catch cold. It’s getting quite chilly these evenings.’

  ‘It’s lovely and warm round the fire. Why don’t you come? Mama and Papa are drinking this’ – she held up the bottle – ‘and having all sorts of jokes.’