Sugar Hall

by Tiffany Murray

  The moths like Dieter; they linger on his skin, whispering, leaving a bright dust before they take off, lazily, towards the boy.

  Dieter falls back onto the grass.

  More moths are crawling towards the boy’s toes, their antennae twitching. They crawl over the green fireflies and the fat Maybugs on their way up his legs, past his belly and up to his neck, his face. The boy opens his mouth in a wide smile and insects push past his lips: they nestle close to his teeth.

  They are Hawk, Hummingbird and Antler Moths. They are Garden Tigers, Emperors, Cinnabers, Bird-Cherry Ermine, Angle Shades: they are Lunar Hornets, Feathered Thorns, Diamond Backs, Scalloped Oaks, Map-Winged Swifts, Pale Bridled Beauties, Corn, Tapestry and Ghost Moths.

  The ancient boy has woken them.

  Their wings beat into blurs of colours. They leave their sparkling dust on the boy’s skin; they give it life. He begins to move his arms, a conductor, as more insects pour from the sky. They land on him, covering him until he is as bright as the moonlight, until he is teeming with life; until the shimmer of the moths’ wings and the glow of the fireflies’ bellies are part of him.

  ‘London,’ Dieter gasps from the ground, ‘is the place for me. London, this lovely cit-eeee.’ He puts his hands over his ears; he is so afraid of insects burrowing into his brain. The boy is a shape now, made up of the scurrying, jumping bodies of insects. Dieter thinks of the moths and butterflies pinned down in the Hall, the ones preserved under those glass cases in that big room, and for a moment he wonders if these are the same ones, dragging their pinned bodies through the grass. Dieter wonders if they smashed the glass with their beautiful, beating wings to escape. Then Dieter hears a noise that makes his eyes roll to the backs of their sockets. He knows the noise is coming from the boy, and that is when he feels something tug at his belly button from the inside, and he faints where he lies in the grass.

  The Hunt

  11

  The sun didn’t take long to come up and Dieter didn’t take long to open his eyes. A small white moth lay on the cuff of his tartan dressing gown. He watched it struggle – legs caught in the wool. When he flicked it off, it crawled through the dew-wet grass. Sun was bouncing off the red-brick wall, off the spoilt chrome rails that curved down the swimming-pool steps. Dieter rubbed his eyes.

  ‘Are you here?’ he croaked.

  Small bright birds flitted up from grass to tree at the sound of his voice, and he sat up, dizzy and cold. As he stood the birds shrieked and flew off.

  Dieter walked towards the swimming pool, his slippers sliding on the ancient turf. He squinted into the rising sun for a long while because he didn’t know if he dared look down. He was afraid he might see the back of his friend bobbing in the black water and Pa’s shirt ruined. Dieter took a deep breath and peeked. The water in the deep end was still black but now it squirmed because the surface was inches thick with insects. Moths fluttered, weak, their wings wet and stained with the black water. They covered the parasol, the old cane chair. Poor things, thought Dieter, but he was relieved, because there wasn’t a body there (unless you counted the dead dog).

  ‘Where are you?’ he said.

  He looked up at the trees. It was strange but in the daylight he wasn’t scared anymore; Dieter was glad to have a friend, he was glad to have an adventure. It had been such an odd night that he wasn’t sure what he remembered; what had happened. In the next moment he wondered if Ma had spent it out in the gardens, calling his name.

  ‘Poor Ma,’ he said, and he brushed himself down, turned to the archway in the brick wall, and began the long walk back to the Hall. He pushed himself through the fleshy leaves of the rhododendrons, hating their wet touch, but glad to be leaving this place. He ran through the pet cemetery with its stunted stones and he took the shortcut through the field. Here the faded stalks of spent daffodils bobbed about him like crisped Jack-in-the-boxes. Dieter slowed and let his hands move through the tall green ears of the new grass, and he skipped his stiffness out.

  Dieter was running towards the house when he saw the colours, and when he saw all those people and all those animals in front of the porch steps he skidded under the larch trees.

  There were so many horses: black, chestnut, dappled white, and they steamed in the morning air. There were so many people on the horses, in white and black and one man in a bright red jacket. And there were so many dogs. The dogs weren’t quite brown or black or white, but spotty in all those colours.

  ‘Aooooowoooo!’ they howled, low and loose, like something was being ripped out from their bellies.

  Dieter decided this was a search party, all for him.

  The horses were brushed, their manes plaited into little buns that patterned the lengths of their glossy necks (Ma and Saskia did the same thing with rags in their hair at night, when they wanted it to curl). The people on the horses were smart too, and Dieter liked that. They wore black bowler or tall hats, the crispest whitest shirts with high collars and tightly tailored jackets in black or tweed. The man in the red jacket had thick thighs that hung either side of his horse’s belly like fat brown sausages. Dieter watched the man’s thighs grip as his black horse fidgeted, its tail swishing from side to side.

  It was then Dieter noticed the children on the small horses. He fought the urge to jump up and wave at them. Dieter closed his eyes and listened to stirrups jangle, leather creak, soft nostrils snort, and molars grind metal. He listened to the voices.

  ‘What a darling cigarette case, Hetty.’

  ‘It was a gift.’

  ‘Simply darling.’

  ‘Has anyone seen her yet? Our lady of the manor?’

  ‘Don’t mock, Cyril, she didn’t have to have us you know.’

  ‘She’s a project of Juniper’s.’

  ‘Yes, June arranged this whole thing. Trying to bring her out.’

  ‘Rum little thing by all accounts.’

  ‘Sh! Cyril!’

  ‘Where is Juniper?’

  ‘Inside with the Sugar woman. Not hunting today.’

  ‘Oh. Pity.’

  ‘Doubt this place or this new woman will be here in the new season. Too much for a filly to run.’

  ‘Well, well. Let’s enjoy today, Teddy. It is our last.’

  ‘What-ho, here she comes.’

  Dieter opened his eyes to see his mother walk out of the big front door carrying a huge silver plate of sandwiches; his belly growled. Mr John was behind her, holding silver goblets and two bottles on his plate, and as they walked down the wide stone steps towards the riders, the horses jostled. Dieter tried to keep track of his mother as she moved into the body of fidgeting beasts. He felt his insides contract, she looked so small; and then she disappeared.

  ‘Ma…’ he tried, and he saw Juniper walk down the steps with Saskia. They held big silver plates too, and as Juniper moved through the horses she slapped one on the shiny rump with her free hand and it moved out of her way, jumping from hoof to hoof. Dieter watched the riders lean down from their horses to take the goblets and drain them; they picked up the sandwiches and chomped them down in one gulp. Again, he strained to see his mother, to spot her head in the mass of steaming horses.

  There was a sharp and high blast of something like a trumpet, the dogs howled and Saskia dropped her tray; the small triangles of white bread scattered.

  Ma appeared from the throng. She rushed up the grey steps to the wide porch, her silver tray empty and her hair falling in her face; she stumbled.

  The noise came again, and the man in red cocked his hat at Ma, turned his horse, and trotted off. The pack followed, and they were fast; they cantered across the grass and jumped the fence where the cows would march twice a day. Dieter heard the trumpet once more; a call to run, a root-toot-toot that blasted over the fields.

  Then there was nothing but the ripe smell of horse, a ruined lawn, and a ringing in his ears.

  A Hammer, a Fruitcake, a Cake Knife, Tin Snips and a Metal File

  12

  A wren zi
gzagged from bramble stalk to bramble stalk in the woods. Dieter looked down at his spoils; he was back at school so it had taken him weeks to gather these things.

  Today he would do it.

  ‘Which shall I use?’ his fingers were on the cake knife. He looked up from bright May bluebells and directly at the boy. His friend was faint in the sunlight; he still wore Pa’s shirt, but it was torn and dirty now.

  Insects hovered; the wood was alive. It felt so good to be out of the damp Hall; it felt so good to be out with a friend.

  ‘It is terribly tight around your neck,’ said Dieter. ‘I’m just not sure how to get at it properly.’

  Fat bluebottles droned above the fruitcake. Dieter’s hand moved from the cake knife to the hammer, then to the tin snips, finally settling on the metal file.

  ‘I think this one first.’ The bluebottles thudded into the beech trunks. ‘Pop your head back then.’

  The boy did.

  Dieter hadn’t seen him for so long. After that night at the swimming pool, he thought the boy had disappeared for good, then he thought he’d dreamt him up. But no, last week he’d found him sitting at the end of his bed.

  And now there was the Plan.

  Dieter slipped two fingers between the metal collar and the boy’s skin; the metal of the collar was cold but the boy’s skin was colder. Dieter felt the same buzzing dizziness and sickness he had whenever the boy touched him, so he talked as he filed to distract himself.

  ‘Do you like it here, in the wood?’

  The boy, head back, stared up into the new green of beech and oak leaves.

  ‘I think there are wolves. Honest Injun. I’ve heard them.’ Dieter thought there could be a whole pack of wolves crouching in the fern and bluebells right now. ‘I think those tree trunks look like elephant feet. They look like the elephant foot umbrella stand we had in the Hall. It disappeared. I told Ma and she said that things disappear in that house and not to worry.’

  Filing made Dieter’s hand ache and his sickness was becoming unbearable. ‘This isn’t working!’ he cried and he threw the file into the flowers. Dieter grabbed the fruitcake and bit because he’d found that sugar helped the sick and dizzy feeling the boy gave him, and fruitcake was the best.

  His stomach settled; his vision came back.

  ‘I hate my school,’ Dieter said (because touching the boy also made him think about sad things). ‘Everyone hates me.’ At Dieter’s village school, boys wore the red welts of ringworm on their hands and cheeks, and they couldn’t say his name.

  ‘Deeee-turrrrr?’ they teased.

  ‘Shu-guuur? After what you puts in your tea? You come from up the Hall? You posh, mind?’

  ‘Hit-ler! Hit-ler! Hit-ler!’ they yelled at him. ‘Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!’ and he could see the thick lines of spit between their upper and their lower teeth. It wasn’t fair: Saskia was older so she went to a girls’ grammar, a bus ride away in Chepstow. At his school lumpy girls held bibles while boys held sawn-off chickens’ feet in their fists. They’d pull the shrivelled tendon until scaly chicken toes flexed in his face.

  Dieter had forgotten he’d once been a leader.

  In the fug of the bluebells Dieter thought of the Wee-Hoo gang. They had never said anything about his name. The Wee-Hoos had a Precious Palmer, a Levi Bloom and the twins Deuteronomy and Comfort Jones. These names were like cities, like countries, like whole worlds to themselves.

  Deuteronomy Jones. Precious Palmer. Levi Bloom.

  Dieter glanced up at the boy.

  ‘I want to run away, back to London,’ he said, ‘would you like to come? You could meet Cynthia and the rest of the gang and we could ride the buses into town.’ He stretched his legs out. ‘You’d have to wear shoes in London, and a pair of trousers or shorts like mine. Do you have the trousers I gave to you?’ Dieter felt something on his arm; it was the boy’s hand.

  He trembled.

  The boy was nodding towards the tin snips and smiling. He had such good teeth, Dieter thought, not like Mrs Pritchard at the village shop who told Ma she was going to have all of hers pulled for her second wedding because it would be easier and brighter, her new married life, with a good set of teeth.

  The boy pointed at the tin snips.

  ‘But I tested them on a can of peaches. They cut right through and it was so sharp.’

  The boy’s expression, if it could be called an expression, didn’t change.

  ‘All right.’ Dieter sat up. ‘But don’t blame me if I cut you and we have to find a doctor.’

  Once again Dieter’s fingers slipped in between metal and the skin of the boy’s neck; he sensed the dizziness before it came and the boy’s head fell back.

  It was careful work, millimetre by millimetre because Dieter was fighting his faintness and thinking of the jugular vein. Cynthia had told him how some people wanted this cut before they were put in their coffins. The Jug-ew-lar. Dieter snipped with the sharp, small tool, and the thin metal of the collar began to open.

  He heard the boy take a breath and he hadn’t heard that before.

  He cut again.

  ‘Sh!’ Dieter said to the birds and the wind in the trees. His eyebrows came together with worry; his fingers shook as he snipped. He imagined the boy’s head dropping off right here into the bluebells. It might roll like a hairy coconut knocked off its post at the fair. He thought about names again, and he wondered if the boy would speak and tell him his, he wondered if his name sounded as lovely as ‘Precious Palmer’ or ‘Deuteronomy Jones’.

  There wasn’t any more metal to cut: Dieter let the tin snips drop in the bluebells. The wood was spinning and he grabbed the fruitcake and chewed, his mouth open with a mulch of sultanas, glacé cherries and nuts. He looked at his friend and the collar seemed to be peeling away of its own accord, like sunburnt skin. Dieter reached out and tugged its end, careful of every wobble of the boy’s head. Dieter burped. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said and he thought of the way Ma pulled off his plasters. ‘Look up at the spider!’ she’d say, and by the time he’d looked to see nothing was there, the plaster was off.

  Dieter yanked and the silver collar came away quick as an old scab. ‘Oh,’ he said.

  The boy’s shoulders were rising. Dieter heard a slurp.

  ‘Did – did that hurt?’ Dieter asked, and then he couldn’t help it, he giggled.

  There was the strangest thing – stranger than all this – because the boy giggled too. It was a light giggle, like little bells.

  Dieter gasped. ‘You’re welcome,’ he said, and then he was shy, he didn’t know what to say at all. He stared at the boy’s neck, at the dark mark around it, wide and blacker than the rest of the boy’s now-glowing skin.

  Dieter turned the cut collar in his hands. It was such a thin thing, so light for something so permanent. He held it up into the sunlight shooting past the oak leaves, and he could see the writing on it. He traced the engraved letters with his finger.

  It was a ‘D’.

  It was a ‘D-E-M’.

  Dieter turned it in the light. It was a ‘D-E-M-E-R-A-R-A’.

  He tried to say the word, his thumb following the letters on the metal. ‘Dem-er-rah-rah.’

  It was an ugly name and he didn’t like it.

  The boy didn’t react. Dieter tried again, ‘Demer-rah-rah. Is that your name?’ He rubbed the indentations of the letters until the silver grew warm and he cut himself on the jagged edge.

  Blood swelled. It was one of those deep cuts that don’t hurt at first. Dieter felt like laughing; he held out his thumb. ‘Look.’

  The boy took it and put it to his lips: he sucked. Dieter felt strong teeth latch on; he felt the boy’s tongue, prodding the cut. It was a terribly soft tongue. Dieter thought of the calves he’d seen in the fields butting at their mother’s udders. He felt so strange.

  ‘Don’t,’ he tried, and he pushed the fingers of his other hand deep into the ground, and it was as easy as plunging his fingers into Ma’s Cold Cream.

  When Dieter
opened his eyes to the bright wood, the boy had let go and he was smiling, smears of blood on his white teeth.

  ‘Oh,’ said Dieter, and he lifted his thumb into the light. It looked like it had been in hot water too long, the skin was shrivelled but there was no blood.

  He looked at the boy. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  They were protected beneath trees when the rain came. Around them baby oaks, no higher than houseplants, shivered. The boys were stretched out on their backs in a deep dip; the crunch of last year’s dry leaves a bed beneath them.

  They listened to it all: the green push above them and the brown rot beneath, the constant buzzing of flies in the bluebells. Squirrels croaked warnings from their drays while the sun tried stretching down to clear the deepest, most faraway mist.

  It was like waking from the longest of sleeps. Drowsy, Dieter shifted his weight to lie on his side. He found he was facing the boy; they were almost nose-to-nose. He felt sick this close, but he could see there were flecks in the boy’s eyes, like gold leaf. There was something cloudy there, too. The boy blinked – a blank blink – and Dieter saw that his friend didn’t have smile-lines or creases on his skin: he seemed brand new.

  Dieter made a mental list.

  The boy hadn’t had German Measles or the Chicken Pox.

  He hadn’t frowned or laughed much because his forehead was as smooth as the top of one of Ma’s chilled jellies.

  He felt the boy’s breath on his face and it smelled of metal and of the sea. Dieter thought of moths and fireflies. He touched the boy’s lips with his finger, lips that now shone like spun sugar. He wished the boy would talk.

  ‘Do you know these woods very well?’ Dieter asked.

  The boy nodded.

  ‘Do you play here?’

  The boy shook his head.

  ‘Do you have any other friends?’

  The boy shook his head.

  ‘I’m glad you…’ Dieter didn’t know how to put it ‘…found me. Is that your name, “Demerara”?’