Sugar Hall

by Tiffany Murray

  ‘It’s “murderess”, Shirley.’

  Shirley, the lumpiest of them, tried the word on her lisping tongue, ‘Mur-der-esssss.’

  The girls were decked out like wedding cakes, tiered with dresses that flared from the waist in yellow, powder blue, white, and Shirley’s unfortunate brown.

  ‘Do you think she’ll hang?’

  ‘Can’t say. Probably,’ Saskia told them.

  ‘She’s confessed.’

  The startled and stuffed heads of glass-eyed animals stared out above the girls’ demi-waved heads.

  ‘They might find she’s innocent. In the court, I mean.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Tina.’

  ‘Hanging sounds just awful.’

  ‘Awful…’

  ‘Frightful…’

  The girls reached for each other’s hands in solidarity; their fingers a mesh of clashing colours.

  ‘But she did shoot that man,’ Saskia told them. ‘She said as much.’

  There had been little else but talk of Ruth Ellis at school: the girls were bewitched. Saskia thought Ruth beautiful, and thrilling.

  Kit sneered, ‘My daddy said the women are like that in London. He said they shouldn’t be allowed.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Saskia snarled like the stuffed badger on the wall because she didn’t like Kit’s father, or Kit, that much.

  ‘Well,’ Kit, sporty and dark, tapped the newspaper with her gloved finger, ‘you know what I mean, Saskia, a woman like that and in London.’

  ‘What’s the matter with London?’ Saskia wanted to add, ‘and what’s the matter with Ruth?’ Because beneath all the drama of the coming trial, beneath the hysteria; something about Ruth Ellis made her want to cry. She looked down at the newspaper picture; and yes, Ruth looked lovely, her white-blonde hair sculpted with a curl on her forehead. Ruth’s black eyes shone with something Saskia didn’t quite understand but Saskia knew Ruth took care of herself.

  Kit was smoothing down her white tulle skirt. ‘Well, Saskia,’ she muttered, ‘we all know what goes on in some parts of London.’

  Saskia’s head jerked up. ‘Do “we”? Do “we”, Kit? What’s that then?’ Her voice was slipping back to its Churchill Gardens twang.

  ‘You sound funny,’ Shirley whimpered.

  Tina and Kit glanced across at each other, they nodded while Saskia flicked out the skirt of her new yellow Marks and Spencer dress. She stared at the rusty mole-traps, the wire snares in the corner of the room, and she tried to calm herself, to bring the new Saskia back. ‘There’s nothing wrong with London,’ she said, glancing down at her disloyal troops. ‘Anyway, you can go and watch the hangings in London. You have to put your name on a list.’

  ‘Never!’ Kit cried.

  ‘That’s simply awful!’ Tina wailed.

  Shirley blanched white.

  ‘Really, you can. I haven’t been yet, but my friend Flinty has…’

  ‘Oh, I don’t want to talk about this anymore,’ Shirley begged. ‘Poor woman. Please.’ She put two gloved fingers in her ears.

  Kit put her arm around Shirley. ‘I think we should play some music. Shall we?’

  Saskia threw the newspaper on the floor, it skidded across the red tiles and she knew that, yes, she hated Kit Goodwin.

  When Saskia danced the skirt of her yellow dress flared out. She twirled in front of her new Dansette. ‘Do you like it? Do you like my birthday present? Mother bought it for me.’ She leant over and clicked the little lever until the stylus lifted and fell on the ’45. The girls listened to a few turns of crackled air, and then Frank Sinatra sang ‘Young at Heart’.

  ‘Oh, Frank!’ Shirley cried.

  ‘I don’t like him,’ said Kit, ‘I like Alma Cogan.’

  The girls paired up, they slow-danced together: gloves clashing.

  ‘Oh, I’m ever so glad you came to live here, Saskia, I’m so glad,’ Shirley sighed as she held Saskia at the waist, her cheeks flushed bright as cherry sweets.

  ‘I never thought your house would be so…’ Kit stopped dancing ‘…so grand.’ Her eyes sparkled because she truly was impressed.

  ‘Well, it needs a lot of work,’ Saskia told them. ‘We’re planning it all quite soon. A refurbishment.’

  ‘How thrilling!’

  Gloved hands clapped together.

  ‘And we can have a ball! Something spectacular.’

  Kit rolled her eyes. ‘A ball? That’s so old-fashioned, Kia.’

  Saskia’s lower jaw pushed out. She wasn’t sure she liked her nickname, ‘Kia’, she’d have to sort that out later, but for now she pulled it all in and smiled: I’m not at Churchill Gardens now, she thought. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘we’ll have a dance, not a ball. We can use my Dansette. Tina, you bring your records, what have you got?’

  ‘“Rock Around The Clock”, it’s American. My mother hates it…’

  ‘And we can invite boys…’

  ‘Would your mother let you, Kia?’

  ‘Of course she would, Tina! My mother trusts me. At the end of term let’s have a proper summer dance here at Sugar Hall. My house. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Kit?’

  Kit squirmed but nodded.

  ‘And by then the swimming pool and the tennis court will all be put right, and we can have pool parties!’

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad you’re my friend,’ Shirley sighed and laid her head on Saskia’s shoulder: Saskia’s mint green fingers teased Shirley’s coarse curls.

  I’ll show you, Kit Goodwin, she thought, because Saskia had hatched a plan. Later she was going to take them up to that room Dieter and John talked about, the blue attic room with the old toys: the haunted room. Yes, she’d listened to the rumours and today she’d show Kit. She’d take her up there, make up a story and scare the bleeding life out of the stupid cow. As she hugged Shirley to her, Saskia had to swallow the bitterness down, she had to close her eyes and concentrate on being this new Saskia: the young girl of Sugar Hall, unworldly and meek.

  ‘What shall we listen to next?’ she cried, and she smiled sweetly at her school friends.

  The Snoopers

  16

  Dieter peeked out from his den beneath the food table; the long reception room seemed greener now summer was here but no less damp. Over the past week he’d languished in here, watching Ma and Mr John redress it: paintings beneath sheets were now hanging, light bulbs were changed, furniture rearranged. He’d even seen Ma sprinkling used tealeaves on the rug, and then sweeping them off with a dustpan and brush because her friend Juniper told her this was the only way to clean old carpets. It was quite an odd thing but now the rug smelled fresh, like tea.

  He bit and tugged at a plaster on his finger; this cut was deep and white from lack of air. Dieter had lots of cuts now; they were bites from the boy, bites that never had time to heal because the boy was always hungry. Ma asked him again and again how he hurt his fingers, his wrists, as she soaked his hands in a bowl of cloudy Dettol at the kitchen table, but he wouldn’t tell. Ma would pinch his cheeks for colour, pull up his lips to note his pale gums; she patted Savlon into his wounds, made him eat liver, she sang to him; but still he didn’t tell.

  His heart thudded. Ma and Juniper were gone to collect more food and he poked his head out from beneath the tablecloth. People from the village were in the reception because Juniper had persuaded Ma to open up the house for Saskia’s Sixteenth. Dieter had decided to call these people ‘The Snoopers’ because they sneered and prodded things, and then whispered under their breath.

  ‘They should knock the old place down. They are knocking these empty places down, you know.’

  ‘Sugar Hall is not empty, dear.’

  ‘But it must be a dreadful thing to keep up, and so drafty…’

  ‘That is exactly why only those who know how to keep our heritage, only those who share our heritage, should possess these great Halls.’

  ‘Really, it’s falling apart before our eyes. Look at the cornices, and that poor ceiling rose.’
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  ‘I heard death duties swallowed any money there was.’

  ‘I heard things were not resolved at all.’

  ‘It’s such a strange business. Were there really no other benefactors? No other relatives?’

  ‘Such odd circumstances, Peter Sugar was found, you know, just like his brother all those years ago…’

  ‘Well. Tragedy has stalked this family.’

  ‘Gossip. Vile gossip.’

  ‘It was in the papers…’

  ‘A tragedy. Pure and simple.’

  ‘It is the daughter who is sixteen today? She isn’t Peter’s of course…’

  Ma walked in and Dieter breathed at last. Juniper and John flanked her and they all carried silver plates of food. Ma had had her hair done and Dieter thought she looked beautiful, not quite glamorous yet, but so much better. When Ma smiled, the room fell silent.

  ‘Deep breaths, deep breaths,’ he heard Juniper mutter, ‘they won’t bite, Lilia, and if they do, bite back. Chin up, darling.’ Juniper winked at his mother and then she was trailing the silent room with her plate of – he was sure it was prawn paste vol-au-vents.

  ‘Come now, you must try one, Vicar. Lilia and I have been working all day. Of course I’m fibbing, Ambrose. Caterers! I couldn’t make these silly things!’

  Dieter watched Juniper’s spaniels shoot in between the guests’ thick legs.

  ‘Leave it!’ she barked and the dogs froze.

  He smelled the new plates of food and his stomach roared. He knew on the table above him were bowls of vegetable pieces, coronation chicken, jelly, blancmange; then countless egg sandwiches, plates of pressed tongue, those vol-au-vents stuffed with prawn paste and a glossy pork pie with a greasy bone-handled carving knife. There was Saskia’s birthday cake too; it was tall and dark with cream and cherries. Dieter was so hungry, but he couldn’t eat. Ma cried and told him he was skin and bone. She cooked his favourites: treacle pudding, goulash, steak and kidney pie, but he could only pick. When she tried chicken soup, sweet scrambled eggs, liver, dark greens and spoonfuls of vitamin B, Dieter gave up eating altogether.

  ‘It’s because of his imaginary friend,’ Saskia said, but Ma didn’t listen.

  One of the Snoopers was talking loudly to his mother; he poked his head out further.

  ‘I’m sure it is such a blessing having good help,’ she said as she pointed at John, who was crouching on the floor rubbing the bellies of Juniper’s spaniels. ‘You are a good outdoor man! Aren’t you, Phelps?’ the woman cried.

  John blushed and it made Dieter angry.

  ‘Phelps here helped the Vicar and I with the garden one spring. Quite trustworthy. And it is so rare nowadays to find trustworthy help, don’t you think, Mrs Sugar?’ The woman coughed, ‘and you yourself, my dear, were you in service when you first arrived in England?’

  ‘Daphne!’ Juniper cried. ‘You are being most dreadfully rude. You do talk the most dreadful tosh.’

  The woman went red in the face. ‘Well, really…’

  ‘Daphne, don’t be coy. You are being rude, and rudeness is the height of bad manners.’ Dieter noticed how Juniper wasn’t even looking at the woman; she was walking towards John, then she crouched next to him and tickled her dogs. Dieter saw her lips move but didn’t hear what she said. She stood up, ‘Bonzo, down, boy! Terribly sorry, John,’ she winked, ‘once you give him attention he’s all for you.’

  Adults were so strange, Dieter thought.

  Suddenly Ma was kneeling in front of the table and pulling up the tablecloth. ‘Dee! Come out. You will take the sandwiches to our guests.’ She reached in; ruffled his hair and he had to crawl out.

  The silver plate of egg and cress triangles was heavy. Dieter walked straight to the woman called Daphne, the vicar’s wife, and picked up a triangle of egg sandwich with his dirty and plastered fingers: he dropped it on her plate. ‘There you are,’ he smiled up at her, ‘but do be careful, my Ma’s egg sandwiches smell like farts.’

  He moved around the room with the egg sandwiches but The Snoopers didn’t care for egg, or for him. He saw Juniper standing at one of the long windows in her tweed suit, pointing out at the fields and arguing with a man who had redder cheeks than hers. They were arguing in that way that sounded like laughter. Dieter put the tray down on the groaning table of food: he was so hungry he nibbled on a loose plaster, pulling on the frayed strands with his teeth, then he walked through the Snoopers as if he were invisible.

  He believed he was.

  There was a new painting above the mantelpiece and he wanted to look at it. It was of Sugar Hall, but a very long time ago because the house was bright and clean, the gardens neat, and the tiny people in the foreground looked like they were made of glass. Dieter climbed up on to the seat of his grandfather’s armchair, his feet creaking the old springs, until he could see the painting quite clearly.

  The small figures in the foreground were so delicate, wispy and pale. Three men wore suits with short trousers and white stockings. There were ladies, three children and their mother, and they wore big puffy dresses and held parasols in their hands. They all had tall wigs, some white, some grey and they sat beneath the yew tree with Sugar Hall behind them. By the steps to the porch was a horse and a boy was holding its reins.

  Dieter stopped breathing.

  It was his friend, he was sure.

  The boy wore a blue suit with gold buttons and white stockings. Dieter craned in closer to try and see it, the silver collar around his neck. He reached out to touch the canvas and the old paint felt hard.

  ‘Careful, you’ll fall,’ a voice whispered.

  Dieter felt ice at the pit of his stomach; his knees went to jelly and he crashed back into the armchair.

  The adults didn’t notice.

  The boy was standing at the other end of the fireplace, his elbow cocked against the marble mantelpiece. He was so much bigger than before and he wasn’t wearing Pa’s shirt, but a blue velvet jacket with gold buttons and bright white stockings, just like in the painting.

  He smiled.

  ‘They’ll see you!’ Dieter glanced up at the room, expecting his ma to cry out and Juniper’s dogs to howl. The Snoopers were chatting, whispering, pointing, but they hadn’t noticed. ‘You need to hide, they’ll see you!’

  Then Dieter realised something. ‘You can talk,’ he gasped.

  His friend threw back his head and laughed, loud. Dieter shrank down in the chair, waiting for the Snoopers to react.

  ‘Yes,’ the boy said, ‘I can talk,’ and his voice tuned in and out; a shout in the smog, a radiogram dial turning on the airwaves. ‘But they can’t hear me,’ and he glared at the room as if he was firing death rays from his eyes like the Mekon. ‘They can’t see me, either.’

  The boy really was taller: his face thinner, longer. Dieter noticed he was actually wearing shoes: black with thick gold buckles on the front. He’s dressed up for the party, Dieter thought.

  ‘You…’ Dieter stopped. He looked up at the painting, but the figure of the boy wearing a blue suit with gold buttons was no longer there. The horse was standing on its own.

  Dieter gasped.

  ‘Where is your sister?’ the boy asked.

  Dieter’s teeth hurt as his friend spoke and he had to hold one side of his mouth.

  Someone tugged on his arm, and Ma was craning over the armchair, ‘Dee, what is it? You are so pale, Dee. You are sick?’

  She held an empty tumbler in her hand; she smelled of whisky.

  ‘Dee, my Dee, what is it?’ she said. ‘You are trembling!’

  He looked across at the boy: he was so terribly handsome and so terribly grown that at last Dieter felt afraid.

  ‘I’m fine, Ma. Just cold.’

  The boy stepped towards Lilia. Dieter sprang up from the chair. ‘Don’t,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t,’ the boy repeated.

  ‘Don’t what, sweetheart?’ Lilia asked.

  Dieter tried to smile at his mother, ‘I mean – don’t – don’
t give me any more egg, Ma. I’ve had too much.’

  ‘Oh, silly boy. Silly Dee,’ she cried, and he knew she was a little drunk.

  There was a loud droning noise outside. Lilia moved to the windows with the Snoopers to watch a small plane low in the sky.

  ‘What’s that?’ the boy asked.

  Dieter watched his mother go, and then replied. ‘It’s, it’s an aeroplane, that’s all.’

  ‘Aer-o-plane?’ The boy’s lips stretched out in a smile. He leant his forehead against the mantlepiece. ‘Do you want to leave this place, Dee-tah?’

  It was the first time his friend had said his name and Dieter’s ears whined.

  ‘Do you wish to go back to London, Dee-tah? Lon-don,’ the boy said it slowly, as if he were trying to see it through the smog. ‘They would paint me in Lon-don.’

  Dieter felt something in him give. He felt sleepy and he collapsed back in the chair. His friend walked towards him.

  Yes, he was so much taller today; he was more like a man. Dieter looked up at his face and he felt dizzy. As the boy put a finger to his cheek a cold buzzing began in Dieter’s belly.

  ‘The walk was long,’ the boy told him, ‘they took me to a tall house, they gave me a waistcoat of gold, they had me sit in a small room, and a man, he painted me.’

  ‘A picture?’

  ‘A portrait.’

  ‘Is it here?’

  ‘No. It is gone.’

  Dieter heard a strange whimpering noise and looked down to see Juniper’s two spaniels crawling towards them on their bellies; their heads flat to the ground, stumpy tails jerking. The boy reached down to put a finger to each of their broad foreheads and they whined a whine of pleasure.

  ‘Dogs,’ the boy stood up. ‘Dogs. Horses. I cared for them.’ The boy smiled. ‘And now I am hungry, Dieter Sugar.’

  Dieter hid his hands behind his back.

  The boy chuckled. ‘No, no,’ he said and Dieter thought the boy’s voice was the creak of rope and he felt himself sinking. The boy was above him now, and then his hands were on his face, such cold hands, and he was leaning forward and he was kissing Dieter: first one cheek, then the other, and then gently on his lips.

  The boy stayed like that for such a long time – his cold lips against Dieter’s – and he breathed in Dieter’s breath; he breathed in and he didn’t stop.