Sugar Hall

by Tiffany Murray

  This time it wasn’t the boy’s voice that was the fuzz of a tuning radio, it was Dieter himself who was tuning in and out. In this fug Dieter found himself day-dreaming. He suddenly saw himself flying away in the big balloon from the sheds. He was holding onto the sides of the wicker basket and swaying over a wide river, over fields, houses. He was waving, too, because almost at once he was gliding over the Wasteland and there were the Wee-Hoos. The twins, Deuteronomy and Comfort Jones, were running beneath him, and there, on the mound by the brick wall was Cynthia.

  His dream-Cynthia was yelling up at him, she was jumping on the spot and waving. ‘Dee, fight him,’ she cried. ‘Dee! Fight! You have to be strong. You have to run. Run away! He’ll hurt you, Dieter!’ And then almost at once everything was thick with smog. ‘I can’t see you, Dee,’ his dream-Cynthia was crying. ‘Where did you go? You’re lost in the smog. Shout my name! Where are you, Dieter?’

  A Visitor

  17

  It was only when a strong arm tugged his waist that Dieter came to. There was high-pitched murmuring, like flies buzzing.

  ‘Leave him be,’ John was saying. ‘Get that knife from him, that’s all. Take the knife.’

  Something was wrenched from his fingers and Dieter went limp. He opened his eyes to see Juniper standing over him and the Snoopers behind her, muttering. Ma pushed forward.

  ‘Dee, oh, Dee, what have you done?’

  He looked up at the faces. He wasn’t lost in the smog on the Wasteland anymore but back in the big green armchair by the mantelpiece in the reception. He saw a carving knife in Juniper’s hands: greasy with fat.

  Juniper stepped closer; she stared down at him. ‘Do you know what you tried to do, young man?’

  He shook his head as she straightened up and pointed at the painting over the fireplace: the one with the olden-day family under the trees and Sugar Hall behind them; the one with the horse and the boy in the blue suit. Now there was a small tear in the canvas, right through the family.

  ‘You attacked that.’

  Ma was wringing her hands. ‘Don’t tell him…’

  ‘Lilia,’ Juniper snapped, ‘he needs to know. Dieter, do you know what you did?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘You took the knife from the table and you climbed on top of the mantelpiece and you stabbed that painting with this knife.’ She held it out; it was evidence. ‘Why? Why did you do this, child?’

  Dieter burped. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, as calmly as he could. ‘Can I go now, please?’

  He saw his mother bite her lip; then she gave a nod and he slipped to the floor, he wobbled as he stood up.

  ‘I’ll take you upstairs, darling, I’ll put you to bed,’ she said.

  ‘It’s the girl’s party, don’t let him spoil it,’ Juniper whispered. ‘Fresh air, that’s what this boy needs.’

  ‘It is not your business, Juniper,’ Ma hissed and then he saw Juniper take his mother’s hand because she was the one wobbling on her feet.

  When Juniper turned back to him her eyes were angry. ‘Dieter,’ she said, ‘please could you take my dogs out; they are getting terribly restless.’ She clicked her fingers and pointed to the open door. ‘Outside!’ she barked at the spaniels and they ran out into the passageway in a straight line. ‘Now, Dieter, you too,’ she commanded.

  He glanced up at his mother; she looked like she might cry, so he bolted through the muttering Snoopers, and out into the passage after the dogs. He could hear Saskia’s crooning music come from the boot room, but Juniper’s spaniels were dashing across the big black and white tiles of the hall and he followed them. The thick front door was wide open but Dieter stopped. He watched the dogs run back and forth like crazed things on the grass; the bunches of their curly ears bouncing either side of their wide heads. Then he ducked under the chain that blocked off the staircase from those Snoopers, and he trotted up the stairs.

  It was a good vantage point. He could see everything that crossed the vast hall below, he could even see the two large yellow and black butterflies that fluttered in, knocked against the pitted gilt mirror and into the arms of the chandelier hanging above. Dieter was hiding, this time behind the marble plinth that stood on the first small landing.

  The space Dieter had squeezed into was tight, but he felt safe, invisible. He was a little mouse hiding. He closed his eyes and wished and wished that the boy wouldn’t find him here.

  A door in the passage below crashed open and he heard the gallop of Saskia and her friends as they ran across the black and white tiles of the hall, squealing. They jumped the chain across the stairs and Dieter shrank back as they thundered closer. He could smell them: fruity with new nail varnish, the scent strong as a bag of pear drops. He heard their giggling gasps, felt their heat; and then they were gone, running past him up the staircase.

  ‘Wait for me! I’m frightened!’ one of them called.

  Dieter peeked out to see the girls circling each gallery, running up, up to the next and then the next floor. They were running up to the attic. The girls’ footsteps were still echoing when Dieter saw a stranger walk in through the open front door.

  It was a man. He stood on the threshold, stared up, and whistled through his teeth. Dieter hunched back down behind the plinth as the man took off his grey hat, walked to the table beneath the gilt mirror and placed the hat there; he ran the fingers of one hand along the edge of the table, blew on his dusty finger, and he whistled again. A grey overcoat hung over his arm, although it was summer, and Dieter watched him tap on a section of the dark wood panels that lined the hall. The two big yellow and black butterflies flitted about him, and he waved them away.

  Dieter had never seen this man before.

  ‘Well,’ the stranger said out loud, and he scratched his head, pushed his glasses up his nose and whistled again.

  He was standing on the bottom tread of the staircase now, straining against the chain that hung between the newel posts. This time the man tapped his fingers on the carved wooden balls of the posts; then he hung his coat on one, shook his head, and sat on the bottom step. He took out a cigarette and he lit it.

  ‘Lily,’ the man said, and Dieter felt strange: he felt like he wanted to run down these stairs and shoo the stranger out and far away.

  There were footsteps coming from the passageway and all at once Ma and Juniper were standing in front of the stranger with empty silver salvers in their hands. Dieter saw his mother’s face fall, and as it did the big silver plate fell too, and by the time that had landed with a crash so loud Dieter had to put his fingers in his ears, Ma was also on the black and white floor; a small and crumpled thing.

  Ma had fainted. If Tommy Perrot were here he’d say she’d gone down like a ton of bricks.

  The stranger sprung up, he cried, ‘Liliana!’

  Dieter didn’t move.

  A black shoe – Ma’s nice high heel, thick and suede – was lying on its side a few inches from her stocking foot. Dieter thought that both the foot and the shoe looked so sad, so helpless, parted like that.

  Strong Black Coffee

  18

  Juniper admired the way Lilia’s forthright nature revealed itself once she came to. Lilia had demanded they take her into the library and close the door, that Dieter should go outside and the guests be asked to leave, she demanded that Saskia and the girls were left to play – they must all keep to the birthday plan, she said, the girls would catch the 4.38 bus into Cheltenham and the girls would see Richard III. Lilia was adamant. Lilia had demanded strong, black coffee.

  Juniper took great pleasure in asking everyone in the reception to go, and with no explanation. She loitered on the threshold of the green room as the guests shuffled past.

  ‘What has happened, Juniper?’

  ‘This is disgraceful.’

  ‘I’ve never been so…’

  ‘Well, really…’

  In truth, Juniper’s enjoyment was rather tempered by her concern for Lilia, and now, as she stood over the
black range in the basement kitchen, she hurried with the bitter coffee. She had opened the back door and fresh summer air wafted down the outside steps; she could hear her dogs tumble in the garden and it calmed her. Juniper cut the dark, heady fruitcake, laid out cups, saucers and small plates. She placed the silver pot of steaming coffee on the tray and added more cake; it seemed these fainting Sugars needed something sweet.

  As she managed the kitchen steps, Juniper considered what sort of scene was being acted out above her in the library: Lilia on the red chaise longue with that strange man at her feet, and outside poor love-struck John Phelps gnashing his teeth at the library window. No, this was rather too Wuthering Heights in tone. The stranger had declared himself to be one ‘Alex’. He had informed them all he was a childhood friend from Germany. Although he didn’t sound overly German to Juniper, his voice was American, like one of her GIs. Still, once Lilia came to, she’d kissed the stranger all over his face, so Juniper suspected he was a long-lost sweetheart and concluded he was telling the truth.

  She stepped into the dark passageway and stopped. Her arms were strong and the tray didn’t wobble but in the damp darkness she shivered, the hairs standing up at the back of her neck. She breathed deep just as her mother had taught her whenever she fell badly from her horse. Juniper steadied herself, and then walked on. In the hall she placed the tray on the table by the gilt mirror, next to the stranger’s grey hat, and walked to the foot of the staircase.

  Juniper needed a pause.

  Sugar Hall had always done this to her, she supposed it was because of the dead. She glanced up at the gallery of the landing, at the portraits of dead Sugars lined up there like so many ducks. Most faces were centuries old, but at the head of the stairs there was the old man Gerald and there was Richard, his eldest boy, to his right. Both had been painted in uniform. There had been a portrait of Peter Sugar there, too; but it made sense that Lilia had taken that down.

  They were all dead. Dead, dead, dead.

  Who knew, Juniper thought as she stretched her legs out, easing the tightness of her morning walk, perhaps Richard would have come a cropper in any case. Perhaps if they hadn’t found him that terrible summer night strung up like gamekeeper’s quarry from the arm of that ancient oak, perhaps he would have simply been shot down in the next war. Perhaps he would have bought it on these country lanes in his new motorcar, toot-tooting like Toad of Toad Hall; perhaps he would have taken a swim in Cannop Ponds one night with too much brandy and too much verve. There were so many possibilities.

  Juniper looked up because something kept tickling the back of her neck, something up there was setting her teeth on edge. She shook her head, there was nothing but shadow. Juniper stood and marched back to the tray; she popped a sugarcube into her mouth because she needed the strength, too. She knew she would be walking into a scene in the library, and how Juniper detested scenes.

  She paused as girlish laughter came from the high landings above. Juniper began to whistle, and she was soothed by the sharp clip of her sensible brown shoes as she strode towards the gaudy red library, the tray in one hand.

  Inside, she poured the strong coffee and they were oblivious to her. The stranger and Lilia were speaking in a language that she could only part understand, she had studied German at school but this was a strange, mangled German. Juniper picked up words, phrases, but then she gave up and picked up the silver tongs to grasp at the sugar cubes; she stirred and the black coffee became thick. She walked to the red chaise longue where Lilia was sitting; the stranger perched on a small pouf at her feet. He was rather like a faithful dog, Juniper thought, a French bulldog perhaps. Lilia truly was a flame, a honeypot, all of those phrases Juniper disliked. For a moment she wondered if she too were simply orbiting around the sweetness of Lilia Sugar.

  ‘Here, Lilia,’ she said, holding out a rose and gold lacquer cup and saucer. ‘Drink.’

  When the stranger took his cup she saw that he was much younger than he seemed, and apart from the way he sat on that pouf he was quite handsome in a darkish way. Juniper liked the way he was solidly built: his black hair was so admirably thick, though in need of a trim. She was wondering if she should stay when Lilia looked up at her, took her hand and squeezed it.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘please sit, Juniper.’

  Lilia didn’t introduce the man or offer the space next to her, and Juniper was glad. She wanted to distance herself from their shocked faces, their odd muttering, and the cloying atmosphere that hugged them.

  Juniper settled in a rather pleasing Queen Anne chair by the bay windows. The chair was slightly turned away from the pair and Juniper stared out at the lawns as she sipped her sweet coffee. She hated sweet coffee. She also hated the garish red of this room. A library should relax a person but here the frighteningly red carpet, the thick sponge-like wallpaper (embossed with the black silhouettes of butterflies in an attempt – Juniper could only fathom – at relief) made it a Maharaja’s Palace and not conducive to reading at all. Butterflies and moths: mad Gerald had been obsessed. He’d once shown her his collection in some locked room upstairs. ‘My husks’, he called them.

  Sunlight hit her sensibly shoed foot and she felt its warmth penetrate the leather. She took the teaspoon from the saucer and used its end to clean under her nails, and by the time she noticed the voices were talking in English, Juniper was drenched in sun.

  ‘So many years I have been writing, writing,’ the man was saying. He sounded a little more German now beneath the American twang.

  There were heavy beats of silence.

  ‘Do you know…’ the man asked.

  ‘No,’ Lilia said.

  Another beat of silence.

  Juniper wanted to block her ears, instead she gazed out at the mangled red gardens and tried not to listen.

  ‘America is a long way to come.’

  ‘I have business here. In London.’

  ‘That’s a long way to come. London to here.’

  ‘It is nothing, Lily, nothing!’

  ‘How did you find me here?’

  ‘I went to Churchill Gardens. What a name, Lily! Your neighbour she gave me the forwarding address.’

  ‘But how did you find me…’

  ‘Lily…’

  ‘I thought. Alex, I thought…’

  There was silence again, and then Lilia’s voice was less than a whisper. ‘Tell me where in America, Alex? What do you do? Oh, Alex, you are here…’

  Juniper began to tap the small teaspoon on the arm of the chair because she hated to hear these intimacies, these silences heavy with things she had already guessed at. She knew what Lilia’s story must be, and how the poor girl got out of Germany in time was a miracle. She obviously had nobody left, but now this stranger had appeared: it was too, too much for Juniper. To stop herself eavesdropping, she found herself humming Edwin’s song, the poor dead RAF pilot’s song, until the words came to her in whispers. ‘We came from way out West, we came to do our best … to fight for right and against the might of the Nazi terrorist.’

  Edwin had been so unbearably young.

  ‘We have our boys in blue, in grey and khaki too, we’ll sing our song and they’ll fight along against Nazi terrorist,’ she trilled.

  Juniper wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, and then she had to smile at her ridiculous show; the cloying atmosphere in here was catching. Sentimental fool. She stretched her foot out further and noticed two moths with wings patterned like bark on the bright panes of the windows; they were completely still, stunned by the light. It took a few moments for her to notice a heavier silence and then to look across to find Lilia and the stranger, Alex, staring at her with shocked faces.

  ‘Oh, please don’t mind me, I was…’ but Juniper didn’t know what she was doing; it was too much sherry and too much sweet black coffee. It was too much drama and this room really was too red. ‘Do forgive me. I was daydreaming.’ She cleared her throat and stood.

  She was sick of indolence; she should
be out with her spaniels.

  The teaspoon dropped to the floor and she smoothed down her tweed skirt. ‘Lilia, dear, please, don’t take offence,’ she said because Lilia’s face was quite a picture. Strong, robust, she marched over to her. ‘And now that you are recovered I must be going. Thank you for such a marvellous afternoon.’ She suddenly whispered because she was afraid words might damage her friend in some way. ‘My dear, I will come over with the vitamins we talked of, and brewer’s yeast, you do look a fright.’

  Juniper took Lilia’s hand from her lap and tried to squeeze it. She leant over and pecked her on the cheek, but it was like kissing a hung and plucked bird. There’s no life in it, Juniper thought, and there should be, there should be! For a moment she was angry. As for the stranger, Alex, he didn’t move from the leather pouf, he simply blinked. When Juniper opened the door, Dieter walked in looking as pale and bereft as his mother.

  ‘There’s fruitcake on the tray, you should eat a little,’ she told him, ‘you don’t want to faint again. Make sure your mother takes some, too.’

  Juniper left the room.

  Outside, as she strode down the potholed drive, relieved to be in the fresh air, she called her dogs to heel. She hated to see them so skittish but they always were up here at the Hall. Next time she would leave them at home. She stopped suddenly and glanced back at the grand facade of the ugly place, at the dark stone; at the great pillars, bigger than they needed to be. She noticed that raven of John’s on the peak of the porch. It was cawing, over and over, caw-caw-caw.

  Ravens were omens, weren’t they?

  Juniper heard girlish screams from inside and the hair rose once again at the back of her neck, then she remembered Saskia’s party. Of course, Saskia and her friends were still playing in there, causing havoc.

  ‘To heel! To heel!’ she cried at her spaniels.

  As Juniper straddled the first stile, she looked back at the Hall. Juniper knew what haunted meant; she had known since she first walked into Sugar Hall that hot summer between the wars. She knew about the ghost too, though she had never seen him. The fact of ‘the Slave Boy’ – as they called him in the village – was common knowledge and had been for years. The ghost simply was, like the apple trees along the tennis courts here, like the forest plantation behind this monstrous eyesore of a house. Juniper wasn’t quite sure if she believed in this ghost or not but she knew this didn’t matter. She had never mentioned it to Lilia and Lilia had never mentioned anything to her.