Sugar Hall

by Tiffany Murray

  There was a knock at the door.

  Bonzo growled.

  ‘Mrs Bledsoe?’

  Juniper shook herself. The girl standing at the open door was Hannah, one of the auctioneer staff; a sweet and pretty thing with charming glasses who insisted on wearing a ponytail. Still so young, Juniper thought.

  ‘Mrs Bledsoe, I am terribly sorry, but we’re locking up soon.’

  Juniper smiled; it amused her how these auctioneers felt they owned the place already. She patted the arms of the Queen Anne chair. ‘This chair, Hannah, what lot number is this old thing?’

  ‘Is there a ticket?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t seem so.’

  ‘I’d have to check, Mrs Bledsoe.’

  ‘Could you, dear?’ Juniper smiled.

  ‘We are locking up. I’m not sure if…’

  ‘That is so kind.’ Juniper’s tone was final: she wanted to be left for a while longer. Then she noticed something in Hannah’s hand: Bonzo whined.

  ‘What is that dreadful thing?’

  Hannah giggled, ‘Oh, this? We found it under a pillow in the…’ her smile disappeared. ‘In the, the little boy’s room.’

  ‘Bring it here,’ Juniper said and Hannah – a good girl – did what she was told.

  It was a cloth doll, quite delicately made but rather startling. It looked ancient and it wore the blue livery of a servant. Juniper touched the life like hair on its head and a shudder went through her. As she held its body it seemed to crunch beneath her fingers. Bonzo trembled at her ankles.

  ‘Take it away, Hannah, there’s a good girl. If I were you I’d burn it.’

  ‘Oh, I can’t do that, Mrs. Bledsoe, it’s in the inventory now.’

  Juniper stared at the face of the doll: the eyes, nose and lips were made with terribly precise white, red and brown stitches. ‘You go on now, Hannah,’ she said, ‘take it.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Ten minutes, dear. You will give me ten minutes.’

  Hannah took back the doll and when she closed the door Bonzo settled.

  Juniper thought of the room above her: Lilia’s room, Saskia’s room, Dieter’s room. The worst thing had been packing the clothes, the personal items up there. She had had to see to those. She’d steeled herself and spent a whole morning packing the boy’s things up in a leather suitcase, folding Lilia’s pretty dresses, her framed photographs, and she’d stacked Saskia’s books. Juniper had been glad to be alone because she had made the most dreadful fuss. Not since the Brigadier died had she made such a scene: she’d had to bathe her eyes with cucumber and cold teabags when she returned home. It was the smell of the family in those clothes; it was the comfort of that smell. Juniper had her man take the three leather cases and the trunk of Peter’s possessions to her house and they now sat in one of the locked rooms she never used. It wasn’t until Saskia had written to her that she could ask what to do with them. ‘I don’t care,’ Saskia replied. ‘I don’t want anything from that place.’

  The library door opened again, but it wasn’t Hannah.

  ‘Mrs Bledsoe, there you are!’

  Juniper straightened her back as the vicar, Ambrose, and his tepid wife, Daphne, walked into the library. Juniper didn’t stand up.

  ‘We have come for a private view,’ he smiled.

  Bonzo barked.

  ‘Steady,’ Juniper muttered. ‘Wait.’

  ‘It is such a pity about the collection, such a pity,’ Ambrose was walking towards her, ‘who would have done such a thing? I mean, who, Mrs Bledsoe?’

  ‘What are you talking about, Ambrose?’

  ‘Why the collection of course. Old Sugar’s magnificent lepidoptera collection. The butterflies and moths, dear…’

  ‘I am aware of the term “lepidoptera”, Vicar…’

  ‘Well, did you not know the old man had a whole room here? I had hoped to see it this summer, at the girl’s party. But now the auctioneers tell me it was completely ruined, smashed, vandalised. Nothing left.’

  ‘Terrible,’ Daphne said.

  ‘Every last specimen taken, who could have done such a thing, Mrs Bledsoe? Who?’

  Juniper suddenly found the fight in her was gone: all at once she couldn’t care less what this foolish man was implying. If he wanted to believe that Lilia had left Sugar Hall to bury her young son with a suitcase full of dead moths and butterflies, then so be it.

  Bonzo growled at her feet.

  The vicar twitched. ‘In a strange way I hope they were stolen, I do hope that poor troubled child didn’t simply smash the whole room, or…’

  Juniper pressed her finger and thumb to the bridge of her nose; she wanted to block the vicar out.

  Something had caught his eye and Ambrose was striding over to a painting up against a red wall. ‘But this,’ he said, and he knelt to tap the gilt frame. ‘This once hung in the reception, did it not?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Juniper sighed.

  ‘Yes, this would do very well, very well for my study.’

  He picked it up, and held it above him. Juniper watched Daphne pick up a big silver cake knife from the collection of cutlery on the main table. The vicar walked to the window with the painting.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Yes. Quite. Of course there is damage. Right through the figures here. I remember now. The boy, that poor, odd boy, he attacked it, didn’t he? With a knife. Do you remember, Mrs Bledsoe? Daphne?’

  ‘Yes,’ Daphne said, her eyes still on the silver. She put the cake knife down.

  Juniper gazed at the painting and the small slash through it, because she did remember. Perhaps that had been the beginning of it all. Dieter had behaved so strangely, a carving knife in his hand and his eyes glazed as if he was in a trance; and all she had done was dismiss him. She’d told him to go outside and play with her dogs. She felt the nausea of guilt as she stared at the painting.

  It wasn’t much to report: a family portrait. Eighteenth century, she’d written up the note for the catalogue. Ancient Sugars were arranged beneath a large oak tree, the Hall behind them. The women wore delicate gowns and tall wigs but of course they were rather damaged now. To the left of the picture there was a beautiful bay horse and a servant boy in blue livery holding its reins.

  Juniper frowned.

  ‘Yes, this will do quite well,’ the vicar said. He looked down at her. ‘Perhaps I can purchase it direct, Juniper? An auction is such a public thing.’

  Juniper tapped her foot on the ground. Bonzo snarled.

  ‘Wait,’ Juniper muttered to her dog, ‘good boy. Wait.’

  Epilogue, September 12th, 1965

  34

  Her hands had suffered most and Lilia was glad she’d been forced to wear gloves. They were huge gloves, thick, red and plastic, but she hardly noticed in her uniform (if it could be called that: a green, faded overall she had to darn every few months).

  The noise of the milking factory was worse than the gloves or the uniform, but she’d been here so long she believed she’d gone a little deaf. The constant chug of the machines, the roar of the lorries and the awful yell of those cows had seen to that.

  Lilia had been here for six years; she’d spent four years before this trying to get back to her old home but there were new borders. Always borders were in her way, and so Lilia had settled for the first thing she’d found: the milking factory.

  Lilia had always hated cows: now she pitied them.

  It was truly mind numbing and this was a blessing; through the long days she didn’t have to think, and so the nights were her own.

  At four o’clock the buzzers blasted and Lilia could pack up, fold her overall into a plastic bag, and leave. It was the same every day. She waited at the bus stop outside the factory with the other women (they ignored her now; at first they had tried with pleasantries but nothing had come of it). They thought she was strange, English and strange, and something about this made Lilia want to laugh. Or cry. She hardly knew anymore. Lilia would settle into the back seat of the bus, next to the windo
w.

  This morning she had received a brief letter from Saskia, who wrote a few times a year to say, ‘Look after yourself, Mother. The children send their regards to their grandmother and they wish they could see her again.’

  Of course when Saskia married and when she started with those many, many children, Lilia had saved and she had taken the train and the boat back to England. But in the end it had been too much. She had visited four times over the last ten years, once for the wedding and three times for each of the earlier children; for the last two she had sent cards and fruit cake.

  Lilia climbed the stairs to her flat, she had been lucky to get it, and for what it was, it pleased her. There were four flights to walk and though it kept her fit, it didn’t keep her from feeling old.

  Forty-one, I am only forty-one, she thought, but recently Lilia had had to catch her breath.

  As she stood inside her hallway and locked and bolted her door, she placed the plastic bag with her dirty overall on the small hall table and cried, ‘Hello, hello!’

  A big tortoiseshell cat trotted from behind the bathroom door: he liked to sleep in the bidet and she didn’t begrudge him. Too many years in England had Lilia confused by the bidet; and so it was the cat’s bed.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, ‘hello, my boy.’

  The lazy cat purred a lazy purr and dropped to the floor, belly up. They would share supper tonight, he and she. Lilia had bought chicken legs and she was going to roast them with thyme and honey.

  It was time to soak her hands and her feet in salt water, to listen to her radio and to treat herself to the last of the whisky.

  It was going to be a feast tonight.

  It would be quiet too, not that Lilia minded the noise in these flats. At times her neighbours’ lives were a comfort but the four young girls next door were gone for three days. ‘We’re off to the big city, Ma,’ they told her because they thought she was so much older (Lilia had long forgotten about colouring her hair and when she first grew the blonde out she’d been shocked to find her roots were white: quite white. She was used to it now).

  ‘There’s a big concert and we’re going East!’ the skinniest of the girls told her.

  ‘Yeah,’ another said.

  ‘And they’ll be there, The Rolling Stones!’ and the skinny girl had screamed as loud as murder down their stairwell. Lilia had laughed. She tried to remember her name, was it Petra or Patrina?

  ‘Be careful,’ she told them, ‘you have to be careful out there, don’t forget your papers.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Ma.’

  ‘Do you want me to watch your flat?’

  ‘No, Ma…’

  ‘Where will you stay?’ Lilia held onto her door handle, her cheek against the edge of the wood; she liked these girls, they were bright and silly but she wouldn’t let them in.

  ‘Oh, Ma, we’ll sleep in the park, at the train station, Berlin’s safe!’

  They laughed.

  ‘And if it’s not, they’ll have us to battle with!’

  ‘You have fun. Please be careful.’

  ‘I’m going to kiss Mick Jagger!’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Lilia smiled.

  ‘I’m going to screw Brian Jones!’

  ‘Sh! Girls, be quiet, you know Mr Steingräber will be out any moment yelling at you.’ Lilia laughed, but she had to close her door: these modern girls were priceless.

  The chicken legs were crisping and Lilia settled into her armchair by the window. Once she stopped visiting Saskia in England, this chair had been her treat. She drank the whisky from her cut-glass tumbler as she watched her nameless and lazy cat think about jumping on her lap.

  ‘Come on, you can do it,’ she coaxed.

  It flicked the tip of its tail but didn’t move.

  The evening September sun was still warm and Lilia relished the last of it on her face. She closed her eyes, listened to the silence, and tried to get the pulsing chug of those milking machines out of her mind, out of her bones – though her foot still tapped to their rhythm. That pulse was in her blood now.

  Lilia sighed and wondered if all her hard work would ever be over, her days at the factory, her nights at the University and the buses in between. She did wonder what she had done it for, that study. Did she think she could work as a translator? Did she think she could find a proper job in Paris, London, in New York? Was she going to call up Alex Behr out of the blue after all these years?

  ‘Hello, Alex?’ she would say and he would cry, ‘Lily! Oh, my Lily!’

  She opened her eyes.

  No: this was too much. Lilia sighed and she tried a different daydream. After all, this was her favourite time, when she could lie here in her own place with her own whisky and her own cat and dream of possibilities. She had to. She had to block the other thoughts out.

  As the rhythm of those fading milk-pumps ran around her system and her left foot tapped it out, Lilia thought of someone else. She liked to think they would meet by chance – suddenly, joyfully – on a street: Paris, perhaps (because Lilia had loved to read old copies of Paris Match for her French exams). Yes, they’d meet on the Rue St Germain, or maybe a boulevard, any of those boulevards. At first they would be too startled to talk, the shock would freeze them, but soon it would be Juniper who would laugh and open her arms while Lilia rushed in and burrowed into that smell of tweed and dog. The street would be empty and they would walk, arms linked, to the Luxembourg Gardens. Here, Juniper would laugh again, and point out the wonderful line of fanned pear trees and how abundant they were. She’d pick one and hold it out and Lilia would bite into it. They’d find a pretty bar, Art Nouveau; yes, an Art Nouveau bar on the Left Bank. There they would drink Pernod and Lilia would giggle at the magic of it: how the wondrous little drink turned to opaque cloud once the water was added.

  In her chair, Lilia licked her lips and the cat finally jumped into her lap.

  Lilia had to settle herself again. She was truly fanciful tonight: she closed her eyes once more and rubbed the cat’s ears.

  It had been such a long time since he took a breath, the headiness of cat litter and coffee was a shock. A fat tortoiseshell growled from his mother’s lap. Dieter shuddered. Death had given him a fear of cats.

  He watched his mother, he often did.

  She hasn’t taken care of herself, he thought, not in the way I would – if that was my body. Dieter sighed; Ma had let herself go.

  Gla-mour, he mouthed.

  At least he hadn’t aged. Not a wink, not a whisker: in appearance at least. Dieter was a boy, he wore shorts; his blond hair was cut to a short back and sides.

  He sat on the floor by her chair, staring up.

  Dieter tried to concentrate.

  Today he was going to do it. He didn’t know why he had chosen today to touch her. The passage of time in living terms; the hours, minutes, days, meant little to Dieter: it was simply a case of here he was and this is what he intended to do.

  He grabbed her hand and she twisted on that armchair in her sleep.

  Dieter smiled and sat up; he knelt in front of her like a little supplicant. He brought her hand to his lips. He pointed one of her swollen fingers out; he opened his mouth and then he bit. The cat hissed.

  When Lilia woke to the cat scratching and biting her hand she pushed him off her lap.

  ‘Bad, bad boy!’ she said and she sucked the blood from the cut on her index finger. She was a little dazed and shocked: the cat was so fat and docile he had never done such a thing before. ‘No supper for you!’ she cried.

  Later, as she brushed her teeth and picked out the pieces of meat, she watched the cat. He was back to his old self, preening his fur in the bidet, the shine of chicken skin glossy on his face because Lilia couldn’t deny him. She looked at the plaster on her finger: it wasn’t such a deep cut.

  ‘I wash myself, you should wash yourself,’ she told him, and she spat out her toothpaste.

  She examined herself in the full-length bathroom mirror as she did every night. Her le
gs were wonderfully shapely; the stairs had seen to that. The rest, though, was bloated. The cream, the butter: the cheese; it had taken its toll.

  It wasn’t over yet: she was sure. ‘Forty-one, I am only forty-one,’ she said. Maybe she would change her hair: her white hair. In the next moment she was promising herself she’d write to Juniper, it was her turn after all. The last she heard, Juniper had begged a visit, ‘because, really my dear, it is quite too long and life, as you know, is so very, very short.’

  Lilia thought of her suitcase, waiting mouth open on the floor of her bedroom. She had brought it up from the basement yesterday evening: she was ready for something, though what she hardly knew. The lazy fat cat twirled in and out of her legs and purred.

  ‘Yes, we are ready, it is time for bed, for sleep,’ she said, and she switched off the bathroom light.

  It was strange, for a moment – the moment between light and darkness – she thought she saw something in the bathroom mirror; it was behind her, a flicker, an outline.

  It was a boy.

  Lilia’s heart swelled, she turned, because it could be true, because miracles do happen. The cat spat and hissed and she switched the light back on.

  There was nothing there.

  Lilia forced herself to swallow: she forced the familiar creep of sadness to her extremities, to her fingers, her toes, where it could always be within reach. She’d had too much whisky. She knelt down and picked up the big cat: he would sleep with her tonight.

  ‘It is time,’ she muttered, ‘time for bed, time to sleep.’

  Acknowledgements

  Huge thanks to my editor Penny Thomas, and to my agent Veronique Baxter, and Laura West, at David Higham Associates. Also to Simon Hicks, Sarah Davies and Mick Felton at Seren. To the Hay Festival and Arts Council of Wales, I can’t thank you enough for the International Fellowship year that gave me (among many other things) the chance to meet Eme De Mario in Xalapa, Mexico. Mario, thank you for these amazing illustrations, and bountiful thanks to Peter Florence, Lyndy Cooke, Becky Shaw, Cristina Fuentes La Roche, and María Sheila Cremaschi for the best festival support. I’m very grateful also to Nina Steingräber for the Yiddish and German translation, and to Silvia Gutiérrez for the English to Spanish translation. Thanks also to Claire Berliner, Andy Squiff at Squiff Creative Media and to Victoria Thorley for the wonderful moth on the cover.