The Amber Shadows

by Lucy Ribchester

  Honey’s mouth began to drop, but she couldn’t scream.

  Swiftly, very swiftly, a smear of a man’s shape shuffled into the frame of the panes and wrestled the fallen blind back up.

  The spectacle vanished. The dark folded in. But still she stared.

  It had been real. It — they — had been real. She recreated the image in her head immediately, placing each object, each curved hump, each glance on each painting’s face into a picture, until she thought she had a grasp on what she’d seen. But as the night reached back round her the details began to falter. Had she seen men seated round the dining table, or was it just the paintings? She had thought in that moment she knew what she was looking at. But now she was not so sure. Her heart was going like the clappers. The rush of blood to her hands and head told her it had been real. She looked up; the chimney continued to pump smoke, the cream walls were leaking again sounds of talk and laughter.

  As she completed her walk home to Yew Tree Cottage she felt queasy. Her fingers fumbled on the gate’s catch. She removed her gloves with her teeth and fiddled with the icy iron.

  In her bedroom she switched on the wireless and turned the dial until she found music, enough to drown out the play Mrs Steadman was listening to below. She could hear Rebecca’s footsteps in her room across the hallway, Mr Steadman coughing catarrh in the bathroom and spitting. With a still-thudding heart she reached into the lining of her coat and retrieved the parcel. Carefully she untucked the ends of the paper. This time the tin was French: Butter and Fruit Satines. Inside it had been padded with tissue. The shape was the same, a small square of brown hard gem, snapped into mosaic shards then stuck and sanded back together. Like the other tablet there was a sandwich of fine foil between the two mosaic sides, a rougher, stickier coating on one side and a high gloss on the other. Now she shivered. On the wireless the pips beeped in preparation for the nine o’clock news, and they somehow felt shocking against the raw, secret ancient amber weight, shadowed in the naked palm of her hand.

  Chapter 5

  By the time the third parcel came along Honey hardly felt surprise, only a queer stab of something anticipated with fear.

  That afternoon they had broken the Vulture key again. In the wave of intercepts came numbers and names of ammunition, weaponry, unit commanders. Then as the tapes hammered on, other lists came firing out. KLEIN 175, DRESSLER 150, HUBER 5.

  It reminded Honey with chilling precision of the decrypts that had come through last summer, as Hitler broke his pact with Stalin and the Nazi armies moved into the east. The lists had begun then, pouring into the Park, German commanders recognisable by name, each followed by a number. She had seen them then as she did now for what they were: the killers had names, the murdered only numbers.

  She felt ice in her blood when she saw the parcel in the messenger girl’s hands, wet from the drizzle outside, cross-tied with string and creased at the corners. The smudge of the censor’s crown was there again in the middle. The parcel was bulkier this time. As she took it she felt through its wrapper soft newspaper or butter muslin distorting the shape inside. The messenger girl handed over the rest of her goodies to the others and left.

  There was a box of coffee for Beatrix from home and a card from Mooden’s aunt with an ice-skating snowman on it. She pinned it on the board. Its head looked like a frosty Halloween pumpkin; pebble teeth, coal for eyes. The coffee took precedence for excitement. Beatrix opened the bag and they passed it round, closing their eyes, shutting out the messages from the machines in front of them, inhaling.

  ‘Early Christmas present, Honey?’ Miss Mooden asked. ‘You have a thoughtful family. You got one yesterday too. You can open it here if you like. Don’t be shy.’

  Honey’s hand slid over the Russian lettering on the stamp. She tried to look nonchalant but she wasn’t slick enough. Moira caught her eye, opened her cherry-red mouth, then closed it again. There was a question on her face. Honey’s throat froze; she couldn’t think of a lie. Words had just about formed in her head when Moira said, ‘Smells like soap. Doesn’t your stepfather own a soap factory?’

  ‘Yes, it does rather, doesn’t it?’ She breathed out.

  ‘Are you going to open it?’ said Mooden.

  The clock seemed to halt for a second. Once again panic dried out her tongue.

  But Moira jumped in. ‘You can’t tell her to open her bloody Christmas presents early! What kind of person does that? Few enough presents this year by the looks of the shops.’ She flicked her hair over her shoulder and went back to typing.

  Honey dropped the parcel out of sight, underneath her chair, and went back to her own pile of work. She caught Moira’s look from the corner of her eye, so swift she could have missed it. And a tiny smile too. But she knew that look. Moira thought she had a secret sweetheart. Silk knickers from the front line or some American with blackmarket chums, that was probably what she thought. No matter, she had saved her blushes and that was all that mattered.

  At lunch Honey managed to swallow a crumbling corned beef and mustard sandwich and some of Beatrix’s coffee, black. As soon as four o’clock changeover arrived she slipped from the room like a thief.

  Wednesdays were bath days. Honey had forgotten until she opened the door, smelled zinc and saw Mr Steadman’s oily overalls steeping in a bucket just inside. The water was still warm and filled the hall with a tepid cloud. Even the beak on Mrs Steadman’s luminous bird had curled upwards as if in disgust.

  ‘There’s water if you want a bath,’ Mrs Steadman shouted through the crack in the parlour door.

  Honey had thought this was a joke when she first moved in. The idea that Mr Steadman’s oily water was to be used for bathing once it had stripped his clothes of grease seemed worse than ludicrous. She soon found out that Mrs Steadman never joked, especially where household matters were concerned. Rebecca, who had arrived first, had slipped a note under her door – ‘There’s a bath house in the manor, free to use’. Honey bathed there once a week now, on Sundays before or after shift. Still every Wednesday the pageant had to be performed.

  ‘Lovely, Mrs Steadman. I’ll prepare the bathroom.’

  The Steadmans were proud to have a fully functioning bathroom, built in a lean-to off the kitchen — the ‘scullery’ Mrs Steadman called it — by the man of the house, with his wife as chief decorator. Their tastes had clashed on certain things. The toilet bowl was chintzy, with painted flowers and a delicate neck. But the hole hacked into the floor was too wide, meaning the linoleum flapped a few inches around its edges. Occasionally you’d hear or see a spider or mouse investigating the gap.

  Half of the bathroom had been carved from the old pantry and they’d left that part of the wall as it was, backed with sticky lino and oilcloth printed with pastel flowers. The old crockery sideboard now formed the linen closet. Behind the skirting boards on the outside wall beetles and more mice scuttled. The toilet flushed, but there was a flush curfew and you couldn’t use it after eight p.m. or Mrs Steadman’s bedtime, whichever came first.

  Honey went in and dragged the copper tub into position, close to the bathroom door. She propped it so it halfblocked the entrance. Mr Steadman had once walked in on her, and though he had apologised he hadn’t blushed.

  Upstairs in her bedroom she fetched a towel, some lavender soap from the factory, and a tub of cold cream; accoutrements of the Bathtime Lie. She took the pencil tin with the first piece of amber from where she had hidden it under a pile of laundry, and the satines tin with the second piece from the bottom drawer of her chest.

  Downstairs she could hear the wet overalls being removed from the zinc bucket, and the terrifying scrape of the mangle on the scullery linoleum. Mr Steadman was groaning as he heaved the bucket towards the bathroom. She arrived just in time to see him slopping it over the piece of carpet on the threshold.

  He pushed back the door. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said, waddling in inch by inch. As he tipped the horrid contents into the copper bath, splashes rained up onto his pu
llover. He dried his hands on his front, leaving dark fingerprints, and backed out of the room, the bucket rattling.

  She smiled, thanked him again and closed the door.

  With her knees she nudged the bathtub until it crept over the doorframe and was flush against the warped wood panels. She hovered her hand over the surface of the water; blood temperature, on a cold day. Grey particles and ribbons of oil swirled on the surface. Where the copper shone, the water looked brown.

  Usually at this point she’d light a cigarette and pull out a mystery novel – Ethel Lina White or John Dickson Carr. There would be a twenty-minute window during which she was supposed to relax and bathe, but instead she’d try to solve a murder and forget she had filthy skinflints for billeters. Tonight however she squatted down on the lino and braced her back against the frigid ceramic of the toilet bowl. The windows on the lean-to wall had been pasted over with brown paper for the blackout. A blue glass shade covered the gaslamp on the wall above the bath, giving the room a cold romantic glow, the strangeness of something on the silver screen.

  The latest package the messenger girl had given her had dried out now, the paper stiff and salty. As fast as she could she tore the wrapper away and found buried inside layers of tissue paper a red Brussels-branded Turkish delight box. The gaudy rose colour turned violet in the blue light. She sliced the wax seal open with her nails and pulled the lid. The panel tumbled out hard.

  Now there were three.

  Honey picked them up one by one, rolling her palms over their smoothness. She propped them against the side of the copper tub. The capillaries between the shards took on a new colour in the colder light.

  Four by four inches each; brown; honey-coloured, the mosaics all glued together then smoothed. She got to her feet, picked one up and held it closer to the blue lamp. Hazy browns and umber knots burned through the tint. Her finger came to rest on a rough ridge running along the bottom of the square. She picked at it for a second, then brought the panel closer. Along one side of the piece, about an inch from the bottom edge, ran a straight line, grooved, not very deep and not very wide. She tilted it and checked the opposite edge. There was the same groove. On the third side she found the same, but the fourth was smooth.

  She picked up the other two pieces. They too were each gouged, this time only with a single tram-line, gritty and hidden by their pattern, along one edge. She placed them down on the floor again, beside one another, standing on end, then fiddled to see if she could slot them together. It took a bit of wiggling but it worked. Now she was faced with three sides of a box, and a groove running right round the base, as if it was missing its bottom. Carefully she turned it topsy-turvy. Maybe it was missing its top too.

  Either way, there were more pieces to come. Bracing it in both hands, for the joints were not steady, she held it closer to the blue light.

  Sounds were travelling through the warped door. Mrs Steadman was cranking the mangle, pinching the waterlogged overalls between its rolls. She was humming ‘South of the Border’.

  Honey leaned an inch closer to the lamp and her heel slipped on the lino. She was flung forward just slowly enough to glimpse the splodge of rainbow-silvered petroleum on the surface of the water that came looming towards her. Her tendon yanked and her knee crunched on the floor. The amber flew out of her palms, spiralling upwards, separating out into its three flat panels, and making three flat wet smacks in the filthy bath. She managed to grab the edge of the copper tub just in time to stop her face from following them.

  ‘Rats!’ She pushed her leg out in front and stretched her ankle until it crunched. She rubbed her knee, then peeled up her sleeves, tucking them beyond her elbows.

  The feel of the oil on the surface of the water was appalling; a horrendous festering grey. It gave her the shivers not to see what she was wading her hand through. Imagination conjured water voles, a tropical snake, a piranha – the water was the right temperature for one to lurk — waiting to snap off her fingers. After a few swills she swallowed her revulsion and plunged for the gritty bottom. Her fingers landed on a hard corner. She pulled the piece out. Oily water dripped down its surface.

  Keeping it at arm’s length from her ivory blouse she reached for the pile of newspaper squares on the spike beside the toilet bowl, and tore free a handful. She left the papers blotting the slice while she went fishing for the second one. This time round she found gummed papers and saturated tickets near the bottom; things the old man had kept in his pocket and forgotten to take out before handing over the overalls for their wash. In the crevices of the copper base there was a sludge of crumbs. She held back her nausea, ignored the smell and slid her palm flat to the far end. There it was. As she began to withdraw her arm from the murk, the panel slipped again, and slapped the water. She caught it floating and scooped her palm underneath to stop it from slipping. There was something very slick on the surface of this one, the texture of butter, stopping her from gaining purchase.

  As with the other, once it was out of the tub she snatched off a wodge of cut newspapers to wipe it down. She placed both in the sink and cranked open the stiff tap, letting a trickle of cool water spill down into the bowl. Carefully she rinsed each piece, turning them over to clean both sides. It was only then that she noticed the buttery substance was on both, and was not washing off but beginning to turn firm and smooth again. She took her index fingernail and scraped it down the surface of one of the slabs. It brought with it a little fragmented curl of brown.

  Wax.

  She tried again. More scraped off. The second piece lying underneath was still warm, having only had the slopping dregs of the clean cold tap water. Honey smudged the surface with her thumb. The coating shifted easily. She rubbed harder and a sleek section of amber became clear. She held it cautiously to the gaslamp above the bath. Tinted paraffin wax was spread in a messy map of fingerprints across the surface.

  Hastily she dipped both pieces back in the tepid water and swilled them around, scratching with all her fingernails to remove the coating. It was sticky but her nails were sharp and it came off in small drifting parings until the surfaces felt more or less smooth. There was some alcohol or chemical in the water, coming off Steadman’s overalls, that seemed to help dissolve it.

  Not caring about the mess any more she took her towel and dipped it underneath the surface and scrubbed hard until she felt the polished amber flush on each piece. She found the third part, still lurking in the filthy water, and tried that one too. When she was done, her flannel towel was fungal brown. But beneath her fingers each small slab of amber had sprung a texture.

  She took the pieces out and lined them up again as she had before, against the copper. Now they all looked polished, as shiny and hard as marble. But here and there when she placed her fingertip flat, there was a roughness, a scratch, a lip.

  She dragged the slopping tub out of harm’s way and held one piece as close to the blue lamp as it would go. The lamp was curved, and ended in a glass bell, but up close its beam was strong, spilling fish-silver rays into the amber, making a stained-glass window of the piece. She did it to each in turn, her breath quickening by the second. As the blue glow leeched and spread its way through the hard ancient sap, it lit up each carefully made slice with a kaleidoscope of images, a labyrinth of patterns that made Honey’s flesh prickle hot and cold at the same time.

  There were letters.

  Chapter 6

  Since the spring of 1941 she had spent six days a week staring at blocks of scrambled letters. But to see before her this calligraphied gobbledygook, carved with care and effort — for the amber was not soft – struck her dumb.

  The letters traced a path up and down, curling round loops of vines, leaves, feathers and long-tailed birds shying behind creepers. It was effortful, it was intricate. As she followed the path with her finger, she picked out the spare bits of wax gummed into the ridges. Someone had created the route lovingly, then covered it all away. There was beauty in it, even without any meaning; a surfac
e image, then an invitation to something else. Lift the carving of one of the leaves and see what you find — something on the forest bed, something closer to the roots.

  The script the carver had used was gothic, tailed and tapered on the ends of the letters. There was something arch about it that fitted its mystery. Whatever was written there wound and turned when you least expected it to change direction. The back panel was free of letters but covered in images of birds, long-feathered, drawn thickly, haughty-necked and with wise human eyes. It had the look of medieval woodcutting. The path picked up again on the other side with the same curling letters. It reminded Honey of a theatre’s proscenium arch and curtain, framing for now an empty space.

  ‘Have you drowned in there?’ A broom beat against the door and her heart sprang. Her thoughts shook to the ground. Trembling, she dismantled the panels, bundled them into the stinking towel, and slipped off her stockings. Time for the most unpleasant part of the deceit.

  She lifted each leg in turn to the icy trickle from the tap and wet her feet. With her spare hand she flicked a bit of freezing water through her hair. The cold shocked her scalp. She looked down at the bundle of amber poking out from the towel. It was still there, still carved. She hadn’t dreamt it.

  ‘Finished,’ she shouted back. She rattled the tub, shaking the water about, and made two thumps of bare footsteps; code for ‘finished’.

  ‘Knock Rebecca on your way up. She’ll want the water.’

  Honey’s breath was still running fast and short when she closed the door of her bedroom. She could hear Rebecca padding the landing; her turn for act two of Bathtime Lie.

  The patch underneath Honey’s rag-knot rug had already been toasted warm by Mrs Steadman’s fire. Now the house was silent. Mr and Mrs Steadman never argued about silly things, the way her mother and Henry argued when she was little, the way they continued to fight always, on trips or at picnics. She wondered at what stage a couple stopped arguing and simply ceased to talk.