Skyfire

by Sam Galliford

  The candlelight in the hallway caught the lines in Mother’s face, and her voice was cut with fear.

  “Alice, go get some clothes on or you’ll catch your death. Sharp now, put on your coat and shoes and bring our bairn’s coat down too.”

  Alice raced upstairs to obey.

  “You stay with me our bairn,” Mother cooed. “You just stay with me.”

  She buried herself in Mother’s neck and enjoyed the comfort of the instinctive jigging.

  “Alice, Alice!” shouted Mother.

  “Coming, our mam.”

  A thudding of feet down the stairs brought a panting Alice into view.

  “All here then?” Granddad bellowed above the roar of the skyfire and the popping of guns from near the Works. “Right then, we’ll be away. Keep close and mind your footing.”

  He led off swinging a lantern for them all to follow.

  The night was clear and cold but the skyfire shone down enough light for them to see their way. Mother’s chest was creaking with each breath as the low path by the railway line became the high path past the allotments, and on up the hillside to where the men of Low Felderby had hollowed out some dugouts for them to shelter in.

  “Keep up, our Alice. Don’t get behind. Keep up,” Mother panted.

  Mother was only little, not like great tall Granddad in his high hat. Over Mother’s shoulder there was a line of dark shadows bobbing and stumbling all of a jumble behind them in the dark. Another lantern shepherded them along from the rear.

  “Alice! Alice!”

  Alice had tripped in the dark and fallen full length in the mud.

  “Away now,” called the woman behind. “Don’t you worry about your Alice. I’ve got her. You look after your Gwen.”

  The horizon swung around and back again as Mother turned in a bob of gratitude to the unseen neighbour then stumbled onwards once more.

  Inside her blanket her breath puffed out into the night to condense near her cheek. She burrowed deeper into Mother and from her bastion of safety looked up at the monster that roared above them. It was all orange flame and silver with a big black cross and numbers on its underside, and it rose majestically like a breaching whale into the sky, carried upwards by the uncontrolled inferno of its own burning. Its nose rose higher, seemingly trying to escape the guns that popped around it from the ground. Then it howled in agony as flame erupted from its body a third of the way back from its head. Its nose dipped, and bright against the blackness of the sky its exposed skeleton cracked under the strain of its gaping wounds. It broke, and glowing shards showered from it to the ground like the pieces of charred taper that fell into the hearth when her dad lit his pipe. And five stars ejected themselves from the furnace that was the beast’s belly. Five five-pointed stars that waved and shrieked as they descended, calling out like the accident siren from Felderby Pit. Frantically she dragged a hand out of her blanket to try and catch one of them, to stop it falling, but before she could do so the black edge of the dugout roof cut across her view and lantern light splashed on the dirt walls that surrounded her. She called out to the burning stars, reaching out her hand again to them through the diminishing opening of the cave, but it was no use. Mother staggered and sank to a panting rest and she was put down on something wet and hard. She yelled.

  “Sorry, my pet. It’s just a sandbag.” Mother picked her up and began jigging her again.

  “It’s all right our Gwen,” reassured Alice, covered in mud but beside her once more. “It’s all gone. It can’t get us in here.”

  Aunt Gwendoline opened her eyes to the fading evening light. A last sunbeam was falling across the rosewood casing of her antique bracket clock standing on the gleaming mahogany of her Sheraton secretaire. It was more than an hour since Gerard had left. She listened to the quiet pulse of the clock, and the bureaucratic beat of her Edwardian station clock, and the commanding tread of her Victorian oak-cased grandfather clock standing sentry in the hall, and to the petulant ticking of her ecclesiastical clock trying to assert its precedence over all things in the earthly domain. All seemed in order. Rani sat up at her feet in trembling welcome to her return to the world of wakefulness and supper.

  Chapter 7

  “So were you able to organise your Vietnamese friends for your next archaeological adventure?” asked Aunt Gwendoline.

  It had been a long week and her worry about him had not diminished.

  “Most certainly,” replied Gerard. “They are more than enthusiastic. They are straining at the leash to start digging and we do not have all the funding in place yet, but hopefully we will get there.”

  She poured his tea, Darjeeling because she wanted him relaxed, and offered him a honey-roast ham and tomato sandwich.

  “I am pleased to hear that the Vietnamese enjoy their history,” she continued. “But are you sure your proposed dig is not being pursued in a somewhat remote and dangerous part of the world?”

  She could not deny to herself that Southeast Asian pre-history was probably very interesting, but with flaming Zeppelins falling out of the sky and family vases being smashed it was now more than ever that she wished her grand-nephew had focussed his chosen career closer to home. She was sure there was no end of respectable Celtic and Roman ruins that still needed investigating.

  “There is no need to worry, Aunt Gwendoline,” he beamed back to her. “The world is a pretty tame place these days compared with what it was, and Indochina is not as remote as you might think.”

  “Maybe not,” she replied. “But I am aware of reports in the newspapers of people coming to grief in that part of the world in what are generally referred to as encounters with warlords and bandits.”

  “I shan’t be going anywhere near any warlords or bandits,” he grinned.

  “Possibly not,” she persisted. “But I did also read of a police chief in Laos who committed suicide while leading a patrol in search of such characters. The report went on to describe how this talented officer had managed to shoot himself in the back five times with a machine gun in order to achieve his end, and that does not give me much confidence in the local forces of law and order where you are going. You will be careful, won’t you?”

  Gerard could not help himself but laugh, but his great-aunt held him with her unblinking eyes and he could see in them the depth of her concern. For her part, she blamed her sister Lizzie and her notions of what constituted parental responsibility that she passed on to her daughter, Gerard’s mother. She should never have allowed him to pursue his preference for archaeology in such wild and jungly places as Indochina.

  “Now, your Chatterwood vase,” she resumed, re-joining the conversation. “You have yet to tell me how it got broken, and you did say something about Dr Brinsley requiring sobering up beforehand. So how did that happen?”

  “I’m not sure what I have already told you,” he waved casually, “but I will fill in a few more details for you if you wish.”

  He saw her gaze become less penetrating, and her eyes softened as she relaxed back in her chair.

  "I was working late in my office when I first heard about Janet’s murder. I gather the police called the university trying to find someone who knew Mark and somebody gave them my name as a close friend. They called my home and Sue called me. It was just after ten when I got home, just as the police doctor was telling Sue that Mark was in no fit state to look after himself. I said we would take care of him. Somebody had to and, damn it, Mark is a friend, a good friend. I don’t see that I could have done anything else. So after the police left, I undressed him and put him to bed.

  "Sue was not happy about my saying he could stay. We had very few details of what had happened at that point but Sue already seemed to be reacting to something a lot deeper than I could see. We tried to talk about it but the shock of it all began to hit us and, as it was very late, we went to bed. I was dead beat and ready for sleep straight away but Sue was awake at every little noise throughout the night. Eventually I had to sit on my temper, with her
constantly waking me with her tossing and turning, so we were both grey-eyed and dozy over breakfast next morning.

  "Mark, as far as we could tell, slept soundly all night. It was probably the sedatives he had been given but we never heard a peep out of him. He was only just waking when I took him in some tea at around nine o’clock. He did not look good but at least he had slept. I told him I would call the university and tell them about what had happened and he seemed to accept it very calmly.

  "‘Thanks,’ was all he said.

  "I telephoned the dean and the head of the chemistry department and brought them up to date with what news I had, and I also called my own department to say I would not be in either. I was just too tired and I had the feeling that Sue would need some looking after as well.

  "I couldn’t fathom Sue. She was edgy, nervous, ready to jump at small noises, and for the first time since I had known her, she lit a cigarette. It puzzled me, seeing her sitting at the breakfast table smoking as if she had always done so. I was not aware that she had ever smoked. I don’t smoke and she had not done so since we had known each other. But she sat flicking the ash into the saucer of her teacup as if it was regular behaviour for her, so familiar and easy to do. I didn’t comment, largely because I knew I was in no fit state to engage in a discussion that would probably end up at cross purposes, but it did puzzle me that you could live with somebody and think you know them but at the same time not know bits of them at all. It was very odd. I suggested that she too should take the day off work, and she nodded her agreement and lit another cigarette while I made the telephone call for her. All in all, it was a rather silent day.

  "The next few days were stressful. Mark was quiet about the place but he gradually came round as the shock and the sedatives wore off. A detective sergeant and a constable came around to interview Sue and me, more to exclude Mark being the abusive husband and perpetrator of the crime than anything else, and we were able to assure them that it was not in Mark’s nature to be violent in any way. He was the sort of fellow who would carry a moth gently out of the house and release it in the garden rather than see it swatted indoors. I have never heard him raise his voice in anger at anybody, even under the extreme provocation of some of his more obstreperous students. I have never seen an angry expression cross his face. He is calmness itself and he only lived for his chemistry and his wife who he adored. And she adored him in return. It was impossible to imagine a violent word passing between them, much less a blow or an attack sufficient to kill her. But the questions upset Sue.

  "‘Get him out of here. I want him out of here as soon as possible,’ she hissed at me on several occasions.

  "I couldn’t believe her. Janet and Mark had been our friends, possibly our best friends since we had first met them. It seemed almost inhuman of her to turn on Mark at the very time when he most needed our support.

  "‘You don’t really know what he’s like,’ she insisted.

  "It was astonishing how within the space of forty-eight hours we developed the habit of whispering our speech at each other, keeping the volume low so that Mark should not hear us and breaking off in mid-sentence if he suddenly appeared.

  "‘How do you know he is not a threat to us, to you, to me. You don’t ever really get to know people all that well and he could have a history of violence that we never found out about. People can be very clever at hiding it, you know.’

  "‘For goodness’ sake, Sue. Did Janet ever give you any hint that he might be violent?’

  "‘No, but then she might have kept it quiet out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to her marriage. Women are built to be extremely loyal to their marriages you know, even under the most violent of circumstances.’

  "‘Ease up, Sue. You have no evidence that Mark is anything other than a gentle man who has just received one of the nastiest shocks it is possible to get in life. His dearly loved wife has been murdered in a particularly nasty manner, for God’s sake. I’m sure that if he had been violent, then Janet would have said something to you about it. Damn it, you and she spent enough time together. I’m sure you would have picked up on something, woman to woman, if there had been any doubts about Mark’s personality.’

  “It was odd, strange. I couldn’t understand how she could change so dramatically towards him. In his presence, she remained smiling and calm and joined in the general chat at breakfast and dinnertime. But there was an undercurrent in her that left her a lot less bubbly than she had been in the past. I put it down to the sudden shock of what had happened and some instinctive fear that women feel when faced with violence of such an order, and the stress of knowing that somewhere out there in the neighbourhood is some animal who can do such a thing and who would be capable of doing it again. I just hoped it would all blow over when the police eventually caught whoever did it.”

  Gerard stopped and looked up at his great-aunt. She was still looking straight at him, sitting relaxed but upright, watching him calmly with her hands folded elegantly in her lap in the manner of an Edwardian lady in confident command of an empire.

  “I don’t seem to have been doing much talking about poor Mark, do I?” he sighed. “I seem to have spent most of the time talking about Sue and me and how we reacted to Janet’s death.”

  “I had noticed,” Aunt Gwendoline replied. “But it doesn’t matter. It is all part of the same story and it will eventually lead to why she broke your vase. But you might finish the story for me. You said that Dr Brinsley did recover from his immediate grief and return home.”

  Chapter 8

  Gerard refocussed. “It was no more than five nights Mark stayed with us,” he resumed. "He was never any trouble. I don’t doubt that he lay awake most of those nights with the turmoil and grief going round and round in his mind, but there was never a sound from his room. On the contrary, it was Sue who paced the floor, taking herself out to the kitchen to have another cigarette at various times during the night. As the days passed, ashtrays began appearing all over the house and were left half full of smoked butts, something which I admit I found offensive, but I let it slide.

  “Of the two of them Mark seemed to take the shock of his wife’s death much more calmly, presenting himself cleanly showered and shaved at breakfast each morning. All in all, he did a very good job of not being a nuisance. He went into his department briefly on about day three and brought back some papers but it was too difficult for him to concentrate on them. He might have sensed Sue’s reaction to him, although I would hate to think he felt he was not welcome. But her attitude was difficult to avoid.”

  “Did you try and talk to her about what was disturbing her?” asked Aunt Gwendoline.

  "Yes, but again it was difficult. She said something about being afraid but would not be specific. I asked the police to send a female officer around to talk with her. One came, and she was very calm and understanding. But Sue remained wary of her and would not talk to her so after a while she left, leaving her card with a direct contact number for support if needed. Finally, the police told Mark that they had finished with his house and he could go home when he was ready. They told me quietly they had organised a visit by a team of cleaners to clear up the blood and other mess left behind by the crime so that Mark would not have to walk into it all over again. And so he left.

  "Then a strange thing happened. After I had seen Mark into a taxi and waved him on his way, I walked into the spare room where he had been staying. Sue was there and I said to her ‘there you are, he’s gone.’ Bad joke, I suppose, or bad timing, but I was completely thrown by the look she gave me. I couldn’t read it, much less understand it. In most ways it was just a stare, but there was something else in it. It certainly wasn’t relief and I couldn’t help feeling it was fear, but a fear all the more frightening because she was unable to explain it. I suddenly noticed she had pulled some of her clothes out of the wardrobe and had put them on the bed.

  "‘It’s been a tough few days,’ I added. ‘But we have our own space back to ourselves again so hopef
ully we can begin to relax.’

  “She didn’t reply and I just left her to whatever she was doing. It never occurred to me that she might be wanting to leave. She had no reason to go. We were living so well together. But in retrospect, I suppose that is how I should have seen it. I still don’t understand it but for the next few weeks we dropped into a sort of silent, uncommunicative existence.”

  “And at the moment Dr Brinsley left you your vase was still intact?” Aunt Gwendoline asked.

  The question momentarily irritated him, but he smothered his annoyance and smiled. “Yes, it was,” he confirmed.

  Chapter 9

  “Aunt Gwendoline, would you excuse me?” he asked. “We have been talking for some time and the Darjeeling has more than worked its way through me. Would you mind if I visited your bathroom?”

  “Of course not, dear boy. You know where it is.”

  She listened while his footsteps went up the stairs and waited until she could hear them no more, then she rose from her chair and went over to the aspidistra in its decorated pot. She looked at it firmly and fussed with its leaves for a few moments.

  “Our Gerard has got himself into some sort of scrape and it is one that could be very bad for him. That much is obvious.”

  The plant did not respond so she spoke to it directly.

  “If you are going to play one of your little games, then there is not much I can do about it, is there, Mother? But you are going to have to be a bit clearer if I am going to do anything to help him. We cannot let anything happen to our Gerard. He is all we have left.”

  The aspidistra still gave no stir and she sighed at it in exasperation.

  “I did notice that the first time I dreamed about the Zeppelin in flames over Low Felderby there were six stars falling from it as it crashed to earth, just as it happened all those years ago,” she continued. “And the second time I dreamed about it only five stars fell from it. One star was missing and that was after our Gerard had told us about the murder of Dr Brinsley’s poor wife.”