The Honours (39 page)

CHAPTER 45

DON'T LOOK BACK

S
he opened her eyes. Daddy bowled into Anwen, blazing. The heat forced Delphine back. She threw her arms up.

Seconds later, she was rising.

Daddy had her by the scruff of her vest. His other hand was planted beneath her armpit.

‘I've got you.'

She dropped her arms. He was standing on the cusp of the channel, using the low wall as a step. As she watched, heatwarp made the stone flutter. Delphine felt herself lurch. She was sweating. Black waters boiled below. Overhead was the hole she had dropped through.

‘Go,' said Daddy. ‘I can't . . . hold it back . . . any longer.' Behind his words, she heard the safety fuse, hissing.

Delphine swung for the lip of the hole with her crab hook. It was too far away. Daddy strained to hoist her higher. His temperature was rising. His palm was a branding iron pressed into the small of her back. He reached up, up.

‘Go,' he said.

‘Don't leave me!' She tried to look back over her shoulder.

She heard Daddy inhale.

‘We'll meet again.'

Delphine twisted to look. She saw Daddy, then Anwen rearing
up behind him, the shattered beakmask pressed to her raw and smouldering face.

‘You . . . are not . . .
leaving
!'

Trembling yellow blisters the size of walnuts stood out on her skin. The paint on the beak bubbled and smoked. Anwen clawed at Daddy's eye. Delphine turned towards the gap in the ceiling and lunged with the crab hook; Anwen howled; Daddy slipped.

Delphine felt metal bite metal.

She pulled for all she was worth. The crab hook had snagged one of the iron hooks in the opening. Pain made little suns burst round the edges of her vision.

Daddy let go.

The heat was blinding. Delphine opened her mouth to cry out but the air was sucked from her lungs. She sank, refused to submit.

No, no
.

She pulled and struggled and raked the slimy rock with her fingernails, dragged at it, fought for it. Beneath her, a groan, a splash, a roaring hiss. She heaved her knee up into the bottom of the ice house well and pulled her other leg clear of the cavern.

‘Daddy!' she called, but there was no answer, and even as the word rang off stone she was turning and scrabbling up the steep wet sides of the pit, digging the crab hook into cracks, smashing out chunks of mortar. She slipped, hit her head against the brickwork, swore, kept climbing.
God please. God please. God please
.

Her toecaps scraped on brick. The black damp ice house echoed with her breaths.

As she approached the top, she was choking, weeping. She didn't have the strength. She felt her knees buckling, her fingers refusing to grip. She clutched at stone. They would not obey. She could not muster energy that was not there. She slipped backwards.

A shape solidified in the darkness.

A hand gripped the cuff of her cardigan and pulled.

Delphine kicked and flailed the final few feet, into the waiting arms of Mother.

Together, they stumbled towards the ice house doorway: a rectangle of blue night, the smell of grass.

They were in cold air, the hill rushing up. She heard the rumble a second before she hit the earth. The impact walloped the air out of her. The ground buzzed. Something struck her forehead.

She came to on her back on the wet hillside. Smoke hung in creepers. Mother lay beside her, not moving. Delphine moved her arm – a freezing pain. Her wrist was broken.

She gazed into the night sky. Flakes of ash fell in pale drifts.

How lovely
, she thought as she slipped back into unconsciousness.
It's snowing
.

INTERLUDE 3

H
e is choking on his teeth.

As Henry wakes, they catch in his throat and he coughs and clenches and vomits and cannot breathe. The ceramic dentures slip onto his tongue like an oily fish and he spits them out. They ooze down his cheek. He is on his back. His hot breath condenses on his face. He opens his eyes. He cannot see.

Some sort of material covers his face. Is he in a sack? Is he dead?

Not dead. His skull hurts.

He thinks he hears breathing. His hearing is exceptionally sharp. Best not to make any sudden movements, in case someone is watching him.

From the sound of it, he is in some kind of stone chamber. He relaxes his knees just a little.

No pain. The floor seems to tip and spin. Tears come to his eyes. Has it worked? Has it really worked?

He bites down. Full sets of upper and lower molars lock together, rooted, solid. He runs his tongue over the smooth backs of his incisors.

Everything they told him is true.

But what about Delphine? She needs him. He has to get back.

He sits up. In doing so, he realises two things.

First: he is not inside a sack, but his own clothes. As his head
emerges from his waxed jacket, he sees his shirt sleeves sagging emptily, his trousers puddled on the floor.

Second: he is not alone.

The giant of tarnished brass breathes. Its steaming armoured body rises, sinks. Behind the visor-slit shine familiar blue pupils.

The first blow catches him in the forehead. He sees white.

He is lying on his stomach. A crushing pain behind his eyeball makes him gasp. He smells vomit.

Instinctively, idiotically, he tries to get up. A shadow closes over him.

He braces for the second blow.

A gauntlet sweeps beneath his sternum. Plated fingers dig into his ribs. They lift.

He slams down over an armoured shoulder, spine-first. He is hanging upside-down, the gauntlet pinning him in place. The air is warm against his hairless legs as the giant turns.

He sees the cavern inverted. He sees Stokeham's valet slumped against the wall, boots pointed inward, one eye open, the other a stoved-in crater. He smells the hops-and-petrol stink of the threshold. He hears the distant slap of gunfire.

As the giant begins to carry him away, Henry realises, with absolute certainty, he will never see home again. The cavern sways, shrinks. Vanishes.

This is the second blow.

EPILOGUE

December 1935

D
elphine woke screaming from a dream of teeth and guts and eyes.

She sat up. The bedroom was black. A mauve wedge of moonlight picked out the brass handles of her wardrobe, the varnished shell of her carved tortoise.

It always took her a moment to remember where she was. Her old room. The Pastures. Home.

She swung her legs out of bed, her heart racing. She tucked her feet into her slippers, padded over to the wardrobe and took out her dressing gown. Her pyjamas clung to her sweaty skin as she fastened the two halves of the belt in a Flemish bend. It took her a couple of attempts. By the time the knot was secure, her breathing had returned to something near normal.

Delphine walked to the window. The world was brilliant with frost. She gazed, stunned by fields of flat deep white. Down in the garden, encircled by what looked like twelve large round stones, shone a single candle.

She went downstairs, closing her eyes, feeling the cool bannister beneath her palm. She smelt pipesmoke. It grew stronger as she entered the hall. She opened the door to the sitting room. Stockings hung around a rippling fire – fifteen in all, the longest on either end, a dozen little ones between. In the corner by the window stood a
Christmas tree. Delphine left the door ajar and dropped into an armchair.

‘I was hungry,' she said.

Professor Carmichael looked at her over a hardback the same deep russet as his sweater. His pipe dipped.

‘I had some reading to do.'

Delphine nodded. Some nights, she was the first to wake up. She had got good at building fires. She rose from the armchair and took a log from the big wicker basket. As she knelt in the hearth, a shriek came from upstairs. She balanced the log on top of the others and blew. The heat made her cheeks glow.

She sat in the armchair and watched firelight play across the curtains. Footsteps rattled down the stairs. The door creaked open. Delphine and the Professor looked up.

‘Thought I'd make a start on the stuffing,' said Mother.

The Professor tapped the cover of his hardback. ‘Reading.'

‘Hungry,' said Delphine.

Mother smiled wanly. She had dark purple smudges beneath her eyes. From the kitchen came the clatter of the catflap.

‘Here come the apostles,' said the Professor. Mother stood in the doorway, looking out into the corridor.

The first entered clutching the stub of a candle in a jam jar. The flame's reflection wavered in the pearlescent globes of his eyes. The others followed in solemn procession. Delphine still found it hard to tell them apart. At Mother's prompting, they had each chosen a name: Immanuel, Timothy, Martha, Abel, Ezra, Gabriel, Naomi, Matthew, Thomas, Isaiah, Joel, Esther. ‘Little Gentlemen' no longer felt appropriate, especially now two of their number (Naomi and Martha) were pregnant. Professor Carmichael had proposed they be known as the Keepers.
^*

The candle-bearer – she thought perhaps Ezra – walked up to
the hearth and set the jar down before the fire. He retreated, then turned to face his companions. The group bowed to Mother, the Professor and Delphine in turn.

‘Well,' said Mother, clapping, ‘since we're all here, shall we have the Christmas?'

‘And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.'

Wine-red armour gleamed in the firelight as Professor Carmichael read in a steady, droning voice from the book of Luke. Keepers sat round dishes of warm sugar water, three to a dish, dabbling their proboscises as they listened. Mother lay back on the long settee, sipping at a cup of cocoa and occasionally massaging her shoulder. It had set badly and Delphine knew that the rheumatism was worse than she let on.

Delphine drifted in and out of awareness. She breathed in the scent of woodsmoke and pine needles. In her doze she was running through the crowded streets of Bethlehem, hunting for an inn. She pushed into an alleyway. He was there. Backed against a wall. His eyes –

She woke with a gasp. She was in the living room. The Professor continued to read. The fire crackled pleasantly.

Later, they opened presents. The Professor gave Mother an electric vacuum cleaner.

‘It beats as it sweeps as it cleans!' he said.

Mother regarded the contraption with bemused tolerance. ‘Yes.'

Esther cracked a monkey nut in her mandibles and tossed it to the Professor. Mother showed everyone how to skin a tangerine so it all came off in one long spiral. Delphine and the Keepers tried to copy her and soon the sitting room was perky with spritzing citrus. Mother and the Professor had a glass of sherry each and Delphine showed the Keepers how to play Pelmanism with her new pack of picture cards. Next, she taught Martha and Thomas
how to play Snap. Since they couldn't shout ‘snap' – or not, at least, in a manner that she, as official adjudicator, could apprehend consistently – she fetched them a bell each from the tree, which they had to ring if they saw a pair. After a slow start, the game soon attracted a rapt audience. Martha and Thomas took it extremely seriously, crouching like sprinters as they laid down Dog, Plum Cake, Soldier.

Professor Carmichael sat at the piano and everyone gathered round for ‘Once In Royal David's City' and ‘Away In A Manger' and ‘Silent Night'. The Keepers did not sing, simply lowering their smooth crimson heads. What the Professor lacked in precision he made up for in gusto, flourishing his big hands between chords, closing his eyes as he romped into the chorus. When he was done, he let out a big sigh and sat back on the piano stool.

‘Why don't you play us one, Delphine?' said Mother.

‘Mo
ther
.'

‘Oh, go on. It'll be good practice.'

Delphine rolled her eyes, but Professor Carmichael made way for her. The velveteen cushion was still hot from his backside as she sat and flipped through the sheet music.

She played ‘O Tannenbaum', and this time, nobody sang. At first, she felt a little awkward, as if everyone was humouring her, but as she went on her playing grew less stilted; she let phrases flow with her breathing; she even began to mimic the Professor's hearty pedalling and attack. When she had finished, she closed the lid and swivelled to face her audience, biting her lip.

The Professor was dabbing at his eyes with his handkerchief. Mother had her head cocked to one side. Her smile was wide. Her cheeks gleamed.

‘Perfect.'

‘It's lovely,' said Mother, holding up a loose-weave woollen scarf in regal purple. ‘How thoughtful of you. Thank you, Algernon. You really are a man of hidden talents.'

Professor Carmichael raised his pipe in acknowledgement. In all the turmoil that had followed the razing of Alderberen Hall, the
biggest shock had been discovering the Professor's knitting habit. When Delphine first walked in to see needles in those apelike hands, clattering out a tea cosy as he listened to the news, she felt like she had interrupted him on the lavatory. Now, he gave lessons to the Keepers, who were naturals. He had tried teaching Delphine, but in his words: ‘Knitting is the Way of the Farmer, Miss Venner. Yours, I'm afraid, is the Way of the Warrior.'

Delphine handed her Mother a crisp brown paper parcel. She watched anxiously as Mother began to unwrap it, cutting along the seam with a pair of scissors so the paper could be folded and reused. Since they no longer had domestics,
^*
Mother had adopted waste-not, want-not as a holy regimen.

‘It's probably stupid,' said Delphine. ‘I can get you something else.'

‘Don't be silly,' said Mother, ‘I'm sure it will . . . oh.'

Mother let the paper fall away. In her hands were three leather-bound volumes with gold-leaf embossed spines:
Civilisation And Its Discontents, Beyond The Pleasure Principle
, and
Introduction To Psychoanalysis
, all by an ‘S Freud'.

‘I'm sorry,' said Delphine.

Mother turned the books over and over in her hands. ‘Why did you get me these?'

‘I don't know.' Delphine picked at a loose thread on the hem of her dressing gown. ‘I haven't read them, I just heard . . . ' She glanced up. ‘Sometimes people get lost. I thought you could help guide them home.'

Something strange happened to Mother's eyes. She looked at the books for a very long time. At last, she nodded.

‘I shall read these.' She looked at her daughter. ‘Thank you.'

Delphine scratched her head and looked away.

‘Here.' The Professor thrust a parcel into her lap.

‘Oh,' said Delphine. She tore it open in two strokes.

The book was plain, with no title. The cover was a dismal
grey-brown. There was a hole in the middle, the width of a drillbit.

The book slipped from her fingers and hit the floor with a
whap
that made Immanuel lose at spillikins. Delphine looked up at the Professor.

‘What is this? Where did you get it?'

Professor Carmichael peered over his reading spectacles. ‘You know what it is. Patience dropped it after we came out the scullery. I thought it might be important and stuck it up my jumper. Turns out it was bloody important. Saved my bacon.'

Delphine picked up the book and let it fall open. Whole sections were stuck together; corrugated red poppies bloomed from the puncture wound at the centre of every page.

She slammed it shut.

‘I don't want this.' She turned to Mother. ‘I don't want this.'

The Professor and Mother exchanged a glance.

‘It's not for reading now,' said Mother. ‘Not today. But someday.'

‘Even if we can't tell other people what we saw,' said the Professor, ‘it's no use lying to ourselves. What you heard Mr Propp say was right, you know. War is coming.'

‘I don't care. I don't want to think about it.'

‘But you
do
think about it,' said Mother. ‘We all do.'

‘Why don't we go straight to the Prime Minister, then? Why don't you take Matthew and Martha and Joel and Gabriel and all the others and say: “Look, Mr Baldwin – now will you take us seriously?”'

The Professor regarded her gravely.

‘Because they asked us not to. Because they deserve to live their lives in peace. Because we promised.'

Delphine hung her head. ‘I just want it all to go away.'

Mother made a noise out the side of her mouth.

‘Demons love appeasers.'

‘Look,' said the Professor, ‘I don't know if that book will be much help. It's a little, ah . . . soiled. But we've got excellent research assistants.' He gestured at the Keepers. ‘And I found the late Mr Kung's research notes tucked into the back pages. We can't very well just ignore it, now can we?'

Delphine rested her chin in the soft nook beneath her shoulder. Every undistracted moment, she thought about Daddy and Mr Garforth. Were they still alive, somewhere? Would she ever find them? And what of Propp?

What of Anwen?

Delphine set the book down on the arm of the chair.

‘Fine. But not today.'

‘Not today.' Mother walked to the door. ‘Now – who's going to help me with the turkey?'

The floorboards rippled with footsteps.

Delphine entered the garage through a sidedoor from the main house. It was freezing. She began dancing furiously. From the hutch in the corner came shuffling.

‘Brrr! Merry Christmas, boys! You didn't think I'd forget you, did you?'

Maxim and Lewis burst from their newspaper nests and grappled at the bars with white-pink forepaws. She flipped the door catch and let them run up her arms. They stank. She dangled a blob of raw turkey giblets and Lewis champed it out of the air. She fed some more to Maxim and the two ferrets wriggled and revelled and lapped at her greasy fingers.

She gazed into their bright black eyes. She felt a sudden terror that she might lose control and hurt them.

She put the ferrets back in their cage. Her tears fell and darkened the cement floor.

She sobbed and sobbed. Lewis and Maxim watched her cry. They were beautiful, and so sickeningly fragile.

She knew the solution to Mr Garforth's riddle. Of course she did. She had known it all along.

The answer was humanity.

^*
The Professor was particularly proud of this bit of etymology: ‘From “Kheper” or “Khepri”, the scarab-headed God of Ancient Egypt, d'you see? But they're the keepers of the Thresholds. And they worked for Henry as under-keepers. Do you follow?' Delphine had nodded, and the Professor had closed his eyes, basking in the satisfaction of a well-done sum.

^*
When Mother had announced they would do without servants, Delphine had said, ‘Like Bolsheviks?'

Mother had given a strained smile. ‘I don't think Bolsheviks buy their companion sets from Fortnum's.'