Absolute Hush (22 page)

With a squeak of unoiled pedals, the Italian prisoner cycled past on his way to meet the gipsy, saw the smoke from the Plague House bonfire, and ducked his head so as not to be recognised.

George, peeping through his goggle of bandages, his single eye wet with smoke and excitement, threw on branches fallen in the autumn storms and said, as steam began to surge swirling in the wind, ‘Lump saved my life.'

Sissy threw twigs and thought she heard, through the bubble and bang of boiling sap, a little growly voice, rather wistful, that seemed to be speaking inside her chest as though indigestion had struck up a conversation: ‘I saved you too, Sissy. I saved you too.'

I am better mouthless. Trailing through the sky like smoke, I have thoughts that, unmuddied by the doubts and troubles of my parents, are
clear again like the light of stars. I came to save the world but couldn't do it. But George and Sissy loved me and that at least is something
.

The wood took suddenly in a rush of fire, sending George and Sissy struggling backwards to avoid the scorching.

‘They shouldn't be doing it,' said Mrs Lovage, wincing her shoulders against her own ciggy smoke, and looking to Elizabeth for confirmation. ‘You know what the police wanted him for.'

Elizabeth, watching from the window, turned to Beattie inquiringly but Beattie only smiled and said, ‘They have to grieve and fire is the only way they know,' then called out to the whinnying pony, ‘Whoa, Patacake, whoa. The buns are nearly ready.'

Did she and Mrs Lovage smoke cigarettes to ease grief? wondered Elizabeth, and accepted the possibility.

When old wood was consumed, George and Sissy began to tear young branches from the trees.

‘The laburnums that Tim put in,' sighed Elizabeth. ‘Look what they're doing to the laburnums.'

The fire toppled and trembled with the great weight of fuel piled on it, but by now it had developed a voracious appetite, and the children had to rush to feed it.

The bursting weight of unused milk in Sissy's breasts was growing lighter because of warmth and excitement and the pills that Beattie had got for her.

‘What for?' Sissy had been reminded of the quinine.

‘To ease you, darling.'

‘It's a pity we didn't have puppies. Or a baby hedgehog,' George had said regretfully. ‘Such a waste, considering how milk's rationed. Can I drink it myself?'

Fire, or perhaps it was Sissy milk, eased George's blisters too.

‘In ancient Egypt, or somewhere, I expect,' said George ad-libbing, ‘they sprayed the milk of mothers on to burns to soothe them.' And, peeling back the stinging bandages, Sissy bent and squirted till Beattie's pills began to take effect and the gushing turned to a tiny trickle.

‘We could have made cheese. Or butter,' sighed George wistfully.

‘Strawberries and Sissy cream,' mourned George until Sissy reminded him it was the wrong time of year.

‘I could suck at it to keep it going till the summer,' said George and was only mildly perturbed by Sissy's fierce retort, ‘What! Stagger round with udders for four more months?'

The fire was licking the lower branches of the plum tree now, nibbling at next year's fruiting spurs with mindless gluttony.

‘We won't get no fruit this year unless it's put a stop to,' said Mrs Lovage without her usual rancour. ‘But I suppose, being the auntie, you know.'

‘Yes,' said Beattie.

A great balloon of burning stuff detached itself from the body of the fire, and began to rise upwards.

‘The firemen said funny things happen with draughts,' said Sissy. ‘Like the one that pushed you out of the Hairy Petal Bedroom.'

‘Or Lump saved me.'

Clumps of red hot stuff rose unsteadily through the branches.

‘It's got the shape of Lump,' said George in awe.

‘Or the Silly Dog,' said Sissy into the sky.

Docks and nettles chopped by the Italian prisoner simmered above the treetops. Wasp-hollowed apples boiled and popped ten feet high. Leather sandals shed by George after a moat fall last summer turned crackling among the dead heads of roses up in the sky.

Then the thing began to rain hot stuff on to George's bandages and Sissy's face until scorch of cloth and sting of Sissy's skin began to add themselves to the clamour and stink of Lump's last bonfire.

‘Now they're really getting it,' said Mrs Lovage, and she drew her own hot smoke into her lungs.

‘I can see the shape of Teddy's doorkey,' said Sissy, not feeling the pain, as though her flesh had become like George's.

*

Half the hot ball of all the stuff and life and death and sadness and joy of the Plague House rained slowly back upon the earth again and the other half rose endlessly upwards to blend, in a billion years probably, with another star I have my mind on
.

I am conciousness itself. There is only one and everything partakes of it. I was manifested by the world's longing for love and peace and no more wars but, like the ball of burning bonfire, one side rose and the other fell, and I was a tossed coin that ended tails up
.

The ball of fire rained sparks that glittered among the twigs and lichens of ancient trees, but still rose.

I am floating away and leaving Sissy and George to the lardy cake, cuddles, and pain-easing pills of Auntie Beattie
.

‘I've never seen anything like that in my life,' said Mrs Lovage, looking out.

‘It's someone's soul,' breathed Sissy, and her hair stank and sizzled as the particles of fire rained on to it.

‘They're going to hurt themselves,' cried Elizabeth, not wanting to feel guilty again.

But Beattie only touched her softly and said, ‘We'll put witch-hazel on. They're survivors, remember?'

‘I was right to say, “See you soon,” wasn't I, then?' urged George, clapping his hand over Sissy's head to stop her blazing.

‘Tim's soul,' whispered Beattie, bending into the oven.

‘Little blighters. I'm surprised their mum lets them,' said Myrtle to herself, but felt a pang of envy and for a moment wished she was purging her dismay with fire as well.

‘It looks as though it's going to set the sky on fire,' murmured Elizabeth, and she pressed her hands to her mouth because she felt something like laughter rising and did not know why.

There is always a star at a time of saviours.

‘It's Lump's soul!' screamed George, then he and Sissy began to dance and scream like on the day they had seen the plane burn in the haystack.

Up and onwards rose the flaming debris until at last it became only a distant glitter in the sky, like a star in day-time, and could have been the flicker of a seagull's wing, or the setting sun reflected on the cockpit of a plane.

Teddy's soul. The Silly Dog's soul. The souls of the Jewish children that even Beattie couldn't save. The soul of Tim.

I hope you are still here when I come back
.

When the ball of fire was just a twinkle, Sissy stopped screaming and jumping but kept on looking.

Then slowly inside her there grew a sensation of being filled up with someone perfect and golden, as though she was a glove-puppet having melted sunshine poured into it, so that the inside of her became comfortable.

She put her hands across her belly, which was empty again of Lump, and knew that she was nearly fourteen, that everything was all right inside her, and that Lump would come there again and again, for she realised now that it was not all over but had hardly started.

Sara Banerji
was born in 1932 in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, in England. One of her ancestors is Henry Fielding, the 18th century author who wrote
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
.

In 1939, when Banerji was 7, World War II began, and she was evacuated to various large and old country mansions. Her father, Basil Mostyn, fought in the war.

After the war was over, Banerji emigrated with her family to Southern Rhodesia. The family lived in a single mud rondavel with no electricity or running water.

Banerji later travelled all around Europe, visiting various places. She worked as an au pair and also attended art school in Austria. She has also worked as an artist, and has held exhibitions of her oil paintings in India. She also taught riding whilst in India, and has been a jockey. She is also a sculptress, and has previously been a waitress.

Banerji worked in a coffee bar in Oxford, where she met her future husband, Ranjit Banerji, who was an undergraduate from India. He was a customer in the coffee bar. They married and moved to India, where they lived for seventeen years. Banerji attempted to run a dairy farm, which was defeated by monsoons and heavy seasons of rain.

Discover books by Sara Banerji published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/SaraBanerji

Absolute Hush
Cobweb Walking
Shining Agnes
The Tea-Planter's Daughter
The Wedding of Jayanthi Mandel
Writing on Skin

This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain 1991 by Victor Gollancz Ltd.
Copyright © 1991 Sara Banerji
All rights reserved
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ISBN 9781448208357
eISBN: 9781448208340
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