The Summer of the Mourning Cloak Read online

  The hum of the insects all around her was reassuring, and the ants’ nest at the edge of the bush was as busy as ever. She was sure that ants never woke up hating their lives; they were always rushing around with a sense of purpose. Even when she turned over a stone to expose their eggs, or placed an obstacle in their path, they would deal with the set-back immediately. Hyslop loved watching them.

  If their nests were disturbed, the ants would rush to their eggs and carry them deeper underground to safety. Hyslop sometimes longed to be a little ant egg. She would close her eyes and think of how it would feel to be in a dark, secret place, guarded by a delicate eggshell: to be so precious that a whole army of ants would fight to the death to keep her safe.

  Sometimes she dropped jam or sugar on their path, which caused huge excitement. They liked melon pieces too. She had to be careful, however, if she wanted to sneak treats for the ants. To her mother all insects were vermin and had to be destroyed. Hyslop did not dare entice ants into the house as they never came singly, but she sometimes brought beetles and millipedes in boxes or jars into her room and hid them under her bed. She also kept a supply of dead wasps, but that was for a different reason.

  The cicadas were particularly loud today. In the distance, butterflies danced and hovered, but none were coming in her direction. And there, right in front of her now was a large bumblebee. It was investigating the leaves of the bush and not finding them interesting enough to linger. A teacher at her previous school had told her that the entire Italian tomato crop would fail without bumblebees. It was in a lesson about geography, not about insects. It was just one of those throwaway comments, with no further details. That was typical of teachers and of grown-ups generally. There would be one interesting fact amongst all the boring drivel they talked about, but it was never followed up. Why couldn’t she learn more about insects: did bumblebees make honey too? And could they sting? Questions about insects buzzed around her brain, bursting to get out. Her current teacher, at the International School, Signora Zanetti, had told the class that bumblebees should not be able to fly as they were too heavy for their wings. And that was it. No further explanations or discussions about insects.

  Hyslop allowed a dribble of spit to fall in the path of the ants. Several of them stopped in their tracks to investigate, waving their antennae around which seemed to attract others. Quite a little crowd was soon forming round it, and Hyslop wondered how they communicated with each other. Did they dance to each other like honeybees? If only she could get a decent book on insect behaviour, or find someone who knew about entomology. She had recently found out that entomology was the name for her interest in insects when one of her mother’s rich American friends had caught her looking at beetles under a stone and said: “Yuck, Hyslop! How disgusting! What are you? A budding entomologist or something?” It led her to look in the English dictionary and to sneak a look at her mother’s lap-top. Studying insects it seemed could be a career. There were adults who took insects seriously and who travelled the world in pursuit of their knowledge. How exciting was that! Her secret dream was to study entomology one day at University, and then to spend her life in tropical jungles hunting for rare species.

  “Hyslop!” her mother’s voice called from the patio.

  Hyslop jumped in astonishment. Her mother usually had a long sleep after lunch when the sun was at its hottest. She hadn’t expected to hear from her for hours. She got up cautiously and parted the leaves, taking care to stay out of sight.

  “Hyslop! Where are you?” There was a sharpness to the call, but it was impatience rather than anger – and Hyslop had learned to recognise all the various nuances of her mother’s moods – so it was probably nothing to do with the new collection of earwigs in her room.

  Uncle Massimo called out in Italian, laughing, and Hyslop understood that he had seen her all along and was pointing out her hiding place with amusement. She felt something inside her curl up into a ball like a woodlouse. Her secret bush-world was never going to feel safe again if he knew she was there.

  “What on earth are you doing skulking about in the bushes!” Her mother approached, waving a sheet of writing paper in her hand. She bent down and peered into the bush. She was wearing an orange sarong and orange rimmed sunglasses, and not even her scowl of displeasure could hide her luminous beauty.

  “Stop bugging me, Hyslop. Come into the house at once. There’s something I want you to do. It’s important.”

  “She could be worse, Nonna,” whispered Hyslop in Italian. She allowed herself the luxury of an imagined ruffle of her hair and a Nonna-hug, then followed the swaying orange sarong and the tap-tapping of expensive sandals into the house. Unusually, there was a sense of purpose about her mother that seemed to involve Hyslop.

  There was a pad of flimsy writing paper on the kitchen table and an expensive looking pen.

  “We have a letter to write!” announced her mother, handing her the pen. “A letter to your Godmother in England.”

  Hyslop had not been aware that she had a Godmother in England. Nor had she ever written a letter before.

  “Sit down and write what I tell you. Exactly what I tell you.”

  Hyslop picked up a sheet of paper. She noticed that there was a small black ant crawling along the table and wondered if it was from the nest she had just been watching. She must have somehow brought it inside with her. Perhaps it had stowed away on her clothes. She would have to rescue it without attracting her mother’s attention, as it would never find its way back to the nest under the bush on its own.

  “Who is my Godmother?” she asked, tearing her eyes away from the ant. Her mother did not often reply to direct questions, but it was worth a try.

  “Your Godmother is called Sandy. We were at school together. You are to write…” Her mother paused, then scribbled something on a piece of paper for Hyslop to copy. “Here. Write it like this.”

  Hyslop read: “Dear Xandi,” and copied it obediently.

  “I’ve written to her as well, but I’m not going to spell it in that stupid way.” Her mother’s lips curled up in disdain. “I can’t bear names spelt wrongly. Anyway, you can spell it like that, Hyslop. It might amuse her. Yes, heaven knows, we want to amuse her.”

  “Does she know me?” asked Hyslop. The ant had stopped now and was moving its head around in a confused manner.

  “Well, she was at your Christening,” said her mother. “Probably the last time I saw her, come to think of it.”

  “How do you know her?”

  “We were at school together, Sandy and I. Happy boarding school days!” This was said with a laugh that was not an expression of amusement. It was the sort of laugh her mother often gave, a nasty sort of laugh. “Very well connected was our Sandy! Lots of useful connections in fact. I shouldn’t have left it so long, should I? Your Christening must have been ten… eleven… years ago. How old are you?”

  Hyslop remembered about Godmothers now. They appeared at Christenings, like in Sleeping Beauty, and gave gifts like being clever or beautiful or having to be pricked on the finger by a spindle. She wondered what Sandy had given her at her Christening.

  “Did she give me a present?”

  “How should I remember trivia like that? Stop asking questions and write what I tell you.”

  Hyslop bent her head and prepared to write. She could write in English and French and Italian. All the teachers at the International School were impressed by her skills. Her mother spoke to her in English, and many of their house guests were English or American, but they only had three English books which they carried around with them whenever they moved to a new Uncle: a book of Shakespeare stories, a wonderful book called The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and a book of fairy tales with a picture of a weeping mermaid on the cover. Hyslop knew all the illustrations and most of the stories by heart, and she always turned to the front page of the Narnia book, where there was a white label announcing: Handwriting Prize, Vanessa Hyslop, Comber Grove Primary School, 1973 – 74. It
gave her a strange feeling to imagine her mother as a small child carefully forming her letters and then going up, with her hair brushed and her shoes shining, to get her prize. Would the child Vanessa have had a cruel tongue and a nasty laugh she wondered, or did those develop later in life?

  “Dear Xandi, yes, you’ve got that,” said her mother. “Umm… I am your Goddaughter Hyslop. I have been living in Italy with Mummy for the last… um, let me see… two, no… let’s make it five years. Yes five sounds better than two. Sounds more stable. Yes, five years. We live in a little cottage with no heating and no electricity. Can you spell electricity in English? Oh, no matter, probably more appealing if it’s spelt wrongly.”

  Hyslop frowned. The first odd thing was being told to refer to her mother as Mummy when normally she had to call her Vanessa. And then there was the strange lie about having no electricity. The villa they were in not only had electricity inside the house but garage doors that opened and lights outside that came on by themselves after dark. It was not as luxurious as Uncle Paolo’s villa, where they had stayed previously, but there certainly weren’t any problems with the electricity.

  “Write it!” Her mother snapped her fingers and made a clicking sound.. “… no electricity. I go to an Italian village school but I am not very happy there.”

  Hyslop paused in her writing. The school was the one place where she was reasonably happy. In fact it was one of the better schools she had been to, an International School for which Uncle Massimo paid expensive fees. Was it good to lie to a Godmother?

  “Keep up!” Her mother snapped her fingers again. “Where was I… yes… I am not very happy there. I would love to come to England and meet you. Mummy often talks about you, and I would love it if we could visit you.”

  To Hyslop’s knowledge, her mother had never talked about Sandy. Surely she would have remembered something as important as a Godmother.

  “Got that?” her mother drummed her fingers on the table, very close to the ant which fortunately she had not seen. “Um… It would be good if we could come and stay with you in England. Lots of love, Hyslop. You can put some kisses… you know, large X’s, after it. Put three. No, make it four.”

  Hyslop sensed her mother’s impatience and did as she was told. She put four X’s, one after the other, beside her name, and thought how odd it looked. Her mother snatched the letter from her and read it through.

  “Perfectly neat and no spelling mistakes in your English!” she said, putting it beside a letter of her own and folding them both into an envelope that she had already addressed and stamped. She looked directly at Hyslop and there was no hint of anger or impatience in her gaze. Her beautiful mouth turned up in a smile that seemed to be just for her daughter. It was a real smile. Hyslop stopped breathing for a moment. The smile, when it came, was so incredible that you didn’t want to miss a second of it. Not even for the brief second of breathing or blinking. Her mother sealed the envelope. “Maybe you take after me, Hyslop. I was always top of my class at school, always ahead of the others.”

  There was a brief silence, then she said: “It’s important to be ahead of the others in life.”

  Hyslop felt a fluttering of insect wings deep inside her. Praise from her mother was so rare and so precious that she felt slightly dizzy. She lost sight of the ant altogether, though she had intended to rescue it.

  “Anyway, take this,” her mother said, handing her the letter. The smile vanished now as quickly as it had come. “Take it down to the post-box at the end of the road.”

  Hyslop took the letter and looked up questioningly. Usually she was told to stay in the shade at this time of the day.

  “Just do as I tell you, Hyslop.” Her mother’s voice was soft as she picked up a glossy magazine and used it to kill the ant which had stopped in front of her. Hyslop gazed at the crushed little body in dismay. Her mother flicked it onto the floor with a long red fingernail, then pointed to the door. “Carla’s off duty, so run along and get it in the post before five. Then leave me in peace, for God’s sake!”

  Nonna walked beside her as she made her way through the garden and out of the side gate into the blinding glare of the street. The air was full of unanswered questions now along with the chirping of the cicadas. Hyslop felt vaguely afraid. Her mother must have some purpose in sending this letter, and often her mother’s strange behaviour led to them moving again. Even if she was not happy here, a move was a frightening prospect, especially if it was to a different country. There would be new unpleasant things and new Uncles to get used to if they moved. England itself, her mother’s homeland, seemed as remote as the North Pole. As for Godmothers, well, weren’t there wicked ones in the fairy stories she had read, Godmothers who made you sleep for a hundred years? There was no guaranteeing that this Sandy person would be of the good variety.

  “Oh, Nonna,” she whispered.

  “It’s so hot, tesoro,” soothed the invisible Nonna in her ear. “You should have stayed in the shade. Have you put your suncream on? What about a sunhat… ”

  Chapter Two

  Zak disturbs the Butterflies

  The trouble about being a daydreamer is that people get mad at you. Some people seemed to like rushing around, flying from one job to another, getting cross, but why couldn’t they accept that not everyone liked to live that way? Why couldn’t they just leave him alone inside his own head? Zak felt that his whole life consisted of being poked, prodded, shouted at, and generally told he wasn’t good at anything.

  At the core of him, the very centre, was a stillness that they couldn’t touch. Zak reckoned that this was what annoyed people so much about him. He knew his mother had been a still sort of person too. His grandmother often said so:

  “Zak Judd, you’re as bad as your mother! All she ever did was drift around in a daydream as if tomorrow would do!”

  Well, and why wouldn’t tomorrow do, was what he wanted to know. The world wasn’t about to come to an end just because some chore wasn’t completed. Why rush around getting angry all the time? Sometimes Granny said nasty things about his mother to provoke him:

  “Bone lazy like your feckless mother, that’s what you are, boy!”

  He knew she meant to hurt him by saying this, but she didn’t succeed. She never seemed to realise that he liked being compared to his mother, even when Granny was saying horrid things about both of them. No one ever mentioned his mother otherwise, so even these insults were a sort of treasure.

  He had learned not to ask direct questions about his mother. Both his father and his grandmother fobbed him off. His father’s face would change and he would find yet another reason to be out of the house, or to reach for a drink. His grandmother would give one of her sniffs.

  “You want to know about your mother, do you? Well, I’m not one for turning people into saints just because they’re no longer with us. I tell it like it is: your mother was a lazy, useless woman who couldn’t keep a clean house and who didn’t know the meaning of hard work!”

  Sometimes she would add, pointing a finger: “And you’re turning out just like her!”

  If only Granny knew how he longed to be just like his mother, how he longed for a messy house that had love at its heart. If only she could understand how he longed to have his mother with him, alive and feckless and drifting around in a daydream. Today he tried to slink out of the house unnoticed, but his father accosted him after breakfast and gestured towards the back door.

  “Need some help,” he said gruffly. “There’s extra clearing and strimming to be done.” He strode out of the house, indicating that Zak should come with him.

  Zak followed some ten or twelve paces behind, as they made their way through the woods to the Hemmingswood estate. Neither of them spoke. To Zak’s surprise, instead of stopping at the main garden by the big house where his father normally worked, they moved on past Zak’s beloved kitchen garden and the dahlia beds to the empty cottage at the far end of the estate. In an area already full of nettles and thistles and wild fl
owers, this was a particularly unkempt corner. The path leading to the cottage was completely overgrown.

  “They got guests coming,” said his father. “We’ve to tidy this area round here.”

  Zak stared around him. He watched as his father got out his strimmer and some weeding tools.

  “I’ll strim round here,” he said. “You need to weed the path, Zak.”

  Zak looked back wistfully at the kitchen garden where he worked for Mrs Braithwaite. He would much rather have tended the salad beds. He could have spent hours happily looking at all the vegetables: recent rain had made the courgettes double in size, and most of the cabbages were being eaten by caterpillars. Every time he came there was new growth to see, always something different.

  “Never mind your stupid vegetables,” growled his father, as if reading his thoughts. He threw a tool at Zak. “Here. Use this to get them weeds on the path out by the roots. And don’t sit staring into space like you usually do.”

  “The old man won’t like it,” said Zak. He stood surveying the path, where brightly coloured butterflies were clinging to the weeds.

  “Never mind the old man. I take orders from Mr Braithwaite,” said his father. “He pays the wages, boy. And you take orders from me. Now get going!”

  Zak bent down and began attacking the weeds that were growing between the stone slabs of the path. It was hard to see the paving stones there were so many weeds. Dandelions and couch grass were the worst. Their roots spread far under the slabs and it was impossible to get rid of them without lifting up each paving stone individually. This part of the garden had not been tended for a long time, and it was going to be hard work. Zak hacked at the weeds as best he could, sending up a pair of tiny blue butterflies that had been clinging to a long grass stalk. His father had his back to Zak, with a pair of ear protectors on and was concentrating on strimming the nettle patch at the side of the cottage. A cloud of dust and insects rose up above his head.