eBook Short Story Competition Runners up

  Snowflake - LP Fergusson

  Hugh Duberly did not arrive at Blenheim Palace until dusk. The fog was rising from the Queen’s Pond, creeping still and low across the estate, surrounding his pony and trap in a capsule of bitter cold. By the time he arrived at the door to the undercroft he was thoroughly chilled.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Duberly,' the butler said. ‘Come in,' and Duberly slipped past, removing his bowler as he descended the stone steps. He waited at the bottom while Hynch secured the door. ‘Her Grace is expecting you,’ the butler said putting out a hand to take Duberly’s hat.

  ‘Her Grace? I thought the Duke had sent for me,’ Duberly said, his hope that today his account would finally be settled beginning to fade.

  ‘No. It is the Duchess who has asked to see you.’

  As they passed beneath the vast bell boards at the back of the undercroft, Duberly smelt the tang of lunch mixed with the scent of gun oil. He followed Hynch up the steps to the butler’s pantry.

  ‘Wait here,' Hynch said.

  Three brown and white spaniels stirred from a pile of old blankets underneath the pantry table and clicked their way across the wooden floor. Duberly squatted down to pet them as he waited for the butler to return. When Hynch beckoned he followed him along the thick carpet of the corridor until they reached the Smoking Room.

  ‘Mr Duberly, Your Grace.' Hynch stood to one side then closed the door soundlessly behind him.

  The only illumination in the room was a bright table lamp at Duberly’s shoulder which emphasised the gloom beyond and as he raised his hand to shield his eyes from the bulb, he was aware of a movement to his left. Stepping forward he saw a shrouded figure seated on a deep sofa.

  ‘Come and sit down,' a voice whispered and he made his way over to a chair a few feet from the figure. As his eyes began to adapt to the low light and he saw in front of him a slim woman dressed from head to foot in black. Every part of her was covered, her hands with black gloves, her face by a dark veil which hung from a broad-rimmed hat like the hood of a bee-keeper. The only contrast on her outfit was a clutched handkerchief which disappeared now and again beneath the veil. She tried to speak but no voice came out and her head bent forward and down and the handkerchief came up once more. Duberly sat patiently and waited.

  After several minutes she became more composed. Her back straightened and the brim of the hat lifted. She laid the handkerchief on her lap, and with both hands began to raise the veil. A clasp appeared at her throat, her slender neck emerged above it but as the veil elevated further, Duberly saw that her jaw and chin were abnormally enlarged and heavy. This observation was quickly superseded by the emergence of her extraordinary eyes. They were a saturated Kashmir blue and despite – or perhaps because of – her recent tears they shone with the lustre of sapphires. Their clarity was accentuated by an outer circle of the deepest violet and the low light in the room had opened the pupils as wide as those of an opium user.

  ‘Yesterday I lost a dear, dear friend and companion,’ she said.

  ‘Please accept my deepest sympathy and condolences, Your Grace,’ Duberly said.

  ‘And I want you to bring her back to life for me.’

  That evening Duberly began his task with a heavy heart. As a naturalist he was excited and enervated by the arrival of a new specimen, confident that he could resurrect the creature to the magnificence it had known in life but as he measured the limbs and skull of the brown and white spaniel that lay on the workbench before him, he had no such confidence.

  He had tried to dissuade the Duchess from this course of action, explore with her the comfort she would have from knowing Snowflake was laid to rest peacefully, perhaps somewhere on the estate where she had enjoyed so many walks with her pet in the past. No, that would not do. It was the dog’s physical presence she needed, the memory was not enough. But the photographs, he reminded her, surely these would bring back a strong sense of physicality. No, absolutely not. Duberly was to take them, use them as best he could to capture the soul of Snowflake.

  Duberly tried a different tack. He explained the limitations of his skill to create character in his pieces. She would not be convinced, she could see the fine character of the antelope he had mounted for the Duke, the power and strength in the polar bear that lay as a rug across the floor of her husband’s dressing room.

  When he reluctantly agreed to attempt the task, she contrived to raise the stakes even higher. Duberly suggested setting up Snowflake in a restful pose as if she had just dropped off to sleep, but the Duchess wanted Snowflake waiting by the door of the Smoking Room as she always did after lunch, her loving eyes attentively watching her mistress for a sign that she was about to rise, put on her coat and take her out walking. She wanted to see the dog’s eager expression and sense the excitement in her little limbs.

  Finally Duberly recommended a few months of mourning before she decided to go ahead with this costly project. He assured her that he could keep Snowflake perfectly preserved until she had reached her decision. Again his pleas were fruitless.

  So here he was in his workshop, rubbing burnt alum and saltpetre into the skin. As he worked, he was further disheartened to see that the poor dog had not been full of bright and youthful health when she died. Her fur was grey around the muzzle and the lids of the eyes loose and stained with age. Hoping he would be able to resolve some of these cosmetic problems later, he set the treated pelt to one side.

  When school finished, Phyllis had a habit of visiting the workshop before going inside to have her tea. Duberly loved his daughter dearly. At fourteen she was accomplished in her schoolwork and helpful domestically – she had also inherited her father’s passion for natural history. At first his wife worried the child may have nightmares if she helped him in the workshop but in fact she had little emotional attachment to the specimens. That is, until the arrival of Snowflake particularly when Duberly began the real practice of his craft, the building of the manikin.

  He gave it a sway to the left, the skull counter-balancing the form as if the final figure was tipping the head inquisitively. Once he began to bind the covering of wood wool with twine, this dynamic position pleased Phyllis – and therefore himself – more and more. He sewed through the excelsior in a vertical line to created depressions between the larger muscles of the leg and Phyllis helped him to wrap thick tow around wire to create the tension of the Achilles’ tendon. When he eased the feet out at a gentle angle to mimic the cabriolet shape to the leg, the girl laughed and applauded her father’s skill.

  Several weeks into his task he received a phone call from Hynch. The Duchess was eager to see how the project was progressing and intended visiting Duberly’s workshop the following afternoon. She arrived alone, she had driven herself. Phyllis ran out to meet her and brought her along the side of the house to the workshop. The Duchess hesitated in the doorway.

  ‘Her body isn’t actually here, is it?' she asked.

  ‘I’m working on the manikin at the moment,' Duberly replied.

  ‘Thank you child,' the Duchess said to Phyllis. ‘You can leave us now.'

  Phyllis looked imploringly at her father but he nodded his assent and she reluctantly made her way back towards the house.

  The Duchess came down the two small steps and stood looking around the room. ‘Goodness,' she said, ‘what a wonderful collection of extraordinary objects.' Her voice was more animated than it had been during their last interview and Duberly thought her mid-Atlantic accent charming. As she moved towards him, the delicate fabric of her skirt caught on a horn that was protruding from a chest on the floor and she reached down to free it. ‘May I look?' She indicated the chest.

  ‘Of
course,' he said. The act of lifting the lid made the antlers rattle and shift and she laughed and looked up at him. The shadow cast by her cloche hat drew back and again he was struck by the contrast between her bewitching eyes and her scarred, twisted face.

  ‘I think you are an alchemist, Mr Duberly. This is like a Merlin’s cave, all these pots and tubs filled with chemicals, these peering faces watching me from the dark corners. And what is that strange smell? I had an aunt who smelt like that. Oh goodness, you’re not working on her are you?'

  Duberly smiled. ‘It’s the camphor, I expect,' he said.

  Then her attention was caught by the manikin. ‘Oh,' she said, ‘so this will be Snowflake.'

  ‘There’s a great deal more work to do,' he said, watching her as she moved in a slow circle around the piece.

  ‘But I see that you have her – look at her little head turning like that – and the leg. You have given her the most beautifully turned stifle. We’ll ignore the fact that she was a bit sickle-hocked, it was part of her charm.' She turned her eyes upon him again and added, ‘I see you are not an alchemist at all. You are an artist.'

  ‘A naturalist perhaps. Certainly nothing more.'

  ‘How modest you are.' She plopped down in an old leather chair at the back of the workshop and drew a cigarette case from her bag. ‘May I sit and watch?'

  Duberly tried to think of a task that wouldn’t cause the Duchess any distress. He had intended painting the eyes that afternoon but this now struck him as ghoulish.

  ‘I find it hard to work with an audience,' he said.

  ‘Oh, never mind,' she said, ‘but you simply must tell me all about it. I admit to a rather macabre fascination. Does it ever strike you as unnatural working with death all the time?'

  ‘Death is a natural end to life.'

  ‘Of course it is. But you choose to sanitise it, to make death beautiful.'

  Duberly felt unnerved. He couldn’t decide if she was criticising him or justifying the route she herself had taken with Snowflake.

  ‘Do you not think,' she continued, ‘it is wrong to play around with nature?'

  ‘I don’t like to think I have “played around” with it. I strive to preserve a mount at a particular point in time as accurately as I can, perhaps as one would preserve a great building or a beautiful book. I would never contrive to deceive people by improving on nature.'

  ‘And would that be such a terrible sin? Would you expect to be punished if you did?' Duberly was baffled by her reply and gazed back at her. ‘Oh come now,' she said, abruptly getting to her feet and stabbing the cigarette out on his workbench. ‘Aren’t you dying to ask? Is some pathology twisting that poor woman’s face? Did she suffer some terrible riding accident?' Duberly remained mute. ‘None of those things,' she continued, ‘I did it to myself. I made a pact with the Devil and now he is making me pay.'

  Duberly abandoned any attempt to follow her train of thought. As she paced around the room, he sank onto the stool by his workbench and waited for her to continue.

  ‘I made my perfect profile even more perfect, many years ago, wax injected here, when I was a great beauty,' and with a forefinger and thumb she traced the bridge of the nose beneath her brow. ‘It didn’t stay there. It moved. It slid down, into my cheeks, puffed them up. I had it scraped out,' and she drew her nails lightly across her cheek. ‘Later it slid down into my lips and gave me this hideous, twisted smile. And the more ambitious wax moved on to my jowls – now I need that cut out too.' She grabbed a knife from the workbench and brandished it towards him. For one ghastly moment Duberly imagined she was building up to charging him with the task. ‘I go to London tomorrow, a man in Harley Street,' she said letting the knife fall back with a clatter.

  She spun round to look at him and suddenly laughed. ‘Why, Mr Duberly. You look alarmed. I have embarrassed you.' She retrieved her gloves from the leather chair and, hoping that this heralded her departure, Duberly stood. ‘I wanted to see how the project was going before I went,' she said as if her recent speech had never taken place. On reaching the door, she turned and added, ‘I took delivery of a pair of sphinxes for the Water Terraces yesterday. I am going to have my own head put on them. How do you think that will look?'

  ‘Unnatural,' Duberly muttered to himself after she was gone.

  So rattled was Duberly by this extraordinary encounter, he decided to finish the job quickly and deliver the piece to Blenheim before the Duchess returned from London. He decided to spend not a minute more on the manikin but press on with fixing the pelt into position and for this he needed the help of his daughter. Together they smoothed soft clay over the model until they had a perfect sculpture of the dog. Then, working quickly with experienced dexterity, Duberly began to apply the pelt to the wet clay while Phyllis supported the edges of the skin, pressing and moulding as he worked to make sure there were no air bubble or looseness between the skin and the clay. Once it was in place, Phyllis’s sensitive fingers ensured that the covering followed every depression and groove of the sculpture beneath.

  The moment Phyllis left for school the following day, Duberly began to work on the eyes. He often used a manufactured glass eye but for this commission he hoped that by hand painting them, he would come close to recreating the glow of real life in those loyal eyes. Sure enough, once they were inserted in the skull, it was as if someone had turned a light on within the little dog’s soul and she sprang to life once more.

  That afternoon Duberly led his daughter over to the workshop. Phyllis gasped with surprise, clapped her hands and flung her arms around her father’s neck.

  They spent several more days on coiffure. Phyllis brushed the coat and treated it with powders to make it shine. Duberly bleached the staining around the jowls and the corners of the eyes. He added glisten to the nose and fullness to the lips. He no longer felt a regard for his patron and precious little for the commission. However, his daughter’s involvement made him fond of Snowflake and he regretted the work robbed the little animal of a dignified resting place.

  On the day he intended to deliver Snowflake, he found Phyllis over in his workshop before she left for school. She hadn’t heard his approach and he stood in the doorway looking down on his daughter. She had grown tall over the winter but the face that lay against the dog’s fur still had the roundness of childhood. He put his arm around her and she rolled her head onto his shoulder.

  ‘It’s always sad to say goodbye,' she said.

  Duberly did not hear from the Marlboroughs again for two years. He received no message to say whether the Duchess was pleased and he certainly never got paid. Then a week before Christmas, Hynch called and asked if he would come once more to the Palace.

  Hynch must have seen his trap arrive because he appeared at the top of the main steps which led directly into the Great Hall. It was bitterly cold and the butler was swathed in a long, thick overcoat and muffler. Duberly hesitated at the foot of the stone steps but the butler called down to him, ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘the Duke’s not here.'

  Two things struck Duberly as he stepped across the threshold – the cold which seemed more penetrating than in the park outside and the acrid smell of dog excrement. A porter and one of the maids were working at the back of the Hall dismantling a large wood and wire pen.

  ‘She turned the place into a kennels,' said Hynch. ‘Fifty of those horrible dogs shitting and pissing and chewing and copulating. It breaks your heart, doesn’t it, after everything he did to restore this place? He finally got rid of her, turned everything in the Palace off, wouldn’t let us serve her, sacked all her staff. She hired a van to remove herself and all those spaniels.'

  ‘Not all,' said Duberly. In the deep shadow at the back of the Hall beneath the great triumphal arch he could make out the ghostly form of a little dog. She had her head cocked to one side as if she was trying to catch the word ‘walk’ and Duberly smiled to see her again.

  ‘That’s why I called you,' Hynch said. ‘Seemed a pity to throw her away af
ter all the work you did. She never liked her. Poor old thing has been stuck up in Housemaid’s Heights for nearly two years now. Can you find a place for her, do you think?'

  ‘I’m sure I can,' Duberly said.

  The End

  Fifteen Days – Paul Kidd

  Day 1

  “Hold her down. I said hold her! Sarah, Sarah! Listen to me. We want to help you.”

  “Get away from me!” The woman being restrained lashed out a leg, catching one of the guards attending her full in the rib cage. “Robert! Help me, please!”

  “Quick, get the syringe….the kit’s over there. Hurry up damn it!”

  “No, please, no...” Sarah’s screams echoed in the tiny metallic room - the last thing she remembered was the sharp scratch of the needle entering her arm. Then darkness.

  Day 3

  “Are you going to make this a little easier today, Sarah?”

  She tried to focus her eyes but fatigue curtailed even this minor exertion. The walls and ceiling above her were a dazzling white and she squinted as she finally overcame the resistance in her eyelids. “Why am I still here? I want to see my husband.”

  “You can soon. How do you feel today?”

  “Sleepy. Really sleepy.”

  “Good.” The reply from the other person in the room was surprising even in her semi-conscious state.

  “I want to leave.” She started to lift a hand from beside her but it was secured tightly to the bed; anger started to swell, the taut bandages pressed into her skin as she struggled to free herself. “Why can’t I leave this place?”

  Sarah turned her head to see where the voice was coming from – a short stocky woman in a lab coat was staring back at her with a rather distasteful curiosity.

  “Sarah, this isn’t helping you.”

  “Let me go!” She began to thrash now, head jerking from side to side, the thin mattress sliding slightly from beneath her. “Please, help me!”