Attica (38 page)

‘Well, I didn’t like him,’ says the owl emphatically. ‘I thought he was drippy. Didn’t seem to know what he wanted.’

That’s just part of being young. You’ve been old for so long you can’t remember what it’s like to be young.

‘I’m just glad he’s gone.’

Didn’t you like him at all?

The owl ponders and a little truth comes out.

‘Well, he was quite humorous sometimes. He made you laugh.’

And you?

‘Just a little.’

‘Owls don’t laugh.’

CHAPTER 22

The End of the Beginning

Once Alex was in the darkness of his own attic, he could see the square of light which was his doorway to the real world. He made his way towards it and paused on the brink, looking down on to the landing of their new house. Hearing low voices he knelt to peer inside and something banged against his thigh: something in his jacket pocket. He reached in with his left hand and pulled out a shiny object that made him gasp in delight.

It was Mr
Grantham’s pocket-watch.

‘Amanda,’ he murmured. ‘Amanda put it in my pocket.’

He descended the loft ladder to the landing, just in time to hear the end of a sentence from Jordy at the other end of the landing, where he and Chloe were standing with Ben and Dipa.

Jordy was saying, ‘… be very long.’

‘Here I am,’ said Alex, smiling weakly, realising he had come down from Attica just seconds after his step-brother and sister. ‘I was right behind them.’

Alex could not fail to see how the faces of his brother and sister lit up with pleasure and relief on seeing him. It was worth it, to come back to the real world, just to see how much they thought of him. If he ever doubted he was loved, he doubted it no longer. These were his family. They had missed him, even for that short time. Chloe especially. He wanted to go up to her and hug her, but of course he couldn’t, not in front of his parents. They had no idea what the three of them had been through. Maybe next week he would want to strangle his sister, but today he thought the world of her.

‘What
have
they
been doing up there?’ asked Dipa, folding her arms and looking at Ben. ‘Look at them! Where did you get those smelly old clothes, Alex? And you two,’ she turned on Chloe and Jordy, ‘you look like rag-bags on legs.’

‘We found them in the attic,’ Chloe said.

Ben said with a questioning look, ‘Aren’t you all just a
teeny
bit old for playing dressing-up?’

‘It was only for a laugh,’ said Jordy. ‘We were just amusing ourselves.’

‘And the backpacks?’ enquired Dipa.

‘Oh, these,’ Alex said, ‘we found them too – and look – I’ve got Mr Grantham’s watch.’

He held it up triumphantly, with both Chloe and Jordy crying things like, ‘Well done, bruv.’ ‘What a star!’

‘Mr Grantham’s watch?’ asked Ben, looking at Dipa. ‘What’s that all about?’

Dipa’s folded arms tightened round her chest. ‘Don’t look at me. I’ve got no idea.’

‘Mr Grantham lost a watch in the attic when he was a young man,’ explained Chloe. ‘We said we’d look for it for him. And Alex managed to find it.’

‘And a letter,’ said Alex, ‘from his old girlfriend.’

He pulled the envelope out of his pocket and showed it to them.

‘I hope you haven’t read it,’ Dipa said. ‘That wouldn’t be right.’

‘What?’ cried
Jordy, who was better at fibs than the other two. ‘Up there in the dark?’

‘Well, I’m glad you Boy Scouts have been doing good deeds,’ Ben said impatiently, ‘and I’m very impressed by it all. I’m sure Mr Grantham will be grateful. But now I think you’d all better go to your rooms and get out of those rags. You, young man,’ he addressed Alex, ‘smell like a sewer. In fact, you all pong. You’re a filthy bunch of herberts and I want you showered and changed within the hour. Your mother’s going to cook us a curry for supper.’

Nelson suddenly appeared as if by magic from round one of the bedroom doorways. He limped into view and let out a pathetic yowl. Curry. Nelson loved left-overs, and of all the left-overs he liked best, curry was at the top of the list, followed by sardines and beef sausages. Nelson knew only a few words in English and ‘curry’ was one of them.

‘Yes, we know,’ said Alex, bending to stroke his erst-while ginger saviour, ‘grub is very important, isn’t it?’

Nelson purred.

The children went to their rooms, but as soon as Dipa and Ben descended the stairs, they all met up again in Jordy’s room.

‘So,’ whispered Chloe to Alex, ‘you found it?’

‘Wasn’t easy,’ murmured Alex, showing them the silver watch again. He wound it round to the hour so that it played
Frère Jacques
a little before snapping it shut again. ‘I had to cross that water tank and …’ He gave them a brief overview of his adventures since he left them on the edge of the tank. ‘Anyway, Amanda gave me the watch in the end – put it in my pocket, so’s I couldn’t even thank her for it.’

‘She probably wanted it that way,’ said Chloe.

‘Amanda, eh?’ chirruped Jordy, nudging his brother and smirking. ‘I see – the quiet ones are the worst.’

‘No, it
wasn’t like that. She’s older than me, anyway.’

‘Only by a hundred years, you said. Hardly significant in a relationship as strong as yours.’

‘Oh, shut up, Jordy,’ Chloe said.

But Jordy’s eyes had suddenly gone misty and distant as he remembered the Tarzan-girl he had seen in the rafters.

Alex then recalled something. ‘Hey, I ran into that other board-comber, you know, the one with the bat hanging from his ear? He gave me a present – I think it’s another model steam engine.’ Alex took off his backpack and reached inside. ‘And there’s a gift for each of you two. This is for Chloe. And this for you, Jordy, though he said you didn’t deserve anything, being as you’re a pain in the butt.’

‘No he didn’t,’ replied Jordy, taking the small round parcel. ‘Wonder what it is?’ He unwrapped it, producing a red leather ball.

‘An old cricket ball.’ Jordy was disappointed at first until he turned it over in his hands and then he exclaimed in delight, ‘Signed by Nasser Hussein! Wow. And that old guy, Ian Botham. And a couple of others. Wait till I show this to everyone at school.’

‘Cool,’ said Alex, not meaning it. ‘A cricket ball. Hey, your arm looks better.’

Jordy flexed it for Alex’s benefit. ‘Good as new.’

Chloe peeled the brown paper away from her gift. She gasped in delight. It was a small book, a children’s story, entitled
The King of the Golden River – or The Black Brothers – A Legend of Stiria
.

‘Never heard of it,’ muttered Jordy. ‘Is it any good, Clo?’

‘It’s a first edition,’ breathed the enchanted Chloe. ‘It’s a rare antique volume by John Ruskin.’ She leafed through it carefully. ‘Look at the illustrations. They’re beautiful. “Illustrated by Richard Doyle.” This is a treasure. It’s probably worth thousands of pounds.’

‘Let’s not
go overboard, girl,’ said Jordy. ‘A few quid, anyway.’

She clasped it to her breast. ‘I shall never sell it. We’ve all come out of the attic with wonderful treasures, haven’t we?’

A female voice came floating up the stairs.

‘Are you getting washed and changed?’

‘Yes,’ they chorused, scrambling away in different directions. ‘Coming.’

Mr Grantham looked irritable and confused when he answered the door the next day and was confronted by the three children. Clearly he had been sleeping in one of his armchairs and had been woken by the bell.

‘Yes?’ he said shortly. ‘What is it?’

‘We’ve been up there,’ replied Chloe.

It took but a minute for his annoyed expression to clear and a new and sparkling light came into his rheumy old eyes.

‘Well, what did you think?’

‘It nearly did for us,’ muttered Jordy darkly.

‘Well, it was supposed to. You don’t want to live in boxes of cotton wool, do you? You need a bit of danger in your lives at your age.’ He looked them up and down. ‘Besides, you’re up to it. I can see it in you. Him,’ he pointed at Alex, ‘made it back by the skin of his teeth, didn’t he? He’s got the look.’

‘I found your watch,’ said Alex, stepping forward. ‘Here.’

He put the silver watch into the open wrinkled hand of the old gentleman and let the chain coil into his palm. Mr Grantham opened the timepiece and stared with glistening pleasure at the face. He turned the hands to the hour.
Frère Jacques
came tinkling out. Then he studied the faded photograph, cut to fit the lid, and his expression turned to one of sadness.

‘She
hasn’t changed a bit,’ he said, ‘in all those years. But of course, she wouldn’t. This is
my
Susan, not the one who lives somewhere else now, this is the one who was fond of
me
.’ He lifted his head to face the children again. ‘I’m very grateful. I know you’ve had an adventure. Had one myself once, when I was about your age, but you’ve guessed that. Anything else up there, while you were rooting around?’

Alex said, ‘Oh yes,’ and reached into his pocket. ‘Here, this letter was there. You’d better read it in private, it’s very personal …’ Then he realised he had given the game away, and added, ‘We just glanced at it.’

‘That’s all right,’ murmured Mr Grantham, taking the letter and removing the envelope. ‘You can keep this, young man. I expect you collect stamps, don’t you?’

Alex didn’t argue.

‘Thank you, Mr Grantham.’

‘You’re very welcome.’ He looked at the watch again, his pleasure evident in his smile, then he said to Chloe, ‘And you’ve been very kind to an old man. You too’ – this was directed at Jordy – ‘I’m sure you had a part to play. I’m sure you all worked very hard up there. It’s not an easy place to get around. That place changes you, doesn’t it? I like to think for the better. I’m sure you’ll all thank me for what I’ve done for you, one day.’

‘You could have warned us,’ Jordy said a little huffily.

‘Oh no,’ replied Mr Grantham, ‘that would have spoiled it for you, now wouldn’t it? Where’s the challenge, else?’

Jordy left it at that, though he did not entirely agree with Mr Grantham’s reasons. The young people left the old man and returned to their parents feeling rather good about themselves. That evening Ben took them all to a restaurant to celebrate a little rise in his salary.

When Chloe went to the salad bar, she almost bumped into a family of five filling their bowls. She recognised four of them. The cheeky boy was there scowling at the beet-root and grimacing at the spring onions, with George the father standing behind him, and Chantelle the spirited little girl who WOULD BE HEARD – and of course Jane.

The scruffy
small boy, jaw jutting out in defiance, was talking with his mouth full of food as he began to eat directly from the salad bar, dipping his fingers into the beetroot and onions. ‘I never took no old walrus. What would I want a rotten old walrus for? It must’ve got lost somewhere or someone else took it. Maybe it exploded? Maybe it swum off somewhere, down the plughole in the sink, swum back to the Eskimos where it come from?’ He let out a raucous laugh which no one joined in with. His protests were not over, however, and the grumbling continued. ‘Who’s to know? All I know is I din’t take it. Wun’t want it, would I? A rotten old walrus? Huh. You always blame me for everythin’. Why not blame
her
or
her
?’ He pointed to his sisters with a fork. ‘Maybe,’ his eyes lingered on Chantelle, ‘maybe she et it. She eats everythin’, she does. She’d eat Big Ben an’ the Houses of Parlyment if you give ’em to her in a sandwich …’

Chantelle, in her father’s arms, blew her brother a wet raspberry which sprayed the salad bar and Chloe instinctively covered her plate.

Chloe, remembering the carved walrus now, wondered where it had gone, at the same time as admiring the boy’s inventive language. The boy was eventually silenced by his father, who said he did not want to hear another word about the damn walrus, from anyone. The walrus was gone and that was that. He would buy another carving for Jane, just as expensive, just as nice. If they could get another walrus, fine, but if not, Jane would have to make do with a seal or a sea lion or something similar.

While
he was talking Chloe studied the older sister of the boy.

She was about Chloe’s age but they looked nothing like each other.

‘Hello, Sarah,’ whispered Chloe, moving closer to the girl at the salad bar. ‘How are you?’

Sarah looked up, startled.

‘Do I know you?’ asked Sarah. ‘I don’t think …’

‘Just a little,’ replied Chloe, who couldn’t help smiling. ‘You might say our paths crossed – once upon a time.’

Sarah continued to look puzzled, then finally she shrugged and drifted away, to join the rest of her family. Chloe was later thrilled to notice that Sarah and Jane were smiling and laughing together. Clearly they were enjoying one another’s company. There was pleasure written on George’s face too, as he contemplated his family.

I wonder if I helped to do that? thought Chloe. I’d like to think so.

In the meantime, Jordy was looking into the eyes of a slim young waitress taking his order. Sadly he found them wanting.

Seven months after the children had left Attica, Mr Grantham died peacefully in his bed. He left the pocket-watch in his will to Alex.

‘He got the wartime stamp as well,’ Jordy pointed out.

The stamp proved to be very valuable, having been franked by the British Post Office, the Swiss Post (acting as a neutral go-between while the countries were at war) and finally the Deutsche Bundespost. Susan could have sent the letter via the Red Cross but in her distressed state had put it through the normal overseas mail instead. It must have lain in some corner of a foreign sorting office for several years and was only returned to Susan in 1948, a few years after the war had ended. This last was scribbled on the back of the envelope and dated by some postal employee.

Alex got
so much for the stamp in an auction the whole family benefited. They purchased the other half of the house from Mr Grantham’s relatives so they had more room.

Jordy was the first to congratulate his brother on bringing good fortune to them all. ‘Good on yer, kid,’ he said, ‘you can borrow my cricket pads anytime.’ Alex thanked his brother kindly, but politely declined the offer.