Heaven Eyes (7 page)

She picked a box up from the floor.

“There is raisins and beef,” she said. “And there is many of the sweetest chocolates.”

She opened the lid of the box and held it out to us. We took chocolates. We took more chocolates. She held out an opened tin of corned beef.

“Take more,” she said. “Take more. Be not feared. Take the thing that looks the nicest thing of all.”

“T
HERE MUST BE PLACES FOR THE NIGHT
,” said Heaven Eyes. “There must be places for the sleeping and the sleep thoughts.”

She laid blankets in a row against the wall.

“For you all,” she whispered. “For you to be fast asleep and safe and sound in Grampa’s office.”

Mouse crouched beside her as she worked. He picked up metal letters from the floor and laid out our names beside our blankets.

“What is these letters?” said Heaven Eyes.

“Our names,” he said.

He spoke the letters, spelling out the words.

“See?” he said. “The letters make words and words make us.”

She pondered.

“Is there letters that make Heaven Eyes?”

Mouse smiled, and laid her name there beside her blankets.

She smiled, and gently touched her letters.

“Is me?” she said.

“It’s you,” said Mouse.

“Lovely. Lovely.”

She wriggled down onto her blankets with her hand stretched out to touch her name.

January kicked his own letters away.

“Like a name on a bloody gravestone,” he said.

I clicked my tongue.

Heaven Eyes lay beside me beneath her own blankets.

“My bestest friend,” she said.

She rested her head on my arm and slept.

Mouse went off to sleep quickly and peacefully, as if nothing here troubled him.

January and I lay on our blankets, rested our heads on our hands and looked at each other. Jan’s eyes were
harsh and red-rimmed and shining with tiredness. I saw how he was ready to quarrel with me, even to fight with me. I tasted the sweetness of the chocolates in my mouth, the juice of the raisins, felt the heaviness of the cold meat in my stomach. Heaven’s voice echoed deep inside my mind. I felt the touch of her webbed fingers on my cheek. The little fire’s gentle heat drifted over us. I felt the Middens mud drying on me, encasing me.

“It’s warm,” I said. “We’re tired, Jan. We have to stay, at least for tonight.”

He glanced at Grampa, who stayed sitting at the table, taking no notice of us. He kept on writing, writing. He muttered and whispered as he wrote. Black dust fell from his hair and beard to the page.

“They’re mad,” said January. “They’re bloody freaks.”

“They won’t harm us.”

“Like something from a bloody nightmare. Look at him. No knowing what he’ll do …”

“But she’s lovely.”

“Lovely!”

“Yes, lovely. Old as us, but like a little girl. And so strange, Jan …”

He shook his head and ground his teeth.

“A freak, you mean. A mutant. Like something from a stupid zoo.”

“Stop it!”

He narrowed his eyes.

“You’re under a spell, Erin. All that stuff about brothers and sisters and bestest friends!”

“A spell! Ha!”

Grampa grunted. He looked down at us.

“Not brother,” he said. “Not sister.”

I shook my head at him.

“No,” I said. “We know that, Grampa.”

“We know that, Grampa,” echoed January in a little mocking voice; then he lowered his head, turned his back to me. Soon his breathing slowed and deepened. Grampa turned back to his book.

B
EHIND
G
RAMPA, THE SHELVES ON THE WALL
were packed. I could make out broken bits of pottery, heaps of coins, rusted knives and tools. There were rows of bottles and metal boxes. There was a small boat’s propeller and a little anchor. There was a little stack of bleached bones. On the highest shelves, right up against the ceiling, there were boxes lashed tight with belts and ropes. Three spades leaned on the wall beside the door. There were several buckets, one inside the other. Grampa murmured and wrote. Heaven Eyes slept on my arm. Sometimes she hummed as she slept and it was like music that came from a thousand miles away. I rubbed my eyes to keep myself from sleep and dreams.

Grampa’s hands were like ours, grainy and black.

Black dust as well as scribbled words fell from his fingers. He kept staring into the darkness, pondering, tapping on his table.

“Tuesday,” he said. “Unless I’ve lost me blinking brain again and I’m all befuddled again an it’s another day. But call it Tuesday. Discoveries, several. Three plates, broken. One cup, broken. One pan, no handle. Two coins amounting to two new pence and one old penny. A bag of bread, sodden. Umpteen pop bottles, plastic. One boot, one sock, one pair underpants, extra large. One wing, kittiwake. One dog, black, dead. One large thigh bone, source unknown. Jewelry, none. Riches, none. Treasure, none. Mysteries, one.”

He chewed his pencil and stared down at us, lying in a row on his floor. I narrowed my eyes. I saw the bulge of his nose, the long hair hanging down, the outline of his ragged beard, the word SECURITY on his chest. He turned his face to the page again.

“Mysteries, one. Creatures, three, crawling on the Middens in the dead of night. One craft, timber. Three creatures carried here by water and the moon. Three creatures crawling from the depths of the Middens’ mud. Three creatures, rescued by my Heaven.”

He lifted a piece of corned beef and started to chew it.

“There’s visitors come, Grampa. Devils or angels or something in between? Who can say.”

He looked down at us, lying there on his floor. He wiped his sleeve across his mouth. He scribbled again.

“No doubt tomorrow will shed light.”

He leaned back in his creaking chair.

“Tuesday over,” he sighed. “Wednesday still to come.”

He started to sing about the sea, about someone who had gone too far out and couldn’t find the way home again. He sat there with his head lowered into the pool of candlelight. He glanced at us again.

“And if these is come for shenanigans,” he said. “Then mebbe there’ll just be fettling to do.”

He smiled and sighed.

“Aye,” he said. “A little bit of fettling.”

“It’s Friday,” I whispered.

He stared.

“It’s not Tuesday that’s over. It’s Friday,” I said.

He scratched his head. Black dust fell from it.

“Sorry,” I said.

He turned back the pages in his book.

“Friday,” he whispered. “Friday over, Saturday to come. You’re befuddled, Grampa.”

He stroked his beard.

“Ah, well. Ah, well.”

“Who are you?” I said.

“Who?”

“Where you from? Why are you here?”

His face twisted. He tilted his head and looked at me from the corner of his eye, as if he couldn’t focus on me properly, as if I was a figment of his imagination.

“I remember many things,” he whispered. “I remember I was all alone. I remember I did dig out Heaven Eyes one starry night from the mud of the Black Middens. Long long time ago. Long ago as she has been alive. I remember I am caretaker and always been the caretaker. But I do not remember many other things.”

He rubbed his eyes, focused on me, wrote again.

“You dug her out?” I said. “What do you mean, you dug her out?”

“Grampa is the caretaker,” he said. “Grampa dug out Heaven from the Middens one starry night. This is long long time back and much in memory does fade away. Heaven Eyes is called Heaven Eyes cos she does see through all the grief and trouble in the world to the heaven that does lie beneath. There are days that come and nights that come and tides that turn. There is chocolates that are the sweetest chocolates of all.”

He fingered the peak of the helmet on his desk. His eyes cleared for a moment and he stabbed his finger toward me.

“No shenanigans! You hear? None of your shenanigans.”

“No,” I said.

He rolled his eyes and calmed again.

“Never mind. Tomorrow will shed light,” he murmured.

He sang again. I carefully moved Heaven’s head from my arm and I stood up.

He watched me as I moved about the room. I touched the bones and the rusted tools. I stared down into boxes of shining pebbles. I felt the letters beneath my feet. There was a framed photograph on the wall: a young man in a uniform like Grampa’s in brilliant sunshine by the river. I leaned close. Was this the same man, years and years ago? I turned and met his eye.

“You?” I said.

No answer. He looked right through me.

“Were you the caretaker, all those years ago?”

No answer. He turned his eyes away, went back to his writing.

There was a photograph of ships lined up on the quayside with great cranes above them, many men working on the quays in caps and overalls. There was a photograph of the greatest bridge as it was being built, the arms of the arch reaching toward each other across the water. There was a photograph of the printing works, lit by sunlight falling through the skylights, huge sheets of printed papers streaming out beneath the wings of eagles and angels.

January, Mouse and Heaven slept. Grampa murmured, sang and wrote. I went to his shoulder and looked down at his pages. At the head was printed: SECURITY REPORT, then DATE and NAME and POSITION. He had written
Tuesday
, crossed it out, replaced it with
Friday
, and written
Grampa
and
Caretaker.
The pages were crammed with tiny writing, with drawings of
Heaven and her webbed fingers, with drawings of we three: black shapes on the Black Middens with the moon gleaming above. I saw our names recorded there: Erin, Janry and Mows.

“We came across the river,” I whispered.

“They crost the riva,” he whispered and wrote.

“We came from Whitegates in St. Gabriel’s.”

“They cum from Gaybrils.”

“We are damaged children, but we are happy.”

“They ar hapy hapy.”

“I once lived with my mum. We had a little house above the river. It was our Paradise.”

I smiled as my story appeared beneath his hand, weaving its way into the tale of Heaven Eyes, into the mysteries contained in his huge book.