The Wolf in the Attic (4 page)

‘She can indeed, since you are so set on being off.’

The thinner man mounts the bicycle. He looks at me, gauging. ‘She’s just become mislaid, that’s all.’ And to me, he smiles suddenly, and his face becomes different, almost mischievous. ‘You’ll be all right with Jack, my girl. He delights in taking on waifs and strays.’

‘A low blow, Tollers,’ Jack protests, but the other is already cycling off, the bicycle tick tick ticking under him.

‘Edith is expecting me. I have my own waifs to see to Jack. Good luck, and I will see you next week, God willing.’ He waves a hand, throws his scarf about his throat, and dings the bell, and then is off down the street, the red glow of his dynamo fading.

The big man called Jack looks down on me. ‘Forgive my friend, my dear,’ he says. ‘He is a Christian, and believes charity begins at home. And often it remains there.’ Then he snorts a laugh, and offers me his big, sweaty hand. And I take it.

3

W
E WALK DOWN
St Giles, hand in hand. Jack does not ask any more questions for a hundred yards. He has retrieved his pipe from his pocket and is puffing it into life again. Twice he is interrupted by groups of young men walking by, all beery and loud – students I suppose – who suddenly clam up as he approaches, and they utter a chorus of ‘Good evening sir,’ to which he nods, grunts and smiles.

‘My acolytes,’ he says with a grin as I look up at him.

‘Do you work at the University?’ I ask him.

‘Yes, Magdalen. Now listen here –’ He stops and looks down on me from within a little cloud of War Horse. I know the smell. Pa smokes it too.

‘This just won’t do. We have not been properly introduced. My name is Jack.’

‘I am Anna,’ I say. ‘How do you do?’

He smiles again, and we shake hands.

‘Now Anna, you must tell me where you live.’ He pauses. ‘Is there someone waiting at home for you? Your father perhaps?’

‘Yes Jack. Pa will be at home. We live in Jericho. Moribund Lane, down by the canal.’

‘Well, that’s not far then,’ He says with some relief.

‘Where do you live?’

‘Eh? Oh, in Headington.’

‘That’s miles away! Do you drive a motor car?’

‘Not I, Anna. I prefer to walk. It improves the digestion.’ He is looking me up and down as he says this, and I lower my head. I suppose I am quite a mess, wet and stained, covered in cow poo and grass, the newspaper sticking in rags out of my shoes.

‘You look as though you’ve been having quite an adventure,’ he says thoughtfully, as we resume our walk. The Randolph Hotel is ahead, and the Ashmolean on our right. There are lots of smart looking people getting out of a motor car at the Randolph and the doorman is tipping his hat. One of the women has a sleek black bob, like Louise Brooks, and a mink stole around her shoulders. Her lips are painted red as apples.

To see her makes me happy and sad at the same time. I know now that I will never be that woman, or anyone like her. I will not dazzle or be sophisticated, and I will probably never smoke a cigarette in a long holder.

I saw a man murdered tonight. That I know. And the boy who did the murdering knows I saw him do it.

‘Adventures are not what they are cracked up to be,’ I tell Jack, and I hug Pie to me tight.

He takes his pipe out of his mouth and watches me as we walk along. ‘Something frightened you,’ he says.

‘Yes.’

‘Were you out on the Meadow?’

‘How do you know?’

‘There are not many places in Oxford where you can become so liberally splattered with cow manure, my girl.’

‘There were men there,’ I begin. And then I stop, and know that I am not going to tell this kind big man what I saw. If I do, things will happen, and I will lose control of it. For now, I want it to stay with Pie and me. I want to pretend it was not real, and that the dark boy with the knife did not have eyes that reflected the light of the moon in glows of silver-green.

Jack has stopped, and there is a different look on his face now. All seriousness, he asks me gravely, ‘Anna, did someone hurt you?’

I shake my head solemnly. ‘I ran away.’

He nods. ‘That is usually the best thing to do.’

‘It was not… it was not brave.’

‘How old are you?’

‘I’m almost twelve.’

‘Then listen to me. Bravery is sometimes not enough. Courage is a dangerous virtue; it can get you hurt.’

‘Discretion is the better part of valour,’ I say, remembering my lessons with Miss Hawcross.

His eyes twinkle. ‘Precisely.’

‘So it was not cowardly to run away.’

‘It was the right thing to do. These men – what were they up to, out on the Meadow?’

‘They were…’ I close my eyes for a second, picking carefully at the memory. ‘They were cooking a rabbit over a fire.’

‘Ah. Sometimes travellers of a certain kind pass through Oxford on their way to London, and they take a day or a night on the Meadow, or in the woods at Wytham. Especially since the War. Those are not places a little girl should be alone in late at night, Anna. No matter how brave she is.’

I know that now. And I am sure I will never want to carry a knife again so I can cut someone’s throat, or daydream about being a soldier creeping up on the Hun.

‘I won’t do it again,’ I say, a phrase I use a lot. ‘But if Achilleos had been there, or Odysseos, they would have killed those horrible men, with sword and bow.’ And as I spit the words out, I feel the heat rise into my face, and I wish – I wish it could be so. That the heroes of the Greeks could have been there all armoured in bronze, with hard faces that held no fear. A stupid little knife would be nothing to their swords and spears, and the awful men around the fire would be dumbfounded, terrified, as Homer’s heroes strode into the light with the moon at their backs.

‘They might very well have,’ Jack says, with something like surprise. ‘I see you are classically educated, Anna.’

‘I am Greek. I came from a city that the Turks destroyed when I was very little. One day we will go back, and throw the Turks out, and we will have our house again, with the balcony that looks out over the sea, and it will be warm summer. Always.’

Jack has a strange look on his face. ‘I’ll be... damned,’ he says, very quietly, and his grip on my hand tightens for a moment. ‘What a curious little bundle you are.’

We turn off Walton Street. It is darker here, and despite myself I shrink against Jack. I know these streets as well as my own hands, but everything seems different tonight, as though Oxford is a woman who has just unveiled herself, and the face revealed is not who I thought it was.

‘It’s all right my dear,’ Jack murmurs. ‘No-one is going to hurt you. You are quite safe.’

Our house is lit up and the front door is open. People are trooping out and Pa is in the doorway, shaking their hands as they leave. As Jack and I approach, he nods at us absently, and goes back to his handshaking. The meeting must have gone on forever.

I realise then that he did not even know that I was gone, and it barely registers with him that I am standing holding the hand of a strange man in the street. And for a tiny, little boiling second of time, I hate my father.

‘What’s your surname, Anna?’ Jack asks me quietly.

‘Francis. At least it is now. I think it was something else once.’

‘And is that your father on the step?’

‘Yes.’

‘Jolly good.’ Jack’s black, bushy eyebrows have drawn together, and there is even more colour in his face. I realise that something has made him angry. He doffs his hat, and leads me up the three steps to Pa, shunting people out of his way like a train.

‘Mr Francis?’ Pa waves off the last clots of the Committee people, and looks at him, and then at me. Only then does it register in his face that something is out of kilter here.

‘Anna – what the devil? Yes, I am George Francis.’

‘My name is Lewis sir. I found your daughter on St Giles, in a state of –’ But here I on tug Jack’s hand, and as he looks down at me, without a word I plead with him not to say whatever is to come next.

‘That is to say’ – he gives me a tiny nod – ‘I encountered your daughter and decided to see her home, since the hour was late and the streets were somewhat rowdy in that quarter. She is perfectly well, and if I may say, a delightful child. I hope you do not consider it untoward of me.’

Pa reaches out his hand, his handshaking hand, and it is engulfed by Jack’s big paw. ‘Why, not at all sir. I am most grateful to you.’ He looks at me, and he has that hard set to his face as he takes in my appearance, the same as when I tried to cut off my hair. ‘Anna, what have you been at? Go straight upstairs and draw a bath for yourself. You are in a filthy state.’

And to Jack, he says. ‘Won’t you come in, Mr Lewis? I should be happy to compensate you for your trouble with a drink, or taxi fare perhaps.’

‘Not at all, not at all. I was passing this way at any rate, and I must be making my own road home.’

I squeeze past them, so very tired, knowing that I am in trouble again and that the adventure is done for now. I will cop it for this. I can see it in Pa’s eyes.

The house is warm after the cold of the night, and the yellow light seems so calm and normal after the Meadow under the moon. I hug Pie, and feel like crying again, but will not. I will not.

Jack and Pa are saying their goodbyes. I start to trudge up the stairs. Even Pie seems heavy, and my feet are like two cold stones.

‘Anna!’ It is Jack’s voice. I look back, and see he has raised up a hand in farewell.

‘Say hello to Odysseus for me when he returns!’ he grins, and winks. I can’t help but smile back.

Then he is gone, and the door is closed, and Pa stands there looking up at me in the lamplight. I am in the shadow on the stairs, and I don’t think he can even make out my face.

‘Where have you been?’ he asks simply, and he holds out his hands as though he is about to catch a ball.

‘Walking. Port Meadow. There – there’s a moon tonight, Pa.’

He walks slowly towards me. Up the stairs; one step, two. Then his hand cocks back and he slaps me hard across the face, knocking me down.

I climb back to my feet. ‘I’m sorry Pa,’ I say.

He nods grimly. ‘Get upstairs. We will talk about this in the morning. I want you washed and in your nightgown in twenty minutes, Anna.’

I rub my face. ‘Will you read to me tonight, Pa?’

‘Go’

And so up the stairs I climb, and Pie slips through my hand I am so tired, and I drag her by the leg as I go up, her head bump, bump, bumping against every step.

4

P
EOPLE TALK ABOUT
being in the doghouse after they have misbehaved. I have never understood why that should be such a bad thing. I love dogs, and would have no trouble at all cuddling up next to one in some little kennel. We could look out at the world side by side, and people would leave us alone. It would be a fine thing altogether.

Far worse is to be in a normal house, with running water and coal fires and lamplight, where it is warm and comfortable, but where you know that everything you do is being watched and weighed up and you must behave in a certain way, and spend your days under the grey weight of disapproval, and wonder if the cloud will ever lift and you will see a smile again.

I like things to be cut and dried and straightforward. If I have been bad, I want a belt on the ear, and then to be forgiven. Or a whack of some kind anyway – one that you can see coming, brace yourself for, and then know that when it is done, it is over. And afterwards it’s all jam and buns again. Pa hits me because he loves me – I know that. And afterwards he is always so nice to me, and it is almost like old times. That is the way it’s done and I am used to it. But things are different this time, it seems.

I tell Pie this, sitting in my room alone. I am confined to the house now, for how long I do not know. Like Rapunzel, only with shorter hair.

I am to stop calling Pa,
Pa
. I am to call him
Father
now. Which is horrible, and does not feel right in my mouth every time it comes out. But
Pa
is not genteel.