The Wolf in the Attic (6 page)

But at least the house is mine to explore. The upper rooms were closed off when we let Elsie and Mrs Bramley go, and I was told to keep out of the top floor, because of the dust and so on, and now up there the rooms are full only of a dim silence, with white sheets draped on all the tatty old furniture, and the air is always damp. It is a ghostly place, in a way, but I am not afraid. I have seen worse things than ghosts, and if one were to appear to me, I should have so many questions to ask of it that it would have no time to groan and moan and shake its chains.

T
HERE IS ONE
place in the house where I have never been, because father has expressly forbidden me to go there. And also because it is difficult to get to. But I have thought on it a lot lately, ever since the meetings of the Committee started to become more frequent. The house has become busier, but not in the good way that it was when Elsie was lighting fires in every room of a morning, and all the drapes were pulled back to let the light in, and the lamps were lit all over the place. This is different, the cold busyness of a bus station or a waiting room, with strange faces and loud voices.

L
AST WEEK,
I was creeping about the lower landing, and I found a man using father’s chamber-pot, while still talking loudly to the people downstairs. He was not ashamed or taken aback when he saw me and Pie, but grinned a little sheepishly, and went about his business before replacing the sloshing pot by father’s bed.

‘All full up down below,’ he said, and he rubbed my head as he passed me on the landing, so close I could smell the whisky on his breath.

It was at that moment that I knew I had to find a place all of my own in the house, or I think I would go mad.

A
BOVE THE SILENT
rooms on the third floor there is an attic. I know this because I have stood outside and studied the house, the way you study a person’s face to tell if they are telling the truth or a lie. There are no proper windows, but there is a skylight on the street side and another on the garden side of the roof, and why put in skylights if there is nothing to light? So there is a space up there where I have never been, and it would be so remote and private from the rest of the house that as soon as I have guessed at its existence, I know I must go there. I will make an expedition of it, or a secret mission. I will be Odysseos, creeping about the hut of the Cyclops.

I
PICK MY
moment carefully, and set my plan in motion. It would not do to get caught. I am deep enough in father’s bad books already. I wait until there is a dull blue day when he is off to London, and after Miss Hawcross’s lessons are done.

S
HE STAYS ON
a while on afternoons like these, to keep an eye on me while father is away, but I can tell that she doesn’t like to be sitting silent with me in the dank old house, with no noise but the occasional crackle of the fire in the front room and the ticking of the clocks. Outside, the winter dusk is falling fast, and I am pretending to read
The Coral Island
, but I have read it many times before – it is one of my favourites – and I am not focussing on the words, but peeking at Miss Hawcross over the top of the book, and exchanging glances with Pie, and every so often yawning so wide that the faked yawns become real, and Miss Hawcross catches them and covers her mouth to yawn herself.

She is knitting, but not with much attention, and the clacking of the needles has slowed. I tell her I think I shall go up to bed, and yawn again. She nods, clearly relieved. ‘Your father should be back soon, Anna. I believe I shall make my own way home, while there is still a little light.’

She pauses. ‘I shall see you up to bed… Are you… are you all right in the house by yourself?’

‘Quite all right,’ I tell her, and smile brightly. ‘I have Pie, and my book, but I am tired anyway. I can get myself to bed, Miss Hawcross, really I can. Let me see you to the door.’

She gathers her things, her black boater and cloth bag, and she pins the hat in place on her head with a stab of pins. ‘I suppose that’s all right.’

As I see her out the door, she turns and looks at me. Her breath is steaming yellow in the light of the hall. ‘I shall see you tomorrow then.’

I nod. She seems a little unsure about going so I smile again, and close the door firmly on her. Then I listen. There is no sound for a long moment, until finally I hear her heels tapping down the steps, like the sound of her knitting needles, only sharper.

‘At last,’ I say to Pie. I do not have a desert island of my own to roam, but for a while at least, the house is mine.

I
GLIDE THROUGH
the upstairs rooms like a ghost, touching the sheeted furniture so that the dust rises off it in tiny glowing mites that float in the very last of the day’s weak sunlight. Already, the street below is in blue shadow, but if I look out of the windows here I can peer over Port Meadow to the hills beyond, Botley to the left, Wytham to the right, and the light sinking fast behind the rising ground, winter-red, a bloody sun falling behind blue-grey hills, and the night above it swooping in.

I shiver a moment, and hug Pie, and wonder if it would not be better to be down below in the firelight. But the thought makes me angry, too. Angry because after all this time I am still unprepared. I must search for matches and a candle, and waste more of this precious solitary time.

I find them in the basement, though the candle is only a stump; and by that time the night has truly fallen, and the lamps are all unlit and cold except for the one in the front room, and the fire is sunk to red coals, and the rest of the house is heavy with the dark, and the loud ticking of the two clocks we keep wound. And I almost falter again. But then I think of the Greeks, cooped up in the dark of the wooden horse under the walls of Troy, and know that I have it in me to do this thing.

Pie agrees. (She always does.) I light the candle, wedge it in a holder, and up we go again.

I talk to her as we ascend the stairs, but on the topmost flight I run out of things to say, and the candlelight seems very weak against the loom of the shadows.

I know these rooms, all of them. Not so well as the lower floors of the house, but I am no stranger here. All the same, I cannot think where the entrance to the attic might be. I scan all the ceilings, ignoring my shadow as it capers candlelit across them, but there is no hatch or door up there. It really is quite infuriating. And for a while the puzzle of it makes me lose all fear.

The clocks strike six, far below, and I know that time is slipping away from me. I stamp my foot in frustration, and do my round of the third floor rooms again.

And that is when I spot it. Hidden behind a tall, shrouded cabinet, there is a crack in the wall. As I prod the candle closer, it becomes the outline of a low door, one even I should have to stoop to enter. It has a recessed catch of brass, and looks as though it has been painted over at least once.

I shove the cabinet aside. Things tinkle within, and there is the thin thump of something delicate toppling, but I am undeterred by such trifles. The dust makes me cough, and rises like smoke in the yellow candlelight. I grasp the brass half-moon catch and pull on it. The painted-over door will not budge.

Here at least, I am prepared. I have my knife with me this time. Not a weapon, but a tool, I say firmly to Pie, and there is a difference. There must be a difference.

I run it along the line of the little doorway, the paint scoring and flaking off under the blade. Once or twice the knife goes astray and scores the door itself, leaving a quite horrible looking scar. But it is too late to back out now, I tell Pie. And I keep going.

Only to stop again a second later, listening.

Just for a moment, I thought I heard something, a sliding thump, something… moving. It came from the attic above.

‘Rats,’ I say to Pie. ‘But I’m not afraid of them. They’re cowards, and I have a knife, after all.’ The tool that is a weapon.

Faint and far away, the clocks below strike the quarter hour.

I grit my teeth, and say through them, ‘Fortune favours the bold, Pie,’ and I continue with my work, the hard white lead paint springing off in scales, until there is movement in the door, a kind of give that was not there before. My knuckles are sore and my fingers too. I have paint chips under my nails and in my hair. I look at the candle. There is still an inch of it left. I put three fingers through the half-moon catch, and pull with all my might.

There is a squeal of wood on wood, and it is open. All at once, a breath of air brushes past me, as cold as a grave, and I shiver. The hour seems much later than it is, and the tall old house seems to have somehow withdrawn in the dark, as though something in its very fabric had changed with the opening of the little hidden doorway.

‘What rot!’ I say aloud, but I know my voice shakes, and seems far too loud for the silent, shrouded room.

I retrieve Pie, fold up my knife, and peer through the little door.

Wooden steps leading up, steep and stark.

‘Here we are Pie,’ I say, and I tilt her head back so that her black glass eyes close in agreement.

I crouch and enter the little staircase. One step up, then two. I look down at the black hatch of the door and have a sudden terror that it will slam shut behind me.

‘Rot,’ I repeat through gritted teeth, and as I ascend the stairs I keep the words coming, one with every step.

‘Balderdash. Bosh, tosh, bunkum and bilge…’ The words run out. But ‘Bollocks!’ escapes from my mouth as the steps come to an end, and there is another door, the twin of the one below, the brass of its handle dull in the shaking light of my little candle.

‘Rats won’t hurt us. They’ll run away,’ I say to Pie, to keep her spirits up. ‘The trick is, not to let them know you’re afraid.’

This door has never been painted over, and it swings open easily, but creaks horribly as it does, making me jump.

There is that breath of chill air again, as though a deeper winter has hold over this room, and beyond that, a smell in the air, musky, animal-like. It is quite pungent.

‘Rats,’ I whisper to Pie. And I make my face grim and resolute.

I straighten up, my candlelight leaping upwards on beams and braces, exposed brick, curtained cobwebs, and blocks of black shadow. I brace myself for scurryings and squeaks and little eyes gleaming in the dark, but there is nothing. No rats, despite the smell. Just a heavy stillness, and that hanging bitter cold.

I step forwards, raising the candle high. It gutters as I do, and I see that I am directly below the skylight. It is the one which faces west, towards the Meadow, and to my surprise I see that it is not closed, but raised and open, with one of its four panes broken. No wonder it is so cold up here.

No clock chimes can be heard in the attic. Even the sounds of the streets below are absent. There is nothing but darkness and silence and cold.

‘This is very disappointing,’ I say to Pie with a sigh, and I make my voice loud, looking around me as I say it. I am the mistress of this house – Mrs Bramley told me so. But I cannot shake the impression that I am not alone up here, and all the little hairs on the back of my neck are standing up, like the pelt of an alarmed cat.

The attic is full of junk. There are old broken-back chairs, and boxes, and racks of ancient-looking clothes that smell damp and dreary. I can see a feather boa, and an enormous hat, wide as a tray. I pick my way over the creaking floorboards, the shadows giving way before me.

‘Bosh.’ I say loudly. ‘Bosh, tosh and balderdash.’

Some of the clothes have just been piled up in a heap on the floorboards, and they smell too. They look almost like a nest, but it’s hard to tell. I look them over and see that they are covered in grey mould.

The candle is almost flat with the holder now, and spilling veins of wax at an alarming rate.

I don’t know what I had thought to find up here, but it was more than this neglected, waiting emptiness.

A treasure chest, perhaps, or a cavalry sabre, or a madman’s diary… or even a doll. But there is nothing, not so much as a book to read. Just that rank smell.

‘It must be the damp,’ I say to Pie.

I can see the slates of the roof, the beams and joists of old and massive wood which support them. Buttresses of brick stick out at regular intervals, and as I pick my way through the rubbish and the boxes I see the mummified body of a little mouse on the floor, and feel a pang of pity for it, to have died up here all alone.

‘That’s what smells I suppose,’ I say. Though it seems too small to account for the stink.

‘We shall open all the skylights and air the place out,’ I tell Pie. ‘Bring up a lamp, and some books, maybe even a stool or something. It could be cosy, I’m sure of it.’ I don’t think Pie is convinced.

I look up at the yawning broken skylight again. There are stars beyond, a glimmer of them. The catch is too high for me to reach. I would have to pile up the boxes, and they all look fragile, like sandcastles which have dried out and will crumble to the touch. It will have to stay open for now.

Newspapers, from another century, yellow and mottled. Here a pair of gloves, the leather stiff as biscuit. A belt, gnawed by little teeth and rippled with mould. A pair of broken spectacles. And some photographs. It is too dark and the candlelight too uncertain to make them out with any clarity, but I see stern faces and stiff collars, muttonchop whiskers, a pot plant. In one there is a sleeping baby, and for some reason it makes me shiver to look upon it.

I wonder who they were, these strangers in the photographs, and if they live yet, or if they are among the dead now. I suppose they must be. There is no life up here, nothing that was made in the century I know.

But perhaps the baby in the photograph is still alive, quite old by now, all grown up and with children who have children. Perhaps they have chased me down the street and called me names.

They belong here, these faded faces from the past. And I do not.