The Girl in the Attic

by Wendy Reakes

  In the bottom drawer, my interest was caught when it revealed a stack of elegant boxes, some wooden and inlaid with mother of pearl and others made of hardened paper with Savoy Gentleman’s Tailors written in scrolls over the top. I removed one and gently opened the lid. Inside was a silk cravat patterned with swirls of rich coloured thread. I ran the back of my fingers over the smooth material. It was the finest piece of silk I had ever seen -that wasn’t to say I’d seen much silk in my lifetime. In the next box, I found black gloves wrapped in tissue while another held white evening gloves with tiny pearl buttons at the wrist.

  Clearly the assortment of articles belonged to a man of great wealth and standing and I wondered for a moment, that if he had died, what was the reason for his possessions being left inside the drawers and not passed down or stored for future generations? Surely the items were too precious and well made just to discard without care. A puzzle indeed.

  Next to the dresser was a matching armoire. I opened the door on the right and discovered pull-out shelves full of gentlemen’s adornments such as garters, braces, waistcoats, round white shirt collars and formal hard shirt fronts. I reached inside the second door and opened a concealed latch. When I pulled it open, I saw two overcoats hanging inside, a hunting jacket, a smart velvet smoking jacket, riding garments, fine linen shirts, tweeds for country pursuits and fine cloth suits for the day and the evening.

  The overbearing scent of mothballs urged me to close the two doors until something caught my eye at the bottom. I leaned down and found a large wooden box next to three pairs of black shoes and a hat box containing a shiny black topper. The box was heavy so I bent my knees and dragged it out onto the dusty attic floor, careful not to trip over my skirts. It wouldn’t fare me well to procure an injury whilst I was alone up there in the attic.

  The lid held a coat of arms like the one on the bedstead and a key protruded from the brass lock, which I turned slowly. Lifting the lid, I discovered an array of items, packed and arranged as if the box had been made to accommodate them all. Shoe cleaning brushes, black and brown shoe polish, a clothes brush, a tooth brush, small bottles filled with cologne and various creams, a razor and a dish for shaving soap, hair brushes with decorative silver tops, two flasks for a warming a tot of brandy or gin, a metal cup, hand lotion, a jar of ointment, a small hand mirror, nail files and clippers with ivory handles. The items were exquisitely made and clearly belonged to someone who travelled a great deal.

  I seemed to be getting used to pilfering. Without pause for thought or conscience, I removed a hair brush and comb, along with the small oval mirror and the tin cup, which I thought might be useful to drink from. When I closed the lid, and went to push it back inside the robe, another box at the rear caught my eye. Once again, the wood was fine mahogany, but the box was smaller than the first. I turned the key and gasped when I looked inside. There, on a blue velvet tray, cufflinks made of silver and gold sat in pairs amid tie-pins of various decorative quality. A single solid gold band, a monocle and six small shirt buttons, sparkling like tiny white stars. I espied a small collection of bronze coins and as I inspected them close up, in the gloom of the attic I could just make out the engravings. One said Lira with a monarch’s head on the opposite side and another Pesetas with a queen’s head. I hadn’t a clue where they were from, but I knew they weren’t English coins. They were most definitely foreign.

  I lifted out a solid silver pocket watch on an elegant silver chain and when I opened the cover, an inscription inside read; to my beloved on the day of our marriage, Elizabeth, June 3rd 1874. I placed it back in its box and tucked everything back inside, all except one item, which I put amongst my other finds on the floor.

  As I stood up, I noticed in the corner of the attic, in-between the two chests and the robe, a valet-stand on three legs, where behind, leaning against the wall, stood a collection of cricket bats and wickets, fishing tackle of nets and rods, a pair of oars, two swords and a musket and a rolled-up flag set on a pole. I stepped through the furniture and pulled up the heavy fabric at the corner of the flag. I knew the emblem because I’d seen one before when a travelling tradesman came through Mells selling books and bolts of fabric. I remembered him because the cart he’d pulled was of a curious design, with a rounded canopy over a flatbed base and a circular opening at the back so that I could see all the way through to the front where the tradesman sat steering his black and white speckled mare. At the side of the strange canopy draped a Union Jack with a crown and a golden sun in its centre with a slogan Heaven’s light our guide. When I asked uncle what he made of it, he told me it was the emblem of the British Empire in India. At the time, I wished I could buy it to give to my brother Brent to drape over his bed but the cost of it would have bought a leg of lamb to feed us for a whole week.

  Now that I was behind the furniture and feeling ashamedly confident that I could scrounge whatever I liked, I found trunks and boxes stacked two high. I worked the first box to the edge of the one beneath and it fell to the floor with a thud. I stopped and opened my ears for any response to the noise. For all I knew there could be someone below, or even the groundsman who’d come looking for a girl who had run away from home. Me! The thought of being discovered and taken back made my heart beat faster as I imagined that cad taking what he wanted from me as well as my uncle encouraging the scoundrel.

  Detecting no more movement, I opened the box on the floor. It was a marvellous find, since it was full of folded newspapers and pamphlets stacked to the brim. I wondered why anyone would keep them instead of using them for making up the many fires around the house, but as I read the headline of the one on top, The London Gazette, dated 1st January 1801, I deduced they had been kept as a reminder of major events, some I never even knew about.

  The first headline read, Great Britain and Ireland merge to become the United Kingdom. I flicked to the Gazette underneath the first. Royal Navy dominates the seas, defeating French and Spanish fleets. That one was dated 21st October 1805. I had heard about the Battle of Trafalgar when uncle had taken us into Bristol, and while he worked he’d allowed me and Brent to visit the museum. It was one of the most memorable days in my young life, since it was a day when uncle had allowed us to partake in something interesting without any grumbling on his part.

  I found myself seated on the floor as the journals engaged my interest. October 23 1815 Napoleon exiled to St. Helena. I began to read a sample of a letter written by an ally of Napoleon, Comte de Las Cases who had kept a diary:

  ‘The Emperor Napoleon, who lately possessed such boundless power and disposed of so many crowns, now occupies a wretched hovel, a few feet square, which is perched upon a rock, unprovided with furniture, and without either shutters or curtains to the windows. This place must serve him for bedchamber, dressing room, dining room, study, and sitting room; and he is obliged to go out when it is necessary to have this one apartment cleaned. His meals, consisting of a few wretched dishes, are brought to him from a distance, as though he were a criminal in a dungeon. He is absolutely in want of the necessaries of life: the bread and wine are not only not such as he has been accustomed to, but are so bad that we loathe to touch them; water, coffee, butter, oil, and other articles are either not to be procured or are scarcely fit for use…’

  I was so engrossed in the article telling of the plight of the French emperor, I failed to be alerted to the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs towards the attic entrance. It was only when they reached the top and opened the door, I stopped my rustling of paper and sucked in my breath.

  Chapter 6

  Hidden behind the gentleman’s armoire, I was grateful for having fortune on my side, since I was out of sight of the one who had entered my secret abode. I was hidden, but that wasn’t to say the intruder wouldn’t sidle behind the furniture and find me.

  The heavy footsteps were familiar. It was the groundsman again. Perhaps he had heard the box of newspapers fall to the floor and now he was there to investigate what had made such a t
hump. I wondered if he’d imagined the maker of the noise to be an intruder of the human kind or animal. Rodents wouldn’t be unheard of in an attic, or perhaps he imagined bats. I prayed he wouldn’t venture further along the attic to the end, where he would see the bed newly assembled and neatly covered in blankets and where a wooden clothes horse had been erected on the terrace outside the windows. Not forgetting footprints embossed in the dust on the floor.

  The sound of his boots halted on the other side of the armoire, where behind I stopped a whisper of a breath leaving my body. I could feel myself building up to a sneeze made from the dust circling from activity which the attic hadn’t seen for decades. I closed my eyes as I heard the groundsman’s footsteps turn-about. He walked along the floorboards and down the three steps to the entrance. The door opened and closed again and just before I released a sigh that was to sound as loud as two symbols, I heard him turn a key.

  Now I was trapped. Locked inside the attic.

  I wondered if I should call out and alert the groundsman by my own accord. It was a terrifying moment of contemplation. Should I…or not? How could I live up there without provisions of any kind? What if I was maimed somehow? Who would come and rescue me? Then, as if an angel had placed his hand on my trembling shoulders and whispered a word in my ear, I stopped my moment of panic and began to think more rationally. Soon, the family would be back and Celia would be there to release me from captivity. Yes, that would work. In the meantime, I should fare as best I could with what little food I possessed. But what of water? I had nothing to drink. How would I quench my thirst without liquid of any kind?

  A few minutes had passed by the time I’d finished my worrying. Gratefully assured the groundsman was now gone, I took the newspapers from my lap and placed them on the floor and when I happened to look up to the beams running along the attic ceiling to the cobwebs hanging and draping like flimsy transparent curtains, I spotted an opening in the roof. It was only small. I doubted if I could have put my finger through it but I could still see a dot of blue sky beyond. My eyes travelled downwards to three stacks of old tea chests. One of the stacks had tumbled slightly, leaning at a precarious angle, but the stack just below the opening in the roof was straight and the crate was a different colour from the rest. I climbed over some chairs to get to it and by chance, just as I was about to place my bare foot on the floor once more, I looked downwards to a mouse trap with some hard, rotten cheese still in situ. I moved my foot to the area alongside it and imagined just for one thoughtful minute, what would have happened if I hadn’t noticed it and the darn thing had sprung and trapped my toes? The notion wasn’t helpful. I needed to carry on regardless of any potential mishaps.

  At the other side of the attic, just below the eaves, I arrived at the place where the crates were stacked and began my ascent by placing one foot on a protruding corner and working my way upwards. My hardened soles after years of running barefoot served me well now as I gripped each corner with strong and pliable toes. By the time I reached the third crate I was able to look over the top one and see inside the forth at the top.

  Our Brent had always called me resourceful. Despite my precarious position up there on the chests, I still managed to recall an occasion when I was nine and Brent had badly hurt his foot whilst out in the meadows beyond uncle’s house. He was unable to walk and his ankle had swelled to the size of a football -or so he’d exaggerated. “Go fetch help, our Marley,” he’d said as he panted through the pain.

  “I will,” I’d replied, “but first I should bind that ankle. It could be broken.” With that, I went and whipped off my shawl and ran to the stream only a few yards away. I dunked the shawl in the water and wrung it out again, running like the wind back to where my brother writhed in pain on the grass. “Here,” I directed. “Give me your foot.” I tied the sodden shawl around his ankle and pulled it tight.

  He’d yelled out, but when I accused him of being a baby, he’d stopped his whining as I set off back to uncle’s house. Most of the villagers were out working in the fields so when I came across two friends playing hopscotch in the square, I called for them to help. When we returned, the three of us were pushing uncle’s old wheelbarrow and calling out to Brent that we were coming. By the time we got him on board the three of us girls were giggling so hard, it took time to gain momentum to lift the barrow up onto its wheel and cart Brent back to the house. That was when he called me resourceful. And I was only nine at the time.

  Now, as my resourcefulness had once again helped me to get out of a tricky situation, there, as I peered into the tea chest, I found it full to the brim of pure rain water. I had found my heaven-sent water supply.

  I was becoming tired. It must have been close to midday as the attic became stifling in the heat of the sun bearing down upon the roof. I had only been up there for a day and already my mind and body had resorted to survival mode. That instinct seemed bizarre as I contemplated how my intent to remain there longer than necessary wasn’t part of the plan at all. I supposed I was preparing for the worse possible outcome: that Celia wouldn’t return for a few more days yet, if indeed she returned at all, silly, worrying pessimist that I was.

  Now that I’d found water, I was desperate for that cup of tea. I didn’t think I could go another hour without a brew, let alone another couple of days.

  I used the tin cup from the gentleman’s belongings to fill it with water from the tea chest. I almost succumbed to stealing a sip, so thirsty was I, but I knew the water could be contaminated -maybe with lead from the roof. I needed to boil it first to rid it of its impurities and to make it drinkable.

  My biggest challenge was going to be making up a fire. I already knew how I was going to accomplish the feat, but my biggest quandary was how I was going to keep a fire going without the smoke wafting upwards and over the terrace balustrade, thus alerting the groundsman. I could have gotten away with it if the family was in residence, using the smoke from their flames through the chimneys to disguise my own. However, since I was alone in the house and the groundsman was probably watching for any sign of disturbance, I would be hard pressed to conceal any smoke generated by my fire. Finally, realising I had little choice in the matter, I decided it was time to take a risk.

  The items I’d already found were beginning to serve me well. I used the cut-throat razor to shred small pieces of lint from one of the gentleman’s vests and I’d taken a newspaper from the collection of issues, ripped out some pages before rolling the pieces into small tubular shapes. I used a journal which perhaps held less importance than the papers on top. In terms of historical points of interests, the one I’d chosen was dated 1820, with its bold print reading, Antarctica Discovered. I had to confess to having little interest in the tales of Caption C. Scott, although his demise along with his team in 1819 allowed me a small amount of pity for explorers of foreign lands, like I, albeit this explorer was hiding in an attic in Wilbury House. I was about to add the journal to my pile of collectables, when an additional article at the bottom of my page caught my eye. Surviving the Great Outdoors. Now, I wasn’t one for believing in angels, but how strange, I thought, to find something so relevant to my particular dilemma. How to make a Dakota Fire Pit. I had to chuckle to myself, since the instructions were way beyond my comprehension. Regardless, the apparently smokeless fire was meant for outdoors, not for an attic that could potentially catch fire. No, I had no intention of following the directions of a fire making method when I had all the knowledge I needed just by lighting fires in uncle’s house and the fields outback.

  In the wooden box of gentleman’s accessories, sitting in its centre was a metal tripod holding a small silver coloured bowl. I guessed it was used for shaving soap and water when the gentleman was travelling, but for me, it would be a perfect substitute for an ingle and cooking vessel. I went to the drawers of the tall boy and removed the second drawer down, then I turned it on its upper side. As I suspected, thin wooden gliders ran along the underside, perfect little pieces for makin
g my fire. I took a metal nail file from the box and used it to prise off the runners so that they fell into my hands to use as kindling. Then I pushed the drawer back into its slot devoid of its sliders.

  I’d found a single lead slate on the terrace outside. I thanked the angels once more for allowing the slate to slip from the roof into my welcome and needy hands. Upon it, I piled the kindling, criss-crossed with bits of lint from the white vest and small strips of paper. The hard part came when I had to light the fire.

  Using the monocle I’d swiped earlier, I angled it towards the sun just outside the attic windows wishful of catching a reflection of rays. My hands ached after holding it for more than forty minutes, blowing tiny breaths upon the kindling below the paper. I was about to give up as my mouth dried to the point of having to lick my lips with my own decreasing supply of saliva when suddenly, I saw a wisp of smoke rising from the fire. I sucked in my breath as I held the eyepiece steady over the point of burning while praying the sun would shine harder for me. When the smouldering paper caught alight, I almost cried for joy. I contained my excitement for a little while and then placed the tripod over the top. The tin cup filled with water sat nicely above it. My legs felt as if they had become rooted to the floorboards, but I still sat there for a further half an hour, urging the water to boil. When it finally offered steam upon my face, I reached over to my supply of pilfered goods and picked up the bag of tea leaves. By the time I pulled out a small handful, the water was steaming well but the fire was dying. I used the hem of my skirt to take the cup from the tripod and then I sat it on the floor. I dropped the tea inside and watched it infuse and my face glowed with the first smile of the day when I compared it to a little cup of liquid gold.