The Wolf in the Attic

by Paul Kearney

  Except that the anyone should really be me.

  SO ANYWAY, HERE I am, stuck here. Confined to barracks is what the soldiers call it, and the barracks is the house we live in, father and me. I know most of it so well now that I could walk into any room on the lower floors blindfold and not bump into a single thing. The furniture is ancient, from the last century mostly, and it is not ours, but came with the place

  THE HOUSE ITSELF was built so long ago that it has no gas, so we use oil lamps as though Victoria were still Queen. And there is a hand-pump and a huge black range in the basement, and the stairs have no carpet on them and are very steep and narrow.

  Father rents the place from a man called Matthew Bristol, and I have heard him call Mr Bristol a greasy little oik under his breath. I know Mr Bristol as a short man with cheekbones sharp as the corners of a box, a waxed black moustache, and a bowler hat which is green with age. He has very pale eyes, as pale as a robin’s egg, and he almost never blinks, but his mouth smiles all the time, as though it has been frozen open.

  Sometimes he appears unannounced, unlocks the front door and walks straight through the house without so much as a by-your-leave, which infuriates father. And once he pinched my cheek and stroked me behind the ear when father wasn’t looking and I wanted to bite his fingers off, except they were yellow from smoking cigarettes and smelled horrible.

  The trouble is we never seem to have enough money. Always, father is hunting around for spare sixpences and thruppenny bits at the end of the month when Mr Bristol makes his visits, and there are usually a few bread-and-dripping days around that time, and no milk for tea.

  I like bread and dripping, but it gets tiresome after a while, and I begin to fantasise about eggs and bacon, crisp green apples, and toasted cheese. Toasted cheese and cocoa is the best thing to have in the world when the fire is lit and it is raining outside.

  When we first came here, father had investments which he could count upon to tide us over. It was just as well, because we brought nothing more to England with us than the clothes on our backs, and by the time we made Portsmouth most of what I was wearing had been given to me by the dear sailors, and they made us up ditty bags and sewed me some cotton nightshirts and were awfully nice, so that I almost forgave them for not blowing the Turks to smithereens with their big guns.

  So, father had money back then, and took on the tall house in Moribund Lane, with its narrow garden that backed onto the canal, and iron railings at the front. And we had a cook and a maid. Cook was a tiny red faced woman who used to like me to tell her stories of Greece while she worked in the basement kitchen. It was always so lovely and warm there, and she would never fail to make me a cup of tea which I would sip very politely at the big wooden table, since I was the lady of the house. Her name was Mrs Bramley, and I miss the warm kitchen – we cook over a miserable little spirit stove now and the basement is grey and cold most of the time.

  We had a maid too, whose name was Elsie Blythe, and she was much younger than Mrs Bramley, and she set the fires and did the ironing and made the beds and brought father his breakfast in the front room, kippers sometimes, and poached eggs all runny. And I remember how baffled she was by father insisting that olive oil be set out at every meal so he could dip his toast in it.

  Father used to go walking alone in Wytham Wood and forage for wild garlic, and he would rub it on toasted bread and drizzle the bread with oil and salt, and the smell was straight away like something out of a lost memory. No-one in England likes garlic or olive oil, and now even father has stopped eating it, and dines quite like an Englishman, and fries his bacon in lumps of suet, which is nice enough but not the same.

  I miss Elsie. She was young, and pretty, and always had time to sit and chat with me and Pie. She had such a pale face, with big blue eyes, and her hands were always red and she would rub her knees as she sat with me and talk about the boys she was seeing. There were no young men left in England, only old crocks from the War, she used to say, and laugh. And she told me once that even a one-legged man could have a lot of lead in his pencil, and if she met one with a fat pocket-book she would be a maid no more. Not that she had been a maid for a long time. And she would nudge me and wink as she said this. She had a lovely throaty laugh, and I always liked to laugh with her, even when I could not quite understand what she was on about.

  So it was all rather jolly back then, with me and Pie and Pa, as I was still allowed to call him, and Mrs Bramley and Elsie always coming and going, and the house seemed less dark and empty, and there were fires lit in every room in the winter, not like now, when they are only in the study and the front room, and I creep from pool to pool of lamplight with the cold shadows in between.

  It seems that some of father’s investments didn’t work out, or else the Turks took them, or perhaps they just got lost down the back of a drawer or something, because all of a sudden, Mrs Bramley and Elsie were let go, and they both kissed me the day they left, and bobbed to father, who was very stern and cold, but I could tell he was upset too. And Elsie cried, her nose as red as her hands. And the door closed on them, and Pa and I were alone.

  THAT SEEMS A long time ago now, and Pie and I are quite used to the silence and the shadows. We sit and read E. Nesbit, or Charles Kingsley, or Daniel Defoe (I love Robinson Crusoe – how splendid it would be to have an entire island to oneself!) And we explore the canal, and Port Meadow, and Binsey, and sometimes when father is in London I walk all the way to Cowley village and back, just so I can cross and recross Magdalen Bridge, and stare up at the beautiful tower. There are so many beautiful places in Oxford. If only the weather were better! And I like seeing the students in their silly mortar-boards and flapping gowns, and the dome of the Radcliffe Camera (how can a building be called a camera? – no-one has ever explained), and the Bodleian, where they have all the books in the world.

  But most of the time, in winter at least, Pie and I stay close to home. Father does not like me wandering around Oxford anymore, not since I got chased down Walton Street by a crowd of the local children who threw stones at me and shouted names and I got home crying and with a lump on my head. I think I still spoke English with an accent back then, and they called me a dirty Jew and other things, but I’m not Jewish, and what if I were anyway?

  Now I speak the same as everyone else, my Greekness quite gone, and I am glad and sad equally. And father hired Miss Hawcross to educate me in how to be an English girl, though I would still quite like to go to school like normal children, and perhaps once they got to know me they would not think I was just some dirty foreigner anymore. But they don’t frighten me as they once did, as I am quite tall now, and I stand my ground and clench my fists and tell them to go to the Devil, and I am very good at throwing stones and hitting what I aim at. But father does not know that of course. He says only guttersnipes call names and throw stones.

  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.

  THERE 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.

  LAST 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.

  ABOVE 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.

  SHE 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.