by Paul Kearney
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.
I return to the doorway that leads below. The candle flame is bright, and tall as a willow leaf, but it has not long left.
‘At least it’s quiet,’ I say to Pie. ‘It would be different in daylight, of course. And no-one would ever find me up here.’
No-one would ever find me. If I sat up here I could be as forgotten and alone as the dead faces in the photographs.
I shiver again. I think of the noisy, incessant chatter of the ground floor rooms when they are full of strangers, the way the voices echo through the house, my father’s among them.
I know now that he will never read me a story at bedtime again. He has given up on all the stories. All he wants is his Committee and his Scotch and a daughter who will not embarrass him and who will keep out of the way.
The attic is a place apart from all that, a lost and forgotten space, like Calypso’s Island.
‘I am not afraid of you,’ I say to the brooding room, the silent, listening house.
And with that, I leave the attic to its cluttered emptiness, and clump back down the cramped little staircase again, the shadows leaping around me like dancers as I go.
5
IT SNOWS ON the Friday, and I am driven half mad by the sight of the fat flakes falling, dark against the lighter sky. I am in the front room, and Miss Hawcross is waving her ruler about with more than her usual testiness, and it cracks down on the table in front of my nose time after time.
‘Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept,’ I say obediently, all the while looking out the window at the world beyond as it slowly transforms. Is there anything more magical than snow? I am aching to be outside in it, and the local children are out scraping up snowballs and hurling them at each other, as loud as a flock of crows.
‘Huit, neuf, dix, onze, douze, treize, quatorze –’ Fifteen escapes me. I am watching the flight of the snowballs and wondering if I could throw one that far. I know I would be accurate. I am a very good shot with a stone.
Miss Hawcross smacks the ruler down on the table three times. ‘Quinze, quinze, quinze!’ She is quite red-faced. ‘You are impossible today Anna!’
I lower my head. ‘Sorry Miss Hawcross.’
‘Ignore what the hooligans outside are at and attend to your work. Life is not all about playing in the snow.’ She follows my eyes.
‘But it almost never snows,’ I complain. And in a low tone I mutter, ‘Why can’t I be like them?’ Looking out at the laughing children in the street.
‘You must not confuse yourself with the likes of them, my girl. Do you want to be a disappointment to your father? Because you are going the right way about it. You must improve yourself if you are to maintain any kind of station in this world. Otherwise, you will end up in the street outside with those hopeless urchins, and believe me young lady, it is a hard and cold world out there.’
Something in her voice takes me by surprise. There is a catch of emotion to her tone, and as I meet her stare, I see that Miss Hawcross is in deadly earnest.
‘Is that how you see yourself, Anna?’ she asks me, more quietly now. ‘A scallywag of the streets, scraping by hand to mouth? For that is what they are. Poor little beggars who would pick a pocket as soon as wipe their nose, who are destined for the workhouse and a pauper’s grave. Do you see them, laughing? Half of them are barefoot in the snow, and the other half will not see a hot meal tonight. The lucky ones will grow up to black boots or wield a spade. The girls will sew, or pick flax, or do laundry until they are worn to nothing but rags and bone. They are not even refined enough for service in a decent house. This is what a proper education will spare you from, Anna.’
I cannot keep her gaze, but look down at the French words on the primer before me. ‘What use is French to me?’ I murmur.
‘It supples the mind, it adds accomplishment. It marks you out as a cut above the common herd. As do mathematics, history, grammar. You must apply yourself to these things here and now, Anna. There is no other time or place for you to learn them. The world is changing all around us. Ever since’ – she falters a little – ‘Ever since the War, there are no more certainties in life.’
She looks away, and her voice lowers. ‘The War swept everything away – you are too young to know what is cost this country. Nothing can be counted upon to endure anymore.’ She seems almost to be talking to herself. For a moment, I feel quite sorry for her, and I set my hand on the fingers that clasp the quivering ruler.
‘I am so sorry Miss Hawcross. I will try harder, I swear I will. I am sure you have the right of it.’
She smiles at that, and for a tiny instant we are not teacher and pupil or child and grown-up, but just two people talking to one another, and I see the young girl who loved the soldier and saw him go off to France all those years ago.
But more than that. For some reason her words go straight to the deep, calm part of me and sting me there.
And I am almost dizzied by a sudden knowledge, as cold as snow down my spine; that I, too, will grow up one day like everyone else, and look back and miss the years gone by, and the things I could have done, should have done. And growing up is suddenly not something to be impatient for, not all jam and buns and doing as one pleases. It is precisely the opposite. And Miss Hawcross is
trying to tell me that, even as the moment passes and the lines settle heavy in her face again and she returns to the here and now and the stupid little words in stupid French.
So I turn my face from the window, and block out the sounds of the skylarking children outside. And the words I speak are still meaningless, but I no longer have any problem recalling them.
‘Quinze, seize, dix-sept, dix-huit, dix-neuf, vingt…’
SO SHORT, THESE days, the sun hardly to be seen between dawn and dusk. When I finally manage to get out of the house the lamplighters are at work though it is not half past four in the afternoon, and all up and down Walton Street the gas is flickering yellow, and the snow is still falling in the arc of the gaslights. It is ankle-deep now, and it has laid a hush over the city. It creaks underfoot, a sound I love, and I have one of father’s old woollen scarves wrapped round my neck many times over and a wool Monmouth cap which flops down over my ears and neck. I am quite comfortable. And the magic of the snow has driven Miss Hawcross’s words to the back of my mind. But it has brought other things back to the fore.
I have left Pie indoors, because I want my hands free, and I am alone in the street but for the lamplighters, and the snow has fallen so thick and fast that already the footprints of the children have become mere dents in it, fuzzy and misshapen. It is almost a silent world, and above the city the sky is blank as frosted glass, and the flakes coming down are as big as feathers loosed from a pillow.
And I am not afraid, not in this white, soft night, not even though Pie is all toasty inside and I am quite alone. I will not be afraid. I have been up to the attic in the dark, and faced down the rats, and the pale faces in the photographs, and I am still a girl, no matter what Miss Hawcross might say, and I want so much just to leave my footprints in the snow and taste the flakes as they fall upon my face, soft as kisses.
Father has relented, after I pleaded with him, hopping from foot to foot in his dark old study. He had been drinking Scotch, and was elbow deep in Committee papers when I made my move. I am becoming quite cold blooded about it.
So I am allowed outside again, but under strict rules. Father has given me one hour, and he will be timing me with his Breguet watch, he says. I did not even point out to him that I have no timepiece of my own. He wrapped me in his scarf and set the shapeless old hat on my head, and watched me in a spill of lamplight as I left the house – but he is gone now, and I am unwatched and free. And I know where I am going.
There is a Committee meeting at five, and I know that father will get caught up in it, and the time will pass and he will not pull the beautiful Breguet out of his waistcoat pocket because he will be talking and talking and talking. And so my single hour will be longer, and as long as I can be mouse-quiet when I come back, I am sure that I can swing half as much again. More perhaps. And if I get a belt out of it for being late, then what does it matter?
That is what I tell myself as I stand there in the softly falling snow. Because I have decided to return to Port Meadow, and I do not truly know how much time I will need. Nor am I entirely sure what I am looking for there.
THERE ARE MOTOR-CARS crumping past slowly, flinging clods of snow from their wheels, the rubber window-wipers whirring back and forth like busy metronomes. Here and there people go by, as faceless as stones, bundled up, heads down. I do not understand why grown-ups hide their faces from the snow, as though they are afraid of it.
IT TICKLES MY nose, and seems to have a life of its own as it falls steadily, the air breathless and still. Even in my galoshes my sock-bound feet are cold, and I walk faster. I have a longing to roll in the snow, to grasp it in handfuls and plaster it into snowballs, snowmen, all those marvellous things which are impossible to create on ordinary days. I am Anna Francis, wanderer, adventuress, and I feel that the snowy dark is smiling on me because it knows the love I have for it. I am a creature now of shadows and the dusk
A train passes under the bridge at Walton Well Road, and the air is filled with the taint of soot, and I see the sparks fly out of the engine like fiery-fairies released from an iron cage. It hurtles north, dragging the wagons with it, a black roar, a goods train, clanking and clicking off into the gathering night to some other city of the Empire.
Port Meadow is not moonlit tonight, for the snow has swallowed up the moon and stars, but it is bright and empty all the same, and the snow is thicker here, and a thin breeze starts up to blow it in tumbling powder around my knees and ankles. The air is so cold it crackles in my nose, and my breath has iced my father’s scarf around my mouth. I stamp my feet hard to keep the feeling in my toes and launch out across the Meadow with resolute strides, like Shackleton in the Antarctic. My knife is in my pocket, but I do wish Pie were here to talk to. The Meadow seems a lonely place. I think most people have gone home from work early today.
It will soon be midwinter, and I have heard people passing on the street say that the snow and the cold are unseasonal, too much for the time of year. Christmas will be here soon, but we don’t celebrate it anymore, and it means nothing to me, except that Father will sometimes let me listen to the carols on the wireless, and he will drink wine at dinner instead of his usual Scotch, and then he will withdraw to his study as usual. And often he gets me something, a book, or a coat, neither new to anyone but me. We do not even go to the Greek Church anymore for Midnight Liturgy, which makes me a little sad. As though we are both children with our faces squashed up against the glass, staring into a brightly lit room we can no longer enter.
‘Bah, humbug,’ I say aloud. Who needs Christmas when you have snow?
I clutch my ribs and trudge north. There are no stars to light my way tonight, and no distant campfire jumps into life out on the meadow. I might as well be on the steppes of Russia, one of Napoleon’s lost army trekking home.
I had almost thought to find something here, some remnant – a skull perhaps, grinning out of the snow like that chap in Hamlet. But there is nothing. Murder does not change the land itself. I cannot even be sure that I can find the same spot again, though I have dreamed of it since.
‘Perhaps he was not dead,’ I say, hopefully. Perhaps I dreamed the dark boy’s shining eyes. He gave me back Pie, after all. And he did not start the fight that night, fat Bert did.
I keep walking, faster now, to keep up the warmth in me. I am past Binsey, past the Perch where I have drunk lemonade in summer. Soon I am in Wolvercote village, and the lights are shining out of the houses, and the road leads west, across the Thames, which is black as tar without a gleam, and past the Trout inn with its weir, and more lights, warmth, voices, a different world from the one I am in.
There is no colour out here, just black and white and shades of grey. Godstow Nunnery is on my left. Wytham ahead, and beyond, the black loom of Wytham Great Wood on its hills. This is where I knew I would come. I cannot even say why, but I know that I must go into the woods tonight.
I climb a fence, snagging father’s scarf as it hangs from my neck. I unpick it in the dark, breathing hard, the snow as thick as a wedding veil in front of my face, the flakes smaller now, and a sting in them as the wind picks up. The grass is rougher, in clumps and tussocks that try to trip me up, and the trees rise before me like the walls of a castle.
I stop on the edge of the wood, listening. Nothing but the sigh of the wind, and the rush of it through the tall trees. I wish Pie was here, and grasp the knife in my pocket.
I am in England. There is nothing in the woods that can harm me, just as there was nothing in the attic back home. Pa has walked these woods, looking for wild garlic, and the soldiers were here training in the War. This is not the wilderness. There is no witch in the wood, nor goblins nor bears either.
‘Un, deux, trois,’ I murmur, and step into the Great Wood.
THE WIND DROPS at once, down below, though it keeps coursing through the trees overhead like the sound of the sea. I look up, and can see the branches moving across the grey sky. It is darker here, but I can still see my way. I have become used to
the night, and my eyes are wide open, taking it all in.
THE FOREST FLOOR is covered in dead bracken and brambles, lean as wire. I pick my way through it, always uphill, and I am warmer now, puffing, even hot under Pa’s big shapeless cap. I knock snow from the brambles as I advance, and tear myself free of the thorns. The undergrowth is worn down by winter, but it still rears up like a cloud all around me, blocking my way. I am about to give up and turn back, when all of a sudden a path opens out in front of me, paler in the gloom, a white lane through the trees. I stumble onto it, scratched and breathing hard. I bend down and look close at the ground, like Hawkeye, and I see tracks in the snow, cloven marks left by deer that have punched through the snow and left frozen slots in the earth below.
Happier now, I follow the track as it curves and meanders like a stream round the foot of the trees.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep…
I read that once, somewhere. It seems to fit here, as though there were power in the words.
‘Dark and deep,’ I whisper aloud as I stride along, faster now. I feel almost as though I am here for a reason other than my own, as though the trees themselves have something in store for me. I wanted to get clear of Oxford, the Meadow, the sounds of the city and the walls of the house. And my father, too. I wanted to leave them all behind and just be myself for a while. Anna Francis, intrepid explorer.
It seemed all so very simple when I left Walton Street, but now it as if I have stumbled into quite another world, in which I am not even a spectator. I am barely here at all. The woods ignore me, and I feel oddly at home in them. There is no fear in this dark. After that last day on the burning quayside of the city, there is not much more to fear in life at all. The very worst thing has already happened.
