‘Well,’ Alice continued, but in a less confident and much lower voice. ‘How would you like it if I called you “old man” all the time?’
‘I should hate it,’ Stephen Tyler replied and he looked at her and smiled. ‘I like you, Alice.’
‘That’s the first time you’ve used my name, I think.’
‘It is a good name.’ He looked sad for a moment, then he shook his head. ‘You are like a slate waiting to be written on. Youth is a wonderful state to be in. The tragedy is that we never know it at the time.’
He crossed and looked out of the circular window at the front of the house. A breeze was blowing that stirred his hair. In the silence that followed, the first distant singing of birds could be heard and the glimmer of dawn light seeped into the room.
‘You’re sad now,’ Alice said, crossing towards him.
Spot turned and looked at her, his tail moving slowly from side to side on the floor behind him.
‘Alchemy makes one sad.’
‘I don’t even know what that is,’ Alice sighed. ‘The Alchything, I mean. William said it was turning things into gold. But you got cross with him . . .’
‘I did?’ Stephen Tyler asked, looking puzzled.
‘At Christmas, when we first met you. But if it isn’t for turning things into gold . . . What is it? What is what you do . . . for?’
‘I tried to explain yesterday. It’s more like turning people into gold,’ the old man said in a quiet voice.
‘People?’ Alice gasped. ‘I don’t want to be turned into gold!’
‘No?’
‘No. I’d be a statue. I don’t want to be a statue.’
The Magician shook his head slowly, looking at her.
‘The gold I speak of is a symbolic word . . .’ He raised his hand, interrupting Alice’s protest. ‘A symbol is a word used to represent something else. Like a colour is used in a picture . . . to suggest depth and distance on what we really know to be a flat canvas. The study and practice of alchemy focuses the mind and gradually transforms it from its gross state of ordinary, habitual thinking, dependent as it is on action and reaction, preparing it instead for higher understanding, for inspiration and, ultimately, for universal knowledge. As gold is to mud, so is this new mind to our ordinary, everyday one.’
Alice sighed. She had tried so hard to listen to him, but all that he had done was say a lot of meaningless words again.
‘You should tell William,’ she said, glumly. ‘I expect he’d understand.’
‘No, Alice,’ Stephen Tyler said, gently. ‘You’ll be first. You don’t have to understand. Far better to live it. You’ll be first because you can imagine . . . Imagination is all important.’ He beckoned to her. ‘Come and see,’ he whispered, turning and looking out of the window.
‘I can’t,’ Alice said. ‘It’s too high for me.’
‘Come to me,’ he said, beckoning to her again. ‘I will hold you.’
Alice put her hands on the bottom rim of the circular window and the Magician lifted her up until she was peeping over the sill. The steep slope of the roof dropped away in front of her and, beyond, the dark trees of the forest crowded up the hillside.
Out in the space between, a bird suddenly darted across her view. Then another plummeted out of the sky, wings spread and the long pointed outer feathers of its tail forming a perfect V-shape.
‘The swallows have come,’ Stephen Tyler said. ‘Bringing summer with them from distant shores beyond our valley.’
As he spoke, more and more swallows came into Alice’s view. They skimmed and swooped and dived and soared, filling the air with movement. As though in a secret dance or a special game they managed never to hit one another, although they seemed always on the point of doing so. A bird would turn away from the main throng and whip out into space only to wheel in mid-flight and dive back into the centre of the flock. Then, at the final moment, just as collision seemed inevitable, it would break and either soar upwards into the high sky or downwards towards the grassy earth, before turning once more to hurl itself into the centre of the throng.
It was such a joyful, happy sight that Alice found herself longing to be able to join in.
‘You can, if you want to,’ Stephen Tyler whispered in her ear.
‘But how?’ she pleaded with him.
‘Just . . . be silent. Let your thoughts rest on the birds. See with their eyes. Look how the sky rushes towards you and the earth withdraws. Feel with their touch. How strong the breeze is; how cold the upward flight, how much warmer when you turn for the earth. Listen . . . can you hear the voices of all your companions? Don’t fight it, Alice . . . don’t resist. Just . . . imagine . . .’
15
The Builders Return
ALICE CAME IN through the yard door just as Mary and William entered the kitchen from the hall.
‘There you are,’ Mary said. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Out,’ she replied with a shrug.
Her hair was ruffled and her cheeks shining, as though she’d been running. Mary looked at her closely and suspiciously. You could usually tell when Alice had been up to something by the way she avoided your eyes.
‘Out where?’ she demanded.
‘Just out,’ Alice replied and she went quickly towards the hall door. ‘I’m going up to clean my teeth. I won’t be a minute.’
Towards the end of breakfast an old white van drove into the yard and Jack got up from the table, explaining as he went out, that it would be the builders arriving.
The sound of a dog barking made Spot sit up, his head on one side, all the hairs on the back of his neck bristling.
‘Oh! They’ve brought that dog,’ Phoebe said, speaking to herself and sounding immediately irritated.
Spot growled quietly, standing facing the back door, with his tail between his legs.
‘What’s the matter?’ Mary asked him.
‘He hates the builder’s dog as much as I do. It’s a real brute,’ Phoebe explained.
Jack remained in the yard talking to the builders and when the children went out to join him he introduced them. There were three of them; an older man, called Arthur, who was almost bald and very skinny. He had a sharp pointed nose and pale, shortsighted eyes with the most miserable expression, as though he was always disappointed about something. Then there was Kev. Kev was the complete opposite to Arthur. He was a big, burly man, with short cropped black hair and tattoos on his arm. He wore a vest and his stomach bulged above the belt of his jeans. His face was round and shiny, with red cheeks and an even redder, small, button of a nose. The third builder was a young lad, no more than seventeen, called Dan. Dan was thin with very long legs, emphasized by the tight, torn, jeans that he wore belted with a piece of string. His hair was long and sandy-coloured and he wore it tied back in a pony tail.
In the back of the white van a huge, ugly looking dog was tied by a length of rope. It growled at the children and started to bark when Spot appeared behind them at the kitchen door.
‘Shut your noise, animal!’ Kev shouted. The dog stopped barking at once, but continued to growl menacingly, as it paced the back of the van staring down at Spot and the children.
‘So you’ve come to help us, have you?’ the old man, Arthur, said to the children.
‘No such luck!’ Jack exclaimed. ‘They seem to think they’re on holiday here.’
‘So, what’s to do now, then?’ Dan asked, turning his back on the children.
‘We can start plastering in the Tudor wing,’ Jack told them, sounding businesslike. ‘Oh! And I’ve hired a skip, so that we can clear the rubbish from the cellars. It should be delivered later this morning, and it’s being collected tomorrow evening.’
‘You’ll never get all that rubbish into one skip,’ Kev told him. ‘Nor will we clear it all in a couple of days.’
‘Well, at least we can make a start,’ Jack countered, patiently.
‘I don’t mind helping,’ William said.
‘Wonderful! T
he more the merrier. I’ll accept any unpaid labour that’s offered,’ Jack rejoined.
‘Oh, William!’ Mary said. ‘I’m not going to spend the day clearing rubbish.’
‘You don’t have to. I wasn’t speaking for you,’ William snapped.
‘I’ll help you, Uncle Jack,’ Alice said, quietly.
‘No. I wasn’t being serious. You lot go off and enjoy yourselves,’ Jack told them.
‘I’d like to,’ Alice protested. This wasn’t really true. The last thing Alice wanted to do was to spend the morning dragging piles of rubbish out of the cellar, but she needed time to think. She knew if she spent the day alone with William and Mary she’d end up telling them about her meeting with Stephen Tyler and she wasn’t ready for that yet. William would apply logic and explain it away and Mary would feign indifference, which would be almost worse. So, instead, she decided to keep the events of the morning to herself until they were at least clear in her own mind.
‘Well,’ Jack said, still sounding doubtful, ‘if you’re really sure you want to.’
‘I am,’ Alice replied, ‘it’ll be fun!’ And, as she spoke, she watched the swallows skimming above the yard in the free blue sky and she felt the wind on her cheeks and she had to look away quickly for fear of taking off.
‘Alice?’ Uncle Jack said, putting a hand on her shoulder.
‘What?’ she asked, breathlessly.
‘Are you feeling all right? You look . . . as though you might be running a temperature.’
‘No. I’m fine, really,’ she replied brightly. ‘Where shall we start?’
‘By putting on your oldest clothes,’ Jack told them. ‘We are about to get exceedingly dirty!’
And so, much to Mary’s continued disgust, it was agreed that they would spend the morning clearing the cellars and that they’d go out in the afternoon, if they felt like it.
It was hot and tiring work. Mary and Alice were given the job of sorting through the mounds of rubbish in each of the cellars and putting them into piles. William joined Jack and Kev carrying the stuff, load by load, up the cellar steps and along the passage to the main hall and out of the front door to the porch where they made new piles, in readiness for the arrival of the skip.
Arthur and Dan, meanwhile, started plastering ceilings in the rooms off the passage. Dan had a ghetto blaster with him and the house, that had been so silent before their arrival, thrummed to the sound of pop music.
The rubbish in the first room mainly consisted of empty bottles which Mary and Alice put into black plastic bags, but which were then left in the cellar because Jack said there was a bottle bank in the town and he’d take them with him in the Land-Rover the next time he went in.
The second room was where the old suitcase was. It was one of several, all crammed with decaying clothes. There were boxes of hats and a trunk filled with bits of fabric from long ago, that turned into dust as the girls inspected it. Here there were piles of papers tied up with string, there was an assortment of rusty garden implements, old pans, a tea chest filled with a whole dinner service, most of it in good repair, boxes of rusty knives and forks, an ancient iron boiler, several broken chairs, rotting velvet curtains, a tin box crammed to the lid with buttons that fell and scattered across the floor as Alice forced it open.
They went through everything, keeping back anything that might be useful.
In what seemed like no time at all, Phoebe called them up for lunch and the builders went and sat in the van and ate sandwiches while Jack and the children had a salad in the kitchen with Phoebe. The window was open and the sound of Dan’s music filled the room. Phoebe wanted Jack to tell him to switch it off, but Jack said it wasn’t doing them any harm and why shouldn’t he listen to music – if that’s what you could call it. Mary informed him that the particular tape he was playing was one of the top bands of the moment and her foot tapped out the rhythm all the time she was eating. At one point, in a lull in the music, they all heard Arthur say:
‘Anyone want this corned beef butty?’
‘Yes – please,’ Alice sighed, with feeling, which made Mary giggle.
‘Go on, then, I’ll have it,’ they heard Kev say, and, as he spoke, he belched loudly. ‘Pardon my French!’
This was too much for Alice, who got a fit of the giggles that went slowly right round the table until even Phoebe was shaking with silent laughter and Jack had to get up and close the window for fear of them being overheard.
Once lunch was over, Jack announced that the children were now on official holiday and that they were released from duty. But they all wanted to carry on with the clearing.
‘I’m quite enjoying it,’ Mary said, to her own amazement.
‘Are you getting through it?’ Phoebe asked.
‘We’re keeping back more than we’re throwing out,’ Mary told her.
‘Oh dear,’ Phoebe sighed. ‘That wasn’t the idea at all!’
During the afternoon they started to clear the third cellar. Here was a much less exciting hoard, though Jack seemed delighted with what they found; piles of oak floorboards and old doors.
‘From the rooms on the other side of the hall, I expect’ he said, ‘when they converted them to the Georgian style.’
‘Will we keep them?’ William asked and he was relieved when Jack said they certainly would. William was beginning to find the long trek to the front door exhausting.
‘It’s all right for you two,’ he told the girls. ‘You’re having all the fun.’
‘You stay down for a bit, Will,’ Jack told him as he and Kev between them carried the shell of a cupboard – without any doors and riddled with woodworm – out of the room.
So William stayed with the girls and between them they found, in a dark corner, leaning against the wall, some metal objects which didn’t at once suggest their original usage. There was an iron post with holes at one end that might have been used to fix it in some way to another surface. The other end of this post was pointed. It was almost like a short thick spear. Beside it, on the ground, was another object in the form of a cross, with a hole at its centre. The end of each arm of the cross had a circular disc attached.
‘What’s it for?’ William asked, thoughtfully.
Then Mary found, leaning further along the wall and half obscured by a panel of oak, a third and much larger piece.
‘Oh, look!’ she said in an excited whisper.
It was also made of wrought iron. A large, flat sculpture, almost. There was a straight rod at its centre. To one side of this rod, and attached by two thin metal arms, was a round sun with pointed rays that stuck out from it like the spokes of a wheel. To the other side of the rood, similarly attached, was a thin shape of a new moon.
‘What have you got there?’ Jack said, coming into the room suddenly.
‘I don’t know,’ William answered. His voice sounded almost afraid.
‘Let me see,’ Jack said, moving closer. ‘Hey! That’s the same design as that pendant I gave Phoebe for Christmas. You remember – the one I found in the hall fireplace. Isn’t that weird? Now what in the world is this for?’ he frowned, staring thoughtfully at the strange object.
‘I think I know,’ Mary said quietly.
‘What, Mare?’ Alice asked.
‘I think it’s like those weather cocks you have on church steeples.’
‘Brilliant!’ Jack exclaimed. ‘That’s exactly what it is. It’s a weather vane! The design is obviously special to this house. I wonder where it was fixed and why it was taken down. Probably fell off in a gale!’
When Jack and Kev left them again, carrying a rusty tin trunk between them, William turned and looked at the girls.
‘You know what else it’s like, don’t you?’ he said. ‘One of those drawings from the book Jack borrowed last Christmas. It’s to do with alchemy. It’s the same design that I thought I saw on the chimney breast, the night I found the steps up the chimney. It’s the Magician’s emblem, isn’t it? We ought to put it back, wherever it belon
gs. But how will we know where?’
‘We could ask him,’ Alice said.
‘Yes,’ William said, quietly, and then he frowned.
‘Don’t try and work it out, William,’ Alice begged him. ‘Please.’
‘It’s just that it seems important and I don’t know why or what it means or . . . anything,’ William said. ‘I have to know what it represents. I’m not even sure that it is a weathercock. If it was there’d be N, S, E and W on these metal arms instead of which there are only these funny discs,’ and he flicked one of the discs with his finger and was surprised when it spun on its axis. ‘Hey!’ he exclaimed, ‘that’s even odder, these things move – look!’ and he rotated the disc again.
‘Well, if it isn’t a weathercock – then what is it?’ Mary said.
‘I don’t know, do I? That’s the problem,’ and not wanting to have another argument, he turned to walk out of the cellar only to find the door blocked by Spot, who was standing listening to them, with his head on one side and his ears forward.
‘I’m going to start clearing up in the next room.’ William said, pushing past the dog.
‘Not without us, William,’ Mary said, hurrying after him. ‘This is our job, you know,’ and she disappeared down the passage.
Alice crossed to the door and flung her arms round the dog’s neck.
‘Oh, Spot!’ she sighed. ‘Why does William have to make everything so complicated?’
‘Because,’ the dog whispered in her ear, in a voice that sounded awfully like Stephen Tyler’s, ‘that is his nature.’
‘But it’s wrong, isn’t it?’ Alice thought.
‘No,’ the dog voice whispered in her head, ‘not for him.’
‘But, I thought we weren’t meant to try and work things out,’ she protested.
‘You’re not. But you’re all different, you know. You are as different from each other as a fish is different from a bird and a bird is different from a bear. Could a bird swim? Could a bear fly? Don’t try to make other people like yourself, Alice. Try rather to discover who you really are.’
‘Then what?’ she thought, glumly.
The Door In the Tree Page 12
