‘Listen,’ said Jordy.
‘I know, I can hear it,’ replied Chloe. ‘Weird, isn’t it?’
‘But what is it?’
‘Bottles,’ answered Alex. ‘Millions of bottles, all standing shoulder to shoulder. Trembling bottles, rattling against each other.’
Chloe asked, ‘But what about the howling?’
‘The attic draughts blowing over the necks.’
Indeed, now that the other two knew what that peculiar sound was, his words made sense. Jordy took off his backpack and went up a dome like aberration in the boards and stared towards the sound. From that vantage point he could see them: an ocean of bottles of all different coloured glass. Wine bottles, milk bottles, beer bottles, lemonade bottles, medicine bottles, and so on, and so forth. What a sight they made in all their hues, glinting in the fading light from the high windows. For some reason Jordy felt an urge to walk upon them, on that vast expanse of bottlenecks, just because they looked so inviting.
And Alex had been right again. It was the strong draughts making them tremble, chinking their shoulders. And the draught causing that howling from their necks. This truly was a sight one might travel miles to see, like a glacier in the real world, or a strange rock formation.
‘Look at that,’ said Chloe, coming up alongside him.
‘I know. And in the sunset too. The best time.’
The sun leapt as dancing fire from bottleneck to bottle shoulder, sending glints and flashes back to the two watchers. Here it streaked over a hundred clear-glass stalwarts, there it jumped from green to red to blue. And all the while that tinkling sound which outdid waves on a stormy beach, or the rustling of reeds on a windy creek for volume. Quivering bottles, bottles, bottles, sweeping out and away, with nothing else in sight. They could have been alive out there, that gathered multitude of glass: a million empty vessels making the loudest noise you had ever heard in your life.
Jordy looked back at Alex, who was busy getting the camping stove going.
‘Clo …?’
‘You’re going to ask how he knew what was here before any of us even saw them.’
‘Yep, I was.’
She shrugged. ‘He’s different now. He seems instinctively to know things about Attica. If you ask him how he knows, he can’t tell you. I’m worried about Alex, Jordy. I’m worried he won’t want to go home when the time comes. He’s altered a lot.’
Jordy became the elder brother. ‘He’ll still do as he’s told.’
‘You can’t force him to obey you, Jordy. He’ll just run off. We can’t tie him up or anything.’
‘No – but he’ll surely listen to reason?’
‘Will he? I’m not so sure.’
Jordy walked back down the slope of the boards, to where Alex was quietly humming to himself. He looked like a rag-bag, Jordy thought, in that rotten old hat and now he was wearing yet another old coat on top of the first two. And all those scarves and things! Those sloppy oversized shoes! He was beginning to smell too, despite the fact that Jordy grumbled at him. Why didn’t he wash himself and his clothes? Did he want his shirt and socks to stink to high heaven?
And there was another thing, too.
‘What’s that bat doing?’ asked Jordy, pointing to a creature hanging from a rafter not far from their camp. ‘It’s been following us.’
Alex looked innocent. ‘Why ask me?’
‘Because I think it’s following you, not me or Chloe.’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘When you go down to drink at the water tanks, it follows you. It doesn’t do that with us.’
Alex shrugged and put on Makishi. ‘Well?’ To Jordy he seemed to be hiding behind that weird African mask.
‘Well what?’ said Jordy in more of an accusing tone than he actually intended. ‘Well I’m right?’
‘You could be. I don’t know.’
Jordy said, ‘I think I’ll kill that bat.’
Alex immediately flared up, leaping in front of Jordy and pushing his Makishi face close to his step-brother’s.
‘You leave it alone,’ he shouted with venom. ‘Who do you think you are?’
Jordy was shocked. Alex had never spoken to him in that way before. He had never been so threatening in his tone. Jordy backed away, saying, ‘All right, all right, it was a joke …’
Chloe came down from the slope. Normally she would have sided with her younger brother, but there was something dangerous about Alex now. Instead she told him, ‘There’s no need for that, Alex. Jordy is just trying to find out what’s happening to you.’
‘Nothing’s happening to me. I’m just me, that’s all.’
‘You’ve changed,’ accused Chloe. ‘You’re not like the Alex who came up here with us. You’re different.’
‘I’m just the me I always wanted to be,’ explained Alex. ‘That’s all. You just leave me be. You just leave me to what I am and who I am. Find another brother. You’ve got Jordy now. Isn’t one brother enough for you?’
It was Chloe’s turn to be shocked.
She stood there, stunned and hurt. Find another brother. What was Alex saying?
‘Alex, are you jealous of Jordy? Is that it?’
Alex sighed and shook his head vigorously.
‘No, of course not. I just don’t want you fussing over me any more. I’m not worried that Jordy’s part of our family. It’s just that I don’t want to be part of the family. I want to be on my own. I don’t want a sister. I don’t want parents. I don’t want anybody. I’ve got me and Makishi and that’s all I need. We don’t need anyone else, do we, Makishi?’
‘No one but ourselves, Alex,’ replied the mask.
It was the first time Jordy had heard Makishi speak and he paled and took a step backwards. Wisely he decided not to make a big thing of this mask of Alex’s, even though it appeared to be alive. Clearly Chloe was used to the fact.
Instead he spoke to Chloe. ‘There’s a bat that keeps stalking us,’ he said to his step-sister. ‘Clo, Alex has gone loopy.’ Chloe ignored Jordy for the moment.
‘Alex, you can’t just opt out of a family. I’m your sister. Jordy’s your step-brother. You can’t change that, whatever you do. You might not want our company any more, but you’ll still be our brother. Please, try to understand how we feel. We’re concerned for you.’
‘That’s what I mean,’ said Alex simply. ‘I don’t want you to be. I’m all right. Nothing’s wrong with me. I just don’t want fussing.’
‘OK, we won’t fuss. But don’t do anything silly, will you? Promise? Don’t run away or hide or anything.’
This speech, short and simple as it was, seemed to touch something of the old Alex deep inside. He stared at his sister with big, brown, untroubled eyes through the holes in the mask. It was true, there was no turbulence in Alex, only calmness and tranquillity. He was all right. It was them who weren’t.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I promise, sis.’
‘Thank you.’
She turned away and began busying herself with something, anything, to stop the tears from welling up and flowing. She was losing her brother. Of course they couldn’t remain as children all their lives. She would leave for university or a job somewhere, or perhaps to get married. He would remain behind for a time, but then leave himself, perhaps finding work that would take him halfway around the world. Who knew how the separation might come about, but it was a natural process, which would leave no scars and no regrets. They would always think fondly of one another, wherever they were, however distant from each other.
This? This was too soon. And he seemed not to care that he was hurting her. All he seemed to care about was his freedom and solitude.
Well, I won’t let him, she told herself mentally. He might not care, but I do, and I can be just as determined and selfish about what I want.
And that was true too.
‘Is that it?’ asked Jordy quietly, later. ‘Are we just going to let him do what he wants? I like having the little beggar around. I
don’t want him to become a bloody hermit.’
Chloe could have hugged Jordy for that, but she didn’t, of course.
‘We’ll have to work on him, without him knowing it,’ she said. ‘We’re older, wiser and more cunning than he is, though he thinks he’s the bees’ knees at the moment. We’ll get the old Alex back, don’t you worry, Jordy. I’ll see to that.’
‘What are you two whispering about?’ called Alex. ‘You hatching something?’
‘Listen to Mr Suspicious,’ called back Jordy. ‘Come on over and we’ll tell you.’
‘No chance.’
In fact, Alex was feeling a little crowded, being with the other two for so long.
It didn’t take him long to forget what he’d just promised Chloe about not running away and hiding. He wandered away from the camp. He made sure the other two weren’t looking and went off to see what he could find.
There was something terribly wrong. Every member of the Removal Firm sensed it in the atmosphere. Something very, very bad was in the dust. The whole attic was in danger. A disaster was imminent. Their world as they knew it was about fall down around their ears. The dust sprites sensed it. When they appeared now their brief journeys were frantic affairs. There was panic in them and they knew not the source. Every beetle, every mouse, was waiting in trembling anticipation for something to happen – they knew not what, but they felt disaster coming – and they were full of dread. Hearts beat a thousand times faster. Eyes were everywhere. Today? Perhaps. Tomorrow? Maybe. Soon? Almost certainly.
But who? Who was planning this destruction? The Removal Firm could only think the latest incomers were responsible. Were they not playing with fire, those recent intruders? Had they not caused havoc among the villages? Had not one of them disrupted the underworld by entering the wrong trapdoor and disturbed the currents of time and place? No real harm had been done yet, but surely these were they who planned something awful, something so heinous it was hard to believe. The Removal Firm decided to step up their efforts to capture the incomers before this horrible crime was committed and the whole attic was destroyed.
There wasn’t a great deal of junk in that area. Nothing of any significance for Alex, anyway. He found some old vinyl jazz records, but nothing to play them on, and he wasn’t sure he liked jazz anyway. And some golf clubs in a rotting leather bag. And a Chinese screen. He wiped the dust away from the lacquered surface to find some beautiful pictures cut into the wood beneath. But even these did not do a great deal for him.
What he really wanted, what he was really looking for, were model steam engines. Engines like the showman’s traction engine and the others he had in his pack. He wanted more of them. A steam car, for example. He’d like one of those. Or a steam roller. Or even a static traction engine. He told himself there must be more of them in Attica – many more. If he searched long and hard enough, he’d surely find as many as he wanted. He didn’t know how many he wanted, but at the moment there was just a yearning for model steam engines of steel and brass.
Alex continued to search, oblivious of the time it was taking, quite unconcerned that his brother and sister might be looking for him.
‘I know where you can find one.’
Alex was in an area where several shafts of light were coming down from the roof and striking the floor in splashes of golden dust. He stared into the gloomy spaces behind the pillars of light, but could see nothing. There were the ubiquitous piles of clothes everywhere, but nothing that looked as if it could speak. Then one of the piles began moving. Eventually it stood up and, like a walking haystack, shuffled over to where Alex was standing. Its face looked hideously ugly at first, until Alex realised it was just a painted mask, a clownish face. Unlike his own mask, it was unthreatening.
Alex was not terrified, exactly, but he was afraid.
‘Are you some sort of cloth creature?’ he asked in a shaky voice. ‘Some kind of walking basket of washing?’
‘No,’ said the clothes, ‘I’m flesh and blood. Just like you.’
Alex looked down at himself and then stared at the thing before him, realising they were of the same ilk. Then he saw, deep within the many folds of cloth, behind the ceramic mask, two human eyes. He had to look down a long tunnel of fabric to find those human features. Even then, they didn’t look that human. They were small and wizened, shrunken, like walnuts left too long in their shells. It was difficult to tell where this creature began and ended, there were so many ends of cloth: trailing empty sleeves, trouser legs, bits of scarves, shirt tails and socks flopping from pockets.
‘You dress like me,’ Alex cried excitedly.
‘No,’ replied the board-comber, ‘you will be like me. But not yet. You’re not quite there. You’ve just started going that way.’
‘Is that a bat hanging from your ear? Will I get one of those?’
‘I’m sure some creature has got you marked out already.’
‘I’ve seen it following me. Are they pets?’
The board-comber shrugged inside its many layers.
‘I suppose you could call them that. Me and my bat, we talk to each other. I think. But,’ the board-comber sighed, ‘now I’ve spoken to you, it’ll be a longish time before my bat speaks to me again. You have to get in the right frame of mind, you see, to converse with bats. You have to be alone a very long while. You have to be alone so long you start seeing forms that aren’t really there. Figures made of dark shadow that dance in the moonlight. Horses made of sunlight rearing on their hind legs and prancing silently across the attic. These things come after a long time of not speaking with another human, of being alone. Do you understand?’
‘I think so,’ replied Alex, ‘but it doesn’t matter.’
‘No,’ agreed the board-comber, ‘none of this really matters.’
Alex peered hard down that fabric tunnel.
‘Are you a girl or a boy?’
‘I can’t remember, but I think he and him.’
Alex then said, ‘You called to me.’
‘Ah.’ The board-comber rubbed its many woollen mittens together. ‘Business. Your female companion …’
‘My sister.’
‘Yes, she. She has a carving. A green carving. It’s – it’s a walrus. I collect carvings like that. I want it.’
‘Then you’ll have to ask her.’
‘No – no, you get it for me.’
‘I can’t … wait a minute. You said “I know where you can find one”. What did you mean?’
The board-comber knew he had the boy hooked.
‘I know where there’s another model steam engine.’
‘Where?’ cried Alex. His heart suddenly started beating fast and his blood pulsed rapidly through his veins. ‘I must have it.’
‘It’s a swop. Do you know what a swop is?’
Alex was scornful. ‘Of course I know what a swop is.’
‘That’s what we’ll do. You get the soapstone walrus for me. I’ll get the car for you. Then we’ll swop.’
Alex was cagey. ‘How do I know you’re telling the truth? Maybe you’re saying you’ve got a steam engine, just to get the carving. Show it to me.’
‘I can’t. I haven’t got it at the moment. But I’ll get it.’
Alex was still not sure. This creature could be lying to him. Or it could be telling the truth. One thing was sure, the urge to get yet another steam engine to go with those in his pack was very great. Alex had never felt anything like it. He would have sold his own grandmother – both grandmothers – to get a steam car. It was as if there was a shape inside him which had to be filled. The shape of a model steam engine. He craved it. Could not live without it. It was an irrepressible yearning.
‘I’ll get the carving for you,’ he heard himself saying. ‘She doesn’t really want it, I’m sure.’
‘Good. Good.’ A filthy mitten full of holes suddenly projected from one of the many dangling sleeves. ‘Shake on it.’
Alex eyed the mitten with disgust.
‘I
’ll take your word for it,’ he said, revolted by the dirt. ‘We don’t need to shake.’
Just at that moment Alex heard a rattling of the boards. Some large Atticans were coming, swiftly and seemingly with some definite purpose. They wore khaki dustcoats with brown buttons. Alarm and confusion rushed through him as the board-comber instantly collapsed into a heap of rags on the floor. Alex copied him, crumpling himself from within, falling and folding down to the planks. There they lay, two piles of old clothes, as the trackers advanced.
The board-comber knew it was the Removal Firm.
The board-comber was cursing his carelessness, hoping for a miracle. His dealings with the visitor should have been short and swift, for the board-comber had known there was danger in the air. Instead they had stood there chatting like two old men sat on a bench. It was not that the Removal Firm would be suspicious of one heap of rags. But two? Why, they were so close together the board-comber could smell the feathers of the human’s boa.
One of the Removal Firm stopped and stood between the two heaps, glancing quickly right and left. Clothes. Piles of them. It sniffed hard. Then it sniffed again. All it could smell was attic. These clothes had been up here a long time. They were steeped, saturated, in attic smells. Layers of dirty lambswool and cotton hid the inner scents. The creature might have picked through the pile, but it didn’t. It sniffed again, hard.
It must have drawn in dust through its nose, for it sneezed right on to the board-comber, showering the rags with spittle. Then, after a terrible few seconds the tracker moved on, scuttling forward to examine a box. For quite a while afterwards their boots could be heard clattering over the boards. Alex kept very still, very quiet, and thought about something else. He made up a shopping list, for Dipa. In his mind he argued with Ben about football: which was the best team and which the worst, as if he cared.
Finally, he felt a tap on his head.
‘They’ve gone,’ said the board-comber. ‘Hey, you did well for a beginner.’
Attica Page 21
