He thought of something.
‘No digital watches?’
The look on her face told him she had the same opinion of digital watches as he did.
‘How do you wind them all up? There are at least a thousand here,’ he gasped. ‘Do you do it all yourself?’
‘I spend two hours every day winding those that are running down.’
A thousand second hands sweeping, a thousand minute hands ticking, a thousand hour hands crawling.
‘Wonderful,’ Alex breathed, stalling for the hour, which was fast coming up. ‘Any of them chime?’
‘A few,’ she said. ‘This one, and this one, and others. Do you like chiming watches?’
‘I love ’em.’
Finally watch fingers flicked at the hour. Of course the chimes didn’t all come at once. Some came and went before others even got started. Some just tinkled tunelessly, a few had a definite melody. But nowhere, nowhere among those several chiming watches could Alex detect Frère Jacques. Perhaps Mr Grantham’s watch was there but the chiming mechanism had long since given up the ghost? It was a very old watch, it was true. Perhaps the chimes had seized? How rotten, to get so close and not be able to identify it. In any case, even if it could chime out its little French air, finding it among its peers would be the devil’s own job. It was like looking for a single ant in a nest of ants.
Alex went for broke. ‘Did – did you ever have a watch that chimed the tune of Frère Jacques?’
A frown appeared on the board-comber’s face.
‘Frère Jacques. No, never.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I would know, wouldn’t I?’ she exclaimed hotly.
‘Yes, sorry.’ He was morose. ‘All this way for nothing.’
At that moment the owl’s head swivelled backwards.
‘Eeerch!’ it screeched. ‘Eeerch, eeerch.’
The board-comber began running back towards the wall of pianos, not staying to blindfold Alex again.
‘Attack!’ she was crying. ‘Big assault on the border!’
‘Oh, right,’ replied Alex, having no idea what was going on, but following her anyway.
‘Here’s a chance to earn your spurs,’ she told him as he caught up to her. ‘Help me fight the Organist’s Music Makers.’
‘Music Makers?’
‘The enemy. You’ll see. Quick, grab these.’
Alex was handed a sword and shield, the kind knights carry into battle or at tourneys. The girl armed herself likewise. Then she leapt in a very agile manner up on to a piano, urging Alex to do the same. Indeed, he found he had to clamber up, but he joined her nonetheless. The pair of them stood side by side, armed and ready for conflict, staring out into the darkness. Naturally, the owl was with them, staring hard too. It kept making chattering sounds in the back of its throat, as if it were keeping the board-comber appraised of what was happening out there in the beyond.
‘Are you sure there’s an enemy coming?’ asked Alex, putting on Makishi to protect his face. ‘It’s awfully quiet out there in the dark interior. Who are these Music Makers anyway?’
As if in answer to his question an arrow came hurtling out of the inky blackness beyond and struck Alex’s shield. Except that once it fell away from him, Alex could see it wasn’t an arrow at all. It was a violin bow. Then another, a larger one, swished by his ear: a cello bow.
Now came a horrible sound: the kind of noise cats might make if burned alive. Alex was startled and not a little terrified to see giant spiders coming out of the darkness, racing towards him, with riders on their backs. The riders were mercenaries, village children. And these hostiles, hired by the Organist, weren’t riding spiders, but mechanised bagpipes.
The pipes of these long-legged steeds raced the riders towards the border of pianos. The riders on their inflated tartan bags were archers using violins, violas and bass viols to shoot their arrows. Violins had become bows, bows had become arrows. A flute whizzed past Alex’s ear, puffed like a blow-pipe dart from the horn of a trombone. Panpipes came humming past, crashing into the pianos. On the edges of the charge were nimble drum-riders on rolling bass drums and snare drums. Trumpets blared in rage, drums rolled out thunder, piccolos piped shrill anger. This really was a serious attack by the so-called Music Makers: the air was full of missiles and the noise level could not be louder if they had elephants and horses.
‘Look out!’ cried Alex.
A rider on his bagpipes tried to climb one of the pianos to get at the board-comber but the girl reached forward and thrust with the point of her sword. Her weapon pierced the bagpipe bag. It gave out a flarrpping sound and immediately deflated. Its rider fell off it, letting out a loud curse. The girl laughed and shook her sword at her enemy. Then another tried to mount the barrier and the colourful board-comber dealt with this attempt in the same way. Soon Alex found he was having to defend himself, piercing bagpipes with his sword and warding off ‘arrows’ with his shield.
‘Watch out for the lurs, serpents and crumhorns!’ cried the board-comber. ‘They’re trying to sneak up on our flanks.’
Alex turned to see snakelike instruments whizzing through the air at him. He swept them aside with his sword-blade, sending them back into the bouncing ranks of hurdy-gurdies. Massive cymbals rolled with knife-blade edges and sliced into the pianos. Ceramic ocarinas, thrown like hand-grenades, exploded on the piano tops, sending deadly shards of pottery flying around Alex’s feet. An oboe spear was aimed at his head but he managed to chop it in the air as it flew towards him.
‘Look out!’ cried the girl.
The enemy had taken an upright piano and sent it rolling at speed towards Alex. However, its castors must have been loose because it veered off course and slammed into one of the big oak pillars. The pillar juddered violently with the impact and bits of debris fell from the rafters above. Alex looked up, alarmed. However, the support was only shaken loose in its joints and remained fast. It didn’t fail in its job of keeping heaven and earth apart, though there had been a moment …
‘You have to watch those pillars,’ Alex yelled at the board-comber. ‘If one of them comes down, the whole world will collapse.’
‘Don’t exaggerate,’ she laughed, warding off a flute-arrow.
‘I’m not. Don’t you believe me? If one comes down, they’ll all go, one after the other. The pressure will be too much for them.’
‘If you say so,’ she called back grudgingly. ‘Now watch your flank – there’s a sneak attack coming!’
He turned to face the danger.
Finally, Alex and the board-comber routed the attack. They had a good defensive position which was difficult for the enemy to surmount. They also had the owl whose swivelling head and keen eyes helped to warn of any sneaky tactics. Alex and the girl stood back to back. They cut this way and that with their swords, protecting themselves with their shields. In the end the two warriors of the boards sent the enemy running.
While his rival was thus engaged, warding off attacks, the Organist crept forward towards the great pillar. In his hands was an object wrapped in brown greaseproof paper. In his pocket was a crudely printed pamphlet dated 1917, with the title A Simple Explosive Device. The grammar and spelling on the pamphlet were poor, it having been written by some anarchist group whose main concern was the destruction of property and not the correct use of the English language.
The Organist was a tall, sly, sallow youth, dressed all in black capes. He had on a long mournful mask which he had worn for so long it had fused with his face. Now he could not remove it. His pale long-fingered hands were the only parts of his body visible in the dimness of the interior. Those hands were engaged in carrying the home-made bomb he had fashioned. Home-made it might be, but it was very powerful, having enough explosive to rip the pillar apart and blow the watches to pieces.
The Organist was aware that the Removal Firm would hear and investigate, but the bomb would go off on her territory, not his, and he was sure that she would get the blame for the
explosion.
Once he got to her collection he quickly scooped away watches from the base of the pillar and strapped the bomb to it, covering it again. He was sweating profusely. Those beautiful hands shook violently. He’d never done anything like this before, nothing so heinous, but then he was at the end of his tether. If he did not get rid of the girl he would surely go mad with frustration. She was the bane of his life. He had been before her and she had simply settled here without his permission. He hated her with venom. Why wouldn’t she go away? It was her fault he was driven to such desperate measures. She had forced him to do it.
It had been different once. When she had first arrived in this part of the attic they had been friends. Good friends. But after a while she turned funny on him, started rejecting his friendship, told him he was not respecting her privacy, her right to solitude. He had argued with her, put his point of view, but she just kept saying she would prefer it if he left her alone. Then no matter what he did, what he said, she would not listen. She would have nothing to do with him. Well, damn her! He would be noticed. He was a genius. Who did she think she was, ignoring such a great musician? Was he nobody? Was he nothing? He would have the last word!
He set the timing device, a pocket-watch, so that the bomb would explode at noon in several days’ time.
It would go off on the very last of its final chimes.
Finally, out of the depths of hinterland Attica came a single, long, deep, resonating note which made every stringed instrument vibrate. A hastily formed charge halted at once in its tracks. Spidery bagpipes turned and limped away. Twice more the bass notes came, without doubt from a great chapel organ. This seemed to be the signal to the musical instruments and their riders to return whence they had come. All those which had not been broken or injured trickled away into the gloom. Some of the mercenaries dismounted and picked up their wounded, turning to shake their fists at the amazon girl standing on the piano wall, her rags and ribbons flapping like victory banners in the draughts from the interior.
She laughed at their creaked curses and waved her sword.
‘You’ll never get me to go away,’ she cried, delighted at her triumph. ‘Tell your master I’ll be here until doomsday!’
The owl hooted in derision at the retreating enemy.
Alex climbed down from his piano and removed Makishi. He wiped the sweat away from his forehead with a rag.
‘What was all that about?’ he asked.
‘Oh, it’s the Organist. Selfish brat. Just like a boy. He wants the whole of this corner of the attic for himself, for him and his musical instruments. Well, he can’t have it, because I’m here now and I’m not leaving. You give some people a little room and they want it all! He won’t listen to reason. I choose to live here and no one is going to chase me away, so there. And no, you can’t have the watch. I need all my watches.’
Alex let the ‘Just like a boy’ go without an argument, though he was wrinkled with annoyance.
‘You’re wondering if you can steal my watches, now that you know where they are, aren’t you? It’s no good thinking crafty thoughts. I’m on to you. You won’t get halfway across the lake. I’ll be after you like a shot.’
Alex said haughtily, ‘I wouldn’t steal from anyone.’
‘Not even a girl over a hundred years old?’
‘Not even you.’
Alex wanted to get back on her good side again, though, and needed to flatter her.
‘Your collection is superb,’ he said, dredging up a few Chloe words from his memory. ‘Those watches are simply exquisite!’
‘Yes,’ she squealed, jumping up and down and clapping her hands, making the owl sway dangerously, ‘that’s what they are. Oh, I’m so glad you came. I just knew there was a word which would describe them exactly. Exquisite. That’s what they are, aren’t they? Simply exquisite. Superb and exquisite.’
That he had pleased her was beyond doubt. But he still had to try to find Mr Grantham’s watch. That’s what he’d come for.
‘A hundred years old,’ he said, looking into her clear blue eyes. ‘I still can’t believe it.’
‘More than,’ she replied. ‘I came up here when I was at a Board School. But they used to tease me a lot, because I didn’t know who my father was, so I stayed up here. Been here ever since.’ She looked over her shoulder. ‘I could go back. It would be as if I never came in the first place. But I don’t want to be teased again.’
‘But a hundred years!’
‘I know.’ She sighed, adoring him for his sympathy. ‘I know you think it’s horrid. A hundred years in a dusty attic. But it’s my home and I love it here. You wouldn’t understand.’
Alex blurted, ‘But I do.’
‘I might go back, one day.’
‘You should. Your mother will be missing you.’
‘Not really. That’s the beauty of it. I’ll only have been gone a few seconds. Strange isn’t it, this time stopped. You think there would be a great hue and cry the length and breadth of the land.’ Her voice suddenly changed to a falsetto. ‘Where is Amanda? Oh, where has she gone, my darling girl?’ Then back to her normal tone, ‘But no one calls, no one knows, because no time has passed since I left. Here we are in a place stuck between two minutes, not moving, still as dust in a box.’
‘Amanda. That’s a very nice name.’
She hugged her knees. ‘And what’s yours?’
‘Alex. Alexander.’
‘Alexander, don’t you miss your parents? Why do you want to stay up here?’
He shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s exciting, isn’t it?’
‘Will you stay? Will you?’
He became almost as deflated as one of those bagpipes he had pierced earlier with his sword.
‘I really don’t know. I think I want to. I thought I did.’
She smiled. ‘It’s not all magic dust and moonbeams, you know. It’s very, very lonely.’
‘I’m beginning to learn that.’
‘Loneliness can gnaw away at you, or come up on you suddenly and suck all the spirit out of you, so you feel hollow and wasted.’
He shuddered and nodded. ‘I guess it can.’
‘You should think about it very carefully. If you wait too long to make a decision, it becomes so that you can’t go. The attic increases its hold on you. It grips you with soft unseen hands. Firm hands. You’re speaking with one who knows, Alexander. It seems to me I’ve been here almost as long as the dust. If it weren’t for my collection …’ Her voice had grown very dreamy. ‘… I might go home tomorrow.’
The pair of them spent the next few hours together. Amanda said there would be no attack from the Organist’s regiments for some time to come, because of the heavy defeat the pair of them had inflicted on them. Thus they had time to enjoy each other’s company, which was wonderful for the board-comber and would be remembered forever by the novice bortrekker.
‘Can you sail?’ she asked him.
‘Sailed all the way here,’ he answered.
‘Yes, but on a raft you said. Can you sail a small boat?’
‘Never tried.’
‘Come with me.’
She took him out on the waters of the tank in a small sailing boat. Probably in order that Amanda could move about swiftly and without hindrance, the owl left her head for once and perched on the bowsprit. Once on the great lake, however, Amanda became a tyrannical captain, yelling at Alex to pull this sheet or reef that sail. He might have guessed he would become a slave to her commands in such a situation. When he complained that he was being treated like a drudge, she explained that unless he obeyed orders to the letter and very quickly, they might capsize.
‘You are the deck hand. You have to learn to react quickly. Now jump to the jib …’
He jumped, wondering what the heck a jib was, but Amanda was not a girl to be ignored.
Nevertheless, Alex enjoyed her company, and so far as he could tell, she enjoyed his. But as the days progressed he began to seriously consider w
hether this attic life was for him. Even though it was a thousand times better than being completely on his own, he grew bored. He was not content within himself. It was no wonder the bortrekker he had met and who had influenced him kept moving. Just as all bortrekkers were restless souls. They had to be in order to interest themselves. New landscapes, new adventures, new horizons were necessary to ward off that corrosive boredom.
‘There are those who’re born to the attic and those who hope to grow into it,’ she told him one day, after looking into his eyes and seeing emptiness there. ‘You are the second kind. Oh, I do not doubt you’re sincere about wanting to stay, and perhaps if you did you’d come to grow into it. But you’re not like me. I can spend a thousand years up here and still not lose interest. I am one of those people happy in my own company. I have my owl of course, and he’s enough for me.’
The owl blinked and climbed down from her head, to walk up to Alex and stare him directly in the face. Alex found this very disconcerting and tried to ignore the bird, but it was difficult when you were the sole object of some-one’s attentions. The owl continued to peer at him with unwavering intensity.
‘Look somewhere else,’ he muttered at the owl. ‘Go on, shoo!’
The three of them were sitting together on the edge of the water tank, looking out over the wavelets that had gathered purple light to themselves. Technically the bird was standing, but it seemed as if he were squatting, since he was all hunched, with feathers fluffed.
Attica Page 27
