Attica (24 page)

‘Those’re
her
drawers, they are,’ said the boy, without taking his eyes from the screen. ‘You’ll get it if she catches you.’

Chloe paid him no attention, but continued to root around in the bureau, without success. She went off and had a look in the kitchen, knowing that people often open their mail at the breakfast table. There were no letters there either. Finally she had an idea. She went back to the boy and said, ‘Have you seen that letter I got the other day?’

‘Never took no letter.’

‘I didn’t say you’d taken it. I only asked if you’d seen it.’

‘That one I give you from Jimmy Caghill?’

‘Yes. That one.’

‘You stuck it under your mattress. You daft, or what?’

Chloe dashed upstairs and found the room which obviously belonged to Sarah, then after a long search, found the letter. She was disappointed. It had no envelope. When she opened it she read: ‘Sarah. I reckon your really something. You want to go to the pictures sometime? I could meet you tomorrow if you wanted. James (Caghill).’ There was no address at the top and Chloe thought James Caghill was a dud. As if she would sell her pride so cheaply as to ever go out with someone who didn’t know how to use apostrophes and wrote
your
instead of
you’re
.

When she left
her room the boy was coming up the stairs.

He seemed very reasonable now. ‘I’m goin’ to bed. You have locked the door, haven’t you, Sarah?’

‘Doesn’t it lock on the latch?’

‘You’re s’posed to deadlock it too.’

After making sure the boy really had gone to bed she went downstairs quickly and found the key in the lock.

Chloe deadlocked the front door and when she went around to the back door found it had been securely bolted.

Then she began a serious search of the house. After an hour it was obvious that there were no letters in the house. There were no bills or bank statements either. This house was quite devoid of printed paper. There was nothing on the phone to say where they were. She did find a name and a date on the first blank page of a book of Burns’ poems which read ‘Isabel Sutherland, 1932, Dunfermline’, but it was a very old book and had probably been bought second-hand with the name already in place.

‘This doesn’t feel like Dunfermline,’ said Chloe to herself.

As she was replacing the book on its shelf the front door rattled.

Chloe picked up the nearest heavy object, a stone carving. She held it like a club, ready to use.

Her heart was beating fast. She was beginning to realise that she was going to get nowhere in this house. It was far too ordinary yet at the same time, very very strange. It could be a house anywhere in England, Scotland or Wales. And the fact that they thought she belonged here frightened her more than anything else.

Who had tried the door? Had it been the wind, or was there someone out there, trying to get in? It could have been anything from flesh-eating monsters to unexpected relatives. Both seemed equally scary at that moment. Or it might even be someone like the TV licensing authority, for this family was too average not to be wholly innocent of all crimes and misdemeanours. Chloe did not want to get any further involved in this family’s affairs.

She put the
heavy carving in her jeans pocket and went upstairs to check on the children. They were fast asleep, both of them. The temptation now was to go, to leave them all to it, but something kept her there until she heard the parents’ car returning. Then she ran down the stairs, opened the deadlock, and rushed back up again. She heard them come in, talking softly. Chloe had already put a chair under the hole to stand on, so that she could climb up and pull herself back up into the attic. This she was doing as the woman came up the stairs. She and Jane exchanged quizzical glances, then Chloe was up and through the hole.

Once up in the attic she slammed the trapdoor shut.

‘You were quick,’ said Alex. ‘Did you come up because the string came off?’

‘That came off
hours
ago.’

‘No – just now. Wasn’t it just now?’ Alex’s question was addressed to a tall boy in a long raincoat with many capes, a big floppy hat and big boots. ‘Less than a minute ago.’

The youth said, ‘But she’s been down
there
.’

‘Anyway,’ Chloe said, ‘it didn’t work. I did spend hours down there, but I couldn’t find out what town it was. And they were expecting me, Alex. They called me Sarah and said I was one of the family.’

‘You can’t just go down anywhere you please,’ said the youth in the capes. In each side pocket he had a rat both of whom kept looking up at him when he talked. ‘It’s just throwing a spanner in the works. You don’t
fit
. It’s a wonder you got back without causing all kinds of damage. Going down through a wrong hole creates a turbulence. It’s to do with matter and space. See,’ he explained, using his hands to describe the contours of creatures in the world below, ‘there’s a perfect empty shape for everything that moves and breathes down there, from an elephant to a mouse. Each elephant fills an elephant space. There be only so many elephant spaces. If there was one more elephant than spaces it would mess up the entire universe. Same if it was a mouse, or a bee – or, like you, another human.’

‘Oh – oh,’ said
Chloe, upset. ‘They kept calling me Sarah. Do you think I displaced a girl called Sarah? Will she find her – her space again?’

‘Who knows?’

Chloe was quite distressed about this. On the one hand she felt that Sarah was well enough out of such a family, wherever she was. But then again, who was she – Chloe – to judge for another girl? Perhaps there were good reasons why Jane was such a harridan. You couldn’t just walk in on a family and start making judgements as to what was right and wrong. In many ways they were a nice enough family.

‘Well,’ said Chloe, ‘I’ve done it now and there’s nothing much I can do to repair the damage. I’m certainly not going down again …’

‘That would be disastrous,’ agreed the boy in capes.

‘And just who are you?’ asked Chloe, now that she’d regained her composure.

‘He’s a bortrekker,’ explained Alex excitedly. ‘He treks the boards. And,’ his voice rose triumphantly, ‘he knows where Jordy is!’

‘You do?’ cried Chloe. ‘Oh, where is he?’

‘Yonder,’ replied the bortrekker, pointing. ‘In a forest of tall clocks. He’s safe enough, for the time being, though I have to warn you, the cold Northern Draught is coming. I do believe he be waiting for the pair of you. Saw you coming days ago, but you must have wandered off the straight and narrow. Easy thing to do, up here.’

‘Then we’d better
be on our way,’ Chloe announced. ‘Come on Alex, we must find Mr Grantham’s watch.’ Chloe bent over to pick up her pack and felt a heavy lump in her pocket. It was the little statuette from the house below. The one she had kept in case she needed a weapon. She hoped to goodness that removing it was not going to cause all sorts of chaos and confusion in the world below: altering the tides, the climate and weather, the phases of the moon, the hours of daylight. But she wasn’t going to ask the bortrekker. He seemed to like being the voice of doom. She would rather not know.

Chloe quickly transferred the stone figure to her backpack.

Later, after the bortrekker had left them to continue his odyssey across Attica and they were en route to the forest of tall clocks, she took the carving out again and studied it. She saw now that it was of a beautiful green walrus. Chloe admired the carving, then stuffed it back into her pack again

A little later they came across a bees’ nest in an old suitcase.

‘I know how to do this,’ she told Alex, taking off her pack. ‘We need some cardboard from an old cardboard box. We could do with some women’s tights or stockings.’

Alex easily found her some cardboard. It wasn’t difficult: Attica had cardboard boxes all over the place. He didn’t find any tights, but he did discover a box with some old lace curtains in. These, Chloe said, would be absolutely perfect for the job. She put on a hat and threw one of the curtains over her own head and shoulders and bid Alex do the same. Chloe looked like a Spanish bride in her curtain, with Alex the bridesmaid. Their faces were protected against stings, as were their hands when they put on gloves.

Chloe rolled up a
piece of the cardboard, then asked Alex to light one end with a match. Once it was burning she blew it out, but continued to blow on the end, making it glow like charcoal embers. She then ordered Alex to lift the suitcase lid. When he did so, the bees began to come out. Chloe lifted her veil enough to blow through the cool end of the cardboard roll and made the smouldering end glow again. Smoke came out and was wafted into the nest. This had a calming effect on the bees and Chloe and Alex were able to steal some of the honey without getting stung. They later ate it by sucking it out of the honeycomb. It was the most delicious meal they’d had in their lives.

‘Oh, that was good,’ said Alex, patting his stomach afterwards. ‘That was really good.’

‘I agree,’ replied Chloe, licking her fingers. ‘
Very
good.’

Alex had had a long chat with Makishi about jungles and wildlife in the tropics. He was feeling content and quite fulfilled. He lay back and looked up at the sky, a heaven made of timber. He liked the russet colour of some of the higher rafters way, way up in the ether. Then the dark ones to the edges: the pale softwood lower ones. Vast. Immense. A massive vault which soared to measureless dizzying altitudes. How peaceful it was up there. What was that? A bird? Something very like a bird: a black shape winging its way through the network of spars and beams. Too high really to recognise
exactly
what it was. Did it matter? Not really.

It was as he was lying there that a scent came to him on a draught. It was the kind of smell which might have a bushman murmuring, ‘The rain is coming!’ The old Alex didn’t know what the smell was, of course, but deep within him a new Alex was emerging. Fledgling though it was, it gave voice to its feelings and cried out, ‘There’s a storm coming!’

Alex huddled
against one of the strong oaken pillars which supported the roof, knowing he and Makishi were safe in the protection of its lee.

CHAPTER 15

Cold Draught Then a Warm Reunion

‘You remember the bortrekker told us about that
wind,’ explained Alex, ‘but he called it a
draught
. The North Draught. A cold one. I think that’s what’s coming our way – the North Draught – so batten down the hatches, there’s dirty weather coming, Clo.’

He didn’t really know what the last couple of phrases actually meant, but he’d heard them in films and they sounded dramatic enough for him.

‘But what I want to know is
how
you know?’

‘I just feel it,’ replied Alex vaguely. ‘It’s sort of in the air. Can you see any snowflakes?’

‘No. There aren’t any. You can’t get snow inside an attic. There’s not enough moisture.’

‘I hope you’re right, sis.’

The draught was increasing in strength now, blowing straight down the middle of the attic. It began to get colder too, as the strength of the draught grew. The chill factor increased and increased until Chloe realised she would have to follow Alex’s example and put on some more clothes. Luckily there were plenty to be had. They were hardly the height of teenage fashion, but she was prepared to give way on that score. It was better to miss out on being the best dressed girl in Winchester, than to freeze to death. Thus with two scarves wrapped around her neck and head, a thick old-lady’s overcoat, sheep’s-wool mittens and another pair of slacks over her jeans, Chloe felt half ready to deal with the blizzard which came hurtling at them.

And
blizzard it was.

There was no snow, as she had predicted, but the wind was so cold it froze all the surface moisture on the boards and over the junk, leaving a white hoar-frost in its wake. After struggling against it, heads down, the force of the draught was too much for them. Seeking shelter they found two or three tables and turned them on their sides to make a windbreak. There they huddled while the draught screamed around them, cutting through cracks and whistling through holes. No arctic wind was as cold as that North Draught. The bortrekker had tried telling Alex just how fierce it was, but no description whatever could have prepared them for this freezing blow.

Chloe hunched there, her back against the bottom of an upturned table.

‘Are you all right?’ yelled Alex. ‘Try to keep covered or you’ll get frostbite.’

She nodded, thoroughly miserable. If there was one thing Chloe hated, it was being cold. Alex didn’t seem to mind, however. He peered out from between the layers he was wearing with bright brown eyes, not at all put out by this wild onslaught.

Indeed, the frost turned to ice crystals, which twinkled with a million glints in the poor light. Ice crystals make everything look colder than it actually is. It turns a frosty spring morning into a harsh winter’s day. Chloe thought about unpacking their stove, but realised it was no good trying to light the little cooker. Such a fierce draught would not allow it. They simply had to sit
and wait it out. Objects picked up by the high draught clattered against the tops of the tables: some were thrown against them with real force. Clothes and other light materials flew through the air like giant birds, flapping helplessly. At one point Chloe thought there were wolves out there, but it was in the end only the North Draught, telling everyone it was king of all Attica.

‘Seventy miles an hour, I’ll bet,’ said Alex. ‘Gale force ten.’

For once Chloe remained unimpressed by her brother’s knowledge.

When it had decreased in strength a little, Alex emerged to find he was able to keep his feet once more. He encouraged a reluctant Chloe to stand and follow him. Off he marched, into the teeth of the gale, holding his head low, while Chloe trudged on behind. They passed white mounds which were probably junk, and white frozen-over water tanks. The whole aspect of the attic had changed in the frost and ice covering. It was as if the attic were trying to disguise itself with a mask of linen and lace.