The Bones in the Attic (10 page)

Perhaps some remnants of that feeling of responsibility had lodged in the grown man's brain, and that was why he had used the word in his letter. Because Matt felt sure it was Peter Basnett's letter: it wasn't just the word “whippersnapper,” it was the whole mind-set. Matt took up the letter again, and read it through, slowly and carefully.

That sentence at the end about his being too young to understand and being told nothing of what was going on smacked to him of wishful thinking—of convincing himself after the event of what he wanted to believe. Yes, he had been too young to understand in the wider sense of the word, but no, he had not been too young to know that something was going on, and that it was something to feel uneasy about. It was true he had never been told anything, but still things were said in his presence that, in spite of Peter's best efforts, he could, even at the age of seven, piece together and half understand. He felt sure he had known even then what they thought Lily had shown to the man she had gone to visit, whom she had been paid by. He was a boy with two elder sisters.

There was something else puzzling in the letter. Peter said he didn't live in Leeds or in the north. Yet he had heard both the original interview and Liza Pomfret's update of the day before. Rather odd. Was he on an extended visit to Leeds? Or was he lying? No—wait: he said he had “caught” an earlier item on the same subject. That could have been Liza Pomfret's interview on Radio Leeds, but it
could equally be the piece he did on “Look North.” That had a much larger catchment area, extending down to Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and Lincolnshire. If he lived so far south, it would justify him saying that he no longer lived in the north.

One other thing was useful about the letter. The memories it provoked had brought the boy Colin into focus: pushy, opinionated, pretty pleased with himself. The other boy in the partnership, Harry, had been the junior one, and Colin made pretty sure he stayed that way.

When he got home and had heard the children's competing accounts of their awful days at school (which sat very ill with their determination not to change schools if it could be avoided) he reached down the Leeds telephone directory and the old Bradford one he had had when he lived in that area. There was a handful of Basnetts in Leeds, but no P. Basnett. There was an L. P. Basnett in Horsforth, and he dialed the number and asked for Peter Basnett.

“No Peter Basnett here,” he was told. “I'm Laura Phyllis.”

When he tried the only P. Basnett in Bradford he found that it was Philip, and the voice was much too young. Radio Leeds could be heard in Halifax and all sorts of other towns in the immediate area, but somehow he did not feel he was going to get anywhere that way. It was too easy. Peter would not have told a lie he could so easily be caught out in.

Except that . . . Matt tried to put into words the thought at the back of his head. If he wanted to write to someone to reassure him that he had played no part in a terrible event without revealing his own identity, he would have kept it very brief and matter-of-fact:
I fear you may be
worried. . . . I can assure you, you had gone home before it happened. . . . You can put your mind at rest.
Nothing more was required.

Yet this letter went beyond that, well beyond. It almost seemed as if the writer would like to resume a relationship, one of which he had happy memories—as Matt himself certainly had of his relationship with Peter.

He would even go further. He felt that, fighting a rearguard action against the eighty percent of himself that wanted to remain anonymous and unknown, wanted to have heard the last of the matter of the dead child, there was twenty percent that wanted to be found, wanted to see how the young Matt had grown up, wanted—even—to have the matter of the child out in the open at last.

Could it be that he had used that word “whippersnapper” deliberately to set him on his track? Was Peter waiting somewhere in West Yorkshire, half hoping and half fearing that he, Matt, would get a lead on him? A lonely person, perhaps? An unfulfilled one? Feelings of guilt contending with instincts of self-preservation?

The next morning, at breakfast time, and on his way to another job, Tony Tyler dropped round to see if he had made any decisions about decorating the bedrooms.

“I'm not going to pick anything for the main bedroom until Aileen is here to OK it,” said Matt. “More than my life is worth. As to the other bedrooms, the children have been hemming and hawing.” He turned to them, sitting over their cornflakes and Frosties: “The one who makes a
firm
decision and sticks to it will be the one who gets their bedroom done first.”

Isabella, Stephen, and Lewis sat, spoons poised, thinking for a moment. Then they downed tools and ran
upstairs, talking and arguing. Matt looked at Tony and grinned.

“I haven't made any decision about whether I'll try to do some of it myself, or with their help, such as it will be. But it's beginning to look as if I shall be too busy. There is one thing I've been wanting to talk to you about, though. This kitchen ceiling”—he looked heavenward—“it looks to me as if it could do with another coat.” Tony Tyler, also looking up, grimaced.

“I think you're right. We thought we might get away with two, but it looks as if we were wrong. To tell you the truth we were covering years of grime—decades, probably.”

“Yes, Mr. Farson doesn't seem to have been house-proud. I think he was a widower by the time he moved here.”

“I could get someone to you tomorrow morning.”

“Fine.”

“I'll send Harry. He says he knows you already.”

“Oh? Harry who?”

“Harry Sugden.”

“Don't register the name.”

“Harry says he used to play football with you when you were a lad.”

Matt was conscious of Tony's eyes on him.

“Yes,” he admitted. “I never told you I'd been in these parts before.”

He opened the gate and went forward. He thought he saw Harry register his approach by a flicker of the eyelids. Matt opened the door and went up to him, his hand outstretched.

“Hello, I'm Matt Harper. I gather I don't really need to introduce myself.”

Harry leaned down and took his hand. He was a man in his forties, his fair hair starting to recede, but with an uncomplicated smile and a feeling of honesty about him.

“Well, I'd not say I'd ha' recognized you if I'd passed you
in the street,” he admitted, “though I might ha' done if I'd stood beside you at the bar. Any road, who doesn't change between seven and thirty-seven?”

“I have, anyway. Ready for a cuppa? Tea or coffee?”

“Tea, please.”

Harry came down his ladder and set paint pot and brushes out on the newspaper laid over the floor.

“By 'eck, it's been a long time,” he said. “But now I look at you properly I can see the little lad still there in the face.”

“I'm surprised you remember me at all,” said Matt, busying himself with the teapot and milk bottle.

“You were that good,” said Harry simply, “a reet little Georgie Best, and we all said the same. And back then you weren't much bigger than the football you were kicking. It were a pleasure to see you score goals, even if they were for t' other side.”

“I'm afraid I never quite lived up to that early promise.”

“Don't say that. You were playing in t' Second Division, as it wor then—I don't call that not living up to promise. I'd've been proud to ha' played wi' you if you'd only been playing i' the Fourth!”

“Well, I'm not saying it isn't nice to be remembered,” Matt said, always more proud of his promise than his achievements. “After all, I suppose I was only here for three or four weeks.”

“Happen it wor about that. We tried to make a little northerner of you, because half the time we couldn't understand your Cockney. You've lost all that, lad. Is it working for the BBC 'as done that to you?”

“No, I lost it, most of it, when we moved to Essex. My father got a good job in an engineering works in
Colchester. . . . Funny thing, but I can't even imitate Cockney particularly well now.”

“Well, you could 'a acted in ‘East Enders' then, if it'd been goin'. It were ‘barf' for ‘bath' and ‘bruvver' for ‘brother' back then. You stood out, I can tell you, and you wouldn't 'ave if you'd talked like you do now. . . . Mind you, we both stood out. We were outsiders, like.”

“Oh? I'm guessing you weren't from round here.”

“I weren't,” said Harry cheerfully. “I were from down the 'ill, like you. I were at a loose end because me best mate were away in a caravan in Brid, and the kids here were always one or two short of players for their five-a-side games. You probably didn't realize it, but I wasn't part of the group. I were with it, but not of it, if you take my meaning.”

“No, I don't think I did realize that at the time. I was very young, and I probably missed a lot. That's what I'm afraid of, when I try to think back to that time. What I do remember about you is your going around with someone called Colin.”

“Oh, aye? Well, Colin were a bit of an outsider an' all. He used to come in the summer to stay wi' his grandparents. His mum and dad were teachers, an' they liked to use their long holidays to travel round Europe. They wanted a bit o' time wi'out kids, which I reckon you can understand.”

“Teachers were they? I remember him as a bit bossy, a bit of a know-all, so that figures. We had teachers' sons at my Colchester school, and they were often like that. Who were his grandparents?”

“The people at the far end house.” Harry nodded in the direction of the curve in the lane. “I think their name was
Mather? Colin were always there a month or more i' the summer.”

“What I remember about you two was you both keeping an eye on a girl called Lily,” said Matt. Harry put down his mug of tea on the stepladder, frowning.

“I don't mind that. I remember Lily—Lily Marsden she were then. But she were older than me and Colin. Why would we be keeping an eye on her?”

“Sorry, I'm not making myself clear. I don't mean minding her. I was trying to find a polite way of saying watching her, spying on her.”

Harry Sugden grinned.

“Well, that Lily Marsden were always up to summat, an' you know what lads are like at that age—smutty as hell.”

That tied in with the hints from the other children about what Lily was getting up to.

“It was something like that, was it? Or you two thought it was. My memory is that she was calling on someone, going to see some man and getting paid for whatever she did.”

“By 'eck, you've got a memory. Tell you the truth, I do mind it now, but not a lot more than you've said.” He took up his tea again and drank thirstily. “She were goin' somewhere and gettin' money for doin' summat. O' course it could have been anything: running errands for someone who was disabled, or old, or—”

“But you and Colin didn't think so.”

“None o' them did, none o' the kids around here. It were—I dunno—it were her way, the way she talked about it, the sly, secretive way she referred to it. Ee, she were a funny lass. There was no pinning her down. She—well, she
knew
things us kids could only guess at.”

“Sex?”

Harry scratched his chest. Matt clearly hadn't hit the nail squarely on the head, but Harry was at a loss to explain the essence of Lily's strangeness.

“That, I suppose. But—I don't know as I can put my finger on it. I were never that clever wi' words—it were more psychological than physical, if you catch my meaning. No doubt there were that as well, in some shape or form, but what pleased her specially were that she were being
told
about things—things most children in them days would know nowt about, whatever they might pick up today. She were on equal footing with an adult.”

Matt thought for a moment.

“Who was this person she was going to?”

“Search me.”

“You and Colin knew she was visiting someone, but not who?”

“I think that's right. You're callin' on memories I hardly knew I 'ad, so I may be messin' you about entirely. But I think we found out the house she was visiting, an' we kept watch on it, but I don't think we ever knew who it were.”

“Where was the house?”

“It were down in our part o' Bramley—where your auntie lived and where I lived.
Down
in every sense o' the word from these houses. It were one o' the streets off from the Raynville Road—you know them. We lived in Lansdowne Avenue.”

“My auntie lived in Grenville Street, and Lily Fitch as she is now lives in Lansdowne Rise.”

“Does she now? Then there's Grenville Grove, Leighton Terrace, an' several more little streets as go off from Raynville Road. Could be any o' those. It weren't Lansdowne
Avenue—that were our own street, an' I'd'a known who she were visiting if it were close to our 'ouse. Anyway, we lost interest because squatters moved into a 'ouse in one o' those streets and we got more interested in them, otherwise I bet we could 'ave found out. 'Ave you spoken to Lily?”

“I have. She's saying nothing.”

“She wouldn't if she had anything to do wi' this baby business.” He shot a quick look at Matt. “It is that we're talkin' about, isn't it?”

“It is.”

“Aye. Tony told me.”

Matt felt a bit shamefaced about his secrecy.

“I didn't tell him till yesterday that I'd known these houses when I was a boy. Made me sound like the poor little kid who looks up at a big house and dreams of owning it. This was a big house to me in those days.”

“To me an' all.”

“You don't remember anything more about those days that could be useful?”

“Not a thing.” He thought before saying carefully, “It doesn't seem likely, does it, that them children were involved? I mean, apart from Lily they were pretty nice kids.”

“May be you're right. But Lily Fitch is hiding something, I'm sure of that.”

“That were always her way. . . . Mind you, I'd 'ave to say I probably wouldn't 'ave known if there were anything up. Soon as me mate came back from Brid I'd've been off wi' him, and not playing up here. I knew me place.”

“You can't remember when that was?”

“Give us a break! After all these years? But I think you were still around.”

“And you never played up here with them in later years?”

“Not as I recall. I'd played on and off in earlier years, but not later. . . . Some o' them were gettin' a bit old for playing—‘leiking,' as we used to call it down the 'ill. They were coming up to an age when they'd be more interested in the other sex. I must 'ave met some o' them around, living pretty close like I did, but I don't think I 'ad anything more to do wi' them as a group.”

“So you wouldn't know where any of them went to in later life, where they landed up?”

Harry Sugden shook his head slowly.

“Not most of them, but just the one I do. Though I don't know about ‘landed up,' because this were—oh, must be eight or ten year ago now. I were on me own then, trying to run me own business. It didn't work out—I 'ad to keep the costs so low to compete that I never made a living wage. This one I'm talkin' about drove as 'ard a bargain as anyone. If he had the money to buy a house on the Otley Road—close to Lawnswood Cemetery, do you know the ones I mean?—you'd ha' thought he could've paid a decent screw to 'ave it decorated. But no—”

“Who is this you're talking about?”

“Pemberton were the surname. I can't call to mind the Christian name but it were something unusual.”