The Bones in the Attic (16 page)

“The year the Beatles made
Abbey Road,
” said Patrick.

“The year Man City won the FA Cup,” amended Matt. It seemed like another era. “But there must be quite a lot of people out there watching this who remember that year well. For example, we don't think there were that many squatters in northern towns at that time. They would have stood out, and we think some of you”—he turned with a practiced transition to look straight into the camera—“may remember this family. They dressed in hippie style, so this fact, and the fact that they took over an empty house illegally, would have made them conspicuous, talked about. We want to know who they were, and which house they took over, in which street. That is, one of the streets off the Raynville Road, on the border of Armley and Bramley, in West Leeds. If you have anything to offer us in the way of information, ring the police on 0113 2435353, or ring and talk to me here tonight, on 0113 2445738, in the next two hours.”

“Matt is hoping to hear from you,” concluded Patrick Priest.

Matt raised a hand in thanks to his interviewer, beetled out of the studio gesturing to the children to follow him, and headed for the room that had been assigned to him for the phone-in. The telephone was already ringing. He told the children they had to be dead quiet while he was on the phone, and took it up.

“Is that Matthew Hartwell?”

“Er—”

“Well, I'm ringing about these squatters.” An elderly female voice. Promising. “I think it's absolutely dizgoosting, I mean, they just take over places, don't they, and the police do nowt about it, and they get their electricity and
gas free, and there's them living off the fat of the land, and it's all at our expense, isn't it, uz ratepayers, we're the ones who pay in the long run, aren't we? Am I on the air?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“I've noted your views, Mrs. . . . Thank you very much.” And he put the phone firmly down.

“Who was it?” demanded the children.

“Someone who thought it was a phone-in on squatters.”

The next one was hardly more promising.

“Matt Harper? It's Len Hainsworth here.”

“Yes, Mr. Hainsworth.”

“I wanted to ring and tell you I saw all your home matches when you were with Bradford City, and I thought you were brilliant—the best thing in the team when you were on form. Ee, I remember that goal you scored in the FA Cup second round in eighty-seven—”

“Mr. Hainsworth, do you have any information for me—”

“No, lad. I just wanted to have the pleasure of telling you that—”

“Then would you please get off the line?” said Matt, banging down the phone. “Nutter,” he said to the children. “Celebrity hunter.”

“Are you a celeb-rity?” asked Stephen, handling the word with care.

“Minor-league celebrity of a local kind. I appear on television, that's why.”

Matt thought that from that point on the only way forward was up, and gently upward it duly went, with the occasional hiccup. At least fifty percent of the later calls did deal with squatters. He took down details of squats in
Headingley, Kirkstall, Bramhope, Pudsey, and Cookridge, with highly conjectural dates and any other details that the caller could remember. All these could conceivably be checked against police records. He was not convinced that if the couple somehow or other lost their baby in a way that made them unwilling to contact the police, they would have stayed on in Leeds, simply moving to another squat.

Stephen was beginning to get restless, and the other two to get positively bored, when something closer to gold was struck.

“Sorry it's taken me so long to get through,” said another elderly female voice, very down-to-earth sounding, “but I've tried twice before and you were engaged, and I'm minding the grandchildren—”

“Yes—you are?”

“Edwina Bartlett. I was brought up in Millais Terrace, and I was still at home in 1969. I think that's the street you're after. There was a pair of hippies with a baby took over the house two down from us—it would be number fourteen.”

“That's very helpful. Have you any more information?”

“Not much. It was a rather larger house than the rest in that street, and it had been up for sale for quite a while because the neighborhood wasn't in its favor. They were there for some months, and then suddenly they were gone—overnight, it was, but that's usual, isn't it? I suppose that's what squatters generally do, disappear into the night.”

“You didn't talk to them, get to know them?” “Not on your life! Me mam would have been down on me like a ton of bricks. How old are you, Mr. Harper?”

“Coming up to forty.”

“I can give you ten years or so. I can tell you, children and adolescents were not encouraged to talk to hippie squatters in 1969. In fact, me mam was the holy terror of Millais Terrace.”

“You've not followed in her footsteps?”

A fruity laugh came down the line.

“Not on your life. Nor my daughters either. When I was eighteen I got pregnant, and me mam and I didn't exchange so much as a word for more than twenty years.”

That, at any rate, was concrete information, and pointed the way to further investigation. The children, however, were unimpressed. Their restlessness was becoming distracting, and they signaled their boredom by saying things like “You haven't got
much
” or “I don't see what use
that
is.” It was nearly half past nine, and Matt was just putting together his papers when the phone rang again.

“Mr. Harper? I'm glad I've caught you. I'm not on the phone, you see, and I delayed ringing till I was on the way to the club.”

“I'm still here, Mr.—”

“Welland. Bill Welland. I used to live in Millais Terrace.”

“Ah—Millais Terrace!”

“Has someone got in first?” He sounded downcast.

“Someone's just been on, mentioning it. A Mrs. Bartlett.”

“Would that be Edwina? Edwina Smithy as was—lived just up the road from us. Her mother could have taught Mrs. Thatcher a thing or two about intimidation. We lived—the wife and I, that is—at number sixteen, just next door to the hippie couple you're interested in.”

“Ah, really!” said Matt encouragingly. “Mrs. Bartlett said she'd never been allowed to talk to them.”

“Well, she wouldn't have been. It wasn't just her battleax
of a mother: working-class folk didn't take kindly to that kind of thing back in the sixties. Squatters did no work, and sponged off those who did, that was the general feeling. But we talked to them, the wife and I. Went in there now and then, even smoked pot with them. Still do that, if I get a chance.”

“Then you can tell me who they were.”

“Aye, I can. Dougie and Sandra, they were called. I've been straining my brain to remember the surname, but for the life of me I can't. It'll come back. If you'll give me a number to ring of an evening, I'll call you when it does.”

“Thank you. It's Leeds 2574945.”

“Right you are. Of course, we never kept in touch because they were gone overnight. But we got on well. We loved little Bella—we were newlywed, and hadn't had any of our own, then, though Milly—my late wife—was desperate to have them. So little Bella was a star in our eyes, and we were fond of Sandra too, though she was two sandwiches short of a picnic.”

“Really? This is news.”

There was a hemming and hawing at the other end as Bill Welland dithered as to how best to put it.

“Not
quite
all there—know what I mean? A bit simple. Had no thoughts of her own. If Dougie said they were against marriage, she said they were against marriage. If Dougie said the world was made of blue cheese, it was Gorgonzola for her too. But she was sweet with it, a lovely mother, and she'd do anything for you if it was in her capacity. If it was something beyond her she'd just say no, she couldn't, and that would be the end of it. She knew she wasn't quite like other people.”

“Do I get the impression you were not quite so fond of Dougie?”

Again, there was a pause as he thought how best to put it.

“Uncertain about him. Didn't quite know where he was coming from. He was bright enough, had the gift of the gab, and if he talked about what he—they—believed in, it made sense. But I wouldn't have sworn he was straight, or sincere, whatever you like to call it. Was he just taking advantage of Sandra's simplicity? He wasn't the type women would flock around, so we thought sometimes she was just a convenient lay for him. And not just a lay, because she gave him blind devotion, which must have been nice. On the other hand, she can't have been much of a stimulus for an intelligent bloke. No, about Dougie I'd have to say I didn't
know.
I just wondered whether he may be knew perfectly well what he was after, and what that was, was the best for number one.”

“Look, I wonder if I could have your telephone number—”

“Don't have one—not since the wife died. Had it cut off. I prefer to see the face of who I'm talking to, see if I'm boring the pants off them.”

“Of course, you said. Address, then?”

When he had taken down the address, in Pudsey, and told him he might drop round if anything else occurred to him that might be of help, Matt rang off and turned to the children.

“I think we can wind things up now.” There was a general and ungrateful sigh of relief. “And
don't
say that wasn't anything very much, because it was the names I wanted of the hippie family, so it was spot on, and the reason I made the broadcast.”

Isabella, throughout the last five minutes, had been looking much more impressed.

“What were the names?” she asked.

“The pair were called Dougie and Sandra, and the baby was Bella.”

As it came out he suddenly wished he'd omitted the baby. A pained and then a dreamy expression came into Isabella's face.

“Bella! And that could be the little baby in the attic! And then I come and live in the same house. Almost like a reincarnation. . . . Isn't it wonderful that you can find that out just by appealing for information on television. . . . Bella!”

Matt's heart sank. It was not quite clear whether the experience was driving Isabella in the direction of becoming a clairvoyant or something-or-other in television. He hoped the former, because he had no desire to found yet another BBC dynasty. But either way it seemed as though Isabella's days as a fledgling master chef or society caterer were numbered. That was an awful pity, Matt thought. Chefs and caterers were at least useful.