Tyme's End
Authors: B. R. Collins
.
Contents
.
.
.
.
.
I've had enough. There's only so long anyone can stand being shouted at, and I'm way past it. We've been arguing for ten minutes, our voices getting louder and louder, and now I don't trust myself to speak. It's fifty-fifty whether I'll swear or burst into tears, and I don't want to do either. I shove past Dad, out on to the landing.
Dad shouts, âWhere the hell are you going?'
âOut.'
âDon't you dare, young lady â I'm
talking
to you â'
âStop telling me what to do! I know you think I'm a waste of space, you don't have to keep telling me. Leave me alone.' I grab my jumper off the banister and run down the stairs.
âYou come back here
right now
â'
âI want to go out.' I look over my shoulder. âI need to get out. I can't stay in this bloody house for one more second. So
leave me alâ
'
âBibi! We have a guest coming tonight.' He's talking slowly now, like I'm very, very stupid. âLook, we can talk about â I'm sorry I shouted. But I do â I need to do the laundry now. So please will you take the sheets off your bed and give them to â'
âHe's not a bloody
guest
! He's a
customer
. Jesus! You make it sound like a brothel.'
âBibi, don't you dare talk to me like â'
I grab my keys, go out of the front door and slam it behind me. I hear Dad's voice rise in a kind of helpless howl, and if I wasn't so angry I'd laugh. I shove my hands into my pockets and turn right.
Sam is kicking a ball against the wall at the end of the street. I walk straight past him without turning my head, but he jogs after me, still dribbling the ball. He says, âOooh, leave me
alone
, you're not my
real
father,' in a high-pitched voice that's meant to be me. He's giggling.
âPiss off, Sam.'
â
Oooh.
You're not my
real
father.'
âAnd you're not my real brother either, so shut the hell up.'
âI could hear it from here,' he says, bending to pick up the ball. He grins up at me, shaking his fringe out of his eyes. âSuppose one day you ask Mum for something and she's like, no, you're not my real daughter?'
âPiss
off
.
They
adopted
me
.
I
did not adopt
them
. And you don't understand.'
âNo,' he says, sighing. âNo one understands you. I
definitely
don't.'
I reach out to hit him, but he's already drifted back, kicking the ball from foot to foot. He gives me a little distracted wave, without looking up. I swallow, hard, because I can feel my anger draining away and misery taking its place, and I turn away. I go left then right again, hurrying down the High Street because I'm determined not to cry in public. There are tourists jostling with cameras outside the church, and I push past them, not caring if I walk through their photos. Someone says, âOh, excuse
me
,' and I clench my jaw, half wanting to turn and apologise, half wanting to swear. I go past Eddie's shop and he salutes, grinning. I raise my hand without meeting his eyes, and then break into a run. Any moment now I'm going to start crying . . .
I sprint across the road, past the gates of Tyme's End and the gaggle of foreign students yelling to one another. Some of them are rattling the padlock, but the gates are rusted shut, and they're wasting their time. I swerve round them, swearing under my breath, and go round the corner. It's much quieter, suddenly. I look both ways, then run at the wall where it's cracked, dragging myself up and over and through the gap in the bars. I drop awkwardly into the brambles and feel a thorn draw a stinging line across my forehead. I struggle forward, until I'm standing waist-deep in the grass under the trees. The light is grey-green and dim, like water, and it's very quiet. I take a deep breath and the tension ebbs and fades. I'm on my own. There's a bloody great wall between me and Dad and Sam and Mum â wherever she is right now.
I clench my fists, throw back my head and shout. The birds swirl upwards in a clatter of wings. I swear through my teeth â it's better than crying, anyway â and shake my head. Bloody Dad. When I think about it, it's so stupid â fights about tidying my room, going out,
laundry
, for God's sake â but Sam's right. It always ends up with
you're not my real father
.
I hate myself for saying it to him, but I can't help it. Every time. It's like a reflex. Afterwards, I resolve never to say it again, but it just comes out. And it hurts. I can see it on his face, like I've kicked him on the shins â but the funny thing is that I feel it too. He
isn't
my real father. And Mum's not my real mother either.
And Sam's right â one day they might turn round and say it back.
I feel my stomach tightening again, and I make myself take another deep breath. It's OK. I'm here, now. I'm safe, on my own.
I concentrate on not thinking about Mum and Dad. I walk forward slowly, wading through the thigh-deep bracken, and come out on what used to be the lawn. I stand in the long grass, looking at the house. Tyme's End. Where would I go, if I didn't have Tyme's End? I'd have to stay at home. I feel a rush of protectiveness, and a strange sort of pride, because Tyme's End is mine. Not really, of course, not legally â H. J. Martin left it to some historian, who died ten years ago, and
he
left it to someone that no one's ever met â but who else comes here? Who else likes it as it is, half falling down, rotting and sagging and crumbling? The tourists stare through the gates, but the drive's too overgrown to see anything, and they don't know about the broken bit of wall. And they wouldn't want it, anyway, the way it is. They want it to be restored and given to the National Trust. They want a car park and toilets and a gift shop. Even my parents have got the
H. J. Martin's House Should Be Open To The Nation
petition displayed on the table in the B&B.
They don't know I come here, of course. They'd have a fit, because it's probably the most dangerous place in Falconhurst. When I'm inside I have to tread carefully, because the floorboards are soggy and the stairs sag and complain when you stand on them. Everywhere you look there's green stuff growing. There are rats. There's a wasps' nest in one of the attics, like a huge humming pillar of papier mâché. And everything's covered with tendrils of ivy â no, not tendrils: trunks and branches, it's grown-up, kick-ass ivy â and the floors stink of mould and water runs down the walls, and where there was wallpaper there are crumbling brownish scrolls of it peeling away, and where there was only plaster there are huge damp bubbles on the walls, like they're boiling slowly sideways. On the ground floor almost all the windows are boarded up and on the first floor loads of the panes are cracked or missing. Tyme's End is dying, slowly. And I love it. I stand in the long grass, watching a rag of old curtain flutter in one of the top windows, and feel a savage surge of gladness that it's here, and so am I. And finally the anger fades, and I imagine myself screaming at Dad about sheets, and I start to laugh.
When the giggles are over, I straighten up and walk through the grass, round the side of the house, to the open door. As I slide through the gap my top brushes the crooked wood, and suddenly I can smell the air in the house: the scent of age, and damp, and seventy years' loneliness. It's musty and a little bit bitter. I take a big breath, opening my mouth so that I can nearly taste it.
Inside it's silent. I stand still, just listening. My heartbeat is the only thing I can hear. Sometimes there are odd noises, or odd silences â moments when your nerves tingle as if you heard something, although you know you didn't â but today the house is dormant, almost welcoming. I go through into the dining room, then into the hall and up the stairs. The staircase creaks ominously, but I'm used to that.
Upstairs I turn left. The corridor's dark, and the air leaves sticky cobweb traces on my face. I walk towards the bedroom at the corner of the house, and as I go through the door the sun comes out from behind a cloud and the whole room lights up. There's not much here â a bed, a desk, wardrobe, everything old-fashioned and covered in a layer of gritty dust like ash from a volcano â but it's cleaner than anywhere else, and hardly any of the windowpanes are broken. A few months ago I nicked the groundsheet from Sam's play-tent, and now I can sit on the bed without my clothes stinking of mildew afterwards. I've got a tin of biscuits, and a couple of books, and a plastic bottle of whisky and Coke for emergencies, and a torch. Not that I'd ever be here at night â but once, years ago, when I got stuck here in the rain, it was so dark I got the creeps. I thought I heard someone moving around downstairs, and I sat there with my eyes closed, practically wetting myself with terror, until finally the sun came out again. After that I didn't want to be here without a light.
In summer I drag the bed over to the window so that I can sit and look out. The groundsheet is still rumpled from the last time I was here, which was yesterday, and my book is splayed face-down on the windowsill. I put the biscuits within easy reach, sit on the bed and find my place in the book. But it's hard to concentrate. I still feel like hitting someone or crying. Outside the trees are swaying from side to side, like they're warning each other about something. The sun goes in again and the warmth fades out of the room.
I kneel up and lean my elbows on the windowsill. It's going to rain. I press my forehead against the glass. A breath of cool air from the broken pane slides over my lips, like there's someone sitting next to me.
A noise makes me look round. It's the draught, riffling the pages of my book. It's one of Eddie's from the ten pence box, an old blue hardback with yellowing pages. It smells of libraries. It's a ghost story about a violin and it's quite good, but my favourite thing is that it's got a little handwritten conversation in the margin. At the moment the spiky handwriting is telling the blunt pencil that writing in other people's books is vandalism. I watch the pages turn by themselves. The air pauses, like it's found a good bit, then gets bored and carries on flipping through.
I look out of the window again, and the first spots of rain spatter the glass. The sound of it is half comforting, half spooky, like someone tapping on the window with their fingernails. I move sideways, away from the broken bit of the window, so I won't get wet, and lean against the wall, propping the book on my knees. The curl of wallpaper hanging above my head bounces and rustles. I listen to the quiet inhuman sound of the rain. I let my eyes focus on the page in front of me and after a while I start to read.
When I lift my head again I don't know how long I've been reading for, or why I've stopped. But there's something . . . I frown, trying to work out what distracted me. I feel uneasy somehow; jumpy.
I tip my head back and look at the ceiling. The damp has drawn a map in the plaster, a network of cracks like country roads. Something's wrong.
There are footsteps downstairs.
I sit up as quietly as I can, and a shiver goes down my back. I pray that I've imagined the sound, or that it's my heartbeat. But it isn't.
Maybe it's just someone who's come in to get out of the rain â a tramp, or a kid, or a tourist. But the local kids don't come here. No one comes here. Even tramps only come here in winter, when they're desperate.
I'm cold all over. I'm on my feet but I don't remember standing up. Oh, God. There
is
someone downstairs. The light has gone grey-blue, shadowy, like dusk.
I stand very still, praying for the noise to stop, praying that I've imagined it â like before, like all those times before â but it carries on. Deliberate, slow footsteps. I shut my eyes to imagine somebody walking like that, and then wish I hadn't. I can see him â the paces are heavy, definitely male â too clearly: someone who's been here before, wandering slowly through the house, familiar room after familiar room, the owner checking that everything's in order.
I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe in ghosts. I do
not
â
Oh, shit.
There's a silence, just long enough for me to relax a tiny bit. Then a door slams. Another pause, then more footsteps, measured, getting very slightly louder, as if they're coming towards the stairs.
I feel panic start to creep over my skin like frost. Oh, God. I shouldn't be here. Part of me wants to hide â I look instinctively at the corner next to the fireplace, where I'd be out of sight of the doorway if I pressed up against the wall â but I don't think it would be any good. I have a horrible, irrational conviction that whoever is downstairs knows I'm here, that he's taking his time, letting me hear him approach. A door scrapes and groans. Then an interminable silence. I tell myself that this time he
must
have gone away, but I know I would have heard him move. No, he's standing still, waiting, watching.