Voices in the Dark (40 page)

I glanced around – I could not help it. My heart was thumping, and I expected to see some sign of his presence in the dark street or the grimy snow. Then I realized it meant the house. This house had stood empty and half ruined all my life, and this was the reason for it. No one wanted to touch it, because it had been his. And it seemed a cruel kind of joke, that the place Michael and I had thought haunted had been haunted all the time – by my real father’s ghost.

‘Anselm?’ Jasmine hissed that night, just after the clock struck two.

‘What is it?’

‘Can’t you sleep?’

I shook my head. We were lying on makeshift beds in my grandmother’s living room, on either side of the narrow space between the sofa and the fire. I had been watching the flames and trying to think what to do.

‘I can’t sleep either,’ Jasmine whispered. ‘Can I light the candle?’

‘All right.’

She sat up and lit it, shielding the flame carefully with one hand. ‘Anselm?’ she whispered. ‘Can you hear them shooting out there in the east?’

‘Not now; the wind is too strong.’

‘I can.’

That must be her powers. The wind was howling and lamenting in the chimney so loudly that it drowned all other sounds.

‘Anselm?’ she said. ‘What’s going to happen when they get to the city?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Will it be all right?’

‘I don’t know, Jas.’

‘Robert at school said they want to lock up people who have powers.’

I turned to her. She was sitting with the blanket wrapped around her, staring into the flames. ‘Robert doesn’t know,’ I said. ‘He hasn’t been to Alcyria, has he?’

She did not answer.

‘Well?’ I said. ‘Has he?’

‘He has an uncle there.’

‘But this uncle wouldn’t write and tell Robert what was happening. They would lock him up if he said things like that in a letter. The police there search your post.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘But it still might be true. Even if Robert doesn’t know, it might be.’

I tried to find an answer, but none came to me.

‘Anselm,’ she said while I was still struggling to think of something. ‘Sometimes I wish I’d never been born with powers at all.’

‘I know, Jas,’ I said. I knew what it was costing her to keep her powers unseen in this house. Sometimes paper curled in her hands or her hair crackled as she combed it out, as though a lightning charge ran through it.

‘It was all right when Uncle was here,’ she said. ‘But now it’s just me on my own. I used to wish the baby would have powers, but I don’t now. Not any more.’

‘Can you tell whether it will or not?’

She shook her head and would not answer. She got up instead and reached under the sofa for something. It was
Aldebaran’s box, the one he had left to her. She traced the patterns in the wood. ‘Why didn’t he leave me something proper?’ she said.

‘He probably thought you’d like that box. He might have picked it up on one of his journeys – and it has a beautiful pattern, after all.’

‘Stupid Uncle!’ she said crossly, and threw the box down on the floor.

‘Shh, Jas, you’ll wake Grandmama!’ I picked the box up before it could roll further. When I did, something rattled inside.

‘What’s that sound?’ said Jasmine.

‘I don’t know. Maybe you broke one of the hinges.’

I opened the box. The fall had split two sides of it, so they were half an inch apart now. The base was loose. ‘Fix it, Anselm,’ she said, halfway to crying suddenly.

I was exasperated; I could not help it. ‘Jasmine, if you hadn’t broken it in the first place—’

‘Please, fix it.’

‘I’d have to get out Papa’s old tools and do it properly. Can’t it wait until the morning?’

‘Please, Anselm.’

She was crying in earnest now. ‘I didn’t mean to break it,’ she said. ‘Please, Anselm!’

I got up, making much of it, and went to our pile of crates in the corner and found the old woodworking tools from the shop. Jasmine clutched the box to her and kept a close watch on it all the time it was in my hands. ‘Be careful,’ she said at intervals while I tried to force it back together.

‘Shh,’ I said. ‘You’ll wake Grandmama.’

‘Is it going to be all right?’ she said. ‘Anselm, don’t break it!’

‘I’m not breaking it!’ My irritation got the better of me. I had been fighting it for several minutes without success. ‘Jasmine, you were the one who broke it,’ I said. ‘Stop complaining and let me work.’ She put her thumb in her mouth and regarded me in silence. ‘There’s something wrong with this – it won’t go together. Sit back and let me have the light.’

Jasmine shuffled back a few inches, without taking her thumb out of her mouth.

‘I have enough to worry about already,’ I said. ‘Jasmine, we have no money, and if someone doesn’t do something about it, I don’t know what’s going to happen, and now you ask me to fix this bloody—’

‘Don’t do it after all,’ said Jasmine, taking it back. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

That only infuriated me more. I threw myself back down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Jasmine was still studying the box, trying to push it back together herself. I let her. ‘Anselm?’ she said when several minutes had passed. ‘Anselm … ?’

‘Yes, what?’

‘What’s this?’

She put the box down on my chest and pointed to something in the base of it. I picked it up and looked. ‘What?’ I said. ‘I can’t see anything.’

She gave an impatient sigh and said, ‘Feel there.’

I traced the line she was pointing to and felt a small dent in the wood, like a fingerprint. ‘Give me the candle,’ I said. I got the file and edged it under the base of the box. The mechanism had broken since Jasmine had dropped it, but it was a hidden compartment. The base creaked and came loose. Inside was a folded sheet of paper.

We stared at each other for several long seconds. We should have known, I thought suddenly. That story Aldebaran had told Jasmine about the smugglers and the fact that this box looked like it was from somewhere else. And yet I had never expected him to resort to a trick out of a story to pass his secrets on to us.

‘Shall I open it?’ said Jasmine.

‘Go on,’ I said.

She took out the paper and unfolded it. Aldebaran’s familiar writing wrenched my heart now that he was gone. The date on the top was more than a year ago.

Dearest Jas
[the letter read]. I
f you are reading this, I am already gone from you. I have been worried for some time that I am in danger. I want you to know that I was only cross with you because it made you a better student. Also, that time when you stamped on my foot, you were quite justified. If you decide to give up your powers, I will always understand. Yours with great affection, Uncle.

Jasmine laughed and then started to cry. ‘Let me see,’ I said. It was Aldebaran’s writing for sure, the firm downstrokes and the letters that sloped as though they were on an arduous journey. ‘What’s this?’ I said. There was another sheet. It was only a few lines, and I read them in a minute:

Magic is dying, and a time will come when no one remembers the old ways. I name my last descendant as your hope in times of trouble, a very certain help in the darkness of the road. But there are those who will not return, those who will go forward into another place. Have courage.

‘What does that mean?’ I said. ‘I don’t understand.’

Jasmine’s face had turned very serious. ‘It’s a vision of the future, Anselm,’ she said. ‘I think it is.’

I tried to take the letter from her, but she was studying it in the light of the candle. ‘It is,’ she whispered. ‘And he meant us to find it and no one else, so he put it in this box.’

‘His last descendant,’ I said. ‘Who is that?’ Jasmine read the page again, then folded it and put it back into the compartment and closed it. ‘Hey, Jas,’ I said. ‘I wanted to read that.’

‘I’m tired,’ she said, and blew out the candle.

I could not tell if she slept that night, but I could not. I was thinking about what Jared Wright had said. That he would pay a good deal of money, thousands of crowns perhaps, for Aldebaran’s last prophecy. And so would any political man. And here it was, in that box of Jasmine’s, and I could not help seeing it as the answer to all our troubles. I knew it was dishonest of me, but I could not help seeing it like that. For the first time, I thought I could see a way out.

My mother was worse in the week that followed, and the thought of that prophecy haunted me. Father Dunstan called one evening; he came back with my grandmother after Mass. ‘How are you, Maria?’ he said, taking her hand and sitting carefully on the side of the bed.

‘Not so bad,’ she said.

‘And when is the baby due?’

‘Not for another few days. Or weeks perhaps.’

The door fell closed at that point. Jasmine and I were in front of the fire, pretending to do homework that we had not looked at for weeks. My grandmother was making tea and laying out biscuits on a plate.

‘Grandmother,’ I said, looking at the ornate china. ‘How much is all this worth?’

‘What?’ she said.

‘This furniture. How much is it worth?’

I had not spoken to her properly for days. She looked up at me, stirring the tea without noticing it. ‘What on earth do you mean?’ she said.

It was something I had been thinking about for a long time. ‘How much are the contents of this house worth?’ I said. ‘I just wondered, because of the hospital—’

She shook her head. ‘Anselm, do you think I haven’t thought of it already? When your grandpa Julian died, he was in that hospital for three weeks. Everything of value went. My little sewing table and the silver, and all my jewellery. Look at what is here. It wouldn’t fetch above a hundred crowns in an auction.’

I must have looked unconvinced, because she raised her voice. ‘Look at it. Do you hear me? Get up and look at it!’

I got up and examined the furniture properly. It was true. What wasn’t worn out was worthless, and the few things that might have had some value were chipped and broken and stained with use. Life can be deceptive – that was what I thought, looking at it. You can give yourself airs and a high-class accent and really have nothing at all. The care with which my grandmother dusted this old furniture had always made me believe that it was worth something.

In the bedroom, Father Dunstan murmured a question, and there was a pause. Then my mother burst into tears. We listened without looking at each other. My mother’s voice went on like a river, speaking and crying at the same time, and I knew she was telling him about the hospital and the two thousand crowns we did not have.
I sat there and watched the fire, but I could not really see it.

Eventually Father Dunstan came back out. ‘I am sorry for your trouble,’ he said. ‘I would have asked the congregation to contribute to a small fund. You are all such respected members of the church that I’m sure they would be willing. But we won’t raise two thousand crowns. Not in a year.’

‘Thank you,’ said my grandmother. ‘It’s a kind thought anyway.’

‘I would advise you to borrow the money somehow,’ he said. ‘I will underwrite the loan, if you wish. It’s all I can think of to do.’

It was a brave offer. All the moneylenders were controlled by gangs, and if we could not pay, they would come down on him instead. But he was only a priest. His cell beside the church had a table and a bed and a narrow kitchen with no window; that was all. His word against a loan was worthless. ‘Father,’ I said. ‘Do you think she really needs to go to the hospital when the baby is born?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think so. My knowledge is limited, but I think it would be safest.’ I rested my head against the side of the fireplace and stared into the flames. ‘If there is any way you can afford it,’ he said.

‘I think I can get the money,’ I said.

There was a pause while they both looked at me.

‘How?’ said my grandmother then. ‘How will you get it? Honestly, Anselm! You live in a world of dreams.’

I did not reply. We sat with the priest, drinking tea, and he left soon after. Jasmine fell to sleep early, with Aldebaran’s box beside her. My grandmother went down to fetch water, and I took my chance. I knelt beside Jasmine, levered open the secret compartment, and took out the paper.

I set out not long after that. I put on my Sunday clothes and my overcoat and that old hat of Leo’s because it made me look older. I felt like I was preparing myself for a great ceremony – a marriage or a funeral – or like a soldier going to war. I glanced at myself in the hall mirror as I passed, but it did not make me feel any better. I looked like Ahira. I tried to forget that picture of my face and started towards our old part of the city.

I went to Citadel Street first. I knew it was a faint hope, but no one had lived in that apartment since us, and a few nights ago, I had remembered a high cupboard in which my mother kept everything of value. I had worked it up into a whole story, this cupboard, in my efforts to find some other way of raising two thousand crowns. There might be something left in it. Had any of us checked before we left? Perhaps it was a strange kind of morality, but if I went to Jared Wright, I wanted it to be my last resort.

I struggled with the rusted lock on the side door of our old building. Leo and I had got in once, I remembered, a long time ago. I had the file from the shop in my pocket, and with some leverage, the door opened. The blackness inside was like drowning. I lit a match and went up the stairs as quickly as I could. I wanted to run, but I concentrated on keeping the match steady in the freezing air. I had a candle, but I was saving it until I got inside our old apartment.

I reached the third door and walked a few steps forward before I lit the candle. The flame steadied uneasily. I made out old packing cases, and a pile of fallen ash in the fireplace, and broken glass glinting in front of the nearest window. Dust and frost sparkled on the floorboards, and spiderwebs hung as thick as wedding garlands in the
corners. Over the mantelpiece, a scrap of paper fluttered in the breeze from the doorway. I crossed the room and took it down, then recognized it. I had drawn this at school, when I was a little boy; we must have forgotten it when we left. Three grinning figures stood in front of a tall black building. I had printed words underneath it:
Mama, Papa, Anselm
.