Restoration (41 page)

  "You alright?" Alan asked her, only too aware that she was struggling to walk.

  When he had expressed such concern back at the station, it had angered Penelope, determined not to be seen as needing anyone's support, least of all his. Now that attitude seemed unreasonable.

  "Shaky," she admitted, "I think the shock of that place is just creeping up on me."

  "What did you see?" he asked, immediately adding, "I understand if you don't want to say, I shouldn't ask, sorry."

  She thought about it for a moment and then decided that there needed to be an honesty between them. "Chester," she said, looking at him to judge his reaction. The look on his face – a mixture of embarrassment and fear – told him all she needed to know. "You know about him don't you?" she asked, not with an air of confrontation but rather encouragement. Let's get this out, that tone said, let's have this
done
.

  He nodded. "Ashe told me," he said. "I had always suspected something, was seeing a therapist about it in fact. That's who I saw," he admitted, "telling me that I was better off dead."

  "Very helpful."

  "I'd be lying if I didn't say I agreed with her most

days." Once said that was something he couldn't pull back and it hung there between them for a moment.

  "Sophie needs you," Penelope said, "and I can tell by the way that this lot look at you that they consider you a good friend."

  "They don't know me though," he replied. "Not really."

  "They know you as you are now," said Penelope, "that might be enough."

  "I suppose it'll have to be." Alan couldn't quite meet her eyes as he said: "I'm sorry though, truly, for what he… I… did to you."

  "So am I," she said. "And I'm not going to lie, I'm finding it hard to forgive you for it. I know the worms took most – if not all – of what you were. I know logically, that you're a different man. But I find it hard."

  "I understand."

  "No, you don't, but that's OK because I can't expect you to. I want to learn to trust you. I want to learn to forgive you. It will take a little time but I think I'll do it. I think I'll accept you as the man you are now, not whoever you were, just as they do," she gestured towards the
Intrepid
crew behind them, "because you obviously deserve that trust and forgiveness, you wouldn't be the man they know..." she nodded at Sophie, "...the man she knows if that weren't the case."

  "I suppose not," Alan replied. "Thank you for trying I guess."

  "Thank you for being worth the effort."

  This corridor was decorated with doll's houses of various shapes and colours.

  Maggie couldn't help but admire one as they passed. "I used to dream of owning one of these," she said to her husband. "To build and cherish and fill with beautiful things." She reached out to stroke the paintwork of one of the tiny windows, pulling her finger back just in time to avoid the teeth that appeared at the top and bottom of the window, snapping down to bite her. "Maybe not one quite like this," she admitted. "When will I learn not to trust a thing in this place?"

  The corridor took them from one impossible room to another: a bedchamber filled with mountains of down that they slogged through like snowdrifts; a study filled with antagonistic candlesticks that howled and spurted blue flame (until Ryan chanced upon a set of bellows that dealt with the opposition in short order); a drawing room where sewing machines whirred and clacked like typewriters in a newspaper office, constructing reams of disturbing samplers: "A Stitch in Time Saves Childbirth", "Life is Silver, Death is Golden", "A Bird in the Hand Gushes When You Squeeze". All the time drawing closer – they presumed – to that impossible library that lay at the building's heart. With each new door their hopes swelled only to be dashed again once opened.

  The paintings continued to be communicative. A selection of Dutch Masters argued with them – and each other – as they passed, some insisting that they were on the right track, others warning them that they had veered wildly off course.

  "Ignore them," Hawkins had insisted. "I'm done taking advice from art that gets above itself."

  Frans Hals' portrait of a
Laughing Cavalier
found this most amusing.

  Klimt's model in
Mulher Sentada
interrupted her important business to point her slick fingers upwards. "You need to climb," she said breathlessly, "through the attic and then descend via the third hatchway."

  "And the attic is where?" asked Alan, but the woman was far too distracted to hear him and so they walked on.

  They needn't have worried, the entrance to the attic was unavoidable – and the only way forward, solving any issues they had over whether to trust the painting's instruction. A set of steps led from the centre of the corridor to a large hatchway in the roof and the party settled down on the carpet to eat something before continuing.

  "Haunted attic," said Penelope, "just what I need. No doubt we'll be besieged by giant spiders or vampire bats the moment we're in the eaves."

  "I can live with spiders," said Maggie, working her way through an unappetising Tuna wrap, "but bats terrify me."

  "Frankly it all terrifies me," Alan admitted. "Creeping through the dark is not the ideal way forward."

  "You get used to it," said Jonah, never one to miss an opportunity.

  "At least we have lights now," said Hawkins, pulling out his torch. "If we stick together and move as fast as we can then it may not be long before we arrive at this third hatchway."

  "Only one way to find out," said Barnabas. "I don't know about the rest of you but I'd rather just get on with it. The sooner we're in then the sooner we might be climbing back down again."

  On Alan's back, Sophie stirred, muttering "With the help of my friends," and "three is good," before settling back into unconsciousness once more. This was becoming a more regular occurrence and Alan had stopped his "panicking parent" routine. He simply cocked his ear to listen to her steady breathing and that regular whisper of "build not break", reassuring himself that she was fine – as "fine" as usual that was – and then carried on eating.

  "I agree there's no point in holding off," said Penelope, "as soon as we've finished eating we'll climb up there. Whatever's beyond the hatchway no doubt it'll be as horrid as everything we've faced before. But we've managed so far."

  "And we'll manage now," agreed Alan, dumping what was left of a BLT back into its box. "If only because I can't bear another of these lousy sandwiches."

  There was a murmur of good humoured agreement to that and the party began to dump their rubbish and replace their packs.

  "You look like you need this more than I do," said Ryan to Dyckman's portrait of a blind beggar that hung next to him. He poked the crust of a cheese and ham sandwich at the man, giving a slight yelp as a wizened, oily hand emerged from the canvas and took it gratefully. "Avoid the canyon," the blind man said, chewing on the crust that seemed as large as a French baguette with the shift of perspective, "not that I'm supposed to tell you that."

  "What canyon?" Ryan asked, but the old woman at the rear of the painting, stepping out of the church door with a prayer book clutched in her hand, dashed forward and started kicking the beggar. "Shut up about that," she squealed. The beggar's child grabbed a pizza-sized sheet of processed ham and ran beyond the frame where she could chew on it in private. "Sorry,' said Ryan, "didn't mean to get you in trouble."

  The beggar shrugged. "I'm a beggar, you get used to a beating every now and then."

  One by one they marched up the stairs towards the attic hatchway, Penelope leading as always, Alan a couple of steps behind her.

  "An attic with a canyon in it," Alan said, "this could be interesting."

  "Isn't it always?" she replied, pushing open the hatch.

 

 

Sophie supposed she was dreaming. She was sat on a bench looking out to sea, an ice-cream in her hand. She did not eat ice-cream but noticed that it was spaghettiflavoured so had a cautious lick. After all she was Very Hungry. It tasted good. The cornet was like toast done on setting number four so that tasted good as well. She recognised the sea. She had been here before. It was a place called Brighton. Brighton didn't know how beaches worked and it made her cross. Brighton had put stones leading into the water not sand. This was wrong. You could not build castles out of rocks. They fell over. But at least rocks did not cling to you when you walked on them so maybe they were not such a bad idea after all.

  The sea was not an angry sea so that pleased her. It was grey. The sea was always grey, whatever it said in pictures. Pictures were lies, she thought. Pictures were what people made when they didn't think the real thing was right and wanted to change it. She could understand that. But changing things in pictures – making the sea blue and the sky clear and the people happy – did not make it real. So pictures were a waste of time. It would be better to make the real thing blue and clear and happy. Why people did not spend their time doing these things confused her. She tried her best after all, making things tidy and Right. If everyone worked as hard as she did then the world would be a much better place and she could get on with the fun things like eating spaghetti and counting all the Right things.

  "Sometimes we just have to do our best to clean up after others," said the seagull perched on the bench behind her. Seagulls did not talk but she had got used to things doing what they weren't supposed to by now. She found it did not make her as angry as it had before. "There are people who make a mess and the rest of us who tidy up after them."

  Sophie decided this was so true that she didn't mind who was telling it to her. Besides, she recognised the gull's voice. It was the voice of the House and whatever it looked like when it talked didn't matter. It could like lots of things she thought. Most often, the man the others thought of as the Grumpy Controller but she knew him as someone else entirely.

  "Why do you speak with that voice?" she asked it.

  "I stole it from inside your head," it answered. "Do you want me to give it back?"

  Sophie thought about this. She liked that the House could talk to her. It made things easier.

  "No," she replied, "you can keep it for now."

  "Thanks," squawked the gull. "Do you know what's going to happen?"

  Sophie thought she might. And, though she knew the others wouldn't like it, it made sense to her so she had decided it would be Good.

  "Yes," she said, "build not break."

  "Exactly," replied the gull, "build not break. It's the only way. We need to put Him back inside."

  "Yes," Sophie agreed. She remembered Him. He had not been a HE but an IT. IT had been pretending to be a HE but she had seen IT for what IT was. IT had touched her. IT had made her part of the House. She did not mind this now as much as she had. The House had become a friend and, whatever voice it used, she did not mind being part of it. In fact it let her be one of The Rest Who Tidy Up After Them and that was who she was so that was Good. But she did not want IT to touch her again.

  "IT won't," the gull said, though she had not spoken Out Loud. "We will touch
IT
. And IT will know what it is like to be touched in a way that feels bad."

  Sophie liked this. IT had thought IT was the biggest thing in the World. IT had thought IT was unstoppable. This was Wrong and Sophie liked making things that were Wrong Right.

  "Don't get too confident," the gull said, "there's plenty that could go wrong… sorry…
Wrong
yet. Your friends may not even get to the library."

  "Alan will look after them. He is good at looking after things."

  The gull scoffed at that, ruffling its feathers and looking away to where a pair of fat ladies struggled to erect deckchairs on the shingle beach. Their dresses were as garish as the deck-chairs. "Alan is a pain, I've had no end of trouble with the older one. He nearly ruined everything."

  "I do not know the older one." Sophie said. "But if he is an Alan then he is Good. All Alans are Good."

  "If you say so."

  The fat ladies had managed to get seated and were now staring at the water wondering why they had gone to all that effort just to look at a grey sea. After a moment one of them wondered if a cup of sweet tea might help and reached into her bag for a flask.

  "I should go," said the gull. "The older Alan is about to go to New York and he's got an unpleasant surprise waiting for him when he gets there. He may need help."

  "Alan sometimes needs help," Sophie agreed, thinking about the time she had helped him into the bathroom at the House. When he had been all tired and broken.

  "Damn right he does," the gull agreed, taking to the air and flying away over the sea, dropping a dollop of guano square into the neck of the fat lady's open flask. Sophie thought the gull was Very Naughty. So did the fat ladies, shouting at the fleeing bird even while it squawked its pleasure and disappeared towards the horizon.

 

 

Penelope looked out across the wide-open sky, taking in what was left of the warmth of a dusk sun. "Some attic," she said as Alan climbed up behind her. They were stood atop a plateau in what looked like the Grand Canyon. To their left were a couple of cartoon-perfect cacti and a stack of tea chests. Alan walked over to the chests.

  "Plenty of storage space, certainly," he said, peering into one of them. It was filled with photos of dead people, the sort of grainy shots you saw in cop movies, people sprawled on floors and roadsides, marker tape and arrows pointing to blood splatter. He dumped the photos back in the chest.