The Wolf in the Attic (10 page)

‘Ugh. Who would ever eat rat?’

‘Anyone, if they was hungry enough.’

That stumps me a little. We pass the Trout, which is lit up and has a few men propping up the bar inside as though the world were still normal and ordinary.

We walk through Wolvercote like two snow-flecked phantoms. Luca seems not to mind the cold, and he is all the time looking at everything as though expecting something to jump out at us, whereas I have my face half buried in father’s scarf and the cold is searching every corner of my clothes. I am beginning to see how grown-ups can consider snow a tiresome thing.

‘The pretty girl, Jaelle, is she your sister?’ I ask at last, to chop up another of the silences.

‘That she is,’ Luca says patiently.

‘And the others – are they all family?’

‘Of one sort or t’other.’

‘Why are you all living in the woods?’

He waits a while before answering. ‘We’s just passing by.’

‘You were here a month ago, when... when I saw you that night.’

‘Wasn’t a month. Wasn’t a whole moon just yet.’ He spits into the snow. ‘Sometimes we stays longer in one place than in others.’

‘What about Bert? Did he die?’

‘That he did.’

I can think of nothing more to say after that, not for a long while. The snow is blowing in clouds across Port Meadow, and we are not far from where Luca killed the fat man that night and I want to ask more but I am too scared and bewildered.

This boy seems so much older than me, so much in charge of things, so sure of himself. I want to ask him why his eyes lit up under the moon that night, and what happened to the other men on the Meadow, and why his family are camping out in Wytham Wood, but somehow I cannot.

And I keep coming back to the animal in the trees, and every time I think on it my mind gets as frozen as my poor feet, and I really don’t want to know anything else, and in point of fact I am quite sure I know more than is good for me already.

And so I say nothing, but I can’t help but look at Luca as we walk along, side by side now. He is rather handsome, in a pinched sort of way, and his long nose seems too big for his face. He is very thin, and I suppose he appears as though he could very well have eaten rat stew and enjoyed it, and I suddenly feel very slow and stupid beside him, and though he seems so much older, I really think he is not.

These thoughts take me all the way across Port Meadow to the railway line, and as we cross the bridge and the buildings of the city loom up all around us, the thought of the trouble I am in now rises like a sour taste on my tongue, and I am almost as afraid as I was in the woods when Luca held his hand over my mouth and the nameless beast walked past us through the trees.

‘What time is it?’ I ask him as we find ourselves back on Walton Street, with the snow blowing through the yellow cones of gaslight. There are not many people around, and the snow is packed tight on the road, pocked with prints of feet and dug into channels by the wheels of motor cars.

‘Nowhere near the middle o’ the night yet,’ Luca says, sniffing the air as though midnight had a peculiar smell to it.

‘Father will kill me,’ I say.

‘Does your Da know you’re out?’ Luca asks.

‘He said I could have an hour. I think it’s been three. Or four.’

Luca grins. ‘Never heard o’ time being doled out like that, in bare mouthfuls. There ain’t no clocks in the woods neither.’

I am more hungry for time of my own than I am for food, I think. And I am suddenly furious at Pa, who is so miserly with his own time and will not allow me to spend mine.

Is it that I just want to be alone, me and Pie in our own little world? I used to think so. After tonight I am not so sure. The woods, the people I met in them, they have me in a spin. I did not think that Oxford could be exciting, or that people like these even existed outside the pages of books. I almost tell Luca this –

But in the end I only sigh. ‘I can get home myself from here.’

‘Queenie said to see you all the way home, girlie, and that’s what I aim to do.’

‘Have it your own way then,’ I snap.
Girlie
. Why can’t he use my name? And I kick my way through the snow, arms folded, annoyed, wanting to get back at him.

‘But if my father sees you, I bet he’ll... he’ll call the police or something.’

Luca glides along, and there is something ugly on his face. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘Because you’re a stranger, and you talk funny, and... and your eyes light up at night, that’s why!’
And you killed fat Bert
I think, but do not say.

Luca watches my face as I stomp along, until I am uncomfortable with it, and somehow ashamed. As if he knows my thoughts.

‘Well they do – I saw it!’

‘You don’t know what you saw, or half of what you see neither,’ he says with disgust. ‘You ain’t nothing but a spoiled little brat that needs a good kick up the arse.’

‘I’d like to see you try!’ but I am infuriated with myself. I am saying stupid things, and I feel so young beside him, and it makes me angrier still because I don’t want to say I am sorry and yet I feel I should and I am not even sure why.

‘Just you stay out of the woods, you hear me? Midwinter night is coming and they ain’t no place for such as you.’

‘I’ll go where I like. You can’t stop me.’

He throws up his hands in exasperation, a little like father does when he is making a point.

‘You want to wander the Great Wood, then you goes ahead, and see how much I care. You’ll find things in there you don’t want to see, girl, and it’ll be on your head alone. But don’t say that me and mine didn’t treat you square, or try and warn you, that’s all.’

‘What could be in the woods that is so dangerous?’ I sneer. ‘Rabbits? We’re not in Africa. There are no lions and tigers or bears, not in England.’ And I am thinking of the shadow in the trees as I say it, and know how false my words sound. And he knows too.

‘There’s more to this world than what you folk see under gaslight, or through a window. My people, we wanders the length of the country all our lives, and we knows things the rest of you has forgotten, and we see things that ain’t seen no more by such as you. So heed me girl.’

The corner of Moribund Lane is in front of us. We stand under the streetlamp there, white with snow, Oxford shrouded and withdrawn all around us. It feels more dark and cold here than it did in the depths of the wood, and all at once I feel close to tears, and hate myself for it.

‘I don’t want to go home,’ I whisper. ‘It’s not home at all.’

Luca stares at me, exasperated. But then his face softens. I see pity in it, and I hate that too. He is right. I am a spoiled brat who knows nothing, and I have always supposed myself very clever, but I can only come out with the wrong things to say, and I want to make it right and I don’t know how.

‘Places ain’t home,’ he says at last. ‘People is. Bricks and chairs is nothing.’

He drops his eyes, and again, he raises his hands the same way Pa does. ‘I leaves you here,’ he says gruffly. ‘I see your house, and there’s light in yon window.’ He reaches out and tugs a piece of dead briar from my scarf, the thorns ripping away one by one. ’Your Da is there, I suppose,’

I look at him. I am quite tall for my age, and he is short for his. I do not have to raise my head by much to kiss him on the cheek, but as I do he darts back as though I meant to bite him.

He rubs his face. ‘What’s all that about?’

‘Nothing,’ I say, and sniff. ‘Tell Queenie her stew is very good. And thank her for it.’

‘You be all right now?’ There is colour in his face. I do believe he is blushing, and I feel as though I have won a tiny victory, but I don’t know why.

‘I’ll be all right.’

‘Then that’s that.’

And just like that, he turns and walks away, back up Walton Street. I watch him a while, and I see it when he turns around to look back at me, and I raise a hand. He just stares, then continues on his way.

And all of a sudden I feel more alone than I ever have in my life before, and my feet are like two lumps of clay as I trudge down the street towards the tall old house with the lamplight spilling out of its window into the falling snow.

7

A
ND OF COURSE
the door is locked, and I had a feeling that would be the way of it. So I stand in the snow, and I listen to the voices inside.

Sometimes the lessons we learn take forever to be driven into our heads – like learning French – and sometimes a thing happens which can teach you that lesson in a second, a moment. So I stand and wait outside the door and don’t touch the bell chain. For some reason I feel I am not the same Anna who set off from this same place just a few hours ago. She was a spoiled brat I suppose, just as Luca said.

I still want warm feet, and lamplight, and I desperately need to hug Pie in a snug fresh linen-smelling bed. But it is as though the quiet calm voice which has always been inside of me has suddenly taken charge, and it is not a strange other kind of voice at all.

It is me, and it has always been there.

The door opens at last, as I knew it would, and the Committee members begin to troop out, the warmth of the house blooming out into the night with them. The meeting went on late, as it always does, and Mr Paparakis goes by with his little moustache, putting his homburg on his head. And Mr Meronides, who wears too much eau de cologne and whose eyebrows meet in the middle. They seem disgruntled and preoccupied, and barely glance at me as I squeeze past them without a word, hidden by the passing overcoats. I am in the hall and almost at the foot of the stairs when I hear father’s voice, sharp as the crack of a whip.

‘Anna!’

I turn around, and father is glaring at me, and his face is blotchy and his eyes are red-rimmed. Even in the meetings, he keeps a tumbler of Scotch at his elbow these days, along with the piles of papers and his pipe and his fountain pen.

Then he is distracted again by someone shaking his hand, and says goodbye to Mrs Gallianikos in quite another tone, and smiles, and claps someone else on the back, and I sit down on the bottom step and pull off the old Monmouth cap and unwind the scarf from my neck, and now that I am in from the cold I can smell the woodsmoke on them, a fine, blue smell that instantly brings back the woods and the firelight. I wonder what it would be like to go to sleep staring up at the stars, and feel the snow land cold on my face with the bright warmth of a campfire beside me and the cold earth below, and the trees in the circle of my eyes overhead, moving with the wind. That would be freedom, to do that.

And for a moment, I understand Queenie and Luca entirely, and think that they and theirs are rather a sensible folk, to want to stay clear of desks and hallways and committees and heaps of papers no-one ever reads.

The door closes, and father is alone in the hallway with me, swaying slightly. His rubs his hand over his eyes, and he seems very pale and I can see the skin of his head shining through his hair, which I never noticed before. I feel sorry for him, and that is a rather horrible thing – to feel sorry for one’s own father.

‘Where have you been?’ he asks distantly, and he fumbles in his waistcoat for his pocket watch. He presses the stud on the side of the Breguet and it gives a series of beautiful little chimes, telling the hours and the quarters.

And I do not feel the least shame in lying to him. ‘I walked around, and played in the snow. I went along the canal, and wandered Jericho. It was very quiet. I didn’t speak to anybody.’

He looks at me. ‘It’s after eleven. All this time, Anna?’

‘I don’t have a watch, father. I’m sorry. I forgot the time. But I’m all right.’

I stand up, and go to him, and hug him, smelling pipe tobacco and whisky and the old stale tweed of his jacket. ‘I’m quite all right.’

He runs his hand over my hair. I can feel it curl into a fist for a moment, and I am sure he is going to belt me – I brace for it – but then the fingers relax again, and he sighs. ‘I forgot the time too.’ And he hugs me back. ‘I should have gone looking for you.’

‘I was not lost, Pa. There was no need.’

‘You can’t be running around the streets of Oxford at all hours. And you smell of smoke.’

‘There was a brazier lit somewhere. I stood by it to warm up.’

He lifts up my head to look in my eyes, and I can’t help wonder if he can see the lies in them. His own are watery, as if he has been crying, but it is only the booze. I know the look.

‘You’re half frozen,’ he says with a snap.

‘My feet are cold,’ I admit, and I smile up at him, willing him to believe.

He shakes his head. ‘This just won’t do, Anna. I must be able to trust you. I said one hour, and here it is the middle of the night. Anything could have happened to you.’ And he tugs me close.

‘Christos,’ he whispers. ‘Don’t you know you’re all I have left?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. And I mean it. The way he hugs me makes me feel little again, and reminds me of the days when he would put me to bed and read to me, or tell me stories of Agamemnon and Achilleos as though they were people who lived in the world we knew, and could any day drop by for tea, leaving their spears and helmets in the hall and breezing in all brown and sunlit and full of life. But I know better now.