“Can I?”
“Umm…?”
And then – slowly, as though he’s reaching for a wild animal, something that might bite – he places his hand over mine, lifting it up and straightening my index finger. At first, I nearly pull away, but the gentleness of his touch and the warmth of his fingers make something catch in my stomach as together we trace the loops of the letters.
“A…L…B…I…E,” he says again. Reaching the end of the line, he suddenly drops my hand like a dead fish, pulling his own away and folding it under his other hand on the edge of the table.
Did I do something wrong? Is my hand weird? Is it too hot? Too cold? Too clammy?
I kick the chattering, panicked voice inside my head into a mental cupboard, closing my eyes.
When I open them again, Hal is studying me from beneath his fringe, but he immediately pretends he wasn’t.
“Sorry. Headache,” I mumble. I peer under the table, looking for the notebook I left in here yesterday. There it is, tucked beside one of the legs, just where I left it. Grabbing it, I let it fall onto the tabletop with a slap.
“So there’s a Jane, an Issy and an Albie.” I write their names on a blank page.
Now what?
I draw a circle around each name.
Better.
Hal sits back in his seat, making the wood creak. “Jane knows Issy,” he says. “She’s writing to her.
“And there’s this,” he says, reaching for something. “I thought it looked interesting.”
The book that he puts on the table is – like just about everything else – old and dusty. It’s a big journal, bound in leather that has cracked and pulled away in places, leaving tatty old boards visible underneath. It’s a murky grey colour – but judging by the clear brownish marks left where he’s touched it, that’s mostly dirt. It makes a cracking sound as he opens it, and the smell…
“Wow.”
Clamping my hand over my face, I realize he’s reacted exactly the same way – ducking his nose into the neck of his T-shirt. The book absolutely reeks of mould and dust and…time, I guess.
“It must have got damp,” I say, peering at it (with my nose still safely covered by my hand). “That’s water-staining.” I poke at the edge of a page, where a brown swirly mark has seeped across the paper. “Careful when you turn the pages – they’re probably stuck together.”
Something flickers deep inside my head – a tiny light at the far end of a long tunnel. I remember this. Digging through the past, looking for clues. I remember I liked this. Maybe I actually was good at it, not just manic and thinking I was good at it – in the same way I’d have thought I could fly, or speak Dutch, or pass my exams, or a hundred other things I literally can’t do, but why let a little thing like reality get in the way of a good manic episode?
Hal peels the two pages apart. Just as I thought, they’ve glued themselves together as they’ve dried, and they make a sticky tearing sound as they separate. The number 1913 is printed in neat, clear handwriting on the next page.
“Is that a year?”
“I think so.” Hal leans closer over the book, then away again as he tries to dodge a fresh waft of that mouldy smell.
He turns another stuck-together page…and the open book in front of us is full of columns in the same tight black ink as the date on the first page. It looks very familiar.
In fact, it looks like Mrs Tilney’s shift book.
I think I know what this is.
“This is a housekeeping book. It has to be.” I peer at the columns. “It’s a housekeeping book from 1913.”
“That’s what I thought when I found it. These must be staff names.” He runs a finger down a column full of different initials. “And this looks like pay.”
“And these are their duties – the rooms some of them are assigned to clean.” Scanning the pairs of capital letters, I hit on something. “There’s someone with the initial I here.” Halfway down the page is a tiny I.C. “There should be a staff list or register or something.” Without thinking, I grab the book and spin it towards me, leafing through the pages. Luckily, the first few seem to have taken the worst of whatever it was and the smell is nowhere as bad now.
“Are you sure you want to touch that?” Hal asks, watching me riffle through it.
“I’ve been cleaning other people’s hotel rooms for a while now. You’d be amazed at the stuff I’ve had to touch.” I stop and think about this for a second. “And you would definitely be grossed out by it. Here you go.”
Triumphantly, I turn the book back towards him. Just where I thought it would be – just like in Mrs Tilney’s – right at the back, is a list of the staff’s full names. And only one of them begins with the letter I.
“Iris Campbell,” Hal says, under his breath. “Look – underneath!” In fainter lettering on the line below: “Goes by ‘Issy’.” Hal blinks at me. “How did you know to do that?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. But that has to be her. Iris Campbell. She was second housemaid.” I lean closer to the book, ignoring how close I am to Hal. “And look, here are the family names.”
There aren’t many on the list, but it takes him a while to see it. Hal’s sharp intake of breath tells me when he does.
“Master Albert Holmwood,” Hal murmurs softly. His hair falls forward over his face, and for a second I can smell his shampoo, faint against the mustier scent of the book.
“Albert, as in…?”
“As in Albie.”
“But the family name is Holmwood. The house is called Hopwood. Wouldn’t the house be called the same thing as the family, like Wayne Manor? Or…” My mind blanks. “Other houses named after the people who live in them?”
“The village is Hopwood-in-the-Hollows, though, isn’t it?”
“Oh. Yes. Never mind.” I bite my lip, feeling stupid. Not that he notices.
“But why would someone be writing to a housemaid—” His voice shakes slightly, even though I can see he’s trying to hide it.
“Second housemaid.”
“Second housemaid,” he says, “about the…” His eyes widen as he stares at the page. “About the only son of the family that maid is working for?”
I pick up the letter again, holding it carefully in my hand. “I think…maybe you’ve found your story after all.”
“It can’t be that easy.” Hal folds his arms across his chest, pushing his spine into the seat back. “It can’t.”
“Why not? You said you’d been everywhere else. It’s like that saying – you always find something in the last place you look.”
Hal uncrosses his arms and presses his face into his palms, his voice muffled. “Well, yeah. Because when you find it, you stop looking. So of course it’s always in the last place you look.”
Which is true, I suppose. But he didn’t have to say it like that, did he?
When he drops his hands, he’s turned so pale that for a heart-stopping second, I think he’s about to faint. Suddenly the freckles I’d barely noticed, but which must have been there all along, stand out so brightly it’s like someone drew them on in neon pen.
“Are you feeling okay?”
He doesn’t seem to hear me. Instead, he pushes his chair back from the table and stalks off across the library, yanking the door open and disappearing into the lobby without a word.
Not exactly the reaction I was expecting. If it’s so important that he finds this story, this soldier, and if this is the lead he’s been searching for, then why doesn’t he look…happy?
I reach for the letter and run my fingertip over the line he pointed out, tracing the writing like he did. My skin prickles at the thought of his hand moving mine and I flex my fingers, trying to shake the feeling off. Maybe it’s the dust. There’s a lot of dust. These boxes have obviously been up in the attics for a long time, forgotten about. Who put them up there? The family, right before they sold the house? Did they pack them up and tuck them under the eaves and then just leave?
The l
ibrary is absolutely still and silent. Even the lobby is quiet, like the whole of Hopwood is holding its breath. It gets like that sometimes: the weird hush of a hotel when nobody’s coming or going, like it forgets what it is. Was it the same back when it was a house, a home, once upon a time? This place had a before, a whole different life when there were maids straightening the beds, not housekeeping staff; cooks down in the kitchens making meals for the family instead of for guests; and somebody actually lived here rather than just checking in for a couple of nights.
It never really occurred to me that every kind of place has a past – not just the big old buildings that we think about as being “History”. They all have a story.
Everything, everywhere, everyone. So what’s Hal’s?
“What happened to your finger?”
“Nothing. It got broken.”
That flicker of expression, the pause, the way he hid his hand.
Got broken. Not I broke it.
Maybe there’s more to his story than there seems.
Picking up the letter, I lift it up to the light. The letters spelling out Albie are clear now – but if Issy is Iris the housemaid, and Albie is Albert Holmwood, who is Jane? And why is she writing to Iris about him? It doesn’t matter how much I squint at the faded squiggles on the page, none of them help. But I can feel the pattern, hiding just below a layer of dirt. I can almost see it – just like I can almost see Iris walking in through the library door, the way she must have done over a hundred years ago, and I wish I could beam her out somehow, the same way I used to wish I could hook my head up to a projector and beam out the things I saw in there so they’d make sense to everybody else. So I’d make sense. (Apparently, midway through my last manic phase, I told Charlie I actually could. He says I was very convincing about the whole thing.)
A sound from the doorway makes me jump. Hal’s there…and the way he’s standing, his feet planted square and one hand in a pocket, his head tilted slightly to one side, suggests he’s been there a little while.
I slide the letter back onto the table. “I was looking…to see if there was anything…”
Why do I feel guilty? I’m supposed to be helping him, and that’s exactly what I was doing. Helping.
“Sorry,” he says, taking a step forward and then stopping. “I needed a minute.” He comes back over, leaning around me and picking up the letter. “Did you make out anything else in there?” For a second, the air fills with the smell of him. When he steps back, I wish he hadn’t.
“No. It’s too hard to read.” I pick up my notebook. “So what now?”
He doesn’t move, just stands there, the page lifted to the light. But his eyes aren’t on it – he’s looking past it, out into the gardens. As though he can’t decide what to say. Or do.
“I don’t know.” His voice is quiet, and it shakes as he speaks. So does his hand – I can see the paper trembling.
I put my notebook down again. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay? I can come back tomorrow?”
“No.” He turns away from the window, and his eyes settle on me. I’m so used to being invisible, to wanting to be invisible, that it feels very, very strange. But not completely bad. Not from him.
“Can I tell you something?” He slides into the chair next to mine, his voice low as though he’s afraid he’ll be overheard – although who he thinks is going to overhear him, I don’t know.
“Sure.” I reach for my pad again – but he shakes his head.
“No. Not…about this.” He stops, cocking his head to one side and narrowing his eyes. “Okay, yes. It’s still about this…but not.” He takes a deep breath, watching me. “My grandfather – I call him Pa, like ‘Grandpa’. The one who told me about this stuff. He’s…not very well.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Is he in hospital?”
“No. It’s not that kind of ill. It’s…” And Hal gently taps the side of his head.
I’ve seen that gesture before. A rapid tap-tap-tap to the side of the temple. The international sign for crazy. I’ve seen it lots. But something about the way Hal does it is different – he isn’t doing it to make fun of someone. He’s doing it because he can’t find the words…like he can’t bring himself to say it out loud.
Suddenly, I have an idea why this matters so much to him.
“That’s why you can’t ask him any more about the story, isn’t it? You don’t want to upset him.”
Hal nods, pushing his hands back through his hair again and closing his eyes. “He has trouble remembering. Not all the time, but sometimes. It’s like he’s looking through a book he’s read before, and suddenly there’s a page missing. He gets angry.”
“And scared?”
Hal’s eyes flick open and he looks straight at me, measuring me. “Yes.”
Feeling pinned under his gaze, I fidget. “I get it. I’ve got…someone in my family with mental health stuff.”
His stare warms and softens, as though I’ve passed some kind of test. “Then you know what it’s like.”
Better than you do.
Hal sighs. “My family’s…complicated. Kind of distant.” From the look on his face I’m not sure that’s quite the word he wanted. “Pa’s the only one who’s never made me feel like I owe him something just for existing, and he’s the only one who never treated me like I was a massive pain in the arse when I was growing up.”
“Really? My brother still tells me I am one, regularly.”
Hal’s laugh is as much of a surprise to him as it is to me. “Sorry,” he says, a flush creeping across his cheeks.
“No, I’m sorry. I was messing around, and you were saying something important.”
“Pa’s the important one.”
“Which is why…this?” I wave a hand at the stacks of paper.
“Yeah. He always wanted to find out if the story was true. He had this idea about tracking down the guy’s family somehow, if there were any of them left, and telling them he hadn’t been forgotten.” Hal tilts his head back to stare up at the ceiling. “He said that too many things get forgotten about, that people only remember the bad ones, when it’s the good memories we should be keeping.” This time, his laugh is quiet and sad, and I don’t think he’s actually talking to me any more. I’m not sure he even remembers I’m here. “So I thought, if I could find out…if I could tell him whether it was true or not, or if it was just some story his grandfather made up…it would be a way of saying thank you. For not making me feel like I was just a…an inconvenience. I started looking, and then he started to be…not so good, and now I can’t stop.”
Then his head tilts forward again, and he looks at me with those pale eyes…and I understand. He’s telling me because he can’t tell anybody else. I’m never going to cross paths with anyone he knows, let alone his family. They’re the kind of people I’m meant to be invisible to, aren’t they? Just like in Mrs Tilney’s rule book. So what’s the harm in him telling me something like this, something quiet and secret? He’s never going to see me again after he’s figured this out – he might as well go and shout it at the birds.
But he hasn’t. He’s told me.
Why doesn’t he have anyone else he can tell?
The thought drifts quietly through my mind. Does he really not have someone – anyone – he can talk to? Watching him sift through the remaining pile, his lips moving silently as he turns the pages over and discards them one by one, I guess not.
“I think we need a better system.” His voice pulls me out of thinking about, well, him.
“A better system?”
“Mmm.”
“‘Better’ implies there was one to start with.”
“There was!” He jumps up, grabbing the nearest box and hefting it onto the table.
“Right.”
A cloud of dust rises into the air as he sweeps a hand across the top of the box, making us both cough. This is not a guy who’s used to handling anything dirty. When the dust clears, he seems to have acquired a light grey streak through his
red hair – along with a dark smudge across his nose where he’s obviously rubbed it.
“You’ve…ummm…got some dirt.” My arm feels like it belongs to somebody else as it sticks straight out, pointing at him. “On your nose.”
“Oh. Right. Thanks.” He wipes his face with his hand, managing to completely miss the smudge on his nose.
It suits him. The smudge.
You could always wipe it away…
“Okay,” I say, quickly turning to the box on the table. “What do you want to do now then?”
“That housekeeping book was dated 1913. We should check the boxes for anything around then. ”
“So all we have to do is find the 1913 papers in amongst…this?”
He follows my pointed look around the room. “Things on the table are later. Look – that one’s labelled 1932.” Already, he’s got the next lid off. “This one looks like it’s…1915.” He twists on the spot, pointing to the next box in the stack. “Try that one. They’re the same kind of box, and they look about as dirty as each other – hopefully they’re about the same age.”
I grab the next box from the pile. It’s heavy, but I manage to swing it up onto the table next to Hal’s and pull the lid off.
A large spider scuttles out and across the table. It’s the size of my hand.
Frozen, we both watch it.
It carries on across the table, down to the floor and sets off over the rug, rounding the door and disappearing from sight.
Hal laughs. “Maybe he wants to talk to Reception about his room.”
I sort of hiccup, because: spider. And then I glance over at him…and he’s looking at me. Heat prickles up my jaw.
“This box looks like it’s…” Clearing my throat, I pick up the first thing I see inside: a sheet of heavy notepaper. “Oh. Hang on.” When I turn it over, it’s covered with flowing handwriting – and topped with an AEH monogram. “It’s personalized writing paper. Look.”
I hold it out to Hal, who is suddenly pressed up against my shoulder. Part of me wants to step away, to keep my distance…but a bigger part of me doesn’t. It wants to stay close to the letter, to see what it says at the same time as he does. I want to see the puzzle come together first-hand, to feel the pieces clicking together, and I can’t do that from a distance.
The Pieces of Ourselves Page 6