The Wolf in the Attic

by Paul Kearney

  ‘My acolytes,’ he says with a grin as I look up at him.

  ‘Do you work at the University?’ I ask him.

  ‘Yes, Magdalen. Now listen here –’ He stops and looks down on me from within a little cloud of War Horse. I know the smell. Pa smokes it too.

  ‘This just won’t do. We have not been properly introduced. My name is Jack.’

  ‘I am Anna,’ I say. ‘How do you do?’

  He smiles again, and we shake hands.

  ‘Now Anna, you must tell me where you live.’ He pauses. ‘Is there someone waiting at home for you? Your father perhaps?’

  ‘Yes Jack. Pa will be at home. We live in Jericho. Moribund Lane, down by the canal.’

  ‘Well, that’s not far then,’ He says with some relief.

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Eh? Oh, in Headington.’

  ‘That’s miles away! Do you drive a motor car?’

  ‘Not I, Anna. I prefer to walk. It improves the digestion.’ He is looking me up and down as he says this, and I lower my head. I suppose I am quite a mess, wet and stained, covered in cow poo and grass, the newspaper sticking in rags out of my shoes.

  ‘You look as though you’ve been having quite an adventure,’ he says thoughtfully, as we resume our walk. The Randolph Hotel is ahead, and the Ashmolean on our right. There are lots of smart looking people getting out of a motor car at the Randolph and the doorman is tipping his hat. One of the women has a sleek black bob, like Louise Brooks, and a mink stole around her shoulders. Her lips are painted red as apples.

  To see her makes me happy and sad at the same time. I know now that I will never be that woman, or anyone like her. I will not dazzle or be sophisticated, and I will probably never smoke a cigarette in a long holder.

  I saw a man murdered tonight. That I know. And the boy who did the murdering knows I saw him do it.

  ‘Adventures are not what they are cracked up to be,’ I tell Jack, and I hug Pie to me tight.

  He takes his pipe out of his mouth and watches me as we walk along. ‘Something frightened you,’ he says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were you out on the Meadow?’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘There are not many places in Oxford where you can become so liberally splattered with cow manure, my girl.’

  ‘There were men there,’ I begin. And then I stop, and know that I am not going to tell this kind big man what I saw. If I do, things will happen, and I will lose control of it. For now, I want it to stay with Pie and me. I want to pretend it was not real, and that the dark boy with the knife did not have eyes that reflected the light of the moon in glows of silver-green.

  Jack has stopped, and there is a different look on his face now. All seriousness, he asks me gravely, ‘Anna, did someone hurt you?’

  I shake my head solemnly. ‘I ran away.’

  He nods. ‘That is usually the best thing to do.’

  ‘It was not… it was not brave.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘I’m almost twelve.’

  ‘Then listen to me. Bravery is sometimes not enough. Courage is a dangerous virtue; it can get you hurt.’

  ‘Discretion is the better part of valour,’ I say, remembering my lessons with Miss Hawcross.

  His eyes twinkle. ‘Precisely.’

  ‘So it was not cowardly to run away.’

  ‘It was the right thing to do. These men – what were they up to, out on the Meadow?’

  ‘They were…’ I close my eyes for a second, picking carefully at the memory. ‘They were cooking a rabbit over a fire.’

  ‘Ah. Sometimes travellers of a certain kind pass through Oxford on their way to London, and they take a day or a night on the Meadow, or in the woods at Wytham. Especially since the War. Those are not places a little girl should be alone in late at night, Anna. No matter how brave she is.’

  I know that now. And I am sure I will never want to carry a knife again so I can cut someone’s throat, or daydream about being a soldier creeping up on the Hun.

  ‘I won’t do it again,’ I say, a phrase I use a lot. ‘But if Achilleos had been there, or Odysseos, they would have killed those horrible men, with sword and bow.’ And as I spit the words out, I feel the heat rise into my face, and I wish – I wish it could be so. That the heroes of the Greeks could have been there all armoured in bronze, with hard faces that held no fear. A stupid little knife would be nothing to their swords and spears, and the awful men around the fire would be dumbfounded, terrified, as Homer’s heroes strode into the light with the moon at their backs.

  ‘They might very well have,’ Jack says, with something like surprise. ‘I see you are classically educated, Anna.’

  ‘I am Greek. I came from a city that the Turks destroyed when I was very little. One day we will go back, and throw the Turks out, and we will have our house again, with the balcony that looks out over the sea, and it will be warm summer. Always.’

  Jack has a strange look on his face. ‘I’ll be... damned,’ he says, very quietly, and his grip on my hand tightens for a moment. ‘What a curious little bundle you are.’

  We turn off Walton Street. It is darker here, and despite myself I shrink against Jack. I know these streets as well as my own hands, but everything seems different tonight, as though Oxford is a woman who has just unveiled herself, and the face revealed is not who I thought it was.

  ‘It’s all right my dear,’ Jack murmurs. ‘No-one is going to hurt you. You are quite safe.’

  Our house is lit up and the front door is open. People are trooping out and Pa is in the doorway, shaking their hands as they leave. As Jack and I approach, he nods at us absently, and goes back to his handshaking. The meeting must have gone on forever.

  I realise then that he did not even know that I was gone, and it barely registers with him that I am standing holding the hand of a strange man in the street. And for a tiny, little boiling second of time, I hate my father.

  ‘What’s your surname, Anna?’ Jack asks me quietly.

  ‘Francis. At least it is now. I think it was something else once.’

  ‘And is that your father on the step?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jolly good.’ Jack’s black, bushy eyebrows have drawn together, and there is even more colour in his face. I realise that something has made him angry. He doffs his hat, and leads me up the three steps to Pa, shunting people out of his way like a train.

  ‘Mr Francis?’ Pa waves off the last clots of the Committee people, and looks at him, and then at me. Only then does it register in his face that something is out of kilter here.

  ‘Anna – what the devil? Yes, I am George Francis.’

  ‘My name is Lewis sir. I found your daughter on St Giles, in a state of –’ But here I on tug Jack’s hand, and as he looks down at me, without a word I plead with him not to say whatever is to come next.

  ‘That is to say’ – he gives me a tiny nod – ‘I encountered your daughter and decided to see her home, since the hour was late and the streets were somewhat rowdy in that quarter. She is perfectly well, and if I may say, a delightful child. I hope you do not consider it untoward of me.’

  Pa reaches out his hand, his handshaking hand, and it is engulfed by Jack’s big paw. ‘Why, not at all sir. I am most grateful to you.’ He looks at me, and he has that hard set to his face as he takes in my appearance, the same as when I tried to cut off my hair. ‘Anna, what have you been at? Go straight upstairs and draw a bath for yourself. You are in a filthy state.’

  And to Jack, he says. ‘Won’t you come in, Mr Lewis? I should be happy to compensate you for your trouble with a drink, or taxi fare perhaps.’

  ‘Not at all, not at all. I was passing this way at any rate, and I must be making my own road home.’

  I squeeze past them, so very tired, knowing that I am in trouble again and that the adventure is done for now. I will cop it for this. I can see it in Pa’s eyes.

  The house is warm after the c
old of the night, and the yellow light seems so calm and normal after the Meadow under the moon. I hug Pie, and feel like crying again, but will not. I will not.

  Jack and Pa are saying their goodbyes. I start to trudge up the stairs. Even Pie seems heavy, and my feet are like two cold stones.

  ‘Anna!’ It is Jack’s voice. I look back, and see he has raised up a hand in farewell.

  ‘Say hello to Odysseus for me when he returns!’ he grins, and winks. I can’t help but smile back.

  Then he is gone, and the door is closed, and Pa stands there looking up at me in the lamplight. I am in the shadow on the stairs, and I don’t think he can even make out my face.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he asks simply, and he holds out his hands as though he is about to catch a ball.

  ‘Walking. Port Meadow. There – there’s a moon tonight, Pa.’

  He walks slowly towards me. Up the stairs; one step, two. Then his hand cocks back and he slaps me hard across the face, knocking me down.

  I climb back to my feet. ‘I’m sorry Pa,’ I say.

  He nods grimly. ‘Get upstairs. We will talk about this in the morning. I want you washed and in your nightgown in twenty minutes, Anna.’

  I rub my face. ‘Will you read to me tonight, Pa?’

  ‘Go’

  And so up the stairs I climb, and Pie slips through my hand I am so tired, and I drag her by the leg as I go up, her head bump, bump, bumping against every step.

  4

  PEOPLE TALK ABOUT being in the doghouse after they have misbehaved. I have never understood why that should be such a bad thing. I love dogs, and would have no trouble at all cuddling up next to one in some little kennel. We could look out at the world side by side, and people would leave us alone. It would be a fine thing altogether.

  Far worse is to be in a normal house, with running water and coal fires and lamplight, where it is warm and comfortable, but where you know that everything you do is being watched and weighed up and you must behave in a certain way, and spend your days under the grey weight of disapproval, and wonder if the cloud will ever lift and you will see a smile again.

  I like things to be cut and dried and straightforward. If I have been bad, I want a belt on the ear, and then to be forgiven. Or a whack of some kind anyway – one that you can see coming, brace yourself for, and then know that when it is done, it is over. And afterwards it’s all jam and buns again. Pa hits me because he loves me – I know that. And afterwards he is always so nice to me, and it is almost like old times. That is the way it’s done and I am used to it. But things are different this time, it seems.

  I tell Pie this, sitting in my room alone. I am confined to the house now, for how long I do not know. Like Rapunzel, only with shorter hair.

  I am to stop calling Pa, Pa. I am to call him Father now. Which is horrible, and does not feel right in my mouth every time it comes out. But Pa is not genteel.

  I am an ungrateful ragamuffin and wholly without discipline, and utterly unaware of the behaviour expected of my sex and station, Pa – Father – told me the morning after Jack walked me home. He was very quiet, very pale, but I knew just by the set of his face that he was as angry as I have ever seen him. More than that. I think he was a little afraid, or desperate even.

  He has this way of raising up his open hands until they are at his shoulders, as though he were boasting about the size of a fish he caught. Then he lowers his head, and it looks as though he wants to cover his ears. He does that when he is not just angry, but sad as well. I have seen him do it in speeches in the hall down at Keble.

  He did it to me that morning, and that quiet cold tone of voice came out of him like it was a stranger he was speaking to.

  And perhaps I have not been attending lately, but as I stood all hangdog in his study I noticed as if for the first time that he is different, changed from what he used to be; and I do not believe that it is wholly my fault. It is to do with the Committee, and the Colonial Office – he has been down to London again – and I think, though he has not said it, that he has finally given up all hope of us ever going home.

  If anything can possibly be left of home.

  NO-ONE ELSE MADE it out with us, from all the friends and family we knew who were still beside us on that last day. Uncle Spiros, Aunt Eugenia; they just disappeared, and my cousins with them. Pa jumped into a launch as it was pushing off from the quay, with me in his arms – and it was sheer chance that it was a British boat and not one of the American or Italian ones. Otherwise we might be living across the Ocean now, and I would have an entirely different accent.

  I could be riding a horse somewhere on the Great Plains, instead of stuck in a dark, damp old house in Jericho.

  BUT THERE WAS no time to look at the flags on the boats that day as the sailors brought them up to the seafront, to choose which country we should end up in. Father put it very well once, in a speech. He said it was a case of the Devil taking the hindmost.

  That is why we do not know where Mama is buried, or if she has a grave at all. The Turks had dragged her away earlier in the day, when we were packed on the roasting quayside; thousands and thousands of terrified people, with the water full of bodies in front of us, and the roaring of the great fire behind.

  I wish I could forget it; the thunder-heat of the flames, and the sound of the screaming as the Turks took away the young girls and the pretty women, and shot and bayoneted the husbands and fathers and brothers who tried to stop them.

  And Pa took me from Mama’s arms when they came for her, and pressed my face into his chest until I thought I should suffocate.

  When he let me look up again, she was gone, and the crowd was pressed tight around us and screaming, but I could feel his chest heaving under me, and the noise that came out of his throat was a dreadful raw howl, with no words in it, like an animal in agony.

  THE LAUNCH WAS desperately crowded, and everyone was wailing and the sailors were armed with revolvers – I remember them being waved in our faces, and the sharp crack as they went off. I think they made me cry even more with fright, for I was very little. And they took us out to a towering battleship, a castle of steel afloat out in the harbour among a dozen others.

  So many flags were in the harbour that day, so many great warships. And they did almost nothing to help the poor people who were burning and drowning and being killed by the Turks back on the quays. A few boats were sent in, but for the most part, they sat there and their crews watched.

  The last thing I remember about that day, before Pa carried me into the depths of the great ship, was the towering pillar of smoke that was looming over the city. It was majestic, immense, greater than anything I ever thought men could create, and at its base, the flames pummelled the smoke and boiled and burst and cast a far-off roar. I shall never forget it, not if I live to be ninety years old.

  I USED TO think it might be that Mama was still alive – it might be possible – but when I said this to Pa later, in Oxford, he looked at me as though I had gone mad – I was very young – and that was the first time I think he ever hit me hard, across the face, and there were tears in his eyes as he did, I remember. I was so shocked I did not even cry, and he hugged me straight after, and said he was sorry. So very sorry.

  That was a horrible thing – to see him weep, and I hate to think on it.

  But we cannot choose what we remember and what we forget. All the lovely bright moments of our lives get forgotten except for remnants here and there, like the leaves blown from a tree in the autumn, and the terrible things, they stick with us forever, as bright and raw as the day they happened.

  When we first came to Oxford we went to Liturgy at the Greek church off the Banbury Road. I loved the smell of the incense, and the singing was glorious, but so sad. As though everyone were in mourning. But it was beautiful too. The priests all have long beards and look like wise men straight out of the Bible, and the icons are all agleam with gold, until the face of the Madonna and the baby Jesus can hardly be seen; they ar
e shadows surrounded by gold and jewels, not real people at all.

  It seemed right and fitting to me, the dark music, the shadowed saints. As though God understood what had happened to us.

  The Mother of God lived her last years not far from our old home, and St Paul wrote letters to the Ephesians, who were the people who lived there back then. I saw Ephesos once, all tall white ruins and poplars and cypresses as shapely as paintbrushes.

  All that is gone now, just history in a book. But it was a real city. And the people in it were as alive as me. I lived there once upon a time, in that place which is now no more. We had been living there for three thousand years before the Turks came, Pa told me. And now it is as far away as a fairy story.

  There are so many echoes and shadows of memory I should like to have kept as clear and bright as fish in an aquarium. Not the horrible last days, but all that went before. But the pictures I want to keep are fading. The more I try to hold on to them, the fuzzier they become. And dreary old Oxford grows more real by the day. Perhaps that is part of growing up, this forgetting, and the pain of remembering the wrong things. If so, it is a hateful part.

  FOR THE NEXT few days I read newspapers, which I never normally do. Father gets the Times and the new local paper, the Oxford Mail, and I read both; even the advertisements for Palmolive soap and Bovril and tooth powder – every page. There is nothing in the Times about murderous gangs of marauding tramps, and there is nothing in the Mail about a body on Port Meadow. Skullduggery. Murder by moonlight. Not so much as a paragraph.

  I am oddly deflated, and there is a squirming part of me that is disappointed. Such a happening – such a horrible event should have been noticed and set on record by someone, anyone.