Attica
Page 6
The bat begins swinging back and forth on the board-comber’s ear.
Stop that.
But the bat keeps on swinging.
When evening time comes round, the bat flies away on its usual jaunt to find food. The board-comber, in a heap by an ostrich-feather shrub, watches the children from beneath the brim of his hat. He watches and he watches. When he hears slumber, when he sees slumber, he crawls from his outer clothes as if they were a snail shell. They are left behind. Once or twice, perhaps it is practice, he darts back again, quick as a rat, into the clothes. However, the children really are asleep and besides now it’s so dark only a wolf or a bat could see him. He slithers and slides until but a metre or two from the sleeping forms. There he writes in the dust. Then he shoots back again, flashing through the darkness, to enter his coats.
‘Did you enjoy that? Your trip out?’
Wha— you back, are you?
‘Yup, full of insects.’
No burping to prove it.
‘Wouldn’t dream of such bad manners.’
Yes, well, I know you.
‘And I know you, mine host. Here, lend me your ear, I come to bury my claws, not to prise them. The evil that men do lives after them …’
Quiet, I need to sleep.
‘Did you warn the children?’
I left a message – messages.
‘Uh-oh, you couldn’t resist, could you?’
What?
‘Asking them about the map.’
No, no – I never asked them about a map. I simply asked if they knew about any stamps or coins.
‘Same thing. Same thing, old host. Now you’ll have them looking in every trunk, under every pile of books, for treasure – you realise that?’
Why should they?
‘Because children are like combers: they collect things, especially if they think they’re valuable. You should know. You were one once. Maybe you’re still one, how would I know? I’m just a bat.’
I’m going to sleep.
‘All right, you sleep, I’ll keep watch.’
What for? asks the board-comber, looking round nervously into the pitch-black darkness.
‘You know.’
The board-comber shudders involuntarily, as he remembers that the Removal Firm could be near. While he has no particular reason to worry, he fears he may have done something wrong without realising he has transgressed. The Removal Firm do not listen to reasoning or excuses: they act on their belief in a creature’s guilt.
‘Hey, have you seen this?’ cried Alex, on his way back to the others from a drinking umbrella.
‘What?’ asked Chloe, not very interested, thinking it might be an old steam-engine toy or something of that nature.
‘It’s a word, written in the dust.’
‘What does it say?’
‘Something about Kate somebody.’
‘It’s probably spider tracks.’
‘No,’ said Alex firmly, ‘it’s a word all right. Here, I’ll show you. Look.’ He pointed.
‘That says “Katerfelto”. That’s not a word, is it?’
‘I dunno. Look, here’s some more. “Any stamps? Any coins?”’
This made Jordy come over and look.
‘Cool,’ he said, ‘Attican graffiti. Stamps and coins. Hey, that would be something, gang. Treasure indeed. I once heard a man found an envelope in his attic which had a stamp worth thousands. Mauritius stamp, I think. He was an East German and very poor, so it meant a lot to him.’
Chloe said, ‘It would mean a lot to anyone, that amount.’
‘And coins!’ crowed Alex. ‘There must be coins up here. Old war medals. This could turn out to be a treasure hunt. We could be rich.’
‘Well,’ Jordy said practically, ‘first we have to find Mr Grantham’s watch.’
‘That’s true,’ agreed Chloe. ‘But picking up treasure on the way can’t do any harm.’
The two older children had forgotten completely about the first word etched in the dust: Katerfelto. It was overlooked in the excitement of realising they were in a potential Aladdin’s Cave. Their minds were now tuned to seeking stamps and coins. They scoured the floor with their eyes, looking for the glint of bright gold, burnished silver. Or the dirty yellow of ancient paper envelopes, perhaps held together by a rotting rubber band. This was an adventure to lift the spirits!
On then, into the sunlit-shafted world of Attica, like three lost mice within the walls of an enormous castle. At noon a dust storm rose, seemingly from a single powerful draught coming from the direction of the mountain. The grey choking motes were blown from the boards and from the cracks between, into a thick blizzard. The children tied handkerchiefs around their mouths and noses, but still the dust got into their lungs. There were cobwebs flying about too, and the light airy bodies of dead spiders, along with threads of cotton. They stumbled forward, there being nowhere to take cover, into the blinding, choking storm that threatened to suffocate them.
When they were just about exhausted they came across a deserted Attican village, the huts of which were old cupboards. Each of the children found one and crawled inside, closing the doors. Outside, the storm continued to rage for quite a while, until it finally abated and they were able to come out of their dark holes and into the dim and gloomy light. Stillness reigned now. And they were unharmed. Perhaps not safe, for they wondered where the villagers were, who once lived in these abandoned homes.
Yet no one came, after the storm had gone, and they assumed they were in a ghost village, a ruined place, long since evacuated for some reason. It stood in the shadow of the great mountain and Chloe could feel the sadness there, in the woodwork of the cabinets and cupboards, in the piles of junk that littered the floor between the huts. Someone had once loved this village enough to decorate it with gardens of silver candelabras overhung with artificial waterfalls of crystal chandeliers. The cut-glass ‘jewels’ and ‘gems’ on the chandeliers shone like diamonds in the spears of sunlight. The candlesticks and candelabras glistened like silver flowers in their beds below these hanging wonders. Yet there were no owners to appreciate their beauty.
Where, thought Chloe, had the people gone?
‘Deserted!’ stated Jordy, as if his decision was based on a long scientific study. ‘Not a soul around.’
‘Well, duh,’ Alex scoffed. ‘Maybe they were massacred?’
‘Who by?’ snapped Chloe, who was already feeling nervous, having sensed that a horrible deed had taken place here.
Alex did not like to upset his sister. He shrugged, ‘Who knows? Some other tribe, maybe. I don’t know.’
‘Attican wolves,’ Jordy said. ‘I heard them last night.’
Chloe shook her head firmly. ‘That was just the wind, howling round the eaves of the house. No, no – one thing we haven’t seen is live animals up here. Not if you don’t count the bats and insects. This is a strange world and getting stranger the deeper we go, but one thing you can count on, I reckon, is that it won’t be like the outside world.’
‘There are no wolves in Britain.’
‘Yes, there are,’ she replied firmly. ‘In zoos and game parks. And the outside world isn’t just Britain, it’s everywhere. There are still wolves up in Alaska.’
‘Well, we’ll see,’ said Jordy, still not willing to give ground. ‘We’ll just see. Something killed them off, that’s for sure.’
‘Or simply chased them away,’ Alex said, sorry that he had raised this issue now that Jordy and Chloe were going at each other. ‘Maybe it was disease or something.’
All three then looked at their hands in horror.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ muttered Chloe, wiping her palms on her jeans. ‘Don’t lick your fingers.’
Alex said, ‘Who licks their fingers?’
‘You bite your nails,’ remarked Jordy. ‘I’ve seen you.’
They found the nearest water umbrella and washed their hands thoroughly. Chloe would have liked a bath, but she knew that wasn’t possible unless
they came across another water tank. She stared at the vacated village while the other two washed. If they had all been killed, or died of disease, there would be bodies. She could see no corpses. Then there was Jordy’s theory of wolves. Perhaps not wolves, but something else, something like a monster made of old kitchen sinks with washtap teeth and plugholes for eyes? Something like that would surely swallow the villagers whole and leave no trace.
Alex had gone to sit on a pile of books to inspect his fingernails.
‘Now you’ve gone and mentioned it,’ he complained to Jordy, ‘I really want to bite them. I didn’t before.’
‘Mental reaction,’ said Jordy, joining him. ‘Now if I said “Liquorice Allsorts” what do you want to do now?’
‘Bite my fingernails.’
Chloe sat down next to her brother, then reached into her bag for the bottle of water she carried. On yanking it out she caught the photo album by a silken cord which hung from its spine. The album flew through the air and hit one of the cupboards, bursting open. The sepia-brown prints inside fell out, the glue of their photo corners long since having lost its stickiness. They floated to the floor like autumn leaves to gather at the feet of the children. Alex laughed and kicked them, to see them raised in a cloud again, and settle once more. Some of them fell face down, others on their backs. Suddenly Chloe darted forward and picked one up, reading the words written on the reverse of the photo.
‘Lance-Corporal John Grantham,’ she cried. ‘Look!’
She turned the photograph over and there, not plain to see but since they knew who it was they could recognise him, was a very young unsmiling Mr Grantham. He was wearing a peaked cap and was in uniform, proudly displaying a single stripe on the sleeve. He was sort of half-sitting, looking slightly over one shoulder. The uniform looked unsullied and the photo, Chloe guessed, had been taken before he left England for the war in foreign places.
They picked up some of the other photos and began poring over them. A great many of them were of people Chloe did not recognise: older people in very old-fashioned boots, suits and shapeless frocks. Some of them were of Mr Grantham. There were several of him standing with a pretty young woman in a polka-dot frock. They guessed this was Susan. She looked happy, being helped over a stile in a meadow by a grinning John Grantham in baggy trousers and sleeveless jumper with zig-zag stripes. There was a dog there too, a mongrel by the looks of the startled beast, caught playfully grabbing a trouser turnup.
Jordy was looking puzzled.
‘What?’ asked Chloe. ‘Come on, tell.’
‘Well,’ he said, looking at the photo he was holding, ‘it’s all a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?’
Chloe shrugged.
They were interrupted by a yell from Alex, which sounded very much like a cry of triumph.
‘What about this then, eh?’ he said. He waved something whitish, a piece of paper. ‘What about this!’
CHAPTER 5
Quest for the Golden Bureau
Alex had found a letter, still sealed in its envelope, tucked between the pages of the album. He looked at the date where it had been franked.
‘The stamp must be rare. This letter’s from the nineteen forties.’
Chloe said, ‘That doesn’t automatically make it valuable. Depends on how many were printed, doesn’t it? Let me see.’
Chloe took the letter and studied the stamp, but she was no expert and had no more idea than her brother. However, one thing struck her as strange about the stamp. On it and around it were several different frank marks. It had been franked in three different countries. By the look of it the letter had never been opened. The address on the front was L/Cpl J. Grantham, Stalag 21, Scheinfeld, Germany. Turning it over she saw scrawled on the back: Addressee not found – returned to sender.
‘This is a letter to Mr Grantham,’ she said wonderingly. ‘Look how yellow the paper is.’
‘Never mind the paper, what about the stamp?’ asked Alex impatiently. ‘Is it valuable, sis?’
‘Don’t know,’ she said. ‘What’s a Stalag?’
‘Prisoner-of-war camp in Germany,’ replied Jordy promptly. ‘The trouble with you is you don’t watch war films. Stalag 17. There’s this officer in it, who escapes—’
‘Please,’ groaned Chloe. ‘When you go on about war films or Westerns you never stop. The point is, this letter is in Susan’s album. She must have written to Mr Grantham after he was captured by the Germans, but he never got the letter. Maybe he moved camps or something, but it was sent back, probably through the Red Cross in Switzerland. Maybe when she got this back unopened she thought he was dead.’
‘I bet the stamp’s worth a lot,’ said Alex.
Jordy snatched the letter from Chloe and to her horror he tore it open and took out two sheets of writing paper.
‘Jordy! You can’t do that,’ she cried, reaching for it.
‘Why not?’
‘You might have damaged the stamp,’ said Alex, equally incensed with Jordy. ‘Just ripping it open like that.’
Jordy ignored his step-brother. ‘Clo,’ he said, ‘this letter is something like sixty years old and it would have stayed here for another sixty if we hadn’t found it. We’ll give it to Mr Grantham if and when we get out of here, but it may contain some clues to finding the watch. You never know. I’m willing to try everything and anything to find my way back, aren’t you?’
Chloe saw the sense in Jordy’s general argument.
‘Leave no stone unturned,’ stated Jordy, ‘that’s my motto.’
‘Or rather no letter unopened,’ muttered Alex. ‘Well, go on, read it then. See what it says.’
Jordy started reading it silently, but after a few lines he handed it to Chloe.
‘Here, you’d better read it. It’s a bit too mushy for me. Girls read these things better than boys.’
Chloe took the letter and, despite her feelings about the invasion of Mr Grantham’s privacy, read it out in a quiet, moving voice. The written words spoke of the writer’s deep love for her fiancé John, saying she would rather die than hurt him. But the fact was her elderly mother was very ill and needed a lot of medical care which was expensive. Susan pleaded with John to forgive her, but circumstances had forced her to marry an older man, a wealthy grocer, and they would all three be moving to Scotland. She ended the letter with the words, ‘you know me, John, Im not so romantic as some people. Not so’s it would mean me losing my mum. Life is hard and I have to be pratical and see to her no matter how it hurts me and does things to me. Arthur has found her a nursing home in a place where the air is good for her lungs and away from the bombs. Hes going to pay for her keep and buy us a cotage near to it. Hes a good man, though you will probably not think it and hate him.’ The letter ended with more protestations, with a short description of the true state of her heart, and with several calls for forgiveness. Then it bluntly asked him to forget her and find another more worthy of his love. ‘It wont be the same with Arthur but he cares for me and I cant do nothing else really. You do see what Im saying John? Please dont hate me for ever.’
Many of the words in the letter were blotched, no doubt by tears. Susan had been weeping when she wrote it.
Chloe blinked away the moisture in her own eyes after reading the letter, though deep down she wondered how Mr Grantham could possibly fall in love with someone whose grammar and spelling were so atrocious. But that was just Chloe. The love of her life would have to be perfect, but that didn’t mean others necessarily needed to have the same standards.
‘Well,’ said an obviously unimpressed Jordy, ‘she certainly dumped him all right, didn’t she?’
Alex asked in a solemn voice, ‘Is there an exact date on the letter? It might help with the stamp, you see. The franking’s a bit smudged.’
‘You two have no souls,’ complained Chloe, folding the letter and handing it back to Alex.
‘Oh, come on, Clo,’ cried Jordy. ‘It was half a century ago.’
‘Love is eternal.’
‘There was no such thing then,’ Chloe said. ‘No National Health. You had to pay for medical treatment in those days.’
Chloe turned from her brothers and gathered up the photos, putting them in her bag. Then the three sat down to talk of their plans. There was a massive mountain of weapons in front of them, which was going to be difficult to cross. Jordy suggested that one of them – he meant himself – should do ‘a reccy’ first, before all three of them went any further.
‘I’ll go and see how hard it’s going to be. You two stay here in the village and wait for me.’ He scanned the distance. ‘Shouldn’t take too long. I’ll be back before you know it.’
‘I don’t like us splitting up,’ stated Chloe emphatically. ‘Anything could happen.’
‘We’re not splitting up. I’m just going to scout ahead. Look, it makes sense for you to stay here, near to food and water. There’s some old hydro-whatsit beds at the back of the village and their supply tank is nearby. You’ll be fine until I get back.’
‘We’ll be fine,’ said Alex, ‘but what about you?’
Jordy let out a hollow laugh. ‘Oh, don’t you worry about me – I’ll be all right.’
He took Chloe’s water bottle and some food. Then he set out before there could be any more arguments. They watched him go, until he had climbed the mound of footstools. Once, an antique stool slid from under his heel and he almost went flying downwards. Another time he stepped on a satin-covered affair and his foot went right through it, making him scrape his knee. But eventually he reached the top of the hill where he turned and waved, to show them he was all right.
‘We ought to pick up the next set of binoculars we find,’ murmured Alex. ‘They’d be useful.’
The two remaining children spent a desultory morning, mooching about, doing nothing in particular. Evening finally came, the light fading from the skylight windows above. The yellowed boards of the attic stretched out behind them: the mountain stood square and daunting before them. There was no sign of Jordy. They could see his tracks in the dust: clear footprints leading into the foothills.