by Helen Grant
The younger man was there, standing with his head turned in the direction Grandmother had taken. His head was covered, so it was impossible to see his expression, but I thought I could read his thoughts from the way he was standing staring after her. I thought we agreed about Grandmother’s behaviour.
I stepped back behind the brocade curtain, and stood for a few moments in the shadows. I had the strangest feeling and I couldn’t even give a name to it. It wasn’t guilt exactly, though I could feel the warmth in my face, nor was it confusion, because I knew exactly what had happened, even if I didn’t know what to feel about it. For the first time ever, I had agreed with someone else against Grandmother.
I didn’t dare stay where I was any longer. I went over to the door, listened to be sure that Grandmother was nowhere about, and then slipped away down the corridor. A couple of minutes later I was back at my post by the attic window, hugging my knees and thinking about what I had seen. What had really happened? Nothing. Neither of the men had even seen me. And yet I still felt strange.
I had to stay in the attic for the rest of that day. The men finished what they had been doing outside, which was to clear away the bushes and overhanging branches and build scaffolding against the side of the house. Then they came inside for a while, although I couldn’t tell what they were doing. Once, I heard the door at the bottom of the attic stairs open and close softly and guessed that Grandmother had come to check that I was safely out of sight. I did not risk any more excursions that day.
That night, when the men were long gone and it was dark inside and out, I went back to the room again with a candle. The candlelight didn’t penetrate far enough to let me see the state of the ceiling, but I guessed that some progress had been made because although the rain was still pattering against the windows, I could no longer feel it on my upturned face.
I went slowly across the room. It wasn’t just that I was being careful not to make a sound; it was also that I was a little afraid of what I would find – namely, that it would be nothing at all.
But there was something. It was right at the end of the window sill, even beyond the spot where I had drawn my letter A, and hidden by the curtain. In the dust, someone had written: TOM.
I looked at that name, Tom, written in the dust, for a long time before I smoothed it away with my fingers. There was something unreal about seeing it there. It was an intrusion from another world altogether. I was afraid that if I didn’t fix it in my mind, I would think that I had dreamed it when I got up the next day.
There was no doubt in my mind that the younger one had written it. I’d seen the way Grandmother dealt almost exclusively with the older man. Even if he hadn’t been so obviously the senior one, he was clearly the owner of the business, the Neil McAllister whose name was painted onto the side of the vehicle. So that meant the other one was Tom.
I turned the name over in my mind as though it were a puzzle to be solved, but it did not tell me very much. He might be the older man’s son, in which case he would be Tom McAllister, but he might simply be an apprentice. What else did I know about him? Only that he hadn’t told Grandmother about the things I had left for him to see. If she had had the slightest hint of what I had done, I would know all about it. So, he hadn’t said anything. All the same, I couldn’t immediately decide what my next move should be.
What’s the worst that can happen if I speak to him – to Tom? I asked myself. It gave me a funny little twinge of self-consciousness to call him that, even in the privacy of my own head.
The answer came promptly to mind, as grim as an omen. You can’t trust people not to talk. Grandmother had told me that often enough. If it once got about that the reclusive old woman at Langlands wasn’t alone, that she had her granddaughter living with her, there’d be no more hiding. All the terrible things Grandmother had described to me passed through my imagination: the planes that bombed Edinburgh, killing people in the open street; the factory explosions that tore the workers to bloody fragments, that painted the blasted walls with a fine red mist. Even the desolate homecoming I had imagined for myself if I survived the War.
He hasn’t told anyone so far, I argued to myself. Then I thought: All I’ve given him is the letter A. What is there to tell?
I stared down at the streaks of dust where I had erased Tom’s name.
What now?
It was impossible to say or ask anything more complicated by scrawling letters in the dust, although there was plenty of dust in Langlands. To do that, I would have to find a way to speak to Tom alone, or else leave a proper message – a written note, left where he would find it. If I did either of those things, I was committing myself, offering proof of my own existence here at Langlands.
A distant creak from the staircase alerted me to the fact that Grandmother was coming up. There was no time to decide what to do now. I slipped across the room and looked out of the doorway. Yellow light was faintly visible from the lamp Grandmother was carrying. Swiftly, I wetted my fingers and snuffed out the candle. Then I flitted across the passage and into my own room.
Grandmother passed the doorway a minute or two later.
“Goodnight, Ghost,” she said softly, perhaps thinking that I was already sleeping.
“Goodnight, Grandmother.”
I was relieved when she continued on to her own room without stopping. I waited until I heard her bedroom door close. Then I climbed back out of bed, still in my clothes, and began to undress. It was not easy getting changed into my night things in the pitch dark, and by the time I got back into bed, I was shivering. It was not the cold that kept me awake long after that, though. It was that question.
What now?
The following day was clear and bright; the autumn sunshine picked out every detail visible from the attic window with crystalline sharpness. The good weather evidently lifted Grandmother’s spirits because she came to find me halfway through the morning, looking less fretful than she had for the past two days. In fact, she brought me a cup of tea and called me down to the bottom of the attic stairs to fetch it. I sat on the stairs and sipped it gratefully while she told me that the work was going very much better now, an unwelcome piece of news.
The men were working on the broken chimney that day, and leaving the damaged roof so that the damp timbers could dry out in the fine weather before they sealed it all up again. I saw that the work had a schedule and that it was progressing through to an end point, after which the men would clear up their things and go, and my chance would be lost.
After Grandmother had gone, I made up my mind. I would write a letter to Tom, and leave it where he would find it. I was dizzy with the sense of my own daring, but it was now or never.
It was easy enough to slip down the passage to my room to find a pen and paper. As well as the pencils I used for my lessons, I had a fine green-and-gold fountain pen. Paper was a little more difficult; since I never wrote letters to anyone, I had no writing paper. I did however have several exercise books with blank pages. A leaf taken from the back of one of those would have to do. More difficult was the question of what to say.
Even beginning the letter was problematic. I had read plenty of examples in the novels in the Langlands library, but there was nothing to tell me the best way to address a stranger. Simply to write “Sir–” was too cold, and anyway, I knew Tom’s name. On the other hand, to begin with “My dear Tom” was impossible. I wrote it out carefully once, just to see how it looked, but tore it up almost immediately, feeling hot with embarrassment. At last I settled on “Dear Tom”. It still seemed a little familiar, but since I was not sure of his surname, it was the most sensible option.
I spent a long time on the rest of the letter, writing drafts which were defaced with crossings-out. Eventually, I judged that I had done the best I could. I had written:
Dear Tom,
What would you do if someone wanted to speak to you? Supposing it was someon
e you had never met – someone you didn’t know – would you still let them speak to you?
Supposing it was someone who was not supposed to speak to you, someone who would get in terrible trouble – perhaps even danger – if anyone found out that you had spoken to her? Would you agree to speak to her without telling anyone else – not anyone at all, not ever?
Supposing it was someone whose questions were strange to you, who seemed to know too little of the world – would you promise to tell her the truth?
I hope and believe that the answer to these questions is yes. If it is, please leave me a message in the place where you found this. “Yes” is enough.
If the answer is no, please destroy this letter and forget that you read it.
Tom, if you can, please say yes.
A.
I copied the letter out again so that it was perfect, and then I folded it very carefully, until it was small enough to be hidden behind the curtain. I thought I might tuck it into the crack between the window and the frame, where Tom would find it if he looked, and it could not flutter to the floor where it risked being seen by Grandmother. Then I slipped the letter into my pocket and went down the attic stairs to listen at the door at the bottom. I did not really expect to hear anyone moving about; I knew the men were working on the chimney. After a few moments, I pushed the door open.
The passage was empty and silent. Late afternoon sunlight slanted through the open doors, across the polished boards and the worn runner.
I stepped out into the passage.
I could feel a pulse beating rapidly in my throat; I shivered with excitement. In my mind’s eye, I was already running lightly across the bedroom to the window, I was pressing the folded letter into the crack of the window frame. I imagined Tom finding it and plucking it out of its hiding place, his brows drawn together in concentration as he read the contents. What reply would he leave me? Would he reach into his jacket and draw out a pen, and scrawl that single word I longed to read – Yes? The idea consumed my thoughts, and that was why, for those few moments, I forgot to be as cautious as usual.
I passed Grandmother’s room and barely registered that the door was standing open. It was not until her quiet voice said, “Ghost?” that I froze in my tracks, horrified.
I didn’t want to turn and look. For one instant, I was tempted to continue down the passage as though nothing had happened, as though I had not been caught in the act. But even before I did turn my head, I heard a creak as Grandmother rose from the chair where she had been sitting, the brusque click of her shoes on the floorboards.
“Ghost?” she said again, and this time her tone was unmistakably grim. “What do you think you are doing?”
There was nothing I could say that would not make things worse.
Grandmother didn’t waste time interrogating me then, either. That would come later. She grasped me firmly by the upper arm and walked me back the way I had come. Her grip was so tight that it hurt, and I winced, but said nothing. I could hardly have spoken anyway; I was choked with disappointment and shame at being caught. I let her push me, unresisting, through the doorway that led to the attic stairs; I stood silent and unprotesting as she locked the door behind me.
As Grandmother’s footsteps receded away down the passage, I sank down onto the bottom of the stairs. I had my hand in my pocket, holding the letter I had written to Tom.
If Grandmother had found it–
The idea made me feel almost sick. My fingers curled into a fist around the folded paper, crushing it. Then I crept up the stairs into the cold attic and waited for nightfall.
I expected Grandmother to be furious with me when she came to let me out of the attic that evening; I expected her to rant and scold. In fact, it was worse: she was cold with me, frozen hard by anger. I tried to say that I was sorry for disobeying her, that I had meant no harm, I had only wanted to peep out of one of the windows for a glimpse of the outsiders who had come to Langlands. Perhaps she believed me about that, because she never gave any sign that she knew about any of the other things – the key, the coin, the messages scrawled in the dust. It made no difference, though. She was inexorable. The following morning, she took me to the attic earlier than before and locked me in again.
When I heard the key turn in the lock, I was tempted to bang on the door, to shout at the top of my voice, to try to force her to change her mind. But I knew that Grandmother would send the men away without finishing the job before she would risk them hearing me.
I was angry too, unreasonably.
Why can’t I ever speak to anyone? Why do I have to hide myself away all the time?
I knew the answer, of course: the War, the wretched, never-ending War. I saw, though, that there was more than one way of ruining a life – doing nothing with it, for example. Supposing the War dragged on and on, and I grew old, never seeing anything outside Langlands, never speaking to anyone new? I might as well go to the old mausoleum in the woods and lie down there right now – buried alive.
Anyway, I said to myself, Tom wouldn’t have told on me. I called him that boldly in my head, Tom, as though we were already friends. The angrier I became with Grandmother, the more convinced I was that I could have trusted him, if we had only been able to speak.
I thought about the little I had seen of the world beyond the borders of the estate: the countryside, the road with vehicles moving peacefully up and down it, the aircraft that crossed the skies as harmlessly as migrating swallows. Sometimes it was difficult to believe in distant horrors. Certainly, there was nothing to say that life out here in the country was as desperate as it must be in the city. Why should Tom give me away? What could he possibly gain from doing so?
The chance was gone, though. The door stayed locked all that day, until the men had left. Grandmother came to let me out then, and if she noticed how stiff and cramped I was, she said nothing. She led me down to the kitchen and made me a cup of cocoa while I warmed myself at the iron range.
While she was preparing dinner, she said, “The work will be finished tomorrow.”
She looked at me, to see that I had understood what she meant, which was: the men will be going for good. I said nothing. There was nothing I wanted to say to her.
The next morning it was the same story. Grandmother took me to the attic early and locked me in. I considered simply refusing to go. I was as tall as she, and certainly as strong. She couldn’t force me. But she must have seen my thoughts in my face because she said, “Ghost, the work is very nearly done. If you will not stay in the attic, I shall simply tell the men to go without doing any more.”
I climbed the attic stairs and contented myself by lying on the bearskin and watching from the window for the men to arrive. I saw the strange, box-like vehicle draw up; I saw both of them get out. It was another dry, bright day and with the help of the field glasses I could have seen the minutest detail, but after a few moments my vision was too blurred to see clearly. I had never said goodbye to anyone before. I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand, and when I looked again, the two men were gone.
Early in the afternoon, I heard Grandmother unlocking the door.
“Ghost,” she called, and I went down the stairs to where she stood. I knew that they had left, Tom and the older one called Neil McAllister. I didn’t want Grandmother to tell me so; I thought I should scream if she did.
I came to the bottom step and Grandmother opened her mouth to say something, probably the very thing I was willing her not to say, but before she could do so, we both heard a distant hammering. Someone was knocking at the front door, and energetically, too.
Grandmother frowned. “They’ll have forgotten something,” she said. “Stay here, Ghost.”
Before I could say anything, she had closed the door and turned the key in the lock. I heard her footsteps moving briskly down the passage; she wanted this over and done with, she wanted the men gone for ever
.
I stepped off the bottom step and onto the floor. There was a strange sensation inside my chest, a fizzing, tingling feeling, almost unbearable in its intensity. The door was not locked. Either Grandmother had failed to push it fully shut in her haste, or the old lock was worn. At any rate, it was not closed. I could see the thinnest line of light outlining the edge of the door.
Another few moments and I heard Grandmother on the stairs; the creaks the boards made were distinctive. Cautiously, I pushed the door right open and stared down the empty passage. Disappointment and resentment made me reckless. Tom was going; I would never see him again. Why shouldn’t I take one last glimpse from one of the front windows, if I could?
I could hear voices downstairs now; they were talking to Grandmother in the hall.
Now or never, I said to myself. I didn’t waste time thinking about it. I made my way down the passage as swiftly as I dared, moving cautiously to avoid the places where the boards creaked the loudest. I was not far from the head of the stairs when it happened: I heard someone coming up.
Grandmother, I thought, panicking. I turned my head, looking for the nearest open door. But it was not Grandmother. If it had been, I probably would have managed to hide myself before she reached the top of the stairs. It was Tom.
He came up the stairs at speed, taking them two or three at a time, and I was still standing in the middle of the landing when he reached the top. The moment he saw me, he stopped dead. We could not have been more than ten feet apart from each other.
I could see the individual strands of dark hair that fell across his forehead, the texture of his skin, the firm lines of jaw and cheekbones. I could see the flare of his nostrils, the way his chest heaved from running up the stairs, the involuntary parting of his lips when he saw me standing there at the top. Every detail was clear and sharp. And it was all wrong.