The Messenger Bird

by Ruth Eastham

  An icy draught of air came out from under the door on to my feet, and Bones must have felt it on his paws too because he whimpered from behind me. I pressed the handle and peered in at the crammed-together clutter with its splintering tea chests and jumbled furniture and packed bookshelves going high up the wall. The air was thick with the smell of dried-up lavender and damp paper.

  There was the skylight caked in grime, and in one corner was the mucky triangular window with its net curtain that looked out towards the back garden. The moon cast silver-grey light across the round, dinted hatboxes and battered leather suitcases and towers of faded newspapers jutting out at every angle. All Auntie Hilda’s junk. There was the big clunky bike with a basket on the front, the gramophone on a wonky round table, the battered metal bucket to catch the drips when it rained. Stuff I’d totally forgotten about. The wireless radio in the shape of a box, the oval-shaped tin bath, scattered ration books and records in ripped sleeves. Fusty-smelling clothes hung on nails like floating people, gas masks dangled from the backs of broken chairs, war medals spilt from broken boxes. Auntie Hilda’s Second World War museum, though you’d think someone who lived through the war would want to forget about it, like who in their right mind would want to relive all that? Dad said she was nutty, but you could see he was cut up about her getting all forgetful and having to go in an old-people’s home.

  I felt a dull ache in my chest. When would Dad be back?

  The dust tumbled slowly, and cobwebs shivered on the sloping ceiling. Bare water pipes creaked and hissed, and I heard tapping noises in the walls like Morse code messages. Bones gave a bark. I tried the light switch, but it was dead. I made myself go on, but how was I supposed to find anything in here? I’d seen the Special Services people come up, but they must have figured out pretty quickly that nothing had been touched for decades.

  I eased past a rickety stepladder and weaved and squeezed slowly through the room. I rounded an old wardrobe and let out a yell. There was someone in the corner, standing in the shadows, looking at me. I saw a lamp and lurched towards it, fumbling to turn it on. Fingers of light spilled out from under its tassels and up the mouldy flower wallpaper with its masses of black and white photographs in frames.

  I stood back, panting. It was just the mannequin wearing an RAF uniform. Nutty Auntie Hilda’s dressmaking dummy.

  I heard a noise outside, like twigs cracking. Mum? In the garden? Not very likely. Scared I’d be seen, I quickly clicked off the lamp and went over to the triangular window and edged back the frayed curtain, rubbing the dirty glass with my fist to see through it. I let out a little gasp. Was that a movement? A figure? I wiped the glass more, smearing dust over the pane. No, I told myself. Just the shadows playing tricks.

  And then I saw it.

  A perfect oval. About the size of my palm. A thin line scratched on the window, with a smaller circle inside like the staring pupil of an eye.

  I let the moonlight shine through the edges and the tiny specks of frost in the groove melted as I ran my finger along it. It was quite deep in the glass, deliberately scratched, and from the grime inside I reckoned it must have been there a really long time. The weird thing was that the glass around it looked less dirty than the rest of the pane, as if it had been wiped over recently and in a hurry. Might Dad have done that, to help me find the symbol? Might he have known he was going to be arrested and quickly made a plan?

  Water trickled on to the spongy wood of the window ledge from the dripping condensation on the pane. I looked out at the overgrown garden stretching away towards Brennan’s wood, the tool shed, the hunched-up air-raid shelter, the old brick well Mum had forbidden us from going near. I squinted and moved my head to the side. I craned my neck. The sign glinted.

  Look through the eye to see where you must go.

  I hesitated. I bobbed my head, leaned to one side and back, looking through the sign. My breath caught in my throat, because when I looked a certain way…

  There was the sound of a car outside. Headlights swept the garden. Mum home with Dad? With one last glance at the window, I tore down the stairs, my mind fizzing like a firework.

  The oval of the eye lined up with the oval of the well.

  Not just a bit of a match. Not even a close match.

  The edges matched perfectly.

  3

  The Ghøst in the Well

  I hurtled downstairs. Was Dad home? I ran into our big sitting room, past the old piano, the chunky oak table, the Welsh dresser with its chipped china plates. Past our stuff still packed in cardboard boxes from the move. Past the walls plastered with Auntie Hilda’s war posters and their slogans:

  DIG FOR VICTORY; LOOK OUT IN THE BLACKOUT; TELL NOBODY, NOT EVEN HER; KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON.

  Past the black metal helmet with a white paint “W”, hooked over the fireplace. Past the big dusty glass dome with its stuffed carrier pigeon on a perch inside, its two glass bead eyes staring. I ran into the hallway and flung open the front door.

  The dark driveway was empty. The sharp pieces of gravel shone white in the moonlight. But I’d heard an engine. Seen the lights. I was sure there’d been a car!

  I shut the door fast and went and stood in the front room shivering. I couldn’t help thinking about the car with tinted windows that had raced away with Dad.

  The wind moaned down the chimney, making the last of the wood in the fireplace flare into rusty orange crusts, and the smell of smoke wafted on to me. Bones lumbered past and lay down in his basket whimpering. There was still no noise from Hannah’s room. Maybe she’d fallen asleep with her headphones on and hadn’t heard my elephant thuds down the stairs.

  I stood there in the middle of the front room, trying not to panic, but my hands were trembling and they wouldn’t stop. I tried to focus on what I’d seen, the eye on the window matching the shape of the well like that. Was it the next step in Lily’s trail, whatever that was, or was I going completely nutty, like old Auntie Hilda? All I knew was that I had to do something else that wasn’t waiting and worrying and being too wound up to sleep… I made up my mind to check out the well right there and then.

  I went back into the hallway, my face brushing against the manky fox fur on the coat stand with its scratchy little paws still attached. I shuddered and zipped my fleece right up to my throat and got my big winter coat from the stand and put on my trainers. I heaved open the top drawer of the hallway cabinet, rifling under a thick address book with a frayed velvety cover that had been there when we moved in, and an old black leather guest book all breaking apart. When would Mum get round to tossing that stuff? I found the bike head torch I’d shoved in there. I still had no idea what I was hoping to do, but I turned the torch on and pulled open the front door.

  I made my way along the icy side wall and into the garden. The sky was clear and the moon was almost full, and the tree branches cast weird shadows over me like nets. A loose corner of plastic tied over the woodpile made slapping sounds in the wind, and the long, frozen grass crackled under my feet. I skirted the burnt circle where the bonfire had been, and got to the well with its crumbling brick wall.

  Never mess with that well, you hear me? I heard Mum’s fussing in my head. Children drown in wells. She and Hannah would definitely not be happy if they could see me now.

  I put the head torch on, leaned over the wall of the well and looked into its gaping hole.

  It was a long way down, and I haven’t liked heights since – I swallowed and felt my face go sweaty, despite the cold – since that time I fell out of a tree. I tried to force the memory away.

  My torch beam stretched along the wet, curving brick walls. I hadn’t a clue what I was looking for. I followed the frayed rope to the pool of water, my face reflected there like the trapped ghost in the scary bedtime story Dad used to tell Hannah and me – “The Ghost in the Well”.

  I heard a noise behind me and spun round. But it was just a magpie that had landed clumsily on the roof of the house and was pecking at the slates. In
the distance I heard the dull clang of the church bell striking one.

  A flaking rod of metal stuck out from the side of the well, the handle to wind the bucket up, and I clamped my hands on to it and pulled. It wouldn’t budge. I pulled harder. Still nothing. It hadn’t been wound up for years, I reckoned. It might never turn. Could Dad really have wanted me to be doing this? I banged the cold metal with frustration. What was I even doing messing about out here? I gritted my teeth and wrenched the handle as hard as I could. There was a jolt, then a squealing sound like a small animal dying, and it started to turn. The bucket sloshed up out of the water noisily, dripping black spots.

  The handle creaked round and the bucket inched towards me, the muscles in my arms aching with the effort. A thrill rippled through me. But what did I think I’d find? The swinging bucket clattered against the wall of the well and the handle suddenly wouldn’t turn any more.

  I craned over with the torch. The rope was jammed, stuck between broken bricks part-way down. I leaned over and tugged. My feet left the ground. I tugged again, hard, and the rope came free too suddenly and the bucket swung like a pendulum, losing water and smashing against the side of the well, making me lose my balance. I gave a cry and for a second I was hovering over the lip of the well and scrambling not to tip over into the dark circle of water.

  Children drown in wells, a voice whispered in my head, and I seemed to be hanging there for ever, suspended between staying and falling, between the garden alive with moonlight and the echoey dead shadows of the well.

  I managed to shift my weight and pivot backwards. I stood there a bit, letting the fear unfurl and sink away, the rope still welded to my numb palms, clouds of condensation tumbling like smoke around me. Then, hand over hand, I carried on pulling, heaving the bucket up. The rope scraped my cold skin painfully and I really wished I’d worn gloves. I gave a final tug and the bucket was out.

  I rested it on the wall of the well and looked inside. Water sloshed around in the bottom, and I dipped my fingers in, snapping a skin of ice. Nothing. I turned the bucket over and the water splashed out. Nothing on the base. There was nothing there, just like in the story of the ghost down the well. Nothing but a reflection of my own face and a stupid old battered bucket.

  It must have been just one big, weird coincidence I told myself, the sign on the window matching the well like that. Lily’s riddle must mean something else. Dad’s bound to be home soon anyway, a voice inside me tried to soothe – you can ask him all about it yourself.

  I was about to push the bucket back into the well when, just for a second, my torch lit the bottom edge of it and I stopped, not believing what I was seeing at first. I stared along the slimy inside rim of the base, rubbing off the gunk.

  To see them you had to angle the bucket a certain way so the scratched letters caught the light.

  FIND STRUM. V O

  You’re the best, Nat! I heard Dad say in my head. A bit tricky, that handle, wasn’t it? I knew you’d do it, though. Cracked Lily’s code again, didn’t you?

  I struggled to think. What did a message from 1940 and a trail by someone called Lily have to do with Dad? I still had no idea, but I reckoned I had possibly just gone and found her next clue.

  4

  An Open Book

  I rubbed my eyes, struggling to wake up.

  Dad!

  I sat bolt upright, or at least tried to. I was on the settee, still dressed, the sheepskin blanket twisted round me.

  It was only just getting dark outside. The little pendulum of the clock on the mantelpiece clicked from side to side and I tried to focus on its luminous Roman numerals. Nearly seven a.m.!

  I untangled myself from the blanket and rushed to the window in a total panic that Mum and Dad could have arrived home while I was asleep and that I’d missed them coming in. I pulled back the curtain and rubbed the frost from the inside of the glass. Our car still wasn’t back.

  I slumped down on the settee, worry like a brick in the bottom of my stomach. For a minute I wondered if I’d dreamt about finding the message on the bucket. Then I saw the head torch on the floor by my damp trainers and I knew it’d been for real.

  FIND STRUM. V O

  My brain felt too fuzzy to think much about the clue. I felt so cold suddenly. The fire was nearly dead, just bright specks of ash in the grate. I shoved on another log and jabbed it into life with the poker, and little flames danced up along the smoking wood. Behind, flecks of soot glowed red, making face shapes, and the horseshoes nailed to the brickwork glinted in the light.

  I stared at the photographs lined up along the mantelpiece, searching for the ones of Dad. There was one of Dad about my age, grinning and holding a model warplane; Dad on a bike too big for him; Dad in the garden with a spade. The clock carried on its ticking like it was counting down to something. I huddled under my blanket and shut my eyes, but all I could see was Dad alone in a room with thick iron bars instead of a door. Don’t be stupid, I told myself, he’ll be back any time, but I just couldn’t get the image out of my head.

  There was the sound of a car outside. At last! I leapt up and I rushed over to the window again. Yes! Mum was back! Dad? I pressed my face right up against the glass so my skin went numb, trying to see.

  But only Mum got out.

  She stood at the front door as I opened it, her face a grey ghostly colour. She came forward into the hallway and hugged me so it hurt. We stood like that in the cold and then Hannah tramped down the stairs in her pyjamas, the ones with I am sweet seventeen … in silver sequins on the front and … just so long as I get my lie-in on the back, her long hair messed up so the red dyed bits stuck out all over.

  Mum pulled away from me and shook her head like flies were buzzing around her. She looked exhausted, confused. “They won’t let me see him,” she said. “I told his solicitor, we’ve got rights, but Mr Edwards said that the law was changed recently and…” She pulled off her hat and unwound her scarf and shook her coat on to the floor. I hung the clothes over the back of a chair as we followed her into the kitchen, and she started opening cupboards and dumping food on the table – a jar of peanut butter, jam, a loaf of bread. Bones looked up at her, his stumpy tail thumping on the floor tiles and his nose twitching.

  Mum walked around the kitchen like she was in robot mode, or on auto-pilot, and for some weird reason that thing they tell you on planes came into my head: those travelling with children, put on your own oxygen mask before helping them with theirs.

  “All I know is,” she said, “he’s been arrested and he’s being held for questioning.”

  Held for questioning. What did that mean? For some stupid reason I imagined Dad with the Bumper Quiz Book from my bedroom in front of him, stooped over a table with a pen and paper, a strict-looking Special Services man standing close by with a stopwatch.

  “He’ll be out by Sunday, though, won’t he?” I said, because it was my birthday on Sunday and I’d be thirteen and it was the only thing I could think of to say. But it was a really lame thing to come out with because I shouldn’t be thinking about my birthday, I shouldn’t even be having a birthday. None of that was important any more, not with Dad held for questioning.

  “What’s the charge, Mum?” Hannah said. “The solicitor must have been told what he’s been arrested for, or that’s not legal! I just did lessons on police powers at college so I know how it works.”

  Mum put a raft of way too much bread on the grill pan and lit the gas with a match. “It’s what I said. They’ve arrested him so they can question him. He’s not actually been charged with anything yet.”

  “OK, Mother, I get that! Don’t treat us like we’re five! Tell us what the potential charge is!”

  Mum shook out the match and a thick line of smoke poured up from the burnt tip. “Breaking the Official Secrets Act,” she said.

  I felt my knees tremble under me, like at that moment if I managed to breathe in all the air in the room in one big gulp it still wouldn’t be enough. That crazy image
crashed back, Dad in the cell with bars on the door.

  Hannah gave a snort. “What is this? The nineteen forties?” She chewed at the black polish on her fingernails.

  I leaned on the edge of the table. “But he’s not done anything wrong,” I mumbled.

  “We know that, love.” Mum’s words were like raindrops running fast down a window, merging together. “But there’s nothing to worry about, OK? We’ll have breakfast and then I’ll drive back to the solicitor’s office so I can try and find out more about what’s going on. I’ve rearranged my shift at the hospital.”

  “You should get some sleep, Mother!” said Hannah. “You’ve been up all night, or didn’t you realize?”

  I wanted so badly to see Dad. I wanted so badly to tell Mum and Hannah about the envelope and the scratched eye and the clue on the bucket.

  Mum filled the kettle and put it on to boil.

  But Dad had told me to keep it all secret. Was it true what he’d said? Was it really so dangerous to tell Mum or Hannah anything?

  I carefully got some china plates from the Welsh dresser, and the butter knives with the ivory handles. I put coffee in the coronation cup Mum liked the best, despite the crack running through King George the Sixth’s head.