“Mum hasn’t told him yet.”
“Maybe when he knows he won’t let her. He won’t want you to live so far away.”
“Do you think I should tell him?”
“Sure. Get him on your side.”
“Right …” Nathan began to plan the phone call in his head. An uncomfortable silence fell. “What’s new with you?”
“We’ve put up decorations for the party.” Tom seemed to search for something else to say. “And someone’s been enjoying our snow pig. They jammed a row of Coke cans along his back. Made him look like a dragon.”
Nathan forced himself to join in. “You mean a pragon.”
“Or a drig.”
They laughed.
“There isn’t a bit of snow here. It’s green and boring and ordinary.” Nathan shut his eyes. He could see Tom sitting on the stairs, his legs draped over the banisters, the telephone balanced on his stomach. He missed him. He said quickly, “I’ll ring again tomorrow, Banksie. Thanks for the advice. I’ll take you up on it.”
But when he dialled Dad’s Edinburgh number, there was no reply.
In the morning, mist hid the woods and a steady rain fizzed against the window. By midday a reluctant sun had struggled through the clouds. Nathan slithered down the path through the woods with Mum. Tropical ferns dripped, the earth steamed, giant fir trees creaked.
At the end of the path a massive iron gate swung them on to the road. Nathan spotted figures in yellow oilskins on the beach, throwing sticks and chasing after their dogs, the wet sand splaying.
“Here we are.” Mum pushed at the door. “Collins Estate Agents.”
“Mrs Fielding?” A tall, fair-haired man stood up to greet them. “And this must be Nathan.” He flashed huge white teeth. “I’m Collins Junior, but please call me Andy. We’ll take my car – rather proud of it, new Rover 75. I’ve lined up three viewings.”
Smarmy git. Wish I were on the beach with a dog.
“We should be able to whip round them pretty smartish. … Two in Carbis Bay. Then we’ll take a peek at a house in Bowling Green Terrace.”
They walked to the car park. The inside of the Rover smelt of leather and tobacco. Nathan sat in the back, glumly staring out.
Their first stop, a bungalow in Carbis Bay, looked as if it had been built for the set of a cheap American movie. Two dying palm trees wilted by the front door. The rooms jostled crazily patterned wallpaper and carpets. Nathan stood in the front bedroom. If he jumped, he could just see the edge of the coast from the window. Mum made excuses and they left.
The second, a house, squatted nearer the sea, reeking of damp. Its paint peeled, its greasy kitchen buzzed with old equipment.
At the Bowling Green Terrace house, set high in the centre of St Ives, a straggly garden flapped with grey washing. The rooms stank of dog. Nathan stood in the hall, scowling at the floorboards. Any minute now I’m going to run for the bus. I’ll catch the first one I see and sit there until it gets to the end of its journey. Then I’ll ring Tom and ask him to come and rescue me. I’ll never come back. That’ll teach Mum and her precious plans.
They drove back to Andy’s office. “Pop in again on Monday.” He gripped their hands. “Tremendous pleasure to meet you both. Do take my card.”
“What a loser.” Nathan clenched his fists until his nails bit into his palms. “And those dumps! I’d rather live in a tent.”
They climbed the hill back to Tregenna.
“Don’t worry, Nathan.” Mum brushed a leather-gloved finger under his chin. He felt patronised, infuriated. “We’ll find a wonderful place near the sea. Summer on the sands, swimming, cliff walking. It’ll be marvellous.”
“What is wrong with London? Tell me that. We can still have holidays. We’ve got everything. Your job. My …” Oh, what’s the use? She’s not listening.
They reached the gate to the woods. Nathan picked up a stone and flung it into the stream. “Why do you have to destroy everything?”
“Don’t talk rubbish.” Mum’s voice hardened. “I’m starting again, rebuilding. It takes courage.”
“That’s a load of shit.”
“Don’t use that word.”
“I’ll use it if I like.”
“Not to me, you won’t.”
At the top of the woods, hot, out of breath and now furious, Nathan kicked viciously at the edges of the grass. “When Dad left us, remember what you said?” His voice cracked. “You told me you’d promised Dad. That he and I would stay close. How can I do that if we’re down here?”
Mum turned her head away. “I know what I said. But that was in September.”
“So you’re going back on your promise? I love our house.”
“Nathan.” Mum seized his arm. “Strictly speaking, it’s Dad’s house, and I told you he’s decided to sell it. I’ll get half the money. You know he wants a divorce. There’s nothing I can do about that. What I can give us both is a new beginning.”
Nathan wrenched away. “I don’t want a new beginning. I don’t want to go with you. Yes, Mum, no, Mum, anything you say, Mum. Coming for Christmas is bad enough. Being here day in, day out will be crap.”
“How in heaven’s name do you know until you’ve tried? Anyone would think I was dragging you off to some ghastly dump instead of this beautiful place!” She swayed slightly, her cheeks yellowy white. “Come inside. Let’s talk about this quietly.”
Nathan backed away from her. “No. Let’s not.”
He turned towards the sea and sky, towards the freshening wind. “Talk to yourself. I’m going for a run.”
“What about lunch? … Nathan!”
His feet felt heavy. He willed them to move.
“Sod bloody stupid lunch,” he shouted. “And sod you.”
Four
Nathan ran, he hardly knew where. Down the path, through the golf course, into the pine-tree shade, out on to the main road. He shot across it. Brakes squealed. A driver yelled at him, stabbing a fist. “Why don’t you look where you’re going, you stupid kid?” Another car screeched to a halt. More yelling. Nathan shouted back.
He ran on, shaking with fright and rage.
Turning away from the centre of St Ives, he found a narrow street dipping sharply to his left, and took it. At the bottom, he turned right and raced on. Houses stood further apart, their gardens aggressively tidy. Christmas holly, sparked with bright berries, hung from their gates. The noise of traffic faded.
Finally, Nathan reached the end of the road, a cul-de-sac. He stopped, short of breath, sweat pouring down his back. He bent to retie a lace on his trainers. As he straightened, he glanced at the cottage in front of him. It stretched long and low, grey stone, its small attic window half-hidden in clambers of flame-red creeper. An apple tree curled bare branches.
And in the sudden quiet, something sang to him, a low murmur, a rhythmic splashing of waves.
It’s the sea, there, behind that cottage. I want to be near it.
He glanced over his shoulder at the empty street. He unlatched the gate, walked towards the cottage. At the front door he stopped. No lights shone, no voices spoke. He ducked swiftly round the right-hand side into the back garden.
It seemed to sigh for him. It was filled with apple trees, beech and silver birch, warm and lush, with a magnificent abandoned wildness. Russet leaves shifted on the grass, winter roses shone like crimson candles. A black cat, crouching beside a stone pond, raised its head to inspect him, its yellow eyes alert.
Nathan darted through the trees. Rotting blackberry brambles snagged against his jeans. He glimpsed bits of his reflection in the broken windows of an old greenhouse. He ran on to the bottom of the garden, aware that the sound beneath the wind had become the clear thunder of sea. He reached the edge of the grass. He gasped.
Without warning the garden stopped, as if a giant hand had sliced the ground away. Below, slabs of moss-stained rocks met dark sand, splashes of glinting seaweed, a vast grey wash of sea and sky. The wind hummed into his ears, lifte
d his hair, threw fine sand on to his lips.
Just look at that. Imagine being able to see that every day, in all different kinds of light and dark. I wish I had my sketchbook. Tom would love it here.
At his feet he spotted metal footholds set into the cliff. He bent to look, almost began to climb, but something made him stay exactly where he was. Instead he squatted on the grass. His legs trembled, his heart raced. He licked his lips, tasting the sting of salt, the grit of sand.
He jumped. The cat had followed him, nudged against his hand. He dug his fingers into its thick fur, feeling its warmth, steadying himself. “Have you come to say hello?” The yellow eyes inspected him closely. “I nearly got run over. It was a close one! Had another row with Mum. I’m sick of it. The same old rubbish every time.”
He looked down at the edges of the sea as they slapped sand.
Then he heard voices call to each other in a nearby garden. The sound cut through the air, jolted him into remembering what he was doing. Trespassing.
“I shouldn’t be here.” Reluctantly he stood up, brushed the damp grass from his jeans. “Better not get caught. Better get back.”
He turned, feeling calmer, began to retrace his steps. He looked up at the cottage, at a second attic window.
Something was there.
Dead centre, motionless, black eyes stared out at him from a pale face and a mass of fair curly hair. The moment of light blurred, then faded. He tilted his head back, blinked and looked again.
Nothing, nobody.
The window must have reflected a cloud. It was a trick of light. It was a ghost.
He wanted to shout, Come back! Who are you?
Keeping behind the trees, he moved closer to the cottage. A crow cawed above him, beat its wings, flapped noisily into the sky, making him jump.
He came closer still.
He heard a new sound. Crying. A girl crying. He moved up to the wall of the cottage. Sobbing, sobbing. Words he could not make out. Silence. He waited. The sobs began again, more quietly, equally wretched.
He scrabbled at a flower-bed, stood in the centre of the garden and threw a handful of earth at the window. He stared up, willing her to come.
She stood there again, her eyes black, her cheeks wet with tears.
He didn’t dare to call. He mouthed, “Can I help?”
She shook her head, wiped a hand across her face.
“Please let me help.” This time he spoke the words. “What’s wrong?”
She struggled with the window and it shot open. “I knew you’d come.” Her voice was high, bell-like, very clear.
He gasped. “How did you—”
“I just did, that’s all. But you’re too late.”
“What for? How can I be—”
“There’s nothing you can do about it … about anything. You shouldn’t be here. Go away. Quickly, before he finds you.”
He shivered as he stared up at her, noticed the pale shine of her skin; the necklace of jade-green stones at her throat; the long, slender fingers that pushed at her hair.
“Before who finds me?”
She mouthed, “Be quiet!” at him and reached for the handle of the window.
“OK, OK, I’m going.”
He wrenched his eyes away. With a dull thud the window closed.
He made himself move, the girl’s voice ringing in his head. His feet took him to the side of the cottage. A new sound greeted him. Hammering. It came from the front garden. It stopped, then started again.
Nathan hesitated. He edged towards the corner of the cottage wall and peered around it, bewildered.
A heavy, thick-set man, a dark green hat crammed over his head, thwacked at the top of a wooden post by the front gate.
Nathan’s heart thudded. What if he finds me here?
He shrank back to the side of the cottage, listening. The hammering stopped. Footsteps crunched along the path and the front door slammed.
Nathan breathed again. He raced into the front garden and leapt over the low stone wall into the street. He looked back. From the wooden post fluttered a piece of paper with a handwritten message:
For Sale, Cottage and Garden
No Agents
Ring 929363. Evenings only
“Where have you been?” Mum hunched in the hotel lobby, defiantly stubbing out a cigarette.
“I went for a run.”
“Well, I hope it put you in a better mood. I will not have you swearing at me, do you understand?”
Nathan nodded, not listening.
“Right. They’ve saved you some lunch. Dad rang from Edinburgh.”
Nathan forced his thoughts away from the sound of sobbing that rang in his head. “Did you tell him about us moving down here?”
“Yes, I did. I told him there’s no way I’m buying another house in London.”
“What did he say?”
Her lips curled. “That I’d given him a lot to think about.”
Nathan sat down, his legs numb. So Dad won’t put up a fight for me.
“Don’t look so gloomy.” Mum tried to kiss him, but Nathan pulled away. “They’ve been decorating the Christmas tree. Isn’t it pretty?”
Nathan glanced at the massive tree, its carefully arranged clutches of purple lights, the stiff gold fairy at the top brandishing a ridiculous wand.
“Great,” he said bitterly. “I suppose they trot that lot out every year.”
“At least they’re making an effort. Come on. I’ll keep you company while you eat. Tomorrow we’re having lunch at Grandpa’s. Proper Sunday lunch with all the trimmings. He’s making an effort too.”
That afternoon, Nathan did his best to stop thinking about the girl. He swam in the pool, but the colours of the water flashed like the jade stones in her necklace. He walked across the golf course with Mum, comparing its flat dullness to the wildness of the cottage garden and the way it sliced down to the beach.
Back in his room, he got out his sketchbook and drew the cat crouching by the pond; the cottage, its windows empty and dark. He tried but failed to draw the girl’s face. Her sobs echoed in his head like the mournful, insistent beat of a new pop song. He wished he could stop wondering who the man in the front garden had been, and why the cottage was for sale.
“Do I have to go to a kid’s pantomime?” he grumbled that evening.
Grandpa brushed his complaint aside. “The St Ives Players are real professionals,” he said firmly. “People book tickets months in advance and come from miles around. Trust me. Mother Goose will be wonderful.”
Nathan sat glumly in the audience, listening in an absent-minded fashion to the excited buzz of voices around him. In front of the stage an enormous goose, painted on to the curtain in thick silver sparkle, flew into the sky, its one eye grinning at Nathan as if they were silent conspirators.
But once the curtain went up, and in spite of himself, Nathan sat entranced. Both child and adult actors threw themselves into the simple storyline and strong music with energy and enjoyment. When the moment came, Nathan hissed and booed at the villain, screamed, “Oh, no, you’re not!” as loudly as everyone else, and shouted with laughter at the hilarious antics of the goose.
In the interval he stood waiting to buy ice-creams. It was not until he had reached the head of the queue that he saw who was selling them. There was no mistaking those dark, anxious eyes.
He said, “Hi! I never realised it was you,” startled by the sting of excitement that raced through him, the sudden thudding of his heart.
The girl recovered her poise but said nothing. Nathan lurched back to his seat, trying to balance three ice-creams. Half an hour later, he squinted over his shoulder. She stood at the back of the hall, gazing at the stage with rapt delight.
When he looked again, she had gone.
At the end of the show, Nathan pushed outside ahead of Mum and Grandpa. He stood in the jostling crowd, hoping to see her. When he did, a sudden shyness gripped him. She caught his eye, but rapidly looked away. She was obviousl
y waiting for someone, he told himself sternly. He could hardly barge up to her. …
The crowd thinned. Grandpa and Mum talked with friends. Nathan watched as some of the child actors emerged, one of them holding the goose’s costume. The girl bobbed towards them. He heard her say, “You were great!” There was talking, laughing, general congratulations. The group moved away. The girl, on its edge, seemed to hesitate. Then she ran off alone in the opposite direction.
Nathan was suddenly desperate to follow her, but Grandpa’s voice cut through the crowd. “Nathaniel? Come and meet some friends of mine.”
And the moment was lost.
When he woke next morning, Nathan’s plan of action was fully formed, as if it had hatched in the night like a gosling, pecking with determined single-mindedness through its fragile shell.
Grandpa lived high in the centre of St Ives in the same terrace as the house he and Mum had seen yesterday.
The last time I stood here, Dad was with us, and Grandma was alive. I was eleven. It was summer. Why does everything have to change?
“Elizabeth! Nathaniel! Come in, come in.” Grandpa was wearing a striped apron and his hair stood fiercely on end. The fragrance of roast lamb wafted into the hall.
Lunch was delicious. Nathan was surprised and pleased. “You’re not just a pretty face, Gramp.” He grinned across the table.
“Oh, I know.” Grandpa met Nathan’s eyes. Laughter linked them. “Well, if Grandma could do it, I said to myself, why can’t I? Coffee, Elizabeth?”
He darted into the kitchen. Mum disappeared to the loo.
Nathan saw his chance. “I’m off,” he called to an empty room. “I won’t be long.”
He flung on his coat, slipped out of the house and raced down the hill, his arms flying.
The town vanished beneath his feet. He ran up the hill to Tregenna, past the woods, along the road until the left turning. Down, right, left and down again.
Girl in the Attic Page 3