Jay, Lizzie and the Tale of the Stairs

by G J Lee

  Chapter 22

  Dinner

  On the way home in the car Dad told me that Mum would probably be home soon. I was really happy at this news. Dad didn’t seem that thrilled though and, when I thought about it, Mum still looked very ill.

  I couldn’t shake off the feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

  Not far from our house I had flashes of the person in the cupboard. Traffic lights and brightly lit shop fronts disappeared behind explosions of brick and old wood. The bucket and an empty plate and mug came and went in the same way. Sudden. Fleeting. Then gone. Again came that awful feeling of aloneness and sheer terror that cut deep like a sharp knife leaving me scarred and breathing hard. Dad saw something was wrong and pulled the car over. I pretended that I was just carsick. I don’t think he was fooled.

  “I’m taking you to the doctor again,” he said as he put the car in gear and pulled away.

  Luckily the vision passed but Dad kept glancing at me to make sure that I was OK. Despite the cool evening I was hot and sweaty. My head felt as light as a balloon. When we got home I headed straight for the shower then took myself off to bed. Dad asked if I wanted something to eat but I couldn’t face food. He looked worried and left my bedroom door open just in case I needed anything.

  Then I was back in the cupboard.

  Again I was looking at the bricks of the cupboard prison with the powdery cement in between; again the panic and the complete agony of being enclosed and afraid; again a voice from beyond the cupboard door. I was me, but inside the person trapped, straining to listen.

  I, she, he, it, placed my ear gently to the splintered wood.

  “There will be no more attempts at escape!”

  I quickly withdrew my ear from the wood as if the door itself had uttered those words. Fingers were placed fearfully into my mouth. I tasted blood, earth and wood on those fingers and knew the nails and tips were torn from repeated attempts at breaking out.

  “Is this clear? Freedom is impossible therefore you must understand what I say. Do not try to escape!”

  The voice was cold, brutal. It wanted to make me understand, wanted me to understand that I was going to be here for a while.

  “Do you understand?”

  “Jay, wake up! Jay!”

  “You will be shot!”

  “Jay, please, wake up!”

  And I sat up in bed panting, struggling, fighting for every breath and clutching at the hammer blows that smashed away inside my ribcage. Someone was holding me and I reached out for support and comfort, for protection from whatever was beyond the door. Still panting hard I looked and saw Lizzie’s grey shape beside me. She had her arm around my shoulders. She was holding me up.

  “It’s fine now. Relax. Relax.” The mouth moved and the words came.

  I did as I was told. Slowly and with great effort. Like a heavy train stopping at a station my breathing became easier and easier and Lizzie fluffed up my pillows and lowered my head onto them. Soon the fear passed and I took a sip from a glass of water Dad had brought up earlier. It tasted like metal. It had been poured hours ago.

  At the thought of Dad I glanced at my bedroom door knowing that it had been left open. I was surprised and shocked to see the lights of the hallway.

  “It’s fine,” Lizzie soothed. “You know he can’t hear us.”

  I wasn’t convinced so I got up and closed the door myself then sat on my bed. Lizzie was stood in front of me, concerned and kind and playing with the Jesus on the Cross around her neck. Then she stretched out the same grey arm towards me.

  “C’mon,” she smiled. “Come with me.”

  So I took her small, pale hand and let her lead me across the carpet of my bedroom to the world that lay beneath those familiar floorboards.

  All of the Raynors were at home when I got there. In the kitchen Lizzie’s Mum Maureen was at the sink peeling potatoes. When she saw me enter with Lizzie in my piranhas I got the same reaction as last time – a long surprised stare. I stood uncomfortable and embarrassed beside Lizzie. Maureen wiped her hands on the white apron she was wearing then surprised me when she said, “Ello, Jay. Glad you’ve come.”

  Pauline was sat quietly at the kitchen table sowing something like a coat or jumper. I say sowing but I’ve never seen anybody sow before so I assumed she was. She had been following my entrance quietly and now my eyes met her great dark ones. I looked at them a little longer than I should have. I couldn’t help it. Those eyes were like magnets. Today she wore a white top patterned with red flowers. It was open at the neck and I could see a Jesus on the Cross laying against the skin just below her neck.

  She was beautiful.

  There was silence for a bit and somewhere a clock ticked heavily. Maureen asked if I’d like a cup of tea. I was about to ask for a coke or something but I knew enough about 1946 to know that if coke was available then it probably wasn’t in the shops. Or if it was they couldn’t afford to buy it. So I said yes to the tea and when Mum nodded at a kitchen chair I gladly sat down. More to hide my piranhas than anything else.

  Pauline continued to sow away but occasionally her eyes would look up at me and she would smile a smile that showed she knew everything about me. A smile that told me she knew that I thought she was beautiful. I suppose I was at her mercy. Already, like Mum, Beth and Lizzie, I was wrapped around her little finger.

  What is it with me and girls?

  I was so shy and in awe of this beautiful thing sat across from me that I couldn’t think of anything to say. I just sat, sat looking anywhere but at those eyes that were like mirrors to how I really thought and felt about her.

  “W…what are you doing?” I asked eventually with a frog that I never knew was in my throat. I coughed to clear it.

  “Mending and making do,” smiled Pauline in reply. Her voice was deep for her age. Pauline’s accent was different too. Posh.

  “What’s ‘mending and making do?” I was trying to hide my feelings by making conversation.

  Pauline had just pulled the needle and thread through the fabric when she glanced about the room. Maureen was clattering cups onto saucers and Lizzie, now in full colour, had gone in search of Albert. When she looked back at me her smile had disappeared.

  “It’s exactly that – silly!” and she stuck the point of the needle through the thin sleeve of my pyjamas and into my arm.

  “Ow!” I shouted as Pauline got up and flounced out of the kitchen, taking her sowing with her. Maureen looked across but continued to wipe the surfaces down with a white dishcloth and Lizzie was still out of the room. I was left rubbing my arm furiously. What was that all about? Was it something I said? Was it because I didn’t know what ‘mending and making do’ was?

  When Lizzie came back I thought about telling but then quickly decided not to. It would almost be like blabbing. I looked at my arm and noticed a small felt-tip pen dot of blood on the sleeve of my pyjamas. Lizzie had been right. Pauline was not what she seemed. She reminded me of some sort of royal, wild alley cat, drawing you in with her cool and superior good-looks then striking out with sharp claws without warning.

  I decided to keep my distance.

  Maureen placed our tea in front of us and I had just taken a sip and winced at its unfamiliar taste when Albert arrived. His pipe was in his mouth and there was the familiar ssh, ssh, ssh, ssh of his trousers as he strolled into the kitchen. He smiled warmly when he saw me and moved quickly to put his hand on my back and welcome me again.

  “We’re so glad that you could come again, Jay,” he said, his pipe now in his hand. “There are things we need to discuss.”

  I nodded and took another sip of the not very nice tea. A tea-leaf was left stranded on my tongue and I had to pick it off.

  “Come through to the sitting-room when you’re ready,” he added and walked back out through the sliding door.

  Maureen carried on preparing dinner as me and Lizzie sipped at our tea. She seemed to begin to warm to me as she started talking about how bad the ‘sp
uds’ were this year; how sugar was expensive; how the neighbour’s garden was ‘like the Zambezi in there;’ how she was reluctant to complain because this neighbour’s daughter was still serving in the far east and the neighbour was ‘as testy as a snake’.

  I was glad Lizzie was next to me as I was wary of Pauline. I didn’t want to be alone with her again. She scared me. Apart from this now Maureen was more chatty and open I had begun to feel comfortable and more at home. I thought about my proper home. In the same house but decades in the future. I measured the gap of pain and pleasure. In my time the pain of Mum’s illness was being carried by Dad and me alone. I mean, we had each other but that’s all we had. There was Gran and Granddad but they lived a long way away. They were Mum’s parents and they had never had really got on with Dad. They visited Mum but rarely visited us two. If they did they really came to see me. Dad had had lots of rows with them because he said they were ’tight with money’ and Granddad had affairs when he was younger. I found this hard to believe. I couldn’t imagine my Granddad having an affair. I mean, he was old. Back then it hadn’t occurred to me that he was young once. It did now though. I thought about all the older people that I knew and all their stories: Mum, Dad, Mr Butler, Albert and HMS Indefatigable.

  And I knew that even I must eventually get old.

  Maybe I’d tell stories of my own. Maybe I’d have kids and tell them about my ‘special powers’ and dreams and everything. Maybe I’d tell them about Lizzie and my time travelling into the past.

  As silly as it seems I smiled at the thought. I felt warm and I kind of looked forward to it.

  There was pain in the Raynors’ house alright, but they had each other. They lived together and worked through it together. Back in my time I didn’t know anyone who lived together like this. Sowing at the kitchen table and helping people trapped in collapsed buildings. Lizzie’s grandparents even lived here before they had passed-on. That must have been a busy house. And all this and no TV! Nothing to distract Lizzie or Pauline from jobs they had to do. Things like PC games or I-pods, DVDs or the internet.

  It felt good being somewhere with more than one person. It felt good in a simpler, less muddled way. In a less muddled world. It lightened the load and made things easier.

  And there was something I had to get off my chest as me and Lizzie followed Albert into the front room. He was stood at the nets again, pipe in hand, and he smiled when he saw us and gestured towards the sofa.

  “Sit down. Please.”

  So I sat on the sofa and Albert sat down too. Lizzie sat on the floor again, her back against the leg of the brown sofa near her father. She started to pick absent-mindedly at the fluff on the carpet.

  I told them of the recent visions of being trapped in a small cupboard with a dim light, a bucket and what seemed like only bread and water to eat and drink. I told them how the dream, of what we all assumed was Ernie and the stone house, had stopped. Albert looked concerned and his sunny face became cloudy and overcast.

  “I’m not sure what this new contact might be,” pondered Albert. Then he looked at Lizzie. “Have you felt anything, Liz?”

  Lizzie shook her head at the floor. “No, Dad.”

  Albert looked at the top of Lizzie’s head. “Are you sure it couldn’t mean…”

  “No father!” interrupted Lizzie forcefully. “He’s still alive. I know he is.”

  Albert nodded quietly and turned to me. “There’s something I need to show you,” he said in a low and serious voice. “Some days ago I telephoned the war office and, well, I’ve recently received this reply.” Albert felt down beside the sofa and retrieved a thick piece of A4 paper that had been folded as a letter. I could see that it was headed paper and heavy with black type. It was important. “It says that Ernie Michael Raynor is still…” he let the paper drop open “…is still missing, presumed dead.”

  I didn’t know what to say. So I said, “Does this…does this mean he’s alive…or…or…you know?”

  “He’s alive!” barked Lizzie from the floor. “I’d know if he wasn’t.”

  “This does say that he’s merely missing presumed dead, “Albert said still looking hard at me. “So we mustn’t give up hope and we must get things moving.”

  “Is this where the séance comes in?” I said this without thinking.

  “Yes,” answered Albert. “Yes it does.”

  “What do I need to do?”

  “Just be here. We’ll do the rest. But promise you’ll be here. Without you we’ll never find him. Never bring him home where he belongs.” Albert put his hand on the top of Lizzie’s head to make the point that the family, Lizzie especially, missed him badly.

  “Of course I will,” I told him. And that was true. I’d do anything to help them get Ernie back. Anyway, I’d promised.

  “We’re grateful,” smiled Albert. “Very grateful.”

  Lizzie turned her face upwards and smiled at me. Her Dad smiled at the both of us. And the nets whispered gently at the window. And a heavy clock somewhere marked the seconds with a boot-stomp of a tick.

  “Anyway, Jay,” Albert said, breaking the silence, “did you manage to find out about the empire?”

  I told Albert that I had remembered but that a confusing note from my history teacher was back in my bedroom. If it was OK with them I could go back, get dressed properly and bring the note with me. Albert seemed to fret over this and I thought maybe it wasn’t a good idea.

  “Would I threaten the order of space and time?” I asked Albert respectfully. “Could I cause a rupture between our two worlds or something?”

  Albert frowned and Lizzie looked up at me curiously.

  “As far as I know, young Mr Webber, you can nip between our two worlds as often as you like.”

  “Oh,” I said, “it’s just that you looked like it was a bad idea.”

  “A bad idea?” echoed Albert. “No, it’s very much a good idea. It’s simply that I’m worried about how our grand old empire has fared by your time. I’m just wondering if all this pain and hardship has been worth it.”

  So Lizzie took my hand and we took the stairs to my bedroom two at a time. All was quiet in the house and I even had time to check on Dad. He was sprawled on top of his bedclothes breathing heavily. So that’s how I left him. I pulled on a pair of jeans, white trainers and a grey hoodie and collected Mr Butler’s note from my computer table.

  We were back in 1946 in no time at all.

  After looking closely at my new clothes Maureen asked if I’d like to stay for dinner. 'They’d make a little go a long way,' she said. I felt bad because they had hardly any money or food. Lizzie squeezed my hand hard and insisted, so I said yes.

  In the sitting-room I gave the note to Albert who examined it greedily. Lizzie took me to the back door. The back door in Lizzie’s time was more or less where ours is now and opens out from the kitchen. So we passed through the kitchen to open a red door with frosted glass and a round, brown handle. The door stuck so Lizzie had to pull it hard and the whole thing wobbled on its hinges when it came free.

  “Albert always says he’s goin’ to fix that,” shouted Maureen from the big white stove, “but ‘e never does. You think it might kill ‘im, picking up a screwdriver.”

  I chuckled but Lizzie rolled her eyes and shrugged. “Dad doesn’t do Mr Fixit.”

  “My Dad is good with his hands but he doesn’t do D-I-Y either,” I agreed.

  Lizzie frowned. “D-I-Y?”

  “Yeah. Do-It-Yourself.”

  “Oh”.

  It was dark outside and I was bright and grey in what was left of the dwindling afternoon. I examined my hands and arms with an open mouth. Lizzie secretly smiled and told me that it was seven in the evening. That meant 1946 was behind us by six hours. So, travelling to 1946 was a bit like going to Greece or Egypt.

  Then I remembered the time Dad came home and nearly caught Lizzie in our house. She had been standing at this exact same spot but decades in the future. I was now standing at the ba
ck door decades before I was born. I suddenly got the feeling that this wasn’t right. That I really shouldn’t have the privilege of experiencing people and places way before I was even thought of. It wasn’t natural. It felt like I was cheating somehow.

  Looking out into the charcoal night I discovered that there was very little I could recognise from my time. The air was cold and heavy with what I knew to be smoke from coal fires. It was so heavy in fact that I could already smell soot on my hoodie. I could see long trails of the stuff drifting darkly out of chimneys that just weren’t there in my time. As Lizzie had pointed out there were no ugly TV aerials so all the roofs of the houses were almost on the same level, yet all smaller somehow. There was also very little light. I could see a few windows glowing dimly and I could count the number of street lamps on one hand. Looking out beyond the immediate few houses I realised that the night was darker because of the lack of electric light. This meant I could see the few stars that had shown themselves this early. In my time street lighting had created a kind of barrier in the air. I remembered driving back from Gran and Grandad’s late one night. Remembered how, from a distance, the town where we live looked like it was on fire with light. The clouds lit-up with what seemed like a billion bright torches. Here our town had accepted the dark blue of night. A dog barked close-by. There were always dogs and I wondered if it was a relative of the one who kept on burrowing under our fence, messing with Dad’s lettuces. The whole night seemed a lot calmer. Quieter. In my time there was a big motorway a few miles distant. Constant with traffic. Twenty four hours a day. Here I noticed that the ‘white noise’ from this traffic was eerily absent. Because of this the dog’s bark had sounded much louder. As did the flush of an outside toilet; a cough; a couple talking together somewhere; another dog; and some trees, that weren’t there in my time, were busied by a breeze that smelt of coal.

  And our garden? From what I could see it had been used to grow fruit and veg. I could pick out neat rows of low plants and, at the end of the garden, those tall canes that people use to grow broad beans.

  It was all unfamiliar. It was an alien world.

  “Your Dad does gardening though,” I said to Lizzie, referring to the vegetables I could just about make out in the semi-darkness.

  “We have to. Rationing doesn’t stretch very far so everybody grows vegetables so we can get by.”

  I thought about all the things Albert and Mr Butler had said, about the waste and the hardships of war. “It must be really hard for you all,” I said to show that I understood and that I was really grateful for the food Maureen was cooking me.

  “Hard?” said Lizzie.

  “Yeah, you know, with the war and that.”

  The brave little girl beside me looked out over the dark shapes of her – our – garden. For a moment she looked thoughtful and sad. “I don’t remember a time when we weren’t at war,” she told me, “and we’ve meant to have won. But it’s still going on. We’re still growing vegetables, still wearing the same clothes, still going cold, still ‘making do’. Everybody I know has lost a brother, a father, or a sister. Somebody.” Out came her white handkerchief. She wiped her nose and, as quickly as it had appeared, it was put away. “Sometimes I’m glad.” She looked up at me with eyes that had probably seen more than a ten year old should see. “Sometimes I get scared of peace.”

  A pause.

  “Why is that?” she asked me.

  I couldn’t answer. Couldn’t even begin to. But Maureen had called us from inside, told us that tea was nearly ready, told us to go and wash our hands. So even if I had an answer I didn’t have the time.

  We held our hands under the taps at the kitchen sink and dried them on a worn tea-towel. Then we went to fetch Albert from the front room. But Albert was sombre and stood in front of the portrait of the soldier with the union jack hung on the wall. The man in the painting seemed young and nervous and I wondered just who he was and why Albert was staring at him so thoughtfully. Albert smiled thinly when he saw us. We felt like we were interrupting something but he turned away from the painting on the wall and gathered up his pipe from the stand beside the sofa. He also took Mr Butler’s note from the pocket of his trousers and came towards us with it held out in front of him.

  “How much truth is in this?” he asked me urgently.

  I shrugged. “Mr Butler’s a good teacher,” I said, “I trust him.”

  Albert stopped and seemed to falter for a moment. His eyes were far away and he slowly crushed the bit of paper in his hand. It crackled in protest and he let it fall into the fire place where it toppled down the side of the fresh wood and newspaper to lay at rest somewhere out of sight.

  “Poor Winston,” muttered Albert, almost to himself. “All this struggle. For what?” He had returned to stare at the portrait again.

  “And what of the royal family?” Albert asked me. The question was so direct it startled me and I had to think about the stuff on TV and in school. Stuff that swam around me and that I didn’t pay attention too because it wasn’t important and I couldn’t be bothered.

  “I know we have a queen.”

  Albert raised his eyebrows in surprise. “A queen?” he repeated. “So the Windsors are still strong?”

  I nodded but I didn’t know who the ‘Windsors were. I could see Albert concentrating as he did some math.

  “This queen,” he said. “Margaret or Elizabeth?”

  “Elizabeth. I think?” I wasn’t sure.

  Albert nodded again still looking closely at the portrait. Under his breath I heard him say, “Poor Lizzie. Poor, poor Lizzie.” Then he sighed. “Still, at least something remains of this bloody mess.”

  “Who is that?” I whispered to Lizzie who was shuffling impatiently beside me.

  “That’s my Dad.”

  “No, silly. The man in the painting. Who’s the man in the painting?”

  “It’s the King.”

  We had boiled potatoes, carrots and cabbage for ‘tea’.

  There wasn’t any meat and Maureen apologised. I felt really sorry for them all. I had a glass of the funny tasting water and Albert and Maureen poured tea from a teapot that was kept warm with a patterned tea-cosy. My knife and fork was big and old and the knife had a wooden handle. Maureen had made some thin gravy that helped give the food a bit of flavour but I didn’t really like carrots and had never had boiled cabbage. There wasn’t a lot of food so it was easy to finish but my face couldn’t hide the fact that I found the meal plain and boring. But I said ‘thanks’ and Lizzie asked if we could leave the table and we did.

  We returned to the back door, returned to blinking out over the back gardens of 1946. It was then that I had the urge to explore, to go out and go for a walk around the streets of Lizzie’s time, streets so familiar to me but that were now ringing with the footsteps that were, in my time, long gone.

  “Can we go out and go for a walk?” I asked Lizzie.

  Lizzie looked me up and down. “But you’re a ghost.” she said rolling her eyes. “I’m not taking a ghost out for a walk.” Then a cute and cunning smile drifted across her face. “I know…”

  She was interrupted by Albert calling from inside so we closed the door that stuck to the kitchen floor. We returned to the pipe-perfumed front room.

  Albert was clumsily holding a black box when we got there, was smiling mischievously. “C’mon you lot,” he urged, “let’s have you sat on the settee.”

  Lizzie groaned beside me.

  “What’s that?” I asked her.

  “A camera,” Lizzie said and rolled her eyes again.

  A camera? It didn’t look like any camera I’d seen. Again the design was clumsy but there were obvious clues that it might be a camera. There were two holes. One for looking through and the other one…(what was the word?)…the aperture. Pauline was still no-where to be found but Maureen wandered in from the kitchen wiping her hands on the worn tea-towel. So Lizzie took my hand again and we all arranged ourselves on the brown settee. I felt a lit
tle self-conscious. You know, that shyness you get when people you haven’t known for a while insist on including you in something. Like most families, the Raynors have their ‘photo ritual’.

  The Webbers did too.

  Either Mum would grip me tightly around the shoulders, me on the left, smiling madly, or Dad would set the timer and stand front and centre with his arms around us both. Here I was worried and patient while tea-towel was hidden, Maureen’s apron discarded and hair straightened, Lizzie’s pig-tails arranged so they fell forward over each shoulder (knees politely drawn together with her hands placed palm down), smiles practised. And all the while Albert experimented with distances and angles.

  Eventually we struck a pose on the brown settee.

  “Ready?” asked Albert slowly, squinting through a small hole in the top of the black box, “steady…smile and say cheese!”

  Some things just never change.

  So we all cried ‘cheese!’ and I managed an awkward smile. The photo reminded of my family and my Mum so, at the precise moment Albert wound a small handle at the side of the black box, I felt a stranger, an imposter. A pretender.

  The feeling of not really belonging was strong.

  But the photograph was a smiling success and it had seemed to cheer Albert up and take his mind off the business of the empire. He fiddled about with the black box some more and took some other camera bits and bobs into another room. Maureen recovered her tea-towel and retreated, grumbling about being ‘left to do all the dishes’, into the kitchen. This gave me the chance to talk to Lizzie about ‘going out’.

  “I thought we could dress you up,” said Lizzie in typical girlie fashion. “You know, disguise you.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked and Lizzie sniggered at this.

  “Well. Dad will have a spare hat and coat and Mum’ll have some make-up. You know, foundation or something like it. We can colour you in.” Lizzie smiled at the thought. “That’ll be fun.”

  I didn’t think so. It was getting late and I should’ve really been getting back home. But Lizzie said that I was home and it was quieter during the evening.

  “Well, I suppose I do want to have a look at the streets where I live before I was born.”

  It like felt I might never get the opportunity again. I don’t know why. I just had a feeling. I put it down to my ‘special powers’.

  But my ‘special powers’ were wrong.

  I didn’t know it then.

  So I agreed.