The bottom three stairs had been spared the lino and a sleek sheen of marble lessened the institutional grip on the Victorian mansion. However, the once magnificent hallway was compromised by a boxed enclosure, with ‘Reception’ above a grille on which a wooden notice was slid to ‘Closed’.
He peered through. A swivel chair was half turned from the hatch, a cushion on its seat moulded by some absent sitter. He tapped the counter. One. Two. Three. ‘Come out, come out wherever you are,’ he whispered.
No one came.
A notice was stuck on the glass to his right, he shone the torch on it. Term dates for 2011–2012. Summer term was due to start on Monday, 7th May, boarders returning on the 5th. This was even later than his own school.
He swept the light up the staircase to the balustrade on the half-landing – where a debutante would have been marvelled at by the crowd below before making her stately descent to the party. He was certain that no one was there now.
He felt a vibration in his pocket; the accompanying buzz, while inaudible in most places, was insidious in this hollow space where there was no other sound. Stella had left him a voicemail. He listened to her message and decided to call her in the morning. Then he changed his mind: he had once before delayed a call to Stella and had regretted it; he would not make that mistake again.
‘You’ve got a cleaning job for me.’ His face was in his sleeve to muffle his voice.
‘Why are you whisp— Oh, never mind. Yes. No.’
‘Great that you’re clear. I love that.’ He risked teasing Stella.
‘I mean it’s not cleaning.’ She went silent and he was just about to check she was still there when she said: ‘It’s a case.’
‘A detective job?’ He forgot to whisper. He had been disappointed that after last year Stella had played it safe and concentrated on cleaning. He wanted to shout with joy.
‘Probably nothing.’
‘But you think it’s probably something,’ he breathed.
‘Yes. I think it is.’
‘See you in the morning, then.’ He turned his phone off and put one foot on the marble step. He held his breath and tuned in to the creaks and sighs of the house in which so many inhabitants slept. Far above he heard a door closing, then footsteps, a purposeful tread. As he had hoped, he was not alone. Jack twisted off the torch and began to climb.
Monday, 2 May 1966
‘I hope those two never breathe fresh air again.’ Mrs Thornton snapped shut her purse and wrote a note on a spiral pad. ‘They should suffer as much as that poor little girl.’
‘Four pints and six yogs’. She tore off the paper and, rolling it into a spill, poked it into the neck of one of the empty milk bottles on the draining board.
‘Shame they weren’t doing it a couple of years ago. We could have hanged them.’ Bob Thornton was tying his shoelaces. He got up and took his briefcase from the boiler and added: ‘The ink’s hardly dry on the law. They should bring back the death penalty just for them, although the rope’s too kind.’
‘How can a rope be kind?’ Michael wriggled on his chair.
Bob Thornton mussed his son’s hair and blew a kiss at his wife.
‘Don’t be late back for tea with your brother,’ he instructed his daughter. Mary was assiduously scooping up the last corn flakes floating in too much milk in her bowl. She made a noise with her mouth full.
‘Say goodbye properly.’ Mrs Thornton poured water from a plastic jug into a pot of geraniums on the sill.
‘Goodbye properly,’ Mary piped.
Mrs Thornton tutted. ‘I don’t know what’s got into you.’
The front door slammed, making the windows vibrate.
‘Dinner money for you and your brother.’ She slapped a pound note in front of Mary and snatched up the Corn Flakes box. ‘Put that in your satchel safely and hand it straight to Mrs Jones. She’ll give you a receipt which you must hold on to or I’ll be very cross.’ The threat was uttered without conviction; Jean Thornton had moved on to other morning duties.
She put the bottles out on the front step and then wiped the table in busy circles, pushing Mary’s elbows off the Formica to gather up toast crumbs and driving the dishcloth through a ring of milk. Mary held the crisp pound note up to her nose: it crackled and smelled of her dad.
‘Myr— Mary! Stop dreaming and clean your teeth. Michael’s waiting.’ Mrs Thornton sluiced the cloth under the tap, squeezed it out, and draped it over the dish-rack. Mary observed this procedure wistfully; it had happened in their old house. She allowed herself to imagine that everything was the same.
Mary had conjured up a spell that worked. She kept her eyes on the table while she ate and, blinkered like a horse, was in the old kitchen. Fixing on her cornflakes, she saw the lemon-yellow walls, the speckly lino and the geyser with the friendly flame in the middle of the night. The spell worked until she lifted her head.
Hampered by her longer journey to work, Mrs Thornton was relying more and more on her daughter to look after her young brother. Mary had been intrigued at the idea of being a grown-up until Michael said she had to mind him because she had been bad. Although she told him this was not true, in her heart of hearts she suspected that it was. She felt bad all the time. The night before last she had left the key in the front door. Anyone could have got in, her mum had said, and stolen everything – or worse. Mary had brought her Everyday Diary home from school and forgotten to take it back. Grown-ups did not make mistakes, she decided. They wrote notes for the milkman, lists for the shops and carried briefcases and handbags with everything safe inside. She would never be a real grown-up.
During the few days she and Michael had been at their new school Mary had made no enemies, but nor had she made friends. She had shunned the helpful overtures of Jacqueline, the girl with plaits, because she had seen her laughing at something with Clifford Hunt. She would not join in games at playtime. Most children struck Mary as stupid; they were not grown up like she was. At her last school there had been a sort of friend, Linda, whom no one played with. Mary did not much like her, but trailing around the playground with her, through a mix of guile and patronage, she had gained a modicum of authority. With the move to the new house she made up her mind she didn’t need friends.
Michael Thornton was immediately popular. Every evening after school, since that first day when Mary had found him winning marbles over a drain cover, she had known where to find her brother after school. He was at the centre of a gaggle of boys and girls, making them laugh, weaving around tackles with a football or handling jacks like a juggler or winning marbles crouched over the drain. His marble collection grew along with his popularity. Although Mary could not articulate it, her little brother had become a bargaining asset. If she were to be visible it would be because she was Michael Thornton’s sister.
She dreaded the walk through Ravenscourt Park on school mornings and would slow their pace, meandering between the beds, pretending interest in newly planted flowers or a name on a bench. Michael said this made him look a ‘cissy’. She told him she was a grown-up and knew best what was good for him. Both children knew it was to stop Michael joining his friends and when they arrived at the tennis courts Michael would pluck up the courage to escape. Mary tried not to hear their shouts – the passing of urgent information and childish jokes – and feeling ever more alone, she plodded on down the shaded path beside the viaduct. Michael never believed that she would tell their dad he had left her. He didn’t believe anything she said any more.
On this particular morning, they met two small boys before they reached the railway arch and Michael was soon out of sight. Mary scuffed her heels along the ground, refusing to give chase or shout. Ahead were girls from her own class; there was Jacqueline, who had found her a colder bottle of milk at yesterday’s morning playtime. She was with Clifford Hunt again and three boys Mary didn’t know. Clifford looked behind him, but did not seem to see her.
At the gate Mary brightened. Michael was there; he had obeyed her instructions. She darted forward to tell him they would have their dinner together and she would get him seconds of ice-cream.
Michael called out: ‘No cars. Now!’
His gang gathered around him and it seemed to Mary that her brother was carried over the road. Sharp metal caught her shin as prams and pushchairs rattled past, with children shouting and mums scolding; the pain was distant. She went and sat on a low wall outside a house. In the glare of spring sunshine, the warmth of the bricks seeped through her dress and made her drowsy.
The voices stopped. There was no talking, laughing or yelling, no legs and satchels or shoving. The paving sparkled in the sun and made her eyes water. She would not cry. Mary looked up and down the road; there was nothing coming. She got up and trotted past the park entrance, past the school gate and under the cool shelter of the bridge. She was startled by the clatter of another train. The wheels clunked over the rails above her head. In time to the beat of the carriages Mary quickened her pace and went into the station.
The concourse was vast, bright with diffused sunlight through a glass roof. It was too wide an expanse for the little girl to manage. She was momentarily paralysed and stood stock still. She steeled herself and made for the ticket windows.
‘Caledonian Road, please.’ She unbuckled her satchel and, straining up, poked a crisp pound note though the opening.
‘Single or return?’ Without looking at Mary, the woman licked her finger and leafed through the pages of a bulging book.
‘Single.’ Mary’s plan took shape.
The green slip of cardboard between her teeth, Mary scooped the torrent of change into her palm and tipped it into her satchel. A threepenny bit slipped from her grasp, bounced on the ground and rolled under a ticket machine. Mary pretended she didn’t care.
She went up the stairs. With each heavy step her skin prickled with the expectation of hearing her name: either name. Miss Crane was telling her off for wasting money or for letting her brother cross a road without her. She couldn’t hold all the reasons for a ticking-off in her mind – there were too many – and as she paused on the platform and looked down the steps, a small corner of her wished for Miss Crane to appear. She divined there was no turning back.
By the sweet machine was a Tube map. She stretched up and traced her finger along the green line from Ravenscourt Park to Hammersmith to the blue line that would take her home. Mary was surprised by a train sliding into the station behind her. As soon as the doors opened, she leapt on board with a giant step. A man and a woman were sitting by the door and to avoid them Mary went to the other end of the carriage. When the doors rolled shut she settled on her seat, her toes just touching the ground and her ticket in her fist. Knees together, she pretended that, like a grown-up, she did this every day.
The train gathered speed and the carriage swayed; Mary had trouble reading the names on the strip of map above the windows. Hammersmith was the next station. She struggled up before the train stopped and wrapped her arms around a pole in the centre of the carriage and only let go when the doors opened.
At some point Mary Thornton changed her mind about travelling north to Holloway. She simply did not cross the platform to the Piccadilly line. If she had boarded a train all she’d have had to do was stay on it until Caledonian Road and walk the few yards to her old house. Instead, she toiled up the exit staircase, handed in her ticket at the barrier and walked out of the station. With no traffic lights, Hammersmith Broadway was a gigantic roundabout, four lanes of weaving vehicles going for pole position. It presented many opportunities for collisions or pedestrians to be run over.
Baffled by the tumult, Mary was a tiny timid figure beneath the Underground roundel.
‘You look lost, lovely.’ A man with carious teeth smiled.
Mary was polite. ‘I’m on my way home.’ The man’s jacket filled her view.
He scratched his bristly chin. ‘Where’s that then?’
‘Up there.’ She tried to point, but could only see the inside of the man’s jacket.
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
At the first landing a corridor stretched off in each direction, doors either side. Jack went left, because he was left-handed. He tested each step; a groan from seasoned wood could be his undoing but he might have been a ghost for all the sound he made.
He must establish where his Host slept because that was ground zero.
The handle on the first door turned smoothly so he would not need to oil it. Jack felt a stab of dismay. This might mean his Host already had a guest who had paved the way and taken precedence. He dismissed the idea: he should not torment himself with such fancies. Besides, he just wanted his book back.
He switched on his Maglite. The room was spacious; two windows faced on to King Street. At three corners were iron bedsteads. Jack had been so taken up with fretting that his Host had a guest that he had forgotten he was in a school and that behind each of these doors boys would be sleeping. It only took one to detect his presence and give him away. He waited for his heart to calm down and crept into the room, the torch low.
There was no one in the bed by the window. He wheeled around. None of the beds had occupants. The blankets, like the ones in the basement, were tightly tucked in, starched sheets folded over on which were the letters: MHPS. On a cabinet stood a glass and a copy of the
Beano
, its pages curling. He opened the cabinet and ran his hand over the shelves. The cupboard was bare. He sat on the bed, perversely gratified when the springs jingled in the cold stillness. It was identical to the one he had slept in at his boarding school twenty-five years ago. Everything was the same.
Jack shone the beam at the glass: no water. No one was here. It was the last week of the Easter holidays. He had his Host all to himself. He had not brought a sleeping bag, unwilling to admit he was staying and breaking his promise to Stella. He had to stay, he told Stella, just for a few days, and to minimize fuss he would sleep here. Jack assured himself that Stella would understand.