The Wolf in the Attic (13 page)

Jack is standing in the street looking up at the sky, and the snow gathers bit by bit on his hat. He does that for what seems quite a long time, and then gently touches me on the shoulder and we resume our walk, more slowly now.

‘An infidel,’ he says slowly, ‘is a pejorative – it is a rather nasty word used to describe someone who does not believe in the same God as you. But believe me, Anna, Tollers meant it in jest.’

‘Oh, a joke.’

‘Well, not quite.’ He smiles around his pipe. ‘Our friend is a Papist – a Roman Catholic, and he has always been faintly scandalised by my atheism.’

‘What’s that?’ I ask, puzzled.

Jack sighs a little, and looks me up and down with his head cocked to one side. ‘I don’t believe in a God, Anna.’

‘Really? How interesting. I thought everyone believed in God.’

‘Well, most say they do, I suppose.’

‘I pray to God all the time, but I’m sure He doesn’t listen much. I never considered that He might not be there at all. I just thought He was busy, or that I was too wicked to help.’

Jack sets a hand on my shoulder as we walk along. ‘If there were a God, He would not find you wicked, Anna, I am sure of that. And I pray too, from time to time. It is a thing I cannot help. It is a need that is embedded in us all. That is man’s condition. He must always look to something greater than himself, be it a deity, or a king, or a myth. To believe that the world is just as we find it, with nothing of the numinous at its heart; that is intolerable. It simply throws the fact of our own mortality in our faces, and Man cannot bear too much reality, to quote Eliot.’ Then he stops. ‘Bless me, my dear, I’ve started to lecture you. Do forgive me.’

‘That’s all right.’

I like it when a grown-up talks to me like an equal, like a real person. It does not happen much.

‘I know Pie is only a doll, but I love her, and she…’ I hesitate. ‘She makes things better. So even if she is not a real person, I am glad she is here. It’s like that, isn’t it?’

Jack raises his eyebrows. ‘My dear, you have it in a nutshell.’

‘So, there is no God, but people feel better believing in Him.’

‘Which would be a fine thing,’ Jack says, ‘if only they would let everyone else believe or not believe in peace. Belief leads to religion, and there we have the start of all the trouble.’ He laughs. ‘I am so glad Tollers is not here, my girl; you would have him spitting smoke by now.’

‘Well, I don’t care what people believe. I just want to be left alone,’ I say.

‘And I say Amen to that,’ Jack replies gravely.

We come to a halt outside the windows of the Randolph. There is a Christmas tree inside, all lit with candles, and very well dressed people are taking tea, and waiters are moving back and forth with starched collars and silver trays. I rub my cold nose, and stare.

‘That is not to say there is not beauty in belief,’ Jack says quietly. ‘The story has a power all to itself. And I for one love a good Christmas Carol.’

We walk on. Somehow, looking in at all the people snug in the Randolph has made me feel colder, and though I don’t much care about Christmas, I can’t help feel that I am missing something, and I hug Pie close and bury my cold nose in her hair. Luca’s people around the fire in the forest were out in the cold too, but they were together, like a family. I wish I had that. I wish the Turks had left us alone and we were all still together in the beautiful city by the sea.

‘I had a brother once,’ I tell Jack. It just spills out of me. ‘He was tall, and dark haired, and he would throw me up in the air and catch me again, and he had big dark eyes. But he went away with the army to fight the Turks, and never came back. That was before we had to leave our home. I remember, though I was very small – just a baby really. Perhaps he is still alive somewhere. Perhaps he is even looking for us now. Father thinks I have forgotten him, but I never will.

‘He gave me Pie, before he left. He was in his uniform. I remember – he looked so smart. She came in a box lined with pink tissue paper.’

We walk along in silence up St Giles, and Jack sets his big hand on the back of my neck for a moment. In a thick voice, he says, ‘You are a brave girl, Anna. As brave as anyone I have ever met.’

I cannot think why Jack should consider me brave, but I am enormously pleased by his words. And I cannot figure why I suddenly blurted out all that about my brother. Perhaps it was the sight of the warm people in the Randolph taking tea. It reminded me of the drawing room of the old house, and Nikos – that was my brother’s name – standing stiff and tall before the mantelpiece, all in khaki, and with a big grin on his face.

We come to Walton Street, and the snow is quite thick now, and it is no longer the kind of day where I want to play at snowballs and run around in it. The snowman on the corner looks dingy and lost and has slumped to one side like a cripple. I feel sorry for him.

Jack kneels down in the snow beside me and takes me by the arms, staring into my face. I can smell the beer on his breath.

‘Anna, if ever you are in trouble, or you are just in need of a friend, then you must come to Magdalen, and leave a message in the porter’s lodge for Professor Lewis. Will you remember that now?’

I nod, wide-eyed.

‘Do not let them fob you off or hunt you out. Stand your ground like I know you can, and tell them to find me.’

‘I will, Jack.’

To my surprise, he hugs me.

‘If there is a God, then I am sure that He is looking down on you my dear,’ he says into my ear. He stands up again. ‘I will leave you here. I don’t want your father to entertain the notion that I spend my days promenading around the streets with little girls, intriguing though they might be.’ He grins, and holds out his hand.

‘Merry Christmas, Anna.’

‘Merry Christmas Jack,’ I say firmly, shaking it.

He lifts his hat to me, then turns on his heel and walks away followed by the ribbon of his pipe smoke, a faint blue trail in the falling snow.

9

T
HERE IS A
storm that night, a great noisy wind that leaps up through the streets and whips the snow into a thrashing fog in which the gaslights are mere orange flickers, and the roads empty of traffic and people, and there is a great blow-down of soot from our chimney which sends it all over the front room, like black snow. We try to clean it up, father and I, but after an hour he throws down his duster in disgust and we step down into the basement to make tea over the spirit stove and huddle in the lamplight with blankets over our shoulders. Above us, the tall old house groans and creaks in the wind, until I almost imagine it is swaying. It is like being in the hold of a ship while the masts and sails are battered overhead, and the sea swirls in great waves about the hull.

I hear a small, repetitive banging from far upstairs, and almost I think I must be imagining it, because father appears not to notice. He sips his tea without much relish and scans yesterday’s paper, while I read about E. Nesbit’s sand-fairy, and wished I lived by the sea again where I could perhaps find one on some hot summer’s day and persuade it to grant me wishes.

The basement has windows below pavement level, and we both look up at the sound of running feet, and an explosion of shouting outside. I see shadows flicker past in the snow and the gaslight, and the shouting seems awfully fierce. Father raises his face from the paper. ‘What the Devil?’

We climb up the stairs and he opens the front door, holding me back with his free hand. As soon as the door is opened the wind seizes it, and wrenches it back, and in comes a freezing blast of snow and bitter air. Father swears in Greek and drops his blanket to grapple with the door, and I can hear the shouting outside, farther away now, and I peep out around the doorway, squinting into the snow.

Shapes and shadows, disappearing down the street towards the canal. The shouting fades away. Father pulls me back inside, glares out at the empty street, and growls, ‘Drunken louts,’ then slams the door shut again.

H
E TUCKS ME
up in bed later, which he has not done for a long time, and sits by my bedside fiddling with the candle for a while. I think perhaps he is going to read me a story, or better yet, tell me one – the way he used to tell me tales of Troy and the gods of Olympus, and make them come alive in the quiet room until I could almost picture the tall walls, the windy plain, and the hosts of warriors with their chariots and brazen shields and long spears.

But he sits there saying nothing, looking very gaunt in the candlelight. His eyes have sunk into his head, and for a horrible second it seems almost that he has been transformed into an old, old man. Priam, mourning his dead Hector. I have never seen him look so worn and worried.

He takes my hand. ‘Anna, do you remember your real name?’

I shake my head, and feel like my ears have pricked up like a cat’s.

‘I changed it when we came to England, the better to fit in. Nothing makes an Englishman’s lip curl faster than a foreign moniker, believe me.

‘Our right and true surname is Sphrantzes. You must remember that. We come from an old, proud family. Georgios Sphrantzes, my namesake, was the best friend of the last Emperor of Constantinople, Constantine himself. He was there at the fall of the city, and escaped afterwards, but lost everything in the sack. He ended his days a monk, and wrote the story of the great siege, and his sons who survived continued the fight in the Peloponnese until that, too, fell. Then they moved to our city, and there they lived and their line prospered and continued under the rule of the Turks. And that is us, our family, Anna.

He smiles, and is so far away as he does that I am almost afraid to touch him.

‘They were not all bad, the Ottomans. I used to go hunting with Rahmi Bey, the Governor, and he was a good and decent man. We all lived in harmony for years, Greeks and Turks and Jews and Copts and all manner of faiths and peoples. There was tolerance. There was peace. But the War changed things. All the old friendships were lost, and our world came down in blood and fire, and it is utterly destroyed now.’ He clasps his hands together as if praying. ‘I tell you this that you should not entirely forget who you are.’

He bends and picks up one of my shoes from the floor by the bed. Shreds of damp newspaper are sticking out of it. He stares at it.

‘England may be our home, but we will always have that difference about us, you and I.’

I am so surprised I cannot speak. But confused too. Father is always telling me that we are English now, and that our life is here. This does not sound like him. It sounds like an old, lost man looking back on a life that is over. I reach out and take his hand.

‘I know, Pa,’ I say. Perhaps I do. I do not mind being different so much, but I feel neither Greek nor English really. I am somewhere in between.

He smiles at me, and rises, before bending to kiss me on the forehead.

‘You were always a sharp one,’ he says. ‘What are you reading?’

‘
Five Children and It
.’

‘Again? I will leave the candle with you so you can read on for a while, but don’t forget to blow it out.’

He straightens, and listens to the storm that is blowing about the roof of the house. ‘I am going downstairs now. I have some papers to look through.’

‘Be careful on the stairs, Pa.’

‘I will. And I told you to call me
Father
, did I not?’

‘I like calling you
Pa
. But it isn’t genteel, is it?’

‘Not really. But we’ll keep it between us and God. Good night Anna.’

He leaves the room, shutting the door behind him, and I hear him clump down the creaking stairs in the dark while the wind howls about the walls.

I
T IS THE
middle of the night, the longest night, and I wake up in the dark with the wind still roaring and buffeting us like a drunken giant wanting in. There is that banging again, far above. I hug Pie close to me and listen to it, and will it to go away but it does not. And suddenly there is a different sound which brings me bolt upright in bed – the shriek of smashing glass.

I sit there in the dark, breathing hard, clutching Pie. I am sure I know what it is – the open skylight in the attic has broken again. It is that which has been banging all night in the wind.

I lie back down, and the banging still goes on, like a patient man with a hammer grimly striking the roof again and again. I wonder if Pa can hear it, but as it goes on and on, I am sure he is not in his bedroom, but has fallen asleep down in his study as he does so often these days.

At last I can bear it no longer. I fumble on the bedside table for the matches and strike one, then light up the candle.

‘Jack called me brave,’ I tell Pie. ‘And I would not be much of an explorer if I was too frightened to climb up into that stupid attic.’

Pie looks at me with her black glass eyes.

‘There’s nothing up there but the wind, Pie. I will pile up some boxes and close that skylight, and even though it’s broken, at least that dratted banging will stop.’