Attica (37 page)

Sometimes, privately, Alex took her for a witch.

They made the far side in good time, even when a fog delayed them in a busy part of the tank known as the Rust-riven Roads, where she said many an Attican had fallen from the mast or rigging to end his days. The owl helped them in the fog, by hooting to warn other vessels of their intentions. When Amanda was not listening, Alex whispered to the owl, ‘At least you’re good for something.’

The owl farted.

Once they
made the far side, the trekking began. Days of it. It was sometimes tedious, sometimes exciting. They circled villages full of lumpy, plaster-covered Atticans with their sewing-machine cars. They avoided dangerous places, like mountains made of weapons. They crossed deserts of boards with dunes of old clothes and forded shallow tanks on the edges of dark plains of planks. Forests there were, of many different trees, and valleys of dust, and lanes of boxes. Sometimes there was kindness and food from local people. At other times Amanda avoided contact, knowing the region was hostile to people, both native and not. It was long and arduous yet – yet deep down in some way Alex did not want it to end.

The owl was a constant companion, sometimes on Amanda’s head, but now sometimes on one shoulder or the other. Alex was surprised to learn she had conversations with it, always just out of his hearing. Did it reply? It seemed to. He was never quite sure. It reminded him that Amanda was not quite human any more, no longer a real person. She was something else, something part fey, part human, part attic-creature. Even if he were to stay a hundred years with her, he would never really get to know her.

As she had promised, Amanda knew her paths. She took the pair of them through seemingly untrodden ways where the dust had previously gathered, unsullied by boot or claw. They left their mark on the trail. Amanda said that their footprints would remain a thousand years, gathering more dust in the hollows of the heels and in the shallows of the soles.

‘Just like the footprints of astronauts on the moon,’ he told her, but she was shocked when he explained. ‘Have you never heard of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin? They were the first men on the surface of the moon.’

‘Men
have desecrated the surface of the moon? Titania and Oberon will
hate
that,’ she told him, as if Shakespeare’s fairies were real people. ‘How could they soil the silver moondust with the mundane feet of men?’

He thought that sounded very poetic and kept the sentence in mind to pass on to his sister, when he next saw her.

One morning there was a hoar frost. A chill draught had blown down from the upper reaches of the attic and turned any moisture to crystals that glittered in the early sunlight from the windows. Young Jack Frost was about, dancing with twinkling toes on box, board and bagatelle. Alex woke thrusting the crackling blanket from him to rub his legs with his hands. It had been a cold night and he had shivered for the last hour. The owl seemed to smile at him, saying, Now the feathers come into their own.

‘You’d better watch it,’ muttered Alex. ‘I’ve had pigeon pie since I came up here, and I wouldn’t say no to owl pudding.’

‘What did you say?’ asked Amanda, rising and yawning, stretching her arms up in a big Y. ‘Did you speak to me?’

‘No, I was simply saying good morning to your owl.’

Just then Alex noticed something lying twenty metres away.

‘I know that pile of rags,’ he said, getting up. ‘He’s got himself a fox fur for a topknot.’

He walked to a heap of clothes and poked it with his toe.

‘Morning, board-comber,’ he said. ‘Like the hat.’

The Inuit carvings collector stirred himself. He had wrapped a fox fur round his head in the night. He looked up at Alex. The nose of the fox ran down the nose on the mask of the board-comber. Its dark eyes glittered. To Alex it was like addressing a boy with two heads. The board-comber looked about a hundred kilos heavier than he had before, but it was only more padding, several more layers of old clothes.

The black
bat dangling from his ear twittered, and the board-comber said, ‘I’m just about to ask him.’ He turned to Alex. ‘Did you find me any you-know-whats on the other side of the lake?’

‘No, I’m sorry. I did look.’

The bat twittered and the board-comber sighed.

‘Oh, well – never mind – so long as you looked.’

‘I did. And now I’m going home. Hey, you should meet another board-comber, my friend over here. She collects pocket-watches.’

But a funny thing happened. The two board-combers refused to look at one another. They didn’t speak. They completely ignored each other. There was a kind of shyness there, or rivalry, Alex couldn’t decide which. Perhaps a little of both? But it was obviously a professional board-combers’ thing. Board-combers didn’t acknowledge one another, and that was that. Some code of culture which was unbreakable, even for a mutual friend. The old board-comber wished Alex the best of luck and said goodbye, and the new board-comber yelled that she was ready to leave. Alex told the old one if he ever got his hands on some carvings down below, he’d chuck them up into the attic and know they would end up in good loving hands.

‘Come on!’ called Amanda in a testy tone, not looking at either of them. ‘Time we were on our way.’

‘I’m coming.’

Before he ran back to her, the board-comber he was with leaned closer and pressed three small packages into his hand.

‘For your sister,’ he whispered. ‘A gift. For your brother. And for you. For helping me find a new treasure.’

‘I
know what mine is,’ said Alex, grinning, weighing the largest of the parcels in his hand. ‘Thanks. Thanks a lot.’

Alex shook a hand that had the texture of crumpled paper.

He put the gifts in his backpack.

When he got back to Amanda, he said, ‘An old friend.’

‘Huh, can’t be that old, you’ve only been up here five minutes.’

‘Well, he helped me, just as you’re helping me.’

‘Who cares?’ she said.

Alex wanted the two board-combers to become friends, but they clearly would have none of it. He thought it a little sad that there were so few nearly-humans in the attic and those there were could not be sociable with one another. Yet, when he thought further he realised that was precisely why they were up here. They wanted as little social contact as possible. Then a chill ran through him, as he realised his own dark side.
He
had contemplated remaining in the attic.
He
was one of them, one of those who wanted to break away from people and become a loner. What had done that to him? Why had he become so disenchanted with other people?

‘My dad,’ he said to himself grimly, ‘that’s what did it.’

‘What?’ asked Amanda. ‘What did you say?’

‘My dad died. He didn’t stand a chance.’ Alex’s eyes brimmed with tears as he thought of his father, deep-set eyes ringed with dark circles from working late in the evenings, very gentle, very caring. ‘It just happened, like that,’ Alex snapped his fingers. ‘One minute he was standing in a supermarket, the next he was lying on the pavement outside. No one knew what to do. Ben would’ve,’ he said savagely. ‘Mum would’ve. But that crowd, they were useless.’

‘Your father died?’

‘Of a
heart attack, lying on the ground. Absolutely useless. Oh, they called an ambulance of course, but that came too late to save him. I
hate
that crowd. Someone should’ve done something. They just stood there. The bloody buggers just stood there and did nothing.’

Amanda stopped and looked at him. ‘Would you have known what to do?’

‘Me? I’m just a kid.’

‘Alex, most people know very little about what to do in emergencies like that – they haven’t had the training. I wouldn’t know what to do and I’m a hundred years old.’

Alex was reluctant to let go of his anger. ‘Yes, but you lived in a different time, when people didn’t know very much.’

‘I know as much as you,’ she retorted hotly. ‘What’s the capital of Ceylon?’ she challenged.

‘Never heard of it. There’s no such place.’

‘Yes there is and it’s Colombo, Mr Thinks-he-knows-it-all!’

‘Ha! Colombo is the capital of Sri Lanka, not this place Ceylon.’

‘Sirry Lanker? Never heard of it. You made that up.’

They both glared at one another as they walked along, still moving towards Alex’s eventual destination.

Finally, after a while, Amanda softened. ‘I’m just saying,’ she said, getting rid of her defiant pose, ‘that you can’t expect ordinary people in a crowd to know what to do with a heart attack.’

Miserably, he had to acknowledge this. He himself lived in a household where medical things were talked about all the time. He guessed others lived in houses where banking or bricklaying was the subject around the dinner table. It was hard though, to lose a dad to something so quick and vicious. Alex found it difficult to live in a world which could snatch a loved one away from a family so quickly and easily. What if his mum were next? Or Chloe? Or Ben and Jordy? It wasn’t fair. Someone should do something about it, because it made you want to leave such a world for good, and stay in Attica where you’d never have to face such losses. If you didn’t have anybody around, you couldn’t lose anyone, could you?

He hung his
head. ‘I’m sorry, Amanda.’

The owl clucked and ruffled its feathers.

‘That’s all right,’ she replied. ‘You should think about your father sometimes. Try to think of the good times, though. He would want you to do that, wouldn’t he? His death probably lasted only a few minutes, but he was alive and well for many years, wasn’t he?’

‘I guess.’

‘Then why concentrate on those few minutes, horrible as they probably were, when there’s a whole life to look at?’

‘I dunno. It’s just that every time I think of him, I get this image of him lying on the pavement, his eyes all wide and frightened. I just can’t get it out of my head. So I don’t think of him very often.’

‘I can understand that, but you’ve got a strong spirit, Alex, you can force yourself to remember him as he was. Did he laugh?’

‘Oh yes, quite a lot. But he could get angry too, when my school reports weren’t good. He was dead keen on education. I used to get annoyed with him for that. But he was good with jokes too.’

‘Did he take you fishing?’

‘No – he wasn’t that kind of dad. He worked too hard to see us that often. But when he had some time we’d go to the Science Museum in London – somewhere like that. He loved engines, just like me. And books, he liked books too, like Chloe. He used to share things with us.’

Amanda’s
eyes twinkled. ‘Maybe he didn’t like either, engines or books? Maybe he was interested because you two were interested? He sounds like a good dad to me. You had a lot of him. I didn’t have a father, not one who I knew, so you’re lucky you got what you did.’

Alex stared at Amanda, realising why she was a board-comber.

‘Yeah, I guess.’ He tried to imagine what it would have been like to have no father at all, not even a step-dad like Ben. ‘You had a bad time, eh?’

‘It wouldn’t have been so bad,’ she replied, ‘if they hadn’t beaten me so often …’

She shook in anger, stirring her colourful ribbons and rags: little flags of rage fluttering at the past.

Bullies, he thought. Even worse than people who did nothing for a man having a heart attack. There were bullies at his school who could make your life a complete misery. These days there were lots of kids who had no dads at home and no one thought much about it. But the bullying still went on, just the same. If they didn’t call you one name, they’d think of another: the colour of your skin, the fact that you had freckles and ginger hair, the fact that you wore glasses – anything, really. And if taunting didn’t stir you, they often resorted to threats and violence. Bullies were another reason why you wanted to escape from the world, if you didn’t deal with them.

‘Well,’ said Amanda, bringing him out of his reverie, ‘we’re here.’

He looked up. ‘Where?’ he asked, surprised.

‘That patch of darkness is where you go.’

Alex blinked hard. ‘In there? My house?’

‘That’s where you came from.’

‘Oh.’

The time had come to say goodbye.

Alex unslung
the African mask from his shoulder.

‘Well, Makishi, I can’t take you with me – you’d just become a wall-hanging down there.’

‘I do not want to part from you, Alex, but I do not want to adorn a wall.’

Alex handed Makishi to Amanda. ‘You’ll look after him, won’t you?’

She nodded. ‘I’ll wear him sometimes.’

‘Well, he’s a boy’s mask really, but I’m sure he’ll like it better here than down in my world.’

‘And we must say goodbye too, Alex.’

Alex said weakly, ‘Oh well, here goes – see you, then.’

‘No,’ she replied seriously, ‘we won’t see each other again, I’m afraid, but I did like meeting you, Alex. I haven’t spoken to a human in – oh, I don’t know how long – but I enjoyed our time together. Now you must go back to what you know, and me to what I know.’

‘You make sure that old Organist doesn’t come back,’ he said fiercely. ‘You keep those Music Makers on their toes.’

‘I will,’ she laughed. She touched his cheek with her fingertips. ‘Goodbye, Alex.’

And she was gone, a pretty creature of many-coloured rags running across the boards, heading for a forest of standard lamps.

Safe inside the forest, she turns and looks at him standing there, until finally he enters the dark patch behind him.

‘What was all that about?’ asks the owl.

Oh, you know. What if you were to meet another owl?

‘I’d scratch her eyes out.’

No you wouldn’t. It’s just that he had that
smell
, you know, of down there. That faint odour of
real world
about him. I miss my mother, and my grandmother.

‘You can go down, if you want.’

And leave you? And my lovely watches? No. But he was a nice young man, wasn’t he? Very exotic. I think he had ancestors from the Orient.

She sighs and thinks about a favourite watch which is covered in stars and moons and comes from that part of the world.