Six Impossible Things (5 page)

Fred heads off to do his holiday homework, chomping on a piece of wedding cake sample – it’s our only snack food – and I go back upstairs to feel bad all over again about my visit to the attic.

I
T HAPPENED ABOUT A
week ago, when my mother was getting frantic about ‘rodents’ and the impending council health inspection, which would mean she could, or could not, start operating her business.

We’d both been hearing the bumps in the night and even though it sounded more like possums or cats than rats to me, I said I’d check it out. That night I dreamt of morose health inspectors, large rats in suits carrying clipboards, stepping around the happy little attic rats who’d come down to party in the kitchen, and I woke to a distinct scratching noise followed by a bump from overhead. It sounded like something being dropped, and it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I stuffed my head under a pillow but heard the scratching again. I sat up and dinted the pitch darkness with my torch. Paper- sharp slices of wind were sighing through gaps in the window frames, moving the heavy curtains gently, so they looked to be breathing in and out. I shivered with cold and horror, and zipped the light around the room once more.

There was a dark shape near the door – it was Howard doing the scratching. I put on a jumper, grumbling but happy to take him out – better by a long shot than cleaning up something biological in the morning. And besides, I’ve promised him he’ll never have to suffer the indignity of having to pee inside again.

As we walked along the landing there was another distinct bump from overhead.

The next night after dinner, when my mother was elbow deep in marzipan research, I went into the storeroom and climbed the ladder attached to the wall under a manhole. Fourteen rungs. The old-fashioned rounded ones. They dug in, even through sneakers. The ladder was set out only about six centimetres from the wall. When I got to the top and undid the stiff manhole bolt, something was weighing down on the cover. It wouldn’t budge. I gave it an awkward shove with my shoulder and head, and heard a crash from the other side as something heavy hit the attic floor.

I froze. Someone had tried to block this entrance to the attic. My mind spat through a kaleidoscope of nasty possibilities – psychotic criminals, hungry rats, ghosts taking the form of small children with vacant eyes, sick little smiles and pointy incisors . . . a vampire ghost? That’s just dumb. Ghosts don’t eat. It would have to be one or the other. Enough. I gave myself a mental smack on the side of the head, started breathing again, and ventured up another rung for a look.

I zipped the torch beam around. Nothing scuttled or charged from the blackness, so I hauled myself into the space.

Like the rest of Adelaide’s house, it was large, dusty, and full of stuff – mostly trunks and wooden storage crates. A box of books had been blocking the manhole cover and had tipped sideways and spilt when I shoved. Who had put it there? I walked around checking between trunks and bits of furniture. Whoever put the box there had either used another exit to get out of the attic, or they were still here. A wave of goosebumps shivered across my skin.

There must be another hatch down into the house. I found it hidden behind a huge camphor-wood chest, but it too had a heavy box on top of it. Much as I searched around, I couldn’t find a third access point back down into the house. It was creeping me out. I swung the torch beam up and looked into the roof cavity. There was the round window you could see from the street, but I couldn’t imagine anyone getting out that way.

As the beam of light washed back down the party wall, I noticed a gap in the brickwork, about a door’s width and half its height, blocked from the other side. This was the wall separating our attic space from Estelle’s. Looking more closely, I could see the gap was blocked by flattened cardboard removal car-tons. I gave a tentative push and they fell in with a bit of a crash. I stopped breathing, but there was no response to the noise, so I crawled on through.

This was not a space for rats, or possums, or even ghosts. I saw in a glance that it belonged to a girl. Estelle. I checked again, making sure I couldn’t hear anything, and shone the torchlight around. My heart thumped like a maniac. Of course I knew I was trespassing, and not just by being on someone else’s property – no, this was a private space. Despite that, there was no way I was leaving without having a look around. I didn’t consciously decide to stay and snoop, I just did it.

There were candles everywhere – in a huge pair of blackened silver candelabras sitting in the middle of the floor, in tall crystal candlesticks, in small Venetian glasses. There was a large nest made up of brocade curtains, faded cushions and intricately patterned patchwork quilts. Next to it was a pile of books and a mohair rug.

On a small desk sat a glass paperweight, a miniature black lacquer Chinese cabinet with hand-painted ivory inlay panels – I can’t help the cataloguing, it’s all that time I spent with Posy – some very old notebooks or journals filled with delicate copperplate writing, a doll with a porcelain face, dressed in French sailor’s clothes, some exercise books and pens, a small bottle carved from pale green jade. Embroidered silk shawls decorated the walls. Estelle had tied ribbon loops onto the corners of the shawls and pinned them up with drawing pins. Overlapping Persian rugs half covered the unpolished boards. Some of the candles must have been scented because the place smelt like vanilla, and something spicy.

I opened a few of the cabinet’s drawers – a stash of lollies, some beads, a few little silk tassels, some pens and three dead Christmas beetles.

The sound of a door shutting loudly made me flick off the torch and listen as though I were one giant ear.

It was Estelle, singing loudly, the way people do when they’re attached to an iPod. She had a good voice.

Then I heard someone else, although Estelle obviously didn’t.

‘Estelle, Estelle!
Estellle
!’ Knock, knock, knock.
Knock knock knock
.

That must have penetrated because Estelle said, ‘What?’

‘ “Yes, Mum”,’ the person corrected.

‘Yes, Mum, what is it?’

‘There’s a good documentary on in a few minutes on early Renaissance art.’

‘Pass.’

‘I wish you’d speak in sentences.’

‘I’m not interested in the documentary.’

‘How do you know unless you come down and look at it?’

‘Instinct.’

She must have put her earbuds in again, because her mother turned up the volume to say, ‘
How can you study with that thing on?
’

‘I’m not studying. It’s holidays . . .’

Then her mother must have left, shutting the door after her.

‘. . . you cow,’ Estelle added.

‘I heard that.’

‘Give the woman the geriatric audiology medal,’ Estelle said.

‘I heard that, too,’ her mother said, from the other side of the door.

‘Well if you’d just go
away
you wouldn’t hear anything!’

‘If you keep listening to that thing at high volume you won’t hear anything by the time you get to my age.’

‘I don’t give a shit.’

‘Right! You’re grounded! You do not use language like that to me!’

‘I didn’t know you were still there. Why are you still there?’

‘To remind you that you
should
be doing homework. I don’t know why I’m spending money on those Alliance classes otherwise.’

‘So, stop. It’s not like I asked to do them.’

Her mother obviously gave up and left.

There was enough streetlight seeping in through the round window to allow me to creep out without tripping over anything. But then there was the problem of the packing boxes. They’d been easy enough to push through, but how was I going to manage the reverse manoeuvre? I stacked them together and leant them against the wall. I crawled through to my side of the attic and tried to slide the boxes back over the gap, but it wasn’t possible from this side. I needed . . . string. I switched the torch on and started searching. I found a long piece of cord attached to a folded curtain. I ripped it off and took it back to the gap. Climbing through again, I looped the cord around the boxes. Then when I backed through the gap I could pull and jostle them into the right position, and carefully pull the cord away from the boxes and back through to my side. I listened – nothing fell. I rolled the cord up and left it on the floor for next time.

It probably should have worried me that I was planning so coolly to trespass again, to spy. How did that mesh with wanting to be good? Not at all, apparently. Stick it on the list to worry about later.

I noticed a tiny cardboard box on the floor next to the wall. There had been a couple in Estelle’s attic, too. I picked it up: ‘Poison. Keep out of reach of children and animals. Pest Control is our business. Rodent Poison. Do not handle.’

Estelle’s parents must have had the eradicators in. I went downstairs and reported a clean bill of health for the attic.

There was another visit to the attic. But that’s the one I can’t talk about.

W
ITH FRED GONE
, I’m back downstairs, still hungry and rummaging for more food. I know it’s to do with growing so much, but there’s not a single time of the day I couldn’t happily bolt down a couple of burgers or meat pies, if they happened to be handy.

‘There’s nothing to eat!’

‘There’s bread. And fruit.’

‘We haven’t even got any good fruit. Those apples are ready for the compost,’ I mutter in a hunger-induced grump. ‘And there aren’t any chocolate biscuits, or muffins, or chips, or Shapes.’

‘They’re luxuries now, I’m afraid.’

‘We don’t even have good leftovers any more!’ I close the fridge door very firmly.

‘Because we eat what we buy now, and there’s certainly no fat in the budget to throw good food into the compost.’

She’s getting angry now, or upset, so I back off before it develops.

Our life has come to this. We’re stuck on the essentials iceberg, watching all the good stuff float past on the luxury ice-berg. They used to be joined.

When she suggests we make muesli bars I agree with feigned enthusiasm and genuine hunger. It’s not too hard. You mix oats, sugar, flour and coconut with some melted butter and honey – we use golden syrup, because it’s cheaper – press the mixture into a tin and cook it.

‘Your dad rang.’

I don’t respond.

‘I understand how you must be feeling, but at least he’s making an effort to stay in touch. Other fathers would have given up long ago, faced with the wall of silence.’

How can she understand how I’m feeling? I certainly don’t. But I can’t be bothered asking for enlightenment – it would just mean more talking. Shared adversity is supposed to be a bonding experience, but it’s not kicking in for us yet.

‘If he wanted to see me so much, he could have moved into this dump with us.’

She puts her arm around my shoulder and gives a squeeze. I lift my elbow out so she can’t get too close. ‘He’s trying.’

‘It’s his fault you’ve got to do all this,’ I say, looking around at the kitchen, the catering-sized containers of flour and dried fruit, the extra wide oven, the range of cake tins that will eventually produce those graded, multi-level edifice wedding cakes.

‘I don’t mind. I’m a very good cook. I’ve found a premium-priced, high-profit-margin niche item to specialise in. I have experience in marketing. The bank has enough faith in me to give me a start-up loan. It’s all under control.’

You can hear how relaxed she sounds.

She’s still running on the post-separation adrenalin surge. Reality hasn’t quite hit. Unfortunately, there’s only me to lend a hand when it does. I’ve googled this. She needs to express her anger so it doesn’t lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, manifesting itself in anxiety, depression and, ultimately, substance abuse.

She watches as I plough through half the batch of muesli bars.

‘You need to express your anger,’ I say.

‘Where would that get us?’ she asks, smiling for some reason.

I don’t want to go into the whole substance abuse risk scenario, in case it makes things worse, so I change the subject.

‘What’s for dinner?’

‘Vegetable and chick pea curry with rice.’

I groan, on the inside. She makes this by the vat. It’s nutritious, satisfying and cheap. That’s the official word. But I’m sick of the sight, smell and taste of it. Pasta alla-nothing-much-on-it and soup with a lot of bread are the other new staples. Juicy steaks, big roasts with lots left over for sandwiches, and once a week takeaway are fuzzy-edged memories.

She fixes her X-ray eyes on me and pounces just as I’ve settled into a nostalgic scan of my favourite takeaway food.

1 Margherita pizza.

2 Meatball sub.

3 Nachos. Hold the sour cream.

4 Hamburger with the lot. Hold the beetroot.

5 Pad Thai noodles and chicken satay.

6 Fish and chips.

‘So how was school, really?’

Fish and chips catches me unaware, my throat jams with a lump of solid tears, remembering the smell of vinegar, ripping into the burning paper parcel, the cypress pines along the edge of the park, the pier, my dad . . . how many times have we done that?

‘Fine.’

‘Talked to anyone yet?’

‘No.’

‘You will make friends, Dan.’

‘Is that an order?’

She chooses to ignore my rudeness. ‘It’s hard for people to get to know you unless you speak.’

‘I was planning to transmit messages using only the power of my brainwaves. I guess I’ll have to rethink that,’ I say. That’s pissy, but it comes out before I have time to edit.

She gives me the compressed lips, narrowed eyes ‘you’re being difficult, but I’m saving my anger for the big issues’ look.

I’m spared the next onslaught by a knock at the back door. It’s the stables guy. He looks like he’s in his late twenties, about ten years younger than my mother. He’s got a slight cockney accent – sounds like it dates back quite a while but he’s kept it cooking along because he thinks it sounds cool. A wanker for sure.