Attica

chapter 14

Visit to the Underworld

Looking up, Alex could see a tall young stranger in long capes and hat, with thick leather boots. The stranger had two rats, one in each side pocket of his coat, their little heads poking out. On his back was a huge rucksack, homemade by the look of it, with a wooden frame built to fit his broad shoulders. His face was as creased as a well-used map.

‘N-n-no,’ stuttered Alex. ‘M-my sister’s on the end of this line – she’s down there in a house.’

‘Bad move,’ growled the youth, taking off his rucksack. The two rats leapt out of his pockets and came to peer down the hatchway at the landing below. ‘You ought to get her out of there, Alex.’

‘Y-you know my name?’

‘I met your brother last night. You won’t know what I am, but they call me a bortrekker. I know the ways of this world, Alex. I know where to go and that’s not one of them. Trapdoors – if they’re not to your own house – lead only to even stranger places than here. Get her out, now. Get her up or you may never see your sister again.’

Frightened by these words, Alex yanked on string. To his utter horror, it went completely loose. He reeled it in, finding a frayed break on the other end. The string had snapped. Chloe was down there alone.


There was a light on the landing of the house. It seemed it was evening. Chloe could see a faint pinkness to the sky through the landing window. For a while she simply stood there studying her surroundings. It seemed a very ordinary house. Very ordinary. A sort of mushroom colour emulsion on the walls of the landing and going down the stairs. A carpet of similar hue. At the bottom of the stairs sat a tortoiseshell cat, washing itself. It looked up at her when she moved and meowed softly, before continuing with its ablutions. It looked a gentler cat than Nelson. Along the landing itself were several doors: bedrooms and the bathroom no doubt. Everything was nicely painted or varnished.

‘All right,’ muttered Chloe to herself. ‘Let’s see who or what’s downstairs.’

She prepared herself for a confrontation. Those who owned this house, who lived here, would not take kindly to an intruder. At least she was a young girl and not a large threatening man. However, if confronted she didn’t want to launch into a story about Attica. No one would believe her. She decided she would make an excuse for being in the house and play it by ear. Once she knew where she was in relation to her own home, she would go back up to Alex. They could mark the trapdoor, look for Jordy, find the watch, and all three of them return down through the house to freedom.

It was as simple as that.

‘If that woman comes I shall say I just found myself here,’ she reasoned, ‘and have lost my memory.’

She didn’t like telling lies, but there was no other option. If the police were called at least she would get home and she could convince her mother of the truth: she would eventually believe her daughter. Ben would be a tougher nut to crack, but Dipa would win him over.

Alex’s voice floated down to her as if from many miles away.

Chloe began to descend the stairs. The cat stopped washing and regarded her with interest. One of the stairs suddenly creaked rather loudly. A woman somewhere in her forties – the same that had put the box in the attic – came out of a room and looked at Chloe. There was a frown on the woman’s face, but it looked like one of those frowns some people wear permanently. She stared up at Chloe with penetrating eyes.

The cat very sensibly wandered off into another room, leaving the humans to their rituals.

Chloe steeled herself for an angry or shocked attack, but none came; instead, the woman’s voice had an exasperated tone to it.

‘Oh, there you are. Where have you been, child? The dinner’s getting cold.’ The woman peered up at the landing. ‘And what have I told you about leaving on the landing light? Electricity costs money.’

Despite being stunned by her reception, Chloe’s natural instinct was to defend herself.

‘I didn’t switch it on.’

‘Please, Sarah, do give me some credit for intelligence. No one’s been up there but you.’

‘You were. You went to the attic.’

A befuddled expression came over the woman’s face, then she simply said, ‘Oh. Well, do hurry up. We’re all waiting for you. What have you been doing in your bedroom? On that silly computer, I expect. I told your father when he bought it we’d never get you away from it. Why can’t you be more like your brother? He gets out in the fresh air.’

The woman was quite thin and anxious-looking, wearing a black dress, pearls and high-heeled shoes. Her hair was tight around her head, almost like a black swimming cap. She was dressed as if she were going out for the evening. Suddenly she reached out and pulled one of the ends of Chloe’s string which had been tied in a bow. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ The woman stared upwards at the length of string, which led to the open trapdoor of the attic. ‘Have you been up there?’

‘No, you left it open.’

The woman was clearly very irritated by the puzzle.

‘Why have you tied yourself to that string?’

‘I – I just wanted to.’

‘You really are a most peculiar child.’ She stared hard at Chloe, before adding in a low voice, ‘I’m glad you’re not mine. I’m glad none of you are mine. If I had my way …’ There was a call from inside the room: a deep male voice.

‘Are we going to eat, or what?’

The woman put on an attempt at a smile, pushing Chloe into the room before her.

‘Here she is. Playing computer games again, George. We should really limit the children, shouldn’t we? I try to be reasonable about this matter, but it’s become an obsession with them.’

Chloe said flatly, ‘I was not playing computer games.’

The man, balding, a little overweight, wearing a suit, white shirt and tie, pointed to the chair next to him with his dinner fork.

‘Never mind all that now. We’ll be late for the theatre. Sit down, Sarah, and eat your dinner.’

Chloe sat, absolutely bewildered by all this. She had been willing so far to put everything down to mental illness on the part of the middle-aged woman. But clearly everyone else in the room accepted her as one of the family. One of their own. Were they all mad? It seemed unlikely. Perhaps she’d wandered into a television programme, one of those reality shows? Yet there was no evidence of cameras or cables or any of the trappings of such.

And who really was Sarah? Would she come wandering into the room at any moment, a mirror image of Chloe? Or was there no Sarah, just a family waiting to trap one, to draw a Sarah into itself like a fish into a net, with lures of commonplace gatherings and home comforts?

The whole thing was mystifying.

It frightened her more than a confrontation would have done. Something surely lurked around the corner: some terrible truth that would swallow her up with its awful ordinariness.

‘Sarah, eat your vegetables,’ said the woman, over-sweetly. ‘They’re good for you.’

There were two other children there.

A boy about half Chloe’s age and a girl not more than three. The girl looked impish, with golden curls and a grim smile. She gripped her spoon as if it were a club and she was about to beat the overcooked cabbage to death. The young boy had a snub nose, freckles and a dirty collar. A football boy. A woodsy, ditchy, scouty, catapulty boy. He seemed wholly taken up with his dinner, shovelling the food down his throat with gusto. The father, George, looked a bit pompous, rather flabby and soft about the gills, but nice enough. He smiled at Chloe.

‘You should listen to Jane,’ he said. ‘Not watch too much TV.’

‘Not television,’ Jane said, ‘video games.’

‘Oh, yes,’ replied George, wiping his mouth on his napkin. ‘Video games. Never understood the interest.’

‘That’s because you’re no good at ’em,’ interrupted the boy with his mouth full of food. ‘You’re hopeless.’

‘That’s enough,’ ordered Jane. ‘George, why do you encourage them to be so insubordinate?’

‘In-sordy-nut,’ said the little girl and banged her spoon on the table. ‘INSORDYNUT.’

‘That’s enough, Chantelle,’ said George mildly. ‘Get on with your dinner. Don’t you like it? Jane cooked it specially.’

‘She means I’m cheeky, don’t she, sis?’ the boy said, grinning at Sarah. ‘She always uses them long words.’

‘Who’s she, the cat’s mother?’ asked Chloe, repeating an old family saying then, realising she really was speaking out of turn, said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I should think so,’ Jane said, pursing her mouth. ‘Really, George.’

‘We ought to be going,’ said George, putting down his napkin and looking at his wrist-watch. ‘We’ll be late. Can you put the children to bed, Sarah? Don’t wait up for us, we won’t be in ’till one or two. You’ll be all right, won’t you? You’ve got my mobile number. I can’t switch it on during the performance, but I will at the interval, and after, of course. Leave a message if there are any problems.’

‘She’s not putting me to bed,’ growled the boy. ‘I can put myself to bed.’

George said, ‘You’re to go up when Sarah tells you.’

He left the room. Jane swept the faces of the children with an icy stare. ‘One of these days …’ she muttered.

‘We were here first,’ growled the boy. ‘You came after.’

Jane glared at him but left the battlefield.

George came back into the room wearing his own coat and carrying another for Jane.

‘It’s snowing,’ he said. ‘I knew it would. Do you think we should cancel?’

Chloe said quickly, ‘No – it’ll be all right – Dad. You go.’ She glanced out of the window. ‘It’s not coming down too hard. It won’t settle. Look, I think it’s clearing already.’

He patted her head with chubby fingers. ‘You’re a good girl, Sarah.’ Then in a whisper as Jane went to find her gloves, ‘I know it’s hard at the moment, but she’ll come round.’ He nodded at the doorway through which Jane had disappeared. ‘We’ll win her over, you’ll see.’ He smiled at what he clearly believed was his daughter. ‘You’re growing up fast. You’ll soon be a woman yourself and then you can be friends. I don’t think Jane has any objections to friends at all. Look after the other two. Sorry to leave you with them, but you know we don’t get out often, and Jane does love her theatre.’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Chloe. ‘Honestly I don’t.’

‘You’re a good girl. I always said so. Now, would you mind going and hurrying Jane up. We’ll be late. She’s lost her gloves.’

Chloe felt daunted at this small task. Hurry Jane up? Why, the woman disliked Sarah intensely. Chloe was a very bright girl and she quickly decided there was jealousy there. Jane was jealous of the children, probably because they had a past history with George – their father – and she was new on the scene. Chloe didn’t think Jane was naturally aggressive. She was terrified of having to fight for her place in an established household. Realising this she went into the bedroom where Jane was still searching for her gloves.

‘Can I help?’ she said. ‘Where did you last see them?’

Jane looked up quickly, a suspicious expression on her face.

‘What are you smiling at? Have you hidden them?’

‘No,’ replied Chloe, ‘I wouldn’t do such a thing. I don’t dislike you, you know. Look,’ she faced Jane full on, ‘this is difficult for all of us. We – us children – are worried about you, whether you’ll like us or not. That’s why we’ve been a bit awkward with you, I suppose. I’m sorry for that. We could start again. We could easily be friends. It would be nicer for – for Dad – for George – if we were. Would you be my friend, please, Jane?’

Jane stared at her for a long time.

‘I can be nice,’ she said at last. ‘If people are nice to me.’

‘Well,’ Chloe laughed, ‘you know what my baby brother is like – he’s a rotten little ruffian and we won’t get much niceness out of him, but he’d be the same in any family. As for Chantelle, well, she’s been spoiled by Dad a bit, but if we’re firm with her, she’ll be all right once she goes to school. It’s you and me who have to make the running in this.’

Chloe paused, wondering how far to take this, but finally put out her hand.

‘Would you shake on it?’

Jane looked down, seemingly uncertain. ‘This is very silly.’

‘I know, but I want to try to help us all get on better together. A handshake – well, it’s symbolic, isn’t it?’

Again Jane looked at her for a long while, before saying, ‘If you’re playing a game with me …’

‘I’m not, I promise,’ replied Chloe, hoping that the real Sarah would prove to be as receptive to tenderness as she would be. ‘I’m just fed up with all this sniping. I get enough of that at school with other girls and I’m sick and tired of it.’

Jane’s eyes went a little moist. ‘So am I,’ she said. ‘Weary to the bone with it.’

Suddenly, they were shaking hands and Chloe was flushed with triumph. Oh, please don’t let me down, Sarah, she thought. This will be so much better for you.

George came into the room, saying, ‘What the heck is happening up here? I said we would be late—’ He stopped in the middle of the room and stared.

‘What are you two up to?’ he said, looking puzzled. ‘Making a pact?’

‘You could say that,’ murmured Jane.

She went forward and straightened his tie possessively, then realised how this looked and turned back nervously towards Chloe.

But Chloe knew the move had been instinctive. Jane had been using these tricks for some time now and they were hard to throw off. Both females knew what had happened and Chloe was determined it would not interfere with this new relationship she had set up.

‘You two have a good time tonight,’ she said, smiling broadly. ‘Off you go. Don’t worry about the kids.’

Jane looked relieved and smiled.

‘Didn’t I tell you she was a good girl?’ George cried.

‘You did,’ agreed Jane, a smile almost reaching her eyes.

‘My two best girls,’ he said with genuine affection. Then a look at his watch and, ‘Come on, Jane. We must go.’

They all bounded down the stairs together and George opened the front door. It had a frosted stained-glass panel depicting a robin on a bough. He took one more look at the snow, then stepped outside.

Once the door had slammed, Chloe turned to the boy.

He said aggressively, ‘I ain’t going to bed yet.’

‘No one’s asked you to.’

Chantelle, still at the table, was hammering her cabbage with her spoon, sending green bits flying all over the tablecloth. Chloe was at a loss for a moment, then went in and gathered her up in her arms. Chantelle kicked and struggled until she was put down, saying, ‘I can do it. I can do it.’

‘Upstairs, young lady,’ ordered Chloe.

Amazingly the youngster did as she was told. The cat had appeared again and got its fur pulled by Chantelle on her way past. Chloe followed, calling up to Alex as she went beneath the open trapdoor, ‘I’ll be a while yet.’

She bathed the little girl, found a nightdress and put her into it, and then told her to get into bed while she let the bathwater go. Chantelle obediently trooped off to one of the rooms and was sitting up in bed sucking her thumb when Chloe joined her.

‘Story!’ said Chantelle, taking her thumb out for a second. ‘Big Red Boots!’

When Chloe simply stood there and looked helplessly around, Chantelle got out of bed, found the book she wanted and handed it to her. Chloe sat on the side of her bed and read the battered, dog-eared pages. It was a tale of an elf who had been given big red boots for his birthday. Even before Chloe had finished the story, Chantelle was asleep, her golden curls decorating the pillow.

Chloe went downstairs again and found the boy watching television. She still did not know his name.

‘You’re next,’ she said.

‘I don’t have to go up yet.’

‘You’ll go when I tell you to.’

‘Bossy boots.’

Still, she left him there for a while and studied the programme herself. It was a quiz show. Chloe didn’t recognise it, but then she never watched quiz shows. They just bored her.

‘What’s this called?’ she asked.

‘You know.’

‘No I don’t, or I wouldn’t ask.’

He was lying on the floor, his head propped up on his elbows. He turned to look at her. ‘It’s called You Know. That’s what it’s called. You daft, or what?’

‘Don’t be cheeky.’

‘Bugger off.’

‘And don’t swear. I’ll – I’ll tell Dad.’

‘Don’t care.’

Chloe knew this was going nowhere. She had a younger brother who could be just like this one at times. She tried to focus on why she was down here, in this house. What she had to do was find out where the house was located. It was no good asking this boy. He would look at her as if she was stupid. Instead, she got up and went to look in the drawers of a bureau that stood in the corner. If she could find a letter, she could study the address.

‘Those’re her drawers, they are,’ said the boy, without taking his eyes from the screen. ‘You’ll get it if she catches you.’

Chloe paid him no attention, but continued to root around in the bureau, without success. She went off and had a look in the kitchen, knowing that people often open their mail at the breakfast table. There were no letters there either. Finally she had an idea. She went back to the boy and said, ‘Have you seen that letter I got the other day?’

‘Never took no letter.’

‘I didn’t say you’d taken it. I only asked if you’d seen it.’

‘That one I give you from Jimmy Caghill?’

‘Yes. That one.’

‘You stuck it under your mattress. You daft, or what?’

Chloe dashed upstairs and found the room which obviously belonged to Sarah, then after a long search, found the letter. She was disappointed. It had no envelope. When she opened it she read: ‘Sarah. I reckon your really something. You want to go to the pictures sometime? I could meet you tomorrow if you wanted. James (Caghill).’ There was no address at the top and Chloe thought James Caghill was a dud. As if she would sell her pride so cheaply as to ever go out with someone who didn’t know how to use apostrophes and wrote your instead of you’re.

When she left her room the boy was coming up the stairs.

He seemed very reasonable now. ‘I’m goin’ to bed. You have locked the door, haven’t you, Sarah?’

‘Doesn’t it lock on the latch?’

‘You’re s’posed to deadlock it too.’

After making sure the boy really had gone to bed she went downstairs quickly and found the key in the lock.

Chloe deadlocked the front door and when she went around to the back door found it had been securely bolted.

Then she began a serious search of the house. After an hour it was obvious that there were no letters in the house. There were no bills or bank statements either. This house was quite devoid of printed paper. There was nothing on the phone to say where they were. She did find a name and a date on the first blank page of a book of Burns’ poems which read ‘Isabel Sutherland, 1932, Dunfermline’, but it was a very old book and had probably been bought second-hand with the name already in place.

‘This doesn’t feel like Dunfermline,’ said Chloe to herself.

As she was replacing the book on its shelf the front door rattled.

Chloe picked up the nearest heavy object, a stone carving. She held it like a club, ready to use.

Her heart was beating fast. She was beginning to realise that she was going to get nowhere in this house. It was far too ordinary yet at the same time, very very strange. It could be a house anywhere in England, Scotland or Wales. And the fact that they thought she belonged here frightened her more than anything else.

Who had tried the door? Had it been the wind, or was there someone out there, trying to get in? It could have been anything from flesh-eating monsters to unexpected relatives. Both seemed equally scary at that moment. Or it might even be someone like the TV licensing authority, for this family was too average not to be wholly innocent of all crimes and misdemeanours. Chloe did not want to get any further involved in this family’s affairs.

She put the heavy carving in her jeans pocket and went upstairs to check on the children. They were fast asleep, both of them. The temptation now was to go, to leave them all to it, but something kept her there until she heard the parents’ car returning. Then she ran down the stairs, opened the deadlock, and rushed back up again. She heard them come in, talking softly. Chloe had already put a chair under the hole to stand on, so that she could climb up and pull herself back up into the attic. This she was doing as the woman came up the stairs. She and Jane exchanged quizzical glances, then Chloe was up and through the hole.

Once up in the attic she slammed the trapdoor shut.

‘You were quick,’ said Alex. ‘Did you come up because the string came off?’

‘That came off hours ago.’

‘No – just now. Wasn’t it just now?’ Alex’s question was addressed to a tall boy in a long raincoat with many capes, a big floppy hat and big boots. ‘Less than a minute ago.’

The youth said, ‘But she’s been down there.’

‘Anyway,’ Chloe said, ‘it didn’t work. I did spend hours down there, but I couldn’t find out what town it was. And they were expecting me, Alex. They called me Sarah and said I was one of the family.’

‘You can’t just go down anywhere you please,’ said the youth in the capes. In each side pocket he had a rat both of whom kept looking up at him when he talked. ‘It’s just throwing a spanner in the works. You don’t fit. It’s a wonder you got back without causing all kinds of damage. Going down through a wrong hole creates a turbulence. It’s to do with matter and space. See,’ he explained, using his hands to describe the contours of creatures in the world below, ‘there’s a perfect empty shape for everything that moves and breathes down there, from an elephant to a mouse. Each elephant fills an elephant space. There be only so many elephant spaces. If there was one more elephant than spaces it would mess up the entire universe. Same if it was a mouse, or a bee – or, like you, another human.’

‘Oh – oh,’ said Chloe, upset. ‘They kept calling me Sarah. Do you think I displaced a girl called Sarah? Will she find her – her space again?’

‘Who knows?’

Chloe was quite distressed about this. On the one hand she felt that Sarah was well enough out of such a family, wherever she was. But then again, who was she – Chloe – to judge for another girl? Perhaps there were good reasons why Jane was such a harridan. You couldn’t just walk in on a family and start making judgements as to what was right and wrong. In many ways they were a nice enough family.

‘Well,’ said Chloe, ‘I’ve done it now and there’s nothing much I can do to repair the damage. I’m certainly not going down again …’

‘That would be disastrous,’ agreed the boy in capes.

‘And just who are you?’ asked Chloe, now that she’d regained her composure.

‘He’s a bortrekker,’ explained Alex excitedly. ‘He treks the boards. And,’ his voice rose triumphantly, ‘he knows where Jordy is!’

‘You do?’ cried Chloe. ‘Oh, where is he?’

‘Yonder,’ replied the bortrekker, pointing. ‘In a forest of tall clocks. He’s safe enough, for the time being, though I have to warn you, the cold Northern Draught is coming. I do believe he be waiting for the pair of you. Saw you coming days ago, but you must have wandered off the straight and narrow. Easy thing to do, up here.’

‘Then we’d better be on our way,’ Chloe announced. ‘Come on Alex, we must find Mr Grantham’s watch.’ Chloe bent over to pick up her pack and felt a heavy lump in her pocket. It was the little statuette from the house below. The one she had kept in case she needed a weapon. She hoped to goodness that removing it was not going to cause all sorts of chaos and confusion in the world below: altering the tides, the climate and weather, the phases of the moon, the hours of daylight. But she wasn’t going to ask the bortrekker. He seemed to like being the voice of doom. She would rather not know.

Chloe quickly transferred the stone figure to her backpack.

Later, after the bortrekker had left them to continue his odyssey across Attica and they were en route to the forest of tall clocks, she took the carving out again and studied it. She saw now that it was of a beautiful green walrus. Chloe admired the carving, then stuffed it back into her pack again

A little later they came across a bees’ nest in an old suitcase.

‘I know how to do this,’ she told Alex, taking off her pack. ‘We need some cardboard from an old cardboard box. We could do with some women’s tights or stockings.’

Alex easily found her some cardboard. It wasn’t difficult: Attica had cardboard boxes all over the place. He didn’t find any tights, but he did discover a box with some old lace curtains in. These, Chloe said, would be absolutely perfect for the job. She put on a hat and threw one of the curtains over her own head and shoulders and bid Alex do the same. Chloe looked like a Spanish bride in her curtain, with Alex the bridesmaid. Their faces were protected against stings, as were their hands when they put on gloves.

Chloe rolled up a piece of the cardboard, then asked Alex to light one end with a match. Once it was burning she blew it out, but continued to blow on the end, making it glow like charcoal embers. She then ordered Alex to lift the suitcase lid. When he did so, the bees began to come out. Chloe lifted her veil enough to blow through the cool end of the cardboard roll and made the smouldering end glow again. Smoke came out and was wafted into the nest. This had a calming effect on the bees and Chloe and Alex were able to steal some of the honey without getting stung. They later ate it by sucking it out of the honeycomb. It was the most delicious meal they’d had in their lives.

‘Oh, that was good,’ said Alex, patting his stomach afterwards. ‘That was really good.’

‘I agree,’ replied Chloe, licking her fingers. ‘Very good.’


Alex had had a long chat with Makishi about jungles and wildlife in the tropics. He was feeling content and quite fulfilled. He lay back and looked up at the sky, a heaven made of timber. He liked the russet colour of some of the higher rafters way, way up in the ether. Then the dark ones to the edges: the pale softwood lower ones. Vast. Immense. A massive vault which soared to measureless dizzying altitudes. How peaceful it was up there. What was that? A bird? Something very like a bird: a black shape winging its way through the network of spars and beams. Too high really to recognise exactly what it was. Did it matter? Not really.

It was as he was lying there that a scent came to him on a draught. It was the kind of smell which might have a bushman murmuring, ‘The rain is coming!’ The old Alex didn’t know what the smell was, of course, but deep within him a new Alex was emerging. Fledgling though it was, it gave voice to its feelings and cried out, ‘There’s a storm coming!’

Alex huddled against one of the strong oaken pillars which supported the roof, knowing he and Makishi were safe in the protection of its lee.