16
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.
He caught a flash of white above the bed-head. Colin. He read the label.
‘Thank you, Colin,’ he whispered. ‘Who’s been lying in my bed?’
At the foot of each bed, against the wall, was a wardrobe – like a coffin, Jack remarked to Colin. It was the wrong thing to say to a seven-year-old boy who had nightmares and wet the bed. Inside the wardrobe was a row of wooden hangers; below, drawers for underwear and a rack for shoes. Perfect.
If she had approved this visit, Stella would insist he wore latex gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints. Jack was not bothered about leaving fingerprints because he left no clue that he had been there.
He hid his biscuit tin of treasures at the back of wardrobe. Tokens to remember his Hosts by, he explained to Colin. On top of this he laid the book, sad that he could not leave it in plain view on the bedside cabinet. He was rereading Howards End, he told Colin.
He ran his light over the other beds. They belonged to ‘Jimmy’ and ‘Steve’. Jimmy was halfway through William the Conqueror by Richmal Crompton, but Steve didn’t read, unless you counted the well-thumbed book of logarithms, which Jack did. Steve’s compass in a brass casing said that out of the window was south. Jack knew this but, although fond of imparting facts, he kept it to himself.
The other dormitories were unoccupied, the beds neatly made. The names on the beds offered him company of a sort: ‘Chris’, ‘Bob’… Only two beds lacked a label and there was no glass on the side cabinet. The informality of the names surprised him; his own school had disapproved of diminutives and nicknames.
His Host did not sleep on this floor. If this was like his boarding school, customs from when the house had been a family home would linger and staff would sleep in the attics. His Host was staff. On the upper floors the staircase narrowed to a plain set of treads with a handrail. There were more passages and dormitories off the landings. He paused on each floor but did not sense the presence of a single soul. No seven-year-old boy remained dispirited at the school in the holidays, sitting listlessly on his bed writing brave and upbeat letters to his mother that he never sent.
At the top there was a corridor to the left, but opposite this was a door with a lock. Feeble light defined three shamrock-shaped holes carved above the panels, perhaps for ventilation. Ground zero.
He took his wallet from his inside coat pocket, flicked out his bank card and swiped it down the crack between the door and the jamb. He teased and shifted it with minute movements to locate the end of the bolt. Jack had never opened a door with a credit card before and was relying on having seen it in films. It didn’t open.
He returned the card, pocketed the wallet and, determined his Host would not defeat him, risked the torch. He was rewarded by a glint above the lintel. He lifted down a silver Yale key.
The door swung silently inwards to a passage like the others, but with a thick carpet. He put back the key where he found it, stepped inside and shut the door. He must rely on his wits. Jack felt truly alive.
The air was warmer and he smelled recently cooked food, something fried; he imagined egg and chips or fish fingers, typical school food. He had a rush of saliva; he had forgotten to eat.
He turned off the torch. He must familiarize himself with the house through touch, smell and acute listening. Ahead, as his eyes adjusted, Jack saw a blurred line of yellow. Someone was in the end room. He felt every nerve in his body as he crept towards the light.
He recalled a door on his left and felt for the handle. Inside he switched on his torch. Instead of a spartan dormitory he was in a kitchen with chessboard lino tiles and pale blue cupboards and Formica surfaces. A table was draped with a plastic cloth patterned with sumptuous blooms in seventies colours of oranges and browns. A yellow roller blind was up and looking out he could see shops on King Street and in the distance the railway and the dark mass of trees in Ravenscourt Park. No more trains tonight; the colleague he had swapped driving shifts with would have stabled the last train in the Earl’s Court depot an hour ago.
There was a noise. He switched off the torch. Too late to hide behind the door; there was nowhere else to hide. Jack moved stealthily away from the fridge which, an ethereal pale figure in the dark, would reveal him in silhouette. It happened again. He placed it. Rain. Gusts of wind swept drops against the glass – like a smattering of gravel thrown at the window. A storm was forecast for dawn. It was early. Jack breathed and put his torch back on.
Brown crockery was stacked in a wire-framed dish-rack; the cloth draped over the mixer tap was still damp. He tipped the lid on a rubbish bin: crushed packaging for fish fingers – spot on. He opened one of two free-standing fridges and light blazed into the room. After the bedside cabinets, he expected the shelves to be bare, but they were stacked with blocks of cheese, pork pies, an open packet of bacon, milk and orange juice and a bowl of congealing baked beans. One of the packets of pork pies had been split; two were gone from the pack of six. Jack hesitated, his mouth watering. He shut the fridge. He did not eat the Hosts’ food, it was impolite and as they had a mind like his own they would miss it and he would have to leave. Or worse. He brought his own provisions when he came to stay; tonight he had been too eager and had not thought of food. Never mind, he’d find his book and be gone by the morning.
The next room was furnished like the dormitories: there was the coffin wardrobe and iron bedstead and a cabinet on which there was a glass; this one was full of water. The wardrobe was not shut. He hooked it open with a finger. Pleated black skirts hung beneath starched white shirts with knife-sharp creases on the sleeves alongside two black jackets. An unofficial uniform intended not to cut a dash but to make the wearer invisible: the perfect attire for a Host. But the woman he had seen in the street had not struck him as a Host. He prided himself on knowing straight away.
On the rack were two pairs of pristine lace-ups, fringed tassels dangling. Substitutes for when her present shoes wore out. She was person of practical mind like Stella, who always wore the same sturdy boots. Only his keen eye knew they were not the same boots.
The cold truth sank in. The woman had access to his secrets. She might have known he was watching. He had not followed her here. She had lured him.
Jack was alive to the trap: everything was precision-placed to show the slightest change. By her bed were no books, magazines or newspapers. Few Hosts were readers: they acted out their imaginings. A cream plastic clock – the kind that came free with a stationery order – was three minutes fast. Something else. Jack shone the torch. A framed photo. A young family squinting in full sun at the camera. A gawky-looking couple, the man slightly out of focus as if he had rushed into the shot, his pose typical of a photograph snapped on a timer. The woman, conversely, seemed anxious to be off, perhaps to make tea or put sun cream on her pale children. Some maternal task had been delayed for the sake of freezing a perfect moment in time.
His Host was not in the photograph. Hosts didn’t have families; he should know, and Jack had glimpsed enough of her to find no connection between the gamine, hawky-featured child standing by the father and the dolorous middle-aged woman whose bed this was. There could only be one reason why this picture was here.
It was a trophy.
All of Jack’s daytime selves – the man Stella Darnell thought could clean better than any operative or the skilled driver who taught novice drivers on the District line – had gone. This night self took risks, with emotions dulled and senses electric. A stranger to those who knew Jack’s other selves.
A voice warned Jack to return to his home with the owl door knocker, get into his own bed and sleep until the morning sun warmed his face.
He turned the handle and opened the door.
He was high over a city. He took in office blocks, terraces of houses, shops on high streets, some bisected by winding crescents and long straight roads. He saw dead-end streets, the sprawling acreage of a municipal park and a half-full gasometer on the horizon. He came lower and saw pedestrians crossing at zebras or dodging cars and buses. Traffic halted at lights and lorries clogged up an arterial road. A river wound through the middle of the conurbation, past a water tower, the blues, greens and metallic greys of the water intimating murky depths and the reflected sky.
Jack tuned into humming, intermitted by clicks. Out of a tunnel came a silver train. It clattered over a section of criss-crossing tracks and slid into a station. Mechanically Jack moved a closed fist towards him, coaxing the lever, bringing the cab to a halt at the correct place on the platform to allow the passengers off.
The attic was the width of the mansion. Jack recognized the metal cone shade from his own school. Like those, it cast an insidious circle of light that dampened the spirits. Now it mimicked the sodium glow of a London sky at night and revealed the largest architectural model Jack had ever seen.
A hatch was raised in the river and an old man, homely in a wool cardigan over a flannel checked shirt, rose like Poseidon. With bony fingers, he adjusted wire spectacles and bent to see the train – on the Piccadilly line – pull out of the station and journey off to the west; the whine Jack had heard earlier rose when it gathered speed.
Jack felt queasy. He shrank into the shadows and willed himself into the cab. He did not drive Piccadilly trains.
‘She’s running late, should be at Acton Town by now but there was an earlier hitch. Some fool couldn’t stick it and bailed out. “One under”, they call it. Life is to be treasured. Agree?’
Jack’s veins ran cold; the man knew he was there. ‘Ye-es,’ he managed.
‘The infrastructure’s under pressure, needs maintenance.’ The old man dipped back into the river and reappeared at the far end of the model. Precariously straightening, he continued, ‘Tunnel’s perishing. Foundations require shoring up.’ He spoke in rasping breaths and leant on a ledge at the perimeter of the model.
‘I could take a look?’ Jack stepped into the light. ‘I know a bit about tunnels.’
The man nodded. The train was at the limits of the model, a space painted black like a void. He began a slow shamble around the cityscape. Jack smelled piss and his own father flashed into his mind; then, just as quickly, he was gone.
The model, on a base just over a metre high and perhaps five metres square, filled the attic. The base was boxed in, Jack was impressed to see, with drawers and cubbyholes labelled with materials for redevelopment and repair. Beneath a work table on the other side of the room were stacked cardboard, ply, tin, lengths of wire and panels of MDF. Bags of sand were piled like a flood defence. Sacks of cement and plaster sagged beside a rack holding sheets of glass. Small pots of enamel paint on a shelf were gradated in order of colour, white leading down to black. The old man had everything needed to maintain a model of such size and detail.
Jack found a trapdoor beneath the model; he scooted along a crawl space on his hands and knees, trying not to inhale the odour of ammonia or consider why his hands and trousers were damp. Between a bundle of wiring clamped with a plastic strap he found a hatch; he pulled down the door and stood up.
To the east was a looping span bridge and to the west an outcrop of land that would become an island when the tide came in. Chiswick Eyot. Jack felt a stirring of excitement. He was downriver from the Bell Steps in Hammersmith and could climb the slippery stairway to Hammersmith Terrace and walk along Black Lion Lane to the subway tunnel under the Great West Road. He shut his eyes and breathed in the warm air, heavy with slick river mud and heard an aeroplane heading for Heathrow and the honks of geese flying in a ‘v’ down river.
It was the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. The model was not for architects or engineers, trees were not circles on sticks, buildings were not blocks of white folded cardboard, perhaps with windows and doors pencilled in. It did not rely on symbolism to get the point across and nor did it provide the bland specificity of the planned developments exhibited in town hall foyers to ignite the imagination of those who would inhabit or use the proposed buildings. This model was a precise imitation of life.
There were lights in some houses; residents were still up at this late hour. A van like those used by Clean Slate was travelling along King Street where a miniature witness appeal notice signalled a traffic accident. Soon the van would pass Mallingswood House where a light in the attic dimly glowed. Grass in Ravenscourt Park was of different greens, diagonal browning strips detailing the desire paths of short cuts. Coarse weeds, nettles and buddleia sprouted from concrete ballast supporting the riverbank on the south side below St Paul’s playing fields. Jack picked out road markings, a granite drinking trough for horses, a yellow salt bin: faithful renditions of street furniture. From his A–Z journeys Jack knew their positioning was accurate. There were buses, lorries, tankers and vans. Some of Stella’s fleet. The only exception to the veracity of the miniature urban landscape was the cars. They were all family saloons and they were all grey.
The sides of the tunnel by Barons Court station were crumbling and when he peered inside he saw sifts of plaster dust on the track, the rails lit by a sprinkling of light from the pockmarked roof.
‘How old is this?’ Jack enquired.
‘Companies don’t honour contracts.’ The man was fiddling with the mesh fence around the tennis courts in Ravenscourt Park. Again Jack thought of his father, who in his last years neglected personal hygiene. He had let him help with his work, what little there had been of it.
‘It’s wear and tear. We could repair it, but the plaster of Paris is perishing so will undermine the work. You’re better off demolishing it and reinstating with new material. More trouble, but worth it.’
‘Good lad.’ The man rubbed his hands. ‘Get on with it then.’
Jack had won the contract. He ducked out of the model and went over to the work table. He contemplated the tools hung from hooks at its side. All he needed was here. He returned to the model and lightly ran his fingers over roads, the points of parapets and turrets, feeling the solidity of rounded kerbstones and the roughness of the tarmac. He tackled the tunnel mouth with an exploratory tug; it held fast. From the hooks, he selected a scout knife with an ivory handle. ‘We must excise this without damaging the surrounding area.’ He teased at the plaster with the tip of the blade.
The old man was tightening the nets in the tennis courts; he must trust Jack.
The blade was sharp. Jack caught it on his thumb and broke the skin. A bead of bright red blood welled up.
A key scratched in the lock of the door at the other end of the passage.