The Lion Tamer’s Daughter (7 page)

“Adalina,” she said. “It's horrid, isn't it?”

I jumped, like she had. It was weird, because I'd heard her all right, but not the usual way, in my ear—no, right inside my head somehow.

I pulled myself together. Really stupid, we must have looked, if anyone could have seen us, standing at the top of the stairs switching our heads to and fro to talk into each other's ears.

“It's not as bad as Cyril,” I told her.

“I have to go,” she said. “If I am late … You will be here tomorrow?”

“I'll try,” I said.

We worked the top switches, both of us, and this time I went with her right along the corridor, waiting for her to turn the switches off again, though the lights stayed on even so. When we got to the nursery door she gave me a prim little smile and took hold of the handle and turned it and pushed, only the door didn't open.

Instead, her hand went through the door when she pushed, just sliding in, like a spoon going into thick soup, and then the whole of her slid through and was gone.

6. Miss Tarrant

I wasn't scared, like you'd have thought, seeing Adalina walk through the door like that, and I was sort of prepared for it by that business with the switches. I could see from that, without having to think about it, that things were happening for her that weren't happening for me, and the other way round, and the same with going into the nursery after her the night before, and finding it all shut up and empty. But it was weird all the same, seeing her slide out of sight like that. I tried the door handle, but the door was locked, which was how I'd left it the night before, and the door was an ordinary hard door I couldn't have slid into to save my life.

But like I say, I wasn't scared, because Adalina just wasn't scary. She was as ordinary as the door. I'd held her hand in mine and I knew she was real, and that was all there was to it. I didn't bother unlocking the door and going in after her, because I knew I wouldn't find anything different from the night before. Instead I went back along the corridor and lit my candle and switched off the lights and went up to my room and got into bed and blew out my candle and lay there in the dark, thinking about it.

You'll have worked out by now, I daresay, that we came from different times, Adalina and me. I hadn't, though I could see her dress was old-fashioned. But then you've probably read stories and seen stuff on TV about people from different times, and the only book I'd read like that was
The Time Machine
where it doesn't go into this business about not being able to change anything in any time except your own. Besides, in stories and things you don't have to believe it, it's just an idea you go along with for the sake of the story. But when it's happening to you you're trying to think about something you just aren't set up to believe in, and that's difficult for anybody, leave alone a kid of twelve who doesn't know much about anything.

In the end I decided there were two Theston Manors, just the same as each other, and in the same place, only two different lots of people lived there, and they couldn't see each other or hear each other, so they didn't know about each other and they couldn't change anything at all in the other one's Theston Manor. Only because both of us, Adalina and me, had been scared stiff by the same thing—what I called the cave—and at the same time in our two different Theston Manors, our fear had somehow sort of joined up and let us through to each other. But only as far as each other. We still couldn't change anything in the other one's Theston Manor. We couldn't even hear each other, talking the usual sort of way, because voices are sounds and sound travels by moving the air around—I'd read about this in a
Pears' Cyclopedia
back at the orphanage—and it was no use me stirring the air in my Theston Manor with my voice because it still didn't stir anything in hers. Mind you, I didn't get that far all at once, that second night, but that's how I was thinking by the time, four or five nights after, when she was really late.

I'll have to go back. You'll have spotted I had a problem. I couldn't go telling my grandmother night after night that I'd got a headache or she'd have decided I was sickening for something, and then she'd have started dosing me with Syrup of Figs, which was always the first thing she tried—she'd have given me Syrup of Figs if I'd broken my leg, most likely, just to be doing something till the doctor came. So around quarter past eight I made out I was getting sleepy. I don't suppose I was much of an actor, because she just looked at me, sharp, and said, “All right, off you go, you great baby. It's a heap better than coming up and finding you dithering on them stairs.”

So that was all right, and I was there before Adalina again and we went up together holding hands like before, and when we got to the top she trotted off into the dark. But next night I'd done the dishes early enough for my grandmother to get out the cards for crib, so all I could do when it was getting toward time was start yawning and playing all wrong until she lost patience—she'd a short temper at the best of times—and gave me a clip over the ear and sent me off. I really raced up the back stairs and Adalina was there already waiting so we ran on up together and it seemed she was just about on time. I managed it that way for the next few nights, hurrying through the dishes so as to get a few hands of crib in, and then running off, but it meant I couldn't hang around on the stairs explaining to Adalina what the problem was or finding out about what was bothering her end, so I hadn't got any further with working things out by the night she was really late.

A good ten minutes I must have hung about waiting before she showed up. Interesting point, come to think about it. I was there all that time, where I'd stood night after night scaring myself silly with ideas about what might be waiting for me round the corner, but now I wasn't scared at all. I was just worried stiff about where Adalina had got to. After a bit I switched off the light on the back stairs and let go of the door and felt my way up and round and switched on the other light, no problem at all, and then I went on along round the corner where she used to show up from. This brought me out at the top of the main stairs, which I've already told you about, when I was sneaking down that evening to read
Ivanhoe
. I'd had my candle then, but they were even creepier now, with only a bit of light coming from round two corners behind me, where I'd left the top light on, a great hollow cavern of a place I couldn't see much more of than just where I was standing and the bit of blackout sagging above my head, so I didn't see Adalina coming until she'd pretty well reached the top.

Really like a ghost she looked now, coming up those last couple of steps so slow, so dragging in her long pale dress, and not a sound from her hard boots on the marble, or not that I could hear in my world. She was crying.

“What's up?” I said in her ear.

“I'm going to kill myself,” she said. “I'm going to jump out of the linen room window.”

“What for?” I said. I knew where the linen room was, if it was the same one my grandmother and me went to get fresh sheets from when it was time for changing our old ones. I'd had a look out of the window, too. Being at the back of the house it was three storeys down to the paving of the back yard.

“She'll put me in the cupboard and I'll go mad, like Mamma did,” said Adalina. “Mamma killed herself, you know. She drank laudanum, but I haven't got any.”

“Well, you're not jumping out of any window,” I said. “I'm stronger than what you are, and I'll stop you.”

“She'll put me in the cupboard and I'll go mad,” she said.

“No you won't, because I'm coming with you,” I said.

“She won't let you,” she said. “And she'll tell Father about you.”

“She won't know I'm there,” I said. “She can't see me. You're the only one who can see me.”

She stared at me, and I realized she hadn't worked it out far as I had.

“You're … you're …,” she began, but she couldn't bring herself to say it.

“I'm as real as you are,” I said. “Real to you, like you are to me. Look, is that door open or shut?”

“Shut, of course,” she said. “You can't go in there. That's Father's bathroom.”

“Just watch,” I said.

I opened the door and walked in. It was a bathroom, like she'd said, but bigger than my room in the attics and with a bath you could have washed a horse in, and shiny brass taps and fittings. I came out again and shut the door behind me. She was still staring, but just amazed, not scared.

“And you're not going mad neither,” I said, “not unless both of us are. I tell you, she won't see me any more than I'll see her. She'll never know I'm there, holding your hand. Come on, give it a go now.”

She let me take her hand and lead her on round the corner and up the stairs. She was in a sort of daze and I had to put her fingers on the switches so she could turn the lights on and off in her world. I stopped outside the door I'd seen her go through.

“I'll go first,” I said in her ear. “Then you'll know she can't see me. You're coming, though, aren't you? You're not going to chicken out on me, Adalina. And you've got to remember not to look at me direct, in case she spots something's up. Right?”

She nodded and I opened the door and went in. I left it open with the light still on outside, so I could check she wasn't going sneaking off to the linen room. This room—the nursery—wasn't any different to how I'd seen it before, just the cupboard and the couple of chests and the bare boards. Like I said, there wasn't any blackout up, and no bulb in the fitting, so I left the door open and the light on in the passage, for me to see what was happening. I didn't think anyone would spot it from outside, because the windows were at the back of the house with just woods and fields beyond.

You've got to remember that as far as Adalina was concerned I'd just walked through a closed door, like I'd done with the bathroom down below, and now she couldn't see me anymore. I watched her sort of brace herself and then she took a deep breath and put out her hand and took hold of a handle that wasn't there in my world and pushed open a door I'd only just opened and walked in. She was pretty good, just one quick peek at me to check, and then looking up and over my shoulder at something else.

Someone else, it had to be, someone who was telling her off, from the way her face crumpled and her mouth puckered and she started to cry. I ran over and put my arm round her shoulders but before I could get hold of her properly she was snatched away by something I couldn't see and rushed across the room to the cupboard and held there for a moment and then shoved through the door, through the actual solid wood, so I couldn't see her anymore. I don't know why this was so shocking this time, seeing I'd watched her doing the same sort of trick, sliding through the nursery door a few nights back. Maybe it was how it was done, real violently, the way nobody's got any call to behave to a kid, and there wasn't a thing I could do about it, though it all happened so sudden I don't suppose I'd have tried anyway. I just stood there gaping, and then I came to my senses and went and opened the cupboard door.

She was lying huddled into the bottom of the cupboard under the coat hangers, with her mouth a bit open and her eyes staring up. She didn't look at me, either. Then I remembered that the door wasn't open for her and she'd still be in the pitch dark so I knelt down beside her and took hold of her hand and gave it a squeeze. She jerked and screwed herself away, but then she got it that I was still around doing what I could and she squeezed back to show she understood. And she stopped doing that crazy stare and went normal.

Next I shuffled myself round on my knees till I could reach my head in and put my mouth against her ear and ask her what was going on. But when I switched over so she could tell me she just said, “Wait. She's still there.”

It was uncomfortable kneeling like that so I twisted myself round, not letting go of her hand, and tried to get her to make room for me by sitting up a bit, but she turned her head away and from how she pushed up with her other arm I realized there'd got to be something stopping her, clothes on the hangers maybe, so all I could do was settle on the floor in front of the cupboard and hang on to her hand.

After a bit of that I got worried about the light still being on and no blackout so I let go of her and went and switched it off and felt my way back to her. I couldn't see anything at first, and then only where the windows were, and it was a bit creepy sitting there knowing there wasn't just Adalina in the room but this other person, the one Adalina called “she,” who'd slung her in the cupboard. Then I thought it had got to be the same for her—I was there and she couldn't see me—and I wondered if there wasn't somehow I could give her the creeps like she was giving me, and I was still thinking about this when I felt Adalina moving around and then running her other hand up my arm until it had to stop where the door was in her world.

That shook her, and no wonder, finding it was just my arm poking through the wood. She tried to let go of my hand, but I hung on and gave her a squeeze and twisted myself into the cupboard and felt around with my other hand until I found her head and got my mouth against her ear.

“It's all right,” I said. “I'm here. What's going on?”

“She's gone,” she said, when we'd sorted ourselves out the other way round.

“How long for?” I said.

“I don't know,” she said. “Ages. It's so she can flirt with Mr. Silvey.”

“Look, I don't understand much about any of this,” I said. “Far as I can make out, we're in two different places, only they've both got this house in them, but I can't see or hear anything in your place except you, and it's the same for you.”