The Lion Tamer’s Daughter (8 page)

“I don't understand,” she said.

“Nor do I,” I said. “All I can tell you is this cupboard is in both places, only I've got the door open and you've got it shut, which is why you can't get out and I can. And when I switch on the lights in my place they don't come on for you till you've switched them on too. And you saw me walk through the door into your dad's bathroom, didn't you? I could do that because I'd opened it in my place.”

“It doesn't make sense,” she said.

“It's a bit easier when you're used to thinking about it,” I said. “But you've got to understand I don't know anything about your place except what you tell me. I don't know who Mr. Silvey is, or this woman who shut you in here. Why'd she want to go and do a thing like that?”

“So that she can go and flirt with Mr. Silvey. He's Father's secretary. She wants to marry him so she can stop being a governess. At quarter to six I go downstairs to read to Father, so that he can see how I am progressing with my reading, and then I must be back in the nursery at half past six for my bath, and if I'm late Miss Tarrant is furious because of wanting to be off to see Mr. Silvey. So Father lets me go at twenty-five past six. It's all right in the summer, when it's still light, but when it starts getting dark … there's that bad place on the top stair …”

I took my head away so she had to stop.

“I call it the cave,” I said. “There's something waiting round the corner.”

“I call it the black hole,” she said. “I know there isn't anything there, really, but I still can't do it. Some nights I can, but some nights it's too horrible. When it started Miss Tarrant just slippered me and sent me to bed without my supper, but one night it was very bad and I couldn't and I couldn't and she came to look for me. That's how she found out about the black hole. After that she shut me in here to teach me not to be afraid of the dark.”

“That's wicked,” I said. “You ought to tell your dad.”

“You mean Father?” she said. “Oh no, I couldn't. I couldn't.”

I didn't tell her that was stupid, because I remembered my dad asking me how I was getting on at the school at Southampton, when I was having that bad time with the bullies, and I'd told him fine. Kids are like that, I suppose.

“It wasn't because of the cave tonight,” I said. “You were late already, coming up the stairs. I'd been waiting ages.”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “He gave me a new book to read from.
Kings and Queens of England
. It was dreadful. I'm bad at reading, you see. And writing. I'm eleven, and everyone else who's eleven can read and write beautifully, but I can't. The words keep jumbling themselves while I'm looking at them. I'm good at other things. I can do sums like a boy, and I can talk French—better than Miss Tarrant, if you want to know—and I can play the piano of course, and I know lots and lots of poetry by heart, so they can tell I'm not stupid, but I still can't read and write as I should. Now Father is trying to help me. It was all right with the old book because Miss Tarrant used to go through it with me before so I could get it right, though she made me promise not to tell Father …”

I had to stop her because I'd heard the clock along the corridor strike the half past, which meant my grandmother would be on her way up to bed any moment.

“I've got to go for a little,” I told her. “I'll be back as soon as I can. You'll be OK. Remember I'll be only just upstairs in the attics.”

“You mustn't say OK,” she said. “That's horrid American. Give me a hug.”

That shook me. I don't suppose I'd hugged anyone since my mum ran off, but it was all right, apart from remembering not to pull her through the door which wasn't there for me. She hugged me like she was never going to let go, and then I felt my way out of the nursery and shut the door and turned on the lights so I could find my candle and carry on up to the attics.

Like I've said, I knew my grandmother would be looking in to check I'd folded my clothes and I hadn't been using a candle to read by. This time I got right undressed and put on my pajamas and lay in bed trying to think what to do for Adalina and how I could get her to tell her dad about this Miss Tarrant shutting her in the cupboard. One thing came to me. The
Kings and Queens of England
book her dad had given her to read from, that was on the shelves at the end of the West Passage, where Miss van Deering had said I could take books from to read. Not that I'd had it out, beyond taking a quick look at it and seeing it looked pretty boring, apart from the pictures. But maybe I could take it tomorrow and then somehow get hold of Adalina before she went to read to her dad and run through it with her, like Miss Tarrant had been doing with the other book … only she wouldn't be able to see it, not unless she got hold of it in her world … and anyway I'd have to get away out of the kitchen somehow all that time earlier, when we wouldn't have more than just sat down to our tea …

That's when it came to me, something you might have thought I'd have been puzzling about sooner, how it was half past eight I'd run into Adalina when she'd told me it was half past six she was hurrying to be back upstairs by. It was because of double summer time of course. The clocks were going to be changing in a couple of weeks, and Mrs. Corcoran in school had told us all about how it came in in the First War, to help us beat the Germans, like we were going to do again now, and how we'd stuck to single summer time after and only made it double for this war. But Adalina didn't have single summer time even, which was why there was that two hours' difference, so she must be from some time before 1914.

And then—it must have been thinking about school and Mrs. Corcoran—I saw what I'd got to do for Adalina. When I say “saw,” I mean I just started to see, because at that point my grandmother came creaking upstairs and I saw the light of her candle under the door so I shut my eyes and made out I was asleep while she poked her head round the door to check on me. As soon as she'd locked the door of her room—she always did that, I don't know why—I stole out of bed and found my sweater and trousers by feeling around and put them on over my pajamas, and my socks but not my shoes, and then waited and waited until I heard her snoring. Then I sneaked out down the stairs, not using any lights of course, just feeling my way, and what's more I wasn't scared at all, spite of the dark and the creakings, because all I was thinking about was Adalina not going crazy, shut into her cupboard without me.

How did I know she'd be there? I didn't, of course. It could've been just like first time I'd seen her go into the nursery, when I'd followed her through the door pretty well at once and she wasn't there because as soon as I'd lost sight of her the way through between her time and mine had closed up and I couldn't get through to her, not until we'd met on the stairs again next evening. It ought to have been like that again now, oughtn't it?

Yes, you'd have thought so, but it didn't cross my mind it would happen like that. She'd got out of sight once before, when I'd been switching off the light on the back stair, and I hadn't lost her then, though it can't have been more than a few seconds that time, and now it was getting on three quarters of an hour. All I can think is that the way through had somehow got used to staying open for us, meeting evening after evening the way we'd been doing, and then being together all that time while she was lying in the cupboard. Or maybe it was just me knowing she'd be there that made it happen. Anyway, she was there.

It turned out she was asleep. I suppose I could have left her and gone back to bed, but seeing I'd got dressed and come down to be with her I sat down with my back against the hinges and felt about and found her hand and made myself as comfortable as I could, which wasn't very. I was dead tired, but sitting there kept me awake and I passed the time thinking out the bits and pieces of what I was going to do next day. And I was glad I'd hung on, because a couple of times Adalina started to shudder and moan in her sleep until I reached in and grabbed her round the shoulders and held her fast till she calmed down.

I'd left the door open so I could hear the clock striking along the corridor and it must have been getting on twelve, my time, when Miss Tarrant came back. I didn't see her or hear her, of course, but all of a sudden something snatched Adalina out of the bottom of the cupboard and I'd only just time to let go of her hand before she went floating away. For all I know Miss Tarrant put her foot right through me to get at her. I wouldn't have felt it if she did.

The moon must have come up by now because there was a bit more light from the windows and I could just about make out how she was carried across the room and dumped on something that wasn't there and made to sit up and her clothes were stripped off of her and her nightdress put on. It was too dark for me to be sure how that was happening, but it looked as if the clothes were somehow going into nowhere as soon as they were clear of her and the nightdress sort of appeared as soon as it was over her head. She wasn't helping much, she was still that sleepy, and whoever was doing it shoved and jerked her around like a floppy doll, and then she was sent staggering off to the room with the bathtub on the wall and when she came back she knelt by the bed which wasn't there and said her prayers, and then lay down on it and curled herself up with her knees under her chin. I put my hand in hers and gave it a goodnight squeeze and she knew it was me because she squeezed back, and then I went groping up to bed.

7. The Man in the Chair

My grandmother and me had our tea six o'clock, like I've said, and neither of us was a quick eater, me being let read at meals and my grandmother liking to give each and every mouthful a thoroughgoing chew while she thought it over. Then there was Miss van Deering's supper to go up in the lift at seven-thirty, sharp, and then I'd the dishes to do before we could settle down to our crib. Now, Adalina had to be down in the library quarter to six, her time, which was quarter to eight ours, so I'd got to have a reason for being done a bit before then, and what's more, for clearing out of the kitchen.

Next day was school. I was near the end of my exercise book so while Mrs. Corcoran was writing on the blackboard I tore out the last few pages, leaving just a couple of blank ones, and I made a real mess of those doing my exercises. Mrs. Corcoran gave me a new book and made me stay in during break to do the exercises again, which I'd known she'd do, and she put my old book in the box to be pulped for the war effort. That meant I had the classroom to myself during the break.

I got my old book out of the box and held it sideways and dribbled ink out of Mrs. Corcoran's inkwell between the pages and then put it in my desk and settled down to do the exercises in my new book, using my best writing so I wasn't near finished when break was over. I asked Mrs. Corcoran if I could take it home to finish and she said yes.

When I got home I showed my grandmother the books and told her I'd spilt a lot of ink over the one and I'd got to copy it all out in my spare time. She didn't know anything about school. Kids had written on slates in her day. I settled down at the kitchen table so she could see I was getting on with it, and how slow and careful I was writing, but she liked to have the wireless on while she was cooking so I told her it was putting me off and I'd better go and do my writing up in my room in the attics, and I'd listen for the clock on the landing and be down by six. She didn't say no to any of that, so I went up and finished the exercises from that morning, and then read for a bit and went down. I ate my tea faster than usual and did all the dishes that was ready to do and then I told her I was going back up to carry on with the exercises as long as it was still light, so she could listen to the wireless.

She didn't like it. She never liked change at the best of times, and besides it meant missing a bit of her crib.

“How long is this going on then?” she said.

I had forty pages to do, I told her, so if I did four each day that would make ten days. (No, I'd no idea what I was going to do beyond that, but by then the double summer time would be over so that story wouldn't wash anymore because it would be dark already.)

“Well, I'm going to give that Mrs. Corcoran a piece of my mind, next time I see her,” she said. That bothered me, but there wasn't any getting out of it now. So I went up the back stairs and through the red baize door, but instead of going on up I carried on and round the corner past the main stairs into the West Passage, where the shelves were which Miss van Deering had told me I could take books to read from.
Kings and Queens of England
was there all right, standing out from the others with its bright blue cover and gold letters on the spine, and nothing like as dusty as most of them either. When I opened it, there it was, in neat slanty writing inside the front cover—“To Adalina on her eleventh birthday, from her father, 1st October 1897.” So now I knew which year she was in.

I went back past the main stairs and hung about by the red baize door waiting for Adalina to show up. I wasn't exactly scared, but I was nervous and excited. I had the feeling I was making things happen, instead of things just happening to me the way they usually did, and what's more I was seeing that they happened the way I wanted. And I fell to wondering how many people might be going up and down those stairs in Adalina's time, and I couldn't see them and they couldn't see me. I wasn't scared by that, either.

She came creeping down the stairs at last, and I really mean creeping. I didn't see her till she got to the corner at the bottom, and then she didn't see me because she wasn't looking my way. She sort of drifted along in tiny slow steps with her body all hunched together and her head turned sideways like somebody was just going to hit her. I thought she'd jump when I touched her elbow but she just turned slowly round and stared, like she didn't remember who I was.