All stories

When Lucy ran in and said she’d heard Uncle Evan speaking German I knew exactly what to do: go up to the attic and find proof he really was a Nazi. They would shoot him, and I’d miss the puddings and sweets, but I wouldn’t miss the way he drank father’s wine or ordered mother about as some skivvy.

My sister was supposed to hoot like an owl when he came back to the house. Perhaps she did, but I missed it completely, kneeling there transfixed by the uniform coat of a general in the Wehrmacht I found in his suitcase.

The light coming on overhead sprung me to life, and I shoved back the uniform and pushed the case under the bed. I was safe hidden behind tea chests and boxes by the time he mounted the stairs, stood there at the summit gaining his wind. His legs lit bright from below, his face made bulbous and obscene under the harsh light of the naked bulb. A single month with us and he’d changed, gone from an upright middle age into corpulent old. Now his pencil moustache was a thicket, the rest of his body doing its best to match the walrus look.

He moved to the desk set under the pale light of the dormer windows, and with a sigh squeezed his buttocks between the spindling arms of the old swivel chair father had fetched from the bank. It was now a waiting game. Dinner was only an hour, and there was no way that Evan the Guzzler was going to miss one of those.

I nearly knocked the tea chests over when he told me to come out.

He said, ‘Footprints in the talc, but none leading back down.’

He laughed as I crept into the open.

‘The boy,’ he said. ‘I should have known.’ He turned his head to gaze at the bed, at the corner where the valance wasn’t hanging straight.

‘Fetch it out for me, go on.’

He slipped into the uniform coat and buttoned it, put his shoulders back and stood there in our attic on the south coast of England, this proud Nazi German.

‘Now the photo,’ he said. ‘Top drawer of the desk.’

It was a black and white photo of a German officer done up proud and smart in his uniform, medals gleaming on the left half of his chest. His round fleshy face was cut in half by the bulging moustache.

‘Major General Ernst von Voss, my half-brother. A brutish look to him, no? The brass hats have this crazy notion there’s a resemblance.’ He patted the bulk of his belly, then plucked at the cloth almost gone taut. ‘Few more meals and I’m ready. Few more plum duffs and it’s one way ticket time.’ He spoke a few words of German, faintly chuckled and said, ‘I think I just said ‘Good morning Mein Fuhrer. Not, it’s not a bomb in my suitcase, but I am pleased to see you.’

Baby steps

Karen had worn her sadness like a shroud since we lost baby Kyle. Sometimes, over the years it would lift, for a time and I’d see her smile and there she was, my girl, laughing in the sunshine again and it seemed like we’d be ok after all.

But slowly it would settle around her again, gradually, like dust that weighed her down and obscured her smile from me. I would find her time after time in Kyle’s little attic bedroom that we’d painted sky blue and sunshine yellow for him. Sad little shadow-Karen hunched on the bed while in my head, vibrant, glowing, radiant Karen danced around the room in dungarees, showing off her bump, brandishing her paintbrush.

We’d sit together a while and then I’d lead her, sadly back to the world again.

Suddenly, though she stopped visiting him, stopped mentioning him at all. It was as if he’d never existed. The photo of her Dad holding him, grinning proudly through his walrus moustache which had once held pride of place on the mantlepiece disappeared and, until six weeks ago, we never spoke of Kyle, my boy who’d left as unexpectedly as he’d come.

And then, one day, Karen was back. I walked through the door and she ran to me, took me in her arms she was my laughing and dancing girl again. I let myself be swept along in her excess of joy. She was talking, saying words that I couldn’t, at first, take in She was talking about Kyle again - for the first time in over a decade.

But something was wrong. She said she’d seen him that afternoon, that they’d stood together at the window together and watched the sparrows squabbling for crumbs, like they used to. How he was wearing his tiny trainers and his trousers with ducks on.

I listened for a moment and took her gently by the hand. Kyle would be twenty now, if he were here, I explained. And Karen was gone again. She said nothing, but the light flickered out. Over the next few weeks I knew she went up to his room, though she was always careful to be downstairs when I walked in through the door; flustered, guilty, defiant.

It was her sister who suggested that Karen went on holiday. Had a break for a while. Karen hadn’t wanted to, but Melanie insisted. When insisting didn’t work, she had forced her. Her husband Mike dragged my Karen screaming from the door of our little boy’s room and I stood there and watched them do it.

The house was silent. For the first time I went alone to his bedroom. I climbed the spiral staircase he had stumbled down on that last day of his little life and opened the door. The room was coated in a thick layer of dust that muted and saddened it. But there on the floor, a trail of tiny freshly-made footprints lead to the window, where the sparrows squabbled for crumbs.

Mrs Ledbetter found herself abruptly widowed at 55, and on the advice of her son had undertaken a hasty attic conversion, providing her with a room to rent out to supplement her meagre pension. Mr Pettigrew had seen the advert in the newsagents window ‘Room to rent. Laurel Avenue. All Bills Included And Meals Provided £95 PW.’ and promptly applied. Mrs Ledbetter, a small bird like woman, had been overawed by the hulking figure of Mr Pettigrew, six foot four, three hundred and fifty pounds, with a face overwhelmed by a walrus moustache that seemed to have a life of its own. However, his references were impeccable and he counted out two month's deposit in crisply folded twenty pound notes. ‘I will take my meals in my room, if you would be so kind’ he asked Mrs Ledbetter, and she had nodded mutely. The kitchen table would barely accommodate his girth, so she considered the three times daily hike up and down the stairs to the attic as preferable to squeezing up next to him in the galley kitchen. ‘And I would like to add some shelving to the walls, to accommodate my collection.’ ‘Collection?’ she asked. His moustache rustled as he replied ‘I collect books, in particular 19th Century Hungarian crime novels.’ Mrs Ledbetter’s was no reader, owning only a handful of Mills & Boon novellas, but she agreed to his request.

He proved to be a model tenant. His rent appeared each Friday morning on the hall table, and he returned his empty plates to the kitchen each morning. She rarely saw him, passing only occasionally in the hallway, each time him clutching a small pile of books to his chest. They continued this way, until after six months Mrs Ledbetter's son came to visit. Upon returning from the bathroom he told his mother there was a distinct bulge in the bathroom ceiling. ‘What’s your lodger got up there?’ her son asked, and she replied that it was just his book collection, it was probably nothing, but maybe she’d get the loft conversion people back to check it, just to be sure. When she next saw Mr Pettigrew she tried to raise the subject of the sagging ceiling, but his face was flush with excitement ‘I’ve found it’ he declared, holding aloft a slim red volume. ‘Ten years I've been searching for this. Ten Years. And now it’s mine’ he cradled the book like a newborn. ‘The Mysterious Footprints, by Endre Vorosmarty. A classic.’ Mrs Ledbetter opened her mouth to voice her concerns about the ceiling, but Mr Pettigrew brushed past her and headed up the stairs. ‘I must go and catalogue this immediately.’

Mrs Ledbetter went into the bathroom and ran a bath. She chewed her thumbnail as she looked up at the bulging artex above her. A shower of dust fell upon her face. ‘What the -’ but the dust was followed by a loud cracking sound and the dust became shards that became chunks of plaster. She covered her head with her arms and cowered on the floor as the ceiling rained down upon her. The air was thick with dust but as the last of the plaster fell she peered over the side of the bath and saw a solitary red leather book floating on the scummy surface.

The moon shone through the cracked ancient window. Thick layers of dust obscured any view and gave the moon an ancient hue as its beams fell onto the bare wooden floorboards. No one had been in the attic room for 40 or so years. Not since the family fell on hard times and could no longer support the hired help. The thin veils draped around the edge of the window swayed gently in the breeze that was squeezing itself in through the crack. Covering the rickety iron bed frame in the corner of the room was a large, one white sheet. It cloaked the soft mattress beneath, hiding the indentations of past guests.

Flowing up through the darkened stairwell, soft beams of light cast shadows on the walls to reveal several enormous gild framed pictures of men with over indulged bellies and walrus moustaches. Their chubby face poked out of the tops of uniforms adorned with medals and finery. Alongside them, delicate wives dressed in luxurious furs and dripping with gems. The frames clung to the walls – the inhabitant’s eyes looking down on the ghosts of the house.

Further down, the stairwell opened into a huge entrance hall complete with marble floor above which hung a once impressive chandelier whose beauty was now obscured years of neglect. The source of the light was the great dining hall, to the left of the entrance hall. A rack of coats hung just outside the room – all jumbled as they had been flung on to the hooks in haste. No longer could the house support a butler to welcome guests as they arrived. Visitors had to now fend for themselves. Muddy footprints covered the marble floor and scattered this way and that. There had obviously been a flurry of activity on that wet night.

Moving further across the hall, the sound of a record turning over and over as it had reached its end on the gramophone could be heard. As the needle jumped, the last bursts of the song yelled forth every now and then.

In the middle of the room, a huge dining table was groaning under the weight of platters of rich, exotic food. A suckling pig, complete with apple. Mounds of grapes nestling alongside huge wedges of blue veined cheeses. Cut crystal glasses full to the brim with the most ruby looking wine. All of this was fresh and overflowing and ready to be devoured by the muddy footed guests. Those elite who carried the right genes and who moved in circles with kings and queens. But where were those guests? Why was the gramophone still looping to a silent room?

On the far side of the room, a thinly paned French door was ajar…inviting visitors to the blackened night beyond. Given the light of the room, it was not possible to see what was out there but the open door allowed sound to seep into the room…a terrifying sound.

I hated having to do it, but she was dead, and my little brother Steve sure as hell wasn’t going to and I didn’t think Mum would cope with it right now, so off I went to clean out Grandma’s house. She’d always been a hoarder, wall to wall crap, but every piece of junk had a story to tell, and it felt so strange sifting through it all without her there to tell them. I sat on the floor, cradling the photo of Grandad with his dumb old Walrus moustache, remembering the last time I’d seen them together. It had been Lou’s christening – such a lovely day despite the rain. In fact maybe the rain had made it; rather than scattering in little pods of usual suspects around Uncle Phil’s garden, we’d been confined together in the marquee, and ended up telling and hearing tales of childhood, lost relatives, relatives we’d wished were lost, until Lou started bawling and the party had slowly dispersed. It was the first time I’d really felt that Steve and I were proper grown-ups. I guess the new generation of which Lou was the first would do that. Anyway, I’d kissed them both goodbye, along with the rest of the gang, never imagining that the next time I’d see Grandma would be at Grandad’s funeral. Top down, maybe that was the best plan of attack. I hooked the stick onto the hatch, and watched the folding staircase descend. It had always fascinated me as a child, how it swung down and stacked together, leading up to the attic room. This room had always been her hideaway, though her arthritic knees had stopped her going up there the last 5 or 6 years. It was where she’d worked on her various projects; sewing, origami, painting, and the scatter of tiny threads and scraps of paper under the layer of dust carpeting the floor were a colourful and multi-textured illustration of years of fiddling. The attic, like the rest of the house, was overflowing with stuff, but here, at least, it mostly seemed to have a purpose. Boxes of paper here, wool there, fabric offcuts under the desk. Then I saw them, the little set of mysterious footprints from the window to the desk and back again, and eight tiny fingerprints hooked over the edge of the desk, as if someone very small had been clinging on to peer over to watch her work. But the footprints looked fresh...I walked over to the window, and found it to be unlocked. Curiouser and curiouser, I thought, temporarily distracted from my grief by the mounting mystery. I swung the window open, and looked out. Left, right, up, down, then left again. As I swung my head right once more a movement in the tree caught my eye, and I saw, to my shock, a tiny being, of adult proportions but baby sized, climbing, ape like, in its branches, and disappearing into a large hole in the trunk.