She’s Not There. Tamsin Grey
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flowers,’ said Jonah. There were hundreds of them, all over the Broken House fence, staring silently, with their purple spiky eyelashes and their downturned yellow mouths.
‘I don’t like them. They look like Bad Granny.’
Jonah snorted, but Raff’s face was strained.
‘It won’t really fall on us, you know, Raff. It’s been standing up this long, it’s not going to suddenly collapse, just because we’re in there.’
Raff nodded.
‘You can wait for me round the front, if you don’t want to come.’
Raff shook his head. ‘Don’t want to be on my own.’
‘Well, OK, come, then.’
Jonah went first, picking his way carefully along the faint and narrow path that led through the rubbish-strewn vegetation. He looked up at the house, and its boarded-up windows were like blank, daydreaming eyes, and the doorless back doorway was mouthing a silent ‘Oh’. It had been here, all alone, for a very long time now, he found himself thinking, and he tried to remember which fairy tale it was when the prince hacks through the forest to get to the sleeping castle.
Inside it was dark and cool, and it smelt of dust and bird poo. They could hear the pigeons, hundreds of them, bustling and burbling in the rafters. The back doorway led straight into the kitchen, which was reasonably solid, with a floor and a ceiling. There was a hulk of an oven, and two halves of a filthy ceramic sink lying on the floor beneath two taps. The light leaking through the entrance fell on the table in the middle of the room, and Jonah saw that there was an old camping stove on it, along with a metal teapot, a plastic lemon and a cluster of bottles and jars. By the table were two chairs, or frames of chairs, their seats missing, which made him think of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò poem. Two old chairs, and half a candle. One old jug without a handle. These were all his worldly goods: in the middle of the woods. He looked at the huge, square, robot face which had been spray-painted onto the far wall. There was a hatch right in the middle of the face, and he went and peered through it, into the mouldy smelling darkness which had been the dining room. When he turned, Raff was at the table, examining one of the jars.
‘Honey,’ he whispered. ‘Does someone live here?’
These were all his worldly goods: in the middle of the woods. Jonah joined him at the table. ‘Maybe,’ he said. There was a smoke lighter, and half a candle, and a sticky-looking teaspoon. The bottles were empty, apart from one, which was about a third full of a dark liquid. He picked up another jar and opened it, and sniffed. A spice. He couldn’t think of the name. He put the jar down.
‘Come on,’ he said.
The hallway was more hazardous, because most of the floorboards were gone. There was more graffiti, pictures and symbols, and some words, mainly names. To their left rose the staircase, still grand-looking, though one of the banisters had been broken by a fallen chunk of ceiling. Light fell through the hole left by the chunk, and they could hear the pigeons more clearly. To their right, the hallway led to the front door, which would have given onto the street, if it hadn’t been boarded up, and the fence erected in front of it. The door was intact, with its stained-glass window, and there were pegs, still, running along the wall next to the door. There was even a coat hanging from one of them. Opposite the pegs was a side table, with a bowl in it, a china one, and Raff, his fear overcome by wonder, went and dipped his hand in. He pulled out a pair of gloves, but then dropped them quickly, with a quiet screech, brushing a spider off his arm. He ran back to Jonah, and they both looked into the sitting room.
It was huge, much bigger than the kitchen. Jonah knew there had originally been two rooms, but that the wall between them had been taken down. He wasn’t sure, but he thought it would have been in the 1970s, when the house was a children’s home. He pictured it as the children’s playroom, with beanbags, and a ping pong table, and the Wendy house for the little ones. Now it was more like a cave than a room. The ceiling had fallen in, and the ceiling above it, so you could look up through the remaining beams and see the outlines of the upstairs rooms: the boarded windows, the doorways, the fireplaces, and even some patches of wallpaper. The floorboards were gone too, fallen down into the basement, along with lots of bricks and rubble from the upper floors.
Jonah jumped down onto the rubble, and a group of pigeons flapped hastily upwards. It wasn’t too big a drop, but it was easy to hurt yourself, because what you landed on tended to move. It was dark too, apart from the pool of light under the hole in the roof. He turned to help Raff down, and they crunched forwards a little way, until they reached the shaft of light. Jonah looked up.
‘It’s like a swimming pool! We could dive into it!’ That’s what Lucy had said, the day they’d crept in together and taken the photographs. As he gazed up through the remaining beams into the lopsided rectangle of blue, a tiny silver aeroplane appeared. Watching it crawl its way across to the other side, he remembered a film they’d watched on TV one afternoon, a really old film, called Jason and the Argonauts. While Jason tried to find the Golden Fleece, the gods watched him from an airy white palace, in their swishing togas, through a blue rectangle of water.
There was a tiny plop, and Raff said, ‘Yuk!’ Jonah looked down. The gob of poo had spattered just in front of them. He looked up again, to the beam that formed one edge of the rectangle. It was covered with pigeons. He could see their tails sticking out, black against the blue.
Jonah peered forwards into the darkness and saw the bed. It was an olden-days bed, with four wooden posts. It must have plummeted down from the floor above when the ceiling fell in. Had there been someone asleep in it? What a surprise they must have got. Lucy had gone right up to it and taken pictures, but Jonah had kept back. It was just too spooky, with its mattress, blankets and pillows all tidy, as if it was still in use. These were all his worldly goods: in the middle of the woods, these were all the worldly goods, of the Yonghy-Bonghy … Trying to silence the chanting voice in his head, Jonah looked away from the bed and over to where they were heading, the patch of light in the far wall. He whispered to Raff to follow right behind him, and stepped over a big piece of carpet, noticing the noughts and crosses pattern. The rubble rose and fell, sometimes steeply, and he had to keep peering down to check each step. He noticed two ping pong balls, pale, like giant pearls. To his right loomed the Wendy house. She’d taken a picture of that too. ‘Such a dear little house, Joney, and it’s like those Russian dolls, it’s a baby Broken House inside the big one.’ Behind the Wendy house was a piece of concrete pipe. He’d crawled into it last time, but she’d been too big. Now his feet slid among a heap of books, mainly open, like fallen birds. Among the books were more ping pong balls, and a toy train, and a Monopoly board. Further along, a baby doll, one-armed, face down – yes, he remembered that doll, and the feeling of wanting to turn it over, to see its face. He was aware of the bed, over on his left, but he kept his eyes on the ground in front of him. Then they were there, below the hole in the wall that used to be a window. The board that had once covered it was propped against the wall underneath, providing a slope up to what had been the windowsill. It would have been quite easy for Lucy, or any adult, to take a couple of big steps up the board, but it was a scramble for the boys. Raff scraped both his hands on the rough brick ledge, and Jonah hurt his knee. Out in the narrow space between the Broken House and their back wall, they examined their injuries and dusted themselves down. Then they surveyed the wall, which was surprisingly high from this side.
‘How does Mayo get over it?’ said Raff.
Jonah looked at the kitchen chair that had been positioned against the wall to their left. The back of it was broken, but the legs and seat looked in good shape. ‘Like that,’ he said. ‘Come on.’
They got on the chair together, and Jonah gave Raff a leg-up before hoisting himself up. They sat on the wall, their legs dangling against the warm brick, looking down at the familiar cracked concrete, the bright flowers, the gold bike, the corduroy cushion and the watering can. He got down first, lowering himself until he was hanging from the top of the wall by his fingers, letting go and remembering to bend his knees as he landed. Then he helped Raff down, and they let themselves in through the back door.