A second excerpt from my ms Kilea today. In this part of the novel, Kilea is ten or so. She is being looked after in the home of her housekeeper, and having behaved well is rewarded with a visit to a previously unseen part of the house, the unused attic space.

The housekeeper, Mrs Sabine, is an older German woman, the widow of a local man she met in a field hospital during the Second World War. Mrs Sabine keeps a lot hidden about her life, but not everything can remain beyond the gaze of our girl Kilea Grieve. There is a sense of development here, of rooms previously not there unfolding, of space extending outwards in a way both uncanny and quotidian – a blending common to girlhood experience, where the divisions between reality and the fantastical are permeable as limestone.

And always, on the island, a soft rain is falling.

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The rooms above

Kilea

The ladder was attached to the wall by long nails. Mrs Sabine went up first and opened the trapdoor, then came back to let Kilea go up ahead of her. Half way up, Kilea stopped. She hadn’t gone very high, but she could feel gravity tugging at her shoulders. The ladder couldn’t be moved. Stuck to the wall as much as the painted wave was. Falling would only be her, letting go. She looked at the matte paint on the ceiling where it was cracked. If she touched it, little flakes would speckle down like snow onto the darkblue carpet. The ceiling was level and as solid as the grainy walls. And the plane of the street as it ran from the harbour lookout to the gate of her house.

“Keep on, up you go!” Mrs Sabine never sounded impatient, only keen. Kilea looked up through the open trapdoor. The light was bright and mild. High-cloud weather through some window just out of sight. She squared her hands on the trapdoor frame and pulled herself up.

The space was divided into several doorless rooms linked by a wide, yellow-painted corridor. A complete house, much larger, it seemed, than the lower floors, Mrs Sabine’s room and the shop together. Kilea crossed the corridor through the first opening and put her hand into light. Several skylights let in diffuse yellow light that fell crisscross on the furniture and the wooden floor. Stand there forever and her whole body might melt into it. She blinked. In the room were two chests of drawers and a writing desk, all clean and shining as though newly polished. No dust in the air either. The girl closed her eyes and stood up on her tiptoes, raising her arms above her head. All that time Mrs Sabine was taking to get up the ladder, but why would she want to be anywhere else?

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Sabine

One foot, one hand after the other. Gingerly like an old monkey, Sabine thought. Her fingers, though bald, were quite the most similar thing: thick and wrinkled. How did they get so old, even before the rest of me? She was like a chimpanzee clambering after her cub, or kit, whatever they were called. At the trapdoor she had to stop. Out of energies. Still, if she could manage so far and still be fit for knitting later, all would be to the good. Why go to the expense and trouble of getting a man in to fit stairs? She called the girl, but there was no answer. Often the case with her, never mind it. The slightest of pauses was enough to get the puff back in; she got up through the door with only a quiet grunt that Kilea surely would not have heard. Another moment of sitting on the floor to collect herself, that was all.

The girl was in the nearest room. When Sabine began explaining how this was her late husband’s study, his workshop, Kilea started. Cloth-eared as usual, what was it, ‘off with the fairies’? Sabine had known her for a while now, and to her recollection she had never met a child so slow-moving and precise, yet at all times so well distracted. Perhaps it was an astigmatism. She’d have a word with the minister, if he would ever let her.

It was time for the tour: the study, she explained, her husband had used it for his accounts. What was his job, the girl asked. Fisherman, but also this and that. He planned, measured, built. A private sort of man. Kilea seemed satisfied at that. But then she asked, when did he die, Mrs Sabine? Sabine heard the way the girl said her name…lightly, so as not to hurt her. Such a good child. A long time ago now, Sabine told her.

They moved on to the next room: living room, a little wider and more full up of things. Here was the wicker three-piece that she had waited so anxiously for all those months. Lasting well. She plumped a cushion. Kilea pointed to a photograph on the wall, yes, that was him, in his uniform. She could tell the girl all about him, how he protected her in all the ways he could, failing in the end, really failing…but it was not a story for a little girl. Instead, Sabine pointed out the carved kist, nooked under the table. The girl pulled it out and lifted the lid. Careful now. Did she see the whale on the side of the lock? Or the dog-roses? Such a fabulous design…John had made it for her as a third anniversary present. Kilea sniffed and said she could smell the dog-roses, but not the whale. Was she making a joke? But wasn’t it the strangest thing, Sabine could swear she smelt the flowers too. Faintly. But she didn’t know if dog-roses had a perfume. The power of suggestion. Kilea was kneeling by the kist, watching her. What does she think? What goes on in her sweet little head?

Sabine lowered herself onto a footrest. Here, she said, have a look inside. Leaflets and pictures. Kilea picked them up by the corners with great care, holding them close to her face. She knew the war from school. Did Sabine have her gasmask? Her ration book? Sabine thought for a moment. No, she told her, I don’t have any of those. Only photographs are important really, and personal things. She told her about her six older brothers. Unfortunately no photographs for them. Kilea asked if they had dark hair like she did. When she spoke she had a frown on her face, and Sabine had the notion that the girl was trying to remember them. Before she could answer, Kilea stood up.

“Six brothers – you’re a seventh child, then?” That is supposed to be magical, she said. The girl quite clearly was an only child herself; not knowing of the many, very unmagical finger-twisting cruelties a brother could practice on his sister. Once her eldest brother had blackened her eye and told her mother it was for stealing. Those things passed. The moment had come soon and sudden when the ghost stories and the broken dolls had ceased mattering.

Sabine took the girl to the room where some of John’s childhood toys lived, in his black umbrella stand. Very clearly she remembered him saying, well I want to keep them, for all that. We can’t just throw these things away. Always there were so many voices in this old place. My John, I did keep them. Kilea lifted out a few of the rubber lego bricks – with the pliable feel that plastic didn’t have – and placed them along the line of a floorboard. Then Sabine helped her choose six wooden soldiers, the size of clothing pegs, for garrison on the wall.

“Mrs Sabine.”

“Mmm?”

“What were your brothers’ names?” Again the slight and careful saying. Sabine sighed, and reached into the umbrella stand. A hunk of black fossilised rock. See the marks of a dead shellfish on the flatter side of it, she said, collected by John from the shore of a nearby island. The girl held onto it for a long time, quietly staring. Heavy-lidded. Whatever does she think? Peaceful things, the woman hoped. It would be a great pain to think if she was troubled. Here, Sabine said, more bricks, just the thing needed to finish her wall. She couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like Kilea whispered to it. Perhaps that was her ears playing up, and just the girl breathing a little poorly. A sickness coming on. Sabine untucked the bottom part of Kilea’s sleeves. There now, if she would just give her that stone, she would put it away.

She went into the old living room with the stone and brought back an old blanket for them both to sit on. The upper flat became cold quickly, when the excitement wore off. Sometimes, she told the girl, this was where she would sit and listen to her music. Right there on the floor under the skylight. John had called this room ‘the cubby’, though it was no different in size really. He had painted the rooms all a whitish-yellow colour except this and the bathroom. What would she call it, ashy pink? Kilea suggested ‘dryrose’. The edge of the bookcase pressed into her back, but it was not very bad. Something that doctors would use on patients with a crick there. Sabine let out her legs, carefully so as not to topple the fortifications, while the girl played, humming to herself.

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Kilea

Stones should not be talking. She was glad for Mrs Sabine taking it away. Not that they had been saying anything bad. Words that weren’t said aloud couldn’t hurt you. Sadness in it though. A man’s voice listing, Avi, Matheus. Others. Six names in total. Not from the rock by itself, but deep down, from a far source. Mrs Sabine’s brother, one of them, speaking for them all. She had known this was a dangerous point, the stone in her hand shivering without moving. Here was where inanimate things and lives of the dead could overlap, and everything complicated. The voice had wanted to keep talking. From the other room she wasn’t sure of how far the sound of it could carry.

Signal reinigen…

It said, faintly, and then a second voice began to sing:

Schlaf, Kindlein schlaf, Der Vater hüt’ die Schaf.

The singer was gentle, calling softly to her, Sleep, Baby, Sleep…Mrs Sabine had taught her it. A comfort song for children, but still put up the hairs on the back of her neck. The refrain went round and round in her head until she didn’t know if it was the voice, just herself thinking it, or both together.

_So schenk’ ich dir ein Schaf,
Mit einer gold’nen Schelle fein,
Das soll dein Spielgeselle sein_

I’ll give to you a sheep, and it shall have a bell of gold, for you to play with and to hold. In English it became a little nursery rhyme, not dangerous. And she could pretend it was just a song she knew, not coming from a dead man’s voice inside a stone. And the voice was quieter now. My sister, it said, my poor sister. She was glad, very glad Mrs Sabine had put it away.

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