The Travelling Bag Page 5

  His trunk and bags were loaded into the blue car. Only Mrs Mills stood watching them go, waving, not smiling.

  A river ran through the garden of his uncle’s house. Years after, he remembered lying on the grassy bank beside it, trailing his hands under the water, which turned them pale as peeled green sticks, the movement making them wave, frond-like, gently to and fro. He liked to feel the coolness slipping over them.

  There was no one else at the house that summer. He decided not to mind. He went with his uncle’s wife into the market town ten miles away and helped carry her shopping, stood beside her when she talked to people, and drank a milk shake in the café while she had coffee. She was kind to him but said very little – he decided it was because she had no children and so did not know how to talk to them. He rarely saw his uncle. He went to London very early, came back late. Once or twice he took Toby out in his car at the weekends, or to swim or to fish, but he hated the thought of the barb hooking itself into the roof of the fish’s mouth, of the way it cheated and deceived the creature, which was only looking for food.

  It was hot. He remembered it years afterwards as the time when his skin always felt warm, unless he was dabbling in the river.

  He also remembered clearly the first time he saw the other boy. He had been looking down at the frond of bright green weed, like hair waving under the water, feeling the sun on the back of his head. He saw his own reflection, waving slightly too, and then he saw the other one, just behind him. The face was thoughtful, and as if he were far away, and his arms were spread out by his sides. He floated. Toby turned slowly and looked behind him, then above, then at the opposite side of the river. But there was no one. No other boy.

  He went down two or three times every day, even when there was rain, and waited, and looked at himself in the clear water as it slid by. Waited. Once, there was a shadow. He thought there was a shadow. Once, he was sure that the other boy’s face and outstretched arms were there, actually there, and yet not visible.

  That was all.

  It was not a bad summer. The days passed. He made lists of fish, and rivers. He read a lot of the books in his uncle’s den, books he had had as a boy. The Wonder Book of the RAF. A Boy’s Army Adventure. Seb Seamer, Secret Spy. The Wonder Book of Transport. They had more drawings than coloured pictures, and everything was old-fashioned, in a comforting way.

  There was only one thing wrong, one thing which soured the summer, and that was the absence of Andreas. He missed him every day. He turned to tell him something, show him something, laugh with him, shove him so that Andreas would shove back and they could have a scramble-fight, walk alongside him, chewing grass blades, hear him breathing close by when he woke in the night. He asked his uncle if Andreas would ever come back but then realised that he had never heard of Andreas.

  Something had shrivelled inside him. The space Andreas had occupied was hollow and silent.

  Two

  ‘Is that everybody? I should have twelve boys from Campion, and eight from Cranmer. I’ll count heads as you get onto the coach. Has everyone been to the loo? Because you won’t be able to go for a couple of hours, we’re not stopping at every service station. Right, first pair, up the steps please. One … two … three … careful … seven … Lucas Johnson, are you chewing something?’

  Toby waited towards the back. It was the last week in September and as sunny and warm as July. He pictured the stream. His hands trailing in the water.

  Where was Andreas now?

  ‘Come on Toby Garrett, miles away as usual.’

  But he looked better for the summer holidays, his skin brown, his face less taut with anxiety. His eyes were always far away. She still worried about the boy.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Can’t remember.’

  ‘Cloten Hall.’

  ‘House.’

  ‘Well, anyway.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue but it’s bound to be boring.’

  Toby sat next to a boy from Cranmer who had only four fingers on his left hand.

  ‘I’ve been to this place before.’

  ‘Is it like a castle?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you go with Mrs Mills?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Now, listen up please. I hope you didn’t think you were going to spend the journey chatting about England’s chances against the West Indies and whether the shop will sell sweets.’ Mrs Mills wobbled as the coach veered left.

  ‘Can everybody hear me?’

  ‘You should have one of those microphone things like they do on the tourist buses, Mrs Mills.’

  ‘I should but the school doesn’t run to it so pin back your ears instead. Right … Cloten Hall. Does anybody know when it was built? Not the day or the month or even the year, the century will do. No? Why am I not surprised? Cloten Hall … and by the way, you will be doing a full project on it, including an essay, divided into several parts, so don’t go off into a daydream, you need to remember. Right … In 1760 or thereabouts …’

  Toby looked out of the coach window. Fields. Houses. Motorway. Fields. Lanes. Houses. Blue sky. Sun suddenly flashing into his eyes.

  Where was Andreas? Had he gone home to his father? Was he in his own country? Whatever country that was, and Toby had never been quite sure. Why had he come and gone so quickly? Did he remember Hesterly? Mrs Mills’s voice in his ears.

  Jacobean. Which James was that? Tapestry. The Dyker-Venn family. Royal marriage. The Battle of … House crumbling. Roof fell in. Birds nested. Bats. Dust. Walls breaking down. Thickets. Brambles. Green ponds. A well. The Long Gallery. The same family had owned it for … for …

  ‘Over three hundred years … but by then …’

  Two old men. One old servant. One room. Maybe two. Roof leaking. Damp. Mould even. No electricity. Front door bolted with iron bolts for decades. Horses and servants and dogs and … nobody. No cars. No money. Iron ranges. Iron pans. Iron beds.

  The king had slept there. Which king? Why? When?

  James.

  Jacobean.

  Tapestries.

  Paintings with mould and cracks and soot congealed. Van Dyke. Horses. Rusting bridles. Rust. Deathwatch beetle. And darkness.

  Dark everywhere. Creepers grew up the windows. Even in summer, darkness. Candles. Torches on window ledges, with dead flies and beetles and tarnished silver dishes.

  The old men died there.

  Preserved. Time warp, like a fairy story. Thickets and thorns grew round. Light coming through the windows, filtered through leaves and branches, green, as if it were under sea.

  In spite of themselves, they listened as she wove the magic spell. Which made their first sight of the house a disappointment.

  ‘You said there was a tent of cobwebs.’

  ‘Where is all the dust?’

  Cloten Hall, rescued just as it was about to crumble and fall, restored, repainted, re-gilded, refurbished. Polished. Clean.

  The creeper pulled off the front, the gardens shaven and re-laid.

  A tall house, with pointed gables. Stone mullions. It stood at the end of a long drive and looked down on everyone who walked towards it, humbling them. They got into the entrance hall first.

  ‘You will see how the lower half of the walls are covered in wood panelling. Why do you think that is?’

  Above the panelling, dark pictures, men in women’s clothes, women like pantomime dames, skirts like barrels. Small dogs. Horses. Long, long, dark oak tables. High-backed dark oak chairs. Settles. Long, long dark red carpets running through the hall, the first room, the second room.

  ‘The house was built by a very rich man around the year 1630. Can anyone tell me who was on the throne of this country in 1630?’

  Beyond the hall a corridor stretched away. At the end, a tall window. Beneath the window, an oak bench.

  A boy was sitting on the bench. Glancing away from the teacher and the fireplace and the rest of the group for a moment only, Toby saw him. He w
as very still. He had dark hair, worn long with thick curls. Some sort of tunic.

  ‘Andreas?’

  ‘Toby Garrett, are you with the rest of us in 1630 or in some other era?’

  He mumbled sorry. Turned his head back to the portrait they were looking at. The man who built Cloten Hall. He wore a strange black hat, had cruel, arching eyebrows. Haughty.

  When he looked down the corridor again, the boy had gone.

  They trailed round. Worksheets were handed out. Toby bent his head over an ancient chest with iron bands. The others were here and there, scribbling, reading questions, asking this and that of Mrs Mills, sketching rough plans.

  He edged his way towards the group at the back of the room and concealed himself between two of the boys. Nobody noticed. Mrs Mills turned her back and was pointing something out on the far wall.

  He slipped away like a shadow.

  There was a staircase, shallow stone steps, curving round. He made no sound.

  The house seemed to be empty apart from them.

  An open door and then he felt as if he were Jonah inside the whale, the belly of the long gallery. An oak trunk set every few yards against each wall. An oak bench between. The roof was the whale’s ribcage, panelled and carved, and painted white. It ran towards the window at the far end. A high window. The sunlight was like golden sword blades falling onto the floor.

  He was there, looking, waiting.

  ‘Andreas?’

  He said nothing. Toby walked very softly, very slowly down the long empty room.

  He was Andreas. And yet he was changed. His skin was paler. His hair longer. But he sat in the same calm, still way, waiting. Looking.

  ‘Is this where you came from? Is this where you’ve been? Is this where you live?’

  The other boy smiled.

  Toby went closer and made to sit down but at once the boy was up and moving swiftly away, down the gallery.

  ‘Don’t go. Please. I’ve wanted to see you ever since … Andreas?’

  The boy stopped.

  ‘Why won’t you talk to me?’

  The boy turned. They were close enough now.

  It might not be Andreas after all. The boy did not speak, did not move, did not smile, as Andreas had. And yet it was Andreas. He knew. He was sure.

  ‘Toby Garrett?’

  Footstep after footstep, coming up the stone stairs.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing? You know perfectly well that you do not wander off on your own. Now come here, back to the group, and if you do that once more … Now, boys, stand here. Look down. This is one of the finest examples of a Jacobean barrelled ceiling in the country. Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it amazing? Look at the way each panel has been plastered and the plaster has been decorated …’

  He looked, and as he did so, the boy seemed to dissolve slowly, as if he were made of sherbet, touching the tongue. They went outside, released like birds from a cage, racing about. The dust in the air of the long gallery seethed in the wake of their leaving.

  Toby went last. Looked back. Lances of sunlight. Plaster roof moulded like wedding cake.

  No boy.

  No Andreas.

  ‘Come back. Please. Come back.’ His whisper ran down the room.

  No.

  ‘Toby Garrett, down here. Now!’

  ‘When are we going into the dungeons, Mrs Mills?’

  ‘There aren’t any dungeons, sorry, Adam.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘This isn’t a castle.’

  ‘Will we see the ghost?’

  ‘There aren’t any …’

  ‘There are, there are, it says here in the booklet, Mrs Mills … it says …’

  ‘Of course it does. They want people to pay to come and see them. It’s called a sales trick, Joshua. Five more minutes running about then you go back to the coach and get your packed lunches. Toby? Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘Well, get up and run about then … we’re going into the kitchens and sculleries next. Have you got your worksheet?’

  He sat on a grassy bank and opened his lunch pack. Sam Hilder stood over him.

  ‘You’re weird, Garrett.’

  He could have said that he knew.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What for?’

  He opened his egg and tomato sandwich and bit into it hard. It was Sam’s finger. The tomato was his blood.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You’re weird.’

  Toby sighed and looked round Hilder, to the back of the house that reared up behind him. At one of the top windows he saw a face. A head and shoulders. Pale. Black hair.

  It dissolved.

  Perhaps he had not seen it.

  ‘You OK, Tobes?’

  David O’Hare was all right. He’d been friendly. Kind. To him. To Andreas.

  ‘He’s weird.’

  ‘Piss off Hilder. You stink.’

  O’Hare sat beside him on the grass and crunched into his apple. The sun was warm on their faces.

  ‘There is a ghost,’ David said. ‘A woman. She died of a broken heart. Her husband got killed in the civil war. She glides up the staircase.’

  ‘I didn’t see her.’

  ‘Nor did I. Cable’s pretending he did. He said she had blood on the front of her dress where her heart was. Do you believe in them? Ghosts?’

  Toby crammed sandwich into his mouth quickly.

  Yes. No.

  Yes.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ David O’Hare said, getting up. ‘See you.’

  ‘See you.’

  Where David had flattened the grass down, Andreas sat now. He had no lunch pack. He looked at Toby.

  ‘Where did you go? Why did you? I wish you hadn’t have gone.’

  But the grass sprang back and Andreas was no longer there.

  The coach came round to the front at two-thirty.

  ‘Good,’ David O’Hare said. ‘That was mega boring.’

  ‘The stables were OK.’

  ‘There weren’t any horses in them.’

  Toby was with Harry Fletcher, five pairs down the queue.

  ‘Right, single file from here please. You know the drill … stop as you are about to get onto the coach and wait till I’ve counted you before you do.’

  Shuffle forwards.

  ‘One … off you go … two … three … Get a move on, Edward … four …’

  Toby looked back at the house. Every window that he could see. One, two, three, four … but there was no one.

  Five …

  Was the boy Andreas? He was like him. Very like him. But was it him?

  ‘Seventeen … eighteen … nineteen … twenty … twenty-one … Stop. Isaac Wemyss. Go back. Right. Who was in front of you?’

  ‘Ben.’

  ‘Yes. Ben, come back here please. Get off again … just do it, Ben. Thank you. Right, Ben. Twenty. Isaac. Twenty-one.’

  ‘Are you all right, Mrs Mills?’

  ‘I am perfectly all right, thank you … but we left with twenty boys and we seem to be returning with twenty-one. Which is not possible.’

  ‘Mrs Mills?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Gant, but they’re all going to have to get off again. There can’t possibly be an extra boy.’

  ‘Better than one less.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. Everybody, please listen. You are to get off the coach in the same order in which you got on just now … and line up here, as you were. Because I miscounted, George … but better be safe. Right, starting at the back please.’

  *

  Five minutes.

  Ten.

  ‘Fifteen … sixteen … seventeen … wait, Arthur, wait … right, eighteen, on you get then … nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one.’ Mrs Mills raised a white face.

  In the end, there was nothing for it but for everyone to say that Mrs Mills had had a long, tiring day, perhaps wasn’t feeling herself, and the bus left, with the teacher seated at
the front, with a queer, dazed expression. But Toby had known at once. He had not seen Boy Twenty-One, but he had known all the same. He was on the back seat and Andreas was next to him. He did not have to see him. They talked.

  They did not have to talk aloud. Their minds became their voices, their thoughts words.

  He was still there when they got back to the school, but then, he was not there. There was a space where he had been at Toby’s side. Perhaps that was how it would be again.

  But when he woke in the night, he knew that the bed in which Andreas had slept next to him had been put back, and that the boy was in it sleeping. He did not need to reach out, to make sure by touching him. He was just there.

  After that, he was always there, in classes, in the dining room, on the playing fields, at prep. It felt safe again.

  ‘Toby Garrett is a different boy.’

  ‘He’s working harder.’

  ‘You find that? I think he’s in a trance half the time.’

  ‘At least it’s a happier trance.’

  ‘He’s had a growth spurt.’

  ‘Parents could do to take a bit more interest.’

  It did not matter. He forgot his parents for days at a time. He forgot he had any parents. He was happy. The days passed. The weeks.

  It ceased to feel strange that no one else saw the twenty-first boy. It was safer. No one else could take him away.

  And then, he went. Like before, but not like that. He was simply there beside him as they walked down New Corridor, and then he was not there.

  As he crossed the hall, boys were going out of the front door. He saw Angus, Will Baines, Joseph Needham, Kit Baker, Archie, from the parallel form.

  ‘Don’t,’ Toby said to him, ‘you’re wrong, you mustn’t go with them. You should stay here. Stay here.’

  But he was already climbing onto the coach.

  No need to ask where it was taking them.

  Toby stood alone in the hall after the coach had driven off and his own class were on their way to the science block. He smelled the diesel that hung on the air, mingling with the smell of wallflowers.

  Then he sat on the cold tiles and folded himself up, hunched his back, put his head down. He did not cry. He made no sound at all.

  People walked round him.

  People stopped.