He rubbed his eyes, focused on me, wrote again.
“You dug her out?” I said. “What do you mean, you dug her out?”
“Grampa is the caretaker,” he said. “Grampa dug out Heaven from the Middens one starry night. This is long long time back and much in memory does fade away. Heaven Eyes is called Heaven Eyes cos she does see through all the grief and trouble in the world to the heaven that does lie beneath. There are days that come and nights that come and tides that turn. There is chocolates that are the sweetest chocolates of all.”
He fingered the peak of the helmet on his desk. His eyes cleared for a moment and he stabbed his finger toward me.
“No shenanigans! You hear? None of your shenanigans.”
“No,” I said.
He rolled his eyes and calmed again.
“Never mind. Tomorrow will shed light,” he murmured.
He sang again. I carefully moved Heaven’s head from my arm and I stood up.
He watched me as I moved about the room. I touched the bones and the rusted tools. I stared down into boxes of shining pebbles. I felt the letters beneath my feet. There was a framed photograph on the wall: a young man in a uniform like Grampa’s in brilliant sunshine by the river. I leaned close. Was this the same man, years and years ago? I turned and met his eye.
“You?” I said.
No answer. He looked right through me.
“Were you the caretaker, all those years ago?”
No answer. He turned his eyes away, went back to his writing.
There was a photograph of ships lined up on the quayside with great cranes above them, many men working on the quays in caps and overalls. There was a photograph of the greatest bridge as it was being built, the arms of the arch reaching toward each other across the water. There was a photograph of the printing works, lit by sunlight falling through the skylights, huge sheets of printed papers streaming out beneath the wings of eagles and angels.
January, Mouse and Heaven slept. Grampa murmured, sang and wrote. I went to his shoulder and looked down at his pages. At the head was printed: SECURITY REPORT, then DATE and NAME and POSITION. He had written Tuesday, crossed it out, replaced it with Friday, and written Grampa and Caretaker. The pages were crammed with tiny writing, with drawings of Heaven and her webbed fingers, with drawings of we three: black shapes on the Black Middens with the moon gleaming above. I saw our names recorded there: Erin, Janry and Mows.
“We came across the river,” I whispered.
“They crost the riva,” he whispered and wrote.
“We came from Whitegates in St. Gabriel’s.”
“They cum from Gaybrils.”
“We are damaged children, but we are happy.”
“They ar hapy hapy.”
“I once lived with my mum. We had a little house above the river. It was our Paradise.”
I smiled as my story appeared beneath his hand, weaving its way into the tale of Heaven Eyes, into the mysteries contained in his huge book.
“Write it,” I breathed. “Everything is true. She was a little woman with red hair that grew like fire around her face and with brilliant green eyes … I had a Salvation Army crib and pictures on the walls. We lived in that Paradise for ten short years….”
He went on writing: tiny words straggling over the wide page while black dust crumbled and fell from his fingers and hair.
“Mum,” I whispered. “Look, Mum.”
I felt her hand on my shoulder, her breath on my face. She whispered my name. She whispered the black words of our story, reading it back to me as soon as I had told it.
“Everything is true,” I whispered.
“Evrythin is trew,” he wrote.
Then his hand stopped and he turned his eyes to me. “What you digging and searching for?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing.”
“Why you come here?”
“We were washed up on the Middens.”
“There is secrets,” he whispered.
His voice was harsh and threatening. He took out a key from his pocket. He opened the desk drawer and took out a carving knife. He held the blade before his face and he stared at me.
“Touch her and you is dead,” he hissed.
“What?”
“And you is dead.”
Heaven Eyes called me from the floor. She was still sleeping. I lay down beside her. Grampa watched and his eyes softened again.
“Erin,” she whispered in her sleep. “Erin. My bestest friend.”
Grampa turned his eyes to the page again and was lost in his words again. Heaven whispered my name again. I looked across at Jan. He was asleep. He had heard nothing, seen nothing. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I took Heaven’s hand in mine, held her as if for safety; then I fell deep into sleep.
HER SKIN AND HAIR GLOWED. Sunlight streamed through the skylights, through the outspread wings, over the huge printing machines. Metal letters glinted in the litter at our feet. Pigeons and sparrows fluttered over us. Little animals scratched in the shadows.
“Follow,” she kept saying. “Follow, Erin, Janry and Mouse.”
She led us from the printing works, into the lanes between the ruined buildings. We came to the edge of the Ouseburn and we paused there, at the head of steep steps that led down into the narrow gulley where the water flowed.
She reached out and clawed away dried mud from my throat with her webbed fingers.
“We will wash the Middens from us here,” she said.
She smiled.
“We will be all beautied again.”
On the opposite side of the Ouseburn was a huge warehouse wall. To our left the water flowed into the wide glistening river.
“Keep little,” she whispered. “Keep looking out, or the ghosts will eye us.”
“The ghosts?” I said.
“There is ghosts everywhere,” she said. “We eye them past where the runny water runs. We eye them in little boats. We eye them running on machines. We eye them way way down there where the bridges is. We ear when they squeal and scream and fill the night with noise.”
She met January’s eye.
“What matters, Janry Carr?” she said.
He glanced at me, glanced back at her. His hands were trembling.
“What matters, Janry Carr?” she said.
“We could just go,” he whispered to me. “We could bloody go. We could even just go back to bloody White-gates.”
“Where’s your spirit of adventure?” I asked him.
“Hell’s teeth, Erin,” he said.
“Do not be feared, Janry,” said Heaven Eyes.
“I’m not bloody frightened,” he said through his teeth.
She touched him with her webbed hand. He stared in horror. He brushed the hand away.
“I is nice,” said Heaven. “I will never never harm you.”
We watched each other, the three of us. Mouse slipped past us, and went down the steps to the Ouseburn.
“I’ll wash first,” he said.
“Good Mouse,” said Heaven Eyes. “Wash away all that filthy filth.”
She began to hum a slow sweet tune. January crouched, stared at the broken ground, stabbed his penknife into the rubble.
I crouched beside him.
“You are scared,” I said. “What is it? What you scared of?”
“I want to get out of this. I want to keep on, like we said we would. That’s what the raft’s for. That’s what it was about.”
“We can go on, but not yet, Jan. Please, not yet.”
“You’re hopeless,” he hissed. “It was going to be just you and me and the raft and the river and look how it’s ended up.”
I touched his shoulder. He tugged away.
“You’re jealous,” I said. I laughed. “That’s what it is, isn’t it? You want me and the journey all to yourself.”
“Yeah! If that’s what you want to think, then think that.” I saw the tears shining in his eyes. “But I tell you what. If you don’t get out of the
bloody spell I’ll be off myself on the raft. Just me, traveling down to the sea. Just me, me.”
“Just me, me,” I mocked. I stood up again.
Mouse sat below at the edge of the Ouseburn, stripped to his underclothes with his feet dangling in the water. He threw handfuls of water over himself. He rubbed at the Middens mud with his hands.
Heaven smiled down at him. She took my hand. I glanced down at January. Then put my arm around Heaven Eyes.
“Where did you come from, Heaven Eyes?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“I memory little,” she said. “There is nothing but a deep deep dark. Grampa tells me this deep dark is the Middens. He tells me that he dug me out one moony night. That is all I memory, Erin Law, before Grampa and the printing works and the ghosts.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing else excepting sleep memories, and these I do not speak of for they must be wrong.”
“What are the sleep memories, Heaven Eyes?”
“Must never tell them. They does angry Grampa.”
She shifted closer to me.
“Grampa is old,” she said. “Him does say that mebbe one day I must cross the river to the world of ghosts.”
She took a chocolate from a pocket and pressed it into my palm.
“For you,” she said. “A chocolate that is the sweetest thing of all.”
Mouse climbed the steps again, dripping water. He smiled and smiled.
January shoved past us and went down to the water.
“You is beautied and happy, Mouse,” said Heaven Eyes.
Mouse laughed. He held Squeak in his gently closed fist.
Heaven touched the words tattooed on his forearm.
“What is these letters on you?” she asked.
“Please look after me,” said Mouse.
“Yes,” she said. “I will truly please look after you.”
She pondered.
“But what is letters doing on your skin?”
“My dad scratched them there,” he said. He lowered his eyes. “He said one day I’d be on my own. He said I was weak and would always need to be protected. He got the idea from a book we used to read about a bear. He scratched them in with a knife and ink.”
She stroked his arm.
“You is not alone now, little Mouse,” she whispered.
“I know,” he said. He took Squeak out from his pocket. “And I’ve always got this one, as well.”
He cupped his hands and Squeak tumbled through his fingers. He tipped Squeak into Heaven’s hands and she laughed as the tiny creature scuttled and tumbled there.
“Lucky Mouse,” said Heaven Eyes. “Lucky lucky Mouse.”
Squeak somersaulted and Heaven laughed. I saw how similar they were, Mouse and Heaven Eyes, how they were both like little children. Heaven passed Squeak back into Mouse’s hands; then she held up her webbed fingers to the sunlight and said to me,
“What is a dad, Erin?”
Then she ducked down.
“Ghosts!” she hissed.
She drew us back into a warehouse doorway.
“Janry,” she called. “Keep little and still.”
Across the river, two cyclists pedaled on the cycle track toward the sea.
She smiled.
“All gone!” she whispered in delight.
She danced back onto the quay above the Ouseburn and her hair and her dress swirled around her.
“Happy,” she sang. “Happy, happy, happy!”
Below her, January flung handfuls of black mud into the stream.
SHE GIGGLED.
“Put in your hand, Erin Law,” she said.
She giggled again and spread her webbed hands across her mouth.
We had all been washed. There were just traces of the Middens in the creases in our skin, and its deep stains on our clothes. We were in one of the warehouses. There were piles of packing crates. Many of them were opened, like the one before us.
“Go on, go on,” she said.
I reached inside, angled my arm, stretched my hands, touched smooth cool cellophane-wrapped boxes.
“Feel?” she giggled. “Feel, Erin?”
I lifted one of the boxes out, and I giggled too. It was a blue box of chocolates.
“For you,” she said. “For you and Janry and Mouse and Squeak. Go on, eat, eat!”
I peeled away the cellophane, opened it, passed around the whitening drying-out chocolates.
Heaven Eyes took an orange cream. She said it was her favorite. She licked her lips and sighed.
“Grampa says them will not last evermore,” she said. “But there is lots in that crate an there is lots of crates.”
She showed us crates packed with tinned corned beef, with plastic packets of raisins and currants. She showed us dozens of crates that still weren’t opened.
I chewed a caramel.
“How old are you, Heaven Eyes?” I said.
She crinkled her eyebrows.
“No,” she said. “I is not old. That is Grampa, Erin.”
“How many years are you, though?”
She gazed at me with her pale and shining eyes, so keen to please me, but all confused.
“How much time?” I said.
“Eat another,” she said. “Go on and eat another. They lovely as lovely.”
January cursed. Mouse shoved chocolates into his mouth.
“How many days and nights?” I said.
“Day comes first, then night, then day again, round and round like dancing.”
“You don’t understand,” I said.
She pondered.
“Life is wakes and sleeps,” she said. “Is that what you is wanting?”
“How many wakes and sleeps have you been here?” I said.
She pondered. She giggled.
“You making my head flap like a pigeon wing, Erin.”
She peered into the chocolate box.
She pursed her lips.
“As many sleeps as there is orange creams,” she said.
January cursed.
“In this box?” he said.
“Oh, in the whole wide wide warehouse, Janry.”
“How many’s that?”
She giggled and blushed. She turned her eyes away from January. She touched my arm with her hand and shuffled close to me.
“Three?” she whispered into my ear.
“ON PATROL, LOOK.”
We were in a lane outside the food warehouse. Grampa was coming toward us. His jacket was buttoned up tight and he wore his peaked helmet. He swung his arms stiffly at his side. He carried an ancient black flashlight. He stopped at a little door and rattled its handle. He nodded and scribbled something in a little notebook, then came on toward us again. We stepped back against the wall.
“Good morning, Grampa Caretaker,” said Heaven Eyes.
“Good morning, little Heaven. Anything to report?”
“Nothing, Grampa. Just ghosts running on machines way way out across the runny water.”
He nodded.
His brow furrowed as he stared at January, Mouse and me. Heaven Eyes stood on tiptoe, leaned on his shoulder, whispered to him.
“These is those that come last moony night. Memory, Grampa?”
He nodded again, and scribbled in his notebook again. Then he raised his finger and peered into our eyes.
“I have you in this little book now,” he said. “I will remember. No shenanigans, now.”
“No shenanigans,” I said.
He blinked, raised his helmet, scratched his head, gazed up into the brilliant blue sky. He slowly followed the flight of a seagull with his eyes. His face softened and he began to murmur a song. Then he blinked again and looked back at us.
“There is patrolling to be done,” he said.
Heaven Eyes reached up to him again and kissed his cheek.
“No shenanigans,” he said to me.
“No shenanigans,” I said.
He let Heaven kiss him again; then he walked on
, peering into ancient doorways, rattling handles, scribbling in his book.
“He is that important, see,” said Heaven. “He is caretaker.”
We wandered back toward the printing works. January kept watching me, shaking his head, cursing under his breath.
“Is there nobody else here?” he said to Heaven Eyes.
“What means you, Janry Carr?”
“Others. Other people.”
“There has been ghosts sometimes. We have hid from them, and if they have come too close then Grampa has fettled them.”
“Fettled them?”
“Yes, Janry. Fettled them.”
January looked at me.
“What did he do to them, Heaven Eyes?”
She shrugged.
“Things I does not know. Fettlings.”
“And there are no other caretakers.”
“Grampa is caretaker. Grampa.”
“Who pays him, then? Who does he report to? What does he do on his weekends off?”
Heaven clicked her tongue.
“Janry Carr, my head is flapping and rattling with you. Why not you be still a little bit?”
January shrugged. He took a chocolate from his pocket and chewed it.
Heaven Eyes took my hand.
“Grampa is busy as busy,” she said. “Patrolling and caretaking in sunny days and digging and searching in moony nights.”
“Digging for what?” I said.
“Oh, lots of lovelies, Erin.”
“Will we see?”
“Mebbe under the shiny moon and shiny stars Erin will eye every little thing.”
I wanted to ask more, but I just shook my head and closed my eyes and grinned as my mind flapped and rattled and wouldn’t be still.
We walked on. We entered the printing works and passed the great machines and entered the office.
“See?” said Heaven Eyes, showing us the things on the shelves, the bottles and rusty tools and shiny pebbles and bones. She stroked the dried-out wing of a seabird, its feathers all clotted with oil and mud. “See? Lots of lovely lovelies.”
She linked me by the arm.
“And there is more lovelies, Erin. He says there is my treasures waiting to be dug one starry moony night. They will be dug up and chucked into his bucket.”