on Ted. “Something really awful must have happened. I mean they must have dug something up, something nasty. I saw the look on his face.”
The plump little woman in the blue overall looked at him thoughtfully. She’d never met a child like this before. He seemed so old, so knowing and he had such staring eyes. Well he wasn’t going to upset her Ted with his questions. “They didn’t find anything,” she told him. “Ask one of the others if you don’t believe me. It’s true.”
“Well, what did happen then? Why did he run away? He did run away, I saw him.”
She hesitated. He wasn’t going to leave unless she told him a bit more; he was obviously that sort of kid. “He said … he said it went all black like,” she began slowly, “all dark. Very dark and … thick, you know, foggy … oh, I don’t know, duckie. Life’s a funny thing.”
She felt very embarrassed. She’d told Oliver exactly what Ted had told her, and she still couldn’t make head nor tail of it. She opened the front door pointedly, and waited for him to go through.
But Oliver didn’t budge. “What went all black?” he repeated, in his high, penetrating voice. “Did he see something? That’s what I want to know. What frightened him?”
“I’ve told you, he just came over a bit muzzy. He’d probably forgotten to take his pills.”
“Well, if that’s all it was why won’t he go back?” demanded Oliver, “and why did they get an ambulance?”
“Look, love, it was nice of you to come and that, but I don’t want him upset. Off you go now, he might be back at work next week.” And she shut the door on him.
Oliver stood outside on the landing, staring at Number Sixteen. He felt like kicking the door in. It was quite obvious that Mrs Hoskins knew things she wouldn’t tell; it was probably in the hands of the police by now. All she’d wanted was to get him out of the flat. He turned away angrily, and started to go down the chilly staircase. Why did grown-ups treat children like idiots?
But he was wrong about Mrs Hoskins. She’d been unnerved when they’d brought her Ted home in that ambulance. He hadn’t been able to tell her what he’d seen, but it must have been bad because he’d threatened to give his notice in.
Oliver thought about Ted all the way home. He simply didn’t believe what Mrs Hoskins had said about the pills; Ted’s face had told him the truth. Perhaps they’d not actually dug anything up at the site, but they must have disturbed something.
It was as if a great black bird was on the wing, flinging a cold dark shadow across London, changing the way everything felt, changing him. “Blackness and darkness”, that’s what Mrs Hoskins had talked about, in her tight, embarrassed voice, not understanding. He’d felt that darkness himself, out in the street, peering down at Ted’s face. He’d felt, but he’d not understood. And he still didn’t understand, not properly. Big beefy Ted, always whistling and cracking jokes. What on earth had happened at River Reach?
After tea Oliver slipped down to the cellar. Mrs Wright had bought a lot of plums and she was planning to make jam. He’d offered to go down and find new jam jars for her. It was a good move because he wanted to have a good look round, but he didn’t want to make her suspicious.
As he went past Dr Verney’s door he heard raised voices. His mother was in there, talking to him, and she sounded annoyed. “I can assure you, Dr Verney,” she was saying irritably, “there is nothing like that in this house, and, if there were, Mrs McDougall has a cat. Now you really must stop worrying like this …” He must be going on about rats and mice again, Oliver decided. He was nuts. He felt rather uncomfortable as he made his way down the cellar steps. If only Dr Verney knew what he and Tracey Bell were hatching up between them.
If Uncle Len did produce a rat for them, it would have to go in the cellar of Number Nine. It wouldn’t mind the dark, and Oliver was planning to put the cage against the front wall, where there was an iron grating, and where you could peer through a little cobwebby window and look up into the street. The thing was to keep it a secret from his mother. If the rat behaved itself, and they got on well with the project, the time may come when he could risk telling her. But even though she hardly ever came down to the cellar it was vital to keep the rat out of sight.
Fortunately that would be fairly easy. There was rubbish of all kinds heaped up round him, boxes and crates, and discarded doors, and sagging piles of yellow newspapers. And since the cellar was much too damp to be of any practical use, it was just a place for jam jars and paint cans, for large hairy spiders and now … rats.
It was large, occupying as much floor space as the house above. Oliver crept about in the dim light, trying not to bump into things. He couldn’t spend too long down here, he’d only come for jam jars, and if he didn’t go upstairs soon his mother would appear and fetch him out. She didn’t like his habit of grubbing around.
He ran his fingers over the damp walls, under the flaky white paint; they were all knobbled and bumpy. It didn’t feel like bricks at all, more like big pebbles, all flung together. His father had told him that this part of the house was centuries old, that there’d been at least two houses built and pulled down on top of it. He couldn’t get down here any more, because of his bad hip.
Oliver wandered about, putting dusty jars in a box, and trying to decide on the best place for the rat. Then he saw them, not skulls or rolled-up documents or heaps of gold coins, but cracks, dozens of little cracks running down the wall from top to bottom, on the left side of the iron grating.
He stared hard, put his face close to the greenish, cheese-smelling wall, and examined them carefully, sticking a finger in. They were new, he could see bits of plaster on the floor, plaster that must have fallen out of the cracks. So his mother was right after all. She’d been up in arms from the beginning about the lorries from the building site rumbling past the house at all hours, and about the huge trailers dragging heavy equipment. She’d said it would shake the old house to its foundations, and it had. These cracks were living proof.
She’d be pleased about the damage in one way, at least these cracks proved she’d been right to complain. A couple of them were quite big, almost big enough to get your hand in. He leaned forward cautiously, and sniffed. A cold sooty smell came out of the holes but he couldn’t see anything. Next time he was down here he’d bring his torch and examine everything properly.
“Oliver? Oliver!” He scuttled round, putting a few more jam jars into his cardboard box, and wedged it under one arm. He needed a free hand to negotiate those stone steps, he’d really hurt himself if he fell backwards, with a load of broken glass on top of him. “OLIVER!!” His mother wasn’t very patient, she’d finished sorting out Dr Verney and now she wanted to make a start on her plum jam.
But her high, piercing voice was suddenly drowned by a terrific noise up in the street; a great yellow machine was being dragged past, on its way to the building site. He could hear the rumble of enormous wheels and an orange light was flashing through the bars of the grating. As it rolled past, the house over his head seemed to rock slightly, the naked light bulb shook on its flex, and a lump of plaster suddenly detached itself from the sagging ceiling, hitting him on the shoulder as it fell to the floor.
“OLIVER!!” She was getting really angry now, but the boy took no notice. He put his box at the foot of the cellar steps and made his way back towards the grating, groping as he crossed the dusty floor. The dangling bulb seemed much dimmer, in fact he could hardly see, and the sun wasn’t filtering down through the grating. It had gone quite dark outside.
He
