The Wolf in the Attic by Paul Kearney Page B

truly know how much time I will need. Nor am I entirely sure what I am looking for there.
     
     
    T HERE ARE MOTOR-CARS crumping past slowly, flinging clods of snow from their wheels, the rubber window-wipers whirring back and forth like busy metronomes. Here and there people go by, as faceless as stones, bundled up, heads down. I do not understand why grown-ups hide their faces from the snow, as though they are afraid of it.
     
     
    I T TICKLES MY nose, and seems to have a life of its own as it falls steadily, the air breathless and still. Even in my galoshes my sock-bound feet are cold, and I walk faster. I have a longing to roll in the snow, to grasp it in handfuls and plaster it into snowballs, snowmen, all those marvellous things which are impossible to create on ordinary days. I am Anna Francis, wanderer, adventuress, and I feel that the snowy dark is smiling on me because it knows the love I have for it. I am a creature now of shadows and the dusk
    A train passes under the bridge at Walton Well Road, and the air is filled with the taint of soot, and I see the sparks fly out of the engine like fiery-fairies released from an iron cage. It hurtles north, dragging the wagons with it, a black roar, a goods train, clanking and clicking off into the gathering night to some other city of the Empire.
    Port Meadow is not moonlit tonight, for the snow has swallowed up the moon and stars, but it is bright and empty all the same, and the snow is thicker here, and a thin breeze starts up to blow it in tumbling powder around my knees and ankles. The air is so cold it crackles in my nose, and my breath has iced my father’s scarf around my mouth. I stamp my feet hard to keep the feeling in my toes and launch out across the Meadow with resolute strides, like Shackleton in the Antarctic. My knife is in my pocket, but I do wish Pie were here to talk to. The Meadow seems a lonely place. I think most people have gone home from work early today.
    It will soon be midwinter, and I have heard people passing on the street say that the snow and the cold are unseasonal, too much for the time of year. Christmas will be here soon, but we don’t celebrate it anymore, and it means nothing to me, except that Father will sometimes let me listen to the carols on the wireless, and he will drink wine at dinner instead of his usual Scotch, and then he will withdraw to his study as usual. And often he gets me something, a book, or a coat, neither new to anyone but me. We do not even go to the Greek Church anymore for Midnight Liturgy, which makes me a little sad. As though we are both children with our faces squashed up against the glass, staring into a brightly lit room we can no longer enter.
    ‘Bah, humbug,’ I say aloud. Who needs Christmas when you have snow?
    I clutch my ribs and trudge north. There are no stars to light my way tonight, and no distant campfire jumps into life out on the meadow. I might as well be on the steppes of Russia, one of Napoleon’s lost army trekking home.
    I had almost thought to find something here, some remnant – a skull perhaps, grinning out of the snow like that chap in Hamlet. But there is nothing. Murder does not change the land itself. I cannot even be sure that I can find the same spot again, though I have dreamed of it since.
    ‘Perhaps he was not dead,’ I say, hopefully. Perhaps I dreamed the dark boy’s shining eyes. He gave me back Pie, after all. And he did not start the fight that night, fat Bert did.
    I keep walking, faster now, to keep up the warmth in me. I am past Binsey, past the Perch where I have drunk lemonade in summer. Soon I am in Wolvercote village, and the lights are shining out of the houses, and the road leads west, across the Thames, which is black as tar without a gleam, and past the Trout inn with its weir, and more lights, warmth, voices, a different world from the one I am in.
    There is no colour out here, just black and white and shades of grey. Godstow Nunnery is on my left.