‘I’m coming up,’ she says, and begins to climb the ladder.
She rises, head first, into a warm and dusty space, the only light coming from two candles propped on a bale. Her brother is sitting collapsed on the floor, his head cradled in his hands.
‘Let me see,’ she says.
He mutters something inaudible, possibly heretical, but the meaning is clear: he wants her to go away and leave him alone.
She puts her hands on his, peels back his fingers. With her other hand, she lifts the candle and examines the place of pain. There is a swelling, reddened and bruised, just under his hairline. She presses its outer edges, making him wince.
‘Hmm,’ she says. ‘You’ve had worse.’
He lifts his eyes to hers and they regard each other for a moment. He gives a half-smile. ‘That is true,’ he says.
She lets her hand drop and, still holding the candle, sits herself down on one of the wool bales that are crammed into the space between floor and roof. They have been up here for several years. Once, last winter, in the yard, as they were wrapping gloves in linen, to be placed finger to wrist, finger to wrist, in baskets on a cart, her brother spoke up and asked why the attic was filled with wool bales, and what was their intended purpose? Their father leant across the cart and seized a fistful of his son’s jerkin. There are no wool bales in this house, he said, giving his son a shake with each word. Is that clear? Eliza’s brother had stared steadily back into his father’s eyes, without blinking. Clear enough, he had replied, eventually. Their father had held on, fist clenched around his son’s clothing, as if considering whether or not he was being insolent, then released him. Don’t speak of what doesn’t concern you, he had muttered, as he returned to his wrapping, and everyone in the yard let out the breath they had been holding.
Eliza allows herself to bounce up and down on the wool bale, the existence of which they are bound always to deny. Her brother watches her for a moment but says nothing. He tips his head back and stares at the rafters.
She wonders if he is recalling that this attic was always their space – hers and his, and also Anne’s, before she died. The three of them would retreat here in the afternoons, when he got back from school, pulling the ladder up after them, despite the wails and entreaties of their younger siblings. It was mostly empty then, save for a few spoilt hides that their father was saving for some unspecified reason. Nobody could reach them there; it was just her and him and Anne, until they were called by their mother to perform some task or to take over the care of one of the younger children.
Eliza hadn’t realised her brother still came up here; she hadn’t known he still sought this place as a refuge from the household. She hasn’t climbed the ladder since Anne died. She lets her gaze rove over the room: slanted ceilings, the undersides of the roof tiles, the bales and bales of wool, which are to be kept here, out of sight. She sees old candle stubs, a folding knife, a bottle of ink. There are, scattered over the floor, several curls of paper with words scrawled on them, crossed out, rewritten, crossed out again, then crumpled and tossed aside. Her brother’s thumb and finger, the rims of his nails, she sees, are stained black. What can he be studying up here, in secret?
‘What is the matter?’ she says.
‘Nothing,’ he answers, without looking at her. ‘Not a thing.’
‘What is ailing you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Then what are you doing up here?’
‘Nothing.’
She looks at the curls of paper. She sees the words ‘never’ and ‘fire’， and something that might be ‘fly’ or ‘try’。 When she raises her eyes again, she sees that he is looking at her, eyebrows raised. She gives an involuntary quick smile. He is the only person in this house – indeed, this whole town – who knows that she has her letters, that she can read. And how does he know this? Because he is the one who taught her and Anne. Every afternoon, here, after he returned from school. He would trace a letter in the dust, on the floor, and say, Look, Eliza, look, Anne, this is a d, this is an o, and if you put a g at the end, it says ‘dog’。 Do you see that? You need to blend the sounds, run them together, until the sense of the word arrives in your head.
‘Is “nothing” the only thing you’re willing to say?’ she says.
She sees his mouth twitch and knows that he is drawing on all his lessons in rhetoric and argument to find a way to answer this question with that very word.
‘You can’t do it,’ she says, with glee. ‘You can’t find a way to reply “nothing”， can you, however hard you try? You can’t do it. Admit it.’