The Wolf in the Attic Read Online Free PDF Page B

Ocean now, and I would have an entirely different accent.
    I could be riding a horse somewhere on the Great Plains, instead of stuck in a dark, damp old house in Jericho.
     
     
    B UT THERE WAS no time to look at the flags on the boats that day as the sailors brought them up to the seafront, to choose which country we should end up in. Father put it very well once, in a speech. He said it was a case of the Devil taking the hindmost.
    That is why we do not know where Mama is buried, or if she has a grave at all. The Turks had dragged her away earlier in the day, when we were packed on the roasting quayside; thousands and thousands of terrified people, with the water full of bodies in front of us, and the roaring of the great fire behind.
    I wish I could forget it; the thunder-heat of the flames, and the sound of the screaming as the Turks took away the young girls and the pretty women, and shot and bayoneted the husbands and fathers and brothers who tried to stop them.
    And Pa took me from Mama’s arms when they came for her, and pressed my face into his chest until I thought I should suffocate.
    When he let me look up again, she was gone, and the crowd was pressed tight around us and screaming, but I could feel his chest heaving under me, and the noise that came out of his throat was a dreadful raw howl, with no words in it, like an animal in agony.
     
     
    T HE LAUNCH WAS desperately crowded, and everyone was wailing and the sailors were armed with revolvers – I remember them being waved in our faces, and the sharp crack as they went off. I think they made me cry even more with fright, for I was very little. And they took us out to a towering battleship, a castle of steel afloat out in the harbour among a dozen others.
    So many flags were in the harbour that day, so many great warships. And they did almost nothing to help the poor people who were burning and drowning and being killed by the Turks back on the quays. A few boats were sent in, but for the most part, they sat there and their crews watched.
    The last thing I remember about that day, before Pa carried me into the depths of the great ship, was the towering pillar of smoke that was looming over the city. It was majestic, immense, greater than anything I ever thought men could create, and at its base, the flames pummelled the smoke and boiled and burst and cast a far-off roar. I shall never forget it, not if I live to be ninety years old.
     
     
    I USED TO think it might be that Mama was still alive – it might be possible – but when I said this to Pa later, in Oxford, he looked at me as though I had gone mad – I was very young – and that was the first time I think he ever hit me hard, across the face, and there were tears in his eyes as he did, I remember. I was so shocked I did not even cry, and he hugged me straight after, and said he was sorry. So very sorry.
    That was a horrible thing – to see him weep, and I hate to think on it.
    But we cannot choose what we remember and what we forget. All the lovely bright moments of our lives get forgotten except for remnants here and there, like the leaves blown from a tree in the autumn, and the terrible things, they stick with us forever, as bright and raw as the day they happened.
    When we first came to Oxford we went to Liturgy at the Greek church off the Banbury Road. I loved the smell of the incense, and the singing was glorious, but so sad. As though everyone were in mourning. But it was beautiful too. The priests all have long beards and look like wise men straight out of the Bible, and the icons are all agleam with gold, until the face of the Madonna and the baby Jesus can hardly be seen; they are shadows surrounded by gold and jewels, not real people at all.
    It seemed right and fitting to me, the dark music, the shadowed saints. As though God understood what had happened to us.
    The Mother of God lived her last years not far from our old home, and St Paul wrote letters to the Ephesians, who were the