Jonathan Coe - Number 11

I couldn’t tell you, now, why it was this argument — the silliest and most irrational argument of all — that finally clinched it for me. Perhaps Alison had just worn me down. But from now on, without agreeing that every feature of the situation corresponded with every detail in the film (besides which I was, in any case, still very hazy on most of those details), I was more persuaded than ever that we had stumbled into the very epicentre of a mystery; that the Mad Bird Woman was the key to it; and that if we wanted to solve it, we were going to have to find out more, somehow, about the person — or the thing — whose silhouette we had glimpsed that afternoon through the window of Number 11, Needless Alley.

In other words, we would have to go into that cellar.

Alison’s second brainwave broke upon her late the following morning.

When she came to tell me, I was sitting by myself up near the top of the plum tree, trying to get some peace and quiet.

It had been a stressful morning. At breakfast, Gran and Grandad had seemed unusually tense. Gran was fussing around making toast and tea in a very absent-minded sort of way, and Grandad was hiding behind his newspaper. The front-page headline, as usual, was about the war in Iraq. ‘Saddam Hussein’s Sons Captured and Killed,’ it said. (Or something like that.)

Buttering my toast and sugaring my tea, I was unnerved by the silence between them. It was most uncharacteristic.

‘Grandad,’ I said, timidly. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘What?’ he said, in a tone that was far from encouraging. But I pressed on.

‘Are we still at war with Iraq?’

‘It’s complicated,’ he said, without putting the paper down.

‘Oh.’

Gran noticed my tone of disappointment, even if he didn’t.

‘Nobody really understands what’s going on,’ she said. ‘The good thing is it’s all happening a long way from here.’

‘Saddam Hussein’s going to be pretty angry, isn’t he, now that his sons have been killed?’

‘I think he was quite angry already, what with one thing and another.’

‘But does this mean he might start attacking us now? Because I know that before he died, David Kelly said —’

Before I had a chance to proceed any further, Grandad slammed down his paper with an angry snort.

‘Your gran’s got more important things to do than answer your stupid questions,’ he said. He stood up, and fished his car keys out of his pocket. ‘I’ll go and get the car out of the garage,’ he said to Gran. ‘She —’ (meaning me) ‘— can do the washing-up when we’re gone. And the other one, if she ever gets up.’

He left the kitchen and in the cold silence that followed Gran laid her hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

‘Take no notice,’ she said. ‘He’s all worked up this morning.’

I was glad of the gesture: Grandad’s behaviour had startled and upset me. ‘Are you going out somewhere?’ I asked.

‘Just to the doctor’s. We’ll have to leave you two girls alone for a couple of hours.’ She pursed her lips doubtfully. ‘Perhaps I should ask Mrs Sparks to come round and keep an eye on you.’

‘There’s no need,’ I said, wanting to quash this idea at once. ‘We’ll be good. We won’t even leave the house.’

‘Well, if you’re sure …’ said Gran. ‘I suppose it’s all right. If you need anything, just go next door.’

About half an hour later Gran and Grandad drove off, both looking as pale as ghosts. I realize now, of course, that they had been waiting for this morning for many weeks; that this was the meeting where they would be told once and for all what had caused Gran’s ‘bit of a funny turn’; would be told, basically, whether she was going to live or die. But I guessed nothing of this at the time, and had little more serious on my mind, as I wandered through the garden, than my shock at the way Grandad had spoken to me, and a more pressing — though shapeless — anxiety about how Alison would propose to continue with our investigation into Number 11, Needless Alley: something which I was beginning to think had already gone quite far enough.

At the top of the garden, once again, I climbed up the plum tree and found my favourite spot among its branches. I had already come to love this tree. There was nothing nicer than sitting here by myself, amidst the soft rustle of its leaves, looking down on the surrounding gardens, watching the little fragments of suburban life being played out there, or tilting my face towards the sun, feeling its gentle heat on my closed eyelids. I could have sat there forever. This is what my week with Gran and Grandad should have been like, all the time. Instead, Alison was ruining it with her silly, selfish fixation on this weird narrative she had constructed around the Mad Bird Woman, the body in the woods, the mystery of Number 11 which might not even be a mystery at all. And here she was now, trotting up the garden path towards me, that familiar mischievous glint in her eye, doubtless bursting with some unwelcome new suggestion or foolish piece of information to torment me with. The shocking truth revealed itself to me suddenly: I was beginning to hate her.

‘OK,’ she said, clambering on to the branch beside me, causing it to sway and judder, clumsily breaking off a blameless twig as she settled herself. ‘I’ve got it all worked out.’

‘Oh yes?’ I said, keeping my voice flat, trying to convey as little interest as possible.

‘The thing is — what’s stopping us from going round there, knocking on the door, and walking into the house?’

I sighed. ‘Well, that’s obvious. She’d never let us in.’

‘True,’ said Alison. ‘Not unless we had some excuse. Like, for instance, if we had something that she wanted.’

‘But we don’t,’ I pointed out.

‘Ah,’ said Alison, proudly, ‘but we do.’ She held up the playing card, the one with the really revolting, brightly coloured picture of a spider. ‘Remember what she said to us in the woods? “They must be returned to me — all of them.” But we haven’t given her this one.’

My heart sank. Alison was outwitting me again. It was true: the Bird Woman had insisted that every one of those cards be returned to her, so we would only be doing what she had asked.

‘So you think we should take it round?’

‘Yep.’

‘When?’ I had been so happy sitting here. And now I was less inclined to move than ever.

‘No time like the present,’ said Alison, brightly. ‘Come on, let’s get it over with.’

We locked up my grandparents’ house with the spare set of keys, and set off into town. We were breaking my promise to Gran that we would stay at home, of course, but Alison was no longer to be swayed by thoughts like that. She strode on ahead of me so quickly that we reached Needless Alley in little more than ten minutes. When we arrived, it was getting on for noon and the fierce July sun was high in the sky. Beverley appeared placid and friendly that morning, but as soon as we turned into the narrow opening between those two tall houses, shadows started to encroach, the temperature seemed to drop, and Number Eleven, as we approached it with increasingly reluctant footsteps (on my part, anyway), looked more threatening than ever. A thick, blanketing silence covered the street, as it had yesterday, and it wasn’t until we had penetrated the front garden and almost reached the front door that it was broken: first of all by the sound of our footsteps scuffling against the stony obstructions in our path, and then by the melancholy chirping of the birds trapped in the leafy aviary that made up the house’s bizarre façade.

At the foot of the four steep steps that climbed up to the front door, we paused. This was it. Our last chance to think better of the adventure, and turn back.