Attic Us Finch

In June 1998 my father, Abel Finch, started living in the attic of our home. I had just turned sixteen so whether this was a response to my coming of age or merely a retraction from society was not clear. It was difficult not to take this personally however at such a formative age in my life. He only set foot outside that attic once more which was during the hot summer of 1999.

In the early days of his lofty occupation my mother, a sensible woman, assumed this was merely a phase, perhaps a reaction to the onslaught of middle age or the pressures of his job as a family solicitor. Surely no one could live up there indefinitely. This was not an attic that had been converted into a comfortably appointed third storey living space with a window in the roof, some nice floorboards and a bathroom. No, this was a small, cramped, dusty and hot space where the joists supporting the roof made it impossible to stand and where the heat from the house below would make the temperature under the roof tiles akin to living in the Sahara. The analogy was further enforced by the night-time temperatures dipping considerably and making the suffocating space as cold as the darkness that enveloped it as he slept on a single mattress balanced above the bedroom he and my mother once shared.

“Why is he still up there Mum?” Was an obvious and, let’s face it, reasonable question my younger sister and I posed on more than one occasion during that first year.

“He just needs to sit by himself, he’ll come down soon enough, you’ll see.” I'm paraphrasing from memory but this was the general tone of all of her answers.

Over time he constructed an elaborate Heath Robinson inspired series of pulleys and hoists that allowed him to pass items to and from the folks in the world below the rafters but which meant he did not have to come down to get so much as a morning cup of tea. At mealtimes Mother would place a tray of food into the box that hung down from the opening in the ceiling and she would then either simply say.

“Dinner is ready.”

Or if she were feeling recalcitrant that day, she would merely tug on the rope to announce the arrival of the meal. The force of the pull was directly proportional to her anger, my sister and I surmised, a strong yank would send a shockwave of frustration coursing up the ropes and produce a symphony of noise as pulleys and knots strained and clashed.

I can only assume that, up in the attic, space was at a premium because my father always dutifully sent the tray down in the box in a reversal of the process, as soon as he was finished. His appetite was small because he took no exercise, other than crawling around like a giant four-legged spider in the heat of the roof space.

For light he had a single bulb suspended inelegantly on its own wire with a switch attached halfway along. In the sane universe a light, such as this, is commonplace and used to locate the box of photographs you once put up there or perhaps the Christmas decorations that you less than carefully threw up there eleven months hence. In my father’s universe this single light was his God, able to let there be light at his command but, unfortunately, the incandescent light bulbs of the day meant heat and heat is not your friend in a roof space.

“I just read my books one chapter at a time before it gets too warm, then I turn it off for a while.” Was his logical response to this situation.

Of course, he also had bodily functions that he needed to obey, and this opened a world of difficulty for my sister Chloe and I. Each morning we dutifully, and carefully, took it in turns to detach the bucket as it was lowered down. We remained steadfast and held our breath as we emptied it into the toilet, flushing the contents away and, at arm’s length, reattached the makeshift device to be hoisted aloft for its next use. At school our friends would complain about having to wash dishes, take out garbage or tidy a room. We were envious of their normalcy, if only they knew how lucky they were not to be dealing with a daily dose of familial shit swaying gently as it slowly lowered towards their head.

“Please Mum, do not make chili again, at least not so hot. What about a nice salad, something wholesome, good for his health?” I implored many times.

“He eats, what we eat. If I make chili, he has chili, I’m not running a restaurant for your father to pick and choose his meals from up there, what would the neighbours say?”

That summer was hot in Liverpool but, however the rising mercury affected the sane individuals living on terra firma, it was nothing compared to the heat in the roof of a small semi-detached house in a suburban street where a determined, hunched and sweating man continued to defy logic, and the social norm, of not living in the roof.

All the perfectly good bedrooms in the house opened on to the top landing and at night, when my sister and I had clambered into our beds, I would hear my parents talking softly to one another. Mother had a chair that permanently lived at the top of the stairs and there she would sit to do her knitting or listen quietly to her small radio. My father would lie on the floor of the attic with his head close to the opening so he could hear too.

“How are you doing up there my love, have you thought any more about coming down, maybe just for tonight?”

“I can’t, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, we can talk about it again another time, don’t upset yourself.”

“What will happen to me do you think? I sometimes wonder if I will ever be able to come down again.”

“You’ll be fine, you just need to have a little think up there.” “Why don’t I put the radio on for a while, the kids are asleep.”

“Thank you my love, that would be nice.”

And so, it continued. The sounds of my teenage nights as I drifted to sleep were no different to those of my contemporaries as my parents softly chatted, interrupted only by the occasional voice from a radio or the staccato click of needles turning wool into scarves and hats. My life, within my poster covered walls, was as ordinary as anyone else but when my door was opened, and the rest of the universe was allowed in, the sights and smells of the swinging toilet bucket reminded me this was far from normal.

When my seventeenth birthday ticked around, and he had been up there for a whole year, my sister decided that a more direct approach to getting father out of the roof was required.

"I've been thinking of ways to tempt him out." She confided in me.

"Like what?"

"Well something simple like, you know those lemon drops he loves? Well I was thinking what if I put a bag on the landing so he could see it but he'd have to come down to get them?"

My sister was an inquisitive and sensitive soul with a definite streak of cunning, I admired the plan for its simplicity but I told her.

"Even if he comes down for a second he will just jump straight back up, you would never even know unless you watched the whole time."

"I guess" she said, a little dejected.

"Still a good idea though, I mean maybe we could take it in turns to keep watch on the sweets and when he comes down we could just appear, casual like, and keep him talking until he didn't want to go back up."

Chloe's eyes sparkled, this was a plan she could get behind.

“Everyone at school is getting worse.” Her face fell slightly as the joy of the plan gave way to the reality of life in school.

It was true. Even though he was within the confines of his own home, word soon spread about the crazy guy in the attic. How could it not? He stopped going to work, we stopped accepting any visitors, even family were fobbed off and we often found ourselves crouching behind the sofa in silence as the doorbell chimed. Mum kept making excuses about how Dad was ‘so busy’ and, my personal favourite, ‘his schedule is packed to the rafters.’

But, with annoying certainty, the secret got out and my father became a short-lived celebrity, he even made the free paper with the headline ‘Does local man have bats in his belfry?’ Pretty poor effort I thought, given his name and occupation.

Chloe and I took the brunt of the punishment at school. The taunts were often imaginative, always cruel and seemingly endless. Even the teachers got in on the act with Miss Cellis my English teacher particularly enjoying herself when she wrote in the margin of my schoolbook.

 “I am often reminded of your father and occasionally, when I read your homework, I too feel like crawling into a dark space and forgetting you exist.” 

Chloe and I walked home from school together one evening when the heat had made us strip off as much of our clothing as we reasonably could, and bought an iced lolly to share after pooling our meagre resources.

“What we are we going to do about Dad?” She asked, in between sucking the lolly. "Shall we get some of those lemon sweets and make a schedule where we take it in turns to wait?"

She was slowly strolling beside me as we made our way home, having her turn sucking the icy treat with one hand and absentmindedly swinging her school bag in the other. Teenagers dragging their heels was not an unusual sight, but we were never especially keen to get back.

“Yes, let do that.” I said. “We have to do something, I’m worried about mum.”

“Yeah, me too, why do you really think he’s up there, I mean it’s beyond weird now right?”

As she said this the bottom part of the lolly collapsed on itself and slid off the stick, she gamely tried to catch it, but it was no use and the final third of our collective worldly goods splatted on the warm evening pavement and immediately became sugary red water, like a tiny crime scene.

“Shit.” Was all that she could say, as she stared disconsolately downwards. A nod of silent agreement was all that I could muster.

As we got closer to home we subconsciously picked up the pace from a dawdle to a brisk walk because proximity equalled recognition. It was old news now and Dad was merely one local weirdo in a neighbourhood where people put up Christmas decorations in October and had cars suspended on house bricks for years at a time. I guess weirdness is in the eye of the beholder. Old news or not, we still attracted stares and poorly hidden laughter, especially as we rounded the corner into our own street where we had practically been elevated to sideshow freak status.

That evening the heat was unbearable, stifling, oppressive, sultry, the whole thesaurus was throwing everything it could at us as we approached our house. The North of England is not set up for this weather, the double brick, well insulated walls all packed together in cramped streets were great in the cold of winter but in summer everything became a heat magnet. There was nowhere for the heat to go and no escape from it with the little houses holding onto the warmth of the day, guarding it jealously, unable to let it go.

“Are you OK up there my love, it’s very warm down here it must be awful up there?”

We could hear mum on the top landing as Chloe and I let ourselves in the front door to be greeted by our familiar, strange tableau.

“Yes.” I heard my father grunt from on high, “it’s very bad today.”

 “Then come down, you are going to die of heat exhaustion up there.”

“We’re home Mum, its only us,” said Chloe interrupting them as she made her way up the stairs.

“Hi Love, I’m just talking with Dad.”

“Hi Dad,” said Chloe, “how is it up there?”

“Oh, not too bad thanks love, how was school today?”

“The usual.”

“That’s good.” Came the disembodied voice from the heavens.

“Hey, Dad, you won’t believe what happened on the way home.”

“What?” He said with undisguised concern.

“Well, we got up to the top of the hill outside the shop and we felt something cool drop on our heads, like it was raining but not actually raining.”

“What was it?”

“It sounds stupid Dad, but I think it was snow.”

The three of us were standing on the landing looking up at the small black square of darkness above. I shot my sister a look because it was bloody hot outside and I had not felt what she had.

She saw me looking but ignored it and continued to speak upwards.

“Yeah, it’s some kind of weird weather thing I guess, they told us in Geography class that it has to be warm enough to snow.”

“Did they?”

I looked out of the window on the landing, making a big deal about how I was just casually glancing.

“Bloody hell" I said. “She’s right it’s snowing.”

I shouted to the attic. “You have to come down, it’s unbelievable.”

“This is once in a blue moon stuff Dad.” Chloe was almost screaming.

And so, on that evening, my Father gingerly and slowly lowered himself from the attic and stood hunched at the window behind us. Chloe held his hand tightly and Mother hid her moist eyes from us. 

We watched the scene below our landing window as the impossible snow fell in large puffy flakes. The warm pavement evaporated it instantly when it touched the ground, but nothing could dampen our incredulous mood as my family watched in silence. Bringing him down, just for a short spell, didn't need lemon drops, just a spark of wonder from my brilliant little sister.