He first visited while I was drawing. There was something about pencils and paper that seemed to bring him downstairs, at any time of day; I never found out what it was.
I had felt him before he made his presence known as obviously as he later would - perhaps he was still just gauging who it was with whom he was sharing his home and seeing whether we were suitable. I was six at the time and living in an old boarding house that my parents were managing. They seemed as though they must be as old as the hills in those days, but were in fact only in their early twenties. My sister had come along and was developing into a fairly cheerful little thing.
As time went on and we settled in he grew a little more curious about us, beginning to visit more regularly. The first time I recall him deliberately incurring into our lives was when he began moving my tin of pencils across the table while I was drawing. Not one to let anyone get away with such a thing without good reason, I would reach over and bring them back to where they had started. So he would move them again, a little further than before. Again I would draw them back. Sometimes he would move them in a straight line, others he would describe a wide arc.
When he tired of this, he would wander off to the kitchen and have a play. The taps would turn on for a few seconds, then off again. Lights would go on even if it was still the middle of the day. Occasionally he would flick the switch on the electric kettle, sending it whistling until we went and turned it off.
We weren’t able to see him during any of this; he was quite shy that way. The only time anyone actually saw him downstairs was when my aunt went out of our rooms and into the boarding house foyer to find my young cousin talking to the bottom of the stairs. When she asked who he had been talking to he said the old man had asked him what his name was. She asked who he meant and he told her that he had disappeared as she opened the door.
Soon after his ventures downstairs began, I grew curious about where he must be the rest of the time. Apart from our modest corner, the house had around 25-odd rooms, converted into accommodation for a range of very different people. Staying there with us were railway workers, an extended family of always-smiling Tongans, assorted other lodgers and a couple of fairly lonely, elderly men who kept much to themselves.
Over the course of a few weeks I made my way around visiting the various rooms, either tagging along as my mother carried out cleaning or dropping by for a game of cards or chess and a chat… such were the ways of my six-year-old self.
No sign of him on any of these occasions. On a couple of trips I did hear the trick with the taps from one of the communal bathrooms, which I knew were not being used by anybody at the time as the doors were open. But there was never a sign of anybody when I would look in.
During this time, while dusting the banisters on the main spiralling staircase, I did catch a glimpse of a fairly elderly man in a grey suit peering from the second floor over the top of the railing. I only caught sight for a brief moment before he turned. I knew that the only elderly gents living with us at that stage were on the ground level and was sure that he didn’t look or dress like any of them.
There was only one place I hadn’t explored, somewhere I knew I had been avoiding. While his presence hadn’t caused me too much undue concern thus far – there was always a ‘gentle’ quality to his visits that meant there was really nothing to be too scared about – I had always had a funny feeling about the attic. I was quite happy roaming the rest of the property, but it was never an area I had really ventured into. The main reason, apart from the dust and spiderwebs and lack of anything of interest bring kept up there, was that my parents had warned me of the likelihood of falling through to the floor below… a long way down with such high ceilings.
But it had to be done. Summoning the requisite courage to venture ‘out of bounds’, I began the long journey up the main stairway to the second floor, around the landing and down the hall passageway to the very rear of the house. This is where the narrow staircase up to the attic was to be found, at the very end of the hall, past the last of the rooms. My stomach was full of butterflies but it’s hard to know if it was being worried at finding anything up there, or being caught out. But everything was quiet so I pressed on. Step by step I climbed, each creaking so loudly I’m sure the whole house could hear. I finally got to the top step and rattled the doorknob. It was unlocked.
Pushing the door open (yet more creaking), I had my first proper look at the attic. There was bright sunshine streaking through a tiny skylight, a rectangular block of light that hung like a column in the otherwise fairly dark space, a place where shadows were allowed to roam in relative peace and had settled into a comfortable existence together. The floor did indeed look very fragile, as well as being covered in a thick layer of dust, almost like a layer of carpet, but more the texture of underlay. Running the length of the attic were beams, criss-crossed occasionally with others running perpendicular. It seemed then that rather than really being a floor, it was simply the top of the ceiling below – therefore unlikely to hold much weight at all.
As my eyes adjusted to the relative gloom, I realised he was there - the man in the grey suit. He was standing in the back right hand corner, looking right back at me. I could see him clear as day, yet I could also see what lay behind him as well, making out the unbroken line of the beams that ran diagonally to the floor, parallel with the sloping roof line. He looked very old, drawn and a little sad.
My voice would not come. If I had seen him elsewhere in the house I would perhaps have managed it, but up here I felt I had invaded his space somehow and felt highly uncomfortable. I let him be.
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