A Dark Dividing (23 page)

‘They had to work all the time. From when they got up in the morning until when they went to bed at night. They had to scrub floors and work in the laundry and sew things—horrid things like shrouds for corpses—and if they didn’t do it properly they were punished. Locked up or beaten. And some of the people who lived here were mad and sometimes they had to be—what’s the word meaning you’re tied up so that you don’t hurt anybody?’

‘Restrained? Confined?’

‘Restrained. There’re rooms in the cellars with iron doors—they used to lock the mad ones down there until they were quiet.’ (Had that been the sound in the nightmares; the clanging of an iron door, followed by sobbing cries of helplessness?)

Sonia had come closer, and her face was only inches from Simone’s. It was pretty spooky being this close to the face that was so much like your own. Except the eyes, thought Simone. I know my eyes aren’t like that, all mean and sly. I’ll try never to have a mean or sly thought ever in my life if that’s how it makes you look.

Sonia said, ‘Think how it must have been to be so mad you were locked away in the darkness and left there for days and days. But the worst thing of all would be if you weren’t mad at all, but people didn’t like you or wanted to keep you out of the way because you had found out their secrets. You’d scream and scream, and you’d try to say you weren’t mad, but nobody would believe you.’

‘Did that really happen? Or are you making it up?’

‘I’m not making it up. I told you—I know what is and what has been.’ She eyed Simone.

‘You said that before. What’s it supposed to mean?’

‘Don’t you know?’ In a soft voice, Sonia said:

Simone thought: she’s mad. She’s absolutely bats. I’m standing in a haunted house with a mad girl who’s quoting poetry at me! At least, I suppose it’s poetry—it sounds like it. She looked uneasily about her, trying not to shiver. The ghosts were still here; they were hating the presence of intruders because they were ashamed of having lived in a workhouse, those ghosts, and they resented the two girls from the future who lived normal lives and did normal things. (Except that Sonia was not normal; if she had been here a hundred years ago they would probably have locked her into one of those cellars because they would have said she was mad…)

Simone pushed this thought down at once, and walked determinedly back into the passage. ‘What’s through that door at the end?’

Sonia’s face took on the sly look again. ‘Come and see,’ she said, and limped across to push it open. There was a grating sound from the warped oak, and then the door swung inwards.

It was another of the dismal, badly-lit rooms, with another of the evil iron stoves watching them from the shadows. Simone hated the stove and she hated the room but she would not let Sonia see this, and so she looked about her, as if she was interested.

One of the windows overlooked a kind of small courtyard. Was it the courtyard where that game had been played about the hanged man? No, that was just a pretend-thing.

Near one wall was a raised area of floor: a large square section different from the rest. At first Simone thought it might be what was called a rostrum: they had one in the gym at school so that the gym teacher could see what they were all doing, and there was one in the little theatre for conducting when the school orchestra gave a recital. It was odd to see one here, though.

Sonia said, ‘Help me to move this, then I’ll tell you a bit more about Mortmain if you like.’ She moved to the raised area and kicked at the edge of it, and for the first time Simone saw that it was not part of the main floor at all; it was a wooden box-structure, with iron handles set into the edges. The wood had rotted in places and a glint of black iron showed beneath.

‘What is it? What’s under there?’

‘It’s an old well. I suppose you do know what a well is, do you?’

‘Of course I know.’ Simone was stung by the faint patronizing tone. ‘It’s where people used to get water before they had plumbing and bathrooms. You don’t usually get wells inside houses, though.’

‘It used to be outside. They built this bit of Mortmain over part of an old courtyard,’ said Sonia.

‘The courtyard out there?’

‘Yes. Most of Mortmain’s really old and the well’s really old as well, only nobody had used it for years and years. But a long time ago—a hundred years ago—they wanted more room and somebody said this was the best place to build, so they just put a cover over the well and built the extra room here. They were only making a bit more room for paupers and mad people and children nobody wanted, you see. That was how they thought of it. They thought it didn’t matter to people like that if they had to live in a room where there was a well. They left a small bit of courtyard—that’s what you can see through the windows.’

‘I don’t believe you. Nobody would build a room where there was a well.’

‘They did. If you go outside and look at the walls you can see where the bricks are different, and there’s a different roof as well.’ She was pulling the red sweater over her head like a man will remove his jacket before attempting a strenuous task. She put the sweater, neatly folded, on the ground, and looked back at Simone. ‘Are you ready to help me? If you hold that side we can pull the cover off between us. I don’t think I can do it on my own, ’cos it’s lined with iron and it’s heavy.’

I wish I knew why she wants to do this, thought Simone, and I wish I dare ask how she really gets to know all this stuff. I think I’d better help her with the well-cover, but then I’ll make an excuse and go. I’ll say I’m expected home—that’s true anyway. There was a faint, far-off reassurance about remembering Mother waiting for her in the cottage. Tomorrow was Saturday, and they quite often went out for the day somewhere on Saturday. They were exploring the villages and the little market towns, and it was pretty good.

‘We have to pull the cover towards us,’ said Sonia. ‘It isn’t bolted down, and it doesn’t hinge, or anything like that: it just slides. All right?’

‘Um, yes.’

Sonia was already half-kneeling down, grasping the rim of the well-cover. She looked a bit grotesque crouching down like that because of the lopsided shoulders but Simone tried not to notice. She unslung the leather camera-case and put it on top of Sonia’s sweater, then she knelt down and reached for the edge of the cover. It was cold and hard and over the years the iron had become pitted so that it felt scaly, like a dead snake. But once it was moved she could say about having to go home.

Sonia had been right about the cover being heavy. At first Simone thought they were not going to manage it, but at the second try it gave way a bit, making the kind of screechy rasping that scraped all the nerves in your teeth. A rim of blackness showed at the far end, and Sonia said, ‘Again!’ and they pulled harder. The blackness widened, and a faint sighing sound came from within the well’s depths. A dank, unwholesome stench gusted into their faces; Simone thought it was almost as if the well had breathed out.

Sonia said, ‘One more tug!’ and this time the ancient cover slid back and crashed on to the ground with a deafening clatter of wood and iron. Clouds of dust rose up making them both cough, and Simone’s heart performed several somersaults because the sound was so massive in this silent old place that surely it would disturb someone or something… But the echoes were already dying away and the dust was settling, and although the stove behind them creaked nastily from its corner as if it were considering coming to life, Simone knew that really it was only that the well-cover had jarred the rusting mechanism.

They both stared at the open well-shaft, while all round them Mortmain sank gradually back into its brooding quiet. Neither of them spoke, and Simone, glancing covertly at Sonia, thought Sonia had not been expecting the well to be quite so creepy. The opening was lined with black bricks and it was not very large—it might be about seven feet across—but everything about it was so extremely old and so dreadfully sinister.

Sonia was still kneeling down, peering into the well’s depths. The cold dank light from the bricks made hollows in her face so that there were black pits where her eyes were. Simone had moved back from the well, but even from where she was standing she could see the remains of an old rope looped across the well’s mouth. That would be where people had lowered a bucket to bring up water.

‘It smells disgusting,’ said Sonia, looking up at Simone. ‘And it looks as if it’s an awfully long way down.’ Her words made faint hissing echoes inside the well. An awfully long way down-down-down… An awfully long way, said the well in a black, evil-smelling whisper.

Sonia did not seem worried by this. She said, ‘I think I can see water at the bottom. Like a black glint. Wait a bit, and I’ll throw something down. A bit of broken floorstone or something—’

The stone dropped silently into the blackness, and after what seemed to Simone a very long time, there was a faint sound that might have been a dull splash or that might simply have been the floorstone hitting a solid floor. Sonia stood up, brushing the dust off her skirt. ‘It is deep, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Anyone who fell down there would never be able to get out again, would they?’

She regarded Simone consideringly, and Simone, horrified, thought, so that’s it. She’s got me out here to kill me. She’s going to throw me down the well, like something out of a stupid nursery rhyme, and then leave me. Except she won’t, because I won’t let her. She got up off her knees and began to move stealthily across to the door. Because I’m a whole lot stronger than she is, and if I can get to the door I’ll run away from her as fast as ever I can—

Sonia laughed, and the laugh was picked up by the well, so that for a moment it spun and shivered eerily all round Simone’s head. ‘Silly,’ she said. ‘I’m not intending to kill you. You didn’t really think that, did you?

‘Um, well, what are we going to do?’

‘We’ve already done it,’ said Sonia. ‘We’ve started the secret. You’ve helped me take the cover off and so the secret’s beginning. The pact’s being forged.’

I’m missing something, thought Simone. There’s something behind all this—I can practically hear her thinking it. It’s something to do with a plan she’s had for years and years, only she couldn’t carry out the plan on her own. She needed help with it—she needed me… For the well-cover? Yes, I think so. I think that’s why she got me here.

Sonia was smiling at Simone. ‘Once you’ve made a secret together, you’re bound to one another for ever,’ she said. ‘That’s what my—’ She stopped abruptly. She was about to tell me something about her home, thought Simone. But she stopped again because she doesn’t want me to know where she lives, or who her family are. Well, OK, I don’t want her to know where I live or who my family are.

She said, ‘But Sonia—um—if we leave the cover off someone might fall into the well.’

‘Yes,’ said Sonia, her eyes still on Simone. ‘That’s the whole point.’

‘But—but we can’t do that! We can’t possibly do that!’ Simone was already kneeling down again, grasping the well-cover and trying to push it back into place, but without Sonia to help her she could not do it.

‘You won’t do that on your own,’ said Sonia watching her. ‘It’s silly even to try. I couldn’t do it by myself, even though I have to do special exercises for my back, so my arms are probably a lot stronger than yours.’ Again the pleased, I’m-better-than-you, I’m-different-to-you tone.

Simone said, ‘Sonia, you must help me! We must put it back!’

‘No, we musn’t. I told you, this is the start of being blood-sisters. We’ll each know what we’ve done, but we’ll never be able to tell anyone else. Because if one gets into trouble for it, the other will as well.’

‘But it’d be murder!’ said Simone desperately. ‘If somebody falls in there and dies it’d be murder!’

‘Yes, it would, wouldn’t it?’ said Sonia very softly, and Simone understood properly then that this was Sonia’s plan, this was what she had wanted to do all along. She stared at Sonia in horror, and felt the familiar ruffling of her mind that meant Sonia’s thoughts were brushing against her own. She blinked, and for a moment, on the inside of her eyelids, there was the darting image of a woman with a rather plain face and straggly brown hair and worried hands. She felt Sonia’s hard cold dislike of the woman, as clearly as if she had put her hands inside a freezer and held them there.

That’s who she wants to kill, thought Simone in horror. She’s been planning it and working it out for years and years. It’s someone she hates—so much that it’s eating away at her. She tried to see the woman’s image more clearly: it was a bit blurry, a bit transparent at the edges, but she could see that the woman looked rather old-fashioned.

And then Sonia said, ‘Oh, if anyone falls in it’ll only be some smelly old tramp. They come in here or in the Paupers’ Dormitory, on account of this is the back of the house and if they make a fire on the stone floors the light can’t be seen from the road. If one of them comes in here in the dark he won’t see that this is a well; he’ll just think it’s a patch of shadow.’

Sonia was lying, of course. Simone could feel the lie in Sonia’s mind as if she was touching it. It was like touching a hangnail or a blister. She said, ‘Sonia, it doesn’t matter who it is! It’ll still be killing!’

‘I know it will.’ She moved closer and her hand curled around Simone’s again. ‘It’s going to be a brilliant secret for us to share, isn’t it?’

‘No—’

‘We’ll be able to talk about it—the private, thought-talking, I mean. I’ll keep coming out here—I told you, I’m supposed to cycle every afternoon—and I’ll tell you when we’ve caught someone.’

Simone said, ‘It’s the woman with brown hair you want to murder, isn’t it?’ and Sonia’s face twisted with fury.

‘How did you know about her?’

‘I saw her in your mind just now.’ This was the most peculiar conversation to be having, but Simone was not going to be put off. She said, ‘You can see into my mind, so why shouldn’t I be able to see into yours? I can’t do it often, but I can do it sometimes. You don’t like her, that woman, do you? Who is she? Is she your mother?’