House of Bells (31 page)

Stumbling her way downstairs, when balance was like something her body had forgotten: she had to lean into the wall all the way. And then stand straight and tell lies, say that she felt good, thanks, perfectly fit, and fine to be leaving now. Just going up to the house, yes. To see a man about a horse, yes. No, she didn't mean that literally; she wasn't delirious, no. She wasn't being deliberately evasive, either; she just wanted to talk to somebody, and no, it really wasn't any of Cookie's business, and . . .

Oh, all right, then. She was being deliberately evasive, yes.

Even so. He didn't have any right to stop her, even patients could discharge themselves from hospital, and . . .

Oh. More soup, before she went? Well, if he insisted, then. Yes.

The doctor and Ruth weren't there, which might be the only reason she got away with it. She couldn't have stood up to all three of them. She could hardly stand up at all, to be honest. Sitting down was better. More soup: that was better too. For somebody who mostly couldn't be bothered to eat, she did seem to be wonderfully hungry.

And she didn't honestly have to stand up to Cookie much, once she'd let him bully her into this respite. Indeed, she almost thought he was colluding. He satisfied himself that she was fuelled and primed, and then he released her.

Better: he drove her up to the house. She had never expected him to do that. Whoever he was and whatever position he held here – she still didn't know his actual name, had no label for him beyond ‘Cookie', which he really wasn't, any more than she thought he was a janitor – she'd come to think of him as a neutral observer, holding himself apart. Even this much engagement was a surprise. Though she supposed he just wanted to see what she meant to do, the results of it at least, and he must have doubted she'd even make it as far as the house without his help.

Either that, or he didn't want to confess to Dr Dorian – or to Ruth – that he'd let their patient walk through the woods all that way. These potent woods, when she was short of blood already, and still open at the wrist.

Anyway: he drove her to the back door but didn't try to come in, didn't apparently want to fuss over her once he was sure that she'd been delivered. Didn't want to snoop.

Which was just as well, because what she did – whatever she did – she didn't mean to be snooped upon.

The sun was setting, but it was not yet dinner time for the house. The captain's belly hadn't proclaimed it, or else there was no one to announce it, they hadn't yet thought to arrange a substitute for Frank. People were milling in the corridors like school kids, perching on window sills and squatting in circles on the floor, smoking like bad kids, waiting for the summons.

She thought somebody ought to be taking control. She was quite surprised that Webb wasn't: the first mate taking charge, keeping the great ship on time and on course. Deferring naturally to the captain, but still making sure the crew got fed . . . Wasn't that his job?

Keeping the gangways clear, that too. He wasn't doing that either. She was prepared to elbow and kick her way through if she had to, no more sweet shy Georgie now; but actually they moved out of her way, mostly, when they saw her coming. They all knew who she was, or at least who she was here, who she was now:
the girl who saved Kathie and then didn't; the girl who found Frank and couldn't save him either; the Jonah
. None of these knew her well enough to talk to, these random hippies; and those who might have stopped her anyway, out of duty or curiosity or sentiment – well, perhaps they saw something in her face.

Perhaps they saw something at her back, and catching up.

They were all of them conditioned, apparently, like Pavlov's dogs; the high doors to the dining room stood open and people had gathered in the hallway outside, but no one had gone in yet.

She went in.

She walked all the way through, around the long low tables to the matching doors at the far end.

And opened one of those, and walked on through; and would have closed it again behind her anyway, and never mind whatever might be following, only she felt it snatched out of her hand by something materially stronger than she was, slammed shut with a force that said there'd be no opening it now, not from either side. Not till this was done with.

Candles were all around. Maybe it was only the draught raised by the slam of the door, but for a moment they all seemed to reach toward her, yearningly. Fingers shaped themselves in the flames.

Joss sticks burned in the fireplace and at the window, all along the windows. Again, their smoke twisted and eddied in the shifting air, formed hands and fingers, groped for her from far away. Georgie thought of Frank and charcoal smoke, and shuddered.

Mother Mary sat alone on her sofa, and smiled to see poor Georgie scared.

Grace met her eye to eye, untroubled. ‘What, no captain? What have you done with him?'

‘The captain's doing grandly,' she said, soft and dangerous, eternally protective. ‘He's off being official with the policemen, and dear Frank. Webb's away too, down to London with his precious Kathie. They can look after themselves tonight, while I . . . look after you.'

‘Everyone knows I'm here.' That came out too quickly; it sounded defensive where she'd meant to sound only calm and ordered, as well prepared as Mary.

‘People in the house know that Georgie Hale's in here with me – but who's Georgie Hale? Does anybody know? If she vanishes, can anybody find her, or any trace of her? Maybe she just left by another door, gone as mysteriously as she came. Maybe that's a confession.'

‘People in London know who she is. Who I am.' One person did, at any rate. And he'd come looking. She thought he would. He'd come for the story.
Sorry, Tony. You're too late.
Too late for Frank, he'd be too late for her too. If he came.

If he didn't, there'd be no one to tell her story. Except Mother Mary, who everybody listened to.

‘Oh, I know who you are,' she said dangerously. ‘I've always known. Everyone here has their head in the clouds, those who haven't smoked their brains entirely; they struggle to know nothing, and they frequently achieve it. I keep my eye on the world, as I do on everyone here. I knew Georgie Hale, even before she lied to me about her name.'

‘Well, then. You know that people will come looking for me.' For almost the first time in her life she really wanted a cigarette, and of course she didn't have one. Grace used to carry them routinely, but only for the benefit of men. Georgie never would.

Besides, she really didn't fancy bringing flame and smoke quite that close to her throat. Not with Mary's eyes darkly on her, broodingly. She wondered if it were possible to be strangled from the inside.

‘Of course, but again: if they find nothing, nobody, no body – then who's to say what happened? Grace Harley's tried to kill herself before. Say she went mad and hanged poor Frank, then came to me to confess; and I tried to keep her for the police, but she wouldn't stay and I couldn't hold her, she went running off into the woods and over the moor and she might be anywhere by morning. Her body might never be found. For certain sure it would never be laid at my door.'

There wasn't another chair, and she wasn't, was
not
going to squash up on the sofa next to Mother Mary, but she really needed to sit down now. So she did that, sliding her back down the wall, hoping that it looked cool and self-confident and not at all as though her legs were giving way beneath her.

Here was one mystery solved: the ship's bell that used to stand by the back door had been removed here, for the moment. Set right here on the floor like she was, out of the way but in the captain's eyeline when he was sitting in his place.

She said, ‘You really think you can do that? Just make me vanish altogether, in a puff of smoke and nothing left behind? You can't afford another body.'

‘Oh, not me, dear. I can't do anything of the sort. Of course not. I'm no magician. I don't even speak their precious magic language. The gods, though – oh, yes. I reckon the gods could take you away from me, little nuisance that you are. Or burn you right up where you sit and leave nothing but a smear of grease and the smell of overcooking. I'll ask them in a little while. Then we'll see.'

Was that how she justified it? Not her work, but the gods'? ‘That must make things easy,' she said, smiling, relaxed. Nothing to it: this was the face she wore night after night, man after man. ‘You just put it to them, and they decide. No kickback, no responsibility.'

‘That's right. They take all the responsibility to themselves. They can do that; they're gods.'

It wasn't right, of course. It wasn't even sane. She really wasn't one to talk, but she knew sheer bloody madness when she heard it: out of her own mouth or someone else's, no difference.

Besides, it wasn't how this house worked. Mother Mary might believe it, she might
choose
to believe it, but she was fooling herself. It wasn't gods that stalked these high rooms, working strange miracles.

Grace knew. So did other people: Cookie, the doctor, Ruth. And at least Cookie knew where she was, and that she wasn't about to go running off into the wilds of the land in chase of some wild abstracted death. He was a sensible man; he'd want a more sensible story.

She tried to find comfort in that, that someone at least would want to dig deeper in search of her.

Tried hard.

Meantime, maybe she was only buying time but that seemed fair enough, a reasonable thing to do; she said, ‘What's it all about, though, Mary? Frank, Kathie . . .'
Me . . .
‘What's it for?'
And why should the gods oblige you?

‘This is Leonard's great task,' Mary said, with just a hint of that breathless awe that said
he is my guru
, even while her smile said that she worked behind her guru's back, moved him around like a chess piece:
as we do, my dear, with our men; you'll know, you of all people, how could you not?
‘It's what he's meant to do, his work in the world. Of course the gods want to see him fulfil his purpose. It's what they want for us all.'

And he's happy, is he, for you to pave his way with corpses?
Aloud, she only said, ‘And, what, Frank stood in his way, did he?'

‘Yes, of course. Frank was a spy; he worked for one of those Fleet Street rags that you make such an exhibit of yourself for. I expect you knew him, did you? So he changed his clothes and came up here and made like he was one of us, but I never believed him. He was never right. I looked through his things and found the proof. Notebooks, a camera. Spy stuff. I didn't mean that he should die, I only wanted rid of him, but the gods knew better. They tried to accommodate me at first, they tried just to scare him away; but he wouldn't go. He only moved out of the house and bedded down in the woods, and watched us all, and waited.'

And went mad
, but it was no use saying that to someone squatting that same territory. She hadn't quite known till this that a person could be calm and competent and entirely crazy.

‘What do you think he was waiting for?'

‘For you. Obviously.'

She might be mad, but she was almost right, that too. Of course Tony would send someone else, when Frank disappeared; it meant only that the story was getting bigger. Somewhere in the giddy maze of his head, Frank must have known that. He really might have been waiting.

Which made his death her fault, probably. One more blow to her conscience, one more stiffening in her spine. She was going to need it.

She said, ‘And Kathie?'
Never mind me, I know about me. So do you.
The assault on Kathie bewildered her.

‘She wanted to take Webb away from us. Nice little rich girl, Kathie – her dad owns half of Buckinghamshire. She was working to set him up down there: in his own institute was what she called it, with all the communications that are difficult here, and none of the distractions that our colony affords. She would have . . . diminished what Leonard is working for. I couldn't have that. People should come to us, not move away. I prayed for intervention. That's all.'

No, that wasn't all. She deluded herself, she took refuge behind her gods, but somewhere inside her she must know what she was doing. She'd gone out to Frank – using her torch, which perhaps nobody else in the house would have done; there were hurricane lamps for going outside in the dark, but Mary had never quite bought into the simple life – and no doubt she'd say that she'd gone only to witness, and perhaps she even managed to believe it, but that had to be fragile, crêpe-paper thin.

Grace wanted to tear through that, just to see what lay deeper down. She wasn't sure it would help, but it might make her feel better. Georgie thought that might be important.

Poking gently, she said, ‘But now you've lost Webb anyway. You said he'd gone with Kathie . . .'

‘Yes, but he'll be back. We still have all his work, his records here. And his faithful lieutenant. Tom can take over, if we have to do without Webb. I'm making sure of that.'

A little demonstration, the power of the rational language: yes, Tom had bought totally into that. Never doubting that it was his own achievement, never thinking that the woman who stood behind his shoulder might have been playing with him. Praying to her gods, no doubt, to kill the candle flames at the moment that Tom spoke his potent word. Deceiving him, and deceiving herself, that too.

She said, ‘Why do your gods play with fire?' Trying to sound a little naive, a little curious, nothing more. A girl at the end of her tether, who only wants to know. ‘It's all been fire and smoke,' and nothing to do with gods. Even the hands of wax had been flame at one remove, in either direction: molten by fire, candles without wicks.

Mary hadn't been there, but that didn't seem to matter. The house took what it wanted, used that as it chose. For her, from her, it took the cold sucking absence of her baby; for Mary and from Mary, hands made of flame.
And you went to Frank and made that happen, Mary, didn't you? Broke his charcoal heap deliberately to let the fire roar, and then I think you stayed to watch your gods at work.