Tower of Silence (21 page)

‘It’s something to help you sleep,’ said the nurse, as Selina stared with scared eyes at the mug of
drink-this
. ‘You’re in hospital, you know.’

Selina frowned, because although her mind felt fuzzy it also felt as if there might be things she should be remembering. She said, ‘My parents—’ and then stopped.
There was something wrong, something bad. She would remember what it was in a minute.

‘Doctor will come along to talk to you when you’ve had a nice sleep,’ said the nurse brightly. Selina hated her. She wore a white apron that rustled, and she smelt of carbolic soap and cocoa. ‘Drink this all up, first, and then off to the Land of Noddington for a while.’

Selina wondered how old the nurse thought she was. She started to say, in her most grown-up voice, ‘I’m seven and a quarter, you know,’ and then quite suddenly a piece of the blurry nightmare slid into her mind, and she said, ‘Christy. She was in the tower with me—Where is she? What happened to her? Did they bring her out? I didn’t see anyone bring her out—’

‘We’ll talk about that later.’

‘No,’ said Selina, glaring at the nurse, her fists beating angrily on the bedclothes. ‘No, you must tell me now. If you don’t, I’ll—’ Another sliver of memory skittered across her mind. Somebody who had screamed into the crimson-streaked night, on and on, until it hurt your mind to hear it. ‘I’ll scream,’ she said mutinously. ‘I won’t stop screaming until you tell me about Christy.’ She drew in a deep breath, and the nurse said hastily, ‘Let me find doctor for you.’

The doctor came nearly at once. He was a nice jowly-faced man with shiny round spectacles and a fringe of hair round a bald head. He sat on Selina’s bed and held her hand, and said, well now, what was all this about?

‘It’s Christy,’ said Selina, clutching at his hands. ‘Christabel Maskelyne. She was inside the tower with me
–I remember that part. We hid from–from something—But then we couldn’t get out because the door wouldn’t open from inside. They did bring Christy out, didn’t they? Because I didn’t see her–not right at the end–not when—’ She stopped, clenching her fists in frustration. ‘I can’t remember. Not properly. I can remember some but not much.’

‘You’ll remember a little bit at a time, Selina. Like being out in the fog, and you think you can’t see where you’re going, only then it clears in patches, and you can see quite clearly. That’s what your memory will do.’

Selina said, ‘Yes, but I can’t wait for it to do that. Because of Christy. If they shut the door on her she wouldn’t be able to get out of the tower. And the walls are so thick they wouldn’t hear her if she called out. They mightn’t know about any of that.’ She looked up at the doctor. ‘You must tell them to go back. Please, you must.’

The doctor had warm strong hands that closed round Selina’s. He did not smell of soap and cocoa; he smelt of clean shirts and the stuff Selina’s father sometimes put on his hair.

Father…Another tiny shard of memory flicked into place. Something bad had happened to father…Part of the nightmare. Part of the screaming and the iron stair that clanged when you went up it…

‘Selina, listen to me,’ said the doctor. ‘You and your friends were taken prisoner by some very bad men—’

‘Yes. They had guns. But Christy and I hid in the tower.’

‘That’s right.’ He paused, as if he was thinking what to say next. ‘My dear,’ he said, very gently, ‘by the time you were rescued, all the other children were dead. It was very quick and they wouldn’t have felt a thing, I promise you. But the tower was searched very thoroughly, Selina, and there was no one else in there.’

The firelight burned up, with a dry crackling noise. It sounded exactly like the greedy rustling of the ogre-birds’ wings.

Christy was dead. All of them were dead.

Selina said, in a whisper, ‘Then who was holding my hand in the tower?’

She had not been able to understand it for quite a long time. She had said, ‘But she was there. Christy was there–she talked to me. She held my hand.’

They had h’rmphed a bit at that, in the way that grown-ups did when they were not sure what to say to you. Selina got fed up with them and burrowed back into the bed, because it felt safe being under the clothes. That night, she heard a nurse saying that it had been a long time before anyone could get near to the bodies at the foot of the tower, because the birds had been so fierce. When they had finally managed to shoot the birds, the children’s bodies had been so badly mutilated that it had not been possible to identify anyone with any certainty.

‘Some were almost completely eaten,’ said the nurse to her colleague, shuddering, not realising that Selina was listening. ‘The vultures swallow bones whole, you know. Even the large leg bones. And the skulls were broken in
the scramble to beat the birds off, so that it was impossible to know if all the children were there or not. In the end they decided to bury what was there in one grave, and to put up a stone with all their names on it.’

‘Oh, the poor mites,’ said the other nurse, horrified.

So Christy must have been killed after all. But when Selina asked if it had been a ghost who was with her in the tower, the nurses said, oh well, it was easy to become muddled in all the panic and confusion, which was no answer at all.

It had not been until a long time afterwards–when Selina had managed to pick up most of the mind-pieces and sort them into a pattern–that she remembered what had happened to her mother.

She tried very hard not to wonder whether at the very end mother had realised where she was, and that she was falling to her death.

Great-aunt Flora had realised it. It was easy to persuade her to look through one of the slit-like windows near the Round Tower’s top: to say, Goodness, what a marvellous view, you can see Teind House and as far as the rectory, and there the meddlesome sheep-faced creature was, breathlessly eager.

In the falling dusklight of the autumn afternoon the view from the Round Tower’s highest window was not very different from that of Alwar’s Tower of Silence. As Selina stared out over the countryside, she remembered how, when she first came to Teind House, she had looked out across the gardens and seen this tower, and how the
garden and the tower had suddenly shivered and blurred, so that she had not been sure whether she was at Teind House at all, or whether she was being pulled back to Alwar.

And today the smoky dusk was beginning to dissolve, exactly as it had done that first night; it was melting, shred by shred, and the twilight that was usually so friendly was filling up with menace–it was crawling with evil-faced men who wanted to shoot children, and the sky was smeary with ogre-birds who liked to grind men’s bones for their bread…

‘You need to lean just a bit further out,’ said Selina to Aunt Flora. Her voice seemed to come from a long way away, but that was because her mind was stretching to span the two worlds, and because she could smell the blood and fear again. She could feel Christy crouching next to her inside the tower, and she could feel Christy’s hand in hers all over again, and Christy’s voice whispering that it was all right, Selina, they were together, and they would find a way to escape.

Taking a deep breath, tensing her muscles, the faraway Selina said, ‘It’s perfectly safe, Aunt Flora. You won’t fall–I’ve got hold of you. But do look–it’d be such a pity for you to miss this wonderful view.’

The stonework around the old narrow window held surprisingly firmly, which was a pity in one way. It meant that Selina had to shove very hard indeed before stupid, snooping Aunt Flora tumbled sufficiently far forward to be toppled out. She screeched as she fell, flailing her arms and legs wildly. Selina watched until she hit the ground
with exactly the same squelching thud that mother had made five years earlier when she fell from the Tower of Silence.

It was easy to poke out some of the stones around the Round Tower’s narrow window, so that people would think Aunt Flora had leaned on them too heavily and dislodged them. Several of the larger ones went smashing down on the silly old creature’s head.

Selina stayed where she was for a while, looking down at Aunt Flora’s body, and at the stones scattered on the ground. Most of them had broken up when they fell, but some of the larger ones were still intact. She thought the stones looked exactly as you would expect them to look if they really had given way under Aunt Flora’s weight. She kicked out one or two more to be sure, and waited for them to go tumbling and smashing onto the ground. Only when she was satisfied with everything did she go back down the stairs. She carefully moved the shrine-things into a corner where they would not be seen if people came to take Aunt Flora’s body, and after this she went home along the little old road and through the orchard to Teind House, deliberately running as hard and as fast as she could so that she would be breathless and dishevelled when she got there and everyone would think it was from the shock of seeing Aunt Flora tumble to her messy splattery death.

It all worked exactly as she had thought it would; everyone was appalled and Selina was made to go to bed with a hot-water bottle, and given aspirin crushed in
hot milk with a half-tablespoon of brandy, and everyone said, Oh, what a terrible experience for the poor child.

There was a funeral service for Aunt Flora, of course, with the same mournful music there had been for Aunt Rosa, and everyone wearing black again. The vicar spoke for a long time about the work Aunt Flora had done for the church and for the parish of Inchcape and everybody looked solemn. Selina wore her school uniform for the service, and Great-uncle Matthew sulked because of having to pay for ham sandwiches and sherry a second time.

Afterwards, life went on and the only difference was that Jeannie came up from the village every day now, to prepare Great-uncle Matthew’s lunch and to leave a meal that Selina could heat up for supper when she got home from school. Teind House became even quieter than it had been in the aunts’ day.

Selina remade the shrine properly again a month after Aunt Flora’s funeral. It was important not to risk its being found a second time. There were not many places to choose because the tower had been built as a watchtower and it was really only a flight of stairs enclosed in a brick and stone shell, but there were two or three little half-rooms opening off the stairway, which Selina thought might have been where the monks would have rested. You would certainly need a bit of a rest if you were stomping up and down those stairs all the time.

She chose the half-room nearest the top. It was not very likely that anyone would come all the way up here,
but even if anyone did, there was nothing wrong in having set out photographs of her parents, and some of their belongings. It might look a bit peculiar, but it was not anything you could go to prison for.

Remaking the shrine took quite a long time because the little room had to be properly swept and dusted and then everything had to be carried up the stairs. But when she had finished it all, Selina was pleased. The place was better as well: it was more secret than when it had been just inside the door. So you could almost say Aunt Flora had done Selina a favour in showing her how vulnerable the shrine was down there on the ground.

Later on, she managed to smuggle more things out to add to the shrine. Great-uncle Matthew did not notice that the silver candlesticks were not in their usual place, or that the little Victorian silver matchbox which had belonged to his father had gone.

As the weeks went by Selina began to feel safe again. Both the snooping aunts were dead, and it was much easier to go out to the Round Tower and keep the shrine clean and fresh. It was easier, too, to take little posies of flowers or sprays of lavender, which would all help father and mother on their journey.

It was not very likely that Great-uncle Matthew would realise what Selina was doing, but even if he did he would not meddle. In any case, if she had to, Selina could deal with Great-uncle Matthew.

Emily Frost woke to a grey, leaden sky and the insistent clamour of her alarm clock, and to the realisation that she had a dull headache and a vague feeling of apprehension. Something unpleasant in the day ahead? Or something regretted in the night gone before?

She stayed where she was. Dad had probably gone up to Moy ages ago–he was on an early shift this week–and her alarm had a snooze button which meant she could have an extra ten minutes before getting up.

The headache would be the result of too many drinks in the wine bar at Stornforth last night: Emily considered last night in case it was the cause of the vague apprehension. But she thought it was not. She thought she had behaved perfectly well, and she had managed to politely avoid the groping hands and gleeful suggestions of a leather-jacketed biker who had had too
much to drink and who seemed to think Emily was anybody’s.

Today was the day she was due to visit Pippa again at Moy, so that could not be the reason for the vague feeling of menace. Today was one of the days that if you were still at school you would have marked with a gold star, because Moy meant Patrick Irvine. Emily smiled and burrowed back into the pillow.

Patrick.

If she had been with Patrick last night they would not have spent the evening in a scrubby wine bar with people gusting cheese-and-onion-crisp breath into your face every time they spoke, and the prospect of going to bed with a lager-sodden biker after closing time. Emily tried to direct the lingering fragments of sleep into a dream about Patrick. You could sometimes do that with dreams, usually when you were drifting in the half-asleep, half-awake stage.

An evening with Patrick would have started with an elegant dinner in some lush, plush country-house hotel, after which they would have gone to bed together in a bed with silk sheets, and spent a mind-blowingly sensual night. They would have made love several times during the night, each time better than the last, and although Patrick might eventually have slept, Emily would not have slept at all, because she would have stayed wide awake so that she could watch him sleeping.

And when finally they did get out of bed, there would have been breakfast with fresh orange juice and smoked salmon with scrambled eggs on silver dishes, and hot
croissants. They would have showered or bathed together, and there would be expensive soap and scented bath oils, and thick, thirsty towels. They would probably make love in the shower, as well—

Emily had just reached this luxuriantly soap-scented point in her daydream when the alarm clock went off for the second time, and Emily bashed it crossly with a fist to silence it and crawled irritably out of bed, because before she could join in with the school’s cookery day she had to go down to Teind House to be on breakfast duty. Miss March only had Krzystof Kent staying at the moment and although she could perfectly well manage to prepare a single breakfast by herself and wash up afterwards, she was so clearly terrified of meeting a lone man at the breakfast table that Emily had said she would dash up for half an hour to help out.

Patrick had quite a full day ahead, because one of the larger drug charities was making a semi-ceremonial visit to Moy, which meant he would have to spend some time with them. Moy’s governor always ducked away from actually admitting to the existence of drug-taking inside Moy, but everybody knew it went on. Patrick sometimes waxed eloquent about what ought to be done to drug traffickers, but despite all the care they took drugs still got passed around inside Moy, just as they got passed around inside other institutions like Moy. All you could do was try to deal with it when it surfaced, and hope to keep it out as much as you could.

The various drug charities were quite helpful and
practical though, which was why Patrick would spend as much time with them as possible, although it was a pity they had asked to come today, because Monday was one of the days on which he tried to see patients.

He tried to stick as closely as possible to the routine he would follow if Moy were a conventional psychiatric hospital, scheduling a half-hour for each inmate at least once a fortnight, leaving the day-to-day stuff to the junior psychiatrists. Moy was quite a good training ground for newly qualified doctors and therapists, and they had several very good people at the moment. It was important to keep strongly in touch with new techniques and new ideas; Patrick had instigated fortnightly forums, at which seniority went by the board and ideas and opinions were tossed back and forth, and discussion often crossed over into downright argument.

As he showered and dressed, he remembered that Emily Frost was coming in again today, to visit Pippa. It was nice of the child to give up her time; Patrick thought she had a good deal of unsuspected depth and considerable intelligence. The peculiar clothes and the hair were deceptive.

He whistled softly as he poured cereal and made toast, and glanced through the day’s headlines as he usually did over a second cup of coffee. Everything in the world too frightful for words, as usual. He put the paper away.

There was a good hour before he was scheduled to start seeing patients, which meant he could work through some of his outstanding correspondence. Then, when he had seen the charity people, the afternoon would be
reasonably free. He might look in on Emily’s session with Pippa.

Emily wore her rainbow combat trousers for the visit to Pippa, along with a magenta waistcoat, because the vivid colours would be bright and cheerful in Moy’s institutionalised bleakness. She could not find a clean T-shirt to go under the waistcoat so she plundered dad’s shirt drawer, and unearthed an old dress shirt that had shrunk in the wash that he had not got round to throwing out. It looked pretty good under the magenta waistcoat. Emily added her black boots, gelled up her hair because it was her day for wearing it in spikes, and set off.

She had remembered the promise about bringing some cakes from the school’s cooking day, and had told the children that she would like to take some of them to give to somebody who was not very well. The children had latched onto this; they had painstakingly traced out ‘P’ for Pippa in sugar or icing on several of the cakes, and then one of the little girls had offered her lunch-box for the transportation, only it must be brought back tomorrow or her mummy would wonder what she had done with it. Emily had gravely promised to bring it safely back, and they had packed the cakes carefully in the lunch-box, and covered them with greaseproof paper. The children’s interest and the slightly uneven icing-letters would make a friendly little story to tell Pippa, even if the cakes turned out to taste as peculiar as Emily thought they very well might.

Alarm bells were dotted all over Moy. They were set into the wall behind little glass boxes like miniature fire alarms. Emily thought they were like single malevolent eyes, staring at you. It was to be hoped she never had to punch out one of those horrid red eyes, and she hoped even more that she never heard the sound of Moy’s huge old-fashioned bell tolling inside its stone tower, to warn everyone within hearing that an inmate was on the loose.

Robbie Glennon had told her about the old bell. He had said it was one of the local legends; the bell-tower had been built at the same time as Moy, so that if any of the prisoners escaped the bell could be rung to warn people in the surrounding countryside. The last time it had been used had been in 1920, said Robbie, and added hopefully that, if Emily liked, he would smuggle her along to see it one of the days. It was a huge iron bell with a long dusty rope dangling all the way down to the ground and it hung in a little oblong stone tower by itself. You were not supposed to go into the bell-tower unless you had specific permission, but he would probably manage it, he said confidently.

Emily had no idea whether he was trying to impress her, or whether he really could get into the old tower. He was quite good company, though, that Robbie: Emily was going to take him into Stornforth this weekend. The wine bar had live music on Saturday nights, and he would probably enjoy it. Also, it would be nice to have a proper escort for once and not look as if you were on the catch and therefore prepared to go to bed with anyone who
wore a cheap leather biking jacket and bought you a couple of drinks. Emily had not yet decided about the bed thing with Robbie Glennon, and she had not decided if she actually wanted to see Moy’s bell, either, because it might be a bit spooky. Bells were like cats and mirrors; you always felt they had a secret life of their own.

Pippa did not look as if she had ever had any kind of life of her own, secret or otherwise.

She was brought into the glum day-room in A wing by the attendant Emily had met last time, and she was wearing the same shapeless clothes and ugly clumpy shoes. Her hair had been ruthlessly combed and pinned back and the impression of a too-obedient child, submissively dressed and tidied and brushed by its mother and brought to an outing, was impossible to miss. The bumpy twist of flesh over the damaged eye-socket was unnecessarily exposed, and Emily felt the pity of it clutch her throat. Patrick had mentioned glasses–surely they could have made sure she wore them to meet a visitor? Or at least combed her hair to fall forward in a fringe?

But she sat down opposite Pippa, and smiled, and said she hoped Pippa remembered her from last week, and more to the point, she hoped Pippa remembered about the cakes.

‘The children baked some extra ones specially for you,’ she said. ‘I told them I was visiting a friend today and that her name was Pippa, so they wrote your initial on some of the cakes. We had a really good time with the baking, although some of the kids got covered in dough and
flour.’ It was a bit disconcerting to talk like this without getting any response. Emily wished the attendant would help out a bit, instead of sitting like a pudding in the corner, reading a magazine.

The mention of children seemed to have struck a bit of a spark at any rate. Pippa was watching Emily with sudden attention; Emily thought it was silly to suddenly feel a bit spooked. Was it the single eye that made it feel eerie? Probably. But surely it was all right to have mentioned the children? Dr Irvine had said not to talk about animals, that was all.

‘We’ll try the cakes, shall we?’ she said, and she was just reaching for her haversack which contained the borrowed lunch-box when a shrillness ripped through the room. Emily looked round, startled, and then realised that one of the red alarm bells was sounding.

She had absolutely no idea what she was supposed to do or whether she was supposed to do anything, but the attendant was already talking into the small intercom clipped to her belt and there was a barely audible crackle of someone gabbling urgent instructions at the other end.

‘I’ll have to go,’ she said to Emily. ‘There’s a problem in D wing.’

‘But–I was told–not to be alone with—’

‘It’s all right. She’s never any trouble,’ said the attendant, sending a quick look at Pippa. ‘But they only sound the alarm if there’s a serious incident–a riot or somebody trying to make a run for it. In that situation it’s all hands to the pump. I’ll come straight back, or I’ll send one of the others.’

‘Yes, but what do I do—’

‘You’ll be OK,’ said the attendant, crossing to the door. ‘Pippa won’t be any trouble, she never is. You won’t be any trouble, will you, Pippa?’ she said in the too-bright, too-loud voice of someone talking to an idiot or a subnormal child.

‘You said a problem—’ began Emily, and the attendant, who was halfway through the door by this time, turned back and said, ‘I don’t know what it is until I get there. It might be a storm in a teacup.’ In a resigned way, she added, ‘But I’ll bet my pension that if real trouble’s broken out, that demure-eyed bitch Mary Maskelyne will be at the bottom of it.’ And she was gone, banging the door behind her.

Emily turned back to Pippa, and saw with sudden fear that Pippa was staring at the door, her hands gripping the arms of her chair so tightly that her knuckles were white. There was a look half of fear, half of puzzlement on her face.

Emily had no idea what she ought to do, but, trying to speak calmly, she said, ‘Pippa–it’s OK. Don’t look so frightened. It’s just that one of the other—’ God, what did they call them in here? ‘One of the other patients has probably got a bit upset and caused a row,’ said Emily, hoping this sounded all right. ‘It’s nothing to be worried about.’

Pippa was trembling by this time, and without thinking Emily went to sit next to her. ‘Does the idea of a row upset you?’ she said. ‘It always upsets me: I hate people fighting or shouting. But what we’ll do, we’ll sit here until
somebody comes back, and we’ll try one of the cakes the children baked for you. I was hoping we could have a cup of tea as well. Do you have a cup of tea in the afternoons, Pippa? It’s a very English habit, tea, isn’t it?’ She foraged in the haversack again. It took a few minutes to unearth the lunch-box–it had slipped down the side which served her right for toting so much rubbish about. She hauled it out and put it on the little low table between their two chairs. It was a brightly coloured plastic-lidded box, with a picture of Stornforth’s bird sanctuary on it. They sold things like that at Stornforth–posters and tea towels and notepaper–mostly to help with the upkeep of the sanctuary. Emily had got a T-shirt with a gorgeous golden eagle on it.

The box had a golden eagle on it as well; a huge, beautifully clear photograph showing the eagle’s massive wingspan and powerful shoulders. Emily reached out to prise off the lid, and it was then that Pippa’s hand darted out and closed around her wrist. Like a claw. Like a snake uncoiling. Emily tried to jerk back, and saw that the poor mutilated face was wearing a look of stark and absolute horror. Emily said, ‘Pippa, what’s wrong? Has something frightened you?’ Because this was how you would look if you had suddenly been confronted with your absolute, all-time worst nightmare. She hastily reviewed what she had said in the last few minutes. Something about the children? Something to do with drinking tea? And then she saw that Pippa was staring down at the vivid eagle photograph on the plastic lunch-box.