Apparently, she’d closed her eyes. Not that brave, then, to stand and watch it come.
She only realized when she started hearing something else, over the relentless sounds of its approach, over the thudding impact of the endless bell.
There was music somewhere in the wood, drifting through the trees: low and plaintive, haunting almost, a breathy melody that seemed as right as moonlight, as natural as wind song. And utterly impersonal, heedless, unattached: the very opposite of what so threatened her. Close, perhaps, but remote. Like someone standing by her and looking at the stars.
Close, though, and coming closer. And the shadow . . . wasn’t. At least, all she could hear now was music. No crashing, blundering progress as that weight of silence surged towards her.
No bell.
This little piggy stayed at home.
She might almost open her eyes now. Almost.
One more breath, and she could smell – oh lord, the whole country of England, all the damp dank buried wonder of it, what she went to the city to forget. To escape, along with everyone else.
Nothing coming. No reeking threat, no monster; no mysterious emptiness, vacuum, absence. She wasn’t quite sure what that would smell like, but not this.
With an effort, then, she did open her eyes . . .
A man stood in the roadway.
Unless he was a faun, unless he had goat’s legs beneath his trousers.
But no, even in this fading light she could see his feet in sandals, no hooves. Dressed all in green else, with long brown hair caught back in a ponytail and as much beard as he could manage: he was, of course, the man they’d passed at the turn-off, sitting on a gatepost keeping watch.
Young man, younger than that beard made him look – or else, now that she was looking properly, it was the straggly sparseness of the beard that emphasized how young he was, despite all his efforts to seem older.
He wanted to be Pan, she thought, in his forest. Playing music to his trees.
It was his flute, of course, that she had heard. Cutting through the bell-strokes, turning away the silence. Like a statement, I am here, and so she wasn’t alone, and so that absence could not come to haunt her. She kept it at bay with company, always, when she could.
Except that it had never been physical before, never made noises in the world. Never broken a path on its way to reach her.
He lowered the flute from his lips and said, ‘Hullo.’
His voice was as sweet as his music, soft and husky and irredeemably young. She thought he probably practised that. Well, not the young part; that he only had to live with. For a while. It would pass.
What she had to live with was eternal. Still, she could manage this much. She took a breath, licked dry lips and said, ‘Hullo.’ And then, because she had to: ‘Did you . . . did you hear anything? Moving, I mean, in the wood just now?’ Not the bell. She didn’t even want to think about the bell.
‘Oh, has Big Bertha been scaring you, crashing about in the undergrowth? I was wondering why you were stood here all alone in the middle of nowhere.’
I’m standing here all alone because your janitor abandoned me. In the middle of nowhere. Aloud, she only said, ‘Big Bertha?’
‘She’s our pig. Well, not ours: she is her own pig. Entirely feral. I suppose she or maybe her mother escaped from a farm hereabouts, and she’s been living wild and free ever since. We see her occasionally, but mostly she’s just noises off. Just as well, really. You wouldn’t want to get too close; she’s not safe by any measure. But then she doesn’t want to get too close to us either. It works out. Everything does, you’ll find, here. Welcome to Hope’s Harbour, by the way. My name’s Tom.’
Tom, Tom, the piper’s son. That wasn’t fair.
Except that it was, of course: more than fair, generous even, against what she deserved. Nothing could ever be punishment enough. If nursery rhymes were going to run through her mind like streams of scalding water, she wouldn’t try to dam them up in seething pools, no. Better to let them run, dabble her fingers in the fierce sting of them, take off her shoes and paddle.
She said, ‘Georgie. I’m Georgie Hale.’ Nervous and fanciful, standing frozen in the middle of the road because she didn’t dare walk on, because she thought their pig was a ghost of absence, a haunting hollow shaped like a boy who never was. That was Georgie all over.
More than once Grace had thought she might run mad. Wished for it, almost. Perhaps it was happening at last. Perhaps this was Tony’s last gift to her: to rip her in two and let the two halves torment each other crazy.
Not his plan, though. Not deliberate. Not to say he wouldn’t be that unkind, he didn’t think that way – of course he did, of course he would if it benefited him, his paper, him – but this, out here? No. He wouldn’t see the benefit.
He might still make it happen, regardless. Let it be.
He might not care.
She hoped he’d care.
It might be easier to fight, if she thought he was doing it deliberately. She might want to fight it, then.
‘Georgie. Georgie . . .’ He rolled the name around his mouth as though trying the taste of it. Then he lifted the flute back to his lips and tried a brief phrase, a sudden trill of notes. Tried it again, seemed to like it; he put more breath behind it, let it dance out into the wood. From his mouth to the pig’s ears; she thought about silk purses and sow’s ears and grew a little confused, decided she was too tired to reach for a joke. Besides, there had been nothing funny about her mood a minute ago, and there was nothing funny in it now. It was lighter, a little; men did that to her, the company of men, it lifted her. Even hairy young men in the half-dark, whose faces she couldn’t really see.
And the sense of imminent danger had receded. The pig in the wood. Yes. She would believe that entirely. She could do that. No little-boy-lost, no sucking shadows, just a feral animal crashing about in the undergrowth.
She was still afraid, but of normal things, what loomed ahead: encounters, people, secrets. Work. Everything had that shadow now, of dread until it happened; nothing was ever quite as bad as it might have been. That was something to hold on to, maybe.
Her case was something to hold on to, something to carry. Tom was walking up the lane, and she was following. Apparently. She had after all found someone to take her in.
He played as they walked – sometimes he skipped, or danced a few steps in the beechmast – so that she felt like a child at the heels of the Pied Piper, following the soft thread of his music through the dark.
It was almost dark enough to be true, under the shadow of the trees. But the trees had to end at last; not even the deepest forest goes on for ever. They stepped out into light again, and here was a dark stretch of water contained between straight lines and stony banks. Beyond that rose a wild tangled garden; above that, the house.
She had seen houses, grand houses, many of them. Seen them, been through their doors and welcomed, slept in four-poster beds as though she belonged there. Played with their luxuries like a little girl dressed up and playing princess.
Learned the truth of them – or no, she had always known the truth of them, had been a part of it herself; only that she had seen it ruthlessly exposed, their truth and her own – and did not ever expect to be invited back.
This wasn’t the same, but even so. There was always this moment, where she stood in the shadow and knew that she didn’t belong. She used to brazen it by, because that was what a princess would do; now she was daunted, because of course Georgie would be.
Of course she showed it. That was what Georgie would do. She stood here by the lapping water’s margin – Tom wanted to walk on the grass now that he’d slipped his sandals off, so she’d gone with him, a few steps to the side of the stony roadway, that much closer to the lake – and stared up at the house where it loured against the darkening sky, and could apparently not move at all.
As soon as he’d caught on, Tom stepped back to stand beside her, with her. Not waiting for her, in any sense she knew – not impatient, not visibly or determinedly or effortfully patient, not mocking, not any kind of manly – but simply there. Keeping her company, until she was ready for the next step and the next and the one after that.
Nice boy. She could draw comfort from that, perhaps, a little. And mock herself, perhaps, a little; be impatient on her own account, with her own anxiety.
Draw a nervous little breath and say, ‘I hadn’t . . . I hadn’t expected it to be quite so big.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘No one does. And it always is that big. You don’t get used to it, I mean. Familiarity doesn’t shrink it down to any contemptible size. Just as well, really. I mean, you wouldn’t want it to, would you? Who’d want to get used to that?’
Tony would. The thought was immediate, unbidden. It was the scale that he thought in, the sort of house that came naturally to him.
She needed not to be thinking about Tony.
She said, ‘I don’t get it. What’s it for?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘at the moment, it’s for us. What comes next, what we build here, what we make of it – that’s for the future to show. For us to decide. For you, maybe, if you stay.’
‘I don’t belong in a place like this.’ That was more than honest, it was absolute. Said in two voices, to contain everything that she was or could be.
‘No one does,’ he said again. ‘How could you? But here we are, and I think the house is getting used to us.’
‘How many of you are there?’ She wasn’t sure if she wanted the house to be full or empty. Two dozen souls, or two hundred. Lose herself in a crowd, or make herself known to a handful.
‘Not enough,’ he said. ‘Yet. One more now.’
‘If I stay.’
‘Of course. That’s up to you; don’t let me bully you into it,’ he said with a smile and that little trill on his flute that apparently meant her. Meant Georgie. Meant who she was meant to be.
Meant a lie, then, but she didn’t want to think about that either.
‘Is it? Up to me, I mean?’
‘Of course.’
‘Isn’t there a – I don’t know, a test? Probation, something? Don’t you get to watch me for a while, see if I fit in?’
‘What, you think we should take you on approval, like a stamp?’ He wasn’t faking it, that baffled amusement, scratching at his head with the end of his flute.
‘Yes,’ she said, not faking it either. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’
‘Well. Not really how it works here. I mean, if you don’t fit in, you’re the one who’ll know it first, aren’t you? You’ll feel it. And then I suppose you’ll just go. I don’t think anyone has, yet. Just gone, I mean, and not come back. Of course, you could, if this didn’t feel right to you. But then, if it didn’t feel right to you, you wouldn’t have come, would you?’
I was desperate – which was true and not-true, and she didn’t need to say it either way, truly or otherwise. She let it lie between them, unspoken, and said instead, ‘I didn’t know what I was coming to. Still don’t, come to that. Who are you, what are you, why are you here?’
‘I’m Tom,’ he said. ‘I grow vegetables and play the flute, and I’m here because I wouldn’t be anywhere else right now.’
‘That wasn’t what I meant.’
‘No, I know – but it’s what I meant. What I mean. I can’t speak for anyone else. I won’t. If you come on up to the house –’ when you’re ready, his body said in its stillness: no gestures, no urgency, no pressure – ‘I’ll take you to Leonard. Then you’ll see.’
‘Leonard?’
A smile, a nod. Unforthcoming.
‘Will he tell me what this place is all about?’
‘You’ll see,’ he said again; and then: ‘He’ll probably want to talk about you.’ Tell you what you’re all about, she heard, unless it was wait for you to tell him.
She couldn’t lose her nerve, even now. Grace had no nerves to lose, and Georgie had lost hers long ago and was here anyway, because a girl had to be somewhere, after all.
She said, ‘Come on, then,’ and took that step, one step forward through the tangled grass; and as she started, so she heard that bell again, rolling down the terraces and over the water, slamming into her, slow and sonorous and cruel beyond measure.
‘What’s the matter?’
Apparently, she’d gasped aloud. It had to be that. She wasn’t crying, and she was still walking, somehow. And the right way, too: along the verge, towards the house. Not into the lake, not back to the woods.
Something was stirring in the lake, she thought: some little hint of whirlpool, bubbles of mud.
Apparently, she could still talk as well as walk, even against the cold dull heavy beat of it. She said, ‘What does it mean, that? That bell?’
He smiled. ‘That means it’s dinner time. Good time to turn up, actually. You get a chance to look us over, all together.’
You get a chance to look at me, you mean. All of you, together.
But she was still walking. And not in time with the bell, stubbornly out of step. That felt like a refusal; that was good enough. For now, for her. For here.
Stubbornly taking the lead, that too, positively marching up the road now. Properly on the road now, none of that kicking through the verge like a reluctant child. Let Tom hug the hedge if he wanted to, if the broken stone and gravel was too hard underfoot.
But the hedge was high and wild, throwing out bramble-runners to trip him by the ankle, and more to threaten his Lincoln green, his eyesight and his hair. Soon enough he was pulling his sandals out of his belt, slipping them on again, taking his place beside her on the road.
‘I ought to have soles like leather by now,’ he said ruefully, ‘but they keep making me wear shoes and go to town. By the time my feet toughen up, it’ll be all mud and frost out here and I’ll want boots anyway.’
‘No, you won’t.’
‘Well,’ he allowed, ‘not want, no. But I’ll wear them. Anyone would.’
Inevitably, they were both looking at her own feet now, at the way she was struggling in court shoes that were entirely practical in London, on London streets, but the next worst thing to hopeless here. The roadway sloped steeply and was smooth nowhere: pitted and rutted, surfaced alternately with rough stone and gravel where it was surfaced at all, where it wasn’t dried cracked mud with dark puddles lurking in the deepest ruts.
‘You’ll want to change those,’ he said, brightly helpful.
‘No, I won’t,’ she replied, immediate. This at least she could do, she was trained for it, bantering with bright boys.
‘Well,’ he allowed, ‘not want, no. But you’ll change them anyway.’
And then he smiled, pleased with himself, pleased with her for playing along. In honesty, she was pleased with herself too.
She said, ‘They’re my best shoes, these,’ meaning my most comfortable, telling nothing but the truth.
He shrugged. ‘Not to worry. We’ll find you something better. Or make them. Or teach you how to make them, that’d be best.’
‘Or you could mend the road,’ she said, perhaps a little waspish as her ankle turned on a loose stone and her foot plunged into a hole and she almost lost that shoe in the mud at the bottom.
‘Or that,’ he agreed, ‘but I don’t think it’s a priority. Hardly anyone drives this way, and we’re fine on foot. Well, you will be, once you’re used to it. Look, would you like me to take your case?’
Yes, of course I would, you oaf, I’d have liked that half a mile ago – but they were at the top of the slope now, right in the shadow of the house, and she was abruptly daunted again. Wanting something to hold on to.
She shook her head, and turned to walk along the paved terrace to the portico and the high door; and was stopped by his soft laugh, his unexpected hand on her arm.
‘We don’t use the front,’ he said. ‘We’re in the country here. The front door is for strangers and funerals. Family all comes around the back.’
She wasn’t family, not yet. Not ever, Grace’s voice in her head said as a reminder: she was undercover here, working, not joining in. Not signing up. So why did she get a warm feeling just from the way he said it, never mind the way he glanced at her sideways, conspiratorial?
It wasn’t as if family had ever meant anything good to her. She and her parents weren’t talking any more, and her son—
Well. If she talked to her son, he wasn’t talking back.
She remembered an absence in the woods, coming at her. And might have faltered then, might have let the next heavy stroke of the bell stop her dead: only that it didn’t come, and she sort of toppled forward into the silence of it and – well, just carried on.
Down the side of the house, then, and around the back: into a broad courtyard made by two long wings and a stable block. The arch through to the stables had a clock tower above; she glanced at the clock with a jaundiced eye but that was stopped at ten to three and surely couldn’t have been striking. She couldn’t see any other bell tower, any likely place for the kind of bell she’d been hearing.
Something to be grateful for, perhaps. Small mercies, and short-lived for sure. She’d hear it again tomorrow.
If she was still here tomorrow. If she didn’t cut her losses and run. She might do that, she was tempted already – except that she had nothing to run to, nothing to go back for. Tony would despise her if she pulled out now, one night in. And she’d stuck worse than this, hadn’t she? She’d stuck prison, and the trial. And all the press, before and after. And the funeral, her baby’s funeral, she’d stuck that. And every day since, and . . .
And really this was nothing, walking over smooth cobbles to a back door that stood open, wide and welcoming. Parked there beside it was the car she’d seen in town, the Morris Traveller, confirming her suspicions. It still had the ladders lying slant across the roof rack. She wasn’t going to ask; she didn’t need to.
Tom said, ‘Charlie and Fish. That’s their car. We don’t have one, else; we don’t really have one at all. They come and go. But when they’re here, they like to be useful round about. Helping out the neighbours. And we’ve got these long ladders, and of course nobody in town has any to compare, nobody with sensible houses; so they clean out people’s gutters for them, and rescue cats from trees, and stuff like that.’
‘And take people’s heads off, near enough, the way they drive that thing,’ she said.
‘There is that. They’re not very good with knots.’ He tugged at the slack of a rope, and tutted, and did nothing to fix it more tightly or to pull the ladders straight. ‘But it saves little old ladies having to call out the roofer or the fire brigade. It’s good to have a few voices on our side, to set against the gruff old colonels who all think we should be called up or given six of the best. Or both.’
She had some experience of gruff old colonels, and some sympathy with them, if only because a few had shown her a little disinterested kindness. She thought it might be better if they could walk the streets of their own town without being yelled out of the way by speeding hippies. But this was probably not the time to say so.
There was nobody about in the courtyard, presumably because they had all been called to dinner. Where Tom was now taking her. This would be her last minute alone with him, then: she really ought to be using it to learn more about this place, or Leonard, who was apparently leader here, or—
He must be hungry, or in a hurry to find his friends, or else in a hurry to hand her over to someone else. Down below, he had given her all the time she needed; up here, he gave her no time at all. Across the courtyard and in at the door, no time to linger and ask questions now, and that was suddenly almost a relief. Even though it meant, it must mean, that the next thing would be a roomful of strangers.
In at the door, then, and through a cloakroom, a chaotic jumble of discarded shoes and boots and coats and jackets and, yes, at least one actual cloak on a hook there; and into a corridor beyond, long bare boards underfoot and doors leading off on either side. Really, it was all very normal for a country house and not at all hippyish, except that there was a little table just at the side there as they came through, hung with a bright cotton tasselled cloth embroidered with tiny mirrors. It shrieked India at her, the hippy trail, girls come back with long loose hair and swinging skirts and cheesecloth shirts and gurus. Gurus above all, preaching meditation and peace and rebirth, ancient foreign wisdoms that sat impossibly awkward in an English landscape, as their clothes really didn’t suit the weather.
Was that what she’d come to: a transplanted ashram, a little man with a vast beard teaching scriptures in an alien chant?
But on the table, on the cloth stood something else. No bizarre idol with too many limbs, no smoking incense, no sanctity. Just a polished wooden stand, a high frame with a bell hanging from it. Too big for a hall decoration, practical bronze: it was as out of place as the cloth it stood on, jarring both with that and the house around. Her mind labelled it a ship’s bell straight off. She ought not to know that, unless she’d picked it up from those black-and-white war films her father used to take her to. She was still certain, though. Of course, it was possible to be certain and still wrong – oh, she knew: who better? – but she really didn’t think so this time. If she looked more closely, that engraving around the bell’s shoulder would no doubt tell her which ship it had come from.
But it was a bell, and she wasn’t going anywhere near it.
But Tom was reaching out casually, unthinkingly, meaninglessly; gripping the white rope that hung below the mouth of the bell; swinging it once, twice and again.
Striking the unseen clapper against the inside rim: once, twice and again.
Making it sound, high and stern and penetrating.
Once, twice and again.
Only perhaps realizing that he’d done it after the thing was done, it was so unthinking an action. Turning then to her with a wry smile and a shrug, saying, ‘We always do that to announce our arrival in the house. Leonard likes it. Once for each of us, twice for a visitor. First time, you count as a visitor, so— Hey. Are you all right?’
No. No, she really was not all right. She had dropped her case, just there by her foot, where she stood shaking.
Her wrist throbbed, in time with the hurried beating of her heart. It didn’t seem enough to explain why she’d let go so suddenly, but that hand just felt too heavy and too remote; it couldn’t hold on any longer.
Perhaps it was her who couldn’t hold on, against the relentless resonance of the bell as it sounded through her skull like a knife; but really she thought it was her hand, all independent of her will.
She still hadn’t taken her gloves off. They were fawn in colour, nylon, and she could see that one – the left, it was – darkening as she stood there, as it hung slack at her side.
Darkening all the way down, in a line from the invisible wrist towards the fingers’ ends.
Darkening, filling.
Starting to drip.
She watched that first drip fall, straight down on to the clasp of her suitcase, where it lay splattered across the brass: not that dark after all, brightly red.
And another.
Once, twice and again.
‘Here, let me see . . .’
Apparently, she was going to do nothing but stand there and watch it happen.
She needed Tom to take charge, as he did: gripping her arm and lifting it, tugging back the sleeve of her coat. Her dress beneath was sleeveless. There was just the glove, with that dark stain showing from the wrist down to the fingers.
Starting to spread the other way now, as he raised her hand. Little dribbles, rivulets of blood running down towards her elbow, tickling.
At least blood didn’t make her faint. Not the sight of it, at least. If she felt abruptly giddy and sick, it wasn’t girlish idiocy. Though she would quite like to sit down now, as that throbbing sharpened to quite a fierce ache as Tom struggled to peel the glove away from her forearm, trying to roll it back on itself like a stocking, not getting very far, so that in the end she did have to help him after all, showing him how to tug the fingers loose one by one.
They were quite wet now, the fingers. She watched them stain the fingertips of the other glove as she tugged, and made a little exasperated noise and wanted to tug that one off too, only she couldn’t because Tom still had hold of that arm – and actually it was hurting quite a bit now, and she really did want to sit down even before he finally worked the glove away and there was her hand exposed, with its two cuts almost parallel across the inside of the wrist.
‘Good grief, girl. Did you do that on the brambles? Why in the world didn’t you say?’
No, she thought. No, I did do that, but not on the brambles, no. And not today. Not recently. I thought that was all healed up now.
That was a lie, of course, but she was quite used to lying to herself, silently, in the privacy of her head. She’d been caught out, apparently, by this one.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I really do . . .’
And she really did. Right then, right there: she sat down on that convenient solid suitcase and watched blood drip on to the bare wood of the floor.
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ When he was flustered, when she wasn’t looking at him, Tom didn’t sound anything like the hippy that he looked, hairy and mystical and remote. Just a nice English middle-class boy: the kind that she’d tried to overleap entirely, from Billericay to Cliveden in a single bound.
He had no idea, of course, of his significance. No notion of being a symbol for anything. His hair was just in the way suddenly, needing to be swept back – with the inside of his wrist, an oddly feminine gesture, as he had blood on his own hands now – while he crouched beside her to look more closely.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I don’t think it’s that bad, actually. They’re not deep. Only bramble scratches. Just, I suppose it will bleed if you cut yourself just there. Try to hold the hand up if you can, don’t encourage it. Gravity’s not your friend at the moment. Look, will you be all right if I leave you, just for a minute? Only, I think Mother Mary ought to have a gander at this . . .’
Of course she’d be all right. She didn’t know who Mother Mary was, she hadn’t thought she was coming to a nunnery, but she supposed it didn’t really matter. Mother Mary and Father Leonard, ruling their community with a rod of iron and the stroke of a bell. Two bells. Two strokes, sharp as a razor. Singing through her brain, singing through her wrist . . .
This little piggy had none.
She didn’t want anything, really. She never had, not really. Even Grace at her greediest, her most immediately grasping: even then, it had all been a cover story. Only that she was too late, too slow to see through it. If she’d really cared about the money and the status and the glamour, she’d have taken better care of them.
That was what the unkind people had said about her poor baby. Almost word for word, again and again, in print and in her hearing: if she really cared, she’d have taken better care. They didn’t even think they were unkind. On the contrary, it was the kindest thing they could think of to say, which was why they didn’t care if she read it, if she overheard it. Some of them would say it to her face. Thinking themselves oh so kind, not to accuse her of worse. Being generous, making allowances. Digging in their wilful stilettos, needle blades that cut and cut, that made her bleed and bleed.
Not like this. When she bled like this, it was because she did it to herself. After she’d stood over her baby’s little grave in the parish churchyard with the great bell tolling above her head, after she’d realized once and for all that she never really did want anything else: then, well, why not? It had seemed the least she could do.
She watched it come, this little blood, this gesture. Watched it spatter on the floorboards. Didn’t cry. Not any more, not now. There had been too much crying already. Grace was tougher than that, and Georgie was – well, too bewildered. Out of her depth. You needed to know what you’d lost, before you could weep for it.
Or bleed for it.
It was odd, to find herself sitting here bleeding. She really hadn’t expected this. Hadn’t anticipated it, in all her many imaginings. Well, how could she?
Here came footsteps. From inside the house, blessedly, not from the outside door and the cloakroom. Nobody else would be coming in to ring the bell while she sat here waiting, while she bled.
Here was Tom back again. She didn’t lift her head but she recognized his green trousers, his bare feet.
With him – well. Mother Mary, presumably.
White robe, over the kind of sandals her mother might have worn. Seeing the two pairs of feet side by side, with the hems of those clothes at ankle height, she found herself thinking again of her Robin Hood book. Robin and the wicked abbess, who had drained his life away . . .
No. She shouldn’t be thinking about that, while her own blood dribbled out to stain their flooring.
The woman gave her small chance to think about anything.
‘Well. What’s this, then? Just scratches, Tom tells me, but even so. They need looking at, he says. Hold your arm up, then, there’s a good girl. No, higher than that. Hold it in the light, where I can see what’s what. Besides, elevation will help to stop the bleeding. It’s uncomfortable, I know, but keep it up. Above your head, yes, like that.’
‘I did tell her, Mother.’ That was Tom’s murmur, somehow self-effacing and self-justifying, both at once.
‘I’m sure you did. And then you had the sense to fetch me, so that I could tell her too. Hmm. These are actually quite shallow, despite all the dripping. No need for stitches. Tom, run and fetch me the first-aid kit. And you, girl, look at me. Yes, look at me. What’s your name?’
Thus adjured, she did that: lifting her head to see the whole of the woman, rather than the fringes of her gown. Which was quite plain and practical, if white robes were the order of the day; and the woman inside it the same, quite plain and practical. In her forties at a guess, pushing fifty perhaps, with iron-grey hair done up in a bun; a pleasant face and a firm accustomed manner. Nothing hippy in her anywhere, except for that robe. But that was probably true for nuns too, that they seemed quite normal women except for the wimple and the habit.
‘I’m Georgie,’ she said, because she was now, she really was. Nothing of Grace left in her: none of that bright glitter jewel hardness, none of the angles, no resistance now.
‘Well, Georgie. I sent Tom away because I do need my kit – this needs a proper dressing; because he was being no help at all, which is no surprise at all to either of us; and because he may believe that these are bramble scratches, but I have yet to encounter the bramble that can scratch skin that deeply through a coat and gloves. I was a nurse in the war, and I know scar tissue when I see it. These are old cuts opening up again, aren’t they?’
She nodded, helpless to deny it.
‘So: do you want to tell me why you cut yourself?’
A shake of the head. Helpless to answer.
‘Fair enough. You can keep your secrets if you must – though this isn’t a good house for secrets; they’ll fester if you’re not careful of them. Still, never mind that for now. What have you been doing, to open these up? They look like they had healed before this.’
A shrug: she had no answers, except it was the bell, the sound of the bell that cut me, doesn’t it cut you too? All of you? She could sound quite mad, if she tried. Better not to try, then. Better to huddle in on herself and say nothing.
Here came Tom to save her, running back down the corridor with a box in his hands, white-painted with a vivid red cross on the top. Truly a first-aid kit, then: as unexpected as anything in this house. But then, with a former nurse in authority, why wouldn’t it have a first-aid kit? Hippies could be as careful as anyone, at need. A commune could be a community, and a community could look after itself. It wasn’t anything like the world she was used to, but she’d always understood that other people were different. Incomprehensible, but not necessarily wrong. Better, maybe. That might be something to discover.
Iodine on her cuts, then, and a bandage wrapped around; and as the older woman tore the end of the bandage and tied it neatly off, she said, ‘You’ll do. No need to worry about using the hand – you can hold a fork with it if you’re that way inclined. Come on through to dinner.’
She stood up a little warily, found Tom rather enchantingly there to help if she needed it, too shy to offer if she didn’t. Gave him a smile to acknowledge both, a little shake of the head at her own stubborn independence – and then thought of something, said, ‘Oh, I should do something about my suitcase . . .’
‘You should,’ the woman agreed. ‘You should leave it where it is. No one will touch it here. You don’t need to be worrying about things.’ She might have meant your things, but that wasn’t what she said. ‘Come along.’
Stalwart thing, her suitcase: something to hold on to, a weight, a weapon. Something to sit on, a support. She hated to abandon it, all alone in the corridor there. Also, she didn’t quite believe that bland reassurance. One of Tony’s reporters had disappeared here. Been swallowed up. Some of the stories she told herself about that, of course they would go through her case.
And find, perhaps, what they were looking for, traces of Grace; and then it would be a whole different story she was telling herself, telling them.
Tony might prefer that, actually.
She gestured awkwardly, just to draw attention to her hands. ‘Please, is there a washroom . . .?’ Blood on my gloves, and I still have my coat on.
‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry, I’m rushing you, aren’t I? Briskness gets to be a habit, I find; if I wasn’t brisk, I’d never get anything done. Never get any of these to do anything, I mean.’ With a little nod at Tom, who was apparently happy to stand in for everyone and be criticized. ‘Time has a different measure in Hope’s Harbour; no one hurries, but the clock does rush around.’
‘There aren’t any clocks,’ Tom said.
‘Hush. And don’t tell Leonard, but I do still carry a watch.’ A nurse’s fob, on the inside lapel of her robe: she flashed it at them, tucked it away again. Briskly. ‘Someone has to.’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘And my name is Mary. Don’t let them tell you any different, Georgie. I’m nobody’s mother now.’
Neither was she. The bells were a constant reminder. She had to face down the ship’s bell again, turning back in defiance of instructions. It was silent like a knife, heavy with potential, brooding. She walked stiff-legged, wary as a cat under a dog’s eyes; scooped up her case and looked to Mary with her head cocked inquiringly. Of course she’d need her case in the bathroom. And time, that too. Time to catch her breath, scrub blood out from under her fingernails. Put her gloves to soak in cold water. Silly, useless gestures: they’d expect those from a new girl, her first day. It was important to seem inappropriate, not to be prepared.