House of Bells (14 page)

‘Well,' Webb said. ‘You're very welcome.' Which didn't at all sound like it did when Tom said it. From Webb it sounded like a visa, a stamp in a passport,
officially approved
.

She thought she'd rather settle for Tom's welcome, even if it didn't carry the same authority. It was less complicated, more heartfelt. More honest.

The opposite of her, so many ways.

‘Thank you,' she said, but her heart wasn't in it. Her wrist was aching suddenly, quite sharply, in its sling: not the dull ache of torn flesh mending, as it should be.

She almost didn't want it to, but her other hand reached to touch. The bandage felt damp beneath her fingers. When she looked, there was a stain against the white.

Despite herself, she listened out for bells.

And heard a soft and constant jingling under the voices and the fire's sounds, like a belled cat at run across a lawn, its every movement a betrayal to the birds,
tin-tin-tin
.

No, like a dozen belled cats, a herd of them all moving together, with purpose. Just one would be lost here, however carefully she listened. One hair-fine cut on her wrist she wouldn't even feel, but this was like razors, light and slender and relentless.

She'd pulled her arm out of the sling without even thinking about it; she cradled her aching wrist in her palm, and rocked a little against the pain, and tried to understand.

No one was herding cats. There were no bells on collars. Maybe the jingling was all in her head. In her wrist. Maybe her wrist was just bleeding a little because that's what cuts do, and she was hearing bells because she was listening for them, because of what lay buried in her poor broken head, her poor broken baby in his churchyard bed.

But her eyes watched the girl as she danced around the fire, danced to no music – and the
tin-tin-tin
that she heard seemed to dance itself in time with the girl as she turned and twisted, all slim and sinuous within the swaying reaching shadows of her hair and skirt.

There was something woven into her hair, lengths of it among the loose dark flying mass: something that flashed fire every now and then when it caught the light, here and here and here again.

She watched and puzzled over that, distracted, bleeding. Trying to distract herself.

Oh – that Indian fabric, with the tiny mirrors embroidered on. The girl must have ribbons of it plaited into narrow braids – and, oh. Yes. Something at the end of each braid, a little weight, shimmering silver. A little bell.

Her skirt flashed too, that same mirrored cotton; and a fringe around the hem that was not enough to muffle the bells sewn there too, which jingled as she swayed.

It wasn't fair. Grace wasn't much inclined to feel sorry for herself, but Georgie could. Georgie could hug her poor sore wrist and huddle up and want to stick her fingers in her ears like a child, to shut out that cursed jingling, as if that would make anything better.

Tom was saying something to her, or trying to. She wasn't listening. She couldn't hear anything, except
tin-tin-tin
.

She couldn't see anything except the girl dancing out her destruction, cutting deeper with every step. Stamp stamp, jingle jingle, and the deep throbbing in her wrist like a backbeat, in time with her heart, pumping blood to the rhythm of the dancing girl.

Until she went too close to the fire, the girl did, swirling and swaying with her eyes shut, not to see the damage she was doing.

She went too close, leaning into that wall of heat as if it would hold her up; and a hand, two hands, reached out from the fierce heart of it, as if to push her away.

Hands of flame, and not pushing, no.

Clawing
at her.

People weren't looking, until it was too late; but Georgie was looking, staring numbly. Georgie saw.

She saw those hands, their fingers hooking, snatching.

She saw them catch at the skirt and nothing else. If the dancing girl was lucky, she was lucky then: that they missed the legs beneath the skirt, that they couldn't catch her flesh.

Nothing to grip, then, to drag her into the flames. Only that sudden flaring fabric, burning through; and the girl could scream and stumble back and the hands had nothing to cling to, only cloth that turned to ash as they did the same, as they fell apart in disillusion.

And maybe it was only an illusion to begin with, but the girl was really burning, all her skirt aflame and the ends of her hair catching now, fire running up those braids; and Grace was on her feet already, the only one moving, running into the light and the vicious reaching heat of it.

B
are feet, bare legs. It didn't matter.

No hands came clutching out of the flames for her. Of course they didn't. She hadn't even thought.

She didn't need to think. There was a girl on fire, screaming and helpless, batting her hands at the fury of her skirt and doing nothing but spread the flame to her cheesecloth sleeves, making everything worse in a moment.

Girl on fire, and a lakeful of water just three paces off. What was there to think about?

She had no idea how deep the water was. That didn't matter either. If there was only one thing Grace did well, with a natural confidence and the virtue she was named for, swimming would be that thing. Water became her.

She didn't need to think.

She hurtled into the burning girl, full on, face to face. Flame to – well, lucky she was only wearing a sleeveless minidress, there wasn't so much to catch fire. Nylon all through it, though, which would melt to a sticky horror on her skin – except that she wouldn't let it; it wouldn't have the time.

Someone had told her once she had a rugby player's shoulders. It wasn't true – they were trying deliberately to be unkind, and not making a very good job of it – and she did watch her weight with care, but she wasn't ever one of those wispy girls who need a man to open an envelope for them.

She slammed into the screaming, skipping, burning girl, scooped both arms around her and just kept going. Feeling heat and not worrying, keeping going. Momentum and determination and the thrust of her legs –
thunder thighs
, that same unfriend had called her, loudly at a party – carried both of them over the grass and over the stone rim of the lake and into the air and down, into the water.

She'd grabbed air on the way because that was what she did, it didn't need thinking about; and if it was hot, the air, if there was a mouthful of flame in there it wasn't burning her.

She was ready, when they hit. Ready for the impact, ready for the plunge. Ready for the water closing over her head, and for her unready companion's struggles. She'd done lifesaver training at the pool in Billericay, her sixteenth summer, when there'd been a man to train her. She could handle this.

She wasn't ready for the cold of it or the depth of it, the falling-away beneath her, falling and falling; that sudden crushing squeeze that made her air feel ridiculous and shook her confidence to the marrow.

It couldn't be that deep, this deep.

Could it?

And the girl couldn't still be burning, she only thought she was. And was flailing, frantic, still trying to beat out flames with burned palms, didn't seem to notice that they were underwater now and sinking still.

Until she tried to catch her breath for screaming, and—

Well. That was a hard time. From trying to burn, the girl was trying suddenly to drown: doing her very best, doing everything wrong, fighting Grace and fighting to breathe and dreadful in her panic, dreadfully dangerous.

In all the watery stories Grace had ever read, a rugby-playing man would administer a swift clip to the jaw and thrust the fainting female to the surface before she could drown of her own wilfulness.

Still lacking the shoulders, she did what she could: kicked like mad and hung on grimly, tried to keep below and push the girl upward, not to let her cling like weed and drag them both down beyond saving.

No swimming, mind.
Not in
that
water
, Mary had said. It must have meant something. Maybe it meant this: the depth and the shocking chill of it, an icy clutch at her confidence.
Not even you
, it whispered deep in the bone of her.
You're out of your depth here . . .

Well, but she always had been. Out of her depth all her life, and fighting all the way: grabbing for air, for a handhold, for a helping hand, for anything. Learning to swim the hard way, by learning to stay alive.

She held her breath in the sour murky water, kicked against the bitter sucking grip of it below, pushed hard at the flailing girl above.

Brought them both abruptly to the surface, gasping and choking, to find too many people crowded at the lake's margin, trying to be helpful: too many hands reaching down to them, too many voices calling, all those bodies shutting out the firelight and only making it harder.

Still. She heaved the girl into those willing hands and felt her drawn away on to solid ground. The same hands clutched for her, but she kicked off from the stone-faced bank and backed water a little way, out of their reach. The cold was vicious but not killing, not yet; if all she had to do was float, she could manage that. And there was a comfort in it, this brief space between her and them like the walls they disapproved of, an absolute line. No one was jumping in to join her.
Not in
that
water.

She could understand that. She could relish it, almost. She'd be glad enough to get out herself, but not until they cleared away from the bank. She didn't want all their hands hauling at her, touching her, dragging her away. She didn't want to be one of them, this suddenly easily; she didn't want to be their hero of the hour.
I'm a spy, not a sister.

A good spy would take any advantage, she supposed, whatever they might offer her: congratulations, gratitude, towels.

Perhaps she didn't want to be a good spy either. Even to please Tony.

She raised an arm to wave them away, all those hopeful helpful people – but that was her left arm, her bad hand, and it was aching fiercely now that the cold had got into it.
Not in
that
water, not with that hand.
Maybe she was due a scolding, rather than congratulations. It didn't matter, but in this darkness a wave might look like an appeal for help, a drowning girl going under again. She let her arm drop and snatched a breath to yell at them instead.
Clear back out of the way, let me get myself out
– the last thing she wanted was anyone pulling on that bad hand, ripping open the stitches again. Mother Mary would understand, she'd corral their eagerness, it only needed a yell . . .

But the air was thin and foul out here over the water; it didn't seem to be enough. She gasped and gasped again and couldn't raise her voice. For a moment she thought something dark and sinuous and massive moved in the water beside her.

Oh, that was nonsense. There weren't monsters in the water. Nor hands in the fire, nor—

Nor a bell, no, tolling deep beneath her, deep deep down. Great thudding strokes that seized hold of her, that crushed her, flesh and bone together; that doubled her up in the water there, no swimmer now. Just a mortal suffering body, breathless and racked with pain and sinking, slipping down into the dark and the cruel cold, and . . .

And something brushed against her body as she fell, and she hadn't ever been the screaming sort but honestly then she might have screamed if there had been air in her lungs, if she had been in air and not this gripping suffocating water.

The touch startled her eyes open, when she hadn't really realized she'd closed them. Not that eyes were any use in this dark, this double-dark, dense clouded lake-water in the night; but she'd rather go down fighting. Even if she couldn't see what it was she fought against, even not believing in monsters even as they swallowed her.

A touch again, fumbling first to find her and then seizing hold. She did try to fight, but that grip had pinned one arm against her side so she only had the other one to fight with, and of course that was her bad arm, which felt almost too heavy to lift now as it burned with cold, as it ached deep in the bone. And she had no air, and there was no strength left in her, and no hope; and she might as well just hang here, seized and helpless, and let whatever had her drag her down . . .

Except that she was rising, all unexpectedly; and that wasn't a monster after all. Of course it wasn't; she didn't believe in monsters. Just a man, she could feel the familiar shape of his body against hers as he kicked powerfully, kicked them both up to the surface.

And she was still in the grip of the tolling bell, still helpless, and that didn't matter any more. He was strong enough for both of them. All she had to do was breathe, finally, at last: great sodden shuddering breaths as he towed her to the side, as she floated slackly in his arms, as far too many hands grabbed hold and hauled her out.

Then she could lie on the grass and cough and shudder uncontrollably, heedless of all those people all around her; until at last here was Mother Mary pushing through, taking charge, what they had needed all along.

‘Stop crowding them, stop standing there like goons, how do you think you're helping? Someone run up to the house, put a kettle on, fetch towels and dry clothes for them both. Yes, all of you go if you want to, you're no use to me here. What they need is the fire's heat, and you lot are just in the way and I don't have time for you. Go on, vamoose . . .'

Of course, not everyone went. There's always someone who thinks general instructions don't apply to them. And perhaps they were right this time; she was glad enough now to have help to bring her closer to the blaze, where she could sit and shiver and wish that she could dive right through into the fire's heart. If there were hands in the fire, where were they now? Not reaching out for her, no, to embrace her and draw her in where it was warm. She thought she would have gone. No fighting now, no fight left in her. This numbing cold had frozen out her heart and her will together, every stubborn grain of spirit that she had. She thought she might be crying, perhaps.