House of Bells (15 page)

‘Hey.'

She turned her head slowly, effortfully to find him. He was sitting cross-legged in the fire's bask, which was more than she could manage. He was long and lean and angular, his limbs jutting in all directions, and the way he sat, slumped forward – and no blame to him for that! – his long dripping draggled hair hung down over his face, and for that little moment she wasn't sure.

Then he lifted a hand, tucked most of his hair back behind his ear, and she saw a shaven chin and a predatory gleam, almost a possessiveness, as he gazed at her, as though he had saved her life and so could claim it now.

Not Tom, no. She hadn't been able to tell in the water, and she had wondered – but no, of course it was Webb. Strong and dominant, taking charge, seizing control. Seizing her, while he had the chance.

He would think so, at least. The water had first claim on her, though, and a tighter grip. She was still coughing, still wheezing through a constricted throat, as though all the passages of her body had clenched up. The fire's heat wasn't coming close. Her clothes were starting to steam, and even so: she still felt bitter, shaking cold, inside and out.

He could see that, she thought. He hitched himself over and put an arm around her shoulders, drew her in close against him. She had no resistance. She felt once again close to tears, unsure that they weren't actually already leaking down her ice-wet cheeks.

At least that was easy to hide. She turned her face into his shoulder, which was wet enough already. For a minute, she let him cradle her; she thought he was probably enjoying it, despite everything.

He didn't get it for free, though. Not for long. After that little minute, she made an effort and peeled herself away, face and body both; and scowled up at him and said, ‘It isn't fair.'

‘What's that, love?'

‘Why aren't you shivering?' He didn't even feel cold, on the inside. Under that skin of wet clothes, she could sense the heat of him, pulsing through. ‘Look at me, I can't stop . . .'

Even her teeth were chattering. She'd always thought that was a myth, but she tried to talk and they clattered together like dentures coming loose.

‘So come back here and borrow a bit of what I've got.' He was imperturbable, pleased with himself, irresistible apparently. When he tugged, she went. ‘You were in longer than I was; I expect that's it. You saved my poor Kathie twice over: once from the fire, and then again from the water. It's no wonder if you're feeling a bit spent.'

‘It's more than that, you idiot. Sit her up and let me look at that arm again.' Mary, of course, back from wherever she'd been: tending Kathie, presumably, seeing how bad her burns were. At least they'd had the cold water to suck all the heat out of them.

‘Yes, of course. Here, Georgie, you just lean back on me, that's the way, and let Mary get at you . . . What's she done to herself, Mother, anyway?'

‘Never you mind.' Of course he'd want to know; information is power. He'd want to know everything. And of course Mary wouldn't tell him, even the sum of her guesses. ‘She's in a bad way, that's all. Hold this arm still, if you want to make yourself useful. I don't think you can do it yourself, can you, Georgie pet? Where are those towels, anyway? How long does it take to run to the linen cupboard and back? I can't be expected to do everything . . . Oh, at last. Thank you, Tom. That's right, just put it round her shoulders, and you go at her hair with another one. Webb can look after himself – or more likely Kathie – but not for a minute, please. Keep holding Georgie, just as you are; you won't die of pneumonia, any of you, for one more minute . . . Yes. That's what I was afraid of: all the stitches gone again, and no telling how much blood she's lost, but I don't like the look of her at all. Honestly, Georgie. What did I tell you . . .?'

Not in
that
water, and not with that hand.
But it wasn't really a question, and she certainly didn't expect an answer: which was just as well, because she certainly wasn't actually going to get one. Not from Georgie, who was hardly even there; and Grace was lost in the tolling of a bell, impossibly deep and impossibly cold, the sound of it felt rather than heard. She thought it was still sounding, thrumming through the ground she sat on. Unpicking her mind as easily as it unpicked stitches, slicing the threads of her thoughts apart, opening her up to bleed and bleed.

She was glad enough just to lean shiveringly into Webb's lean strength, sorry when someone – was that Tom, of all people? – bullied her into leaning forward so that he could get at her hair, violently, with a towel. It'd dry all wild, but oddly even Grace didn't seem to care. She couldn't manage it, somehow. Even her arm wasn't hurting now; it was just numb. If Mary wanted to sew it up again, she wouldn't need to bother with any novocaine.

Oh. Apparently, she was sewing it up already. Grace hadn't noticed, and neither had Georgie – well, no reason why she should: it was Grace's arm, wasn't it? Grace had done the cutting first, before those damn bells started – but she heard, ‘Pass me my scissors. Or no, better, just cut. Cut there, and wait. I'm putting another one in. I'm putting in a whole lot more, actually. I'm going to hem these cuts, to stop her tearing them open again. I'd do them cross-stitch if I could. Lord knows what she found down there in the water, to cut them through so cleanly. Something that had rusted to an edge, I suppose . . .'

But the light had changed, and they weren't huddled by the fire any more. When had that happened? She blinked around, and here they were: herself, and Mary, and Tom. No Webb. Tom was holding her with one arm, helping Mary with the other; and they were back in the familiar bathroom again, bright lights and clean water and Mary's medical bag opened up on the marble side there.

She didn't quite understand what had happened, but she was glad enough to have the lake water washed out of her. And she wasn't shuddering now, and she couldn't hear the bell, and all of that was good. And Mary said, ‘She'll do now. I've put in double the number of stitches this time round. You get her to bed. Up with Kathie, please. They'll be company for each other and I won't have to disturb anyone else when I check on them. Oh, I'm sure half the house will be sitting up all night anyway, but not on that corridor. You and Webb can take turn and turn about, if you insist . . .'

And then she must have drifted off again, by herself or perhaps with help if Mary gave her something: because now she was in bed, in a bedroom, or at least in a room set aside for sleeping. The bed was only a pallet on the floor, but she was a little surprised to find that she didn't mind that. For Georgie it would probably be like camping with the Guides, a girlhood pleasure rediscovered, nights of whispering in the dark with friends when they should have been sleeping. Grace was more practical. She was warm and cosy and weary to the bone, and she never wanted to move again and had no reason to. Half the aristocratic beds she'd slept in had been more lumpy and less comfortable than this.

There was another pallet in the room, the other side of the little window where a night light burned. That was just enough to show her a muffled shape asleep, and that must be Kathie the burned drowned girl, not burning now, not drowning. That was good, that must be good enough.

Between the two of them sat a third figure on the bare board floor. A shadow, long straight hair lit by the window's candle. A sharp red glow as he inhaled; a slow breathing-out, and the smell of acrid leaves.

She murmured a soft, ‘Webb?'

‘Tom,' he said, half apologetic. ‘Webb's sleeping the sleep of the justly famous. So are you supposed to be. I said I'd keep watch over your snoring forms.'

‘I don't snore!'

‘Yeah, you do. Little feminine snorts, it's quite cute. Maybe it's just because you're full of lake. Or drugged up.'

‘You can talk.' He could, but his voice was slurred a little, slow and dreamy; that was surely not his first joint of the night.

‘Hey. Got to do something to pass the time. You wouldn't like it if I made a noise.'

She might, actually, if he made it with his flute. She could see herself lying here in the dark and letting soft breathy music carry her away. Like a child floating on a lullaby. It wouldn't take much; her body was half asleep already.

‘I'm not drugged up, anyway,' she said, just because it was needful, not because it was true. ‘I don't.' Grace did, of course, she was a party girl, she took anything she was offered if anyone was looking; but Georgie did not. Of course not. Georgie had never even had a cigarette. She was trying gamely to be cool about it all, but the waters had closed over her head long since.

‘You do now. Mother Mary stuck you full of things. Don't ask me what. They were supposed to make you sleep, though. Like poor Kathie.'

‘How is she?'

‘Better than she would've been without you. She's got burns, of course, but they're all superficial. Mother Mary says she'll be sore for a few days, but nothing worse than that.'

‘Well, that's good news. So why do we need you to watch over us?'
Just let us sleep.
Kathie was comatose, and she herself was wrapped in a lovely lethargic feeling, safe under blankets, nothing to do but lie here and let the world turn beneath her . . .

‘Just in case. Mary's confident, but she could be wrong. She's not a doctor. What if Kathie comes round and she's really hurting? Webb said someone should be here through the night. And he was falling asleep where he sat but still in a state over Kathie and trying to hide it, the way he does, so I said I'd spell him for a while. And just as well, see? Here you are, awake.'

‘I might not be, if you weren't sitting there smoking at me.' In truth, though, she didn't mind a bit. There had been times when all she wanted was unconsciousness, if she couldn't actually be dead – but not now, apparently. Not right this minute. She was oddly happy, half afloat inside her body, bickering lightly with this boy. She felt like a night light herself: barely awake, barely troubled.

Even her wrist didn't hurt right now. Well, there were no bells cutting at it. She thought about that, about houses like this, how she had lain awake on other nights with other men beside her and listened to their snores interspersed with a community of chimes, a carriage clock in the room and a grandfather clock down the hall and the big clock over the stable all out of time with each other and picking fights about it, loudly, all through the night.

The thought became a question: ‘Why aren't there any clocks here?'

‘Oh, there are plenty of clocks. All in one room, put away. Nobody winds 'em. The captain won't have 'em around the house.'

‘No, but why not?' He wanted discipline and order, didn't he? Everything shipshape and Bristol fashion – and ships ran to time, she was sure of that. She'd known sailors enough, and seen all the movies too. Everything was governed by the ship's bell, which in olden times was governed by the captain's watch. These days they'd do it the other way around, she supposed: run the bell off a clock and let that govern everybody's watch. Here they used the bell to announce a stranger, and no one ran a clock at all. Except Mary, with her secret fob.

‘He says that clocks are tyrannical, and that tyranny is the enemy of order. He says that time and clockwork are antithetical, that the universe is consensual and not mechanistic. God is not a horologist, he says.'

‘Says a lot, doesn't he? Uses big words, too.'

‘He does. Also, he says when it's time for lunch and dinner. Well, lunch is noon, that's easy enough. We ring the bell anyway, but we can pretty much all tell that. Dinner is when his stomach says it's dinner time: which is sunset around the equinox, which makes sense, but this far north the sun's no guide at all. We hardly see it in the winter, and it hardly goes away midsummer, so we rely on Leonard.'

‘Leonard and a bell,' she said, with an edge she hoped he wouldn't hear, because he couldn't understand.

‘That's right. He says, “Make it lunch,” or, “Make it supper time,” and someone runs down to the kitchens to tip them off, and someone else runs up to Frank in the wood. Frank rings the bell to tell us all.'

Frank. She was here to look for a Francis Gardiner, as well as to learn what she could about the set-up here. Francis might well come down to Frank. If she was going to bleed twice a day, though – if he was going to make her bleed – then she couldn't stay.
Sorry, Tony
, but she'd be like a vampire's victim, ever more pale and ever more frail, mysteriously weaker every morning. Mary would summon doctors, or send her to the cottage hospital more likely. She'd be away from here, anyway, safe and useless.

Bells didn't make her bleed in London, except in her heart. Something here took her literally. She ought to be more scared than she was, maybe. Except that she really wasn't scared of dying any more. Well, you couldn't be, after you'd cut your own wrists open; it wouldn't make sense, would it?

Just to be clear, she said, ‘Not for breakfast, then? The captain's tummy, I mean, telling you when it's time, and that big bell to wake everybody up?'

Tom laughed softly in the darkness. ‘Not for breakfast, no. The captain doesn't eat breakfast. Except at sea, he says. Dawn watch, sandwiches and cocoa. Here he has a cup of tea and leaves the rest of us to look after ourselves. Or each other. Somebody usually makes up a cauldronful of porridge and leaves it keeping warm. But some people are early up, and some sleep late; you really couldn't make us all eat at the same time in the morning. Not without sacrificing what this place is really about.'

‘What's that, then?'

‘Us,' Tom said. ‘Each of us individually, and the group of us together. We're like a hedge: lots of separate different plants growing all together, growing tough and strong and intertwined, marking out a boundary, making a shelter. It's the new way, the coming thing. Have you ever seen a hedge being laid?'