Evergreen Falls (36 page)

He lay down on her bed and groaned. “Can I stay here tonight?”

“Of course.”

“He’s come for me. He knows that’s my room. I can’t go back there, not during the night.”

“Who are you talking about, Sam?”

“The ghost. He’s stepped out of my dreams and now he’s in my room. Standing, grinning in the corner. Blue with the cold, bloated from the water.”

Freezing alarm touched Violet’s heart. “Sam, tell me you know that’s not true.”

“I’ve seen him with my own eyes. I’m not going back there.” He cried out in pain, then leaped up and began to pace.

She came to his side and tried to still him, but he shrugged her off violently. “No, don’t hold me down. My legs and arms, they are racked with cramps. The only thing I can do is move them. The pain is . . . oh, God. I can’t do this. You must help me. You must.”

“I’ll do anything.”

He lay down again. His arms twitched and flailed as though he wasn’t
in control of them. “But for an hour of sleep. A moment of respite,” he gasped.

“How can I help? Tell me. I’ll do anything.”

“Kill me.”

Violet recoiled. “No.”

“I beg you. I beg you. I don’t want to live anymore, not without my opium. I saw . . .” He raised his hand and it shook. “I saw all the way to the other side of reality. It was beautiful, so beautiful. What is my life now? Pain, unending pain. I can feel my body dying all around me.” As if on cue, his legs started to shake uncontrollably, and he had to shoot to his feet and pace again. “This is all there is,” he said, “until the pain kills me. It would be a mercy for you to press a pillow over my face and let me die.”

“I’m not going to kill you.”

“I’m going to die anyway. He’s come for me. That’s why he’s in my room. He’s come to take me with him. I don’t want to die with him grinning at me. I want to die looking upon your sweet face.”

Violet gulped, the heat of her fear blinding her. He did look like a man very close to death. But never in a million years would she help him die. No. She would help him live.

Violet knew exactly what she had to do.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

W
atching Sam go through the pains of withdrawing from opium was a living horror, but Flora comforted herself with Will Dalloway’s words: withdrawal wouldn’t kill him.
The far greater danger is that he keeps taking it
.

First thing in the morning, she rose and sat outside his door. He no longer wanted her in his room, but she heard him. She heard his groans and thundering steps as he paced around and around trying to shake out the cramps that racked his limbs. She heard as his groans turned into shrieks, pleas to God for mercy, pleas to Flora for death. Every one pierced her heart, but she sat there all morning and let nobody come near. Shortly after breakfast, Violet stood at the top of the stairs looking at Flora, eyes pleading and tearful. But Flora waved her off. She would explain to the girl later. This was for the best.

And so, with snow two or three feet high outside, and food running out, and no electricity in the dim hallway, Sam yelped like a madman in his room, and Flora sat with her head against his door, and willed her heartbeat to stay even and calm. One more day of this, perhaps two, and surely—
surely
—he would start to recover.

The door to Tony’s room opened. He had declared he couldn’t
bear the sounds emerging from Sam’s room so had retreated to his room to read. But here he was now, strolling down the corridor towards her with a smile on his face.

“How is the patient?” he asked, settling on the floor next to her. He was smoking a cigarette. Both he and Sweetie had taken up the habit again the moment Miss Zander had disappeared.

“Tearing himself to pieces,” she replied, her voice cracking.

“But it’s for the best. You said it was for the best.”

“Yes. Once he’s through it, he can recover. I’m glad for the snowstorm. I’m glad we’re cut off from the world. He can’t get out. He can hardly walk as it is, but the snow and the cold would stop him and he knows it.”

“You’d be the only one of us who’s glad we’re cut off. Sweetie’s climbing the walls.”

“Sweetie needs to learn when to surrender to circumstances,” she said with a sniff. “Picking on the waitress because of bad weather is very poor form.”

Tony narrowed his eyes and blew out a stream of smoke. “You’ve become very defensive of that waitress. What’s her name? Vera?”

“Violet.”

“Do you fancy her for a sister-in-law after all?”

Tony was likely joking to try to lighten the mood, but Flora was too deep in a well to respond. “In a perfect world, Tony, Sam could marry Violet if he wanted. But we all know that isn’t going to happen.”

The quiet of the corridor was punctuated by more shouts from Sam. “Flora! Flora! Where are you? Make it stop! Make it stop!”

Flora’s heart iced over. “Oh, this is such a horror,” she cried.

Tony put his arm around her shoulder. “Come here,” he said. “There, there. It will work out. You’ve said so yourself enough times.”

She shrugged him off—he reeked of cigarette smoke—and called back through the door, “I’m right outside. You’ll be fine soon.”

Sam started thumping on the door from the other side. “Let me out. He’s in here with me. He’s in here with me now. Let me out.”

Flora scrambled to her feet. Tony looked at her, puzzled.

“He’s hallucinating,” she told him, before opening the door a crack and looking in on Sam’s pale face, his haunted eyes. “It’s not locked, Sam,” she said. “I haven’t locked you in. I’d never lock you in.” In fact, she had thought about it, but his door could easily be unlocked from the inside.

“He’s here,” he hissed. “Get Violet. Violet makes him go away.”

“Violet’s busy. Do you want me to come in?”

He wrenched open the door. He was wearing nothing but a singlet. Below the waist he was completely naked, and as unashamed as a child. “In the corner,” he said to Flora in a low voice. “Can you see him?”

“I can’t see anyone, Sam. It’s probably just a shadow. Do you want me to get you a lamp to put in the corner?” As soon as she said it she became afraid he’d upend it and set fire to his room.

“A lamp’s not going to help.”

“Where are your clothes?” she asked.

“My clothes? There’s a
ghost
in my room, waiting to take me with him to meet death, and you care about where my clothes are! Here!” He marched across the room and threw a pile of clothes at her. They were filthy and the stench of them was unbearable. It seemed he’d soiled every pair of trousers he owned. “Enjoy them!” he shouted, before pushing her out and closing the door again.

Tony eyed her and the clothes. “What are you going to do with those?”

“Come to the bathroom with me. I’ll soak them in the bath.”

“Just get one of the staff to do it.”

“This is too private.” She headed down the corridor to the bathroom—the bathroom in which the unfortunate man had died, the
man who was haunting Sam. She had Tony check that nobody was in it—it was the men’s bathroom, after all—and went in to fill the tub and leave the clothes in it. Then she washed her hands as thoroughly as she could and leaned back on the sink. Tony stood in the doorway.

“At least this way, your father will be happy,” he said. “The visit to the hotel will have cured Sam of his addiction.”

“His ‘health problems,’ ” Flora said. “Father never called it an addiction.”

“But he knew?”

“It’s hard to say. But yes, when all of this is over and we return home, Father will be pleased.”

“Pleased with you?”

She laughed bitterly. “In that he’s not overtly
dis
pleased, I imagine. He won’t cut me out of his will, if that’s what you mean.”

“It’s not what I meant.”

Something about the current awful circumstances, the way the isolation had robbed them of civility, prompted her to say, “Would you still have married me? If he’d cut me off?”

“I would,” Tony said without hesitation.

“Why?”

“Do you want me to tell you I’m crazy for you? That you’re irresistible and you make the heavens bright?”

“I want you to tell me the truth.”

He shrugged. Smiled. “A man needs a wife. He needs a woman with a good name and a good heart, somebody who will stand by him and not fuss and carry on. You have a strong moral compass, Florrie. You know what to do. You will be a good wife, and for that I love you.”

Another cry rose from Sam’s room, and Flora pushed past Tony to hurry back. Sweetie emerged from his room at the far end of the corridor and called out gruffly, “Can you not make him quiet?”

“He’s very ill,” she protested. “Have a little pity.”

“Pity is for women and weaklings,” he retorted, and slammed his door shut.

She looked at Tony meaningfully.

“I’ll talk to him,” Tony said. “He’s frustrated, that’s all. We all are, cooped up in here.”

“Have a little pity, that’s all I ask,” she said again, quietly, indicating Sam’s room and the groans emanating from within. “He’s my baby brother.”

*  *  *

Violet was crazed from lack of sleep. She’d been up all night in her room with Sam. He’d only left when he heard Flora in the bathroom that morning. Violet had then slept for an hour before being roused by Cook, who told her he was now unwell and that meant Violet had to make and serve breakfast single-handedly.

Clive was weak, but he rose to help her and then went straight back to bed. Miss Zander was alarmingly pale but determined that this would be her last day in bed. At her request, Violet told the guests at breakfast that the hotel was officially non-operational. She would do her best to make biscuits and sandwiches that she would leave in the kitchen for them, but that for the next twenty-four hours they could expect no more than that of her.

Lord Powell and Sweetie shouted her down, but she simply told them, as Miss Zander had instructed, that there would be no charge for staying here this week. “Might I remind you,” she said, indicating the falling rain outside the window, “you are free to walk to the village in the hopes of finding a different place to stay.” Miss Zander had definitely
not
told her to say that, but she enjoyed the look on the men’s faces as they understood that all the shouting in the world would not improve their situation.

After breakfast Violet tried to check in on Sam, but once again Flora was sitting outside his door like a particularly zealous guard dog. Violet tried to keep a lid on her anxiety as she made biscuits and bread in the kitchen, the wood-burning stove keeping the cold at bay. But her mind returned repeatedly to Sam, to the grotesque dance the spasms made him perform, and to her own certainty that she would find something to help him.

She would need different clothes. Her fashionable winter boots would not be warm enough or dry enough out in the snow. Her destination was about two miles away, and she estimated the snow would be thigh deep. She’d need a walking stick of some kind. A waterproof coat. Her plans whirled around her head as she mixed and kneaded and baked and left the food in the kitchen for the guests to help themselves.

Then she put on her warmest clothes, wrapped all her scarfs around her, pulled on gloves and a hat, and headed out the kitchen door to Clive’s workshop.

The snow was ankle deep in some places, thigh deep in others. It seemed to take her an age to trudge across, and she began to doubt very much that she could get to Malley’s house. What if she did? He likely wasn’t there, and even if he was he might not have any opium for Sam.

She considered turning back but then she remembered Sam begging for death, convinced he would die of the pain. She believed him. He already smelled like death. His eyes had already dimmed. She wouldn’t be like Flora, doing nothing more than sitting and watching as he slowly died. The thought galvanized her, and she pushed herself through the snow until she arrived at the workshop.

Miss Zander had given her the keys to everything now that Cook was ill in bed, and she unlocked the door and pushed it open. A mound of snow fell in as she did so, and she stepped over it and into the workshop, her eyes scanning the room. She knew she’d seen it
somewhere . . . ah, yes. With the fishing equipment. A pair of waterproof overalls, and scuffed Wellington boots. She shrugged out of her coat and pulled them down from the hanger.

Sitting on the wooden floor, Violet unlaced her own boots—now wet and cold—and pulled on the overalls. Her skirt rode up, and she tucked it awkwardly into the legs, then pulled the bib of the overall up and fastened it. It gaped. She pulled her coat back on and fastened it as tightly as she could. Then she slid her feet into the Wellington boots. They swam on her, so she removed the boots and put on the two spare pairs of men’s socks she’d found in the laundry. Once her feet were padded the boots were still far too big, but they would have to do. She pulled the overall legs down over the boots and tied them tightly at the ankles. Then she grasped a broom from the stand and prised off its head.

Using the handle as a walking stick, she took her first few steps out into the snow.

She waded away from the workshop, away from the hotel. She couldn’t see where the roads were, so she looked out for other landmarks. Trees, street signs, the train station. Her thighs began to ache while the hotel was still in sight behind her. The cold penetrated even the waterproof overalls, and her feet chafed in the boots. Still she pushed on, lifting her feet through heavy snow, pushing herself forward while her hips groaned and her knees burned, hoping against hope that she was going the right way. Sometimes she would come to a short stretch where the snow was only up to her knees, giving her some respite. In places, though, it was almost up to her waist, and she leaned heavily on the broomstick to drag herself through. A light rain started then stopped again, but she barely noticed. Teeth gritted, she pushed on, towards the only thing that could make Sam feel better.

There was nobody at the train station. Nobody moving around outside the small houses that lined the street.

The last time she’d come to Malley’s house with Sam, it had taken a little over ten minutes. This time, it was an hour and a half before his house was in sight. Her heart was thundering and her lungs bursting from the effort. But she recognized the house easily enough. The long couch was still on the veranda, and she hoped this meant that Malley was home.