House of Bells (24 page)

‘No,' Tony said, unusually solemn, oddly not laughing at her. ‘I don't suppose you are. One thing I can rely on: you've got a rock-solid grip on what matters, deep down. I wouldn't have sent you, else.'

Oh, Tony. If you only knew . . .
He was right, of course; she did, rock solid. What mattered was the hollow at the heart, the missing space, the baby. She had that and would never let it go.

It was her turn to laugh at him; he was waiting for it, but she couldn't manage it either. She muttered something disparaging that the phone line must have garbled; it was as much as she could manage not to be crying now.

‘You're sure, now? You don't want me to come and get you? I would, you know. I need you to know that.'

‘No, you wouldn't. You'd send Robbo. But you don't need to do that anyway. I'm fine. Nothing's going to happen to me here, if it hasn't already.' She could feel quite pleased with that, if it hadn't come out quite so gulpy and sorrowful; it was true twice over, in different directions.
If it hasn't already
, when of course it already had, and now she didn't need to tell him about the bandage on her wrist or the bruises on her throat; and
nothing's going to happen to me
, which was of course exactly true, only that
nothing
was a very great deal indeed, an absence, a vacuum that would happen to her in the worst way imaginable, a reality that would suck her down. Sooner or later, ready or not.

Mostly, she thought she would just try to be ready.

Punished enough. Ready to go.

He called her a good girl, and she promised to call him again and hung up hastily before she could get herself even more tangled up between what she was saying to him and what she was hearing in her head.

And then she'd done what she came for, and she didn't know what else to do. It was far too soon to sit and wait for the boys, and she had no money to buy herself a pot of tea or anything at all;
money's not an issue
, but it is when you neglect to bring it with you.

The landlord had disappeared, so she couldn't even thank him. Instead she spent some time in the lavatory, cleaning wax off her clothes as best she could, and then she walked out on to the square and into the sudden tumbling clamour of a tower of bells.

It wasn't Sunday, and it was only mid-afternoon. Nothing was ever fair, but this was purely cruel. The ringers must just be practising, but that would make no difference to her. Her hand moved instinctively to her wrist, to cradle it against the inevitable ache of fresh blood running.

And found the bandage quite dry and the wrist only aching in that good way that flesh does when it's starting to heal; and remembered that she wasn't at the house any more. She was in the world, where bells only cut her on the inside.

That was something. She supposed.

What did people do, in market towns with no money? She had no idea. She couldn't really remember what she used to do when she was a teenager with no money. Hung out with her friends, talked, smoked, listened to music: all those things that she couldn't do here or now and saw no point in anyway. None of it led anywhere that mattered; it had only brought her here. What was there left to say, or to smoke, or to listen to . . .?

Feeling unutterably depressed, she thought she might just stay by the car, under the sound of the bells, and wait the hours till the boys came back. Why not? She had nothing more useful to do. Nothing to do at all, so she might as well suffer.

Suffer in public. Standing there and looking around, she was abruptly aware of people looking at her and stiffening, turning away, hurrying on. It wasn't London, and they weren't staring or spitting or crying down curses on her head, but even so . . .

Gradually, she understood. This wasn't London, and they weren't seeing Grace Harley. They weren't even seeing Georgie Hale. All they saw was a hippy from the big house, someone so utterly different from themselves there weren't the words to describe it.

Rather than linger by the car, then, she did the other thing: she walked deliberately away. That didn't help. The car was a giveaway, yes, but so were her clothes.
You are what you wear
– there had been times when that was a cause for celebration, times when it was a weapon of war, times when it was a prison sentence. Right now, apparently, it was a condemnation.

Brightly dressed, oddly dressed, she drew every eye with every movement. She moved through this conservative country town in its tweeds, its greens and browns, like molten wax in water: vivid and apart, surrounded but not swallowed. She seemed to have a force field around her that pushed other people aside: except that it was their choice, every time. They saw her coming and looked away, moved away. Crossed the road, or changed their minds about crossing; or simply blatantly waited until she'd passed, to be sure she didn't infect them or their precious children or their dogs.

Perhaps it was just as well that she had no money. She couldn't imagine how they would treat her in any of the tea shops here. Or rather, she could. She could imagine it all too well, because it was how they treated Grace in half the boutiques on the King's Road.

She had thought it might be different for Georgie. Still, at least she knew how to deal with this. Chin up and eyes front, her face a mask until she found somewhere to go, somewhere to be out of the public gaze.

That wasn't going to be easy. If they weren't ringing that damn bell, she might have risked the church, but—

‘There's one of them now.'

It was a male voice, young and rough. Off to the side, a little group gathered by a fountain. She didn't turn her head, she didn't scurry on, but something deep inside her held its breath. Young men were the worst. In the right mood, with enough beer inside them and their mates watching, they'd go for confrontation every time.

Here they came. The sun was behind her; their shadows were all about her, hemming her in. Three of them, she thought. Maybe four. They wouldn't, surely they wouldn't actually attack her, in broad daylight, in the middle of town where everyone must know who they were; but nobody would care if they gave her a hard time any other way. She was the outsider here, the natural victim. No one knew who she was, and still she was the victim.

It was only fair, and still she would have given plenty to escape whatever it was coming. She always did escape her just deserts, that was what she counted on; so—

So a door opened abruptly just ahead of her, and the sudden jangle of its bell brought her to a dead stop just when she needed to keep moving, but no matter; here was rescue, apparently, though she didn't understand it.

Here was a woman, a stranger, middle-aged and dressed to suit – dressed for town, but even so: one of the enemy here, one of those who made a point of making space, not letting her near for fear of contamination – holding the door open for her, smiling at her, beckoning her inside.

Seeming as though she knew her, had been waiting, was glad to see her now.

Seeming utterly blind to her escort, that pack of lads at her heel.

She didn't need to understand it; she just grabbed, as she had done all her life. How the world works: take what's on offer now, whatever you can reach. Pay for it later.

She ducked straight inside the tea shop, heard the woman close the door behind her, felt almost grateful – almost! – for the dreadful
jing-jang
of the bell. At least it couldn't hurt her here, and it was like another door, a lock, a wall to hide behind. Boys who hung around in the street wouldn't follow her in here, the bell said.

‘They won't come in here,' the woman said, uncanny, clear and bell-like. ‘Come on, sit with us.' Right in the window there, where she must have seen exactly what was happening outside. ‘You're from D'Espérance, aren't you?'

So she'd seen it and understood it, that too. And acted, swiftly and effectively; and
who are you?
was a question bubbling under but not ready yet, not ready to be asked.

Here was her companion, a man maybe ten years older than she was, rising to his feet.

‘Edward Dorian,' he said, reaching to shake her hand. She'd almost forgotten already that that was what people did. ‘And you've already met my wife, Ruth.'

‘Well, not to say met, exactly.' The other woman smiled, her own hand at the ready – and then hesitated, frowned a little, said, ‘Haven't we, though? Met? In London, perhaps . . .?'

‘Oh! No, I don't think so, I really don't.' She really didn't; it was most likely just that sense of familiarity that people carried away from newspaper photographs, a half-recognition that had brought her half-waves and vague smiles even before she was notorious. After that she thought that everyone knew exactly who she was – but only apparently in London, at the centre of things. Here she was distant enough and changed enough, dressed otherwise and not made-up, her hair flat and dirty and her whole presence just so utterly unlikely, she could get away with it. She hoped. ‘I'm Georgie Hale. Thank you, for—'

A gesture through the window-glass covered the rest of that sentence. They were still out there, those boys, baffled by lace curtains and the smell of scones. They wouldn't cross the threshold, and they wouldn't linger long. Grace might not have lingered either, but Georgie felt obliged. She took the chair that Mrs Dorian drew back for her, and said thank you to the tea and refused the cake, and was taken aback when it was the male half of this unknown couple who turned abruptly personal. She called him ‘Mr Dorian', and he said:

‘That's
Doctor
Dorian, actually – and the doctor in me wants to know, what have you been up to, hmm?'

‘What? Oh, um, I cut myself . . .' Fidgeting with the bandage on her wrist as though it were the cuff of a blouse, nothing more significant. Checking that it hadn't started to bleed again. Trying to be angry – who was he, that he should interrogate her? – but not really managing it. He was a doctor; this was what they did.

‘That was careless, but that's not what I meant. You look like you've been half-strangled. I know they play games up at the house, but not – I thought – that sort of game.'

‘Oh . . .' Unwillingly, almost unwittingly, her hand moved to her throat. And yes, she was sore to the touch; and yes, likely it did look bruised. It must do, or he wouldn't have noticed. She said, ‘No, no, nothing like that,' when perhaps she should have said
yes, exactly that, sex games,
just to deflect him.

It might have been too late already. He was looking at her more closely than was comfortable, his examination of her neck moving up to her face now as he said, ‘I think my wife's right, though, isn't she? We have met before. At a party, I fancy.'

‘Really? I'm sorry, I don't remember.' She was, perhaps, trying to sound world-weary –
so many parties, so many people
– but that was only a last-ditch gesture, almost a surrender in itself.

‘I wouldn't expect you to,' he said, oddly kindly. ‘You must have seen so many faces, the way you've been living these last years. I expect they're a kind of blur, aren't they, Grace?'

Well. There it was, then. Sooner than she'd hoped for, perhaps, but inevitable sooner or later, even in a backwater like this. It might not matter – random strangers taking tea, passing through – except that they knew about the house and called it by its old name, so not so much strangers after all. Maybe not so random, either.

Maybe not so bad. Another man would have said it differently, slammed it home –
aren't they? Grace?
– to make his point, not broken it to her so gently that she only just caught it.

She didn't try to deny anything. What was the point? In a way, she'd come here to be discovered. Still, she said, ‘I'm Georgie, please, not Grace. While I'm here.' And then, a sudden bright idea that left her thoroughly pleased with herself, she added her own argument from earlier, her prepared defence. ‘Webb gets to call himself Webb, and I bet that's not what it says on his birth certificate. If you can't choose your own name, what can you do?'

He smiled; his wife laughed aloud. ‘Fair point,' she said. ‘You might want to hold that ready, for when he learns who you are. He will learn, you know. You do know that, I hope?'

Oh yes, she knew. And now she knew that these two were far from random strangers. They knew the house and its lieutenant, and presumably its captain too. And they knew her, apparently, from a London party; and he was a doctor. It might have been any party, she really didn't remember, but he couldn't just be any doctor. You needed to know the right people to catch an invite to the kind of party she'd be at. Before or after the trial. Everything had changed, but that was still true. And . . .

‘Oh,' she said. ‘Are you the doctor we've been waiting for, come up to see Kathie?'

‘That's me,' he agreed quietly. ‘It's both of us. Ruth nursed pilots in the war; she's had as much experience with burns as anyone in the country.'

‘It's not the burns. I'm sorry, not to put you down, uh, Mrs Dorian—'

‘Ruth.'

‘—but it's not her burns that are killing Kathie. It's my fault.' Because apparently she did still have to confess to someone, and who better? A doctor and a doctor's wife: people with authority but no governance. People who would come, speak their minds, and go again. People who could stand in line with the judges and the journalists and the lords, condemn her utterly and never, never punish her enough.

‘Oh? How's that?' He didn't argue with her implicit diagnosis, that Kathie was dying. Well, he hadn't seen her yet. Perhaps he was just ignoring it, paying no attention to a hysterical girl. She could hope, she supposed, that there was still hope. Though it didn't seem likely.

‘I . . . I'm the one who took her into the water, after her clothes caught light. And I kept her under too long. I think I did. I must have done.' Because confession was one thing but she wasn't going to tell the whole truth, not to anyone, not for anything. She never had. Not
I killed my baby
, and not
I did for Kathie too. I think I turned my baby's ghost on her to save myself.
‘She couldn't, you know . . . She didn't breathe for ages, and she's never woken up since.'