House of Bells (25 page)

‘Anoxia? Well, perhaps. Perhaps.' He didn't sound convinced. ‘It may be in her head, more than a physical cause. She may just have . . . retreated.'

Head doctor, was he? A psychiatrist? That seemed all too likely. She'd met a lot of those. Most of them had wanted to fuck her, one way or another. Maybe not this one.

She felt a hand close over hers, and was startled. It was Ruth, of course, not her husband. She said, ‘You mustn't blame yourself. You were trying to save her life.'

Which was true, as far as the woman knew, as far as anyone knew.
Or maybe I just wanted to save mine, because I was too scared, so I gave her over to the ghost
– she wasn't going to say it, but she couldn't escape it either. It was something else to carry, a deep weight that would drag her down in the end. Would have done, if she hadn't been all the way sunk already.

‘I take it they don't know, up at the house. About your other name, your past life?' That was the doctor, being practical, clearing the air.

She shook her head mutely.

‘Well, they won't learn it from us. You may yet have a period of grace. I'm sorry, of not-Grace,' he added with a wry smile. ‘Though I'd like a chat with you while I'm here, to find out why you want it.'

Wasn't it obvious? Being Grace was hell. That ought to be enough. But he'd want to hear her say it, no doubt. They always did.

Well, maybe she'd oblige. If that was the price of his silence, she might. She'd like a few more days at least, before the penny dropped for someone and stage two of Tony's plan kicked in. Feeling like Grace again, even for ten minutes under their scrutiny, was . . . less than comfortable. Not something she wanted.

‘Well,' he said, gesturing for the bill, ‘we'd better get moving. We only stopped off for a last cup of decent tea, before the barleycup and that dreadful Tibetan stuff, the brick-tea the captain drinks.'

‘We could bring proper tea, you know,' his wife said, with a long-suffering tone and almost a wink aside. ‘And coffee. Nobody would care.'

‘I'd care. You don't do well in a community if you start out by separating yourself. Even from what they eat and drink. Especially, perhaps, from what they eat and drink. Why do you think so many tight and surviving communities have dietary laws? We are what we eat; if we eat together, we are together.'

‘But we're outsiders in any case, Ned. We come, we go. We don't stay.'

‘All the more reason to share what they have while we're here.'

It was clearly an old argument, well worn, unworrying. It lasted them from the tea shop to the car. She went with them, just for the comfort of their company in the abrupt discomfort of the streets. She had honestly not been angling for it, but she barely hesitated when he turned to her and said, ‘May we offer you a lift?'

‘Actually, I came in with Charlie and Fish.' But that was not a way to say
no
, more an appeal for help:
tell me how to leave without them.
Grace wouldn't have hesitated for a second, but Georgie didn't want to upset anyone.

‘I don't suppose you know where they are?'

‘No. They said they had errands . . .'

‘Which might mean anything, knowing those two. Not to worry –' it was Mrs Dorian who had unexpectedly taken charge now – ‘we'll leave them a note.'

She wrote it out herself and didn't show Georgie what it said; only sent her trotting across the square to leave the folded sheet tucked under the windscreen wiper of the Morris, where nobody could miss it.

Grace would have read it on the way, but Ruth had explicitly given it to Georgie – ‘Here, Georgie, you take it,' like an absolute guarantee,
your secret is safe with us
– and of course Georgie wouldn't do any such thing. She just slipped it between blade and glass, left it, hurried back.

He drove a big black Bentley: terribly suitable on the outside, terribly comfortable within. She used to take cars like this, rides like this for granted; now she took them with a kind of tentative pleasure, wondering each time whether this might be her last. Luck was something they could take away from you, she had learned. However hard you worked at it.

She headed automatically for the back, where the girls go and the third wheels too, but Ruth waylaid her: ‘You sit in the front, dear. Ned will want to talk to you.'

That sounded ominous. She settled nervously into the passenger seat, fidgeting with her bandage cuff again and almost wishing that she smoked seriously, that she had something to smoke.

He glanced across and smiled, as though he read her mood exactly. She hated that in psychiatrists; she always had. It was presumptuous, she thought. Where was a girl to keep her secrets, if not in her head? And who from, if not these middle-aged men with their outmoded values, who would condemn her as soon as look at her, if they could look that far inside her . . .?

Not that she wanted their approval. Of course not; why would she? There was nothing she could do with that. She had no use for it.

Even so. Something in her did still want to satisfy this quiet, steely man, or at least to avoid his contempt. Her London life – both sides of it, before the court and afterwards – had been all about satisfying older men, but this was different.

Besides, his wife was in the car.

A psychiatrist – himself, maybe? – would probably say she was still looking for a father figure. The papers – Tony's, maybe – would say she was looking for a sugar daddy. She didn't think either of those was actually true, but they'd say it anyway.

Apparently, though, he didn't want to talk about her. That was . . . unusual. And welcome. She was quite determined about that. She didn't want to talk about her either.

‘Tell me about Kathie,' he said. ‘Everything that happened, last night.'

It really was, it was only last night. That seemed extraordinary. She felt like she'd come so far since then. Down and down, mostly.

‘She was dancing,' she said slowly. ‘In the firelight, with everything swinging loose: her hair, her sleeves, her skirt.'
Those bloody bells.

‘Was she high?'

‘I don't know. Maybe. She was smoking, but what's one joint worth? I don't know if there were others first. I don't know her.'
I didn't know my baby, either. I only do harm to strangers.

‘All right. We do know her, a little; she's not the type to get stoned and fall into a fire. Mostly when I've met her she's been head down over a notebook, working on Webb's language project. She's one of his prime lieutenants, and you need a clear head for that. Webb would say that the words themselves keep you sober; Tom would probably say that the words themselves are enough to make you high. I'm not saying for certain that Kathie wouldn't get out of her skull, but if she was looking to wind down, I'd have thought that music and dancing and firelight would have been enough for her. We'll know more later, but in the meantime, let's assume that she was clean. So what happened?'

‘She danced, and I guess she went too close to the fire. Tom says something collapsed in there and blew out a shower of sparks . . .'

‘Never mind what Tom says. What do you say? What did you
see
?'

He asked the question like it mattered. Not like he knew the answer already – not like the police, or the lawyers in court – but like he knew there was an answer to be discovered, a change in the story, a truth.

She didn't want to say. She'd told it to Tom, and he'd laughed at her; she didn't want to tell it here.

‘I saw . . . I saw her burning. I saw her skirt catch, and then the fire just spread everywhere, all over her . . .' Which wasn't an answer to the question he was trying to ask, but it would do: for her, for now. Whether it would do for him – well.

She didn't have to find out immediately, at least. From behind her, Ruth said, ‘Ned, why is it always fire?'

‘Hmm?'

‘This house. It always turns to fire, at the last. But why?'

I don't think this is the last. I don't think this is the end of anything.
She didn't say so. This was suddenly interesting. And a question that she didn't have to answer, let alone dodge.

‘It's elemental,' the doctor said. ‘Fire, water. They both speak to human need. Earth and air we can take for granted, more or less, most of the time. Fire and water we always seek to control. Our minds turn that way. I'd like to say by nature, but I'm not sure that's true. It may be we're trained to it, very early on. Campfires and swimming lessons; not to play with matches, not to take a bath straight after dinner. The power of fire, the strength of water. Both of them together, in a steaming kettle and the iconic sound of a locomotive. Diesel's not the same. Coal-fuelled power stations: every child gets to learn that fire and water together make electricity. It's ingrained. We carry it with us, that sense of what matters most, what's most dangerous and most needful, both at once. Of course the house picks up on that.'

They spoke like Cookie, almost; like Frank, not at all. As if they knew the house intimately, the spirit of it; as though they studied it clinically. And were not mad, and still believed in ghosts.

It was reassuring. If they weren't mad, then likely neither was she.

‘It's all fire, though, isn't it?' Ruth repeated. ‘The water's incidental.'

‘I don't believe so. It was the lake that burned for the colonel; it's the lake maybe that did the damage this time. We haven't seen her yet, but everyone's saying she's not that badly burned. Let's say that she danced too close to the fire, and never mind why for now. Tell us what came next, Georgie.'

He was doing it too, using the one name even though he knew the other. She didn't want to see that as a kindness, she didn't want to be grateful to him, but it was hard not to feel a warmth rising in response.

More urgently, she didn't want to diminish herself in his eyes; she really didn't want to talk about what she had done, after that moment of rescue. Instead, she tried to turn him back, to ground where she suddenly felt unexpectedly more comfortable: ‘Frank thinks the house is haunted by the ghost of a woman burned to death at the lakeside. He thinks the ghost reached out from the flames, to catch Kathie.'

‘No.' From the back seat, from Ruth, flat and final. And then, ‘Frank's mad,' which was her own opinion too, but she hadn't expected to hear it reflected quite so bluntly, or not from there.

‘Never mind Frank,' the doctor said, more reasonably. ‘What do you think?'

‘I think . . . it's what I saw. I think it was. Two hands, snatching.'

‘You see?' Ruth said. ‘It's always fire. But not some ancient ghost, Georgie, no. Nothing lingers that long in D'Espérance. People come, they go. They bring their own damage with them, every time.'

‘That's what Cookie says, too.' It was almost uncannily close, except that she didn't believe there was anything uncanny about that at all.

‘Ah, Cookie. Yes.' The doctor seemed almost to be laughing as he repeated the name. ‘You should listen to Cookie. There's a man who knows what he's talking about.'

‘There's a man who lingered,' his wife added. ‘He's the exception.'

‘Yes. But never mind even Cookie, for now. Georgie, you were going to tell us what you did next.'

Was she? Apparently, she was. She'd been trying to avoid it, but he was relentless and she couldn't be bothered to duck again. She said, ‘I . . . took Kathie into the water –' that hurtling memory, a tackle any rugby player would be proud of – ‘and we went down deep. Deeper than I thought it would be, and colder too. I . . . I should have brought her up sooner, I'm sorry, but—'

‘I don't suppose you kept her under deliberately,' Dr Dorian said, mild and inoffensive and deceptive all three. ‘Is that when you hurt your wrist?'

She was fidgeting with the bandage again; he thought it was a giveaway. Which it was, but not perhaps the way that he was thinking. She said, ‘Yes. Well, no, not the first time –'
not even the second
– ‘but . . .' Her voice drained away, the strength of it. Next he'd be asking her about the night, about being in the same room as Kathie, what had happened to cause her collapse. That was an interrogation she really couldn't face; she gave herself away too easily, even after all this time. Years of practice, years and years, and she was still a shoddy liar. Even when she got the words right and the voice too, her body would betray her. Besides, she was so tired of lying. Lying and smiling, bright brittle words to hide the blood behind her teeth. Instead of lying, then, she told him the truth about something entirely other. ‘Frank isn't wrong about everything. There's a bell in the water.'

‘A bell? And that . . . cut you?' For once he was honestly bewildered. It almost felt like a score.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Bells do that. To me. In the house, and round about. They open up old wounds and make me bleed.' Apparently, they didn't even need to be striking, except in her mind.
Sound carries underwater
– she remembered that from lessons, long ago. A bell lying still on the lake bed shouldn't be sending out any sounds at all, but she had heard it, felt it, bled for it.

And had been half-strangled by hands rising out of wax, that too, but that . . . didn't feel internal. It wasn't
hers
, not her own, not hers to carry. She was her own worst enemy; she hardly minded being attacked by someone else's.

If he kept on asking about the night gone and Kathie, she'd tell him about the hands of wax. Better that than admit to being Kathie's worst enemy too.
I did that to her.
The more she thought about it, the more sure she was. She'd seen it coming, and been deliberately too slow. She'd let it take the other girl, sooner than sacrifice herself. How much more guilty could you be?