Deadlight-Hall(17)

Miss Hurst said she would not dream of criticizing the Bible or saying this particular text was unfair, but it made you think. After this pronouncement she succumbed to a fit of hiccups, and the vicar’s sister finally helped her up to her bed. Mr Porringer wandered round the house looking at things and once Leo saw him open the sideboard drawer, but he closed it when he realized Leo had seen him. He told Leo he had a nephew about Leo’s age, but Leo did not think this could be right, because nobody at school had an uncle called Porringer. It was not a name you would forget. Sophie said Porringer Pigface was just making an excuse to snoop around. Susannah thought he might really be a burglar, whether he had a nephew or not.

Left to their own devices, Leo and the twins finished up the mince pies and carried plates and cups out to the scullery, which was what Leo had been taught to do at home, and which the Hursts liked him to do here. The twins came out to help so as to avoid Mr Porringer, and then Sophie discovered there was still some elderflower wine in the bottle, so they tried it before going back to the sitting room. Susannah said it was awful, like drinking turpentine, and spat it out in the sink, but Sophie and Leo drank an entire glass each. It did not really taste like turpentine, but it tasted peculiar, and it gave Leo a headache.

It snowed hard all night, and when Leo woke up his room was filled with white light. He still had the headache from yesterday, and by this time it was a very bad headache, but he thought it might be from the white glare of the snow rather than the elderflower wine. It was making him feel quite sick, so he could not eat any breakfast, but Miss Hurst, who appeared to have got over her hiccups and blurred eyes, said that was because he had eaten too much yesterday. It was a pity that everywhere was snowbound, or she would have suggested a good brisk walk in the fresh air, she said. But the road was practically impassable already, and the wireless had said more snow was on the way. Still, Leo could help Mr Hurst to clear the paths, which ought to blow the cobwebs away, and then they would have cold turkey and vegetable soup for lunch.

The snow-clearing did not cure Leo’s headache at all, and by the middle of the afternoon he had started to be very ill indeed. There was a throbbing pain in his head, a red mist kept coming down over his eyes, and sudden uncontrollable sickness sent him running blindly to the privy just outside the scullery to be painfully sick.

He began to think he was inside a nightmare, because everything was starting to seem distorted. Miss Hurst and the farmer stood at his bedside, and their faces seemed to swell then shrink, and their voices came booming down a long tunnel, so that Leo was not sure what they were saying. But there seemed to be some kind of argument going on – something to do with Miss Hurst wanting to ask somebody to come to the farm, to which the farmer was objecting, saying something about God’s will, and snow chains. But in the end Miss Hurst stumped angrily down the stairs and Leo heard the ping of the telephone. He pulled the sheets over his head then, because the bedroom light was hurting his eyes.

A man came shortly after that; he had a kind, creased face, and he carried a large black bag, and he sat on Leo’s bed and looked in his eyes and took his temperature, then asked Leo to try to sit up and to bend over to touch his knees with his forehead. When Leo could not do this, he said, dear, oh, dear, this was worrying, and Leo must be taken to Deadlight Hall. There was an outbreak of something – a word Leo did not know – which was affecting a number of children in the area. The man used the word brain several times, which was terrifying, and said all the children who had this illness were being kept together and nursed. He would take Leo to the Hall himself, right away, he said. Perhaps Miss Hurst would kindly pack a few night things.

Farmer Hurst demurred at first, saying it was a lot of fuss about what was nothing more than a bilious attack; children in his day had not had illnesses with fancy names like meningitis, and it was a bad journey to Deadlight Hall in this snow, what with the lanes being iced up and more snow to come. But the man who Leo supposed was a doctor insisted it must be done, and then Leo was sick again, which seemed to decide matters.

The journey to Deadlight Hall was horrid. It was growing dark, and the car jolted and slithered on the icy roads, and twice ended up in the hedges, and the doctor had to drive and reverse over and over again to get back on the road. Leo, wrapped in a blanket, huddled miserably on the back seat clutching a pudding bowl in case he was sick again, thought they would go on and on driving through the darkening world with the sky bulging with snow waiting to fall, and that they would never get anywhere. But in the end they did get somewhere; they got to Deadlight Hall, and that was when, as well as feeling dreadfully ill, Leo had started to feel frightened.