Spider Light(77)
‘Very extravagant items of food they were, Miss Sullivan. Jars of preserved pears and peaches in brandy, and expensive foreign cheeses. Camembert and Brie, and the best water biscuits to go with them.’
She nodded several times, and Bryony looked round to see if there was any hope of being rescued from this, but the only person anywhere nearby was the Reverend Skandry. It would be better to stay with Mrs Minching who was saying that she would never believe Miss Thomasina and Mr Simon could have got themselves shut inside Twygrist, not if fifty crowners said so, and would Miss Bryony be so kind as to pass round the shrimp patties.
The idea of a memorial to Thomasina was being discussed in several corners of the room by this time. It appeared to have captured people’s interest, although it sounded to Bryony as if opinions as to the form it could take differed wildly. It was perhaps as well that the suggestions being made by several gentlemen who had looked on the wine when it was red did not reach Reverend Skandry’s hearing.
They had reached Dr Glass’s hearing, though. Bryony saw his eyebrows go up at one point. He wandered over to where she was standing, and said had she ever noticed that funerals produced a remarkable degree of bawdiness in some people.
‘It’s simply the relief that they’re still alive,’ said Bryony. ‘In Ireland they all get roaring drunk. In fact, I think there are still places where they prop the corpse up in a corner of the room.’
‘Wouldn’t the parish priest object to that?’
‘He’s usually roaring drunk with them,’ said Bryony caustically.
Dr Glass grinned, and said, ‘I’ve been to Ireland, but I’ve never seen your Ireland, Bryony, and I’d like to do so someday.’ Before Bryony could think how to reply to this, he said, ‘I was thinking though, that if Amberwood really wants a memorial to Thomasina, they could make it in the form of a bequest to one of the hospitals. A new ward, or, at the most, some new equipment. Do you think that’s a good idea, Bryony?’
He had rather a nice way of saying her name. She said, ‘I think that’s a wonderful idea.’
‘And if people want something permanent to look at and remember Thomasina Forrester, then I’ll personally pay for something to be stuck on the side of Twygrist. A clock perhaps. It’d look hideous, but it’s probably what people would like. What do you think?’
‘I think it would look hideous too, but I think it would be very well received.’
At first Maud did not realize where she was, except that she was in a small room inside a rambling echoing place, with long soulless passages.
Awareness came gradually, like stagnant water trickling into her mind, and like sly throaty whispers inside her head.
Of cours-s-e you know where this is, Maud…Of course-s-s-e you do…
Latchkill. She was inside the place of nightmares, the place of huge heavy doors, the place where spider light lay thickly on all the rooms all the year round, so you could never be sure what might be crouching inside it, watching you. The place mamma used to stare at through the thick iron bars of the gates. But what mamma could not have known was that the inside of Latchkill was so full of pain and fear and despair that there seemed to be hardly any room for all the people who came and went.
People came and went in and out of Maud’s own little room, which was quite bare, apart from the bed and a cupboard next to it. The woman everyone called Matron, who had a face like a slab of concrete and tiny mean eyes, came in quite a lot of times, and some nurses came in as well. At first Maud had hoped Bryony Sullivan might be one of these. She did not know Bryony very well, but she knew she was pretty and clever. She would be someone Maud might be able to talk to–she might explain why Maud had been brought here and what was going to happen next. But Bryony did not come.
Father came, although not very often. Maud was taken to a special room for his visits–a proper bedroom, it was, with a frilled bed-cover and cushions, a dressing-table with an embroidered runner, and a little table and chair in one corner. There was a marble washstand in the other corner, with a flowered jug and basin. Father liked the room. He looked round approvingly, and said, My word, very nice, very comfortable, and he was glad to see Maud was being properly looked after.
‘I don’t sleep here,’ said Maud. ‘I have another room. Not nearly as nice,’ and father looked immediately worried, and said he would speak to matron about it. Maud did not really understand this, but she was more concerned with finding out if Thomasina and Simon had been found yet. She listened carefully, but father did not mention them at all. He just talked about ordinary things–about what was happening in the town–and he did not mention Twygrist or ask why Maud had been there that night.
Did this mean Thomasina and Simon were still in the mill? Surely it must. After a while Maud could not be bothered to listen to father’s babbling any longer. She hated him because he had brought her to this place and was trying to pretend it was for her own good, and she did not think he believed her about the room. So she stared at a single point in the wall, which she had found was quite a good way to shut everything out–father’s stupid talk, the nurses telling her to eat this, drink that, my word, you’re a silent one, aren’t you…One day she would have a very good revenge on all of these people.
But the one thing she could not shut out was the growing conviction that Thomasina and Simon must still be inside Twygrist. Were they both alive? Maud began to believe they might be–they were so sly and so clever, those two.