Celandine (26 page)

Celandine was surprised to see light in one or two of the sanatorium windows, a faint glow. Did that mean someone was awake? She began to wonder how she would ever find Nina without perhaps accidentally finding Matron first.

The glass-fronted door to the porch, at least, was unlocked. Celandine hesitated for a moment, then crept quietly in. A tiny light glowed from a gas-mantle.
It
was enough to illuminate the porch – the rubber boots, the walking stick, the mackintosh that hung upon the wall.

Celandine gently turned the brass handle of the front door and pushed. It was open!

The surgery was on the right of the hallway that she now found herself in. She knew that much. She also knew that Matron lived on the premises – upstairs perhaps? If that was the case, then the other downstairs rooms could be sick wards.

This was worse, much worse, than creeping through the school itself. This was like being a burglar. Celandine told herself that she was here to find Nina, not to commit a crime. And if she
was
caught then perhaps she could simply say that she felt sick – something that was not so very far from the truth.

She could see that there were two more doors – one on the left, and one at the end of the passage. Celandine reached for the handle of the first door, but then changed her mind. There was something
about
the other door, the one at the end of the passageway, which made her think it the more likely one. There was no telling why – it was just an instinct, and she crept towards it.

The handle turned easily and the hinge was smooth and silent. Celandine peeped into the room. Here too there was a soft glow of light, another mantle turned down low, and she immediately saw that the room was occupied. A bed stood in the near corner, and there was a sleeping child in it. The girl lay with fists clenched and arms flung out, as though she was running a race. Her face was familiar, but it was not Nina’s face. Tiny Lewis? Yes, Tiny Lewis. One of the second-formers, probably down with a cold.

Her instinct had been wrong, then. Celandine began to close the door, but then realized that there was a second bed at the far end of the room. It was partly hidden behind a folding screen. Was that her? She moved forward, so that she could see around the angle of the screen. Yes, that was Nina.

There was a canvas chair next to the bed – one of the tubular-framed ones that were sometimes used for school concerts. A tumbler of water stood on the bedside cabinet, and against the glass was propped a pale blue envelope, a letter, addressed to Nina. The water was apparently untouched, and the letter unopened. It didn’t look as though Nina had yet regained consciousness. Celandine sat on the chair, put her hands between her knees, and tried to control her shivering.

They had bandaged Nina’s head. It was very neatly
done,
the broad strips of white gauze criss-crossing perfectly, like a diagram from a textbook. And the pillow and bedclothes were smooth and unrumpled – further indication that Nina had not moved during the hours that she had lain there. She was motionless now, lying flat on her back, as still as a waxwork. Celandine leaned closer. The very slightest rise and fall of the starched cotton sheet, tucked so tightly across the thin shoulders, reassured her that Nina was actually alive and breathing.

‘Nina,’ she whispered. ‘Can you hear me?’

No response. Not a flicker. Celandine glanced beyond the folding screen at the sleeping figure of Tiny Lewis, whose tousled hair and sprawling pose seemed so full of life and energy by comparison.

Gingerly she put out her hand as if to touch the bandaged head of her friend, but then thought better of it. Nina looked so pale and vulnerable. She would not disturb her. Instead she held her palm uncertainly for a moment above the neat bindings, before slowly withdrawing it.

Curious, though, the brief sensation of heat that she had felt in that moment: as if her outstretched fingers had passed through a wisp of steam. Had she imagined it? Celandine considered for a while longer, before hesitantly extending her hand once more, allowing it to hover just above Nina’s forehead.

A tingling sensation in her palm – it was definitely there – but then it was probably just a reaction from the beating she had taken. That must be the reason. Celandine closed her eyes and slowly moved her hand
from
side to side, surprised at how the feeling strengthened and faded accordingly, and yet she did not find it alarming. It was peaceful to just sit in silence, to let the turmoil of this day recede. Her thoughts began to drift, as though she were upon the edge of sleep, and she gradually let her consciousness float where it would.

She was looking down into the darkness. A pool of darkness it was – a pit, an ocean, a millpond, black with leaf-mould. It was an unhappy place. There was pain down there. The darkness itself was a concentration of pain, and she could feel herself being drawn towards it. No, it was the other way round; the pain was being drawn upwards to meet her, a ragged cloud of swirling substance, attracted to her outstretched hand . . .

Stop – this was too strange a feeling. Celandine briefly opened her eyes, became aware once more of her surroundings. The quiet room was still there and she was still sitting next to Nina, with her hand steadily resting above the bandages. Nothing had changed, except that now her heart began to beat a little faster. Had she momentarily fallen asleep? She felt woozy, uncertain.

Again she allowed her eyes to close, and this time she ventured a little further into the darkness. Nina’s pain, that was what she could feel. Her hand was resting above Nina’s head, and she could feel the pain in there – the inky cloud that reached out towards her and sucked at her palm. It clung to her, greedily attached itself, thick as road-tar, sticky as the cobwebs
that
festooned the corners of Mill Farm’s dusty stables. If she withdrew her hand, then the pain would come with it. She would somehow bring the pain from its dark hiding place, draw it upwards and into the light, set it free. Could she?

The thought frightened her. Her heart was beating so fast now that it hurt, and her shoulders trembled. A trickle of perspiration ran down onto one of her eyelids and she half blinked it away, catching a sparkled glimpse of the room around her as she did so. She was still here, and all she had to do was bring her hand back, if she could only find the strength.

It seemed so heavy. The dead weight of it sapped at her fading energy. She reached out with her other hand, in order to grasp the wrist of the first, to drag it back, to gradually reel in that long tangle of confusion, waterlogged, from the silent depths.

Up it came then, in one twisted mass, a skein of pain, a monstrous catch. As she lifted her aching hands, the thing unfolded itself before her imagination; a creature of oilskin, a bat-winged sail, a tattered tarpaulin that covered her in its circling shadow before drifting away. Far and away it spun, whirling up into the heavens, around and around, until it became no more than a leaf upon the wind. One among many. It was gone.

Celandine let her hands fall back into her lap, dizzily conscious once more of her own being. She didn’t feel at all well. For a long time she sat with her eyes closed, waiting for her beating heart to subside, waiting for everything to be normal again. She tried
stretching
her neck from side to side, but this made her dizzier than ever, and she was frightened that she was going to be sick. Slowly she opened her eyes. Tiny Lewis was staring at her, propped up on one elbow in her bed, a look of outright astonishment on her small white face.

‘Hallo.’ Nina’s voice, faint and distant. ‘How long have you been there?’

Nina was awake, then. Awake, awake . . . That was good – but it was a struggle to reply.

‘I . . . I don’t know.’ It might have been hours. It might only have been minutes. Celandine felt hot, then cold, then horribly faint. The room was slowly turning about her. A jug and washbasin on a corner stand. If she had some water . . .

Nina had closed her eyes again. The glass at the bedside – Nina wouldn’t mind. Celandine reached out towards it, but her fingers fumbled against the blue envelope and the glass tipped up. She watched it roll over the edge of the little cabinet, saw it shatter on the tiled floor. Harsh echoing sounds. Bright jewels of glass and water droplets, arcing upwards, rushing to meet her – so close – and then an unfamiliar voice, high and panicky, spinning away into the darkness. ‘Matron!
Matron!
’ Tiny Lewis . . .

She could hear the rooks calling to one another, and thought at first that she was in her bed at home until the explosive sound of a nearby coughing attack suggested that she must still be in the sanatorium after all. Celandine kept her eyes closed and listened.

The sound of whispering – two low voices. She thought that she recognized one of them: Tiny Lewis, talking to another girl.

‘She
did
, I tell you.’

‘Who? Ninky?’

‘No, you dilly. Howard. The
Witch
. It was like a . . . like . . . What are those people called – the ones who talk to dead people?’

‘Priests?’

‘
No
, idiot. Not priests. Medi— somethings . . . medians . . .?’

‘Mediums?’

A brisk footstep, and the rustle of starched cotton. The whispering stopped.

‘Lewis – I don’t
think
I gave you permission to come in here and talk to Price. Are you all dressed and ready? Good. You’ve just two minutes before Assembly to take your sponge-bag and nightclothes back to your dorm – and you can tell Miss Belvedere that I’ve excused you from games for the rest of this week.’

‘Yes, Matron. Thank you.’

‘Off you go, then.’

The footsteps came closer. Celandine cautiously opened her eyes. Matron was standing at the bedside, looking down at her.

‘Ah. You’re awake then, Howard.’ Matron reached into the top pocket of her crisp white uniform and drew out a thermometer. ‘Pop this under your tongue and I’ll come back in a minute or two. In the meantime you might like to think about giving me a
good
reason for your sudden arrival in the middle of the night.’

They’d moved her in with Nina, into the bed lately occupied by Tiny Lewis. Her explanation to Matron – that she had been feeling too ill to sleep and had then wandered down to the san in a kind of daze – seemed to have been accepted. It was possible that she had a chill, although her temperature seemed normal. She was to be kept here for a day or so, but away from other infected patients, just to be on the safe side.

It was so peaceful, just to lie there and do nothing but think. Celandine looked across the room at Nina. Asleep. The strange experience of the previous night came back to her, but now it seemed unreal, something that she had imagined. Yes, she must have fallen half asleep in the chair and simply imagined it all, although the shocked expression on Tiny Lewis’s face had been real enough. ‘Witch’ – that was what they were calling her. She thought about it. It was true that some very odd things had happened to her – the ghostly figure of the girl that kept appearing, the business with Miss Belvedere’s dog, and with Nina . . . and the little people, of course. The little people – that was the strangest thing of all. But did that make her a witch? She didn’t think so. But perhaps she was . . . different.

Nina rolled over and opened her eyes. Her hands were outside the bedclothes now, and one of her wrists was bandaged.

‘Celandine? Is that . . . what are you doing here?’
She
tried to prop herself up, but then said ‘Ow,’ and lay back down again. ‘Were you here last night? Only . . . owww . . . my head . . . only, I thought I woke up once, and saw you. Something got broken.’

‘Yes. I was worried. I came down to see how you were. Then . . . then I didn’t feel very well. I think I fainted. Now Matron says I might have a chill. But never mind about that – what
happened
to you? What did they do?’

‘Oh.’ Nina sighed. ‘The swimming pool. It was horrible. They said . . . Mary and everyone . . . they said to come up on to the playing field. They said they’d found something, and they wanted me to see it, but they wouldn’t say what it was. I thought it was something to do with you, so I went. Over by the swimming pool, they said – that’s where it was. Then they made me walk the plank. Made me stand on one leg. Then the other. They kept throwing bits of mud at me, and laughing. So I turned around and jumped. I . . . I don’t know why. I just did.’ Nina managed to push herself up into a half-sitting position. She looked away, staring out of the window for a few moments. Then she turned back again. ‘I don’t think I was trying to kill myself,’ she said. ‘I think I was trying to frighten them. To make them sorry. I didn’t care about me, or what happened to me, as long it would make them sorry.’

‘Well, they
are
sorry,’ said Celandine. ‘Mary Swann is
very
sorry. I think I broke her toes, I stamped on them so hard. And she’s probably got a bald patch where I pulled out most of her hair.’

‘No! Did you?’ Nina looked half horrified, half delighted. ‘But . . . she’ll kill you . . .’