House of Doors (10 page)

She groped behind her and was almost surprised to find the door still there, rough timbers smoothed by age, by centuries of hands. Hands that groped in the dark. She couldn't be the first who tried to find a knob, a latch, some way to pull it open, to let that vivid starlight in.

There didn't seem to be one.

Which was nonsense, surely. With no handle on the outside, there must be one within.

There was a keyhole, she remembered. On the outside.

In here, too, Her fumbling fingers found it, deep recessed. Inaccessible. No key.

It couldn't be locked, it was not locked; she had just pushed it open and walked through.

It ought just to pull, then, but she couldn't find anything to grip. It seemed as smooth on the inside as it was out there. There needed to be crosspieces, didn't there, braces holding the planks together  . . .?

Still. She couldn't open the door.

She reached to one side of it and then the other, running her fingers over roughcast wall, feeling for that light switch.

Not finding it.

An old house electrified late, not built for it: the switch might have gone in anywhere. Very well, then. This was some kind of hallway, a lobby, a servants' route in and out of the house. Flagstones underfoot, a chill in the air – and another door somewhere, access to the house. Closed against her, shutting out light and sound for now, but certainly there must be another door. With a knob, a handle, a way to open it. Of course. All she had to do was find it.

The alternative was to crouch in a corner, huddle in on herself, wait to be rescued. No. She had spent one long, uncomfortable night dwelling in her own memories, under the stars. She wouldn't do the same again, in this pitch black. That would be unbearable. Besides, what should she say in the morning, discovered: ‘I couldn't find my way out'?

Pathetic.

Unbearable.

Well, then.

Plasterwork under her hands, from the door frame towards what must be a corner. She could feel her way all around the walls, until she found that other door. At least she wasn't susceptible to night fears, whatever curious tricks her mind might have been playing in her exhaustion, under the long burden of her sorrow. She didn't believe that uncanny creatures lurked in any darkness. This was just a room that lacked a light, and she was a mature sensible woman and would find her own way out of it, and—

And now that she was standing still, utterly frozen by the shock of it, yes, she could hear his breathing in the dark, but actually it wasn't that which had seized her first, made her understand so instantly and utterly that he was here in the room with her.

It was the smell of him, immediate and unmistakable: bay rum and wet wool and warm living flesh, the way he had come home to her time and time again, the way she had met him in their small hallway and unbuttoned his overcoat for him because his own hands were too stiff and unwieldy in the cold, still fumbling to peel off his driving gloves. Oh, she used to scold him for not stopping the ancient Austin, not putting up the hood against the weather, driving home so stupidly in the rain. But in her private treasury of moments these were precious to her, almost beyond measure. They had been precious even then, when she thought they were only a stopgap, moments of mothering him that would satisfy until they had children.

Now she reached in the dark there and found him, physical beneath her questing hands; the damp wool of his overcoat and himself inside it, standing, breathing.

Nearly, nearly she spoke his name.

FOUR

I
nstead, it seemed, she screamed.

At any rate, that elusive other door flew open and a light clicked on, and there was a shadow that resolved itself into a woman, a nurse, another sister striding in. And here was Ruth standing trembling in a cloakroom, her fists buried in a man's overcoat where it hung from a hook on the wall, just one among a dozen others.

‘Oh,' she gasped. ‘Oh, how stupid of me. I'm sorry, I'm not—'

I'm not making any sense today.
Or
I'm not coping
, or
I'm not up to this after all
.

She was not, apparently, letting go of the overcoat. The weight of it, the smell of it, the way the thick fabric bunched between her fingers – of course it wasn't Peter's, it wasn't even Air Force blue but still she stood here, still she gripped it, she must look half mad, but even so.

Even so, the newcomer had to walk across the flags and unpeel her fingers for her, because she simply couldn't do it for herself.

‘You're Sister Taylor, aren't you? My name's Judith, Judith Trease. You look quite done up. Come along, I'll fix you a mug of cocoa in my room before bed.'

‘I'm sorry,' again, ‘I'm making such a fool of myself.' Fainting first and now this, some kind of hysterical reaction. ‘What you must think of me  . . .'

‘Sister  . . . what is your name, anyway? For I'm not calling you Sister Taylor all the time, unless the men are listening.'

‘Ruth.'

‘Ruth, good. Now listen to me. You were there for the unpleasantness, weren't you, that flock of dead birds? And then the colonel took you down his surgical corridor, I know. He will do that, he believes in baptisms of fire, though it's an unfortunate phrase in this place, and I'm sorry you heard me use it. Listen, no one comes through that unshaken. You cling to anything you can reach, girl, so long as you do it where the men can't see you. We all have something, one way or another. Me, I shut myself away and crochet mittens for my cousin's children. It gives me something to hope for; they're too young for this war, and with luck they'll never have to face one of their own  . . .'

Somehow, passages and stairs had passed beneath their feet while the older woman talked. Here was Ruth's own corridor, here her own room. Here she was still walking, going by.

Two doors down, here was her new friend's room, much like her own. Judith's room. She must remember that.

Some things it would be better to forget.

Not this: sitting on Judith's bed, just waiting. Waiting while the cocoa boiled, waiting for the cold to ebb from her body, the bitter dread from her mind. By the time there was a warm mug to fold her fingers round, her hands had almost stopped shaking.

Her voice, too. She could shape an English sentence without choking, without shrilling, without breaking out in hysterics. She said, ‘I worry that I'm going mad, you see.' There. It was out. What she dreaded, what this day was trying its utmost to confirm.

‘That hardly seems likely. Sanity is a prerequisite in nursing sisters. Having two feet on the ground is one of the qualities we look for here.' Judith's voice was quiet, and mildly amused. At least she wasn't being robust about it. If Ruth looked up, she thought she might see the twitch of a smile.

She kept her eyes on the steam of the cocoa, on the dark skin slowly forming in the mug. She said, ‘It's just, I keep seeing my husband. My dead husband. Since I came here.' That wasn't entirely true, nor entirely honest – it wasn't all seeing, and there was the falling too, that sense of being drawn down in chase of him – but it seemed to cover the ground. If she didn't mention what predated her arrival here, the wanting to die and the almost-resolve to put herself in situations where she might, where a bomb or a shell or a bullet could find her out. No need to mention that. That wasn't a madness, it was a perfectly rational response to an intolerable life.

‘Lord, girl, you turn up here with no sleep and an empty belly, you faint across our doorway –' she'd always known that word of that would get around – ‘and come round to find yourself in a fair imitation of hell – and if you haven't read Dante, then I really don't recommend him, not for the duration – and you're surprised to find your own private sorrow rising up to meet you? I'd only be surprised if it didn't. We're all widows and orphans here, it's policy, and I think we're all haunted.'

‘Why would—?'

‘I didn't say it was a wise policy, did I? They do it because they think we'll be as tough as they are, with the men. Nothing sentimental. They think because we've had it rough, they can depend on us to be rough ourselves. That doesn't always follow, but they seem to have got it right, more or less, with us. We cope, at least.'

Judith, what is it that we cope with? What do they do here, that demands so much more than professional nursing?

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask. Perhaps she actually meant to. Her mouth was open, and she had the air. But then she listened to herself, and what she was saying was not that, no. It was confession still, again: ‘Only in the dark there, I thought I was holding him, I could
smell
him, exactly  . . .'

After a moment, Judith said, ‘Did he use bay rum?'

‘Yes, yes, he did.' Fresh from shaving, impossibly smooth and soft of cheek, and the lingering scent of his lotion clinging to his skin, clinging to hers after she had kissed him.

‘My dear, they all do, all these men. It's a part of their uniform, they all need to smell the same. Which is why they all wear overcoats which all smell the same when they're wet. That was Major Dorian's I found you cuddling up to, in the cloakroom there.'

Oh, dear God. Was it? She'd seen him wearing it, of course, earlier. At the sing-song. And, yes, of course he used bay rum. She'd smelled it on him at their first encounter – but she smelled it on everyone these days. Every man, as Judith said. And accused them all, silently, for not being Peter.

No surprise, that it had been that particular man's overcoat that ensnared her. Of course she was going to blame him, even if he wasn't actually occupying it at the time. It was his fault that she was here, after all. So everything that happened to her here, that must be his fault too. By definition. Yes.

Whatever she made happen, though, now that she had come here, that would be her own responsibility. She didn't need to be feeble, always pushed about by men. She could make her own decisions. Chase her own bullet.

Yes.

Choose her own friends, that too.

She sat with Judith on her bed there and sipped cocoa so hot it burned her lips, and talked a little about Morwood – shop talk, the house and how it worked as a hospital, Matron and how she kept it working – and a lot about childhood, friendship, discovery. Not at all about Peter, nor whatever secret adult sorrow Judith cherished, that had laid a path to draw her here. There would be time enough for that. Six months. That was time enough for anything.

And so goodnight, the slightly foolish formalities of parting with a near stranger when you're only going two doors down; and one last gift as she was leaving.

‘You'll need this until you learn your way around, learn where the switches are and how to find your way in the dark, this place is a maze.'

A heavy torch that Ruth took under protest and with gratitude. She peeled off her clothes and sank into a bed that only seemed this soft because she was this tired, and so to sleep.

And so to wake, sometime in the dark. She couldn't remember where she had put her watch and wouldn't be able to read it anyway, it wasn't luminous, and it didn't really matter anyway, what the time might be. What mattered was that she wasn't sleepy, not at all. Of course not, after that long nap last afternoon. Her inner clock was out of all kilter.

Well, she was used to that. The regular sleeping patterns of her young life had been broken long ago. Night shifts and raids and anxiety and grief had all contributed in their turn. She had strategies for dealing with wakefulness, but they all depended on her being at home or else at work, where there was always something that needed doing.

Here, well. One thing she knew, that there was no point lying in bed and hoping to sleep again. Up, then. A robe across her shoulders, because the days might be warm but the nights apparently were chilly this far north, this far into the year. Last night she had shivered on Darlington station and blamed the cold stare of the stars. Tonight she shivered in her own room under a strange roof, and went to stare out of the window.

Something monstrous crawled across the sky, a great foreboding. More like spiderweb than smoke, she could still glimpse stars through the strands of it and it had purpose, she thought, there was a will behind it somewhere.

And of course it was only cloud-shadow, wisps of cloud on the wind, utterly meaningless. Meaningless and gone now. She could look down into the courtyard and see quite clearly, by brilliant starlight quite uninterrupted in its fall.

She could see men moving, shadows themselves, figures of darkness drifting silently towards this wing of the house. She might have seen something mystical in them too, her mind was so uncertain and they seemed so unearthly – except that they moved like broken ghosts, hints of damage that was all too physical and real. It was almost comforting that she could read their hurts at distance, in this ethereal light.

She was still shivering, despite the robe. And utterly wakeful, so she might as well dress. Might as well turn on a light to do that, though not until she had seen the last of the men vanish through the door, not until she had heard it slam. There was a comfort in that too, a guarantee of solid actual men, who needed doors to open and caused them to close again.

Never mind that that same door had defeated her. She needed to learn the way of it, that was all. In the dark, that especially. And find where the light switch was, that too.

Before she reached for her own light switch, there was still one thing to do. Virtue transplanted, a city habit that might actually be unnecessary here: she adjusted the blackout curtain, so that not a glimmer could be seen from outside. From above or below.

Dressed, she had no notion what she ought to do now. Not linger without purpose in her room, emphatically not that. She might go looking for a staffroom, perhaps. Or a library, anything that would offer a distraction. Or there must be a kitchen in this wing somewhere, she might hope for a gas ring and a kettle, there was nothing so distracting as a cup of tea  . . .