The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (126 page)

There was no answer at number seventeen.

Adam swore under his breath.

It wasn’t yet nine o’clock, so she probably hadn’t gone to bed. Perhaps she was out. Or perhaps she didn’t feel like answering. And who could blame her, after what she’d been through over the past three days.

With a troubling sense of unfinished business, he went back to his table, where Drum had reached the maudlin stage. ‘You’re the only one I can talk to, old chap. The only one who
understands
. . .’

It was another half-hour before Adam got his friend safely bedded down in one of the club’s spare rooms, and himself into a cab bound for Berkeley Square. If he could just check that she was all right, he could put the whole thing out of his mind.

There was no moon, and the streets were bathed in a dim blue glow from the few streetlamps which had been lit. There wasn’t much traffic, only the odd omnibus with its windows heavily curtained; but on the pavements, people were out for an evening stroll, admiring the searchlights and that peculiarity of wartime London, the stars.

Number seventeen was in darkness, and when he rang the bell, no-one came.

‘Looks like she’s out,’ said the cabbie cheekily.

‘So it does,’ said Adam between his teeth.

Back at the club, he slept badly. There was nothing new about that; since the War he always did. But this time he was trapped in an infernal loop. Again and again he saw the blood drain from her face.
Well, that’s it, then
. The way she’d said it.

Dawn was breaking and the milk chariots were starting on their rounds when he set off on foot for Berkeley Square, feeling oddly conspicuous in his civilian clothes. Better get used to it, he told himself. You’ve no longer any right to wear the uniform. But it still felt wrong. He even missed the feel of the identity disc round his neck – which for the first time in four years lay discarded on top of his bureau.

Again there was no answer at number seventeen.

‘She’s gone,’ said a girl’s voice below him, making him start.

Glancing down, he saw a housemaid craning up at him from the basement of number sixteen. Sharp, intelligent blue eyes assessed him with frank curiosity.

‘Do you know where she went?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘But she’d a bag with her, so it must of been an overnight visit. And she didn’t take Mrs Clyne’s motor, she took a cab.’

Adam’s heart sank. She could be anywhere.

Something must have shown in his face, because the girl took pity on him. ‘There’s a cab rank round the corner. One of them’d probably know.’

It turned out that, for a shilling, ‘one of them’ did indeed know; and for another, he was willing to take Adam there.

‘But this can’t be right,’ said Adam, when the hansom drew up outside a dingy tenement in Walworth.

The cabbie insisted. ‘I remember ’cos it was so rum, lady like her wanting to put up in a slum like this.’

What the devil is she playing at? thought Adam. She has money. Why not put up at an hotel?

The front door was on the latch, and above it hung a grimy sign which had seen better days:
Lodgings, weekly or monthly rates, Mrs Arthur Jugg.
Beneath that were traces of another line,
Dinner by arrangemt
, but this had been scrubbed out – presumably, thought Adam with a flash of pity for Mrs Jugg, because she was having trouble with rations, and couldn’t afford the black market.

He told the cabbie to wait, and went inside.

It was dark in the hall, and the gasolier hadn’t been lit. In the gloom, Adam made out peeling wallpaper spotted with rosebuds and rust.

A door opened to his right, and a child peered out. From the oversized trousers and the cap jammed down over its red hair, Adam guessed it to be a boy, although the small, grimy face was delicately androgynous.

Adam said, ‘I’m looking for a lady.’ He felt in his pocket and held out a sixpence. ‘Young, dark, very pretty. Has she been here?’

The boy snatched the sixpence, then darted back to the safety of his doorway. ‘Numberate, forfflor,’ he muttered.

‘Thank you,’ said Adam.

What the devil is she playing at? he wondered as he climbed to the fourth floor. He was beginning to be faintly irritated. This precipitate flight from Mayfair to the slums, with only a carpet-bag for luggage . . . It smacked of self-pity. Was she trying to ‘throw herself away’, like a character in a penny dreadful? And why? Because Osbourne was married? Somehow, that didn’t seem to fit.

He’d almost got tired of knocking at number eight when she answered the door. His irritation vanished. The blue frock hung off her. Her eyes were swollen, her face flushed and blotchy. He thought, so she can actually look plain.

‘You,’ she said blankly. Then she glanced behind him, as if she’d expected someone else.

‘I was worried,’ he said. ‘I wanted to see if you were all right.’

‘I’m fine. Go away.’

‘I can’t do that. I’ve a cab outside. I’ll take you to an hotel.’

She was watching his mouth as if she was having trouble following. ‘I’m staying here,’ she said. ‘It’s where I belong.’

‘You can’t stay here.’

‘Please go away.’ She took a step back and stumbled, and instinctively he put out a hand to steady her. Her wrist was feverishly hot.

He felt a flicker of alarm. ‘You’re burning up. How long have you been ill?’

‘I’m fine,’ she muttered. Then her knees buckled and she went down.

For a moment, Adam stared at her in astonishment. Then he picked her up and carried her inside.

Chapter Eighteen

The world was falling away, and she was spinning into darkness. A band of red-hot iron was crushing her skull. Burning needles pierced her eyes. Someone was trying to smother her with a blanket: someone strong. ‘Go ’way!’ she moaned, clawing at his hands.

‘Try to lie still,’ said a voice, infuriatingly calm.

How could she lie still when every breath, every blink, sent the burning needles shooting through her?

Down, down she fell, into the churning black tide . . .

She awoke to the certain knowledge of evil. Before she even turned her head she knew what it was. There in the corner: a massive yellowsnake. Malevolent. Waiting to strike.

She moaned in terror.

‘It doesn’t exist,’ said the voice, as unruffled as before.

‘Yes it does,’ she retorted. She could see every scale on the flat, monstrous head; every lightning flicker of the black forked tongue. In horror she watched as it uncurled its bloated coils and slithered towards her . . .

‘
No!
’ she screamed.

‘Don’t be such a silly,’ said Sibella, bending over her and brushing her face with the sleeve of her lacy blue bedjacket. ‘Yellowsnakes are harmless. Surely you know that?’

‘But Sibella,’ said Belle. ‘You’re dead.’

‘Oh no I’m not,’ chuckled Sibella. ‘That was just a joke they played on you. You children can be such vicious little brutes.’

‘But I’m not a child,’ said Belle.

‘Yes you are,’ said Cornelius Traherne, coming to stand beside Sibella. ‘You’re an extraordinary child. You are aware of things which most grown women—’

‘Go away!’ she screamed. ‘Don’t
touch
me!’ Raising herself on her elbow, she fought him off with her other arm.

The strong hands took hold of her shoulders and gently pushed her back onto the pillow.

Again she clawed at them. ‘Don’t – touch me!’

‘You seem,’ said Traherne, ‘to have created some sort of terrible fantasy—’

‘It’s not a fantasy!’ she shouted. ‘It really happened!’

‘It’s not real,’ said the voice. ‘There are no snakes.’

She was sobbing with fury. How could he deny it? How could he sit there and
deny
it? He was in league with Traherne, and so was Sibella. They were all in league against her.

She opened her eyes, and the daylight stabbed her like shards of glass. There he sat, Adam Palairet, calmly telling her that she was making it up. Adam Palairet, who had killed Sibella, who had chased Osbourne away; Adam Palairet, who had told the duppies where to find her . . .

‘It’s your
fault
!’ she screamed. ‘It’s all your fault!’

He knew that he wasn’t helping her; he was making things worse. She needed doctors and a hospital bed, not a bug-ridden mattress and a man she couldn’t stand. She needed help.

After her outburst over the snake, she’d collapsed in a dead faint. That was a relief, but it wouldn’t last long. He knew that much from the past seven hours. And he knew, too, that he couldn’t just sit here any longer, hoping she would get better. He had to go and find help.

Praying that she wouldn’t wake up and fall out of bed while he was gone, he raced downstairs and hammered on the landlady’s door. No answer. He tried the other doors, working his way back upstairs. Most swung open on cramped, empty rooms. One bore an
I
sign, but its occupant was either away from home, or too ill to answer.

Cursing under his breath, Adam ran out into the street. It was only two in the afternoon, but the place was eerily quiet. He hammered on doors, and still no-one came. There was no-one about. It was like the dreams he used to have before the War, when he knew that he had to reach some vitally important goal, but obstacles kept springing up, each more impossible than the last.

At the end of the street he spotted a public telephone booth. Salvation. But when he reached it, he snarled in frustration. It was chained shut ‘
to prevent infection
’. He cast around for something to snap the chain.

A piece of luck. The landlady’s boy was back, hunched in a doorway, watching him with unblinking blue eyes.

‘Crowbar,’ said Adam, tossing him a sixpence. ‘Fast.’

The boy caught the sixpence one-handed and sped off, returning a few minutes later with a length of iron railing. ‘You’ll get done for that,’ he muttered as he watched Adam breaking into the booth.

‘Quite probably,’ said Adam. ‘Here’s a shilling. Run up to number eight and keep an eye on the lady till I get back.’

The telephone exchange was undermanned and maddeningly slow, and it took for ever to get through to St Thomas’s Hospital. They didn’t have a bed to spare, and seemed astonished that he was even asking. He tried the Lambeth Infirmary; then the two doctors whom they recommended. Still no good. All were awash with patients, and scoffed at the very notion of a private nurse. Adam began to feel like a man trying in vain to get rid of an unwanted stray.

He telephoned Clive. By some fluke, his friend was at home, snatching a quick meal before hastening out to see more patients. ‘Sorry, old man, but I’m up to my eyes in patients of my own.’

‘But what am I supposed to do?’ said Adam in disbelief.

‘See her through,’ said Clive.

‘But I’m not a doctor!’

‘Listen, old man. You won’t get her into hospital, and you won’t find a nurse for love or money. It’s down to you. You’ve done a spot of medicine in the trenches; it’s not that hard. Besides, one way or the other, it’ll be over in a day or so.’

Adam cut the connection, and leaned against the side of the booth. How could this be happening? A simple visit to see if an acquaintance was all right, and now he was marooned in the slums, dizzy with fatigue, with claw-marks throbbing on the backs of his hands – and he didn’t even
like
the girl.

It’s down to you
, Clive had said.

Bloody
hell
, thought Adam.

Through the open door, a flash of yellow caught his eye. It was a shrine: one of tens of thousands which had sprung up on street corners since the start of the War. A wooden tablet surmounted by a simple cross bore the names of those from the street who had been killed at the Front. A ledge below held flowers: in this case, chrysanthemums in a jam jar.

Suddenly, Adam felt ashamed.

Back at number eight, he found Isabelle Lawe raving at the snakes, while the boy stood in the doorway, trying not to look scared.

Adam gave him two pounds plus sixpence commission, and sent him off for quinine, phenacetin, a thermometer, and a bottle of whisky. He couldn’t remember much about his own bout of fever in Arras, and he wasn’t even sure if this was the same illness; but he had a hazy recollection that quinine and alcohol had pulled him through.

While the boy was gone, he ransacked Isabelle Lawe’s valise for anything that might help. Among the flimsy silk blouses and the ridiculously impractical lace all-in-ones – didn’t the girl know how to pack? – he found some eau de Cologne which would come in useful as an alcohol rub, and a sixpenny booklet entitled
The Nurse’s Guide to the Treatment & Management of the Influenza Patient
.

‘Not a
child
,’ whispered Isabelle Lawe.

Startled, Adam turned round.

The illness was draining her from within. The skull beneath the skin was disturbingly visible: the blue ridges of cheekbones, the sharp line of the jaw. Her eyes were dull and sunken, and they stared at him without recognition. He wondered what she saw when she looked at him. Whom was she trying to fight?

‘Right,’ he said, and his voice echoed in the dingy little room. ‘It’s just you and me and the
Nurse’s Guide
.’

Then he pulled up the stool and started to read.

‘Why are you doing this?’ gasped Isabelle Lawe.

Adam stopped sponging her neck, and sighed. Damn, she was awake again. Every time he thought she’d fainted, she came round. If she didn’t get some rest soon, her heart would give out.

It was some time after midnight on the second night. She’d been delirious for nearly two days. So perhaps, he thought, it’s a good sign that she’s regaining her senses? But he wasn’t too sure. The
Nurse’s Guide
was full of stark warnings about false dawns.

‘I’m giving you a sponge bath,’ he told her. ‘Cold water and eau de Cologne. It’s supposed to—’

‘No, no,’ she muttered, screwing up her eyes at the penny candle on the rickety deal table. ‘Why are
you
doing this. Why you.’