Free Cold Pastoral by Margaret Duley Page B

go.”
    â€œNo, I won’t let you go until you’re asleep, and when I go there’s a nice nurse to look after you. Don’t talk, don’t talk…”
    Later, years later it seemed, the centre of her blackness was pierced by a throb. Like a pebble dropped into a pool it went widening away in painful extension. At first it beat in her mind until there was a hot report from her hands and feet. This time she did not cry out. She was sick but sane and capable of endurance. Once or twice she opened her eyes to try and identify her surroundings. Finding she was indifferent, she shut out the pool of light, the blur of the dressing-table and the dim square of the window. Where was the man with the cold quiet voice, and the women in white robes? She wished she had a drink. Where did they keep the bucket in the hospital? How silly she was! Here they had taps and deep white baths and basins. Her mother had told her about them. What was she hearing? Whispers by her door.
    â€œâ€¦fairies. They say she’s fey.”
    â€œPure Irish, I’d say, by the sound of her. I know the Shore she comes from. I was there once, and it took me back to Grimm. Heard about the money?”
    â€œYes, imagine! Rags to riches, and all for a little Bay Noddy. I suppose she’s as common as bog-water.”
    â€œNot a bit of it. Very appealing, with a beautiful face and a lovely little body. Her people must have been decent. Dr. Fitz Henry says there’s no malnutrition beyond exposure and starvation.”
    â€œHe’s all burned up about her.”
    â€œAnd how! I’ve never seen him like it before. When he gave her the hypo he waited to see how it would react.Then we sat like a pair of dummies until she woke up with a dreadful screech—”
    â€œI heard it! It woke number nine.”
    â€œHe talked to her like an angel and held her in his arms until she went to sleep. I was as much use as an extra degree of fever. If she was older I’d say it was hearts and flowers for doctor.”
    â€œIf it is, it’s his first crush. They say he’s more in love with that old barracks of his—”
    â€œIt’s not his barracks. It’s Lady FitzHenry’s.He gets it at her death.
    They passed over the eldest son. He got a wad from a maiden aunt.”
    â€œThey’re as poor as rats, since the war.”
    â€œWell, I wouldn’t mind being as poor as they are. She got a cold hundred thousand insurance, even though the business failed.”
    â€œThat’s poor for the Place. They say the coal bill is a thousand a year. My father often speaks of their grand days when the gates were flung open to let her ride out. And now she walks.”
    â€œBut how she walks—shush, there’s the bell….”
    The whispers ceased. It sounded like a Cinderella story: coaches and horses, rags to riches. Was she Cinderella? She had no ugly sisters, but she had many ugly brothers. How pleasant it would be to live with men who had voices and hands like the man of last night.
    A dim white figure stooped over her bed, and a nurse found herself staring into glazed yellow eyes.
    â€œMy dear, why didn’t you call?” she said kindly. “I was only at the door.”
    â€œCould I have a drink?” she whispered.
    Ministrations helped her towards the morning. It seemed an infinity of time, an endlessness she’d never known before. The three days in the woods had been timeless, past weight or weariness in the light frost of her mind. Dozing fitfully, she woke to another face.
    Outside the sun was shining and the world sounded very big. Once the unfamiliar noises would have wooed her to exploration, and she would have had to follow the richness of bells and blasts of whistles and horns.
    â€œAre you awake, Mary?”
    â€œYes,” she said unhappily, opening her eyes on a girl with waved hair under a starched cap so far on the back of her head that it seemed