A Dark Dividing, page 16
Simone remained absolutely still. Had it been the inner voice or had the words been said aloud this time? She was not sure because everything felt different in here, in fact she was almost ready to believe that she really had stepped into the past—into the time when the black iron doors had clanged shut every night and the pig-men had prowled through the dark passageways. If she could listen hard enough she might hear the echoes of all those people who used to live here.
But there were no echoes; there was only a faint drip-drip of water from somewhere. If you wanted to give yourself nightmares for about a hundred years you could believe it was a brittle whispery voice, like the tapping of icicles against your bedroom window in winter.
And then it came again. Come deeper in, Simone… It’s time we got to know each other properly… I’ve waited so long to see you and meet you properly…
Simone said out loud, ‘Who are you? Tell me who you are?’ Her voice sounded peculiar in the silence. It sounded a bit quavery as well. She said, a bit louder, ‘I know you’re here. I can feel that you’re here. But I can’t see you.’
Nothing. Silence. But Simone was still having the fluttery-stomach feeling that you had just before something really tremendous and important. Something’s about to happen, she thought. Something that’s going to matter a lot.
She removed the lens cover again; her hands were shaking which was annoying, but if she really did manage to photograph the little girl it would act as a sort of weapon. I’ve got photographs of you, she could say. And if you don’t leave me alone I’ll show them to people. The little girl would not like that: she wanted to stay secret and mysterious, Simone knew that.
The flash was in place which was good because of the boarded-up windows, and she had only used two of the new roll of film. She would try an inside shot now; it would be great if she could get on film the darkness and the spookiness of Mortmain, and the feeling of all the people who had lived in it.
The people who heard the clanging door that shut them in every night and that shut the world out, and the people who sometimes had to hide from the evil men—Don’t think about that.
The flash worked exactly as it was meant to; it went off with a sharp, white flare of brilliance that lit up the dusty old hall so that Simone saw it vividly. She saw the black mouldering stones and the patches of crawly fungus on the walls, and the splintered wooden panels hanging off the walls.
She saw the small figure framed in the doorway near to the back of the hall watching her. Exactly like the nightmare. The little girl with dark, sly eyes.
The flashlight died, and the darkness closed down again like a bad-smelling black curtain. But from out of this clotted darkness a voice spoke. It said, very softly, ‘Hello, Simone. I thought you’d never come.’
There was a long silence. Then Simone said, ‘Who are you? I don’t know who you are.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said the girl, and she took a step forward. ‘Of course you know who I am. Just as I know who you are.’ Simone felt the faint familiar tug on her mind. Amusement. She’s laughing. And then—no, she’s not laughing, she’s gloating. She’s hugging some secret knowledge to herself. I think what I’ll do, I’ll just find out who she is, and I’ll find out all that stuff about Mortmain, and then I’ll cycle home as fast as I can. But she was conscious of a vague feeling of disappointment. All that build-up—all that mystery and excitement—and after all it’s just a girl of my own age in a ruined house.
After a moment, she said, ‘You know my name, but I don’t know yours. What is it?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said the girl again, and at last she came forward. The shadows slid off her like water streaming away from somebody getting out of a bath. Simone saw that she was wearing a cherry-red pullover with a pattern on the front, and that as she walked one foot dragged a bit and her shoulders were slightly crooked. If she ran or even moved quickly she would do so in a hunching, lopsided way. But other than that—
Other than that it was like looking in a mirror.
‘Who are you?’ said Simone again.
‘I’m Sonia,’ said the little girl. ‘I thought you knew that.’ She smiled, and Simone saw that there was the same small unevenness in her front teeth that Simone had herself. As if a tiny piece had been chipped out.
Sonia put out a hand. ‘Come with me, Simone,’ she said, and Simone took the outstretched hand.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE HANDCLASP WAS an extraordinary moment. It gave Simone the strangest feeling she had ever had in her whole life, and for several crowded seconds everything else was blotted out, so that she was only dimly aware of where she was and what she was doing here.
Many years afterwards she was to identify it as the feeling of an electrical circuit closing, or of negative and positive forces meeting and fusing, but standing in Mortmain’s swirling shadows, staring at Sonia, she was only aware that something important and something tremendous had happened. She did not really understand it and she was not sure if she ever would, but for the moment the nearest she could get was that it felt as if something that had been missing had been found, or as if a final piece of jigsaw had been slotted into place so that you suddenly saw and understood the whole picture. Sonia did not seem especially aware of the fierce emotions zig-zagging back and forth; she was drawing Simone across the hall and through one of the doors near the stairs. ‘It’s all right, Simone,’ she said. ‘There’s no one here but us.’
And the ghosts, thought Simone uneasily.
‘And I think this might be the day I told you about. Remember? Remember how I said that one day we’d meet? And share secrets, so we’d be bound together for always?’
‘Blood sisters.’
‘Yes. Yes. That’s what’s going to happen today. We’ve got the thought-talking thing already, but that’s a—a shadow-thing. I’d like it if we had something else, wouldn’t you? Something in the real world. Something in the daylight world. And there’s someone I really hate—someone I really want to get the better of. Remember how we talked about that?’
Simone started to say, ‘What do you—’ and stopped, because she was not sure she wanted to know what Sonia meant. What she really wanted to do was get away from Sonia as soon as she could, but the trouble was that she would have to think of a way of doing it politely. Sonia was a bit weird and if she got annoyed she might become even weirder. But Simone thought if it had not been for Sonia’s hand still holding hers and if it had not been for that insistent feeling of a loop closing, she would most likely have run away there and then, going full-pelt back down the track to where her bicycle was, and then pedalling home at top speed.
But she did not. She walked with Sonia through Mortmain’s swirling darkness, trying not to notice that Sonia moved awkwardly because of the squinty slant of her shoulders, and trying not to wonder what had caused it in case Sonia picked up the thought. Mother had always said it was quite rude to wonder about people’s disabilities, and it was very rude indeed and probably hurtful to let them see you were wondering. So Simone concentrated on the house: on the long echoing corridors with the black stone walls that dripped with slimy moisture as if a zillion snails had crawled down them, and on the rusting stoves that squatted in unexpected corners and had doors with grinning iron grilles and stumpy little clawfeet. When there was no one around the stoves might come waddling out of their corners and gather in one of the rooms, whispering to one another in clanking rusty voices, making plans to snatch up the next human who entered Mortmain.
Wherever Sonia was taking her she knew the way. Once they went through a long dim room with a scarred table nailed to the floor, and Sonia said, very softly, ‘This was where everyone had to come to eat. All of them—children, grown-ups, everyone. The refectory, they called it. There were wooden benches for seats.’
Not everyone could manage to spoon up their food without help…
‘And the food was dreadful, anyway,’ said Sonia, offhandedly.
‘How do you know that? How do you know all this about Mortmain?’
Sonia sent her another of the sideways glances, and then said, ‘I know what is and what has been.’
This was no kind of answer at all, in fact Simone was not sure that Sonia mightn’t be showing off because it sounded like a line of poetry. Still, the question might as well be asked sooner rather than later, so she said, ‘You don’t—um—live here, do you? In Mortmain?’ Because for a wild moment this seemed entirely possible. It seemed perfectly believable that Sonia might really live here as Simone had once believed; that she might actually sleep and eat and live inside Mortmain, wandering through the empty rooms. (Talking to the ghosts and listening to their stories…? No, that’s really stupid!)
‘Of course I don’t live here. I live in Weston Fferna, though. Well, just outside it. A few miles. But I’m allowed to cycle around places in the afternoons on account of it’ll make my legs stronger.’ This was said disinterestedly, and because Simone was not sure how to deal with it, she said, ‘I’ve never seen you.’
‘No, I only go along the lanes. And there’s a back road up to Mortmain. It’s closed off from the main road but if you know it’s there you can get through, and then you can cycle up the slope. Mostly I use that.’
‘What about school?’ Because there was only Simone’s own school for miles, and Sonia certainly did not go there.
‘I don’t go to school. I’m different from other people.’ It sounded smug. It very nearly sounded as if Sonia liked having a crooked shoulder and awkward legs; as if she thought it made her one-up on everyone else. ‘So I have lessons at home,’ she said, and sent Simone a quick glance to see how this was received.
‘Oh, I see.’ Simone did not like to say it must be pretty boring to have lessons at home, and not be able to enjoy things like art lessons and school concerts, and not have the fun of friends to giggle with about the teachers. There were a lot of bad things about school (arithmetic and geography were two of the worst), but there were quite a lot of good things as well.
‘I’ve lived here for a lot of years,’ said Sonia. ‘In fact—’ She stopped and for the first time Simone saw that Sonia was unsure. But then she said, ‘I’ve listened to things people say and stories that they tell. I don’t always like having to listen to all that stuff, but I have to listen whether I want to or not. But I probably know more about Mortmain than anyone alive today.’
Simone had the feeling that Sonia had been about to tell her something, and then had changed her mind. She was aware of a small jab of curiosity. I’ll stay a bit longer. I’ll see what she has to say.
They had reached the end of the corridor, and Sonia pushed open a door and waited for Simone to step through. Beyond the door was a long dim room, with fading sunshine trickling in through the high windows, showing up the dirt and the decay. Strewn messily on the floor were little piles of rubbish, left by the tramps and winos who dossed down here and did not see Mortmain’s ghosts, or maybe saw them and were so drunk they thought the ghosts were real people.
The room was dreadful. Simone had never been in such a dreadful place. Even standing just inside the doorway thick suffocating waves of pain and misery seemed to jump out at her, and there was a feeling of something tugging at her mind as if she was being dragged back to the days when people had been forced to live here because they had nowhere else to go and no friends or family to help them.
‘Why should you be young and pretty and free?’ said this horrid tugging thing. ‘We were never pretty, and we were never allowed to be young, not properly… Why should you live in a nice house and go to school and have friends and games and money to spend when we never had any of those things…?’
For several moments the room seemed to fill up with anger and bitterness and Simone had to take several deep breaths before she could go inside. She would not let Sonia know how frightened she was though, she absolutely would not.
But just as Sonia had not seemed to feel the huge surge of emotion that had exploded when they held hands earlier on, now she did not seem to feel the room’s anger and pain.
‘They called this place the Women’s Workshop,’ she said, her eyes still on Simone. ‘The women came here because they had no money and nowhere to live. If they hadn’t come to Mortmain they would have died from starvation. But they all hated being here.’
‘That was because of it being a workhouse.’ Simone remembered Mother telling her about this. ‘It was very shameful to go into a workhouse.’
‘They had to work all the time. From when they got up in the morning until when they went to bed at night. They had to scrub floors and work in the laundry and sew things—horrid things like shrouds for corpses—and if they didn’t do it properly they were punished. Locked up or beaten. And some of the people who lived here were mad and sometimes they had to be—what’s the word meaning you’re tied up so that you don’t hurt anybody?’
‘Restrained? Confined?’
‘Restrained. There’re rooms in the cellars with iron doors—they used to lock the mad ones down there until they were quiet.’ (Had that been the sound in the nightmares; the clanging of an iron door, followed by sobbing cries of helplessness?)
Sonia had come closer, and her face was only inches from Simone’s. It was pretty spooky being this close to the face that was so much like your own. Except the eyes, thought Simone. I know my eyes aren’t like that, all mean and sly. I’ll try never to have a mean or sly thought ever in my life if that’s how it makes you look.
Sonia said, ‘Think how it must have been to be so mad you were locked away in the darkness and left there for days and days. But the worst thing of all would be if you weren’t mad at all, but people didn’t like you or wanted to keep you out of the way because you had found out their secrets. You’d scream and scream, and you’d try to say you weren’t mad, but nobody would believe you.’
‘Did that really happen? Or are you making it up?’
‘I’m not making it up. I told you—I know what is and what has been.’ She eyed Simone.
‘You said that before. What’s it supposed to mean?’
‘Don’t you know?’ In a soft voice, Sonia said:
I know what is and what has been; not anything to me comes strange,
Who in so many years have seen and lived through every kind of change.
I know when men are good or bad, when well or ill,
When sad or glad, when sane or mad…
And when they sleep alive or dead…
Simone thought: she’s mad. She’s absolutely bats. I’m standing in a haunted house with a mad girl who’s quoting poetry at me! At least, I suppose it’s poetry—it sounds like it. She looked uneasily about her, trying not to shiver. The ghosts were still here; they were hating the presence of intruders because they were ashamed of having lived in a workhouse, those ghosts, and they resented the two girls from the future who lived normal lives and did normal things. (Except that Sonia was not normal; if she had been here a hundred years ago they would probably have locked her into one of those cellars because they would have said she was mad…)
Simone pushed this thought down at once, and walked determinedly back into the passage. ‘What’s through that door at the end?’
Sonia’s face took on the sly look again. ‘Come and see,’ she said, and limped across to push it open. There was a grating sound from the warped oak, and then the door swung inwards.
It was another of the dismal, badly-lit rooms, with another of the evil iron stoves watching them from the shadows. Simone hated the stove and she hated the room but she would not let Sonia see this, and so she looked about her, as if she was interested.
One of the windows overlooked a kind of small courtyard. Was it the courtyard where that game had been played about the hanged man? No, that was just a pretend-thing.
Near one wall was a raised area of floor: a large square section different from the rest. At first Simone thought it might be what was called a rostrum: they had one in the gym at school so that the gym teacher could see what they were all doing, and there was one in the little theatre for conducting when the school orchestra gave a recital. It was odd to see one here, though.
Sonia said, ‘Help me to move this, then I’ll tell you a bit more about Mortmain if you like.’ She moved to the raised area and kicked at the edge of it, and for the first time Simone saw that it was not part of the main floor at all; it was a wooden box-structure, with iron handles set into the edges. The wood had rotted in places and a glint of black iron showed beneath.
‘What is it? What’s under there?’
‘It’s an old well. I suppose you do know what a well is, do you?’
‘Of course I know.’ Simone was stung by the faint patronizing tone. ‘It’s where people used to get water before they had plumbing and bathrooms. You don’t usually get wells inside houses, though.’
‘It used to be outside. They built this bit of Mortmain over part of an old courtyard,’ said Sonia.
‘The courtyard out there?’
‘Yes. Most of Mortmain’s really old and the well’s really old as well, only nobody had used it for years and years. But a long time ago—a hundred years ago—they wanted more room and somebody said this was the best place to build, so they just put a cover over the well and built the extra room here. They were only making a bit more room for paupers and mad people and children nobody wanted, you see. That was how they thought of it. They thought it didn’t matter to people like that if they had to live in a room where there was a well. They left a small bit of courtyard—that’s what you can see through the windows.’
‘I don’t believe you. Nobody would build a room where there was a well.’
‘They did. If you go outside and look at the walls you can see where the bricks are different, and there’s a different roof as well.’ She was pulling the red sweater over her head like a man will remove his jacket before attempting a strenuous task. She put the sweater, neatly folded, on the ground, and looked back at Simone. ‘Are you ready to help me? If you hold that side we can pull the cover off between us. I don’t think I can do it on my own, ’cos it’s lined with iron and it’s heavy.’
