A Dark Dividing (26 page)

We knew you’d come back to us, Simone…

But then after all it was only Mother saying in a cheerful voice something about coming back here one day in summer, and seeing some of the lovely old carving and the panelling, and what a scandal the house had been left to rot like this. Apparently as an afterthought, she said, ‘Are you all right, Sim?’

‘Yes, only I thought I heard—’

‘What?’

‘Well, sort of whispering.’

Mother listened carefully, but said she could not hear anything. There was a bit of a wind outside, she said; wind often sounded like whispering, especially at night, especially when there were tall old trees nearby. But when they went into the Women’s Workshop she was silent for a few minutes, looking round. Then she said, rather quietly, ‘Yes, this is horrid. This feels very bad indeed. I’m not surprised you were a bit spooked by it, Sim. There must have been so much sadness in here.’

‘And anger,’ said Simone. Had Mother felt the anger as well? ‘The people who had to be here would have been angry on account of it being shameful to be in a work-house,’ she said.

‘Yes, that’s true. That’s quite perceptive of you, as well.’ Mel shone the torch around, and said, half to herself, ‘And nowadays we regard it more or less as a right to be given State assistance, in fact some people boast about how they can outsmart the system and get more than they’re entitled to, or how they cheat on income tax. Personally I’m a believer in the old maxim of, “To each according to his needs, and from each according to his means.”’ Then she said in a brisker voice, ‘OK, Sim, let’s get this dealt with. If we get back in time we can pick up some French bread from the village shop to have with the chili—they stay open until half past six on Fridays. Is this the room with the well through here?’

‘Yes.’ Simone knew Mother was saying all this about the chili and the village shop to remind her that there was an ordinary world outside of Mortmain, and that they would very soon be going back into that ordinary world. But as she followed Mel to the inner door, shining her own torch as she went, she knew that even if a hundred ordinary worlds existed beyond Mortmain this was still going to be dreadful. It would be dreadful in one way to find Sonia’s body, and it would be dreadful in quite another way not to find it… Which do I really want it to be? thought Simone.

‘It’s a bit peculiar to have a well inside a house, you know. Are you sure you got that part right?’

‘Yes, I did. This used to be part of the outside and so the well was outside, but then they had to have more rooms for the paupers and things so they covered the well up and built the room over it. They didn’t think paupers and things mattered, so they didn’t care about making them live in rooms with wells—I told you all that,’ said Simone a bit desperately.

‘Yes, I know you did. It’s all right.’

They stood in the doorway, neither of them going into the room, letting the torches move slowly across the dust and the dirt. Simone’s heart was thudding loudly in her chest and her stomach kept performing little somersaults of panic, because in another minute the light would fall on the yawning blackness of the open well, and then they would have to look down inside, and then Simone would know whether Sonia had been real or not—

‘Is that the well-cover, Sim?’

Mother’s voice broke the spell and the fear a bit. Simone started to say, ‘Yes, it—’ and broke off, staring at what lay in the beam of torchlight. The well-cover. The huge wooden, iron-bound cover that she and Sonia—that she and someone—had dragged clear that afternoon, leaving the well open and evil-smelling. She could see marks in the dust that might have been footprints, but that might as easily have been made by rodents or tramps, or even by little flurryings of wind getting in through the badly-fitting windows. She could see all of this.

And she could see that the well-cover was firmly in place over the well.

For a space of time that she was never, afterwards, able to measure, Simone felt as if she was falling down a long dark echoing tunnel. She felt as if she might even be Sonia, tumbling down and down into the darkness, like Alice down the rabbit hole, or the children falling into one of the Narnia-worlds. She heard a voice that she thought was her own voice saying, ‘But—we dragged the cover off. I
know
we did. It shouldn’t be back in place like that—I didn’t put it back—’

‘It doesn’t matter. But it looks as if we’ve got a choice. We can go back home here and now and eat chili—’

‘And never really know—’

‘Yes. Or,’ said Mel, ‘we can explore the thing properly and really find out.’ She looked at Simone as if she was waiting for Simone to make the decision. In the dimness her face looked pale and her eyes looked like black pits, and Simone suddenly remembered how Sonia had looked exactly like that when she had peered over the well’s edge, and said it was deep and that anyone falling in would never be able to get out. Was Sonia lying down there, in the dark?

She said, ‘I s’pose now we’re here, we ought to look inside. Properly look, I mean.’

‘So do I. Otherwise you’ll keep remembering and wondering, and I’ll keep wondering as well. But I’ll do it. You stand just there then you can shine the torch for me.’ She was already crossing the floor and setting her own torch down so that it shone directly on the well. After a moment Simone followed her, and shone the second torch downwards. ‘That’s fine,’ said Mother, bending down to drag at the cover. ‘Goodness, Sim, this is a situation where I remember I was forty last year—This thing’s shockingly heavy.’

Impossible not to suddenly remember Sonia limping across the room with that odd hunched walk, and grasping the cover’s edges and saying impatiently that they just had to pull the cover towards them… And how she had said it was all right to punish people, because it was what the Mortmain children had done…

The cover came back easily enough, although there was the same shrieking protest and there was the same rusting-iron shudder from the horrid squat stove in the corner. Simone glanced at it uneasily, and then looked back at the well.

‘Give me the bigger torch, Sim—thanks. Wells are quite nasty when they’ve been abandoned for years and years, but once this one was probably in a courtyard, and the cook would send the kitchenmaid out to draw up a bucket of water, so that they could wash up—’ She shone the torch straight down into the blackness and Simone’s heart leapt in panic. Which is it? Is Sonia’s body down there or isn’t it?

Mel said, ‘Sim, darling, there’s absolutely nothing down here except a few puddles of water and some bits of rubbish.’ She held out a hand. ‘Come here and you’ll see for yourself.’

After a moment, Simone walked forward and peered over the black brick edge into the empty darkness.

So. So although Sonia had once been real—she had been Simone’s own sister—the Sonia that had talked in Simone’s mind all these years, and the Sonia who had led Simone through Mortmain’s spooky darkness, could not have been real, not ever.

Sonia had been a ghost, an echo from Simone’s own twin, and if you wanted proof that people lived after death it looked as if Simone had been given that proof. Sonia had died all those years ago—Mum had been very clear about that—but in some odd way she had found, and clung on to, the sister to whom she had been joined when they were both born. It was what Mother thought, and it was probably the only way to think. Simone thought that Sonia might have been angry and bitter at dying when she had been so tiny, and so she had tried to live for a while through Simone. Was that possible? It sort of explained things, but it did not explain absolutely everything. It did not explain all those links to Mortmain, or all that ‘I know what is and what has been’ business. It did not explain why Sonia had said she had lived near to Mortmain for a lot of years.

They took the roll of film to be developed next day, and when the photos came back Mother thought they were very good indeed. She thought Simone ought to put them into a proper album and keep the negatives somewhere safe; Simone might one day be glad she had done that, Mother said.

It took a bit of the horror out of Mortmain to arrange her own views of it on the thick cardboard pages of the album they bought, and to write the dates in underneath in her best handwriting.

The trouble was that Mortmain would always be a place of darkness for Simone, and it would always be the place she would associate with Sonia. And even though the well had been empty, she still did not know whether Sonia had been a real person or a ghost.

H
ARRY WAS BEGINNING to wonder if Sonia Anderson had been a real person or a ghost.

He had turned up references to various Sonia Andersons and also to various Sonia Marriots, but none of the dates tallied with his Sonia’s birth. He had explored every source he could think of to find her—most of the sources had been official but one or two had not. Police data banks, the passport office. Under-the-counter stuff, but you called in favours where you had to. But even with the favours he had still not found Sonia, and as far as he could make out Sonia Marriot had been born as Sonia Anderson, twin to Simone, and then vanished.

(‘People died and people vanished…’ Markovitch had said.)

The answer was probably that Sonia had simply left the country as a small baby, travelling on an adult’s passport and had never returned, or—and this was more likely—Harry had missed something somewhere. Both ideas were profoundly depressing, although there was at least the prospect of being able to say to Markovitch, Sorry, dear boy, but it looks as if you’ve backed a loser this time. There’s nothing in the least mysterious to be disinterred about the family.

Liar, said his mind. You don’t want to write the feature and you never did, in fact you’d rather starve than write it, but you know quite well that there
is
a mystery, and you’re hooked on unravelling it. How about the mother, then? The somehow-shadowy Melissa? Was it possible to find her? Harry considered this.

Any researcher worth his salt knew that you did not just pursue one line of inquiry; you pursued as many as you could, picking up the ends of threads that might lead you to the crock of gold at the rainbow’s end, or that might unravel of their own accord and only lead you to a crock of shit or even of bullshit. But there were times when threads that might almost have been the spun gold of the miller’s daughter in the old fairytale came sizzling out of the ground and twined themselves around you.

Harry reached the
Bellman
’s office around ten on the morning after receiving Floy’s book. He was still thinking about Melissa Anderson—Melissa Marriot—who might be anywhere in the world now, but who might be traceable.

There were several calls on his voice-mail, and there was one that had come in half an hour earlier which main reception had switched through to his phone. Harry listened to it, drinking the coffee that Markovitch thought good enough for his staff.

A rather hesitant female voice said she had read the article about Thorne’s Gallery, and she had been so interested to see the photograph of Simone Marriot and to read about her wonderful career and the gallery. She had known the Anderson family very well indeed when the twins were babies, said the voice, but sadly she had lost touch with them. She would so much like to contact them again—was there any chance that a letter sent to Mr Fitzglen, c/o the
Bellman
, could be forwarded? It would mean so much. Perhaps Mr Fitzglen might ring or write to indicate if this was acceptable. Here was her phone number—oh, and her address. She worked at St Luke’s Hospital—here was the number of that as well, and her extension. She would be so grateful if he would contact her, and if he rang the hospital he should ask for Sister Raffan. Thank you so much. Goodbye.