Thorn (21 page)

‘What concerns me most is protecting the rest of the family,' said Thalia. ‘And that means protecting the reputation of Ingram's –the company, I mean.' She paused, frowning, as if selecting her next words with care. ‘I believe I can be open with you,' she said, leaning forward. ‘You know what happened at my son's funeral?'

Freda shuddered delicately and said, ‘Dear me, yes. Very nasty for you all.'

‘Imogen will inherit Ingram's eventually,' said Thalia. ‘But if it became known that she was, shall we say,
disturbed,
it might harm the company severely. People are so hidebound by the conventions, don't you agree?'

‘Oh, quite.'

Thalia, satisfied that she had got the point across, changed tack. ‘I have met Professor Rackham,' she said, as if she had only just remembered this. ‘In the course of some of my charity work. I wonder, supposing I were to send him a personal reference about you.'

Freda said, carefully, ‘And in return for that, you would want . . .'

Dear God, did it have to be spelled out in single-syllable words for the woman? Thalia said, ‘I would want you to make sure that once inside Thornacre, Imogen stays there.'

The two women looked at one another. Eventually, Freda said, ‘For how long? And asleep or awake?'

‘I don't care which,' said Thalia. ‘But I don't want her to come out of Thornacre for a very long time.'

Quincy had been given the especial task of watching Imogen in case she woke up.

This was an extremely important job, and Quincy had stared with wide, scared eyes when Matron Porter and Dr Sterne had explained it to her, and then had said a bit breathlessly that she would do it; she would do anything in the world for Imogen. She would sit up all night and not go to sleep in order to watch, she said earnestly. Dr Sterne had smiled at that – he had a nice smile but at the moment it was very tired – and had said that would not be necessary; they would have an extra nurse on duty by tonight, and in any case Imogen would have woken up by then. Quincy had not liked to ask what would happen if Imogen did not wake up.

Porter-Pig had not been pleased about any of it; Quincy had known that at once on account of the little jagged spikes all round Porter-Pig's head, like angry buzzing hornets. Hornets were like wasps only a lot bigger and a whole lot more dangerous. Drawing Matron with the hornet-crossness around her head would make a good new picture.

Dr Sterne would make a good picture as well. Quincy had not drawn him yet, but when she did, she would make him a dark, faintly mysterious figure against a background of light, like the coloured windows you saw in church. She had never been to church until she came to Briar House; people in Bolt Place had spent Sundays sleeping off Saturday night's drinking, or dodging the rent man. Quincy had once, greatly daring, ventured into St Thomas's and crept into one of the seats, fascinated by the marvellous rich colours in the windows, and by the faint drift of polish and old wood and the enormous feeling of peace. She went several times after that, until Mother and the men in the pub found out and sneered, and told coarse stories about vicars, and Mother dug the men in the ribs and shrieked with mirth at the things they said.

Quincy did not go to church again after that, and she did not go when she came to Briar House, either. It was not part of what you did here; Freda said her staff had better things to do than trail people all the way to church, particularly with Sunday being a visiting day for so many. Visitors to Briar House expected to smell the good scents of beef roasting for a traditional Sunday dinner and to go away feeling comfortable about leaving their relatives in such a pleasant, homelike place where such nice meals were cooked. A few favoured guests were sometimes invited to stay to share the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding or the pork with apple sauce, and it all meant extra work and the staff demanded bonuses for working on Sundays.

Imogen might stay asleep like this for a very long time. She might not wake up for months and months and she might not wake up at all. Quincy had heard Matron say this to Dr Sterne; they had been crossing the hall and Quincy had been on the half-landing. She had huddled behind the curtains at the long windows, and she had heard Matron say something about comas and something else about vegetables, which was bewildering, and then about brain death which sounded appalling.

Normally Quincy would have gone away then, but she wanted to hear more about what was going to happen to Imogen. Matron and Dr Sterne were going into Matron's sitting room – the light from the front door was just falling across Dr Sterne so that it looked as if he was wearing a crimson and sapphire cloak of light, and Porter-Pig was poking and pecking her head forward like a long-beaked, bulgy-breasted animal.

Dr Sterne said, very sharply, ‘It's not a coma, Matron.'

‘Whatever name we give it, Dr Sterne, she can't stay here. We haven't the facilities.'

‘Have you talked to her family yet? There are some very good private places that specialise in that kind of care.'

There was a sudden pause, and then Freda said, ‘I've talked to Mrs Caudle, of course. She is the girl's guardian.'

‘Why on earth – oh, she's still under age, of course. Sixteen?'

‘Almost eighteen. And it seems,' said Freda, still in the same careful voice, ‘that the family are not prepared to finance an indefinite stay in Briar House. Even if we had the resources.'

Quincy, still curled into her hidey-hole, could no longer see Porter-Pig's face, but she could hear that there was something very odd in her voice when she said this about Imogen's family. Dr Sterne seemed to have heard it as well, because there was a moment of silence, as if he might be looking at Matron very carefully.

But after a moment he seemed to accept it. ‘I see,' he said. ‘I wonder if it's “can't” rather than “won't”. Maybe Ingram's is suffering from the recession like everyone else.'

‘Well, that isn't for me to say, Dr Sterne.' And then, as if she might have taken a deep breath beforehand, she said, ‘And so if you are to continue to treat her, I am very much afraid there is only one place for her, isn't there?' She did not say ‘I' when she talked to Dr Sterne: she said ‘Ai', in the way people did when they were trying to sound expensive and well educated. Porter-Pig was neither of these things and she only made Dr Sterne wince when she put on this pretend-posh voice. The words came out as, ‘Ai am very much afraid there is only one place for her,' and Quincy knew that Dr Sterne would have liked her much better if she had been ordinary and natural.

But he said, half to himself, ‘Thornacre,' and Quincy felt a wash of cold horror engulf her. ‘I'll ring them up straight away and make the arrangements. If the guardian is agreeable—'

‘Oh, most definitely.'

‘Then she'd better go at once.'

And Matron Pig said, in her silly, simpering voice, ‘And did you know Ai shall be going to Thornacre as well, Dr Sterne? Yes, confirmed this morning. Professor Rackham telephoned me himself. Mai word, what a charmer he is. Ai almost think Ai made a conquest there. And you and me working together. It almost seems meant, doesn't it?'

Imogen's room smelt of nice things, expensive things like the good soap she had brought with her and the box of powder that went with it, which Quincy thought was like floaty pink icing sugar. There was the scent of clean hair as well, and of thin, soft underthings. On the little table under the window was a bowl of what was called potpourri. Quincy knew about potpourri; you saw it in shops and it smelt delicious. But Imogen had said it differently to the way Quincy had thought it was said. Quincy had pronounced it silently when she was on her own, trying to make her voice sound the same, and then she wondered if she was only being like silly old pretend Porter-Pig, trying to be something she was not. It was not very nice to think of old Freda being at Thornacre with Imogen. Quincy was unhappy about that.

Somebody had undressed Imogen and put one of the silky nightdresses on her, and Quincy had been allowed to brush the long dark hair and arrange it neatly on the pillows. Imogen had not moved the whole time and although her eyes were a bit open, she looked as if she was seeing things a long way away from Briar House. Quincy knew it was because of what she had seen in her mother's coffin; she had heard two of the assistants talking about it and she knew that Imogen had crept out to the graveyard when it was dark.

Imogen's mother had been alive when they put her in the ground, just as Thalia Caudle had said. The lady with the beautiful name, Eloise, had been alive, and she had tried to get out and she had died screaming for help, and nobody had heard her.

Quincy had dreamed about Imogen's mother several times and woken up frightened. Once she had tried to draw it, because Dr Sterne said that drawing frightening things was a good thing to do. There was a long word for it which Quincy could not remember, but it meant that it helped you to stop being frightened of things. But the drawing of Imogen's mother had been so terrible that she had had to stop. It had started out as a good-looking lady, a bit like Imogen, but then it had changed on the page into a red, raw screaming thing, all twisted and writhing and blood-spattered, with torn-off fingernails where it had tried to claw its way out of the ground.

Quincy had not been able to stop thinking about it. She had not been able to stop thinking that it was all her fault. If she had gone to the cemetery earlier that day she might have saved Imogen's mother. If she had not gone at all, nobody would have known anything about it, and Imogen would not have fallen into this faraway sleep. Quincy did not know which would have been better.

She sat down in a chair at the foot of Imogen's bed. Dr Sterne had made a chart so that they could keep a count of how long Imogen was asleep like this. He was crossing off the days, one at a time, and six had been crossed off already. Quincy stared at the chart, not seeing it.

Imogen was going to Thornacre, and Thornacre was the worst place in the world. It was a place that made people evil; they looked ordinary on the outside, but underneath they were evil and cruel. They wore masks, just as Thalia Caudle had worn a mask.

There had been a doctor in Thornacre who had looked quite ordinary and who had pretended to be kind. He had talked to Quincy in a special voice, and listened to her telling about how after her mother's funeral the man who owned the house was going to throw her into the street because she had no money and how she had had to lie on the bed and let him poke himself inside her. The man had said it was what her mother had always done when there was no rent money, and a young slag was as good as an old one, and one pair of open legs the same as another.

The Thornacre doctor had listened to everything, and then he had locked the door and told her to undress, beause they were going to act out what had happened with the rent man and all the other men, and then afterwards Quincy would be able to forget all about it. He had used a word Quincy had never heard – something beginning with cat, something that sounded like cattersis – and his eyes had been cold and glittery. He had said she must tell him exactly what each man had done to her, and then he had unfastened his trousers and pushed her over the desk. She had felt the hard poking part thrusting against her.

He had not done it to her at the front like the other men; he had done it from behind and it had been the most painful thing she had ever known. It had gone on for what had seemed to be a very long time, but then right at the end the doctor who was the Cattersis-beast had jerked her round to face him and forced her to kneel down, pushing into her face and making her open her mouth. He had panted smelly breath on to her, and his body had been sour in her mouth. There was a word she had heard – rancid. People said butter was rancid when it went off in the hot weather. The doctor's body and the wet stickiness spurting into her mouth were rancid.

Quincy had wanted to get into a bath and scrub her skin and scour out her mouth until it was raw to get rid of the feel and the taste, but you could not have baths when you felt like it at Thornacre, and she had had to go about with the tainted Cattersis-breath in her nostrils and with his sour taste in her mouth.

He had said she must not talk about it because keeping it a secret was part of the treatment. It was part of the cat-word. He said that if she ever broke the secret, she would be punished. Even if it took years and years, there would be a punishment waiting for her. She would be locked inside Thornacre for ever, he said; perhaps she would be locked in the old east wing, with the black iron door. He had thrust his face close to her, his eyes glittery like dead fish eyes. Did she know about the black iron door? he had asked. Ah, but did she know what was
on the other side of it?
If she told what had happened in this room today, she would find out because he would throw her into that room and lock the door.

Quincy sat in a miserable little huddle in the chair in the corner of Imogen's room, staring at the still figure in the bed, and then without warning an idea began to form in her mind. As it grew and got stronger and more definite, she began to feel very frightened indeed, because it was a truly terrible idea. She squeezed her eyes tight shut to pretend it was not there, but this was cheating, because once ideas were born, you could never send them away.

Quincy took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She was going to look the terrible idea full in the face, because if she could not have courage for Imogen, she could not have courage for anything.

She would have to go with Imogen to Thornacre. To look after her and to protect her. The Cattersis-beast would not be there. Dr Sterne had told her that once people had found out what had been going on, they had taken him away, and probably he was going to prison for a very long time, which meant that Quincy could feel entirely safe.

The only person Quincy really felt safe with was Dr Sterne himself, but she couldn't say this. She trusted him completely and she would die for him – not pretend die, not like when people said, ‘Oh, I'd
die
if such and such happened,' but really truly die.