House of Doors by Chaz Brenchley Read Free Book Online

blouse and rinsed grime from her face, wishing only that she might shift her weary resignation as easily.
    The clouded water showed her nothing as it stilled. No reflection. There was nothing to be learned in any case, of course, no art to read a woman’s future in her face. Peter had taught her not to believe in omens; she tried to cling to that. She did try. It was just  . . . unfortunate  . . . that earlier lessons lay deeper, at the heart of her. And that his own death had been so ominous, trying to teach her other lessons yet.
    Teacher, instruct thyself. But he had done that, of course, he had lived and died believing in the physical world, whatever he could determine and measure and control; and in the idea of England, more than just geography; and in her. More than anything, she thought, he had believed in her. More than grateful, almost desperate, he had clung to her even in the hollow fragile peace, restless and uncertain, struggling to find or make something solid and dependable in a time of shift.
    They had struggled together, built it together, a marriage that could endure. And then the war came, as it must; and then more than ever he had needed her, and she had been his rock. So busy doing that, perhaps neither one of them had noticed actually how much she had needed him.
    All her presentiments, all her anxieties were natural, of course, in a young wife in wartime. Proven right too, but there was nothing unusual in that either. Young men do die, and their widows will look back and see those deaths foreshadowed. And feel guilty, blame themselves. If only they had said this or not done that, not let him go at the last, everything would have been different and some other man, some other woman’s husband would have died in his place, and that would have been better, yes.
    She couldn’t live without him, there wasn’t any point. She couldn’t live with herself, it was too distasteful.
    She couldn’t see anything in the water. There was nothing to be seen.
    She straightened, and turned away.
    For a wonder, there was a glass in the room. Hung of course in the darkest corner, small and square, the mirrored door of a little cabinet. Hung of course too low for her, but no matter, she could stoop. And she need only make herself presentable, pull a comb through her hair and be sure her cap was straight.
    Just a glance, no more. It wasn’t as though she cared, only that Matron was safe to be a stickler for neatness. That was laid down in regulations, that all matrons must be tartars.
    So, a stoop and a squint, leaning one-handed on the chest of drawers with her other hand reaching already for her toilet bag to rootle out her comb, and—
    And that wasn’t her face peering out from the shadows, no.
    Blessedly, not Peter’s either. Just for a moment the world had faltered again, she’d been afraid.
    Not a face at all, nothing peering. She saw a blankness, a pale blur, and thought the mirror somehow fundamentally broken, its silver fogged, as unreflective as the wash-water.
    Until she understood that it was turning , that pallid wash of light. It was not quite featureless, and she could see it spin within the glass. Spin and rise, as though it reached to engulf her.
    Or no, she must be spinning as she fell because now she was falling into it. Even standing entirely still in her room here, she could feel the sudden chill, the damp as it soaked her through and through. She could feel the sick giddy spinning, even while she felt the utter solidity of the furniture beneath her hands, the floor beneath her feet.
    And now she had fallen entirely through the cloud and there was the land below her, the patchwork fields of England that he loved even as he plunged towards them, and she could feel the weight of the parachute on his back and the stubborn treachery in his hand as it didn’t and didn’t and didn’t pull the ripcord, as he fell and fell and