House of Doors by Chaz Brenchley Read Free Book Online Page B

leading up – the East Staircase, she supposed they would call that – and doors in all directions.
    They couldn’t conceivably be short of space in this enormous house, and yet they had chosen to lay this hallway with trestle tables and eat their meals here. She would have called it the staff canteen, except that some of these men were very clearly not staff. The rowdy ones, for example: some in uniform of one description or another, uniform and dressings, some in dressing gowns and slippers. Those were surely patients.
    She might have called it a dining hall, then, set aside for walking wounded – and she might have been casting about already for a glimpse of Bed Thirty-Four, young Lochinvar, young Tolchard – except that some of these, men and women both, most certainly were staff. There was Matron herself, presiding at one of the tables. Presiding over dressing gowns and uniforms together, all mixed ad hoc; and some of those uniforms were nurses, some orderlies, some officers. Ruth was confused already, even before her eyes were drawn again to the rowdy congregation around the piano.
    A piano, standing at the heart of all this noise. And a congregation, a singing congregation, half of them with pint mugs in their hands. Doing that thing that men do, wrapping their hands around the body of the glass rather than use the handle.
    The other half couldn’t manage to hold theirs, by the handle or otherwise. Their drinks were lined up on the piano top, with paper straws.
    Two men shared a bench at the piano. She could barely see through the packed bodies, but they weren’t playing a four-handed melody. She thought perhaps they played one hand each.
    She thought she knew where Bed Thirty-Four might be found, if she cared to push her way through the crowd.
    There was no question of that. Among the singing congregation, one voice in the multitude, a man in an overcoat between the dressing gowns and the blue serge: that was Aesculapius. Major Dorian , she reminded herself sternly. Already she thought he had noticed her. Indeed, he was tilting his mug towards her in a greeting, in a toast.
    She ignored him magnificently, stalking over to Matron’s table to ask where she should sit.
    â€˜Why, here today, Sister. With me,’ and the short woman reached out to touch an empty chair on her left. ‘Another day, you’ll take a table of your own; another again, you’ll move around. You’ll find us  . . . not so much informal as irregular. In many ways. One day you may even join the choir,’ with a nod towards the piano, where those two invisible hands were breaking down catastrophically over Greensleeves in waltz time. ‘Today, though, I thought you’d likely have questions, and I’m your best hope of an answer.’
    Meaning I want a closer look at you, young woman, I want to see what Aesculapius has sent me. Ruth wasn’t fooled for a moment.
    Still, she did indeed have a flood of questions, all dammed up. Better to loose them than turn inward once again, towards that sucking void at the heart of her. Far better, so long as Major Dorian had his eye on her. Beer or no beer.
    She opened her mouth, then, to ask the first of them, and—
    â€˜No shop!’ It was a curious parrot-squawk of a cry, rather terrible, and it came from the man sitting opposite her. Half the skin of his face was drawn pale and sheer, like greasy silk, in brutal contrast to the vivid colour of the other half. She thought one eye was glass. It was as though he wore a demi-mask, as though he could be two men in one, depending which way he was facing.
    The voice suited neither one. Its clarity was almost obscene, given how far it was from human. Birds, she thought, should not have voices; certainly should not gift them to men in their extremity.
    â€˜Squadron Leader Jones,’ Matron introduced him, trying perhaps to quell him at the same time.
    If so, it was a hopeless endeavour.