The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman Read Free Book Online

together, laid it on the bed beside him, and cut a small piece of brown gum from a lump in the cupboard.
    "Lie down," she said. "It sends you off quick, now. You gotta lie down else you'll fall."
    He did as the little girl said, stretching out languorously on his side. The chilly gray light of the fading afternoon, struggling through the grime on the tiny window, gave the scene the somber color of a steel engraving. An insect crawled lethargically across the greasy pillow as Adelaide applied a lighted match to the lump of opium. She passed the drug, transfixed on a pin, to and fro across the flame until it began to bubble and the fumes leaked outward. Bedwell sucked at the mouthpiece, and as Adelaide held the opium above the bowl, the sweet, heady smoke was dragged into the pipe.
    When it had stopped smoking, she lit another match and repeated the process. She hated it. She hated what it did to him, because it made her think that under every human face there was the face of a staring, dribbling, helpless idiot.
    "More," he mumbled.
    "There ain't no more," she whispered.

    "Come on, Adelaide," he whined. "More."
    "One more, then."
    Again she struck a match; again the opium bubbled and fumed. The smoke poured into the bowl like a river disappearing underground. Adelaide shook out the match and dropped it with its fellows on the floor.
    He breathed a long sigh. The fumes were thick in the room now, making her feel dizzy.
    "D'you know, I haven't got the strength to get up and leave?" he said.
    "No, sir," she whispered.
    A strange thing happened to his voice when he was in the opium trance: it lost the rough sailor's edge and became refined and even gentle.
    "I think about it, though. Day and night. Oh, Adelaide .. . the Seven Blessings! No, no! You fiends—devils— leave me—"
    He was starting to rave. Adelaide sat as far away from him as she could; she dared not leave, for fear Mrs. Holland would ask her what the gentleman had said, and yet she feared to stay, for his words brought nightmares to her. The Seven Blessings—this phrase had come twice lately, and each time with terror.
    He stopped in midsentence. Suddenly his expression changed and became lucid and confiding.
    "Lockhart," he said. "I remember now. Adelaide, are you there?"
    "Yessir," she whispered.
    "Try to remember something for me—^will you?"
    "Yessir."
    "A man called Lockhart . . . asked me to find his daughter. A girl called Sally. I've got a message for her. Very important. . . . Could you find her for me?"

    "I dunno, sir."
    "London's a big place. Perhaps you couldn't."
    "I could try, sir."
    "Good girl. Oh, dear God, what am I doing?" he went on helplessly. "Look at me. As weak as a baby. . . . What would my brother say?"
    "You got a brother, sir?"
    The light had almost gone now; she looked like a mother by the bed of her sick child, seen through the distorting haze of opium. She reached across and mopped his face with the filthy sheet, and he seized her hand gratefully.
    "A fine man," he mumbled. "My twin. Identical. The same body, but his spirit's all light, Adelaide, while mine's corruption and darkness. He's a clergyman. Nicholas. The Reverend Nicholas Bedwell. . . . Have you any brothers or sisters?"
    "No, sir. I ain't got any."
    "Your mother alive? Your father?"
    "I ain't got a mother. I got a father, though. He's a recruiting sergeant."
    This was a lie. Adelaide's father had been anonymous even to her mother, who herself had vanished a fortnight after the birth; but Adelaide had invented a father, and formed him in the image of the most splendid and gallant men her stunted life had ever seen. One of these swaggering figures, jaunty little pillbox hat cocked, glass in hand, had once winked at her as he stood with his fellows outside a public house and laughed loudly at some coarse jest. She hadn't heard the jest. All she had retained was an image of heroic male splendor falling suddenly into her dark little life like a shaft of sunlight. That wink