Her whole life felt like a prison, and she slumped back on the edge of her bed as if she were condemned.
When the knock came on her door, her heart filled with dread. Was it Dr. Barnes, come to confront her about her crime? She didn’t answer, but when the knock came again, she said, “You may come in.”
The door opened only halfway, and Michael, his hood thrown back, put his head in. “Permission to visit?” he said, and Eleanor replied, “Permission granted, sir.” She felt like she’d been given a reprieve. “But I’m afraid there’s little I can offer you,” she said, “besides a chair.”
“I’ll take it,” Michael said, turning the chair around and straddling it. His cumbersome down coat hung down on either side, and given the size of the room, he was only a few feet away from her—so close, in fact, that she could feel the bracingly cold air radiating from his coat and boots. Oh, how she longed to be free.
Michael took a few seconds to unzip his coat and collect his own thoughts. It was always awkward enough, talking to someone under such bizarre circumstances as these, but it was even stranger in light of that harrowingly erotic dream he’d had about her. Even now, it was a little difficult to look her in the eye; the nightmare had seemed all too real.
He was also afraid that their close proximity—the sick bay was so small—was making her self-conscious.
Above the stiff collar of her blue dress, he could see the vein pulsing in her neck. She was looking down at her hands, crossed in her lap; he discreetly glanced at her fingers, but there was no wedding band.
“I saw you outside,” she said, “with the bird.”
“That’s Ollie,” he said. “Named after another orphan, Oliver Twist.”
“You are familiar with the books of Mr. Dickens?” she asked in amazement.
“To tell you the truth, I’ve never read it,” Michael confessed. “But I’ve seen the movie.”
Now she looked blank again. And why not, he thought…the movie?
“My father was quite radical in his ideas,” she continued. “He allowed me to attend school as often as possible, and even frequent the parsonage, where there was a library.”
Her eyes, he thought, were as green and glistening as spruce needles after a rainfall.
“They must have had two hundred books there,” she boasted.
What, he wondered, would she make of a Barnes and Noble?
“I so wanted to join you out there,” she said, with a touch of sadness.
“Where?”
“When you were feeding Ollie.”
He was about to ask her why she hadn’t when he remembered that she was being kept a virtual prisoner. Her nervous pallor showed it. He surveyed the room, but there wasn’t so much as a book or magazine here.
“Maybe tonight, late, we can sneak you into the rec hall,” he said, “for another piano recital.”
“I would like that,” she said, but with less enthusiasm than he expected.
“What else would you like?” he said. “For one thing, I can definitely round up some decent reading material for you.”
She hesitated, but then, leaning an inch or two forward, she said, “Shall I tell you what I would really like? What I would give anything for?”
He waited…afraid, to his own surprise, that it might have to do with Sinclair. How long could he keep that a secret?
“I should like to walk outside—no matter how cold it is—and hold my face up to the sun. I had only a taste of it on my visit to the whaling station. More than anything, I want to see the sun, and feel it on my face again.”
“Sun we’ve got,” Michael admitted, “but it isn’t exactly warm.”
“I know,” she said. “And isn’t that strange? We’ve come to a place where the sun never sets, but it offers so little in the way of warmth.”
Michael sat very still, considering what she had said, and rolling over in his mind an outlandish idea that had just occurred to him. The consequences, if he got caught, would be bad; Murphy would skin him alive. But the thought of it so thrilled him—what, he wondered, would Eleanor make of it?—that he couldn’t resist.
“If I said I could give you what you’re asking for,” he said, cautiously, “would you agree to follow my instructions to the letter?”
Eleanor looked puzzled. “You can smuggle me outside?”
“That part’s easy.”
“And make the sun shine hot, even in a place like this?”
Michael nodded. “You know what? I can.” He’d been wondering what kind of Christmas present he could give her the next day…now he knew.
“So?” Charlotte said, looking into the aquarium tank, where several dead fish floated in various compartments. “You’ve got some dead fish.”