He put his hand on the doorknob. “Just don’t vomit. If you do, I have to tell her.” He opened the door.
It was the largest, most modern bathroom I’d ever seen, and if it didn’t have a vile sort of black mold sprayed over it, I’d have thought it beautiful. A claw-foot tub dominated one corner; in the other was a sink, elaborately styled, and a toilet. In an oval mirror mounted on the wall, set in a gold-painted frame, I could see a matching footbath on the facing side of the room. Tiles of pristine white set in a diamond pattern covered the floor, and smaller tiles hand-painted with blue flowers decorated the walls. Over it all, above the bathtub, was a high window, opaque with blue-and-white stained glass.
They had put the hose down the drain in the bathtub; most of the mess was concentrated there. Something was spattered on the walls, black and dripping over the pretty hand-painted blue. It seeped from the edge of the bathtub and pooled on the floor, running between the tiles. The stench was rotten. As I stood in the doorway, a black drop disengaged itself from the curled edge of the tub and landed on the floor with a fat plip.
I put a hand over my mouth. “How did they manage to do this?”
“A hose has two ends, doesn’t it?” said Paulus. “What came up one end came out the other. They tried to put it in a bucket, but you can see it didn’t work very well.”
“But what is it?”
“Buggered if I know. Something dead, most like, as I said. It made a sound coming up— Well, I’ve put the soap in the bucket. Just do the best you can.”
I couldn’t even nod.
“I’ll be outside the door,” he added before he left. “I’m needed in the kitchen, but I can stay a few minutes. In case Creeton comes back.”
Then Paulus was gone, and I was alone. I filled the bucket in the sink, turning the pretty china taps. I soaped the mop and began to clean, my eyes watering from the smell. I started on the floor, but the black stuff smeared and wouldn’t come off. I scrubbed harder, dousing with more soap and water. It was definitely some kind of disgusting mold, thick and viscous, blackening the grout. Suddenly I was thirteen again, cleaning my father’s vomit from the floor of our rancid old flat, my stomach heaving at the sour smell, sweat dripping from my forehead into the mess, trying not to clatter the brush against the bucket, trying not to make any sound as he slept in the next room. Please, please, don’t let him wake up. Please—
There was a sound in the wall.
I stopped. It came again—a low groan from deep in the building, far off and down below. Somewhere, something clanged against a metal pipe with a hollow sound. I’d been at Portis House for three days, and I’d never heard anything like it.
I stood frozen, half bent over my mop, cold sweat on my temples, staring at the wall.
It wasn’t a precise, mechanical sound; the groan came and went, now closer, now seeming farther away, like breathing. The clangs came irregularly, and then came a low ticking, as of something dripping in rhythm. It sounded for a while—tick, tap, tick at perfect intervals—and stopped.
“Paulus?” I said.
My breath came hard in my chest. It was just the house, of course—the walls settling, water coming from somewhere in the roof. It was a big place, and there were bound to be sounds. The groan came again, and I pressed my eyes shut. For some reason, the thought I’d just had came to my mind again. Please, please, don’t let him wake up . . .
The noise eased off and quiet fell again. I dunked the mop into the bucket and scrubbed with renewed vigor. The sooner I got out of this horrible, solitary bathroom, the better.
As I finished the floor, my arms shaking with strain, there was a single far-off clang. I jumped as if someone had touched me. Behind me the toilet gurgled and I nearly dropped the mop handle, grasping it again at the last second and leaning on it like an old woman, my heart pounding. The sound from the toilet was thick and sucking. I kept my back to it and imagined turning around to look, seeing black mold in there instead of water. I deliberately walked away and twisted the taps on the bathtub, letting the gush of water drown out the sound.
Leave. Just get out of here.
And tell Matron I couldn’t do it? No. I can’t. I needed this job. Needed it. Matron was looking for a reason to dismiss me. She’s told you to clean the bathroom. So stop jumping at sounds and bloody well clean it.
It took another half hour with a scrub brush to clean the bathtub, and by the time I finished, I was wet with sweat, tendrils of hair coming from my braids. My sleeves—even though I wore them at the shorter, elbow length, as always—were edged in black at the cuffs, and I had wet smears on the chest and front of my apron. My arms shook with the strain of scrubbing, and I could smell myself, the rotten smell of the mold mixed with the pungent odor of sweat.
But the lav was clean. I dropped the brush in the empty bucket and ran my forearm over my eyes. I suddenly felt like weeping. Nothing was worth this—nothing. This humiliation, this disgusting work under a woman determined to break me. I’d sold my pride, bartered my soul for a job. But what did it matter? Who cared about the pride and the soul of one stupid girl? I didn’t even have enough train fare to leave.
In the wall behind me, the groaning started again, far off and low. I gripped the bucket and raced for the door, away from that horrible sound that seemed to crawl up my spine, to grip my brain. I had to get out, get out. Don’t let him wake up, don’t let him wake up, don’t let him—
Paulus Vries was not outside the door. He’d had to go back to the kitchen, leaving me alone in there, if he’d ever stayed at all. I closed the door behind me and set down the bucket, the sweat on my body and neck icy cold. My head throbbed and I looked around the dim corridor, part of me surprised to find I wasn’t actually in our old flat, dizzy with exhaustion from a sleepless night. I was only in the east wing of Portis House, in a hallway lined with the men’s bedroom doors, quiet now as all the patients were down in the common room, the last of the twilight fading into darkness. I could no longer hear sounds in the walls; but whether they’d stopped, or I could just no longer hear them, I had no idea.
My eyes burned with some unnameable emotion, and my legs felt weak. I was still standing there, trying to gather the strength to take a single step forward, when someone came toward me down the hall. It was a heavy, skirted silhouette—Nina, I already knew from the slouch of the shoulders.
Her doughy face looked alarmed, her eyes frazzled behind her glasses. “Kitty—for God’s sake. Where have you been?”
My voice croaked. “Matron’s orders.”
She glanced down at the bucket and the blackened mop. “Oh. Well, she could have picked a better time, I have to say. West’s legs are hurting him, one of the others needs a headache powder, and I’ve just realized I never collected the supper dishes from Patient Sixteen. If the kitchen tells Matron, she’ll kill me.”
“It’s all right,” I heard myself say, as if from far away. “I’m finished now. I’ll get the supper dishes for you.” When Nina paused, her expression uncertain, I pushed on. “Don’t worry. I have clearance. Boney just told me tonight.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course. You go get the headache powder. I’ll collect the dishes and bring them down.”
“I suppose that works. It’s the fourth door to the right.” She turned and hurried back the way she had come.
I approached Patient Sixteen’s closed door, my bones aching and a shrill, painful sort of excitement in my spine. I walked in without knocking.
The room was dim and quiet. A single lamp burned on a table next to a narrow bed, but the bed was empty. My gaze traveled over the washbasin, the dressing table, and the single chair. These were also empty in the reflected light, tidy and uncluttered but for a set of dishes stacked on the dressing table. I blinked, my eyes becoming accustomed to the dark.
“You should have knocked,” said a voice.
Unlike the other men’s rooms, this one had a large window, dark now, looking out over the vista of trees and marshes behind Portis House. I could see the low humps of soft hills rolling away into blackness that must be the ocean.
The curtains were tied back from the window, framing a narrow alcove. A man sat there, visible only in silhouette, his knees drawn up, looking out the window at the darkness.
The sound of the voice jolted me from my strange, exhausted reverie. It was familiar in some impossible way, the sound resonating in my brain like an itch. “I came for your dishes,” I said.
“Did you?” Again, the familiarity stunned me; I tried to place the voice. He sounded as if he cared not at all. “I left them on the dressing table.” He glanced at me only briefly, his face in shadow, before turning back to the window.
I took a step into the room. From the shape of him, he looked like a normal man—all legs and arms present, no fits or shakes. His wrists were draped over his drawn-up knees, his back pressed to the wall of the window seat. I saw an outline of hair, tidy and short. His body was big but lithe, curled with the thoughtless ease of an athlete, his large bare feet on the ledge. I knew I had been picturing some kind of monster—deformed, perhaps, unrecognizable, like the ones Ally had described. Better off dead, she’d said of them.
But now I knew that made no sense. No patient would require clearance for a set of injuries, no matter how awful. A confidential case, Boney had said. It was something to do, then, with the man himself.
Someone important. Someone secret. Someone no one was supposed to know was here, in a madhouse. And I knew that voice.
He was still looking out the window; he seemed to have forgotten me, lost in whatever he was contemplating. I walked to the dressing table and looked at the tray. He had arranged the emptied dishes in a tidy stack, centered for easy balance, the cup placed in the middle of the empty bowl. Considerate, then. I couldn’t ask him who he was, why he was here. Once Matron found out what I’d done, how I’d lied and broken the rules, I’d never be allowed in this room again. But there was nothing to do but obey, take away the dishes like the servant I was, and leave.
I had raised my hands, nearly touched the edges of the tray, when he spoke again.
“Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
I looked up. He had turned toward me now, squaring his shoulders in my direction. He slid one elbow over and crooked it on his knee, the better to see me. At this angle the lamplight fell more fully on his face; I saw dark eyes, high cheekbones, and a sharp, shadowed jaw. His eyes on me were kind, and as I watched, he tried a tentative smile on his lips, as if it were costing him a great effort.
I dropped my hands. He must have heard my intake of breath, for his smile slowly faded.
“My God,” I said, “it’s you.”
The smile nearly disappeared, just the last remnants of it touching the corners of his mouth. His eyes narrowed and he looked at me more closely.
I walked toward him, staring at his face. It was all there now, every one of his features burned into my brain, familiar from the dozens of times I’d seen them everywhere—the magazines, the newspapers, the newsreels. His voice familiar from the one unforgettable time I’d heard it. The dark curling hair, the blue eyes under winged brows, the high cheekbones, the elegant jaw now covered in second-day stubble. Though I’d never seen him close up and in person, I could see now that the photographs, the films that made him look so handsome to hundreds of poor, stupid factory girls like me—none of them had lied.
“Oh, God,” I said, unable to help myself, “you’re Jack Yates.”