Dark Companions Read Online Free PDF

her completely; she wished she could be left alone with her music. But that was not to be, not for two years. There was the medicine bottle, incarnating her mother’s continued influence in the house. Taking medicine for a cold was a sign of weakness, in Alma’s opinion. But her chest hurt terribly when she coughed; after all, her mother wasn’t imposing it on her, if she took it that was her own decision. She measured a spoonful and gulped it down. Then she padded determinedly through the hall, past the living-room (her father’s desk reflected in one mirror), the dining room (her mother’s flower arrangements preserved under glass in another), and upstairs, past her mother’s Victorian valentines framed above the ornate banister. Now, she ordered herself, to bed, and another chapter of Victimes de Devoir before Maureen arrived. She’d never make the Brichester French Circle if she carried on like this.
    But as soon as she climbed into bed, trying to preserve its bag of warmth, she was troubled by something she remembered having seen. In the hall—what had been wrong? She caught it: as she’d mounted the stairs she’d seen a shape in the hall mirror. Maureen’s coat hanging on the coat stand—but Maureen wasn’t here. Certainly something pale had stood against the front-door panes. About to investigate, she addressed herself: the house was empty, there could be nothing there. All right, she’d asked Maureen to check the story of the house in the library’s files of the Brichester Herald— butthat didn’t mean she believed the hints she’d heard in the corner shop that day, before her mother had intervened with “Now, Alma, don’t upset yourself” and to the shopkeeper: “Haunted, indeed! I’m afraid we grew out of that sort of thing in Severnford!” If she had seemed to glimpse a figure in the hall it merely meant she was delirious. She’d asked Maureen to check purely because she wanted to face up to the house, to come to terms with it. She was determined to stop thinking of her room as her refuge, where she was protected by her music. Before she left the house she wanted to make it a step towards maturity.
    The darkness shifted on the landing. Tired eyes, she explained—yet again her room enfolded her. She reached out and removed her flute from its case; she admired its length, its shine, the perfection of its measurements as they fitted to her fingers. She couldn’t play it now—each time she tried she coughed—but it seemed charged with beauty. Her appreciation over, she laid the instrument to rest in its long black box.
    “You retreat into your room and your music.” Peter had said that, but he’d been speaking of a retreat from Hiroshima, from the conditions in Lower Brichester, from all the horrid things he’d insisted she confront. That was over, she said quickly, and the house was empty. Yet her eyes strayed from Victimes de Devoir.
    Footsteps on the stairs again. This time she recognised Maureen’s. The others—which she hadn’t heard, of course—had been indeterminate, even sexless. She thought she’d ask Maureen whether she’d left her coat in the hall; she might have entered while Alma had slept, with the key she’d borrowed. The door opened and the panel of sunlight fled, darkening the room. No, thought Alma; to inquire into possible delusions would be an admission of weakness.
    Maureen dropped her carrier and sneezed. “I think I’ve got your cold,” she said indistinctly.
    “Oh dear.” Alma’s mood had darkened with the room, with her decision not to speak. She searched for conversation in which to lose herself. “Have you heard yet when you’re going to library school?” she asked.
    “It’s not settled yet. I don’t know, the idea of a spinster career is beginning to depress me. I’m glad you’re not faced with that.”
    “You shouldn’t brood,” Alma advised, restlessly stacking her books on the bedspread.
    Maureen examined the titles. “Victimes de