House of Doors Read Online Free PDF Page A

didn’t know what to call him, quite. His nickname was for his friends, his surname was for his superiors, his rank would be absurd. His bed number – well, if that was truly the custom here, she could fall in with it, but not yet. Not until she knew everyone else’s number too. For now she elided the difficulty with a smile.
    He knew, she thought. And did nothing to help her out, because he was young and wicked, amused, a boy: hurt in adult games too hard for him, but still a boy beneath.
    Besides, if he offered a solution it would be a callous one. Call me Mikey, as my mother does. She was no one’s mother, and never would be now. And he wouldn’t know, wouldn’t think, wouldn’t understand the hurt. Being a boy, and so forth.
    So, no. Let it stand, for now. She’d find her answer from the other nurses. She took a step towards the rear of the car, but he blocked her. ‘Never mind your case, one of us will take that up for you later.’
    â€˜No, no, I should—’
    â€˜What you should do,’ he said firmly, taking her arm in his, ‘is come with me to meet the old man. Report in. Salute and so forth. Do nurses salute? I don’t know, but I’m sure you must  . . .’
    He was talking nonsense but his intent was nothing but practical, as he led her up two steps to the door. She went along because again she didn’t have the option.
    It was a plain plank door, unpainted and possibly as old as the house it inhabited. Not iron-bound or studded, nothing grand. This was a servants’ way to come and go. Servants and children, perhaps, visiting the kitchens on a detour between nursery and stable. Not for family in the proper sense, not when they were being proper. These days perhaps it was a door for staff, and not perhaps for patients.
    There was no handle and no escutcheon, only a keyhole deeply recessed, a cavity she could have slid three fingers into, three with ease. She wondered briefly how Tolchard meant to open it, with his one good hand so solidly clasping her elbow; then she saw the scuff marks and streaks of mud that adorned its lower planking and knew, even before he lifted his foot to kick it wide.
    That seemed disrespectful, both to the door and to the house it guarded. She lifted her gaze, not wanting to watch. Lifted her chin too, stubborn in the face of defeat, fighting back a wave of dull exhaustion with the world. Six more months, just six months. My promise and no more.
    She couldn’t remember now why she’d ever made that promise. All she could see in front of her was the door, a flat barrier, dark and unpromising, unadorned. It seemed appropriate.
    Then her eyes found forms within the ancient wood: a knot here, a whorl of grain there, a scar from some injury long ago. They looked almost like eyes and a mouth; that was almost a face beneath the varnish of centuries.
    It was a face, of course. It was Peter’s face, emerging from the wood just at her own height as it properly ought to be, she was tall for a woman and he not for a man.
    His face, wreathed in the smoke of his disaster, screaming.
    Tolchard kicked the door open and she saw Peter fall away from her, falling and falling.
    Tolchard stepped forward and took her with him, and she felt herself follow Peter, falling and falling.

TWO
    â€˜ W ell,’ a voice said, ‘I’ve known young women come fainting across my threshold before this, but I don’t expect to find it in my nurses.’
    She had, of course, expected Aesculapius.
    This was someone else altogether. A burly man, balding, with a luxuriant silver moustache to compensate. His voice rumbled like a cannonball in a barrel; his hands were huge and unexpectedly subtle. She could feel the strength in them as he lifted her up, the delicacy with which he checked her pulse.
    â€˜Feeling better?’
    â€˜Ye–yes  . . .’
    He eased her back against something firm but yielding, the