Sparrow Falling Read Online Free PDF Page B

but...”
    “I didn’t think they were your type of people,” he said, sitting in one of the red plush chairs that stood in a rigidly maintained order about the blue-and-red Turkey rug. In a glass-fronted cabinet of wood as dark and shiny as treacle stood ranks of crystal glasses, soldiers ready to sally forth on the field of social battle. On the black marble mantle photographs in heavy, bedizened silver frames jostled Chinoiserie vases and cut-crystal candlesticks.
    The curtains were open, but the setting sun just managed to miss this window; sun never quite found its way into this room. All the rich and precious things gleamed in corners like the eyes of animals hiding in burrows, and despite the constant ever-changing flow of maids and skivvies dust gathered in nooks and cast a patina over the crystal, the silver, the polished wood; the chandelier dulled with it, the curtains grew a bloom like mould.
    Stug lifted his chin to stop the collar – heavily starched, and still only slightly wilted at the end of a long day – from digging into the flesh of his neck. “Cora?”
    “Well, no,” she said, shifting one of the picture-frames a little to the left, then pushing it back again. “They’re rather tiresome. But she’s heard of a mesmerist – a most remarkable man, apparently – she thinks he might be able to... well. You know, dear.”
    Stug felt a shudder clench his innards. “Cora. I hope you have not been mentioning our personal affairs to these people?”
    “I hardly needed to,” she said. “She’s in an interesting condition. Again . This will be her fifth.” Cora looked at him, briefly, her face ghostly in the gloom. Even her ringlets seemed drifted with dust; his pretty young wife for a moment a lost, dead thing, like some spirit-photograph set among the frozen pictures on the mantel. “So many children, the littlest is the dearest thing. I don’t know if I can bear it.”
    “Then don’t go,” Stug said, suddenly unable to bear it himself. “If it upsets you so, stay away from them. I don’t approve of this nonsense in any case. Mesmerism! Sheer flummery and fraud. I hear disturbing things about it, Cora, I forbid you to meddle with such stuff. Even if it is harmless, and I’m not convinced of any such thing, it carries the aroma of the sideshow. I don’t want my wife running about with such people.”
    “But Josh...”
    “No, absolutely not. No mesmerism, Cora.”
    She turned away, her shoulders drooping. Stug heaved himself out of the chair and made for the stairs. “I hope cook, at least, is still performing satisfactorily,” he said. “And that she is not going to inflict mutton on us again.”
    “No,” Cora said. “I believe it is a ham, tonight.” Her voice was chilly. No doubt there would be a bill from some obscenely extravagant dressmaker soon. He would pay it, and Cora would not go to a mesmerist.
    He stumped up the stairs to his dressing room, wrenched off the wretched collar and flung it on the floor. He hoped there would be enough maids left to keep the place in order, at least.
    As he changed, he took his watch from his pocket and laid it next to his shaving things. It ticked softly, a sound that should have been reassuring – but it was only another reminder. Time clawed at him with every tick, with the way his hair crept from his scalp, with the loosening of his jowls and the deepening lines beside his mouth. When he shaved, it was harder now, because the skin had loosened and slackened, the stubble hiding in the soft flesh, escaping the razor’s edge. He was not, he considered, a vain man – but he had no desire to look like a thug.
    The watch glowed in the gloom. It was a fat, smooth, glossy thing; Presented to J Stug Esq curled in extravagant letters over the cover, entwined with grape-laden vines. It was a fine watch.
    It should be his son’s. It would be his son’s. He would not permit anything to stand in the way of that.
    Perhaps he should let Cora have