The Crimson Rooms Read Online Free PDF Page A

them up for a bit, I could get work. Nights. Anything.”
    “Is your husband alive, Mrs. Marchant?”
    Mirthless laugh. “Gone to sea.”
    “Does he send you money?”
    This, apparently, was an inappropriate question. The mug went flying across the cell, hit the wall, ricocheted against Mrs. Marchant’s foot, and was given a kick for good measure.
    I sprang up; the jailer picked up the mug, ushered me out, and slammed the door behind us. “That’s quite enough for one day,” he said.

Three

    I t was six-thirty before I reached home in Clivedon Hall Gardens, but my step slowed when I came to our railings where the Monday smell of reheated roast crept up from the basement. As on every other evening, I climbed the steps reluctantly and my hand faltered as I inserted the key in the lock. And yes, here it came, the familiar tremor of apprehension because now, as always, would begin the series of events that had brought the telegram telling us James was dead.

    On November 21, 1917, I arrived home just after half past seven, chilled by freezing smog and sore-eyed from too much close reading at the censorship office. I stuffed my gloves in a pocket, hung my hat and coat on the stand, gave James’s panama a flick for good luck, and threw open the drawing room door. Grandmother urged me to sit by the fire and Mother poured tea as they plied me with questions about my journey and workmates, taking care not to delve further; my task of reading hundreds of postcards a day was grindingly humdrum but they were impressed because it was top secret. Mother said she had been busy at the church hall, packing relief parcels for war widows and orphans. She was wearing a gauzy evening blouse under a long, bottle-green cardigan knitted by Grandmother, whose sight was much better in those days, and fastened at the bosom by two iridescent mother-of-pearl buttons.
    We were fragile still from the news a month ago that James had been injured, and we treated each other with great care as if we were all convalescing from a dangerous illness. There was a slight air of self-congratulation among us, because we had come safely through a crisis and thought we had behaved well. At one point, we’d been informed that James’s injuries were so severe he would be sent home, then that he was being treated in a military hospital and would soon return to the front. All in all, it has been a tumultuous time, but we had ended by convincing ourselves that he was now immune from harm. Surely nobody could have two brushes with death in quick succession?
    I leaned toward the fire, took hold of the toasting fork, and wondered if it was too near supper to ring for a couple of slices of bread. My mouth watered at the prospect of buttered toast. There was a knock on the front door.
    I threw down the fork and crossed the drawing room, calling over my shoulder: “I suspect it’s Father, forgotten his key. How many times must we tell him the girls hate being disturbed when they’re in the midst of mashing potatoes . . . ?” Then I was in the hall, my hand was on the latch, and, all unsuspecting, I threw open the door.
    The telegram was succeeded, a couple of weeks later, by a letter from James’s company commander: . . . sad duty to give you details of how Captain Gifford died . . . climbed from the trench in full view of enemy snipers in order to rescue one of his men trapped in deep mud . . . exceptional courage . . . Mentioned in dispatches . . .
    I was not satisfied. The picture was too vague, the choice James had made too extreme. In my mind, I roamed across a sea of mud searching for him, unconvinced that he was dead.
    I wrote letters to everyone I could think of, and in the end got the truth from an officer friend of James, invalided home after Christmas. The story I heard was that one of Gifford’s men, or rather a boy not yet eighteen, had been wounded on no-man’s-land and was crying out. It was a frosty night and therefore murderously clear, but in the