'Before what?' I asked.
She hesitated. Then she said, 'Before my mother was killed.'
I thrust the letter at her. 'Read it,' I said.
'No,' she answered quickly. 'No, I don't want to.'
'Read it,' I repeated.
But she stood up, wrenching at her arm. 'No,' she said. Her breasts were heaving in agitation. How perverse are a man's reactions. In that moment of all moments my mind could wander to admiration of her breasts as she stooped to free her wrist from my grip. The candle fell to the floor, flared for an instant and then extinguished itself. In the darkness I heard the skin of her bare feet on the floorboards. Then the door opened and closed and I was left alone in the darkness of that room. A flicker of far-off lightning showed me the sloping ceiling and the washstand like a lone sentinel against the crude flower pattern of the wallpaper. The bars of the window leapt into sight with the lightning. Then darkness again and I lay there, cold and numb, with my mother's letter in my hand.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Mermaid Gallery
When I woke it was light. I got out of bed and went over to the window. A grey mist was swirling up from the sea, blotting out everything but the tumbled ruin of the mine buildings that stood like wraiths amid the debris of the mine. It was on this scene of desolation that my mother had looked for a whole year. The bars and the mist — no wonder she had been driven to suicide. I shuddered and, turning to get my clothes, saw her letter crumpled among the blankets of the bed. I picked it up and hurried into my clothes. I wanted to get out of that room. I wanted to get away from Cripples' Ease. And yet there were so many questions to be answered. Why had she been shut away up here? They say I am not responsible for my actions now. Was she really mad? It was a horrible thought — as horrible as the girl's dread of saying anything. What was it that Friar had said? My mind shied from the thought of it and I went down the bare staircase into the silent house.
It was a quarter past eight by the grandfather clock in the hall. The girl was not in the kitchen. The old woman looked up at me curiously over a plate of porridge. I went through the scullery and the stables to the men's quarters. The room was empty and cold. I looked through the door beyond. It contained two Army pattern iron beds. The bed clothes were flung back. There was nobody there. I went out into the yard. The mist blanketed everything, deadening the sound of my boots on the cobbles. It was dank and chill.