Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss (top ten ebook reader TXT) 📕

She hangs her coat in the cupboard, as she always did. A winter cloak that must be Papa’s is on May’s peg.

‘So, you’ve come back to us?’

‘Just for the winter, Papa. To help with Dr. Henry’s clinic.’

Papa nods. ‘Your mother said so. I don’t recall that you and Dr. Henry were such great friends.’

Mamma used to consult Dr. Henry for Ally’s nervous troubles. He prescribed blistering and hard work, as a medieval physician might have done, although the rest of his practice appeared to be conducted along approximately modern lines. More than once, Papa simply countermanded Dr. Henry’s orders. The child will turn into a calf if she eats so many milk puddings.

‘He always did good work with the poor. He never spared himself.’

Papa sighs. ‘Nor anyone else. Just as you please, Ally. You are surely old enough to do as you will. I was in the studio, my dear, when you arrived, and if you don’t mind I’ll just go back up. Your Mamma expects to be home this evening, I believe.’

‘And Jenny?’ she asks. She has been weakly dreading Jenny, who has known her since infancy and has never been taken in by any pretence of strength or competence. Who knows her a useless and foolish thing.

‘Oh, Mamma pensioned her off last year. Said she’d had a harder life than my coddled imagination could compass and deserved to pass her last years in comfort. She’s living with her sister, I think. Mamma will have the address if you want to visit.’

He hurries up the stairs. She should perhaps have known when he didn’t answer her second ring that Papa was painting, not to be disturbed. But I did write, she thinks, I did give them the time of my train.

The towel in the downstairs lavatory is grimy and soft, and there are stains in the WC. She decides not to try to carry the trunk upstairs and risk banging the banister spindles or the treads. She moves quietly, not to disturb Papa. The door of her room, her room and May’s, is closed and she stands on the landing, her hand on the concentric circles of the doorknob. May’s bed. The pillow on which her hair lay spread every morning, however tightly it was plaited at night. When Ally came to change the sheets or make May’s bed, there was the scent of May, a powdery drift for which she can now remember only the words. She opens the door, and May’s bed is bare and flat, the mattress covered only by a ridged cotton bedspread exactly as it was last time Ally visited. Someone—it can only be Mamma—has left in a glass vase four dark twigs of bronze beech leaves from the tree in the garden. A gesture, a hand lifted in the direction of the cut flowers that would seem to Mamma an intolerable waste of money urgently needed elsewhere. Maybe this time it will be different. On Ally’s bed against the opposite wall, there are folded sheets and the same worn green blanket that was always hers. She is, then, expected. She moves the pile to the table where she used to do her homework and begins to make the bed. The text from the gospel of Matthew is still on the wall: Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth.

The house was always cold, cool even in the height of summer. Ally opens her trunk in the hall and carries up piles of clothes and books until it is light enough for her to take the whole thing. She finds herself putting her possessions back into the trunk instead of the chest of drawers, as if her visit is so short there is no point unpacking. She slides her garnet engagement ring over the first joint of her finger and back down again, making a tiny click in the house’s silence as it rejoins her wedding ring. She wants, anyway, to add the trunk bought for her wedding journey to the furniture of her childhood. Things have changed. She blows on her fingers and rubs her hands. It is not as if she will be here in the house very much. The clinic may at least be heated, and she will be too busy to mope. In the street, the trees are shedding their last leaves, and through the branches she can see the other houses. The children across the road, who used to go out in a carriage with their Mamma or accompanied by a nurse to the park, will be grown up now. She remembers them chattering and skipping along the pavement, dressed in clothes of which May was fiercely envious,. Next door was a banker and his wife; he used to leave early and return late on foot while she seemed rarely to leave the house, although other rich women called in carriages on Thursday afternoons and a maidservant took a lapdog around the block twice a day. It is not as if she is going to be here, in this house or in this room, enough to learn these patterns again.

Ally presses her cold fingertips to her eyelids until she can feel the chill in her eyeballs. What has happened to Mary Vincent now? She is on the back ward, inevitably, perhaps still in isolation. Not restrained, surely Dr. Crosswyn would not authorise such a long period. Although the nurses seem able to use the closed gown at will. In some ways, Ally thinks, it would be a relief to be so tethered and put to bed, to be required to do nothing except remain warm and still for days. That, after all, is the principle of the treatment, inasmuch as there is a principle and it is a treatment. Mamma is right, it will be better for Ally to be stitching cuts and setting bones, treating the contagious diseases of prostitutes and the fevers and infections of slum children.

Darkness is falling. It appears that Papa still resists gaslight. The