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

I am a madwoman in a closed dress. I cannot do this. I must leave here. ‘I am sorry, Mamma. I will do it now.’

Mamma sighs. ‘I will do it. At least that way we know there will be no waste of matches.’

She takes a cup of tea and a plate of buttered toast up to Papa. He is sitting up in bed with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, reading what would appear to be a novel.

‘Thank you, Princess Al. And happy Christmas! She’s let you light a fire, has she? Maybe I’ll come down.’

She sets the tray on the bedside table, beside Papa’s water glass and spectacles. ‘Mamma was chilled when she came in from church. Will you join us, Papa? I have made a steak pudding for lunch. With oysters.’

She dared not buy a joint of beef, even with her own money. Tom’s own money. But she hoped Papa would enjoy the oysters.

‘In a while, Princess Al. You are getting as bad as your mother. Let me drink my tea in peace, on Christmas morning.’

Papa remaining in bed, Mamma takes to the drawing room with a pile of letters to answer. The morning services today will be overrun with ill-disciplined children, but she intends to attend Evensong at five and she expects Ally to accompany her. Meanwhile, since Ally appears to have nothing better to do, she might clean the pantry. Mamma has had more pressing matters to which to attend for some weeks. She closes the door behind her. Ally wanders into the kitchen, cold even in her wool shawl with the range lit. She has been growing thinner here. She must clean the pantry. Hot soapy water and clean rags. While there is hot water, she will clean the lavatory properly and wash the floors. There will be plenty of time while the puddings steam. She does not know if Mamma has noticed the puddings. You take us for railway labourers, Alethea. Did you not think a lighter dish more fitting for those of such sedentary habits? I did not believe I had brought you up to be always thinking of your stomach in this way. Papa used to invite Aubrey for Christmas lunch, and Aubrey used to bring a plum pudding already steamed by his daily housekeeper and a box of candied fruits for Ally and May. Such sugary trash as only infantile or vitiated appetites could stomach, to rot the teeth and ruin the digestion for more wholesome fare. Mamma, May said in their bedroom later, would have the whole world live on bread and water if she could. Mamma cannot be content while another person is happy. I am afraid my sister is just such a difficult woman as our mother was, says Aunt Mary, and living with her must be a test of anyone’s health and strength. I do not wonder she considers you fragile. But May was not fragile, Ally thinks, May was strong. So strong she went away and drowned.

Ally is still standing in the kitchen.

Hot soapy water, she thinks. The pantry. The lavatory and the puddings.

I do not know how you can bear to stand about in that manner, Alethea, idling your time away when there is such work to be done!

The clock ticks. A coal falls in the range.

What, you will not exert yourself even now?

Dearest Ally, says Aunt Mary, it is sad that you who brave such opposition from the most powerful men in your profession yet quail at Elizabeth’s reproaches. Can you find no strength to brook her, darling? Are you yet so frightened?

There is ringing in her ears, like the reverberation of a distant bell. Like an alarm.

Gracious me, Al, says May, you’re such a coward. Just tell her she can’t have a prize-winning doctor clean her pantry on Christmas Day and go do something else. Eat something. You’re being ridiculous, no wonder she calls you crazy. It’s a game you play, both of you, following your own mad rules. You let her hurt you, Al. You like it. You keep coming back.

As if not inheriting those rules, not playing that game, did May any good in the end.

The bell is louder, filling her head, an emergency behind her eyes and in her mouth and ears and nose.

* * *

She finds herself upstairs, pushing a few clothes and her medical books into Tom’s valise, and then creeping down again, past the closed door behind which Papa reads in bed and the closed door behind which Mamma writes her letters. She finds herself easing the handle of the front door and then leaving it ajar because that way there is no sound and by the time they realise she’s left the door open she won’t be there any more. She finds herself balancing on the edge of the bottom step to make a long stretch to the flowerbed, swinging the valise to help her leap over the gravel to the soil. The gap in the hedge is visible from the drawing room and she stands on the flowerbed for a while. If Mamma sees her now, sees her running away, if Mamma chases her and catches her—she cannot stand here in the soil.

You are being ridiculous. What extraordinary conduct is this, Alethea? Where, pray, do you think you are going? Today of all days?

She’s not the police, Al, and you’ve committed no crime. She doesn’t own you, you know.

You know you will always have a home here in London with us, Ally. I know something of what it must be like to be brought up by Elizabeth. We shared a room, you know, until she married.

She begins to shake. She has left her gloves hanging from the rack over the range, where Mamma will see that they have silk linings and were expensive. But there is Tom’s letter in her pocket. Dearest Ally, it sometimes seems that I miss you more every day because there is so much here that would interest