Heap House by Edward Carey

Author:Edward Carey [Carey, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Fantasy, Young Adult, Contemporary, Fiction
ISBN: 9781468309539
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
Published: 2013-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Infirmary

My hearing was coming back though the rumbling still thundered on in my head, but ever a little less and a little less. I could not hear Robert Burrington, I kept looking behind me for the clanking of that thing of things, but it had not come yet, but soon, I thought, surely soon it would. I must return the door handle Alice Higgs to Aunt Rosamud. It had all started with the door handle, perhaps it might stop there too. That once I had delivered the handle back where it belonged somehow the whole upturning of Heap House might stop, that all the pieces of Robert Burrington might disperse, that everything might settle down once more, and that, most of all, in the night I might see Lucy Pennant. And so, the Infirmary.

I could not march into the Infirmary and loudly announce myself, this must be done carefully and quietly. Nothing could be achieved until the matron Iremonger, a great white handkerchief upon her head, was away from the desk in the entranceway. She sat there with seven watches pinned upside down upon her bosom. I waited. Come on, come on, always looking back for Robert Burrington. Come on, come on. At last some sickened Iremonger hollered out, and away the matron went, her footwear clattering upon the floor tiles. Then I was in the Infirmary and seeking out Aunt Rosamud.

The name of the patient within each chamber was posted upon each of the doors and so I hoped my aunt should very soon be found. She was not down the first corridor I crept, nor yet the second, on the third all was much busier and I had to shelter a while behind a great basket of filthy linen. There were so many names calling out upon that floor, some groaning, some moaning, some in complaint, some in whispers, some hurt, some crying, it took me a time to isolate them, for my hearing to come back, for the thudding to cease, but then at last, among others, I caught the words, ‘Geraldine Whitehead!’

Uncle Idwid was just beyond the door with the greatest commotion inside it. But that was not all, and that was not least, because then I caught another name amongst the jumble of names and that name was slow and serious, sharp and spiteful, ‘Jack Pike.’

Grandfather was within. Grandfather himself was here though Grandfather should be in the city by now. Only then did I understand that for the first time in my life I had not heard the train leaving that morning.

Grandfather himself and his portable cuspidor Jack Pike and also Uncle Idwid and his nose tongs Geraldine Whitehead were all four parked together beyond the door just before me. And then I heard the shrieking, an awful howling, a painful bellowing: screech, scratch, terrible bellow. And the worst was the name it called out in its absolute misery, ‘Percy Detmold! Percy Detmold! Percy Detmold!’

What were they doing to poor Percy Detmold, whoever

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