The Leper House (A Novella) by Andrew Taylor

Author:Andrew Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008179762
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

7

The strange thing about what happened next was that so much of it didn’t feel strange. It seemed not exactly normal – never that – but natural, in the way that water flowing downhill is natural or the pleasure of eating when you are hungry.

I followed her into the cottage and closed the door. She took off her oilskin and hung it on a peg on the back of the door, leaving it to drip on the floor. Underneath she wore a shabby khaki trench coat, which looked as if it had come from a charity shop, over a grubby white dress.

Not a dress, I realized, as she crouched by the stove a moment later. A nightdress.

She opened the stove door and threw a handful of driftwood inside, followed by a shovelful of coals. There was a kettle on the top of the stove. She lifted it, testing by the weight how much water was in it.

‘It’s quite hot,’ she said. ‘It shouldn’t take long to boil once the fire gets going. Tea?’

‘Yes, please,’ I said.

‘I’m afraid there’s no milk.’ She frowned. ‘Or sugar.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘We could have cocoa. But it’s horrible without milk.’

‘And it’s even worse without sugar,’ I said.

We smiled at each other.

‘Tea, then.’ She glanced at me. ‘Do take your coat off and sit down. Unless you’re too cold.’

I took off the coat and hat and hung them on the empty peg next to hers. She went into the kitchen and came back with a teapot and two cups and saucers on a tray. The china was pretty – Art Deco and very delicate; unexpected in this wreck of a place.

She set down the tray on the table and for the first time seemed to notice the untidiness of the room. While I sat watching from the sofa, she picked up the chair that had fallen over and scooped up handfuls of books and papers from the floor.

‘Can I help?’

‘No.’ She looked up. ‘I’m Sophia, by the way.’

I told her my name. ‘What happened?’

She didn’t answer. She gathered up the rest of the papers and dumped them on the table. She picked up the two blankets. She handed one of them to me.

‘Put it over you,’ she said. ‘It’s so horribly cold. It never gets warm here. Or hardly ever.’

She sat down beside me and wrapped her own blanket around her. She was shivering. We listened to the weather and sea and the fuel settling in the stove and the sound of each other’s breathing. We both stared at the stove, at the kettle, as if willing it to come to the boil. It was very dim – a single hurricane lamp doesn’t throw out much light. To an outsider we must have looked like an old country couple, side by side under our blankets, still in our wellington boots, staring wordlessly at the stove: a tableau of the depressed rural poor, exhausted after the day’s drudgery.

‘We had a quarrel, you see,’ she said.

There was no warning. She didn’t look at me.

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