The Asylum by Coles Karen

Author:Coles, Karen [Coles, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Welbeck Publishing
Published: 2021-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

‘Doctor Womack will allow you to go to the gallery,’ Prune says a few days later, ‘since you’ve been so well behaved.’

Well behaved makes me sound like a dog.

The nice attendant who never comes to me – the pretty one with fair hair – is sitting at the piano. Her fingers are long and slender and as pretty as the rest of her. I imagine the other attendants are jealous. I imagine they make her life a misery.

She doesn’t play the usual music hall songs. There’s no ‘Daisy Bell’, no sing-along ditties. She plays proper music, sad and beautiful. It makes me long for something, although I don’t know what. I like it, and soon the other patients stop moaning and listen. Some of them cry, but I don’t, not with all these lunatics about and the attendants watching.

Even the maniac is quieter, dancing and twirling like a ballerina instead of running back and forth.

The young girl with curly hair is sitting at the far end, her head lowered – the one who wanted to be my friend.

I glance at the chaplain’s table and catch him watching me. He looks away and busies himself with arranging the books, taking more from the box, and moving them hither and thither. His fear is palpable, his eagerness to be gone from here, his dread of the madness, as if we might infect him with it. As I approach the table, his movements quicken, grow jerky.

‘May I have Great Expectations ?’

He jumps. He must have known I was there, and yet he jumps, the poor man. He picks up the book and hands it to me with a wan smile.

I hold the book close, and walk across the room, to the far end, a place I’ve never dared go before. With each step, my heart beats faster, my chest feels tighter, as if I’m diving underwater, deeper and deeper with less and less hope of return.

By the time I get there, she’s talking to a girl next to her, someone nearer her age than I.

She looks up and sees me. Her eyes are flat and brown and cold.

I hold the book out. ‘I’ve brought Great Expectations for you.’

‘I’ve read it.’ She doesn’t blink, not at all.

My heart beats so vigorously that I can scarcely hear the noise of the gallery. ‘You could read it again.’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘I don’t know.’ I clutch it to my chest. Stupid. Stupid of me to try being nice. It doesn’t suit me and makes my eyes smart and my throat ache, and now I’m at the wrong end of the room, and so far from my place, from where I should be and I’m standing there, just standing and staring, and I don’t know how to get back to my seat.

‘Turn,’ I murmur to myself. ‘Turn around.’ And I do, and it’s easier than I thought. One step follows another and I’m halfway there, in the open, for everyone to see. My legs are stiff and awkward.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.