"Ah." There was again some gentleness in her voice. Sally popped the morsel into her own mouth. "Want some tea?" She spoke as one who does not wish to dine alone.
"Where am I, girl?"
"You've 'ad a knock on the 'ead, you 'ave. So you're—in 'ospital."
"But in what city?" Although of that, at least, he had no doubt.
"How 'bout some tea: 'Spect I'll have it meself if you won't."
"Thank you, but no. Some water, if you please," he added, so he should not seem too strange. With water his old guts could cope, he felt.
"Right-o." She held the glass for him, while being careful, he noted, to touch neither his gray lank hair that straggled before his face, nor his clothing, nor his skin. He managed to raise his head enough to drink whilst his arms stayed bound down. Water slid toward his stomach, where it lay unabsorbed, like liquid glass.
"Girl…" He lay back, blowing through wet lips. "What shall I call you?"
"Never you mind." Then there occurred a thought that pleased her privately. "You can call me 'Miss.' "
"Miss. Will you then be kind enough to tell an old man why he is being held a prisoner?" Night deepened; he was waking up. The words had begun to dance along naturally, without thought on the old man's part. The finger-movements of a violinist, tuning a new instrument, whose hands over the long, long years have cradled a thousand others like it.
"I told you, yer in 'ospital." Making herself cold and abrupt was not something that came naturally to Sally. She had practiced for enough years, though, to do it well. She could be ruthless. Now she was eating, quite neatly, the rest of the bread and jam he had refused.
"Miss. Please." The old man played for pity. She could be ruthless but it did not suit her, and he supposed he must look shriveled and senile as he lay bound before her. Her own dear father was somewhere tonight… but one had to be careful along that route. Across the room the cracked fragment of a mirror leaned upon a high shelf close to the chest of drawers, but the angle was wrong for him to be able to see himself in it. Besides…
Besides what? Something important had come and gone before he could grasp it. So much was gone, so much remaining was now jumbled, broken, useless, inside this savage persisting pain that felt as if it must deform his head. Anyhow she had called him old, and there was his gray hair twisting before his eyes. And he could see his own hands, and thought that they looked old. Wrinkled and gray-furred on the backs, yes, old-looking despite the strong long nails and the incongruous firm plumpness of the palms that so contrasted with the leanness of his wrists where they emerged from newly dirty cuffs.
"Why am I shackled, Miss? I have done no one any harm."
"You gets violent at times. Out 'o yer 'ead, so't' speak. That's why you 'as't' be restrained a bit." She had a relish for the jam that she was finishing, but not for lies.
He would now strike with the name, and see what magic wound he might inflict. "I hope devoutly, Sally, that…"
Right in the heart. She jumped up, chair almost toppling back, breadcrumbs scattering to the floor. " 'Ow'd you know my nyme?"
"Ah, my dear girl! I did not realize that your name was a secret, too. Do you know mine? It has been taken from me." Which was the all-too-painful truth.
Her face hung over him. Her fists were clenched. " 'Ow'd you know?"
He had seen and heard far too many real menaces to take this one very seriously. Her anger was not aimed at him, of course. "My dear… I had no wish to upset you. You have been kind to me. The others mentioned your name, with some laughter… as if there were some joke. But then, perhaps I am mistaken."
"Joke? Tell me wot joke!" She leaned over him, still trying to sound threatening. But one hand was now raised to conceal her disfigurement, in case the dark should fail her at close range.
"Perhaps I am mistaken, as I said. Perhaps, for all I know, it is mere accident that yours is the only name my caretakers have spoken freely. There is no reason, is there, why the names of my attendants should be secret?"
"Ow, damn them!" Sally fell back into her chair, muttering to herself, and perhaps not hearing the old man at the moment. "Damn all their ber-luddy eyes!"
"And the names of the doctor in charge, and his good wife?"
That caught Sally's attention back, and for a moment it seemed she might be going to utter a harsh laugh. "Huh! Wife? Not 'er!" Then the girl retreated abruptly into a silence so quick and accomplished that it must have been an habitual defense.
Now wait, the old man told himself. Wait for a little while before you push again. His brain still throbbed, distracting him with pain, refusing to yield his rightful memories. How could he plan or act? Yet he must do the best he could.
Presently, in this deep night that was to his eyes clear as brightest day, the girl got up and moved about the room. Standing for a moment by the window, she pulled the curtain back for a furtive, nervous peek, looking out blankly, not as if she really expected to see anything of importance. Then she went to the tall chest of drawers, fondled the candle in its holder for a moment, and put it down again. Next with decisive steps she left the room, to come back shortly, once more masked, and carrying a lighted oil lamp which she set on the tall chest. She moved the chair back closer to the light and, somewhat to the old man's surprise, extracted from her bag a small book. This she settled down to read.
"What are you reading, Sally?" Though he could see the faded printing on the cover: Christina Rossetti's Goblin Fair.
She raised her eyes to his some seconds before answering. "A long poem, like. A lady wrote it." She told him what the title was.
"And are the goblins in it terrible?"
"Oh, no sir." The "sir" seemed quite unconscious. "Least I don't think they are." Sally was on the verge of confiding more, but changed her mind, blanked her face, and dropped her eyes back to the safety of the printed page. She read with an occasional lip-movement, but well enough for all that, to judge from the deft shuttling of her eyes. Outside, the night was growing darker, and there came a hint of ozone in the air, even before the old man could hear the distant thunder. Still faintly audible were the two sets of his fellow prisoners' lungs, in nearby rooms—they sounded like two old men slowly dying.
"The word 'goblin,' " he remarked, "derives I believe from the Greek kobalos, and means 'rogue.' "
"Ah." Above Sal's mask her eyes came back to fasten on his face, as if unwillingly. "How old are you, Sally?"
"Turned seventeen last Easter. Look 'ere sir, you sure you don't want no tea?"
"Quite sure."
"And they spoke out my name, hey?" The book went down in her lap. "Wot'd they say?"
"Very little."
"Come on, wot?"
"That you were to stay with me, tonight." His voice was low and tired and patient. "And there was some indelicacy, which I should prefer not to repeat. And something, somehow, amused them—having a connection with your appearance, perhaps; I could not hear them clearly. I say, is there anything wrong? I'm sorry."
She had frozen in her chair, and under her mask there might now be a ghastly kind of smile. I have not said he was a kindly, good, benevolent old man.
At last the thunder of the approaching storm rolled near enough for her to hear it, and broke in upon her poisoned reverie. She glanced at the closed window, then back at the old man. And then back to her book.
He let her turn two pages. Then: "Sally, what lies behind that door?" When the girl looked up he indicated with a movement of his head the doubly padlocked portal.
"Ah, just some drugs an' medicines an' things." She was making up an answer to avoid being bothered by the question. Her deeper thoughts were elsewhere—without doubt, still brooding upon those vicious employers of hers who laughed at her blotched face. Now, how could she get back at them? Oh, he was not a considerate, truthful old man at all. But long-lived, yes indeed.