I decided to wait. I would try again later and see if sheer persistence paid off. I wondered if this girl was the night shift or if she would be replaced. I put down my kit-bag on the step and sat on it. I fished out my copy of the Orthography and read a few passages by the slowly fading light from the still clear sky.
I couldn't settle, though, and after a while got up and walked round the house. There was a locked gate to one side but a clear passageway on the other. Tall wheeled rubbish bins in grey and yellow were lined against the roughcast wall beneath a black metal fire escape. The back garden was full of white sheets and grey blankets, hung out to dry and dangling limply in the still air. I walked round the back of the house. I tried the back door, gently, but it was locked.
Then I heard a tapping noise. I expected it was going to be the girl in the nurse's uniform, shooing me away, but it was the same old lady who'd appeared behind the nurse earlier: Miss Carlisle. She was wearing a dark dressing-gown, standing at a small window to the side of the wing that overlooked the farm lane. She tapped again and motioned to me. I went over and stood under the window. She fiddled with something at the bottom of the window-frame. After a while the window cracked open, pivoting horizontally about its centre line. She lowered her head.
'Ssh,' she said, putting one thin, milk-coloured finger to her lips. I nodded and mirrored the gesture. She motioned me in. I looked around. It was getting dark and hard to see well, but there didn't appear to be anybody watching. I pushed my kit-bag through first, then scrambled over the sill.
Her room was small and smelled… of old person; of bodily wastes that were somehow genteel because the failing system had done little processing on their raw materials, so that the offensive became unobjectionable. There was a faint scent of something pleasant, too; lilacs, I thought. I could make out a wardrobe, drawers, a dressing table and a small chair. There was a narrow single bed, its covers disturbed as if she'd just got up.
'I always knew you'd come back, dear,' she said, and gave me what was probably meant to be a fierce hug. She was tiny and so frail; really she just leaned against me and put her arms round my back. Her tiny head was against my breast. I looked down into translucent, wispily white hair; as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I could see that the skin on her scalp was very pale pink, and covered in little faint brown patches. She gave a sigh.
I put my arms round her and gave her the gentlest of hugs, fearful of crushing her.
'Dear Johnny,' she sighed. 'At last.'
I closed my eyes, holding her lightly to me. We stayed like that, holding each other for a while, until it gradually dawned on me that she had fallen asleep.
I pulled carefully back, unclasped her hands from the small of my back, and laid her gently down on the bed, pulling out the covers to slide her feet and legs in, adjusting her trailing nightie and tucking her in properly. She gave a tiny snore and turned onto her side. From what I could see, there was a smile on her face.
I opened the door. There was a light on in the corridor; no noise. There was a faint smell of institutional cooking. Miss Carlisle's door had number 14 on it and a little plastic apparatus at about eye level which contained a slip of white cardboard with her name on it. I relaxed a little. That ought to make things easier. I looked back into the room. Through the window, I could see the girl in the nurse's uniform in the garden, bringing in the washing, grabbing the sheets and blankets off the line and throwing them into a wash basket. I hoisted my kit-bag and went silently out into the corridor, closing the door quietly behind me.
I checked all the names in that corridor; no sign of Zhobelia. There was a fire door with a glass and wire-mesh window to one side off the corridor, leading to the main house. I peeked through to a dimly lit hall.
The door creaked as I went through. I paused. I could hear music, and then a man's voice, distorted and professionally cheery, then more music. I went on, and found another couple of rooms with names on them, looking to the front of the house.
The first one I looked at said 'Mrs Asis'. I looked around, gave the gentlest of knocks for form's sake, then slowly opened the door and stepped into the darkened room.
It was bigger than Miss Carlisle's. I saw two single beds and worried that Zhobelia might be sharing; that would complicate matters. I need not have worried initially; there was nobody in the room. I was wondering what to do when I heard slow footsteps and two voices approaching.
There were two wardrobes. I opened one to find it almost full; trying to squeeze myself and my kit-bag in would probably take minutes and cause a commotion anyway. The other was locked. I tried the nearest bed; it was solid underneath, with drawers. The voices were at the door now. I pulled up the cover on the second bed. Bliss! It was an old iron-framed thing. Plenty of room. I pushed a plastic chamberpot out of the way and disappeared underneath five seconds or so before I heard the door open. The carpet under the bed smelled of old dust and - very faintly - of vomit.
'I don't want to go to bed, horrible child,' said a voice that I thought I recognised; a curious feeling - half familiar, half dizzyingly novel - ran through me.
'Now, Mrs Asis. Ye've got tae get yer beauty sleep, haven't ye?'
'I'm not beautiful, I'm old and ugly. Don't be stupid. You're very stupid. Why are you putting me to bed now? What's wrong with you? It's not even dark yet.'
'Aye it is; look.'
'That's just the curtains.'
The light clicked on. 'There ye are, that's better now, isn't it? Will we get ye tae yer bed now, eh?'
'I am not a child. You are the child. I should have stayed with the white man. He wouldn't treat me like this. How can they do this to me?'
'Now now, Mrs Asis. Come on. Let's get that cardie off.'
'Ach…' There followed a stream of what might have been Gaelic or Khalmakistani or a mixture of both. I have heard that there are no real swear-words in Gaelic, so from the sound and force of the utterances directed at the unfortunate lass either Zhobelia was making up her own or she was speaking the language of her ancestors.
I stopped listening after a while, not so much from boredom but because I was having to concentrate very hard not to sneeze. I pushed my tongue forcefully into the top of my mouth and forced one finger hard up underneath my nose until the pain alone brought tears to my eyes. This worked, as usual, but it was a close-run thing.
Eventually Zhobelia was installed in the other bed and the girl bade her goodnight, turned off the light and closed the door. Zhobelia muttered away to herself in the darkness.
I was now left with the ticklish problem of how to let my great-aunt know there was somebody there in the room with her without either giving her a heart attack or causing her to scream blue murder at the top of her lungs.
In the event, the dilemma was taken out of my hands by my own lungs, or my nose, anyway. The urge to sneeze returned, more powerfully this time. I tried to prevent it, but to no avail.
I kept my mouth shut and closed my throat with my tongue, so that the sneeze back-fired, repulsed into my lungs. Despite my attempts to silence my sneeze, however, it was still loud.
Zhobelia's mutterings stopped abruptly.
CHAPTER TWENTY - FOUR
A charged, uneasy silence hung in the air.
Zhobelia mumbled something.
'Great-aunt Zhobelia?' I said quietly.
She muttered something else.
'Great-aunt?' I said.
'… I am, I'm hearing voices now,' she muttered. 'Oh no.'