Читать книгу Dragon's Green - Scarlett Thomas - Страница 10

4

The small hospital was tucked away in the northeastern corner of the Old Town. It had wrought iron railings outside and a huge blue door with a big brass knocker. Effie, tired from all her walking, and a bit weak from having no breakfast, went in. Usually there was a nurse on the desk, but on this Monday morning there was no one, so Effie went up the stairs by herself and along the gloomy corridor. She opened the door to her grandfather’s room, wondering how he was, hoping he had come through the operation OK, despite what he had said on Saturday.

The room was empty. Well, there was a bed and a bedside cabinet and an empty vase. But her grandfather and all his things were gone. Effie felt tears come to her eyes. But no – she must have gone to the wrong room. Or maybe they had moved him. Or maybe, maybe . . . But it was the right room. She knew that, really. And she understood what it meant.

The next thing Effie knew she was being taken into the nurse’s special kitchen where someone gave her a cup of hot chocolate, and she was trying not to cry in front of everyone, and one of the nurses was saying that her grandfather had gone peacefully, during the operation, and that he had looked happy, almost, as if he were just at the gates of heaven.

‘Where’s my dad?’ asked Effie.

Another nurse said she thought that Effie’s father had gone off to clear out Griffin’s rooms in the Old Rectory. The nurse offered to page him, but the Old Rectory wasn’t far, and Effie said she’d go and meet him there. And so, all of a sudden, that was it. It was a hollow, horrible feeling. Except . . .

‘The codicil!’ Effie gasped. ‘What about the codicil?’

The nurse frowned. ‘The what?’

‘And his things. His silver ring and . . . There should be an envelope for me, and some other . . .’

The nurse shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, dear. Your father said he didn’t want to take anything, so it’s all gone to charity.’

‘What? But I don’t understand.’

‘A lot of people do that. You know, to give back to the hospital trust. Your grandfather had a ring, you say?’

‘Yes. It was an antique, I think. He wanted me to have his . . . Some of his things, very important things, and . . .’

The nurse sighed. ‘I can show you the room where we put everything if you like.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I don’t think the charity man has been yet. But we’ll have to hurry.’

Effie followed the nurse out of the main hospital building and down a passageway to a herb garden full of lavender and sage, just starting to die down now before the winter. There was a little cobbled courtyard and some old steps leading up to a one-storey stone building. The sign on the door simply said CHARITY. Inside, there were clothes and books and alarm clocks and all sorts of other sad-looking objects. Effie looked for her grandfather’s things, not wanting them to spend a moment longer in this gloomy place than was necessary. But there was nothing.

‘Well?’ asked the nurse. ‘Any sign of this envelope? Or the ring?’

Effie shook her head. ‘I’ll just check one more time.’

The nurse looked around her quickly, with a slightly frightened look in her eyes. ‘Well, you’d better be quick, before the charity man gets here.’

Effie didn’t like the sound of the charity man. But she had to find her grandfather’s things. She searched and searched, but they were not there. Eventually, her eyes filling again with tears, she had to thank the nurse and leave.

Outside it was still cold, despite the mellow autumnal light. Effie drew her school cape around her and walked quickly towards the Old Rectory. Perhaps her father had taken the things after all. Effie had only been walking for a minute or so when she heard breathing behind her. Someone was following her. She increased her pace; her follower did the same. Then, suddenly, the follower hissed her name – ‘Effie!’ – and grabbed her arm and dragged her into a thin cobbled passageway.

It was one of the nurses from the hospital. Nurse Underwood – Maximilian’s mother. She was breathing heavily and her face was very stern and serious. She put her finger to her lips and then took Effie’s hand, opened it, and placed in her palm a silver ring with a dark red stone held in place by a number of tiny silver dragons.

‘My grandfather’s ring!’ said Effie. ‘Thank you! I— ’

‘Shhh!’ said Nurse Underwood urgently. ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ she whispered. ‘And you must hurry away from here. The charity man is coming. He doesn’t like it when we give things away. Don’t let him catch you.’

Effie thrust the ring in the pocket of her cape and was about to run, but . . .

‘What about the other things?’

Nurse Underwood frowned.

‘My grandfather was writing a codicil. You were there when he was doing it.’

‘I think your father may have that,’ Nurse Underwood said. ‘As for the other things . . .’ She looked at her watch.

At exactly that moment Effie heard the sound of more footsteps. These were heavier than Nurse Underwood’s and made a sharper sound. Then a man appeared.

‘Oh good,’ said Nurse Underwood. ‘Dr Black. Have you . . .?’

‘Hello, Euphemia,’ he said. ‘I’m the surgeon who operated on your grandfather. I’m so sorry for your loss. I did everything I could to get him to the Otherworld, but I don’t know if he made it.’ Dr Black took a cotton drawstring pouch from the pocket of his large overcoat. ‘These are the items that remained. He particularly wanted you to have them, for, well, obvious reasons. He was concerned that if your father got them first they might be destroyed. I tried to catch you before, but you rushed off. Luckily Nurse Underwood beeped me when she saw you leaving. It is of course vital that as few people as possible know about this.’ Dr Black looked up and down the deserted alleyway. Then he gave Effie the drawstring pouch.

‘Good luck,’ he said.

And then, before Effie could even say thank you or ask what Dr Black had meant about the ‘Otherworld’, he and Nurse Underwood both hurried away.

Effie didn’t want to be caught by the charity man. She opened the drawstring pouch and saw inside the wonde, the crystal, the letter opener and her grandfather’s spectacles. She closed the pouch carefully and put it right at the bottom of her schoolbag. Then she ran.

When Effie arrived at the Old Rectory, it seemed as if there was no one there, not even her father. Effie reached under the flowerpot for the spare key, but it was gone. She looked through the downstairs window and saw Miss Dora Wright’s things just as the teacher had left them. How awful to have lost two people so dear to her, one after the other. But Miss Wright would come back, of course. Wouldn’t she? Effie couldn’t see into any of the upstairs windows. Were her grandfather’s books still there?

Just then a latch clicked from inside the Old Rectory, and the door started to open. It was Effie’s father, looking pale and tired. He was tucking a cream-coloured business card into the pocket of his suit trousers, and looking so distracted that he didn’t seem to notice his daughter at first. Then he saw her and his face changed, reddening slowly like an angry sunset.

‘Effie,’ said her father. ‘Why aren’t you at school?’ After a pause he looked at the ground. ‘Oh dear. You know about your grandfather.’

There was a time when Effie and her father had been a lot closer than they were now. There had been a time when this situation would have led to a jumble of feelings and they would have talked and talked – each interrupting the other – until sense finally came out. Once, Effie would have cried, and this would have made her father get out an old-fashioned cotton handkerchief to give her. That was in the days when he still carried handkerchiefs, before Cait made him throw out all his old things, including his gold bow-ties, and buy some plain suits more appropriate for his new role as Dean of the Linguistics Faculty of the Midzhar New University of Excellence.

Orwell Bookend used to be the kind of university lecturer who floated around absentmindedly trailing great wafts of chalk dust and eager students wanting to know more about whatever lost language or medieval manuscript he’d just lectured on. And once upon a time Cait had been just another one of his adoring students and Effie’s mother had been alive and everything had been different. Before the worldquake Orwell had been a lot kinder, and back then he would have put his arms around his daughter – however cross he really was – and told her everything would be all right.

This is not what happened now. Instead, Orwell Bookend just sighed loudly.

‘Dad?’ said Effie.

He frowned. ‘I just wish you would do what you are told sometimes, that’s all. I’m very sorry for you – for us all. Everyone loved Griffin, of course. But we could have talked about this later, properly, not in the freezing cold on some doorstep. Rules are rules for a good reason, whatever has happened. And now . . .’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’m going to be late for my faculty meeting and you are already VERY late for school.’

All the time this was going on a rabbit was sitting under the front hedge wondering why exactly humans were so complicated. Could they not just share a lettuce together and move on? The older human had a very complex aura, the rabbit noted, but one that was not at all magical. The younger human had an extremely magical aura of a sort the rabbit had never seen before, including a faint colour that didn’t usually exist in this world. It made the rabbit want to help her – even though it did not know how.

‘Grandfather Griffin left me a codicil, but I couldn’t find it at the hospital,’ said Effie. ‘Do you know where he put it?’

Orwell sighed again. ‘Look, Effie. I’m sure you know that your grandfather lived partly in a fantasy world full of people who believe in magic and other dimensions and so on. It probably seemed real at times, but you do understand that it was not real, don’t you? I’ve been worried about what he’s been teaching you recently. What Griffin thought of as “magic” is at best a complete waste of time, and at worst . . .’

‘He hardly said anything to me about magic. He just said it was really difficult and that there were always other ways of doing things.’

‘Well, that’s something, I suppose. But whatever stories he may have told you about travelling to other worlds and battling the Diberi, or whatever he called them, Cait and I want you to understand that they were just stories and you should not take them seriously.’

‘What’s Cait got to do with this? She’s not even my real mother.’

‘Effie, please. We’ve talked about you hurting Cait’s feelings by saying that.’

‘Cait isn’t even here. Anyway, what about my codicil?’

‘I may as well tell you. I’ve destroyed the codicil. It’s for your own good. I didn’t read it. I burned the wretched thing immediately. I want all this nonsense out of our lives for ever. You should be learning about how the world really is, not how it appears in the addled minds of a bunch of freaks and madmen. You probably don’t understand now, but you’ll thank me later.’

‘But a codicil is a . . . It’s a legal document. I have to take it to . . .’ Suddenly Effie decided not to mention Pelham Longfellow. Her father would probably just write him off in the same way he’d done with everyone else Griffin had known. ‘I have to take it to a solicitor.’

‘Effie,’ her father said, sighing. ‘Do you even know what an M-codicil is?’

Effie realised that she did not know. But she remembered that was indeed what her grandfather had called it. An M-codicil. She shook her head.

‘The M stands for magic. The idea of an M-codicil is that it adds something to an M-will. A magical will. So the stories go: when normal people die they leave wills, and when magical people die they leave M-wills. They might leave particular spells or magical items behind that can’t be covered in a normal will. And these wills can supposedly only be dealt with by magical solicitors. So that’s who he wanted you to find, I expect. Some sort of ridiculous “magical” solicitor.’

‘But . . .’

‘But these are just stories. Fantasy. Like those stupid Laurel Wilde books you used to read. And recent events have shown just how dangerous some of these fantasists can be. I don’t want you anywhere near the people or the world that your grandfather was so caught up in.’

Effie’s eyes filled with tears, but she refused to let her father see her cry.

‘How could you? That codicil was for me.’

‘You are eleven years old. You are too young for all this. Do you even know where magical solicitors supposedly live? Do you?’

‘No.’

‘In the “Otherworld”. Another dimension! It’s all just another story.’

Effie looked up towards the top of the building. ‘Well, what about the books that Grandfather Griffin left for me? I’m supposed to look after his library and . . .’

‘That lot of old leather-bound junk?’ Orwell Bookend snorted, forgetting how passionate he had once been about rare books and manuscripts. ‘Your grandfather was being completely unrealistic, as usual. Where would we put a library, for heaven’s sakes? We’ve barely got enough room for the four of us. It was completely unfair of him to give you the impression that you’d be allowed to keep all those books. You can choose one book to remember him by, Effie. That’s reasonable.’

‘What? One book! But they’re rare last editions and— ’

‘Don’t push me, Effie, or there won’t be even one book. I don’t know what’s happened to you lately. You used to be such a normal, happy child. Now . . . It’s probably my own fault. I should have found you proper after-school care rather than leaving you in the clutches of a deluded old man. Anyway, you must try to pull yourself together and go to school and put all this out of your mind. After school you can come back here – five o’clock on the dot – and you can choose one book before the charity man comes.’

The charity man again.

‘And then we can all talk about our grief together. I think Cait might have a book on the subject . . .’ As well as diet books, Cait had a number of self-help books that either told you things that everyone already knew, or told you things that no one in their right mind would think. In the last few months the house had been filling up with these books, all published by the Matchstick Press.

Effie knew better than to argue with her father when he was in this mood. She would have to go to school and try to think of some way to rescue her grandfather’s library before five o’clock. She could cry in the toilets if she felt upset. And as for Pelham Longfellow . . . He was apparently in this Otherworld, where her grandfather may also have gone. She’d have to work out how to get there. There was so much to think about. Wiping the tears from her eyes, Effie looked at her watch. It was still only ten past ten. If she hurried she could be at school in time for the end of double English. At least at school she would be warm.

When Effie had gone, the rabbit noticed that the child’s father was putting a human metal object – the thing they called a key – under a flowerpot. This was the object the child with the strangely-coloured aura must have been looking for. Would she need it again? When the man had gone, the rabbit went and knocked over the flowerpot and took the key in its teeth. It then took the key deep into its burrow where it would remain until the child needed it. Satisfied, the rabbit emerged and went back to chewing on the wild strawberry leaves that grew down by the well at the end of the Old Rectory garden.