Read Online House of Doors by Chaz Brenchley - Free Book Online

 . . .’
    He left her feeling small and young, diminished. It wasn’t fair – it wasn’t kind, no – when she had worked so hard to be the other thing, mature. Complete. Done with the world now, ready to move on.
    Unexpectedly done with her plate too. She’d been afraid that the gingerbread would sit like lead in her stomach if she managed to swallow it at all, but she had seldom been more wrong. It melted somehow on the tongue and filled her with a warm benevolence, a sense of well-being that was almost frightening, it was so utterly unfamiliar.
    She looked to Matron for consent to leave the table, and saw a looming figure behind her, Colonel Treadgold. His the voice she might have missed from the sing-song around the piano, if she’d only been paying attention and thinking straight. His bluff manner and mustachioed splendour made him a natural, surely. A bass baritone, most likely, laying down the path that the lighter tenors walked. And quaffing beer – no, cider, he was a cider man, but quaffing with the best, surely  . . .
    No, again. Something else to remember: he was on duty. So was she, now. Ward round, and he was here to collect her.
    â€˜Ordinarily,’ he said, ‘staff cross the courtyard from one wing to the other, coming on and off duty. Rain or shine. Tonight you have a special dispensation; you’re with me, and so we may trespass in Major Black’s domain. Besides –’ in a pantomime whisper – ‘he isn’t here just now, he’s stood his team down till tonight, so the coast should be clear.’
    â€˜Colonel  . . .’
    â€˜Hmm?’
    â€˜Who is Major Black?’ And what’s he up to, and why do you all tiptoe around him, why does he get first claim on anything? This is a hospital, and you’re senior surgeon. And a colonel. You outrank him every way you can.
    â€˜Ah, you’ll meet the major soon enough. Let that happen in its own good time.’ No need to dash to damnation , he seemed to be saying. Which was no answer at all, and only left her the more frustrated.
    Which he knew, of course. She thought the moustache was hiding a smile as he opened a tall door and ushered her through.
    No suggestion of servants’ quarters now, suddenly everything had changed scale. She stepped into darkness and couldn’t sense walls or ceiling, anything, until he touched a light switch by the door.
    â€˜Oh. Goodness  . . .’
    Electric chandeliers glowed into life, high overhead.
    Shuttered and stripped, silent and empty of life, this was still a magnificent space. The wide parquet floor was sprung beneath her feet; every window bay held an upholstered seat beneath the barred shutters; above the chandeliers, the ceiling was an arch of glory, a masterpiece of plasterwork and colour.
    â€˜It’s a ballroom, surely?’
    â€˜It was a ballroom, of course. Not for a while now, not for a long time. It wasn’t we who killed the dancing. Perhaps it will be a ballroom again, but that is out of my stars. For now – well, as you see.’
    Major Black’s domain. Yes. She saw, and didn’t quite understand what she was seeing. Trestle tables collapsed and set aside against the long wall, they might be used for anything. Stacked chairs explained themselves. The gouges in the floor, the ruined varnish – well, heedless military occupation, of course they wouldn’t trouble with the varnish, any more than they trimmed the hedges.
    Ammunition boxes, stacked beside the chairs. Again, they might hold anything. She didn’t want to think of this beautiful room being used as a rifle range. The sandbags piled up against the far end, though – and the sand that had spilled out of them, all across the floor there – did make her wonder. Did make her sniff the air, and frown, and, ‘Surely they don’t  . . .?’
    â€˜Oh, they do. Indoors,