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

outdoors. Popguns and worse. Night and day. You’ll grow used to having your sleep disturbed. Oh, but you’ve been in London, of course. You’ll be used to that already.’
    I’m a nurse, Colonel dear. I have been a wife in wartime. I am very, very used to that already. It wasn’t only shooting that went on in here. There were tailors’ dummies marked with arrows that had little or nothing to do with tailoring. Punch here , she guessed, to disable, here to silence, here to kill . There were man-sized silhouettes painted on the walls and pierced with many gashes in the plaster: St Sebastian in effigy, except that she thought that the damage probably had more to do with flung knives than arrows.
    She did wonder what the owner of the house might have to say about such wanton vandalism, when he reclaimed it after the war. Assuming that he did so, assuming that he survived and England too, that it wouldn’t be the Nazis who were next to requisition his property.
    She followed the colonel from one room to the next, and found herself apparently in a world that contravened her own assumptions, that tracked her own thoughts. Here were Nazi uniforms racked and ready, for when those invaders came.
    If that was the ballroom they had just traversed, this must be the supper room, smaller and less stately, still grand. Repurposed now as a robing room for German officers: regular army grey and SS black, summer and winter weights, overcoats in wool and leather, boots on shelves and a library in Gothic black letter print to browse through while they waited for a fitting.
    They did, all too obviously, wait here for a fitting. There were chairs and footstools, coffee tables, signs of use. Shoehorns on long handles – boot horns, she supposed. Tailor’s chalk and pincushions.
    Ruth blinked, and realized it had been a while since she’d done that.
    Realized she’d been standing, staring, quite a while now.
    Lifted her eyes to his, ready to apologize; saw his smile, his quick shake of the head.
    â€˜Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘and don’t ask. Mum’s the word, yes?’
    She nodded mutely, followed obediently.
    Out of the supper room, and here was another, grander hallway. Here was the front door at last, with its two leaves and heavy bolts; here was the main stairway, dividing overhead and sweeping down in two mirror-image curves that met again in the last flight. Like a swan’s wings, she thought, grace and power embodied in a line.
    Here was a racket, all unexpected, footsteps thundering overhead and voices raised in an incoherent whooping.
    Here was something stranger, a shadow that flickered in and out of vision as she lifted her eyes, a shadow that seemed to turn and tumble in that great open space overhead, between the light and her, oh, Peter  . . .
    She might have thought he was coming down to find her, only that he wouldn’t make so much damn noise about it.
    It was hardly possible to be sure of anything, but she was sure of this at least, that he wouldn’t have screamed as he fell. Not her Peter. As long as he wasn’t burning, as long as the fall had put the fires out.
    In any case, this was no haunting. This was young men on the ramp: hurtling downstairs, yelling their heads off, doing  . . . something with all that height and air, and—
    Oh.
    Oh, yes. Of course.
    Feeling slightly foolish, she stood beside the colonel and waited while his errant charges came charging into sight and down this last long flight, still making noise enough to wake the devil, while their failed experiment clattered down to earth ahead of them.
    She probably didn’t feel as foolish as they did, these three boys, when at last they lifted their heads and saw Nemesis waiting for them.
    â€˜Oh, lor’,’ one of them breathed, as they stumbled to a halt on the fine floor, stood almost to attention. As straight as they could, perhaps, with their