Bridget Collins - The Binding

The stove had gone out. I hesitated, wanting to leave it and go upstairs to bed; but it was morning, and there was work to do … Work. I didn’t want to think about work. I crouched down and remade the fire. By the time it was going properly I was a little warmer, but the deep, cold quiet of the house needed more than the stove to thaw it. I hadn’t boarded up the broken window; but it wasn’t that, it was something else. I shook my head, wondering if my ears were playing tricks on me. It was like the way the snow had muffled every sound – or a feeling of distance, as if everything I heard was an echo …

Tea. The caddy was almost empty. I put water on to boil and went to get a new packet from the pantry. As I crossed the hall I turned my face away from the moist draught that blew in through the jagged-edged window. As soon as I’d had something hot to drink I’d find a bit of millboard—

Seredith was curled on the stairs, her head resting against the banister.

‘Seredith? Seredith!’

It was only when she moved that I knew I’d been afraid. I pulled her gently to her feet, appalled at how light she was, and the heat that was seeping from her skin. She was clammy, and her face was flushed. She muttered something, and I bent close to hear her. ‘I’m all right,’ she said. Her breath was foul, as if something was rotting inside her. ‘I was just … sitting down.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Let’s get you to bed.’

‘I’m perfectly all right. I don’t need …’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Come on.’ I half pushed and half lifted her upwards, step after step, and then along the passage to her room. She clambered into bed and pulled the blankets over herself as if she was freezing. I hurried downstairs to get her a jug of water, and herb tea to bring the fever down, and more blankets; but when I came back into the bedroom she was already asleep. She’d undressed, and her clothes were crumpled in a pile on the floor.

I stood very still, listening to the silence. I could hear Seredith’s breathing – faster, louder than it should have been – and the faint crackle of rain against the window; but behind that, and my own blood in my ears, there was nothing but the solid emptiness of the house and the marshes beyond. I was more alone here than I’d ever been.

I sat down. In this light, sleeping, Seredith looked even older; the flesh on her cheeks and below her jaw sagged, so that the skin was stretched thin over the bones of her nose and eyes. A scab of spittle clung to the corner of her mouth. She murmured something and turned over, and her hands twitched and clutched the quilt. Her skin was a chalky, yellowish colour against the faded indigo-and-white of the patchwork, while here and there the shadow of a raindrop crawled across the cotton.

I looked around. I had never been in here in daylight. There was a little fireplace and a padded window seat, and a mossy-looking armchair, but it was almost as bare as my room. There were no pictures, or ornaments above the hearth. The only decoration on the walls was the light from the window, the faint lattice, the sliding silver of the rain-shadows. Even my parents had more than this. And yet Seredith wasn’t poor; I knew that, from the lists of supplies we sent to Castleford every week, and the sacks that Toller brought back for us. I had never thought about where her money came from. If she died—

I looked down at her face on the pillow, and a kind of panic seized me. It was an effort to stop myself from waking her up and pouring the tea forcibly down her throat; it was best to let her sleep. I could light a fire, bring damp cloths, have some honey dissolved in water for when she woke of her own accord … But I sat still, unable to leave her. It had been the other way round, so many times – that she’d watched at my bedside while I slept, as patient as stone – but she’d never made me feel as though I should be grateful. For the first time I wondered whether her brusqueness had been deliberate. My throat ached.

An hour later, through the rain, I caught the distant creak and rumble of a cart, and at last the off-key jangle of the bell. The post. I lifted my head, and a perverse part of me wanted him to go away again, to leave me in this strange, bereft peace; but I got to my feet and went down to open the door.

‘Seredith’s sick. I don’t know who to … Can you send someone?’

He squinted at me above the collar of his coat. ‘Send someone? Who?’

‘A doctor. Or her family.’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. She writes letters, doesn’t she? Tell the people she writes to.’

‘I—’ He stopped, and shrugged. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But don’t count on them coming.’

He drove off. I watched until the cart was a tiny blot in the mottled expanse of brown grass and half-melted snow.

The house was so quiet it was as if the walls were holding their breath. Every few hours, during that day and the days that followed, I had to go outside and listen to the dry wind in the reeds, just to be sure that I hadn’t gone deaf. I went and got a spare pane of glass from the storeroom to fix the broken window, but as I was fitting it I found myself putting down my tools with unnecessary vehemence, tapping on the glass harder than I needed to. I was lucky not to break it. And when I sat at Seredith’s bedside I coughed and fidgeted and picked at the paring callus on my forefinger. But no sound I could make was enough to break the silence.

At first I was afraid. But nothing changed: Seredith didn’t get better, she didn’t get worse. She slept for hours, at first, but one morning when I tapped on her door she was awake. I’d brought her an apple and a cup of honeyed tea, and she thanked me and bent over the cup to breathe in the steam. She’d slept with the curtains open – or rather, I hadn’t closed them for her the night before – and the sky was full of grey-bellied clouds being torn apart by the wind. Here and there the sun flashed through. I heard her sigh. ‘Go away, Emmett.’

I turned. Her face was damp, but the bright flush had left her cheeks and she looked better. ‘I mean it. Go and do something useful.’

I hesitated. Now that she was awake, part of me wanted to ask her questions – all the questions that had been brewing since the first time I walked through the bindery door; now that she had no reason not to tell me … But something inside me baulked at the idea of so many answers. I didn’t want to know; knowing would make it all real. All I said was, ‘Are you sure?’

She lay back down without answering. After a long time she dredged up another heavy breath and said, ‘Don’t you have better things to do? I can’t bear being watched .’

It might have stung, but somehow it didn’t. I nodded, although her eyes were closed, and went out into the passage with a sense of relief.

I was determined not to think, so I set myself to work. When I collapsed on the lowest stair in the hall and looked at the clock, I saw that I’d been at it for hours: cleaning and filling the lamps, scrubbing the floor and wiping out the kitchen cupboards with vinegar, sweeping the hall and sprinkling the floor with lavender water, polishing the banister with beeswax … They were jobs that my mother would have done, at home, or Alta; I’d have rolled my eyes and trod unconcerned footprints across their clean floors. Now my shirt clung to my back and I smelt rank and peppery with sweat, but I looked round and was glad to see the difference I’d made. I’d thought that I was doing it for Seredith, but suddenly I knew I’d been doing it for myself. With Seredith ill, this was no one’s house but mine.

I got to my feet. I hadn’t had anything to eat since the morning, but I wasn’t hungry. I stood for a long time with one foot on the stair above, as if there was a decision to be made: but something made me turn again and go into the passage that led to the workshop. The door was closed and when I opened it there was a blaze of daylight.