Flood Read Free Page B

unheard of. You must know yourself, Mrs Miller, someone or other who has changed physically after having had a shock.
    Widows, people after a long illness, and others who have simply had a fright. Oh no, it's by no means unheard of, and I'm not one hundred per cent sure that the process is reversible. Mary's hair might remain like this for the rest of her days. She'll get used to it, of course, and so will her friends at school. I don't think there's any physical cause for concern. There might, however, be psychological damage, latent or otherwise. Time will tell, just as time will heal.'

    The thing in the purple liquid looked as if it had drowned in that jar. Mary could imagine it twisting and pushing at the glass, but being unable to escape, rising to the surface to find that a lid was holding fast above it. No air, only an intake of purple water and the darkness, the goblins, the swathe of darkness, the choking in the throat and the final urge. The lid not budging.

    Mary let out a scream.

    She went to bed early and her mother wiped her brow, telling her to try to get some sleep. The light was left on in the bedroom. Neighbours were still dropping in to enquire about her, but they were kept downstairs, and though Mary leaned out of bed with her ear to the floor, still she could not make out much of the muted conversations. She felt like a leper. The quiet in and around the house was funereal, and Mary hoped that she would die soon. She tiptoed into her parents' bedroom and stole her mother's vanity mirror through to her own room. In bed again she examined her hair and saw how it aged her pale face, how it seemed someone else's hair, even when she pulled it. Not a girl's hair, but the hair of an old woman, a woman no one would ever marry.

    When she heard her father's boots heavy on the stairs again, she hid the mirror under her pillow and lay down as if asleep. Her father entered the room quietly, his breathing desperately controlled, and touched ever so lightly her silvery hair. Mary jumped up and clung to him, the tears gurgling in her throat. He wept with her, sitting himself on the edge of the bed. 'Great God Almighty,' he said. 'Sshh, sshh.' He patted her softly, cradled her, and finally calmed her so that she was lying down again. He lay on his side beside her and told her that the two big boys had got a hiding from their fathers, and had been hunted by her mother besides. He told her that one of them, Matty, would be starting work at the pit in a few weeks and would get a thumping from him at that time, just to let him know what was what. He told her a story about a princess with long silver hair and about the prince who saved her, but he stumbled as he spoke, and Mary could see that it was not a real story at all, but one that he was making up and that had never been true. Sometimes her father treated her as if she were still a little girl. She was ten, she often told him, and did not believe in made-up stories any more. Stories had to be true; stories had to be real. Her father's stories were those of a tiny child with a will to believe, and they seemed the only stories he had. He patted her hair again as if it were a kitten, then told her that she must try to get some sleep, for she would have to go to school tomorrow.

    No, she thought when he had gone. She could not go back to school so soon. But it was true: the summer was already over. She would be ill. She would be ill until her hair turned black again. She could not go to school when she was so very ill. Her friends would visit her in her bedroom and would not comment upon her hair, because hair that colour suited someone so very ill.

    When her mother wakened her with a shout next morning, Mary leapt out of bed and rubbed her eyes. She whistled as she dressed. Tom was still asleep, and she hit him with his own pillow, reminding him of the new term, and that he was starting at secondary school today and wasn't he excited? He groaned with his head beneath