The Chemickal Marriage

how do you even eat breakfast?’
    Miss Temple followed her to a door that had once been formidable, ironbound planks four inches thick. Now the wood was eaten by worms and hung by a single hinge. The Contessa lifted her dress and kicked with the flat of her foot, turning her head at the dust blown up when the thing fell in. She let the cloud settle and stepped over the mess.
    ‘Why did you say we had to swim?’ asked Miss Temple.
    ‘Because we may. Or I may.’
    ‘Why not me?’
    ‘Perhaps you.’
    ‘Perhaps I’ll go my very own way.’
    ‘Perhaps that is my intention.’
    ‘Your intentions can go hang,’ replied Miss Temple. ‘This leads nowhere.’
    The ceiling had collapsed, blocking the passage with debris. The Contessa set the candle-box on the leather case and bent for a tumbled stone. She lifted it with a grimace and heaved it behind them.
    ‘Put down that hamper and help.’
    ‘You cannot be in earnest.’
    The Contessa raised a second stone. ‘If you do not help me I will club out your brains.’
    Miss Temple snatched up the light and climbed the pile, dislodging bricksand gravel where she stepped. At the top, she poked an arm between two beams and then wormed her head to follow. Threads of dust traced the air around her.
    ‘Celeste, you are just making more work.’
    ‘There is a way.’
    ‘You cannot fit.
I
cannot fit.’
    ‘You’re wrong. Come see.’
    The Contessa gamely scrambled up, holding her dress with one hand and groping with the other until she could reach a beam to steady herself – an action that launched another spray of brick dust. She spat it from her mouth.
    ‘Look!’
    Miss Temple raised the light. Perhaps ten feet above, the darkness opened to black space.
    ‘But where does it lead? We could be trapped in a hole.’
    ‘We
are
trapped in a hole.’ Miss Temple handed the candle-box to the Contessa. ‘Keep it steady. I will do my best not to bury you as I go …’
    It was just like climbing a monkey-puzzle tree, not that she had done that for a decade, but Miss Temple’s limbs remembered how to wriggle from one branch to another. Only one of the beams gave way, a heart-stopping moment when – in the midst of a cascade of pebbles and dust and, from below, Italian profanity – the light went out. Miss Temple clung to where she was in the dark, waiting for all the debris to settle.
    ‘
Goffo scrofa!
’
    ‘Are you all right?’
    A snap of a match and the light returned, to show the Contessa covered in dust, black hair like an old-fashioned powdered wig. ‘
Climb
.’
    The distance was not far, and once she had a solid brace for her feet Miss Temple raised her head to the edge of a floor. ‘Half a moment … shut your eyes …’
    She pounded the broken lip with a fist, breaking away weakened brick until she was sure that what remained would take her weight. Then Miss Temple writhed up over the edge. The air was warm and dank. She could not see, but the sounds around her – water and machines – echoed from a distance.
    ‘Pass everything up,’ she whispered. ‘We are inside.’
    The Contessa joined her with an extremely sour expression, her person filthy, and shone the candle around the room: a barrel-shaped ceiling, a door cracked off its hinges and a line of furnaces, all cold.
    ‘You’ll be happy for a swim now, I wager,’ said Miss Temple as they padded on.
    The Contessa did not reply and Miss Temple realized that they must be silent now, that around any corner might be a foe. They continued on, past standing pools and buckled plaster, finally reaching a gas-lit spiral staircase. They climbed one turn to a door. The Contessa faced her.
    ‘Put the hamper down.’ Miss Temple did, warily. The Contessa held out the leather case. ‘Take it.’
    Miss Temple did, then backed away. ‘Why?’
    ‘Because I cannot carry everything. Because now I do not need it. I took it from you so you’d have no weapon.’
    Miss Temple glanced at the hamper, wondering if she could snatch that up as well – and, with both books, run.
    ‘I thought you needed me. I thought I would be
used
.’
    ‘And did you
want
that?’
    ‘Of course not.’
    ‘What
do
you want, Celeste?’
    ‘I want to stop him,’ she said boldly. ‘Stop all of this. I want to save Chang. And Svenson.’ She hesitated. ‘And myself.’ The Contessa pursed her lips, sceptical. Miss Temple wanted to kick her. ‘What do
you
want?’
    ‘To find Oskar.’
    ‘
What?
’
    The Contessa was silent.