The Towers of Silence

  ‘Hello, Barbie. Are you feeling better? I’ve brought these from the garden. I remembered the yellow were your favourite.’

  Barbie smiled and nodded.

  Her voice, of which she had been proud, had become a humiliation. It was weak on the consonants. It cracked on the vowels. When she spoke she could feel the vibrations in the tight drum of her chest.

  ‘Thank you, Sarah.’ She tried to whisper it but the first vowel betrayed her. One had to face it. ‘My silly old voice,’ she said in two registers at once. ‘It seems to have packed up on me. Some will think it a blessing if it keeps me quiet.’

  The roses trembled as the fractured sounds hit them.

  ‘You’ve been here before, haven’t you?’

  ‘Once or twice. But you were very sleepy.’

  ‘You were in uniform. You brought me a bottle of barley water. I still have some. Would you like a glass?’

  ‘No, but I’ll give you one.’

  ‘It would oil the cogs.’ She watched from the pillow-bower of roses while Sarah poured barley water. Helped into a drinking position she could feel her own backbone against Sarah’s hand. Her wasted body filled her with revulsion; in the room it alone lacked the security of shape and form and definition. It was like something the bed had invented, got tired of and left half-finished to fend for itself.

  ‘I shall be glad to get out of here,’ she said when Sarah had resettled the pillows to support h