Quicksand (15 page)

 

 

-- That's how to start gossip. Mustn't do it.

 

 

But the impulse was hard to resist, nonetheless. Urchin was so childlike
in many ways that all his paternal instincts were aroused.

 

 

-- If only Iris . . . But we've been through that, and I don't feel
ready for a replay of the argument yet.

 

 

The houseman was just coming in search of them when they arrived, and led
them straight to the X-ray room. A nurse entered Urchin's particulars
on a form, made a quick check of her hair for metal clips or anything
that might show on the plate, and opened the inner door with its red
radiation-danger sign.

 

 

Over Urchin's shoulder Paul had one clear view of the equipment: a couch,
a chair, various supports for legs and arms requiring examination,
and the blunt-snouted machine itself.

 

 

Then Urchin had spun around.

 

 

"Hey, where do you think you're going?" the nurse said, making to seize
her arm. Fast as a striking snake the arm was out of reach, and back again,
fingers straight in a jab to the inside of the nurse's elbow. She screamed
and dropped the papers she was clutching.

 

 

Paul, petrified with astonishment, put up a hand as though to ward Urchin
off, saying stupidly; "Now just a second . . . !"

 

 

But he was in her way, and that was enough. She slammed him off balance
with the point of her shoulder, hurling her tiny body upwards like a
pouncing cheetah and driving at the vulnerable base of his sternum.
He doubled up, all the wind knocked out of him, and she was past him,
out of the room, and gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*18*

 

 

"Patient exhibited unaccountable fear of the X-ray equipment," Paul wrote
with careful legibility. "It was judged inadvisable to make a second
attempt at securing plates of her skull, as her violent reaction -- "

 

 

He stopped, set down the pen, and lit a cigarette, wondering about the
rest of the sentence he was entering in his report. Absently his left
hand wandered to the pit of his stomach where Urchin had charged into
him with such deadly effect.

 

 

-- No matter how carefully I phrase it, anybody is going to get the
impression she's really dangerous. What was the bit in the paper about
the Beast in Man breaking loose?

 

 

He shuddered gently at the narrowness of the margin by which he had
escaped real trouble. If Urchin had taken to her heels and got lost in
the crowded town, there would have been no end to it: police, a search,
a major local scandal and demands for an official inquiry. . . .

 

 

She'd let him off lightly, by going no further than the hospital yard
and waiting passively until he staggered out after her. She had resisted
being taken indoors, again, but she'd climbed peaceably back into the
ambulance and ridden alongside him with no more trouble.

 

 

Nonetheless, the matter couldn't be allowed to slide. The nurse she had
attacked was very ill; the blow had ruptured the vein on the inside of
her elbow, resulting in a horrible-looking haemorrhage, and the poor girl
had fainted from pain. So Urchin was in her cell with the door locked,
and he had taken advantage of the trust she still reposed in him to pour
a heroic dose of tranquilliser down her. At last report she was asleep.

 

 

-- God's name, what did her mind conjure up from an innocent X-ray machine?
A mad scientist's gadgetry out of a horror picture?

 

 

But the moral was clear. He'd seen and felt for himself what she was
capable of. Faberdown couldn't have stood a chance agaimt her; with her
skills she could have broken not just his arm, but his neck.

 

 

-- Which, I suppose, is evidence for a fundamental personality disturbance.
Even if she is a little shrimp, the average girl isn't so scared of her
fellow human beings that she trains as a killing fighter.

 

 

The idea was still a trifle frightening. It was one thing to see the
hero of a TV thriller or a movie bashing the villains in a struggle
choreographed as formally as a ballet. It was something else entirely to
find himself face to face with a lethal weapon in the shape of a slender,
attractive girl.

 

 

-- And there's half the trouble, if you'd only confess it. Hasn't living
with Iris taught me not to judge by appearances? If Urchin had come in
with a typical slack face, slopped around careless of how she looked
instead of trying to be clean and neat, and shown apathy instead of
lively interest in what goes on around her, I'd have shoved her to the
back of my mind and got on with my work.

 

 

Determinedly be picked up the pen and poised it to continue his report.
The phrase on which he had paused, however -- "her violent reaction" --
seized his imagination by the scruff and dragged it off down one of the
familiar, fearful alternative world lines which so often haunted him.

 

 

-- Demanding of the ambulance driver which way she went: "I didn't
see her, Doc, I was lighting a cigarette." Wandering crazily around the
streets and mistaking other people for Urchin, a child in a similar coat,
a woman with a similar head of hair. Informing the police, having to face
Hofford, having to face Holinshed: "This is an unforgivable breach of
your professional responsibility which I shall be compelled to report to
higher authority." Explaining to Iris when she gets back why I'm facing
probable dismissal . . .

 

 

The pen he was holding cracked with a noise like a dry stick. He stared
at it stupidly. The vision obsessing him had been so agonising that he
had closed both hands into fists; his palms and face were moist with
sweat. Angrily, he hurled the broken pen into the wastebasket and took
up another.

 

 

-- But it was almost more real than this desk, this office with its
windows darkening towards sunset! As if I, this consciousness looking
out of my eyes at such innocuous surroundings, were not the real Paul
Fidler; as if, at some inconceivable angle to this actual world, the real
"I" were trapped in some disastrous chain of events and crying out so
fiercely that this brain which till so recently we shared thinks with
his thoughts instead of mine!

 

 

Hand shaking, be drove himself to complete the report:
" . . . proved that she had been trained in unarmed combat. She did not
resist being brought back to Chent; however, I judged it advisable to
sedate her, and . . ."

 

 

-- Bloody hell. Now I've used "advisable" twice in three lines.

 

 

 

 

He hated the atmosphere of the hospital at weekends. The sense of purpose
which the daily activity of the staff normally lent to the place was
exchanged for one of vacuous futility. The coming and going at Saturday
lunchtime -- mostly going -- awakened in the patients a fresh awareness
of being confined, and resentment stank in his nostrils. Living out,
he escaped the worst impact, but on a duty day it struck him all the
harder for not being accustomed to it. To compound his depression, the
food provided for the staff was worse than ever at weekends, because
the real cooking was done beforehand and the meals were a succession of
warmed-up leftovers.

 

 

-- At least I can study for a few hours before I turn in.

 

 

He pushed open the door of the sitting-room, not expecting to find anyone
else here. Given the chance, the resident staff quit the premises and
stayed away till the last permissible moment. To his surprise, Natalie
was sipping a cup of tea in a chair facing the door. She looked tired.

 

 

"Hullo!" he said. "Of course, you're looking after the dance tonight,
aren't you?"

 

 

"Bloody farce," she said morosely. "Like the worst village hops plus
one extra horror -- canned music instead of a proper band, which can
at least be relied on to liven the proceedings by getting drunk. Well,
I let myself in for the job, so I can't complain."

 

 

"How's the tea today?" Paul asked, tinkling the hand-bell.

 

 

"Above average. Probably they didn't tell the girl that they use stale
leaves on Saturdays. . . . I hear Urchin was in trouble today, incidentally."

 

 

"I'm afraid so," he acknowledged; then, when she continued to regard him
with a speculative expression but did not speak, he added, "What do you
want me to do -- show you my bruise?"

 

 

"Sorry. I didn't mean to stare." She drained her cup and set it aside.
"It's just that you looked somehow . . . annoyed?"

 

 

"Should I not be?"

 

 

"But who with?" she countered. "Getting annoyed with mental patients
is a waste of time, and in any case I don't think it's Urchin you're
upset about."

 

 

Who, then?" Paul snapped.

 

 

"Yourself. You've been going a bit by appearances in her case, haven't
you? The episode this morning must have been a considerable let-down."

 

 

"Is this meant to be advice or sympathy?"

 

 

"Sympathy," Natalie said, unruffled by Paul's obvious irritation.
"But there's advice coming, if you don't mind. Gossip positively pours
in while we're getting ready for a patients' dance, you know, and this
had better come from me rather than from Holinshed. Is it true you were
seen in Blickham with your arm around Urchin?"

 

 

"God's name!"

 

 

"Paul, simmer down. This is a segregated institution and like every other
of its kind it's positively obsessed with sex. I know without being told
that it was a bit of fatherly reassurance for this girl who seems totally
disoriented But if there's going to be any more of it you'd better leave
it to -- well, to me."

 

 

"Who told you this?"

 

 

"Like I said, gossip goes the rounds while we're making ready for
a dance."

 

 

"Well, it might be better if you didn't listen to so much of it!" Paul
barked, and strode out of the room.

 

 

 

 

He was half inclined to skip dinner, since it meant sharing the otherwise
empty dining-room with Natalie, but he came to the conclusion that that
was ridiculous. There had been no call to shout at her, and he ought
to apologise.

 

 

As it turned out, she had ordered dinner early to get back and supervise
the start of the dance. She was on the point of leaving when he arrived
and he had to compress the planned apology into a few hasty words. She
accepted it anyhow, pleasantly enough.

 

 

Eating his solitary meal, he thought about Natalie's comment that the
hospital was obsessed by sex. It was no exaggeration; the mere fact that
expression of physical love was impossible because there was nowhere
that patients could find privacy made sexuality not just the greatest
single root cause of the inmates' disorders apart from senility, but
far and away the richest source of rumour and scandal.

 

 

Gloomily he wondered, as he had done the other evening at the Needle
in Haystack, whether any other of the hospital gossip concerned himself
and if so what it said.

 

 

-- Dance. Christmas dance, the only time Iris has ever been further into
this building than Holinshed's office. Did they see deeply enough into
her personality to guess or half-guess my problems? The zest seemed to
go out of it when I realised she was going to go on refusing to have
children, and that seemed to suit her okay, so . . . But a psychiatrist
of all people should know that out of sight doesn't mean out of mind.
Do something about that, maybe . . .?

 

 

He toyed with the idea, remembering Mirza's suggestion which had so
disturbed him. Then he tried to push it aside, but everything conspired
to prevent him: in particular, the spectacle of the female patients
assembled for this ghastly parody of merrymaking.

 

 

Most of the time, shut away from men, they neglected their appearance,
but a dance was always preceded by a flurry of titivating, of changing
into a dress set aside for "best" and so seldom worn it had survived
the disintegration of the rest of what they had when they arrived and
the issue of ugly standard replacements, and of making up. Even the
most withdrawn cases dabbed on a bit of powder and smeared lipstick
inaccurately across their mouths.

 

 

The result was ghoulish, especially in the case of someone like Mrs
Chancery, who at sixty-five was still convinced she was a flapper
capable of laying men low in swathes with one deadly flash of her
kohl-rimmed eyes.

 

 

The dances were held in the large female sitting-roam, decorated for the
occasion with a few paper streamers and some jars of early flowers.
The idea was to make the women feel they were the "hostesses" at the
party. A table covered in white cloth served as a bar for tea, coffee
and soft drinks.

 

 

When Paul arrived, the male patients had barely started to trickle in,
but the tape-recorder was already blasting out music and two or three
couples were on the floor. Young Riley was showing off, partnered by Nurse
Woodside, whose smile was glassy and self-conscious. At present the music
was recent pop; later, to placate the older patients, it would go over
to sentimental ballads with lots of strings, and at the end they would
probably abandon dancing, as usual, for a singsong accompanied at the
piano by Lieberman the overambitious locksmith.

 

 

-- How seriously do they take it all?