Quicksand (17 page)

 

 

He let his eyelids roll down in a last childish flicker of hope that if he
couldn't see the broken bottle it would go away.

 

 

Astonishingly the pain never came. Instead there was a smashing sound --
the bottle on the floor. Then a thud -- Riley keeling over. And a scream
-- Riley, snatching his right hand with his left.

 

 

Paul blinked. Everyone was suddenly there: Oliphant, Natalie, Sister Wells.
Paul had eyes for none of them. He could only see, standing over the
prostrate Riley, the small determined figure of Urchin, who had done
. . .
something
. . . so that he was still alive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*20*

 

 

After which there were all the loose ends to tidy up.

 

 

In the vain hope of minimising the sensation, they tried to continue
the dance after Riley had been sedated and taken to a security cell, but
the idea was absurd. The gloating gossip that spread among the patients
nauseated Paul. Eventually, still shaking with remembered terror,
he ordered them bedded down. But that was a long job, involving extra
issues of tranquillisers for the most excitable.

 

 

Perhaps the saddest part of it was that Lieberman missed his chance
to show off by leading the traditional sentimental singsong by way
of finale. He sat at the side of the room, face long as a fiddle, and
resisted all attempts to move him until two of the male nurses carried
him bodily away.

 

 

On reviving, Nurse Woodside was violently sick in the middle of the floor,
to the hysterical amusement of the patients. But Paul only heard about
that. At the time he was examining Riley and trying to figure out what
on earth Urchin had done to him. The right arm which had seemed to give
him such agony was unmarked, bar scratches where he had flailed it about
among the crumbs of glass on the floor. It was almost by chance that
he spotted a small oblong bruise beside the shoulder-blade, exactly the
right size to have been caused by Urchin's fingertips.

 

 

Awkwardly he reached behind his own back to poke at the corresponding
area and located the site of a sensitive nerve.

 

 

-- Christ, where did she get her knowledge of anatomy? Half an inch and
she'd have hit bone, harmlessly!

 

 

But as it was, the shock had jolted Riley's arm straight and opened
his fingers.

 

 

-- And saved my sight, if not my life. But how can I express my thanks?

 

 

With or without words, he needed to try; when he left Riley, however,
he found that Urchin had gone meekly back to her cell, which was now
securely locked. Peering through the peep-hole he saw she was in bed
with the light out, and gave up his intention of disturbing her.

 

 

He sat with Natalie in the staff sitting-room for a while, drinking a
late cup of tea and carrying on a desultory conversation from which an
annoying point kept distracting him: only the other day he had ordered
Riley transferred from the Disturbed wing against Oliphant's wishes,
and now here was Oliphant with his fingers bandaged because of Riley.
The cut was shallow, but that hardly signified.

 

 

When Natalie left to go to bed, he opened one of his textbooks and sat
staring at its pages. Time and a great many cigarettes wore away, and
his mind refused to absorb the words.

 

 

He had never before in his life been so close to being killed. But simple
death was not so terrifying. Earlier today he had had that curious notion
about another, somehow more real, version of Paul Fidler diverging from
a moment of crisis down another and more disastrous life-line, so that
what was to the alter ego real experience provoked these recurrent vivid
imaginings. Paul Fidler in a world where he had died was inconceivable
to Paul Fidler still alive and breathing.

 

 

But Paul Fidler blinded, moaning through a red mask of blood . . .

 

 

He had put up his hands before his face without realising, to reassure
himself that he could see them. With a shudder he forced his churning mind
back to the here and now and once more stared at the open book on his lap.

 

 

-- No good. Suppose I'd insisted on Urchin being shut in her cell again;
nobody else could have stopped Riley. Suppose Natalie hadn't thanked me
for staying at the dance up to what she called the break-even point,
and I'd slipped away early as I'd at first intended: who would have had
to tackle Riley then -- Natalie herself, one of the nurses? Would Urchin
have done the same for somebody else?

 

 

Those questions were too remote to conjure up equally clear visions;
they didn't involve him so personally. Nonetheless they possessed a dull,
nagging power to distract him, and the book remained open at the same
page, unread.

 

 

The clanging and chinking of the clock at midnight was the last straw.
"Oh, God
damn
!" he exploded, and slammed the book on a nearby table.

 

 

"What the -- ? Paul! You look terrible!"

 

 

Mirza must have been on the landing opposite, about to enter his own
room. Startled by the noise, he had put his head around the door of
this one.

 

 

"We had some trouble during the dance," Paul explained apologetically.
"Riley went for me with a broken bottle."

 

 

" What? No wonder you're pale! Hang on, let's see what we can do
about that."

 

 

Mirza picked up the two empty teacups and disappeared. There was a sound
of splashing from the direction of his room; then he was back, the cups
freshly rinsed and dripping.

 

 

"This'll set you up," he murmured, and handed Paul three fingers of whisky.

 

 

"I didn't know you drank," Paul said irrelevantly, accepting the liquor
with eager gratitude.

 

 

"I was raised not to touch alcohol, of course, but I was also taught to
think for myself, and what I think is that you need a drink. Sit down
and tell Uncle Mirza the whole story."

 

 

By fits and starts Paul complied. Mirza listened intently. At the end
of the recital he jumped to his feet.

 

 

"It was the clock, I suppose, that made you swear so loudly before I
came in?"

 

 

Paul nodded.

 

 

"Well, lying awake listening to it is about the worst possible treatment
for you tonight. This your bag here? Go on -- take it and go home."

 

 

"But -- "

 

 

"I'm on duty, not you. As of this moment. Shift yourself before I change
my mind about being public-spirited!"

 

 

 

 

-- Thank God for Mirza. Though I'm not sure sending me home to an argument
with Iris is any better than lying awake at the hospital. . . .

 

 

The lights were out along the street now; an economy-minded council
switched them off at midnight. He dipped his headlamps as they swerved
across the frontage of the house. All the windows were dark.

 

 

-- Put it off till morning if she's asleep? Lie down in the living-room
on the couch?

 

 

He crept up to the door. How had she got in? No sign of a broken window.
Perhaps he'd forgotten to bolt the kitchen door; he'd left in a hurry
this morning.

 

 

He was just hanging up his coat when the lights snapped on and there
she was on the stairs in gossamer-thin shortie pyjamas.

 

 

"Well!" she said. "What happened to this night duty you were telling
me about?"

 

 

Dazzled after the darkness outside, Paul blinked at her. Somehow during
her absence he had kept a mental picture of her only with make-up on;
encountering her with her face cleansed for sleep, a trifle shiny
with some sort of nourishing cream, was like meeting a stranger by the
same name.

 

 

He said, "I told Mirza you'd come home, so he volunteered to stand in
for me."

 

 

"Who?" She came the rest of the way down the stairs, huddling her arms
around her body as if to screen it from his gaze.

 

 

-- What did Mirza call her: "lovely but unsociable"? I don't know that
"lovely" is the word. Pretty, yes . . . I suppose.

 

 

Belatedly he answered her question. "Mv friend from Pakistan that you
were so rude to when I brought him here."

 

 

She stopped dead. She might have been on her way to give him a kiss,
not wanting to make a grand issue of what had happened earlier, but that
settled the matter.

 

 

"If I'd known this was the sort of welcome home I was going to get I
wouldn't have bothered to come! I was stranded at the station for nearly
a bloody hour, and then when I did get hold of you you wouldn't come
and pick me up, you wouldn't even finish talking to me before you ran
away to see to one of your precious lunatics -- "

 

 

"You got in all right, didn't you?" Paul snapped. "I suppose when you
looked again you found you did have your key!"

 

 

"No, I did not! The taxi-driver went around the house with me and we
found the kitchen door unbolted. Anybody could have walked in and looted
the house!"

 

 

-- My heart's not in this. I haven't got the head of steam up for a
proper row.

 

 

Paul turned aside and dropped into a chair. "Sorry to disappoint you,"
he said. "I'm not in the mood for a bust-up. I was just damned nearly
carved up by a madman with a broken bottle."

 

 

"What?"

 

 

"You heard me. He was threatening one of the nurses. That's why I had to
run away from the phone, and why I'm damned if I'm going to apologise for
not coming to fetch you from the station."

 

 

"Are you serious?" she said in a thin voice.

 

 

"Of course not. I'm tremendously amused. It positively made the evening
for me and I don't know why I'm not shrieking with laughter!"

 

 

"Darling, how was I to know?" Iris said after a pause. She advanced on
him uncertainly, eyes scanning his averted face. "Goodness, it must have
been awful. . . . Look . . . ah . . . Bertie Parsons gave me a bottle
of vodka. Would you like some?"

 

 

-- I don't know what I'd like. Except out. Stop the world I want to get off.

 

 

Exhausted, he sat without stirring except to light a cigarette, while she
scampered up to the bedroom for a robe, then produced the vodka and mixed
drinks for them both.

 

 

"Who was it?"

 

 

"A young fellow called Riley. I thought he was on the mend because he
hadn't given any trouble lately. I was wrong."

 

 

"What started it?" She came over and put the glass into his hand, then
fetched a cushion from the settle opposite and squatted down at his feet,
turning to poke the fire; she must have lit it on coming in.

 

 

"He tried to kiss one of the nurses. Woodside. You met her at the
Christmas dance -- pretty, but very big, as tall as I am."

 

 

She set down the poker and rested her arm on his knee. Her blue eyes
turned up to his face, large and liquid. "It would have been nasty,
wouldn't it?"

 

 

"Nasty!" He gave a short laugh. "Ever seen a man who's had a bottle
ground in his face?"

 

 

"Tell me exactly what happened," she insisted, and began to caress the
inside of his leg.

 

 

-- Where's the affection come from all of a sudden? You haven't behaved
like this in nearly a year!

 

 

Mechanically, as he recounted the story, he pieced together the reason,
and damned the training which gave him insight for that.

 

 

-- It excites you, doesn't it? Starts the little juices running! Thinking
about Riley threatening Nurse Woodside to make her kiss him: that gets
the breath rasping in your throat. I can hear it.

 

 

He gulped the last of his drink and roughly thrust his hand down the neck
of her robe, groping for her nipple with the tips of his fingers. The
contact made her stiffen and shiver. He flicked the butt of his cigarette
into the fire and slid forward off the chair.

 

 

"Paul . . ." she said, the words muffled by a tress of hair that his
movement had drawn across her mouth.

 

 

"Shut up," he said, his lips against her neck. "You've been away for
over two weeks, and I came within inches of never seeing you again and
I want to celebrate."

 

 

"But I . . ."

 

 

Yet, even as her mouth breathed reluctance, her hands were tearing at
his clothes.

 

 

-- Christ. Married four years, nearly five, and I find this out the night
I'm bloody nearly killed.

 

 

That was the last thought before he gave himself up to the plunging and
churning of her body under his.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*21*

 

 

On Sunday Paul drove Iris to Ludlow in chilly spring sunshine, and
they had a good dinner in Cornminster before going home. The other Paul
Fidler kept his distance; thoughts of death and blindness had no place
in a countryside hesitantly emerging from winter lethargy, showing new
green on the trees and shy flowers under the hedgerows.

 

 

But once Paul was at work again on Monday, his alter ego crept back
at the edge of awareness. By force of will he reduced his accumulated
work to manageable proportions, and only then did he allow himself to
consider the problem weighing on his conscience: what he might do for
Urchin to balance the debt he now owed.