Quicksand (2 page)

 

 

-- Blast Mirza. Doesn't anything ever go wrong with his life?

 

 

But the twinge of bitterness didn't last in Paul's mind. Mirza was
diabolically handsome, indecently intelligent and quite without false
modesty: how could anyone help liking him?

 

 

-- Although, of course, Iris . . .

 

 

The Pakistani sipped his tea, grimaced, and put the cup on the arm of
his chair. He touched the trace-line of moustache along his upper lip
as though making sure it was still there, and fixed his bright black
gaze on Paul.

 

 

"You really do look under the weather. What's the matter?"

 

 

Paul shrugged, kicking around a hard chair to sit on.

 

 

"You closemouthed English," Mirza sighed. "It's a marvel you aren't all
stark raving bonkers in this country. Or are you? Sometimes I get the
impression . . . Well, I'll guess, then. A rough session with Soppy Al?"

 

 

He meant Dr Knox Alsop, the consultant with whom Paul worked most closely.

 

 

"No, he wasn't in today," Paul muttered. "Put it off to tomorrow. Some
committee meeting he had to attend."

 

 

"Then it's probably Hole-in-head. Hm?" Mirza cocked his right eyebrow
to a disturbing angle.

 

 

One of these days Dr Joseph Holinshed, medical superintendent of the
hospital, was going to learn about the series of punning nicknames Mirza
had coined for his superiors, and feathers would fly. As yet, though,
he seemed to have remained aloof from earshot of them.

 

 

"It's partly him," Paul conceded. A frigid exchange with Holinshed
was becoming almost a daily feature of his work, and this morning had
conformed to the pattern.

 

 

"Only partly? Holy Joe is the largest single obstacle to getting one's
work done around this place, and occasionally I experience this urge
to lock him accidentally in the disturbed female ward overnight. Then
perhaps he'd catch on to what's really happening." A casual gesture
implying dismissal of a whole range of alternative possibilities. "That
leaves your lovely but unsociable wife. What's she done to you this time?"

 

 

"Changed her mind about coming home tomorrow," Paul admitted reluctantly.

 

 

There was a short silence, during which the two men faced each other
directly, Paul wanting to turn aside but somehow lacking the will-power,
Mirza biting down on his lower lip in an expression eloquent of concern.

 

 

He said at length, "What can I say, Paul? If I speak my mind I risk
making you think I'm offended because of the way she treated me. I'm
not -- enough of the attitude customary at home under the Raj leaked
through my arrogant skull for me to half-expect women like her to snub
wogs like me. It's what she does to you that bothers me. She wants to
boss you about, and that's bad."

 

 

"Now look here, Mirza!" Paul began, and realised with an appalling shock
that it stopped there; the words he needed to counter the charge didn't
exist.

 

 

He was saved from having to bluster, however, by the arrival of others
of the junior medical staff: Phil Kerans, Natalie Rudge, Ferdie Silva.
At once, with the more-than-British tact of which he was invariably
capable, Mirza was away on a ludicrous fantasy about Holinshed, and they
were laughing together, allowing Paul to sit by quietly and even crack
a passable smile of his own.

 

 

-- Without Mirza, what the hell would I do?

 

 

Sufficiently distracted to swallow his sour cool tea without tasting it,
he considered his colleagues.

 

 

-- Relating to other people: a jargon phrase we use to blanket the spectrum
love-to-hate. But human beings don't follow tidy lines on graphs. They
diverge at odd angles into n dimensions. Where can one plot the location
of indifference? Somewhere in mid-air above the surface of the paper? It
leads neither to affection nor to detestation. It's a point in a void.

 

 

Not that he was totally indifferent to these coworkers. Just . . .
somewhat indifferent.

 

 

-- A state worse yet?

 

 

Take Irish Phil Kerans. At forty-plus he knew he was never going where
Mirza certainly and Paul presumably were going, to consultant status.
He'd do a reasonable job in this or another hospital until he retired:
an average, neutral person. He seemed no longer to resent the fact. Paul
matched his own probable future against Kerans's, and could draw no
conclusions from the comparison.

 

 

-- Natalie?

 

 

When he had first seen her it had been from behind, and he had immediately
been attracted by her sleek black hair glistening under a fluorescent light.
It had been a shock when she turned to be introduced and he saw the bad
complexion and receding chin which made her not downright ugly but just
plain. Yet she had an amazing talent for warming the cold withdrawn
personalities of chronic geriatric cases.

 

 

-- Do I like her? As with Phil, the answer is: yes/no. A reaction
equidistant between liking and disliking but far off the line which
would lead me to either.

 

 

So too with Ferdie Silva, like Mirza an immigrant but unlike him of
European extraction, born in British Guiana: a sallow, stolid man whose
chief attribute was the unspectacular one of patience.

 

 

-- I can't work up enthusiasm over someone's patience!

 

 

Then: over what? Anything? Not today, not now. His brain had congealed
before the prospect of accepting what Mirza said straight out, what he
himself knew intellectually but dared not let seep into total awareness
for fear it would overload his mind with pseudo-real visions of the
consequences. Best to spin out uncertainty as long as possible.

 

 

He felt poised in this instant of time, as an impossibly slow spinning
top might poise before falling. He could almost sense the rotation of the
earth, carrying him past the successive doorways leading to his alternate
futures. It was within his power to move forward into whichever he wished,
to go on putting up with things as they were or to make a clean break
and any of half a dozen fresh starts, or to set in train events leading
to a break being forced on him. He could picture with painful clarity
the likely form that each of those futures would take. Only the act of
choosing between them was beyond his present ability.

 

 

Passive, he absorbed snatches of what was being said.

 

 

"I think young Reynolds is on the mend. He got quite animated telling
me about the right time to plant flowers this afternoon. I must find
out if there's a patch of garden he can have."

 

 

Groping, Paul attached the name to a person: a youth who had at first lied
to his mother about going to work and spent his days riding about on buses,
then progressed to refusing to get out of bed.

 

 

-- To be cured with a plot of ground and a packet of seeds? God, how
wonderful to find such an easy solution!

 

 

"Watch out for Lieberman next time you're on duty. They found another key
under his pillow this morning."

 

 

-- Lieberman the master locksmith. See something locked, open it. Anything.
When he tried the cages at Dudley Zoo they sent him here, and now . . .

 

 

Paul jangled the heavy bunch of keys in the side pocket of his jacket.

 

 

-- What's the difference between me and a jailer? No prizes for the first
correct answer.

 

 

"Paul, you're looking pale today. Anything the matter?"

 

 

Natalie, eyes monstrous behind pebble-thick glasses, was regarding him.

 

 

"I didn't get much sleep last night," Paul apologised hastily. "It was
my duty. And that bloody cracked bell . . . !"

 

 

"If you didn't live out in luxury you wouldn't notice it," Phil Kerans
said. "Since the first week I was here I've simply learned to ignore it."

 

 

"Can't ignore it now," Ferdie Silva put in, glancing at his watch. "Time to
move along."

 

 

There was a chinking of piled cups, a stubbing of cigarettes. It was just
about sunset, and the wind had risen enough to moan in the mock battlements
of the building.

 

 

"I have an idea for augmenting our budget," Mirza said. "Let's rent
this place to a horror film company.
Dracula Meets the Headshrinkers
would pack them in at the local flea-pits!"

 

 

"We're packed in tightly enough here," Natalie said. "How near are we
to capacity, Paul?"

 

 

Paul started and thought back to the chart on the wall of his office.
"We have a couple of discharges due for tomorrow," he said. "Which will
leave . . . uh . . . eighteen bed-spaces empty."

 

 

"It's a record," Kerans grunted. "I hope you're keeping quiet about it,
or they'll send us twenty new admissions."

 

 

The clock chimed. Natalie gave an exaggerated wince and looked for Paul
to respond, which he did belatedly, and then she was gone. The rest of
them moved in her wake.

 

 

"How are you fixed for work this evening, Mirza?" Paul inquired as they
emerged on the landing. "Time for a quick one before supper?"

 

 

"I wish I could," Mirza answered. "I think you need company.
But.
"

 

 

"It's not your duty tonight, is it?"

 

 

"No, it's Natalie's, I think." Mirza gave a consciously mock-wicked grin.
"I have a date, though, and it's too . . . ah . . . tentative to risk
making her hang around."

 

 

"Another new one?" Abruptly Paul found himself trying to imagine Mirza
through a woman's eyes: tall, lean, his skin not much darker than a heavy
sun-tan, his English far better than most Englishmen's, his features
classically regular . . .

 

 

-- God damn.

 

 

"I've told you before," Mirza said, smiling. "It's prophylactic. I gather
Holy Joe is winding up to a session on the mat because he doesn't approve
of my goings-on -- what else could you expect, though, of someone named
after the idiot who turned down Potiphar's wife? But if push comes
to shove I shall tell him what I've told you: I'm insuring against a
breach of ethics. Your poor repressed womenfolk nursing their desire
to be raped by a nigger would be all over me, and I couldn't stand them
off if I didn't . . . ah . . . make adequate provision elsewhere."

 

 

The self-deprecating mockery left his tone abruptly.

 

 

"Paul, this girl had a friend with her when I met her the other night --
rather a dish. But you wouldn't be interested, would you?"

 

 

Paul shook his head and tried to swallow, finding his mouth was desert-dry.

 

 

"A marriage like yours is no basis for a proper understanding of women,"
Mirza said, so clincally it was impossible to take offence. "Try looking
at it from that point of view. It may be a consolation. . . . I'm sorry,
Paul. Believe me, I really am very sorry indeed."

 

 

He touched his friend lightly on the shoulder and was gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*3*

 

 

After the first pint of beer Paul thought about a second and went to
the toilet while making up his mind. Tiredness leadened his limbs --
pressure of work had kept him in the office far later than the official
quitting time -- but at least he had a more concrete reason for not going
home yet than the mere prospect of a cold empty house and a meal out of
cans: a sad drizzle of rain was muttering at the pub's windows.

 

 

-- On the other hand, why stay in this dismal dump?

 

 

In the hope of waking himself up a little he splashed his face with cold
water. Wiping the wet away with the automatic roller-towel -- overdue for
changing again, hanging fully out of its white enamel dispenser like a lax
pale tongue from a dinosaur's mouth -- he stared at himself in the mirror.

 

 

Not a remarkable person, this Paul Fidler. Rather a round face without
great character, his eyes turned to echoing circles by puffy dark lower
lids and exaggerated half-moon eyebrows. Dark brown hair above the face,
crisp and rebellious; below, a decent medium-priced suit, white shirt,
green tie. . . .

 

 

-- To look at: a Kerans-type second-rater in the making?

 

 

The trend of his thoughts alarmed him. He dropped the towel as if it had
stung him and thrust his way back to the bar. He needed to take the
pressure off. He ordered a Scotch and carried it to the corner table
where he had been sitting before alone.

 

 

-- I have this sense of
waiting
. But . . . what in hell for?

 

 

The fact that the feeling was familiar didn't make it any more palatable.
It had reverberated along his life-line in advance of almost every major
event of his existence, pleasant or unpleasant, each pulse spawning in his
imagination a horde of possible worlds: failing to win the scholarship
he banked on, being ploughed in his medical course, losing Iris after
becoming engaged to her against all his expectations, being turned down
for this post as psychiatric registrar at Chent. Sometimes, between sleep
and waking In the morning, those unrealised possibilities became so real
be mistook them for memories and carried nightmare into the daytime.

 

 

-- And during my breakdown, of course, they