Quicksand (9 page)

 

 

He found Natalie in the stairwell connecting the upper and lower floors of
the Disturbed wing, at the end of the passage leading to the Female wards.
She was talking to Matron Thoroday and Sister Wells; Paul waited till
she had finished.

 

 

-- Must be the "thorough" in her name Matron's trying to live up to,
I suppose.

 

 

This entire hospital was a sluggish battleground between interlocking
zones of influence, all the way from the grand scale of medical
superintendent versus hospital secretary where the support of outside
forces like the hospital group or even the Ministry could be invoked,
by way of Matron's unending series of arguments on points of principle --
this including such questions as what colour to repaint the drainpipes --
clear to the absurd manoeuvrings which centred on the patients themselves:
silent but persistent jockeying for a majority of the cases that might
be milked of a paper for an important medical journal. Paul had hoped
that this last, which had shocked him when he first discovered it, might
be confined to teaching hospitals, but Chent suffered from it too in a
muted form.

 

 

-- I wish Alsop hadn't said what he did when I first arrived, about my job
being an ideal launch-base for getting my name into print. At twenty-eight
what do I know that's new enough to warrant being printed? A paper on this
strange girl we're starting to call Urchin? I could fit one in, I suppose;
I don't have to break my neck on the diploma course yet. But I'm not
involved. To me patients are still all strangers, all individuals. When
they become simply "cases," maybe then . . .

 

 

Matron bustled away. He moved towards Natalie and Sister Wells.

 

 

"What was all that about?"

 

 

Natalie grimaced. "It bothers Matron that we should have a patient with
no clues to her identity. Hasn't she any scars? No deformities? Then
how about having her fingerprints taken in case she's been arrested at
some time?"

 

 

Sister Wells, a gaunt brown-haired woman whom Paul had liked since their
first meeting, exposed her big horsy teeth in a sympathetic grin and
led the way towards the ward where Urchin was accommodated. Falling in
alongside Natalie, Paul was struck by a point he'd overlooked last night.

 

 

"I completely forgot to get in touch with Inspector Hofford!"

 

 

"I remembered just after you'd gone. Not that I had any news for him."

 

 

"What did he say about Faberdown -- the salesman?"

 

 

"Still maintaining he did nothing to provoke an attack on him. Hofford
was apologetic, but he said the matter would have to be taken further."

 

 

"Meaning what?"

 

 

"Sounds like a jargon phrase for making a nuisance of themselves." Natalie
stopped outside one of the boxlike security cells running the whole length
of the ward. "Damn. Sister, I said her door was to be left open."

 

 

"It was," the sister countered.

 

 

Paul looked around. Here, as on the men's side, those patients due for
an interview with a consultant were hanging about in nightwear, and one
caught his eye: a sly woman with a greasy tangle of grey hair. She put
her hand to her mouth and giggled. Paul touched Natalie's arm, gesturing.

 

 

"What? Oh, Madge Phelps interfering again! I might have guessed. Convinced
she's in here to spy on the others, keeps coming to me and the nurses with
harrowing tales about how they misbehave. Tell her off, will you Sister?"

 

 

She jerked the cell's door open. There on the hard bed sat Urchin,
tensed at the sudden intrusion.

 

 

-- I've seen this cell before. HELP HELP scratched into the paint.
Probably a mercy she can't read it.

 

 

Recognising Paul, Urchin got to her feet and gave him a wan smile.
He returned it as warmly as he could.

 

 

-- Forget the trapped-animal look. Homicidals can wear it too.

 

 

"What sort of night did she have?" he asked Natalie.

 

 

"Kirk looked in on her a couple of times, and so did I. She spent a lot
of the night sitting up in bed frowning, and Kirk says she was talking
to herself at one stage."

 

 

"Saying what?"

 

 

"Foreign language. I quote Kirk."

 

 

Paul rubbed his chin. "And this morning?"

 

 

"Perfectly tractable apart from having to be shown how to do absolutely
everything. Oh -- with one exception. She ate her porridge at breakfast,
but then there was bacon and fried bread, and I gather she picked up
the bacon in her fingers, smelt it, and left the table looking pale."

 

 

"I was wondering if she might be Jewish," Sister Wells put in. "She's not
what you'd call an English type, is she?"

 

 

"No more a Jewish one." Paul shrugged. "Though that would account for
her refusing bacon, of course. . . . I wonder. Perhaps she's vegetarian."

 

 

"Health food and nudism?" Natalie suggested quizzically.

 

 

"Picked a damned silly climate to do it in, then," Paul grunted. "Is she
any the worse for her exposure, by the way?"

 

 

"Not at all. In fact she found the bedding too hot for her; she removed
the coverlid and folded it on the locker."

 

 

"Feverish?"

 

 

"Nope."

 

 

"Well, I have no new ideas. You got any Natalie?"

 

 

"The more that occur to me, the more they seem stupid." Natalie glanced
at the clock on the wall of the ward. "Blazes, I can't stand around here
any longer. Roshman will be here any minute and he wants me to go to
Birmingham with him after lunch, so it'll be a frantic morning. Let me
know what Alsop says, won't you?"

 

 

"Of course."

 

 

She and Sister Wells moved away. Paul remained standing in the cell,
staring at the girl and feeling a vast surge of pity for her plight.
She seemed so tiny and helpless in the hospital dress of blue cotton,
child-sized but even so too baggy around her waist, which she had been
given. There was nothing childish, though, about the keen gaze of her
large, dark eyes. And, despite the ugly garments put on her, she merited
Mirza's approving description of her as a poppet: there was colour in
her cheeks this morning instead of the cold pallor of yesterday, and
that was a transfiguration.

 

 

-- Damned shame you didn't give us some name we could twist into "Elfin"
instead of Urchin! More suitable by far!

 

 

"Pol?" she said suddenly.

 

 

"Arrzheen," he agreed.

 

 

Her small hand darted to her right, touching the bed, while she cocked
her head at an inquiring angle. At first he didn't catch on; abruptly he
realised her intention.

 

 

-- She wants to know what it's called. What in the world have we stumbled
into here?

 

 

"Bed," he said carefully.

 

 

"Baid!" A hesitation; then a tap on the wall.

 

 

"Wall."

 

 

"Wol!"

 

 

"Dr Fidler!" a voice interrupted from behind him. He swung around to find
Nurse Foden at the door.

 

 

"Dr Alsop is here, Dr Fidler, and he says will you please join him
right away."

 

 

-- Damn. Well, it can't be helped. Try apologising in gestures.

 

 

He pointed at himself, at Nurse Foden, and pantomimed walking away.
Urchin's face fell, but she had no words to object with; she merely
sighed and resumed her seat on the edge of the bed as though resigned
to letting the world do what it liked with her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*11*

 

 

Dr E. Knox Alsop was a fine-looking man: over six feet, with a broad
forehead, smooth dark hair and a tan meticulously maintained throughout
the winter with an ultraviolet lamp. Paul considered himself fortunate
to be working with him rather than, say, with Dr Roshman or any other
of the hospital's regular consultants. He had an undoubted streak of
vanity, which had given Mirza the excuse (if he needed any) for coining
the nickname "Soppy Al," but it was chiefly confined to minor
characteristics like his tan and secretiveness about what his initial E
stood for. Mirza had a theory about that, too: in his view Alsop had been
an exceptionally active baby before he was born, and the name was Enoch --
" 'E knock-knocks!"

 

 

Nonetheless, this vanity was a foible that seldom reached the point of
irritating the people he had to work with, whereas Roshman's perpetual
air of harassment found expression in indecision; he would spend an hour
with one of the resident MO's planning an exact course of therapy for
a patient, then ring up from home the same evening with a full set of
radically different second thoughts.

 

 

On the other hand, Alsop did exhibit the attitude which had enabled
Mirza to coin a spare and to Paul's mind far more apt nickname for him:
"Opportunity Knox." He regarded himself as inhabiting a jungle in which
behind masks of civiised behaviour and conventional politeness everybody,
doctor or not, was out for what he could get. No means of enhancing his
reputation, status and income escaped him.

 

 

When he first cottoned on to the extent of Alsop's ambitions, Paul
had been mystified as to why he was content to act as a consultant
to a medium-sized provincial hospital like Chent, with its total of
under three hundred beds, when the promotion ladder offered so many
more rungs in big cities. The explanation had proved to be perfectly
simple and absolutely typical. From correspondence in periodicals like
the
British Medical Journal
he had progressed very early in his career
to publishing papers, first with colleagues of greater standing, then on
his own. The next step would have to be a book, and the subject he had
settled on was a comparative study of the incidence of various psychoses
among rural and urban populations. Chent's catchment area was eight per
cent rural. Hence his presence.

 

 

Whether directly from Paul, or -- as Paul suspected was more likely --
after meeting Iris, he had summed up the new registrar as a go-getter
like himself. Paul had done nothing to disillusion him immediately.
He had listened with attention to Alsop's well-meant advice, promised to
act on it . . . and then somehow let it slide. Up until about Christmas
of last year Alsop had continued to prompt him, going so far as to point
out letters in medical journals which called for a reply from someone
-- why not from Paul? And he'd likewise stressed the advantages of a
registrar's post as a stepping-stone to eventual fame. Paul, slightly
disheartened by the requirements of the course he'd just started on
-- the two-year programme for a Diploma of Psychological Medicine --
had complied with one or two of the suggestions, but given up when no
instant results followed, preferring to spend his free time in study.

 

 

Now, a couple of months past Christmas, Alsop appeared to be ready to
write Paul off as the white hope of Chent. Paul was still helping at
his once-weekly clinic in Blickham, but the references Alsop had made
to letting him tackle clinic sessions on his own during the consultant's
absence had remained a vague idea without plans to implement it.

 

 

-- I suppose I have disappointed him. But that doesn't make him unique.
My parents, my wife, even myself are in there with him.

 

 

At all events, the greeting he offered this morning was friendly enough.
He waved Paul to the interview chair in the rather cheerless office.

 

 

"Chuck me that stuff from the couch, would you?" he went on. Paul passed
over a small stack of files that had been dumped on the grey blanket.
"How are things, young fellow?"

 

 

-- Should I tell him? It's already only half a secret. But he has small
sympathy for failures, and failing in marriage is about as basic as
failures come.

 

 

"So-so." Paul shrugged. "The weather's been getting me down, I think.
I'm coming to understand why the suicide peak starts in March."

 

 

"Thought you'd have worked that out in your teens," Alsop grunted,
scanning a succession of case-notes as he talked. "Your wife still away,
is she?"

 

 

"Yes."

 

 

"That's probably a contributory factor. I wouldn't go so far as that chap
in Sweden who advocates promiscuity as a treatment for delinquents,
but there's no doubt whatever about the therapeutic effect of regular
orgasm." Alsop gave a dry chuckle. "Your friend Bakshad seems to realise
that okay. I ran into him in Blickliam last night with what must be his
twentieth different girl since he got here."

 

 

Paul, off guard, was overwhelmed with a pang of bitterness.

 

 

-- Therapeutic effects of orgasm! I've half a mind to spew the truth in
his lap and see how his face changes!

 

 

But while the decision was still untaken Alsop had gone on.

 

 

"You ran foul of some local bigwig, I gather -- hm?"

 

 

Paul scowled. "Mrs Weddenhall,
Jay Pee
! Who told you about that --
Dr Holinshed?"

 

 

"Of course."

 

 

"I thought I'd set him straight on the matter. But apparently I didn't
shout loudly enough to make him listen."