The Breaking Point (12 page)

‘No,’ she said, ‘no, I can’t feel them. It’s just that they make everyone look strange.’

‘They’re bound to do that, you know.They don’t show colour.’ His voice was cheerful, friendly. ‘It comes as a bit of a shock when you’ve worn bandages so long,’ he said, ‘and you mustn’t forget you were pulled about quite a bit. The nerves behind the eyes are still very tender.’

‘Yes,’ she said. His voice, even his head, gave her confidence. ‘Have you known people who’ve had this operation before?’

‘Yes, scores of them. In a couple of days you’ll be as right as rain.’ He patted her on the shoulder. Such a kindly dog. Such a sporting, cheerful dog, like the long-dead Angus. ‘I’ll tell you another thing,’ he continued. ‘Your sight may be better after this than it’s ever been before.You’ll actually see more clearly in every way. One patient told me that it was as though she had been wearing spectacles all her life, and then, because of the operation, she realized she saw all her friends and her family as they really were.’

‘As they really were?’ She repeated his words after him.

‘Exactly. Her sight had always been poor, you see. She had thought her husband’s hair was brown, but in reality it was red, bright red. A bit of a shock at first. But she was delighted.’

The Aberdeen moved from the bed, patted the stethoscope on his jacket, and nodded his head. ‘Mr Greaves did a wonderful job on you, I can promise you that,’ he said. ‘He was able to strengthen a nerve he thought had perished. You’ve never had the use of it before - it wasn’t functioning. So who knows, Mrs West, you may have made medical history. Anyway, sleep well and the best of luck. See you in the morning. Good night.’ He trotted from the room. She heard him call good night to Nurse Ansel as he went down the corridor.

The comforting words had turned to gall. In one sense they were a relief, because his explanation seemed to suggest there was no plot against her. Instead, like the woman patient before her with the deepened sense of colour, she had been given vision. She used the words he had used himself. Marda West could see people as they really were. And those whom she had loved and trusted most were in truth a vulture and a snake . . .

The door opened and Nurse Ansel, with the sedative, entered the room.

‘Ready to settle down, Mrs West?’ she asked.

‘Yes, thank you.’

There might be no conspiracy, but even so all trust, all faith, were over.

‘Leave it with a glass of water. I’ll take it later.’

She watched the snake put the glass on the bedside table. She watched her tuck in the sheet. Then the twisting neck peered closer and the hooded eyes saw the nail-scissors half-hidden beneath the pillow.

‘What have you got there?’

The tongue darted and withdrew. The hand stretched out for the scissors. ‘You might have cut yourself. I’ll put them away, shall I, for safety’s sake?’

Her one weapon was pocketed, not replaced on the dressing-table. The very way Nurse Ansel slipped the scissors into her pocket suggested that she knew of Marda West’s suspicions. She wanted to leave her defenceless.

‘Now, remember to ring your bell if you want anything.’

‘I’ll remember.’

The voice that had once seemed tender was over-smooth and false. How deceptive are ears, thought Marda West, what traitors to truth. And for the first time she became aware of her own new latent power, the power to tell truth from falsehood, good from evil.

‘Good night, Mrs West.’

‘Good night.’

Lying awake, her bedside clock ticking, the accustomed traffic sounds coming from the street outside, Marda West decided upon her plan. She waited until eleven o’clock, an hour past the time when she knew that all the patients were settled and asleep.Then she switched out her light. This would deceive the snake, should she come to peep at her through the window-slide in the door. The snake would believe that she slept. Marda West crept out of bed. She took her clothes from the wardrobe and began to dress. She put on her coat and shoes and tied a scarf over her head. When she was ready she went to the door and softly turned the handle. All was quiet in the corridor. She stood there motionless. Then she took one step across the threshold and looked to the left, where the nurse on duty sat. The snake was there. The snake was sitting crouched over a book.The light from the ceiling shone upon her head, and there could be no mistake.There were the trim uniform, the white starched front, the stiff collar, but rising from the collar the twisting neck of the snake, the long, flat, evil head.

Marda West waited. She was prepared to wait for hours. Presently the sound she hoped for came, the bell from a patient. The snake lifted its head from the book and checked the red light on the wall. Then, slipping on her cuffs, she glided down the corridor to the patient’s room. She knocked and entered. Directly she had disappeared Marda West left her own room and went to the head of the staircase.There was no sound. She listened carefully, and then crept downstairs. There were four flights, four floors, but the stairway itself was not visible from the cubby-hole where the night nurses sat on duty. Luck was with her.

Down in the main hall the lights were not so bright. She waited at the bottom of the stairway until she was certain of not being observed. She could see the night-porter’s back - his head was not visible, for he was bent over his desk - but when it straightened she noticed the broad fish face. She shrugged her shoulders. She had not dared all this way to be frightened by a fish. Boldly she walked through the hall. The fish was staring at her.

‘Do you want anything, madam?’ he said.

He was as stupid as she expected. She shook her head.

‘I’m going out. Good night,’ she said, and she walked straight past him, out of the swing-door, and down the steps into the street. She turned swiftly to the left, and, seeing a taxi at the further end, called and raised her hand. The taxi slowed and waited. When she came to the door she saw that the driver had the squat black face of an ape.The ape grinned. Some instinct warned her not to take the taxi.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I made a mistake.’

The grin vanished from the face of the ape. ‘Make up your mind, lady,’ he shouted, and let in his clutch and swerved away.

Marda West continued walking down the street. She turned right, and left, and right again, and in the distance she saw the lights of Oxford Street. She began to hurry. The friendly traffic drew her like a magnet, the distant lights, the distant men and women.When she came to Oxford Street she paused, wondering of a sudden where she should go, whom she could ask for refuge. And it came to her once again that there was no one, no one at all; because the couple passing her now, a toad’s head on a short black body clutching a panther’s arm, could give her no protection, and the policeman standing at the corner was a baboon, the woman talking to him a little prinked-up pig. No one was human, no one was safe, the man a pace or two behind her was like Jim, another vulture. There were vultures on the pavement opposite. Coming towards her, laughing, was a jackal.

She turned and ran. She ran, bumping into them, jackals, hyenas, vultures, dogs. The world was theirs, there was no human left. Seeing her run they turned and looked at her, they pointed, they screamed and yapped, they gave chase, their footsteps followed her. Down Oxford Street she ran, pursued by them, the night all darkness and shadow, the light no longer with her, alone in an animal world.

 

‘Lie quite still, Mrs West, just a small prick, I’m not going to hurt you.’

She recognized the voice of Mr Greaves, the surgeon, and dimly she told herself that they had got hold of her again. She was back at the nursing-home, and it did not matter now - she might as well be there as anywhere else. At least in the nursing-home the animal heads were known.

They had replaced the bandages over her eyes, and for this she was thankful. Such blessed darkness, the evil of the night hidden.

‘Now, Mrs West, I think your troubles are over. No pain and no confusion with these lenses. The world’s in colour again.’

The bandages were being lightened after all. Layer after layer removed. And suddenly everything was clear, was day, and the face of Mr Greaves smiled down at her.At his side was a rounded, cheerful nurse.

‘Where are your masks?’ asked the patient.

‘We didn’t need masks for this little job,’ said the surgeon. ‘We were only taking out the temporary lenses. That’s better, isn’t it?’

She let her eyes drift round the room. She was back again all right.This was the shape, there was the wardrobe, the dressing-table, the vases of flowers. All in natural colour, no longer veiled. But they could not fob her off with stories of a dream. The scarf she had put round her head before slipping away in the night lay on the chair.

‘Something happened to me, didn’t it?’ she said. ‘I tried to get away.’

The nurse glanced at the surgeon. He nodded his head.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you did. And, frankly, I don’t blame you. I blame myself.Those lenses I inserted yesterday were pressing upon a tiny nerve, and the pressure threw out your balance.That’s all over now.’

His smile was reassuring. And the large warm eyes of Nurse Brand - it must surely be Nurse Brand - gazed down at her in sympathy.

‘It was very terrible,’ said the patient. ‘I can never explain how terrible.’

‘Don’t try,’ said Mr Greaves.‘I can promise you it won’t happen again.’

The door opened and the young physician entered. He too was smiling. ‘Patient fully restored?’ he asked.

‘I think so,’ said the surgeon. ‘What about it, Mrs West?’

Marda West stared gravely at the three of them, Mr Greaves, the house physician and Nurse Brand, and she wondered what palpitating wounded tissue could so transform three individuals into prototypes of an animal kingdom, what cell linking muscle to imagination.

‘I thought you were dogs,’ she said. ‘I thought you were a hunt terrier, Mr Greaves, and that you were an Aberdeen.’

The house physician touched his stethoscope and laughed.

‘But I am,’ he said, ‘it’s my native town. Your judgement was not wholly out, Mrs West. I congratulate you.’

Marda West did not join in the laugh.

‘That’s all right for you,’ she said. ‘Other people were not so pleasant.’ She turned to Nurse Brand. ‘I thought you were a cow,’ she said, ‘a kind cow. But you had sharp horns.’

This time it was Mr Greaves who took up the laugh. ‘There you are, nurse,’ he said, ‘just what I’ve often told you. Time they put you out to grass and to eat the daisies.’

Nurse Brand took it in good part. She straightened the patient’s pillows and her smile was benign. ‘We get called some funny things from time to time,’ she said. ‘That’s all part of our job.’

The doctors were moving towards the door, still laughing, and Marda West, sensing the normal atmosphere, the absence of all strain, said, ‘Who found me, then? What happened? Who brought me back?’

Mr Greaves glanced back at her from the door. ‘You didn’t get very far, Mrs West, and a damn good job for you, or you mightn’t be here now. The porter followed you.’

‘It’s all finished with now,’ said the house physician, ‘and the episode lasted five minutes. You were safely in your bed before any harm was done, and I was here. So that was that. The person who really had the full shock was poor Nurse Ansel when she found you weren’t in your bed.’

Nurse Ansel . . . The revulsion of the night before was not so easily forgotten. ‘Don’t say our little starlet was an animal too?’ smiled the house doctor. Marda West felt herself colour. Lies would have to begin. ‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘no, of course not.’

‘Nurse Ansel is here now,’ said Nurse Brand. ‘She was so upset when she went off duty that she wouldn’t go back to the hostel to sleep. Would you care to have a word with her?’

Apprehension seized the patient. What had she said to Nurse Ansel in the panic and fever of the night? Before she could answer the house doctor opened the door and called down the passage.

‘Mrs West wants to say good morning to you,’ he said. He was smiling all over his face. Mr Greaves waved his hand and was gone, Nurse Brand went after him, and the house doctor, saluting with his stethoscope and making a mock bow, stepped back against the wall to admit Nurse Ansel. Marda West stared, then tremulously began to smile, and held out her hand.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘you must forgive me.’

How could she have seen Nurse Ansel as a snake! The hazel eyes, the clear olive skin, the dark hair trim under the frilled cap. And that smile, that slow, understanding smile.

‘Forgive you, Mrs West?’ said Nurse Ansel. ‘What have I to forgive you for? You’ve been through a terrible ordeal.’

Patient and nurse held hands. They smiled at one another. And, oh heaven, thought Marda West, the relief, the thankfulness, the load of doubt and despair that was swept away with the new-found sight and knowledge.

‘I still don’t understand what happened,’ she said, clinging to the nurse.‘Mr Greaves tried to explain. Something about a nerve.’

Nurse Ansel made a face towards the door. ‘He doesn’t know himself,’ she whispered, ‘and he’s not going to say either, or he’ll find himself in trouble. He fixed those lenses too deep, that’s all. Too near a nerve. I wonder it didn’t kill you.’

She looked down at her patient. She smiled with her eyes. She was so pretty, so gentle.‘Don’t think about it,’ she said.‘You’re going to be happy from now on. Promise me?’

‘I promise,’ said Marda West.

The telephone rang, and Nurse Ansel let go her patient’s hand and reached for the receiver. ‘You know who this is going to be,’ she said. ‘Your poor husband.’ She gave the receiver to Marda West.

‘Jim . . . Jim, is that you?’

The loved voice sounding so anxious at the other end. ‘Are you all right?’ he said. ‘I’ve been through to Matron twice, she said she would let me know.What the devil has been happening?’