Transmigration (22 page)

 

 

When Gerry looked out of the window, sixty feet up, he and Fletcher split
into their respective units. But Fletcher could not escape. The strain
was not yet great enough.

 

 

It was not a remarkable coincidence that he was again having to face
a situation in which height played a major part. When he was Fletcher,
with a mild phobia, it had been easy to avoid such situations. Now that
he was caught up with others, it was not.

 

 

Sheila was ten feet away, sitting on the sill of a false window. The
architect who designed the building had fancifullly alternated real
windows and embrasures in the stonework. Sheila was, in certain senses of
the word, safe. She was sitting on a substantial sill with enough space
behind her to give her a reasonable purchase, though her legs dangled
in space.

 

 

The height was negligible compared with the skyscraper parapet. The offices,
at the back of the factory, overlooked an untidy jumble of tenements and
back greens, and even not very tall buildings cut off sight of any street.
From Sheila on her perch, straight down to the warehouse lanes beneath her,
the drop could not be more than sixty feet.

 

 

Gerry turned away and said urgently: "Have you called the police or the
fire service? She could be caught in a blanket."

 

 

A chorus of voices assured him the firemen were on their way.

 

 

He looked out again. This time Sheila saw him, and waved ironically. He
choked as he saw she was waving with her misshapen, broken arm. Blood
dripped from it, and as his gaze followed it down, Fletcher felt all
the horror that had driven him out of Judy.

 

 

It was incredible that she should have reached her perch without plunging
down to the lane below. There was a ledge not quite three inches wide, and
he gathered from what he had heard, that she had darted out of the window
recklessly and almost run to where she was now. There was the paradox of
suicide: nobody without suicidal impulses would ever have gone out through
that window, yet instead of plunging straight to her death, she had gone
along a three inch ledge to a place of temporary safety . . . why?

 

 

"I'm going out after her," said Gerry.

 

 

The five words paralyzed Fletcher. He didn't know they were coming until
he heard them. Then immediately he hoped that the men and girls all round
him would say at once: "No, you can't, we won't let you," but although
they chattered like monkeys, nobody took any action to stop Gerry.

 

 

Fletcher remained paralyzed. He could not take over and control Gerry,
as he had controlled them all, including Gerry himself, when it was
necessary. Possibly the paralysis came from indecision; there were so
many things he might try to do, so many things he could and could not do.

 

 

If he were able to become Sheila he might succeed in straightening her
out. But while she was in her present situation, nothing could.make him
transfer to Sheila, and if he did, terror would make him/her fall. Then,
though he would no doubt move voluntarily or involuntarily to another
haven, Sheila would be dead.

 

 

If he were able to take control of Gerry, a simple matter if he could
calm himself sufficiently, he might be of help in talking Sheila back
into the office, or in keeping her there until the firemen arrived with
their ladders.

 

 

If he could not stop Gerry going out, it might well be the end of both
Gerry and Sheila. He, of course, would survive. Either when Gerry fell or
when Gerry looked like falling, he'd jump to . . . Baudaker? Ross? Someone
entirely unexpected, as most of them had been?

 

 

Gerry's knee was on the sill of the open window. And Fletcher was still
indecisive. If only it hadn't been a matter of heights, he told himself
as an excuse. It was the unreasoning terror of falling sixty feet,
unreasoning became he was fairly certain he would escape before this
happened, that made him helpless when the two people who were currently
his concern, Gerry and Sheila, faced their crisis.

 

 

Then Sheila said calmly: "If you come out, I'll jump."

 

 

Gerry remained two entirely separate people. At that moment there was
only enough contact between him and Fletcher for each to know what the
other was thinking.

 

 

Gerry thought: If I was quick enough I could reach her and catch hold
of her all right, because she'd hesitate. But what could I hold on to
once I'd caught her?

 

 

Fletcher thought: If I could reverse this situation -- put Gerry in
danger while Sheila is safe -- I might be able to switch from Gerry to
Sheila. This way, it's impossible. I can't control what I do, I have to
lose control before anything happens.

 

 

Sheila's injured arm was on the side away from him, hidden now, and
except for the appalling drop beneath her, she looked like any pretty
girl sitting on a ledge in the sun, dangling her legs. She wore a skimpy
black skirt and a plain white blouse. She had lost both her shoes.

 

 

Fletcher thought: this girl must be saved. He still felt a deep need
for justification -- all that had happened could be justified in some
supreme court if it had a purpose -- a worth-while purpose. "Sorting
Sheila out," as Gerry thought of it, would be a very worth-while purpose,
if there were some way to do it.

 

 

Having relaxed momentarily, he found he was able to take partial control
of Gerry.

 

 

He turned to the whispering office girls and clerks. "Please get out,
all of you," he said. "She'll never come back here with all of you
standing about. If you leave me here alone . . . "

 

 

"He's right," said Sheringham. He started to shepherd the others away.

 

 

Gerry went back to the window. He had not lost his confidence in Fletcher.
Fearless himself, he was quite prepared to make a reckless, even suicidal
attempt to save Sheila, but it was obvious that this would, more likely
than not, precipitate her fall. If Fletcher had any ideas, Gerry was
quite prepared to let him try them.

 

 

"Sheila," Fletcher said. She turned her head. "It will be all right,
I promise you," he said quietly. "Come back, and it will be all right."

 

 

"How can you promise anything?" she retorted bitterly. "Last night you
showed what your promises are worth."

 

 

"All that happened was I decided not to run away. Sheila, I love you."

 

 

Curiously, or not so curiously, Gerry had never said that to Sheila.
Indeed, he didn't say it now. Fletcher said it for him.

 

 

Sheila's mood changed. "I'm no good to you, Gerry. I never was and I
never will be. I'm no good to anybody, especially not to myself."

 

 

"I still love you, Sheila."

 

 

"Then you're a fool. I can't change. If there were some way . . . "

 

 

"But there is a way!" Fletcher paused, striving to explain the inexplicable
to a girl who only had to lose her nerve for a moment and she would plunge
to her death. He knew the only real explanation was for him to become
Sheila. Wild possibilities revolved in his mind . . . get Gerry to stand
on the ledge, so that Fletcher's transfer to Sheila might be possible?

 

 

Anyway, keep her talking, he told himself. Any moment now the police and
firemen would arrive. What was keeping them? In scores of such cases,
the would-be suicide eventually returned docilely to safety. The trouble
was, Sheila wasn't just an ordinary kid trying to draw attention to her
wrongs. She wasn't particularly interested in attention and she didn't
feel wronged, not really even by Gerry. She had been born for suicide,
and for her there would be pleasure in the moment of abandonment to death,
the moment of supreme pleasure, supreme pain.

 

 

"Please come in," he begged. "I'll help you . . . "

 

 

"Come any farther out of that window and I'll jump," she warned. "I don't
know what I'm waiting for anyway. I'm not coming in. I did want to see
you again, Gerry . . . how did you get here?"

 

 

"I knew you were in danger, Sheila, I swear to you that everything can
be put right. There is a way."

 

 

There was scarcely any wind, but a sudden gust ruffled her thin blouse
and flapped her skin over one thigh and off the other. Automatically she
tried to push it back but with her injured arm, and for a moment the
shock of the pain and the unexpected chill of the wind, startled her,
and very nearly made her fall.

 

 

"You see!" said Gerry triumphantly, as she relaxed again. "You don't
want to fall. You were terrified just now."

 

 

She answered obliquely: "I didn't need to hurt my arm. I saw the cabinet
falling quite slowly, and I could easily have got out of the way. But I
let my arm be smashed. That shouldn't surprise you."

 

 

"No."

 

 

"I do want to fall. The only thing that's keeping me here is . . . well,
that would be the end, and somehow I'm not quite ready."

 

 

"Of course you're not quite ready. No one's ever quite ready to take
his own life."

 

 

She frowned at that, sensing it was not Gerry who was speaking.

 

 

A shadow fell across her and they both looked up.

 

 

Descending by a rope ladder from the roof was a man in uniform. He was
within six feet of Sheila, directly above her. He was now at the end of
the ladder, which was being lowered from above.

 

 

"Goodbye, Gerry," said Sheila softly, and deliberately raised herself
clear of the wall.

 

 

She seemed to be falling interminably. She fell flat, as if lying face
down on a bed, one arm and both legs spread out.

 

 

Then she landed on the concrete.

 

 

A little later, the terrible sound of her landing reached Gerry.

 

 

For two days Gerry's shock numbed Fletcher too.

 

 

There were confused impressions: a police inspector blustering, knowing,
and knowing that Gerry knew too. He had taken a chance that didn't come
off, and if he had not done so, Sheila might not have died. Everybody
knew, although the office had been cleared when Gerry requested it, that
Sheila had apparently calmed down as he talked to her. It had seemed to
the inspector then that a man coming down from the roof, without warning,
might grasp her and hold her until a ladder could be run up from below.
But now, of course, it seemed to him, as well as to everybody else, that
perhaps it might have been better to leave it to Gerry.

 

 

Baudaker was silent but sympathetic, aware that Fletcher was with Gerry,
yet also aware of Gerry's loss. And Baudaker, whatever had happened since,
had loved both Sheila and Gerry.

 

 

There was a moment when in his grief Gerry blamed everything on Fletcher,
saying that if there had been no interference he and Sheila would be on
a blissful holiday in Wales, that if Fletcher had wanted to he could not
merely have saved Sheila but transformed her. But Fletcher, who once had
cringed under such attacks, could not feel this time that he had failed,
except in being unable to engineer the transfer to Sheila which he had
always felt was her only chance.

 

 

The sympathy of Mr. Gordon, which Fletcher was glad to observe, made Gerry
more ashamed than ever. Far from suspecting the truth, Mr. Gordon thought
Gerry a totally innocent victim of all that had happened, and though he
would not say so, well rid of Sheila, even if the manner of his release
was unfortunate. Mr. Gordon told him not to return to work until he felt
like it, but Gerry replied that he felt like it now, and worked as usual.

 

 

A chance meeting with Anita, who knew him slightly as Baudaker's son,
and suspected, he was sure, something of what had happened. Fletcher
would have spoken to her and asked about Judy, but Gerry was reticent
with all people who had known him as the graceless son who was a burden
to poor little Baudaker.

 

 

. . . Puzzlement as Baudaker gave him a Ł5 note, "for a wreath, or
anything else you like."

 

 

"But you've sent a wreath already."

 

 

"It's not just that. Gerry, Fletcher, I've been made chief technician. Sam
was asked about that Saturday I didn't get off, and he blew up and said
if they wanted me in charge they could have me. He's gone now." Gerry was
diverted for a while by this, proud that his father, who had never "got
on" in all the time he could remember, had now been promoted twice in a
matter of days. There was also reinforcement of his belief that Fletcher,
though he had failed to save Sheila, was some kind of angel. What else
could explain what he had done for Baudaker?

 

 

And then a chance meeting with Daphne Smith, the redhead Gerry had met
on the estuary; without Vera this time.

 

 

Impressions ceased to be confused.

 

 

The girl, a frank extrovert, knew all about it. A dentist's receptionist,
she knew everybody and everything. She loved meeting people, and anything
which happened to anybody was always of interest to her.

 

 

"The poor kid," she said of Sheila. She was the first to express any
sympathy for Sheila.

 

 

Gerry told her all about it, but not about Fletcher. Daphne was fascinated.
The cynical thought that she could be far more sympathetic over Sheila now
that she was dead than she could ever have been while she was alive did
occur to Fletcher, but he did not pursue it. Unlike Sheila, Daphne was
not his concern. She was certainly not sick. A no more exuberantly female
girl existed in the Western world.