Quicksand Page 13

  A man came up and diffidently asked her for the next dance. Excusing herself to Paul, she moved away.

  For some time after that he just stood, lacking the willpower to do as he knew he ought to and dance with two or three of the women. Holinshed arrived and duly showed the flag, as he always called it, chatting with elaborate condescension to the staff but too remote for the patients even to address him. Paul was watching him from the far end of the room when Sister Wells came up to him, gawky in a dress patterned with blue roses.

  "There's a phone-call for you, Dr Fidler. It's your wife. Would you like to take it in the ward office?"

  -- Iris? What can she want on a Saturday night?

  Puzzled, he walked into the office, shut the door to exclude the booming music, and picked up the receiver.

  "Iris?" he said neutrally.

  "What on earth are you doing there?" the distant voice said. "I've been calling and calling you at home! What's all that noise I can hear?"

  "We've got a patients' dance on."

  "Oh. Well, I want you to come and rescue me."

  "What? Where are you?"

  "Freezing to death on Blickham Station!"

  "Well . . . ah . . . can't you get a taxi home?"

  "Don't take me for one of your patients, will you?" Iris countered acidly. "If I could get in when I got home there might be some point in using a cab. But I left Bertie and Meg's in rather a hurry and I forgot my door-key."

  A sinking feeling developed in Paul's stomach.

  -- I suppose I could; Natalie would cover for me, though I hate the idea of asking. I could run into Blickham, drop her at home and come back, all within the space of forty minutes. But . . . Damn it, I just don't want to very much.

  "Paul, are you there?" Iris demanded shrilly.

  "Yes, of course. . . . Well, it's a bit awkward, you see. I'm on duty tonight."

  "All by yourself?" The words were charged with sarcasm. "Big deal! Anybody would think you were one of the patients, the way they keep you in."

  -- Oh my God. She can't possibly have found out about . . .? No, it's just a cheap gibe. But am I going to do it, or not?

  "If you'd let me know you were coming -- "

  "I didn't know myself until four o'clock!"

  -- There's a terrible blankness in my mind. I can think words but I can't utter them. What I want to say is . . .

  The door of the office slammed open and there was Sister Wells, gasping.

  "Doctor, quickly !"

  "What?" Paul covered the phone.

  "It's Riley. There's going to be trouble."

  "Right away!" He added, "Darling, there's an emergency. Hang on, I'll be back in a moment."

  "Never mind," Iris rasped. "I suppose I can break a window and climb in!"

  "I'm sorry, but I must dash."

  He dropped the receiver on the table, as if he expected to continue the conversation, but the click of the connection being cut followed him out of the office.

  -- Now there'll be a row and she'll make out it's my fault but if she'd let me know when she was coming home I could have arranged to swap duties with someone and . . .

  But all his private concerns evaporated the moment he entered the room where the dance was being held. The scene was as fixed as a photograph. Everyone had drawn back around the walls, cowering, except the two figures in the centre of the floor: Nurse Woodside and Riley. The girl's face was as white as chalk.

  -- Small wonder.

  For Riley had taken a bottle from the bar, smashed its end, and now held the jagged neck poised like a knife.

  Movement resumed. Natalie switched off the tape-recorder. Nurse Woodside attempted to back away, but a threatening wave of the bottle froze her again. Oliphant and another male nurse sidled past the jabbering patients, trying to get out of Riley's field of vision and tackle him from behind. But he was aware of this, and as they moved so did he, following the rim of a circle with the miserable nurse at its centre. Seeming hypnotised, she turned with him, always facing him.

  "What happened?" Paul whispered to Sister Wells, gnawing her knuckles beside him.

  "I think he tried to kiss her and she wouldn't let him," Sister Wells muttered. "So then he shouted something about making her, and went to get that bottle, and that was when I fetched you."

  Paul's eyes darted swiftly over the room. "Has Dr Holinshed gone?"

  "A moment ago. I sent someone after him, but I think it was too late."

  -- So it's up to me.

  The thought was chilling; it seemed to congeal the progress of time. At an immense distance he heard Riley's voice, wheedling: "Make your mind up, Woodsy dear -- are you going to do it, or shall I make sure no one ever wants to kiss you again?"

  Paul took a deep breath, gestured to Oliphant to come forward with him, and strode out to the middle of the floor with a sense of fatalistic resignation. "Riley!" he snapped, and was infinitely relieved that his words didn't come out thin and squeaky. "That's enough! Put that bottle down -- and sweep up the mess you've made!" he added, inspiration coming from the crunch of glass underfoot.

  As though the interruption had broken a spell, Nurse Wooaside rolled her eyes up in their sockets until the whites showed and slid fainting to the floor.

  "Scared of us, aren't you?" Riley taunted, and spun to confront Paul, the bright sharp glass weaving in his hand. "Scared silly of us lunatics! You make us bow and scrape and order us about, and all the time you're pissing yourselves with fright in case we stop cringing. Come on then, let's have you! Where's Lord Godalmightly Holinshed gone?"

  -- Have to rush him. Nothing else for it. Do I have to be first? Come on, somebody. Anybody? No, it must be me. . . .

  Beyond Riley he saw Natalie inch cautiously forward. He felt a pang of shame at standing still himself and his feet moved involuntarily. Taking advantage of the distraction of Riley's attention, Oliphant made a lumbering grab for the bottle. He was too slow. Riley dodged, jabbed -- and there was a red mark on Oliphant's knuckles, dripping.

  Paul exclaimed and charged Riley. He missed the hold he was aiming for, on the right arm, and knew at once it was a mistake to have come within reach. Desperately he clawed at the younger man's clothes. His left hand got a purchase on the sleeve of his jacket above the elbow, but Riley had too much leverage; the grip lasted a heartbeat and was lost and the round horrible end of the broken bottle like the rasping sucker of a leech loomed vast as a tunnel before Paul's eyes. He had an instant to prepare himself for pain, and thought with curious detachment of being blind.

  -- So this is the moment when the other Paul Fidler and I become one: the moment when the vision of the disastrous future moves from my imagination into the real world. I've always known it had to come, some day, somehow.

  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 atte
mpts 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?"