Quicksand Page 20

  When he drove out of the filling station he turned homeward instead of towards the hospital, and within another few minutes was in sight of the house. The instant he rounded the last bend, however, he jammed on his brakes, pulses in his temples hammering so fiercely he thought he might faint.

  A taxi was drawing away from the house. Through its rear window he could see the bright blonde outline of Iris's head. Beside her on the seat were piled the three cases she always travelled with, and she was drumming on the topmost with the tips of her fingers.

  She didn't notice him.

  Later it occurred to him that he could have driven after the taxi, overtaken it, forced her to stop and come back. Instead he sat numbly until it had disappeared, saying to himself over and over, "You fool -- you fool -- you fool!"

  *30*

  There was a nearly full bottle of cooking sherry in the kitchen cupboard. It might be enough to get drunk on. He poured it splashing into a glass, gulped, poured again.

  A tap at the door, and when he went to answer, a tearful Iris ready to throw her arms around him and whisper close to his ear, "Darling, it's no good, I can't go through with it, I love you and if it's a boy we'll call it Derek -- and if it's a girl . . ."

  Nothing. No one. Wind in the chimney-top.

  The phone rang, and when he picked it up he heard Iris's voice tremulously saying, "Darling, I miss you and I'm so ashamed of what I've done -- will you take me back so that we can start again?"

  The small neat modern form of the two-tone telephone, out of place against oaken beams and whitewashed plaster; on the memo pad beside it, the indentations of the note Iris had made, pressing heavily with a ballpoint pen.

  A letter dropped through the door; opened, it ran, "Dear Paul, I want to marry Gellert because it's his child, not yours, and the threat of the abortionist was just to let me see your face, my solicitors will be in touch with you."

  The glass was empty again. He refilled it.

  "Well, you can't say I didn't warn you," Mirza sighed. "Why didn't you do as I suggested? You could have found out how much she wanted to keep you, and if she didn't care enough to mend her ways you'd have saved months of mental anguish."

  And again; the level of the bottle was down to half.

  "This is a serious matter," Holinshed told him frigidly. "One must inevitably judge the competence and social adjustment of psychiatric staff by the success with which they conduct their personal relationships. It has come as a shock to me to learn, from reliable sources, that your wife in in London flaunting an affair with a notorious . . . ah . . . playboy. Gossip is already circulating among the patients. I cannot put up with this kind of thing. Your employment at Chent will terminate directly we find a suitable replacement."

  A car pulled up noisily outside. He dashed to the window. But it was merely someone who had lost his way and was turning around in a gateway opposite.

  "Still hoping your wife might come back to you?" Maurice Dawkins gave the unpleasant high giggle which he only affected during his peak manic phase, when he acquired enough false courage to regard his swish mannerisms as funny. "But I told her about you going around the bend, and she was absolutely fascinated -- kept ringing up for more and more details. Of course, I hadn't got them all, so I made some up. She's beside herself, my dear. Who wouldn't be, finding they'd been married for years to a lunatic without realising?"

  "Of course," Oliphant said, "you're a doctor and I'm only a deputy charge nurse. But doesn't the fact that you've been in a bin yourself make you a bit too eager to side with the loonies? We're the ones who have to clear up the mess when you make mistakes, you know. Seen this scar where Riley cut my hand at the dance? Dr Jewell says I'll have it the rest of my life."

  "It's a delicate matter, Dr Fidler," Matron Thoroday murmured, "but it's one which I must bring to the attention of Dr Holinshed. My belief is that because the disorder for which you were certified bore so much resemblance to Urchin's condition you're supporting her against my nurses, and this is making their position intolerable."

  "But I wasn't certified! I just had a breakdown from overwork!"

  The cry of despair echoed away into the empty house. There was no one to hear it but himself.

  "As you know, I tend to judge my colleagues objectively," Alsop said. "I'm impatient with failures; either a man has what it takes, or he hasn't, and I prefer the former. There are few more fundamental failures than letting a marriage go smash -- and don't offer excuses. You decided to marry the woman, presumably when you were in full possession of your faculties and over the age of discretion. If it weren't for the exceptional success you're making of Urchin's case, I'd -- "

  -- No. More like . . .

  "What persuaded you to be taken in by this farrago of rubbish?" Alsop demanded coldly. "I wouldn't expect a first-year student to be hoodwinked the way you've been! I gather your colleague Bakshad told you that a marriage like yours was no basis for a proper understanding of women. You should have taken the comment seriously. You made a miserably bad choice of a wife, but that's of no concern to me -- I'm keeping this on a professional level. And my view is that you've allowed your head to be turned by a clever trickster, because she's young and appealingly helpless and rather pretty. These notes of yours are worthless. They're the most spectacular example of self-deception I've ever seen from a supposedly responsible psychiatrist!"

  Back and forth, back and forth, Paul paced with the glass in his hand, feeling the alcohol gradually numb the nerves of his fingers and toes. On every tenth or twelfth circuit, he detoured into the kitchen where he had left the bottle of sherry on the table with the cork out. It was almost empty now.

  -- No, no, no, that's all I've got left. If that's taken away from me I'm finished, done for, dead.

  "I fooled you, I fooled you! My name isn't Urchin, it's plain Aggie Jones and I come from Wrexham and Main and Da wouldn't let me leave home and live on my own so I wanted to hide for a few months where they'd never think to look for me -- "

  -- No!

  Paul took a deep breath. The first violent shock of Iris's departure had faded, leaving his mind clear, if a little askew from its usual course.

  -- I can't be wrong about Urchin. It all fits: the language no one can identify, the peculiar cast of her face which resembles no known racial type, the fact that she had to be taught how to speak English, wear our kind of clothes, use a knife and fork . . . Wait a moment.

  He closed his eyes' and rocked gently back and forth on his heels.

  -- In what sense do I mean "it all fits?" That what she claimed today is true? No, I can't possibly mean that. I'd be a laughing-stock. Lord, I am getting drunk. I thought this wine was so vile I couldn't choke it down sufficiently fast, but my head's swimming and the room is beginning to go round.

  He had to open his eyes again, to escape the illusion that the whole earth was surging up and down beneath his feet.

  -- Got to hang en to Urchin's case. Letters in BMJ , signed Alsop consultant Fidler, psychiatric registrar Chent. Notes of work in progress: new elements in the fantasies of female hysterics with special reference to. Final paper: I am indebted to my colleagues -- no, former colleagues at Chent for. By then: "So you're Fidler, are you? Been reading your stuff in BMJ . Thought the eventual paper was a model of its kind. By the way, there's post due to fall vacant at Nuthouse shortly. Won't be advertised until next week, but if you're considering moving on . . ."

  But the forced attempt to envisage good things happening failed. The nagging suspicion remained that if he had been so deceived and cheated by Iris, why not by Urchin too?

  -- Cure her, discharge her, look after her while she finds her feet in the strange outside world, make sure her medical supervision ceases to be my responsibility, be able to approach her as a pretty girl instead of a case-history.

  That was no good either. For one thing, the optimism he was preaching to himself was so pale and unreal beside the previsions of disaster his subconscious kept spawning, unbidden
. For another . . .

  -- Cure her? How the hell, when she acts more rationally than Iris does? She's the one who needs therapy, the wife scared witless by the idea of performing her natural functions as a woman! I should have come straight out and told her so, instead of beating around the bush and waiting for "nature to take its course." She's unnatural, that's the long and the short of it. Wait till doomsday, she won't change.

  The sherry bottle was empty. Ten minutes till the pubs closed. Time to drive to the Needle and get some more liquor.

  -- In this state? Well, if I'm very careful . . .

  But instead he opened cupboards, looked in drawers, hunted the house high and low, until in the bathroom medicine cabinet he found the bottle labelled "Alcohol 100%, for medicinal purposes only."

  -- Not much different from vodka, I suppose. . . . Suppose it were surgical spirit denatured with methanol, that poisons, blinds and ultimately kills: what would I do?

  He couldn't answer that question. But mixed with orange juice and chilled with a cube of ice it made a passable drink.

  -- As to Urchin, I was all set this evening to start drafting the paper about her. I must have been crazy. I'm not even going to tell Alsop that I've made a breakthrough, just in case I'm being overeager. They'll look at me, judging by appearances, and maybe with luck they'll say, "Paul's bearing up well, isn't he? His wife left him, you know, but then she was always rather a cold-hearted bitch and treated him disgracefully." And only I will know that it's success with Urchin's case that sustains me, until I'm sure beyond a shadow of doubt that it's all coming right, and then I'll . . .

  He realised with a stab of dismay that be was addressing himself aloud, because his mind was so foggy it needed that crutch to guide its thoughts forward. When he prevented himself from forming the words with his lips, the terrors rushed in on him again.

  -- Alsop will . . . Holinshed will . . . Iris will . . .

  Angry, he made to pour another of the fierce cocktails he'd concocted with the raw spirit, but put his glass down an inch this side of the table-top. It smashed on the floor. Kicking it aside, he seized a replacement and filled it to halfway.

  -- Iris won't complain about having to clean up behind me. That's a consolation, isn't it?

  Spilling a little from the can, he added orange juice and sipped. The fierceness stung his palate; gasping, he put in more juice.

  -- This time it's not a question of being obsessed by the things that might have gone wrong but I somehow escaped. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in me tonight. Got to face facts, Paul. Lost, one marriage, finder please don't inform Dr Paul Fidler.

  "You out there," he said mildly. "All those other Paul Fidlers -- are you listening? Years you've plagued me with your damnable sorrows, making me worry till I was sick about the things that didn't happen to me but happened to you -- understand me? Failed your scholarship exams, got thrown out of medical school, never picked your way back to sanity after the breakdown but spent the rest of your life in the bin, got turned down by Iris when she broke off the engagement -- lucky bastard, you! Well, how do you like it the other way around for a change? I'm in the cart this time, I'm thinking the dismal thoughts, and I hope to God you rot with them."

  Swaying, one hand clutching the glass as if it were a torch casting light to guide him, the other poised to fend off furniture, the banister rail, the bedroom door, when each in turn threatened to come around and hit him in the face, he made his way to the bedroom and turned down the covers. Tugging aside the pillow, he realised that he had taken away his pyjamas. The overnight bag was still in the car, forgotten.

  -- Never mind. Who's to care? Damned silly clothes we men wear nowadays, this tie keeps trying to strangle me, doesn't want me to take it off, no wonder I'm pulling on the wrong end, oh, damn the thing.

  He pitched forward on to the bed. Around him the house stood empty except for the hordes and hordes of other Paul Fidlers, trapped in the dead ends of disaster, mourning silently that not even this last one of their infinite number was to escape into freedom.

  *31*

  -- It's the density of the events you see, coming on me thickly like a hail of midgets and a rainstorm. This and that I could cope with one at a time but I have only two pairs of hands to catch them as they go past. It's the difficulty of chess where you can't move to take the other player's piece because you'd expose yourself to check. I sit on the black square and fume at the people going past me on the white ones.

  He grew aware that Urchin had stopped talking a long time ago and now sat, statue-still, watching the elsewhere vision she had been describing. Hypnotised, she would not care if he neglected to put another question yet awhile. She would not even react to the sound of the desk-drawer sliding if he eased it open and took out another pill from the stock he kept there.

  -- Which of them? Careful, bad to put myself to sleep by accident . . . oh no, I took the sleeping-tablets home, didn't I? Sleep at home, almost overdid it this morning woke up late and had to come in without breakfast. But shaved. Mum's the word, keep it from showing outwardly, mum's the wife but I wonder if she's had the abortion already, bloody half-shaped human thing gone ground with garbage to the sewers of London. No wife no mum no bloody good. God damn look at the time on the clock, get on with the work chop-chop, get ahead chopped off ouch. Settles it. Tranquilliser.

  He swallowed the pill. Waiting for it to work, he looked at the scrappy notes he had mechanically copied down while Urchin was talking. Only part of his mind could have been wandering.

  -- Part I. bad enough, isn't it? Oh God, what shall I do? It's sleeping badly that's doing it, it must be the shortage of sleep, but I daren't take more pills than I'm taking already. The silent noise in the house at night, the creaks of settling floor-boards which between waking and sleeping I mistake for footsteps, calling out and thinking for one slim instant Iris will reply and it will all have been a nightmare. Not because I love her so much losing her had made me desperate, just because I got used and can't adapt to being alone again. Maybe I should shut up the house and move to the hospital; after all the place isn't mine anyway, bought with Iris's inheritance. But to lie awake under that cracked bell every night . . . ! Has Alsop noticed? I suppose he must have. Thank God he hasn't taxed me with it directly. Wants to see bow I can keep personal problems from interfering with my work, no doubt. So far: yes. Better able to concentrate on the diploma course without distractions ("there may be said to be a continuous spectrum between the isolated traumatic experience and the disorienting environment which may give rise to schizophrenic responses") and the routine of every bloody day ("do this please Nurse ask Matron if she would kindly do that Nurse I wonder if you'd oblige me by doing the other Dr Alsop") and of course there's Urchin, but . . .

  The notes on his pad danced before his eyes, evading his clumsy attempts to grapple with them and deduce the content of his next question.

  -- I don't know. Maybe he isn't satisfied with the progress I've made regarding Urchin. After all I haven't told him the whole story yet, just in case I'm wrong because being wrong about her on top of everything everything . . . Or perhaps he hasn't inquired too closely because he's decided I'm a write-off. How can one be sure with a slick bastard like him?

  He looked at Urchin, and a sudden wave of affection rose in him.

  -- Good girl, keep it up. You're all that stands between me and ruin, did you know that? Ace in the hole, pull you out one of these days and dazzle everybody with my sleight of mind, "such insight, Dr Fidler, such perspicacity, this major contribution to the theory of gabblephobia!"

  "Tell me more," he said aloud. "Tell me more about . . ." And couldn t remember what the subject was, but she saved him the trouble, and talked on, the button having been pushed.

  -- Meantime: maybe I should take a holiday or something. But to spend a fortnight in some place I've never heard of, nobody to speak to night after lonely night except people I never saw before and never want to see again! If I could go wh
ere Urchin lived before she came to Chent . . .