Quicksand Read online

  -- And if something unpleasant happens to the child, like a nervous breakdown from overwork, they never tire of reminding him how much he owes them for fulfilling their parental duty towards their ungrateful offspring.

  "On the other hand, in Llanraw the general attitude towards sexuality is enlightened and permissive, and physical expression of affection is taken as a matter of course."

  -- I wonder what my father would think if I tried to kiss his cheek.

  The day came, not long afterwards, when for the first time he checked himself on the point of losing his temper with a refractory patient, and the thought crossed his mind: That's not how they'd do it in Llanraw.

  His anger faded. Calmly and reasonably he sorted the difficulty out, and when it was over he felt a warm glow of self-approbation.

  He developed the habit of seeing Urchin daily after lunch, except on Mondays when he went to help Alsop with his clinic in Blickham, and gradually sent for her earlier and earlier until he was having to go early for his meal if he was not to risk indigestion from gulping it down.

  On a day in June which had brought a sudden blast of summer heat he went into the staff wash-room to rinse his hands and tidy up before eating. He was overdue for a visit to the barber, and on catching sight of his hair in the mirror he attempted without success to make it lie down. Comb still in hand, he glanced sideways out of the open window, and stared at the sunlit countryside.

  -- How would those hills look covered in a sea of flowers? And what kind of flowers, exactly? Sunflowers? Taller than I am, she said. But in so many different colours . . . I rather picture them as being like enormous poppies, with flat gaudy petals that flap in the breeze.

  The door opened. Guiltily he darted his comb to his hair again, ashamed of being found standing idly contemplating the scenery. The newcomer was Mirza.

  "Morning, Paul," he said, letting the cold tap run fast to fill the hand-basin. "Had any news from Iris?"

  "No," Paul said, in a tone calculated to imply that he didn't much care if he did or not. Mirza's eyes darted towards him and away again.

  "Forgive me saying so," he murmured, "but you can't completely hide the effect it's having on you. You're looking awful."

  -- Bumkum. I saw myself in the mirror just now and I look okay, considering. And what the hell business is it of Mirza's, anyway?

  "I'm all right! Sorry to disappoint you. But you used to tell me often enough that being married to Iris was bad for me -- do you expect me to be worse off now?"

  Mirza cupped a double handful of water and dipped his face. Spluttering, he reached for a towel.

  "Well, I haven't noticed you . . . ah . . . taking advantage of your unlooked-for reversion to gay bachelor status."

  "Oh, stuff it! It's all very well for you with your endless string of casual tarts, isn't it? I'm not built the way you are. You don't wipe away five years of marriage with -- with a swab of that towel!"

  "There's no need to bite my head off," Mirza said after a pause.

  "There's no need for you to come the heavy father with me either. What started this, anyway? Have you been hearing complaints about my work going to pot, perhaps?"

  "As a matter of fact, no."

  "Good. I'm getting more work done in a day, and more studying too, than I used to manage in a week with Iris pestering me. So what did put this idea into your head?"

  "I took a look at you," Mirza said.

  "What?"

  "You're losing weight, you have bags under your eyes big enough for weekend luggage, and -- well, this isn't the first time you've lost your temper over nothing."

  "Nothing!" Paul echoed, and tried to laugh. "Yes, I suppose losing one woman would seem like 'nothing' to you. You always have half a dozen more lined up!"

  Mirza tossed the towel back on its hook and sighed. "Don't go on trying to be bitter. It doesn't suit your temperament. All I'm asking you to do is not to pretend you're unaffected. People take it for granted that the bust-up of a marriage is a disaster. Why shy away from their sympathy, when it's perfectly sincere, as if you thought they were -- what shall I say? -- looking down on you for being upset?"

  Paul didn't answer for several seconds. Eventually he shook his head.

  "Do you ever find yourself envying your patients, Mirza?"

  "Envying them? Heavens no!"

  -- To go away from here, to float off into the empyrean at the mercy of the wind and drift uncaring above the flowery land-sea of Llanraw . . .

  "Why not? The insane have one great advantage over the sane: when things get too much for them, they're taken in charge and looked after. The sane have to sweat it out by themselves."

  "If that's really what you think," Mirza said, "you have a damned low opinion of your friends. What are friends for if they're not to help you sweat out your problems?"

  "Some problems are one's own personal property," Paul muttered. "'Marriage according to the law of this country is the union of one man with one woman to the exclusion of all others. . . .' Oh, the hell with it."

  "Agreed," Mirza said promptly. He stepped to the window and peered out with an expression of exaggerated pleasure. "It's far too fine a day for wrangling. Hell of a view in this direction, isn't it? Makes me almost sorry to be going back to work in a big city, with the rest of the summer still to come."

  "What?" Paul tensed in dismay. "You're not leaving Chent, are you?"

  "I am indeed. You knew I'd applied for another job, didn't you?"

  "Yes, but . . ."

  Mirza turned and gazed at him levelly. He said at length, "I'll tell you one reason I can never imagine myself envying the patients, Paul. They can't arrange to leave Chent when the place becomes too much for them. I've had my bellyful of Holy Joe, and it's touch and go whether I serve out my notice or tell him what I really think of him and walk off. A patient who did that would be jabbed full of drugs and maybe even snakepitomised to get rid of the troublesome bits of his brain. Imagine being stuck here for the rest of your life; imagine never being able to leave but in your coffin."

  He spun on his heel and marched out, leaving Paul aghast at the venom in his tone.

  -- I never realised he felt so violently about this place; he was always so full of banter and mockery. . . . It's the way I feel, pretty near, but I can stomach it until I've completed two years -- I think. I shall go on trying, anyway. But it was a stupid thing to say about envying the inmates. How must they feel! How must Urchin feel, looking back to the free air of Llanraw! Being put in here is enough to make you crazy whether you're crazy or not to begin with. Urchin growing prematurely old shut up in Chent, mourning her lost and lovely home, slopping around in dirty clothes with her hair matted and her nails black, stinking the way the older patients stink, not talking except to answer back when the staff address her. . . My God, what a waste, what a waste !

  *33*

  Paul had not been given to talking much at meal-times lately, but the news of Mirza's impending departure depressed him so much that he was more taciturn than ever. Natalie made a couple of attempts to draw him into the conversation, which he rebuffed; after that he was aware of her eyes and occasionally Mirza's darting his way as though to ask what was wrong.

  While waiting for his dessert course, he suddenly decided he could not stand company any longer. He pushed back his chair and strode out of the room. There was no one on the landing outside the mess. On impulse, instead of returning to his office, he put his ear to the door and listened.

  He heard Natalie say, "Well! Paul's in a funny mood, isn't he?"

  "You could try being a bit more sympathetic," Mirza said. "After all, the poor guy's marriage has gone on the rocks, and that's not something you get over in a couple of days."

  "Still the same trouble, hm?" Phil Kerans said with a chuckle. "I thought something might have gone wrong with his star patient. He hasn't been so eager to discuss her lately, I've noticed."

  -- And why the hell should I? Hoping for some dirty childhood memories, maybe,
to compensate you for your Irish Catholic repressions?

  Without realising it, Paul found he had jerked the door open and taken a step inside. Everyone was staring at him in astonishment.

  "Did I . . . uh . . . did I leave my cigarettes in here?" he improvised.

  The excuse seemed to strike them as thin; at any rate, their eyes all lingered on his face for longer than he liked before Mirza, who had been sitting next to him, reported that there was no sign of any cigarettes.

  "Must have left them in my office, then," Paul muttered. "Sorry."

  When he shut the door again, he was sweating -- not from the heat of the day.

  -- What possessed me to do that?

  Heels tapping on the stairs, he hastened away to the privacy of his office.

  -- At least, in another few minutes, Urchin will come and we can talk about Llanraw. "Something gone wrong with my star patient!" If the fat mick only knew . . . But I've done hardly any of the work. All I can take credit for is sneaking under her defences by accident. If she'd been less persistent, say in learning English, if she'd let herself be overwhelmed and lapsed into despair as I might have done in the same situation, I'd be done for. I wouldn't have even one reason for struggling on.

  On the shelf where it had remained since the day it arrived, the clock ornamented with the skull-faced figure of Time waved him a greeting with its scythe. Because it too had contributed to saving him when he feared he might sink without trace in the quicksand of his troubles, he had long ago conceived a kind of affection for it. Dust had settled on the polished statuette; he took a tissue and wiped it before sitting down.

  His cigarettes, of course, were in his pocket as they had been all along, but for fear of someone coming out of the mess and seeing him he had refrained from lighting one until the door was safely shut behind him. He did so now, and the phone rang in the same moment.

  "Dr Fidler? Oh, good. Hang on, I have a call for you. . . . Dr Alsop, I've found Dr Fidler for you now -- go ahead please."

  -- Not coming in today, or something?

  "Good afternoon, young fellow! Look, I've had lunch early today and I can come over to you a bit ahead of schedule -- in fact I'll be leaving Blickham as soon as I've finished talking to you, be with you in twenty minutes or so. But since I have the extra time in hand, it struck me that I ought to have another look at Urchin. It must be . . . oh . . . almost three weeks, isn't it?"

  Paul's heart seemed to turn into a leaden weight.

  "I think you said you were seeing her daily at the start of the afternoon's work, correct? Well, don't have her sent up before I join you. I want to have a word with you first."

  Paul didn't reply.

  "Hello? Are you there?"

  "Yes, I'm still here. Sorry."

  "Well . . . See you shortly, then."

  Click.

  Paul sat frozen, the phone still in his hand, for a minute or more after Alsop had rung off.

  -- Blast the man! What business has he got prying into my affairs? I show him notes that tell him everything I think he ought to know. Won't he take my word that I'm making steady progress? Doesn't he trust me?

  The ash on his cigarette lengthened until a chance movement dislodged it down his chest. He blew it away and it scattered as dust over the papers on the desk. There seemed to be a lot of them today.

  -- And if he comes here and starts questioning Urchin and she tells him . . . I haven't found out everything about Llanraw yet. I couldn't bear to break it off now. On the other hand, I . . .

  The turmoil of his thoughts quietened. His hand was quite steady as he reached for the phone again.

  "Nurse? Who is that? Oh, Nurse Kirk! Would you be so kind as to let Urchin come up here straight away, please? . . . Yes, I'm sorry, I know it's still lunch-time, but there's no need for anybody to come with her -- I'm sure she can be trusted to find her way on her own after all this time."

  Waiting, he finished the cigarette and lit another. Shortly there was Urchin's usual gentle knock at the door. He told her to come in, settled her in the chair facing him, put her into trance -- by now, after daily reinforcement, the induction consisted in no more than a dozen words before she sighed and let herself go limp -- and addressed her with the calm assurance that he was doing this in the best interests of his patient.

  "Urchin, Dr Alsop wants to come and talk to you this afternoon. You remember Dr Alsop?"

  "Yes."

  "Urchin, what do you think would happen if you told him about Llanraw? Do you think he would believe you?"

  A hesitation; then a shake of her head.

  "And if he didn't believe you, what do you suppose he would think?"

  She shuddered. "That I'm crazy!" she forced out.

  "I'm afraid so." Paul leaned forward with an urgent air. "So listen to me very carefully. When anybody else but me is in the room, you will forget about Llanraw. When anybody but me is talking to you, you will not say anything about Llanraw. You will not answer any questions about where you come from or how you came here. In another few moments I shall wake you up; you will go out on the landing and sit in the window-seat until I call you back in here. When you come back I will put you into trance again, but you will not talk about Llanraw if anybody else is in the room!"

  Alsop was frowning as he came in. Shutting the door, he said, "What's Urchin doing out there on the landing by herself? I thought I asked you not to send for her until I'd had a chance to speak to you."

  "I'm sorry," Paul shrugged. "She comes up here on her own now -- she's quite trustworthy -- and I suppose she looks forward to her daily session with me. When she turned up I simply told her to hang on for a few minutes."

  "I see. Well, anyhow, what I want to say won't take long." Alsop lowered himself into the chair which Urchin had been using a little while previously. "I've been running over your recent case-notes, including Urchin's, and they won't do, Paul, they simply won't do."

  A pang of alarm drew Paul's nerves taut.

  "I know about your wife, and all that," Alsop pursued. "I sympathise, believe me. That's why I've been putting off my comments until now, hoping you'd recover without my having to prompt you. But while you're not actually in arrears with your notes -- it might be better if you were -- you're turning out the most uninformative bald scrappy stuff I've ever seen. And Urchin's a case in point. No doubt some of the sketchiness of your other notes is due to the amount of time you're devoting to her; well, I'd accept this, provided only that you were making such rapid strides towards a cure for her that these long daily sessions were likely to come to an end in the immediate future. As far as I can tell, though, they are more likely to continue."

  He drew from the pocket of his coat an envelope folded double. "This is the sum total of the notes you've shown me about her. Apart from minor details, you could swap the latest of them for any other six or eight weeks old and never know the difference."

  "But I am making enormous progress," Paul said. "How is one to define a 'cure?' If you're expecting me to restore her memory in full -- "