"Are we low on petrol, Ivor?"
"No, I had a full tank when I picked you up, Geoffrey."
"There you are, Jake." Geoffrey gave a hesitant smile. "Right as rain. Nothing to worry about at all."
"I wasn't worrying for Christ's sake, I was telling you about Services because of that sign."
"Sign?"
"Yes, Geoffrey: 'sign'. The generic name for flat objects, often rectangular in shape, on which instructions or as in this case information—"
"Do please shut up, Jake," said Brenda.
Jake held his peace. After about another three minutes" driving they came off the motorway and found to their surprise an authentic old-fashioned family and commercial hotel where it proved possible to dine. All the dishes were firmly in the English tradition: packet soup with added flour, roast chicken so overcooked that each chunk immediately absorbed every drop of saliva in your mouth, though the waterlogged brussel sprouts helped out a bit there, soggy tinned gooseberry flan and coffee tasting of old coffee-pots. Jake wasn't hungry anyway: foreboding had driven out his earlier feelings of looking forward and there was some tension among the party, no doubt as a result of his surely pretty mild brush with Geoffrey in the car, so he didn't say much. The only one who did was Ivor, whose prowess behind the wheel had made them early and who had filled in the spare time with a few large gin and tonics.
"I don't think these psychiatrist chaps are much good," he said a couple of times in his agreeable full modulated voice. "Or perhaps the phobia lot are particularly lousy. I'm on my third and none of them have made a blind bit of difference. In fact .... well never mind. Do you know what my latest one tried to tell me the other day? You don't mind me going on about this do you? I don't often get the chance."
"You go on as long as you like, my dear."
"Thanks, Brenda. Well—do you know what this bloke tried to tell me?"
"No," said Geoffrey on brief consideration.
"Well you wouldn't would you Geoffrey? Now you've heard me go on about how I don't like the Tube, the Underground. Right, he took me down there the other week, we went all the way from Warren Street up to Hampstead and I was fine, didn't turn a hair. Next go—off, next day I've got to make the return trip on my own. I went down in the lift and on to the platform and in half a minute I was absolutely terrified. I got myself over it in the end with that deep breathing, but it wasn't funny. So I said all this, and he was 'surprised', because I'd done so well when we went together. And him with a syringe in his pocket with half a gallon of tranquilliser in it, enough to calm down King Kong. And he's 'surprised' it makes a difference. That wasn't it though, the really marvellous thing he told me. Now .... I'm an only child, it was a difficult birth, looks as if my mum and dad decided not to take any chances, I don't blame them. We've been through all that. Anyway, he asked me, when I said I'd been frightened he asked me if there was anything in particular I was frightened of, and I said yes there was, there was nothing on the indicator, no train signalled, and I thought, oh my God it'll never come, I'll be down here forever. And he said, now this is it, he said, me being afraid of nothing arriving in my Underground was all to do with my mum being afraid of something arriving in her Underground. Isn't that marvellous? Especially nothing being the same as something. I tell you, that cheered me up, it really reassured me, I thought, I may be a bit peculiar but at least I'm not as bloody barmy as to come up with that."
Jake, who had enjoyed the opening of this speech too, laughed a good deal, more than either Geoffrey or Brenda. Soon afterwards Ivor said they still had to find the house and he'd like to get there in the light, so the bill was called for. To Geoffrey's perplexity but without eliciting anything from him in the way of protest, thanks or contribution, Jake paid it; he considered that to save every spare penny for his retirement, every penny, every time would do its bit towards shortening that retirement. They went off. In less than ten minutes, before the sun was quite down, they had pulled up in the large asphalted front yard of a fair-sized redbrick building that must have dated from about the year 1900. Various creepers ran up its walls and there was an ochre-coloured lichen on part of its tiled roof. It was situated near the top of a slight depression that ran down from the main road to Salisbury. Ivor said interestedly that it looked a bit on the big side, to which Brenda demurred; Jake heard later that the place had once been a nursing home and was now hired out for conferences and other enterprises of that kind, many of them no doubt perfectly serious and useful. They went inside.
In another ten minutes the four were reassembled in one of a pair of rooms run together by the disposal of folding doors. Both had the look of meagreness attached to being used rather than lived in: large table to discuss business round, dark-green leather armchairs to hold informal discussions in, reproductions of abstract paintings to do what with? Surely not look at; perhaps to be flattered by, flattered into fancying yourself a cultured person. Ed was on hand to greet them, giving Jake a smile not so much of geniality as of amusement; Rosenberg, little legs atwinkle, must still be pedalling gamely down the M20. The others already arrived were Lionel (stealing), Martha (mother), Winnie (shyness) and three men and a woman Jake had never seen before and whose names he didn't bother with for the moment because he would get to know them so very well the following day. After the introductions he stuck to Ivor, whom he had rather taken to and who seemed to need to talk to somebody.
"We're going to be sixteen altogether and that won't fill this house. It really is big."
"Is that bad?"
"Not as such, but it means parts of it will be empty so that I can't sort of account for them."
"I think I can see what you mean. But there's bound to be quite a large staff at a joint like this, and offices and so on."
"That's true, I hadn't thought of that. Thank you, Jake."
"Don't pills help? Tranquillisers?"
"Yes, but my bloke's made me give them up. Just gloss over the problem, he says. I take his point in a way, but I'm the one that needs them, not him."
"Is there anything I can do?"
"It would be good if you could tell me you wouldn't mind if I came up to you and started talking rather fast and saying some pretty silly things."
Jake had just told Ivor he wouldn't mind when a taxi drew up outside the window near which they were standing. It delivered Ruth (despair), Rosenberg, Kelly (you name it), an unnecessarily tall young woman with a head designed for somebody almost as short as Rosenberg, and not Chris (aggression or something), which was nice. When in due course Kelly came into what called itself the conference-room with the other new arrivals she had just the same easy, amicable manner as on first meeting Jake. She greeted everyone in turn, leaving him till last and taking a step or two beyond him so that he had to turn about to face her. Over his shoulder she gave Ivor a superb experienced-hostess look that apologised for removing Jake and at the same time indicated her confidence that the need to do this would be understood.
"Jake, we may only have a second or two so please don't interrupt, all right?"
His mental alarm-bell started up. It was some comfort that the chatter of other voices and the opportune arrival of a trolley with coffee and sandwiches would prevent their being overheard for the moment; not a lot, though. "All right, but make it quick."
"I'm in room 33, second floor just next to the landing. There's something I want to show you. It won't take long, five minutes, ten at the very outside, but I think it really must be in private. Will you come to my room, number 33, and look at it for me? Leave it till everyone's bedded down, midnight or later, I won't mind, I've got something to read."
"You must be..... You must think I'm off my head."
"Listen Jake, did I enjoy you turning me down? Would I enjoy it any more the second time? .... Well there you are."
"What do you want to show me?"
"A letter. Well, a kind of letter. I'd like you to read if for me."
"Brenda's a light sleeper, I'd be almost certain to w
ake her up."
"Has your room got a loo attached to it? Mine hasn't."
"No."
"Well there you are. Only five minutes. I'll expect you. Hallo Brenda, hallo Geoffrey, isn't this marvellous weather?"
Geoffrey understood without apparent trouble and said it was, but Brenda said in that colourless voice of hers, "How are you getting on with your plans for exposing Ed? It's been a long time since we discussed them."
"Oh, that." Kelly laughed in a relaxed, way. "More or less on ice these days."
"Really. You were quite keen on them before."
"Yes, I do rather act on impulse, I'm afraid. I get crazes."
"I see."
"But it's not only that. I've pretty well completely changed my mind about Ed. I've come to the conclusion he's rather good. He's helped me."
Jake would have chuckled if he had dared. The girl might be a bit touched but nobody could have improved on the deftness with which she had taken the initiative away from Brenda by forcing her into agreement. Add to that the way Geoffrey was looking from face to face, not merely unable to deduce anything what-so-bloody-ever from what he had heard but seeming to think that not to be in prior possession of every relevant fact about anything at any time was a novelty, and a shocking one—add this and you had the makings of quite a jolly party as long as you didn't add anything else. After constraining Brenda to extol End's qualities an extra couple of times Kelly took herself off, first to the snacks trolley and not long afterwards out of the room, presumably in the direction of bed.
Other people were drifting away too, just as presumably to allow for the early start promised for the morning. Jake's bedtime was at least an hour ahead, preferably more. He was about to go up and fetch his week-end reading (another slice of sizzling suspense by the author of 'The Hippogriff Attaché-Case' when he caught sight of what looked like, and proved indeed to be, a TV set in the further conference-room. To his considerable surprise it was in working order and could be switched on. He was soon settled down to a just-about-endurable film about Paris in 1944; it had in it Kirk Douglas, whom he didn't mind, and Charles Boyer, whom he minded a lot, and there was also some female. Two of the strangers and Martha and Ivor watched with him. Unusually for her, Brenda sat up too, but she was in the other room talking to Geoffrey. Ed and Rosenberg were also to be seen there. It was after midnight when the party dispersed. Before it finally did, Jake told Ivor he was to come and wake him at any time if he wanted company. Their rooms turned out to be on different floors—Jake's on the first, Ivor's on the second—but there wasn't a lot to be done about that.
Upstairs was a little more homely than downstairs but not much. The Richardsons" room had twin beds, plain curtains, a plain rug, papered walls that would have been nicer plain, a dressing table of military (World War II junior officers" quarters) appearance and a few other things. Jake sat on his bed and told Brenda what Kelly had asked him to do, wishing he had also told her of the Oxford encounter at the time: too late now.
"Whether you go or not is entirely up to you," said Brenda in a friendly tone, answering his question. "You remember I told you to feel free; that still holds. But you know what she's like, or rather I don't think you do quite, not as well as I do, seeing her every week. Of course a straight pass is what it looks like but with somebody like that you can never be sure. This five or ten minutes business... If she's got it in for you for any reason, and people like that don't need a proper reason, then she might do anything. Rush about screaming you tried to rape her, anything. But it's up to you, completely."
In the end, what with one thing and another, he didn't go.
25—Increased Insight
"Jake, Jake, wake up!"
It was Ivor. The light was on. Jake got out of bed very fast saying things like steady and calm down, but Ivor said there was nothing wrong with him, it was Kelly. Brenda sat up in bed. The two men ran out and up the stairs, where it was dark, and into another room with the light on. Kelly was lying in bed on her side with her eyes shut and breathing deeply. Ivor handed Jake a page torn from a pocket diary with a few words written on it in ballpoint in a rather neat script. They were Sorry everybody, but it's better this way. Then Ivor handed Jake a small empty bottle made of brown glass. The label said Mogadon—Miss J. V. Gambeson.
"Do you know where Rosenberg's sleeping?" asked Jake.
"No."
"Go into every room till you find him. I'll call an ambulance."
He remembered seeing a telephone near the front door and hurried down to it. The emergency-services operator answered in three seconds. Within another twenty or so he had passed his message and was walking back upstairs when he noticed it wasn't completely dark outside. He looked at his watch: thirty-one minutes past four. And still hot, or hot already. In Kelly's room he found Brenda and Rosenberg. Kelly was lying on her back now. Brenda came over and squeezed his hand but didn't speak.
"Ambulance on the way," he said. "Any idea of her chances? Doctor?"
Rosenberg shook his head. In pyjamas and with his hair ruffled he looked about nine. "I don't understand, there's something crazy about the timing. We'll have to wait for Ivor. Oh, her chances, we don't know how many she took or how long ago she took them so medically nobody could say at this stage. If that bottle was full when she started it would have held around eighty of the things, quite enough to do for her."
"I thought you couldn't die of an overdose of those," said Brenda.
"I grant you it isn't easy but it can be done, that is if you've been taking other pills as well, which she no doubt was. The trouble is it's very widely believed that there is no fatal overdose. If she believed it...."
Jake made an effort. "I noticed she was one of the first to go to bed. She could have been swallowing them by ten-thirty."
"If so they'll be well into her by now. She can't have wanted that."
"How do you mean?,
"Her object was not to die but to punish someone or call attention to herself or both. Unfortunately...."
He stopped speaking as Ed hurried in with Ivor. The note and the bottle were produced. Ed stood still for a moment and looked at the floor. Then at the sound of approaching voices he went active, moved to the threshold and said, "Hold it there, fellows. Kelly's been taken sick and will have to be moved to the hospital but she's going to be okay. And that's all."
"Anything we can do?" asked somebody who sounded to Jake like Lionel.
"Yes there is. There's an ambulance coming—you go down to the front door on the double to let the men in. You stay right where you are and don't let anyone past. I don't want a crowd in here. Thanks." He shut the door and looked round the room, at Brenda in an unluxurious armchair, Jake standing near the head of the bed, Rosenberg sitting on its foot, Ivor by the boarded-up fireplace. "All right Ivor, let's have it all and in the right order."
"Jake kindly said I could wake him up any time I felt bad," said Ivor at a brisk rate, as one who has worked out in advance the best and shortest way to impart a set of facts. "I woke up suddenly and I was frightened because it was a strange place. I started to go to Jake but his room's on the floor below and I needed somebody at once. So I went into just the nearest room, I didn't know whose it was, and I turned on the light and it was here and she was like that and I saw the note and the bottle. So then I stopped feeling frightened about myself and fetched Jake and he sent me for Frank and I found him almost straight away."
"So: she had no way whatever of knowing that you even might come bursting in at four a.m."
"None."
"What woke you?" asked Rosenberg.
"I don't know, I just woke, found I was awake."
Ed rubbed his cheeks alternately with one hand after the other. "It's off pattern, Frank."
"I agree. What's worrying is that you can kill yourself with those things but hardly anyone—"
"Is that right, I didn't know that."
"There you are, if you didn't know there's a good chance she didn't either."
>
"So she goes for a cut-me-down, a joke, a phoney attempt without knowing what she's using can be deadly."
"She could have found out about that," said Jake, hoping even as he spoke to be taken as stating a rather obvious general possibility rather than showing special knowledge.
"Maybe. We'll know more later. You did well, Ivor. You too, Jake. Now you can all go along to bed. Frank and I'll take care of everything here."
It struck Jake then that he wanted to stay and see Kelly safely taken off the premises, but he felt he couldn't argue the point so he glanced at her, saw that one of her cheeks was reddened, where Rosenberg might have slapped it to try to arouse her, but nothing else of significance and left with the other two. When asked, Ivor said he would be fine now because it was nearly light. As soon as he had gone Brenda said,
"You're not to blame for that in any way at all."
"If she dies I'll be responsible. That stuff has had three or four more hours to work on her because of me."
"You're not responsible. Either she is or God is or nobody is, not you. It's nothing to do with you except in the sense that she did it to get you involved with her and make you feel awful about her, and she picked you because she knows you quite like her or have a bit of time for her and nobody else does."
"All right, but poor little bitch."
"You can't afford to think that. Dangerous little lunatic is the only safe thing to think about her. Remember, it's 'not your fault'. You couldn't possibly have foreseen what she was going to do, how could anyone?"
They heard the ambulance approaching. Neither spoke while it came up and halted outside the building and, after what seemed a remarkably short time, drove off again. Jake had heard no voices or footfalls in that time and wished he had, feeling that that would have been some sort of guarantee of Kelly's actual departure. By now he and Brenda were tucked up in their beds, or rather lay there in the hot twilight each covered by a single sheet.
"Do you think I did right not to tell them about her asking me to go and see her?"
Jake's Thing Page 25
