Lady Mislaid

by Claire Rayner

  There was a sharp sound, and Abigail heard Cecily draw a sharp hissing breath.

  He’s slapped her, she thought. Slapped her – who has slapped her? Miles?

  She hurled herself at the door again, but it held fast, and beyond it she heard footsteps, and another peal of that sick laughter, and she stood very still, her ear pressed against the panels, trying to hear what was happening. The footsteps dwindled, softened in sound, and then there was just silence. A thick silence that was like a blanket.

  She stood for another interminable minute listening, and was just about to draw a breath to shout again, when she did hear something.

  At first, she thought it was an animal crying somewhere, so high and plaintive was the sound but then she listened again, and knew.

  It was a child crying, crying in long piteous moans, and in an agony of frustration, Abigail ran about the room, banging on the walls, throwing aside the few broken chairs and the battered card table which were its only furniture, seeking a way out. The child cried again, remote and with such misery and fear in the sound that Abigail beat her own forehead with her fists and cried out aloud.

  “Dany – Danny – I’m trying – I will come, I will – Danny!–”

  And she ran back to the door and again beat against it till her hands bled and the pain forced her to stop.

  And again that plaintive cry filled her ears, and this time she ran to the window. It was locked, but the panes were broad and with a strength she didn’t know she had, she seized one of the chairs and swung it widely and hit the glass with a tinkling jangling curiously satisfying crash.

  Recklessly, she thrust with her elbow at the fragments of stiletto sharp glass still clinging to the edges of the window frame, and looked out. Far below her the road with its parked cars lay serene and still in the brilliance of the early May sunshine, but not a person was in sight. Only a solitary black cat stalked in foreshortened long legged dignity across the central garden. No one to answer a call for help. No one at all.

  And again she heard it, that high pleading cry, and again the agony of being locked up and frustrated almost overcame her, so that she lifted her head and wept aloud, tears running down her face unheeded.

  But gradually, her panic and anger subsided, and thought came to take over, to fill her shaking body with determination. For the next time the child called out, Abigail moved purposefully and swung her legs out through the gap she had made in the dirty window. Somehow she managed to turn her body, so that she hung by her weary hands, with her face pressed against the grimy brickwork, her feet scrabbling for the foothold of a ledge she had seen a few feet below the window.

  It was the right side of her face that was against the wall, and she could just see, distorted because only one eye was able to see clearly, a diagonal rail of iron. One of the struts of the balcony, she thought. One of the struts. If I can reach it I can slide down, and get in at the window below. And find Danny and get him out of here. Find Danny and get him out of here.

  Her feet found the ledge, and slipped, and for one sick moment she thought she was going to fall – and then the third miracle happened. One of the shoes she should have taken off first hooked itself agains the wall, and one convulsive kick sent it spinning off her foot. But her toes were free, and she was able to use them to cling to the ledge.

  Gingerly, she moved her hands, one over the other, until she was right at the far edge of the window frame. There was nothing else to hold onto, nothing between her and the diagonal of the balcony. She let go with her left hand, and reached for it, but it was just a few inches beyond her eagerly groping finger tips. The only way she would be able to reach it would be to let go the little support she had. She would have to hurl herself bodily at that metal pole, hoping to catch it, hoping it would take her weight if she did.

  And then it became definitely the only thing she could do, for even as she tried to measure the distance with her eye, the piece of the ledge on which her shoeless foot was clinging gave way, and she had to let go and throw herself at the only hope of support there was.

  With a convulsive movement she closed her eyes, and let go, felt herself fall sideways and downwards, sickeningly.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The jerk made her retch, closing her throat with a sick clutch that took her breath away. But she clung as instinctively as a young animal clings to its mother’s fur. And when she opened her eyes, she was swinging from arms which were convulsivelyy looped round the metal diagonal of the balcony.

  All she had to do now was loosen her grip very sighly, to allow her body to slide down the pole to safety of the balcony ten feet below – but she couldn’t. Antilcimax had hit her like a physical blow, and her arms were held in a spasm of muscular contraction that was agonzingly painful. It was as though she had hung there all her life, and would hang there for another eternity, doomed for ever to a peculiar and private hell of her own.

  And then, absurdly, she sneezed. That spasm seemed to loosen the one in her arms, for the slid, swinging awkardly from side to side, until she found herself bent double over the balcony railings which trembled and rocked under her weight.

  Somehow she managed to pull herself back, managed to get her feet on the concrete of the balcony floor, and then she was sitting huddled in a corner of it, her hands screaming with pain, her chest torn with the huge retching gulping breaths she had to take.

  To sneeze. To hang in mid-air from a slender metal pole, and sneeze herself to safety. It was crazy, so crazy that she started to laugh weakly and helplessly, feeling tears streak through the fifth that caked her face, making her breathe even more deeply as she struggled to regain her equilibrium.

  To sneeze – why should anyone want to sneeze when she was in imminent danger of a very bloody, ugly death, when nothing but a metal pole stood between her and the hard body-shattering pavement so far below?

  The smoke. That was why. The thick smell of smoke. Abigail lifted her head and dragged herself upright, and clung swaying to the balcony railing, staring up at the face of the house. All she could see were the flat curtained windows, curiously foreshortened because of the angle at which she had to look at them. She looked behind her, and down, dizily, but there was no indication of a source of the smell that had thickened in her nose to that saving sneeze. And words slid into her mind, made her giggle and speak aloud.

  “An olfactory hallucination,” she infomred the balcony solemnly and giggled again, a little hysterically.

  But there was no time for thinking about what had happened, only what had still to happen if she was to get Danny safely out of the house. She stood still for a second, listening, but there was no high pitched cry of a child to be heard – and somehow the silence seemed even more ominous than the cries had done, made it even more imperative that she find him.

  Once more she peered over the edge of the balcony, across the square, but there was no one, not so much as the prowling cat to prove she was still in a world full of living creatures. No help anywhere; she was still out on this limb on her own.

  She turned to the window that fronted the balcony, and with an automatic movement that had no real hope in it, she pulled on the catch that, when released, would let the window swing open. It turned smoothly in her fingers, and she was so startled when in fact it opened, that she stumbled backwards, and fell hard against the cruel edge of the railings, making them sway, so that for one sick moment she thought she would be pitched down to the street after all.

  But she recovered, and moving awkwardly round the open half of the window, pushed the heavy dust-smelling curtains aside, and stepped into the room beyond.

  It was dark, heavily dark, and she held the curtain high as she looked round. She was in a bedroom, a room with a heavy brass railed bedstead, dark mahogany wardrobes and dressing table, a deep red carpet. Obviously it was not a room that was used for the bed was humped with folded blankets and pillows under a crimson silky counterpane.

  The door was opposite the window, a
nd letting the curtain go, she stumbled across the darkened room towards it. If it were locked? What then?

  But it wasn’t, and she turned the knob very gently, fear coming back in a tidal wave. Her captors were still in the house. It was pretty remarkable they hadn’t yet heard her for she must have made a great deal of noise getting out of that attic room. So she moved as gently as she could, and slid out of the dark bedroom into the corridor.

  She was on the same floor as the room she had remembered was her own bedroom. She recognized the arrangement of doors, the opening to the flight of linoleum covered stairs that led to the floor above, to which she had so trustingly allowed herself to be led by Cecily. And she stood, very quietly, again listening.

  And this time, she realized she had not had an hallucination out there on the balcony. Her nose had reacted to a real stimulus when she had produced that life-saving sneeze, for here the smell of smoke was very strong, an acrid pungent smell thatt made her already painful eyes water again, made her throat contract sickly. It wasn’t just ordinary smoke, either, she realized, but was thick with fumes of some sort, and her weary mind struggled to identify the fumes.

  Petrol. It was the heavy smell of partly burned petrol that was making her feel so sick, and now another kind of fear rose in her, and sent her running along the corridor, heedless of the danger of being heard.

  “Danny! – Danny!” she called, and her voice came out in a heavy rasping croak that was almost a whisper, so that she tried again, though it hurt her throat abominably to force sounds through it.

  “Danny! Where are you? Call again, darling – call again, so that I can find you! But her voice wouldn’t rise above that croaking half whisper though she felt the veins in her head and neck bulge with the effort she was making.

  She threw open each door as she came to it, peering in eagerly, but each room was empty, blank walls and dusty furniture staring back insolently at her, bringing frustration to compound her fear into a paralysing conviction that she and Danny would never leave this house, would stay in it until it burnt away–

  For now she could see the smoke as well as smell it, could see it curling in thick lazy tendrils up the main stairwell. And her ears added to the clamour of terror inside her, for she could hear a distant crackling, the sound that is so attractive in fire that is safely confined in a hearth, so redolent of death and disaster when it is uncontrolled, as this crackling was, for it grew perceptibly louder and more eager with each second, as it ate away at the house below her feet.

  She turned at the end of the corridor, and stood poised with her back against the window at the end, one part of her screaming, “Get out – get out while you still can –” so that involuntarily she turned and scrabbled at the fastening of the window, aching to get it open, to jump at any risk into the promise of safety in the garden below.

  But a stubborn determination came back, made her turn again and stare along the smoke hazed corridor towards the staircase that led upwards.

  “Danny,” she whispered huskily. “I came for him, and I’m going to get him out with me – can’t leave him here, can I? You wouldn’t want me to leave him here, would you?” And ignoring the insistent little voice inside that screamed with monotonous regularity, “Get out – get out – get out –” she pushed herself away from the window, and stumbled into the smoke, the smoke that thickened and blurred until she could barely see the stairs at the end.

  As she began to get up to them, on hands and knees, pulling her desperately heavy body along with aching trembling arms, the crackling noise seemed to diminish a little, giving her new hope. But the smoke was thicker than ever, and suddenly she felt her throat close almost completely, making breathing virutally a physical impossibility.

  But she was at the top of the stairs now, and lyhing flat on the cold polished linoleum. And becauser she was on a high landing, the smoke was thinner near her head, rising above it to hang heavily ominous against the ceiling above.

  It was extraordinay how her memory successively adandoned her and then came to her rescue. She saw another little picture suddenly, herself sitting at a desk in a room full of uniformed nurses, listening to the remote bored voice of a lecturer.

  “It is essential,” intoned the voice ’to maintain an air supply in an emergency, and in fires it is possible to trap much of the asphyxiating material in smoke – a mask can be made of any available material–”

  She struggled to pull off her jacket, and then ripped off the lace of the little blouse, and wadded it up into a flat pad. With fingers that felt as still and useless as a bunch of twigs, she managed to get the fabric round her nose and mouth, and then, experimentally, took a breath. And it seemed to help, seemed to make the smoke turn away and abandon its effort to fill her mouth and nose and chest with its acrid poison.

  And then she crawled again, forwards, until her head hit a solid surface, until she was against the wall, and could drag herself along it, feeling deperately for a break in the smoothness that might mean a door.

  And then she did feel it, the panels, the cool thin movement of air through the crack between the jamb and the door. And painfully climbed hand over hand until she was kneeling upright with her hand on the knob.

  “Danny –” and she didn’t know whether she had actually made a sound, or only heard it inside her head.

  The doorknob turned uselessly, for even though she leaned against the panels with all her weight it held firm. Again, she let go, and began to slither along the wall in search of yet another door, but stopped, and tried to think logically.

  Locked – why locked? None of the doors on the floor below had been locked – and they had been empty. If this one was locked, it must be for a reason. Danny?

  She turned her head painfully to look at the door, and realized with a great rush of relief that it wasn’t the room into which she herself had been locked, but was directly opposite it. Even in the thickening swirl of grey smoke she could recongize the landing and the arrangement of doors in it – so the locked room must be the one for which she was looking.

  And she moved back to it, knelt up again, beat on the dumb panels hopelessly, calling, “Danny – Danny,” thickly. But no sound came from within, only the distant crackling filing her ears with its triumphant greed as it ate its way into the building below her.

  Her hand slithered down helplessly – and was stopped by a sharp pain. The key – the key was in the lock, mutely inviting her to seize it, to turn it. And she tried, so hard, but her aching painful fingers slid away from it, so that she had to use both hands, holding the key with her right hand, and forcing her left to curl its twiggy fingers round it and force the tumblers to fall.

  And then the door creaked open, and she fell forwards, into comparatively clean pure air, and visibility.

  He was lying in a corner on bare floorboards, for the room was completely bare of any furniture, lying hunched up with his dark curly head pillowed on one crooked arm, looking for all the world as though he had simply fallen into a sweet sleep. And a new strength pulled her to her feet, sent her half-running, half-falling across the room to land on her knees beside him. She put out one hand, taking his shoulder and shaking him gently.

  “Danny – Danny, darling – it’s me, Abigail – wake up, sweetheart – we’ve got to get out of here–”

  But the child didn’t stir, even though she shook him more urgently, even though his head fell back and hit the floor as she moved him.

  He was out cold, completely oblivious of what was going on, and as she peered at him, she realized that he wasn’t asleep, but deeply unconscious, for his eys were rolled back, and his mouth lax.

  Slight though he was, he was heavy, and for one desperate moment she thought she had been beaten, that the two of them would have to stay where they were to lie curled up together waiting for the greedy flames to crackle nearer and consume them – and the possibility seemed somehow a warm and attractive one. There was an invitation in the thought of lying there in peace and
comfort, never to feel pain or terror again.

  But the smoke was filling the room now, coming billowing eagerly through the door she had left open, and a deep breath she took unthinkingly made her retch sickly again banished completey the idea that it would be peaceful and pleasant to die in a fire.

  She pulled her mask from her face, and with all the strength she had, ripped it, making two strips of fabric. She folded them, so that the interstices in the heavy cotton lace covered each other, trying to make the masks more effective. One strip she tied over Danny’s loose mouth, managing to hold his jaw up with it. Got to maintin an airway. Musn’t let his tongue fall back and choke him, the nurse part of her mind instructed.

  Then she tied the remaining mask back over her own face, and bent, and manoeuvred the dead weight of the child’s body until his head lay flopping against her back, and his legs dangled helplessly in front of her. Lying like that, said the nurse part of her approvingly, he’ll have the added protection of your body against the smoke–

  Then, she hooked her own arm round one of his legs and reached behind her for one of his loosely swinging arms. And when she had him in a firm grip in her right hand, she managed to get to her feet, to stand swaying sickly in the centre of the empty attic room – empty but for the heaviness of grey-blue smoke.

  It ws odd, the way the weight of Danny’s inert body balanced her, made it possible for her to walk upright. She moved out of the room, turning awkwardly to get him past the narrow opening. Mustn’t scratch him against the wall, she thought absurdly – and using the wall as a guide, moved towards the stairhead.