Nell Alone

by Jennie Melville

  ‘That’s a chic tot,’ said Jordan who was watching them too. He had seen the glint of silver bracelet on the five-year-old’s wrist. He talked like that sometimes, offering his audience a highly stylised comment as if in joke. It was usually offered with a wry undertone, though.

  ‘She’s dressed like her mother. Even walks the same: a replica.’

  ‘A corrupted replica of her mother,’ said Nell bitterly.

  ‘You know them?’

  ‘No,’ said Nell shortly. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it.’

  But there had been a ring of feeling in her voice; she had meant something by it. Or conversely, it had meant something to her. Now she gave her head a toss as if to throw out the thought.

  ‘They may just admire each other,’ he said uneasily. ‘All love is a sort of imitation, isn’t it?’

  ‘If the daughter admires her mother, that’s one thing. If the mother admires herself in her daughter that’s another.’

  He gathered up his papers.

  ‘They’ve found a dead body in an empty warehouse behind Ryon Hill.’

  ‘They have?’ Nell halted.

  ‘Yes. It’s not in the papers yet but it will be. The warehouse is derelict. A man going to work knocking it down found it. Been there a long time.’

  ‘Years?’

  ‘Long enough to make identification difficult. No, not years. Months perhaps.’

  ‘Identification is never difficult if you try hard enough,’ said Nell in a cold voice. She walked on. ‘I’m busy.’

  Jordan watched her.

  The dead can come back to life. But not for long. Their life is sporadic. In this case the dead person sat up, said ‘Sis, sis,’ almost like a doll, then died again. The life which animated came from the heart and mind and memory of another soul.

  This dead person would come to life again and again.

  Relaxed and gentle in appearance as ever, Nell went on her way. She had not exactly dismissed the dead person of whom Jordan spoke, so much as put it aside. She was reasonably certain that an unidentified dead man could have nothing to do with her. And especially not one that had been dead some time.

  ‘Give me a few weeks and then we’ll see,’ she thought with a wicked half smile. ‘A newly-dead man might have something to do with me then.’

  She was more occupied with the story the girls had told her the night before. To this subject her thoughts returned more than she wished. Something happening in her home when she was away. Activities over which she appeared to have no control. It was a disquieting thought for any householder.

  All the time she was working that day Nell was very conscious of the big city outside. Some days she loved it, on others she hated it, but she was never neutral. About this city you couldn’t be. It was a great, old, dirty centre of civilisation with a history reaching back through the centuries and a future that sometimes seemed ambiguous. It could not go on as it was, that seemed certain. People had been saying so for generations. But still it went on growing, nothing seemed to stop it. Here a complex of handsome modern buildings, and there a neighbourhood of small shops and houses. A church built like a Roman temple, a hospital built into a skyscraper, this boisterous vulgar city had everything. It was charming or faintly sinister according to your mood.

  It had two murders a month, quite often by shooting; several children died annually through neglect but there was a good library and a swimming pool within everyone’s reach.

  Nell had lived here three years now, and her sister before her marriage had been six years in the city, three alone, three with Nell. Now it was Nell’s turn to be alone.

  A year ago Louise had married and left the city. She had moved across the river.

  The noises of the streets drifted in through the open windows and half disturbed Nell, half soothed her. She could hear voices and traffic, somewhere in the distance a man was singing. The city was alive, and that was a good thing to be.

  She took her lunch alone at a small eating-place next door to the Institute. There were plenty of people she knew there, but she avoided them. Dr Wightman was lunching with his secretary, who was reputed to be also his wife: although other people said he had a wife still alive in Hamburg and whatever Felicity was she couldn’t be his wife. Rurie Mactaggart and James Lipton and Polly Christmas were roaring with laughter over some joke or non-joke, making a noise like musique concrète at a table in one corner. Old Dr Festerone was quietly reading a book in another. His own book, Nell noticed, written five years ago. Festerone on The Detached Mind. Surely he knew all about it by now?

  Nell sipped black coffee. Whatever her other needs and passions (and she had them) Nell found no difficulty in being austere about food.

  Nevertheless, she drew her shopping list from her bag and checked it over. Asparagus tips. Butter from Normandy. Gruyère cheese. Strawberry and brandy preserves. A strange list for a hard-up drinker of black coffee.

  ‘My mother always said that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Or was that Napoleon? Mother was never an original thinker, although she had some good practical ideas, so perhaps she was right about that one.’ Nell smiled, delicately, cruelly. ‘But it isn’t his stomach into which I wish to penetrate, is it?’

  So after eating she went to the shops.

  Some of the little shops she visited looked as though they had been on the site since the Plague last visited the city. They were like dark caves dug out of the city face, but filled with riches.

  She did some of her shopping then and the rest on her way home that night. Her last call was at a special delicatessen.

  ‘Nice to see you again, miss,’ said the man who served her. ‘Thought you must have moved away. You used to be in all the time, you and your sister.’

  ‘She’s married.’

  ‘I know. She told me, said she was moving right away.’

  ‘She did,’ said Nell with some irritation. He seemed to have people moving right away on the mind.

  ‘She was a nice young lady,’ he said, carefully slicing a ham from Parma.

  Louise is not a nice young lady, Nell wanted to say loudly. Louise was many many things but not a nice young lady. Not. And neither am I.

  ‘Doing well, I hope?’

  ‘I haven’t heard for some time,’ said Nell. She picked up her shopping and departed.

  ‘Here’s your change,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘All the same, she’s doing a lot of eating for a young lady living on her own,’ he said to his wife, watching Nell disappear. ‘Parma ham, tinned stuff, the best coffee.’

  ‘She’s entertaining people,’ said his wife.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘It’s a man,’ said his wife confidently. ‘ You’ll see.’

  Nell was later tonight, owing to all her shopping, and the girls Amabel and Charlotte had given up and gone in to their tea. Amabel was thinking of her, though. She was eating her bread and jam, quarrelling with her sister, and thinking about Nell. It was always possible for Amabel to do three things at once. In any case, it was not now difficult to think about Nell because it was what her sister was quarrelling about. She was doing the quarrelling, not Amabel, in whom the sense of restrained power made the need to quarrel unnecessary. ‘You shouldn’t watch out for her the way you do,’ Amabel’s sister was saying. ‘How do you know she likes it?’ Amabel showed her teeth amiably, and chewed on.

  Mrs Richier was watering the flowers in her window box as Nell came in. The flowers were sparse and few and only came up because they were annuals like daisies and had nothing better to do with their lives than make a desultory annual appearance. Mrs Richier did not encourage them. It was rare for her to give them even water. One year they would fail to appear but she probably would not notice. If she was still around herself, of course. Perhaps she didn’t expect to be.

  She smiled at Nell and waved her hand. She had pretty, well kept hands with shining nails. Her hands were younger than her face, which in spite of careful make-up
had an aged timeless quality which was certainly not young. She could have been fifty or she could have been ninety. Her face was painted on, it was an illusion, a complete trompe l’oeil. Nell believed she had once been on the stage. Now she was Nell’s landlady and in her back room she mixed and packaged unguents and creams and lotions fragrant with herbs and sold them as Rose Richier’s Cosmetics. They were expensive and harmless and sold only in a handful of shops in London, Paris and New York. They were advertised as ‘handmade’, which they really were.

  ‘Well, I haven’t seen you for a long while, dear.’

  ‘I’ve been busy,’ said Nell, preparing to hurry on.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But it’ll be summer soon.’

  ‘And then you won’t be so busy?’

  ‘I might go away later in the summer.’

  ‘Might you?’ Mrs Richier gazed at Nell enviously. ‘I wish I could get away. Of course, I could. But then there are so many places I can’t get to. It’s such a handicap not being able to climb a step.’

  ‘But you do go away sometimes.’

  ‘Oh, of course, but I have to make special arrangements. Isn’t it strange to think that it’s easier for me to go to New York than up my own stairs?’

  Nell smiled. ‘There’s nothing much to see up there.’

  ‘Oh, I can imagine it all. I hear a door creak and I think that’s her closing the front door. I hear the water running and I think she’s taking a bath. Oh, I never feel lonely.’

  ‘No,’ said Nell. ‘You seem to hear quite a lot. Not too much, I hope?’

  ‘Oh, you’re as quiet as a mouse really.’

  ‘I try to be.’ I shall try harder in future, added Nell to herself.

  ‘You heard about the dead body they found in the bottom of that empty house? Unidentified, it said on the radio. Imagine lying there dead and none of your friends knowing or caring!’

  ‘Someone must know and care,’ said Nell. She started to walk on, up the stairs which so fortunately provided an impassable barrier to her landlady.

  ‘Well, look after yourself,’ called Mrs Richier to her back. ‘A young girl like you, all alone in a big city.’

  Nell walked on up the stairs and stood by her own front door. She looked a pretty, elegant, if slightly preoccupied girl. A girl alone in the big city.

  ‘Only I’m not alone in the city,’ said Nell to herself as she opened the door.

  She stood on the threshold, listening for a moment, then she closed the door quietly and crept forward.

  Inside someone was whistling.

  Chapter Two

  The whistling stopped as Nell opened the door and hurried into the room.

  ‘I was only whistling in the dark,’ said the man who was lying in the long chair. ‘ To keep my spirits up.’

  Nell took his wrist and felt his pulse. ‘Nothing wrong with your spirits,’ she said shortly, letting his arm fall. And indeed, in a remarkable way, this was true.

  ‘You can’t tell that way.’

  ‘It gives a clue.’ She looked down at his left leg, which was stretched out on a chair. ‘Any pain today?’

  He shook his head without speaking.

  ‘You didn’t answer the telephone when I rang,’ said Nell.

  He was still silent. Then he said, ‘You know I can’t.’

  Nell shook her head. She ran her hand over the muscles of his leg: they were relaxed and flaccid.

  ‘I can’t move.’

  ‘How’s the right leg?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said irritably. ‘ I can twitch it, I suppose. I can’t walk on one leg, you know that.’

  ‘I know you say so.’

  ‘You’ll have to believe it, the way I have to believe you’re a doctor.’

  There was silence between them. End of round one for the evening.

  ‘Telephoning,’ he muttered. He looked at the telephone which stood close by and yet beyond his reach. Next to the telephone table was a wheel-chair in which Nell transported him to such spots within the flat as she chose he should go to. He shuddered at the things he was obliged to let her do for him.

  He closed his eyes and leaned back. There was something strangely restful in being helpless and without a memory. He couldn’t make an effort one way or another, and no one could really expect him to. Who wanted memories?

  Nell sensed what he was feeling, and to a large extent understood it. Her problem was to define the area of her understanding. She wanted clarity and precision in her own mind about this man.

  ‘You ate your lunch.’ She picked up the tray she had left ready beside him. ‘Nothing wrong with your appetite anyway.’

  ‘I didn’t think it was poisoned.’

  Nell did not answer; she had considered mixing a mild sedative in his coffee but had decided against it. Frankly, it was hardly necessary.

  ‘Would you like to get into the wheel-chair and get a change of scene?’ she called back over her shoulder.

  ‘No.’ And immediately he changed his mind. ‘Oh yes, might as well.’

  Nell came back into the room and assisted the change over; it went smoothly as usual. She always looked intimidatingly severe as she did this. Straight away he wheeled the chair over to the window and sat staring out, his back towards her.

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t see much.’

  ‘Pretend you care.’ The only window to which he had access gave on to a restricted view of tree tops and high gables and roofs. There was never a human being. ‘How did you get me here? How did you get me?’

  ‘We’ll go into that some other time.’ Nell was laying the table with silver and china.

  ‘The things you say,’ he almost groaned.

  ‘You may find you remember some day.’ Nell was detached and reasonable.

  ‘If you don’t stop me.’

  ‘No. I’m trying to help. Don’t quarrel with me. Besides—’ she paused. He was waiting, watching her lips as if her words gave him life. ‘No outsider can control the memory, what influences it comes from inside.’

  She had made the table look very pretty although he still was refusing to look at it.

  ‘The things you say are ridiculous,’ he said, still staring out of the window.

  ‘Come and eat.’ Nell wheeled the chair over to the table.

  ‘You certainly make me welcome,’ he said, looking at the table with a faint smile.

  ‘I want you to stay.’ Nell was quite sincere. She did want him to stay.

  Nell sat down at the table opposite him; she busied herself serving the food. She placed steak and beans on his plate, and mixed the salad. All the time she watched unobtrusively and not over-anxiously to see how he handled the knife and fork. There was no sign he found any weakness in his arms and wrists.

  ‘I got your clothes from the cleaners today,’ she said conversationally. She kept her eyes on her steak but every other sense was fully alert. She could almost smell the fear welling out of him.

  ‘Did they – did they get the blood out?’ he asked after a pause.

  ‘There was no blood.’ Nell let the sentence fall out in strong, measured syllables as if she wanted every sound to weigh with him. ‘I told you so.’

  ‘I can’t get it out of my head that there was blood on the jacket.’

  ‘There is no blood on the jacket, no blood on the trousers.’ Nell leaned forward. ‘Let’s put it this way: there is no blood now. Perhaps there has been blood on them in the past.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I don’t like that idea. I don’t know about that. I can’t remember.’

  ‘Try,’ said Nell in her relaxed gentle voice that soothed and coaxed her child patients.

  ‘Why did you take them to be cleaned?’

  ‘There was a lot of mud on them, remember,’ said Nell. ‘At least you can remember that.’

  Whether he remembered the mud or not (and he probably did) there had been mud on the clothes and for that matter there still was. She had not, of course, taken them to the clea
ners.

  There was no blood on them. Nell had searched diligently and as far as she could see there was no blood.

  They continued eating in silence. After the steak Nell had a dish of strawberries and cream to offer. She watched with a smile as her companion enjoyed his food.

  ‘Black,’ she said. He looked up quickly. He always responded at once to his name. To Nell he seemed to cling to it in desperation as if he was frightened that he might one day forget it.

  ‘Black Douglas,’ he said. ‘It’s a sort of joke, really.’

  ‘Do you remember the joke?’ asked Nell promptly.

  ‘No.’ He frowned and shook his head. ‘I just remember about its being a joke. But I’m always called it.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ he asked swiftly.

  Nell was silent. ‘I looked in your jacket,’ she said eventually.

  ‘That’s no answer.’

  ‘Perhaps you will remember yourself how I know your name. Give yourself time,’ said Nell in a kindly way.

  ‘The things you say, the things you almost say.’

  ‘It’ll all come back,’ said Nell, still sounding kind. Monstrously kind, she suddenly felt with great weariness.

  But she recalled the girls’ story of signs of life and movement in the house when she was out and this strengthened and hardened her.

  He could not walk but it was possible that he had managed some way of moving round or at least of attempting contact with the outside world: she herself had she been in his position would certainly have contrived something.

  She watched him suspiciously, eyeing his hands and wrists to see if the malaise was affecting them. But they seemed to move freely and easily still.

  ‘Hold out your hands,’ she said suddenly. She gripped them firmly. ‘Now break away,’ she ordered.