Nell Alone

by Jennie Melville

After a moment’s hesitation, he wrenched her grip apart.

  ‘No weakness there, anyway,’ she said thoughtfully.

  As their hands touched she knew that he was not emotionally or sensually interested in women. She knew it coldly and reasonably and innocently with her mind, but untouched by it, as if all its implications were unknown to her.

  But from that moment the thought would run, courant, within her, liberating all sorts of other thoughts.

  She put the radio and his books on the table by his elbow before she started her evening’s work on the article which Jordan Neville was clamouring for. She had dismantled the television set and removed it from the room. He could have a radio set but not television. She allowed him ears on the world but not eyes.

  There was a pattering noise in the attics above them, like the sound of tiny animal feet.

  ‘I think Mrs Richier has squirrels living in the attics,’ said Nell, sounding as if she was amused by it.

  ‘Not mice? Not rats?’

  ‘No. Squirrels, grey ones. I saw them once.’

  ‘They can’t get down here?’

  ‘No. They can’t get down and you can’t get up. She keeps the door locked.’ Nell looked thoughtful. Perhaps it had been the squirrels the children saw.

  ‘I find it difficult to believe in these squirrels.’

  ‘You have to believe what I tell you,’ Nell reminded him.

  Jordan Neville also lived alone. Really alone, in a tiny two-roomed flat.

  He did not disguise to himself that he was deeply in love with Nell. Nor did he disguise to himself the fact that in her present mood she was unlikely to be susceptible to appeals or offers of love of any sort.

  Sometimes he wanted very much to marry Nell; at other times, and more often, he did not. Marriage had not been his first thought, nor his second. He was not naturally a marriageable person and neither, he suspected, was Nell. Uncontracted relationships had so much more to recommend them. But Nell refused to be ephemeral; she was not transitory; she was here to stay in his life anyway.

  But he admitted sadly to himself that, if so, it looked like being the most one-sided love affair of the century.

  Was a direct amorous relationship the answer then? No, that would be essentially a simple and unsophisticated contract. And what he felt for Nell was not simple. It was subtle, complex, legalistic, perhaps even cruel. He did not think he could necessarily promise Nell a happy life but, by God, it would be an interesting one.

  But every day the voracious hours ate a little more of his Nell away and he wasn’t sure what was being left. Something was changing her.

  The night passed uneasily for them both in the upper flat. How Mrs Richier slept on the ground floor no one knew. Certainly it was all quiet down there. Nell suspected she took heavy sleeping drugs at night to dull the pain in her limbs. She was interested in Mrs Richier’s disease; it seemed a bad but static case. It never got any better and yet it never got any worse either. Some psychological factor operating, probably.

  Nell did not take sleeping drugs. She did not sleep that night. She lay on her back and looked at her white ceiling and listened to the traffic passing along in the distance. A main highroad out of the city ran only a few hundred yards from the house. To Nell this highway seemed unreal. She didn’t believe it had any ending. People and things just piled in vehicles and drove along it and disappeared for ever. This road when she occasionally drove down it herself seemed to have no relation to the highway as it existed in her mind. Now she was lying there listening to the trucks trundling down it out into nowhere.

  Once she heard Black call out in his sleep. He had bad dreams, too bad, she sometimes thought, for him to remember them in the morning. But she would know by his eyes and the lines round his mouth that the night had harrowed him. He was another one whose disease, if disease it was, made no progress either towards worsening or to a remission of symptoms. But unlike Mrs Richier he would certainly recover the use of his legs one day.

  Then perhaps he would get up on them and walk out.

  Rather earlier than usual she took his breakfast in to him. He was already sitting up wearing his dressing-gown; of course, he could do a few things for himself. They were both nervous and alert this morning.

  ‘Good morning. It’s a fine morning.’

  ‘It’s not. It’s raining.’

  ‘How can you tell?’ Nell was genuinely surprised. From his chair by the bed he could not see the window and as far as she knew he could not move far from it. The wheel-chair she had carefully placed outside.

  ‘I can hear.’

  Nell considered this: it was a quiet steady drizzle rather than a heavy downpour, inaudible, she would have thought. He must be developing a sharpening sensory perception to compensate for his immobility. She would have to take this into account.

  ‘The traffic sounds different,’ he said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘As if the road was wet.’

  ‘You’re getting to know the sounds.’

  Black was silent.

  ‘Make it a good day,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t control the day.’

  ‘You control everything else.’

  ‘That’s rubbish.’ Nell laid out the breakfast. Her voice was tight, even amused. ‘Here’s coffee. I boiled you an egg. Please eat it. We won’t get anywhere unless you get strength.’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ he said broodingly. ‘That tone. You know. Always you know.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Nell laughed. Not yet, she thought, but I will know.

  His hand came round and gripped her wrist.

  ‘How did you get me?’

  ‘Oh?’ She shrugged. ‘Perhaps I won you in a lottery.’

  ‘Poor joke.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re a necessity of life. What every smart girl must have.’ She was able to speak lightly.

  ‘This is a big flat.’

  She was surprised. ‘No, not really. All the rooms are small.’

  ‘But more than one?’

  ‘Oh yes, seven little rooms.’

  ‘All occupied?’ There was almost a quiver in his voice.

  ‘You don’t think I’ve got one of you locked up in each, do you?’ She sounded amused. ‘I’m not making a collection.’

  ‘I wondered,’ he muttered.

  ‘No. You’re unique. My sole specimen.’

  ‘You’re keeping me a prisoner,’ he said sullenly. ‘I’ve been thinking about it all night. A prisoner.’

  ‘Go, then.’ She went to the door and threw it open. ‘Go on. Go.’

  He stood up. For one moment he was fully erect, a tall well-built man of about thirty. Then he slumped back against the chair. ‘You know I can’t.’

  Nell was silent while she helped him to dress and arranged him for the day. She returned when she herself was ready to leave.

  ‘Good-bye for the day.’ She moved the telephone to within his reach. ‘You have my office telephone number if anything desperate happens.’

  ‘You’re a strange girl.’ He was calm again now. ‘Aren’t you afraid I’ll ring them up and tell them you’re keeping me here?’

  ‘I’ll be interested if you do. I’ve been waiting to see.’

  ‘The police, the telephone exchange then, anyone,’ he said desperately. ‘I could ring.’

  She shrugged, giving her secret smile.

  This was near the end of the first period of their life together.

  The house was quiet all that day while Nell was at work. Amabel and Charlotte, watching it carefully from behind the garden wall, saw nothing. It was a school holiday. Soon they gave up and went away. They had other secrets, other lives to attend to after all.

  But later that day the house came alive. A window on the top floor was closed. A door banged in the wind and then was carefully drawn to.

  The postman who came with the second post, glancing casually upwards, received the unmistakable impression of life and activity on the top floor.

  Nell’s powers
were strong. She seemed to be in control, her ‘mana’ powerful. But when she was away perhaps the mice played?

  Chapter Three

  As soon as she arrived at work Nell felt the atmosphere of crisis. This was not unknown at the Institute where crisis appeared and went continuously. Sometimes they were important crises like the time when their grant of money from the Ministry was suddenly halved and everyone thought this was the end (fortunately a reprieve came through at the last minute); and sometimes they were relatively unimportant crises as when a child got locked in the sixth-floor lavatory and had to be rescued by the fire brigade. There had been no locks on lavatories in the Institute since that time. Nell usually took these crises in her stride. Living in a world of her own, as she had done for nearly a year now, this was easy. ‘Nell’s always so calm,’ cried her friends. ‘Nell has no imagination,’ said her critics. But they were both wrong. Nell was not calm, not inside, and she had masses of imagination, but it was occupied with thoughts and dreams they guessed nothing of. Only Jordan Neville saw it and wondered what to do.

  He watched Nell walk in now and shook his head slightly. He thought that every day she grew a little more withdrawn. This morning she even looked haggard. But at the same time she was prettier than ever.

  ‘I must love you very much, Nell,’ he said, advancing towards her, ‘ not to be as mad as hell at you.’

  ‘Oh, you do, Jordan, you do.’

  ‘Where is that article?’

  ‘I have it nearly ready,’ said Nell, almost making an apology but not quite. ‘I’ve been busy. Other things, you know.’

  ‘Yes. That’s what I thought,’ said Jordan, his eyes on her.

  ‘I think you are mad with me.’

  ‘No. Really not. Couldn’t I help with those other things?’

  Nell smiled. Jordan thought it was the coldest, saddest little smile he had ever seen. It might have been the smile of the Ice Queen. It pierced his heart.

  ‘Nell!’ he said, in alarm.

  ‘I’m a freak, a sport,’ said Nell. ‘ Forget me.’ She got into the lift and pressed the button.

  There was a quiet, dark-haired man standing in the lift who had presumably been listening to every word that had been said. He looked at Nell, not rudely and completely impersonally, as if it was his job to survey her and make a report on her. In just such a way did Nell herself study her patients. But this man was not a doctor.

  In spite of herself Nell’s heart began to beat. He was certainly a policeman.

  As soon as the lift stopped he walked quickly out, not glancing her way. Jordan was waiting for her, having raced the lift up the stairs. It was the kind of thing he did. Nor was he even panting.

  ‘I had something to say to you,’ he complained. ‘ Didn’t you notice the air of tension?’

  ‘Yes. Who’s locked in where now?’ Nell made her joke, but in fact she connected the air of tension quite sharply with the man in the lift and knew it was serious.

  ‘No locks. The police.’

  ‘Well, what’s it about? Tell me then.’

  ‘Remember the dead man discovered not far from here?’

  ‘I remember you telling me.’

  ‘The police think he had some connection with the Institute.’

  The dead person was on the move again, walking around in the minds of the living. This dead person could even strike an attitude. The body had been discovered with one arm protruding in a gesture. You could call it defiance. Or it might have been anger. Perhaps it was an appeal. The body was very shrivelled and black and strangely more like a huge vegetable, some great tuber, than anything animal.

  At the moment it was on the pathologist’s table where it was due to come up with a big surprise.

  ‘Oh, surely not,’ cried Nell.

  ‘We can’t really say that, can we? A good many people come and go here. And the police must have some reason for thinking so.’

  ‘We haven’t lost anyone,’ said Nell thoughtfully. ‘There hasn’t even been any change of staff.’

  ‘It may not be as direct a connection as that.’

  ‘It’s got to be fairly direct, I should think, for the police to come round here asking questions.’ She thought of the man in the lift. He had been quite a senior detective, not a young constable.

  ‘Not necessarily. They may just be clutching at straws.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Nell didn’t think the man in the lift looked as though he clutched at straws.

  ‘I heard a rumour, mind you there may be nothing in it, that they’d found a piece of paper with the Institute’s address on it.’

  ‘Oh well, we may find out,’ said Nell, preparing to go on her way. Her office door was already open.

  ‘I thought I’d just tell you. Of course, they’re hardly likely to have much to say to you; may not even come up here.’

  Jordan departed, giving Nell a wave of the hand. He had not suggested meeting her at lunch. He hoped Nell was disappointed.

  Nell watched him go. She was not as sure as Jordan that the police would have nothing to say to her. She knew what they might say, what they could say. She could imagine the dark-haired man in the lift coming out with it to her.

  ‘You called on us, Miss Hilton,’ he would say, watching her with those cold bright eyes, just as that other man had done. ‘About your sister. And we didn’t believe you.’

  Four months ago Nell had found herself desperate. It was the first time this had ever happened to her. Often enough she had been anxious, once or twice frightened, these things happen to everybody, but never before had she felt this sense of loss combined with a fierce feeling that she must do something, a feeling turning even as she looked at it squarely into a sense that yet there was nothing to be done. Despair, she saw, had many faces. Also, she knew now, despair took some time to build up; it was a plant of slow growth. You went on hoping.

  But before despair, even before hope, you got incredulity. Nell had felt incredulous when Louise left her.

  ‘I’m going, Nell,’ Louise had said. ‘My husband and I are leaving town.’

  ‘So soon?’

  ‘It’s not so soon really. We’ve been married a month. I always knew when he came back from this trip we’d be leaving. I told you so.’

  ‘I wish you could have married someone who didn’t travel round so much,’ Nell had said wistfully. ‘Someone who … Someone who …’

  ‘Someone who what?’ asked Louise sharply.

  ‘Someone who worked in the city,’ finished Nell lamely.

  ‘That’s enough about my husband. You’ll be better without me. You need to be without me, Nell. And I need to be away. With my husband.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re going,’ Nell had cried, as she watched Louise packing.

  ‘I’m going all right. You’d better find a husband yourself, Nell.’ Louise locked her case.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You need one, Nell. Don’t love me too much,’ said Louise. ‘Good-bye. I’ll be writing.’ She had given her sister a gentle kiss and a little loving pat on the shoulder.

  Louise was beautiful and kind, but also more than a little obtuse. She never understood the exact nature of Nell’s love for her. From where Louise stood it looked like dependence. But to Nell it always seemed as if she was the one who protected Louise. She had learnt to take into account Louise’s limitations. Louise didn’t see events and people as sharply and clearly as Nell did, she was not in the least analytical and took her own strength for granted. It never occurred to her to question that because she was the older she was not also the wiser. In their youth the stage had been set by their mother who always said, ‘But Louise is the elder’, as if this made her always the one who knew best.

  Louise had gone away and she had written just as she said she would. Two or three letters had come; scrappy disjointed letters in Louise’s usual terse style. She always expected you to read between the lines. In this case, even the lines themselves were few.

  When no more letters
came, Nell was first angry, then anxious, and finally despairing. Louise was her only living relative.

  It took her another two weeks to go to the police. She saw a sergeant. He was seated behind a large oak desk in a tiny room; he filled the room, there didn’t seem much space left for Nell. She had squeezed herself on a chair between the wall and desk and stared up at him. Outside in the street she could hear an electric drill at work.

  ‘They’re digging up your building,’ she said with nervous laughter.

  ‘No, only the street.’ He didn’t show a flicker of humour. ‘This is a new building.’

  Nell glanced wildly round her; she hadn’t noticed anything about the building. But it was indeed brightly new. In this district of the city about half the buildings were less than five years old, and the other half over a hundred and awaiting demolition. Structures were going up and coming down all around, everywhere was dust and noise.

  ‘My sister is missing,’ she said suddenly. ‘I’m very worried.’

  ‘Yes, I can see you are, Miss.’ He drew a pad of paper towards him. ‘Let me have it all, please. Now, what’s your sister’s name?’

  ‘Mrs Lang. Mrs Louise Lang.’

  He looked up. ‘Oh, she’s married?’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’

  ‘Where’s her husband then?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Nell. ‘ With her, I suppose.’

  ‘Just in what sense is your sister missing?’ said the sergeant, putting down his pencil. ‘If her husband’s with her?’

  ‘She’s missing from me,’ cried Nell.

  ‘Did you have a quarrel, Miss?’ he asked, after a pause.

  ‘No,’ said Nell. But yet, in a sense, there had been a quarrel between them. Their last exchange of letters could be said to constitute a quarrel. Or, at any rate, it provided a promising start to one.

  ‘Can you lend me one thousand pounds for one year?’ Louise had written bluntly, and without preamble. ‘It is to complete the purchase price of a business for my husband. I told you he is an engineer. This is something I can help him in. I know you have the money.’

  Yes, she knew Nell had the money. Ten thousand pounds, all their inheritance, had been split between them.