Fletcher thought: If I could reverse this situation -- put Gerry in danger while Sheila is safe -- I might be able to switch from Gerry to Sheila. This way, it's impossible. I can't control what I do, I have to lose control before anything happens.
Sheila's injured arm was on the side away from him, hidden now, and except for the appalling drop beneath her, she looked like any pretty girl sitting on a ledge in the sun, dangling her legs. She wore a skimpy black skirt and a plain white blouse. She had lost both her shoes.
Fletcher thought: this girl must be saved. He still felt a deep need for justification -- all that had happened could be justified in some supreme court if it had a purpose -- a worth-while purpose. "Sorting Sheila out," as Gerry thought of it, would be a very worth-while purpose, if there were some way to do it.
Having relaxed momentarily, he found he was able to take partial control of Gerry.
He turned to the whispering office girls and clerks. "Please get out, all of you," he said. "She'll never come back here with all of you standing about. If you leave me here alone . . . "
"He's right," said Sheringham. He started to shepherd the others away.
Gerry went back to the window. He had not lost his confidence in Fletcher. Fearless himself, he was quite prepared to make a reckless, even suicidal attempt to save Sheila, but it was obvious that this would, more likely than not, precipitate her fall. If Fletcher had any ideas, Gerry was quite prepared to let him try them.
"Sheila," Fletcher said. She turned her head. "It will be all right, I promise you," he said quietly. "Come back, and it will be all right."
"How can you promise anything?" she retorted bitterly. "Last night you showed what your promises are worth."
"All that happened was I decided not to run away. Sheila, I love you."
Curiously, or not so curiously, Gerry had never said that to Sheila. Indeed, he didn't say it now. Fletcher said it for him.
Sheila's mood changed. "I'm no good to you, Gerry. I never was and I never will be. I'm no good to anybody, especially not to myself."
"I still love you, Sheila."
"Then you're a fool. I can't change. If there were some way . . . "
"But there is a way!" Fletcher paused, striving to explain the inexplicable to a girl who only had to lose her nerve for a moment and she would plunge to her death. He knew the only real explanation was for him to become Sheila. Wild possibilities revolved in his mind . . . get Gerry to stand on the ledge, so that Fletcher's transfer to Sheila might be possible?
Anyway, keep her talking, he told himself. Any moment now the police and firemen would arrive. What was keeping them? In scores of such cases, the would-be suicide eventually returned docilely to safety. The trouble was, Sheila wasn't just an ordinary kid trying to draw attention to her wrongs. She wasn't particularly interested in attention and she didn't feel wronged, not really even by Gerry. She had been born for suicide, and for her there would be pleasure in the moment of abandonment to death, the moment of supreme pleasure, supreme pain.
"Please come in," he begged. "I'll help you . . . "
"Come any farther out of that window and I'll jump," she warned. "I don't know what I'm waiting for anyway. I'm not coming in. I did want to see you again, Gerry . . . how did you get here?"
"I knew you were in danger, Sheila, I swear to you that everything can be put right. There is a way."
There was scarcely any wind, but a sudden gust ruffled her thin blouse and flapped her skin over one thigh and off the other. Automatically she tried to push it back but with her injured arm, and for a moment the shock of the pain and the unexpected chill of the wind, startled her, and very nearly made her fall.
"You see!" said Gerry triumphantly, as she relaxed again. "You don't want to fall. You were terrified just now."
She answered obliquely: "I didn't need to hurt my arm. I saw the cabinet falling quite slowly, and I could easily have got out of the way. But I let my arm be smashed. That shouldn't surprise you."
"No."
"I do want to fall. The only thing that's keeping me here is . . . well, that would be the end, and somehow I'm not quite ready."
"Of course you're not quite ready. No one's ever quite ready to take his own life."
She frowned at that, sensing it was not Gerry who was speaking.
A shadow fell across her and they both looked up.
Descending by a rope ladder from the roof was a man in uniform. He was within six feet of Sheila, directly above her. He was now at the end of the ladder, which was being lowered from above.
"Goodbye, Gerry," said Sheila softly, and deliberately raised herself clear of the wall.
She seemed to be falling interminably. She fell flat, as if lying face down on a bed, one arm and both legs spread out.
Then she landed on the concrete.
A little later, the terrible sound of her landing reached Gerry.
For two days Gerry's shock numbed Fletcher too.
There were confused impressions: a police inspector blustering, knowing, and knowing that Gerry knew too. He had taken a chance that didn't come off, and if he had not done so, Sheila might not have died. Everybody knew, although the office had been cleared when Gerry requested it, that Sheila had apparently calmed down as he talked to her. It had seemed to the inspector then that a man coming down from the roof, without warning, might grasp her and hold her until a ladder could be run up from below. But now, of course, it seemed to him, as well as to everybody else, that perhaps it might have been better to leave it to Gerry.
Baudaker was silent but sympathetic, aware that Fletcher was with Gerry, yet also aware of Gerry's loss. And Baudaker, whatever had happened since, had loved both Sheila and Gerry.
There was a moment when in his grief Gerry blamed everything on Fletcher, saying that if there had been no interference he and Sheila would be on a blissful holiday in Wales, that if Fletcher had wanted to he could not merely have saved Sheila but transformed her. But Fletcher, who once had cringed under such attacks, could not feel this time that he had failed, except in being unable to engineer the transfer to Sheila which he had always felt was her only chance.
The sympathy of Mr. Gordon, which Fletcher was glad to observe, made Gerry more ashamed than ever. Far from suspecting the truth, Mr. Gordon thought Gerry a totally innocent victim of all that had happened, and though he would not say so, well rid of Sheila, even if the manner of his release was unfortunate. Mr. Gordon told him not to return to work until he felt like it, but Gerry replied that he felt like it now, and worked as usual.
A chance meeting with Anita, who knew him slightly as Baudaker's son, and suspected, he was sure, something of what had happened. Fletcher would have spoken to her and asked about Judy, but Gerry was reticent with all people who had known him as the graceless son who was a burden to poor little Baudaker.
. . . Puzzlement as Baudaker gave him a Ł5 note, "for a wreath, or anything else you like."
"But you've sent a wreath already."
"It's not just that. Gerry, Fletcher, I've been made chief technician. Sam was asked about that Saturday I didn't get off, and he blew up and said if they wanted me in charge they could have me. He's gone now." Gerry was diverted for a while by this, proud that his father, who had never "got on" in all the time he could remember, had now been promoted twice in a matter of days. There was also reinforcement of his belief that Fletcher, though he had failed to save Sheila, was some kind of angel. What else could explain what he had done for Baudaker?
And then a chance meeting with Daphne Smith, the redhead Gerry had met on the estuary; without Vera this time.
Impressions ceased to be confused.
The girl, a frank extrovert, knew all about it. A dentist's receptionist, she knew everybody and everything. She loved meeting people, and anything which happened to anybody was always of interest to her.
"The poor kid," she said of Sheila. She was the first to express any sympathy for Sheila.
Gerry told her a
ll about it, but not about Fletcher. Daphne was fascinated. The cynical thought that she could be far more sympathetic over Sheila now that she was dead than she could ever have been while she was alive did occur to Fletcher, but he did not pursue it. Unlike Sheila, Daphne was not his concern. She was certainly not sick. A no more exuberantly female girl existed in the Western world.
Again Fletcher had to fight with himself. And I kissed her little sister and forgot my Clementine . . . No, Gerry would never forget Sheila. In his way he had truly loved the girl, just as in her even more peculiar way she had loved him.
Gerry was emerging from the shadows into the sunlight. He was a simple character. He no longer needed Fletcher, and he knew it. A little like his father, however, he was reluctant to be rid of him.
And there was no sign of any crisis, now that Sheila was dead, which might eject Fletcher.
They walked home in the moonlight. This time Daphne led him round the back of the old house where her parents lived.
"Where are we going?" Gerry asked.
"There's a shed at the back of the greenhouse. But don't get ideas. I'm a sfanf girl."
"What?"
"So far and no farther."
"I've met girls like that."
"I bet you have. And the other kind?"
"One or two."
"I thought there was only one girl in your life?"
"Only one in it, but there were a few round the edges."
They could talk quite easily about Sheila now, though her name was rarely mentioned.
Gerry was an easy talker with girls and with customers. It was only with Authority that he had been sullen, his feeling of inadequacy expressing itself in resentful obstinacy. He would in time be an extremely good salesman, and there were indications that Mr. Gordon was well aware of this.
The shed was tiny, dusty, warm and dark. The furniture consisted of one small stool on which Gerry sat, pulling Daphne down on his knee. Her lips met his willingly.
A little later she said "Naughty!" and slapped his hand, following up with a playful dig in the ribs. Automatically he swung back at her.
Instantly she was on her feet in the gloom. "Never do that again," she said fiercely. "Now get out."
"Sorry, Daphne," he said, trying to pull her back on his knee. He had reacted without thinking, swinging at her middle, but it was a light punch that could have hurt her no more than she had hurt him. For a moment he felt the old vicious resentment (what did I do wrong?), and then admitted to himself that she had been playful and there had been just the hint of malice in his response that made a world of difference. Although she was not trying to pull away from him, she was resisting his efforts to draw her back to him.
He caught her ankle, jerked it and caught her as she fell. But that was all right; there was no malice this time and she laughed breathlessly.
"I'll have to go in soon," she murmured. She had no intention of going in soon, and he knew it.
It was quickly and clearly established where the limits lay, to the satisfaction of both. Gerry was the kind of youth who would despise any girl who gave in to him too easily, and while on the face of it he was not getting what he wanted, he didn't really want Daphne to be too easy. And she, no doubt, was as well aware of this as he.
However, as Gerry finally made his way home, very late, he suddenly observed:
--It's true. Three's a crowd.
--I'd be the last to deny it.
--If I didn't have a girl, I wouldn't mind so much.
--0h, I see your problem all right.
--Well, what are you going to do about it?
--You know the difficulties.
Gerry began to laugh.
--It's the kind of thing you kill yourself laughing about later. Some day I'll tell Daphne, though she'll never believe me.
--No. I've found that. There's no point in not believing it when you know it's true, but it's something that has to happen to you. I think if this thing really has happened before, the sketchy and generally discounted evidence that is left is about all one could seriously expect.
Gerry wasn't interested in the general problem, only in his particular one.
--I wouldn't mind walking along that skyscraper parapet.
--I don't think it would work again.
--I never really liked whisky. But if it would work . . .
--Gerry, I think I have to be surprised. I never picked the way. In your case it might be very difficult.
--I know what you're thinking. You think I'm not very bright. You don't believe I'll ever be able to think of a way.
It was true. Baudaker, too, lacked the imagination of Judy and Ross, both of whom, when they made up their minds to be rid of Fletcher, had gone all out for the consummation devoutly wished, and achieved it.
Possibly, Fletcher mused, the means was far less important than they all believed. Neither he nor his host, nor both in collaboration, could snap their fingers and achieve the miracle. Yet once the host had really made up his mind, the thing couldn't be as difficult as Gerry believed, or Fletcher would not have been ejected three times almost on cue.
On cue -- that might be deeply significant. Judy, in a very short time, got what she wanted from him and then sent him on. Ross, after a longer period, did the same. Baudaker, although he had done nothing to eject Fletcher, did not lose him until he had nothing more to gain from his presence. Gerry, if he had ever stood to gain, no longer did so.
--I'll never be able to think of a way, said Gerry rather desperately.
He needn't have worried. Nobody had to think of a way. That same night, while Gerry was sleeping peacefully, Fletcher for the first time made a transfer when there was no crisis, at any rate no crisis at his end.
CHAPTER 6: SEARLE
He was an old man and he was dying.
Fletcher, who had several times believed himself prepared to welcome death -- total, final death -- discovered that he had never yet experienced genuine resignation. This old man, who was of course Sir Charles Searle, was in his last hours. He knew it and was glad of it.
Although there could be nothing more pitiful than a crazy old man dying in a madhouse, Fletcher's hate for him, the only hate he had ever experienced for anybody, did not diminish. On the contrary, it was focused to a burning spot of pure hatred that temporarily warmed the old man and brought him, reluctantly, a little way back to life.
He was in a. hospital bed in an ancient ward, cheerless and solitary. Not quite solitary, for in another of the five iron beds was another dying creature who appeared to be a woman. Old, dying people did not rate the privacy of sex accorded in hospitals elsewhere, apparently.
No nurse was present. A dim light burned.
Fletcher could not heal Searle. He could do nothing for him, and would not have done anything if he could for the man who had tortured, perverted and ruined him.
Yet he could not help bringing him a last glimpse of sanity. The old man who had not been rational for more than thirty-five years suddenly said:
--Why, hullo, I've often wondered about you. Did you change the world?
--No, Fletcher replied grimly. --You left me so maimed and crippled that the world never had a place for me.
Transmigration Page 18
