“Nothing to worry about”—when the whole aim and object of the harrowing, nerve-racking episode had been to make him worry! These damned interfering medicos—she hadn’t meant to “come round” at all, let alone as quickly as this, before Rodney had had so much as fifteen minutes of real anxiety! How could she have known that forty tranquillizers wouldn’t be enough to finish her off? Or that consuming them on a park bench on a freezing February night would actually detract from, rather than add to, their efficacy?
“The cold gives a shock to the system, it delays the onset of coma,” Sister explained, with a touch of malicious triumph, pulling down Maggie’s lower eyelids, one after the other, while she spoke, and examining their inner surfaces for God knows what sign or symptom (dying was no simple thing, Maggie had discovered; it seemed to involve the most unexpected areas of the body, and to expose you to the most complicated and irrelevant procedures at all hours of the day and night). “And anyway,” Sister continued, still smugly, “you can’t kill yourself with tranquillizers no matter how many you take; they’re not strong enough.”
How could Maggie have known? How did people find out these things?
And likewise, how could she have known, the very next summer, on holiday, that if you can swim at all, however poorly, then it is impossible deliberately to drown?
*
They’d gone to Ibiza this time for their holiday—if you could call it a holiday with Rodney working all day and all night on his wretched Report—scribbling, crossing-out, jotting down figures, frowning, staring blind as a stone into the glory of the summer sea: seeing nothing, saying nothing, as unaware of Maggie as if she was dead. It was on the sixth day of this holiday, a day of blue water and white, shimmering heat, that he’d told her, quite casually, at lunch-time, that he had to fly back to London that very afternoon. Yes, it was an awful shame; and yes, he’d try to get back within two or three days; but just supposing he couldn’t make it before the end of their three weeks, then …
Then Maggie must stay on and enjoy herself Just like last summer, and the summer before that … not to mention the Easter holiday they’d had in Madeira. It was always the same … Maggie staying on and enjoying herself in some awful foreign hotel where she didn’t know a soul … a surplus woman, eyed by her fellow-guests, served pityingly by the waiters, dragging out the remaining days of her “holiday” as if it was a prison-sentence.
And as if this wasn’t enough, there’d been the quarrel as well—and this, too, followed the familiar pattern: But it’s my job, darling, don’t you see? Your job, your job, always your damn job, you never think of anything else, can’t you ever think of me, for a change? Think of you—hell, who do you think I’m slaving away earning the money for? I notice you’re not behindhand in spending it—new kitchen-unit—new curtains—wall-to-wall carpets! Hell, you’ve got everything! And expensive holidays thrown in! Do you realise what this hotel costs?—just bed and breakfast alone comes
Shut up, shut up, shut up, all you ever think of is money! Money, money, money! I hate your money, I don’t want your money, I just want you to love me, like you used to do …
Oh Lord, Oh God, don’t start that again! Look, dear, do please try to pull yourself together. I have to be at the airport by five, and I was hoping we could have one last swim …
One last swim. Rodney must have been surprised at Maggie’s sudden silence, and at the way all the temper seemed to drain out of her. All of a sudden, she became quiet and co-operative, agreeing to join him for his swim … even walking into the sea ahead of him …
*
How do people drown? How do they decide to swim this stroke, but not the next one ..?
At first, swimming away from the shimmering beach, away from Rodney fixing his snorkel in the middle distance, it had all seemed so easy. All she had to do was to go on swimming, on and on, through the warm silky water, until the end came.
“HOLIDAY BATHING TRAGEDY”—she saw the headline in her mind’s eye; thought about Rodney seeing it too,—covering up his eyes, perhaps, to shut out the terrible words … the terrible remorse … the despairing realization of how much he had loved her … a realization that had come too late …
A small wave, whose coming she had not noticed, slapped against her face, a little peremptorily, and she spluttered for a second or two, coughed, and went on swimming—noticing, for the first time, that the water seemed colder than it had a little while ago. Her arms were beginning to ache, and her back too.
“YOUNG WIFE SWIMS TO HER DEATH” …
Well, fairly young. Thirty-three isn’t old, and the reporters would naturally want to make a meal of it if they could.
“MYSTERY OF DROWNED BLONDE”—well, not blonde exactly, but they could hardly say “DROWNED MOUSE”, could they—and then the Coroner’s questions. Did the dead woman have any worries? Was she depressed? In financial difficulties? No, poor Rodney would have to answer: No, and No, and No. No, she had everything. Everything.
“THE WOMAN WHO HAD EVERYTHING”—that would be the next headline. On the second day, that would be—the day after tomorrow.
The day after tomorrow. As soon as that, she, Maggie, just wouldn’t be there any more. Sooner, actually. Much sooner. By this evening, probably. By the time the lights along the shore were switched on tonight, she just wouldn’t be there to see them.
Another wave spluttered in her face … and another. Out here, the water was getting choppy, and very cold. She thought of turning back, then remembered why she was here.
She was tired, though; so very, very tired. Little cramps were running down her legs, and there was a sort of heavy numbness in her limbs which made it hard to keep going.
How do people drown? How do they? How do they prevent their exhausted, obstinate muscles from swimming just one more stroke … and then another? Exhausted, frozen, tied in triple knots with cramp, still the damn things keep on functioning … one stroke … another … another …
Another wave slopped into her face; and almost before she had got her breath, came a second one. They were coming at her faster now, more spitefully. She was aware of a threat in them now, veiled as yet, but unmistakable … each time it was harder to get her breath, to cough away one little dollop of water before the next sloshed against her nostrils.
It would get harder still. This, of course, would be the way the end would come. The moments of recovering her breath would become fewer and fewer, the coughing more desperate until, at last, that wave would slosh into her lungs which couldn’t be coughed away at all. Not ever.
With what seemed like her last strength, she swivelled over onto her back so that her face need not take the brunt of every oncoming wave; raising her weary head for a second she glimpsed, terribly far off, the line of the beach, and the tiny, sunlit holiday-makers, like dolls in the distance. This is it, she thought; now I can’t get back; and with the thought, there came into her body a huge and terrible force, surging from somewhere behind her ribs and spreading everywhere, into every limb. It gripped her as a terrier grips a rat, carrying her triumphantly where it intended she should go.
*
“Had a good swim, darling?” asked Rodney, not raising his eyes from the journal he was reading; and Maggie, slumped down on the sand beside him, could not believe that he would not, in a few moments, notice her shuddering limbs, her face; hear the thundering of her heart.
But he didn’t; and within minutes the shuddering had begun to subside, the heart-beats to slow down. Colour was returning to her face, and she lay there in the hot sand hating her body for its flawless functioning, for the perfection of its survival mechanisms, and for the speed with which it knew how to recover from almost anything. Of what use was her decision to die, in the face of her body’s tigerish determination to stay alive? All those billions of cells in there, what did they care about the misery, the humiliation and the futility of her existence? They were all right, Jack, multiplying and dividing and regenerating, carrying on with their petty
little life-cycles, with never a thought of what it all added up to for her! She was the one who had to take the consequences of their blind, idiot determination to keep going, damn them!
Damn them! Damn them!
*
It must be past midnight by now—well past. Slumped deep in the wing-chair, Maggie stirred a little; tried, feebly, to sit up straight; but the whole thing was too difficult. The muted lamp-light still seemed too bright for such sensitive retinas as hers, newly returned from the dead, and so she closed her eyes once more. Against the swirling blackness behind her lids she tried to picture Rodney’s home-coming—which surely could not be delayed much longer, so late as it was?
There was no possibility, this time, that he’d be able to ignore the thing, she’d set the scene much too carefully. To start with, she’d left the milk on the front step ever since this morning—to come home after midnight and find two full milk bottles still outside the front door would surely arrest any man’s attention? On top of this, she had left the back door swinging open into the black, blowy garden, so that the first thing Rodney would feel as he stepped into the hall would be the icy November draught sweeping through the house. What the hell is going on? he would inevitably wonder, striding across the hall and into the kitchen to slam the back door. And then—angrily at first, but presently with growing anxiety— he would go in search of his wife.
Not in bed? Not watching television? Not in the bathroom? And she couldn’t be out, not possibly, for neither of them ever went out without locking the back door and all the windows. And as he moved, with growing unease, from room to room, he would notice—if he hadn’t noticed it already—that the whole house was in darkness. What could she be doing, sitting in total darkness, making never a sound ..? And now, at last, his heart would begin to thump with fear …
But there was something wrong somewhere. This delectable vision of Rodney’s anxiety and concern contained some discrepancy … there was something that didn’t fit properly … Her brain, with slowly returning clarity, groped uneasily for what it was that could be amiss; but it was not until, by some chance, she blinked her eyes open again for a moment, that the thing hit her with a sledgehammer.
*
The lamp! The reading-lamp, casting its dim beams across her field of vision—it shouldn’t have been on at all! She hadn’t switched it on—she knew with absolute certainty that she hadn’t. It had been bright afternoon, the room bathed in slanting autumn sunlight, when she’d sat down here to take the pills, there was no possibility at all that she’d have had the lamp on … and now, with an awful growing suspicion, she noticed something else.
The desk. Rodney’s big desk, wide open, and all that litter of papers—it hadn’t been like that this afternoon! It had been shut and locked—as Rodney was always accustomed to leave it—and her suicide note had been standing in solitary state on the bare polished surface—not flanked, as it was now, by papers, files, documents …
The terrible suspicion grew, it became a certainty, monstrous and almost beyond belief. Rodney must have already come in! Come in here, switched on the lamp and seen her! Seen the note: seen her unconscious, the pills beside her! Seen her—and gone away! He had done nothing—attempted nothing—to save her! He must even—so monstrous was his unconcern—have pushed right past her dying body to get at his desk!
And what then? What does a man do next, after he has looked down at his wife’s unconscious face, and decided to let her die? Where does he go from there?
Away, of course. He gets the hell out of it all. And now a new vision, hallucinatory in its intensity, took over behind Maggie’s eyelids. She saw Rodney, guilty and secretive, padding about this room in the dim lamplight, hastily shuffling together his most important documents, cramming them into his briefcase, all the time keeping his eyes averted from the awful figure in the chair, who might or might not be dead, and who might yet, like some avenging spirit, rise up and accuse him …
*
And what next? Off upstairs to pack an overnight bag? By a tragic chance, your Honour, I happened to be away from home that night … By the time I got back, it was too late …
Something like that … and swift upon this thought, followed another in Maggie’s brain: perhaps he is still here! Perhaps, if I got out of this chair, and tiptoed up the stairs very quietly ..?
*
And it was only now that Maggie discovered that she actually couldn’t move. It wasn’t, as she had supposed, mere weakness and lethargy, the aftermath of her over-dose; it was actual paralysis of every limb, against which her muscles seemed to brace themselves in vain. Only her head was still mobile, and raising it a little she looked down, and saw, with numbed incredulity, the ropes which bound her legs and arms; felt the bruises and the weals; and identified the strange stiffness of her jaws as a gag, professionally secured.
And so Maggie got her headlines after all.
“DIPLOMAT’S WIFE, BOUND AND GAGGED, DEFIES FOREIGN SPY RING”
“COURAGE OF YOUNG WIFE SAVES SECRET GOVERNMENT PAPERS”
“BLONDE FOILS INTRUDERS SINGLE-HANDED”
Reading, in column after column, of her courage, her resource, her cool-headedness, Maggie did not know what to think, or which way to turn: she did not even know how to counter the undeserved admiration, the hugs and kisses, which Rodney was lavishing upon her. He didn’t seem to want to listen to the true story.
*
If it was the true one? What Maggie presumed had happened was that the intruders had seized on this extraordinary chance of getting into the house without breaking-in, had made their way to Rodney’s study, switched on the light—and seen Maggie. They would not have stopped to ask questions, they were professionals, binding and gagging her would have been a matter of seconds.
Was it the strange, unresisting limpness of her body that had scared them? Or the suicide-note, which they would have seen as soon as they began to rifle the desk? Whichever it was, they plainly had not wanted to get mixed up in it, and had fled.
That was how it probably was. Almost certainly. And yet … and yet ..? There were these bruises, over and above the marks of the rope. Wasn’t there just the possibility that Maggie hadn’t been quite dead to the world when her assailants had arrived? That she had fought back, protecting her husband’s interests, powered by some blind, enormous instinct below the threshold of consciousness, and far beyond the reach, now, of her drugged memory? An instinct as enormous and as invincible as the one which last summer had wrenched her out of the depths of the sea? Had she indeed mysterious powers inside her—an untested courage of which, in ordinary life, she knew nothing?
The courage, maybe, actually to commit suicide? Or even, just possibly, the courage to face the consequences of loving an ambitious, highly-strung man stretched almost beyond his limits by responsibilities and pressures such as he had never known?
TEST CASE
ONCE AGAIN, HE had spoiled it all. “You have taken it, haven’t you, darling?” he’d whispered. “You didn’t forget ..? You’re sure ..?”
Of course she was sure. How could any woman not be sure of having performed a duty so distasteful, so inimical to her deepest feelings, as this daily swallowing of the Pill was to Christine?
Six years ago it had been now—no, nearly seven—since Bernard had so rationally—so lovingly, even—laid down his conditions.
“We won’t tie ourselves down, will we, darling?” he’d said, his arms close about her in the summer twilight, a week or two before the wedding. “Let’s have a few years of just us. Just the two of us together, the way we are now … don’t you think so, Christine?”
And of course she’d said Yes. With her lips on his, her mind empty of thought, her body already trembling in the circle of his arms, there had seemed nothing else to say.
“Yes, darling … of course! That’s what I want too—just the two of us together …”
*
It hadn’t been true. Even at the time, she’d known that it ha
dn’t been true. But somehow, in the magic softness of the summer night, it hadn’t seemed to matter. After all, it was only a lie, a little, loving lie, just one more of the gentle sounds of a world moving over into night; as natural as the stirrings of the awakening moths; natural as the soft twitterings of the birds settling themselves to rest among the leaves of the great elms at the end of her father’s garden. Only a lie—a little, little lie; and a singularly private one at that, concerning no one in the whole world but herself and Bernard. The possibility that so very private a lie might one day bring the police pounding on her door at midnight, might plaster her likeness over the front page of every newspaper in the land—this possibility could hardly be expected to have entered her calculations.
That something bad might, at some future date, come out of her reckless prevarication might, perhaps, have occurred to her; but it didn’t, not really. The fact was, she wasn’t thinking about the Future at all. And why should she? When you are truly happy, the Future is nothing more than a minor nuisance that can be safely ignored. When you are truly in love, you can claim the Here and Now as your rightful heritage.
The Future is for other people.
*
But now the Future was here. It had come upon her, as it does on others, almost while her back was turned, and already—unbelievably—she was seven years into it. Seven years of her marriage had already passed—seven of those precious child-bearing years which are so few for a woman, and which will never return. She was seven years, already, nearer to that time in a woman’s life when pregnancy is going to become less and less likely, more and more of a hazard. Only a week or two ago she had been reading in a magazine that even if she became pregnant right now, she would already be past the optimum age and would be classed as an “Elderly Primigravida”—the horrible medical jargon for a woman over twenty-five having a first baby. Over twenty-five! And now here was Christine, nearly thirty-three—“Senile Primigravida” would they call her, or what?
A Lovely Day to Die Page 14
