I approached the bed and called her name for the third time. That is when I saw the bottles. They were not bottles, in fact, but those small containers that prescription medicines come in. They were both empty, and next to them there was an empty tumbler lying on its side. The tumbler smelled of brandy. On the floor, beside the bed, some tablets had fallen and scattered. I leaned down and scooped them up. Then I righted the tumbler and picked up the containers and put them in a wastepaper bin in the corner of the room. I do not think I had a single coherent thought during this process. Maybe hysteria had given way to shock. Or something else.
As I say, at first I had no conscious understanding that Patsy had tried to kill herself. Nor did I make any attempt to ascertain whether or not she had succeeded. But slowly the idea began to dawn on me and I sat on a chair that was an exact replica of one I had in my room, and I thought about it. And what I thought was that, if Patsy died, Mason would naturally turn to me.
Can it be love that makes such dangerous fools of us? Does love descend like a lead bell and cut us off bluntly from the call of reason, of right? Or do we wantonly, selfishly give ourselves over to this delusion in order to avoid the tougher decisions demanded by dull decency?
I sat and watched Patsy, her sleek hair in a tangled mass on the pillow, her one bare shoulder very tanned against the white of the linen; I was watching her die. A fact that only truly came to me, only reached out and grabbed me by the throat and shook me when she actually did.
Some time close to dawn, after I had sat in that room for an hour or more, stupefied by my ludicrous musings, my pitiful longings, Patsy convulsed. And if I had thought I had known fear before that moment, I had not. Bile lurched to my throat as the body on the bed shuddered, electrified. A noise came from it that was part gargle and part animal cry, and Patsy’s face twisted toward me, its color changing horribly, violet to blue. Eventually—after how long?—this unspeakable racking violence stopped and she seemed to collapse, to exhale, her soul releasing with a rattling sound. And then she was dead.
I do not think that I screamed, although perhaps I did. Certainly I leapt to my feet, but I just stood, rigid and immobile, rooted to the spot on which my limbs had planted me. By the time it was over I was shaking, shivering all over, like a small bird does before it dies in your hand. Then, appalled, terrified, I switched off Patsy’s bedside light as if she were sleeping, which in fact she looked as if she was. Just as she had when I had first come in.
I left after that. And I ran, for the second time in eight hours, without stopping, without breathing.
For many years I expected the battering at the door that would signal exposure. But it did not come. Until now. And in a very different form from the one I had anticipated. Nevertheless, it is real enough, this call, this demand to lay bare my part in that death, my failure to act to prevent it. My willing of it. Could I have helped her? I can’t be sure. What matters is that I did not try. I was the man on the bank offering not even a twig hopelessly stretched out to the drowning boy. And now the truth of that, the sin and burden of it, is all here, preserved in my sloping hand, in these three notebooks. They are the school exercise type, flimsy with thin cardboard covers. And at my back the fire rages.
The View from Here Page 23
