His polished voice called her back. ‘Tell me a little about yourself, Leonora. What troubles you?’
He was sitting behind his desk now, gazing at her with that bountiful smile.
‘Morning Star,’ Leo heard herself say. ‘Morgenstern in German. Such a good name for a foundation. Was it yours?’
He hid his visible consternation with a sage’s stroking of the beard. ‘No, no. A friend.’
‘The bright morning star, day’s harbinger,’ Leo quoted from some store of memory, cloaking the apprehension which had come over her with his denial. ‘A good name for a sanctuary. Milton, I think.’
‘I’m not terribly familiar with his work, Leonora. I’ll take your word for it.’
‘I think it’s Lucifer’s star, too.’
‘Let’s get back to you, shall we.’ The smile was wearing thin. ‘Tell me about yourself. Your troubles, I imagine, aren’t in the stars.’
‘The trouble is anxiety, really.’ Leo heard herself giggle. ‘Maybe that is in the stars these days. I need to get a better grip on myself. I have these visions. Fear. Panic. It takes me over. Dr Lukas thought…’
‘Have you ever been raped?’
Leo shook her head fiercely.
‘No, then burgled perhaps. Assaulted?’
He was staring at her, examining her closely. It made her avert her eyes. Beneath the desk, she spied those neatly shod feet again. Something gnawed at the edge of her consciousness and with the sensation came that laugh again. Isabel. Isabel who was everywhere here. Present, despite her death. More present than in those weeks when Leo had been oppressed by the mystery of her absence. As if she had come home to her in death.
Leo blinked away the clutch of tears.
‘I think I’d like you to dream for me, Leonora.’ Frederick Hilton glanced at his watch. ‘Yes, there’s time now. It’ll help me to help you. There are techniques, you know. Ways.’
Before she could say anything, he had ushered her through the door and shut it behind them. The room they were in now was small and dim, like a cave or a womb, with one rounded wall. There were no windows. The only light came from two high rectangular slits, like cross-bow recesses. It fell on his desk illuminating a row of stones, honey white, pale grey, striated, granite dark. They lay there like so many ancient presences.
He gestured her towards a cream-clad divan in the shadow of the wall and sat down opposite her, half-lolling in a throne-like chair. His hands were clasped behind his large head.
‘Since you’re interested in names, let’s think about yours. You like to be called Leo, don’t you?’ He smiled at her again, his lips pinkly moist above the white of his beard. ‘Is that the kind of Leo who roars mightily or the kind who protects her cubs against all comers?’
Leo tried to still her jangled nerves. How had he guessed she preferred to be called Leo?
From somewhere in the air, Isabel’s musky perfume invaded her nostrils, together with a heavy scent of perspiration, a clogged odour of fear which seemed to rise from the recesses of the divan. She prodded a strand of hair away from her eyes and met his. They were wide now, the pupil’s pebble bright. Isabel’s eyes. Or was she imagining things? She tried to force the face into the remembered magazine photograph. It was too fleshy to fit. Yet she didn’t think she was wrong. Had he denied Isabel, too?
‘Leo?’
‘A little of both, perhaps,’ she rushed to answer him unable to leave his eyes.
‘Good. Yin and yang.’ He leaned towards her and she giggled again.
‘And yours is Hilton. Like James. The inventor of Shangri-la.’
She had said it off the top of her head, but his abrupt guffaw made her think she had struck some dissonant chord.
‘Most people think of hotels… But let’s go back to you, Leo. You suffer from excessive anxiety, you tell me. It impedes your roar and hampers your ability to protect. In my long experience, I have found that this kind of debilitating anxiety grows not only out of sexual fears, but out of a fear of death, of dying. I think we need to travel to the source of your anxiety and uncover it. Travel inwards, to your internal family, the people and forces who inhabit you.’ His voice had taken on a lulling quality. ‘Travel back, too, perhaps, to the origin of your problems in a past life, to some forgotten trauma, some sin or crime or violent act for which you are still unconsciously atoning. So that it controls your life by stealth. The long perspective helps the healing. As of course does the eradication. Forgetting is important.’ That disturbing gaze was fixed on her face.
‘Travel back to a past life…’ Leo murmured. ‘I don’t think…’
‘Don’t resist, Leo.’ His eyes flickered. ‘I don’t like working the resistance. I’m not a Freudian. Co-operation will be far more useful. Did you dream last night, Leo?’
‘Yes.’ She began uneasily. ‘I dreamt of my father leading me by the hand across a swaying bridge.’
‘Excellent. A wise older man, guiding you. We all need a father to guide us.’
She would ask him now, she thought. Ask him directly. Isabel’s father.
Something stopped her. Maybe it was Isabel, hovering protectively at her side. Or the stone he was holding in the palm of his hand, turning it over and over, like some mysterious weapon. She shivered. His fingers were small like his feet, his nails neatly manicured, the half-moons perfectly outlined.
‘Look at this rock, Leo. It’s so beautiful. See how its history is etched in its markings.’ His voice was soft now, almost inaudible, a gentle chant. ‘Layers and layers of recorded history to be recovered at will. Look, look, at this shape here, the imprint of a fossil, a past life…’
It came to Leo with a clang, louder than any hourly gong, that she was being hypnotised. She jumped up. ‘I… This isn’t what I’ve come for. No hypnosis. I’m not a good subject.’ She managed to say it without a note of panic, but her hands were clammy.
His face darkened. A muscle played in his cheek. The stone felt the grip of his fingers. A controlled ferocity. He really didn’t like resistance.
‘But Leo,’ he said in his genial way. ‘Hypnosis is the way to truth. If Dr. Lukas has sent you to me, it is precisely for that. That is what I am known for.’
‘No, no. It wasn’t for that. It was for the place itself, an asylum, a rest cure, the calm.’ Leo invented.
‘You are a recalcitrant young woman. Lie down again, please.’
She had a feeling that if she didn’t, he might push her. She stretched out again slowly,
Her head had just reached the cushion, when a beep sounded insistently.
With a scowl, he reached beneath his white shirt and brought out a pager. ‘You rest here, Leo. Relax. I’ll be back soon. Dream another dream for me. Rich, evocative.’
His hand rested for a moment on her forehead, shrouding her eyes and then light dazzled her as he walked into his bright outer office. She saw him reach for the telephone before he shut the door again. A few moments later, she heard the undeniable thud of the solid door of the outer office.
Silence followed.
She waited for a full long minute, then rose quickly. This was her chance. The desk drawers. She tried them one by one. The top one slid open to reveal nothing of more significance than an assortment of fantastic fish baits ranged in a box. She wondered if these too served for inducing hypnosis. Hardly necessary, she imagined, but maybe patients liked the external ploys. Another drawer contained an assortment of mandalas. The last and largest drawer was locked.
She had no idea what she was looking for, but she knew that it was necessary. Isabel was urging her on, forcing her into bravery.
Behind the divan, she noticed a sliding door. She pushed it open. This was more like it. She was in a store room of some kind. There were no windows. Boxes lined a part of a wall. Two filing cabinets, too ugly and official for his perfectly arranged rooms, stood next to them. She tried the drawers. All were securely locked. She swore beneath her breath, then paused to listen again.
Everything was quiet, though the soft soled shoes everyone wore did little more than produce an occasional squeal against floorboards. She had to be vigilant.
She prodded open the lid of one of the narrow boxes and saw a host of small bottles ranged in neat rows. Medication. With a glance over her shoulder, she put one of the bottles in her pocket, then quickly replaced the lid of the box. On the other side of the small room, packets of what looked like stationery were stacked. One was open. Without bothering to peer, she folded a sheet into her pocket, then moved to the far corner.
The light here was so dim she stumbled, her feet tangled in what appeared to be rags or old sheets. She pushed these aside and suddenly a luminous face peered up at her from the floor. One of those happy sticker faces that Becca liked to place here and there.
Leo scrabbled round to find what it adhered too. A second tiny face jumped out at her and simultaneously, she felt a smooth synthetic surface, a square object. She tugged it towards her. A computer. Her heart was making too much noise. A Mac and next to it a second machine. A notebook. Her own. Certainty coursed through her, riding roughshod over confusion. Those small feet, she remembered them now. For a split second her eyes had been level with them on the floor of the loft.
She lifted Isabel’s computer. That was the one she had to get out of here.
She was already at the sliding door when voices stopped her progress. They were coming from the large outer office. She stilled her thumping heart. She had time to stretch out on the couch. But then she would have to leave the computer behind. No. No. And she couldn’t face him. Why had he broken into the loft? What had he been looking for?
She lurched back behind the door. Her pulse louder than the voices, she inched it to, leaving only the tiniest crevice for her fingers. She held her breath.
The voices were moving closer.
‘Not now, Heather. I have a patient in there.’ The Director’s voice.
‘Still that Gould woman? You know she came here earlier in the week asking about Iris Morgenstern?’
Leo heard a door opening. The voices grew clearer. They were in the den-like room. She forced herself into utter immobility.
‘Damn it, she’s gone. I’ll have to catch up with her later.’
‘Good. Then we can talk. You’ve been very elusive these last weeks, Fred. What are you up to?’ Heather’s voice was heavy with accusation.
She sounded, Leo suddenly thought, like a jealous mistress.
‘Nothing to worry your sweet self over.’ Hilton oozed charm. Leo could imagine the seductive set of his heavy face.
‘You said you’d be back early on Monday. You didn’t get back until Wednesday. I don’t like that. Where were you?’
‘You know better than to ask.’
A hint of menace had come into his tone. Heather stood her ground.
‘I’m asking.’
‘Meetings. Drumming up business. This and that.’
‘They weren’t in your diary.’
‘Heather, if you get up to your old tricks, I’ll have to punish you.’ A harsh laugh. ‘In fact I went to Paola Webster’s party. Good for clientele, as you can see. An instant referral from Daniel Lukas. His first. Important that.’
‘I wouldn’t have found a space for her.’
‘You leave those decisions to me.’
‘That Morgenstern woman was nothing but trouble. She stomped about the place as if she owned it. And she’ll publish something vitriolic. You wait and see. Nor did she pay her bill.’
‘She will. It was a sudden departure.’
‘And why was that? Exactly what methods did you use on her, Fred? I don’t like it. And I don’t know why you asked me to have that diskette sent to her. If she left it behind, too bad.’
Leo stopped her sudden rush of breath. The diskette with the map sites had come from here. Why? Nothing made any sense.
‘Now Heather. Spite is unnecessary.’
‘Azleck found her prowling around next door, you know.’
‘Drop it, Heather. I told you not to worry your pretty little head about her.’ It was an order. Silence followed. Leo tried to shift her tense posture without making a sound.
‘There’s something else, Fred,’ Heather continued stubbornly. Leo could visualise the determined set of her shoulders.
‘I think it was too early to bring April over from the other side. She’s totally unstable. These multiple personalities…’
‘It’s an experiment.’
‘We don’t need any more experiments, Fred. I don’t know what kind of deals you’ve been doing with your drug companies, but I don’t want a repetition of what happened last time.’ Heather’s lowered voice carried the threat now.
‘You never learn, Heather. You never learn that people are stupid. And that there’s excitement in science. Adventure. Put something in and see what comes out. Presto.’
His laugh had a manic tinge and Heather’s voice in return was shrill.
‘I don’t want to know about that.’
‘We’re partners now, Heather. You know how much I depend on you.’
‘Too much for what you give. You’re fucking her, aren’t you?’
‘Now, now. Come here my jealous little vixen and Daddy will make it all better. Come. Come. The old lap still has room for you.’
Leo heard the slight shudder of springs.
‘Yes, you know what Daddy likes. No lessons needed for little pussycat Heather. Tell me a dirty story, Heather, while I scratch those furry little ears of yours.’
A sound like a mewl reached Leo and then a tiny child’s voice and a rhythmic creak. The air around her seemed to grow tepid, close. It cloyed at her nostrils. Breathing was difficult. She inched away from her place at the door towards the far corner of the storeroom. Her eyes had grown used to the dark. The glint of light through the crack played off the filing cabinets. Behind her the creaking grew more insistent. And then, just when she thought she could bear no more, she saw it, as if Isabel were standing there and pointing the way. A latch. A small door, like those leading to servant’s quarters.
With sudden swift decision, she picked up the computer she was certain was Isabel’s and wedged it against her chest beneath the loosened belt of the uniform. Trying to keep pace with the sounds behind her, she unhooked the latch, eased the door open and squeezed through.
She was at the top of a narrow staircase. Light poured in from a small, barred window. She adjusted her eyes to it and crept down, her arms firmly crossed over her chest.
The stairs came to an end after one floor and gave onto a door at the side. Her pulse jagged, she turned the knob. There was no way back.
A rank, feral odour attacked her, though the room she was in glistened white and chrome, too bright. Counters, topped by vats and instruments, stretched everywhere. At one of them a woman, syringe in hand was bent over what looked like a rat. Leo gasped, despite herself, and the woman turned round. She frowned.
‘Sorry, sorry to disturb,’ Leo stammered, her eyes wide at the scuttle of creatures in a cage at her side. ‘The Director sent… Azleck…’
The woman examined her for what felt like too long. Then at a squeal from the trapped animal, she shrugged and gestured her towards the far door. Her attention was back on her work even before Leo had reached it.
Leo walked down a long corridor, punctuated by the slatted internal windows of a hospital. She was, she realized, in the prohibited section of the building. The addiction clinic. It was too tricky to try and explore now. She had to get the computer back to her room. She kept her eyes straight ahead.
A man in a doctor’s coat emerged from one of the rooms. She tilted her head in a quick nod and continued her course. Not too quickly, that would attract suspicion. An even pace. A look of purpose, one arm propped casually against her chest. She turned a corner.
She could feel Isabel smiling at her, winking once in joyous complicity.
At the far end of the corridor, beyond a staircase, she saw what l
ooked like an external door. She would try that. She suddenly longed for the outdoors as avidly as a prisoner in solitary confinement.
The bar wouldn’t give. The door was locked. A tremor went through her. She turned away, was halfway down the corridor again, when she heard the unmistakeable squeak of a heavy door behind her. She rushed back.
A painfully thin woman with strands of lanky hair falling over her face stared at her with glazed frightened eyes. ‘Hey, we’re not supposed to…’
Leo was already slipping through the door. She rushed down a short flight of stairs. Clean, crisp air. The sky. Blue now. High. She breathed deeply, then paused to look around her. She was uncertain of her whereabouts. She seemed to be towards the back of the far wing of the building. She guessed that she would have to walk right round it to get to the front door. But no path led to her left along the back. The only lane led to her right and that, she guessed, would take her into the central part of the grounds of the addiction clinic. From there, she would somehow have to cut through the thickly ranked cypresses. The grounds were bound to be peopled.
Her only alternative was to head straight up the cliff. What looked like a narrow trail, flanked by gorse, climbed in front of her. Where would it abut? No matter. Better that lonely track than the hundred eyes, she would otherwise meet. She shifted the computer into a more comfortable position, took the risk of winding the black strap round her neck, and began to make her way up.
The path was steep. Each step dislodged loose earth and a tumble of stone. She slipped and clung to a shrub, too late recognising the prick of gorse. She sucked her fingers and steadied herself , wishing she had four feet rather than two. The bulk of the computer in her middle distorted her balance. Like a crab, she moved sideways as the trail grew almost vertical. Another dozen feet and she caught her breath.
She was on the top of a jagged headland. The wind gusted fiercely, whipping at her hair and clothes. Before her, the sea snapped and roared and foamed against rocky outcrops. Her mind whirled with the water’s frenzy. She peered down the vertiginous incline. Dizziness overtook her. The sea’s lash, the shriek of the gulls, the whistling wind, all conspired to create the sound of the name. Is-a-bel. It raged and moaned around her. Here. It had happened here.
Sanctuary Page 35
