‘Leave me be!’ she screamed at the purple world that was killing her.
‘Ha! You’ve found your voice? No more blockages?’ He tugged her round as if to aim a deliberate blow at a baby to get it breathing – and sent her spinning into the room. ‘Don’t try and put one over on me, or I’ll hand you over to the plumbers!’
He was so much the old sort that he hardly knew himself. He hadn’t left it behind, after all. Should have known better than to think so. Wouldn’t it come whenever needed? You couldn’t save a life and follow the niceties of polite behaviour.
The whizz-bang circled her head, and the carpet she tasted was not her own. She was in London. A madman had broken into her room. She’d had a nightmare but couldn’t remember lock, latch or hinges bursting. Yet the door had come open. He tried to throw her out of the window. Water was pounding into a sink, laughter above everything. He’d made her sick. A pillar of bile had rammed to her stomach and she retched it out, sent it flying. Arms, legs and teeth shook from cold. A star ate into her forehead, while a hammer beat at the bones behind. The star burned. She choked. She had eaten pepper, chewed salt. She looked at grey rods and silver wires. I wanted to sleep. She tried to close her eyes but the burning rods forced them open. Knees came to her chin. What happened? You may bloody well ask, she heard.
He cleaned the sink and filled it. ‘Get up.’
‘Who are you?’ She couldn’t see him.
‘You’ll know, soon enough.’
She smelled sweat when he came close. ‘Don’t kill me, George.’
His laugh wasn’t George’s. Never could be, a sound from somebody caught in a trap she’d had nothing to do with. He exulted in his separation from civilized entanglements. The metal grip shook from her eyes.
‘Stand up,’ he barked, ‘or I’ll half-kill you.’
She tried. He saw that she couldn’t. She was lifted, and supported in a walk across the room, her head pushed into a block of ice. She screamed from shock. That’s better. Bubbles burst, then floated. He was torturing her, holding her head under water. She kicked him, arms pounding at cloth and bone. She was pulled by the hair.
‘No brain damage.’ He sounded gleeful, had saved more than he’d hoped for. Her feet kicked against ankle. A hand swung at her wet cheek and pushed her once more into the freezing mist. She might have known that George would catch her. Wrong again. He had paid his brothers’ friends to kill her. Never took on his own dirty work. The water leaped at her face till she felt him get tired.
‘Thank God.’ He sat her in an armchair, and took a clean towel from the cupboard. ‘Dry yourself. You might be all right. But no funny business.’
Vision was scarlet, changing to a steel grid, shaking into interchange. The pink face was surrounded by red. He lived in blood. Hands and legs would not stop rattling. Pieces of wood clattered, and a gong was calling the world to dinner, sonorously behind both eyes. She talked, but heard him say:
‘Can’t make out a word.’
‘I want to sleep,’ she roared.
His ear was against her lips, and he heard faintly.
‘I’ll tell you when you can go to sleep.’
He pulled her upright, too exhausted to be gentle. ‘Walk. First this foot. And now the other. Left-right, left-right, left-right. Come on!’
‘Don’t shout.’
He didn’t hear.
She stepped obediently, pushing against a cliff of indifference. She dropped.
‘I can’t go on.’
He caught her. She walked the room and back, then fell off the wall. He sat her down. No use. They spoke together, but neither heard. He put a kettle of water on the stove, not knowing what else to do. Then he walked her again. Shouting and cajoling, he was remorseless. He moved her at the waist, pushed her, walked her again until she clutched at the ceiling and heard a whistle that became a scream of pain. She sat while he turned the gas off and put six tablespoons of coffee into the pot. After water, the lid went on, and he walked her again.
The treadmill was unendurable. ‘I hate you.’
‘Walk,’ he said, ‘or you really will go out of the window – without a bloody parachute.’
She walked, though. ‘I tried to …’
She was inching back to life. He felt wasted to nothing, yet hadn’t known such elation since the war, when perils came fast enough to stop youth dead in its tracks – when youth was the ideal state to be in. Brought a whiff of it back, cordite and salt water. ‘Yes, I know. I know all about it.’
‘Free country,’ she said.
Bald, ugly, freckled, she saw him laugh. No devil without cruelty. ‘Tell me some more,’ he said, ‘it’s good for you.’
‘It’s a free country.’
He laughed.
‘Stop laughing.’
‘So it is,’ he said. ‘Free as air. You do what you like, and I do what I like. God works in many ways his wonders to perform, even in a free country.’
‘I don’t like it here. And I don’t like you.’
He held her, wouldn’t let go. ‘Talk, then you’ll have to walk less.’
‘I don’t want to.’ Stone on a piece of rope kept banging the back of her head. She asked him to cut it loose. She’d ask anyone if they were here. She told him. He didn’t care.
‘Maybe you’re going to live, after all.’
‘I shan’t do it.’
At the stove he poured hot stuff into mugs. He put spoons of white powder in. He was going to poison her. She ran at him but didn’t move. She told him not to kill her, but instead of her lips moving she felt more tears wetting her cheeks. He put white powder into his own mug as well, but it wouldn’t kill him, she was certain.
‘I want to go back,’ she heard herself saying.
He turned. ‘You tried to kill yourself, and that’s your business. It’s my business to bring you out of it. You’re staying here till you’re all right, and afterwards, if you still want to chuck yourself off the world, it’s up to you.’
He hoped she wouldn’t. But she was over twenty-one, and that was a fact. He snapped at the plug chain, and water ran out of the sink. She nodded. He was asking something. He couldn’t stand up, and shouted. He was insane. He was in a fit when he said: ‘I wonder if you could lend …’
She was alarmed. His head swayed left and right. Some new horror was about to be manufactured by his mad but versatile mind.
His laughter subsided, but silence gave him a dignity that didn’t fit. ‘I was going to ask if by any chance … you haven’t some sugar in your room?’
It was impossible to know what he meant or would do. She nodded. He was concerned about a matter which frightened her. He would murder her if she didn’t escape. The light pushed like a flame against her eyes.
‘Where is it?’
She tried to explain, but couldn’t tell what he wanted. He seemed to understand. She saw him as dead – and deaf as well as ugly. She wouldn’t return to George no matter how much he tormented her.
‘Don’t fall while I’m away.’
He returned with half a loaf of bread, some butter and cheese, and a packet of sugar, reasoning that with such a full cupboard she couldn’t have considered knocking herself out for ever – unless she had been too dead-set on it to care.
She was asleep, and he asked himself, putting spoons of sugar into each mug, and whisky into hers, whether he should call a doctor. He helped her to her feet. ‘Come on, more walking along the deck. You’re all right’ – wishing to God she was – ‘so twice to the window for a ten-fathom breather, then back to the coffee pot for a sniff at the bean.’