She wondered whether the door was locked. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘I don’t see how I can. We only met a couple of hours ago.’
The room was warm, and he opened the window an inch. He sat away from her. Life had been divided between a stifling cabin and the grinding wind. Oven or gale was the order of life. One without the other was impossible. Tears pumped from her eyes, another method of getting the poison out. ‘You should have left me,’ she said.
‘I had no say in the matter. I heard a distress signal, or sniffed it, rather, so answered it with my own feet and shoulder, instead of all nine articles of Rule 31!’
The world had no limits. If she stretched her arms she wouldn’t reach the outside of herself. She wanted to run. ‘Did George send you?’
His face was honest. If anything, he was amused at her fear and torment. He looked like a monk in a film. ‘It’s the first time I’ve heard him called that, though I must admit I’ve referred to him myself in some pretty wicked terms in my time. Who the hell is George?’
‘My husband. I walked out on him a couple of months ago.’
She was improving. ‘I’m sure you had to. But don’t cry. You’ll be all right. Every move is for the best. Always keep moving. Any sailor will tell you – that while you’re on the move, you’re alive!’
She knew. But she had no will, no strength. There was nothing left. She wanted to get out of his sight, but was terrified of dropping into sleep, then of waking up and never knowing again who she was. She clutched at the speeding circular wall when the pinpoint of the sky got smaller.
‘It’s hard till you get used to it,’ he said kindly, as if he knew all about whatever it was.
‘Don’t belong anywhere.’
He held her hand. She tried to draw it back. ‘I’m a doctor of the soul,’ he said. ‘I shan’t hurt you. None of us belong anywhere till we die. Most people don’t know it, but I always have. Moving across the oceans all my life and never being in one place for more than a few days was what I chose from early on. It was my work. Now that I’ve left the service I belong on this island, but where I’ll be tomorrow God alone knows.’
She thought he talked to himself. Her eyes were half closed. When she swayed he steadied her, keeping her from sleep as she became more of a weight.
‘There’ll be enough of that belonging when you’re dead,’ he told her. ‘That’s what I feel, so why peg yourself down and anticipate that zone of oblivion? Not to belong anywhere special while you’re alive is a blessed state. Well, maybe not for everyone, but I was set for it as soon as I was born, conceived on the sea by a sea-cook, no less, so it’s in my blood and maybe my ancestry on more sides than one for all I know, though that’s a tale I may never get to the bottom of.’
The morning light was fading, its promise gone. She fell. Cloud hovered low. He switched the light on. Bed was the best place for her, a horizontal state that even a spirit-level couldn’t quibble with. ‘You’ll be all right as long as somebody’s close to make sure you start eating when you wake up.’
What did she care?
He walked her next door, and pulled open her neatly made bed. He gently lowered her, and took off her shoes. Her feet were cold now.
She surrendered to a kind of peace. A hand lay against the side of her face. He wondered what the hell he had done. She certainly wouldn’t thank him. He covered her, and went back to his room for a roll of bedclothes, which he laid over her own.
A faint snore sounded as he shut the door. It had been as close a run thing as any storm he had been in. He had risked having a dead woman on his hands, and the police asking questions, and charging him with some arcane misdemeanour. The world of law and regularity would rush on to him and he would be no longer someone set apart from the rest of the people because he’d inhabited a closed order for so long. A juicy scandal for the papers! He’d left the sea, and Aunt Clara was dead, but there was still a polished procedure to follow in such emergencies. He was forgetting his training and habits. Or they were already abandoning him. Even now it wasn’t too late to get her tucked up in a nice clean cot with trained nurses to hover around.
Another few minutes, and who is to say whether she’d have come through undamaged? Or even pulled out of the black pit she’d dug pretty well for herself? He put a coffee-flask and some biscuits by her bed, with the thought that she would be normal in a day or two and that what happened then would be up to her. If she really had a mind to kill herself – no use denying the proper words – no one would be able to stop her. He respected her free will, providing it didn’t threaten the liberty of others – his especially.
A frown rippled over her forehead. He had an impulse to kiss her on the cheek before leaving, by way of wishing her a quick recovery, not to mention the luck she would need. He resisted, and fought off the sudden wrack of pure sadness, as if they had met at some forlorn beach after their separate shipwrecks, and might never see each other again. He went out quickly, imagining that on waking she wouldn’t even remember him.
2
At the bottom of the stairs he knocked twice on Judy Ellerker’s door. ‘I heard the first time,’ she said, ‘but like to make sure I’m wanted!’
He went into the room.
She told him to sit down. ‘I thought I heard you huffing and puffing up the stairs last night.’
The place was tidy, except for a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle on the floor. ‘I do a bit every day, and break it up before the kids come home. But every day I get more of it done. I threw the box away, in case the picture made things too easy. Not that I have much time, but I manage the odd half hour.’
‘What do you know about my new neighbour?’ he asked.
‘Can I get you anything to drink, captain?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘She left her husband, or whatever it was called, a month or so back. Leads a quiet life, poor kid. Still got her brain-damage from an overdose of matrimony, which makes it hard to tell what she’s like. I suppose you fancy her, but if I were you I’d leave her alone. Give her a chance to pull round.’
He’d heard her distastes concerning men before, but felt they could have nothing to do with him. ‘She’s not well this morning.’
‘It doesn’t surprise me. We all recover in the end, though.’
‘She had an accident.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, let’s say she left the gas on by mistake, unlit.’
‘And you didn’t get an ambulance?’ She reached some coins from the shelf.
‘There was no need.’
Her face reddened. There was an expression in her eyes for which he knew no other name but panic. She pushed by, and took her coat from a cupboard, then swung to face him. ‘No need? Have you been playing mummy and daddy up there? What have you got against her? Why do you want to kill her? Never heard of the social services, you blind prick?’
He was going around Cape Horn with a vengeance, and would have felt more comfortable if mere cliff-like waves were crumbling against him instead of this swell of blind loathing, before which he found it hard to stay calm. Yet in the face of her determination to do something ridiculous he felt he had better explain. ‘She’ll be all right. Call an ambulance, and they’ll think it’s a hoax. And if you do get one I might be entitled to ask what you have against her. Go up and see for yourself.’
She hesitated. ‘You think you handled it, do you?’
‘I did what I could. My first thought was for her, not the authorities or whoever you want to run for.’