The theory of suicide was excellent: the hard facts were simply repellent. Better to get drunk, take pills and go to sleep in a warm bath. Provided one could be sure of not waking up shivering and with a hangover.
His meditations were interrupted by a bra.
It fell on his shoulder, and it seemed to come from the direction of Sir Michael Jagger, Bart. Though, hitherto, the statue had not displayed any transvestite tendencies. The bra was followed by some lace nonsense and the sound of sneezing.
Gabriel walked round the statue. A dark-haired girl of perhaps twenty-three or twenty-five, clad only in fishnet tights, was tying a rope round her neck. The rope was not very long. Its other end was tied securely to an old five-kilo weight resting on the parapet of the bridge. The rest of the girl’s clothing was strewn on the pedway.
“Good evening,” said Gabriel. “A trifle warm for the time of year, don’t you think? I hope I am not intruding.”
“Please go away. I’m busy.” Her voice shook a little, but otherwise sounded quite normal.
“I don’t wish to intrude. But we seem to have a mutual interest. However, the river stinks, the time is out of joint, and I am sure you would not wish to swallow unwholesome semisolids.”
She shuddered. Gabriel repressed a feeling of triumph. She could easily leap on the parapet and kick the five-kilo weight over before a vodka-stricken non-hero had time to intervene.
“Please go away. My husband is dead, I have a dread disease and I do not wish the bounty hunters to get any of my body.”
“Self-pity,” said Gabriel, taking another cautious step, “is a destroyer of perspective. As my dear mother at the Yurkuti Embassy used to say, there are few problems that cannot be resolved by a bottle, a tumble, a cup of tea or a good night’s sleep… Unfortunately, having emptied the bottle and enjoyed the tumble, she accidentally electrocuted herself while making a cup of tea prior to a good night’s sleep. The Yurkuti flags were flown at half mast for twenty-one days. I still have not got over her loss.”
The girl burst out laughing. “I don’t believe the Yurkuti Embassy exists.”
Gabriel shrugged, and took another step. “If it did not, it would have been necessary to invent it. My mother existed, though. When she was fifthy-three, she thought it was all a great drag. So she flipped to Munich for the Oktoberfest, had a twenty-four carat time and at the end sold her body for twenty-thousand D marks. I had the D marks and she had the last laugh.
They found one diseased kidney, cancer of the lung and a heart with about as much mileage in it as a nineteen-twenty Rolls. The eyes were good, though. Her eyes were always good.”
He grabbed the girl, holding her fiercely and idiotically. One moment she had been trying to commit suicide, the next moment she had managed a laugh, and now she was sobbing fit to burst. Some spinhead.
And why should Gabriel crome, cretin at large, book sculptor without patrons, suicide pretender and amateur alcoholic, step round Sir Michael Jagger to save an adult female from the Thames? Something required to be examined. Possibly, the whole of human history.
“My name is Gabriel Crome,” he said gently. “I undertake not to bore, beat or ravish you until we are in a better place and in better states of mind. I am a failed book sculptor and a failed suicide. Please forgive my intrusion. It is probably entirely due to masculine pride. One simply hates to see a woman succeed.”
She continued to sob with verve and decibels, while Gabriel continued to hold her tightly, convinced that she had not heard a word he had spoken. Naturally, he was wrong. Presently, the sobbing subsided somewhat; and a breast twitched with brief indiscretion against his ribs.
He smiled. She was beginning to recall the facts of life once more.
“I have made an idiot of myself,” she said. “Forgive me. I think I had better dress.”
“There is no hurry. I like you as you are.”
“Possibly. But what of the procs?”
Bang on cue, there was the high whine of a hover sled upon the otherwise deserted bridge.
It moaned to a halt, then hissed and clanked as the air-cushion died and the sled sank to the pedway.
Two uniformed proctors leaped off the sled. One grabbed the girl and the other squirted an aerosol pencil of freezair into Gabriel’s face.
Gabriel froze. He had no option. The muscles of his body seized and went rigid, as if they had just been dipped in liquid oxygen. He could still think, though. And feel.
He felt considerably as the proctor hit his face three times then prodded him with a jump wand for good measure. The electric shock seemed to echo round his body like thunder in deserted alleyways. He wanted to scream. He would have been very grateful for the opportunity to scream. But the freezair wouldn’t let him. It wouldn’t even let him die mentally.
He began to think that there were worse conditions to be in than floating with unmentionables and unthinkables down the Thames.
“What’s this? What’s this? What’s this?” demanded the proctor who had snatched the girl from Gabriel’s arms. His hand lingered accidentally but tenderly over one of her erect if confused nipples. “Rape? Assault? Attempted murder? Coercion? Grievous bodily? You name it, darling. We make this boyo bounce like a butyl ball.”
“Please!” she said tearfully, “please. He was helping me. He just saved my life.”
Both proctors registered the rope and the five-kilo weight. Balloons formed over their heads.
“Excreta!” said Proc One.
“Plus derision,” said Proc Two. He regarded the girl sternly. “You high?”
“Certainly not,” she snapped with indignation. “Unhappy only. I have a right to be unhappy, have I not?”
“Yes, darling.”
“There is no law against felo de se?”
“No, darling. But there are three thousand nine hundred and seventy-two laws against stripping on the king’s highway, which this happens to be, with intent. And they are practically all capital offences… Let me see. We could pull you on intent to riot, disturbing the king’s peace, soliciting, obstruction, vagrancy, bribery — since what you’re showing constitutes bribery — loitering, distracting proctors from their duty, psychopathic action, sedition and wilfully perverting the course of justice… Namepad, darling, and think yourself lucky if we don’t call a funny wagon.”
She began to cry again.
“Cut the commercial,” said Proc One. “Give with the newsflash.”
“Camilla Greylaw,” she said. “Box 1735, Babscastle Boulevard, Hampstead. My husband -
at least, he was until the day before yesterday — is, I mean was, Professor Greylaw, late of the Microbiological Warfare Division of the Ministry of International Security and Race Harmony. If you wish any further information I will give it only after I have contacted my solicitors, Haroun al Raschid and Co., King’s Road, Chelsea.”
“Ho,” said Proc One. He slapped Gabriel’s face again. Gabriel tried to blink and couldn’t.
“Who is the rigid Galahad, then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ah, you don’t know.” He took another aerosol pencil from his belt and squirted Gabriel’s face.
Gabriel sneezed. Movement was restored to his muscles. He willed himself not to hit anybody.
“Well, student?” demanded Proc Two enigmatically. He tapped his jump wand, reminding Gabriel of its possibilities.