I turned away at once, in case she saw me. But I needn’t have worried, for when I turned back briefly and looked at Clare again, I could see her blank face, how her eyes were quite unfocused. But it was Clare all right, with the mop of golden colour all round the top of her head; Clare alive, if not well. But physically well, I thought, at least: capable of being moved. I wished I could have gone to her there and then, my heart jumping with excitement.
As I left these private rooms, I saw a fire-extinguisher by some half-opened curtains at the end of the corridor. Beyond was a metal-framed french window leading out somewhere to the back of the hospital. I could see trees and some tired summer grass in the late-afternoon light. The car-park must have been nearby. And there was a key in the lock of the door: here was my escape.
On the way back to my ward I stopped in the main hallway of the hospital. There was a public phone on the wall here, but it was engaged, and I had to wait ten minutes before I got through to Alice. We had agreed on a code before I’d left her.
‘It’s all arranged,’ I told her. ‘I’ve found the present we want. I’ll wait for you with it behind the station, from ten o’clock onwards, tonight.’
I wasn’t given any supper that evening and I was light-headed with nervous excitement as well as from lack of food. I tried not to look at the clock at the end of the ward. I tried listening to the radio instead, taking the headphones down from above my bed. At least this ploy kept the old man next door at bay, though I could still see him trying to talk to me, his lips moving soundlessly as I listened to “The Archers”.
And then, through nervous exhaustion I suppose, I must have fallen asleep with the headphones still round my ears, for the next thing I knew I was awake and on my side, with the curtains drawn all down the ward. It was 10.15 — the old man next me was still talking, I noticed, when I looked across at him.
But after a moment I saw he wasn’t talking to me. With my headphones on there was still no sound from his lips. He was speaking to someone else, I realised now, someone I’d not seen on the other side of my bed. I turned.
The Indian doctor was there, together with another older man I didn’t recognise, and beyond him a third figure, but one I knew: it was Ross, the man who’d stalked me two weeks before through the early mists in the valley by the lake, whose dog I’d killed and who now, much more certainly, had come to claim me.
I took the headphones off. The other man had a clipboard in one hand. He looked at it and then at my name on the end of the bed.
‘Mr John Burton? he asked.
‘Yes. I’m John Burton. What’s wrong?’
But Ross came in at once then. ‘You’re not “John Burton”,’ he said. ‘You’re Peter Marlow, aren’t you?’ He spoke quietly, very reasonably, with kindness almost.
‘I couldn’t find anything wrong with him, you see,’ the Indian piped in. ‘There was nothing wrong in the X-ray. Nothing whatsoever. I thought there was something strange then,’ he added, justifying himself.
The old Cotswolds gardener in the next bed was all ears, craning over towards us, trying to pick up our conversation. And others in the ward were awake or alert now, curious at this intrusion.
‘If you wouldn’t mind coming to the administrator’s office for a moment?’ Ross asked, looking about him uneasily at the disturbance they’d caused.
‘You don’t have to move, Mr Burton,’ the other older man said to me, the Administrator himself, I presumed. He looked at Ross very critically. ‘I’m afraid,’ he went on, ‘if Mr Burton denies he’s the man you want, he can stay exactly where he is. He’s a patient here, appropriately admitted for observation pending treatment. Your writ stops at the entrance.’
‘Of course, doctor; I’d no intention …’ Ross excused himself. ‘I’d just like to talk to Mr Burton privately for a few minutes, here in the hospital.’
‘Well, if Mr Burton agrees, that’s all right. But you can do it here. We can pull the curtains.’
I’d no wish to see Ross privately here or anywhere else. He’d probably try and get rid of me at once, in whatever circumstances, I thought. But I saw that if I wanted to get Clare out I’d have to move immediately in any case. With Ross so certainly on my trail again, yet with Alice waiting outside for me at that same moment, I knew I’d never get another chance of taking Clare. The best thing was to get out of bed, prepare myself, get ready to run … There was nothing to be gained by staying put, that was for sure.
‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ll come to your office. We don’t want to go on making a fuss in the ward.’
I got slowly out of bed. I still had my dressing-gown on. The others made way for me as I stood up gingerly. Then I grasped my stick, taking it as support, before limping carefully out from between the beds.
The three men were moving slowly behind me now, as we all made our way towards the ward door. A night nurse had just arrived and was sitting at a table ahead of us, in the middle of the central aisle near the exit, a table which, I saw, would slightly block our progress. We would have to move past it, to either side, in single file. And if I were first through, as I would be, the three others behind me could well be delayed … And the sooner they were delayed in some manner the better, so that I could have the more time to lose myself in the tortuous corridors outside and reach Clare’s ward without their knowing where I’d gone. There was only one obvious way to ensure their delay. I had it in my hand.
As I moved through the gap by the night nurse’s table I started to release the safety catch beneath the antler handle on my swordstick. I’d have used the stick against them anyway. But Ross’s words just then, as he came up behind me, suddenly annoyed me, gave me added impetus.
‘A bad limp, Marlow?’ he said condescendingly. ‘So that’s your problem. I hope you haven’t hurt yourself, on the run these past weeks.’
I was through the gap now, the catch released. I turned and in the same movement I pulled out the long needle of steel and held it up, straight at Ross’s chest, blocking his way through.
‘Put that down, Marlow!’ he said. ‘I only want to talk to you: to explain things. With that bad leg you can’t get far anyway. Don’t play the fool!’
I touched Ross’s shirt with the tip of the sword. ‘Back!’ I said. ‘Back a little! Like you people played the fool with my wife.’ I had a sudden urge to stick the sword in him there and then — and give the meddlesome little Indian a jab with it too. But I controlled the impulse.
The nurse, who had got up to let us pass, turned to me now and gave a short, little delayed-action yelp, like a dog. I spun the table round so that it ran lengthways across the aisle, blocking the gap almost completely.
Ross tried to vault the table, throwing himself towards me. But he came straight onto the tip of the sword, which I’d raised again. It pricked him in the arm, so that he drew back hurriedly, clutching his shoulder, amazed. I think he thought I was simply pulling his leg with these theatrical props and antics. He put his good arm inside his jacket, reaching for a gun I thought.
‘Don’t!’ I said, moving forward towards him over the table, flourishing the swordstick at his throat this time. He withdrew and I backed away, the ward in some pandemonium now, as the shaded light on the table fell to the floor, the bulb breaking, leaving the whole room in darkness and confusion. But by then I had turned and was running furiously out the door. I was gone.