Free Fall

  “Mr. Mountjoy, Dr. Enticott is not quite ready but asks if you would go down to his office. Do you know the way?”

  “I’m afraid I’ve never—that is; no.”

  The receptionist traced out a route on a plan. Not at all, it was a pleasure to her, professionally smooth, helpful and untouched. Accustomed to deal with too much joy, too much sorrow.

  The grounds were just recognizably the same. The cedar had survived and the branches each reached up to a level of water and defined it with floating leaves. The bulk of the house was the same as before, only a little smaller. There, stretching away from my feet along the back of the house was the terrace where the man had walked ritually. Johnny and I must have hidden behind the scruffy remains of that hedge. But there were other buildings that had sprung up within the grounds, low and functional, sprung up like fungus. The wide lawn was slashed by concrete paths and these were worn and cracked, though they had appeared since we had trespassed. I had been a prisoner so long that now, only a hundred yards from my own house and in the grounds of an English hospital I did not dare to step off the path and I zigzagged across the lawn where the concrete allowed me to walk. The gardens were as well kept as public gardens and the air was the air of the top of the hill. Yet the sense of institution lay over the whole house and gardens like the greyness of a prison camp. Two women walked arm in arm under the trees. They sauntered, but the greyness included them. There was a single figure standing in the middle of the lawn like an ungainly statue; a stolid woman who stood with arms akimbo as if time had found her like that and then stopped.

  Kenneth’s office was empty. There were green filing cabinets, papers, pen, blotter, ink and a couch for confidences. It was a good, airy office, workman-like and pleasant if it had been anywhere else.

  He came in behind me.

  “Hullo.”

  “Here you are.”

  But this was not the loud Kenneth of parties with his wonderful stories, his admiration of Taffy and his liking for me. This was no more Kenneth than I was Sam, sprawling in slacks and sweater. Here we met officially in suits and constraint.

  “Won’t you sit down?”

  We looked at each other across the desk and I spoke first.

  “I suppose this is very—irregular?”

  “Why should you think that?”

  “I’m not a relative.”

  “We are not in purdah. No.”

  “I can see her?”

  “Of course. If she wants to see you, that is.”

  “Well then.”

  “Is Taffy coming on later?”

  “She’s not coming.”

  “But she said——”

  “Why should Taffy come?”

  “But she said—I mean—she wanted to meet Miss——”

  “She couldn’t have!”

  “She said Miss what’s her name was a friend of you both——”

  “She said that?”

  “Of course!”

  “She’s busy on this wine thing of hers for tonight. You’ll be there, won’t you?”

  I saw the disappointment come into his face. He swung his pencil and bounced it on his blotter.

  “Oh well.”

  So Taffy had been diplomatic. It looked better if we had both known Beatrice. The helping hand.

  “Perhaps she can come and see Miss Ifor later on.”

  Kenneth adjusted his face.

  “Of course, of course.”

  It is true then that these places are not necessarily forcing beds for humanity and understanding. You can walk a hospital and learn nothing.

  Kenneth jumped up, opened a filing cabinet and took out a sheaf of papers. He thumbed through them, returning his face to what he thought was the proper face for a medical man, withdrawn and responsible. But youth will out and his mask was unmarked. He might have been my son.

  “When can I see her, then, Kenneth?”

  He started.

  “Now, if you like.”

  Crestfallen a little. Yes, he has really come to see her, not me: and no, Taffy is not with him, she does not think of me.

  “Well——”

  He got up, abruptly.

  “Come on then.”

  I stood up to follow. My feet were obedient but my mind was thinking strange things and behaving mutinously. There should be a pause of recollection, it thought. I will wash my hands before I. There should be deliberate thinking back, a straightening out of the time stream back to when you last saw her. Yet the spots are opening and closing in front of my eyes and Kenneth is in love with Taffy and that complex sticks a peninsula into this ocean of cause and effect that is Beatrice and me.

  “This way.”

  She was in the main building, then, in the general’s own house, the house for lucky people.

  “Through here.”

  I remember now. It was that morning when I turned up outside the training college after walking all night, the morning when I first pretended to be half-way round the bend. I remember what she said. You mustn’t ever say such a thing, Sammy.

  But most of all I remember her terror.

  “Just a moment.”

  Kenneth had stopped and was talking to a nurse. He did this to impress me with yes, Dr. Enticott, no, Dr. Enticott. I am not famous, Sammy, but this is my pitch.

  Can’t you see I am up to the neck in the ice on paradise hill?

  “Here we are, Mr. Mountjoy. I’d better go first.”

  Formal, because on the job.

  The room was huge, an old drawing-room perhaps, in which the moulded ceiling was heavily dependent, marked with dust in dull lines like the rubbing of brass or bark. The three tall windows on our left were too big for frequent cleaning so that although they let the light in they qualified it. There were no pictures or hangings, though the light-green room cried out for both. There was little enough fabric anywhere. There was only a scatter of heavy round tables, chairs, and one or two sofas arranged by the farther wall.

  There was a scatter of women too, but left random as the furniture. One held a ball of string. Another stood looking out of the middle window, unnaturally still like the ungainly statue on the lawn. Nurse knew her way about this aquarium. She swam forward between the tables to the darkest corner, the right-hand one across areas of floor.

  “Miss Ifor.”

  No.

  “Miss Ifor! Your visitor’s come to see you!”

  There was someone sitting on a chair in front of one of the sofas. She faced the right-hand wall, hands in her lap. She was posed. Her weak, yellowish hair was cut short like a boy’s so that the shape of the head was clear to see, a vertical back. I remembered then how my hand had sometimes supported her head deep in the hair at the back; and now the truth was out, in daylight, shorn. The high forehead was parallel to this vertical back, so that really there was not much room in the head, very little, I now saw when the crowning glory was away from it.

  Somewhere one of the women began to make a noise. It was the same sound, over and over again, like a marsh-bird.

  “Hi-yip! Hi-yip! Hi-yip!”

  No one moved. Beatrice sat, looking at the wall, looking at nothing. Her face was in the shadow of her body; but a little light was reflected from the institutional wall and showed some of the moulding. Certainly the bones of the face were well hidden now. The flesh had hidden them in lumps—or was it the very bone that had coarsened? The knuckles of her hands seemed more prominent and under the green dress the body had thickened, was the same size from shoulder to hip.

  There was a curious feeling in my hands. They seemed to be growing larger. The room was shuddering slightly as if a tunnel of the underground lay below.

  I pulled my lips apart.

  “Beatrice!”

  She did nothing. The nurse moved briskly past my right shoulder and bent down.

  “Miss Ifor dear! Your visitor’s come to see you!”

  “Beatrice!”

  “Miss Ifor dear!”

  “Hi-yip! Hi-yip! Hi
-yip!”

  There was a movement of sorts, a kind of small lurch of the whole body. Beatrice was turning. She was jerking round like the figure in a cathedral clock. An express was passing through the tunnel. Beatrice moved jerk by jerk through ninety degrees. Her back was to me.

  Kenneth touched my arm.

  “I think perhaps——”

  But nurse knew this aquarium.

  “Miss Ifor? Aren’t you going to talk to your visitor? Come along now!”

  She had the body by the shoulder and arm.

  “Come along, dearie!”

  Jerk jerk jerk.

  “Hi-yip! Hi-yip! Hi-yip!”

  The body was facing me. The entombed eyes were nittering like the hand of an old man.

  “Aren’t you going to say hullo, dear? Miss Ifor!”

  “Beatrice!”

  Beatrice was beginning to stand up. Her hands were clasped into each other. Her mouth was open and her eyes were nittering at me through my tears and sweat.

  “That’s a good girl!”

  Beatrice pissed over her skirt and her legs and her shoes and my shoes. The pool splashed and spread.

  “Miss Ifor dear, naughty—ah, naughty!”

  Someone had me by the arm and shoulder and was turning me.

  “I think——”

  Someone was leading and helping me over acres of bare floor. Marsh-birds were sweeping and crying.

  *

  “Keep your head right down.”

  I could smell her still on my shoes and trousers. I struggled against a clamping hand at the back of my neck. Down, down, forced down in the fetor.

  “Better?”

  The words would not form. I could see them as shapes, hear them silently, could not twist them into my tongue.

  “You’ll feel better in a moment.”

  Cause and effect. The law of succession. Statistical probability. The moral order. Sin and remorse. They are all true. Both worlds exist side by side. They meet in me. We have to satisfy the examiners in both worlds at once. Down in the fetor.

  “There.”

  The hand removed itself. Two, one on each shoulder pulled me back. I fitted a chair.

  “Just sit still for a bit.”

  My mind wandered off into long corridors, came back, pictured Kenneth at his desk and opened my eyes. He was there. He gave me a smile of professional cheer.

  “These things are a shock until you get used to them.”

  I made my mouth do its proper work.

  “I suppose so.”

  I was coming back now into my body and I could hear Kenneth quacking on. But there was something I wanted from him. I felt round and found a cigarette.

  “Do you mind?”

  “No. Of course not. As I was saying——”

  “Is there any hope?”

  He was silent at last.

  “What I mean is: can you cure her?”

  More stuff. More quacking.

  “Look, Kenneth. Can she be cured?”

  “In the present state of our knowledge——”

  “Can she be cured?”

  “No.”

  The smell of the foul nursery rose from my shoes. Maisie, Millicent, Mary?

  “Kenneth. I want to know.”

  “Know what?”

  “What sent her——”

  “Ah!”

  He put his fingers together and leaned back.

  “In the first place you have to remember that normality is a condition only arbitrarily definable——”

  “Her life, man! What drove her mad?”

  Kenneth gave a vexed laugh.

  “Can’t you understand? Perhaps nothing happened.”

  “You mean—she would have gone—like this—anyway?”

  He looked at me, frowning.

  “Why do you say, ‘Anyway’?”

  “For the love of—look. Did anything send her, send her——”

  Puzzled, he looked at me, reached out for the file, opened the spring cover, looked down, flicked paper, muttered.

  “Heredity. Yes. I see. Illnesses. School. Training College. Engaged to be——”

  His voice faded away. I hit the desk with my fist and cried out.

  “Go on, can’t you?”

  He was consuming himself in blood. He shut the file, looking anywhere but at me. He muttered in the corner of his office.

  “Of course. It would be.”

  “Go on! Read it out to me.”

  But he was muttering still.

  “Oh, my God. What a fool. I should have—now what shall I do?”

  “Look——”

  He swung round and down at me.

  “You shouldn’t have done it. How the hell was I to know? And I thought I was doing you both a favour——’

  “No one can do her a favour——”

  “I didn’t mean—I may have done—I could be——”

  “I had to see her.”

  He was whispering frantically now.

  “No one must ever know. Do you hear? I could be struck off——”

  “Paradise.”

  All at once his voice spat at me.

  “I’ve always detested you—and this—that a man like you should have a woman like Taffy——”

  He stopped speaking and sat down the other side of the desk. His voice was intentional.

  “You and your bloody pictures. You use everyone. You used that woman. You used Taffy. And now you’ve used me.”

  “Yes. It’s all my fault.”

  His voice ran up high.

  “I’ll say it’s your fault!”

  “Do you want it in writing?”

  “That’s right. Take all the blame, you think, and nothing happened. Kiss and be friends. Do anything you like and then say you’re sorry.”

  “No. I don’t believe like that. I wish I did.”

  Silence.

  Kenneth pushed the back of his hand across his forehead. He looked at the file.

  “Who can tell you anything certain? Perhaps you did. Yes. Perhaps you hurt her so badly it tipped her over. I should think so. She’s been here ever since, you see.”

  “Seven years!”

  “Your Beatrice is a foundation member.”

  “Seven years.”

  “Ever since you saw her last. In a condition which we think is rather like experiencing continual and exaggerated worry.”

  “Ever since.”

  “I hope it makes you happy.”

  “Do you think hurting me will help you with Taffy?”

  “I’m glad we’ve got that straight at last. Yes. I’m in love with her.”

  “I know. She told me. We’re both sorry.”

  “To hell with your sorrow. And her sorrow.”

  “Well there.”

  “And to hell with this place and life generally.”

  “I asked her, you see. She would have kept your secret.”

  Kenneth gave a high-pitched laugh.

  “Oh, yes, you’ve got a good wife, she’ll never let you down. She’ll stand at your back and prop you up so that you can come across a few more suckers.”

  “It isn’t like that, you know. Not from inside.”

  “Got what you came for.”

  “I did it then. I had a dream. Not your line of country—or is it? You could put this one in the file with the rest of the evidence. Mr. X after deserting Miss Υ had a dream. She was following him, stumbling, and the waters were rising round her. Exaggerated worry, you said. Cause and effect holds good. Nick was right and Miss Pringle was right——”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Just that I tipped her over. Nothing can be repaired or changed. The innocent cannot forgive.”

  I smiled wrily at Kenneth; and as I smiled I felt a sudden gust of affection for him.

  “All right, Kenneth. Yes. I got what I came for. And thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For being so—Hippocratic.”

  “I?”
br />   Suddenly the image of thick Beatrice started up behind my eyes, green, tense and nittering. I covered them with one hand.

  “For telling me the truth.”

  Kenneth moved about uneasily between his desk and the cupboard and then settled into his chair.

  “Look, Sammy. I shan’t be seeing much of you both from now on.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For God’s sake!”

  “I mean it. People don’t seem to be able to move without killing each other.”

  “So I’m telling you what the chances were as far as I can see them. Then you’ll know. You probably tipped her over. But perhaps she would have tipped over anyway. Perhaps she would have tipped over a year earlier if you hadn’t been there to give her something to think about. You may have given her an extra year of sanity and—whatever you did give her. You may have taken a lifetime of happiness away from her. Now you know the chances as accurately as a specialist.”

  “Thank you.”

  “God. I could cut your throat.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “No, I couldn’t. Don’t go. Wait. I want to talk to you. Listen, Sam. I love Taffy. You know that.”

  “I can’t take it in.”

  “And I said I hated you. But I don’t. In a sort of twisted way—it’s that life you both lead together, that place you’ve got. I want to share that. In a sense I’m in love with both of you.”

  “I can’t take it in.”

  I pulled myself up and made a sort of smiling grimace, mouth dragged down, in his direction.

  “Well——”

  “Sammy.”

  I turned at the door.

  “Sammy. What am I going to do?”

  I adjusted myself to his face. Useless to say that a man is a whole continent, pointless to say that each consciousness is a whole world because each consciousness is a dozen worlds.

  “There’s too much interpenetration. Everything is mixed up. Look. You haven’t hurt us. It will pass. Nothing of what you go through now will peer over your shoulder or kick you in the face.”

  He laughed savagely.

  “Thank you for nothing!”

  I went out of the door then, and as I went, I nodded him my agreement.

  14

  I had my two speeches ready, one for each of my parents not in the flesh. Now I would go to Nick Shales and do him good. I would explain gently.