No Escape (7 page)

But the next moment Gerry's face relaxed and he gave her a brief smiling glance that removed her doubts at once.

“It's not important,” she tried to explain. “Only medical details. Anyhow he couldn't persuade her and that was partly my fault, so he's furious with me.”

“Is that all? I don't see quite how it affects Sheila.”

“No. of course not. I'm being stupid. What I mean is she
won't
do as he wants and she
is
going home tomorrow.”

“I see.”

They drove on in silence for a few minutes, then Gerry said, “You know that doctor friend of yours isn't far out about Sheila.”

“How d'you mean?”

“She's been unstable before. A couple of years ago. She nearly had to go away, then.”

“
Really
?”

“Yes. I'm not kidding. The place where she works, well, it belongs to a friend of mine—”

“Ronald Bream,” said Jane, remembering the photographs in Sheila's room.

The car swerved a little, but Gerry's face did not alter. “Greasy in patches,” he said. Then, a second later, “She's told you about her work, then?”

“Oh no.” Jane explained how she had noticed Bream's signature on the photographs in Sheila's room. She did not describe the photographs, but when Gerry gave her a sideways glance, full of secret amusement, she flushed and laughed.

“Art pictures, most of them,” she said. “You knew she posed for them, I suppose?”

“Naturally. Does that shock you?”

“Not really. Anyway, it's nothing new. And I'd rather have these photographs than most of the women on beaches with bikinis on. You have to have a really marvellous figure to take a bikini. Most of the women who wear them just haven't. They bulge in all the wrong places.”

“Too right. What was I saying?”

“That Ronald Bream, the photographer, is a friend of yours.”

“Yes. And a couple of years ago when Sheila first began to work for him she turned up one morning and threw a fit of hysteria.”

“Had he just suggested she might model for the nude?” Jane asked.

Gerry looked round at her again.

“You're a cool customer, aren't you?”

“I'm in medicine,” Jane answered. “I see nudes every day. I don't get any kick at all, from either sex.”

“So it seems.”

“You were talking about Sheila.”

“Yes. Well, they had to call a doctor and she had some treatment or other and was away a couple of weeks as far as I remember.”

“But she went back to her job? The same job?”

“Oh, yes. Ron took her back.”

“Then it can't have been anything to do with the art photos.”

“No, it can't, can it?”

“You mean she's really, basically, a bit twitched? Poor Sheila.”

“Exactly. Now are you satisfied why I was hanging around the hospital, wondering how to get in touch with her, what to do to help the poor kid?”

Jane blushed, tongue-tied, annoyed with herself on so many counts she felt she would like nothing better than to get out of the car and run away. For she had begun to wonder if she might be the attraction that had kept Gerry waiting outside the hospital. He had certainly worn a faint air of triumph when she appeared. But really it was all his anxiety about Sheila. So much for vanity, she decided. How idiotic can you get, when the slightly older man has charm?

In her confusion and remorse, both on her own account and Sheila's, she said, impulsively, “I'm really grateful to you for telling me. Neither Dr Long nor I thought at first that the suicide theory held for a moment, though the other staff did. Now he agrees with them and I suppose I must too. We didn't know what you've told me. We thought there must be some real reason—an outside reason, I mean—for her perfectly genuine fear. It's certainly there, Mr Stone—Gerry. She's scared of everything, her job, herself, her parents, her friends—”

“Which friends?”

Jane remembered in time that she had promised Gerry not to mention him to Sheila and that she had betrayed that promise. This added to her sinking opinion of herself, both her judgement and her integrity.

“Anyway,” she said, not answering his last question, “she's made up her mind to go to Reading tomorrow morning. So we shan't have any further responsibility, shall we?”

Gerry did not answer. They had just turned in Arcadia Road and he was slowing down, looking at the numbers of the houses.

“After the next turning on the right,” Jane said. “The fourth house on the right—now!”

Gerry stopped the car at the kerb but did not attempt to get out. Jane began to fumble with the door on her own side.

“Don't go in yet,” Gerry said, pulling out a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and offering it to her.

“I don't,” she said. “Not worth the risk—or the money.” Gerry made a face at her.

“Little Miss Salvation Army, are you? You won't get a convert here. I'm deep in sin.”

He said it with a low laugh of inward pleasure. But Jane was kicking herself again and did not notice. She had the door open now and was moving to get out of the car.

“Why the hurry?” he asked.

“I want my tea.”

“I could do with a cuppa myself.”

She was properly caught, she realised. After all his kindness that afternoon it would be too churlish not to invite him in.

“Can I give you one?” she said, lightly, hoping he would refuse.

But he merely thanked her, left the car, locked the doors, and followed her into the house, up the stairs and into her flat.

Whereas when she left the hospital Jane had looked forward to a solitary tea in her own room, now she would have been delighted to find Mary, with whom she shared it, at home. But there was no welcoming light in the windows and in spite of the electric radiator in the small hall, the whole place felt cold and cheerless.

“I'm sorry,” she apologised, turning on lights and fires as she moved about. “Mary isn't in yet.”

“I don't mind. Why should I?”

Jane did not answer this but having taken him into the sitting-room went off to the kitchen to get the kettle on to the stove. When she had assembled the tea she carried the tray to the other room, where she found Gerry sitting by the fire reading the newspaper. She had only had time to glance at the middle page that morning, but he was not reading the middle page. He seemed to be absorbed in the financial news that she never read herself.

Conversation during the meal became more and more trivial. Gerry seemed to have retreated to some inner place of his own. She wondered why, if his interest in herself was so short-lived, he had forced upon her this invitation to the flat. After a time, however, it became clear that he was still thinking about Sheila Burgess.

“You've a very nice place here,” he said. “I wouldn't have thought—if what you say about a radiographer's money is correct—”

He looked at her with one comically raised eyebrow. Jane, inclined to resent his impertinence, could not help laughing.

“It's Mary's flat, really,” she said. “I share, but not exactly halves.”

“Nothing like having rich friends,” said Gerry.

“We happen to have been at school together,” Jane answered, stiffly. He was getting a bit too offensive, she thought. But his next words swung her back again.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I was only kidding. What I really mean is you've got a very nice flat and plenty of room in it, I'd think. I was wondering if you couldn't suggest to Sheila that she stays with you for a few days before going down to Reading. No, wait a minute!” He raised a hand as Jane began to object. “Let me finish. I don't want her family to be so upset by her state that they, too, think she's in for a real bad breakdown. Apart from anything else, they'd have it in for me for not looking after her better. D' you see what I mean?”

‘Perfectly,” Jane answered. “All the same I don't think Mary would fall for it. And the flat is hers, as I told you.”

“But you yourself would be willing?”

“I don't know. I'm out all day. I couldn't really look after her, could I?”

“Perhaps not. But perhaps some of her friends might come round to see her.”

This was something Jane had not considered at all. Sheila's friends. Had she any? Surely she must have. But where were they and why hadn't she wanted to see them? She hadn't named a single one, not one.

“Do you know any of her friends?” she asked. “We don't. She simply insisted that no one at all was to know about her or see her before she goes home.”

“Of course I know them.” Gerry's eyes brightened. “I know what! I'll introduce you to some of them. Ron Bream, too. Tonight.”

“Tonight? Where?”

“Two of the people Sheila sees most often are throwing a little party tonight. I was asked but I said I was too worried about Sheila. What d'you say I go after all and take you with me?”

“Where?”

“Tom's studio. Chelsea.”

“Is he another photographer?”

“No. But he lives in a studio. He knows a lot of artists, too.”

“What time?”

“I don't remember. Late-ish, I think. Wine and cheese touch. Shall I ring them up and say we'll come? Do come!”

It was tempting. It was new. Whatever she thought about Gerry, and her feelings had fluctuated wildly between attraction and anger all that afternoon, it might be useful to meet some of Sheila's friends. She still had no intention of having the girl to stay in the flat. Anyway, she was sure Sheila would never agree. But it might help her know that her friends were sympathetic and would rally round when she felt strong enough to come back to London, to her job.

“Yes,” she said. “I'll come. I'd like to meet them. D'you want to ring them from here? When should we start? What do we wear?”

“Anything,” he told her. “You'll be charming in anything.”

“No. I mean how informal?”

“Completely informal. Chelsea has all its variety. Tom paints a bit and his wife, too. He makes commercial designs from her abstracts.”

“Doesn't she object?”

“Not if he sells them.”

A strange world, Jane thought, but worth a visit. She knew she was pretty well bogged down in the utterly different world of the hospital. It would be a pleasant change to go right outside it for once.

“Ring up, then,” she said. “I'll change.”

She put on a black silk skirt and a white evening jumper. When she rejoined Gerry she found him sitting down again, staring at the electric fire. He jumped up as she went into the room.

“You look fabulous!” he said, warmly.

“Will they have us?”

“Of course. I was wrong about the time. It's a six to eight do. It sounded well warmed up already. I could hardly get what Tom said.”

She looked at her watch. Seven o'clock. She was astonished. They must have wasted over an hour over tea.

“Aren't we too late?”

“Good God, no. If we start right away.”

“I'll get my coat. Turn out the fire, do you mind?”

She put on a new top coat that she had bought only a week before. As they drove off she wrapped its soft folds over her knees and leaned back in her seat. It was really very pleasant to be driven about in a fast car by a very competent driver whose admiration for her appeared to be growing hour by hour. Did she really like him? Well, enough to enjoy this evening in his company, at any rate. What a question to ask herself, she thought, when she'd only known the man for a little over five hours. She laughed aloud.

“Happy?” Gerald Stone asked, putting out a hand to touch her lightly.

“Yes, I am,” she answered, laughing again, and found that he was joining in her mirth.

The party, as Jane expected, was in full swing when they, arrived. The studio, on the top floor of the house, was an attic room with a skylight uncurtained and partly open. In spite of this the heat was almost unbearable, for a big stove, its front open, blazed with piled coke and at the opposite side of the room, in a recess where the ceiling was too low for anyone to stand, a long electric radiator spread another cloud of suffocating warmth.

Jane drew back from the door of the room.

“I can't go in there in my coat,” she said, “I'd die on the spot.”

“You don't have to. Give it to me and I'll park it with mine.”

He was helping her off with it as he spoke. When she turned he had disappeared. But a few seconds later, while she waited, as she hoped, out of sight of the crowd, he came back, took her hand in a friendly gesture and led her forward, searching about for their hostess.

It was a very mixed crowd, Jane saw, of the sort of people one came across in the espresso bars and small dimly-lit restaurants all over Fulham and Chelsea. They were very variously dressed, as Gerry had said they would be. A number of the girls wore drab black and brown, had seaweed hair floating on their shoulders, thick woollen stockings and high boots with ridiculous little high heels like the principal boy in an old-fashioned pantomime. There were men to match these girls, with dirty sweaters and corduroy slacks and untrimmed scruffy beards round their weak chins. At the other end of the scale there were very highly-painted, stiffly coiffured girls, in tight bright satin, jewelled with sequins; also one or two in long narrow skirts slit up one side. Very few of the men were dressed for the evening, whatever their women had on. Most of them, like Gerry, were in sober town suits.

“There they are!” Gerry said, over his shoulder, continuing to push his way through the crowd, making a path for Jane. “Hi, Tom! Toni!”

A thin young woman, in a long white chiffon dress, turned her head towards them, waved a glass in the air and called back, “Come right in, Gerry!”

“Easier said than done” he shouted back, tripping as a girl in front of him, trying to move away, dropped a long woollen stole round his ankles. Jane stooped to pull it away, the owner snatched it from her with a loud, four-letter curse and Jane stood up, red with anger and effort, to find the painted face of her hostess peering at her.