No Escape (8 page)

“Jane Wheelan,” Gerry said. “Meet Toni.” He half-turned and catching hold of the man beside him by the arm, added, “Tom.”

Jane greeted them both politely and waited. The girl with the unruly stole had swept away, the whole incident had been trivial, rather ridiculous and she did not want to talk about it. On the other hand there was nothing whatever to say except that the room was far too hot and held far too many people. This being unsuitable as an opening gambit, she said nothing.

“Sorry we're late,” Gerry said, cheerfully. He handed on to Jane a glass of champagne Tom had just produced and held out his hand to the latter for another. “Jane is a world's worker,” he went on. “World benefactor, I ought to say.”

“What at?” Toni asked, languidly. She did not look much interested. This stung Jane into saying, “I'm a radiographer. Gerry wanted me to meet you because I used to know Sheila Burgess.”

Toni's face changed, or rather it tightened and grew even more blank than before. Jane watched her. The makeup was nearly perfect if you liked that heavy kind, which she herself did not. It must be useful, though, she thought. It effectively prevented any slight change of expression. And from a distance made a pretty picture. But not from near to and not when you could see the eyes looking out from their black rims and green lids with uncontrolled surprised anxiety.

It was Tom who spoke.

“You're very welcome,” he said heartily. “Any friend of poor little Sheila—” He let his voice sink to a whisper in Jane's ear. “I'd like a word with you later on, if I may. Mustn't spoil the party just now. Wait till they push off.”

Jane nodded. She had not wanted to embarrass anyone. Tom's reaction to her mild reference to Sheila surprised her. She did not know now what to say except to murmur that Gerry had brought her, would he taking her back and she wasn't sure how long—

“He'll want to stay,” Tom finished for her. “That'll be for you to dictate, won't it? Toni always makes the going for me.”

“But I only met Gerry today,” Jane said, stiffly.

Tom took no notice of this, but moved away with a bottle in each hand, filling glasses as he went. As soon as he was out of earshot, which was almost at once because the noise in the room had reached shouting pitch, Toni pressed nearer to Jane and leaning forward to speak into her ear, much as Tom had done, she said, “How is she?”

“Sheila, d'you mean?” Jane said in a raised voice.

“Hush! Don't shout, for God's sake! Yes, the poor kid.”

“Better. Much better, I think.”

Toni nodded, but leaned forward again.

“Are they going to send her away? They ought to, they must do, mustn't they?”

“D'you mean to a mental hospital?”

“That's right. She's up the wall, isn't she? Properly up the wall.”

Jane drew back. She had no intention of discussing Sheila in this place either with Tom or with his sympathetic wife. So she merely said, “I'm only a radiographer, I'm afraid. I don't even meet the psychiatrists.”

“But you must know what they're going to do with her,” Toni said in her ear. Her voice had risen from a whisper to an impatient, demanding whine that nearly deafened Jane at such short range. She began to feel resentful.

“No, I don't,” she said. “No one is going to
do
anything to her or with her or for her without her consent. It's a free country isn't it? Up to a point, anyhow,” she added, feeling ashamed of trotting out the old cliché so glibly.

Toni's eyes took on a hostile glare but all she said was. “I thought you were a friend of hers,” and turned away, leaving Jane alone with a circle of backs hemming her in.

She locked about her, desperately anxious to go home now. If these were Gerry's friends then she had no wish to cultivate him any further. She began to move very slowly towards the door of the room. But she had not gone more than a few steps before she found Gerry at her side and saw just behind him two men who appeared to be with him.

“There you are!” Gerry shouted heartily. “Where's Toni?”

“I don't know,” said Jane, allowing her total indifference to show in her voice. “I think I really must be getting back now.”

“But you've only just come!”

One of the men behind Gerry pushed forward as he spoke with hand outstretched. “You must be Miss Wheelan. Sheila's friend. I'm Ron Bream, her boss. Or should I say her late boss?”

“You're late all right,” said the other newcomer, also pressing forward.

“Ron's partner, Giles,” Gerry said, watching Jane.

She shook hands with the two. The photographer himself was middle-aged, rather stout, carefully and neatly dressed. His partner, considerably younger, wore a dinner jacket and spoke with a marked Mediterranean accent in spite of his English name.

Jane said, gravely, looking at Ron, “I'm afraid Sheila won't be coming back to work for you, Mr Bream.”

“I'm sorry,” he answered gently. “But Gerry has told me about the breakdown. Perhaps, later on—”

His partner interrupted, in a high-pitched impatient tone, “It is useless to speak here. Impossible to hear what is said. Where is Tom?”

Gerry took Jane's arm and pushed her gently forward.

“Tom's gone to the other room,” he said. “We'll find him there. You chaps coming?”

They formed a group about Jane as they moved slowly to the door of the room. She was not unaware of this, resenting it slightly but unable to resist the pressure on each side of her. They went along a short passage and into another room, smaller than the first, but empty of people except for Tom, who stood near an electric fire, smoking a thin cigar.

“That's better,” Ron Bream said. “Give the lady a drink, Tom.”

“No, really, thank you,” Jane said. “I've had quite enough already. I think I really ought to be going home.”

Her persistence seemed to disconcert the men around her, who stood looking at her with puzzled, frowning faces. But Gerry said, after a short pause, “So you shall, Jane. We all know you're doing a grand job, don't we, Tom? Mustn't send her up to the hospital tomorrow with a hangover. She might take a picture of the wrong end of the patient.”

There was loud laughter at this, quite uncalled for by his feeble joke, Jane thought. But she consented to sit down for a few minutes though she still refused another drink and made it plain by her attitude that only good manners prevented her from leaving at once.

“We ask too many bods to these shows,” Tom said, making a wry face. “Toni's fault, really.”

“I wasn't even asked,” said Jane, trying to smile. “I ought to apologise.”

“Now don't take him up like that,” Ron protested. “Any friend of Gerry's—”

“Any friend of poor little Sheila,” said his partner.

“Exactly. Now we can hear each other speak won't you tell us a bit more about her, Miss Wheelan?”

With persistent questions, frequent suggestions, total disregard of her repeated wish to go home, they gradually bore down Jane's resistance. It was all done with outward good nature, consideration and politeness. But she felt the ruthless purpose behind it and though at first it stiffened her resolve to say nothing that mattered, in the end she was too angry and too exhausted not to break it.

She jumped up, said briskly, “Now I really am going. You can't do anything more to help Sheila just now. She's as sane as I am and nothing can keep her in hospital against her own wishes. She's discharged herself, she's off tomorrow morning and by this time tomorrow she'll be with her parents in Reading.”

They could not stop her now and at last they seemed to give up their strange interest in the sick girl. They shook hands with Jane, saying they hoped to meet her again soon, hut they did not follow her out of the room. Gerry, who had gone instantly to fetch her coat, was nowhere to be seen in the passage. It was curiously quiet there; the party seemed to have broken up at last.

But as she waited, not quite sure where Gerry had gone, one of the rougher looking young men appeared suddenly beside her.

“I heard you say you were a friend of Sheila Burgess's,” he said, curtly.

“Not
again
! Well, yes, I used to be.”

“Used to be? Not now?”

“Yes, now again. Since her—accident.”

“You're another model, are you?”

“Me? I'm a radiographer. At the West Kensington.”

A look of frank horror passed over his face. Jane thought she understood.

“You said model. Are you an artist? Did Sheila model for painters as well as for her photographer? I know she did that.”

“You do?” His face went hard now. He said, slowly. “If you're a genuine friend of hers tell her she'd better look out for herself, will you?”

“Why? Anyway, she's going home tomorrow—by train.”

“Then tell her she'd better not travel alone. I mean that. Seriously.”

“What
do
you mean?” Jane thought his dramatic manner rather silly. It matched his long hair and his beard and sloppy, dirty clothes.

“Frankly, I'm not with you,” she said impatiently, turning away her head to look for Gerry.

But when she turned back again the young man was gone and Gerry appeared the next instant, his own coat and hers over his arm, her handbag in his other hand and profuse apologies on his lips.

Gerry was silent at first on the drive back to Jane's flat. At last he said, “You didn't enjoy the party much, did you?”

His frankness was embarrassing. Jane temporised.

“I never do like big parties, really,” she said. “Even when there are people there I know. Too much noise, so you can't have any sort of conversation. Too much drink. I like my wine best with a meal. When you don't know a soul there, like tonight, it seems pretty pointless.”

“It wasn't pointless,” he answered, gravely. “Didn't you realise how upset Sheila's friends are by this whole painful business?”

Jane did not know what to say. Her main impression had been that the worry, the anxiety of Sheila's loving friends, was less for the girl personally than for the effect her actions and their consequences might have on all of them. But she could hardly give these cynical views to Gerry, who seemed to be the only one genuinely concerned with Sheila's real welfare.

“Was she very important to Ron's business?” she asked. “I mean, I know she modelled for the art photographs. I saw them in her room, as I told you.”

“Did you really recognise her in them?” Gerry asked. “The lighting is usually arranged to make the face a silhouette or partly in shadow.”

“I know.”

“You really did recognise them, then? Sheila didn't tell you?”

“No. She hasn't told us anything at all about her work. That's one of the mysteries or a symptom of her illness. She—she seems to be absolutely scared of the whole set-up.”

She could have added that though Ron Bream was not particularly formidable, the thin character, Giles, with his cold eyes and long yellow face had certainly sent a few shivers down her spine. But she held her tongue. She was tired now, tired physically, for her working day was spent mostly on her feet and she had been standing again nearly all the evening, and tired mentally, tired of Sheila, her problems, her misfortunes, her refusal to help herself, all the deadly boredom of the un-cooperative patient.

She said, irritably, “I can't help feeling Sheila's making a lot of fuss about very little. If she doesn't like her job, why can't she just give notice and leave in the normal way? Why all the melodrama? Whether she fell in the river on purpose or by accident, she was rescued and the best thing she could do would be to get her parents to come and fetch her from the West Kensington. But of course the silly clot won't hear of it. I'm wondering if she really means to go to Reading or if she‘ll skip off somewhere else.”

“Why should she?”

Gerry's question was the obvious one, but his voice was too eager.

“Oh, don't you understand?” Jane cried, in exasperation. “I thought you knew her. Isn't it all a fantasy? Isn't she dramatising herself to the limit? Why don't you go down to Reading with her, if you really want to help?”

Jane saw that they were already in Arcadia Road and nearing her flat. Gerry brought the car in to the kerb, stopped and turned towards her.

“If I thought she'd let me, of course I'd travel with her,” he said, quietly. “But you told me she absolutely didn't want to see me.”

“Yes, that's true! Oh, why are some people such idiots!”

Jane's exclamation related to the whole of Sheila's behaviour, but Gerry evidently took it as a personal compliment, for he put an arm across Jane's shoulders, smiled at her and said, very softly, “
You
wouldn't turn me down like that, would you, Jane? You'll come out with me again, won't you?”

She wanted the evening to finish. Another argument, about herself this time, would be unbearable. So she smiled at him and said, lightly, “I expect so. I'm always around.”

“You're wonderful,” he said, drawing her a little closer. “I know we've only met today, but I feel I've known you for years.”

Hopelessly unoriginal, Jane thought, for a man of his age, especially. She yawned; she really was half asleep, she realised.

“Thank you for—everything,” she said. He had certainly been useful earlier in the afternoon. The party had been a dead loss, but that wasn't his fault.

Gerry drew her closer still and gave her a long, experienced kiss. More exciting than was good for her, Jane thought, drawing away from him and turning to unfasten the car door.

He did not try to stop her or continue his advances. He just sat and watched her, smiling a little. When she was out of the car and turning to say good-night to him, he said, “Tomorrow evening? Same time?”