No Escape (9 page)

Jane pulled herself together.

“Sorry. Not tomorrow.”

“Another date?”

“No. A home session with Mary. My flat partner.”

“Scrap it.”

“Can't. Sorry. Good-night and thanks again. Thanks a lot.”

She shut the car door, turned and ran up the steps to the outer door of the flats. It was locked. She had not realised how late she was. She stood for a few seconds raking her bag for her keys, found them and opened the door. Gerry had not driven away yet, but he had not followed her to the door as she had been half afraid he might. She looked back as she went in. It was too dark to see him but she noticed the glow of a cigarette. He had been lighting up. That was why he had waited. Not on her account. So much the better, she thought, stifling her unreasonable disappointment.

Upstairs in her room she took her handbag under the light and stirred its contents. When she had searched for the door keys she had been aware vaguely of some change in the contents. Now she knew. There had been a colour film of her own in the bag waiting to be developed. She generally dealt with her black and white films herself, but always sent the colour ones away. Or rather handed them in to a local chemist to be processed. It had been in its tin, which was tied up in its yellow bag. It must have fallen out at the party. If so it would be at the house. She was disagreeably surprised to find she had no idea where the place was. Somewhere in Chelsea, somewhere between the Town Hall and the river. But she remembered neither the name of the street nor the number of the house.

There was only one way to get her film back. She would have to ask Gerry. Again she checked. She did not know where he lived, either. So unless he tried to see her again she had no means of tracing her property. Well, it served her right. All the same, she was pretty sure she had not seen the last of Gerry. Her confidence was based on his kiss, which lingered agreeably in her mind.

Thinking about her film reminded her of the spool she had found on the floor of Sheila's room. She went to her cupboard and felt in the pocket of her everyday jacket. It was there still, so she took it out and put it in the handbag she used on workdays. She wrote in her diary a reminder to take the film up to the ward before Sheila left the hospital. After that she went to bed and slept heavily, without dreams.

She woke to a knocking on her door. Mary followed the knock and came to her bedside, looking down at her in some surprise, for Jane was usually the first in the flat to leave her bed.

“What were you doing last night?” Mary demanded. “Living it up somewhere by the look of you.”

Jane, struggling into full consciousness, looked first at her watch, then, stung by what it told her, leaped up.

“Gosh! I'll be late!” she said. “Be an angel and get the coffee going.”

“The coffee has been waiting for you for the last half-hour. Egg?”

“Shan't have time.”

Jane was already at the door, making for the bathroom.

“There's toast. I'll have to go myself in five minutes.”

“Don't wait.”

Tearing into her clothes, swallowing coffee that was far too hot and toast that was stiff and cold, Jane cursed the activities of the day before, that had so exhausted her. Her thoughts were totally on her work, on not breaking her good record for punctuality, on not annoying Miss Gleaning, who already considered her rather too independent in her bearing. With effort and concentration and the abundant energy that made both possible, Jane managed to arrive at the West Kensington only a little later than Miss Gleaning and ahead of one of her contemporary colleagues.

The work began that morning with a positive explosion. A wall on a demolition site in the neighbourhood had fallen. Major casualties among the workmen were being admitted, minor ones among the passers-by, struck glancing blows by falling stones and timber and iron scaffolding, were lined up outside the department waiting for investigation of possible fractures before being treated. Until noon Jane was at full stretch. After that the pace slackened, but there was a back-log of patients from the wards booked for investigations of various kinds, besides the usual morning crop from casualty and from general practitioners of sprained joints and supped spinal discs.

It was nearly two o'clock before Miss Gleaning told Jane to go off for lunch. She went to the changing cubicle for her bag and as she took her powder compact from it to attend to her face she saw Sheila's film.

“Damn Sheila!” she thought. “I've still got her on my back.”

She tore up to the ward. Sister had just come back from her lunch. She looked disapprovingly at Jane.

“Miss Burgess was rather upset you didn't come up to say goodbye to her,” she said severely.

Jane flapped her hands.

“Don't say she's
gone
!”

“Of course she's gone. You knew she was going this morning.”

Yes, she had known; it would be stupid to pretend she hadn't.

“We were absolutely gummed up in the department,” she said, shaking her head to clear it, for she felt stupid, almost dizzy from exhaustion and lack of food, having had no real breakfast and no dinner after the party, either. “We had a whole heap of query fractures from a big accident.”

Sister nodded. Surgical work was outside her province and her interest but she knew the Radiography Department was under-staffed and often pushed to the limit.

“Never mind,” she said. “Miss Burgess had no right to expect more of you than you did. But these mental cases are so demanding. She asked me to thank you. She had the grace to do that.”

“Have you got her address in Reading?” Jane asked. She would have to send on the film.

“No. She wouldn't give it to me. I think you posted her letter for her, didn't you, Miss Wheelan? If I'd handled it myself I'd have copied down the address.”

And probably steamed open the envelope and read the contents, Jane thought. Sister in Alexandra would not be above any unorthodox means of helping her patients.

“I only remember it was in Reading,” Jane said. So she could not send on the film. She would have to keep it until Sheila wrote to her. If she ever did write.

She turned away. The film was in the top pocket of her white coat. After she had had her lunch she went back to the department and put the spool in a little-used drawer below a cabinet of records. It would be safe there until she wanted it again, she knew.

The afternoon work was light in the Radiography Department. Following the morning of exceptionally hard work the girls were able to relax a little, sort films more carefully, even discuss cases and the clearness or otherwise of the pictures they had taken.

But the easier atmosphere made Jane's exhaustion and anxiety only more apparent to her. Her head felt stuffed with cotton wool in place of brains, her legs and feet ached, her mouth was dry, her throat sore. Probably a germ picked up at that beastly party, she thought, savagely. Never again. Be a bit more choosey when you meet a man for the first time, even if he does have an attractive face and an easy manner.

As the afternoon wore on Miss Gleaning noticed her chief assistant's pale face and listless manner, but she said nothing. Girls were only too prone to fall sick at the slightest suggestion of illness and anyway a periodic falling-off of energy was natural, not that Jane Wheelan usually displayed this symptom. All the same she was a good girl and did work hard and regularly, so Miss Gleaning was inclined to be indulgent for once.

“Jane,” she said. “Just run up to the theatre with these films for Mr Beech-Thomas. They're old ones he wanted me to look out for him. The patient didn't attend for two years after his operation. Letters sent to him returned, address unknown. Now he's appeared again, a very sick man. His own fault, chiefly. They've taken him in as an emergency and he'll be down here tomorrow. In the meantime Mr Beech-Thomas wants all his notes and films. Here you are. He's operating, I think, but you can leave them in Theatre Sister's room.”

“Yes, Miss Gleaning.”

Jane went on her errand, walking slowly because that was the best she could do. Outside the operating theatres she met Timothy Long, leaving.

“Hullo,” he said. “Want someone in there?”

“Mr Beech-Thomas.”

“Left five minutes ago. Short list for him today. Through by four.”

“We were slack this afternoon, too. But this morning—Funny how it happens like that.”

“In waves? Yes. Is it urgent?”

“Is what urgent?”

“The old man?”

“I don't know. He wants to see these notes and films, Miss Gleaning said.”

Tim looked at the large envelope in Jane's hand.

“
That
chap! I should think he does want them. Bloody idiot went off and disappeared into the blue as soon as he left here. Hasn't seen a doctor since. Carried on as if he was cured. No follow-up treatment, no checks, nothing. Now he's dying, of course.”

“Cancer, was it?”

Tim nodded.

“Would it have made any difference if he had come back?”

“It might have. A couple of years more, perhaps more than that. A few seem to get right away with it. We don't know. Can't know unless people do as they're told and keep reporting to us, and get their follow-up treatment.”

“Some people find that impossible.”

“You're telling me. Little Miss Burgess, for one. Did you see her before she left?”

“No. I couldn't get away to the ward till after lunch-time.”

“Nor me. She was out of the place, baggage and all, before ten, Sister told me. Taxi to Paddington. She'll be home by now, but I bet we don't hear from her again, any more than this chap.”

He tapped the envelope under Jane's arm.

“I almost hope we don't,” Jane said. “Except—”

She was going to tell him about the film, which she would have to send on, somehow, but she checked herself. Forgetting it the way she had made her look such a fool. She did not want Tim to think her totally inefficient.

“Except what?” he asked, looking at her curiously.

“Nothing.”

All the time they were talking they had been moving along corridors and down stairs in the direction of the front hall of the hospital. Now it was in sight, just ahead, and they both stopped.

“I'll just see if he's still in the hospital,” Jane said. “If not I'll give this to Simpson.”

The head porter, she knew, would see that the package reached the surgeon somehow.

“O.K.,” Tim answered. “Be seeing you.”

He turned away, feeling a little disappointed that the conversation had come to an end. A nice girl, he decided, not wildly exciting, not madly beautiful, but someone you could talk to without wondering what she thought of you and whether you were making an ass of yourself.

Jane continued on her way to the front hall. Mr Beech-Thomas was ‘In', the consultants' board told her.

“He really is, do you think?” she asked Simpson.

“Mr Thomas never forgets to clock out,” the latter told her, reprovingly. “Some of the others, I have to do it for them. Not him.”

“Have you any idea where he'll be?” she asked, wearily.

“As a rule at this time he's in the theatre this day of the week.”

“I've been there. He's finished.”

“He don't take tea. Is it that emergency admission, miss? Name of Parker?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Then I should say Mr Thomas is having another look at him. Proper upset he was. And no wonder. Silly ba—”

Simpson swallowed the epithet. Jane smiled.

“I agree,” she said. “Which ward?”

“Victoria, miss.”

“Thank you very much.”

Simpson nodded genially and leaned forward through the window of his office.

“What can I do for you, sir?” he asked, politely.

Jane, who was moving away, looked round. There was no mistaking the plastered locks, the fuzzy beard, the dirty sweater, the greasy corduroy trousers and broken-down suede shoes. It was the so-called artist who had spoken to her after the party last night.

She was so astonished that she stopped and he recognised her.

“It was you I came to see,” he said, moving forward eagerly.

“Oh? Why?”

Feeling Simpson's astonished gaze burning into this recognition, Jane flushed angrily.

“Has she gone? Oh, say she hasn't gone!”

“If you mean Sheila Burgess, of course she's gone. Early this morning.”

“Did you see her? Was she all right when she left?”

“I didn't see her. I couldn't. We were too busy in the department. Sister could tell you if you go up to Alexandra Ward.”

“No,” he said. “Pointless. Too late. Oh,
God
!”

He turned and stumbling a little, went out through the big doors and down the steps, leaving Jane staring after him.

“Beatnik,” said the head porter, with pursed lips. “Screw loose, I should say. Friend of yours, miss?”

It was said politely, but Jane felt it as an insult.

“Certainly not. I met him, or rather he spoke to me for the first time, last night”

“You want to be careful,” Simpson advised. “The types that get around these days. Not fit to be on the loose, really. But you can't touch them or they have the law on you.”

Jane did not wait for the end of this homily. She hurried away to Victoria Ward and was relieved to find Mr Beech-Thomas in consultation with the senior physician, the radio-physicist, and the radiologist, at the bedside of the erring patient.

She delivered her envelope, received absent-minded thanks, and went back to the department. Miss Gleaning was ready to leave; there was no further work to be done.

Jane bought a newspaper on the way home. She did not look at it until she was sitting by the fire with her tea on the table at her side. But when she unfolded it and saw a short paragraph on the front page, she pushed the tray from her, laid her head on the table and wept.