Psyche (39 page)

“You mean your family?”

Again there was a flicker in the blue eyes, but this time the nurse could not interpret it. “No. My friends.”

“I'm afraid not. You had no purse. No address.”

Thank God for that, anyway, Psyche said to herself. At least I haven't involved Bel in anything. But five weeks—she must be wild with anxiety.

“How did it happen?”

“You walked in front of a truck that had no lights. It was at night, just after ten o'clock, and it was raining.”

“Do you know where I was?”

The young nurse did know, and, with a quick glance at her watch, told her.

“But I don't live” Psyche began, and stopped abruptly. A long way from Bel's—she must have been walking as she usually did. No slightest memory of her pilgrimage to the cemetery returned to dispel this conviction.

“Where do you live?” the nurse asked gently.

“Do I have to live anywhere?” Psyche asked, and there was both confusion and a hint of desperation in her face.

The nurse bent to straighten the sheets and smooth out the pillow. “No,” she said, in a voice little more than a whisper, “there's no law that says you must. Do what you want. Tell the doctor that you can't remember, but be careful, he's not easy to fool.”

Mists that had parted were gathering again. It was difficult to see through them, to think through them. “Thank you” she murmured. “Thank you. I won't forget. I won't let him know that you—that you”

The nurse, a quick hand searching for the pulse in a blue-veined wrist, thought, she's asleep this time. I shouldn't have done it. I don't know whatever possessed me. But I'm glad, just the same. In the morning, after a normal sleep, she won't be so defenceless.

Pressing the bell for her relief, her rounded chin was both very stubborn and very young.

The night nurse came in with a rustle of starched skirts. Her starched manner was soundless. “No change?”

“No change.”

2

W
HEN
Psyche woke, early morning sunlight was tracing bars of gold on a pale green wall, and she knew, even before she looked around the small, bare room, that she was alone.

Her watch, the watch Joe had given her, lay on the table by the bed. Reaching for it, acutely conscious of her own weakness, she saw that it was not quite seven. Her eyes moving on to the telephone, she thought, they will all be asleep, but the extension in Bel's room will wake her, and this may be my only chance. Five weeks—I have lost five whole weeks out of my life. What have they been thinking all this time? That I ran away from them without even a good-bye? Would Bel think that of me?

To lift the receiver was a real effort, and when she had accomplished it, she cradled it on the pillow beside her head.

“Number please?”

She gave Bel's number, and waited, her heart beating so heavily she wondered if the operator on the hospital switchboard could hear it. For what seemed a long time she listened to the evenly spaced ringing of a bell that brought no response.

“The party does not answer.”

“Try it again, will you, please.” Bel—wake up! It's me. Psyche. You must wake up I

“Hello!” The man's voice, angry, thick with sleep, was so unexpected that for a moment Psyche could not reply.

“Hello, who is it? What do you want?”

“I want to speak to Bel. At once, please.”

“She don't live here no more.”

“Wait! Don't go! Where can I reach her?”

“I don't know, lady. She didn't leave no address.”

Slowly, automatically. Psyche replaced a receiver that now conducted nothing but the singing silence of an abruptly broken connection. She knew well enough what must have happened, if not in detail, at least in its rough outlines. The geraniums were gone for good this time. For a reason she might never know, Bel had been forced to move out, to fold her tents and disappear. As Bel might have put it herself, she had taken a powder, and heaven only knew where she might be, she and her girls. They would not be together, but scattered to the four winds.

It must have been something to do with one of the boys, Psyche thought dully. That would be the one avenue that Joe might not have been able to barricade. Joe would stand by Bel. In a way she would still be all right, but she would no longer be independent, and Bel, to be truly Bel, had to be her own mistress before she was anyone else's.

The door opened quietly, and the nurse, seeing that she was awake, came at once to her bedside. “Good morning. Miss Moran. How are you feeling?”

“Fine, thank you.” I have just lost all my friends. I own one set of clothing which may or may not be wearable, and one wrist-watch, and one name. I feel like the devil, thank you.

“I will call the doctor at once.”

This was not a nurse Psyche was aware of having seen before, and she remembered her obligation to the smiling young redhead of the previous evening. “Where am I?” she asked mechanically. “What happened?”

“Don't try to talk yet. The doctor doesn't want you to talk until he comes. Just lie quietly. You are doing very well.”

A heavy apathy settling on her, Psyche had no desire to do anything other than lie quietly. To stay where she was forever would be easy, so much easier than resuming a struggle that never seemed to lead anywhere, that finished up in one blind alley after another.

I just don't care any more about anything, she thought bitterly. I am doing very well.

The doctor, called from his bed, was shaved, dressed and ready to leave for the hospital in twenty minutes. He was a vain man, but his vanity did not reach to externals when he was in a hurry.

He left a message for his wife, who would in all probability sleep until noon, and drank a cup of coffee, standing, in the front hall. His glance roved over waxed oak panelling, polished Jacobean furniture, and an Aubusson carpet rich in subdued colour. Nora had extremely good taste. In some respects, he thought acidly, she had made him an excellent wife.

He put his empty cup down on a narrow refectory table, took his bag, hat, and gloves from the maid who had stood, holding these things, waiting to open the door for him, and went out to his car.

The door of his car was opened and shut by a chauffeur who, liking neither his employers nor the uncertainty of his hours, stayed with the job because he was unlikely to find another that paid him so well. Wooden-faced, he got in behind the wheel. Bought, that's what I am, he thought. Bought, just like this ruddy big limousine. The bastard. Never a “good morning” or a “good night”. Doesn't even call a guy by his name. Just orders, like he was the Almighty's right-hand man.

“Where to, sir?”

“The hospital.”

Some day I'll paste him one and teach him some manners, “Very good, sir.”

The doctor had first employed a chauffeur in order to make full use of hours otherwise, from his point of view, wasted. Sitting in the back of the big car, undisturbed by pedestrians, traffic lights, or other vehicles, he was able to explore neat mental files, and with the material thus conveniently at hand weigh and consider the manifold eccentricities of the human animal. This morning his thoughts ran in the groove that interested him above all others. Believing as he did that heredity was a stronger factor than environment in the formation of any given individual, and determined to prove this, he faced a challenge that he found coldly exhilarating. That he should have to produce not only tangible proof, but an enormous weight of it, in support of anything so obvious, at times irritated him profoundly: so much so, that he had even considered abandoning surgery entirely in favour of devoting all his energies to research. That he did not do this revealed an Achilles heel that he did his best to conceal. Contemptuous of other people, he was yet driven by a need to impress them in every way possible. Childless, he had no need of a large house, but he could not give it up. The constant parties given in that house bored him, but without them his possessions would have had no audience. His household staff was too large, but he added to it rather than cutting it down, and his chauffeur had become a sign of status without which he would have felt naked in the eyes of the multitude.

Arriving at the hospital, he got out of the car without a word, and, his long legs taking him quickly but without loss of dignity up a flight of broad steps, disappeared through doors manipulated for him by a doorman who touched his cap in silent respect.

Expressionless, the chauffeur watched him go. There was a coffee stand half a block from the wide avenue on which the hospital faced, but with no indication as to when his services would next be required, he knew that he would not dare go to it.

The doctor, when he reached Psyche's room, dismissed the nurse with a curt nod, and drew a chair up beside the bed of this.
one of the most interesting guinea pigs he had ever had the good fortune to run across.

“Do you remember me?” he asked.

Turning her head on the pillow. Psyche said, without enthusiasm, “I remember your eyes.”

“Do you know how you got here?”

Psyche remained silent.

Now that she was fully conscious he wanted her co-operation. His manner underwent a subtle but definite change, and his brilliant eyes, instead of probing, asked for her trust and confidence.

“You were struck by a large truck, and were brought here with concussion and a skull fracture. I am the doctor who operated on you, and I can assure you that you will suffer no future ill effects. Do you remember any of this?”

“No.”

“That is quite normal. Don't let it disturb you. Would you tell me what you last remember?”

“I went out for a walk.”

“At what time did you leave home that evening?”

The question was very casually put, but Psyche recognized it for a leading one.

“I went out after dinner. About seven,” she replied, and volunteered no further information.

He did not press her further. Diagnosing her defensive lassitude as a natural concomittant of her weakened condition, he decided it would be best to leave her alone for the time being. Later he would elicit a consecutive and willing recital of a story he already knew in part.

“Any headache or soreness at the back of the head?” “Not now.”

He nodded his satisfaction. “That is as it should be. The last dressings were removed a week ago. You will find that you have lost some of your hair. Fortunately it's underneath and won't show.”

“You think that matters?” Psyche asked flatly.

“It will. To you.”

He had found out all he wished to know at present. The crude
English she had used at times while delirious belonged to an earlier stage. To speak well was now natural to her; she had perception; and she gave evidence, both in manner and in facial expression, of a high degree of intelligence. She would be supremely useful to him.

Rising, he said, “I will leave you now. I will be in again tomorrow.”

He came in every day, and Psyche, either propped up in bed or sitting listlessly in a big chair by the window, accepted his visits with the same indifference she showed to everyone and everything with which she came in contact.

Any further protection of Bel rendered futile by Bel's disappearance, she told him, bit by bit, almost everything he wanted to know, without bothering to try and fathom his reasons for questions that often seemed haphazard, entirely pointless. She did not, however, tell him her name. To give him that would be to deliver herself into his hands completely, which she was not prepared to do. Guarding this, the one thing she truly possessed, she held it, an amulet, between herself and a powerful modern witchcraft.

Only twice, during the weeks she spent convalescing, was her indifference pierced. Once when she woke in the night to hear a ragged voice screaming broken words and phrases that trailed into silence with the swift, soft passing of a rubber-wheeled stretcher. Chilled through and through, she thought, “Did I perhaps sound like that?”

And again, when the young auburn-haired nurse came into her room with a bouquet of flowers.

“You've made a mistake,” Psyche stated, rather than asked.

The girl smiled, and shook her head. “No. No mistake. They're from me and some of the other nurses. Happy middle of July. We thought it terrible that you should be here so long and not have any flowers.”

“You shouldn't have—you're too kind.”

“Yes, we should. You're a very nice patient. We think you deserve them.”

Her smile heartbreaking, Psyche said, “Thank you so much.
Thank them all, and wish them a—happy middle of July from me.”

It was the doctor who informed her that she was ready to be discharged from the hospital, and at the same time presented her with a solution to the problem of where she was to go until such time as she would be strong enough to look for work.

“My wife has suggested that I bring you home with me for a few weeks,” he told her casually.

Frowning her incredulity. Psyche asked, “Why should she?”

Dr. Scarletti was, several generations back, of Italian origin, and his expression just then was that of a Venetian doge putting poison into the goblet of someone unwise enough to dispute his authority. “Because I guided her to the suggestion,” he replied softly.

Shivering a little, Psyche thought, “I do not envy his wife. I wonder what she is like.” Aloud she said, “Thank you. I'm afraid I am going to refuse your invitation.”

Taking out a cigarette, fitting it into a black holder, he said, “And I think you will change your mind.”

“I feel like a bird being hypnotized by a snake,” Psyche thought. “I wish he would look away?”

“Why should I?”

“Because with your help I think we may be able to find out who you are, and where you came from originally. That is, always presupposing that you came more or less directly from there to the shack where you were brought up.”