Rotten Apples (12 page)

Risking another look downwards in search of where to go next, she thought she saw the shadow of a gap in the brick-work about nine inches below her right foot, but she also saw the street and several upturned faces. Dizziness flooded her mind and she pushed her face into the brickwork in an effort to keep the sick faintness at bay. The roughness of the bricks rasping the singed skin of her face helped to control the vertigo and she arched and stretched her right foot until it found the crack in the bricks.

Carefully testing her weight, she took one hand off the window frame and instantly gripped the edge of the wider concrete sill. She breathed deeply and forced herself to move the other hand. The toehold was not deep enough to take her whole weight and she knew that she must move on quickly.

Her muscles began to quiver and she could not force herself to move either hands or feet. Terrified that she would fall, she hung spreadeagled against the wall, feeling the skin on her burned hands break agonisingly.

‘Hang on, love,' said a voice from below her. ‘You're doing okay. We've called the Fire Brigade. They won't be long. Hang on. The fire's above you. It can't come down and get you. If you fall we'll catch you. It's not far.'

Another male voice, more authoritative, said: ‘You're not going to fall. Move your left hand down, about four inches. There's a gap in the mortar that'll be a great handhold. You're fine. The shaking will stop as soon as you move. Take your left hand off. Come on. You can do it.'

Feeling as though she were pulling against some tremendous suction, Willow did as she was told, scrabbling clumsily for the promised handhold.

‘Aah!'

‘That's right. Turn your fingers so that they fill the whole gap. Good. Now move your right foot. Just about eighteen inches below the level of your foothold is the top of another window. It's narrow, but it'll serve you so long as you don't let go of your handhold. Come on. You can do it. It's much safer than staying where you are. Come on.'

In the distance Willow could hear the consoling, exciting, threatening sound of sirens. There were several, not quite synchronised with each other.

I'm going to make it after all, she thought, relaxing just enough to move her right foot as she had been instructed. I'm not going to die.

It was not until a tough-feeling young fireman in a scratchy blue uniform pulled her into the safety of the cradle at the top of a crane that she remembered wanting to be dead. He put his arm around her shoulders, chuntering to her as his mates wound them down to the ground.

‘You'll be fine, love. You did great. Don't worry now. We've called an ambulance. You'll be fine. All's well. See? They've got the pumps going.'

There was a slight bump and he guided her out on to the pavement. There was the sound of clapping and a hoarse cheer. Willow turned, every muscle in her body shaking even more than when she was pinned in terror against the excoriating brick wall. Her head felt as though it were floating a few inches above her neck and her throat was sore. She could hardly see.

‘Thank you,' she muttered, frowning at the bunch of spectators, who were being urged away from her and from the building by an older fireman. A row of four gleaming, panting, quivering, scarlet and silver engines was ranged along the pavement and there seemed to be dozens of running, helmeted men, pulling out hoses, fetching ladders. One yelled out: ‘We've got a real burner here.'

Then the water started, hooshing out of the hoses, filling their flatness out into great, fat worms. Willow moved as water drops ricocheted off the building into her hair and she tripped over a loose paving stone.

The young fireman steadied her and urged her towards the first-aid kit in his particular engine.

‘Wait a minute,' she said, searching the faces of the growing crowd.

‘There's a man there who was talking me down. A climber, I think. I must—'

‘Anyone else in the building, love?' called an urgent voice.

‘I don't know,' said Willow. ‘Not on my floor. But I don't know about the others.'

‘We can't find any, Matt,' shouted a voice from inside the building.

Willow's officer led her away to put a temporary dressing on her hands. Then the ambulance came. She tried to explain that she had to find the man who had guided her down the building, but the paramedics overrode her protests and whisked her away. With tears of pain and frustration leaking out of her sore eyes, Willow asked the green-overalled woman where she was being taken.

‘Dowting's. Just across the river. You'll be there in no time and they'll give you something for the pain. It won't be long now, love. I promise. Hang on.'

Willow closed her eyes.

FIVE HOURS LATER she was lying, washed, bandaged and dressed, in a torn but clean hospital nightgown in a ward full of interested middleaged women. Her burns were not severe, she had been told. She was very lucky. Yellow ointment had been smeared over her hands, and then they had been swathed in light, unconstricting gauze bandages. Her hair had been singed in front, as had her eyebrows, presumably by the burst of flames that had surged towards her as she forced the second door to close. But there was no serious damage. The sensation of peeling and burning on her face had been merely heat. The skin was intact, except for a couple of places where the brickwork had scraped it. The damage was not much worse than a bad day's sunbathing on the beach would have caused.

Looking down at her bandaged hands, Willow doubted the doctor's reassurances. The memory of the stretched and distorted skin on the first three fingers of her right hand was terrifying, worse even than the actual pain, but eventually the pills she had been given began to deaden her feelings.

The sharp pain in her hands and the rasping ache in her throat, nose and eyes were still there, but they seemed less immediate and her mind was soothed, too. Her thoughts slowed into easy lethargy.

Someone else was responsible. She could let go for the moment.

SHE WOKE THE NEXT MORNING, feeling much less easy, choking and coughing, and feeling sick. Trying to find a tissue to spit into before she was properly awake, she banged her hand on the edge of the wheeled table at her side and cried out sharply. Holding the hand against her chest, still choking, she waited for the throbbing pain to stop.

She could not see properly and her eyes hurt too. Terrified that they might have been permanently damaged by the fire, it took Willow a while to remember that she had not taken out her contact lenses when she reached the hospital. There was nothing on her bedside table to put the lenses in and so she screwed up her eyes to try to ease the burning sensation, and decided to put up with it until she could think of something sensible to do with the lenses.

‘Here, love, take this,' said a small, grey-haired woman at her side, offering her a bundle of paper handkerchieves. Willow nodded and accepted them, spitting gouts of blackened phlegm into them.

‘Sorry,' she muttered when the spasm was over. ‘Disgusting!'

‘Don't you fret. You've had a bad time. You really have. You were having a terrible nightmare just now.'

Willow tried to haul herself up the bed, leaning on her wrists and wincing.

‘Hold on,' said her rescuer. ‘Bet, come over here and help.'

‘Coming, Lil,' said a taller, plump woman from a bed near the door. She pulled an orange quilted dressing gown over her blue nightdress and hurried over. Her blue eyes were alight with interest and concern. She helped her friend push Willow up against the banked pillows behind her back.

‘Aren't there any nurses?' she asked painfully, when, panting, they stood back.

‘Oh, yes, but they're doing the changeover at the moment. You know, night staff to day. They have to talk about us, so they don't have time to do anything for a bit. But they'll be round soon. They're good girls, you know,' said the woman called Bet.

Willow smiled at them both. ‘What are you in for?' she asked, but before they could answer she was coughing again.

Bet bustled off in her quilted dressing gown and fluffy slippers and poured Willow a glass of water, saying, ‘Go on, Lil. Get her some more hankies. Can't you see she needs them?'

Willow, astonished by their kindness, coughed and spluttered, drank the water, and began to breathe normally again. Bet assured her that the trolley with early tea would be round soon and asked if she could get anything in the meantime. Willow, tired out by the effort of coughing up the smoke and dust, shook her head.

‘D'you know which floor we're on?' she asked suddenly. The two women turned, beaming.

‘Ninth,' they said in unison, obviously glad to be able to help.

Thinking of Tom, lying just one floor above her, made Willow swing her legs out from under the white cellular blanket.

‘Oh, I don't think you ought to get up,' said Bet, ‘not for a bit. Wait till the nurse's seen you.'

‘Don't be silly, Bet,' said Lil. ‘She'll need the toilet AU that coughing! Think what it does to your bladder; and she probably hasn't been at all since they brought her in.'

‘We'd better help her, then. She shouldn't go on her own. She might pass out'

‘It's all right,' said Willow, smiling at them both and trying not to wince as the scorched skin of her face stretched. ‘It's my hands and my lungs that are the trouble, not my legs. I'll be fine.'

She walked gingerly out of the ward, and knowing that they were watching, held herself as straight as possible in spite of the shakiness of her legs. Having used the lavatory, as they expected, she turned out of the ward through the swing doors and called the lift.

It was not until she was walking into the Intensive Care Unit that she noticed the cold on her back and realised that the nightgown she had been put into the previous evening was gaping all down the back, secured by only one pair of tapes.

‘What are you doing?' called a nurse, hurrying round the desk half-way down the corridor. ‘Who are you?'

‘Tom Worth's wife,' she said, noticing how hoarse she sounded. She could not recognise the nurse but thought that was probably because she still could not see clearly. ‘I need to see him.'

‘So you are,' said the nurse, peering at her. ‘I'd not have recognised you like that. But you're hurt; burned, isn't it? You shouldn't be up here. Where've you come from? I'll take you back at once.'

‘Floor below. Don't know the ward. Please let me see him.'

‘Come along. I'll take you back.'

‘I must see Tom first'.

With a small, strong hand under Willow's right elbow, the nurse led her to Tom's room and let her stand at the foot of his bed for a moment His face was still the odd pale-beige colour that had worried her so much when she first saw him after the shooting, and he appeared not to have moved at all since then. At that moment Willow could not believe that he would ever look any different.

‘There's been no change,' said the nurse, stating the obvious, but she added with brisk kindness, ‘That's not bad news. He's holding his own. Come along now. We must get you back to bed.'

The Following Day Willow was told that her bed was needed for an emergency admission and that she would be allowed to leave after lunch. She went bearing a prescription for painkillers and a pink card to remind her of the date of her first outpatient appointment. The nurse who saw her off told her not to touch the dressing on her hands until she came to the hospital's burns clinic again after the weekend.

‘But if you are worried or have any bad pain, let us know at once. All right?'

‘All right,' said Willow, longing to get out of her filthy, stinking clothes and find her old spectacles, which would at least help her to see the world's sharp edges again. She took a taxi back to the house and let herself in.

It struck her belatedly that she ought to have telephoned from the hospital as soon as she came round the previous morning to let Mrs Rusham know what had happened and when she might be home. She was just rehearsing an explanatory apology when Mrs Rusham emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a teatowel. At the sight of her employer she smiled, apparently bearing no malice at all.

‘Mrs Rusham,' said Willow at once, determined to make amends, ‘I should have rung you yesterday. It was inconsiderate of me to disappear without a word like that. I am sorry.'

‘Please don't apologise. You could hardly help being taken to hospital with burns. I was very concerned for you when I read the newspapers yesterday morning, but once I had rung the hospital to enquire how you were, everything was fine.'

‘I'm glad,' said Willow, wondering for the first time what might lie behind Mrs Rusham's refusal to expect anything from anyone and to keep all her own feelings and needs so tightly controlled. Both characteristics had been so useful in the days when Willow led her secret double life that she had never even considered their oddity. Now, after they had shared a much more human anxiety over Tom, Willow did find her housekeeper's restraint curious, and she was even beginning to feel guilty for all the years of treating Mrs Rusham as though she were an unfailingly efficient robot.

‘I must get out of these revolting clothes and then make some telephone calls,' she said, putting her keys on to the pewter plate in the hall.

‘Do you need any help getting undressed?' asked Mrs Rusham. ‘Your hands look quite badly damaged.'

‘It's really just the bandages,' said Willow. ‘I'm sure I'll be able to manage.' She swayed suddenly and put out a hand to steady herself against the wall, adding, ‘But I think I might spend the rest of the day in bed. Could you bring my post and stuff up there in a minute or two?'

‘Certainly. A great many people have phoned and sent flowers. I'll bring them up so you can see them as they are and then I'll put them in vases. Would you like some in your bedroom?'