Wyndham, John (2 page)

“Why ‘oooh’?” I inquired.

“That was such a brilliant one then—it made the whole room
look green. What a pity you couldn’t see it.”

“Isn’t it?’ I agreed. “Now do go away, there’s a good girl.”
I tried listening to the radio, but it was making the same “ooohs” and “aaahs,”
helped out by gentlemanly tones which blathered about this “magnificent
spectacle” and “unique phenomenon” until I began to feel that there was a parry
for all the world going on, with me as the only person not invited.

I didn’t have any choice of entertainment, for the hospital
radio system gave only one program, take it or leave it. After a bit I gathered
that the show had begun to wane. The announcer advised everyone who had not yet
seen it to hurry up and do so, or regret all his life that he had missed it.

The general idea seemed to be to convince me that I was
passing up the very thing I was born for. In the end I got sick of it and
switched off. The last thing I heard was that the display was diminishing fast
now and that we’d probably be out of the debris area in a few hours.

There could be no doubt in my mind that all this had taken
place the previous evening—for one thing, I should have been a great deal
hungrier even than I was had it been longer ago. Very well, what was this,
then? Had the whole hospital, the whole city made such a night of it that
they’d not pulled round yet?

About which point I was interrupted as the chorus of clocks,
near and far, started announcing nine.

For the third time I played hell with the bell. As I lay
waiting I could hear a sort of murmurousness beyond the door. It seemed
composed of whimperings, slitherings, and shufflings, punctuated occasionally
by a raised voice in the distance.

But still no one came to my room.

By this time I was slipping back once more. The nasty,
childish fancies were on me again. I found myself waiting for the unseeable
door to open and horrible things to come padding in—in fact, I wasn’t perfectly
sure that somebody or something wasn’t in already, and stealthily prowling
round the room. ...

Not that I’m given to that kind of thing really. It was
those damned bandages over my eyes, the medley of voices that had shouted back
at me down the corridor. But I certainly was getting the willies—and once you
get ‘em, they grow. Already they were past the stage where you can shoo them
off by whistling or singing at yourself.

It came at last to the straight question: was I more scared
of endangering my sight by taking off the bandages or of staying in the dark
with the willies growing every minute?

If it had been a day or two earlier, I don’t know what I’d
have done—very likely the same in the end—but this day I could at least tell
myself:

“Well, hang it, there can’t be a lot of harm if I use common
sense. After all, the bandages are due to come off today. I’ll risk it.”

There’s one thing I put to my credit. I was not far enough
gone to tear them off wildly. I had the sense and the self-control to get out
of bed and pull the shade down before I started on the safety pins.

Once I had the coverings off, and had found out that I could
see in the dimness, I felt a relief that I’d never known before. Nevertheless,
the first thing I did after assuring myself that there were indeed no
malicious persons or things lurking under the bed or elsewhere was to slip a
chair back under the door handle. I could and did begin to get a better grip on
myself then. I made myself take a full hour gradually getting used to full
daylight. At the end of it I knew that thanks to swift first aid, followed by
good doctoring, my eyes were as good as ever.

But still no one came.

On the lower shelf of the bedside table I discovered a pair
of dark glasses thoughtfully put ready against my need of them. Cautiously I
put them on before I went right close to the window. The lower pan of it was
not made to open, so that the view was restricted. Squinting down and sideways,
I could see one or two people who appeared to be wandering in an odd, kind of
aimless way farther up the street. But what struck me most, and at once, was
the sharpness, the clear definition of everything—even the distant housetops
view across the opposite roofs. And then I noticed that no chimney, large or
small, was smoking. ...

I found my clothes hung tidily in a cupboard. I began to
feel more normal once I had them on. There were some cigarettes still in the
case. I lit one and began to get into the state of mind where, though
everything was still undeniably queer, I could no longer understand why I had
been quite so near panic.

It is not easy to think oneself back to the outlook of those
days. We have to he more self-reliant now. But then there was so much routine,
things were so interlinked. Each one of us so steadily did his little part in
the right place that it was easy to mistake habit and custom for the natural
law—and all the more disturbing, therefore, when the routine was in any way
upset.

When almost half a lifetime has been spent in one conception
of order, reorientation is no five-minute business. Looking back at the shape
of things then, the amount we did not know and did not care to know about our
daily lives is not only astonishing but somehow a bit shocking. I knew
practically nothing, for instance, of such ordinary things as how my food
reached me, where the fresh water came from, bow the clothes I wore were woven
and made, how the drainage of cities kept them healthy. Our life had become a
complexity of specialists, all attending to their own jobs with more or less
efficiency and expecting others to do the same. That made it incredible to me,
therefore, that complete disorganization could have overtaken the hospital.
Somebody somewhere, I was sure, must have it in hand— unfortunately it was a
somebody who had forgotten all about Room 48.

Nevertheless, when I did go to the door again and peer into
the corridor I was forced to realize that, whatever bad happened, it was
affecting a great deal more than the single inhabitant of Room 48.

Just then there was no one in sight, though in the distance
I could hear a pervasive murmur of voices. There was a sound of shuffling
footsteps, too, and occasionally a louder voice echoing hollowly in the
corridors, but nothing like the din I had shut out before. This time I did not
shout. I stepped out cautiously—why cautiously? I don’t know. There was just
something that induced it.

It was difficult in that reverberating building to tell
where the sounds were coming from, but one way the passage finished at an
obscured French window, with the shadow of a balcony rail upon it, so I went
the other. Rounding a corner, I found myself out of the private-room wing and
on a broader corridor.

At the far end of the wide corridor were the doors of a
ward. The panels were frosted save for ovals of clear glass at face level,

I opened the door. It was pretty dark in there. The curtains
had evidently been drawn after the previous night’s display was over—and they
were still drawn.

“Sister?” I inquired.

“She ain’t ‘ere,” a man’s voice said. “What’s more,” it went on,

“she ain’t been ‘ere’ for ruddy hours, neither. Can’t you
pull them ruddy curtains, mate, and let’s ‘ave some flippin’ light? Don’t know
what’s come over the bloody place this morning.”

“Okay,” I agreed.

Even if the whole place were disorganized, it didn’t seem to
be any good reason why the unfortunate patients should have to lie in the dark.

I pulled back the curtains on the nearest window and let in
a shaft of bright sunlight. It was a surgical ward with about twenty patients,
all bedridden. Leg injuries mostly; several amputations, by the look of it.

“Stop foolin’ about with ‘em, mate, and pull ‘em back,” said
the same voice.

I turned and looked at the man who spoke. He was a dark,
burly fellow with a weather-beaten skin. He was sitting up in bed, facing
directly at me—and at the light. His eyes seemed to be gazing into my own; so
did his neighbor’s, and the next man’s.

For a few moments I stared back at them. It took that long
to register. Then: “I—they—they seem to be stuck,” I said. “I’ll find someone
to see to them.”

And with that I fled from the ward.

I was shaky again, and I could have done with a stiff drink.
The thing was beginning to sink in. But I found it difficult to believe that
all the men in that ward could be blind, and yet...

The elevator wasn’t working, so I started down the stairs.
On the next floor I pulled myself together and plucked up the courage to look
into another ward. The beds there were all disarranged. At first I thought the
place was empty, but it wasn’t—not quite. Two men in nightclothes lay on the
floor. One was soaked in blood from an unhealed incision, the other looked as
if some kind of congestion had seized him
.
They were both quite dead.
The rest had gone.

Back on the stairs once more, I realized that most of the
background voices I had been hearing all the time were coming up from below,
and that they were louder and closer now. I hesitated a moment, but there
seemed to be nothing for it but to go on making my way down.

On the next turn I nearly tripped over a man who lay across
my way in the shadow. At the bottom of the flight lay somebody who actually had
tripped over him—and cracked his head on the stone steps as he landed.

At last I reached the final turn where I could stand and
look down into the main hail. Seemingly everyone in the place who was able to
move must have made instinctively for that spot, either with the idea of
finding help or of getting outside. Maybe some of them had got out. One of the
main entrance doors was wide open, but most of them couldn’t find it. There was
a tight-packed mob of men and women, nearly all of them in their hospital
nightclothes, milling slowly and helplessly around. The motion pressed those on
the outskirts cruelly against marble corners or ornamental projections. Some of
them were crushed breathlessly against the walls. Now and then one would trip.
If the press of bodies allowed him to fall, there was little chance that it
would let him come up again.

The place looked—well, maybe you’ll have seen some of Dore’s
pictures of sinners in hell. But Dore couldn’t include the sounds: the sobbing,
the murmurous moaning, and occasionally a forlorn cry.

A minute or two of it was all I could stand. I fled back up
the stairs.

There was the feeling that I ought to do something about it.
Lead them out into the street, perhaps, and at least put an end to that
dreadful slow milling. But a glance had been enough to show that I could not
hope to make my way to the door to guide them there. Besides, if I were to, if
I did get them outside—what then?

I sat down on a step for a while to get over it, with my
head in my hands and that awful conglomerate sound in my ears all the time.
Then I searched for, and found, another staircase. It was a narrow service
flight which led me out by a back way into the yard.

Maybe I’m not telling this part too well. The whole thing
was so unexpected and shocking that for a time I deliberately tried not to
remember the details. Just then I was feeling much as though it were a
nightmare from which I was desperately but vainly seeking the relief of waking
myself. As I stepped out into the yard I still half refused to believe what I
had seen.

But one thing I was perfectly certain about. Reality or
nightmare, I needed a drink as I had seldom needed one before.

There was nobody in sight in the little side street outside
the yard gates, but almost opposite stood a pub. I can recall its name now—the
Alamein Arms. There was a board bearing a reputed likeness of Viscount
Montgomery hanging from an iron bracket, and below it one of the doors stood open.

I made straight for it.

Stepping into the public bar gave me for the moment a
comforting sense of normality. It was prosaically and familiarly like dozens
of others.

But although there was no one in that part, there was certainly
something going on in the saloon bar, round the corner.

I heard heavy breathing. A cork left its bottle with a pop.
A pause. Then a voice remarked:

“Gin, blast it! T’hell with gin!”

There followed a shattering crash. The voice gave a sozzled chuckle.

“Thash th’mirror. Wash good of mirrors anyway?”

Another cork popped.

“S’darnned gin again,” complained the voice, offended.

“T’hell
with gin.”

This time the bottle hit something soft, thudded to the
floor, and lay there gurgling away its contents.

“Hey!” I called. “I want a drink.” There was a silence.
Then:

“Who’re you?” the voice inquired cautiously.

“I’m from the hospital,” I said. “I want a drink.” “Don’
‘member y’r voice. Can you see?”

“Yes,” I told him.

“Well, then, for God’s sake get over the bar, Doc, and find
me a bottle of whisky.”

“I’m doctor enough for that,” I said

I climbed across and went round the corner. A large-bellied,
red-faced man with a graying walrus mustache stood there clad only in trousers
and a collarless shirt. He was pretty drunk. He seemed undecided whether to
open the bottle he held in his band or to use it as a weapon.

“‘F you’re not a doctor, what are you?” he demanded suspiciously.

“I was a patient—but I need a drink as much as any doctor,”
I said. “That’s gin again you’ve got there,” I added.

“Oh, is it! Damned gin,” he said, and slung it away. It went
through the window with a lively crash.

“Give me that corkscrew,” I told him.

I took down a bottle of whisky from the shelf, opened it,
and handed it to him with a glass. For myself I chose a stiff brandy with very
little soda, and then another. After that my hand wasn’t shaking so much.