"Keep an eye?"
"Watch you, make sure you do the right things." He rubbed his sweating
palms on his trousers. "If they don't believe you're telling the truth
about yourself, they will assume you really
are
crazy."
She gave a sober nod. "I thought so. Even before you warned me, I had
decided not to tell other people than you about Llanraw."
"So you must wait a little longer. When it's definite that you can behave
as people here do, you will be allowed to go away from Chent and be on
your own. Don't worry -- I'll help you every way I can."
" Must I be on my own?"
"Oh, you'll have friends, and -- "
"Never mind." She jumped off the table. "You haven't shown me what there
is up the stairs in this house."
With grave interest she surveyed the two bedrooms, one sparsely furnished
for guests. But it was the bathroom which made her clap her hands in delight
and cry out.
"Oh! You have one here!"
"A bathroom? Of course I do," Paul agreed, puzzled.
"Can I?" Eagerly she was leaning forward to touch the taps. "I have not
felt truly clean since I came to the hospital. There is always a -- a
stink. The bath they let me use is swilled with disinfectant. Dis . . ."
"Yes, you pronounced it right."
-- Hmmm . . .
He tugged open the bathroom cabinet and produced some of the toilet
luxuries Iris had left behind. Drawing the stopper on a bottle of
bath-oil, he held it out.
"Is that better?"
"Mmmm!" Her eyes shone.
"Go ahead then. Scrub all you like. Put some of this in the water."
He turned on the taps as he spoke, waiting for it to warm up with his
hand in the flow. "And -- how do you feel about drinking in Llanraw?"
"Drinking?" she echoed in a puzzled voice.
"Alcohol. Ah . . ." He hesitated. Naturally, liquor was forbidden to
the inmates at Chent. "Do you understand beer, wine? Something made from
fruit or grain that makes you feel cheerful?"
"Oh yes! We make it from grapes."
"Wine, that's what we call it. I have a little sherry downstairs;
I'll bring you a glass of it."
He was about to go out when she called after him, "Paul!" Turning,
he saw that brilliant smile again.
"Paul, you are very kind to me. Thank you."
-- Everybody ought to be. That's why I feel embarrassed.
She had taken off her dress and stockings when he came back with the
sherry, but since she had not closed the door of the bathroom he had
no warning. He was a little startled at the matter-of-factness of her
attitude, and firmly drew the door to as he left her.
-- Though since on the first occasion we met she was in the nude,
I suppose . . .
He wandered back downstairs, collected his own drink, and went into
the kitchen to consider the possibility of a meal. It would be little
more than a snack; since Iris left, he had begrudged the time spent in
preparing elaborate meals for himself, and made do most of the time on
the hospital lunch and something fried up in the evening.
However, Urchin could hardly object to a cheese salad, and there was a
brown loaf only a day old. Humming, happier than at any time since he
secured his job at Chent, he set about preparing the food.
-- I love the way little things delight her. To think that giving
someone a bath in reasonable privacy, with a drop of scent instead of
disinfectant, could create such
joy
! It's like taking out a kid from
an orphanage, showing her a dream come true.
He had been drinking quite a lot since he was on his own -- more than
his medical training told him was advisable, but it did help him to
face the situation without panic -- and when he came to look for wine
to accompany the food he found he had drunk the last bottle. However,
there was cold beer. He shrugged.
-- If she doesn't like it, there's water.
He surveyed his handiwork with approval: a mound of cheese framed by
green lettuce, red tomatoes, pale cucumber, yellow chopped apple and
brown dried fruit. With bread, and perhaps an orange each for dessert,
that would be plenty.
He went back into the living-room to fetch himself another glass of sherry.
From behind, as he was pouring it, he heard her voice.
"Paul?"
He raised his head, and almost dropped the bottle he was holding.
She stood with one foot on the landing, one foot on the first tread of
the stairs, face averted to run her nose with sensual approval along her
arm. She was pinkly flushed from the heat of the bath, and completely
naked.
"Urchin, for goodness' sake! Go and put your clothes on!"
She let her arm fall and stared at him with hurt bewilderment. After a
pause she said, "But don't you like to look at me?"
"Yes! Yes, God damn it, you're a beautiful girl. But -- "
"I don't understand people here," she sighed. "Even when it's warm,
always in clothes, and always talking about clothes, too -- never about
how their bodies look, or about how to make their muscles firm . . . But,
Paul, that stuff you put in the bath makes me so delicious! I want you
to smell, first."
She came leaping down the stairs three at a time, holding out her hands
towards him. Just before she arrived within arm's reach of his petrified
body, she stopped dead, her face falling.
"Paul, this is . . . not right?"
"I -- " His voice was thick, and refused to form words properly. "Urchin,
I think you're sweet and charming and lovely and everything. But I'm your
doctor, I'm supposed to be looking after you, and so I'm not allowed to
. . . to . . ."
She put her hands on her hips and jutted her small breasts forward
aggressively. "It is to look after a woman, to stay away from her, not
touch, not kiss? Paul, I have never in my life since I was thirteen years
old been without a man to want to touch me for so long as I have now! It
will make me really crazy. It is like having a fire in the tummy. I
thought today, thank goodness, finally, this is the punishment for mad
people in your world and he is satisfied I am not crazy and do not have
to be punished any longer, and -- "
She raised both fists to shoulder level, closing her small fingers on
the air as though she would. strangle it.
"And if it does not make me crazy, now I think it will make me dead!"
She buried her face convulsively in both hands and began to cry.
From outside there came the sound of a slowing car. Panic gripped him.
He darted to the nearest window, which stood open for the warmth of
the evening, and dragged the curtains across it. It was still light
outside. The next curtain, and the next, and he was screened from
passers-by. Panting, he turned back to Urchin. The car's engine stopped
and its door slammed.
-- By the skin of my teeth. If one of the neighbours had looked in and
seen her . . .
Awkwardly he tried to calm her, but she flinched away; when he made
another attempt, she chopped at his arm viciously with the side of her
hand, making him cry out for the shock. Curling her lip, she looked as
though she might spit at him.
-- Oh my God. What sort of trap have I dug for myself now?
There was a rap on the door. He froze, heart flailing at his ribs.
His hands shot out and clamped on Urchin's shoulders.
"Urchin, for pity's sake! If they find you here like this with me,
they'll send me away and you'll never see me again. They'll lock you up
in Chent for the rest of your life!"
She raised lustreless eyes to him. "It can't be true," she said sullenly.
"Human people could not live in that way."
There was another bang on the door, louder. He shook her back and forth.
"I swear it! In a little while, Urchin, when they let you go away from
Chent and you're not my patient any more, perhaps then -- but now it
would ruin me. Ptease, please!"
She freed herself with a ducking twist and began to plod towards the
stairs, head down, shoulders slumped. Paul put his hand to his forehead
and found it slippery with perspiration.
-- Move, woman, don't dawdle like that!
Behind him there was the rustling sound of a curtain being thrust aside.
A voice said through the open window, "Paul! Did you get the clock I -- ?
Oooh! I say! Hello, Iris! It is warm tonight, isn't -- ? Oooh- hoooh!
You're not Iris! Paul, you randy old so-and-so, such goings-on never did
expect!"
Chortling at the window, leering and giggling, the flushed round face
of Maurice Dawkins in the grip of his manic phase.
*37*
When Paul regained the power to move, his first impulse was to turn his
head towards the stairs. Urchin had vanished.
-- Perhaps she was never here at all. Perhaps it's all a dream. I've been
walking about in the sun getting delusions from the heat and the strain.
"Aren't you going to invite me in to join your little party?"
Maurice demanded.
-- Everything go smash, fly apart, house fall down, earth open and
swallow me . . .
"Paul, I didn't expect this kind of welcome from an old friend! Well,
I'll come in anyway."
Maurice disengaged the window-stay and pulled the casement wide. With
much huffing he put first one fat, wobbling leg and then the other across
the sill.
His hair was all over the place, he couldn't have shaved for three
days, his shoes were filthy and the zip of his trousers was open an
inch and a half. Paul noted these facts mechanically, camera-fashion,
while struggling to order his raging mind.
-- Let him talk for a bit, calm him, and get rid of him? Won't work.
If he's in this state he'll be out of reach of normal persuasion. How
do I get drugs down him? There are packets and bottles and jars of
pills here thanks to my own need for them, but I can't expect to make
him swallow them. Have to get him drunk. Get him to Chent -- no, for
heaven's sake, must keep him away at all costs. He belongs in a hospital
but now he has more to tell than simply that I once had a breakdown,
now he can say I was seen with a female patient naked in my home and . . .
The world slithered, tilted, spun awry. Face sweating so much it gleamed
as if it had been greased, Maurice advanced on him and clapped him on the
arm. "It's wonderful to see you again, Paul," he babbled. "I've kept
meaning and meaning to look you up, thank you for all the help you've
been to me when I was brought down in the past, but I didn't know where
to find you until I ran into Iris at Meg and Bertie's the other day and
I heard you'd had some sort of bust-up and she was staying with them for
the time being so I thought really I ought to come and sympathise with
you a bit. Hello, hello, and who's your lady friend -- ah? It ain't the
one I saw yer with at 'Ampstead!"
Carolling, he lurched forward in a grotesque parody of a dance figure,
and the words blended into a disgusting chuckle. Withdrawing, trying not
to appear to retreat, Paul saw from the corner of his eye that Urchin
had reappeared on the stairs. She had apparently slipped on her dress
and sandals only, without taking the time to bother about stockings.
"While the cat's away the mice will play, dance over my lady gay,"
Maurice continued, approximating the tune of "London Bridge Is Falling
Down." "I'm surprised at you, being a doctor, but of course doctors are
as human as anybody, aren't they?" He winked and gave Paul a hearty nudge
in the ribs. "It was a great comfort to me to know that -- did I ever
tell you? It meant I was able to put up with my bad phases much better,
Of course, I feel on top of the world at the moment, and all the more
so for seeing you again after all this time, but -- " He lost the thread
of his declamation; his wet lips flapped for a couple of seconds before
he concluded, "Well, aren't you going to introduce me?"
"Urchin, this is Maurice," Paul mumbled. "A friend of mine from London.
Maurice, Urchin."
"One crazy-type name!" Maurice exclaimed. "Caviar is the roe of the
searchin' Urchin -- hmmm . . . Lurching? Researching! Caviar is the
roe of researching virgins -- not true, that, of course, because as
I understand it any sturgeon which goes into the caviar business has
already lost her cherry stone -- and all. I keep meaning to lose a stone,
too." He stuck his thumb in the waistband of his trousers and gave his
pot-belly a rueful look.
"You . . . uh . . you must be thirsty after your drive," Paul ventured.
"How about a drink?"
"Yes, I rented a car from some funny firm or other in an impossible
suburb this morning and got up here in what would have been good time
except for a damned fool of a driver in a Mini who got in the way while
I was overtaking -- well, it's all insured, I suppose, but I'm glad I
got here before dark because I don't suppose either of the headlights is
much good now, one broken and the other sighted on Mars or Jupiter or
some planet or other. I thought I'd signal to them later on, send them
some Morse code saying hello and good wishes from Maurice but since the
collision the car sort of swings when I'm putting the brakes on and I'd
probably miss them by miles. Drink! Yes, we ought to celebrate. Long
long time no see. Paul, I love you, did I ever tell you that?"