No Escape (4 page)

It was an uncomfortable moment for the two who watched her. Tim was disconcerted, Jane was sorry for him and indignant with Sheila. She said in rather a hard voice. “Aren't you going to thank him? He risked his own life, didn't he?”

Sheila opened her eyes; there was a flash of spite in them, covering the misery they held.

“He didn't have to, did he? I never asked him to.”

“Then why did you raise your arm when you saw me leaning over the parapet of the bridge? If you hadn't done that I wouldn't have recognised you as a human being in the water. I thought your cry for help was a seagull.”

She did not deny it. She said despairingly, all spite gone, “I was afraid.”

“Quite. You didn't want to drown. Very right and proper.”

“I wish now I had.”

“Why?”

Jane intervened. “I've asked her that, but she won't tell us.”

“Did you expect her to?”

Jane flushed at the icy note in his voice. Tim was exasperated. What did this girl from X-ray think she was doing taking on herself to question a would-be suicide? No, that wasn't fair. He didn't believe Sheila was that. But this other girl wasn't to know. Or was she?

“You're a friend of hers, aren't you? You recognised her in Out-Patients?”

“When I was taking an X-ray of her ribs. Yes.”

“You're—”

“Jane Wheelan.”

“I saw you yesterday.”

“I've been here over a year.”

“I've been here six months.”

They laughed. Sheila looked from one to the other, her own expression relaxing in the happier atmosphere.

“Now,” Tim said, turning back to the bed. “All buddies together, you see, Sheila? Listen. Your ribs are O.K. though Dr Milton, the radiologist, thinks they may be bruised. So we're going to fix you up with some more strapping to make you really comfortable.”

“Then I don't have to stay here?” she said, eagerly, lifting herself in the bed, then catching at her side and sinking back.

“Not at once, but soon,” he answered. “We're going to move you to a medical ward because this bed is needed for another emergency. A serious surgical one.”

“I'd rather go home. I must go home!”

“Why?” Jane asked again. “We can let them know. If you'll give me an address I'll see it gets through.”

“No. No! I don't want anyone to know I'm here. To know I didn't drown. No one—”

“But the newspapers have got it already,” Tim said, watching her closely. “They weren't allowed to bother you, but the hospital secretary gave them a bulletin. Probably he didn't give them your name. But they know you're here.”

“But I asked you!” Sheila cried, looking at Jane. “I begged you not to say—”

“Miss Gleaning had to have your name when I told her I knew you. For your papers, the records, the nurses. Sheila, please, please, let us help you.”

“No one can help me. No one. I wish I was dead. I wish they'd—”

She stopped her own mouth with both hands, staring at the others from terrified eyes.

“Look,” said Jane. “Here's Nurse with your strapping. I'll come and see you again later this evening in the other ward.”

Tim followed Jane into the corridor. Here they met Sister and told her their fears.

“What we need is her parents, if any,” Sister said. “From what I've seen of her she's in trouble of some kind. Not the usual, but serious trouble all the same. Get her home address out of her, Miss Wheelan. Or the place where she was living in London.”

“It might be the same thing,” Tim suggested.

“Nonsense. After what the newspapers put in we'd have had an inquiry that fitted, wouldn't we? There've been half a dozen from London families for girls who hadn't been in all night. None like this one. You get hold of her parents' address, Miss Wheelan, then we might get somewhere.”

“I'll try,” Jane answered, doubtfully.

But she was not successful. Sheila refused absolutely to allow her parents to come to London. But she did, after much patient persuading, agree to write to them, saying that she was due for a short holiday in a few days' time and would like to spend it at home.

“I'm afraid they may hear what has happened from the newspapers,” Jane told her. “I don't know if we can hold out on your name indefinitely. Oh,” she went on, as Sheila sat up in violent agitation, “the Staff have been asked not to give it to the Press. But you know what they are. Anything for a story. ‘The Mystery Girl in the Water' is what you're called at present. The doctors and nurses won't give you away, but I'm not sure about the cleaners. I heard one of them say ‘Who does she think she is? All this fuss about—' ”

Jane stopped. The rest of the cleaner's words as she remembered them were ‘about a mixed-up little tart who's only got herself to blame, I wouldn't wonder'. So Jane covered up her pause by adding hastily, “Someone could take a bribe to let the cat out of the bag. Don't you think you ought to tell your people what really happened?”

“I can't,” Sheila said in a low voice, sinking back on her pillows. “I can't tell anyone—ever.”

Jane looked at her. They were getting nowhere and she felt her sympathy weaken in face of this iron obstinacy. And stupidity. For Sheila was going to give her a letter to post, so she would see the address and had every intention of writing it down for her own use. At present she would keep it a secret from the hospital authorities and the snoopers. But even this was against her inclination.

She said severely, “You can at least tell me what work you've been doing since we were on that course together.”

“Photography. Private firms.”

“More than one?”

“Oh, yes. I ought to have stayed in my second job. The money was good—”

“Why didn't you?”

“I couldn't help it.” She was looking beyond Jane: talking to herself. “I just couldn't help it.”

Quite evidently she was not going to explain. But her meaning was clear enough. Some man, Jane thought. It's nearly always some man.

“Why didn't you stay in radiography?” she asked, to bring Sheila back from her painful contemplation of her past.

“The money wasn't good enough.”

“I know. It never is. But the work—”

“They run you off your feet, don't they? And pay you less than the cleaners? Or not much more? What sort of life can you get on that?”

Jane was silent. Anything she might answer would sound too unutterably ‘square'. But she was ready to defend her vocation, if not directly.

“And what sort of life
did
you get?” she asked. “Not exactly what you wanted, was it?”

She expected a healthy outburst of anger or a fresh onset of despair, but got no response from the girl at all. Sheila simply shut her eyes and tears once more welled from the closed lids and dripped down to the pillow.

“I'm sorry,” Jane said, instantly remorseful. “Look, you're going to write home, aren't you? Do it now and I'll post the letter.” Still remorseful to the point of honesty she added. “I shall be the only one to see the address. I won't show it to Sister or anyone. You'll be fit to leave the day after tomorrow, I think. I'll check that with Dr Long if you like. Oughtn't you to get some message to your present boss? Is that a photographer?”

“Yes. But I'd rather he didn't know.”

“What about wages due to you? And notice?”

“I'd rather just leave it.”

“What about where you live? Your things?”

Sheila seemed to be too crushed or too indifferent to make any plans. But she gave Jane the address of her lodgings and agreed to her settling the current rent with the landlady.

“Will you be going back there after your holiday at home?”

“I suppose so. I don't know.”

“But not to your present job?”

“No! Oh,
NO
!”

Employer trouble, Jane decided. Or was Sheila just simply bonkers? Not that mental states were ever simple.

Jane went away and came back with writing paper and an envelope. Sheila had not changed her mind. In fact she seemed to be rather more calm, though no happier. Jane took her letter when it was sealed, made a note of the address of the girl's lodgings and left the ward.

In the corridor she met Timothy Long. He smiled and was moving past her, but she stopped him to ask when Sheila would be leaving.

“Not my pigeon now,” he said. “You'd better see the chap in charge.”

She remembered that the physicians were now in authority, as she would have realised when the girl was moved into a medical ward. It worried her, because they might think she was presuming too much on her slight acquaintance with the patient.

Tim saw her anxiety.

“What's the trouble?” he asked, kindly.

Jane explained.

“I was just going to have a word with the girl myself,” he said. “About that strapping. After all we put it on in Nightingale. Good enough excuse. I agree with you. She's in a non-medical mess of some sort and she's no suicide. I'll get her out of the psychos' clutches if I can.”

“Then will it be all right for me to go ahead getting her things up here for the day after tomorrow? I'm off tomorrow afternoon, so I could do it then. Collect a suitcase and clothes and pay her rent?”

“I don't see any objection. I'll have a word with Sister. She didn't mind my barging in over the transfer.”

“Thanks very much.”

Jane went on her way, feeling rather less confused by he strange position in which she found herself.

The next day in the afternoon she went to the house near Shepherd's Bush where Sheila rented a bed-sitting room on the second floor. The landlady, Mrs Coates, who lived in the semi-basement of the house, opened the door. She was a tall woman, untidily dressed in a worn skirt and shapeless cardigan over a washed-out but fairly clean blouse.

“They're all out,” she said, moving to shut the door.

“No, wait!” Jane said, quickly. She handed over a note from Sheila which explained the situation.

“Miss Burgess was taken ill in the evening two days ago,” Jane explained briefly. “She had to be taken to hospital.”

“Drinking again?” asked Mrs Coates, sharply. “Or would it be the other thing?”

“What other thing?” Jane asked. The landlady's manner was far from reassuring, a mixture of defensive aggression and a cringing wish not to offend.

“I don't quite understand what you mean,” Jane said, hoping to satisfy her curiosity and perhaps discover something important about Sheila's strange behaviour.

“She says ' ere you're a friend of 'ers,” Mrs Coates answered, suspiciously.

“Yes.”

“Then why d'you ask?”

It was clear to Jane that she was unlikely to be allowed into the house if she showed any further ignorance, so she smiled and said, “I expect she was living it up a bit. Anyway, she wants to go straight home from the hospital, so she sent me round to get some of her things. And to give you this week's rent.”

Mrs Coates's face brightened a little at this news and stepping to one side she let Jane move into the narrow hall and shut the door behind her.

“Four pounds, ten,” Jane said, producing the notes and added, “I'd like a receipt, please.”

“You can go up,” Mrs Coates told her, taking the money. “Second floor, back. Not hearing a word from 'er, I left the room as it was.”

“Won't it be locked?”

“Didn't she give you no key?” Again Mrs Coates's face folded into grim suspicion.

“I'm afraid she lost her handbag when she was taken ill.” Jane explained. “Doesn't she mention that in her note?”

Mrs Coates read the message again, nodding sourly, after which she walked up the stairs in front of Jane, fumbling in the pocket of her drooping cardigan as she went.

Neither the house nor its owner were really dirty, Jane decided, only seedy, drab, depressing in the extreme. Sheila's room, where Mrs Coates left her, pattering away downstairs to write out the receipt for the rent, was the same. The furniture was old, unpolished; the curtains and bedcover faded, creased; the small rugs on the cold grey-brown linoleum had a tattered fringe at the ends and bare patches in the middle.

Jane shut the door, shivering a little. The window was fastened, she saw, and the room was both very cold and stuffy. On the other hand it was not untidy. Sheila had made her bed, cleared away the remains of her breakfast. If she had had any breakfast on that last morning, Jane thought. And why not? Hadn't Tim and she both decided it was not attempted suicide? In which case the girl had not left the house intending never to return. So apparently she had some sense of order. She was not the pathetic helpless slut it would be easy to imagine. As Sister and the nurses in Nightingale undoubtedly regarded her.

Jane moved slowly about the room, looking first for luggage of a suitable size, which she found almost at once in the shape of two suitcases on top of the old-fashioned wardrobe. Having laid these on the bed and propped them open, she moved to the equally old-fashioned tall chest of drawers, whose top carried a small mirror and a large collection of photographs.

Though her purpose was to open the drawers and choose some clothes to take to the hospital Jane found her attention rivetted by these photographs. To begin with they all bore the photographer's autograph in a bold scrawling hand, Ronald Bream. Sheila's employer, surely? In the second place half the photographs were nude studies both of men and women, in the style known to the trade as ‘art'.

Jane smiled. So this was perhaps why Sheila had been so shy about her job. Silly kid. Personally she preferred her art in the form of paintings, but there was nothing wrong with these photographs. Some of them were quite attractive. The human body could be beautiful, though more often than not it wasn't.