The Meddlers (41 page)

It was cold, so cold. A heavy cold that weighed on the back of her neck and pushed her body down against the hardness of the slatted seat, that pressed up against her feet cruelly, so cruelly that she whimpered a little with the pain of it.

He stirred in her arms at the sound, and she looked down to peer at his face and felt a sudden leap of fear. He wasn’t there. All she could see was the buttons of her coat strained across her chest, and then she whimpered again, but now with relief. She had forgotten, so silly to have forgotten. She had managed to tuck his small body inside her coat, to button him against her and keep him warm, to stop people seeing him.

Not that there was anyone around who could see him, not here. A good place, this, a private place, although it was such a cold one. A good place.

She lifted her head and listened, but it was still the same. The faint rattle of the twigs on the bushes as the wind moved through
them, the hissing sound above as the wind went upward to reach the leafless trees, the hoarse whispering rumble of traffic coming from somewhere very far away. And it all looked the same, the darkness stretching away into patches of heavier darkness that were empty flower beds and clumps of shrubs, the faintly glowing deep gray sky reflected away on her right in the shifting dull gleam that was the water.

When you’re a big boy, Georgie, we’ll come to this park in the daytime, and we’ll sail a little boat on the water, that’s what we’ll do, won’t we? When you’re a big boy, and they’ve stopped looking for us. When you’re big …

He stirred again in her arms and gave a thin muffled cry, and she pulled at her coat and peered into the darkness inside it. She couldn’t see his face, but she could feel a faint warmth from him, and she lifted him closer to rest her cold face against him. But he wasn’t as warm as she had thought, for his cheek was as cold as her own, and she murmured, “There, there, my lovey, soon make it better, soon…”

With fingers doubled in size with the cold she fumbled at her clothes, unbuttoning her cardigan and then her blouse, pulling at her breast so that he could reach her, and she tried to make him open his mouth, to take the nipple and start feeding, but he rolled his head, and she held him close and said again, “There, there, my lovey, soon be better, soon…”

This time he managed it and began to suckle, but after the initial awareness of the pull on her, the cold came down again, and she could feel nothing but the ache in her legs and the hardness of the seat. But it didn’t matter. As long as she knew he was feeding, it didn’t matter.

She leaned her body forward as a sudden sharper gust of wind curled into her clothes, touching her bare skin, and moving awkwardly, bent her knees closer by tucking her feet more under the bench, so that he was enveloped by her body. It was a comfortable position, she suddenly realized with startled pleasure. She hadn’t tried sitting like this before. To curve her back forward seemed to relieve the ache across her shoulders, to bring more warmth to her
belly, even to make her feet hurt less, and she let her head droop further forward in gratitude for the comfort.

But it didn’t last long. The cold came back, the aching, and this time she moved sideways, lifting her feet awkwardly up onto the bench, resting her back against the curled iron armrest, still keeping her knees bent to keep Georgie safely pressed against her body.

And now it was really easier. Much easier. By moving her buttocks slightly sideways she could rest her head against the back of the bench, could hide herself from the coldness of the wind. This way it didn’t matter that she could hardly feel the positions of her own arms and legs, because the back of the seat held her safe, held her crooked arm firmly so that Georgie’s face was held close against the safety of her body. He seemed to be happier too, for he didn’t move, just lay in her arms quietly. She looked down once more, feeling sleep creeping toward her from the darkness beyond her safe bench, trying to see his jaws pumping, to gain the familiar pleasure of watching him feed, but she couldn’t see him properly in the dimness. But it didn’t matter, not being able to see. He was here, safe with her, and no one would come to take him away from her, not from this safe, quiet place. A good place. Not so cold any more. Not now she was getting used to it.

The sleep came nearer, stepping gently toward her out of the darkness, bringing the soft blackness with it, moving up the bench, around it, and then lightly over her, and she closed her eyes and let it cradle her and Georgie, let it make them both warm again.

  “Mr. Bridges, I’ve told you as clearly as I can that it would not be to Miss Lawton’s interest to be visited by you now. Later, perhaps, when she has had sufficient treatment to be able to cope with the situation, but not now. Surely you can understand that?”

“I understand what you say, but I take leave to disagree with you. I may not know as much about clinical psychiatry as I might, but surely the support of friends is an essential part of treatment? And she has so few …”

The heavy man in the white coat leaned back in his chair and looked consideringly at him, and Mike looked back defiantly. He
couldn’t have explained why it was that he was being so dogged about this, why he had spent so much time convincing Norma Gould that his concern for Miriam was genuine, why he had felt it so necessary to persist in his demands to talk to the psychiatrist in charge of the case. But it was necessary. And he wasn’t going to give in now and go meekly away without seeing the girl, without talking to her.

“Tell me something, Mr. Bridges,” Dr. Galleyman said. “Have you wondered why you should be so anxious to see this girl? On your own admission, you hardly know her. I am aware of course of, er, the extent of your involvement with her. We have managed to obtain quite a comprehensive history. But even so, your involvement, though intimate, was of a very short duration, wasn’t it? Now, you say you know little about clinical psychiatry, yet surely you must realize that your own needs are being expressed in this anxiety? That you are not being… well, merely friendly. I feel it is possible that in some way you are seeking an answer to a problem of your own as much as trying to offer help to my patient.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake! Haven’t you enough patients? Do you have to fill in your spare time analyzing their visitors?”

Dr. Galleyman smiled. “Belligerence is an interesting response, Mr. Bridges. Quite diagnostic in some cases. May I suggest to you that you analyze yourself? I certainly don’t wish to. As you say, I have quite enough work to do without adding to it unnecessarily. I suggest the possibility that you have a personal need in this situation in order to save my time, in fact. Until you have some insight into your own motives for this stubborn refusal to accept the reasons for waiting until Miss Lawton is able to cope with a visit from you, clearly you are going to make a considerable nuisance of yourself. And since you are far from being a fool, and seem, as far as I can tell on so short an acquaintance, a reasonably well adjusted individual, I will offer you a few ideas to think about. Now—”

He began to count on his fingers.

“One, I suggest to you that you feel guilt because you think that your acceptance of her sexual advances precipitated her present state of frank illness. Two, I suggest you feel guilt in a more general
way since you were, as part of your job, a supporter of the man whose scientific activities led to Miss Lawton’s belief—based though it was on erroneous thinking—that she had a need to make those sexual advances to you. Three, I suggest you are driven to expiate your sense of guilt by throwing it back at Miss Lawton, either in the form of an apology, or in the form of a denial of what you subconsciously feel is your share of the blame.

“Well, if I am right, I can tell you this. First, your contribution to her present condition was nothing like as important as you think. She would have reached this stage of florid breakdown even if you had not had intercourse with her. Second, to take to yourself a … a corporate guilt about the use of her in Dr. Briant’s project is pointless. If there is any need for such guilt, it is indeed a corporate one, that is, should be shared by every individual in our society. And third, she has quite enough of her own problems with which to cope without being burdened by your need to either apologize or deny blame.”

He smiled gently at the silent man on the other side of his desk. “You are right in your recognition of her need for the support of friends. She will need it, but not until she begins to get better. If you can spend the next few weeks coming to terms with your own problems, then by the time she is ready for you, I will be more than happy—indeed, eager—to allow you access to her. In the meantime, I am sufficiently interested in her future welfare to offer you the chance to come and talk to me here from time to time. I believe it will be possible to help this very interesting girl to recover from the emotional illness toward which I believe she has been moving for some time, and which was hastened in its onset by her recent experiences. And part of her recovery will undoubtedly consist of—shall we say?—the hope of meaningful relationships in the future. If you relate to her as much as I suspect you do—and I am not sure you are yet aware yourself of how emotionally involved you are—then Miss Lawton has an excellent prognosis. An excellent one.”

He stood up and moved toward the door to open it and stand back invitingly.

“It is up to you, Mr. Bridges. I hope you now see the situation as
clearly as I would wish you to. There is a very good outlook for both my patient and for you. If you will be patient. And now if you will forgive me, I must send you away. I have some work to do.”

  She woke to a thin grayness that filled every part of herself as well as the landscape around her, and sat staring stupidly around, her mind clouded with bewilderment. And then she knew the heavy ache in her legs that had woken her, felt it change, become actual pain, and remembered.

Awkwardly, she moved, heaving her legs clumsily off the bench, until they were resting on the ground and shrieking their hurt at her, and then she flexed her shoulders slightly and looked down to see if Georgie was still asleep.

He didn’t move against her arm as she eased it away from its cramped position against her body, until with a clumsy twist of her shoulders that dropped her arm lower, his head fell away from her breast and lolled heavily against the crook of her elbow.

“Hello, my little lovey, did I wake you?” she murmured aloud. Then she slid her other hand under his head to turn him so that he was lying on her lap and she could look into his face.

He was patchily red, the skin creased around his mouth and nose into deeply indented white lines, and his eyes were half open, the narrow edge of bluish whiteness matching the color of the creases.

Poor Georgie… doesn’t want to wake up. But it’s time to wake up, time to find another safe place to be, or they’ll be coming here as well, Georgie.

She moved her knees against the ache in her legs and his head rolled again, lax and curiously weighty, and she lifted him and tried to hold him against her breast, but the heaviness of him seemed to defeat her, seemed to defeat him too, for again his head rolled and she peered at him in the thin gray light and whispered, “Georgie? Try to wake up properly, Georgie. Don’t play games with me, Georgie, don’t frighten your Isobel.”

But he didn’t respond, lying against her arm with a chill weight that matched the feeling in her body, and she stood up with agonizing slowness, hearing the muscles shout their agony at her, and held him close and whispered again, “Don’t play games, Georgie.”

Again she looked at him, and now his head was twisted awkwardly against the buttons of her coat, and she eased him away from her then, and with one stiff icy hand tried to arrange his head comfortably against her, pulling at her clothes so that his cheek with its red and blue-white patches was against the fabric of her cardigan.

But she knew now. She knew, yet she did not know, for she spoke again, louder, hearing her own voice, hoarse with cold, filling her ears against the silent voice inside her that was crying aloud words she would not listen to.

“Sleep a little more, my lovey, sleep a little more if you want to. Your Isobel won’t wake you.”

She began to move, dragging one leaden foot in front of the other, pushing away the deeper gray of the concrete path so that the monotoned landscape around her moved, the trees and bushes that bordered the path going past her in jerky slowness. And as they went, they muttered with their own whispering voices at Georgie, telling him to wake up and not to play games, to wake up and not to play games, to wake up …

The edge of the path was shimmering now, and the voices whispering at Georgie stopped being whispers, became a liquid murmuring that took up the same refrain, as the water of the lake glimmered and moved and pulsed its way past her, and she turned her head to look at it, at the moving silveriness of it, and saw its pulsing, lifting and falling in gentle grayness.

Pulsing and shifting, moving gently and grayly, murmuring and pulsing …