The Walking Stick (27 page)

At seven the lights went down. From now until morning pilot lights in the passages and single lights in the store rooms and display rooms. The minor offices, such as my own, were left dark.

So against all belief the first part of the plan had happened. Not as planned, of course, nothing ever did, it seemed; but I could get to my cupboard if I waited and chose the time.

Seven-twenty. Maurice Mills was clearly not coming back. Smith-Williams? On his way home to Canonbury and dinner? The commissionaires would all be gone. Think carefully. At seven the patrolling
guard will have clocked in just near the strongroom in this basement. At twenty past he goes up two flights and registers in the cashier’s office. Therefore this basement should be empty of
life at least until a quarter to eight. Wait then until twenty-five to eight – that gives everything time to settle down.

Fifteen minutes to crawl by. Count. Don’t look at your watch until you’ve counted a thousand. Slow now. Counting I reach five hundred and feel I must look in case I’m
overrunning it. Six minutes have passed.

I look at my watch then until seven-thirty. Now.

How easy it is to stumble or kick against something merely by taking too much pains to avoid it. Out into the passage. The stairs are dark. Smith-Williams’s office in darkness. Turn
corner, hand on handle of cupboard. Freeze . . . Our office is lighted.

Against the wall, trying to be invisible. Through the glass door I see Smith-Williams in there just coming out. I watch his hand on the door, then he turns back into the office and lights
another cigarette.

Hand on cupboard door. Door open. It
creaked
. He’s taken down one of our reference books, is poring over it, blue smoke spiralling from the cigarette. Gently into the cupboard. One
foot, the other, draw in one’s body, pulling the door with finger tips. Creak again. Through the narrowing gap I see him shut the book and return it to its shelf. Fingers on handle, turn
slowly; shut, release handle very gently.

Darkness. Success. Footsteps close outside, another door shuts, a nick of light pierces a tiny crack in this door. He has gone back to his own office.

Smith-Williams left at eight. Before he left I heard him talking to the guard. It was Gaskell who was patrolling at present – I knew, from Monday night, the West Country
voice. Gaskell was a much smaller man than his companion, McCarthy, red-faced, spectacles, with an expression as if he’d a nasty taste in his mouth. He’d been a prison officer and later
a private detective. After Smith-Williams left, the tiny crack of light disappeared and utter silence fell.

I was at last able to grope about and find a comfortable position. I inched the buckets over to one side where there was less likelihood of accident. The copy of the Rodin sculpture was then
eased gently after them. It was obviously impossible to get the camp bed unfolded, so I let it lie on the floor and squatted on it, letting my legs reach toward the Rodin, and trying to rest my
back against the wall.

Not a great success, but time was passing. And the acute pains in my inside had temporarily stopped. Immediate emergency over.

I was a lot more comfortable than I had been in that chimney eighteen years ago. Odd I should have remembered that tonight; it had fallen into a deep trough of memory and had not been dredged up
once in the last ten years. Possibly it had come up tonight because of hiding behind the pictures. Hide and seek, that was it. No claustrophobia in those days.

Don’t think of that word now. You’re not really confined here. You only have to turn the handle and the door will fly open. Only you daren’t touch the handle, that’s
all.

Pity so dark. Even when one’s eyes grew accustomed it was still like near blindness. Strange that crack, which had allowed in the light from Smith-Williams’s office, let in none from
the pilot light in the passage. Perhaps the light had failed. Odd if there was a power failure tonight of all nights.

Where was Leigh? Not yet nine o’clock. Perhaps eating a nervous meal on his own at the studio. And Jack Foil helping Doreen to wipe up and watering his indoor plants and then taking the
dachshunds for a walk. Perfect domestic scene. Ideal husband. What excuse did he make to Doreen when he left the house later tonight? Or did she really know it all?

And Ted Sandymount? How did one tap a wire? What was more, how did one do it secretly? Presumably he knew. Post Office training? And the putty-faced, sunken-eyed Mr Irons, quiet-spoken,
gentlemanly, gaunt. Was he by now gathering up his tools? Or did he have them in a special case, each instrument tempered and proved? And how would he bring them here tonight? In a private car, or
by tube? Would he look like a commercial traveller, with a suitcase, seeking a hotel? Might he not be stopped by the police? They didn’t go about with their eyes shut.

Pity so dark in here. Wish one had brought a torch: this was a bad oversight. Open the door an inch? It would be quite safe to do so at regular times through the night, because one knew
certainly there would be no one on this floor.

But safer not. Stay where you are. Stretch your legs a bit. Left knee is aching.

Funny if I’d never had this bad knee. Funny if none of that had ever happened. I had come home from school one afternoon; Erica petulantly: ‘Oh, Deborah, not
another
cold in
the house! We seem to have only just got rid of Arabella’s.’ Next morning: ‘Did you remember the aspirin? Well, go to school, see how you are tonight. It’s a pity to miss
games. Take two or three hankies with you.’ That evening: ‘Do your homework and then bed; I’ll bring you some hot milk. You’re running a temperature, I can see.’
Temperature 99.4 . Not alarming. Nasty night. Streaming nose. Douglas in the morning, peeping in smiling. ‘What’s the temp? 99 ? Bed for you, I think; but get up for lunch, it’ll
do you good. Minta will be in to see you later. Bye.’ I didn’t get up and didn’t want any lunch, and Minta was cross because she thought I was saucy and didn’t fancy what
she brought up. Dreary afternoon, nose still running. Throat dry. Feeling mouldy. Missing the rehearsal for the school play. Miss James wouldn’t like that. Out of bed to the lavatory, felt
quite breathless. Very odd. Erica back at eight. ‘Oh, dear,
still
in bed? You’re looking pinched. I’ll come and see you after supper.’ While they were having supper
it got worse. ‘Mummy, I can’t breathe! Mummy, I can’t breathe!’ Sarah heard me. Douglas upstairs. One look at me. ‘Telephone for an ambulance.’

Funny how one remembered things after all this time. ‘Mummy, I can’t breathe!’ Didn’t do to dwell on it just now, the memory too vivid. How much air in this cupboard? If
it kept out light, might it not keep out air? To have the door an inch open would be a wise precaution.

Footsteps. Gaskell round again. It must be ten. Three hours gone. Nearly halfway. Give him time to clock in . . . Think about something else. Music, painting,
skating
. Skating was lovely,
smooth, sweeping, cold refreshing air, not like this stale cupboard air. Footsteps again; he was going back. I glanced at my watch to check, and was horrified to see that it had stopped. Stopped at
ten past nine. Now what to do? I put the thing to my ear and heard it ticking.

Jogging in the ambulance. Erica came with me. Somebody in the darkness had said: ‘Hurry, she’ll not live another hour.’

Hospital – stretcher – wheel in. Room with a boxlike thing. Lift me in it. Only my head out. Torture? No, iron lung. Flat on back, head on pillow like a deck chair head rest, all
body inside enormous metal coffin connected by tube to giant bellows slowly rising and falling.
Pushing
on your chest, pressing till you wanted to faint; then relaxing, then
pulling
instead, pulling till your mouth opened and air went in; relaxing, then pressing again, pressing till the air came out. ‘Ease this off a bit, nurse,’ said a voice. Then Douglas saying:
‘Naturally one did not anticipate . . . The symptoms were unidentifiable.’ Another voice: ‘You didn’t notice the loss of muscle tone?’

I put my hand on the handle of the cupboard and gently turned the handle. Gently pushed the door an inch. Light. Dim light but
so
welcome after the utter darkness. And
air
. Not
imagination that it had grown short in the cupboard. I put out my head and looked each way. My office in darkness. Smith-Williams’s in darkness. Upstairs two men. Shut the door so carefully;
but it still creaked. Loose the handle, grope your way a foot back – something fell off the back of the door with a hellish clatter.

Frozen silence, heart lurching, teeth held,
wait
.

It was an overall that had dropped, but what the devil had made the noise? If Gaskell or McCarthy were coming down the stairs . . .

I squatted back slowly on the floor and waited. Nothing . . .

Five to ten. It was growing stuffy again. I could feel the iron lung compressing and expanding my chest.

You didn’t really lose any feeling in your body when you had polio; it was all there, but helpless. You lay as if strapped in that iron coffin, not moving because you couldn’t move.
At first you couldn’t even pass urine. The disease had never got up to my throat. They fed me liquids through a sort of teapot, but I couldn’t take much. The whole coffin was on a sort
of trolley and they wheeled you about on rubber wheels that squeaked. They were all cheerful and peered at you smiling, and you wanted to scream and daren’t because if you did a sort of
bubble might form in your throat and make you cough and then you’d suffocate.

Three hours to go . . . It had been three days to go then. They took me out after about a day, but I began to die so they put me back. The nights were the worst time then, because you were
supposed to sleep; but it was only the nurse who slept, and you were still troubled with the remnants of your cold, and your nose irritated and you couldn’t rub it. And a tear came out of
your eye and ran down your cheek and tickled and irritated all the way and
never stopped
irritating as it dried. And sometimes your nose was altogether blocked. But still the bellows went
on, pushing, pressing on your chest until your mouth opened and the air went in again. It
was
torture because you were really dead and it was keeping you artificially alive. If you could
just
die
, if you could just
suffocate
: a horrible few minutes and it would be
over
. But this:
in
and
out
and
in
and
out
and
in
and
out
and
in
and
out
, forever, all through the long dark hours; and if the mucus ran down your face and you whimpered loud enough the nurse would stir and bend over you and wipe your face
and say: ‘All right, love? Like a drink?’ And you’d shake your head and she’d move away and sit down again and you’d just have to concentrate on this terrible living
that was being forced on you . . .

My head banged against the wall and I woke up . . . Time? I’d been asleep. Nearly midnight. God, I might have slept all night through! But was it natural sleep? Wasn’t it more
half-fainting for lack of air? I could feel the machine working on my chest even now. I was terrified to scream because if I did a bubble would get in my throat and choke me. I was bound hand and
foot. Paralysed, dead and buried, all except my head; the thing beside me was like a steam engine puffing and sucking at the air. Pressure all round. Black walls weighing, black sides pressing,
holding me down, blind in the dark, deaf in the dark, dead in the dark . . .

I thrust at the cupboard door, wriggled the handle, got it open and stumbled out into the passage, gasping at the air. I could hardly stand, hair soaked in sweat, trembling, gasping to get
breath. The only importance was to get out of the cupboard and never go back.
Never
go back, not for love of Leigh or all the money in England!

I lurched against the wall, nightmare still only just a step away, but reality slowly taking over, reason beginning to flex and stir. I shut the cupboard door and leaned with my palms and face
against it. Not in there again. Not yet anyway. Must have a short break. Just a chance to recover. Then perhaps I could stand it again. Only an hour and a half now. Pity, having come so far, to
fail now.

The door of Smith-Williams’s office was ajar. At his desk was a big swivel chair that he often tilted back to put his feet on the corner of the desk. I pushed open the door, closed it
again, groped to the chair, sat there.

Relief. Like being taken out of the box for the third time and finding that your lungs could go in and out of their own accord. Erica had cried. The only time I had ever seen her cry. Douglas
wasn’t there, but he came soon after, his blue eyes limpid with pleasure. ‘She’s been very lucky,’ they said. ‘Full movement in the arms now, and we’ll hope the
legs will recover in the next day or so.’

Footsteps. So I was caught. McCarthy. Well, it wouldn’t be difficult to pretend illness. No need for Jack Foil’s pill. He had come down the stairs pretty slowly and now he appeared
at the junction of the passage, walking sleepily, swinging his torch. He turned his head and looked up the short passage to my office and then passed on. His footsteps receded. He was going to the
clocking-in place. I sat still. He was whistling
The Londonderry Air
. I sat still. His footsteps stopped. There was a long pause. He had gone right on into the antiquities department.
Footsteps coming back. Same pace. His torch was on now, flickering about.

He came to the T-join again, paused, flicked the torch toward my office. The light swept across Smith-Williams’s office in passing, but was too high to show me up.

He went on. I heard him going right down the passage into the furniture department. Silence. Then back he came again to the stairs, began to mount them. His footsteps died away.

. . . With the back of my hand I wiped my damp forehead. So now I should be safe here for nearly an hour. Sitting in this chair in comparative comfort. When one o’clock came round I would
slide down and lie under the desk until he had gone again. It was no part of their duty to search every office. I should be reasonably safe.