Under the Net (32 page)

A day or two passed, and it was some time in the late afternoon. In about half an hour my day's work would be over. Owing to my exceptional diligence it was virtually over now, only although there was nothing further for me to do I could not leave the building until six o‘clock had struck. In a few minutes, I was thinking to myself, I would go and mop the kitchen floor; one could never mop round that kitchen floor too often. But for the moment I was in no hurry. I felt very tired; and it was becoming clear to me that this was indeed the main drawback of this otherwise fascinating job, that it was extremely tiring. At some time in the future, I decided, I would arrange the work, whether here or elsewhere, only half-time. Then in the other half of the day I might do some writing. It occurred to me that to spend half the day doing manual work might be very calming to the nerves of one who was spending the other half doing intellectual work, and I could not imagine why I had not thought before of this way of living, which would ensure that no day could pass without
something
having been-done, and so keep that sense of uselessness, which grows in prolonged periods of sterility, away from me for ever. But all this was for the future. Just then I had no idea but to continue with my tasks and wait for my destiny to catch up on me. That it would do so I felt confident ; though as I idly turned the pages of the
Evening Standard
, standing up because the light was so bad, I had no notion how fast it was galloping at that very moment to overtake me.

I saw from the paper that Lefty's great meeting had taken place earlier that day, not without considerable disturbance and the final interference of the police. There were several pictures of mounted policemen controlling crowds. Someone had thrown a magnesium flare and two women had fainted. Lefty had made a speech which, so far as I could see, was filled with harmless and boring remarks about the technicalities of affiliating left-wing organizations to each other. A well-known Trade Union leader who was a member of Lefty's party had made another speech, also a woman M.P. who was not a member but very pretty.

As I was looking this over I heard the swing doors which led on to the main corridor being opened, and then the rumble of the trolley wheels. A new patient was being brought in. Through the glass door of the cubby hole I saw The Pid pass by, and heard her black heels click away down the ward corridor. I opened the door and held it ajar, standing just inside. Stitch was pushing towards me the trolley on which, under the red blanket, a figure lay prostrate. Stitch caught my eye and jerked his head angrily to indicate that I had no business to be hanging around and watching. He did not speak to me, in accordance with an unwritten rule that hospital servants do not speak while they are wheeling patients along corridors; but his eyes spoke volumes. I returned his look with all the insolence I could muster. Then I lowered my eyes to the face of the man on the trolley, which was at that moment passing in front of me. The man on the trolley was Hugo.

His face was dead white and his eyes were closed. A darkly stained bandage encased his head. I stood there rigid. Then the trolley had passed. I stepped back inside the cubby hole and closed the door and leaned against it. A conflict of emotions filled me. My immediate feeling was one of guilt; like Hamlet confronted by the ghost of his father. I had a curious sense that it was because of some neglect of mine that Hugo had been struck down. Together with this I experienced immediately a certain gratification at the thought that as soon as I had ceased to look for Hugo he had been knocked on the head and brought to me. I was still smarting a little from his casualness to me at the studio. But this idea had no sooner formed that I was overcome with remorse, and nothing mattered to me except the question of how badly Hugo was hurt. I came out into the corridor.

They had put Hugo into a single room right at the far end. I saw The Pid emerging and coming back. I followed her into the surgery.

‘What's the matter with the big fellow?' I asked. ‘Is it anything bad?' There was nothing unusual about this question; I asked it about every new patient that came into the ward.

‘I've told you before not to come into this room,' said The Pid. She would never call me by any name.

‘I'm sorry,' I said, ‘I'm just going. But is it bad?'

‘You ought to be doing your work,' said The Pid. ‘I shall ask Stitch to see that you have more to do.' I started to go. Then when I was half out of the door she added, ‘He had a brick thrown at him at that meeting. He's got concussion. He'll be here about five days.'

‘Thank you!' I said, and slid out as smoothly as a fish. A great concession had been made.

I went into the kitchen and started mopping the floor. Stitch came in and made a number of remarks which I scarcely heard. I was wondering what to do. I had to see Hugo. It was an odd trick of fate that although we had been brought together it was under circumstances which made communication virtually impossible. We were placed here in the one relationship that totally debarred any exchange. I ran over a hundred possibilities. By an unfortunate chance tomorrow was my day off; so that if I wanted to see Hugo in the ordinary course of my duties I should have to wait until the time when I should clean his room on the afternoon of the day after tomorrow. Even then I should only be able to be with him, for, at the most, fifteen minutes; and in any case this was too long to wait. It was always possible that by then, if Hugo's injuries turned out to be very slight, he might have left the Hospital; but quite apart from this, I could not bear the idea of waiting so long. Hugo had been brought to me and I had to see him at once: but how? There then occurred to me a further difficulty, viz. that Hugo was unconscious.

I cursed to myself as I ran the mop savagely in under the cupboards. Stitch had gone away. I wondered if it would be possible to alter my day off, or to offer to work tomorrow in any case; and then to creep into Hugo's room some time during the morning. This would be very difficult, with nurses and doctors continually on the prowl. And would I be allowed to work tomorrow, even if I offered to? The matter would be referred to Stitch, who would be certain to divine that I wanted it, and so to declare it impossible. If I had had a bit more time I might have thought out some way of inveigling him into imposing it on me as a penalty: but it was too late for this now. As I was debating one of the nurses came in. She was the most Irish of the nurses, with a voice that constantly reminded me of Finn. I asked, ‘How is the big fellow?' ‘He's after shouting for a meal!' said the nurse.

When I heard this I made up my mind what to do; and indeed there was only one thing possible. That was to come back to the Hospital in the middle of the night. This idea filled me with a kind of religious terror while at the same time it fascinated me very much. I had never seen the Hospital at night, though I had often tried to picture it. To the terrors of its imagined silence and solitude was added the sense that my presence there at such an hour would be a sort of sacrilege. If I were discovered I would, I felt sure, be shot down at sight. There could be no mercy. But it was necessary to come. The proximity of Hugo was already raising in me a tornado which could only be stilled by his presence. I had to see him.

I put away the mop and took off my white overall, thinking fast. It was now after six. I had to contrive the details of my plan at once, for if there were any preparatory steps that needed taking they must be taken now. How was I to get into the Hospital? I pictured the place, and it seemed to me like an impregnable fortress. The main entrance was open all night, but very brightly lit, as I knew from having passed it by at all hours when going to Dave's flat. A night porter would be certain to be on duty and would stop me and ask my business. I thought of various lies I might tell, but none of them seemed plausible enough to ensure my being allowed in without anyone else being put on my track. Then there was a back door which led out of Corelli I into a yard where coal and bicycles were kept. This was the door which I normally used. But I knew, from something that Stitch had said, that this door was locked at ten; and doubtless the same applied to any other back doors the place might turn out to have. There was always of course the entrance through the Accident Wards, where emergency cases were brought in. But this entrance would be garrisoned too, so that there would be precious little chance of slipping through unobserved; and one mistake would be fatal. The only possibility was to come in through a window; and if I were going to do that, I must decide which window to use, and go and open it straight away.

I put on my coat and began to walk slowly down the main stairs. My head was in a turmoil. The side of the building which faced the bicycle yard had lights upon it which were kept burning all night. Anyone trying to enter from the yard would be clearly in view from the street. The ends of the Transepts came into the radius of the street lamps, and the main building had its own row of lamp-posts which encircled the main courtyard. There remained the Transept gardens, which were wells of darkness. Most of the windows which opened on to these gardens were the windows of patients' rooms. It was impossible to think of entering through one of these; for even if I had had the nerve to go now and satisfy myself that one of these windows was open, I had certainly not the nerve to re-enter through it at two a.m. and run the risk of being pursued by the screams of some nervous inmate. There were other possibilities, such as the scullery window of Corelli I. But this would fall too much under the eye of the Corelli I Night Sister, whose room was next door to the scullery; and the same objection applied to the other windows which led from the garden into the administrative rooms of the ward. My only hope lay in the more anonymous and public parts of the Transept, round about the Transept Kitchen. It was true that there was likely to be somebody in and around the kitchen all night; but there was a number of cloak rooms and store rooms round about which seemed to be derelict and unvisited even during the day, and whose windows lay at the very end of the garden, where it would be darkest.

On reaching the bottom of the stairs I turned, with an air of conspicuous casualness, towards the Transept Kitchen. When I am up to something I find it very hard to realize that I probably
look
no different from the way I look on other occasions. I felt sure that the expression of my face must be betraying me, and whenever I passed anyone in the corridor I turned this tell-tale surface in the other direction. I walked firmly past the door of the kitchen. The upper half of the door was made of plain glass, and out of the corner of my eye I could see figures moving about within. I selected a door two or three farther on, and turned into it sharply. I had remembered right. It was a store room, against each wall of which the iron frames of bedsteads were leaning ten deep. I closed the door quietly behind me, and walked down the aisle in the middle of the room. In a square of sun and shade the garden was revealed and the rows of cherry trees. The shadow from the Corelli side fell sharply across the lawn, and cut it into two triangles of contrasting greens. I stood for a moment looking out. Then I unlatched the window.

It was a simple casement window with one catch halfway up the frame and a perforated bar at the bottom which regulated the aperture. I unpinned the window and undid the catch, opening the window an inch or two, so that the catch rested against the glass on the outside. I didn't want the window to look as if it were undone; and on the other hand I wanted to be certain that I should be able to pull it open from the outside when the time came. It took me some minutes to satisfy myself that both these conditions were met. Then I marked the position of the window carefully in relation to the rows of trees. After that I went back and listened at the door until I was sure that there was no one in the corridor. I emerged, closed the door, and walked back towards Corelli. No one had seen me. A moment later I was leaving the building.

THE first thing I did after that was to take a stiff drink. My heart was beating like an army on the march. I would never do to enroll in a conspiracy. Then I went back to the flat and fetched Mars. I took him on a bus to Barnes, had beer and sandwiches at the Red Lion, and then walked with him on the Common until the light was failing. By the time we got back to Goldhawk Road it was nearly dark. I left Mars at the flat; there was no sign of Dave. He was out at some meeting. Then I started walking at random in the direction of Hammersmith. I just wanted the hours to pass and be quick about it. The pubs were just closing, and I put down as much whisky as I could in the last ten minutes. I walked until I was nearly at the river. I wasn't thinking about anything in particular during this period, but my mind was simply dominated by Hugo. It was as if from his bed in the hospital Hugo were holding the end of a cord to which I was attached, and from time to time I could feel it twitching. Or else it was as if Hugo brooded over me like a great bird; and I took no pleasure in the prospect of our imminent encounter, save a sort of blind satisfaction at the down-rush of the inevitable.

I looked at my watch. It was after midnight, and I was standing on Hammersmith Bridge, not far from the place where we had released Mars from his cage. I looked up stream and tried to make out where in the mass of buildings on the north bank the Mime Theatre lay. But it was too dark to see. Then a panic overtook me in case I should arrive back at the Hospital too late. I set off walking briskly and hailed a taxi at Hammersmith Broadway which took me back to the Goldhawk Road. But now it was still too early. I walked up and down the street several times, passing the Hospital. It was not yet one o‘clock, and I had resolved not to try to enter before two. I kept walking away from the Hospital, but something kept drawing me back again. I had to set myself little tasks: this time I would walk as far as the Seven Stars before I came back again; this time I would stand under the railway bridge as long as it took me to smoke a cigarette. I was in anguish.