once, brought him his pills and the tumbler of water, helped him to cope without choking or slobbering, and eased him down to the horizontal. She picked up the tray with the same decisiveness, but then just stood there looking down at him. He was already floating off toward the nonsense world of dream, but she remained part of the scenery, changed, though, to belong to the altering context. He felt the sudden shock of dream alarm that precedes and signals the nightmare. Her eyes werenât human at all. Her hair flamed round the white passionless face. She took a seemingly endless breath.
âI was helping Jenny wash her hair,â she whispered. âThatâs what I was doing. Helping Jenny wash her hair.â
5
H e slept after lunch. On âgoodâ days, of which this was apparently one, he lay for a little more than half an hour in a dreamless dark, from which he usually half-surfaced into a comfortable in-and-out doze, full of a tangle of thought and memory and dream. When Jenny spent her rest period with him, this would prolong itself into rambling talk, often till teatime.
Today he woke almost fully, knowing that he had slept longer and deeper than usual and that Jenny wasnât there. Of course, it was her day off. But what ⦠? There was something else. Shock. Just before he had gone to sleep he had ⦠thatâs why he had slept like thatâshock, not tiredness. He wasnât really tired. It was a âgoodâ day, and heâd been thinking effectively. None of that now. Rest time. He ought to be dozing in and out of dream. â¦
He let his mind begin to jumble through ancient detritus, but kept finding among the dusty relics something new and strange, connected with Jenny, or Mike Crewe, or the body on the tower. One part of him yearned to assemble these new pieces into a collection, to compare shapes, fit them together into whatever whole or wholes they ought to compose; this longing was overruled by a reluctance which disguised itself as tedium, though it was deeper than that. Occasionally, as if by accident, two or three fragments would coalesce into a shape which was almost ⦠but then his mind would shy away, pick up an ancient toy worn beyond any recognition of origin, and play violently with that until the alarm and menace of that almost died away again.
The process was thoroughly unpleasant, and could not last. Soon he would be forced awake by the pressure of worry and then he would have to start to think. Unless ⦠deliberately he tried to will back the desolation which had engulfed him when Mrs. Finsky had taken his lunch away. At least there was no thinking in that morass. But it wouldnât come. After all, this was a âgoodâ day. A desert.
Suddenly, the desert was inhabited, not by a stranger seen trekking toward him out of the distance, enabling him to prepare a mask and a reason, but by an ambush. A voice at the door, a rattle of metal on timber. Lady Treadgold. Crippen.
Residents at Flycatchers did not often visit each other in their rooms. This was not a rule, but a code of manners. It was in the TV lounge and the bridge room and the morning room and the dining hall and the bar that encounters took place, alliances were formed, feuds fought. One went down there prepared for meetings, wearing the armor of almost-health. It was not good manners to play other roles than the stoic. But in oneâs own room one unbuckled and was as feeble, ill, old, as one chose. Naturally, one did not care to be seen in such a state, with the door of the mausoleum ajar and the odors of death seeping into the air.
Of course Lady Treadgold knew this, so came rattling into the room already talking. Her head was cocked sideways and a little forward, just the gesture she used when she rebid her own feeble suit, knowing that her partner had every right to play the hand.
â. . . so they were all against me,â she said, banging her walking frame forward
âI was helping Jenny wash her hair,â she whispered. âThatâs what I was doing. Helping Jenny wash her hair.â
5
H e slept after lunch. On âgoodâ days, of which this was apparently one, he lay for a little more than half an hour in a dreamless dark, from which he usually half-surfaced into a comfortable in-and-out doze, full of a tangle of thought and memory and dream. When Jenny spent her rest period with him, this would prolong itself into rambling talk, often till teatime.
Today he woke almost fully, knowing that he had slept longer and deeper than usual and that Jenny wasnât there. Of course, it was her day off. But what ⦠? There was something else. Shock. Just before he had gone to sleep he had ⦠thatâs why he had slept like thatâshock, not tiredness. He wasnât really tired. It was a âgoodâ day, and heâd been thinking effectively. None of that now. Rest time. He ought to be dozing in and out of dream. â¦
He let his mind begin to jumble through ancient detritus, but kept finding among the dusty relics something new and strange, connected with Jenny, or Mike Crewe, or the body on the tower. One part of him yearned to assemble these new pieces into a collection, to compare shapes, fit them together into whatever whole or wholes they ought to compose; this longing was overruled by a reluctance which disguised itself as tedium, though it was deeper than that. Occasionally, as if by accident, two or three fragments would coalesce into a shape which was almost ⦠but then his mind would shy away, pick up an ancient toy worn beyond any recognition of origin, and play violently with that until the alarm and menace of that almost died away again.
The process was thoroughly unpleasant, and could not last. Soon he would be forced awake by the pressure of worry and then he would have to start to think. Unless ⦠deliberately he tried to will back the desolation which had engulfed him when Mrs. Finsky had taken his lunch away. At least there was no thinking in that morass. But it wouldnât come. After all, this was a âgoodâ day. A desert.
Suddenly, the desert was inhabited, not by a stranger seen trekking toward him out of the distance, enabling him to prepare a mask and a reason, but by an ambush. A voice at the door, a rattle of metal on timber. Lady Treadgold. Crippen.
Residents at Flycatchers did not often visit each other in their rooms. This was not a rule, but a code of manners. It was in the TV lounge and the bridge room and the morning room and the dining hall and the bar that encounters took place, alliances were formed, feuds fought. One went down there prepared for meetings, wearing the armor of almost-health. It was not good manners to play other roles than the stoic. But in oneâs own room one unbuckled and was as feeble, ill, old, as one chose. Naturally, one did not care to be seen in such a state, with the door of the mausoleum ajar and the odors of death seeping into the air.
Of course Lady Treadgold knew this, so came rattling into the room already talking. Her head was cocked sideways and a little forward, just the gesture she used when she rebid her own feeble suit, knowing that her partner had every right to play the hand.
â. . . so they were all against me,â she said, banging her walking frame forward
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