No Escape Page 5

  “Nothing! I only wish to God it was nothing!”

  Jane went away again and spent a little time finding out where Timothy was likely to be that afternoon. He was not operating, she discovered, so he might be anywhere, possibly not in the hospital at all. After several attempts to find him had failed she went down to the entrance hall.

  Here another obstacle checked her. The head porter was off duty and his substitute did not know where he had put Miss Burgess’s case.

  “But you must know were he’s likely to have put it?” Jane said, desperately.

  The man looked vaguely round the office. It was small, square and box-like, the side facing into the hall entirely made up of glass sliding windows, a long table under them, a bank of telephones, a letter rack, a few chairs. No place, Jane realised in which to keep, far less to hide, a rather large suitcase.

  “I don’t see it anywhere, miss,” the porter said, picking up the receiver on a ringing telephone.

  Jane waited for the call to finish.

  ‘Then where can it have gone?” she asked beginning to be really anxious now.

  “If you ask me—” the man began, picking up the receiver again.

  “I just have,” Jane breathed, not loud enough for him to hear.

  “If you ask me,” he repeated, as soon as he could, “I wouldn’t wonder if it’s been sent up to the ward.”

  “Alexandra?” cried Jane. “But I’ve just come down from there. It wasn’t there when I left.”

  “When would that be?”

  How long had she spent looking for Tim?

  “About fifteen minutes, I should think.”

  “Ah. He’d have disposed of it when he went off, I should think. Say ten minutes ago. I think you may find it up there, miss.”

  “You couldn’t ring them and find out, could you?”

  The porter smiled, his hand moving automatically to plug in the house telephone. After a few seconds he came back to Jane.

  “Yes miss. It’s up there all right. I understand Sister isn’t too pleased.”

  “I bet she’s hopping mad. Thanks a lot,” Jane said, happily as she turned away.

  Back to Alexandra, she sighed. Another small basinful of Sheila’s woes and then home, a solitary, blessed solitary, late tea at her flat in front of the fire, toast and honey and a new novel from the Public Library. She found that Sister had gone off for her own tea but Staff Nurse gave her permission to take the big suitcase into the ward, just to convince the scatty girl in Bed 12 that it had not been stolen. As she staggered in with it she saw the cubicle curtains were closed again. She kept going, however, and pushing her way in heard Tim saying—” it’s for your own safety, Miss Burgess. You will do as I ask, won’t you? Say yes! Let me hear you say yes!”

  Then Jane was inside, Tim had sprung to his feet and Sheila who had been sitting upright, leaned forward with a flushed face and said, “Oh Jane, you angel! You found it. I was so afraid someone—” She broke off, turned to Timothy and went on, eagerly, “I’ve got to clear out! You understand, don’t you? I’m all set to leave— All my things— All that matters Jane’s been wonderful. So I’ll go home tomorrow. Dr Long. Thank you for all you’ve done, but I just have to go home.”

  Jane backed away, stammering apologies. She wanted to get out of the ward, more particularly to get away from the picture of Timothy leaning forward, one of Sheila’s hands between both of his gazing into her eyes and saying, “You will do as I ask, won’t you?” and Sheila gazing back, melting rapidly, on the very point of agreeing. She was furious with Tim; she was furious with herself for interrupting him.

  “Don’t go, Miss Wheelan!”

  It was an order, given in a voice of suppressed fury, quite equal to her own, Jane thought miserably. She made an effort to defend herself, however.

  “I understood that Sheila was to be discharged tomorrow and as she asked me to go to her room and bring her things here, I just did that. Was it wrong?”

  Tim shook his head, hopelessly.

  “Not really, I suppose. But actually since you came back with some of the luggage, Miss Burgess has been in such a disturbed condition—”

  Jane protested, but he went on, disregarding her, “So very much worse that we are now advising her to have further treatment—specialist treatment.”

  “You know what he means, don’t you, Jane?” Sheila insisted on being heard. “The luny-bin—that awful shock treatment or something.”

  “I’m sure rest and a few talks with the doctor will do the trick,” Tim told her.

  “I can get that at home. My mother has a very good doctor. I’ve been to him myself sometimes. He’ll do for the talks and I’m going home for the rest. So what more do you want?”

  Her attitude and appearance had changed profoundly since Jane’s arrival. She was lively and confident where before she had been apathetic and fearful. While Tim considered that this was an added proof of her instability, he had to acknowledge that it gave him no grounds for pressing her to sign a form to admit her to a mental hospital as a voluntary patient.

  All the same he could not forgive Jane for interrupting him at the moment of success. So he got up from his chair, shook hands with Sheila, nodded to Jane and left the cubicle. Sheila immediately burst into tears.

  “He’s gone and he won’t see me again!” she wailed.

  “Does that matter? You weren’t exactly co-operative, were you?”

  “I never even thanked him properly for helping me.”

  Jane began to feel immensely, overwhelmingly bored with the whole business.

  “You can write him a nice letter when you get home,” she said.

  Unconscious of the intended irony, Sheila nodded. Jane lifted the suitcase on to the empty chair.

  “Do you want it here or shall I take it out again to Sister’s room, now you’ve seen it?”

  “Leave it here, please. But put it under the bed.”

  “They won’t let you keep it there.”

  “Only till tomorrow. They may not notice it if you push it well under.”

  Jane did as she was asked to avoid argument and as Sheila now appeared to be fully satisfied, sinking back on her pillows and smiling, Jane left her, picked up her own outdoor things and handbag in the X-ray Department and left the hospital by a side door.

  She came out into the road by a small gate a short distance from the main entrance. Cars were parked on both sides of this approach. Walking rapidly, she suddenly heard her name called and turning saw that the car directly behind her on the other side was Mr Stone’s and the man himself was leaning from the driver’s seat to open the passenger door.

  Chapter Five

  She walked back slowly, wondering what he was doing there, over an hour since he had left her at the main hospital entrance.

  Her surprise must have shown plainly in her face, for Stone said, smiling, “Why am I here? Yes. Well, I just wanted to know the latest about Sheila.”

  “We’re worried about her,” Jane said simply.

  He frowned, turned to look up and down the road, then said, “Why not hop in and let me take you wherever you’re going? Then you can tell me.”

  His manner was very soothing, coming as it did so soon after her uncomfortable brush with Tim. This man was not at all excited, but calm and wise and helpful. Sheila needed a friend and surely this was one; he had already proved it by his solicitude.

  So Jane got into the car and gave her address in Arcadia Road, that lay between Olympia and Shepherd’s Bush.

  “Not so far from Sheila’s place,” Stone said, as they moved off. “But a different kind of set-up, I’m sure.”

  “I share a flat with a girl who’s at the L.S.E.”

  “What was that?”

  “The London School of Economics” Jane told him, put out a little by his ignorance, which did not match the impression she already had of him.

  “Mr Stone.” she began, formally.

  “Gerry,” he said, keeping his eyes on the r
oad. “Gerry’s the name, Jane.”

  “I said I was anxious about Sheila,” she went on, ignoring this interruption, though it pleased her. “You see I don’t think the hospital people understand her. I mean the nurse and—and the doctors.”

  All her resentment, her anger with Tim, rose up again.

  “Go on, tell me,” Gerry said, quietly.

  “Particularly Tim—I mean Dr Long. He seems to think now she’s having a real mental breakdown. He wants her to go to a mental hospital for treatment.”

  She saw Gerry’s hands tighten on the wheel, and went on, “He’s furious with me because—” She stopped. Sheila had begged her to say nothing about her immediate plans. It would he a gross breach of confidence to describe the fuss over the suitcases. Besides, she did not really know the man beside her, whose profile just now was far from prepossessing.

  But the next moment Gerry’s face relaxed and he gave her a brief smiling glance that removed her doubts at once.

  “It’s not important,” she tried to explain. “Only medical details. Anyhow he couldn’t persuade her and that was partly my fault, so he’s furious with me.”

  “Is that all? I don’t see quite how it affects Sheila.”

  “No. of course not. I’m being stupid. What I mean is she won’t do as he wants and she is going home tomorrow.”

  “I see.”

  They drove on in silence for a few minutes, then Gerry said, “You know that doctor friend of yours isn’t far out about Sheila.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “She’s been unstable before. A couple of years ago. She nearly had to go away, then.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I’m not kidding. The place where she works, well, it belongs to a friend of mine—”

  “Ronald Bream,” said Jane, remembering the photographs in Sheila’s room.

  The car swerved a little, but Gerry’s face did not alter. “Greasy in patches,” he said. Then, a second later, “She’s told you about her work, then?”

  “Oh no.” Jane explained how she had noticed Bream’s signature on the photographs in Sheila’s room. She did not describe the photographs, but when Gerry gave her a sideways glance, full of secret amusement, she flushed and laughed.

  “Art pictures, most of them,” she said. “You knew she posed for them, I suppose?”

  “Naturally. Does that shock you?”

  “Not really. Anyway, it’s nothing new. And I’d rather have these photographs than most of the women on beaches with bikinis on. You have to have a really marvellous figure to take a bikini. Most of the women who wear them just haven’t. They bulge in all the wrong places.”

  “Too right. What was I saying?”

  “That Ronald Bream, the photographer, is a friend of yours.”

  “Yes. And a couple of years ago when Sheila first began to work for him she turned up one morning and threw a fit of hysteria.”

  “Had he just suggested she might model for the nude?” Jane asked.

  Gerry looked round at her again.

  “You’re a cool customer, aren’t you?”

  “I’m in medicine,” Jane answered. “I see nudes every day. I don’t get any kick at all, from either sex.”

  “So it seems.”

  “You were talking about Sheila.”

  “Yes. Well, they had to call a doctor and she had some treatment or other and was away a couple of weeks as far as I remember.”

  “But she went back to her job? The same job?”

  “Oh, yes. Ron took her back.”

  “Then it can’t have been anything to do with the art photos.”

  “No, it can’t, can it?”

  “You mean she’s really, basically, a bit twitched? Poor Sheila.”

  “Exactly. Now are you satisfied why I was hanging around the hospital, wondering how to get in touch with her, what to do to help the poor kid?”

  Jane blushed, tongue-tied, annoyed with herself on so many counts she felt she would like nothing better than to get out of the car and run away. For she had begun to wonder if she might be the attraction that had kept Gerry waiting outside the hospital. He had certainly worn a faint air of triumph when she appeared. But really it was all his anxiety about Sheila. So much for vanity, she decided. How idiotic can you get, when the slightly older man has charm?

  In her confusion and remorse, both on her own account and Sheila’s, she said, impulsively, “I’m really grateful to you for telling me. Neither Dr Long nor I thought at first that the suicide theory held for a moment, though the other staff did. Now he agrees with them and I suppose I must too. We didn’t know what you’ve told me. We thought there must be some real reason—an outside reason, I mean—for her perfectly genuine fear. It’s certainly there, Mr Stone—Gerry. She’s scared of everything, her job, herself, her parents, her friends—”

  “Which friends?”

  Jane remembered in time that she had promised Gerry not to mention him to Sheila and that she had betrayed that promise. This added to her sinking opinion of herself, both her judgement and her integrity.

  “Anyway,” she said, not answering his last question, “she’s made up her mind to go to Reading tomorrow morning. So we shan’t have any further responsibility, shall we?”

  Gerry did not answer. They had just turned in Arcadia Road and he was slowing down, looking at the numbers of the houses.

  “After the next turning on the right,” Jane said. “The fourth house on the right—now!”

  Gerry stopped the car at the kerb but did not attempt to get out. Jane began to fumble with the door on her own side.

  “Don’t go in yet,” Gerry said, pulling out a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and offering it to her.

  “I don’t,” she said. “Not worth the risk—or the money.” Gerry made a face at her.

  “Little Miss Salvation Army, are you? You won’t get a convert here. I’m deep in sin.”

  He said it with a low laugh of inward pleasure. But Jane was kicking herself again and did not notice. She had the door open now and was moving to get out of the car.

  “Why the hurry?” he asked.

  “I want my tea.”

  “I could do with a cuppa myself.”

  She was properly caught, she realised. After all his kindness that afternoon it would be too churlish not to invite him in.

  “Can I give you one?” she said, lightly, hoping he would refuse.

  But he merely thanked her, left the car, locked the doors, and followed her into the house, up the stairs and into her flat.

  Whereas when she left the hospital Jane had looked forward to a solitary tea in her own room, now she would have been delighted to find Mary, with whom she shared it, at home. But there was no welcoming light in the windows and in spite of the electric radiator in the small hall, the whole place felt cold and cheerless.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologised, turning on lights and fires as she moved about. “Mary isn’t in yet.”

  “I don’t mind. Why should I?”

  Jane did not answer this but having taken him into the sitting-room went off to the kitchen to get the kettle on to the stove. When she had assembled the tea she carried the tray to the other room, where she found Gerry sitting by the fire reading the newspaper. She had only had time to glance at the middle page that morning, but he was not reading the middle page. He seemed to be absorbed in the financial news that she never read herself.

  Conversation during the meal became more and more trivial. Gerry seemed to have retreated to some inner place of his own. She wondered why, if his interest in herself was so short-lived, he had forced upon her this invitation to the flat. After a time, however, it became clear that he was still thinking about Sheila Burgess.

  “You’ve a very nice place here,” he said. “I wouldn’t have thought—if what you say about a radiographer’s money is correct—”

  He looked at her with one comically raised eyebrow. Jane, inclined to resent his impertinence, could not he
lp laughing.

  “It’s Mary’s flat, really,” she said. “I share, but not exactly halves.”

  “Nothing like having rich friends,” said Gerry.

  “We happen to have been at school together,” Jane answered, stiffly. He was getting a bit too offensive, she thought. But his next words swung her back again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was only kidding. What I really mean is you’ve got a very nice flat and plenty of room in it, I’d think. I was wondering if you couldn’t suggest to Sheila that she stays with you for a few days before going down to Reading. No, wait a minute!” He raised a hand as Jane began to object. “Let me finish. I don’t want her family to be so upset by her state that they, too, think she’s in for a real bad breakdown. Apart from anything else, they’d have it in for me for not looking after her better. D’ you see what I mean?”

  ‘Perfectly,” Jane answered. “All the same I don’t think Mary would fall for it. And the flat is hers, as I told you.”

  “But you yourself would be willing?”

  “I don’t know. I’m out all day. I couldn’t really look after her, could I?”

  “Perhaps not. But perhaps some of her friends might come round to see her.”

  This was something Jane had not considered at all. Sheila’s friends. Had she any? Surely she must have. But where were they and why hadn’t she wanted to see them? She hadn’t named a single one, not one.

  “Do you know any of her friends?” she asked. “We don’t. She simply insisted that no one at all was to know about her or see her before she goes home.”

  “Of course I know them.” Gerry’s eyes brightened. “I know what! I’ll introduce you to some of them. Ron Bream, too. Tonight.”

  “Tonight? Where?”

  “Two of the people Sheila sees most often are throwing a little party tonight. I was asked but I said I was too worried about Sheila. What d’you say I go after all and take you with me?”

  “Where?”

  “Tom’s studio. Chelsea.”

  “Is he another photographer?”

  “No. But he lives in a studio. He knows a lot of artists, too.”