-- Never. It's a disgusting idea. But if Maurice were . . .
He ran blindly out of the room, out of the building, as if he could literally flee from such thoughts. At the Needle he stopped and bought a bottle of vodka which consumed almost all the cash he had left since his impulsive spending spree to clothe Urchin.
It was no longer Iris's presence that haunted his home now, but Urchin's. The scent he had brought hot on her skin from the bath seemed to float after him wherever he went; a shadow he mistook for hers darted away at the edge of his vision, and imagination filled his hands with the firmness of her muscles, the sleekness of her skin.
Hopelessly drunk, at four in the morning he found himself encouraging her in hoarse whispers to finish the job she had begun on Maurice, to clamp her steely little fingers on his fat wobbling throat and choke the life out of him so that they might couple undisturbed beside his body on the floor.
*39*
On Monday morning he did what he could to conceal the haggardness of his appearance and went first thing to Holinshed's office.
"Yes?" the medical superintendent said, glancing up. "Oh, it's you, Fidler. I was just about to send for you. Sit down. What is it you want, first?"
The words choked Paul as he forced them past his stiff tongue.
"Sir, I've been thinking over what you said on Saturday morning -- about Urchin -- and I've come to the conclusion that it would perhaps be best if Dr Rudge took over her case."
"It's a bit too late for that, Fidler," Holinshed grunted. "I already have the admission report here on this man Maurice Dawkins, and it's pretty damning, to say the least of it. You've been caught in flagrante delicto with a female patient, and I have no choice but to suspend you from your post forthwith and report your conduct to the General Medical Council."
"You're not going to believe the accusations of a psychotic!"
"If you imagined that Maurice Dawkins was insane, your incompetence must be total and I cannot guess how you ever deluded me into accepting you on my staff. He is and has been since he awoke yesterday -- and no doubt was when you misused your status to have him committed -- in full possession of all his faculties." Holinshed shuffled his papers noisily. "Dr Silva assures me the matter is beyond doubt."
Paul screamed.
On Sunday afternoon after a great deal of difficulty, he managed to reach his former colleague in London, and informed him that Maurice was at Chent but ought to be brought back to his regular therapist at once.
"Sorry, old chap," the voice at the far end of the line replied, "no go. No point! I'm moving to Edinburgh tomorrow and Charlie's emigrating to America and nobody else here has any knowledge of his case. You have, though. I'll send up his recent case-notes for you; I can't do any more."
"For God's sake -- "
"He's no particular trouble, old son. Bit of a loudmouth when he's in the manic phase, of course. You should hear some of the dirty gossip he spread about me around this place. It was kind of flattering -- answer to a maiden's prayer stuff -- but he got practically everyone believing it for a while."
Paul threw the phone at the wall and it smashed.
In the end Paul decided to ignore the whole business, trust to his ability to furnish glib excuses for any accusation Holinshed might level at him, and continue his work in exactly the same pattern as hitherto. Oliphant brought in some memos from his charge nurse and plonked them on the desk.
"Morning, Doc," be said cheerfully. "Nice bit of nooky on Saturday night, I hope? Heard about it from the ambulance driver. You old so-and-so, you!" He gave Paul a playful jab in the ribs and went out.
"I must congratulate you, Doctor," Matron Thoroday said. "Of course, it's hardly conventional treatment, but what insight to diagnose that this was precisely what Urchin needed! She'll be out of here inside a week if she continues to improve this rapidly."
"Can't say I expected you to take what I said about the therapeutic value of orgasm at its face value in this fashion," Alsop grunted. "However, the proof of the pudding, as they say . . . It's a remarkable development in psychotherapy, to my mind, well worth a short paper in the BMJ . If you'd care to use my name as co-author, please do so. I propose to try the technique myself at the earliest opportunity."
"Brave of you," Mirza approved. "Often thought about it myself, to be frank, but I didn't quite have the guts. Also there's the problem of finding a suitable patient. I've got Urchin over in the male wards now, though, co-operating an absolute treat. It's put life back into at least half of the men there. And she's got such fantastic stamina! She seems positively starved for it; been through about thirty of them already."
Paul picked up Maurice's clock by the statuette on top and smashed it over Mirza's head.
"Thanks very much, Paul," said Maurice, washed, shaved, neatly dressed, extending his hand to be shaken. "I don't know what I'd have done the other day if I hadn't been able to locate you. I was sure you'd be able to help."
Paul gripped the proffered hand squarely. "It's a pleasure, Maurice," he said. "Any time. And, speaking of time, did I remember to thank you for the clock? Most kind of you." He hesitated. "Will you be seeing Iris, by any chance?"
"I expect so. Bertie and Meg have invited me to dinner tomorrow, and I imagine I'll see her there. I'll tell her you're getting on okay, shall I? Not too badly despite her going away, at least not since you acquired this snazzy little girl-friend I met at your place. One of the patients, I gather. Look, if she gets out of here and is ever in London, put her in touch with me, won't you? I doubt if Meg will tolerate Bertie messing around with Iris indefinitely, and it would be nice for him to have a complete contrast for the next one. You can trust me to pass her on unscratched, tee-hee!" He giggled in his familiar camp manner.
Paul turned to pour him a farewell drink. Into one of the glasses he tipped a generous measure of cyanide.
When he went to answer the knack at the door, he found Inspector Hofford there. Hovering in the background was Mrs Weddenhall, clinging to two monstrous hounds on a shared leash, while beyond her again were a number of figures whose faces he couldn't discern -- whose only clearly visible attribute, in fact, was the gun each one carried on his arm.
"Good morning, Dr Fidler," Hofford began in an apologetic tone. "Sorry to bother you, but as the result of an information laid by Mrs Weddenhall, JP, I have a warrant for your arrest on charges of assault and battery, malicious false committal to an insane asylum, harbouring a dangerous lunatic, gross indecency with a person below the age of consent, being an accessory after the fact to an illegal entry into Britain, not having a dog, gun or broadcast-receiving licence and disturbing Her Majesty's peace. I also have a warrant to search these premises in connection with the unexplained disappearance of one Maurice Boris Horace Doris Dawkins, a spinster of this parish. How say you, guilty or not guilty?"
Paul slammed the door in his face, and it was ripped open again by the thunderous blast of twelve-bore shotguns. Through the gap, torn in the door like a paper hoop, leapt Mrs Weddenhall's hounds. They fell on him and shook him like a rat until he died.
Paul pulled his car into the yard of Blickham General Hospital, jumped out without removing the ignition key, and marched over the road to the photographer's studio. Samuels was idly solving the crossword in his morning paper.
"Yes, sir?" he murmured on Paul's entrance.
-- It won't be Llanraw, but at least it's away from Chent.
"I was in here on a Satutday morning some time ago, about the beginning of March, I think, to have some pictures taken of a girl I brought in. I'd like three more prints of that picture. Do you still have it by any chance?"
"I believe I remember you, sir. Just a minute." Samuels vanished behind his black velvet curtain, while Paul waited, humming to himself, surrounded by the blind faces of strangers.
After some minutes, Samuels re-emerged. "Here you are," he said, showing a negative. "Not much of a likeness, I'm afraid -- she wore that scared expression while I was taking it
-- but I can certainly give you some more prints from it. How many will you be requiring?"
"Three. How soon can I pick them up?"
Paul walked into the bank and rang the little bell on the counter. To the girl clerk who appeared he said, "I'd like to aee my current balance, please."
Armed with the statement, which showed a healthy sum in credit, he marched down to the far end of the counter and rang another bell labelled Inquiries, Foreign Exchange.
To the stiff-collared male clerk who answered him this time he said, "I'd like to draw my balance in traveller's cheques. How soon can you have them ready for me?"
At home he kept a rubber stamp with the address of Chent Hospital on it, for use when he had to deal with medical correspondence away from the office. Chuckling a little over the almost hypnotic force which rubber stamps exert on the official mind, he carefully laid it on the back of each of the passport photographs of Urchin. Picking up a pen, he hesitated.
-- Joseph Holinshed, MD, certifies that this is a true likeness of . . .? Mirza Bakshad . . .? No, of course!
With vast amusement at his own imagination, he wrote in a fair approximation of the consultant's spiky hand: Certified to be of Iris Elaine Fidler -- Enoch Knox Alsop, M.D.
-- " 'E knock-knocks!"
For a second his vision blurred with tears.
-- All those things gone now, all wasted: scholarship and lies told to Iris to make her marry me, hope of being a consultant psychiatrist with status and prestige, a little bloody sketch for a human baby ground up in Newton Swerd's garbage disposal unit, daddy daddy come and play with me take me shopping for a lovely new yellow dress and white stockings and a coat the colour of the green leaves on the tree . . .
But for once Paul Fidler in one of his myriad versions was going to thumb his nose at the course of fate.
-- Stay, and: "This is Iris speaking, Paul. Maurice Dawkins told me about your goings-on with the fiddler's bitch and I've just posted a letter to your medical superintendent" -- lovely resounding mouthfilly title which one day her husband should have enjoyed, sterile as a prepubescent boy clinging to mama's skirts against the hostile complicated world -- "asking him to report you to the General Medical Council." Finish. Slut. Kaputt. Moreover: "Dr Holinshed, this is Barbara Weddenhall. After seeing Dr Fidler in Blickham cuddling a patient of his in the public street I asked the police to keep watch on his home and they inform me the woman was seen brazenly unclothed there in his presence." Following which: "Fidler, you have been called here to answer charges concerning a patient of yours at Chent Hospital, with whom you have carried on an adulterous liaison seemingly without regard for your professional responsibilities towards her."
Pathway after pathway into the future, each ending in a blind alley of ruin, where the disaster he had eluded for so long finally closed the trap on him and he was condemned as surely as Urchin was doomed to a lifelong stay in Chent.
-- A weak personality has no business choosing psychiatry for a career anyhow. I'm sick of reaching after stupid ambitions because at every turn someone is ready to betray me and stop me achieving them: Holinshed hates me, Alsop is jealous of me the younger rival, Ferdie distrusts what I said about Urchin, Iris has left me, even Mirza whom I took for my best friend is abandoning me and going away to another hospital. My bloody stinking parents have pushed me this far, like the Yiddischer jokes "my boy's a good boy he's going to be a doctor." . . . Enough. Stop now. Free. Break loose. Out of Chent the prison. And some day our private secret version of Llanraw.
To the woman in the passport office, blue-rinsed, her eyes cold behind steel-framed glasses, he said, "I'm sure this is going to be difficult for you, and I do apologise in advance, but you see I'm a doctor" -- important first point to get across, someone responsible like a doctor or JP or minister of religion has to certify the likeness on a passport photo and who would think of a doctor lying any more than a parson? -- "and my wife and I have the first chance we've had since we got married to take a holiday abroad and what I'd like to do is have her included on my passport so we can go off as soon as we possibly can."
"Your wife isn't with you," the woman said.
"I'm afraid not. You see, she's going to have a baby shortly -- that's why we're extremely eager to get away at once so she can make the most of the trip before she's too unwell to travel. But I have the right number of pictures of her here, and I brought our marriage certificate too." He laid documents on the desk in a tidy array.
"When do you want to go, then?" the woman said.
"As soon as humanly possible. Tomorrow, probably. Look, I do appreciate that one ought to give plenty of notice for this sort of thing, but hospitals are dreadfully understaffed and it's only the sheer coincidence of somebody turning up who can take over my work for a couple of weeks which has allowed us to think of taking a holiday at all this year. The last four years, ever since we got married, I've been so desperately busy we've had to make do with the odd weekend -- no chance at all to go abroad, and she's terribly looking forward to it."
The woman looked at the photographs of Urchin. Her expression softened at the childish worry she read on the image of the face. She said, "I'll have to talk to my superior officer about this, Dr . . . ah . . . Dr Fidler, but I suppose there is just a chance we might be able to help you out."
At five-thirty he marched into the entrance hall of the hospital, armed with his deceitful proofs of identity. Natalie was just on the point of going out.
"Paul! Where in the world have you been all day? Holinshed's been raising the roof, Alsop was ringing up the whole afternoon to find out why you weren't at the clinic with him, and -- "
He walked straight past her, leaving her gasping.
Ferdie Silva was the next person he encountered: "Holinshed is looking for you, Paul -- where've you been?"
-- Keeping out of the way of you, you dirty-minded suspicious bastard.
But he judged it safer not to speak the thought aloud.
Afterwards, he never remembered clearly how he had carried it off -- by sheer effrontery, perhaps, the tone of authority in the voice with which be instructed the nurses to do as he wanted overcoming their lingering doubts due to the half-heard rumours that must have been circulating through the hospital today. The car was a mile down the road before anyone put two and two together, including Paul himself, who dazedly glanced sideways and saw Urchin wriggling to draw her new bright yellow dress down around her shoulders in place of the horrible hospital bag in which she had come out.
He didn't believe it could be true; when for occasional instants it seemed to him that it was, he felt a spasm of naked panic and relapsed into the reassuring hope that it was an illusion, another of the vividly imagined courses of action leading to disaster which had plagued him all his life.
But she sang at the top of her voice, an eldritch off-key melody belonging to no school of music he had ever heard of, while the car streaked through the gathering dusk, and that night he enjoyed her body in a shabby Dover hotel which for the space of an hour or two seemed like an extension into the everyday world of lovely, heartbreakingly lost Llanraw.
*40*
The town was called Louze. It sat at the end of a road to nowhere, some twenty miles east of Marseilles: an overgrown and deformed fishing-port with a native population of three or four thousand, doubled at the height of the season and perhaps a little more than doubled on Saturday nights when Marseillais came cut in their droves for a gambling session at the sea-girt casino terminating the harbour mole.
One deformed quadrant of buildings faced the harbour, hotels at either end, everything between a café, a restaurant or a souvenir shop. From there, what were more alleys than streets staggered backwards into the countryside behind, their curious random directions being dictated by the lie of the ground. Crowning one of the two miniature promontories that cut off further expansion, there was a caravan and camping site; beyond that again, luxury villas were scattered wherever access could be gained to a morsel
of beach.
Today, abruptly, the mistral had risen to bring the first promise of autumn to the Mediterranean coast; it was picking up the sand by handfuls and chucking it at anyone who came within reach. The cars that crept by in low gear had their tops up, their windows closed against the wind. The sun-bathers had abandoned the shore to a few children playing with a huge bright ball.