‘Never mind,’ said the second voice. ‘She’ll do now. That’s one of us with the chance to begin again. I could almost envy her.’
Something pricked her thigh. She went down again gratefully, fathoms deep into the dark.
Faces loomed, receded and vanished like puffs of smoke. Voices, some of them real and some illusory, whispered, barked, shouted, fired themselves like pistol shots from every corner of unreality, in the crazy round-dance of disorientation. Hands lifted her, trickles of water fed themselves into her mouth. There were periods of light and sense, but she always lost them again before she could orientate herself or make anyone understand her. Pain, never acute but never absent, ebbed and flowed in a capricious tide. Through a shadowy underworld spiky with quickset hedges and shattering glass she pursued and was pursued, at every lucid moment reaching out feverishly after whoever was nearest: ‘Tom… please, find Tom! Never mind me, look for Tom…he’s hurt…’ And all the while the dead man pressed hard on her heels, tapping at her shoulder; but the voice that panted in her ear was always her own voice, thinly wailing: My God, what have I done? I’ve killed him… killed him…
Later she hurt all over, and that meant that there were senses there, nerves that were working, muscles that didn’t want to work; and she tried to move, and did move, and that hurt more, but nevertheless was not discouraging.
A face hovered, impressed: ‘My, you’re mobile!’
‘Tom…’ she said urgently. ‘Please, I’ve got to know about Tom…’
‘Tom? Who’s Tom?’
‘Tom Lowell. He was with me in the car…’
‘Oh, he’s all right. Don’t worry about him. He was the lucky one, he got off with only a few bramble scratches and mild concussion. He was discharged yesterday.’
She couldn’t believe it. ‘You mean he isn’t dead? Really he isn’t? You’re not just trying to keep me quiet by telling me that?’
‘Not a bit of it! He’s far from dead. If you’re fit for visits to-morrow he’s coming in, so you can see for yourself. Got his face scratched, but that’s all the damage you’ll see. He was thrown out just short of the hedge. You’re the one who took the brunt, and you’re going to be all right, too. Drink?’
‘We were going to Liverpool,’ said Maggie, groping after departed urgencies that might have validity again any moment. ‘We should have been at a concert…’
‘Mr. Lowell fixed that as soon as he came round. We telephoned them, and they got somebody else. Everything’s taken care of.’
So there seemed nothing more to ask about, and nothing more to say. She sank back into a chaos now less frightening because almost meaningless. Everything was taken care of. Tom wasn’t dead. After all, she would never have to face his wife and try to excuse herself for the crash that killed him. He was alive, not even badly hurt.
Then if it wasn’t Tom, who was it, tapping her on the shoulder, treading on her heels, dunning her for his life?
It wasn’t any delusion, he was still there; even in the instant of absolute relief over Tom he had still been there, close and faceless, making use of her voice because he had no voice of his own, being dead: My God, what have I done? He’s dead, and I killed him! My God, what have you done to me? Killed me… killed me… killed me…
How could she have mistaken him for Tom? Only out of the remote past, where so much was forgotten, could something so ominous and shapeless surface again to haunt and accuse. When the waters are troubled, dead people rise. But all her dead were decently buried, and she had never done them any wrong.
‘Nurse! There wasn’t anyone else, was there? We didn’t hit somebody else, when we crashed…?’
‘There was nobody else around. Just the two of you, as if that wasn’t enough! What are you worrying about? You’re both going to be all right.’
No answer there, either. Much longer ago, much farther away, than the badly-engineered curve by the brickworks. Somewhere, at some time, she had done something terrible to someone, something that destroyed him. Oh God, what was it? How could she know she had done it, and not know what it was? The silence that had covered it could only be her silence. She must have known at some time, and held her tongue in the hope of universal silence. And gradually drawn breath easily again, because there’d been no sound, nobody to rise up and accuse her, nobody to dig up what was dead, nobody she need fear, after all. Only herself, lulled, bemused, bribed, persuaded, subdued into acquiescence, but never convinced. Only herself and this roused ghost clawing at her shoulder, and this now constant and inconsolable ache inside her of a debt unpaid and unpayable.
‘Well, how are you feeling this morning?’ asked the ward sister, coming in on her daily round.
‘Much better, thank you.’ The patient was pale, lucid and astonished among her pillows, staring great-eyed at a recovered world in which she seemed to find nothing familiar. ‘I’m afraid I’ve been causing you all a great deal of trouble.’
‘You haven’t done so badly, considering. You did give them rather a run for their money in the theatre—very naughty reactions to the anaesthetic. But that’s all over now. Your temperature’s been down to normal since last night, and Nurse tells me you’re eating well this morning. Keep it up, and we’ll be getting you out of bed in a couple of days.’
‘I seem to have been lucky,’ said Maggie, flexing her legs experimentally under the bedclothes. ‘Everything works. What exactly did I do to myself?’
‘It wasn’t half as bad as it looked when they brought you in. A lot of blood, but no breakages. But you were pretty badly cut about, down below, you’re going to look like a Victorian sampler when you get all that plaster off. Never mind, the scars won’t be where they show, and if you usually heal well you may not have much to show for it in a year or so. There’ve been any amount of callers enquiring after you. Your sister telephoned, and your brother… your agent… In a few days we’ll let you have a telephone in here, but not just yet. But I think we could allow you visitors this afternoon. Mr. Lowell sent you the roses, and said he’d be in to see you the minute we let him.’
‘Wasn’t I in a ward? I thought… I seem to remember more beds… a big room and a lot of people sleeping…’
‘Your agent asked us to move you into a private room, as soon as he knew what had happened.’
‘Oh,’ said Maggie, ‘I see!’ He would, of course, to him it would be a matter of first importance. ‘It sounds silly, but I don’t even know what hospital this is. I’d never driven that road before.’
‘You’re in the Royal, in Comerbourne. We’re the nearest general to that nasty bend where you crashed. You’re not the first we’ve had brought in from there, and I doubt you’ll be the last. Take things easily, and don’t worry about anything now, you’re doing very nicely.’
‘Everybody’s being very kind. I’m sorry to be a nuisance.’
‘It’s what we’re here for.’ The ward sister looked back from the doorway, and saw the dilated blue-black eyes following her steadily from the pillow, but without any real awareness of her. They gave her the curious impression that they were staring inward rather than outward. ‘There isn’t anything troubling you, is there? If there’s anything you want, anything we can do for you, you’ve got a bell there by your bed.’
‘Thank you, really there’s nothing more you can do for me.’
There was nothing more any of them could do for her. Not the ward sister, not the wiry little staff nurse with a bibful of pins, not the tall, splay-footed Jamaican beginner from Port Royal, who herring-boned up the ward like a skier climbing back up a slope, and warmed the air with her split-lemon smile and huge, gay, innocent eyes; not the young houseman who made the daily rounds, nor the consultant surgeon who had sewn her torn thighs back into shape, not the anaesthetist who had kept her breathing on the table when it seemed she had been set on giving up the struggle. Nor her visitors, who came with flowers and chocolates as soon as they were allowed in: Tom Lowell, tongue-tied with unwary joy at seeing her on her way back to life, and half-inclined to blame himself, though heaven knew why, for what had happened; her agent, swooping in from London laden with roses and reassurances; a young conductor passing through Comerbourne on his way to an engagement in Chester; a famous tenor who had recorded with her a few months ago; a concert violinist, and others who had shared platforms with her. They sat by her bed for an hour or so, happy and relieved to find her recognisable for the same Maggie, with a steady pulse, a satisfactory blood pressure, and a voice unimpaired. They went away with the comfortable feeling of having visited and consoled the not-too-sick. There was nothing more she could do for them, or they for her.