"Ambulance on the way," he said. "Any idea of her chances? Doctor?"
Rosenberg shook his head. In pyjamas and with his hair ruffled he looked about nine. "I don't understand, there's something crazy about the timing. We'll have to wait for Ivor. Oh, her chances, we don't know how many she took or how long ago she took them so medically nobody could say at this stage. If that bottle was full when she started it would have held around eighty of the things, quite enough to do for her."
"I thought you couldn't die of an overdose of those," said Brenda.
"I grant you it isn't easy but it can be done, that is if you've been taking other pills as well, which she no doubt was. The trouble is it's very widely believed that there is no fatal overdose. If she believed it...."
Jake made an effort. "I noticed she was one of the first to go to bed. She could have been swallowing them by ten-thirty."
"If so they'll be well into her by now. She can't have wanted that."
"How do you mean?,
"Her object was not to die but to punish someone or call attention to herself or both. Unfortunately...."
He stopped speaking as Ed hurried in with Ivor. The note and the bottle were produced. Ed stood still for a moment and looked at the floor. Then at the sound of approaching voices he went active, moved to the threshold and said, "Hold it there, fellows. Kelly's been taken sick and will have to be moved to the hospital but she's going to be okay. And that's all."
"Anything we can do?" asked somebody who sounded to Jake like Lionel.
"Yes there is. There's an ambulance coming—you go down to the front door on the double to let the men in. You stay right where you are and don't let anyone past. I don't want a crowd in here. Thanks." He shut the door and looked round the room, at Brenda in an unluxurious armchair, Jake standing near the head of the bed, Rosenberg sitting on its foot, Ivor by the boarded-up fireplace. "All right Ivor, let's have it all and in the right order."
"Jake kindly said I could wake him up any time I felt bad," said Ivor at a brisk rate, as one who has worked out in advance the best and shortest way to impart a set of facts. "I woke up suddenly and I was frightened because it was a strange place. I started to go to Jake but his room's on the floor below and I needed somebody at once. So I went into just the nearest room, I didn't know whose it was, and I turned on the light and it was here and she was like that and I saw the note and the bottle. So then I stopped feeling frightened about myself and fetched Jake and he sent me for Frank and I found him almost straight away."
"So: she had no way whatever of knowing that you even might come bursting in at four a.m."
"None."
"What woke you?" asked Rosenberg.
"I don't know, I just woke, found I was awake."
Ed rubbed his cheeks alternately with one hand after the other. "It's off pattern, Frank."
"I agree. What's worrying is that you can kill yourself with those things but hardly anyone—"
"Is that right, I didn't know that."
"There you are, if you didn't know there's a good chance she didn't either."
"So she goes for a cut-me-down, a joke, a phoney attempt without knowing what she's using can be deadly."
"She could have found out about that," said Jake, hoping even as he spoke to be taken as stating a rather obvious general possibility rather than showing special knowledge.
"Maybe. We'll know more later. You did well, Ivor. You too, Jake. Now you can all go along to bed. Frank and I'll take care of everything here."
It struck Jake then that he wanted to stay and see Kelly safely taken off the premises, but he felt he couldn't argue the point so he glanced at her, saw that one of her cheeks was reddened, where Rosenberg might have slapped it to try to arouse her, but nothing else of significance and left with the other two. When asked, Ivor said he would be fine now because it was nearly light. As soon as he had gone Brenda said,
"You're not to blame for that in any way at all."
"If she dies I'll be responsible. That stuff has had three or four more hours to work on her because of me."
"You're not responsible. Either she is or God is or nobody is, not you. It's nothing to do with you except in the sense that she did it to get you involved with her and make you feel awful about her, and she picked you because she knows you quite like her or have a bit of time for her and nobody else does."
"All right, but poor little bitch."
"You can't afford to think that. Dangerous little lunatic is the only safe thing to think about her. Remember, it's 'not your fault'. You couldn't possibly have foreseen what she was going to do, how could anyone?"
They heard the ambulance approaching. Neither spoke while it came up and halted outside the building and, after what seemed a remarkably short time, drove off again. Jake had heard no voices or footfalls in that time and wished he had, feeling that that would have been some sort of guarantee of Kelly's actual departure. By now he and Brenda were tucked up in their beds, or rather lay there in the hot twilight each covered by a single sheet.
"Do you think I did right not to tell them about her asking me to go and see her?"
"I should think so, darling. I suppose it might be a bit awkward if it ever came up, but I can't see why it should. And it doesn't make any difference, does it?"
"Not now."
"I'm going to rest. I shan't sleep but I must rest or I'll feel terrible in the morning. I mean later on. Try not to worry. As I said, you're not to blame in the least."
Jake agreed with Brenda about resting and sleeping but got it wrong: he dropped off almost at once and was woken by the heat four hours later. Much the same turned out to have happened to her. On the feeling-terrible front his achievement was well above par, nothing on the scale of the morning after Eve but with similar all-round coverage of the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, moral. As for worrying he was well into that by the time his eyes were open, so far that he couldn't get round to considering whether he was to blame or not: perhaps he was an innocent instrument but there was no doubt whatever that he was an instrument.
If breakfast was to be had at all he must do no more than dress, comb hair and pee before plunging downstairs. With Brenda at his side, full of complaint about how ghastly she looked, he found something called a dining room. The sun shone brightly on the non-prestige furniture, plastic tablecloths and haircord carpeting. There was a kind of sideboard with doll's-house packets of cereal, quarter-pints of milk, "sachets" of sugar and other easier-for-them items that recalled the Comyns buttery. No cooked food was available. You got your coffee out of a machine, and having done that you couldn't get it back in.
The room was set with tables for four, only about half of which were to any degree laid, so Ivor had been right in his estimate of the non-fullness of the house. Here he was now, hurrying over to them.
"Ed and Frank would like to see you in the committee-room as soon as you're ready-same side of the hall as this at the back," he said and was gone.
Brenda had agreed with Jake that it would be more comfortable to discuss Kelly's case as little as possible, so they picked the table already part occupied by Ruth and Winnie, an ideal pair for the present purpose at any rate. On his left Jake had a window that gave him a view of a stretch of lawn in need of cutting, a tall thick hedge and then nothing until some low hills with a few trees and dumps of bushes and what looked from here like smooth densely growing grass, and sky of course, in no way remarkable but quite grand on such a bright day. And yet not so grand, he felt, as the same scene would have looked to him five or ten years ago. 'Then' it would have been apparelled in ti-tum ti-tum, the glory and the freshness of a dream. Was that what Wordsworth had been on about without knowing it? How old had he been when he wrote the Ode? Thirty-something? But then he aged early in other respects. Get on to Lancewood.