Whatever it contained was, however, concealed beneath a purple velvet covering. Julia was kneeling alongside the box, and as she reached in to draw aside the covering, she overbalanced so that her right hand slid beneath the purple velvet and encountered something hard. There was a flash of white; she tried to snatch her hand away, but something caught it fast with a hot, piercing sensation, and the doll-child sat up and opened its eyes.
The porcelain fingers gripped like the needle-sharp teeth of a serpent; with her free hand, Julia tried to fend the creature off, but it seemed to leap from its box as she recoiled through the French windows and fell heavily against the balcony railing. She felt the creature dragging her over; for one dreadful instant it hung, smiling, in mid-air before its grip upon Julia's hand was broken and the doll-child went whirling down into the void; whole seconds seemed to pass before Julia heard it smash upon the pavement.
She remained, clinging to the railing, until the worst of the shock had subsided. But the piercing sensation in her right hand did not diminish; one of the serpent-fingers must have lodged in it. Shuddering, she lifted her hand to the light and discovered that the source of the pain was, in fact, a hat-pin, driven deep into the side of her palm. Bunched beneath the head of the pin were several torn folds of white material. Clenching her teeth, she drew out the pin and dropped it over the rail; then she stood up and leaned over to see if she could discern the fragments of the doll by the light of the street lamp below. She was too far up to make anything out, but as she watched, a small figure shuffled into the pool of light and seemed to be stooping over something in the road.
Julia became suddenly conscious of where she was, but vertigo did not follow. She felt she could stay here, leaning on the rail, for as long as she liked. But there was nothing to stay for, and her hand was throbbing painfully. She returned to the sitting room, closed the doors, restored the empty box to its place, and exchanged a final glance with Lydia's portrait. The eyes had lost their wariness; indeed the picture seemed to have faded, to have become simply a photograph of a young woman seeking to make the most of her beauty for the camera. Julia wondered, as she turned away, if she would ever see the poem in print, but it was addressed to Lydia, not to her; all that was left for her to do was to ensure that a doctor would be summoned. Looking in upon Frederick for the last time, Julia saw that he was smiling faintly in his sleep. She left him dreaming of the dead, and went wearily down the stairs to rejoin the world of the living.
I emerged from the story with the sensation of waking from a dream in which I was Julia, and dreadfully cold, and the Reading Room had slipped its moorings and floated out to sea. The dome was palpably revolving; I could feel the sway of the waves as I struggled up from the depths, only to find that I was already awake, with a burning forehead and a deep, shivering ache in every bone. Walking back to Russell Square tube station, I was shaking so hard I had to clench my teeth to stop them chattering. From amongst the press of bodies in the lift, a desolate male voice announced to the world at large, 'Ah'm not happy. Ah feel bad. Ah'm depressed.' 'Aren't we fuckin' all,' muttered a man behind me. Crammed into our filthy metal cage, steeped in the farmyard stench of sodden clothing, we sank in silence into the earth.
For the next ten days I shivered and sweated and coughed, drifting in and out of dreams in which the doll-child appeared several times. Worst of all was a recurring nightmare in which I pursued a fleeting figure, who might or might not have been Alice, through a maze of deserted streets and derelict buildings. Usually she would vanish; once I cornered her in a blind alley and she turned to me with a face of stone. Outside the rain pelted down upon the icy slush, through which I slithered to the chemist for more drugs, or to the nearest cheap restaurant for another oily Indian meal. The Westland affair fizzled and died. The space shuttle blew up. The Iron Lady went on and on.
Three days before I was due to leave, I thought about taking a train from Waterloo to Balcombe, a village about three miles north-east of Staplefield. The least I could do was see the village and ask around. But as I looked again at the tiny black circle marked on the B2114, all I could feel was 'what's the point?' I tried to summon the old sense of wonder and refuge, but it was like feeling for a lost tooth. Without Alice-by now I had convinced myself that I would never hear from her again-Staplefield was dead and gone.
On my last day, a Saturday, a watery sun came out. I took a bus to Hampstead Heath and walked up to the top of Parliament Hill, where I did at last feel some sense of awe at the great sweep of the city below. But the wind was keen and biting, and so cold my fillings began to ache. I descended to the swimming ponds, shuddering at the sight of the icy green water in which some madwoman was actually swimming. Dodging pushchairs and bicycles, I wandered the muddy gravel paths as far as the Vale of Health, and came back along the boundary road.
I hadn't imagined I would welcome the heat and glare of a Mawson summer. When I emerged from customs, my mother hugged me as if I had returned from the dead.
'But you're so thin, Gerard. What's happened to you?'
I told her about the flu, and agreed I should have gone to a doctor. There didn't seem to be much else to say. After breakfast we sat with our coffee under a flowering gum in the back yard. Crimson filaments drifted across the lawn; the sky was a dazzling blue. Breathing the dry, pungent scent of eucalyptus, I couldn't help thinking that it was better to be desolate and warm than desolate and frozen.
'-were you too ill to do anything at all, dear?' my mother was saying.
The only thing I could think of was my walk on Hampstead Heath. Idly watching a pair of rosellas as I talked, I was unprepared for the outburst.
'How could you be so reckless, Gerard? You might have been murdered!'
Her forehead was beaded with sweat, though it had been dry a moment before.
'It was a Saturday afternoon, Mother. There were people everywhere.'
'People get dragged off those paths, all the time. And never seen again. I've read about it. Anything could have happened to you.'
I tried to reassure her, but she would not listen, and shortly afterwards she said she was going inside to lie down. c/o Penfriends International,
Box 294, Mount Pleasant PO,
London WC1
31 January 1986 Dearest Gerard, I'm so sorry, I've only just got your letters (the ones you wrote while you were here) because I've been in hospital. Don't worry, everything's fine now-wonderful in fact. There's a real chance that in a couple of years' time I'll be walking again! I've been on Mr MacBride's waiting list-he's a neurosurgeon-for ages, and I thought it would be months more, but then he had a cancellation on New Year's Day and they whisked me off to Guy's Hospital in an ambulance. Only I didn't know where you were staying because your letter from Mawson with the hotel address in it must have been delayed in the post-it was waiting with the others when I got back yesterday. I would have written much sooner, only there were complications with the dye they injected into my spine for the X-rays-God, those endless hours lying in the scanner, trying not to move, or even breathe-anyway I got terribly sick and spent two weeks on a drip because I couldn't keep anything down. I had a monster headache that never stopped, and my eyesight went so blurry I thought I was going blind-this often happens, apparently, with spinal injections-it's almost back to normal now. I thought of you all the time but I was just too ill to write. I would have told you about the tests only I just couldn't bear to raise our hopes-you know how superstitious I am-until I knew for certain there was something to hope for. And there is, there truly is. Mr MacBride is working with a new laser technique for splitting healthy nerves to replace the damaged ones, and he thinks that in a year or two-it just needs one more breakthrough with the lasers, he says-he'll be able to operate with a ninety per cent chance of success! This must go now to catch today's post; I've told them to send it express. I'm so sorry about the mix-up with letters and that you had such a miserable time in London-I'll make it up to you, I promise. More, much more, tomorrow. I love and adore you with all my heart, and I'm longing to hear from you. Your invisible lover