He climbed the rickety wooden stairs to the first floor, carrying the
reeking oil-lamp he had left downstairs for that purpose. The thin
wooden panelling of the house kept out nothing of the freezing cold. It
was stained with damp from the rains and cracked with frost. In a room
along the corridor, someone was moaning in pain, but no-one came. Outside, dogs were prowling in the streets, old dogs, thin and diseased, afraid to show their faces in daylight. He could hear them howling, lonely and desperate in the night.
He did not see the man who hit him as he opened the door, nor did he feel the blow that dropped him, unconscious, to the grimy floor of his room. For a moment, he saw a bright light and faces moving in it, or a single face, blurred and shifting. Then the ground lurched and fell out from under him, and the world shimmered and reddened and was swallowed up, leaving him spinning and howling and alone in the darkness.
He was at sea in an open boat, tossing deliriously on blue salt waves. Then the boat vanished and the water opened up beneath him and he was sinking into the blackness again. Somehow the blackness passed and he was rising once more towards the light.
There must be a storm on the surface: he was tossed again and again, a piece of flotsam on the back of giant waves. Then, as if by a miracle, the waves were stilled and he was drifting on gentle, inland waters, rocking in a soft, rhythmical motion.
There was a face, then a pair of hands pulling at him roughly, then he was no longer afloat on still waters but lying on a hard bed. The face was European and unshaven, and it kept slipping in and out of focus.
“Can you hear me, Mr. Wylam? Can you hear my voice?”
The face was speaking to him in English, but with a heavy accent. His first thought was that this must be the Russian, Zamyatin; but something else told him that was ridiculous.
“Can you sit up?” the voice insisted. Christopher felt hands pushing against his armpits, raising him to a sitting position.
Reluctantly, he allowed himself to be moved. Upright, his head began to spin again, and for a moment he feared the blackness would return. He felt nauseous: the mysterious meat and its lugubrious accompaniments had chosen their moment to break free: they had swollen out of all proportion in his stomach. Rapidly, they were acquiring a life of their own.
“Do you want to be sick?” the voice asked.
He managed to nod, sending flashes of green light in every direction through his reeling brain.
“There’s a basin beside you. Here on your right. Just let it out.
I’ll hold you.”
He felt a hand guiding his head, then something exploded in his guts and travelled upwards with the violence of an express train on its home journey. Hot liquid rushed into a metal bowl.
Spitting sour vomit, he fell back exhausted against the back of the
bed. Someone had taken his head off and replaced it with a spinning
top. And a mad child stood over him, cracking a whip and sending the
top round and round without stopping,
“Better?” the voice sounded stronger this time. He’d heard the accent before, but still could not place it. Scottish? Irish?
“If you want to be sick again, there’s another wee basin here. And if you fill that, I can get another. Can you open your eyes?”
His mouth felt foul. Someone had gone for a walk in it, wearing large, muddy boots.
“Taste .. . horrible,” he managed to croak.
“Here, rinse your mouth with this. It’s safe I boiled it myself.”
The stranger held a cup to his lips. It contained water. He sipped some, rolled it in his mouth, and spat it out into the basin by his side. With an effort, he opened his eyes again.
(, He was in his room at the rest-house. He recognized the table and broken chair by the window. Someone had brought up a charcoal stove that was giving off a reddish-yellow glow in the middle of the room. A stinking oil- lamp was burning on the table.
The man who had helped him was sitting on a second chair by the side of the bed.
“You’re all right,” said the man, catching Christopher’s eyes on ‘ him.
“A wee bit bruised, but you’ll be none the worse for wear in a day or two. There’s nothing broken. You’ll have a headache for a while, and a very tender lump on your head for a few weeks, but I don’t think you’ll die.”
“Thanks,” said Christopher, wincing as he realized that his head did ache.
“You’re probably wondering who I am,” the stranger suggested.
Christopher closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again.
“The thought had crossed my mind,” he said. His voice sounded like a cross between a camel and a hyena. It made peculiar echoes in his eardrums. His stomach had settled a little, but it gave occasional twinges as if to remind him it had not forgotten him; he guessed that some of the meat if it had been meat was still lying there, thinking what to do next.
“My name’s Cormac, Martin Cormac. You left a wee note for me up in the Black Hole of Kalimpong. The hospital, or so they say.”
Christopher squinted to see the man properly. He didn’t look like a doctor, he thought. At a guess, he would be in his mid-forties and ageing fast grey-haired, grey-eyed, and grey-skinned. On his face was that look certain men of his age wear, of someone who has shut his eyes for a moment twenty years ago and opened them again to find himself in his present predicament. Somewhere along the way, he had lost a pound and found sixpence. At the moment, he looked dusty, as though he had been travelling. On reflection, Christopher realized he must just have arrived back from Peshok.
“You’re probably wondering what the hell I’m doing here,” the doctor continued.
“That had crossed my mind as well,” answered Christopher.
“I’m sure. Well, to answer your first question I’m not the one who hit you over the head. Not guilty. I don’t know who that was, to tell you the truth. He ran off as soon as I came on the scene I’d been waiting outside for you to come back from Cold Comfort Hall. I saw you go in here and I came behind, maybe a minute later. He was rifling your pockets, but I don’t think he took anything. Your room had been given a good going over before you arrived. You can take a look later, see if any thing’s missing.”
Cormac paused and looked solicitously at Christopher.
“How’s the head?”
Christopher stoically tried to smile, but the effort was more than his skull could bear. The smile turned into a grimace.
“Bad, eh? Well, I’ll give you a wee something for it. I never come out without some of these.”
From his pocket, Cormac drew out a small brown bottle of pills.
He knocked two out on to his palm, gave them to Christopher and handed him a glass of water. Christopher swallowed the pills one at a time: it felt like swallowing splinters of glass.
“A pity you’ve had those,” said Cormac as soon as they had been downed.
“From the way Sister Campbell talked about you, I guessed you might be in need of some refreshment after your visit to the wee darlings up the hill. So I brought along a bottle of the real stuff for us to drown our sorrows in. Assuming you had any, that was. Only, now your sorrows are such that I’ll have to share the bottle with me self Do you want me to leave, or shall I hang on.”
Christopher, who was beginning to feel nauseous again, shook his head.
“It’s all right. I’d like you to stay. What’s the “real stuff”?”
“Ah!” said Cormac, drawing a half-pint flask from his other pocket.
“Poteen. Irish whiskey, made from spuds. I’ve a friend in Newry sends
me a wee bottle every now and again. I don’t suppose there’s another
drop of this stuff anywhere between here and the
Belfast ferry.”
Northern Irish that was the accent. Probably Belfast, but
Christopher couldn’t be sure. He’d never heard of Newry. There were a lot of them in India: the ruled ruling
