‘It’ll get cold.’
‘It already is. All those people. Still, it was nice, wasn’t it?’
Rosemary said nothing. The phrase seemed so far from the mark, so grossly inadequate to the situation, that she might have suspected Dorothy of irony if she hadn’t known that her friend was literal-minded to a fault. Whatever else it might have been, the incident certainly hadn’t been nice. It had been bizarre, embarrassing, unpleasant, sad, and finally rather moving. But Rosemary’s most vivid impression, both at the time and now, was of utter astonishment that it had ever taken place.
The scale of the transgression involved had been made clear when Miss Davis burst into the room, having been tipped off by Belinda Scott. By that time they were all there. Mavis Hargreaves had been the first to arrive, having ‘just popped in on the way back from the loo’. While she was standing there at rather a loss, wondering what to say next or how best to leave, there was a timid knock at the door, followed by Weatherby’s voice asking if Dorothy were ‘presentable’. Grace Lebon and Charles Symes appeared next, accompanied by Alfred Purvey, and it was at this point that Belinda Scott put her head round the door, gasped, and promptly disappeared. Rossiter, who arrived shortly afterwards, reported having met her running along the corridor calling for Miss Davis.
This news might have been expected to break whatever spell had descended on the residents that evening, but-much to their mutual surprise-it did not. Not only did they all stay, but on the face of it they seemed less flustered by the risks they were running than by the embarrassment of bidding Dorothy goodbye. It thus initially came as something of a relief when the door flew open and Miss Davis stormed in, with Belinda Scott at her heels.
‘Right, back to your rooms!’ she barked at them. ‘No fraternisation permitted! Contrary to fire regulations! Break it up, break it up!’
But against all expectations the party refused to be broken up. Perhaps it was their very terror which impelled them to the unprecedented step of defying Miss Davis. The thought of what she might do if she were to get them alone merely increased their determination not to be separated. The outcome was equally startling. Never having had to face a situation like this before, Miss Davis proved to be at a loss as to how to deal with it.
When threats and orders had no effect, she tried hitting one or two of the nearer residents, but was at once disabled by the others. No word was spoken, yet all seemed to understand what they must do. Aged and frail as they were, they could not offer active opposition, but they could and did very effectively get in the way, hampering the younger woman’s freedom of action, pushing her off balance, holding her back and hemming her in, until with a cry of mingled rage and panic she broke free and forced her way back to the door.
‘Very well, then!’ she shouted furiously. ‘Go ahead and wish your precious chum goodbye before she’s packed off to the abattoir. But just remember this! She’ll be strip-searched before she leaves, and if I find any begging letters, billets-doux or other foreign matter concealed in her cracks and crevices, the person responsible will get it for lunch, with the rubber gloves as afters!’
Belinda Scott tried to say something, but Miss Davis slapped her across the face and stalked out, leaving her rejected acolyte to run off in tears. The others remained, the awkwardness which had briefly been dispelled now returning in full force. To Rosemary, the scene appeared increasingly grotesque and disgusting, a hideous caricature of everything hateful about their lives: the cruel light, the sordid room, the men and women variously disabled in mind and body, strangers both to themselves and to each other, reciting their impotent good wishes and empty formulas of farewell.
Then everything changed. Exactly how and when was something Rosemary was not sure of even now. Perhaps it had been when Purvey stumbled against the bedside table, spilling some of the cocoa, and everyone rallied round to help with the clean-up. Or it might have been when Dorothy, her face flushed and her eyes brilliant with tears, thanked them all for coming and urged them to give her friend all the help she would need in the coming days.
Rosemary had found it hard to repress a disdainful scowl at this. Under the circumstances Dorothy could of course say what she liked without fear of contradiction, but she was stretching her privilege to the limit in suggesting that this crew of decrepit geriatrics might conceivably be of any help to Rosemary Travis. She would come to terms with Dorothy’s absence in her own way and in her own time. All she asked of the others was that they should leave her alone.
To her dismay, however, the effect of Dorothy’s words was exactly the opposite. The other residents all turned to Rosemary as though seeing her for the first time, and smiled or nodded, murmured something, said her name. It wasn’t what they did or said that mattered, it was what came with it, a wave of emotion that engulfed them all, filling the room, bringing them together.
Rosemary managed to stand her ground, but she felt cruelly betrayed. She and Dorothy had spent their whole time taking their distance from these people, turning them into cardboard characters whom they manipulated to suit their whims and the twists and turns of the story. Now Dorothy had made them real, given them depth and feeling, turned them into human beings united in this mindless warmth like a litter of animals in a burrow. It wasn’t fair, Rosemary reflected bitterly. Dorothy had broken the unwritten rules of their friendship.
She kept her thoughts to herself, of course, even once the visitors eventually trooped out, leaving them alone together again. Dorothy was putting a brave face on it, but Rosemary knew how she must dread the ordeals and indignities which awaited her at the hospital. If her chosen way of coping was by patronising Rosemary, that was something she was just going to have to accept in silence. In the event, neither of them spoke until the fire-alarm clattered briefly and, thirty seconds after this warning, all the lights went out. It had been this imposed curfew which had first given rise to the stories. They flourished in the dark, running riot, proliferating wildly, unrestrained by anything but the absolute and eternal rules of the genre.
‘Have they told you what time you’re leaving?’ Rosemary asked.
The figure in bed stirred slightly.
‘They don’t know themselves.’
Rosemary pondered this for a moment.
‘Surely they have to organise transport?’
‘It’s all taken care of.’
There was a disjointed quality to this exchange which Rosemary found irritating, as though they weren’t talking about quite the same thing.
‘Well, if and when you find out, perhaps you would be kind enough to let me know,’ she replied a trifle waspishly. ‘I have my own arrangements to make, you know.’
The darkness secreted something which sounded suspiciously like a laugh.
‘You lead such a busy life, Rose.’
Rosemary pointedly said nothing.
‘I expect you’ll be wanting to get some sleep,’ Dorothy added quietly.
At once, the reality of the situation came home to Rosemary with redoubled impact, and she felt dreadfully ashamed of her petulance.
‘Do you want me to go?’ she asked tremulously.
Again there was a hint of laughter.
‘Go? You’re not the one who’s going, Rose.’
Rosemary felt her irritation flare up once more, but this time she managed to keep it under control.
‘Precisely,’ she replied. ‘I remain here, to try and solve the mystery of these murders as best I can alone.’
‘Oh Rose.’
Rosemary was glad to note that Dorothy sounded suitably contrite.
‘I don’t ask for sympathy,’ Rosemary went on, ‘but any help you might feel able to offer would be most gratefully received.’
There was a brief detonation of bedsprings.
‘Do you want me to send in the police?’ whispered Dorothy.
Now it was Rosemary’s turn to laugh.
‘Good heavens no! What earthly use would the police be in a case like this? They would simply go clomping about, obscuring all the clues and falling for every red herring in sight. What I was hoping was that I might continue to be able to count on your own invaluable assistance, Dot.’
There was a long silence.
