The Old Vengeful

The crash of noise which broke the bond between them was so unexpected and so shattering that for a fraction of time she thought it was inside her, as though her brain and her heart had exploded simultaneously.

Then the noise was outside her, repeated and so loud that it convulsed her into movement, regardless of the pain which tore at her again and as the chair toppled turning black into screaming red into nothing as her head hit something hard—

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III

THERE WERE COLOURS, bright as flowers, but crowned with stars—

'Come on, Miss Loftus—Miss Loftus, come on now—wake up, Miss Loftus ...' The voice surrounded her, hectoring and encouraging her at the same time.

The colours revolved, and then became flowers in reality: the flowers in the curtains of the study, with the evening sun shining through them and starring the gaps in the folds of the pelmet with light. Elizabeth blinked the tears out of her eyes and fought her way upwards into consciousness.

She could see again!

More, she could see and her hands moved—hands, wrists and arms ... all of them moved, freely though painfully, falling where gravity took them.

'Come on, Miss Loftus—damn it!' The voice became peremptory and irritable. 'Wake up!'

First, she felt aggrieved—then she became aware of hands holding her, lifting and dragging at her, which roused her into a flurry of fresh resistance against them.

The hands became arms, imprisoning her again. 'No! Come on, now—it's me— stop it.''

The hands weren't those hands—they crushed her, but they didn't touch her ... it was as though, even though ungentle, dummy3

they were unwilling to hold her, never mind to touch her—

Elizabeth relaxed, suddenly boneless.

'That's better! Now then . . . I'm putting you down—it's all right, but I'm putting you down—do you understand? Don't move—it's all right. . . I'll come back . . . right?'

There was no way she could answer any of that. But she accepted the soft-hard feel of the carpet against her cheek, and the movement of the bright flowers of the curtains and the stars twisting at impossible angles—and the desk and table legs horizontal when they should have been vertical.

She wrinkled her nose against the smell of burning carpet . . .

Burning carpet! The smell registered in her brain, triggering consciousness and a proper focus on her surroundings at the same time.

The desk blocked half her view of the room from ground level, but there at the end of it, a yard from her face and sending up a spiralling blue-grey smoke signal to her, a cigarette smouldered on Father's best-quality Wilton carpet!

Elizabeth hauled herself on to one elbow and reached out towards the cigarette. But it was too far away after all, and she had to go on hands and knees in order to extend her reach. To her annoyance she saw, as she picked it up, that it had already gouged an ugly brown mark into the thick pile of the Wilton, and—

God! There was someone lying behind the desk!

She froze on two knees and one hand, the cigarette pinched dummy3

between thumb and forefinger of the other hand, hypnotised by the dark suede shoes, and the grey trousers rucked up to reveal socks and an inch of hairy white leg.

'Don't look,' said a voice from behind her.

Elizabeth hadn't wanted to look, there was no danger of that: not only the legs themselves, but also their stillness terrified her. But she found it impossible to take her eyes off them.

'Look at me instead,' commanded the voice. 'Come on, Miss Loftus—look at me.'

She didn't want to turn round either, but in the end it was the lesser of two evils.

'There now . . . it's all right, Miss Loftus—Elizabeth—can I call you 'Elizabeth'? And you can call me 'Paul'— right?'

Elizabeth stared at Dr Mitchell uncomprehendingly.

'There's nothing to be afraid of. It's all over, and there's nothing to be afraid of—do you understand?'

She didn't understand . . . except that she knew he was trying to reassure her about . . . about things for which there could never be reassurance.

'It's all right, Elizabeth.' He was speaking to her as though to a child, in exactly the same way that she had spoken to little Helen Powell when she'd come offher bike outside the school and broken her wrist.

'Dr Mitchell . . .' she heard her own voice from far away, half-strangled.

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'Paul.' He advanced towards her. 'Here—you put this on, Elizabeth.'

She frowned at what he was offering her: it was her old raincoat from the peg by the kitchen door. What could he possibly have in mind—that she should wear her old raincoat?

Then she looked down at herself, and saw with horror how her dress gaped open, and fumbled instantly in a panic of embarrassment with her free hand to draw the torn edges of her dress across her breasts.

'Here—' He held the raincoat out with one hand and took the cigarette from her with the other '—put it on ... and then we'll get out of here.'