I hurled myself at the door, shouting, «Rachel!» Then I stopped, and listened very carefully.
There was a tiny sound from within, a sort of little creeping mouse-like sound. I said aloud, «Oh let her be all right, let her be all right.»
More creeping. Then very softly in a scarcely audible whisper. «Bradley.»
«Rachel, Rachel, are you all right?»
Silence. Creeping. Then a little hissing sigh. «Yes.»
I shouted to the others, «She's all right! She's all right!»
I heard them saying something behind me on the stairs. «Rachel, let me in, can you? Let me in.»
There was a scuffling sound, then Rachel's voice, breathy and low down, close against the door, «You come in. Not anyone else.»
I heard the key turn in the lock and I pushed quickly into the room, catching a glimpse of Arnold who was standing on the stairs with Francis behind him a little lower down. I saw the two faces very clearly, like faces in a crucifixion crowd which represent the painter and his friend. Arnold's face was distorted into a sort of sneer of anguish. Francis's was bright with malign curiosity. Suitable expressions for a crucifixion. Inside I nearly fell over Rachel who was sitting on the floor. She was moaning softly now, trying frantically to turn the key again in the lock. I turned it for her and then sat down on the floor beside her.
Since Rachel Baffin is one of the main actors, in a crucial sense perhaps the main actor, in my drama I should like now to pause briefly to describe her. I had known her for over twenty years, almost as long as I had known Arnold, yet at the time that I speak of I did not really, as I later realized, know her well. There was a sort of vagueness. Some women, in fact in my experience many women, have a sort of «abstract» quality about them. Is this a real sex difference? Perhaps this quality is really just unselfishness. (In this respect, you know where you are with men!) In Rachel's case it was certainly not lack of intelligence. There was a vagueness which womanly affection and the custom of my quasi-family friendship with the Baffins did not dispel, even increased. Of course men play roles, but women play roles too, blanker ones. They have, in the play of life, fewer good lines. This may be to make a mystery of what had simpler causes. Rachel was an intelligent woman married to a famous man: and instinctively such a woman behaves as a function of her husband, she reflects, as it were, all the light onto him. Her «blankness» repelled even curiosity. One does not expect such a woman to have ambition: whereas Arnold and I were both, in quite different ways, tormented, perhaps even defined, by ambition. Rachel was (in a way in which one would never think this of a man) a «good specimen,» a «good sport.» One relied on her. There she was. She looked (then) just like a big handsome sweet contented woman, the efficient wife of a well-known charmer. She was a large smooth-faced, slightly freckled, reddish-blond person, with straight– ish gingery wiry hair and a pale complexion, a bit tall for a woman and generally on a larger scale physically than her husband. She had been putting on weight and some might have called her fat. She was always busy, often with charities and mild left-wing politics. (Arnold cared nothing for politics.) She was an excellent «housewife,» and often referred to herself by this title.
«Rachel, are you all right?»
«Rachel, are you hurt? I've got a doctor here-She began awkwardly to get up, again pushing away my assisting hand. I got a whiff of alcohol from her panting breath. She knelt upon her dress and I heard it tear. Then she half ran half fell across the room to the disordered bed, where she flopped on her back, tugging at the bedclothes, ineffectually because she was half lying on them, then covering her face with both hands and crying in an appalling wailing manner, lying with her feet wide apart in a graceless self-absorption of grief.
«Rachel, please control yourself. Drink some water.» The sound of that abandoned weeping was scarcely bearable, and something far too intense to be called embarrassment, yet of that quality, made me both reluctant and anxious to look at her. A woman's crying can sicken one with fright and guilt, and this was terrible crying.
Arnold outside shouted, «Please let me in, please, please-«Stop it, Rachel,» I said. «I can't bear this. Stop it. I'm going to open the door.»
«No, no,» she whispered, a sort of voiceless whine. «Not Arnold, not-« Was she still afraid of him?
«I'm going to let the doctor in,» I said.
«No, no.»
I opened the door and placed my hand on Arnold's chest. «Go in and look at her,» I said to Francis. «There's some blood.»
Arnold began to call out, «Let me see you, please, darling, don't be angry, oh please-I pushed him back towards the head of the stairs. Francis went inside and locked the door again, whether out of delicacy or professional caution.
Arnold sat down on the stairs and began to moan. «Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear-« My awkward appalled embarrassment mingled now with a horrible fascinated interest. Arnold, beyond caring about what impression he made, was running his hands again and again through his hair. «Oh I am a bloody fool, I am a bloody fool-I said, «Steady on. What happened exactly?»
«Where are the scissors?» shouted Francis from within.
«Top drawer dressing table,» Arnold shouted back. «Christ, what does he want scissors for? Is he going to operate or something?»
«What happened? Look, better move down a bit.»
I pushed Arnold and he hobbled stooping, holding the banisters, past the turn of the stair, and sat on the lowest step, holding his head in his hands and staring at the zigzag design of the hall carpet. The hall was always a bit dim because of the stained glass in the door. I went down past him and sat on a chair, feeling very odd, upset, excited.
«Oh Christ, oh Christ. Do you think she'll forgive me?»
«Of course. What-?»
«Thank God,» said Arnold. «Do you know, I think she may have been shamming all the time. Anyway, thank God. What should-?»
«There's nothing seriously wrong. She's got a very nasty lump on her head and she's a bit in shock. Could be a touch of concussion. Keep her in bed and keep the room dark. Aspirins, any of her usual sedatives, hot-water bottles, hot drinks, I mean tea and that. Better let her see her own doctor. She'll soon be herself again.»
«Oh thank you so much, Doctor,» said Arnold. «So she's all right, thank heaven.»
«She wants to see you,» said Francis to me. We had all moved back up to the landing.
Arnold began again calling, «My darling, please-«I'll deal,» I said. I half opened the bedroom door, which was unlocked.
«Only Bradley. Only Bradley.» The voice, still almost inaudible, was firmer.
«Oh Christ. This is awful. I've had enough-« said Arnold. «Darling-«You go down and give yourself another drink,» I told him.
«I wouldn't mind a drink,» said Francis.
«Oh don't be angry with me, darling-«Could you chuck out my mac,» said Francis. «I left it in there on the floor.»
I went in and threw the macintosh out and closed the door again.
I heard retreating steps as Arnold and Francis went away down the stairs.
«Lock the door, please.»
I locked it.
Francis had pulled the curtains and there was a sort of thick pink twilight in the room. The evening sun, now palely shining, made the big floppy flowers on the chintz curtains glow in a melancholy way. The room had the rather sinister tedium which some bedrooms have, a sort of weary banality which is a reminder of death. A dressing table can be a terrible thing. The Baffins had placed theirs in the window where it obstructed the light and presented its ugly back to the road. The plate-glass «table» surface was dusty and covered with cosmetic tubes and bottles and balls of hair. The chest of drawers had all its drawers gaping, spewing pink underwear and shoulder straps. The bed was chaotic, violent, the green artificial– silk coverlet swooping down on one side and the sheets and blankets creased up into a messy mass, like an old face. There was a warm intimate embarrassing smell of sweat and face powder. The whole room breathed the flat horror of genuine mortality, dull and spiritless and final.
I do not know why I thought then so promptly and prophetically of death. Perhaps it was because Rachel, half under the bedclothes, had covered her face with the sheet.
