Ellen thought this meant her until she realised Charlotte was peering into the ward. Annie was beckoning while she leaned sideways towards Rory's bed and turned her eyes to it. Charlotte shoved the doors apart and hurried down the room. 'What's wrong, Annie?'
'I don't know if it's wrong,' Annie said and returned her free hand to clasping her husband's. 'I thought I heard him say something.'
'Who did?' Hugh called, his breath fluttering on the nape of Ellen's neck.
'Your Rory. Who else would it have been?'
Ellen rubbed her moist neck and snatched her hand away from rediscovering how spongy her flesh was. 'What did he say?'
'He doesn't look like he said anything, does he? Maybe I dozed off for a minute and dreamed it. I truly thought I heard him, but I haven't been getting much sleep.'
Ellen sought refuge in the space between the beds. Rory appeared not to have shifted, and his hand didn't stir when she made herself reach for it. At least he didn't flinch from her touch, but she kept her gaze on Annie while Hugh insisted 'What did you think he said?'
'I thought he was asking for something,' Annie said, only to shake her head.
Charlotte was sitting sideways on her chair as if she were a mediator. With sufficient patience for all three of them she prompted 'And that would have been . . .'
'Something to write with. I thought it was because he couldn't talk.'
'It's harder to write,' Hugh objected.
'He mightn't realise, might he? I don't know what else he'd have meant by a pen.'
Ellen felt Hugh's stare fasten on her. As she met it he spoke for at least the two of them. 'What exactly do you think he said?'
'I'm not sure exactly. I don't suppose he would have been. Something about a pen, that's all I could make out.' More obstinately than Ellen thought was called for Annie added 'If I did.'
'Something pen, you're saying he said.'
'That's about it,' Annie said and then fingered her lips as if to check that they were working properly. 'Half a tick, though. Maybe it was more like pen something. It wouldn't have been pendulum, would it? That doesn't seem to make sense.'
'It doesn't,' Charlotte told her cousins in particular.
'How about demand? I suppose that would mean he was wanting it.'
'He's wanting all right,' Hugh said and stumbled to his feet. 'I've got to be going. I need to be there well before dark.'
Charlotte crouched over the end of the bed as if a weight had pressed her skull down. 'Suppose you aren't?'
'I will be. I've plenty of time still,' he said and lurched at the aisle.
Ellen imagined him losing his way, wandering desperately as the night caught up with him. She squeezed Rory's hand before levering her sluggish body, her slug of a body, off the chair. 'You're going to need me, Hugh.'
'I'll be best off by myself,' he hissed, concealing his words from Annie with his left hand. 'You don't want to see.'
'I've seen once,' Ellen murmured, only to grasp that he was referring to whatever he might have to do. 'I'll need to show you where. You'll stay here, won't you, Charlotte?'
'Someone certainly has to,' Charlotte said but seemed inclined to follow them, presumably to dissuade them. 'You're actually going to do this,' she said under her breath.
'That's right,' Hugh said and strode with a little less conviction towards the doors. He held the left one open for Ellen, so that she almost failed to notice he was uncertain which way to go. At least the corridor was empty, but she would be visible to spectators soon enough. It was just the start of the journey, and already she was dreading what she and Hugh might encounter on the way, never mind at the end. As the doors met with a discreet thump like the surreptitious fall of a lid, she heard Annie summarise the sudden exodus. 'Was it something I said?'
TWENTY-SEVEN
The express was more than an hour out of Leeds, and flanked by suburbs as bad as identical, when Hugh ceased to be able to silence his doubts. 'This is wrong.'
Ellen opened her eyes as if they were sluggish with gum. 'Don't say you're having second thoughts after we've been to all this trouble.'
Perhaps she was thinking of the farce outside the hospital, where he had looked the wrong way for the first three taxis she'd elected him to hail. Or she might be remembering how his disorientation and her loathing of spectators had almost made them miss the train once she'd succeeded in ushering him through the crowd to buy tickets. He'd spent most of the journey gazing at her, largely so that the views from the train wouldn't snatch away any lingering sense of direction, but could she think he was striving to convince her that she didn't revolt him? Of course she didn't, though he had to stifle his dismay at the sight of the frail undernourished sufferer she'd become in case she mistook it for disgust. 'I'm not,' he said, and when her depleted face worked as if she wished she could slough it 'You aren't, are you?'
'I'm not my cousin, Hugh.'
'Charlotte, you mean.' Since she wasn't there he risked saying 'I wouldn't want you to be.'
'We shouldn't put her down. She's done a lot for me.'
Beyond Ellen heads swayed gently with the motion of the train, and Hugh had to tell himself that none of them was shaking in mockery of his remark, let alone too thin to be decently alive. If anyone like that was behind him, surely Ellen would have noticed, but in a sense it was the lack of intrusion that bothered him. 'Is it hard for you, doing this?' he said.
'No harder than it's been for you, I should think.'
'That's what I was getting at. That's what's wrong.'
'You're saying you'd like me to feel worse.'
'You know I wouldn't like it. I'm asking if you do.'
'Well, you're certainly making it happen,' Ellen said with a kind of anguished triumph.
Hugh stretched out his hands, only for her gaze to weigh them down until they sank to his knees. 'I don't mean to, but –'
'Just leave well alone, Hugh.' Ellen's lips worked on their shape before she gave in to adding 'Except well isn't the word.'
'It will be,' Hugh said and advanced his hands again. 'I promise.'
A hint of affection not entirely divorced from amusement glimmered in her eyes. 'What are you trying to promise me, Hugh?'
'To stop what's happening to you. What you think is happening. What he's making you think.'
Each variation seemed less able to reach her. Perhaps they were driving her further inside her head – and then Hugh realised that his hands were hovering as if he couldn't bear to touch her. Before he had time to be inhibited by his clumsiness, he took hold of her arms. The sleeves of her crumpled garment yielded even more than he was afraid they would, and his innards quailed as he felt how gaunt her arms had grown, but he held her as she did her best to draw back. 'Don't, Hugh,' she said low and unevenly. 'Especially not here.'
'Why not here?' His head was filling with a mass of stale perfume and the drunken rocking of the carriage, but he didn't let go. 'What don't you want people to see?'
'You can't still need to ask that. You aren't so lacking in imagination.'
'I don't mind if they all look. They're welcome to see how much I care about you.' Though his face was growing more uncomfortably hot than any childhood fever, and he seemed to be clinging to her so that his hands wouldn't betray his awkwardness, none of this could silence him. 'I'm not doing this just for Rory,' he blundered onwards. 'It's mostly for you.'
'If you say so, but you're hurting me.'