Читать книгу Outrageous Fortune - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 6

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Tides rising and falling—waves rocking—and a long dream that rocked with them—rocking—rocking. He was swinging like a pendulum between the dream and some vague waking state—swing, swing—out and back again—out and back again. When he swung out, there was a sense of light and women’s voices; but when he swung back, there was the rise and fall of water, and black fog, and only one voice, that never stopped. He thought the voice was his own, and when he was in the dream he knew very well what it was saying; but when he swung towards the light the meaning drained away and was gone even before he lost the sound.

Presently the swing of the pendulum became uneven. There was a long swing out into the light, and a short swing back into the fog. The voice dwindled, and its meaning went from him. The light beat strong and warm against his eyelids. They opened, and up went an arm in an instinctive movement to shield his eyes. There was sunlight in the room, slanting across the bed in which he lay. As he moved, someone else moved too. There was a soft hurry of footsteps. A blind came down with a click and the sun was shut out. His arm dropped.

He rose on his elbow, and saw a girl turning back from the window, a very pretty girl with silver flaxen hair and big pale blue eyes. She wore a blue overall, and she was looking at him rather as a small child looks at a tiger in a cage.

She said “Oh!” in a soft, breathless way and edged towards the door.

He sat up, closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened them again. The girl had almost reached the door.

“I say—don’t go,” he said in an alarmed voice.

The girl stood where she was.

“I’ll tell Nesta,” she said.

He repeated the name.

“Who’s Nesta?”

She looked really terrified when he said that.

“Oh please—” she began.

“I say, don’t look so frightened—I only want to know where I am.”

This was apparently something that could be answered. A little modest pride displaced her timidity.

“You’re at our place—Tom’s and mine. I’m Min.”

“Oh—” He was expected to know who Tom was.... Tom and Min. He certainly didn’t, but it was obvious that he ought to.

The girl said again, “I’ll tell Nesta,” and got as far as turning the handle of the door, when he stopped her.

“No—do wait a moment. Can’t you tell me what’s happened? I don’t know—I—” His voice stopped dead. He didn’t know. What didn’t he know?

He shut his eyes and tried to pierce the fog that filled his mind. He had had a dream about fog, and a dream about a voice. He had left the voice behind in the dream, but the fog had come with him. It filled his brain. He groped in it and found nothing.

At the sound of the closing door he opened his eyes again. Min was gone, and where she had been standing there was now someone else—an older woman with dark hair and a high colour. She came across the room, sat down on the edge of his bed, and smiled a ready-made smile.

“Well, Jimmy—so you’re awake?” she said.

He felt an immediate prickle of irritation. Her eyes were too close together. Who was she? And what was she doing calling him Jimmy? He loathed being called Jimmy.

“Well?” said Nesta Riddell in her hard bright voice. “You look pounds better. You’ve slept round the clock, you know. Are you hungry? You ought to be. Min’s getting you something.”

He said, speaking slowly and with a sort of frowning intensity.

“Why did you call me Jimmy?”

Nesta Riddell stared.

“Isn’t it your name?”

The frown became a sheer straining effort to find an answer to that. And it beat him. He didn’t know—he didn’t know what his name was. He knew that he hated being called Jimmy. That stuck out like a corner in his mind, but he couldn’t get round it.

“Look here,” said Nesta Riddell, “You wait till you’ve had something to eat. Here’s another pillow for you. And if I were you I shouldn’t go bothering my head about things at present.”

The pillow was comfortable. He relaxed against it, conscious of a swimming head. Then Min came in with a tray, and he found that he was faint with hunger.

Nesta watched him eat and drink. When he had finished, she took away the tray and came back to her seat on the bed.

“Well?” she said, “feeling better?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Want to talk?”

“Yes.”

“All right—go ahead—”

That was easier said than done. Where were you to begin when you had no landmarks? He went back to the question he had asked before.

“Do you mind telling me where I am?”

“You’re at Tom’s place—in Ledlington.”

He opened his eyes upon her very directly.

“And who is Tom?”

“My brother,” said Nesta Riddell. Then she laughed a little. “Come, Jimmy—you’re not going to say you’ve forgotten Tom?”

He put his hand up to his head.

“I can’t remember. Have I had a crack on the head?”

She nodded, watching him.

“Do you mind telling me how I got here?”

“You really don’t remember? Well, I’ll go back to a week ago. You know what had happened. You said you’d got to get off the map for a bit. I was to come here, and you were going to work up the coast to Glasgow. I don’t know what name you went under, but you were on the Alice Arden when she got driven ashore on the Elston sands. There was a gale first, and then an awful fog, and she broke up against the cliffs. Very few people were saved. They took you into the Elston cottage hospital, and Tom and I fetched you away yesterday. Can’t you really remember anything about it?”

His hand went up to his eyes and pressed on them. He said,

“Tom—” His voice choked on the word. Then, in a dull whisper, “I remember—the fog.”

For a moment it was the fog which was pressing against his eyes—the fog; not his own hand. And behind the fog things moved—vague, horrible things. He jerked himself out of the fog and flung out his hand.

“No—I can’t remember.”

“What—nothing?”

“No—no—”

“Not your own name?”

“I don’t—know—”

“Your name’s Jim Riddell,” said Nesta sharply.

The name came back to him like a faint echo from somewhere in his mind. It was as if someone had spoken it from behind that deadening fog. She said, “Your name is Jim Riddell,” and something in his own mind answered her.

He said the name aloud: “Jim—” Then with more confidence, “Yes—Jim.”

He preferred Jim to Jimmy any day of the week. Jim Riddell... He left the name and began to go over what she had said. He took the easiest part first.

“You brought me here yesterday? I can’t remember anything about it.”

“You needn’t worry about that. They gave you some kind of a sleeping-draught to take you over the move, and when we got you here you had a good drink of hot milk and off you went again like a baby.”

“Why did you bring me here?” His voice was quiet and direct.

Nesta’s dark eyebrows rose.

“That’s a funny thing to ask. Where else should I take you? We’d agreed to give London a miss, hadn’t we?”

He groped for memories of London.

“London?”

“You’re not going to say you’ve forgotten London!”

“I’ve forgotten everything. I—” His hand closed upon the edge of the bed. He shut his eyes for a moment, giddy with the sense of empty space all round him. There were no landmarks, nothing to steer by, no horizon line, no faintest, farthest star.

He opened his eyes, clutching desperately at this tangible present—the firm softness of the bed on which he lay; the sunlight at the edge of the blind; the brown linoleum on the floor, with its parquet pattern; the blanket with the three pink stripes across his feet; the texture of the twilled cotton sheet. These things were reassuringly actual.

The woman who sat on the end of the bed looking at him was also actual, but somehow not so reassuring. He didn’t like her very much. He didn’t like the way she was dressed, or the way she did her hair, or those near-set eyes of hers. He supposed she was handsome, but he didn’t like her. She had a black dress with little magenta and yellow squiggles on it. The pattern hurt his eyes.

Her voice cut sharply across his thought—a bright voice with an edge to it.

“You’re not going to tell me you’ve forgotten me, Jimmy!”

He looked at her with growing apprehension. There was no echo from the fog. But she called him Jimmy. She had brought him here. And she said “we.” She said “we,” and she called him Jimmy. His hand clenched hard upon the bed. He had to force his voice.

“Who are you?”

“Oh, come!” said Nesta.

“Who are you?”

“Good Lord, Jimmy—you don’t mean—”

“Who are you?”

“You don’t mean to say—”

“For God’s sake!”

She began to laugh.

“My dear Jimmy—”

He looked at her with something so grim in his expression that the laugh broke off.

“Will you kindly tell me who you are?”

The colour rose in her cheeks. She looked away from him. “I’m Nesta.”

“I’m afraid that tells me nothing.”

“Nesta Riddell.” She risked a sideways glance. That three days’ beard gave him a savage look.... It wasn’t only the beard.... She stayed where she was, but it needed an effort not to jump up and get nearer the door.

“And still that tells me nothing,” he said in a carefully controlled voice.

Nesta sprang to her feet and flung out her hands.

“I’m your wife. Jimmy—you can’t have forgotten me!”

He had known what she was going to say; before she said it he had braced himself to take the shock. When it came, it actually steadied him. He felt as cold as ice and as quiet as if he were dead. He said just above his breath.

“My wife—no—”

She burst into angry tears. Take it whatever way you like, it was a slap in the face. Nesta did not take kindly to being slapped. She felt no impulse to turn the other cheek.

“Yes—your wife! What else did you think? How dare you think anything else—and in my own brother’s house!”

“I beg your pardon—you misunderstand me. I simply have no recollection of you at all.” He should have left it at that, but he went on, his calm broken a little. “I can’t—I can’t—believe—”

“You can’t believe—and you can’t remember? Well, how much can you remember? How did you come here, if you’re not my husband? Why, Tom and I went to the hospital and fetched you away!”

She dashed the angry tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. It was the gesture of a furious child. The tears were real, and so was the choke in her voice as she flung open the door and called,

“Min! Min! Come here!”

She stood aside as the girl in the blue overall ran in. Min came to a standstill about a yard inside the door, looking timidly from Nesta to the bed.

“Perhaps you’ll believe Min, if you won’t believe me.” Nesta wasn’t crying now, but her colour was high and her eyes bright.

“What is it?” said Min in a bewildered voice.

“Tell him who he is!” said Nesta sharply.

“Jimmy? Why, Jimmy Riddell.”

“Tell him who I am.”

Min began to look frightened.

“Why, Nesta.”

“Nesta what?”

“Nesta Riddell.” She took a step towards the bed. “What’s the matter? Don’t you remember?” She spoke sweetly and pitifully.

He shook his head, watching them both, holding himself in.

“Oh dear! Don’t you know Nesta? Oh dear!”

He spoke then, quite quietly.

“I’ve lost my memory. I don’t know either of you. You say I’m Jim Riddell?”

“Oh yes.”

“And that is Nesta Riddell?”

“Oh dear, yes.”

“What is she to me?”

“Oh, she’s your wife,” said Min, and burst out crying. Something began to roar in his ears. He felt himself slipping and fell back against the pillows. The room went round. He heard the women’s voices as you hear voices in the roar of heavy traffic. They came and went, and they meant nothing. Actually he had done no more than lean back and close his eyes.

Min Williams said, “Oh, he’s fainted!”

Nesta took her by the shoulders with a quick, “Run along and don’t talk nonsense!”

After that the door was shut. Nesta stood waiting with her back against it, and in a moment he was looking at her. His eyes were of so dark a grey as to seem black. His brows frowned above them, making the shadow deeper. He went on speaking as if there had been no interruption.

“When were we married?”

“On the twenty-fifth of July.”

“Of what year?”

“This year.”

“This is—what month?”

“August.”

“What date?”

“The thirteenth.”

“We were married—here?”

“No—in London.” She crossed the room, opened a drawer, and came to him with a paper in her hand. “There’s the certificate.”

A voice in his mind said quickly, “She had it ready.” It was like what stage directions call a voice off. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with him, but he remembered it afterwards. At the time, he was looking at the certificate, which set forth that James Riddell had married Nesta Williams at a registry office in Kensington on the 25th July 1931.

Nesta put out her hand to take the paper back. The hand shook, and all at once it came to him that, whether he liked her or not, it was hard lines on her. He didn’t like her, but it was damned hard lines. Her hand shook. There was enough to make it shake.

He said in a constrained voice,

“I don’t know what to say—I can’t remember.”