A Time to Heal

by Claire Rayner

  She tried shouting once more, and then angrily wound up the window. Whatever nonsense this was, she wasn’t going to sit in a cold car in her weary state a moment longer than she had to; she was going in to see George, was then coming out to drive home, and she didn’t give a damn one way or the other about all this, or what it all meant.

  Once more she put the car into gear, and began to inch forward, at the same time putting one hand firmly on the horn so that it blared full-throatedly; and after a moment she kicked the switch beside the accelerator pedal to throw her headlights forward.

  Before her the crowd shifted, and turned, and flowed backward to separate and then re-form behind her, and she realized with a sudden fear that she was surrounded by bodies again, just as she had been in Trafalgar Square; this time there was a shell of car between herself and them, but still they pressed sickeningly against her, and she could see faces peering in at the windows, and even as one of the torches was thrust so close to the windscreen that she flinched against its brightness, she felt the car rock as someone climbed onto the hood.

  Panic rose in her, sharply and with a sick familiarity, and she put her hands up to her face and shouted, “Go away! Go away!” But the noise outside was so great that she could only just hear her own voice. The car began to rock again, and terrified, she shrank back even farther in her seat, and her foot slipped on the clutch, and the car, still in first gear, gave a convulsive jerk forward as the engine stalled, and she felt a sick thump and grinding under the wheels. And then, there was almost silence outside, though a few voices from the back of the crowd produced a desultory shout or two.

  Suddenly a voice that came from very near her right ear, muffled by the closed window yet still clearly audible, shouted, “The fucking bitch—she’s run ’im down—get ’im out, someone, get ’im out, and then we’ll show ’er—”

  The car rolled again, moved, and she sat in terrified rigidity as it was bodily lifted and then dropped a few feet farther back, to shake her like an egg in a box as it hit the ground with a jarring impact. All she could do was sit still and tense, her hands clawed into fists at each side of her face, her elbows held against her body so firmly that the muscles in her arms and across her shoulders trembled painfully.

  Somewhere in front she could feel almost more than see activity, as a shape was lifted from the ground in front of her wheels, and carried away into the crowd, and then she saw the big gates open, and the crowd surged forward, and flowed through it. But then there was a shout from her right again, the same voice that had shouted before: “’Ere! Come back, you sods—we’ll do this first—” and the crowd turned and shifted and came back toward her, torches leaping and flaming in her eyes.

  It started almost gently, affectionately, a side-to-side rocking that was almost pleasant, and for a moment she relaxed her arms and shoulders, tried to put her hands down on the wheel to hold on, but then, quite sharply, the rocking accelerated, became vigorous, angry, vicious, and she was thrown from side to side of the car, helpless and feeling her gorge rise as terror took over. She couldn’t hold on, couldn’t tell where she was, where there was anything to hold on to, only fending off the walls of the car as they came, in strict turn-and-turn-about rotation, to hit her, to thrust at her, to stun her with their impersonal blows.

  It seemed to stop almost as suddenly as it began; the car was still, and she was lying half-sprawled across the passenger seat, and then the door opened behind her, and she shrank against the crumpled smelly old leather under her cheek, terror rising higher in her.

  “Move over, for Christ’s sake,” a voice said, and she turned her head and peered bewildered into the confusion of lights and darkness and said stupidly, “What?”

  “Move over, you idiot! I’ll drive you in—get out of the way—” And almost viciously, he shoved her hard, and she lifted her right leg awkwardly, flexed her knee, and dragged herself out of the driver’s seat and across to the far side to sit crumpled against the window, her shoulders hunched and her hands up to cover her head.

  “It’s all right,” he said, and she turned and peered again as the engine coughed and then started, and the car almost leaped forward. This time the crowd moved away, and let it pass, and looking at Oscar’s face in the darkness, she thought, for one brief second, that he was sorry; he had wanted very much to hit someone with that furious thrust.

  And then they were inside the gates, and the car was moving more quickly, swerving around corners, along the narrow ways between the buildings, the twisting ways around the Establishment that they all knew so well, but which always confused visitors. Behind them the sound thinned, became no more than a distant crying, and then the car stopped outside the stores entrance, and Oscar turned off the engine to sit with his head up, listening. But all they could hear was that remote calling, nothing nearer, and he nodded sharply, and got out, to come around the car and open her door to help her out.

  “Not too bad,” Theo grunted. “Bruises, of course—or there will be by tomorrow morning, but no more. How are you now?”

  “Bloody,” she said, and moved stiffly, wincing at the pain in her back, across her shoulders, down her sides.

  “You’re sure there’s no real harm done?” Oscar’s voice was sharp, and he turned away from the desk, putting the phone down with a clatter. “The police should get that lot cleared fairly quickly —it wasn’t as many as it looked. They’re sending an ambulance from the District General for the injured man, and if Harriet needs any further care, she could go too. Sure you don’t want any—”

  “No,” Theo said. “She’s had a fright and a bit of a thumping. That’s all.”

  “That’s all?” she began to giggle, stupidly. “Theo, you are–you’re the outside of enough. That’s all? I feel like—”

  “I know. But why the hell you didn’t just reverse out of the driveway and head for home and phone in from there, I’ll never know. To go and deliberately drive at an angry mob is asking for it!”

  “I didn’t know it was an angry mob,” Harriet said, and now she felt some of the fatigue the excitement had kept battened down creeping up again, chilling her aching arms and legs, icing her belly to solid numbness. “I didn’t know anything. I hooted and went forward and I suppose I thought they’d move, if I thought at all. The man—the one I hit—”

  “Fractured femur and a few crushed ribs. No other damage I could see.”

  She breathed deeply and tremulously. “I thought I’d killed him.”

  “So did I. Watching from the lodge window, I thought—that’s all I did. I thought.” Theo raised his head, and looked across the room at Oscar, his eyebrows up. “There’s your actual man of attack and action, you know. I was thinking, now what do we do, how do we get Hattie out of that bloody car and in here, and dear Oscar shoots out for all the world like a cross between Superman and Tarzan, and lo and behold, brings in the terrified maiden. Well, hardly maiden—”

  She looked up at him, and could see the anger in his face, and pitied him; all the help he had ever given her, obviated in his own eyes by one action of Oscar’s. She knew how he felt, and pitied him deeply because it had happened, and yet knew she despised him for it too, just a little. Had she ever foreseen such a situation, had she been asked to guess which of them would behave in so physical a fashion to help her, she would have been certain it would be Theo. How dare Oscar behave so uncharacteristically? she thought with a spurt of anger. And then realized how stupid she was being, for wasn’t Oscar the most physical man she had ever known? Was not her relationship with him on an entirely physical level, while that with Theo was based on thought, shared thought, planned thought? They had in fact behaved very characteristically, both of them. And she smiled up at Theo from the depths of the armchair in which she was stretched and said softly, “Not to fret …”

  Oscar was moving restlessly about the office, his head thrust forward, and he said petulantly, “There’s plenty to fret about. Of all the stupid—” Above him, the lights flic
kered, and he looked up. “For God’s sake, is the emergency generator going now? I couldn’t—”

  “Changing over,” Theo said. “They’ve probably managed to do something at the power station.” He went to the window and, standing to one side of it, peered out carefully. “They’ve gone, I think,” he said after a moment, and opened the window to lean out into the cold darkness and look toward the main road far away to his left. “Yes,” he said. “Road lights are on again.”

  “Shut that bloody window. It’s cold,” Oscar said, and Theo pulled his head in and slammed the window shut with an angry snap of his shoulders.

  “What is all this?” Harriet asked from her armchair, and she knew she sounded dreamy and a little remote, and was glad of it. The aching was easing now, and she felt warm and almost relaxed as the exhaustion that had been building all afternoon became a shell inside which she could hide.

  “Oh, a lot of Communistic rubbish!” Oscar said. “That’s all. But my God, they can—”

  “Not entirely, Oscar,” Theo said. “Not all those men are Communists by any manner of means. And I’m not so sure it’d be such a terrible thing if they were. I—”

  “Look, Fowler, I’m in no mood for any of your needling and coat trailing and childish playacting, do you hear me? I’ve had a bastard of a day, and all I’m short of is—just stop it, will you? If you’ve anything to say that’s constructive, then by all means, but do me a favor, and shut up otherwise. Right?”

  From the edges of her dreamlike state, Harriet could see that Theo felt better, that his anger at himself and Oscar was lessened, now that Oscar had displayed his own anger, and she was puzzled. Because he showed his weakness, because he showed he’s frightened of what’s going on? That must be why, and smiled inside herself. I’m getting to be a very clear-seeing person, she thought with owlish satisfaction.

  “Harriet wants to know what’s been going on. Would it be suitably constructive to tell her that there has been—how do they put it—ah, industrial action, that’s it, industrial action, possibly Communist-inspired, but by no means an entirely Communist affair, and that it’s all because of her and her work?”

  Now she felt herself fully awake and completely aware of what was going on around her. “Based on my work?” she asked sharply.

  “Well, yes, since Fowler has—” Oscar breathed a heavy gust of annoyance. “It’s all this bloody stuff that cheap tabloid paper—the same stuff as all that ridiculous haranguing in Trafalgar Square over the weekend.”

  “Ben,” Harriet said dully.

  “What?”

  “Ben. My—Patty’s—Ben Shoeman. He’s—he finds what I’m doing useful for his revolutionary purposes.” She produced a curious sound, half-snort, half-giggle. “Isn’t that ridiculous? Me, rallying them to the ramparts—or is it the lampposts? I really don’t know.”

  “You’re dead on your feet, Harriet. I think you’d better get to bed. Look, you can’t go home tonight—” Theo came to help her to her feet. “There’s no guarantee they won’t go there, and—well, you stay here. You can have one of the spare staff rooms, I imagine.”

  But she resisted his tug on her arm. “What happened? You’ll have to tell me before you can get me to go—”

  “The local power station,” Oscar said impatiently. “They got a notion into their Neanderthal heads that we were treating what they’re pleased to call ‘stinking rich capitalists’ here. So they pulled all the plugs out or whatever it is they do when they have a wildcat strike—”

  “—effectively cutting off power to a large area of East Anglia as well as Brookbank, the real object of their fury, and marched up here to protest,” Theo cut in with relish. “Getting stoned out of their minds on the way, as far as I could judge. There’s the British workingman for you—always mixes business and pleasure.”

  “They went on strike because of—I don’t believe it!” Harriet said.

  “Then the sooner you suspend your disbelief the better,” Oscar said shortly. “Because that is precisely what they did. I had a dozen of them in hens—illiterate clods.”

  “They spoke with a countrified accent, in other words,” Theo murmured.

  “—and made what they pleased to call their demands. Demands! I never heard such impudence in my—”

  “What demands?” Harriet was trying to concentrate. “What did they want? Me on a plate or something?” And again she made her curious sound.

  “They wanted—oh, such absurdities—the animals let out, for a start. They’ve got some antivivisectionist notions mixed up in it too—the most stupid business. What sort of people are they who imagine you can release a few hundred capuchin monkeys, not to mention infected rats and mice and guinea pip, into an East Anglian winter? That should give you some idea of their caliber.”

  “We’ve had to put a guard on the animal pens,” Theo said soberly. “They’re so scattered about—we couldn’t be sure no one could get in and meddle, so”—he shrugged—“we’ve got a rota going until such time as the police can take over.”

  “But they’re all right at the moment?” Now Harriet was fully awake again. “My God, my monkeys—are they all right?”

  “John Caister’s with them. He’s staying the night. What this will do to the staff budget doesn’t bear thinking about,” Oscar said, and then, surprisingly, looked at her and smiled. “So there you are, my dear. You’ve really been causing some excitement here tonight! And then after we’d managed to shove them outside the gates and locked them, making them paralytic with rage as a result, you calmly drive into the middle of it all, and proceed to run down one of their number. You must admit it has a certain piquancy, this situation.”

  She smiled back, and let herself slip a little more deeply into the comfort of her remote feeling. “It’s nice of you not to be angrier. In your shoes, I’d be—I don’t know. Probably I’d want to give me the boot, my marching orders, the sack, my stamped-up cards—” Oscar looked up sharply at that, but it was Theo who looked closely at her and then laughed suddenly.

  “How much brandy did you give her when you brought her in here, Oscar?”

  “Mmm? Oh, I don’t know … some …” he indicated the glass on the desk with a vague gesture. “A glass—I didn’t measure it.”

  “Yes. And like an idiot, I gave her some too. My dear girl, you’re half-smashed, do you realize that?”

  “Yes, I think I do,” she said. “But I needed both lots of brandy, so—” And she shrugged, and smiled up at Theo, who shook his head at her.

  “Well, what with a long drive and then what happened at the end of it, and a positive cascade of brandy to follow on—come on. We’ll get one of the night nurses to nurse you to bed.” He helped her to her feet, and she winced again as the ache in her back and sides returned, and leaned against him as he led her to the door.

  “There’s something I wanted to know,” she said vaguely. “Something else. Something important. I can’t remember what it is. Theo, I can’t go yet … there’s something else …”

  “Dear heart, you’re in no condition to—”

  “That’s it!” she said, and managed to pull away from Theo to stand supporting herself on her own two feet. “George. I must go and see George and find out how he is before I go to bed. Please, Theo, I must.”

  Theo looked over her shoulder at Oscar, and after a moment said, “No need, Hattie, I saw him myself not a couple of hours ago. He’s fine. Just fine. And you can’t go to see him now—he’ll be asleep. Ifs getting fairly late, you know. Come on—let’s get you to bed.”

  As obediently as a child, she went.

  16

  SHE FELT a great deal better than she would have thought possible, remembering the state in which she had gone to bed. She woke to the strangeness of the impersonal staff bedroom and lay very still for a while before moving experimentally; she would have expected to have a headache at the very least—brandy taken in excess was not one of her usual experiences—and to be bruised and sore most certain
ly. But her head was clear, and though there were some large and lurid bruises on her hips and arms, she was no more than a little stiff.

  She drove herself to the cottage to bathe and change her clothes and eat some breakfast and to phone the District hospital to ask about the man who had been injured the night before. They told her he was “progressing satisfactorily,” and she was startled by the wave of sheer relief that surged through her when she heard that.

  It’s not as though it was really my fault it happened, she thought defensively. They frightened me—But all the same it was comforting to know the man was in no danger.

  It was past eleven by the time she walked into the unit. Catherine was sitting hunched over a pile of graphs, but jumped quickly to her feet as soon as she saw her.

  “Dr. Berry! Are you all right? I couldn’t find out anything about you this morning—I’ve been worried sick.”

  “Considering everything, I’m fine, thanks, Catherine. Where’s John? In the animal pens? I think I’ll go and see—”

  “No, there’s a policeman there now. John went to bed sometime in the small hours. I saw the monkeys early this morning, and they seemed to be perfectly all right. You’ve no need to worry, really. Come and sit down and—”

  “I think I’ll go and see for myself, all the same. I won’t feel really sure until I have. Could you put out a call for Mr. Fowler for me? I’ll be back in about fifteen minutes, and if he’s free I’d like a word with him. And after that, Sam—but I’ll call him myself when I get back.”

  The policeman, a large young man with a downy dark mustache, his helmet on the floor beside him, was sitting reading a newspaper in the little cubbyhole that served as an office to the main monkey room. He jumped up awkwardly as she came in, and put his helmet on.

  “No one to come in here unauthorized, madam,” he said a little breathlessly.