Nell Alone

by Jennie Melville

  Abel looked alert and interested, as if he was thinking that Nell-alone with Detective Abel was someone else again. Or possibly he was only thinking that Jordan would find married life difficult if he was always going to be analysing his wife like that.

  ‘And this affects Louise too,’ went on Jordan. ‘Louise-with-husband is not the same as Louise-with-Nell.’ He continued: ‘And this will explain why she has gone off and not written to Nell.’

  ‘We got the impression of a quarrel,’ said Abel.

  ‘And of course Nell’s own tension will derive similarly.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Abel.

  ‘I must explain it all to her. She’s familiar with the concepts of process and praxis from her own work.’

  ‘Praxis?’ asked Abel.

  ‘Deeds done by a doer,’ explained Jordan impatiently. ‘Happenings may be of two kinds; either the work of an agent, that is praxis, or the result of a chain of operations which may have no author, that is process. But she may not have applied it all to her own life. It’s not easy.’

  ‘It is not,’ agreed Abel.

  ‘I’ll explain it to her.’

  ‘You do that,’ said Abel with some irony. ‘My own feeling is that she’s got real trouble on her hands.’

  ‘But this is real,’ protested Jordan.

  ‘I mean real like a dead woman,’ said Abel. He finished his drink and stood up. Jordan was still staring at him, apparently with no words ready to use. ‘Take my advice,’ he went on, ‘don’t talk too much about this. In fact, don’t talk about it at all.’

  ‘Nell,’ began Jordan.

  ‘No, especially not to her,’ said Abel. ‘ We’ll meet again, shall we?’ He looked about him. ‘Perhaps here? I’ll telephone.’

  ‘Abel,’ called Jordan after him. ‘Abel, there’s something else …’ But Abel was gone.

  Chapter Seven

  The morning of the next day, the third Wednesday in June, was bright and fair and tranquil but brought no peace for any of the protagonists. Naturally not, they were still greatly confused about what was really happening. This was true even of Nell, who thought she knew most of all. She knew she was living in a nightmare, but she thought mistakenly it was her own private nightmare, engineered by herself to suit herself.

  Her patient or prisoner slept during most of that morning. He found himself unaccountably dreamy, a state not perhaps unconnected with the bitter taste of the tea given to him by Nell that morning. Or, at any rate, this was not unconnected in his mind.

  ‘I’ll kill myself before I let her go on drugging me,’ he said defiantly. But in his heart he knew that even killing himself was a step beyond his powers. He was obliged to go on living, if that was how Nell wanted it.

  Last night he had loved her; today the hate had come back. It was all, effectively, the same thing. The pain caused by the two emotions was identical.

  He groaned and felt sick. There is no end to the discomfort that can be caused by love, hate, a strong dose of a hypnotic drug and the welling up of a third emotion so far unidentifiable.

  The telephone rang. It echoed round the quiet room; it rang and rang obstinately for some minutes before silencing itself.

  Black ignored the call. It was Nell’s usual routine check-up telephone call which she had tried every morning lately. He resisted the temptation to spit at the instrument. It was not difficult to resist the temptation anyway, the drug had not left much saliva in

  his mouth.

  Then the taps sounded from below. Rap, rap, rap on the ceiling,

  like a stick banging. It probably was a stick. He didn’t suppose

  the old woman had wings.

  Hesitantly he knocked back.

  After a short, measured pause the telephone rang again.

  So this time he answered it.

  As he lifted the receiver a great convulsion of emotion spread

  through him, and now he had no trouble in identifying it. Guilt.

  ‘Nell,’ he muttered. ‘ Nell, I’m going against you.’

  He put the receiver down.

  After a very short pause the telephone began to ring again.

  Nell had left her flat reluctantly that morning. She placed the wedge under the door as she had done every morning recently, without much conviction that it would keep Black in if he really wanted to get out.

  ‘I’m not relying on it,’ she told herself grimly. ‘ I have other and better ways.’

  She walked very quietly down the stairs and opened the front door which she and Mrs Richier shared. The house had originally been one large family house and had been sub-divided long before Nell came to live there. Her rent was paid to an agent, but Nell suspected that behind the agent was the hand of Mrs Richier, open ready to receive the money. She had no proof that her fellow tenant was really her landlady but sometimes it seemed very likely. There was so much about the house that spoke of her needs. The slight slope created inside Mrs Richier’s own flat, eliminating the necessity for steps, the further slope from Mrs Richier’s back door into the garden (which belonged to Mrs Richier alone, further evidence of ownership), the plan she had once spoken of to Nell to have an internal lift put in to reach the attic floor, which was also Mrs Richier’s territory, all these suggested that the house belonged to her. The very colour scheme of the decorations on the facade and hallways, pale blue and grey, suited Mrs Richier, who always wore one or the other. The whole house was, in short, a machine for Mrs Richier to live in.

  Nell herself was indeed under notice to leave. In four weeks time from now she would be gone.

  She stood for a moment on the threshold, preparing to depart.

  Behind her, she heard a door quietly open. She waited for it to close again, consciously posed as a happy relaxed figure off to a day’s work. Mrs Richier often peeped out on her. It was one of the tricks Nell would be particularly glad to leave behind.

  ‘Could you give me my milk bottle, please,’ said Mrs Richier. ‘It is there, isn’t it?’ Her voice sounded weak.

  Nell slowly picked up the bottle and handed it over. Mrs Richier was standing, still wearing her dressing gown, propped up against the door. She took the bottle awkwardly.

  ‘Careful’, said Nell as she steadied the bottle. Her eyes fell on Mrs Richier’s hands. They were red, swollen and spotted with little blisters.

  ‘Your hands!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, they’re bad, aren’t they?’ said Mrs Richier wearily. ‘ They kept me awake.’ She swayed and Nell steadied her.

  ‘You silly old lady,’ said Nell gently. ‘ What have you been doing?’

  ‘Burning something.’

  ‘Burning?’ Nell gave a little whistle as she examined the hands. ‘I can smell it. What were you burning?’

  ‘Papers …’ Mrs Richier faltered.

  ‘Paper! It smells like wool.’ She looked closely at the left hand where there did indeed seem to be a fragment of white wool actually embedded in the skin. ‘I shall have to dress these for you.’

  Mrs Richier protested, but perhaps she sensed the determination in Nell, or perhaps she was nervous of the threat of hospital which was clearly going to be Nell’s next suggestion. She allowed Nell to come inside, settle her in a chair and work on the hands.

  ‘However did you do it?’ asked Nell. ‘You’ll need penicillin for this. I’ll drop a prescription in at the chemist.’

  ‘I’m so awkward, you see,’ said Mrs Richier.

  ‘Well, you’re not going to be any less so now,’ said Nell, looking at the stiffly bandaged hands.

  ‘You’ve always been very kind to me,’ said Mrs Richier, over Nell’s bent head.

  ‘Have I?’ Nell was surprised.

  ‘Oh yes, very kind. Don’t think I haven’t been grateful.’

  ‘You’re tired,’ said Nell, patting her shoulder. ‘ Go to bed and rest. I haven’t done anything. I won’t do anything.’

  ‘I only wanted to say thank you.’

  ‘You’ve said it. It
’s acknowledged. The debt’s paid.’

  She didn’t like Mrs Richier any better than she ever had done and she was sure Mrs Richier didn’t like her. She had performed a small service to Mrs Richier and this had been recognised. Perhaps they could now go on as before.

  ‘I shouldn’t do any more burning,’ she said. The smell still hung about the room and it still smelt like charred wool. She flicked an eye round the room, which was all perfectly orderly. ‘I can leave you a sedative if you like.’

  ‘I don’t like drugs.’

  ‘I don’t know how you burnt yourself. Or why, really,’ said Nell in a level tone. ‘But you mustn’t burn the house down while I’m out.’

  —An interesting insight on the home life of Mrs Richier, thought Nell, as she hurried on her way to work. But then, whose home life is impeccable? Look at mine—

  A few paces ahead of her she saw the girls. She was neither pleased nor displeased to see them. She was in a rush and she had to get to work. Normally the sight of them stumping along to school, wearing their school uniform like a disguise and talking hard, brought a smile to her lips.

  She waved and walked on.

  ‘Miss Hilton,’ called Amabel. ‘Oh, Miss Hilton … Oh, she never heard, Charlotte, and we ought to have told her what we saw.’

  ‘What I saw,’ corrected Charlotte.

  ‘The burning,’ said Amabel.

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Charlotte. This morning she had withdrawn from the world, had dropped her interest in dancing, poetry, the arts, indeed the whole world of secular society, and was going for higher things. She thought she might be a great mystic. At the very least, a nun. ‘Did I really see burning? Somehow none of it seems very real this morning. I dare say it wasn’t true.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ demanded Amabel, giving her a sharp rap on the arm. ‘ Did you or did you not see it? Were you telling me lies?’

  ‘Oh no,’ cried Charlotte, hurt. Naturally this morning she was the bride of truth, her clear pure eyes could see through falsehoods like glass. ‘I saw it. But how can we know what I really saw? The real essence of it?’

  Amabel gave a short incredulous snort. Once again she sounded exactly like her own father. She knew this too and it made her cross. How well she began to understand why parents felt the way they did. Faced with Charlotte renouncing the world, the flesh, and the devil, she practically was a parent.

  ‘You saw it,’ said Amabel. ‘Leave the brainwork to me, addle-head.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Charlotte, momentarily abandoning the cloister.

  From across the road, Nell looked back and saw them giggling and pushing each other. She was always glad when her clever, imaginative friends showed their youth.

  She wondered what they had wished to tell her. Another item about Mrs Richier, no doubt.

  She walked faster and as she walked she thought: ‘It’s a strange pair I’ve left behind in the house – one with helpless legs and the other with burnt hands.’ She gave a short laugh: ‘And never the twain shall meet.’

  The weekly, even the daily routine of the Institute was very well established and, considering it was a highly individual and ruthless group that worked there, they all conformed to it very well. It was admitted that the Wednesday meeting for the common discussion of work problems was a nuisance, but they all came. Even Dr Grout, who hated to talk about his work and had the reputation of having bitten the hand of a persistent questioner, attended, silent, it was true, but there in the body if not in the spirit. Even Miss Aumerez, who was a devout Freudian and therefore at war with the majority of her colleagues, who were not devout at all, put in an appearance. She usually sat among them with the expression of a Mohammedan who had got into church by mistake. She never spoke, either. Everyone else talked a great deal, and smoked, and drank coffee, then returned, revived, to their work. Perhaps this was what it was all about.

  ‘Has it ever struck you,’ said Jordan to Nell, after this Wednesday’s session, ‘that possibly the whole function of this place is to cure maladjusted psychologists? And that the children are only provided to assist us?’

  ‘It occurs to me every day round about nine o’clock and then again around four that I’m crazy to be here at all,’ said Nell. ‘In between times I forget.’

  ‘You were meant to laugh at my little joke, not answer it seriously,’ complained Jordan.

  ‘Was I serious?’ said Nell.

  ‘So serious that you’re not really paying me any attention.’

  ‘Anyway, I’m going back to work now,’ she said with her tight little smile.

  ‘Do you take your work home with you too?’ asked Jordan irritably.

  ‘I do, as a matter of fact.’

  They were walking up the stairs and towards Jordan’s office. Next door to his room was the room of his secretary and next door to that the room labelled, a little archaically Jordan always thought, ‘The Dispensary’.

  ‘I’m going here,’ said Nell, nodding towards the Dispensary door.

  Another of the well established routines of the Institute (no one ever actually used the word rule) concerned the Drug Book. Everyone working here was free to use what drugs they chose in the treatment of their patients. Some of them used drugs a great deal and others (they were in the minority) hardly at all. But although they were at liberty to use what drugs they liked they kept a strict record in the Drug Book.

  ‘You’re using a lot of Bavadin lately.’ Jordan flipped through the Drug Book.

  ‘Yes. I’m interested in the effects. Relaxes them.’

  ‘Bit strong, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Nell walked across the room and locked a door. ‘I don’t know why we have to keep this locked, there’s nothing really dangerous here.’

  ‘Depends, doesn’t it? On how it’s used,’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Nell, ‘ would you consider it unethical, wrong, to use Pentathol or any of the truth drugs on a subject, to get them to tell you what you are wanting to know? Not a child, of course, hardly necessary there perhaps, but on an adult say?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jordan promptly. ‘And so would you.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ agreed Nell, meditatively. ‘It depends, as you just said.’

  ‘I wish I could think of powerful and cogent words to convince you,’ said Jordan. ‘But you know the arguments as well as I do. What I don’t like is the way you use the word subject. It suggests a certain inhumanity.’

  ‘Ah, don’t try to be too clever, Jordan.’

  ‘Abel told me something, Nell, something about the dead person. He told me not to tell you.’ He was studying her face, trying to read the expression of query he saw there. ‘But I think really he meant me to tell you.’

  Nell waited.

  ‘He told me, at least he more or less told me, that the dead person is a woman.’ He took her arm; she had gone very white. ‘Nell!’ And then, when she still did not speak: ‘Nell?’

  ‘No, don’t touch me, take your arm away.’ She moved away and stood rigidly alone. Carefully she closed and locked the drug cupboard, placing the key in her pocket. ‘Leave me alone, Jordan, it’ll be better if you do. Better for me, better for you.’

  To his surprise he saw that touching up another emotion which he could not put a name to was anger. Nell was angry.

  ‘I declare, Jordan, you and Abel are both the same, keen to sharpen up your knife on me.’

  ‘Nell!’

  ‘Yes, that hurt me. You meant it to, didn’t you?’ Jordan was silent. ‘Oh, don’t worry, I forgive you, but just leave me alone, will you?’

  She walked stiffly from the room. Shock had dropped a curtain around her private nightmare. Nightmare became like a person to her, and they were shut in together. She had a twin now, a nasty symbiotic twin.

  She shut her office door behind her, feeling unsteadily that her nightmare twin was on the point of taking over. As she passed the mirror on the wall she almost expected to see two of her.

  ‘One more step
forward,’ she said. ‘ I must take just one more step forward.’

  On an impulse she picked up the telephone and rang her own number.

  She had listened for some moments before she realised that the line was engaged. She put the receiver down, waited a little while, then tried again. Her telephone line was still in use.

  ‘A long conversation,’ she said.

  For the rest of the day the Institute was extremely busy. No one had much time to spare to think of Nell, not even Jordan. People tended to be very self-absorbed there anyway.

  But when, at the end of the day, he went in search of her with an apology on his lips, there was no sign of her. There were books and papers still on the desk, there was her white apron flung over the back of the chair, but Nell herself was gone.

  At the end of the corridor he met Miss Aumerez; she was carrying a large cross. It could hardly be for her devotions so perhaps it was part of her personal therapy.

  ‘Just looking for Nell,’ explained Jordan.

  ‘Oh, she’s been gone some time. Cancelled her last two sessions. I know I heard the kids protesting in the corridor. The porter had to come and take them away.’

  ‘Cancelled’s hardly the word, then, is it?’ said Jordan. ‘ She just failed to put in an appearance.’

  ‘You could put it that way.’

  ‘It’s not like Nell.’

  Miss Aumerez shrugged. ‘ Excuse me, please, I have to get back to my construction.’

  Jordan watched her go then called ‘What are you constructing?’

  ‘A truth,’ she said sedately, without turning back to look at him.

  Jordan went back to Nell’s room and stood at the door, looking in. But he realised that there was no clue to be gained from her room. Nell carried her own secrets locked up inside her.

  Miss Aumerez poked her head round her door and called out to Jordan.

  ‘I forgot to tell you – your telephone was ringing when I passed your door. Still is, I expect.’

  ‘I’d like to see you,’ said Abel. ‘A couple of hours time? It would be convenient. Where we met before? A quarter past the hour, then.’

  It was like Abel to take acceptance for granted, but Jordan did not wish to refuse. He and Abel were glumly yoked together for the present, and he knew it.