At last he admitted defeat and scrambled through the bedside drawer for a cigarette. He smoked two consecutively before he could really appreciate the familiar relaxing response. God, it felt wonderful!
Once more in charge of his brain, he did some more marshalling, and came to the conclusion that he was not the right therapist for Valerie. He was getting far too involved. When it came to his subconscious dragging him into her fantasy land first chance it got, it was time for him to depart the scene and hand his patient on to some less empathetic type.
Perhaps he’d been wrong to try hypnotherapy, but he’d honestly thought it might help where nothing else had. Valerie knew too much about the psychotherapeutic techniques. She’d been the rounds for too long. She knew how to play the game. Possibly, she had deliberately sealed herself off from help, although he wouldn’t believe that until forced to.
Pulling out his little book of contacts, he began to search for someone who might meet her needs. There was Bill Copley… No. He’d gone to Luxembourg last year to join a clinic there. Maybe that fellow in Edinburgh…
Sound exploded against his left eardrum. His head hit the top of the bed. The dreadful shrilling went on and on until he realized it was the phone. Because he slept heavily, he’d installed a bell that sounded like the clappers of hell. Sometimes he had regrets.
At first he didn’t recognize the dazed voice on the end of the line as Valerie’s.
‘Wait a minute. I can’t hear what you’re saying. Valerie, it’s still the middle of the night and…’
He stopped protesting. The skin on the back of his neck crept, as if a little breeze had stolen across it. He listened. ‘Valerie, it’s going to be all right. I’m coming. Just hold on and I’ll be with you in fifteen minutes.’
He flung down the receiver, missing the phone altogether the first time, and grabbed his pants. Within sixty seconds he was out in the street with one shoe on, shouting for a taxi. He put the other shoe on while urging the driver to hasten to Bellevue Gardens, Mayfair, and an extra pound in it if he made it in ten minutes.
Nine minutes later he was pushing the bell on the front door of a classy modern block of apartments. The doorman, half-dressed and clutching a nice sausage and toast, seemed in two minds whether to let him in.
‘I’m a doctor, called urgently to Mrs. Winterhouse. Which apartment?’
The magic words swiftly elevated him to the fifth floor. The main door of No.11 stood ajar. He stepped inside and closed it on the man’s inquisitive face.
Valerie lay on her stomach in the lobby, the expensive cream rug under her stained with vomit. He breathing was so shallow he could hardly believe in it, but it was there. Tom let out his own breath with an explosive sigh.
After putting her in a coma position on her side and checking her airway, he left her and telephoned Phil. That done, he went into the bedroom and pulled a blanket from the bed to tuck around the unconscious woman. He moved automatically, not really thinking about his actions. His mind was furiously occupied with questions.
Why had Valerie tried this particular moment to do away with herself? Then, having set things in motion, why had she apparently regretted it? Was it a ploy meant to disrupt her treatment, a cry of ‘wolf’ that had gone badly wrong? Was she far more disturbed than he had realized?
He looked down at the pallid face and felt a touch of panic at its emptiness. But she still breathed.
What would happen to her now? He should, of course, notify the authorities and have her removed to care, but he was reluctant to do this. It would mean the end of their sessions together for some time. He found he didn’t want that, after all. Valerie’s plight had touched something very deep within him. He couldn’t let her down. So, why not keep this episode quiet and go on helping her himself, with the aid of Phillip Thornton MD? He supposed it depended on how badly affected she was by whatever she’d taken.
He risked leaving her again to dash into the bedroom and search for a pill container, but found nothing. There was nothing in the bathroom, either, nor in the kitchen or sitting room – except for a half-empty bottle of vodka and a tumbler on the floor by the couch.
As he searched he was only half aware of the apartment layout and décor. Pastel peach predominated, a color he loathed. All the surfaces had a suede-like texture, the chairs a mushroom softness sinking into the rugs. He had a sense of overwhelming sponginess, as though the place might very well open its pores and absorb him completely.
When the doorbell rang he shook off his fancies and went to let Phil in.
Fifteen minutes later Phil stepped back from the bed where Valerie was now tucked up, looking slightly less corpselike. Tom saw him pocket a pill container he’d taken from Valerie’s dressing gown pocket.
‘She’ll do. She’s vomited a good deal of the drug, plus the alcohol. But she was never in any real danger. Of course, she’ll have to be watched for some hours, but I don’t think we have anything to worry about.’
Tom looked at him incredulously, then decided that this was normal medico tunnel-vision, narrowed down to the immediate moment.
‘What had she taken?’
‘She’d ingested rather a lot of one of the benzodiazepines and washed it down with vodka. Not a great combination, but also not necessarily fatal. Her respiratory function was affected, as you saw. However, she has a strong heart and, really, it’s just about impossible to kill yourself with such drugs unless you decided to drive a car under their influence.’
‘So she wasn’t serious?’
‘Serious enough. I think she just wasn’t aware of how much safer these sedatives are.’
Tom sank down on the sofa and rested his head in his hands. Phil continued to pack away his medical gear, while watching his friend.
‘What are you going to do?’
Tom raised bloodshot eyes. Her felt terrible, and he’d have killed for a cigarette. ‘I’m going to help her, of course. I feel I’ve let her down.’
‘That’s what I thought you’d say. Do you want any help?’
‘All I can get, Phil. We could have lost a precious life tonight. I won’t let it happen again.’
Phil closed his bag and stood up. ‘Okay. I’ll arrange for a nurse to special her for twenty-four hours. There’s no need to hospitalize her and put her through all those questions. She’ll sleep quietly, and by tomorrow she should be able to talk to us… if it’s what she wants.’
‘There’s not much doubt of it. This episode was the classic cry for help… and I was just about to turn my back on her.’ Tom lumbered to his feet, telling his protesting legs to shut up and get on with moving him around. It was Friday, with a full case load, and he hadn’t so much as shaved. ‘I’m off home to snatch some coffee before I go into work. Did I remember to thank you, Phil?’
‘My middle name is Shylock. I’ll get it out of your hide one of these days, pal. Go home and do something about your horrible face or you’ll frighten your clients into fits. I’ll wait here until the nurse arrives.’
‘There’s no hope of talking to her just yet, I suppose?’
‘Valerie? Not a chance. She’ll sleep for hours. Off with you.’ He punched his friend lightly on the shoulder and pushed him out the door.
On the front steps of Bellevue Mansions Tom stood with his face raised to the early morning sun. All around him activity swirled – buses, cars and taxis jockeying across the traffic lanes, people hurrying along the pavements. In a park opposite, men trundled wheelbarrows and wielded spades, children ran and romped, their schoolbags clashing together like warriors’ shields as they mock battled. Horns, tyres squealing, voices shouting, dogs barking. Somewhere road works were in progress. The noise was infernal. It was life. He’d never appreciated it as much as he did now he’d helped to save a part of it.
He took a huge sniff of petrol-perfumed air and hailed a bus.
*
Valerie rang that night.
‘Tom? I don’t know whether to thank you or send you a letter
bomb, you damned interfering quack!’
‘Phil’s the quack. I’m just an interfering s.o.b. How are you feeling?’
‘How do you think I feel? It’s worse when you know you’ve done it to yourself. I think I must have gone into a fugue, or something. Isn’t that what they call it when you do something you don’t really mean to do, and don’t know it?’
‘No. You can stop trying to impress me with your jargon and tell me when you’re coming in to see me.’
There was silence on the line.
‘Valerie?’
‘I’m still here. I’m just wondering whether it’s any use, Tom.’ Her voice began to wobble. ‘Oh, God, I’m a mess. I’m frightened. I’m cracking up and I don’t know what to do about it.’ She began to sob, deep, painful sobs that tore at her throat, making her gasp for breath.
He heard movement in the background and the sobbing faded away. Another woman’s voice came down the line. ‘Dr. Levy? This is Sister McPherson speaking. Mrs. Winterhouse is a little upset and I’ve got her to lie down. She will be quite all right. Dr. Thornton saw her only half an hour ago.’
‘Right. Thank you, Sister. Please tell Mrs. Winterhouse that I expect to see her in the morning at nine o’clock. If there’s any problem with that would you mind giving me a call? Mrs. Winterhouse has the number.’
‘Certainly, doctor. Is there anything more?’
Tom said there was nothing, thanked her and put the receiver down. It was an advantage having a doctorate. Hardly anyone went beyond the assumption that he was a medical man, which opened many a door closed to those outside the profession.
There was a probability that Valerie might not come. Yet, the first move had to be hers. He should not pursue her any further. Their relationship had reached a thin spot. Like the delicate membrane stretched across the opening in a baby’s head, it barely covered the pulsing life beneath. A sudden break could be disastrous.
He slept well that night; and if he had dreams, he didn’t remember them. He was at his desk, swiveling around contemplating his painting when Valerie came in. Phil followed thirty seconds behind her.
The three looked at one another.
Tom spoke first. ‘How are you feeling, Valerie?’
‘Okay, I guess.’ Her eyes flicked from Tom to Phil and back. ‘I suppose I should thank you. I don’t like to feel a fool.’
Phil grinned. ‘Join the rest of humanity. We all make idiots of ourselves sooner or later.’
Tom nodded and led Valerie to her chair. ‘He’s right. Valerie, how would you feel about Phil sitting in on our sessions, as an observer? Besides practicing medicine, he’s also an experienced psychotherapist. I’ve already discussed certain aspects of your case with him on a professional basis, and I think it would help us both to have another point of view.’
He thought she looked ill under the heavier-than-usual make-up. Her eyes had a smudged look, and she seemed very tense. Her glance flickered restlessly around the room, finally stopping at the picture hung behind Tom’s desk. Then he saw her start to let go, shoulders relaxing against the back of the chair, jaw muscles softening.
She said, in a low voice, ‘Yesterday I had the living daylights scared out of me. I thought I was going to die, on my own. So I’m not about to quibble at anything you might suggest to help me. Besides which, I’m afraid for my sanity, and to me that’s the bottom line. I’ll agree to anything at all.’
She turned to Phil. ‘You probably know all about me, by now. So go ahead, sit in, observe, comment. Whatever.’
Tom trundled his chair over to the recliner and sat down facing his patient. ‘You do realize that the same thing will probably happen? You will start to relive a sequence, whether real or imaginary, in which you will be under some kind of attack from others, and I won’t be able to intervene.’
‘I’ve thought about it. It’s scary, but I also have a sense of things working out in some way. I’m getting closer to whatever it is that’s driving me crazy.’ She looked at him squarely. The gray rims about her irises seemed to thicken and grow more luminous. He felt she was trying to project an integrity formerly lacking in their relationship – that she was now in earnest.
Whatever her reason, fear, remorse, perhaps more than a touch of curiosity since that last revealing episode, he felt a new rapport with her.
They began the session.
Tom cut out everything from his awareness, to concentrate on his patient. Slowly, carefully he took her away from the conscious world, deliberately pacing her decent. It was an effort at maintaining control, but almost immediately he knew it was wasted. Valerie had gone ahead of him. Her face remolded itself while he watched, sharpening into the gypsy features of the woman he had privately named ‘The Battler’.
She sat practically rigid. Her fingers clutched at the chair’s arms, digging into the leather with such ferocity that he thought she might break her nails. The tendons in her throat stood out and he knew her teeth would be clenched. He was startled when her lips parted and she spat at him, or at someone she saw in his place.
He wiped his sleeve with his handkerchief and said calmly, ‘What is it, Valerie? Why are you upset?’
Her fingers ground into the leather.
Phil whispered, ‘She’s gone, hasn’t she?”
‘I’m afraid so. She’s listening to someone else, not to me. It’s someone she doesn’t like.’
Her face worked. Different emotions flickered across it like shadows on a screen. Again Tom had the feeling that the black eyes burned behind their closed lids.
‘No!’ she screamed, suddenly. Her voice sounded raw and husky. ‘I will not lie. Ye condemn me at your peril.’ She began to pant. It was a horrible animal sound magnified in the silent room. ‘Lying whoresons! Y’r Hammer is a tool of Satan. ‘Tis an instrument that glorifies torture, and ye who follow it will end in hell y’rselves.’
She paused again, listening. Globules of sweat sprang up at her hairline, started to gather and trickle down her forehead.
‘I deny it all, Sir Priest. Y’re mad and full o’sinful lusts to think such. Ye accuse my cat of being my familiar. She is but a cat. My herbs are brewed to help folk. I have no magic potion to help me fly.’
She brought her hands up as if to deflect a blow, then doubled up in the chair, the breath knocked out of her.
‘Good God! Phil sprang to his feet, pointing. Tiny droplets of blood began oozing from her fingertips. Her arms hung down by her sides and her neck sagged. She was unconscious.
Tom already had his fingers on her pulse. He talked to her in a low, encouraging murmur, trying to penetrate the barrier between them.
‘She’s being tortured! Phil’s eyes bugged. ‘We’ve got to stop it!’
Tom broke off his one-sided conversation to say with asperity, ‘She’s obviously in the middle of a witch trial, and if I knew how, I’d certainly bring her out of it. As it is, all we can do is wait.’
He patted Valerie’s fingers dry and wiped her forehead, laying her head to one side so that she could breathe more easily. As the seconds passed without event Phil resumed his seat, or, rather, perched on its edge to wait.
Finally she began to quiver, then to rock her body to and fro, moaning. Her hands shifted into her lap, pressed tight, as if they were bound together. Tom even fancied he could see welts on her wrists. Her lips looked dry and cracked, and sunken cheekbones spoke of illness.
She abruptly stiffened. Terror was a mask clamped over her face. ‘No! Not again!’ She dug her heels into the chair, dragging against the force that pulled her forward. ‘Have you no mercy? Is God sleeping?’
Her protests died in a broken jumble of words and then to silence as she once again seemed to face her accusers. Her head came up in a parody of its former pride. Her bowed shoulders straightened.
‘Look at her stand up to them,’ muttered Phil. He was leaning practically on top of Tom, his former horror apparently overlaid with professional curiosity.
Tom paid no atte
ntion. ‘Valerie, listen to me. You know my voice. You must listen to me and do as I say. Leave that place. Come back down the path to the beautiful garden we created. Come with me, Valerie.’ His tone was urgent, yet controlled, but it still failed to pierce through to the terrifying space Valerie occupied.
She had braced herself to face what came. ‘Ye judged me guilty before I came to this court. ’Tis y’r sworn duty to smell out a witch, Sir Priest, and find one ye will, where e’er ye go, because y’r mind is set on’t.’
Again she listened. Then, for all her bravery, she flinched. ‘So, I’m to hang. Then if I must perish ‘twill be in my own way.’ Her voice rose, harsh as a cracked bell. ‘Before I go I lay a curse on ye, all o’ye that stand here and watch a woman brought down like a squirrel midst a pack o’mad dogs.’
An ugly smile split her lips, drawing blood from the cracks. ‘I lay this curse on ye, Sir Priest. My spirit will follow ye in this life and the next, and wreak a most horrible vengeance. Ye’ll not rest for the pain acrying in y’r bones. Ye’ll suffer without cease, and ye’ll beg for the death that I alone can bring ye.’
She flung up her bound hands as if beseeching heaven. ‘I curse the mother that bore me and taught me the ways that ha’ brought me to this pass.’
Without warning she burst out of the chair, throwing the two men aside as easily as straw bundles, racing out of the room and along the corridor, heading straight for the stairs.
They followed. Tom was only two paced behind her when she leapt from the top step, her terrified scream rebounding off the walls. He flung himself forward, one hand grasping the railing, the other catching about her waist, arresting her fall. He cried out himself as his arm jerked almost from its socket. She dangled in his grasp, her knees buckled under her on the stairs. Then Phil was there to take her weight. Between them they carried her back to the office and laid her on the recliner.
Endless Time Page 20