“Like Mr. Rawlinson?”
“That’s just plain silly, and you know it.”
“I thought I’d try it on you.”
“You’ll have to try harder than that. I don’t know why you’re straining so hard to make Mr. Swain into a whited sepulchre. I know he took that money, and I know Mr. Rawlinson didn’t. Why, the poor man lost everything. He’s lived from hand to mouth ever since.”
“On what?”
She answered quietly: “He has a little pension, and I have my savings. For a long time I worked as a nurse’s aide. That helped to keep him going.”
What she said sounded like the truth. Anyway, I couldn’t help believing her.
Mrs. Shepherd was looking at me more kindly, as if she sensed a change in our relations. Very gently, she touched my bandaged shoulder with her fingers. “Poor man, you need a rest. You oughtn’t to be troubling your head with all these questions. Aren’t you tired?”
I admitted that I was.
“Then why don’t you get some sleep?” Her voice was soporific. She laid her palm on my forehead. “I’ll stay in the room and watch for a while if you don’t mind. I like the smell of hospitals. I used to work in this very hospital.”
She sat down in the armchair between the closet and the window. The imitation-leather cushions creaked under her weight.
I closed my eyes and slowed down my breathing. But I was very far from going to sleep. I lay and listened to Mrs. Shepherd. She was completely still. Sounds drifted in through the window: the sounds of cars, a mockingbird tuning up for a night song. He kept postponing his song until the sense of something about to happen had screwed my nerves up tight.
The imitation-leather cushions of the chair emitted a tiny noise. There was the faintest possible sibilance from Mrs. Shepherd’s feet sliding across the composition floor, the rattle of a doorknob, the paired whispers of a door opening and closing.
I opened my eyes. Mrs. Shepherd wasn’t visible. Apparently she had shut herself up in the closet. Then its door began to open slowly again. She came out sideways, and held the picture of Nick up to the light. Her face was full of love and longing.
She glanced at me, and saw that my eyes were open. But she thrust the picture under her coat and left the room quietly, without a word.
I didn’t say anything to her, or do anything. After all, it was her picture.
I turned out the light and lay listening to the mockingbird. He was singing all-out now, and still singing when I went to sleep. I dreamed that I was Nick and that Mrs. Shepherd was my grandmother who use to live with birds in the garden in Contra Costa County.
chapter 31
In the morning, as I was eating a poached egg on a damp piece of toast, the resident surgeon came in.
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” I lied. “But I’ll never build up my strength on this kind of rations. When can I get out of here?”
“Don’t be in such a hurry. I’m going to have to ask you to take it easy for at least a week.”
“I can’t stay here for a week.”
“I didn’t say you had to. You’re going to have to look after yourself, though. Regular hours, mild exercise followed by rest, no rough stuff.”
“Sure,” I said.
I rested very carefully all morning. Truttwell failed to return my call, and the waiting began to get in the way of the resting and finally displaced it.
Shortly before noon I called his office again. The switchboard girl informed me that he wasn’t there.
“Really not there?”
“Really. I don’t know where he is.”
I did some more resting and waiting. A Pasadena motorcycle officer brought me the keys to my car and told me where to find it in the hospital parking lot. I took this as an omen.
After an early lunch I got out of bed and to a certain extent put on my clothes. By the time I had on underwear, trousers, and shoes I was wet and shaking. I sort of draped my bloody shirt over my chest and shoulders and covered it with my jacket.
In the corridor, the nurses and nurses’ aides were still busy with lunch. I crossed the corridor to a gray metal door that opened on the fire stairs and walked down three stories to the ground floor.
A side exit let me out into the parking lot. I found my car and got in and sat for a while. Mild exercise followed by rest.
The freeway was crowded and slow. Even with all the concentration I was giving it, my driving wasn’t too good. My attention kept slipping away from the traffic I was moving in. Once I had to burn rubber to avoid running into the rear end of another car.
I’d originally intended to drive to Pacific Point. I barely made it to West Los Angeles. In the last block of the trip, on my home street, I caught a glimpse in the rear-view mirror of a bearded man carrying a bedroll. But when I turned to look at him directly he wasn’t there.
I left my car at the curb and climbed the outside stairs to my apartment. The phone started to ring, like an aural booby-trap, just as I opened the door. I picked it up and carried it to my armchair.
“Mr. Archer? This is Helen at the answering service. You’ve had a couple of urgent calls, from a Mr. Truttwell and a Miss Truttwell. I’ve been ringing your office.”
I looked at the electric clock. It was just two o’clock. Helen gave me the number of Truttwell’s office, and the less familiar number his daughter had left.
“Anything else?”
“Yes, but there must be some mistake about this call, Mr. Archer. A hospital in Pasadena claims that you owe them a hundred and seventy dollars. That includes the cost of the operating room, they said.”
“It’s no mistake. If they call again, tell them I’m putting a check in the mail.”
“Yessir.”
I got out my checkbook and looked at the balance and decided to call Truttwell first. Before I did, I went out to the kitchen and put a frozen steak in the gas broiler. I tasted the milk in the refrigerator, found that it was still sweet, and drank half of the remaining quart. I wanted a shot of whisky as a chaser, but it was exactly what I didn’t need.
My call to Truttwell’s office was taken by a junior member of the firm named Eddie Sutherland. Truttwell wasn’t in at the moment, he said, but he had set up an appointment for me at four thirty. It was very important that I should be there, though Sutherland didn’t seem to know why.
I remembered as I was dialing the number Betty had left that it belonged to the phone in Nick’s apartment.
Betty answered. “Hello?”
“This is Archer speaking.”
She drew in her breath. “I’ve been trying to get you all day.”
“Is Nick with you?”
“No. I only wish he were. I’m very concerned about him. I went to San Diego yesterday afternoon to try and see him. They wouldn’t let me into his room.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“The guard on the door, backed up by Dr. Smitheram. They seemed to think I was spying for my father. I did manage to get a glimpse of Nick, and let him see me. He asked me to get him out. He said they were holding him against his will.”
“ ‘They’?”
“I think he meant Dr. Smitheram. Anyway, it was Dr. Smitheram who ordered him to be moved last night.”
“Moved where?”
“I don’t know for certain, Mr. Archer. I think they’re holding him prisoner in the Smitheram Clinic. That’s where the ambulance took him.”
“And you seriously believe that he’s a prisoner?”
“I don’t know what I believe. But I’m afraid. Will you help me?”
I said that she would have to help me first, since I wasn’t up to driving. She agreed to pick me up in an hour.
I went out to the kitchen and turned my steak. It was hot and sizzling on one side, frozen solid on the other, like schizophrenic people I had known. I wondered just how crazy Nick Chalmers was.
The immediate problem was clothes. My not very extensive wardrobe included a stretchable nylon s
hirt that I managed to get into without putting the left arm in the armhole. I completed my costume with a soft cardigan jacket.
By this time my schizoid steak was brown on both sides and red in the center. It bled on the plate when I stabbed it. I let it cool and ate it with my fingers.
I finished the quart of milk. Then I went back to the armchair in the front room and rested. For just about the first time in my life I knew how it must feel to get old. My body was demanding special privileges and offering not much in return.
The yelp of Betty’s horn brought me out of a half-sleep. She gave me a hard look as I climbed rather awkwardly into her car.
“Are you sick, Mr. Archer?”
“Not exactly. I took a slug in the shoulder.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You mightn’t have come. I want to be in at the end of this thing.”
“Even if it kills you?”
“It won’t.”
If I was looking worse, she was looking better. She had decided after all not to be a gnome who lived in the gray underground.
“Who on earth shot you?”
“A Pasadena cop. He was aiming at another man. I got in the way. Didn’t your father tell you any of this?”
“I haven’t seen my father since yesterday.” She spoke these words rather formally, as if they constituted an announcement.
“Are you leaving home?”
“Yes, I am. Father said I had to choose between him and Nick.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”
“Yes, he did.”
She made her engine roar. At the last moment I remembered that Chalmers’s war letters were still in the trunk of my car. I went back to get them, and looked over the top ones again as Betty drove me to the freeway.
The heading of the second letter stopped me:
Lt. (j.g.) L. Chalmers
USS Sorrel Bay (CVE 185)
March 15, 1945
I turned to Betty. “You mentioned Nick’s birthday the other day. Didn’t you say it was in December?”
“December 14,” she said.
“And what year was he born?”
“Nineteen forty-five. He was twenty-three last month. Is it important?”
“It could be. Did Nick rearrange these letters, with certain ones up front and out of chronological order?”
“He may have. I think he had been reading them. Why?”
“Mr. Chalmers wrote a letter at sea in the forward area, dated March 15, 1945.”
“I’m not too good at arithmetic, especially when I’m driving. Is it nine months from March 15 to December 14?”
“Exactly.”
“Isn’t that strange? Nick always suspected that his fa—that Mr. Chalmers wasn’t his real father. He used to think he was adopted.”
“Maybe he was.”
I put the three top letters in my wallet. The girl turned up the on-ramp to the freeway. She drove with angry speed under a brown firmament of smog.
chapter 32
Southward along the coast it was a bright, windy day. From the mesa above Pacific Point I could see occasional whitecaps on the water, and a few sails leaning far over.
Betty took me directly to the Smitheram Clinic. The well-groomed, rather formal young woman who presided over the reception desk said that Dr. Smitheram was with a patient and couldn’t possibly see us. He would be with patients all the rest of the day, including the evening.
“What about a week from Tuesday at midnight?”
The young woman looked me over disapprovingly. “Are you sure you don’t want the emergency ward at the hospital?”
“I’m sure. Is Nicholas Chalmers a patient here?”
“I’m not authorized to answer questions like that.”
“Can I see Mrs. Smitheram?”
The young woman didn’t answer for a while. She pretended to be busy with her papers. Finally she said:
“I’ll see. What did you say your name was, again?”
I told her. She opened an inner door. Before she closed it behind her, I heard a flash of noise that made the back of my neck bristle. It was a high yell; someone crying out wordlessly in pain and desolation.
Betty and I looked at each other. “That may be Nick,” she said. “What are they doing to him?”
“Nothing. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Where should I be?”
“At home reading a book.”
“Dostoevsky?” she said sharply.
“Something lighter than that.”
“Like Little Women? I’m afraid you don’t understand me, Mr. Archer. You’re fatherizing again.”
“You’re daughterizing.”
Moira and the receptionist opened the inner door and came out unaccompanied by any sound. Moira gave me a look of surprise and Betty a more complex look which seemed to combine both envy and contempt. Betty was younger, Moira’s look seemed to say, but she herself had survived longer.
She moved toward me. “What on earth’s been happening, Mr. Archer?”
“I was accidentally shot, if you mean this.” I touched my left arm. “Is Nick Chalmers here?”
“Yes. He is.”
“Was that him yelling?”
“Yelling? I don’t believe so.” She was flustered. “We have several patients in the closed wing. Nick isn’t one of the more disturbed ones.”
“Then you won’t object if we see him. Miss Truttwell is his fiancée—”
“I know that.”
“—and she’s quite concerned about him.”
“There’s no need to feel that way.” But she herself seemed deeply concerned. “I’m sorry I can’t let you see him. Dr. Smitheram makes these decisions. He evidently thinks that Nick needs seclusion.”
Her mouth twisted sideways. The strain of keeping up her public face and voice was telling on Moira.
“Could we discuss this in private, Mrs. Smitheram?”
“Yes. Come into my office, please.”
The invitation excluded Betty. I followed Moira into an office which was partly sitting room and partly file room. The room was windowless but hung with abstract paintings, like inward windows replacing the outward ones. Moira closed the door and locked it and stood against it.
“Am I your prisoner?” I said.
She answered without trying to be light: “I’m the prisoner. I wish I could get out of this.” A slight upward movement of her hands and shoulders suggested the almost insupportable weight of the building. “But I can’t.”
“Won’t your husband let you?”
“It’s a little more complicated than that. I’m the prisoner of all my past mistakes—I’m feeling sententious today—and Ralph is one of them. You’re a more recent one.”
“What did I do wrong?”
“Nothing. I thought you liked me, is all.” She had dropped her public face and voice entirely. “I acted on that assumption the other night.”
“So did I. It was a true assumption.”
“Then why are you giving me a bad time?”
“I didn’t mean to. But we seem to be ending up on different sides.”
She shook her head. “I don’t believe it. All I want is a decent life, a possible life, for the people concerned.” She added: “Including me.”
“What does your husband want?”
“The same thing, according to his lights. We don’t agree about everything, of course. And I made the mistake of going along with all his large ideas.” Once again the movement of her arms referred to the entire building. “As if we could save our marriage by giving birth to a clinic.” She added wryly: “We should have rented one.”
She was a complex woman, spinning off ambiguities, talking too much. I moved solidly against her, held her not very masterfully with one arm, and silenced her mouth.
The wound in my shoulder was beating like an auxiliary heart.
As if she could sense the pain directly, Moira said:
“I’m sorry you’re hurt.”
“I’m sorry you’re hurt, Moira.”
“Don’t waste your sympathy on me.” Her tone reminded me that she was or had been a kind of nurse. “I’ll survive. But it isn’t going to be much fun, I’m afraid.”
“You’re losing me again. What are we talking about?”
“Disaster. I can feel it in my bones. I’m partly Irish, you know.”
“Disaster for Nick Chalmers?”
“For all of us. He’s part of it, of course.”
“Why don’t you let me take him out of here?”
“I can’t.”
“Is his life in danger?”
“Not as long as he stays here.”
“Will you let me see him?”
“I can’t. My husband won’t allow it.”
“Are you afraid of him?”
“No. But he’s a doctor and I’m just a technician. I simply can’t second-guess him.”
“How long is he proposing to keep Nick here?”
“Until the danger is over.”
“Who’s the source of the danger?”
“I can’t tell you that. Please don’t ask any more questions, Lew. The questions spoil everything.”
We stood and held each other for a while, leaning against the locked door. The warmth of her body and her mouth revived me, even though our minds were at odds and part of my mind was keeping track of the time.
She said in a low voice. “I wish we could walk out of here this minute, you and I, and never come back.”
“You have a marriage.”
“It isn’t going to last.”
“On account of me?”
“Of course not. Will you promise me one thing, though?”
“After I know what it is.”
“Don’t tell anyone about Sonny. You know, my little La Jolla postal clerk. I made a mistake in talking about him to you.”
“Has Sonny cropped up again?”
She nodded. Her eyes were somber. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
“I have no reason to.”
I was hedging a little, and she sensed this. “Lew? I know you’re a powerful man, and a very one-way man. Promise me you won’t do anything to us. Give Ralph and me a chance to work this thing out.”
I stepped away from her. “I can’t make a blind commitment. And you’re not being clear, as you bloody well know.”
The Goodbye Look Page 18