King of the World

by Celia Fremlin

  Then, reaching into his breast-pocket, he pulled out a cheque book.

  “Ten thousand pounds?” he suggested pleasantly. “As a young woman on your own, needing to earn every penny you get. I’d hazard a guess that …”

  “Dr Payne, will you please leave this house? Immediately! Or would you like me to call the police?”

  “Now, now, my dear – not so hasty! Though I do admire your spirit, I really do!” Here he paused, studying her face yet again, assessing his chances. Every man has his price, you could see him thinking: and every woman, too. It was several seconds before he spoke.

  “How about twenty thousand …?”

  Bridget started up from her chair, intent on phoning the police as she had threatened. She couldn’t really afford so much as a moment’s delay – but the temptation was too great. Leaning across the low table, she slapped his face as hard as she possibly could. She was a sturdy girl, and those strong muscles were rendered even more effective at this moment by the rush of adrenalin which was flooding her whole body.

  It was wonderful! She stood back, gazing with the satisfaction of an inspired artist at her completed handiwork: one side of his face blazing scarlet with the force of her blow; the other side white as paper with alarm and dismay.

  But by this time her chance to reach the telephone was over. His muscles, too, were powered by a flood of adrenalin; he had her arm in an iron grip, forcing her back onto her chair.

  “So you want to play it rough, do you, dear?” he enquired, controlling his voice with audible effort. “Very well, then that’s how we’ll play it”; and plunging his free hand into his briefcase, he brought out a hand-gun. The very same one, as far as Bridget could tell, that they had found in his front garden.

  “I’m sorry it has had to come to this,” he said. “I really am. I had hoped we could come to some mutually satisfactory arrangement, but since your obstinacy has rendered this impossible, I have no alternative but to resort to more forceful methods to bring you to your senses.”

  Raising the gun, he pointed it – perhaps merely as a threat – in her direction.

  “Well, my dear, does this encourage you to change your mind?”

  He had released his grip on her arm by now, but she still sat quietly in the chair into which she had been pushed. It seemed sensible in the circumstances, with that gun only the width of a coffee-table away. Indeed, it was sensible. The mistake she made, though, was to laugh.

  “You must be out of your mind,” she taunted him, “If you think you can scare me with that silly implement. It’s as obvious to me as it must be to you that you aren’t planning to lumber yourself with a second murder charge. You’re going to have trouble enough disentangling yourself from the first one, without courting another one from which there will be no chance whatever of escape. I mean, it will be an open and shut case, won’t it?

  “For a start, Norah can vouch for the fact that you arrived here this evening, and I daresay other people in the house will have noticed you coming in – not to mention passers-by in the street – neighbours and so forth. And so when I’m found shot through the head in my own sitting-room, and when everyone else in the house will have heard the shot, and will have heard the shot, and will be lined up in their doorways all agog to know what’s happening, while you make your getaway past all those doors, down those flights of stairs … Well, it’s ludicrous, isn’t it? What sort of a fool do you think I am, to believe that you’d ever let yourself in for that sort of scenario …?”

  “How right you are, my dear! What a clever girl! But you see, dear, it won’t be like that. You forget, you see, that I’m a psychiatrist of some note, and I can explain to them that you are my patient. I shall tell them that I have been treating you for some time for depression. Normally, of course, you come to my consulting rooms for your sessions, but on this particular occasion you rang me up in very great distress, begging me to come to you in your own home, and threatening suicide if I should fail to arrive. In my position, and with my current knowledge of your case, I could not do other than take the threat seriously, and make all speed to your address. Once there, I will be able to tell them, I found you distraught and hysterical, and repeating your threats of suicide. You were in a frantic state of guilt about some grotesquely false story you’d told to the police yesterday. Guilt, you know, is an almost invariable concomitant of depression, and the patient commonly feels herself driven to suicide as a way of punishing herself for the guilty deed.

  “All this is perfectly plausible, indeed commonplace, as my colleagues will readily confirm. The tragic outcome in this case is that my patient, unknown to me, had somehow equipped herself with a loaded hand-gun; and even while I was talking to her, endeavouring to alleviate her sense of guilt at having deceived the police, she snatched it up and shot herself before I could make a single move to prevent her.

  “Tragic; and of course your neighbours will have heard the shot. Of course they will come out to see what has happened, and no doubt they will give me every assistance in coping with this tragic event … telephoning the doctor, the police. Giving me cups of hot sweet tea for my state of shock….

  “They won’t believe it!” Bridget retorted sturdily, trying to sound more confident that she felt. “Of course they won’t. They know me. They know I’m not like that!”

  “You may be a very clever girl Miss Sadler. In fact I’m sure you are, as I’ve just told you. But you are also somewhat naïve. Have you not heard, or perhaps read in some popular magazine article, that depressives tend to be deeply ashamed of their condition? They will go to great lengths to hide it from their friend and workmates, putting on a false front of extreme self-confidence and cheerfulness, when inside they are a seething mass of despair? This is a well-known syndrome; and it is especially prevalent among successful career women. Women, perhaps, who are approaching their thirties, still with no male partner: women who are beginning to wonder what is the point of it all? Where is their success getting them? Is it bringing them love? Happiness? Contentment?

  “The answer, all to often, is, no, it is not; and the woman is then in a fearful dilemma. She has to pretend, all the time, among friends, colleagues – everybody – to be still the person she once was – brilliant, indefatigable, on top of the world; while all the time her energy is draining away – she is no longer in her first youth … Though of course, Miss Sadler, I am not implying that you are no longer in your first youth …”

  “Of course you’re implying it! What would be the point of all this psycho-babble if that wasn’t the implication? But you’re forgetting one thing, Dr Payne. If I’ve been your patient for a sufficient number of weeks, for this sort of story to be plausible, then my records would be in the hospital files. Or are you planning to cook the hospital records? Not so easy these days, when they’re all on computer …”

  “Oh dear, that clever little brain of yours thinks of everything doesn’t it? But once again you are wrong. You’re one of my private patients, you see, and the records are entirely in my hands. I do have private patients, you know, as well as my hospital appointments A lot of us do….”

  He paused, fingered the gun almost lovingly with his gloved hand, then looked up again.

  “Another thing, my dear, that may not have occurred to you: your finger-prints are all over this gun already. Suicide will have to be the verdict.”

  Bridget caught her breath – inaudibly, she hoped. So that was why the gun was at the bottom of a plastic bag, so that whoever took it out would leave it covered with fingerprints other than those of Dr Payne. It didn’t matter whose they were – anyone’s would be enough to put the authorities off the true scent.

  The whole scenario now seemed clear. The original plan had doubtless been that a gang of imaginary burglars should have broken into the house and have shot Christopher dead when he caught them in the act. No doubt the house was to appear ransacked, it was all to have happened on that very Sunday afternoon; but the timing had gone disastrousl
y wrong. Christopher was out somewhere, leaving no clue as to when he could be expected back, and on top of this the three tiresome females had come barging in and stayed for hours, creating further havoc with the remaining options. A new, last-minute plan had to be concocted, and quickly. No wonder it had been full of loose ends.

  With Bridget out of the way, though, Mervyn might yet get away with it. She was the one who had kept her head, had reported what she knew to the police. Above all, she was the only person, so far as he knew, who had guessed that Christopher was dead. She was the one who would have no compunction about reporting to the police anything else that she happened to find out – including the whole of this evening’s interview: the attempted bribery: the threats.

  Across the table, Dr Payne was still fiddling, idly, thoughtfully, with the gun.

  “I hate doing this,” he said. “I really do. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have twenty thousand pounds? You could go on a world cruise. You could buy a yacht. You could start a new life …”

  He raised the gun, purposefully, and leaned towards her, taking aim.

  “I’m sorry to bring it so close to you,” he apologised, “But I don’t want to miss, and cause you unnecessary pain.”

  He paused, seemed to hesitate.

  “Are you sure?” he repeated, “Are you quite, quite sure that you wouldn’t rather have twenty thousand pounds?”

  I won’t be scared, Bridget told herself. I won’t. Once you’ve let your self get scared, you’ve already let your enemy win. I won’t. I won’t, I won’t!

  Once more, for the second time that evening, she made her disastrous mistake.

  She laughed.

  “I don’t believe it’s even loaded!” she jeered, reaching for it across the table.

  The noise was like the end of the world; but, strangely, she felt no pain. It was as if a mighty hand had lifted her from her chair and laid her, quite gently, full-length on the floor.

  I hope I’m not bleeding onto our lovely carpet, was her last thought before losing consciousness.

  But she was; she was.

  Chapter 26

  It was during her second day in hospital after the operation to remove the bullet from her rib-cage that Bridget was allowed to receive vistors, and reluctantly, propped against pillows, she prepared to do so.

  For really and truly, given the choice, she would have preferred not to have any visitors at all. The invalid role was anathema to her. Absolutely not her thing. She was the strong one, the always-well one; the one who could boast of never having had a day’s sick-leave in all her working life. It was other people, weaker and more fragile human specimens than herself, who found themselves in hospitals, in doctor’s surgeries, on sick-leave: humbled recipients of largesse in the form of flowers and grapes and get-well cards. These were the people, quite unlike herself, who needed to be asked how they were feeling, and to be listened to as they answered.

  Bridget wished for none of this. Given the choice, she would have chosen to be left entirely on her own – reading, listening to the radio, working as best she could, until she was on her feet again completely recovered.

  But of course she wasn’t being given the choice. No one is. Once in hospital, you are a sitting-duck for anyone who chooses to come to your bedside: you have no control over who they are, when they come, or how long they stay. At home, you can, as a last resort, pretend to have an appointment with somebody else, but here there could be no such escape route.

  She would have to go through with it. She would have to respond to the sympathy, to the kind enquiries. She would have to explain, to one after another of them that, yes thank you, she was feeling fine, and that the surgeon had promised complete recovery in days rather than weeks; back at work, probably, inside a month. It could have been so much worse. The bullet had mercifully missed both her heart and her lungs, though it had been a near thing. It could have been much, much worse.

  Well, yes, of course it could have been worse. She might have been having to tell her visitors that she wasn’t feeling fine at all, but absolutely awful, and that the surgeon had warned her that it would be a long business and might leave her unable to continue with her chosen career. Of course that would have been worse. Of course she was lucky that it was only this; but all the same it was humiliating to be ill at all. Even more humiliating to have been saved by Alistair, who had let himself into the flat before Mervyn had had time to fire a second shot.

  Bracing herself for she knew not whom, and resolving to behave nicely to whoever it was, she felt quite a little rush of relief when she saw that her first visitor was to be Diana, tap-tapping across the ward, her face alight with happiness, and her bright hair swinging as she moved.

  She was pleased, of course, to find Bridget so much better and out of danger, but to Bridget’s enormous relief she did not spend many words on solicitous enquiries, but plunged straight ahead into an account of the real source of her radiant looks.

  “It’s been confirmed!” she exulted. “There’s absolutely no doubt at all any more! I am pregnant! July it will be … Isn’t that marvellous!”

  One couldn’t agree, in all honesty, that it was marvellous; to Bridget it all seemed most ill-judged. But she was surprised to find herself feeling much more benign towards the project than she had before. Was it sheer physical weakness that was softening her capacity for clear and practical judgement? – the anaesthetic, perhaps, or the loss of blood? Or was she genuinely seeing the thing in a new way? After all, you only live once, and if in this one and only life of yours there is something you want as passionately as Diana wanted this baby, and if it is something that brings you as much joy as was now shining in her friend’s face – should you not grab it with both hands and be thankful? And who could tell that Diana wouldn’t make a success of being a single mother? Lots of women did. More and more of them with every passing year. Likewise, with every passing year, the child of a one-parent family must be feeling less and less exceptional. Indeed, by the time this one was of school-age, one-parent families could well have become the norm.

  “Mummy, why have I only got one Daddy?” an anxious five-year-old could be asking after his first week at school.

  “But it won’t be a one-parent family!” cried Diana, as Bridget began to expound something of her new philosophy. “You won’t believe this, but Alistair is actually pleased! Yes, I know I said I wasn’t going to tell him just yet, but … well, it sort of came out. And he was pleased! Didn’t I tell you he would be? He even went out and bought a copy of the Dictionary of Christian Names, and he’s been hunting out the most ghastly names you can possibly imagine. ‘Genghis Khan,’ ‘Assurbanipal,’ that sort of thing. Well, you know how he is. He wouldn’t bother to do that sort of thing if he wasn’t thrilled to bits, would he? Besides, I feel sure it’s going to be a girl …”

  She chattered on and Bridget, listening to her, found it impossible not to feel, however irrationally, that such happiness as this was going to be worth whatever it cost.

  And who knew? Alistair might, after all, turn out to be a devoted father. Goodness knows, he was inconsistent enough; there was just no telling.

  “He’s coming to see you later on,” Diana was saying as she gathered up her belongings and prepared to leave. “I expect he’ll tell you all about it – if not, you must ask him. Because he really is pleased, you know, and I’d like you to hear for yourself what he says.”

  What Alistair said turned out to be not quite what Bridget had been led to expect.

  “I shall marry her, of course,” he announced, helping himself to a substantial cluster of Bridget’s grapes. “Well, it’s what a chap is supposed to do, isn’t it, in this situation? But don’t worry. The more I think about it, the more I don’t see why it should make any difference to any of us. We can all go on living comfortably exactly as we are now, with me dropping in and out when I feel like it, just as I do now. I’ll be keeping on my own place, of course. Nothing odd about that, not these days. All
the best people are doing it. All the most trendy and newsworthy couples – especially the super-high-brow ones – are opting for this life-style; and making a go of it, too, by all accounts. ‘Go’ being the operative word, of course. Staying becomes much more acceptable once you have the option of going.

  “No, Bridget, don’t be silly; of course you’ll stay on at the flat. Like I say, we can all carry on exactly as we do now. I’ll be married to Diana, that’s true, but I can still go on yearning after you, can’t I? And don’t look like that, you know perfectly well that I’ve been yearning after you all this time. I like your spiky ways, and married men really do need someone to yearn after as well as a wife. There are good historical precedents for that, too. Look at Shelley, yearning after Mary’s half-sister. And Dickens, too; wasn’t there a yearn-worthy sister-in-law in his household? Though of course it depends on which biography you’ve been reading; but such a well-read know-all as you, Bridget …”

  Bridget could have kicked herself for her strange inability to think quickly enough of an appropriately devastating put-down. Normally, her quick tongue would have been ready enough with some abrasive retort; but not now. Some sort of power seemed to have drained out of her; and after Alistair’s departure she was appalled to find tears trickling weakly down her face; tears partly of weakness, and partly of an idiotic kind of pleasure. She was actually feeling flattered by the man’s silly remarks. What on earth had happened to that strong, sensible self which was the only self she knew?

  It would return, of course, as soon as the effects of the anaesthetic and the shock had worn off, but meantime she was undergoing some strange reversals of feeling. When, later that same evening, her mother arrived, tearful with relief at finding her daughter on the way to recovery, Bridget found herself weeping too, uncontrollably; tears of relief, and love, and long-ago childlike dependence, in her mother’s arms.