The Complete Short Stories Part 23

'Mr Neviss,' said Felicity. 'Relax. Just relax.'

'O stands for Olaf. It isn't easy to relax,' said the patient, 'with him standing there.' He pointed to a spot behind her chair.

Felicity leaned back. 'Please describe this pearly shadow, Olaf,' she said. 'Simply tell me what you see, with the details. Call me Felicity -please do.'

'Well,' he said, 'you can see for yourself. He's standing behind you.

'What is he doing?' Felicity inquired.

'Just standing,' said Mr Neviss. 'He's always just standing, except when I try to get hold of him, and then -'Try,' said Felicity, 'to relax. What exactly do you mean by a pearly shadow?'

'For goodness' sake, woman,' said the patient, 'look round and see for yourself.'

Indulgently, with a small smile, she looked round, and looked back very quickly at her patient. 'That's the way - keep relaxed,' she said, helping herself to a sweet. 'Now, tell me, when did this pearly shadow business first start?'

Felicity gave Olaf an hour. Then she showed him out to the nurse, who conveyed him to an attendant, to take him to his ward. Felicity lingered outside her consulting-room. She hesitated, then entered abruptly. Yes, the pearly shadow was still there.

She gave the matter a moment's thought before deciding to see the Chief about herself. Overwork, clearly. As she reached for the house phone, the nurse entered with the appointment book. 'Only one more patient today, doctor,' said the nurse pleasantly.

'Oh,' Felicity said, 'I thought Neviss was the last.' She looked at the book. 'P. Shadow,' she repeated. 'He must be a new patient; have we got his previous record?'

'It's on your desk,' said the nurse. 'Will I show him in?'

'I'm here already,' said the pearly shadow.

The nurse jumped. 'Oh, Mr Shadow,' she said, 'you should have waited in the waiting-room, you know.

'Sit down, Mr Shadow,' said Felicity, as the nurse withdrew. She opened a drawer and took out a packet of cigarettes. 'Cigarette?'

'Thank you,' said the patient hoa.r.s.ely, while Felicity glanced at his record.

'I shouldn't really offer you cigarettes,' she smiled. 'I see you've had lung trouble. And anaemia.

'I'm very bloodless,' said the pearly shadow, 'and my voice has almost gone.

'But,' said the pearly shadow, as Felicity tried to distinguish his features, 'I've come here about my nerves, you know. There's something on my mind.'

This put Felicity finally at her ease. She applied herself calmly to the problem before her. The luminous vagueness of the patient's face became irrelevant. 'I see you're down as P. Shadow. What does "P" stand for?'

'Pearly. You can call me Pearly.'

'Just relax,' said Felicity. 'Pearly, relax.'

'It isn't easy to relax,' said the pearly shadow, 'when every hand is against you.

'Everyone is against me. You,' he continued, 'are against me. You want to do away with me. You intend to exterminate me.'

'Relax, Mr Shadow,' said Felicity, who did not really believe in first-name relations.h.i.+ps with patients. 'Now, tell me, what gives you this idea?'

'You told Neviss you'd both get rid of me. That's what you're here for, I heard,' said the pearly shadow. 'You're giving him sedatives, aren't you? You're going to work me out of his system, aren't you?'

Felicity kept her eye fixed on what looked like a pearl tie-pin at the level of his chest. 'I can't discuss another patient's treatment with you,' she explained. 'That would be unethical. One patient has nothing to do with another.'

'They gave him a drug last night,' the pearly shadow said, 'and I nearly died of it. If you give him anything stronger I shall probably fade away.

'You're trying to murder me,' the patient insisted. 'You and all the rest of them. I know.'

Felicity gave him an hour. Then she opened the door and let him out. She carefully wrote her report on P. Shadow, and took it to the nurse. It was her habit to exchange a friendly few words with the nurse, after the last patient had left. Felicity leaned in the doorway. 'Another day over, nurse,' she remarked. 'It's been rather a bore. In fact,' she went on, 'we don't get any interesting cases these days. All quite cut to the pattern, these days. Take those last two, for instance. Neviss - illusions of being haunted; perfectly simple. Shadow - straightforward illusions of persecution. Now, if you'd been here last year, we had some really complicated... Nurse! What's wrong with you?'

'He walked right through me,' said the nurse, heaving, 'and he came out at the other side.'

'You've been overworking, Nurse,' Felicity said. 'Take a sweet, a cigarette ... Here's some water. Now relax... just relax. He could not have walked right through you, but I think I know what you mean. He is a very insubstantial type.' Felicity regarded the prosperous shape of the nurse. 'Did you feel any sensation when he appeared to walk through you?'

'Well, he's luminous, isn't he? Where's he gone?'

'Home, I imagine. He's an out-patient. If you're feeling better, Nurse, I'm afraid I have to close the office. It's been a heavy day.'

Felicity was still firmly decided to consult the Chief about herself and her confused delusion, but it was too late. Everyone had gone home.

Dr Felicity Grayland, as she left her office, regretted that she had not been able to remember the name of the nurse, and so make her chatty interlude more personal. She rarely remembered the names of the people around her or of the people she met. Without referring to the cards, she did not remember many of her patients. She drove home, trying hard, for some reason, to think of her last patient's name. She had no success, and when she put the car away she deliberately gave up.

Her supper of mixed green salad, Roquefort cheese and fruit, with brown bread and b.u.t.ter, was laid out on the dining-room table. Felicity set about it with relish, reading the morning's newspaper. She could never read the papers until the evening. Now she also remembered that she had decided to see the Chief about herself.

About herself? Herself? Why? There must be some mistake. She went into the sitting-room and turned on the television, tuning in to a quiz show, her favourite programme. The subject was the Armada. What age exactly was Philip of Spain when he embarked upon this enterprise? The girl student with black glossy hair and round-eyed gla.s.ses, who was already winning thousands of pounds, opened her mouth confidently to answer. But just at that moment the television turned itself off although the lights were still on. 'I hate quiz programmes,' said a thin voice. 'They get too much money.

Felicity looked round and saw that patient of hers. The name?

'How did you get in here?' she said.

'Through the door.'

The front door was locked, but she supposed he meant that he always proceeded like a ghost through walls and doors.

'If you want to consult me professionally,' Felicity said, 'you'll have to see me at my office in the clinic. This is my home, Mr -?'

'P. Shadow,' he said. 'First name, Pearly. I prefer not to attend that clinic. I frighten the nurses.'

Felicity was used to strange patients, but she was thoroughly annoyed that her privacy had been violated. Quite sensibly, she didn't see the point of arguing with Shadow. Instead, she decided to ring a colleague to see if he would come round and help her to chuck out the unwanted patient. She phoned a number while P. Shadow made himself comfortable in an armchair with the newspaper.

There was no reply to the number Felicity rang. She paused a moment and started looking up another number in her address book.

She came to the name she was looking for: Margaret Arkans, a gynaecologist married to James Arkans, another gynaecologist. When she thought of them, sun-bronzed, young, with white teeth flas.h.i.+ng as they laughed, she felt a fool.

The shadow sat on. He had put aside her paper and from what she could make out of his features, he looked more anxious than before.

'Mr Shadow, what's troubling you?' she said.

'I gather you're looking for medical friends,' said the pearly shadow. 'They might advise you to take a sleeping pill or something.'

'Undoubtedly,' said Felicity, beginning to see some way out of the situation. 'I'll take a sleeping pill anyway.

'It might kill me if you did that.'

'Relax. Just relax. I'll only take a light one. But I do feel the need of something to make me sleep, quite honestly.'

In the bathroom Felicity took a white tablet from her medicine cupboard. She cleaned her teeth. Then she looked round the door of the sitting-room. Already, the pearly shadow had gone. To be quite sure, she searched the rest of the house before going to bed. Yes, the pill had worked. She slept well.

'Nurse, relax. Just relax.'

'He's in the waiting-room,' said the nurse. It was nine-thirty the next morning, the time when the psychiatrist's office opened.

'Any other patients?' said Felicity.

'Three more. But they don't seem to notice him.'

Felicity could quite believe this. Most psychiatric patients look weird, especially while waiting for consultation.

'He might walk through me again,' wailed the nurse loudly. 'It makes me feel awful.'

'Hush,' said the doctor. 'Someone might hear you.'

The office door was open. Someone had heard her. Dr Margaret Arkans put her head round the door. 'Anything wrong?'

'Nurse Simmons isn't very well,' said Felicity in a voice which suggested she had decided everything - on a course of action, everything, from now on.

'I've had a terrible experience,' Nurse Simmons said. 'Last night; and now it's going to happen again this morning.'

Margaret and Felicity were extremely solicitous. Felicity herself gave the nurse an injection to make her relax, and took her to the staff rest-room to lie down.

'Overwork.' The two doctors looked at each other and shook their heads knowingly. They were both long since convinced that everyone in their department was overworked, including themselves.

On her way back to her office Felicity looked in on the waiting-room. The pearly shadow was not there.

Felicity recommended that Nurse Simmons should have a month's rest, with a course of sedatives. Nurse Simmons lived with a large family who were extremely alarmed when she felt a 'presence' in the room every time she forgot to take her pills. She screamed a great deal. 'She still has her delusions,' said her sister on the phone.

One night Pearly Shadow visited Felicity again.

'Are you hoping to kill me with all these sedatives you're giving her?'

'Yes,' said Felicity.

'She might take an overdose.'

'Almost certainly she will,' Felicity said.

'But that would kill me.'

'I know,' she said. 'If you don't leave us alone you'll be finished soon.'

'But I'm your patient.'

'You won't feel a thing,' said the doctor. 'Not a thing.'

The pearly shadow looked terribly frightened.

'Your only hope,' said Felicity, as she switched the television from station to station, 'is to leave us alone and go elsewhere for treatment.'

Nurse Simmons improved. Neither she nor Dr Felicity Grayland saw Pearly Shadow again, but a few years later they heard of a psychiatrist in the north who had died of an overdose of barbiturates which had curiously made his skin translucent and pearly.

Going Up and Coming Down How many couples have met in an elevator (lift, ascenseur, ascensore or whatever you call it throughout the world)? How many marriages have resulted?

In their elevator there is usually an attendant, sometimes not.

She goes up and down every weekday. At the 1.05 crush and the 2.35 return she generally finds him in the crowded box; looking up at the floor number display, looking down at the floor. Sometimes they are alone. He, she discovers, comes down from the twenty-first.

His office? On the board downstairs six offices are listed on the twenty-first floor: a law firm, a real estate office, an ophthalmologist, a Swiss chemicals a.s.sociation, a Palestine Pota.s.sium (believe it or not) agency, a rheumatologist. Which of these offices could he belong to? She doesn't look at him direct, but always, at a glance, tests the ramifying possibilities inherent in all six concerns.

He is polite. He stands well back when the crowd presses. They are like coins in a purse.

One day she catches his eye and looks away.

He notices her briefcase while she has her eyes on the floor numbers. Going down. Out she pours with the chattering human throng, turns left (the lobby has two entrances) and is gone. On the board down there are listed four offices on Floor 16, her floor. Two law firms, a literary agency and an office named W. H. Gilbert without further designation. Does she work for Mr Gilbert, he wonders. Is Gilbert a private detective? W. H. Gilbert may well be something furtive.

Day by day she keeps her eyes on his briefcase of pale brown leather and wonders what he does. The lift stops at Floor 9, and in sidles the grey-haired stoutish man with the extremely cheerful smile. On we go; down, down. She wonders about the young man's daily life, where does he live, where and what does he eat, has he ever read the Bible? She knows nothing, absolutely nothing except one thing, which is this: he tries to catch a glimpse of her when she is looking elsewhere or leaving the elevator.

On the ground floor - seconds, and he's gone. It is like looking out of the window of a train, he flashes by so quickly. She thinks he might be poorly paid up there on the twenty-first, possibly in the real estate office or with the expert on rheumatism. He must be barely twenty-five. He might be working towards a better job, but at the moment with very little left in his pocket after paying out for his rent, food, clothes and insect spray.

Her long fair hair falls over her shoulders, outside her dark green coat. Perhaps she spends her days sending out members.h.i.+p renewal forms for Mr Gilbert's arcane activity: 'Yes, I want to confirm my steadfast support for the Cosmic Paranormal Apostolic Movement by renewing my subscription', followed by different rates to be filled in for the categories: Individual Member, Couple, and Senior Citizen/Unwaged/Student. Suppose there is a power failure?

She looks at his briefcase, his tie. Everything begins in a dream. In a daydream she has even envisaged an inevitable meeting in a room in some place where only two could be, far from intrusions, such as in a barn, taking shelter from a storm, snowed up. Surely there is some film to that effect.

He does not have the married look. That look, impossible to define apart from a wedding ring, absent in his case, is far from his look. All the same, he could be married, peeling potatoes for two at the weekend. What sign of the zodiac is his? Has there been an orchard somewhere in his past life as there has in hers? What TV channels does he watch?

Her hair hangs over her shoulders. He wonders if she dyes it blonde; her pubic hairs are possibly dark. Is she one of those girls who doesn't eat, so that you pay an enormous restaurant bill for food she has only picked at?

One night the attendant is missing. They are alone. Homicidal? -Could it possibly be? He would only have to take off his tie if his hands alone weren't enough. But his hands could strangle her. When they get out at the ground floor he says, 'Good night,' and is lost in the crowd.

Here in the enclosed s.p.a.ce is almost like bundling. He considers how, in remote parts, when it was impossible for a courting man to get home at night, the elders would bundle a couple; they would bundle them together in their clothes. The pair breathed over each other but were mutually inaccessible, in an impotent rehearsal of the intimacy to come. Perhaps, he flounders in his mind, she goes to church and is better than me. This idea of her being morally better hangs about him all night, and he brings it to the elevator next morning.

She is not there. Surely she has flu, alone in her one-room apartment. Her one room with a big bed and a window overlooking the river? Or is Mr Gilbert there with her?

When she appears next day in the elevator he is tempted to follow her home that night. But then she might know; feel, guess, his presence behind her. Certainly she would. She might well think him a weirdy, a criminal. She might turn and catch sight of him, crossing the park: Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.

Does she go to a gym cla.s.s? She must have caught me looking just now. He knows she does not wear a wedding ring or an engagement ring. But that does not mean very much.

She looks at his briefcase, his tie, the floor, the floor number. Could he be a diamond merchant with a fold of tissue paper, containing five one-carat diamonds, nestling in his inner pocket? One of the names on the board could be a cover.

Other, familiar people join them on every floor. A woman with a white smile that no dentist could warm edges towards him while he edges away.