No Escape (2 page)

He turned back. A seagull? Above the noise of the traffic on the bridge the sound had been faint; but quite distinct. There were no seagulls, or at least he saw none. So what—?

He peered over the parapet but saw nothing, until suddenly a bundle swept into view and a thin white arm shot up from it, a round white face lifted despairingly, dipped and disappeared under the bridge.

Tim found himself in the water without any conscious appreciation of time passing. He had shot across the traffic, causing two near-accidents and one genuine pile-up; he had torn off his duffle coat, shoes and jacket, tumbled over the parapet and was falling the considerable height to the water before he even considered what he was going to do when he got there. He had just time to wonder if the man in the water was clear of the bridge or if he would actually fall on top of him when he hit the water himself. The impact was fierce. He had gone in feet first and he sank some distance. He was gratified to find that he was clutching his nose as he had always done as a small boy until he was ten and learned to dive. He pushed himself back to the surface, shook his head free of water and looked about him, first back at the bridge, which seemed a long way off already, a dark mass with a row of dots along the top, the heads of an excited crowd; then at the water beneath, a rippling empty flood bearing down on him, carrying him along with it; then ahead, at the backs of the little waves curling over as they ran.

At first he saw nothing, but just as he began to wonder if he had been altogether mistaken, in which case he was all kinds of a foot, he saw once more a thin white arm lift from the water and fall back. Putting his face down he made off towards it in a fast crawl, passed the floating object, turned on his hack and as it came up to him, grasped the shoulders of a human figure.

It was a girl, he saw, without much surprise. Most of the river suicides they brought to the West Kensington as query corpses were women. This one, from what he could see in the dim light on the water was young. Short and slight too, he decided with relief, for as soon as he grabbed her she had stopped her own attempts to swim and lay still, her legs sinking down on to his.

“Go on kicking,” he told her, “helps me and keeps your circulation going.”

She did not attempt to answer but began again to use her legs and, as her face was now above water, to cough and spit to clear her mouth and lungs.

Tim swam easily, holding her and turning his head at regular intervals to look for a possible landing place. He dared not try the mud which seemed here to reach right up to the embankment wall with no firmer stretch of shingle at the edge. Besides, there were no steps in the wall, which seemed to indicate that this was not a place where anyone could expect to climb up or down.

He wondered how long they would have to swim like this before rescue came, a police launch or some other boat. He tried to go over in his mind the detail of the Boat Race course, but did not find it helpful. Putney. There were boat-houses at Putney. How far was it from Hammersmith to Putney?

He found the girl was speaking.

“I can't go on,” she was saying. She seemed to be repeating it over and over again in the intervals of gasping and spluttering when waves washed over her upturned face. “Let me go. Save yourself. I can't go on.”

“Rot!” he shouted at her. “You're doing fine. We'll be making land in a minute. Keep it up! You're doing fine!”

He was beginning to feel cold himself. Not tired, hut miserably, dangerously cold. She must be worse. Her movements were very feeble now. He began to rage inwardly at the bare thought of failure, but he kept his steady pace, though he began to steer, away from the inhospitable left bank towards the centre of the stream. The tide ran faster here and there was less danger of being swept into moored boats and dragged under them by the current.

And then a beam of light shot over the river from side to side and the sound of powerful engines roused even the girl. She began to struggle.

“Shut up!” Tim yelled at her. “Keep still. It's looking for us. They'll pick us up. Keep still, damn you!”

He went on shouting at her but she fought so hard he nearly lost his hold twice and in the end he had to dip her head under the water and hold her there before she became quiet enough to manage. When the police launch reached them and strong arms took her from him she was limp and still and rolled over on the deck of the launch, unconscious.

Tim was pulled inboard. He stood swaying for a few seconds, feeling colder than ever in the keen wind that blew up the river. He began to shiver violently.

“Come on,” one of the patrol said, urging him with a strong arm. “Get below and get those things off. Talk later.”

Tim obeyed thankfully. In the warmth and shelter of the cabin below the wheelhouse, supplied with a dry towel, a pair of jeans and a sweater, he soon recovered. He had not been in the water for more than half an hour and was used to swimming for twice that time. The girl had been no trouble until just at the end. The girl—

“Is she all right?” he asked, looking about him.

Two men, whose backs had hidden her up to now, looked round.

“She'll do,” one of them said.

“She was fine until your searchlight picked us up,” Tim said, moving forward. “Then she panicked. I had to be a bit rough—”

“Why can't they do it quietly at home?” the other man said. “Where nobody like you is on hand to interfere.”

“Can I have a look at her?” Tim said. “I'm a doctor, actually.”

He was annoyed by the man's indifference, so he asserted his position with unnecessary vigour.

“O.K.” the man who had first spoken agreed. “You a friend of hers?”

“Good God, no! Never seen her before,” Tim answered, picking up the girl's unresisting arm and feeling her pulses.

She was lying on her back, very still, covered up to the neck in grey blankets. Her eyes were shut, her breathing rapid but regular, like her pulse.

She was not unconscious, Tim decided, but she was desperately afraid.

“Has she said anything?” he asked.

“When we carried her down she said ‘I can't go on—I told him I can't go on.' ”

“That's what she told me just before she began to struggle,” Tim said, nodding.

“There you are, then.”

They meant, clear case of suicide, isn't it? But Tim was not convinced. She had cried out for help. She had signalled with her arm. She had accepted his help at first. She had even been co-operative. It was this particular form of rescue she wanted to avoid. The police were the cause of her immediate fear at least.

He kept this conclusion to himself. A few seconds later a steaming mug of tea was put into his hands and the girl was lifted while another mug was held to her mouth.

She gave a little cry when the hot rim touched her lips and her eyes opened very wide.

“Drink some,” said Tim in his best bedside manner. “Doctor's, orders.”

She stared, not taking this in, not realising her surroundings at all. But she put a hand to the mug and having sipped one mouthful, sipped again.

“Who are you?” she said at last, pushing the mug from her.

Tim hesitated.

“He's the bloke that's just saved your life, miss,” said the officer with the cup, handing it to the other and issuing a string of rapid orders. He turned back to the girl. “I am an officer of the River Police. This is the launch that effected your rescue from the river. Would you like to tell me how you came to be in the water?”

The girl stiffened.

“No!” she cried. “No! No! No!”

Tim moved quickly to her side again.

“Lie down,” he ordered. “Do as I tell you. Lie down!”

She obeyed him slowly, covering her face with her hands, beginning to sob.

“I'll tell you what happened,” Tim said. “At least everything from Hammersmith Bridge to wherever it was you picked us up.”

“That won't tell us where she fell in—or jumped in—will it? Or will it?”

Tim told his story briefly. There was not much to it, he realised; the patrol officer was right. It threw no light at all on the question they all needed to know. Was this an accident, and attempted suicide, the most probable explanation, or something much more sinister?

“She won't tell you in her present state,” Tim said, in a low voice when he had finished. “Send someone up to the hospital tomorrow morning. You might have more luck then. You don't have to sit at the bedside these days, do you?”

“Thanks for the information,” the officer said, with heavy sarcasm. “Perhaps you'd like to advise me which hospital she ought to go to?”

“Mine, of course,” said Tim, impatiently. “Aren't you making for the nearest pier? Well, the West Kensington is the nearest place for casualties, isn't it? I'm surgical registrar there, on duty tonight—sleeping in. Oh, my God!”

He stopped abruptly.

“Yes, sir?”

“What's the time?” He shook his wrist despairingly. “I've drowned my watch. What time is it, for Christ's sake?”

“Ten forty-five.”

“Is that all?”

The river patrol man grinned.

“We should be nearly there now,” he said. “Ambulance will be waiting. They'll have fixed a bed for the young lady.”

“At the West Kensington?”

“I couldn't say.”

The launch rounded up into the tide to come alongside the pier at Chelsea. She heeled as she came broadside on to the wives whipped up by the wind, and the girl, feeling herself slipping, cried out in renewed terror.

“Not to worry!” Tim called to her, staggering in his turn as the vessel righted again. “We're just about to land.”

They were alone now, the officer having gone to the wheel to bring the launch alongside himself.

“Listen!” said Tim urgently. “You're to do exactly what I tell you. I'm going to arrange a bed for you at the hospital where I work. I'll see you aren't badgered by the police again, tonight, but you'll have to tell them the truth tomorrow. Understand?”

“I must go home. I'm all right. I must go home.”

“That's exactly what you're not going to do. If you try to insist I shall tell the police I believe you are mixed up in something you daren't tell them. You are, aren't you?”

“You devil!” she whispered. “How dare you! I'll see you—”

“No, you won't.”

“I must go home!”

“You can give your addresss at the hospital and your parents will be notified at once and come to you.”

“I don't live with my parents. I won't go to hospital.”

“You will or else!”

They were both furious, Tim because she defied him and seemed to be wholly without gratitude for what he had done, the girl because of her abiding fear.

Above, there were sounds of activity, a few thumps, a few short orders. The engine of the launch died. A voice said, “This way. I've got them both below here.”

Two ambulance men appeared and a helmeted policeman, who carried Tim's duffle coat and jacket over his arm and his shoes in his hand.

“Picked up on Hammersmith Bridge, sir,” he said. “Yours, I believe.”

Tim put them on, feeling much more like himself, the nightmare quality of the last hour fading rapidly. He went ashore ahead of the stretcher with the girl to find out what arrangements had been made.

“Waiting to hear,” he was told. “Emergency Bed Service have it. Might be outside the area.”

“To hell with the E.B.S.!” Tim cried, furiously. “I'm on the staff at the West Kensington. Where can I find a phone?”

He was able to fix a bed for the girl, whom he described as an accident case with query fractured ribs and severe shock. He was also able to check that his presence had not been needed at the hospital since he left it.

In the ambulance he said nothing to the girl at all. Nor when she was transferred from the stretcher to a trolley and wheeled into the hospital. But at the entrance to the ward, while the night nurse was organising her reception, he leaned over her and said, “I've admitted you as an accident with damaged, possibly fractured ribs, left side. You fell in the river at a broken bit of the parapet. Understand?”

“Thank you,” she whispered and caught at his hand. “It won't be any good, but thank you for everything.”

Jane Wheelan struggled into her white working coat in the tiny cubicle set apart for non-resident staff of the Radiography Department at the West Kensington Hospital.

Four girls and Miss Gleaning used this cubicle, which was no more than one of the changing rooms for outpatients sent to the department. It was totally inadequate. There were only three hooks on the walls for five coats. There were no lockers, no shelves. There would not have been room for them. There were five small stools extracted from the hospital store by a threat of rebellion. On these, or under them, the girls put their handbags, their hats, (if any), their shoes, if these differed from the ones they wore in the department. For years Matron had fought an unproductive battle to secure a proper changing room with lockers for all the non-resident staff. But the Ministry, pandering from political fear to the voracious general public's demand for luxury drugs, pep pills, tranquillisers and so on, for which they, the public, paid about a twentieth of the proper cost, had forbidden all piecemeal interior development in what had been, like many others, a Poor Law hospital or workhouse before the reformation of 1948.

So Jane, beset with other people's clothes so that movement of any kind was difficult, struggled into her white coat, while the patient who ought to have been using this cubicle to undress in, sat on a bench outside the department, waking.

Miss Gleaning, a handful of ward papers in one hand, came towards her as she emerged.

“It's going to be a busy morning, Jane,” she said, severely.