Consider Her Ways (18 page)

‘Now,
if that were indeed a blank, why did you awake in such a confused condition? There must have been some recollection to cause it. And if there was something akin to ordinary dream images, why this refusal to speak of them? There must have been, therefore, some experience of great personal significance wherein the name Ottilie Harshom was a very potent element indeed.

‘Well, Mr Trafford. Is the reasoning good, the conclusion valid? Let me suggest, as a physician, that such things are a burden that should be shared.'

Colin considered for some little time, but when he still did not speak the doctor added:

‘You are almost at the end of the road, you know. Only two more Harshoms on the list, and I assure you they won't be able to help – so what then?'

Colin said, in a flat voice:

‘I expect you are right. You should know. All the same, I must see them. There might be something, some clue … I can't neglect the least possibility … I had just a little hope when you invited me here. I knew that you had a family …'

‘I
had
,' the doctor said, quietly. ‘My son Malcolm was killed racing at Brooklands in 1927. He was unmarried. My daughter married, but she had no children. She was killed in a raid on London in 1941 … So there it ends …' He shook his head slowly.

‘I am sorry,' said Colin. Then: ‘Have you a picture of your daughter that I may see?'

‘She wasn't of the generation you are looking for.'

‘I realize that, but nevertheless …'

‘Very well – when we return to the study. Meanwhile, you've not yet said what you think of my reasoning.'

‘Oh, it was good.'

‘But you are still disinclined to talk about it? Well, I am not. And I can still go a little further. Now, this experience of yours cannot have been of a kind to cause a feeling of shame or disgust, or you would be trying to sublimate it in some way, which manifestly you are not. Therefore it is highly probable that the cause
of your silence is fear. Something makes you afraid to discuss the experience. You are not, I am satisfied, afraid of facing it; therefore your fear must be of the consequences of communicating it. Consequences possibly to someone else, but much more probably to yourself …'

Colin went on regarding him expressionlessly for a moment. Then he relaxed a little and leaned back in his chair. For the first time he smiled faintly.

‘You do get there, in the end, don't you, Doctor? But do you mind if I say that you make quite Germanically heavy-going of it? And the whole thing is so simple, really. It boils down to this. If a man, any man, claims to have had an experience which is outside all normal experience, it will be inferred, will it not, that he is in some way not quite a normal man? In that case, he cannot be entirely relied upon to react to a particular situation as a normal man should – and if his reactions may be non-normal, how can he be really dependable? He may be, of course – but would it not be sounder policy to put authority into the hands of a man about whom there is
no
doubt? Better to be on the safe side. So he is passed over. His failure to make the expected step is not unnoticed. A small cloud, a mere wrack, of doubt and risk begins to gather above him. It is tenuous, too insubstantial for him to disperse, yet it casts a faint, persistent shadow.

‘There is, I imagine, no such thing as a normal human being, but there is a widespread feeling that there ought to be. Any organization has a conception of “the type of man we want here” which is regarded as the normal for its purposes. So every man there attempts more or less to accord to it – organizational man, in fact – and anyone who diverges more than slightly from the type in either his public, or in his private life does so to the peril of his career. There is, as you said, fear of the results to myself: it is, as I said, so simple.'

‘True enough,' the doctor agreed. ‘But you have not taken any care to disguise the consequence of the experience – the hunt for Ottilie Harshom.'

‘I
don't need to. Could anything be more reassuringly normal than “man seeks girl”? I have invented a background which has quite satisfied any interested friends – and even several Harshoms.'

‘I dare say. – None of them being aware of the “coincidence” in the conjunction of “Ottilie” with “Harshom”. But I am.'

He waited for Colin Trafford to make some comment on that. When none came, he went on:

‘Look, my boy. You have this business very heavily on your mind. There are only the two of us here. I have no links whatever with your firm. My profession should be enough safeguard for your confidence, but I will undertake a special guarantee if you like. It will do you good to unburden – and I should like to get to the bottom of this …'

But Colin shook his head.

‘You won't, you know. Even if I were to tell you, you'd only be the more mystified – as I am.'

‘Two heads are better than one. We could try,' said the doctor, and waited.

Colin considered again, for some moments. Then he lifted his gaze, and met the doctor's steadily.

‘Very well then. I've tried. You shall try. But first I would like to see a picture of your daughter. Have you one taken when she was about twenty-five?'

They left the table and went back to the study. The doctor waved Colin to a chair, and crossed to a corner cupboard. He took out a small pile of cardboard mounts and looked through them. He selected three, gazed at them thoughtfully for a few seconds, and then handed them over. While Colin studied them he busied himself with pouring brandy from a decanter.

Presently Colin looked up.

‘No,' he said. ‘And yet there is something …' He tried covering parts of the full-face portrait with his hand. ‘Something about the setting and shape of the eyes – but not quite. The brow, perhaps, but it's difficult to tell with the hair done like that …' He
pondered the photographs a little longer, and then handed them back. ‘Thank you for letting me see them.'

The doctor picked up one of the others and passed it over.

‘This was Malcolm, my son.'

It showed a laughing young man standing by the forepart of a car which bristled with exhaust manifold and had its bonnet held down by straps.

‘He loved that car,' said the doctor, ‘but it was too fast for the old track there. It went over the banking, and hit a tree.'

He took the picture back, and handed Colin a glass of brandy.

Colin swirled it. Neither of them spoke for some little time. Then he tasted the brandy, and, presently, lit a cigarette.

‘Very well,' he said again. ‘I'll try to tell you. But first I'll tell you what
happened
– whether it was subjective, or not, it happened for me. The implications and so on we can look at later – if you want to.'

‘Good,' agreed the doctor. ‘But tell me first, do we start from the moment of the accident – or was there anything at all relevant before that?'

‘No,' Colin Trafford said, ‘that's where it
does
start.'

It was just another day. Everything and everybody perfectly ordinary – except that this demonstration was something a bit special. What it concerned is not my secret, and not, as far as I know, relevant. We all gathered round the apparatus. Deakin who was in charge, pulled down a switch. Something began to hum, and then to whine, like a motor running faster and faster. The whine became a shriek as it went up the scale. There was a quite piercingly painful moment or two near the threshold of audibility, then a sense of relief because it was over and gone, with everything seeming quiet again. I was looking across at Deakin watching his dials, with his fingers held ready over the switches, and then, just as I was in the act of turning my head towards the demonstration again, there was a flash … I didn't hear anything, or feel anything: there was just this dazzling white
flash … Then nothing but black … I heard people crying out, and a woman's voice screaming … screaming … screaming …

I felt crushed by a great weight. I opened my eyes. A sharp pain jabbed through them into my head, but I struggled against the weight, and found it was due to two or three people being on top of me; so I managed to shove a couple of them off, and sit up. There were several other people lying about on the ground, and a few more picking themselves up. A couple of feet to my left was a large wheel. I looked farther up and found that it was attached to a bus – a bus that from my position seemed to tower like a scarlet skyscraper, and appeared, moreover, to be tilted and about to fall on me. It caused me to get up very quickly, and as I did I grabbed a young woman who had been lying across my legs, and dragged her to a safer place. Her face was dead white, and she was unconscious.

I looked around. It wasn't difficult to see what had happened. The bus, which must have been travelling at a fair speed, had, for some reason got out of control, run across the crowded pavement, and through the plate-glass window of a shop. The forepart of the top deck had been telescoped against the front of the building, and it was up there that the screaming was going on. Several people were still lying on the ground, a woman moving feebly, a man groaning, two or three more quite still. Three streams of blood were meandering slowly across the pavement among the crystals of broken glass. All the traffic had stopped, and I could see a couple of policemen's helmets bobbing through the crowd towards us.

I moved my arms and legs experimentally. They worked perfectly well, and painlessly. But I felt dazed, and my head throbbed. I put my hand up to it and discovered a quite tender spot where I must have taken a blow on the left occiput.

The policemen got through. One of them started pushing back the gaping bystanders, the other took a look at the casualties on the ground. A third appeared and went up to the top deck of the bus to investigate the screaming there.

I
tried to conquer my daze, and looked round further. The place was Regent Street, a little up from Piccadilly Circus; the wrecked window was one of Austin Reed's. I looked up again at the bus. It was certainly tilted, but not in danger of toppling, for it was firmly wedged into the window opening to within a yard of the word ‘General', gleaming in gold letters on its scarlet side.

At this point it occurred to me that I was supernumerary, and that if I were to hang around much longer I should find myself roped in as a witness – not, mind you, that I would grudge being a witness in the ordinary way, if it would do anyone any good, but I was suddenly and acutely aware that this was not at all in the ordinary way. For one thing I had no knowledge of anything whatever but the aftermath – and, for another, what was I doing here anyway …? One moment I had been watching a demonstration out at Watford; the next, there was this. How the devil did I come to be in Regent Street at all …?

I quietly edged my way into the crowd, then out of it again, zigzagged across the road amid the held-up traffic, and headed for the Café Royal, a bit further down.

They seemed to have done things to the old place since I was there last, a couple of years before, but the important thing was to find the bar, and that I did, without difficulty.

‘A double brandy, and some soda,' I told the barman.

He gave it me, and slid along the siphon. I pulled some money out of my pocket, coppers and a little small silver. So I made to reach for my notecase.

‘Half a crown, sir,' the barman told me, as if fending off a note.

I blinked at him. Still, he had said it. I slid over three shillings. He seemed gratified.

I added soda to the brandy, and took a welcome drink. It was as I was putting the glass down that I caught sight of myself in the mirror behind the bar …

I used to have a moustache. I came out of the Army with it, but decided to jettison it when I went up to Cambridge. But there it was – a little less luxuriant, perhaps, but resurrected. I put up my
hand and felt it. There was no illusion, and it was genuine, too. At almost the same moment I noticed my suit. Now, I used to have a suit pretty much like that, years ago. Not at all a bad suit either, but still, not quite the thing we organization men wear in E.P.I …

I had a swimming sensation, took another drink of the brandy, and felt, a little unsteadily, for a cigarette. The packet I pulled out of my pocket was unfamiliar – have you ever heard of Player's ‘Mariner' cigarettes – No? Neither had I, but I got one out, and lit it with a very unsteady match. The dazed feeling was not subsiding; it was growing, rapidly …

I felt for my inside pocket. No wallet. It should have been there – perhaps some opportunist in the crowd round the bus had got it … I sought through the other pockets – a fountain-pen, a bunch of keys, a couple of cash receipts from Harrods, a cheque book – containing cheques addressed to the Knightsbridge branch of the Westminster Bank. Well, the bank was all right, but why Knightsbridge? – I live in Hampstead …

To try to get some kind of grip on things I began to recapitulate from the moment I had opened my eyes and found the bus towering over me. It was quite vivid. I had a sharp recollection of staring up at that scarlet menace, with the gilded word ‘General' shining brightly … yes, in gleaming gold – only, as you know, the word ‘General' hasn't been seen on London buses since it was replaced by ‘London Transport' in 1933 …

I was getting a little rattled by now, and looked round the bar for something to steady my wits. On one table I noticed a newspaper that someone had discarded. I went across to fetch it, and got carefully back on to my stool before I looked at it. Then I took a deep breath and regarded the front page. My first response was dismay for the whole thing was given up to a single display advertisement. Yet there was some reassurance, of a kind, at the top, for it read: ‘
Daily Mail
, London, Wednesday 27 January 1954.' So it was at least the right day – the one we had fixed for the demonstration at the labs.