The Stone That Never Came Down (7 page)

VIII

“Ruth! Ruth, that is you, I know! I recognise your breathing!”

The quiet words roused her from the pile of cushions she had used to improvise a bed. The room was in total darkness, because she had drawn the curtains tight against the cold outside; though the snow of last week had mostly given way to hail and sleet, it was still freezing hard every night.

“Malcolm! You finally woke up!” She snatched a robe around her and by touch located the switch that controlled the nearest light. Shaded to the point where it was not a shock to her eyes, it showed her his face as he rolled over in the bed: pale, unshaven, but visibly less tense than she knew her own to be. “How do you feel?”

“I … I feel pretty good. Very relaxed. Very rested. But I’m starving hungry!”

And then in sudden astonishment: “But what the hell are you doing here, anyway?”

Rising, padding towards him barefoot and pausing only to turn on the electric heater, she parried, “That’s a good sign, anyhow.”

And, one step from his side, her self-control failed, and she fell forward on her knees, clutching at him.

“Malcolm, thank heaven you are all right! I’ve been so–so
terrified!
”

“What?” Raising himself on his elbow, he stared at her. “Why? I told you: I feel fine. I feel as though I’ve slept for days on end … Oh, lord.” With abrupt fearful realisation. “I have, haven’t I? I mean literally!”

Drawing back a fraction, she glanced at the bedside clock and nodded.
“Yes, Malcolm. It’s now about five-twenty a.m. on December twenty-seventh.”

“I’ve slept clear through Christmas?” Appalled, he made to throw back the covers and jump from the bed; she caught his shoulders and made him lean back on the pillows again.

“You stay right where you are!” she ordered.

Yielding, seeming weak, he said, “But why aren’t you with your brother in Kent? That’s where you said you were going!”

“I … I decided not to go.” Shivering a little, she reached out one arm to turn the heater so that its blast of warmth came at her directly, but with her other hand maintained her grasp of him as though half afraid he might melt into the air.

“I can see that!” he retorted. “But when I flaked out I … Have you been looking after me all the time?”

“Billy spelled me. He didn’t have anywhere special to go. And if you’re worried about the scandal, there’s no need. Mary’s away, Len’s away, Reggie’s away … We’ve had the place to ourselves.”

“But this is crazy! Did you call the doctor?”

“We decided not to.”

“What? If I was lying here right through Christmas and–”

“If we had,” she interrupted, “you could very well have found yourself in jail.”

He gaped unashamedly. “Ruth, I don’t understand!”

“And you better hadn’t try until you’ve woken up properly. I haven’t.” She yawned and rubbed her eyes. “Wait until I’ve got the sleep out of me. How about a hot drink? There isn’t too much food left–all the shops have been shut, of course–but I have plenty of milk. Hot chocolate?”

“Damn it, stop talking in riddles!” He broke free of her and swung his legs to the floor.

“Only if you get back into bed!” she countered.

“In a minute! I–uh–I
have
to get up!”

“Oh. Oh, sorry. I should have realised. Though, come to think of it, that’s another proof we were right.” Glancing around, she spotted his bathrobe and handed it to him.

“Proof of what?” he snapped, belting it around him.

“Well, I’ve had a lot of practice nursing, what with my mother being bed-ridden for so long, and Billy said he’d had to take care of a lot of friends who were on bad trips with acid and mescaline … Anyhow, we knew all the right tests, and your pulse was normal and your temperature was normal and you were turning over the way people do when they’re asleep, so we were sure you weren’t in coma or even in a drunken stupor, which of course was what we first–”

“Stop!” Malcolm ordered, and broke past her and headed for the door. “I don’t have time to talk!”

“Chocolate yes or no?” she called after him.

“No! Hot milk and Bovril–I need the protein! I know I have some Bovril left. I can smell it!” And the door slammed.

The toilet flushed, but he did not return at once, and she was just beginning to wonder what had become of him when, overhead a door opened and closed and there were footsteps on the stairs and she heard Billy exclaim in amazement, “Malcolm, you woke up! Are you okay now?”

“Yes, I feel fine,” Malcolm answered, and preceded Billy back into the room. “I gather,” he went on, “that you two think you’ve kept me out of jail. Would you mind explaining what in hell that’s supposed to mean?”

Handing him his hot drink, which he carried over to the bed again so he could sit down in the flow of warm air, Ruth said, “Well, I was going to say: when you passed out we thought you were just drunk, and Billy and I sat talking here for a while and didn’t realise how much time was passing, and then all of a sudden there was this reference on the radio news to the Hampstead Arms. The pub where you met Morris, you said.”

“You don’t have to add footnotes! I remember okay!” Malcolm snapped, and immediately relented. “I’m sorry. But, you see …” He thrust his fingers comb-fashion through his tousled hair. “No, how could you see? I’m terribly confused myself. But I can remember everything, and I mean
everything!
”

Billy and Ruth exchanged baffled glances.

“I’m remembering, and remembering, and–and I can’t stop! That’s why I had to get drunk!” He set aside his mug, his face betraying agony, and she darted to drop on her knees at his side.

“What kind of things?” Billy ventured.

“There’s no end to them. Want to know what the weather was like on my second birthday? Windy and raining–I can hear the branches rattling at the window. Want to know the name of the guinea-pigs they kept when I was in infant school? Things that I thought I’d forgotten years ago are coming back, coming back …” Retrieving his mug, he clasped both hands around it as though needing its heat to overcome the fit of shivers racking him.

“So what about the Hampstead Arms?” he added after a pause.

“It said on the radio the police were anxious to contact everybody who’d been there the night before, because they’re looking for a murderer. And then in the papers on Christmas Eve … Ruth, find that copy of the
Guardian
and show him.”

She hesitated. “Are you sure we ought to–?”

“That one?” Malcolm shot out his arm and pointed at a paper lying on a table on the far side of the room, almost completely in shadow. “That’s Morris, the man I took the pill from! Only–
Oh!
”

“So we were right,” Billy said quietly to Ruth.

“You were but I wasn’t,” Malcolm said. “I took it for granted Morris was his surname, M-O-R, but it was M-A-U, Maurice Post! And someone killed him!”

“How the hell did you know that?” Billy demanded.

“Why, it says right in the caption who he is!”

“You can read it at that distance, in that light?” Billy said incredulously.

“I– Oh my God.” Malcolm sat bolt upright, looking dazedly about him as though he had this moment realised the room was in near-darkness, with only one shaded lamp alight. “But I can read it. It says, ‘Dr Maurice Post, the distinguished biochemist’–and that’s not right because he told me he was an organochemist, which isn’t the same–‘who was found dead on a development site in Kentish Town yesterday.’ Am I right?”

“Yes,” Ruth whispered. “I’ve read that caption over and over until I know it by heart. Malcolm, something terribly strange has happened to you, hasn’t it? The way you could tell there were four godheads crossing the street–the way you smelled the mackerel I brought even though it was tightly wrapped and my shopping was in the hallway–what you said just now about smelling the Bovril, too, because when I found the jar the lid was screwed well down …” She shook her head, mystified. “Do you think it’s because of the VC?”

“I suppose it must be.” Malcolm looked alarmed. “But just a moment; let’s take it in order! You didn’t call a doctor because people from the pub were being interviewed by the police, and according to Billy it’s near to where one of the biggest pushers in London lives. So you realised you would have to tell a doctor about my taking the pill, and–”

Billy interrupted. “For all we knew, it might be a local name for something extremely illegal. I guess it was my–uh–my New York instincts which made me warn Ruth not to call a doctor. Once I did call one to help a friend of mine who had taken an overdose of hash–just hash, nothing worse, but so much that he was getting a hell of a bum trip off it–and the result was I wished a year in jail on the poor guy. I could see you waking up with a cop at your bedside!”

“And especially since I’d have been among the last people to see Post before he died …” Malcolm gave a nod. “Yes, it could have been like that. I’m very much obliged. But it was a hell of a risk you were running, wasn’t it?”

“Not half the risk you took by swallowing that VC cap!” Billy retorted. “Do you really have no idea what it was?”

Malcolm grinned sheepishly. “No. Absolutely none.”

“Why the hell did you
do
it, then?”

“Because I was so depressed I was half-minded to commit suicide!” Malcolm exclaimed. “I wanted to get drunk, or stoned, or
something
, Just so that I could forget this miserable world for a few hours.” .

“Have you been into drugs before at all?”

“Oh, pot was easier to get when I was in college, so I used to smoke now and then. But I never missed it when it sort of faded from the scene. And of course I used amphetamines a few times, to stay up all night studying, but I found they didn’t help much. And once I tried acid. But it was a half-and-half trip, if you know what I mean–so delicately balanced between good and bad I never felt tempted to try again. And that’s the lot. I mean apart from medical drugs, prescribed for me. Tranquillisers.”

Ruth said, “Billy, you know a lot about drugs, don’t you? Have you ever heard of anything that could have this sort of effect?”

“This memory thing, you mean? This heightening of the senses? Never. I mean, not except on a very short-term basis. Malcolm, you said you were getting drunk the other evening because of it. Now, apparently, you still have it. Stronger, weaker, about the same?”

“Stronger,” Malcolm said positively.

“Does it feel good or bad?”

“Neither. Strange. Different. It was frightening at first, but … No, I don’t feel afraid of it any more.”

“Can you describe what it’s like?”

Malcolm pondered, supping at his drink. At length he said, “I can give a sort of analogy. Imagine you took a floodlight for the first time into the attic of a house you’ve lived in all your life, where you’ve always imagined there was nothing but useless lumber. And you switch on the lamp, and all of a sudden you realise you’re surrounded by priceless heirlooms–Rembrandts and Goyas and heaven knows what else. Well, that’s a very faint shadow of how I’m feeling right now.”

“By the sound of it you ought to be overjoyed,” Ruth said. “You don’t look it.”

“No. And there’s good reason. Because there is lumber up here too, of course.” He tapped his temple. “And stupidity. My God, stupidity with knobs and bells on! How could I ever have been such a fool as to …? Never mind. It’s years too late to go back and put
that
right.”

“What?” Ruth said.

“I’d rather not tell you,” was Malcolm’s prompt answer. He was relaxing now, moment by moment, as though within his head some process of review was taking place that was bringing him to terms with himself in the manner a psychiatrist might dream of achieving for his patients.

“Well, whatever it was,” Ruth said tartly, “I don’t believe it can have been half as foolish as taking this VC pill. Nor can it have caused half as much trouble. Don’t you realise I’ve had to spend Christmas sleeping on that heap of cushions when I should have been at my brother’s–that I had to beg off with lies about not being well enough to travel–that my nephews cried when I told them on the phone they weren’t going to see me after all?” She glared at him. “Not to mention the agonies I went through when you slept on, and on, and
on!
”

“She’s right,” Billy said soberly. “We’d just about decided we’d been wrong, and you weren’t going to wake up naturally after all, so we’d have to face the consequences of calling a doctor and explain why we didn’t do it before. And given my reputation, and yours, and–”

“And what shreds are left of mine!” Ruth cut in.

“Yes. Yes, I see what you mean,” Malcolm confessed. “I think you’ve been wonderful. I’m terribly grateful to you both. And even if it was a fearful gamble it has turned out for the best in the end.”

Setting his empty mug on the bedside table, he walked over to pick up the paper with Post’s photograph displayed, and shook it around to the front page as he returned to where he had been sitting.

Billy said, “I’m not so sure of that.”

“What?” Malcolm countered absently.

“About it turning out for the best, of course! I mean, you’ve been left with what sound like lasting side-effects, right? You’re pretty cheerful right now, but how long is that going to go on?”

“Not very long,” Malcolm said, eyes racing down the major news-stories in the paper, then turning it over to follow them on to the back page. “Dalessandro! Yes, Morris mentioned that guy–I mean Maurice Post. I didn’t remember hearing about him at the time, but I recall him now. A super-patriot with a fanatical right-wing following, the kind of guy who lays flowers at shrines in memory of Mussolini.”

“What do you mean, not very long?” Ruth insisted.

“What I’ve got …” Malcolm licked his lips. “It isn’t just being able to remember. It’s being able to include what I remember in my calculations. See trends and tendencies I never noticed before. Do you realise I’ve almost certainly missed the last Christmas?”

“What?”–from both of them, uncomprehendingly.

“When Post told me the conclusions he’d drawn from the news, I didn’t really believe him. I just pretended to agree because I was in the right kind of mood not to care if the world did come to an end.