‘WHAT the hell were you playing at?’ The young woman steered Maitland on to the bed with a hard hand. Her strong body was livid with temper. ‘You're supposed to be a sick man! I'm not interested in fighting over a wallet. I've a damned good mind to pack up and leave you here before you cause any more trouble.’
‘He tried to kill me,’ Maitland said. ‘You were egging him on.’
‘I wasn't. Anyway, Proctor's half blind. That was our blanket you set fire to.’
‘Your blanket. I'm not staying here tonight.’
‘Nobody wants you to.’ The girl shook her head with unfeigned indignation. ‘That's real capitalist gratitude! I saved you from Proctor just now, and you tell him about the wallet. That was pretty smart of you, giving him money. It won't do you any good – Proctor never leaves this place and as far as I know there's nowhere here to spend it.’
Maitland shook his head. ‘It wasn't smart at all. Poor old man, I don't think he knew how to take it.’
‘The only thing he's been given is other people's shit. Don't get any ideas about him being your friend for life. If I left you alone with him you'd soon miss me.’
Maitland watched her pacing about restlessly. Her repeated references to leaving the island worried him. He was not yet ready to deal with Proctor on his own.
‘Jane – sooner or later, you'll have to help me. My friends and family, the police, my office, they're bound to find out what happened here. They must be looking for me now.’
‘Your family…’ The girl had taken this isolated phrase from its context, putting a peculiar emphasis on it. ‘What about my family?’ She swung away and snapped, ‘I haven't taken a penny from you – tell them that!’
Tired and cold, Maitland lay back against the damp pillow. The young woman moved around the dimly lit room. She straightened her suitcase, and re-hung her clothes. The afternoon light was fading, and Maitland regretted that he had burned the blanket. He realized that he had gained a small advantage over the girl and Proctor. Already he was playing these two outcasts against each other, feeding their mutual distrust.
Yet for the time being he was the young woman's prisoner, and a prey to whatever devious whims might flick through her mind. In an odd way she seemed to enjoy their relationship. Her attitude towards him varied from tenderness and good humour to a sudden vengeful anger, almost as if he represented two different people for her. After hanging her clothes she lit the stove and made Maitland a drink of condensed milk and hot water. She held his head in her arm, crooning reassuringly as he drank from the plastic cup, half-working her plump breast against his forehead as if feeding her own baby. A minute later, in an abrupt change of mood, she pulled herself away sharply, jarring Maitland's head. She began to prowl irritably around the room, and turned up the paraffin lamp in a complaining way as if blaming Mait-land for the falling afternoon light.
‘Jane …’ Maitland pulled out his oil-stained wallet. ‘Do you want this money? You could use it to get away from here.’ He held out the wallet, feeling a sudden surge of concern for the girl.
‘I don't want to get away from here. Why should I?’ She turned her head with a flourish, watching him suspiciously.
‘Jane, be serious. You can't stay in this place for ever – where's your family? You were married, weren't you?’ Maitland pointed to the suitcase, adding frankly, ‘I looked through your photographs. Your husband – what happened?’
‘Mind – your – own – damn – business.’ She spoke in firm, quiet tones. Her fingers stiffened like rods. ‘God Almighty, I came here to get away from all these moral attitudes.’ She blundered around the room, as if searching for an exit from Maitland's nagging. ‘People are never happier than when they're inventing new vices.’
‘Jane, say I promised you five hundred pounds — would you help me to leave?’
She glanced at him cannily. ‘Why so much? That's a lot of money.’
‘Because I want us both to get away from here. I think we need each other's help. I'll give you five hundred pounds – I'm serious.’
‘Five hundred pounds …’ She appeared to consider his offer, mentally counting each one of a stack of bills. Abruptly she turned on him, gesturing with her pot-smoker's brown paper bag. ‘Have you any idea how long that would rent a house for a homeless family?’
‘Jane – you're part of a homeless family. Your child – ’
Maitland gave up. He lay back wearily as Jane spread out her kit. For a minute she sat slackly on the edge of the bed, ignoring Maitland's hand which he placed reassuringly on her arm. Her eyes stared at the shabby wall. Mechanically, she prepared two cigarettes, and wrapped away the kit in its paper bag. Rattling the matchbox as if to revive herself, she lit the first of the cigarettes. She inhaled deeply on the sweet smoke, holding it in her lungs for several seconds. Satisfied, she lay down next to Maitland, nudging him to move over. She pulled her combat jacket over them, smiling wanly to herself as she gazed at the Astaire and Rogers poster.
Maitland felt his mind swaying under the effects of the smoke. The young woman's strong body pressed against his own as the bed sank in its centre. Her arm rose and fell. She lifted the cigarette to her lips, and offered him a draw. Trying to keep himself alert, and frightened of falling asleep, Maitland fixed his eyes on the fading light coming down the stair well. His fever was returning with the cold evening air.
The young woman smiled at him, taking his hand lightly. Her strong-jawed face lay like a child's in its bower of red hair. She released the smoke from her mouth and steered it towards him with her hand.
‘Nice…? You know, you could have got away from here, if you'd wanted to.’
‘How?’
‘Right at the beginning…’ She inhaled on the cigarette. ‘If you'd really tried, you could have done.’
‘Tried?’ With a grimace Maitland recalled his ordeal in the rain. He rubbed his chest, covered by no more than the grimy dress-shirt. ‘It's cold in here.’
The young woman stretched her arm across him. ‘You could have got away,’ she repeated. ‘Proctor doesn't realize this, but you made it easy for him. Do you know that we both thought you might have been here before?’
She gazed through the smoke at Maitland, and stroked the oil-smeared ruff of his shirt. He watched her without speaking. Her tone was in no way jeering or hostile, but at the same time she seemed to be testing both him and herself, exploring through Maitland some failure in her own past. With an unerring eye for the defects of others, she had seen that he would accept this role.
Had he, in fact, deliberately marooned himself on the island? He remembered his refusal to walk through the overpass tunnel to the emergency telephone, his childish insistence that a rush-hour driver stop for him, the anger that had poured out… he had sat in that empty bath as a child, screaming with the same resentment.
Deciding to play the girl's game, he said, ‘Jane, you owe it to yourself to leave here – by staying on the island you're just punishing yourself.’
‘Big deal – I don't get that.’ Her eyes glinted in her cold, euphoric face. ‘Anyway, it's easier than coming to terms with something. I was never very good at patching up quarrels – I wanted to go on simmering for days. That way you can really hate …’
She smoked the last of the cigarette. When she had finished it she placed her hand on Maitland's stomach. Moving her head, she kissed him on the mouth.
‘Don't tell me I touched a nerve?’ she asked.
‘Perhaps you did.’ Maitland tried to put his arm around her waist, but his fever was rolling in waves across his body. ‘These last four days have been strange – like visiting an insane asylum and seeing yourself sitting on a bench.’
He slipped away from her. Vaguely he was aware of her undressing. As she smoked the second cigarette she examined her stomach and breasts in the travelling mirror. She changed into a short, blood-red skirt and sleeveless lurex blouse. He had already fallen asleep when she turned down the lamp and left the room, her stiletto heels clattering on the stairs.
Hours later, in the centre of the night, he heard her return. The traffic sounds had gone, and as she argued with Proctor her sharp voice carried clearly over the seething grass. The tramp seemed to be remonstrating with her, whining that she had forgotten to bring something for him. When she came into the room she turned up the lamp and glared down drunkely at Maitland. Her wild hair flamed around her in the vivid light like a demented sun.
She clattered among the cans and saucepans, barely able to focus her eyes. Maitland watched her uneasily. Her behaviour warned him that she might be mentally disturbed, perhaps a fugitive from a Broadmoor institution. Was it Jane, and not her mother, who had been the inmate of the sanatorium in the photograph? Too weak to protect himself, he listened to the cosmetics tumbling from the card-table. A poster ripped in her hands as she swayed around the room, tearing Manson's face. When she brought a cup over to him and held his head he drank gratefully in his fever.
Gasping for breath, he choked on the dilute paraffin she had fed him. He vomited into her hands and lay retching across the bed. He tried to hold off the girl as she tottered towards him with a glass of milk, laughing into his face.
Behind her. Proctor burst into the room. The polished lapels of his dinner-jacket gleamed like mirrors in the blazing light. Pushing Jane aside, he bent over Maitland and wiped the paraffin from his face. She screamed at him, flinging the vomit-smeared combat jacket after them as Proctor carried Maitland up the staircase and laid him on the wet midnight grass.