feel as he stumbles, exhausted, past the tape, with the cheering from a million throats ringing in his ears. Only for Milly there was no cheering, only the distant, changeless roaring of the winter sea, and the rattle of her ill-fitting windows as the wind battered against them out of the night.
Oh, but the triumph of it! The glory of lying here, safe, and dry, and victorious, her whole soul glowing, expanding with the consciousness of having faced almost impossible odds, and of having overcome them! What wonders she had performed in the past thirty-six hours! Had she not succeeded in disappearing , without trace, from the heart of a great civilisation which checks and counter-checks, which lists and dockets and supervises its citizens as no civilisation has ever done before? And had she not survived, and survived in perfect health, thirty-six hours of exposure and starvation such as might have brought a trained soldier to his knees? She, a flabby middle-aged woman, with no training, no money, and in a state of total shock, had succeeded not only in surviving, but in finding herself a job, a home, and a new way of life, and all without rousing a moment’s suspicion in any of the people involved!
If only Julian could know! “Not fit to be out alone!” he used to say, with such withering scorn, when she happened to have left her gloves somewhere, or to have forgotten the special Polish olives, or whatever, for one of his important parties. “Out alone,” indeed! Just let him look at her now!
The dim, unfamiliar shapes of the strange furniture in theStrange room began to melt and swim before Milly’s eyes as the deep drowsiness of prolonged fasting stole over her. How clever I am! she congratulated herself sleepily: and as she lay there, basking in the contemplation of her own cleverness, it never dawned on her that, for a person planning to vanish without trace, she had already made two glaring and awful mistakes: one of them so foolish that, really, even a child might have thought of it, and taken more care.
CHAPTER VI
M ILLY WOKE FROM a long, dreamless sleep with a vague sense that something was going on. For a while she lay, inert and tranquil, too sleepy to care. Then, slowly, recollection of yesterday’s events came flooding back, and with it a realisation of where she was and how she had got here. Slowly, and with a degree of awakening curiosity, she opened her eyes.
At first, the sickening terror almost made her faint, right there as she lay. And the most ghastly thing of all was that the terror was so familiar: familiar like a madman’s nightmare, that has to be lived through over and over again, for ever, and from which there is no escape. The shuffling, slippered footsteps : the striped pyjamas sagging from bony shoulders as the tall, stooping figure fumbled its way across the curtained room…. The long hands groping, softly reaching into drawers and cupboards … searching, fumbling…. The terror was so great that at first Milly could neither move nor cry out.
Had her escape all been a dream, then? Had these last two days never happened at all? All that cleverness, all those stratagems and strokes of luck by which she had launched herself so miraculously into a new life—had it really all been too good to be true, as it had at moments seemed?
A dream? A mere fevered, wishful fantasy, bred of the sick, stagnant air of that South London basement—an air thickwith obsession, with strange miasmas of the mind, soaked up over the years into the very walls …?
So it was all to do again? Her decision—her escape? Had she still to face it all in reality, having gone through it once in dreams …? Milly forced herself to look again into the almost-darkness: and now, with the first shock beginning to subside in her limbs and in her knotted stomach, she was able to observe that the figure was not quite as she remembered . Where was the crest of white hair, gleaming moth-like through the darkness no matter
Oh, but the triumph of it! The glory of lying here, safe, and dry, and victorious, her whole soul glowing, expanding with the consciousness of having faced almost impossible odds, and of having overcome them! What wonders she had performed in the past thirty-six hours! Had she not succeeded in disappearing , without trace, from the heart of a great civilisation which checks and counter-checks, which lists and dockets and supervises its citizens as no civilisation has ever done before? And had she not survived, and survived in perfect health, thirty-six hours of exposure and starvation such as might have brought a trained soldier to his knees? She, a flabby middle-aged woman, with no training, no money, and in a state of total shock, had succeeded not only in surviving, but in finding herself a job, a home, and a new way of life, and all without rousing a moment’s suspicion in any of the people involved!
If only Julian could know! “Not fit to be out alone!” he used to say, with such withering scorn, when she happened to have left her gloves somewhere, or to have forgotten the special Polish olives, or whatever, for one of his important parties. “Out alone,” indeed! Just let him look at her now!
The dim, unfamiliar shapes of the strange furniture in theStrange room began to melt and swim before Milly’s eyes as the deep drowsiness of prolonged fasting stole over her. How clever I am! she congratulated herself sleepily: and as she lay there, basking in the contemplation of her own cleverness, it never dawned on her that, for a person planning to vanish without trace, she had already made two glaring and awful mistakes: one of them so foolish that, really, even a child might have thought of it, and taken more care.
CHAPTER VI
M ILLY WOKE FROM a long, dreamless sleep with a vague sense that something was going on. For a while she lay, inert and tranquil, too sleepy to care. Then, slowly, recollection of yesterday’s events came flooding back, and with it a realisation of where she was and how she had got here. Slowly, and with a degree of awakening curiosity, she opened her eyes.
At first, the sickening terror almost made her faint, right there as she lay. And the most ghastly thing of all was that the terror was so familiar: familiar like a madman’s nightmare, that has to be lived through over and over again, for ever, and from which there is no escape. The shuffling, slippered footsteps : the striped pyjamas sagging from bony shoulders as the tall, stooping figure fumbled its way across the curtained room…. The long hands groping, softly reaching into drawers and cupboards … searching, fumbling…. The terror was so great that at first Milly could neither move nor cry out.
Had her escape all been a dream, then? Had these last two days never happened at all? All that cleverness, all those stratagems and strokes of luck by which she had launched herself so miraculously into a new life—had it really all been too good to be true, as it had at moments seemed?
A dream? A mere fevered, wishful fantasy, bred of the sick, stagnant air of that South London basement—an air thickwith obsession, with strange miasmas of the mind, soaked up over the years into the very walls …?
So it was all to do again? Her decision—her escape? Had she still to face it all in reality, having gone through it once in dreams …? Milly forced herself to look again into the almost-darkness: and now, with the first shock beginning to subside in her limbs and in her knotted stomach, she was able to observe that the figure was not quite as she remembered . Where was the crest of white hair, gleaming moth-like through the darkness no matter
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