Trusted Like The Fox by James Hadley Chase Page B

great pain. But he was sweating by the time he was stretched on the sheet, and he felt he was going to be sick. She saw his deathly pallor and his glistening skin and she pressed him down, her small brown hand firm on his shoulder.
    “I have some brandy here,” she said, twisting round to the suitcase.
    He stared at her narrow arched back as she bent over the suitcase, at her beautifully shaped legs. It was a pity she was so plain, he thought. She had a beautiful body. A tiny spark of lust rose up inside him, but sparked out immediately as he felt a twinge of pain.
    She came over to him, a tumbler containing brandy in her hand.
    “Drink this,” she said, raising his head.
    The brandy helped. He felt it going down inside him, spreading a comforting warmth, pushing away the deadly sickness, giving him courage.
    She began to take off his shoes, and he suddenly wondered if his feet were clean. Hot shame ran through him: a feeling he hadn’t experienced since a child. This feeling angered him, and he tried to stop her, only he couldn’t reach her hands. So he lay still, staring up at the multi-coloured umbrellas, angry and ashamed, hating her unfairly, blaming her for his loss of pride. She took off his shoes and socks, and then she came closer and began to fumble at his trouser buttons.
    He snatched at her hands, gripping her wrists and glaring at her.
    “Leave me alone,” he snarled. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
    She stared back at him, her small white face scared and a puzzled look in her eyes.
    “It’s all right,” she said soothingly. “I’m going to set your leg. I’ll have to take your trousers off. It doesn’t matter . . . I was a nurse once . . . at least, almost a nurse.”
    “Leave me alone,” he muttered, furious to find that he was blushing. He thought of his thin hairy legs and shrank from her seeing them. “You’re not to undress me.”
    But she persisted with a kindly, anxious obstinacy. It was too much of an effort to stop her, and when she pulled away from him, he hadn’t the strength to hold on to her, and he lay still again, his eyes shut, his thin lips moving angrily. He let her remove his trousers, and he turned his face away.
    But as she gently worked the trousers over his feet, she accidentally jarred him, sending pain shooting up his leg, making him cry out.
    He called her an obscene name, but she did not know he had done so. He wanted to kick her, to make her suffer as he was suffering, but he was too afraid to make the necessary move in case he increased his own pain.
    He raised his head and watched her, his eyes vicious. She had produced a blanket from the suitcase and was now covering his sound leg with it. The warmth from the blanket was comforting. She examined the broken leg in the light of the torch. Her smooth brown hand looked beautiful against his white hairy skin.
    “It’s just below the knee,” she said. “I think I can set it.” She looked up at him, her eyes large and anxious. “It’ll hurt.”
    “Get on with it,” he said, cringing in spite of himself. “Set it. I can stand pain. What do you think I am — soft?”
    But before she even touched the broken place, he was sweating. As her hand hovered over the swollen limb he flinched, biting his lip, clenching his fists.
    She seemed to sense his fear of pain, and she poured out more brandy and gave it to him.
    “Try and bear it,” she implored, knowing how difficult it could be. “You won’t struggle, will you? I want to set it properly.”
    “Get on with it, you slut,” he shouted, terrified. “Get on with it and stop drivelling.”
    Again she missed his savagery as she had turned to bend over the suitcase again. He longed to kick her slim buttocks, to inflict indignity on her, feeling ashamed of his own cowardice and trying to blame her for it.
    She produced surgical splints and bandages from the suitcase. It seemed there was nothing she couldn’t produce. The suitcase reminded Ellis