|
|
by John Wyndham
There was nothing but myself. I hung in a timeless, spaceless, forceless void that was neither light, nor dark. I had entity, but no form, awareness, but no senses, mind, but no memory. I wondered, is this -- this nothingness -- my soul? And it seemed that I had wondered that always, and should go on wondering it for ever....But, somehow, timelessness ceased. I became aware that there was a force, that I was being moved, and that spacelessness had, therefore, ceased, too. There was nothing to show that I moved, I knew simply that I was being drawn. I felt happy because I knew there was something or someone to whom I wanted to be drawn. I had no other wish than to turn like a compass-needle, and then fall through the void....
But I was disappointed. No smooth, swift fall followed. Instead, other forces fastened on me. I was pulled this way, and then that. I did not know how I knew it, there was no outside reference, no fixed point, no direction, even, yet I could feel that I was tugged hither and thither, as though against the resistance of some inner gyroscope.
It was as if one force were in command of me for a time, only to weaken and lose me to a new force. Then I would seem to slide towards an unknown point, until I was arrested, and diverted upon another course. I wafted this way and that, with the sense of awareness continually growing firmer, and I wondered whether rival forces were fighting for me, good and evil, perhaps, or life and death....
The sense of pulling back and forth became more definite until I was almost jerked from one course to another. Then abruptly, the feeling of struggle finished. I had a sense of traveling faster and faster still, plunging like a wandering meteorite that had been trapped at last....
"All right," said a voice, "Resuscitation was a little retarded, for some reason. Better make a note of that on her card. What's the number? Oh, only her fourth time. Yes, certainly make a note. It’s all right. Here she comes!"
It was a woman’s voice speaking, with a slightly unfamiliar accent. The surface I was lying on shook under me. I opened my eyes, saw the ceiling moving along above me, and let them close. Presently, another voice, again with an unfamiliar intonation, spoke to me.
"Drink this," she said.
A hand lifted my head, and a cup was pressed against my lips. After I had drunk the stuff I lay back with my eyes closed again. I dozed for a little while, and came out of it feeling stronger. For some minutes I lay looking up at the ceiling and wondering vaguely where I was. I could not recall any ceiling that was painted just this pinkish shade of cream. Then, suddenly, while I was still gazing up at the ceiling, I was shocked, just as if something had hit my mind a sharp blow. I was frighteningly aware that it was not just the pinkish ceiling that was unfamiliar -- everything was unfamiliar. Where there should have been memories there was just a great gap. I had no idea who I was, or where I was, I could recall nothing of how or why I came to be here. . . . In a rush of panic I tried to sit up, but a hand pressed me back, and presently held the cup to my lips again.
"You’re quite all right. Just relax," the same voice told me, reassuringly.
I wanted to ask questions, but somehow I felt immensely weary, and everything was too much trouble. The first rush of panic subsided, leaving me lethargic. I wondered what had happened to me -- had I been in an accident, perhaps? Was this the kind of thing that happened when one was badly shocked? I did not know, and now for the moment I did not care, I was being looked after. I felt so drowsy that the questions could wait.
I suppose I dozed, and it may have been for a few minutes, or for an hour. I know only that when I opened my eyes again I felt calmer -- more puzzled than alarmed -- and I lay for a time without moving. I had recovered enough grasp now to console myself with the thought that if there had been an accident, at least there was no pain.
Presently I gained a little more energy, and, with it, curiosity to know where I was. I rolled my head on the pillow to see more of the surroundings.
A few feet away I saw a contrivance on wheels, something between a bed and a trolley. On it, asleep with her mouth open, was the most enormous woman I had ever seen. I stared, wondering whether it was some kind of cage over her to take the weight of the covers that gave her the mountainous look, but the. movement of her breathing soon showed me that it was not. Then I looked beyond her and saw two more trolleys, both supporting equally enormous women.
I studied the nearest one more closely, and discovered to my surprise that she was quite young -- not more than twenty-two, or twenty-three, I guessed. Her face was a little plump, perhaps, but by no means over-fat, indeed, with her fresh, healthy young colouring and her short-cropped gold curls, she was quite pretty. I fell to wondering what curious disorder of the glands could cause such a degree of anomaly at her age.
Ten minutes or so passed, and there was a sound of brisk, businesslike footsteps approaching. A voice inquired.
"How are you feeling now?"
I rolled my head to the other side, and found myself looking into a face almost level with my own. For a moment I thought its owner must be a child, then I saw that the features under the white cap were certainly not less than thirty years old. Without waiting for a reply she reached under the bedclothes and took my pulse. Its rate appeared to satisfy her, for she nodded confidently.
"You’ll be all right now, Mother," she told me.
I stared at her, blankly.
"The car’s only just outside the door there. Do you think you can walk it?" she went on.
Bemusedly, I asked, "What car?"
"Why, to take you home, of course," she said, with professional patience. "Come along now." And she pulled away the bedclothes.
I started to move, and looked down. What I saw there held me fixed. I lifted my arm. It was like nothing so much as a plump, white bolster with a ridiculous little hand attached at the end. I stared at it in horror. Then I heard a far-off scream as I fainted....
When I opened my eyes again there was a woman -- a normal-sized woman -- in a white overall with a stethoscope round her neck, frowning at me in perplexity. The white capped woman I had taken for a child stood beside her, reaching only a little above her elbow.
"I don’t know, Doctor," she was saying. "She just suddenly screamed, and fainted."
"What is it? What’s happened to me? I know I’m not like this – I’m not, I’m not," I said, and I could hear my own voice wailing the words.
The doctor went on looking puzzled. "What does she mean?" she asked.
"I’ve no idea, Doctor," said the small one. "It was quite sudden, as if she’d had some kind of shock -- but I don’t know why."
"Well, she’s been passed and signed off, and, anyway, she can’t stay here. We need the room," said the doctor. "I’d better give her a sedative."
"But what’s happened? Who am I? There’s something terribly wrong. I know I’m not like this. P-please t-tell me" I implored her, and then somehow lost myself in a stammer and a muddle.
The doctor’s manner became soothing. She laid a hand gently on my shoulder.
"That’s all right, Mother. There’s nothing to worry about. Just take things quietly. We’ll soon have you back home."Another white-capped assistant, no taller than the first, hurried up with a syringe, and handed it to the doctor.
"No!" I protested. "I want to know where I am. Who am I? Who are you? What’s happened to me?" I tried to slap the syringe out of her hand, but both the small assistants flung themselves on my arm, and held on to it while she pressed in the needle.
It was a sedative, all right. It did not put me out, but it detached me. An odd feeling, I seemed to be floating a few feet outside myself and considering me with an unnatural calmness. I was able, or felt that I was able, to evaluate matters with intelligent clarity.... Evidently I was suffering from amnesia. A shock of some kind had caused me to ‘lose my memory’, as it is often put. Obviously it was only a very small part of my memory that had gone -- just the personal part, who I was, what I was, where I lived -- all the mechanism for day to day getting along seemed to be intact. I’d not forgotten how to talk, or how to think, and I seemed to have quite a well-stored mind to think with.
On the other hand there was a nagging conviction that everything about me was somehow wrong. I knew, somehow, that I’d never before seen the place I was in, I knew, too, that there was something queer about the presence of the two small nurses, above all, I knew, with absolute certainty, that this massive form lying here was not mine. I could not recall what face I ought to see in a mirror, not even whether it would be dark or fair, or old or young, but there was no shadow of doubt in my mind that whatever it was like, it had never topped such a shape as I had now. And there were the other enormous young women, too. Obviously, it could not be a matter of glandular disorder in all of us, or there’d not be this talk of sending me ‘home’, wherever that might be....
I was still arguing the situation with myself in, thanks no doubt to the sedative, a most reasonable-seeming manner, though without making any progress at all, when the ceiling above my head began to move again, and I realised I was being wheeled along. Doors opened at the end of the room, and the trolley tilted a little beneath me as we went down a gentle ramp beyond.
At the foot of the ramp, an ambulance-like car, with pink coach-work polished until it gleamed, was waiting with the rear doors open. I observed interestedly that I was playing a part in a routine procedure. A team of eight diminutive attendants carried out the task of transferring me from the trolley to a sprung couch in the ambulance as if it were a kind of drill. Two of them lingered after the rest to tuck in my coverings and place another pillow behind my head. Then they got out, closing the doors behind them, and in a minute or two we started off.
It was at this point -- and possibly the sedative helped in this, too -- that I began to have an increasing sense of balance and a feeling that I was perceiving the situation. Probably there had been an accident, as I had suspected, but obviously my error, and the chief cause of my alarm, proceeded from my assumption that I was a stage further on than I actually was. I had assumed that after an interval I had recovered consciousness in these baffling circumstances, whereas the true state of affairs must clearly be that I had not recovered consciousness. I must still be in a suspended state, very likely with concussion, and this was a dream, or hallucination. Presently, I should wake up in conditions that would at least be sensible, if not necessarily familiar.
I wondered now that this consoling and stabilising thought had not occurred to me before, and decided that it was the alarming sense of detailed reality that had thrown me into panic. It had been astonishingly stupid of me to be taken in to the extent of imagining that I really was a kind of Guiliver among rather oversize Lilliputians. It was quite characteristic of most dreams, too, that I should lack a clear knowledge of my identity, so we did not need to be surprised at that. The thing to do was to take an intelligent interest in all I observed. The whole thing must be chockfull of symbolic content which it would be most interesting to work out later.
The discovery quite altered my attitude and I looked about me with a new attention. It struck me as odd right away that there was so much circumstantial detail, and all of it in focus -- there was none of that sense of foreground in sharp relief against a muzzy, or even non-existent, background that one usually meets in a dream. Everything was presented with a most convincing, three-dimensional solidity. My own sensations, too, seemed perfectly valid. The injection, in particular, had been quite acutely authentic. The illusion of reality fascinated me into taking mental notes with some care.
The interior of the van, or ambulance, or whatever it was, was finished in the same shell-pink as the outside -- except for the roof, which was powder-blue with a scatter of small silver stars. Against the front partition were mounted several cup-boards, with plated handles. My couch, or stretcher, lay along the left side, on the other were two fixed seats, rather small, and upholstered in a semi-glazed material to match the colour of the rest. Two long windows on each side left little solid wall. Each of them was provided with curtains of a fine net, gathered back now in pink braid loops, and had a roller blind furled above it. Simply by turning my head on the pillow I was able to observe the passing scenery -- though somewhat jerkily, for either the springing of the vehicle scarcely matched its appointments, or the road surface was bad, whichever the cause, I was glad my own couch was independently and quite comfortably sprung.
The external view did not offer a great deal of variety save in its hues. Our way was lined by buildings standing back behind some twenty yards of tidy lawn. Each block was three storeys high, about fifty yards long, and had a tiled roof of somewhat low pitch, suggesting a vaguely Italian influence. Structurally the blocks appeared identical, but each was differently coloured, with contrasting window-frames and doors, and carefully-considered, uniform curtains. I could see no one behind the windows, indeed there appeared to be no one about at all except here and there a woman in overalls mowing a lawn, or tending one of the inset flower-beds.
Farther back from the road, perhaps two hundred yards away, stood larger, taller, more utilitarian-looking blocks, some of them with high, factory-type chimneys. I thought they might actually be factories of some kind, but at the distance, and because I had no more than fugitive views of them between the foreground blocks, I could not be sure.
The road itself seldom ran straight for more than a hundred yards at a stretch, and its windings made one wonder whether the builders had not been more concerned to follow a contour line than a direction. There was little other traffic, and what there was consisted of lorries, large or small, mostly large. They were painted in one primary colour or other, with only a five-fold combination of letters and figures on their sides for further identification. In design they might have been any lorries anywhere.
We continued this uneventful progress at a modest pace for some twenty minutes, until we came to a stretch where the road was under repair. The car slowed, and the workers moved to one side, out of our way. As we crawled forward over the broken surface I was able to get a good look at them. They were all women or girls dressed in denim-like trousers, sleeveless singlets, and working boots. All had their hair cut quite short, and a few wore hats. They were tall and broad-shouldered, bronzed and healthy-looking. The biceps of their arms were like a man’s, and the hafts of their picks and shovels rested in the hard, strong hands of manual toilers.
They watched with concern as the car edged its way on to the rough patch, but when it drew level with them they transferred their attention, and jostled and craned to look inside at me.
They smiled widely, showing strong white teeth in their browned faces. All of them raised their right hands, making some sign to me, still smiling. Their goodwill was so evident that I smiled back. They walked along, keeping pace with the crawling car, looking at me expectantly while their smiles faded into puzzlement. They were saying something but I could not hear the words. Some of them insistently repeated the sign. Their disappointed look made it clear that I was expected to respond with more than a smile. The only way that occurred to me was to raise my own right hand in imitation of their gesture. It was at least a qualified success, their faces brightened though a rather puzzled look remained. Then the car lurched on to the made-up road again, and their still somewhat troubled faces slid back as we speeded up to our former sedate pace. More dream symbols, of course -- but certainly not one of the stock symbols from the book. What on earth, I wondered, could a party of friendly Amazons, equipped with navvying implements instead of bows, stand for in my subconscious? Something frustrated, I imagined. A suppressed desire to dominate? I did not seem to be getting much farther along that line when we passed the last of the variegated but nevertheless monotonous blocks, and ran into open country.
The flower-beds had shown me already that it was spring, and now I was able to look on healthy pastures, and neat arable fields already touched with green, there was a haze like green smoke along the trim hedges, and some of the trees in the tidily placed spinneys were in young leaf. The sun was shining with a bright benignity upon the most precise countryside I had ever seen, only the cattle dotted, about the fields introduced a slight disorder into the careful dispositions. The farm-houses themselves were part of the pattern, hollow squares of neat buildings with an acre or so of vegetable garden on one side, an orchard on another, and a rick-yard on a third. There was a suggestion of a doll’s landscape about it -- Grandma Moses, but tidied up and rationalised. I could see no random cottages, casually sited sheds, or unplanned outgrowths from the farm buildings. And what, I asked myself, should we conclude from this rather pathological exhibition of tidiness? That I was a more uncertain person than I had supposed, one who was subconsciously yearning for simplicity and security? Well, well....
An open lorry which must have been travelling ahead of us turned off down a lane bordered by beautifully laid hedges, towards one of the farms. There were half a dozen young women in it, holding implements of some kind, Amazons, again. One of them, looking back, drew the attention of the rest to us. They raised their hands in the same sign that the others had made, and then waved cheerfully. I waved back. Rather bewildering, I thought, Amazons for domination and this landscape, for passive security, the two did not seem to tie up very well.
We trundled on, at our un-ambitious pace of twenty miles an hour or so, for what I guessed to be three-quarters of an hour, with the prospect changing very little. The country undulated gently and appeared to continue like that to the foot of a line of low, blue hills many miles away. The tidy farmhouses went by with almost the regularity of milestones, though with something like twice the frequency. Occasionally there were working-parties in the fields, more rarely, one saw individuals busy about the farm, and others hoeing with tractors, but they were all too far off for me to make out any details. Presently, however, came a change.
Off to the left of the road, stretching back at right-angles to it for more than a mile, appeared a row of trees. At first I thought it just a wood, but then I noticed that the trunks were evenly spaced, and the trees themselves topped and pruned until they gave more the impression of a high fence.
The end of it came to within twenty feet of the road, where it turned, and we ran along beside it for almost half a mile until the car slowed,, turned to the left and stopped in front of a pair of tall gates. There were a couple of toots on the horn.
The gates were ornamental, and possibly of wrought iron under their pink paint. The archway that they barred was stucco-covered, and painted the same colour.
Why, I inquired of myself, this prevalence of pink, which I regard as a namby-pamby colour, anyway? Flesh-colour? Symbolic of an ardency for the flesh which I had insufficiently gratified? I scarcely thought so. Not pink. Surely a burning red ... I don’t think I know anyone who can be really ardent in a pink way....While we waited, a feeling that there was something wrong with the gatehouse grew upon me. The structure was a single-storey building, standing against the left, inner side of the archway, and coloured to snatch it. The woodwork was pale blue, and there were white net curtains at the windows. The door opened, and a middle-aged woman in a white blouse-and-trouser suit came out. She was bare-headed, with a few grey locks in her short, dark hair. Seeing me, she raised her hand in the same sign the Amazons had used, though perfunctorily, and walked over to open the gates. It was only as she pushed them back to admit us that I suddenly saw how small she was -- certainly not over four feet tall. And that explained what was wrong with the gatehouse, it was built entirely to her scale....
I went on staring at her and her little house as we passed. Well, what about that? Mythology is rich in gnomes and "little people", and they are fairly pervasive of dreams, too, so somebody, I am sure, must have decided that they are a standard symbol of something, but for the moment I did not recall what it was. Would it be repressed philoprogenitiveness, or was that too unsubtle? I stowed that away, too, for later contemplation and brought my attention back to the surroundings.
We were on our way, unhurriedly, along something more like a drive than a road, with surroundings that suggested a compromise between a public garden and a municipal housing-estate. There were wide lawns of an unblemished velvet green, set here and there with flower-beds, delicate groups of silver birch, and occasional, larger, single trees. Among them stood pink, three-storey blocks, dotted about, seemingly to no particular plan.
A couple of the Amazon-types in singlets and trousers of a faded rust-red were engaged in planting-out a bed close beside the drive, and we had to pause while they dragged their handcart full of tulips on to the grass to let us pass. They gave me the usual salute and amiable grin as we went by.
A moment later I had a feeling that something had gone wrong with my sight, for as we passed one block we came in sight of another. It was white instead of pink, but otherwise exactly similar to the rest -- except that it was scaled down by at least one-third....
I blinked at it and stared hard, but it continued to seem just the same size. A little farther on, a grotesquely huge woman in pink draperies was walking slowly and heavily across a lawn. She was accompanied by three of the small, white-suited women looking, in contrast, like children, or very animated dolls. One was involuntarily reminded of tugs fussing round a liner.
I began to feel swamped. The proliferation and combination of symbols was getting well out of my class.
The car forked to the right, and presently we drew up before a flight of steps leading to one of the pink buildings -- a normal-sized building, but still not free from oddity, for the steps were divided by a central balustrade, those to the left of it were normal, those to the right, smaller and more numerous.
Three toots on the horn announced our arrival. In about ten seconds half a dozen small women appeared in the doorway and came running down the right-hand side of the steps. A door slammed as the driver got out and went to meet them. When she came into my range of view I saw that she was one of the little ones, too, but not in white as the rest were, she wore a shining pink suit like a livery that exactly matched the car.
They had a word together before they came round to open the door behind me, then a voice said brightly, "Welcome, Mother Orchis. Welcome home." The couch, or stretcher, slid back on runners, and between them they lowered it to the ground. One young woman whose blouse was badged with a pink St Andrew’s cross on the left breast leaned over me. She inquired considerately.
"Do you think you can walk, Mother?" It did not seem the moment to inquire into the form of address. I was obviously the only possible target for the question.
"Walk?" I repeated, "Of course I can walk." And I sat up, with about eight hands assisting me.
"Of course" had been an overstatement. I realised that by the time I had been heaved to my feet. Even with all the help that was going on around me it was an exertion which brought on heavy breathing. I looked down at the monstrous form that billowed under my pink draperies, with a sickly revulsion and a feeling that whatever this particular mass of symbolism disguised, it was likely to prove a distasteful revelation later on. I tried a step. "Walk" was scarcely the word for my progress. It felt like, and must have looked like, a slow series of forward surges. The women, at little more than my elbow height, fluttered about me like a flock of anxious hens. Once started, I was determined to go on, and I progressed with a kind of wave-motion, first across a few yards of gravel, and then, with ponderous deliberation, up the left-hand side of the steps.
There was a perceptible sense of relief and triumph all round as I reached the summit. We paused there a few moments for me to regain my breath, then we moved on into the building. A corridor led straight ahead, with three or four closed doors on each side, at the end it branched right and left. We took the left arm, and, at the end of it, I came face to face, for the first time since the hallucination had set in, with a mirror.
It took every volt of my resolution not to panic again at what I saw in it. The first few seconds of my stare were spent in fighting down a leaping hysteria.
In front of me stood an outrageous travesty, an elephantine female form, looking the more huge for its pink swathings. Mercifully, they covered everything but the head and hands, but these exposures were themselves another kind of shock, for the hands, though soft and dimpled and looking utterly out of proportion, were not uncomely, and the head and face were those of a girl. She was pretty, too. She could not have been more than twenty-one, if that. Her curling fair hair was touched with auburn lights, and cut in a kind of bob. The complexion of her face was pink and cream, her mouth was gentle, and red without any artifice. She looked back at me, and at the little women anxiously clustering round me, from a pair of blue-green eyes beneath lightly arched brows. And this delicate face, this little Fragonard, was set upon that monstrous body, no less outrageously might a blossom of freesia sprout from a turnip.When I moved my lips, hers moved, when I bent my arm, hers bent, and yet, once I got the better of that threatening panic, she ceased to be a reflection. She was nothing like me so she must be a stranger whom I was observing, though in a most bewildering way. My panic and revulsion gave way to sadness, an aching pity for her. I could weep for the shame of it. I did. I watched the tears brim on her lower lids, mistily, I saw them overflow.
One of the little women beside me caught hold of my hand.
"Mother Orchis, dear, what’s the matter?" she asked, full of concern.
I could not tell her, I had no clear idea myself. The image in the mirror shook her head, with tears running down her cheeks. Small hands patted me here and there, small, soothing voices encouraged me onward. The next door was opened for me and I was led into the room beyond, amid concerned fussing.
We entered a place that struck me as a cross between a boudoir and a ward. The boudoir impression was sustained by a great deal of pink -- in the carpet, coverlets, cushions, lampshades, and filmy window curtains, the ward motif, by an array of six divans, or couches, one of which was unoccupied. It was a large enough room for three couches, separated by a chest, chair and table, for each, to be arranged on either side without an effect of crowding, and the open space in the middle was still big enough to contain several expansive easy-chairs and a central table bearing an intricate flower-arrangement.
A not-displeasing scent faintly pervaded the place, and from somewhere came the subdued sound of a string-quartet in a sentimental mood. Five of the bed-couches were already mountainously occupied. Two of my attendant party detached themselves and hurried ahead to turn back the pink satin cover on the sixth.
Faces from all the five other beds were turned towards me. Three of them smiling in welcome, the other two less committal.
"Hallo, Orchis," one of them greeted me in a friendly tone. Then, with a touch of concern she added. "What"s the matter, dear? Did you have a bad time?"
I looked at her. She had a kindly, plumply pretty face, framed by light-brown hair as she lay back against a cushion. The face looked about twenty-three or twenty-four years old. The rest of her was a huge mound of pink satin. I couldn’t make any reply, but I did my best to return her smile as we passed.
Our convoy hove to by the empty bed. After some preparation and positioning I was helped into it by all hands, and a cushion was arranged behind my head.
The exertion of my journey from the car had been considerable, and I was thankful to relax. While two of the little women pulled up the coverlet and arranged it over me, another produced a handkerchief and dabbed gently at my cheeks. She encouraged me.
"There you are, dear. Safely home again now. You’ll be quite all right when you’ve rested a bit. Just try to sleep for a little."
"What’s the matter with her?" inquired a forthright voice from one of the other beds. "Did she make a mess of it?"
The little woman with the handkerchief -- she was the one who wore the St Andrew’s cross and appeared to be in charge of the operation -- turned her head sharply.
"There’s no need for that tone, Mother Hazel. Of course Mother Orchis had four beautiful babies -- didn’t you, dear?" she added to me. "She’s just a bit tired after the journey, that’s all."
"H’mph," said the girl addressed, in an unaccommodating tone, but she made no further comment.
A degree of fussing continued. Presently the small woman handed me a glass of something that looked like water, but had unsuspected strength. I spluttered a little at the first taste, but quickly felt the better for it. After a little more tidying and ordering, my retinue departed leaving me propped against my cushion, with the eyes of the five other monstrous women dwelling upon me speculatively. An awkward silence was broken by the girl who had greeted me as I came in.
"Where did they send you for your holiday, Orchis?"
"Holiday?" I asked blankly. She and the rest stared at me in astonishment.
"I don’t know what you are talking about," I told them.
They went on staring, stupidly, stolidly. "It can’t have been much of a holiday," observed one, obviously puzzled. "I’ll not forget my last one. They sent me to the sea, and gave me a little car so that I could get about everywhere. Everybody was lovely to us, and there were only six Mothers there, including me. Did you go by the sea, or in the mountains?"
They were determined to be inquisitive, and one would have to make some answer sooner or later. I chose what seemed the simplest way out for the moment.
"I can’t remember," I said. "I can’t remember a thing. I seem to have lost my memory altogether."
That was not very sympathetically received, either.
"Oh," said the one who had been addressed as Hazel, with a degree of satisfaction. "I thought there was something. And I suppose you can’t even remember for certain whether your babies were Grade One this time, Orchis?"
"Don’t be stupid, Hazel," one of the others told her. "Of course they were Grade One. If they’d not been, Orchis wouldn’t be back here now -- she’d have been re-rated as a Class Two Mother, and sent to Whitewich." In a more kindly tone she asked me. "When did it happen, Orchis?"
"I -- I dont know," I said. "I can’t remember anything before this morning at the hospital. It’s all gone entirely."
"Hospitall" repeated Hazel, scornfully. "She must mean the Centre," said the other. "But do you mean to say you can’t even remember us, Orchis?"
"No," I admitted, shaking my head. "I’m sorry, but everything before I came round in the Hosp -- in the Centre, is all blank."
"That’s queer," Hazel said, in an unsympathetic tone. "Do they know?"
One of the others took my part.
"Of course they’re bound to know. I expect they don’t think that remembering or not has anything to do with having Grade One babies. And why should it, anyway? But look, Orchis."
"Why not let her rest for a bit," another cut in. "I don’t suppose she’s feeling too good after the Centre, and the journey, and getting in here. I never do myself. Don’t take any notice of them, Orchis, dear. You just go to steep for a bit. You’ll probably find it’s all quite all right when you wake up.
I accepted her suggestion gratefully. The whole thing was far too bewildering to cope with at the moment, moreover, I did feel exhausted. I thanked her for her advice, and lay back on my pillow. In so far as the closing of one’s eyes can be made ostentatious, I made it so. What was more surprising was that, if one can be said to sleep within an hallucination or a dream, I slept....
In the moment of waking, before opening my eyes, I had a flash of hope that I should find the illusion had spent itself. Unfortunately, it had not. A hand was shaking my shoulder gently, and the first thing that I saw was the face of the little women’s leader, close to mine.
In the way of nurses, she said.
"There, Mother Orchis, dear. You’ll be feeling a lot better after that nice sleep, won’t you?"
Beyond her, two more of the small women were carrying a short-legged bed-tray towards me. They set it down so that it bridged me, and was convenient to reach. I stared at the load on it. It was, with no exception, the most enormous and nourishing meal I had ever seen put before one person. The first sight of it revolted me -- but then I became aware of a schism within, for it did not revolt the physical form that I occupied, that, in fact, had a watering mouth, and was eager to begin. An inner part of me marvelled in a kind of semi-detachment while the rest consumed two or three fish, a whole chicken, some slices of meat, a pile of vegetables, fruit hidden under mounds of stiff cream, and more than a quart of milk, without any sense of surfeit. Occasional glances showed me that the other "Mothers" were dealing just as thoroughly with the contents of their similar trays.
Over
Visitors