Thieving Fear

TWENTY-ONE

That couldn't be Ellen, Hugh tried to believe. It mustn't be. Perhaps his thoughts were visible, because she retreated, dragging her wheeled suitcase or using it as support. As soon as she disappeared from the double frame of the doorway and the window he had no idea which way she'd gone. The banister gave a pained creak before he realised how hard he was clutching it. As he managed to relax his grip in case the rail came loose from the uprights, Charlotte ran to open the front door. 'Oh, Ellen,' Hugh heard her cry, 'what have you done to yourself?'

They could have been his words, and he shouldn't let her speak for him. He was too prone to behave as if Rory and their cousins were more capable of just about anything than he was. If he couldn't help Ellen, he was no use whatsoever. He swung towards the sound of Charlotte's footsteps dulled by moss. The hall was straight ahead, and so was the path. He was able to keep Charlotte in sight all the way to joining her outside the gate.

Ellen was heading doggedly towards a clump of trees as if she planned to take cover among them. 'Ellen, don't,' Charlotte called and ran after her. 'Ellen.'

'Where are you going, Ellen? Come in the house.'

The ominous rumble of her luggage faltered to a halt, and then she did. She didn't turn, and even in the silence her voice was barely audible. 'Don't you want your neighbours to see me, Hugh?'

'I always would.' He only mouthed this, from embarrassment more than doubled by Charlotte's presence. Aloud he said 'We don't want them seeing us arguing, do we?'

'There's nothing to argue about. I saw you both.'

'What did you see?' Hugh felt so guilty that he imagined it might help to protest 'We weren't doing anything.'

'Oh, Hugh, don't start any of that now. I saw what you both think of me.'

'It was a shock, that's all,' Charlotte was determined to assure her. 'Come on, let's go inside so we can talk properly.'

'About what? It won't do any good.'

'I'm certain it will, aren't you, Hugh? And more to the point, Ellen will.'

She was facing Ellen by now, and he had to. As he moved to stand in front of Ellen he saw her lips shift as if they were trying to recall how they used to feel. 'Tell me how,' she said without inviting.

'By going to see Rory,' Charlotte said. 'We're all here for him, remember.'

'I don't think he'd like to find this at the end of his bed.'

'I'm sure he'll appreciate it when we've come all this way to see him. You aren't planning to waste the journey, Ellen. What sense would that make? Suppose we had to tell him?'

Ellen pressed her lips together, squeezing them paler still. Hugh was afraid that she meant to leave without further discussion, and dismay made him clumsier than ever. 'Maybe he won't know,' he no sooner thought than said.

Ellen forced her lips apart with her tongue before it appeared to flinch from them. 'You mean he'll be safe from having to look at me.'

'No, I mean maybe he's waiting for us all to bring him back to himself. Maybe we're the only ones that can.'

It was Hugh's latest if not last attempt to wield his imagination. Though he thought it sounded more desperate than persuasive, it delayed Ellen long enough for Charlotte to say 'Hugh could be right. We won't be able to live with ourselves if we don't find out, will we?'

'Don't go off without us. We need you.'

The towing handle of her case had sunk into its sockets, but Ellen pulled it up. Hugh thought his blundering had driven her away until she trundled the luggage around in a reluctant arc and to some extent followed it. 'Take me in if you want to,' she only just audibly said.

Since he was managing to look at her without betraying his distress, he could surely restrain it if he touched her. He took hold of whichever arm wasn't involved with the suitcase, and his guts shrank as if he'd been punched in the stomach. The arm felt frail as an old woman's, and he was unable to judge how much of the handful consisted of cloth, how much of skin emptied of flesh. The long-sleeved blouse was as baggy as the trousers it went some way towards covering up, and he didn't know whether he'd taken it for a nightdress only because the clothes looked as if she'd slept in them. He tried not to look at her starved loosened face beneath the clump of unkempt maddened hair. He thought he'd concealed his reaction, but as he took a pace towards the house Charlotte said 'You bring the bag, Hugh.'

Ellen produced a version of a laugh. 'He is.'

'Oh, Ellen, don't be silly. You're just playing with words now.'

'Or they're playing with me,' Ellen said, which fell short of being a joke.

Hugh relinquished her arm, only to wonder if she would think he'd recoiled. Might she have been so involved in her writing that she hadn't had time to eat or had forgotten to? Perhaps other writers looked as strange – perhaps it came with the job – but he was dismayed to watch Charlotte lead her away as Ellen must have escorted people she cared for. He didn't move until Charlotte glanced back, presumably to see why she couldn't hear the trundling luggage. He grabbed the handle and hurried after them in a panic that his sense of where they were might desert him once they vanished into the house.

Charlotte hesitated outside as the small case bumped and wobbled along the path. 'Go in, Ellen,' she urged and turned to murmur 'Have you got much to eat at home?'

'Nothing for me,' Ellen said at once.

'You can have a snack at least before we go to the hospital. When did you eat last? What did you have?'

'More than I should have.'

'I've used up nearly everything I bought at work,' Hugh was unhappy to have to admit. 'I've got some bread, I think. We could have toast or bread and milk.'

'Don't treat me like an invalid,' Ellen warned them and took refuge in the hall.

Charlotte had to make some kind of effort to follow. Hugh lifted the luggage over the doorstep, and as he wheeled it to join the case she'd left at the foot of the stairs he thought he knew why she'd been reluctant to enter. In the street he'd been unable to locate the source of all the scents – several front gardens, he'd assumed – but now it was apparent that Ellen was doused in perfume, and not just one. Perhaps he should have restrained his bewilderment, but it was too quick for him. 'What's happened to you?' he cried.

Both women swung around to stare at him, and he could have concluded that they'd both taken the question personally. He might have felt compelled to answer if Ellen hadn't said 'You aren't saying you can't see.'

'No, I mean why?' At once he had the anguished notion that she'd hoped he would deny her state. 'Is it being out of work?' he babbled. 'I mean, you aren't, of course, you're writing. Is that it, the writing, the stress? Or Rory, is it him?'

His cousins gazed at him for at least a mute second after he ran out of suggestions. 'Oh, Hugh, we love you,' said Ellen. 'Don't ever change.'

Of course he had, but he mustn't bring up his problem if he could keep it to himself; she and Charlotte had enough to worry about. Ellen's words had come close to a phrase he wouldn't have dared to admit yearning to hear from her, but he couldn't take advantage of that now. 'Thanks,' he said. 'Really, thanks. So which –'

'One of those, I expect. All of them if you like.'

'Then what do you think you should –'

'That's all now, Hugh. No more or I'm leaving. Like Charlotte said, we're here for Rory, not for me. Show us where we're sleeping.'

Charlotte was giving him a private frown, presumably for leaving her no chance to question Ellen. 'Upstairs,' he mumbled.

'We'll find our own way, shall we?' said Charlotte.

'I shouldn't think it takes much finding,' Ellen said.

He could have imagined they were making light of his condition, but surely he'd managed to hide it. While he was able to follow them he knew which way to go. 'I'll bring the cases,' he said.

Ellen was first up the stairs, fast enough to suggest she was seeking a refuge. As Hugh brought up the rear with a case Charlotte said in some haste 'That's Hugh's room.'

He thought she was trying to head her cousin off from being troubled by its state. Ellen pushed the next door open, only to wonder 'Isn't this?'

It was more like a museum of his boyhood. As Ellen gazed wistfully at the misshapen scale models and puerile books, Charlotte said 'It's all his house.'

Hugh could have taken this as a rebuke for forcing Rory out, and did. If he'd still been living here, Rory wouldn't be in hospital. Ellen opened the third door, beyond which there was hardly any furniture except an infirm wardrobe and a single bed, not even a mirror. 'This'll do for me,' she said at once.

Charlotte gazed around the landing as if she wished it were larger or less shadowy, and Hugh came close to wondering if one shadow too many was lurking in a corner. He wheeled the dwarfish case ahead of her into his old room and had to assume she wanted him to emerge before she went in. She made him feel like a jailer for lingering outside, but he was growing nervous of letting his cousins out of his sight in case they were his only means of orientation. In a moment she said 'Wasn't there some talk of a cup of tea? You'd like one, wouldn't you, Ellen?'

Was she trying to send him downstairs so that he wouldn't inhibit any female conversation? 'I'd better phone the hospital,' he countered. 'We need to find out when we can go.'

As the number rang Charlotte came to the doorway, and he heard the bed creak in Rory's old room. The switchboard operator transferred the call to the ward, and as the bed amplified Ellen's restlessness Hugh wondered unhappily if his brother could move even that much. Charlotte was raising her eyebrows at him by the time the ward sister spoke. 'Intensive Care.'

'How's Rory Lucas? It's his brother.'

'The same as when you called this morning, Mr Lucas, and this afternoon. No change, but that's no worse.'

'I've got our cousins here now. When can we come and see him?'

'We're having a few problems on the ward just at the moment,' the sister said, and Hugh was disconcerted to overhear a laugh that sounded anything but pleasant, not merely muffled but clogged. He could only suppose it was somewhere other than the ward, since she didn't react to it, instead saying 'Do you mind if I put you off for a while?'

'If you've got to. Till when?'

'Tomorrow would be best.'

'It won't make any difference to him, or will it?'

'Not at the minute, sadly, I'm afraid. I'll contact you if there's any significant development.'

'Thanks. That's kind,' Hugh said, but as soon as he pocketed the mobile he thought he'd been too eager to accommodate her – worse, that he was glad to have a reason to delay travelling all the labyrinthine way to Leeds. 'The ward's shut to visitors till tomorrow,' he announced, and Ellen let out a groan that vibrated her bed. He had to dodge as Charlotte darted out of her room. 'I'll make it,' she informed him, at which point he grasped that she was thinking of the tea, not proposing to escape from the house. He might have been grateful if he hadn't needed to choose which cousin to stay with, which direction to take. As he hurried downstairs, terrified of losing sight of Charlotte, he began to dread that the reunion would turn into the longest night of his life.