Lynne Banks - The Key to the Indian

He laid her carefully on his bed, rushed to the fireplace, fished the bag he’d just put away out of the chimney, and frantically unwrapped the figures till he came to Matron. He thrust her into the cupboard and locked her in.

When he re-opened the door, she was standing with her arms akimbo, looking extremely severe.

“My dear young man,” she said. “This cannot, I repeat cannot , keep occurring. You are going to get me the sack. I had a great deal of explaining to do, the last time. Don’t you realise there’s a war on? These little excursions are all very fine, but we are rushed off our feet. Do you understand? I am on duty !”

“Matron! Please! I’m sorry. I need you.”

“And the unhappy victims of the Luftwaffe do not ?”

“Just for five minutes! You must!”

He didn’t give her a chance to argue, but picked her up by the waist and airlifted her to the bed where Jessica Charlotte was lying, a watermark spreading over the quilt. Matron bent over her for only a moment.

“Put her on something firm,” she ordered.

Omri transferred them both to his desk.

“Turn her on her stomach.”

Omri obeyed. Matron knelt beside the prone figure and began artificial respiration, her hands on either side of Jessica Charlotte’s ribcage, rocking to and fro with a strong, purposeful rhythm. After a short time that seemed long to Omri, he heard a sound like a tiny cough, then a choking, then some gasps and groans. Matron sat back on her heels.

“There we are. She’ll be all right now. Keep her well covered. You need to get those wet clothes off… Oh. No, I quite see that would be, er… difficult. All right. Go away and get me something to wrap her in.”

Omri stumbled to his chest-of-drawers, got out a pair of woollen socks and some scissors and hacked out a little blanket. He returned to the desk with his eyes averted and handed it to Matron.

“All right. She’s decent.”

He looked. Jessica Charlotte’s wet clothes had all been pulled off and were lying in a soggy heap. There seemed to be quite a lot of them. Matron was just finishing rolling her patient in the sock-blanket like a cocoon. Only her head stuck out.

“Pillow!”

Pillow! Omri’s brain raced. A much-folded Kleenex was all he could think of. At least it would soak up the water from her hair.

“There now. She’ll do. She’s half-awake. Something hot to drink, with a drop of Scotch in it. How did this happen? No, don’t tell me. I’ve seen it all before. Very little of that in wartime, y’know. Funny thing.”

“Very little of what?”

“Suicides. Too much else to think of. And then, when someone else is trying to kill you, you don’t do it for them. Well! I’m off. Have to pass this little lapse off somehow at St Thomas’s. How long have I been, ten minutes?” She looked at an all but invisible watch, pinned to the front of her uniform. “Less. Well, even matrons have to spend a penny occasionally… Hurry up, young man!”

“I can’t thank you enough, Matron—”

“Oh, pish, tush, and likewise pooh!”

He dispatched her through the cupboard, and hurried back to Jessica Charlotte. As always when involved in this business, he was beginning to feel frantic, to wish he’d never started. He always forgot this feeling in between.

She was stirring, trying to sit up. He lifted her tenderly back onto the softness of the bed, keeping his hand behind her to support her. “Miss Driscoll?” he said softly. “Are you okay?”

“Why am I – tied up?” she gasped in a panicky voice.

“You’re not tied up, you’re wrapped up to keep you warm. You – you’ve been in the river.”

She stared up at him. With her hair straggling round her white face and her bare shoulders rising from the blanket that she was clutching, she looked like pictures he’d seen of mad people in old asylums, where they used to take their clothes away and just give them blankets.

“The river!” she cried out suddenly. Then the glassy look left her eyes and she buried her face in the blanket and began to sob.

Omri found this hard to bear. He crouched beside her till his face was level. “Miss Driscoll,” he said softly. “Please don’t be upset. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault!”

Her head snapped up. She faced front, clutching the blanket, shivering all over. She spoke sharply between chattering teeth. “I’m dead. That’s what it is. I died in the river and this is my hell. It’s only what I deserve.”

“No! No! You’re okay, you’re alive, you’re just – just visiting the future like you did before. And you don’t deserve to go to hell or to feel so bad. Please don’t feel so bad. Honestly, you couldn’t help it!”

“I’m a thief and a murderer. I killed my own sister’s husband.”

“ No you did not! ” Omri almost shouted. “It was an accident!”

“I caused it.”

“You couldn’t know!”

Abruptly she turned her ravaged face to him. “But you! You knew! You could have warned me! You could have stopped me!”

“No, I couldn’t—”

“Yes! You said you could see my future. You must have known, you must have done!”

“I couldn’t change what happened,” mumbled Omri. “It’s – not allowed.”

She gave him that mad look again, out of the corners of her eyes. “Are you God?” she asked in a small, suddenly childish voice.

“Of course I’m not. I’m Lottie’s grandson.”

“Lottie’s—” She sat perfectly still. He could almost see her mind working. “Move back.”

He knew why she said that. She couldn’t see him properly this close. He moved halfway across the room.

“You’re nothing like Lottie. You look a little like me.”

“Well, you are my great-great-aunt.”

“Lottie’s – grandson…” She couldn’t seem to take it in. But then she began to cry again, only not as before. She almost seemed to be crying with joy.

“She lives! My Lottie lives to grow up, and marry, and have children, and be happy! At least I haven’t destroyed her !”

“Of course not,” said Omri, creeping close again. His heart felt monstrously heavy with the truth he couldn’t tell her. Lottie lived and grew up and married, sure enough. But when she was barely thirty-one – still in Jessica Charlotte’s lifetime – her life was cruelly cut short by a bomb. The Luftwaffe , Omri thought suddenly. The German Air Force . In Matron’s time, right now, it might be happening. Layers. Layers of time… He shivered all over, just as Jessica Charlotte had.

She stopped crying abruptly. She picked up the ‘pillow’ and pressed it to her tiny face to stem her tears and wipe them. Then she put it down, and stood up clumsily because of the blanket.

“Where are my clothes? I hope you didn’t take them off!” she said, with something of her old spirit.

“No, don’t worry, a nurse did it. They’re here. I’ll put them on the radiator to dry them.”

“Radiator? Is that some heating device?”

“Yes. They’re so small, they’ll dry in no time.”

He lifted the little pile of wet clothes and squeezed some drops of water out between finger and thumb. Then he began to separate them. Some of the underclothes were so small he could hardly handle them and he was afraid of their getting lost. He placed his big comb across the ridged top of the radiator and very carefully laid the clothes on top of it – the dress, a black one; an underskirt; a strange, corset-like thing; some long pantaloons; two black threads that were her stockings. Her shoes were so tiny he had to pick them up by pressing his finger to their wetness. There was also a tiny triangular thing – a shawl perhaps. He unfolded it with infinite care. It was about two centimetres square.