J. Ballard - Concrete island

Maitland brought a hand to his face, feeling the sweat pour from his skin. 'Oh my God… Look – I need a doctor.'

We'll call a doctor. You must rest now. You've been over-exciting yourself for days, deliberately, I think.'

'Jane, I'll give you some money. Help me up on to the road and stop a car. How much money do you want?'

Jane stopped pacing up and down the room. She looked back cannily at Maitland. 'Have you got any money?'

Maitland nodded wearily. Communicating the simplest information seemed to tax this intelligent but devious woman. Clearly she suspected everything around her.

'Yes – I'm well off… a senior partner in a firm of architects. You'll be paid all you want, without any questions. Now, have you sent for help?'

Jane ignored this. 'Have you any money here – say five pounds?'

'In my wallet – it's in my car, in the trunk. I've got about thirty pounds. I'll give you ten.*

'In the trunk…' Jane pondered this, and with a deft movement of her hand picked up the keys. 'I'd better look after these.'

Too tired to move, Maitland stared at the Charles Manson poster. Again he found himself losing the will to survive. He needed to sleep on the warm bed with its smell of cheap scent, in this windowless room deep in the ground. Far above, he heard the grass seething in the night wind.

Heavy boots clattered down the staircase, barely waking him. Jane stepped forward aggressively. Deferring to her, the visitor stood outside the door, a scarred hand shielding his small eyes from the paraffin lamp. As he panted from the exertion of moving his burly body down the steps, Maitland recognized the harsh, phlegmy breathing of the man who had attacked him.

The man was about fifty years old, plainly a mental defective of some kind, his low forehead blunted by a lifetime of uncertainty. His puckered face had the expression of a puzzled child, as if whatever limited intelligence he had been born with had never developed beyond his adolescence. All the stresses of a hard life had combined to produce this aged defective, knocked about by a race of unkind and indifferent adults but still clinging to his innocent faith in a simple world.

Ridges of silver scar tissue marked his cheeks and eye-brows, almost joining across the depressed bridge of his nose, a blob of amorphous cartilage that needed endless attention. He wiped it with his strong hand, examining the phlegm in the paraffin light. Though clumsy, his body still had a certain power and athletic poise. As he swayed from side to side on his small feet Maitland saw that he moved with the marred grace of an acrobat or punch-drunk sparring partner who had gone down the hard way. He continually touched his face, like a boxer flicking away the sting of a sharp blow.

'Well, Proctor, did you find them?' Jane asked.

The man shook his head. He bounced from one foot to the next like a child too busy to visit the lavatory.

'Locked,' he announced in a gruff voice. 'Too strong for Proctor.'

Tm surprised – I thought you could break anything. We'll look again tomorrow, in the daylight.'

'Yes – Proctor rind them tomorrow.' He peered over her shoulder at Maitland, and she stepped back reluctantly.

'Proctor, he's nearly asleep. Don't wake him, or we'll have a corpse on our hands'

'No, Miss Jane.'

Proctor stepped forward with exaggerated caution. Maitland turned his head, realizing that the man was wearing his dinner-jacket. The silk lapels gleamed as they were bunched outwards by the tight fit.

Jane had also noticed the garment.

'What the hell are you wearing that for?' she asked sharply. 'Are you going to a party, or just dressing for dinner?'

Proctor giggled at this. He looked down at himself, not without dignity. 'To a party. Yes… Proctor and Miss Jane!'

'God Almighty… Well, take it off.'

Proctor gazed incredulously at her, his broken face in an expression of pleading and resentment. He clung to the points of the lapels, as if frightened that they would fly away.

'Proctor! Do you want to be seen straight away? They'll spot you a mile off in that fancy dress I'

Proctor hovered in the doorway, accepting the logic of this but reluctant to part with the jacket.

'Night only,' he temporized. 'At night no one will see Proctor's jacket.'

'All right – at night only. Don't let it go to your head, though.' She pointed to Maitland, who lay half-asleep on the damp pillow. 'I'm going out, so you'll have to keep an eye on him. Just leave him alone. Don't start fiddling around with him, or hitting him again. And I don't want you in this room – sit at the top of the steps.'

Proctor nodded obediently. Like an eager conspirator, he sidled backwards through the door and climbed the staircase. Woken by the clatter on the wooden steps, Maitland recognized the industrial boots whose prints he had seen on the embankment. He tried to rouse himself, frightened of being left alone with this punch-drunk resident of the island. He assumed now that the tramp had scaled the muddy slope and replaced the trestles, hiding all traces of his accident.

As he muttered to the young woman she sat down on the bed beside him. A sweet, euphoric smoke filled the room, hanging in long decks around her face. She cradled Maitland's head with unexpected gentleness.

For five minutes she comforted Maitland, rocking his head and murmuring to him reassuringly.

'You'll be all right, love. Try to sleep, you'll feel better when you wake. I'll look after you, dear. You're sleepy, aren't you, my baby? Poor bundle, you need so much sleep. Sleepy baby, my rock-a-bye babe…'

When she had gone, Maitland lay half-awake in his fever, conscious of the tramp in his dinner-jacket watching him from the doorway. All night Proctor hovered over him, his heavy fingers roving around Maitland's body, as if searching for some talisman that eluded him. Now and then Maitland would smell the hot breath of rancid wine in his mouth, and wake to see Proctor's broken face staring down at him. In the light of the paraffin lamp his scarred face seemed to be made of polished stone.

A few hours before dawn Jane Sheppard returned. Maitland heard her calling out in the distance as she crossed the island. She dismissed Proctor, who disappeared silently into the seething grass.

There was a clatter of high-heeled shoes down the steps. Maitland watched her passively when she lurched across to the bed. Slightly drunk, she gazed down at Maitland as if not recognizing him.

'God – are you still here? I thought you were going. What a hell of an evening,'

Crooning to herself, she kicked away her stiletto-heeled shoes. Where she had been he could only guess from her costume., a caricature of a small-town forties whore – a divided skirt that revealed her thighs and stocking tops, pointed breasts under a day-glo blouse.

She tottered round to the far side of the bed and undressed, heaving the clothes into the suitcase. When she was naked she slipped under the frayed blanket. She stared up at the Rogers and Astaire poster and took Maitland's band in her own, partly to still him, partly for company. During the remainder of the night and early morning, as he lay beside her, Mainland was aware in his fever of her strong body touching his own.

The next morning Jane Sheppard had gone. When Maitland woke the basement room was silent. A shaft of sunlight down the narrow staircase illuminated the shabby bed on which he lay. The faces of Guevara and Charles Manson hung from the walls, presiding over him like the custodians of a nightmare.

Maitland reached out his hand, feeling the imprint of the young woman's body. Still lying there, he looked around the room, taking in the open suitcase, the gaudy dresses on their hangers, the cosmetics on the card-table. Jane had straightened everything before leaving.