More Than Human

The silence, again the hissing breath.

‘ – children who lived there, and no children lived there. And I shouted again, everybody was afraid, I straightened out a little. I told them just tell me what I wanted to know, I’d go away, I didn’t want to frighten anybody. I said all right, no children, then tell me where is Alicia Kew, just let me talk to Alicia Kew.’

He straightened up, his eyes alight, and pointed the piece of tubing at Janie. ‘You see? I remember, I remember her name, Alicia Kew!’ He sank back. ‘And they said, „Alicia Kew is dead.” And then they said, oh her children! And they told me where to go to find them. They wrote it down someplace, I’ve got it here somewhere…’ He began to fumble through his pockets, stopped suddenly and glared at Janie. ‘It was the old clothes, you have it, you’ve hidden it!’

If she had explained, if she had answered, it would have been all right but she only watched him.

‘All right,’ he gritted. ‘I remembered one thing, I can remember another. Or I can go back there and ask again. I don’t need you.’

Her expression did not change but, watching it, he knew suddenly that she was holding it still and that it was a terrible effort for her.

He said gently, ‘I did need you. I’d’ve died without you. You’ve been…’ He had no word for what she had been to him so he stopped searching for one and went on, ‘It’s just that I’ve got so I don’t need you that way any more. I have some things to find out but I have to do it myself.’

At last she spoke: ‘You have done it yourself, Hip. Every bit of it. All I’ve done is to put you where you could do it. I – want to go on with that.’

‘You don’t need to,’ he reassured her. ‘I’m a big boy now. I’ve come a long way; I’ve come alive. There can’t be much more to find out.’

‘There’s a lot more,’ she said sadly.

He shook his head positively. ‘ I tell you, I know! Finding out about those children, about this Alicia Kew, and then the address where they’d moved – that was right at the end; that was the place where I got my fingertips on the – whatever it was I was trying to grab. Just that one more place, that address where the children are; that’s all I need. That’s where he’ll be.’

‘He?’

‘The one, you know, the one I’ve been looking for. His name is – ‘ He leapt to his feet. ‘His name’s – ‘

He brought his fist into his palm, a murderous blow. ‘I forgot,’ he whispered.

He put his stinging hand to the short hair at the back of his head, screwed up his eyes in concentration. Then he relaxed. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’ll find out, now.’

‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘Go on, Hip. Sit down and listen to me.’

Reluctantly he did; resentfully he looked at her. His head was full of almost-understood pictures and phrases. He thought, Can’t she let me alone? Can’t she let me think a while? But because she… Because she was Janie, he waited.

‘You’re right, you can do it,’ she said. She spoke slowly and with extreme care. ‘You can go to the house tomorrow, if you like, and get the address and find what you’ve been looking for. And it will mean absolutely – nothing – to you. Hip, I know!’

He glared at her.

‘Believe me, Hip; believe me!’

He charged across the room, grabbed her wrists, pulled her up, thrust his face to hers. ‘You know!’ he shouted. ‘I bet you know. You know every damn thing, don’t you? You have all along. Here I am going half out of my head wanting to know and you sit there and watch me squirm!’

‘Hip! Hip, my arms – ‘

He squeezed them tighter, shook her.’ You do know, don’t. you? All about me?’

‘Let me go. Please let me go. Oh, Hip, you don’t know what you’re doing!’

He flung her back on the bed. She drew up her legs, turned on her side, propped up on one elbow and, through tears, incredible tears, tears which didn’t belong to any Janie he had yet seen, she looked up at him. She held her bruised forearm, flexed her free hand. ‘You don’t know,’ she choked, ‘what you’re…’ And then she was quiet, panting, sending, through those impossible tears, some great, tortured, thwarted message which he could not read.

Slowly he knelt beside the bed. ‘Ah, Janie. Janie.’

Her lips twitched. It could hardly have been a smile but it wanted to be. She touched his hair. ‘It’s all right,’ she breathed.

She let her head fall to the pillow and closed her eyes. He curled his legs under him, sat on the floor, put his arms on the bed and rested his cheek on them.

She said, with her eyes closed, ‘I understand, Hip; I do understand. I want to help, I want to go on helping.’

‘No you don’t,’ he said, not bitterly, but from the depths of an emotion something like grief.

He could tell – perhaps it was her breath – that he had started the tears again. He said, ‘ You know about me. You know everything I’m looking for.’ It sounded like an accusation and he was sorry. He meant it only to express his reasoning. But there wasn’t any other way to say it. ‘Don’t you?’

Still keeping her eyes closed, she nodded.

‘Well then.’

He got up heavily and went back to his chair. When she wants something out of me, he thought viciously, she just sits and waits for it. He slumped into the chair and looked at her. She had not moved. He made a conscious effort and wrung the bitterness from his thought, leaving only the content, the advice. He waited.

She sighed then and sat up. At sight of her rumpled hair and flushed cheeks, he felt a surge of tenderness. Sternly he put it down.

She said, ‘You have to take my word. You’ll have to trust me, Hip.’

Slowly he shook his head. She dropped her eyes, put her hands together. She raised one, touched her eye with the back of her wrist.

She said, ‘That piece of cable.’

The tubing lay on the floor where he had dropped it. He picked it up. ‘What about it?’

‘When was the first time you remembered you had it -remembered it was yours?’

He thought, ‘The house. When I went to the house, asking.’

‘No,’ she said,’ I don’t mean that. I mean, after you were sick.’

‘Oh.’ He closed his eyes briefly, frowned. ‘The window. The time I remembered the window, breaking it. I remembered that and then it… oh!’ he said abruptly. ‘You put it in my hand.’

‘That’s right. And for eight days I’d been putting it in your hand. I put it in your shoe, once. On your plate. In the soap dish. Once I stuck your toothbrush inside it. Every day, half a dozen times a day – eight days, Hip!’

‘I don’t – ’

‘You don’t understand! Oh, I can’t blame you.’

‘I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say, I don’t believe you.’

At last she looked at him; when she did he realized how rare it was for him to be with her without her eyes on his face. ‘Truly,’ she said intensely. ‘Truly, Hip. That’s the way it was.’

He nodded reluctantly. ‘All right. So that’s the way it was. What has that to do with – ‘

‘Wait,’ she begged. ‘You’ll see… now, every time you touched the bit of cable, you refused to admit it existed. You’d let it roll right out of your hand and you wouldn’t see it fall to the floor. You’d step on it with your bare feet and not even feel it. Once it was in your food, Hip; you picked it up with a forkful of lima beans, you put the end of it in your mouth, and then just let it slip away; you didn’t know it was there!’

‘Oc – ‘ he said with an effort, then, ‘occlusion. That’s what Bromfield called it.’ Who was Bromfield? But it escaped him; Janie was talking.

‘That’s right. Now listen carefully. When the time came for the occlusion to vanish, it did; and there you stood with the cable in your hand, knowing it was real. But nothing I could do beforehand could make that happen until it was ready to happen!’

He thought about it.’ So – what made it ready to happen?’