LITMIR.BIZ

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      She was aware of him throughout the quiet routine of her day. She usually got up early in the morning, went down, got in the papers and milk, then returned to bed with coffee and toast. She slept lightly and badly and was always glad to begin the day again. Marion was an optimist; however tiresome yesterday had been, and however unpromising today looked, she always started off the day with a little glow of happiness. The man was never at his post in Chancellor Hyde Street as early as this, but by about eleven in the morning he had arrived unobtrusively and was watching her. Some days if she went off on a journey he followed, on other days she was able to leave him behind. He had, for instance, twice come after her to London and once when she went to the Midlands to give a lecture. It had occurred to her once or twice that it was a question of money whether the man travelled with her or not: when he had enough, he came; when he had not, he stayed behind. What she could not arrive at was his motive. She thought he was trying to observe all he could about her; he wanted to know exactly what she was like. “He seems to want to know if I am me,” thought Marion indignantly.

      She for her part was watching him, but she never could get very close. She had once, on Oxford station, taken her courage in both hands and marched up to him.

      “Well,” she said fiercely. “Do you know me?” She had been close enough to him then to see the slight jaundiced yellow under his pallor and to see the fine little lines round his eyes and mouth. He was younger than she was but still not young.

      He had said nothing, nothing at all.

      “Someone should teach you not to stare,” she had snapped, and she had felt herself grow red and cross.

      It was at this moment she swore she saw recognition in his eyes.

      Later she had looked at herself in her bedroom mirror and shaken her head. “Poor battered tired old Marion. Do you imagine you are still a femme fatale?”

      It had been one of her old bitter jokes to call herself a fatal woman. She had been fatal enough for poor Francis, in her fashion.

      From then on she had dismissed any thought of going to the police. She could imagine only too well how she would be received: the raised eyebrows, the sceptical smiles; the advice to see a doctor.

      She was under the care of a doctor in any case. Dear Dr. Steiner had been fumbling about, trying to find a cause and hence a cure for her headaches, for about a year now. “I can give you aspirins, Marion,” he had said. “I can alleviate the pains but we must find out what is causing them.” Marion had answered that she would be quite glad just to have alleviation. “It’s hindering my work, you know.” Dr. Steiner had looked at her for a long time before answering. “Ah yes, your work. You think a good deal about that?”

      Marion had nodded. It had been a rather one-sided conversation, as it was more or less bound to be, considering the doctor was peering down her throat with a light. “And do you dream a great deal, Marion?” This time Marion had shaken her head in a no. But it was not true; she did dream; she dreamt a great deal.

      She thought she could blame herself for this. There was another side to Marion of which her colleagues knew nothing, of which Ezra knew nothing, and of which the doctor knew nothing; she had another world, and it was this world which had triggered off her dreams.

      Every week she visited the children’s wards in the tall, old hospital near where she lived; she played with them, talked to them and tried to distract them. Boredom is a great hindrance to recovery. In this world she was a different person, she was slow moving, almost phlegmatic, calm. She was better tempered, too. So there was the academic Marion, the home Marion, the poetic Marion, and the hospital Marion. She had no name there; she was known as the Play Lady. Presumably someone, somewhere, in that great building knew her as Dr. Manning, but the name was lost.

      She valued this world of hers; she had found the entrance to it herself. She had gone to visit a friend and had wandered by mistake into the wrong ward. Her entrance was welcomed, and since Marion was at heart an entertainer, she could not help but respond. She amused them. She promised to return next week and she did so, and the week after. Very soon she was an accepted institution. She took them books, odd toys, and games, and wandered round from child to child. This period was the best time of all and would probably have gone on if some child had not discovered that Marion’s stories and talk were better than any book.

      She was missed when she was away. The children were accusing, with the unashamed egotism of those who know beyond a shadow of doubt that they are the centre of all possible worlds. “Why were you away last week? We missed you.”

      “Like me to read?” asked Marion, always equable with them. “Or play card games? Or sing to you?”—She did sing sometimes in a low, tuneful, untrained voice.

      “Talk.”

      “That’s the hardest work of all.” But she sat down with a smile. The children asked her ‘just to talk’ more often than anything else. She told them the most wonderful things and although they did not always believe them they drank in every word. She told them of things that had happened to her and stories she had heard. They were real life stories, and although the children were sceptical in fact she invented nothing; she would have preferred to read or play dominoes but very well, if they wanted her to talk, then she would talk.

      As the weeks went on Marion’s talks got more and more vivid but she did not notice. The children noticed, however, and their excitement was reflected in their quickened pulses, raised temperatures and restless nights.

      It took some time for the nursing staff to relate all this to Marion’s visits, but they did so in the end. Even then they could not at first guess why such a quiet person could have such a stimulating effect. A nurse lingered one afternoon to listen and observe.

      “It’s all quite harmless,” she reported afterwards. “That is, she only tells them stories from her travels in South America and so on, and it is absolutely fascinating, and educational as well. I don’t wonder they love it. But still,” and she shook her head, “it’s the way she tells it: as if she was there, she’s reliving that past of hers. And I don’t think she even knows she’s doing it.”

      So a gentle hint was passed on to her and Marion woke up to what she was doing. All story-telling from her own experiences was stopped and she stuck wryly to Cinderella. But inside her the stories went on. The past which she had comfortably laid away all those years ago was still alive and kicking.

      It shook her up and reminded her that life was not a Pandora’s box which you could put the lid on and forget. Her headaches started again and drove her to seek the doctor’s advice. She thought his remark about dreams acute, but she was inclined to resent it. He could confine himself to her pains and leave her to cope with her dreams. So she shook her head.

      Quite often she dreamt of the past but sometimes she dreamt of the future. She dreamt that the book she was working on was completed but that it had been burnt before she could get it to the publisher’s hands. She had dreamt this dream in varying forms more than once. Surely fire in dreams meant something rather nasty in Freudian terminology? It seemed a pity that it had to be associated with her poor little book. Characteristically Marion took her studies lightly. She knew her own value as a scholar and did not overrate it. She was a subordinate, a contributor, not an originator, not a hacker-away in new and virgin territory. She had had much praise, but it was beyond her deserts.

      Marion had a keen idea that some of her colleagues were cautious, if not suspicious, of her. Sitting in the Common Room, or working in the Library, she felt their quick glances and their little silences. She was an outsider, never quite one of ‘them’; a changeling who had had too much publicity; more than was good for her perhaps.

      A good deal of this feeling was caused by her change-over from one school of studies to another. She was only a tolerable English scholar but potentially she had been much more as an anthropologist. She knew this and everyone else knew it. So her transference puzzled them.

      On this subject she had kept her own counsel. She never spoke of it. No one thought this odd of her. It was merciful that she lived among women who distrusted

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