The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [132]
Philip arrived beside her. His shout, hushed and wary, reached her, “Alice, Alice, what is it?”
She stopped screaming. In her scarlet voluminous nightdress she was like a female in a Victorian melodrama. She pointed a finger at the horrid sight, and shuddered.
Philip said, “She has cut her wrists.”
He then put his arm round Alice, who, being so much taller and heavier than he was, made him stagger. Together, they lost balance, and found it by clinging to the doorframe.
Alice had got back her common sense, her control.
She was by Faye’s side. The blood was still pulsing out in red waves.
“We have to stop it,” she said. She looked around for anything that would tie, found a scarf lying on a chair, and tied it round Faye’s wrists, like handcuffs. The bleeding stopped.
Philip, also back in control, said, “I’ll ring for an ambulance.”
“No, no, no,” screamed Alice, “you mustn’t.”
“Why not, she’s going to die.”
“No, no, no, she won’t. Don’t you see? She mustn’t go to hospital.”
“Why not?”
“Roberta would never forgive us, she wouldn’t want that. The police, don’t you see? The police …”
Philip was staring at Alice as at a madwoman.
“Have we got any elastic bandage in the place?”
“Why should we have any?” he said, distressed.
“I know. Your masking tape. The tape you use for your electrics.”
He had already gone to get it. Alice knelt by Faye, who seemed to have become as light and empty as a dead leaf. How can you take the pulse of a woman whose wrists are butchered? Where else is there a pulse, wildly wondered Alice, peering here and there. She held her cheek to Faye’s nostrils and felt a slight breath. She wasn’t dead. But so much blood lost, so much … Everything was soaked with it. Faye was lying in a thick red pool.
Philip ran in, with a roll of black tape. Alice fitted her hand, like a bracelet, around one wrist, to stop the blood from bubbling and spurting, while Philip strapped up the wound. Then she held the other wrist, and they cut the scarf away.
“She’s lost so much blood,” said Alice.
“She ought to have a transfusion,” said Philip, obstinately. His face was full of criticism of Alice.
“We’ve got to get liquid into her. No, wait.…”
Down ran Alice to the kitchen. She made a mixture of warm water and salt and sugar, glucose not being available. Up she ran with it.
“She’s unconscious, Alice,” said Philip, still with that look of dislike, hostility. “How can she drink if she’s unconscious?”
Alice knelt down, slid her arm under Faye’s lolling head, so that she was well propped up, and began trying to pour the liquid into Faye.
“It’ll go into her lungs, you are drowning her,” said Philip.
And then, miraculously, Faye swallowed.
“Faye,” commanded Alice, “Faye, drink, you’ve got to drink.”
Faye seemed to want to shake her head, but swallowed. It was because she was in the habit of taking orders, commands from Roberta. Alice knew that, so she made her voice soft and full and loving like Roberta’s and said, “Drink, you must drink.”
Slowly, over twenty minutes, Alice got a pint or so of the mixture into Faye.
Then she rested. She was running with sweat. The sweat was from terror, she knew that.
Philip knelt at Faye’s feet, watching. His look of disapproval, even of horror, had not abated. It was Alice who horrified him, and she knew and could not care.
“She’s not going to die,” she said, loudly, for Faye’s benefit as well as Philip’s.
She said, “You stay here. Make her drink some more, if you can. She must have done it only a minute before we came in. I’m going to telephone Roberta.”
Philip took her place, his arm under Faye’s head. He reached for the jug full of liquid.
Alice thought, seeing them like that—frail white Faye, frail pale Philip—that they were two of a kind, victims, born to be trampled over and cut down. There was a flash of vindictiveness in this thought, as far as Philip was concerned, for she knew