Towards Zero - Agatha Christie [2]
By this time it ought to have been over. He ought to have been out of it all! Curse that damned ridiculous tree growing out of the cliff! Curse those officious sweethearts who braved the cold of a winter’s night to keep a tryst on the cliff edge.
But for them (and the tree!) it would have been over—a plunge into the deep icy water, a brief struggle perhaps, and then oblivion—the end of a misused, useless, unprofitable life.
And now where was he? Lying ridiculously in a hospital bed with a broken shoulder and with the prospect of being hauled up in a police court for the crime of trying to take his own life.
Curse it, it was his own life, wasn’t it?
And if he had succeeded in the job, they would have buried him piously as of unsound mind!
Unsound mind, indeed! He’d never been saner! And to commit suicide was the most logical and sensible thing that could be done by a man in his position.
Completely down and out, with his health permanently affected, with a wife who had left him for another man. Without a job, without affection, without money, health or hope, surely to end it all was the only possible solution?
And now here he was in this ridiculous plight. He would shortly be admonished by a sanctimonious magistrate for doing the commonsense thing with a commodity which belonged to him and to him only—his life.
He snorted with anger. A wave of fever passed over him.
The nurse was beside him again.
She was young, red-haired, with a kindly, rather vacant face.
“Are you in much pain?”
“No, I’m not.”
“I’ll give you something to make you sleep.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort.”
“But—”
“Do you think I can’t bear a bit of pain and sleeplessness?”
She smiled in a gentle, slightly superior way.
“Doctor said you could have something.”
“I don’t care what doctor said.”
She straightened the covers and set a glass of lemonade a little nearer to him. He said, slightly ashamed of himself:
“Sorry if I was rude.”
“Oh, that’s all right.”
It annoyed him that she was so completely undisturbed by his bad temper. Nothing like that could penetrate her nurse’s armour of indulgent indifference. He was a patient—not a man.
He said:
“Damned interference—all this damned interference….”
She said reprovingly:
“Now, now, that isn’t very nice.”
“Nice?” he demanded. “Nice? My God.”
She said calmly: “You’ll feel better in the morning.”
He swallowed.
“You nurses. You nurses! You’re inhuman, that’s what you are!”
“We know what’s best for you, you see.”
“That’s what’s so infuriating! About you. About a hospital. About the world. Continual interference! Knowing what’s best for other people. I tried to kill myself. You know that, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“Nobody’s business but mine whether I threw myself off a bloody cliff or not. I’d finished with life. I was down and out!”
She made a little clicking noise with her tongue. It indicated abstract sympathy. He was a patient. She was soothing him by letting him blow off steam.
“Why shouldn’t I kill myself if I want to?” he demanded.
She replied to that quite seriously.
“Because it’s wrong.”
“Why is it wrong?”
She looked at him doubtfully. She was not disturbed in her own belief, but she was much too inarticulate to explain her reaction.
“Well—I mean—it’s wicked to kill yourself. You’ve got to go on living whether you like it or not.”
“Why have you?”
“Well, there are other people to consider, aren’t there?”
“Not in my case. There’s not a soul in the world who’d be the worse for my passing on.”
“Haven’t you got any relations? No mother or sisters or anything?”
“No. I had a wife once but she left me—quite right too! She saw I was no good.”
“But you’ve got friends, surely?”
“No, I haven’t. I’m not a friendly sort of man. Look here, nurse, I’ll tell you something. I was a happy sort of chap once. Had a good job and a good-looking wife. There was a car accident. My boss was driving the car and I was in it. He wanted me to say he was driving under thirty at the time of the accident. He wasn’t. He was driving nearer fifty. Nobody was killed, nothing like that, he just wanted