* * 5 * Credit
Then one day about a week later, he didn’t come to the library. Miss Crail was delighted; by half-past eleven she had told her mother, and on returning from lunch she stood in front of the archaeology shelves where he had been working since he came. She stared with theatrical concentration at the rows of books, and Liz knew she was pretending to work out whether Leamas had stolen anything.
Liz entirely ignored her for the rest of that day, failed to reply when she addressed her, and worked with assiduous application. When the evening came she walked home and cried herself to sleep.
The next morning she arrived early at the library. She somehow felt that the sooner she got there, the sooner Leamas might come; but as the morning dragged on her hopes faded, and she knew he would never come. She had forgotten to make sandwiches for herself that day so she decided to take a bus to the Bayswater Road and go to the A.B.C. Café. She felt sick and empty, but not hungry. Should she go and find him? She had promised never to follow him, but he had promised to tell her; should she go and find him?
She hailed a taxi and gave his address.
She made her way up the dingy staircase and pressed the bell of his door. The bell seemed to be broken; she heard nothing. There were three bottles of milk on the mat and a letter from the electricity company. She hesitated a moment, then banged on the door, and she heard the faint groan of a man. She rushed downstairs to the fiat below, hammered and rang at the door. There was no reply so she ran down another flight and found herself in the back room of a grocer’s shop. An old woman sat in a corner, rocking back and forth in her chair.
“The top flat,” Liz almost shouted, “somebody’s very ifi. Who’s got a key?”
The old woman looked at her for a moment, then called toward the front room, where the shop was.
“Arthur, come in here, Arthur, there’s a girl here!”
A man in brown overalls and a gray trilby hat looked round the door and said, “Girl?”
“There’s someone seriously ifi in the top fiat,” said Liz. “He can’t get to the front door to open it. Have you a key?”
“No,” replied the grocer, “but I’ve got a hammer,” and they hurried up the stairs together, the grocer, still in his trilby, carrying a heavy screwdriver and a hammer. He knocked on the door sharply, and they waited breathless for an answer. There was none.
“I heard a groan before, I promise I did,” Liz whispered.
“Will you pay for this door if I bust it?”
“Yes.”
The hammer made a terrible noise. With three blows he had wrenched out a piece of the frame and the lock came with it. Liz went in first and the grocer followed. It was bitterly cold in the room and dark, but on the bed in the corner they could make out the figure of a man.
Oh God, thought Liz, if he’s dead I don’t think I can touch him. But she went to him and he was alive. Drawing the curtains, she knelt beside the bed.
“I’ll call you if I need you, thank you,” she said without looking back, and the grocer nodded and went downstairs.
“Alec, what is it, what’s making you ill? What is it, Alec?”
Leamas moved his head on the pillow. His sunken eyes were closed. The dark beard stood out against the pallor of his face.
“Alec, you must tell me, please, Alec.” She was holding one of his hands in hers. The tears were running down her cheeks. Desperately she wondered what to do; then, getting up, she ran to the tiny kitchen and put on a kettle. She wasn’t quite clear what she would make, but it comforted her to do something. Leaving the kettle on the gas she picked up her handbag, took Leamas’ key from the bedside table and ran downstairs, down the four flights into the street, and crossed the road to Mr. Sleaman, the chemist. She bought some calf’s-foot jelly, some breast of chicken, some essence of beef and a bottle of Aspirin. She got to the door, then went back and bought a packet of rusks. Altogether it cost her sixteen shillings, which left four shillings in her handbag and eleven pounds in her postoffice savings bank book, but she couldn’t draw any of that till tomorrow. By the time she returned to his flat the kettle was just boiling.