Chapter 3 third chapter

"Passengers on Air France Flight 108 to Paris, please go this way." People in the departure lounge at Heathrow Airport stood up when they heard the sound.Hilary Craven picked up her little lizard-skin suitcase and followed the flow to the tarmac.As they had just come out of the sweltering waiting room, the passengers felt the cold wind biting their bones. Hilary shivered all over, and wrapped the fur coat tightly around her body.She followed the other passengers across the plaza to where the plane was parked.It's finally here!She was going, running away!Get out of this gray, cold and insensitive misery.Escape to the sunny blue sky, to a new life.All this burden, the burden of terrible misery and frustration, will be left far behind.She walked up the gangway of the plane, walked into the plane door with her head down, and was led to her seat by the attendant.For the first time in months, she found relief from her pain.The mental pain was so severe that it affected her physically. "I'm going to get away from it all," she said to herself hopefully, "I'm going to get out of it all."

The roar and turning of the plane made her very excited.There seems to be a kind of primitive wildness in the roar and rotation.Civilized man's pain, she thought, is the worst pain, gray and hopeless. "But now," she thought, "I'm going to run away." The plane taxied slowly along the runway.The flight attendant said: "Please fasten your seat belt." The plane made a half turn on the runway, stopped and waited for the signal to take off.Hillary thought: "Maybe this plane will crash... Maybe it will never leave the ground. Then everything will be over, everything will be solved." Hillary felt that the plane had been waiting for a long time to take off.She was waiting for the signal to freedom, and Hillary thought absurdly: "I will never leave, forever! I will be held here as a prisoner."

However, it finally took off. There was a final roar of the engines, and the plane began to roll forward.The plane went faster and faster down the runway, and Hilary thought, "It won't fly. It won't be able to...that's it." Oh, they seem to be off the ground now.It looked as if it wasn't the plane that was going up, but the ground was leaving, sinking, throwing all problems, all disappointments and frustrations under that roaring monster rising proudly into the blue sky.The plane was ascending and circled the airport.How the airport below looked like a ridiculous child's toy!Ridiculously small roads, strange little railways with toy trains running on them.A ridiculously childish world where people love, hate and break their hearts.Now, none of that mattered because they were so ridiculous, so small, so insignificant.Below them now were clouds, thick, gray clouds.They must be over the English Channel.Hilary leaned back in her seat, her eyes closed.escaped, escaped.She had left England, she had left Nigel, she had left that miserable little mound, Brenda's grave.All this was left behind.She opened her eyes, then closed them again with a long sigh.she fell asleep...

When Hillary woke up, the plane was descending. "Paris is here!" Hilary thought as she sat up straight in her seat and reached for her handbag.However, this is not Paris.The flight attendant stepped down from the gondola and said in the coaxing tone of a nursery nurse that some passengers found very annoying: "Because of the fog in Paris, we're going to land you in Beauvais." She had the look of saying, "Isn't that nice, kids?" Hilary peered down through the little window next to her seat.She can barely see anything.Beauvais also appeared to be shrouded in thick fog.The plane was slowly flying around the airport, flying for a while before finally landing.The passengers were then led through the cold, damp mist toward a simple wooden house with only a few chairs and a long wooden counter.

Hilary was feeling down, but she was trying to push the gloom out.A man next to her grumbled under his breath: "It's an old airfield from wartime, no heating or comfort equipment. Luckily, it's French and we can always get a drink." He was absolutely right.Almost at once a man arrived with some keys, and he served the passengers various liquors to cheer them up.The booze did refresh the passengers during the long and annoying wait. After several hours of doing nothing like this, several more planes emerged from the fog and landed, and these planes also diverted here because Paris could not land.Immediately the small room was filled with shivering, irritated people, all complaining about the delay.

For Hillary, it all had an unreal quality.It was as if she was dreaming, and someone was benevolently protecting her from reality.But it's just a matter of delaying, of waiting.She was still on the road—on the run.She was still running from it all, still running to where her life might start again.The emotion haunted her.This emotion haunted her both during the long and tedious delays and in the confusion caused by the sudden announcement that several buses had arrived to take passengers to Paris long after dark. What confusion was there in the throng of people coming and going!Passengers, clerks, and porters all ran and collided in the dark with their luggage.Finally, Hillary, shivering with cold feet and legs, boarded a bus and rumbled through the fog toward Paris.

It was a long and tiring drive, four hours in all.It was already midnight when they arrived at the Museum of Disabled Soldiers.To Hilary's relief, she was able to pick up her luggage immediately and take the car to the hotel where she had reserved a room.She was so tired that she didn't want to eat, so she just took a hot bath and hurried to bed. The flight to Casablanca was due to leave Orly at half past ten the following morning, but when they arrived at Orly there was chaos.Airplanes have been grounded in many parts of Europe and passengers have been delayed. The constantly interrupted clerk at the Departure Desk shrugged and said:

"Ma'am, you can't leave on this flight you've booked. The flight schedule will all have to be changed. If Ma'am can just sit here and wait, everything will be in order." Finally, people called her and told her that there was still a seat on the plane to Dhaka, which normally didn't land in Casablanca, but was going to land there this time. "Madam, you are only delayed for three hours on this late flight." Hillary agreed without saying a word.The clerk seemed a little surprised, but delighted by Hillary's attitude. "Madame, you can't imagine the difficulties I've had this morning," he said, "and how unreasonable the gentlemen of the passengers are. I didn't make the fog! Fogs cause confusion, of course! But we must calmly adapt to the new situation." That is to say, no matter how unpleasant it is to change our travel plans, we should take it lightly. Madame, what does it matter if a delay of an hour, two hours or three hours? As long as it can reach Casablanca, after all What plane does it matter?"

It mattered, however, which plane arrived in Casablanca on that day, something the little Frenchman didn't know when he said that.For, when Hillary finally arrived in Casablanca and disembarked from the plane into the sunny square, a porter who passed her with a cart full of luggage said to her: "You're lucky, ma'am. You didn't get on that plane, which was the normal flight to Casablanca." Hilary said, "Why, what happened?" The porter looked around nervously, and finally, he couldn't keep the secret anymore.He leaned closer to Hilary and said in a low voice:

"What a dreadful thing! The plane crashed on landing. The pilot and navigator were dead, as were most of the passengers. Four or five people who were still alive had been taken to hospital. Several of them were seriously injured. serious." Hillary's first reaction after hearing these words was unwarranted anger.She almost couldn't help thinking, "Why don't I get on that plane? If I got on that plane, it would all be over—I must be dead, free from everything. What a sad thing." It's all over. The people on that plane wanted to live. I didn't want to. Why wasn't I the one who died?"

She passed customs (very sloppy) and drove to the hotel with her luggage.It was a sunny afternoon and the sun was just about to set.The clean air and the bright sunshine—it was exactly what she had imagined before she got here.Now she has arrived.She had left foggy, cold and dark London.She had left the sorrow, the indecision, and the pain.There is bustling life, color and sunshine here. She walked into the bedroom where she lived, opened the curtains, and looked out to the street.Yes, everything here is as she once imagined.Hillary turned slowly, away from the window, and sat down on the side of the bed.Run away, run away!It was a voice that had been ringing in her head since leaving England.ran away, ran away.And now, she knew with terrible, wounded grimness, there was no escape for her. Everything here is exactly the same as in London.She, Hilary Craven, is still the same as ever.She wanted to escape Hilary Craven, and Hilary Craven was still Hilary Craven in Morocco, as was Hilary Craven in London.She whispered to herself: "What a fool I am, what a fool I am! Why should I think that, if only I were to leave England, I should feel quite differently?" Brenda's grave, that forlorn little mound, was still in England, where Nigel would soon be taking a new wife.Why had she thought that these two things were of little importance to her here?This is nothing more than a delusion.That's it!all right!All this is over now.Now she had to face the reality, the fact that she still existed, the reality of what she could bear and what she couldn't.Hilary thought that people can bear pain if there is a reason for it.She had endured a long illness, had endured Nigel's betrayal and the cruel, savage circumstances that followed it.She had endured all this pain because Brenda was still alive.Then came the long, slow battle to save Brenda's life, and that battle was lost, lost... and now, there was nothing worth living any more.She didn't realize this until she arrived in Morocco.There was a strange sense of confusion in London, thinking that if only she could go somewhere else, she would be able to forget what was left and start a new life.So she booked a plane ticket to travel to this place.There was nothing here to remind her of the past, it was a new place for her, a place with many beautiful things she loved so much.Sunshine, pure air, new people and new things.Things were different here, she had thought.However, things are no different.Things are still the same.The fact was so simple and inescapable that she, Hilary Craven, had no desire to live any longer.It's as simple as that. If the fog hadn't gotten in the way, and if she'd been on the plane she had booked, maybe the problem would have been solved by now.Now she may lie in one of the official French cemeteries, her body mutilated, but her spirit at peace, free from pain.Of course, such an ending can still be achieved now, but it will take a little effort. It would have been easier if she had taken sleeping pills with her.She remembered how she had asked Dr. Gray and the rather strange look on Dr. Gray's face when he answered her question. "It's better not to take sleeping pills. It's better to learn to fall asleep naturally. It may be difficult at first, but eventually you will fall asleep." Oh, that odd look on Dr. Gray's face, had he known or suspected that she was going to take that step?Oh, that shouldn't be difficult.She stood up resolutely.She is going to the pharmacy. Hillary has always believed that medicines are easy to buy in foreign cities.She was a little surprised to find that this was not the case.The pharmacist at the first pharmacy she went to sold her only two doses.The pharmacist said that if she wanted to buy more than two doses, she needed a doctor's prescription.She thanked him with a smile, and quickly walked out of the pharmacy as if nothing had happened.At this time, a tall young man with a serious face happened to be walking into the pharmacy and almost bumped into Hillary.The young man said sorry to her in English.As she was leaving the pharmacy, she heard the young man asking for toothpaste. The young man wants to buy toothpaste.Somehow Hillary found it amusing.How ridiculous, how ordinary, how ordinary!Then, a sharp pain hit her.For the toothpaste that the young man was going to buy was the one Nigel liked to use so often.She crossed the street and walked into another pharmacy across the way.She had run to four pharmacies before she returned to the hotel.To her somewhat delight, the stern-faced young man reappeared in the third pharmacy and asked persistently again for a brand of toothpaste that was not usually stocked in French pharmacies in Casablanca. Hilary was almost carefree as she changed her blouse and made up her face before going downstairs to dinner.She made up her mind to delay getting down because she was eager not to run into any of her fellow travelers or anyone on the same plane.In fact, this is almost impossible, because the plane she was on was on to Dhaka again, and she thought she was the only passenger who got off the plane halfway in Casablanca. When she entered, there were almost no one in the dining room, and she only saw that young man with an owl-like face was about to finish his dinner at the table next to the wall.He was reading a French newspaper as he ate, and seemed interested in what he read. Hilary had a big dinner with a half bottle of wine.She felt a little tipsy and agitated.She thought, "After all, this is the last adventure." Then, she ordered the waiter to send a bottle of Vichy mineral water upstairs to her room, and left the dining room upstairs. The waiter brought the Vichy water, uncapped the bottle, put it on the table, bade her good night, and left the room.Hilary breathed a sigh of relief.After the valet shut the door behind him as he stepped out, Hilary went to the door and turned the key to lock it.She took the four-pack from the drugstore out of the dresser drawer and opened them.She put the pills on the table and poured a glass of mineral water.Since the medicine is in the form of tablets, she just needs to swallow the pills and wash them down with Vichy water. She took off her coat, wrapped her dressing gown around her, and went back to sitting at the table.Heart beats fast.Now she felt a little scared.But that fear was only a slight fascination, not something that would make her flinch from abandoning her plan.She was very calm and knew exactly what she was about to do.This is the last escape, the real escape.She stared blankly at the desk, wondering if she should leave a note.In the end, she decided not to leave a note, she had no relatives, no close friends, in short, no one she wanted to say goodbye to.As for Nigel, she did not want to burden him with useless regrets and burdens, even if she could do that by writing a note.Nigel might read in the papers that a lady named Hilary Craven had died in Casablanca of taking too many sleeping pills.That may have been just a snippet in the newspaper.Nigel would take the news at face value. "Poor Hillary," he'd say, "you're out of luck." Maybe, deep down, he'd be quite relieved.For, she supposed, she was a small burden on Nigel's conscience, and Nigel was a man who wished to be at ease. Now Nigel seemed far, far away, inexplicably irrelevant.There is nothing more to do.She was going to swallow the pills and go to bed and sleep.From this sleep she will never wake up again.She doesn't, or she thinks she doesn't, have any religious feelings.Brenda's death had suppressed any such feelings.Therefore, there is nothing more to think about.As at Heathrow, she was a traveler again, a traveler waiting to depart for an indeterminate destination, unencumbered by baggage or sentimental about parting.For the first time in her life, she was free, completely free to do whatever she wanted.Everything in the past has severed ties with her.The long agony of sorrow which had weighed upon her during her waking hours was gone.Yes, she feels light, free and unattached now.She is ready to embark on a new journey. She reached out for the first pill.While she was doing this, there was a soft knock on the door.Hillary frowned.She just sat there with one hand out in the air.Who is this, the waitress?Impossible, the bed was already made.Maybe someone handling documents or passports?She shrugged.She didn't want to open the door.Why did she go to this trouble.If there is anything wrong with this person, he will leave temporarily and come back when he has a chance. There was another knock on the door, this time a little louder than the last.Hillary, however, sat still.There can be no real urgency, and the knocker will walk away quickly. Her eyes were fixed on the door.Suddenly those eyes opened wide in surprise.The key in the lock was slowly turned back, jumped out, and fell to the floor with a clang.Then the doorknob turned and the door opened and a man walked in.She recognized at once that this man was the serious owl-faced young man buying toothpaste in the pharmacy.Hilary stared at him blankly.She was so surprised that she couldn't say or do anything.The young man turned away, closed the door, picked up the key from the floor, put it back in the lock, and locked the door.Then he came over to her and sat down in a chair on the other side of the table.He said something that seemed to her the most inappropriate thing to say: "My name is Jessop." Hillary blushed instantly.She leaned forward and said coldly and angrily: "Excuse me, what do you think... what are you doing?" He looked at her seriously, and blinked. "Funny," he said, "that's what I came to ask you." He nodded quickly to the pills on the table next to him. Hillary snapped: "I don't know what you mean by that." "No, you know." Hillary paused, clearly struggling to find the right words.To show anger.How much she wanted to say to get him out of this room.Strangely enough, however, curiosity finally won and kept her from uttering that expression of anger.A question came to her so naturally that she said it almost without knowing it. "That key," she said, "did it turn in the lock by itself?" "Oh, that's a question!" The young man suddenly grinned like a child.He put his hands in his pockets, pulled out a metal object, and handed it to Hilary to examine. "Here it is," he said. "It's a very handy thing. Put it in the lock from the other side and it'll grab the key and turn it." He took the thing out of Hilary's hand Go back, put it in your pocket. "That's what thieves use," he said. "So you're a thief?" "No, no, Mrs. Craven, please don't wrong me. You know I knock and thieves don't knock. I only use this thing when I don't think you're going to let me in." "Why did you come in?" Her guest's eyes flicked to the pills on the table again. "I wouldn't do that if I were you," he said. "You know, it's not like you think it is at all. You think you just go to sleep and never wake up again. But It's not like that at all. All sorts of unpleasant reactions happen. Sometimes the skin gets cramps and gangrene. If you're resistant to the drug, it takes a long time to work, so someone might Find you, and all sorts of unpleasant things happen. Stomach pumps, castor oil, hot coffee, patting and massage—I can assure you, it's all very unpleasant." Hilary leaned back in her chair, squinting her eyes.She clenched her hands a little and forced herself to smile. "What a ridiculous person you are," she said. "You think I'm going to kill myself, or something like that?" "It's not just that you think you're going to kill yourself," said the young Jessop, "I'm sure you're going to kill yourself. You know, I was in that drugstore when you walked in. In fact, I It was there to buy toothpaste. But that drugstore didn't have the kind I like. So I went to another drugstore. There, I saw you buying sleeping pills again. So I thought it was a bit weird .So, you know, I followed you. You buy sleeping pills in different places. It all boils down to one thing." His tone of voice is friendly, casual and reassuring.Hilary Craven dropped all pretense in watching the young man. "Don't you think, then, that it was inexcusably rude of you to try to prevent me?" He considered the question for a moment, then, shaking his head, said: "No, I'm not being rude. You know, you can't do that kind of thing." Hilary said angrily: "You can stop me from doing this for a while. I mean, you can take these pills and throw them out of the window or something. But you can't stop me from doing it again later." Buy more pills, or jump off the top of a building, or lie down in front of a train." The young man thought about it. "Of course not," he said. "I agree that I cannot prevent you from doing any such thing. It is, however, a question of whether you would like to do it in the future. Would you like to do it tomorrow, say?" "Do you think I'll have a different relationship tomorrow?" Hilary asked in a slightly poignant tone. "That's the way people are," Jessop said almost defensively. "Perhaps," she said, after a moment's consideration, "if you're doing it out of impulsive desperation. But if you're doing it in cool-headed desperation, it's quite a different story. I don't have anything worth living for in this world, you know." Jessop tilted his owl-like head to the side and blinked. "It's funny," he said. "It's not interesting, not at all. I'm not a very interesting person. My husband, whom I love, has abandoned me. My only child died a painful death from meningitis. I have no close friends or Kin. I have no profession, nor any craft or job that I love to do." "You're miserable," Jessop said with a sigh.Then he added with some hesitation: "Don't you think it's wrong to do so?" Hillary said excitedly: "Why not? This is my life!" "It's your life, yes," repeated Jessop petulantly. "I'm not talking about ethics, but, you know, some people don't think it's right." Hillary said: "But I'm not one of those people." Jessop said inappropriately: "indeed so." "Perhaps, now, sir, you—?" "My name is Jessop," said the young man. "Perhaps, now, Mr. Jessop, you will leave me alone." But Jessop shook his head and said: "No. I want to know what's behind all this. Now, I've figured it out, haven't I? You've lost interest in life, you don't want to go on living, you more or less welcome the idea of ​​death?" "yes." "Okay," said Jessop cheerfully, "now we know what we're talking about. Let's move on to the next step. Do we have to use sleeping pills?" "what do you mean?" "Well, I've already told you that sleeping pills aren't as romantic as they say they are. And jumping off a building isn't nice either. You don't die right away. The same goes for lying down in front of a train. I The point is, there are other avenues.” "I don't understand what you mean." "I'm going to suggest another approach, actually, an aboveboard one. It also has a sort of excitatory effect. I can tell you without any hesitation that there's only a one in a per cent chance that you won't Death. But, I am sure, you would have no objection to living if that had happened then." "I don't understand at all what you're talking about?" "Of course you don't understand," said Jessop, "because I haven't begun to tell you about the method. I'm afraid I'll have to babble—I mean, I'm going to tell you a story. I can start?" "As you please." Jessop ignored her reluctance to assent, and began talking in the most serious manner. "I suppose you are one of those women who read the newspapers a lot and are generally acquainted with current affairs," said he. "You must have read in the papers that scientists have disappeared from time to time. The Italian scientist disappeared about a year ago." , the young scientist named Thomas Betterton disappeared about two months ago." Hillary nodded and said, "Yes, I read about it in the paper." "However, many more people have disappeared than are reported in the newspapers. I mean, many more people have disappeared. Not all of them were scientists. Some of them were young men engaged in important medical research. People. Some are research chemists, some are physicists, one is a lawyer. Oh, many, many, here, there, everywhere. You know, our country is a so-called Free country, if you want to leave, you can leave. But with regard to these strange phenomena, we must know why these people left? Where did they go? And - this is also important - how did they get there Did they go voluntarily? Were they kidnapped? Were they deceived? Which way did they go? What kind of organization is this business? What is its ultimate purpose? There are many, many questions. We need to find answers to these questions, and you may help us find that answer." "Me? How can I help? Why should I help?" "Now we come to the particular case of Thomas Betterton. He disappeared from Paris two months ago, leaving his wife behind in England. She was on the verge of madness with worry—or, she said, she was. She insisted that she didn't know why he went? Where? Or how? She might be telling the truth, or she might not. Some people—I was one of them— I don't think she's telling the truth." Hillary leaned forward in her chair.She couldn't help becoming interested.Jessop went on. "We are going to put Mrs. Betterton under covert surveillance. She came to me about a fortnight ago and told me that her doctor had ordered her to go abroad for a complete rest and recreation. She was having a bad time in England, People kept coming to bother her—newspaper reporters, relatives, well-meaning friends!" Hillary said coldly: "I can imagine that." "Yes, she's very unpleasant. It's only natural that she wants to go away for a period." "That's quite natural, I think." "But, you know, there are serious suspicions in our profession. Arrangements have been made to keep Mrs. Betterton under surveillance. She left England yesterday for Casablanca as planned." "Casablanca?" "Yes . . . a stop in Sacablanca, and then elsewhere in Morocco. Everything is open and above board, travel plans are made, plane tickets and hotel rooms are booked. But, very likely, this trip The trip to Morocco was no more than a pretext for Mrs Betterton to flee to that unknown destination." Hillary shrugged. "I don't understand why I need to know about this." Jessop smiled. "You should know that, because you have very pretty red hair, Mrs. Craven." "Red hair?" "Yes. That's Mrs. Betterton's most distinguishing feature—red hair. You may have heard that the plane that preceded yours today crashed on landing." "I know that. I was supposed to be on that plane. I actually booked that plane." "Interesting," Jessop said, "Ms. Betterton was on that plane. But she didn't fall to her death. She was rescued from the crash alive and is in the hospital. But according to the doctor , she won't live to-morrow morning." A gleam of light fell on Hilary's heart.She looked at Jessop inquiringly. "Well," said Jessop, "now you understand the method of suicide I propose to you. I propose that Mrs. Betterton should go on traveling. And you should be Mrs. Betterton." "But, really," Hilary said, "that's going to be hard to do. I mean, they're going to recognize right away that I'm not Mrs. Betterton." Jessop tilted his head to one side. "Well, that all depends on who you mean by 'they'. 'They' is a very vague word. Who is 'they'? Is there such a thing? There is such a thing as 'they' People? I don't know of such people. But I can tell you this: If the most colloquial interpretation of the word 'they' is accepted by ordinary people, then those who work in a closed self-sufficient organization are called ' They'. They did it for their own safety. If Mrs. Betterton's trip had a purpose and was planned, the people in charge of the trip here have no idea of ​​the British side of the trip. Will know nothing. They'll just contact certain women at certain places at agreed times and pass the situation on from there. Mrs Betterton's passport says she's five feet seven inches tall, Red hair, blue-green eyes, medium-sized mouth. No identifying marks. Excellent." "But the responsible authorities here, really, they—" Jessop smiled, "have absolutely no problem with that. The French have lost some valuable young scientists and chemists, too. They'll work with us. The situation will be arranged as follows: Mrs Betterton, who suffered a concussion, has been taken to hospital. Another passenger on the crashed plane, Mrs. Craven, has also been taken to hospital. Mrs. Craven will die within a day or two Mrs. Betterton will be released from the hospital with only minor concussion damage and will still be able to travel.The plane crash was real, Mrs. Betterton's concussion was real, and the concussion gives you A good cover. It can justify a lot of things—like memory loss and all sorts of unpredictable behavior.” "That would be insane," Hillary said. "Oh, yes!" said Jessop, "that's madness, all right. It's a very difficult task. And if our suspicions come true, you may be killed. Do you understand, I Quite frankly. But, as you say, you are ready to die and want to die. As an alternative to lying down in front of a train or something like that, I think you'll find the mission much more interesting many." Suddenly Hilary laughed unexpectedly. "I do believe," she said, "that you are quite right." "Then, are you willing to do it?" "Yes. Why not?" "In that case," said Jessop, rising quickly from his chair, "we must not lose any time."