Concrete Island by J. G. Ballard Page B

disappeared silently into the seething grass.
    There was a clatter of high-heeled shoes down the steps. Maitland watched her passively when she lurched across to the bed. Slightly drunk, she gazed down at Maitland as if not recognizing him.
    â€˜God – are you still here? I thought you were going. What a hell of an evening.’
    Crooning to herself, she kicked away her stiletto-heeled shoes. Where she had been he could only guess from her costume, a caricature of a small-town forties whore – a divided skirt that revealed her thighs and stocking tops, pointed breasts under a day-glo blouse.
    She tottered round to the far side of the bed and undressed, heaving the clothes into the suitcase. When she was naked she slipped under the frayed blanket. She stared up at the Rogers and Astaire poster and took Maitland’s hand in her own, partly to still him, partly for company. During the remainder of the night and early morning, as he lay beside her, Maitland was aware in his fever of her strong body touching his own.

12 The acrobat
    T HE next morning Jane Sheppard had gone. When Maitland woke the basement room was silent. A shaft of sunlight down the narrow staircase illuminated the shabby bed on which he lay. The faces of Guevara and Charles Manson hung from the walls, presiding over him like the custodians of a nightmare.
    Maitland reached out his hand, feeling the imprint of the young woman’s body. Still lying there, he looked around the room, taking in the open suitcase, the gaudy dresses on their hangers, the cosmetics on the card-table. Jane had straightened everything before leaving.
    His fever had subsided. Maitland picked up the plastic cup on the packing-case, lifted himself on to one elbow and drank the tepid water. He pulled back the blankets and examined his leg. Some wayward healing process had locked the hip joint into its socket, but the swelling and pain had eased. For the first time he was able to touch the bruised flesh.
    Maitland sat quietly on the edge of the bed, staring at the Astaire and Rogers poster. He tried to remember if he had ever seen the film, casting his mind back to his adolescence. For several successive years he had devoured almost the whole of Hollywood’s output, sitting alone in the empty circles of huge suburban Odeons. He massaged his bruised chest, realizing that his body was more and more beginning to resemble that of his younger self – the combination of hunger and fever had made him lose at least ten pounds in weight. His broad chest and heavy legs had shed half their muscle.
    Maitland slid the injured leg on to the floor and listened to the traffic sounds from the motorway. The certainty that he would soon be leaving the island revived him. He had now been marooned on this triangle of waste ground for almost four days. He knew that he had begun to forget his wife and son, Helen Fairfax and his partners – together they had moved back into the dimmer light at the rear of his mind, their places taken by the urgencies of food, shelter, his injured leg and, above all, the need to dominate the patch of ground immediately around him. His effective horizon had shrunk to little more than ten feet away. Even though he would escape in under an hour – however reluctantly, the young woman and Proctor would help him up the embankment – the prospect obsessed him like some decade-long quest.
    â€˜Damned leg…’
    Inside the packing-case were a primus stove and an unwashed saucepan. Maitland scraped the brown crust of dry rice from the pan, hungrily forcing the hard grains into his bruised mouth. A thick beard covered his face – he looked down at the grimy dress-shirt, the blackened trousers slit from the right knee to the waistband. Yet this collection of tatters less and less resembled an eccentric costume.
    Leaning against the wall, Maitland swung himself around the room. The Guevara poster tore in his hands and hung swaying from a corner