Chameleon's Shadow

Six

ACLAND’S DECISION TO abandon further surgery in favour of a quick return to the army came as no surprise to Robert Willis. The lieutenant’s fuse had become shorter by the day since his return from London, made worse when a small operation, designed to begin the process of creating a pouch for a glass eye, showed minimal results.

He was left with an empty, misshapen eye socket, irregular migraines, persistent low-level tinnitus and a blade-shaped scar up his cheek, but as no one could guarantee that further operations would produce a significantly better result in an acceptable time-frame, he opted to live with the face he had. He was warned by Mr Galbraith that in an image-conscious world he could expect adverse reactions, but he rejected the surgeon’s advice and chose instead to confront the prejudices of the image-conscious by drawing attention to his disfigurement.

On the day of his departure, at the fag end of April, he buzz-cut his hair to half an inch, donned a black eyepatch and went in search of Robert Willis for a verdict. He found the psychiatrist in his office, deep in concentration in front of his computer.

Willis’s startled expression at the tap on his open door was as much to do with the fact that he hadn’t known anyone was there as with his lack of immediate recognition of the man in his doorway, but the response pleased Acland. Surprise and alarm were preferable to sympathy and disgust. ‘Am I disturbing you, Doc?’

‘Do you mean am I busy . . . or do I find your appearance disturbing?’

‘Both. Either.’

‘You certainly made me jump.’ Willis gestured towards a chair on the other side of the desk. ‘Take a pew while I finish this sentence.’ He shifted his gaze to his monitor and typed a few words before clicking on save. ‘So what are you hoping for?’ he asked. ‘Shock and awe? Or just shock?’

‘It’s better than pity.’

Willis stared at the lean, expressionless face that was staring back at him. Part of him could see that the image Acland had created for himself was magnificent – hard, tough and old beyond his years – but the other part saw only a tragic death of youthful innocence. There was no reconciling this implacable man with the boyish, good-looking one in photographs from before his injury.

‘You’ve nothing to fear from pity, Charles, although I can’t say the same for loneliness. You won’t make many friends looking like that . . . but I presume that’s the intention.’

Acland shrugged. ‘A glass eye won’t help me see any better . . . and the surgery will just delay my return to the army.’

‘You’re placing a lot of faith in this return.’

‘My CO’s supporting me.’

‘That’s good.’

Acland came close to smiling. ‘You might as well say it, Doc. I know you pretty well by now. The medical board won’t be as easily persuaded as my CO.’

‘No,’ said Willis with a sigh. ‘I’m afraid they’ll view your blind side as a liability and offer you a desk job instead. But that’s not what you want, is it?’

‘So I’ll have to prove the board wrong. Other people have done it. Nelson’s the greatest admiral this country ever had and he was one-eyed. If it didn’t stop him, it won’t stop me.’

‘Everything was a lot slower in Nelson’s day, Charles . . . including the ships. He had time to make decisions which isn’t given to commanders in today’s armed forces.’

‘What about Moshe Dayan? He made it to general in the Israeli army.’

Willis avoided another negative reply. ‘True . . . and a lot more contemporary. Are you hoping the eyepatch will prompt some positive memories from the board?’

‘What if I am? Will it work?’

‘I don’t know,’ Willis answered honestly, ‘but I suspect you’ll find the decision is made by computer. You’ll be asked a series of questions and your responses will trigger answers to another block of questions that you won’t be asked.’

‘Like what?’

‘Can you see to your left without turning your head? No? Then the computer will answer every other question relating to vision with a negative. For example, “Are you able to monitor a radar screen?” You’ll say yes – you might even be able to persuade an army doctor to put a tick in that box – but the program will give you an automatic no because you’ve already indicated that you have a blind side.’

‘You don’t need two eyes to watch a screen.’

‘You do if you’re in the middle of action and giving coordinates to a gunner. A fully sighted man can watch two things at the same time, a one-eyed man can only watch one. You won’t know if the gunner’s received the instruction unless you look away from the screen.’

‘I won’t need to. He’ll confirm over his radio.’

‘A doctor might agree with you,’ said Willis gently, ‘but a computer won’t. Written into the software will be an acknowledgement that accidents happen. The intercom might fail . . . the gunner might mishear the coordinates . . . you might mishear his confirmation. But in any case, you won’t be able to stop yourself turning away from the screen. It’s human nature to double-check. Every soldier – right down to the lowliest private – needs visual confirmation that the man next to him knows what he’s doing. It’s a necessary impulse when your life depends on it.’

Acland stared at his hands. ‘Did you design this program, Doc? You seem to know a lot about it.’

Willis shook his head. ‘I don’t even know if it exists, I’m just making an educated guess. The government uses a similar system to assess disability claimants, because doctors are seen to be more sympathetic than computers. The decision-makers work on the principle that if you take the human element out of the equation, it’s harder for a cheat to get benefit.’

‘What if I lie and say yes to the original question?’

‘You can’t. You’re not the one who feeds in the answers. It’s a doctor who does that and he’ll have your medical notes in front of him. Even without the evidence of the eyepatch, he’ll know that you’re unsighted on one side.’

Acland turned towards the window, deliberately presenting his blind side to Willis. ‘So what you’re saying is that I haven’t a hope in hell’s chance of getting back into a Scimitar.’ It was a statement rather than a question, as if he were confirming something he already knew.

‘Not necessarily,’ the psychiatrist answered as lightly as he could. ‘I’m saying it’s a possibility.’ He watched the young man flick a tear from his good eye with the back of a finger. ‘But you’ll be better able to argue your case if you understand what you’re up against. No decision’s final . . . and your CO’s support will carry weight at any appeal.’

There was a lengthy silence before Acland spoke again. ‘What about yours, Doc? Will your support carry weight?’

‘I hope so. I’ve given you a positive assessment.’

‘Have you mentioned Jen in it?’

‘No.’

‘My parents?’

‘No.’

‘I should be OK, then.’

‘Except it’s not your mental health the board will be assessing, Charles. It’s the physical handicaps of semi-blindness, persistent tinnitus and chronic migraines. Those are what you have to minimize.’ He gave one of his dry smiles. ‘No one on the board is going to be interested in disappointing relationships.’

‘Thanks, Doc.’

‘For what?’

Acland swung back with a twisted smile on his face. ‘Keeping it real . . . managing expectation. At least I won’t make a fool of myself. It doesn’t do to blub in front of retired colonels.’ The smile died abruptly. ‘Still . . . I’m never going to get my sight back so I might as well give it my best shot now. If they chuck me out, I’ll learn to live with it.’ His tone hardened. ‘That’s the one thing I am getting good at . . . learning to live with things.’

Willis opened a drawer and took out a business card. ‘There are two things you can do with this, Charles,’ he said, pushing it across the desk. ‘Bin it or keep it. The number will put you through to an agency who can reach me any time, day or night. I don’t expect to hear from you for several months . . . if at all . . . but I’ll return your call immediately.’

‘What if I phone next week?’

‘I’ll be surprised,’ the psychiatrist said frankly. ‘Whether you stay in the army or not, I’m afraid you’re about to shed friends quicker than you make them. You’ll walk away, closing doors behind you, rather than try to sustain relationships that you think are meaningless.’

Not for the first time, Willis wondered if a female psychiatrist would have been a better choice for this lad. With none of the formal baggage that came between men – the instinctive reluctance to show affection, the necessary distance demanded by alpha males – she could have adopted a softer approach which might have allowed the lieutenant to weep for the person he’d been.