Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 799 & 800, March/April 2008

Michelle by Marilyn Todd

Marilyn Todd writes mysteries set in various historical periods; one of them, a short story entitled “Distilling the Truth,” set in 1950s France (and published in EQMM), was recently selected for the Best British Mysteries 2006. Ms. Todd has also been dazzling readers with her new series set in Ancient Greece. A first novel-length entry in that series, Blind Eye, is just out from Severn House.

What struck Wilfie was the silence. That incredible, beautiful, absolute silence, and, as he lay on his back, his face and torso swaddled beneath a stiff cocoon of bandages with his left foot up in traction, he wallowed in its splendour. This was the first time in weeks — months — when he could hear nothing but the sound of his own blood pounding through his temples. Could actually listen to his own voice for once, humming in his ears.

Mademoiselle from Armentiéres, parlez-vous—

He was out of tune (as usual), but who cared? There was only him to criticize.

— inky, pinky, parlez-vous.

What did that mean, he wondered? That inky pinky stuff? Maybe if he’d been in France for more than a few months he’d understand, but right now Wilfie was happy to overlook the harness that bound him flat and bask in the luxury of painkillers and silence.

Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile—

Who wouldn’t smile, he thought. Ever since Lord Kitchener’s finger pointed at him from that poster, telling Wilfie “Your country needs YOU!” his eardrums had been bombarded with the din from the barrack room, the clack of rifle practice, the clatter of the trains that carried him to war. And then, if it wasn’t the blast of the artillery or the pounding of the grenades, it was screaming, groaning, sobbing, praying, or else it was the rain. The endless bloody freezing rain that turned the fields of Flanders into mud. Rancid, slippery, endless, dripping off the barbed wire, dripping off his nose. Night or day, the racket never stopped. The bark of orders. The whistle of gas canisters fizzing through the air. The whinnies of a thousand terrified horses...

It’s a long way to Tipperary—

But now. Now Wilfie could enjoy the quietude, safe in the knowledge that he wasn’t being shot at. Wasn’t having to walk upright through a hail of bullets, stumbling over twitching bodies, slipping on someone’s guts and trying not to cry. Here he could relax. Lie still. Drink in every silent second—

“Wilfie?”

Jerked from his indulgence, Wilfie tried to place the voice.

“Wilfie Baines, by God, it is you inside that white marshmallow!”

“Ron?”

Nah. Ron had had a leg blown off when the ammunitions store went up, and that must have been — ooh, a month ago at least. That’s right, he remembered now. That was a name from the past, he had thought, hearing how they’d carted him off to some posh joint that had been turned into a field hospital. Some chateau well clear of the front, where the seriously injured could be cared for, until they were fit enough to be sent back home to Engl... Shit.

“Now, you behave yourself, Ron Tyler,” a female voice castigated, except there was no malice in her Irish lilt. To Wilfie’s ears, it sounded more like laughter. “Anything you need, you ring the bell this time, you understand?”

“Yes, Sister.”

“And don’t you patronise me, either. I won’t have you careering round these corridors by yourself. You’re dangerous on wheels.”

“No, Sister.”

“Oh, you!” With a good-humoured tut, her stout nursing shoes clacked off. “And mind you don’t tire my patient, either,” she called out. “The boy needs rest!”

“I’m blind, aren’t I?” Wilfie said.

Ron cleared his throat. “Your face is burned up pretty bad and the blast from the explosion knocked you back so hard you broke your leg and fractured a few ribs, but otherwise it’s not too serious.”

“No?” Trust Ron to play it down. “Then what am I doing here?”

“You’re alive, Wilf. That has to count for something.”

Did it? Did it really? Suddenly, silence was no longer Wilfie’s friend.

“Here, on your medical chart I see it reads Corporal Baines,” Ron said. “Well done, mate!”

Wilfie grunted. He was burned, blind, might never walk again, and then only with a limp, so what the hell did making corporal matter? Especially since Ron had made lieutenant, and you didn’t make that simply from being the last man in your unit left alive.

“How come they haven’t shipped you home?” he asked.

“Ach, you know how it is.” Ron clucked his tongue. “They took my left leg off at the knee after the accident, but then gangrene set in, so they’ve taken my right foot away to join it. Still.” He let out a wry chuckle. “Never was much of a dancer, me.”

Not true, Wilfie thought. Ron had always been a smooth mover, the sort who could glide effortlessly across a ballroom. Whereas he was always stepping on some poor girl or other’s toe, making her snap at him and glower. But no girls ever jumped down Ronald Tyler’s throat, Wilfie remembered enviously. Not on the dance floor, not anywhere else.

“It must bother you, though. Not being able to — y’know.”

“Walk? Not really.” Ron’s knuckles cracked. “I mean, obviously I’d rather I had both my legs, who wouldn’t? But war’s war, isn’t it? My lungs haven’t been scoured with mustard gas so bad that I can barely breathe, and I could have lost my hands—”

“No, I meant... attracting women.”

Just look at him. I mean, who’d want to take on a soldier invalided home with a limp, crinkled skin, and who couldn’t bloody see?

“Well, the way I look at it is this.” Ron rolled and lit a cigarette, then pressed it between Wilfie’s lips. “With every bloke under thirty over here in uniform, there’ll be thousands of jobs just begging to be filled back home. Being disabled won’t matter with a desk job, and you know what I’ve been thinking of doing, Wilf? Teaching.”

“You? A teacher?” Wilfie laughed, even though he knew Ron would make a good one. He had the patience, him. When they were kids, kicking a football up and down the same street of terraced houses and climbing trees together on the common, Ron was the one who always took the younger ones aside and showed them how to bake their conkers, roll their marbles, how to learn from their mistakes.

“If not, I’ll try the banks,” Ron was saying, “because either way, the money’s good, they’re respectable positions, and — well, let’s just say you don’t need to worry about me not being able to find myself a wife and raising a batch of screaming nippers.”

No, he wouldn’t, Wilfie thought. But he was thinking of his own chances.

“Lieutenant Tyler, I swear by Almighty God you’ll be the death of me!” The cigarette was whisked out of Wilfie’s mouth by a hand that smelled of disinfectant. “If Dr. Mallory finds you two have been smoking in the rooms, he’ll have my guts for garters, so he will!”

“Sorry, Sister.”

“Aye, you sound it, too,” she laughed, and although she was plumping Wilfie’s pillows, he knew it was Ron those Irish eyes were smiling at. “You said you were wanting to cheer the patient up, Ron Tyler, not set fire to his bed, now away with you and let the poor boy sleep.”

Patient? Boy? To her, Wilfie was nothing more than another brick baking in the kiln of convalescence and she hadn’t even bothered to learn his bloody name. He could understand it, he supposed. Hundreds of wounded soldiers passed through these disinfected portals, but even so. She’d not only called Ron by his full name, she’d used his rank as well—

“Help, somebody help,” Ron cried, as Sister wheeled his chair away. “I’m being kidnapped!”

“Fat lot of good it’d do me, holding you to ransom,” she joked back. “Your family’s as poor as blooming church mice!”

As their banter faded, Wilfie felt the emptiness creep up on him. Slowly, silently, it began pressing on his bandages, crushing down his spirit and suffocating his hopes.

And the worst part was, he couldn’t even cry.

“So what’s it like, this chateau, then?” he asked, as Ron sneaked him another cigarette. “Is it all slate roofs, lakes, and turrets, like the one we saw outside that village where we were billeted the first few nights after we arrived? Ven— Verr—” He could never pronounce these flaming words.

“Véziéres,” Ron said, without stumbling. “And it’s not only like that chateau, mate, it is that chateau. All crystal candelabra, the sort of place where you can’t see the wood panelling for tapestries and the ceilings are so high, giraffes wouldn’t brush against them. You know, I bet these paintings cost a pretty penny, too.”

“Stuff ’em,” Wilfie said. “Stuff the sodding lot of them.”

What use was posh furniture when he couldn’t bloody see it? So what if the silk hangings could be removed, washed, and then rehung again? And who bloody cared whether the bed was Louis ex-one-vee or ex-vee-one when you were strapped to it night and bloody day?

The length of the pause suggested he’d put his foot in it again, and Wilfie felt bad about it, he really did. Apart from Ron’s visits, time hung and wouldn’t pass. The doctor’s calls were brief and far too impersonal for Wilfie’s liking, and worse, the snotty sod talked over him, as though Wilfie was deaf, as well as swaddled like a mummy. Even the nurses who flittered in and out to change his dressings and refresh his bedpans were too busy to stop and chat. There were far worse injuries than his, they’d tell him briskly, and remind him that he could at least feel the discomfort, which was more than could be said for those poor souls down there in the morgue. The trouble was, Wilfie was too proud to say outright that he was grateful to Ron for wheeling himself along when Sister’s back was turned. But truly, if it hadn’t been for him, he’d have gone stark, staring mad, and in any case, the poor sod was only trying to cheer him up. And it wasn’t exactly a picnic for him, either. Losing one leg, then a foot, what a bugger that was. The trouble was, Wilfie wasn’t the type who could just say “Sorry” and forget it, and, unlike Ron, he wasn’t good at making conversation. Never knew what to say that didn’t come out wrong.

“Hey, Wilf, guess what?” He should have remembered. Ron never took offence. “You know that girl we used to see cycling round Véziéres?” There was genuine excitement in his voice. “The one that fancied you?”

“The ginger one with fat thighs?” Wilfie said, because to the best of his recollection none of them had looked twice at him, not even the fat one.

“No, no, no. The little blonde who worked in the baker’s.”

“Think so,” Wilfie lied. “Wore glasses, didn’t she?”

“If she did, I never saw them, but the point is, she’s outside, my old mucker. Feeding the sparrows on the lawn not fifty feet from your bedroom window.”

Oh. For some reason Wilfie imagined he’d be on one of the upper stories, floating in the air in his fairytale castle. Not wedged like a sack of coals in some dark corner on the ground floor. But yeah, it made sense, he supposed. They’d want to protect his lower-class blood from staining their precious oak parquet, or make sure his working-class vowels didn’t shock the ghosts that drifted so genteelly round the West Wing.

“Here, are you listening, Prince Charming? I said, she’s waving at you. Not that I can make out what she’s saying through the glass—”

“Then open the bloody window,” Wilfie snapped.

“Ah, but then I’d need a jemmy and they’re not hospital issue,” Ron laughed. “All the windows have been nailed shut. Keeps the germs out, apparently.”

More likely to keep the burglars out, Wilfie thought sourly.

“But let’s see if we can’t improve on the situation, shall we.” The wheels on Ron’s chair proclaimed a desperate need for grease as he scraped his way across the room towards the window. “That’s better. We’re talking with our hands and reading one another’s lips. She says her name’s Michelle. She’s asking how you’re doing, so I said you’re feeling a bit down in the dumps—”

“What the bloody hell did you tell her that for?”

“—so she said she’ll drop by again tomorrow, if that’s all right with you.” There was a pause. “Well, is it?”

Was it! “Suppose so,” Wilfie said.

And all night he couldn’t sleep for trying to picture the baker’s shop with the petite blonde behind the counter who may or may not have been wearing glasses, but for the life of him he just couldn’t place her face. By the time dawn was glowing warm through his pyjamas, he realised he’d been picturing the wrong flaming baker’s shop, hadn’t he! It would have been the other one she worked in. The one behind the ironmonger’s, not the one opposite the church!

Wilfie was always getting things bloody wrong.

In fact, that’s what got him in this mess in the first place. He was sloppy. Always had been. He’d lose concentration at a critical moment, and that’s when mistakes happened. He didn’t mean them to, of course. But somehow his mind would get distracted, or he couldn’t quite remember, especially when he was under pressure, just what it was that he was supposed to do. Was it that you had to press this lever, or not ever press the flaming thing? Clockwise or counter-clockwise to twizzle that red knob?

All that drilling, all that training, and he still got things back to front.

Like that sodding grenade. Hung on to it too long, it blew up as he was throwing it. He was lucky. It could have literally blown up in his face. And even luckier that there was no one else around. He could have killed someone with his carelessness that time. But of course, if there was no one else around, there was no one else to blame, and now Wilfie’d be a laughingstock again, he really would. So he supposed that was at least something to be grateful for. Not having to go back and face his regiment.

Ha-bloody-ha, very funny, too. But it wasn’t simply the humiliation. He’d got used to that. No, the thing was, Wilfie’d really like to get things right for once. To not screw up.

And this Michelle...

It was such a pretty name.

“Describe her to me, Ron.”

“Again?”

“I want to get the picture right inside my head.” Before the memories of real life faded, and before colours turned to black.

“Well, it’s hard to tell exactly, but I reckon she’d come up to about here on you.” Ron drew a line at the top of Wilfie’s shoulder. “She’s slim, but not too skinny. Blonde, like I said, with curls piled up on top that catch the sunlight when she turns, and very fresh looking, with big blue eyes and a lovely smile, and I’ll bet her skin’s as soft as silk, you lucky dog.”

“Michelle.” Wilfie rolled her name around on his tongue. Michelle. Michelle. Michelle. “And it’s been how many days now she’s come to see me?”

“Six.”

“Including Sunday.” Wilfie had heard the church bells. Faint, but unmistakable. “So we can safely say she’s not the religious type.” He smiled. “That’s encouraging.”

“So’s seeing a grin on that face of yours — hey, what’s the matter?”

“Well, that’s the trouble, isn’t it. My face.” The smile had dropped as quickly as it appeared. “Right now, this Michelle feels sorry for me. Stuck in hospital, wrapped in bandages, it brings out the best in girls like her. But she won’t want me once I’ve been discharged, Ron. Blind, limping—” (Say it, Wilfie. Say it!) “—ugly.”

“Give over, you’ve always been ugly,” Ron shot back, and Wilfie laughed as well. “But I reckon you’re wrong about Michelle. She doesn’t strike me as the sorry-for-you type. I mean, remember how she used to glance over her shoulder at you as she cycled through the village?”

“She did?”

“Oh, come on, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how she used to suddenly have this urgent need to adjust her heels every time you passed her in the street? Or drop her handkerchief, or walk that silly dog of hers just when you happened to be in the neighbourhood.”

“Honest to God, Ron, I don’t remember any of it.”

Pretty girls just didn’t do that. Not for Wilfie. Not that he was ugly or anything. It was just that he was nothing special, him. So he’d keep his head down, scowling, hands stuffed in his pockets, and pretend he didn’t care. But... well, well, well.

All this time, and he hadn’t even realised!

“She left a letter, shall I read it?”

“Well, I bloody can’t, now can I?” But for once there was no bitterness in Wilfie’s voice. “What does it say?”

“It says—” With a theatrical cough, Ron cleared his throat. “—Mon cher Wilfie, je tu souhaite un prompt rétablissement, et j’attends avec intéret de toi rencontrer, quand tu es assez bien, and it’s signed Michelle.” Ron pushed the paper into his hand. “In other words, she—”

“Hey, I’m not stupid! I don’t need you to bloody translate it for me!”

“Sorry.”

“So you bloody should be.”

There was an awkward silence in which Wilfie wished he’d bitten off his tongue, but then Ron said he had to rush, the doctor was doing his evaluation any minute, though he’d be back for when Michelle dropped by this afternoon. But Wilfie wasn’t listening. He was too busy sniffing the letter, which smelled of disinfectant, but then it would. Everything that came into contact with this place did, and they’d probably made her wipe her hands before letting her pass it over! He waited until the squeak of the wheelchair had faded out of earshot, then called an orderly.

“Don’t suppose you could get this translated for me, could you, mate?”

“Tell me again what her letter says,” he asked Ron that afternoon.

Apparently, orderlies were too busy to do blind corporals any favours. Hardly took a glance at it, the lazy sod, and he was stuffing it back in Wilfie’s hand, trotting out more excuses than you could shake a stick at. Well, sod him, Wilfie thought, and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t offered to bloody pay him for it, either.

But as usual, Ron didn’t mind a bit, and Wilfie decided he really would make a damn good teacher. He had patience, did Ron.

“Your lovely Michelle wishes you a speedy recovery, and looks forward to meeting you once you’re well enough.” Ron chuckled. “Looks forward, you notice, Wilf. Now, does that sound the type of girl who’s going to drop you once you’re up and running? I tell you, mate, she’s smitten with you — and ho, ho, ho, talk of the devil. Guess who’s walking up the path towards a certain young man’s window at this very minute?”

Wilfie felt his heart pounding. “What’s she wearing? Is it that white blouse and pale grey skirt again?”

Ron had described it to him in exquisite detail. The way the breeze would ruffle the lace around her collar. The way that single slit in the back of her skirt made it swish this way and that, to reveal her shapely ankles. The brooch she always wore at her neck, in the shape of a flying swan.

“Tell me how she walks, Ron.”

He loved to hear about her. Every tiny detail. The long, slim fingers that spoke so eloquently through the glass panes that separated them. The eagerness in her wide, blue eyes as she drank in everything about Wilfie’s family, the neighbourhood he grew up in, his friends, even his dreary old labouring job.

Michelle...

Michelle didn’t care that he hadn’t amounted to anything, but with her, anything was possible. For a start, with her, he wouldn’t be so clumsy. She’d be there to help him and support him, and that was what had been missing in his life. The love of a good woman. My oh my, how he used to laugh at that old chestnut! Talk about corny, he would scoff. Oh yeah? Well, he wasn’t scoffing now. It was early days, of course, and he wouldn’t dare tell Ron, but — don’t laugh — Wilfie thought he might, just might, be in love.

“Dr. Mallory reckons I should retain partial sight in my right eye, what do you think of that, eh, Ron?”

And the news just kept on getting better. Tomorrow he’d be out of traction and soon he would be able to hop over to the window by himself. He had no idea what kind of sign language crutches were likely to communicate, but the thought of waving them like semaphore made him laugh so hard that the night sister feared he’d taken some kind of fit.

And maybe he had, at that.

Daft, wasn’t it, he thought? Him a half-blind, limping invalid, her all cool and elegant, but don’t they say that opposites attract?

“Ask her... ask her how she feels about living in England.”

The answer, apparently, was a shrug, but it was accompanied by a coy smile.

“But she’s blushing, right?”

“Very becomingly, in my opinion, Wilf.” Ron clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re onto a winner, there, my boy.”

Oh, yes indeed. Michelle obviously liked what she saw even back when he was stationed in the village, although he wished now he hadn’t been so bloody sullen. Lack of confidence was all it was, but suddenly, with Michelle, Wilfie realised that he wouldn’t need to play the tough guy anymore. She was the kind of girl who could see through a chap’s insecurities and just let him be himself, and for that he loved her, yes, he did and — there. He’d said it. Wilfie Baines loves Michelle.

Crumbs. Who ever would have thought it! He lay awake all night thinking it was all very well passing messages to Ron to signal through the window, but what would he actually say to her when they finally met up? What would her hand feel like closed inside both of his, he wondered. How would her hair smell when he buried his face in it? Would it be warm and yeasty, from working so close to the ovens? Or would it be dusty with flour from the loaves, tickling his nose and making him sneeze? By the time the first cup of morning tea was making its wobbly way towards his mouth, he was picturing their initials carved in the trunk of the old plane tree where she came to feed the sparrows.

It might be a little premature, but Wilfie couldn’t help wondering where a man could buy engagement rings round here.

What Wilfie hadn’t bargained for, of course, was being moved. That between having his leg seen to, and then his ribs, then his burns and eyes sorted out, several days would pass. But at least it was still good news.

“Exactly as I told you,” the surgeon said. “A clean and simple leg break.”

Six weeks and Wilfie would be running for the bus again, he quipped, and Wilfie could not believe his luck.

“I thought this place was for the seriously injured?”

“We don’t have time to classify the maimed, Corporal.” The surgeon had already lost interest in his patient. “I’m just grateful to see you boys leave here alive, now who’s next on the list, please, nurse?”

Wilfie tried to think who it was who’d told him about this place, but then how often had the bloke beside you told you something, and by the time it reached the far end of the trench, the meaning had changed out of all recognition? Getting signals crossed was par for the course around here, and all that mattered was that Wilfie’s luck was changing.

“Mademoiselle from Armentiéres, parlez-vous—”

“Oi!” somebody yelled. “Would someone put that flaming cat outside?”

Wilfie grinned and gave him a cheerful V-sign. “—inky-pinky, parlez-vous.”

Funnier things had happened at sea, he thought, but he had a feeling that hanging on to that grenade was Wilfie’s lucky day. Had he thrown it properly, he wouldn’t have found Michelle, he wouldn’t have run into his old school friend, hell, he might even be dead by now. Another lump of meat, bloating in the mud, trampled down by scores of frightened boots.

Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile—

“There you go, soldier. Put these drops in your eye three times a...”

Wilfie was only half listening, though, because suddenly the world was a completely different place. He could see, he could see, and all right, his left eye was still covered by a patch and the right was weak and blurry, but as he was surrounded by daylight, faces, colours for the first time in God knows how long, Wilfie remembered hangovers that had left him with worse vision than this. He could see and he was free, and were it not for that stupid leg in plaster, he’d have clicked both heels together in the air.

“Excuse me,” he asked one of the porters. “Do you know where I can find Lieutenant Tyler? He’s an amputee—”

“Ronnie?” The porter stood his empty stretcher upright and used it as a prop. “What a character, that boy, eh?” He sighed. “I mean, we all know what he did to earn that promotion to lieutenant, and he’ll get a medal for diving forward to push three men out of the way when that ammunitions store went up, but to listen to him, you’d never think he was a cripple, would you?”

“No. No, you wouldn’t.”

“That lad’ll have the same nightmares that you and all them other poor sods’ll have, probably for the rest of your lives, you poor old buggers, but does our Ronnie let it show? Not him, and that’s the point, innit? It’s all a question of attitude, and I’ll bet you’re right proud to call that lad your friend.”

“I am.” He was.

“Anyway.” The porter picked up his bloodstained stretcher. “Up them stairs, turn right, and you can’t miss him, chum. Just watch for the gaggle of hens clucking over him!”

“Thanks.”

Hobbling through the crush of haemorrhaging humanity, joggled by muddy uniforms, shattered gas masks, and all the other horrors that he’d shoved to the back of his mind while he’d been wrapped up in his silent, white cocoon, Wilfie was suddenly gripped by a cold, hard rush of fear that made him stumble. Panic gripped him. He was slipping in the mud again, choking on cordite while cannons roared and bullets pinged around him He could hear the soft hiss of canisters of death. The crackle of machine-gun fire. The screams of men cut to ribbons on barbed wire—

Then snap and it was gone. Over as quickly as it started, and although his skin was cold with sweat, it wasn’t out of fear. Lying bandaged to the gills, Wilfie hadn’t stopped to think about it, but now it dawned on him that these injuries, however minor, still meant he’d never be sent back to the front, and Ron was right. He was alive and yes, it did bloody count for something. War was not the Great Adventure that was being played out in the newspapers at home. It wasn’t over quickly, as the pundits had predicted; in fact, this filthy war was claiming more young lives than ever, and in the vilest of ways. Wilfie only had to look around to see that he was one of the lucky ones, and it came as quite a shock to realise that the bitterness and rancour that had been eating him before was gone.

He felt different, suddenly. Lighter. As though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders and a whole new world was opening up before him. A fresher, cleaner world, full of opportunities, and he no longer felt ground down with envy, either. Sure, Ron had brains and looks and charm. All the things Wilfie didn’t have and frankly never would, but surprisingly it didn’t matter anymore. For the first time, Wilfie had someone in his life who wanted him. Who accepted him for who and what he was, with neither criticism or judgment. Today — today, from this day forward and in sickness and in health, was the start of a new life...

It wasn’t easy, shambling up the crowded stairs with blurred vision and a crutch, but even so, Wilfie could see the chateau steps had class. He couldn’t tell whether they were stone or marble, but whichever, he couldn’t help but admire the big, wide sweep. To be honest, he’d suspected Ron had been pulling his leg about the tapestries and pictures hanging on the walls. Wilfie thought they’d have been removed at the outset of the fighting, but perhaps there wasn’t time to take them down, or maybe looting was the least of these Frenchies’ worries. Either way, though, he was glad. Wilfie couldn’t tell his Titian from his elbow, but he’d bet his last pack of fags that Ron would know who’d painted what, and fancy being able to tell his mum he’d seen a real, live Rembrandt!

It’s a long way to Tipperary—

Yep. Ron might have the brains, the looks, the charm, but Wilfie was in love. In unconditional, thrilling, can’t-sleep-for-thinking-about-her love, and it wouldn’t be long now before he got to meet Michelle and hold her hands in his, perhaps stand beneath the ancient plane tree and bury his face in her gorgeous, soft blond hair.

“—it’s a long way to go—”

But first, yes, first he had to set things right. Throughout Ron’s visits — visits which, quite honestly, were the only things that kept him sane — he’d been obsessed with nothing other than his own injuries. Now admittedly he hadn’t known it at the time, but they were trivial, especially compared to Ron’s, and it was high time he said the things he’d been too proud to say before. Words like sorry, thank you, and, who knows, maybe even owning up that he couldn’t speak a word of French needed to be aired. No call to make a song and dance of it, just a few words, man to man, to set the record straight. As he approached Ron, engulfed by hordes of laughing staff, Wilfie knew that, wheelchair or not, he really wouldn’t have any trouble finding himself a wife. It was exactly as the porter said. A question of attitude, and he had Ron to thank for his. That grenade might not have killed him, Wilfie reflected happily, but Ron had surely saved his life. Him, and his sweet Michelle.

“Ron?”

Oh, wasn’t that just his luck? The minute he opened his mouth, some bloody bell goes off and drowns him out, and suddenly nurses, orderlies, doctors, the lot, were rushing off in all directions to attend to this latest crisis on the battlefield.

And that’s when Wilfie saw her. Blond hair, swirled up and round on top, it couldn’t be anyone else. Even with his fuzzy vision, how could he miss that long grey skirt and lacy blouse, and though he couldn’t quite make it out from here, he’d bet his pocket watch that that brooch glinting at her neck was a swan in flight.

“Michelle!” His heart was pounding. “Michelle!”

She couldn’t hear above the piercing shrill, so he waved his crutch, and it was due to the combination of excitement and fighting to stay upright that he hadn’t quite realised what he’d been looking at.

Where all the other staff had rushed away, Michelle remained beside Ron’s chair. She was laughing — so help him, he could see her white teeth shining when she tipped her head back — and then bending down to whisper in Ron’s ear.

Nah. Don’t be daft, Wilfie told himself. Of course she’d have to lean down close, he couldn’t hear her otherwise, could he? Not with this flaming racket going on. All the same, he stopped. Watched while she ruffled Ron’s hair with genuine affection. While she laughed again, in the way that only close friends do. And when she walked away, Wilfie watched the slit in her skirt swishing this way and that, to reveal her shapely ankles.

Stop it. Stop it, Wilfie, don’t do this. They’re friends. Good pals, that’s all, and what do you expect after all that signalling through the bloody window? It’s you she wrote to, remember? You she came to see each day, and you, Wilfred Herbert Baines, that she wanted to hear about, not Ron, so don’t you go making a damn fool of yourself. Not this time. You’ve screwed up enough already in your life, so you get this bloody right for once.

But then it happened. As Michelle strode off down the corridor, she turned and glanced at Ron over her shoulder. Not a quick glance, either. A direct and lingering look, probably the very one she’d given Wilfie when she cycled through the village. Except this time there was someone to acknowledge her. Someone to wave back...

Oh, yes, Ronnie Tyler had the lot. Courage, brains, good looks, and charm; he was popular with both sexes of all ages, and could have any girl he wanted.

Yet the minute Wilfie’s back was turned, he’d stolen his.

In the end, it was very simple. Everyone had gone, even Michelle, God love her, and the corridor and the stairs were deathly quiet. Only Wilfie, Ron, and the ghosts that stalked the chateau stayed, frozen in some kind of limbo in which the passage of time was marked by dust motes dancing in the air.

“Wilf!” Ron turned, his mouth breaking into a grin. “Congratulations, mate! Wasn’t expecting you back until tomorrow.”

“So I gather,” he growled, knocking the brake off the wheelchair with his crutch.

“Look, Ma,” Ron laughed, throwing both arms in the air as Wilfie gave the chair a good, hard shove. “No hands!”

The stairs were stone.

The drop was steep.

Those were the last words that Ronnie Tyler ever spoke.

And the weird thing was, Wilfie didn’t even feel bad about it. Like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, he’d broken free of his cocoon, and he didn’t mean his bandages. The clumsy, sloppy, sullen Wilfie had emerged into a poised and confident individual, and ironic as it was that Ron had been responsible for that transformation, you can’t go round stealing a man’s only chance of happiness and not expect to pay the price.

Wilfie didn’t blame Michelle for what had happened, how could he? She’d never even met him, and even though he’d only been gone a day or two, this was war, where time was measured on a different scale, and in any case Ron could charm the birds down from the trees.

“Oh, fancy, would you look at that!”

He couldn’t make out sister’s expression as she ran towards the jumble of twisted metal at the bottom of the staircase. But Wilfie could hear the sorrow in her voice.

“I told him,” she sniffed. “I told him time and time again not to go wheeling himself about on his own, and now look what you’ve done, Ronnie Tyler! You’ve gone and killed yourself, you silly fool.”

See? Even in a place that was hardened to tragedy and carnage, Ron was still their darling. But what the hell. Wilfie let him have his triumph, and why not. He couldn’t say whether he and Michelle would make it as a team, it was still very early days, but he didn’t see why not. Because while Wilfie could never be a teacher (and nothing in the world would keep him stuck inside a bloody bank all day), Michelle worked in a bread shop, didn’t she? Who better to teach him shopkeeping skills, and what was to stop them from opening their own little baker’s shop back home?

He would love her, cherish her, devote his whole life to her if she would only let him, because this was the new Wilfie now. Hadn’t he already proved that he was no longer that sloppy worker who lost his concentration? It was a pity, in a way, that he could never tell her that he hadn’t just committed murder, he had committed the perfect murder. No witnesses, no weapon, no clues, no motive, it was absolutely textbook, but the point is, if a man can get away with that, he can do anything he puts his mind to.

A question of attitude, right, Ron?

He didn’t wait while they untangled the body from the wheelchair and laid it on a stretcher. He needed to find Michelle. Better Wilfie broke the news than have her hear it from a stranger, but first he needed to see what kind of mangled mess she’d be confronted with. Ron might have lost his legs, he remembered sourly, but at least his face had remained intact, and though Wilfie was no coward, he didn’t mind admitting that his hands were shaking as he hobbled towards the massive gilt mirror at the end of the hallway.

“Corporal Baines?”

He was so absorbed in examining the raw, red mess that was his face that he smelled her perfume before he even saw her. Jasmine, with soft hints of patchouli — and not a trace of disinfectant. And when he looked into the mirror, he saw that, yes, she did come up to about here on his shoulder, and yes again, it was a flying swan, that brooch.

“You were Lieutenant Tyler’s friend — oh, I say, are you all right?”

“I—”

When she smiled, Wilfie didn’t need 20–20 vision to see there was no grief clouding those heavenly big blue eyes. Only kindness and comfort shined out to him. The trouble was, in the unforgiving glare of the crystal candelabra, the strands of grey in that lovely pile of hair stood out. Hundreds, yes hundreds, of silver, glinting threads that were in keeping with the furrows round her eyes, the lines around her mouth, and no wonder he hadn’t paid attention when she cycled round the village. Michelle was old enough to be his bloody mum.

“I’m... fine.”

He was. Honest. Because so what that Michelle was older than Ron made out? She cared about him, didn’t she? At least it wasn’t the fat girl with ginger hair and thighs like tree trunks, and knocking on or not, she was a damned good-looking woman, so stop stuttering, you fool. You’re the new Wilfie, remember? Strong, confident, got away with murder? Just calm down, ask her if she’d like a cup of tea, and take it from there.

Except...

There was something here that Wilfie couldn’t quite put his finger on. Admittedly, he was so confused, so amazed, oh Christ, so bloody happy that his brain was out of focus, but something was still bugging him. Not that he might be ashamed to be seen with an older woman. Not that. Michelle was still a stunner — Shit. A stunner who spoke English...

“Are you sure you don’t want me to call somebody, Corporal? You’ve gone terribly pale and I’m concerned about your sudden change in breathing.”

Corporal. She addressed him by his rank...

“You... You’re not Michelle, are you?” The floor was spinning. He could barely gasp the words out.

“Yes, dear, I’m Mrs. Mitchell.” She nodded supportively. “The hospital administrator, but if you’re absolutely certain that you don’t need a nurse, I’ll be about my duties.” Her smile was sad. “I simply wanted to offer my condolences, I know what good friends you were, and perhaps when you get home you wouldn’t mind telling Ron’s family how proud we were to have him with us.” She ruffled Wilfie’s hair affectionately. “Well, I don’t need to tell you how it was, do I?”

With that she was gone, her long grey skirt swishing round her ankles, the lace at her collar ruffling in the air. At the end of the corridor, she turned to glance over her shoulder. Not a quick glance, either. A direct and lingering look. Exactly like the one Wilfie watched her giving Ron.

How many hours did he remain, slumped at the top of the marble staircase? Sunshine turned to night. The hospital went quiet. Quiet, Wilfie decided, as the grave.

This wasn’t true. Michelle was real. She’d come to see him, hadn’t she? Every bloody day she’d come to see him, and even if it was the fat one with ginger hair and Ron was too kind to say, so what? She’d come to visit, that’s the bloody point.

But a little voice kept whispering. Whispering at him through the silence—

I made it up, Wilf. I only said those things to cheer you up. To give you something to focus on, when you were feeling so depressed.

No, no, she’s real, Wilfie shouted inside his head. She came to feed the sparrows on the lawn outside my window.

And that’s when he remembered. When they’d stretchered him away to get his leg seen to, he’d been so preoccupied with the pain searing through his ribs that he hadn’t paid much attention as they bumped him down the stairs. The stairs, you see. Not one flight, not even two. Which meant there could not have been a lawn outside the window—

Bollocks. Get a grip. Ron could still have seen her down below, and who cares if he lied about her looks? Michelle was real and the proof was here, right here in Wilfie’s pocket. Look! In the letter she had written him herself. He shuffled to the light beneath the mirror. Smelled the disinfectant on the page. The page that was blank, whichever side he turned—

In the mirror, Wilfie saw an old, old man, and the old man’s face wasn’t ravaged by either scars or burns, it was disfigured by loneliness and spite. And in the silence that would follow him forever, he could hear the sound of an ungreased wheel spinning slowly at the bottom of the stairs. No matter how loudly Wilfie screamed to drown it out.

© 2008 by Marilyn Todd