The Charioteer: A Novel

3

THE TWO LINES OF beds converged in a neat perspective on the desk at the end. The crude design on the cotton counterpanes was shrill and unfaded, hard reds and blues on a buff ground. The deal lockers, the low beds, even the prefabricated walls were new. New things were everywhere; it was only the men in the beds who looked shabby and worn. None of them were old, and many were no older than Laurie, who was twenty-three; but they had had a good deal of hard use.

It was ten minutes to eleven of the Sister’s morning off, which began at ten-thirty. As usual she was still there, giving last reminders to the Charge Nurse, who as usual resented it.

“Don’t forget that Major Ferguson is doing the sequestrectomy after the arthrodesis.”

“No, Sister.”

“And do see that there’s no muddle about the injections, this time.”

“Yes, Sister.”

Laurie, overhearing this, unstrapped his watch; later he might get drowsy and forget. He pushed it across the locker to Reg Barker, who said, “Uh-huh,” and put it on. They always looked after each other’s on operation days.

The Sister said, “Oh, and Nurse. I want Wilson moved out of the side ward for today, and Corporal Odell put in there when he comes back from the theater. He was very noisy coming round last time.” Two of the men exchanged grins and her back stiffened.

“There,” said Reg Barker to Laurie when she had gone. “Put in solitary. That’ll learn you, Spud.”

“Suits me,” said Laurie, who had had this joke in every way. “I’ll get a bit of sleep.”

“Sleep! We know. Mind, now, I’ll be listening. Minute I hear a woman scream I’ll be there. You watch out, Spud, she might be more oncoming when she gets you alone.”

“Comment? Pardon?” Laurie stifled a sigh. Charlot hated to miss anything. None of the nurses spoke French, so they had put Laurie next him to interpret. His father and three brothers had been killed by machine-gun fire in the boat after their fishing smack had been bombed. Charlot, the sole survivor, had been picked up unconscious, drifting with the corpses. He had been shot in the spine, and after three months and two operations was still in plaster from chest to hips. His legs were paralyzed; Major Ferguson thought that it was functional. So now Laurie explained to him what they had all been laughing at, as brightly as he could. It gave Charlot the chance to try out some of his English vocabulary; Laurie wasn’t the only one to give him lessons.

“Now, boys,” said the Charge Nurse, “I don’t need to ask if that was a dirty one; I can tell by the sound. Odell, have you used the bottle yet?”

“I can go through, Nurse; I’ll look after the leg.”

“Don’t you dare. If you think we’ve got time to prep you again at the last minute. Ask for one when you have your injection.”

“I was wondering about my X-rays, they don’t seem to be here.”

“Oh, yes they are, they’re on the desk. I know what you are, reading your notes and getting half-baked ideas. Shakespeare says a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

“Sorry, Nurse.”

“That put you in your place,” said Reg. “Time you was kipping down, ain’t it? They going to fix the knee so you can bend it, this time?”

“I can now, a bit.”

“Ah,” said Reg with foggy tact. He changed the subject. “You was supposed to be done first. They ought to be more careful, drawing it out how they do.”

“Oh, well. When we were lying out on the beach we wouldn’t have minded swapping for this.”

Reg replied in the conventional way, which was to mill over a number of old grievances. No one discussed what he had really felt; they took it out on other things. They were an extremely touchy society, but most of them were aware of it.

What with one thing and another, Laurie felt as touchy as anyone that morning; but he was anxious not to let it loose on Reg, to whom he was bound in a kind of blood-brotherhood. The stretcher party had dumped them side by side on the Dunkirk beach, and they had had time to get used to one another. Laurie had had two shots of morphia inside an hour, which removed apprehension to some extent but seemed hardly to touch the pain; so it had sometimes been a relief to know that Reg was then totally blind. The bomb which had splintered his arm had mildly concussed him, and his eyelids had swelled and stuck together. He was sure he had lost his eyes, and, the concussion having destroyed his inhibitions, begged loudly to have a bullet put through his head. It was months since either of them had referred to this even obliquely; but now Reg said, “I wonder I didn’t do you when you shoved me eyes open. If I could have found me rifle I’d have done for you sure. Set me mind at rest, though, that’s a fact.”

“I’m starting to forget half of it now. All for the best.”

“Never been able to think how you moved that far.”

“Dope. Doped to the eyes.”

“Well, here’s another coming for you now. Be turning you into a flipping drug fiend, this rate.”

Laurie rolled up his sleeve. The ice-cold evaporation of the spirit, the wasplike sting of the needle, once more set his teeth on edge. When the nurse had “settled” him, he ran his eye over the paraphernalia on the locker-top: enamel vomit bowl and cloth, tongue forceps and spatula. The absence of the notes and X-rays fidgeted him. There was a new nurse on and they might get forgotten. Well, she would probably not resent being reminded as the Charge Nurse would. She hadn’t minded his shaving the leg himself while she was called away from the screens. One glance at her face had assured him that she wouldn’t shave it far enough up, in which case Major Ferguson, who gave no marks for modesty, would make her sorry she had ever been born a country vicar’s daughter or whatever it was. It was a job for an orderly, but the whole place was in a chronic muddle.

He ought to shut his eyes now and give his sedative a chance. He wished he could cure himself of fighting drugs and anesthetics, since this only seemed to make it worse. The Night Nurse, a comfortable person, had said that nurses were far too busy on operation days to listen to all the rubbish they heard, which meant nothing anyway and all sounded alike. Laurie, who had no great sense of his own importance, was very ready to believe this; but it never quite reassured him.

Seeing him move restlessly, Reg said, “Doing you this late, you could have had breakfast.”

“Hell, don’t remind me. They can’t help it here, it’s all fixed in the theater.”

“Post’s late today. Heard from Madge yesterday, though.”

“She and the boy okay?”

“Had a bomb in the next street. That’s the nearest yet. She’ll have to go to her auntie in St. Albans. I keep telling her. Don’t know what makes her so obstinate.”

Laurie, who had met Madge Barker several times, thought he could guess. Lest his face should hint at this, he got down into the bedclothes.

“That’s right. Get yourself some shut-eye. And when they do you, you watch yourself and don’t get fresh with no officers, ’cause you’ll have to meet them again, see, you won’t be lucky like you was on that ship.”

Laurie smothered the conversation with a sleepy-sounding grunt; this reminder came at the worst possible time for his self-confidence. He could remember very little about the crossing from Dunkirk; he had lost a good deal of blood by then, since they couldn’t keep a tourniquet on all the time, and had had some more shots of morphia. Barker, who was seeing by then as his swollen lids contracted, had told him a little. Laurie only knew that the ship was small and crowded, and that sometimes his life had seemed to be going out on a cold wave of nausea. Once, returning to himself for a few minutes, he had looked up to find a bearded face peering into his. It hung there persistently saying something and asking questions he felt too ill to deal with. Dimly he reflected that he was filthy and unshaved, and that his leg felt like some extraneous decaying mess. This attention was very flattering and suddenly, weakly funny. His inhibitions must have been at their lowest; for he remembered giving a wry kind of smile and saying, “Sorry, dearie. Some other time.” The face had disappeared rather quickly; he couldn’t remember seeing it again. Luckily, Reg Barker had his own version of this story. “Old Spud was a one coming over. The captain took a look at him to see he was still alive, like; and old Spud was that far gone, he took him for some tart and give him the brushoff. Chap with a mucking great beard and all. Laugh!”

A fuzzy dullness was creeping over his brain. He recognized the effects of morphia and atropine, being too old a hand not to have found out by now what the syringe contained. Resolving not to doze off, he lay staring at the ceiling. He was in a punt on the Cher at Oxford, lying on cushions and looking up at the leaves. Between the willow banks he saw Charles swimming toward him. “Come along,” said Charles, “the water’s absolute heaven. You know you can swim really.” “Perhaps I can,” Laurie told him, “but I don’t want to. It’s not allowed, I’m having an operation.”

The theater trolley came squeaking up to the bed; the orderlies said, “What, you again? Watch after the towels, Sid,” and lifted him onto the cold, taut canvas. He was aware of it all but it couldn’t have mattered less. They went out through an unwalled covered way, roofed with iron, to the theater. Here was the anesthetic room with the awkward ledge in the doorway. The previous operation was still going on; one of the orderlies went, the other whistled between his teeth and looked out of the window. Captain Hodgkin, the anesthetist, came out masked and gowned, holding a big syringe. Laurie thrust out his arm.

“Well, Odell, back again. How’s it been?”

“Coming along, sir, thanks.”

“Good. Clench your fist.”

The vein inside the elbow corded and stood out. The needle went into it. “Count.”

“One. Two. Three. Four.” Nothing was happening. “Five. Six.” Nothing. “Seven … Nine. …”

The trolley beneath him ceased to be palpable. He floated, soared. The doors of a forgotten home opened to receive him.

He was being lifted and put down. They were putting him on the table. They hadn’t given him enough, he wasn’t under; they would start to operate if he didn’t tell them now. He struggled with a sore throat and furred mouth. His knee felt sore; good God, they must have begun.

“Hi.” It came out like an animal grunt.

“All right,” said a girl’s voice. “Keep quiet. It’s all over.”

He opened his eyes; he was back in bed. “Sorry,” he said. “Silly. Always do this. Awfully sorry. So damned silly.”

“Sh-sh. Go to sleep again.”

“Sorry to be so silly. Do excuse me.”

“It’s all right, but you ought to be resting.”

“Don’t worry about me. I know you, you’re the new one. So sorry to be a bother. What’s your name?”

“Nurse Adrian. Don’t talk now.”

“Goodnight”

He shut his eyes, but opened them again.

“Nurse.”

“Yes?”

“You’re staying with me, aren’t you? You won’t go?”

“Not if you’re quiet and don’t get excited.”

“No, really, Nurse. I’m not excited at all. I just think it’s so very good of you. I don’t deserve it, you know. If you knew all about me, you wouldn’t be good to me like you are.”

“Hush, you’ve had an operation, you must keep quiet.”

“I’m always having operations. I’m quite used to it. Don’t go back over there. I want to hold your hand.”

“Sister says you’ve got to keep still.”

“She doesn’t understand. You see, you see it’s important. You don’t think I’m like that, do you?”

“Of course not, it’s just the anesthetic.”

“Going through a phase is different, I mean people do. It isn’t anything. You never met Charles, did you?”

“Please try and settle down.”

“It was the people he knew, awful people you’d never have believed, it was that, really. Can I have some water?”

“You’ve just had some. Only a sip.”

“Thank you. There was a man at school, that would have been quite different, you may not understand that, but it would. But he had too high ideals, I can’t tell you now, it was all wrong the way they treated him, of course I never saw him again. So please don’t think I’ve ever done anything that would make you not want to sit here with me. You don’t, do you?”

“Of course you haven’t. It’s only the ether upsetting you. Is your leg hurting much?”

“It always hurts a bit. Just don’t think about it. I should like to kiss you and I think that speaks for itself, don’t you?”

“You’re talking rather nonsense and it’s only making you tired.”

“I suppose you wouldn’t kiss me, just quickly?”

“Sister wouldn’t let me sit here if I did, I should have to go.”

“People don’t understand, do they? I’m sorry, Nurse.”

“It isn’t your fault, it’s only the ether. I think I’ll ask if you can have a sedative now.”

A light crossed his eyes. The blackout was up; it was the Night Nurse leaning over him with her torch.

“Hello, Odell. Feeling better now?”

“Oh, hello, Nurse. Yes, thanks. What time is it?”

“Nearly one.”

“Good Lord, is it? I say, I do hope I’ve not been making a row.”

“Not since I’ve been on. We’ll put you back in the ward in the morning.”

When she had gone he shifted his leg cautiously on the pillow, moving it from the hip. It felt tender and aching, and the joint seemed stiffer than ever, but then the bandage was tight. Major Ferguson would be doing a round tomorrow; one could ask him, perhaps.

All being well, this was his final operation. In a few weeks’ time, someone would write in the ward report book, “Returned to unit for discharge: Odell. Admitted: So-and-So.” They would remember him, perhaps, as long as people remember one of the bit parts in an old film. Exit a quiet, tidy patient (except on operation days). Enter, somewhere else, a young man with a lame leg and an unanswered question. Statistics gave this new character something like fifty years’ expectation of life. Laurie reminded himself that it was two in the morning; he drank his malted milk, wriggled down in the pillow and shut his eyes.

The river flowed gently under the hanging willows; the sun shone slanting through it, lighting up dark streaming weeds along the bottom, warm umber mud, and golden stones. The fish slipped by, sly fine shadows among the other shadows of water and weed. The afternoon sun felt warm along his side. He raised his arms and dived, straight and clear; came up, shook his eyes free, and with long, easy strokes swam into the sunny waters upstream.

Eight days after his operation they had still not told him anything. The morning of Major Ferguson’s round had come again. It was the most detested event of the week: for the staff, because he expected the punctilio of a large teaching hospital to which the resources of the place were unequal; and for the patients because for an hour or more they would be virtually on parade, unable to move from their beds, smoke, or talk.

Laurie’s knee had been cleaned and dressed, and a cheap gauze bandage put on which could be cut to save ninety seconds of Major Ferguson’s time. There had been opportunity for a good look. The upper half of the scar had been reopened; it was thick, purplish, deeply indented, and smelt of pus. Two red rubber drainage tubes stuck out of it. Below that it was almost healed; but that was where the kneecap had been shot away and the ragged skin cobbled over. From there a long, deep, jagged scar went plowing down nearly to the ankle. He had got over feeling sick when he looked at it. Sometimes it had been a struggle to hide this ungrateful reaction. He had been told often enough it was a miracle he should have the leg at all.

There seemed, he thought, to be a worse flap than usual today. Every nurse was doing the work of one junior to herself; and now for the first time he noticed that the junior of them all was sweeping the floor, a job normally finished hours before by the wardmaid. It was the young Nurse Adrian: he had been a little shy of her since the operation, which he felt to be selfish since she was probably much shyer. It was high time to be making an effort.

“New job for you, Nurse?” he ventured when she got to his bed.

She gave him her open, schoolroom smile. (A bumpy tennis court, he thought; red-hot-pokers in the border, and a few cobby old trees with a hammock they call the orchard; a pensioned-off gun-dog who sits in with Daddy, and a wire-haired terrier you couldn’t show, but a good listener.) “I do wish these beds had wheels, I can’t get behind them properly.”

“Where’s the maid, off sick?”

“No, they’ve left.”

“What, not all of them?”

“Yes—oh, I’m so sorry, I hope that didn’t jog your leg. They thought it was too isolated.”

“Oh, they did?” said Reg Barker. A walking patient, he saw a number of small fatigues coming his way. “That’s too bad, that makes my heart bleed, that does. I been in some isolated places too, and so’s Spud here. See, Spud, that’s how mugs like you and me waste our lives. That’s what we ought to have done, packed it in and gone to the pictures. We wouldn’t be no trouble to anyone then.”

Neames, who had been in a bank in civil life and was dignified, said, “From what I hear, Nurse, there’s been a good deal of mismanagement over staff conditions here.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” said Nurse Adrian correctly. She hurried on. Everyone in earshot, except Charlot, settled down to a solid army grouse.

“Quiet, everyone, please,” said the Charge Nurse. A clump of white coats had appeared in the doorway.

Laurie stubbed out his cigarette, moistened his lips, and waited. They would start on the other side and take more than half an hour to reach him. The thing was to be prepared for the worst; and at once he imagined Major Ferguson saying, “Well, Odell, I think we can get you back the full use of that leg. A few exercises and some massage …” The scene presented itself to him with vivid clearness, like a landscape before a storm.

He had no entertainment to pass the time, except the slow procession across the ward. There was a different lot of students. They came out from the large City Hospital at Bridstow. The pink young man at the end was a new one. Crowded out from the case under discussion, he was running his eye idly along the opposite line of beds. His glance lingered on Laurie; slid away with a flick of his light eyelashes; slid back and lingered again, cautiously, as a fly settles. Laurie, whose nerves were strained, began to be irritated. In heaven’s name, he thought, why so shy? Every second man in this room, on a modest estimate, must have wiped out at least one of his fellow creatures; with the gunners it might run into scores for all they know. That poor little devil with the white eyelashes, with any luck at all, will probably save enough lives to balance the book. But because something holds him back from reproducing himself in time for the next holocaust, here he is peering out at us from under a flat stone. Cheer up, darling, after all you might have invented a bigger and better bomb and got a bloody knighthood. … At this point the young man looked his way again. Rapidly, Laurie caught his eye before he could disengage it, and gave him a deliberately dazzling smile. As he had confidently expected, the young man went crimson, and merged himself deeply in the throng. I do hope, thought Laurie he won’t decide later to write me a little note. But no, I don’t think he puts much in writing. To a nunnery go, why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?

From long practice on mornings like this, he and Reg had perfected an almost soundless speech like that of convicts at exercise. Beg said, “Know that guy?”

“No. Made a mistake.”

“I’ll say. Proper sissy.” But the Sister had turned. He pretended he had only leaned over for a drink from the locker-top.

The clump of white coats moved sluggishly on, clotting around each bed like ants around lumps of sugar.

“Morning, Odell.”

Laurie sat at attention, a little lopsidedly because of the cushions under his leg. “Good morning, sir.”

“Leg more comfortable now?”

“Yes, thank you, sir.”

“Much drainage still, Sister?”

“Very little now, sir.”

“I’ll see it, please.”

The Sister folded back the clothes, snipped the bandage, and lifted the dressing off with forceps. Major Ferguson peered down with simple pleasure, like a gardener at a choice rose. Laurie got his question ready; his hands felt rather cold.

“I think you saw this man after his first operation, sir.”

The question died on Laurie’s lips. He had noticed for the first time, on the visiting surgeon’s shoulders, the tabs of a brigadier.

“… and comminuted patella,” Major Ferguson was saying. “The fractured ends of the femur were extensively exposed and penetrated with gravel and so on. The osteomyelitis responded remarkably well to sulphonamides, but, as you see, we had to open four times in all to remove various sequestra, and about a month ago we began to feel he’d probably be better off without it. However, the callus started to look more promising, and the question then was whether amputation would be justified by the increased mobility he’d get from an artificial limb.”

“The knee’s completely ankylosed, is it?” The brigadier sounded like an intelligent player discussing a chess problem.

“No, sir, we managed to give him a flexion of about twenty degrees, and that decided us to leave it, combined with the fact that we’ve reduced the shortening to just about an inch. The repair of the quadriceps …”

Laurie sat at attention, eyes front. After the blow had reached him through the swathes of technical jargon, he had suddenly remembered the pink young man lurking somewhere at the back. It stiffened his pride, which the two specialists had made to seem nugatory, a trivial reflex like a knee-jerk. Laurie schooled his face, for the necessary minutes, to a wooden noncomprehension; and soon he was alone again, half hearing the exchange of Charlot’s patois and the surgeon’s public-school French. Then he slipped down in bed with the caution of a criminal, lest the counterpane should be disturbed and some nurse come to straighten it. Luckily this fear was a kind of distraction; soon he was able to blot his eyes on the sheet and come to the surface again.

Reg was maneuvering a book in front of his face, signal of a wish to talk. Suddenly Laurie felt a great craving for simple, platitudinous sympathy. He turned around, and held a paper up too.

Reg said, “Had a letter from me dad today.”

“M-m?” The doctors had worked over the next few beds quickly; they were nearing the door. Laurie realized a delayed impression which his tension had excluded before, that all day Reg had been rather like an actor gagging to cover up. “Your dad all right?”

“Dad’s okay. Me better half’s gone off the rails, that’s all.”

Laurie remembered the letter coming and the long silence after. An awful sense of inadequacy appeared ahead of him, like a gulf into which he would have to step. He murmured, “Things get garbled. Gossip and so on.”

“Gossip?” Reg’s coarse-grained forehead puckered down the middle, so that the reddish hairs of his eyebrows met. “She’s gone to live with the mucker, and she’s took our boy.”

“Bloody shame,” said Laurie, desperately trying to make emphasis do the work of sense. Madge Barker was a dumpy, bosomy girl with a dusty, mouse-colored parting in her platinum hair, which she wore shoulder-length, emphasizing the shortness of her neck. Her real-good-sort façade was not so much false as slovenly, like a cover flung over an unmade bed. She looked at every man she met as if there were only one thing she wanted to know about him, but her speech was terrifyingly genteel. Laurie detested her.

“Boy’s turned six now,” Reg was saying. “Kids that age understand.”

“They’ll give you custody.” Thankfully Laurie accepted the side issue.

“Who’d I get to look after him? ’S not just the kid.”

“No, of course. It’s hell.”

“You’re right,” said Reg, and fell silent. But Laurie felt a heavy certainty that he was waiting; for sympathy, for fellow feeling. He felt like a man who has strolled empty-handed into a famine area.

“She can’t be worth it. Treating you like that.” But, he thought immediately after, perhaps she was, perhaps he ought to be urging Reg to understand, to win her back.

“Too true she’s not. But it’s one thing to know you been a mucking fool, it’s another to learn sense.” His face reddened. A shiny rim began to form along his lower lids.

“You know, my father wasn’t faithful to my mother. She minded a lot at the time, but she’s all right now.”

“It’s not the same for a woman. That’s their lot, and nature made them to stand it. But a man’s nature’s different.”

“Is it? It’s bloody hell, Reg, I know. I’m terribly sorry.”

“Her sister’s a good girl. Looked after the mother and got passed over like. Our dad would have rather I’d picked Ireen, I know. But she hadn’t the life in her that Madge had.” He snatched a handkerchief from the pillow and blew his nose.

“If she got sick of all this would you take her back?”

“No. Never.” Reg swallowed convulsively. “I couldn’t never go with her again, thinking of how she’d been with him.” He swallowed again; there was a pause. “But I’d never get used to no one else. She was one of those that know what a man needs—I used to think she only learned it thinking of me.” Suddenly he turned over with his back to Laurie, and held up the book close to his face.

“Goodness, they have left you in a mess.” It was the Charge Nurse with the dressing trolley, making the bandages good. The doctors had been gone some minutes. The nurse bandaged the leg and straightened the bed, tutting mildly. He lay looking at the ceiling, wondering whether to tell his mother by letter or wait till she came.

“Qu’est-ce que tu as, Spoddi?” He turned to meet Charlot’s kind, vague eyes. Here was someone who could be told without bothering Reg. If he could tell just one person it was all he wanted. He said in French, “It’s only something the doctor has just said about my leg—that it will always be stiff, and shorter than the other, and that all my life I shall be lame.”

“That is bad,” said Charlot slowly. “That is a wicked thing.” Suddenly a spasm of extraordinary violence convulsed his face. The filthy Boches. Animals. Pigs. …” Laurie could only guess at the next few words. “When the war is over we shall split the gullets of these assassins. All … all—”

“Oh, I don’t know. If you hanged the lot of them it wouldn’t put back an inch on my leg.”

“The world knows what they are. They are—”

“Yes,” said Laurie soothingly. “Yes, I know.” He had been forgetting the Germans, and was ashamed of his lack of tact.

“You’re having your stitches out soon,” said a shy, cool voice beside him. “I heard Major Ferguson telling Sister.”

It was Nurse Adrian. He looked around, smiling. The emotions of the anesthetic were still tangled in his consciousness; he felt at once that it was she all the time whom he had really wanted. Her hand, resting on the locker, looked cool and slim, with nice bones.

“You’ll be up again before long,” she said. “What’s the matter, is it aching?”

“Not much, thanks.” He looked at her again, longing to speak; but he could only think of things too simple to say. “I shall always be different,” he wanted to tell her; and some part of his mind expected that she would say “No,” and everything would be changed. “It only aches on and off now,” he said, to fill the pause which already she might be noticing. She had none of that awful knowingness; one could take one’s time with her, hesitate, and she would only be grateful. “Different?” she would say, surprised. “But of course you’re not.”

“I’ll ask Sister for some A.P.C. for you,” she said.

“No, really, it’s all right.” As she stood looking down at him in kind anxiety, he saw what his own trouble had hidden before, that she was dog-tired and harried to death. Strands of her fair hair were slipping down damply under her cap; her face was shiny like a schoolgirl’s after hockey; the inside of her hand was soggy and rough, she must have been scrubbing somewhere out of sight. She had the air of giving up appearances and expecting nothing. He remembered that both the maids and the nurses had always seemed to have a full-time job, and there were no maids today.

“Thanks all the same,” he said, “but it’s gone off now, it feels fine.” On a sudden impulse, because she looked plain and didn’t deserve to, he added, “Seeing you must have cured it.”

“Silly,” she said offhandedly; but she gave him a quick, shy smile as she went on to the next locker.

“Now then, Spud,” said Reg, suddenly reappearing. “At it again. Ought to be ashamed. Here, I never asked you, what did the old man say about your leg? He was going on long enough.”

“God knows,” said Laurie. “It was just Greek to me.”

They put Reg into an airplane splint next day. It supported his arm outwards on a level with his shoulder, flexed at the elbow. Learning not to knock people down as he passed them gave him an occupation. He wrote Madge a long letter. Laurie had his stitches out, and was allowed up. This was his fourth convalescence; there was nothing to it, except that, as usual, he found when he used the crutch again that his arm muscles had gone soft. The stick would come later; he had only graduated to a stick once before.

In the evening, when he came back to the ward from the kitchen where he had been washing up, he was pleased to notice still more progress in Reg. Not only was he not sitting alone, but he had a grouse. It was plainly a stirring, public and noisy one. His face looked a healthier color already. He was sitting on the end of Neames’s bed. Between Reg and Neames there was always something of a class war; so Laurie realized the grouse must be serious, and he had better be in on it.

“Hello,” he said. “What’s cooking?”

“What’s cooking? Eh?” Reg wheeled round, so that Neames had to duck to dodge a scythelike sweep of the splint. “Cor, Spuddy, you wait till you hear. This’ll kill you, this will. Listen to this. Who d’you think they’re sending up here, to do for us ’stead of the maids?”

“German prisoners?” guessed Laurie. Unlikely as it seemed, he could think of nothing else proportionable to Reg’s fury.

“Oh, come on, wake up, Spud; what Jerry prisoners do we get? Only the Luftwaffe boys. And God’s truth, I’d rather have a bunch of them. They learn them this Nazi stuff in the schools, they don’t know no better, they’ve been had for suckers but they done their duty the way they see it, same as us. Not like these creeping-Jesus, knock-kneed conchies.”

Laurie took it in. He whistled.

“C.o.s? God, that’s going to be a bit embarrassing.”

“Embarrassing?” said Reg sharply. He usually covered up Laurie’s social gaffes, but this was serious. “Too true it is. Embarrassing for them, the muckers.”

“One way to look at it,” said Neames, making what was evidently not his first speech in the debate, “they’re mouths the country’s got to feed. If they’re kept in prison producing nothing, who foots the bill? We do. Now here we have the nurses wasting half their time on cleaning, and everyone’s comfort going by the board. No fraternization, that goes without saying. But no obstruction. That’s what I suggest.”

Reg snorted. “Got it totted up like the petty cash, haven’t you? After all we been through, if I was to see one of them muggers coming up with a soap and flannel to wash me, I’d smack it acrost his face. Don’t worry, we’ll soon have them out of here.”

There was a growl of assent from the meeting behind him. Laurie listened in mounting depression and dismay; his imagination flinched from the series of excruciating little dramas he saw approaching. He said, “You know, they did some pretty fine ambulance work in the last war, right in the line.”

“Ah,” said Reg, “that would be the Quakers. Not that I hold with them, but that’s a proper religion, what they’ve been brought up to, same as what the Catholics are.”

“But if—” began Laurie. His knee, which had been aching dully, like a sprain, had begun to ache fiercely, like a burn. Growing cross, he said, “Don’t look now, but it’s supposed to be our religion too, when there isn’t a war on.”

“If you’ll excuse me saying so, Odell, you’re apt to be a bit too easygoing. Suppose we had Hitler here, and all our kiddies brought up to worship Valhalla and inform on us to the Gestapo. What about religion then?” Laurie perceived in Neames’s sallow face the old stresses of a fierce struggle and hard victory; it gave him, for a moment, almost distinction.

“Yes, that’s a point. Still—”

“Good old Spud,” said Reg with sudden awkward kindness; he had recognized the signs of pain and fatigue around Laurie’s eyes and mouth. “Argue the case for Jack the Ripper, he would.”

“What are you men doing still up?” The Sister, expecting trouble, had scented it from afar. “I know you’ve been helping outside, Odell, and thank you, but get along now. Barker, you’ve been here long enough to know the rule about sitting on beds.”

Laurie’s leg felt worse before it felt better. He lay trying to forget it, thumbing the pages of a dog-eared magazine. The unshaded electric bulbs revealed mercilessly the cement floors, the wooden lockers with their day’s burden of ash, orange peel, paper and foil.

Reg Barker, returning from a trip to the lavatory, jerked the thumb of his good hand at the outer door. “Them sods has moved in.”

“Which?” asked Laurie vaguely. “Oh, yes. Have they?”

“Just been out and seen them come up in a truck and move into the maids’ block. Proper lot of pansies, too.”

“Go on, Reg, it’s been dark for hours, you couldn’t tell if they were Zulus.”

“Wait till tomorrow and you’ll see, then. Same as what they will.”

“You know, Reg, let’s face it, we’re all a bit on edge here. We can do to take things quietly, for our own sakes.”

“Then why do they have to send the muckers here, as if we hadn’t got no feelings?”

“God knows, and some zombie at Whitehall. Still, why make it worse?”

“You know, Spud, it’s right for once what Neames said, you’re too easygoing by half. Why should they get away with it? Sitting safe on their backsides at home and taking our jobs.” A dark flush rose in his forehead. “There’s women that fall for that smarmy sort,” he said, “if they can talk posh.”

“Did you say taking our jobs? They’re welcome to mine in the kitchen. I say, Reg—before you get into bed, would you mind asking Sister if I can have some A.P.C.?”

“Knee playing up?” Reg leaned forward; the shape of his splint made him look as if he were preparing a savage blow. Anxious creases divided his brows.

“Nothing much. You were right, though. I did mess about on it a bit too long.”

“They got no business to have put you on that kitchen fatigue. I said all along.”

“Someone’s got to, with all you lucky people in arm splints.”

“Well,” said Reg with vicious emphasis, “from tomorrow on, those muckers can do it. And like it.”

Laurie looked ingenuously up at him. “So they can. I shan’t be sorry, I must say.”

It was not one of his good nights. He was awake till the Night Sister gave him medinal at two. This sent him soundly off; so that a touch on his shoulder, waking him to light and clatter, filled him with impotent outrage. Dimly aware that the offending hand was not a nurse’s, he burrowed into the pillow and growled, “What the bleeding hell is it?”

“I’m sorry. If I can just take your temperature.”

Sudden recollection jerked Laurie awake. He looked up into a lean, austere face with a short grizzled beard. There was no doubt that the beard had a chin under it.

“Excuse my language,” he said uncomfortably. “I was half asleep.” He suppressed what he had meant to say; tomorrow would do. This was silly, for he might have known Reg would never let it pass.

“He don’t have it taken mornings,” said Reg promptly. “He gets up.”

The man withdrew his thermometer from Laurie’s arm. “Then I’ve waked you for nothing. I’m extremely sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“It’s all right. I never sleep much after the work starts.”

“Go on,” said Reg, more in sorrow than in anger. “Day before yesterday you slept till the breakfast come round, you know that.”

The bearded man as he passed on gave Laurie a slow smile which seemed, oddly, both sophisticated and good. He went on to Charlot, to whom he spoke in fluent idiomatic French. Reg said, in a hoarse whisper, “Here. What’s he doing here? You’re not telling me he’s still military age. Nor anywhere near.”

Laurie looked again. “No, of course. He must be a good fifty. Perhaps it was all a mistake.”

He looked along the ward. Another man, wearing a coarse, gray cotton coat like the first, was pulling out the beds one by one to sweep. No, thought Laurie with sinking spirits, this one wasn’t over age. He was a small man, with a small licked-down mustache, and looked about twenty-six. Eager conscientiousness informed his every movement. Chapel type, Laurie decided; and thinks damn is pretty serious swearing. This really is going to be rather hell.

“Proper little pipsqueak,” hissed Reg.

“Doesn’t look as if he’d pass a medical,” said Laurie hopefully.

“Go on. Course they’re c.o.s. It’s written all over them. Search me what the old boy’s here for, though.”

Laurie glanced after the bearded man, now several beds away. Neames, looking straight ahead, allowed his temperature to be taken as if by an automaton. The next bed was Willis’s.

Willis was a towheaded youth, whom Neames had early christened the Missing Link. He had never seemed to resent this, though he was quarrelsome by nature; Laurie deduced that he didn’t know what it meant. Willis always made him feel uncomfortable. One felt he should have been given a choice at the outset, whether or not to be born. It must have taken generations of conditioning to breed him, in some dockside warren neglected by angels and the borough inspector.

Reg said, “Watch this, this’ll be good.”

“Willis gets up,” said Laurie. “He’s only got to say so. What the hell did they send them here for, this bloody Government’ll lose us the war.”

It was often quite hard to hear what Willis said, even when he was not chewing. It was the prevailing hush which carried his voice along the ward.

“You can take that—thing away, and put it where the—monkey put the—nuts. I don’t want none of you—’s touching me.”

The c.o. replied as if to an expected social commonplace. “I expect not, it’s awkward for both of us. Still, we’ll have to get on with it, I suppose.”

“You—off and get on with it somewhere else. See?”

“This is a lot of silly bull,” said Laurie. He sat up, and reached for his crutch. But the little c.o. had just pulled out his bed from the wall where it was, and he couldn’t reach it.

“I say, Reg.” But Reg had hitched his dressing-gown over his shoulder, and was shuffling down the ward.

“Here,” he said to the c.o. “Didn’t they give you no list of the men that gets up?”

“No,” said the c.o. with a friendly smile. “I ought to have asked for it.”

“You only want it mornings. Evenings they take them all round, barring the chaps out on passes. I reckon that’s soft, not giving you no list. Asking for it, that is. Here. You turn that paper over and I’ll give you one now. Save tempers all round, that will.”

When they had finished he turned around. “And when you done your funny number, Willis,” he said over his shoulder, “you remember there ain’t been no comfort in the ward since the maids went, and if this lot’s transferred there won’t be none again. What you want them to do, go through the whole flipping war without working?”

Just then Laurie’s bed moved. The little c.o., having swept behind it, was putting it back. His face confronted Laurie over the end of it, as he shoved earnestly with all the force of his thin arms. Laurie said encouragingly, “Next time give me that crutch first, then you can have the pram without the baby.”

“Oh, beg pardon. Yes, of course.” With helpless concern and irritation, Laurie saw that he had blushed to the ears. Perhaps he thought his physique was being sneered at. Suddenly Laurie felt that, early as it was, his nervous system had had enough. He would get away for a bit, he thought, before he lost his sense of humor over some trivial annoyance. He was not allowed to dress yet, but with luck the bathroom might be free.

The lavatory was too filthy to linger in—no one could have scrubbed it since the maids went—but he was lucky with the bath. Although he couldn’t get into it properly because of the dressings on his leg, at least the water was hot. The window was steaming up; he opened it; an apple tree in a cottage garden looked faintly gold against a cool blue autumn sky, and he caught the smoky tang of sun on frost-caught leaves.

Behind the noise of the taps, the jerry-built hut echoed with every thud and bang of the morning work. He could hear someone scrubbing the floor just outside, and whistling quietly. The whistling stopped almost as soon as he turned the taps off. The last notes had sounded like a phrase of Mozart, but he had probably imagined it.

As he dried himself, the sun went in behind a cloud; easing himself slowly and stiffly into his pajama trousers, he got a waft of watery haddock from the kitchen. Just another day, he thought. He put on his dressing-gown, reached for his crutch, and opened the door into the lobby.

The cement floor outside was wet; a voice said quickly, “Look out for the bucket.”

Before he had seen around the door, some instantaneous reflex caused Laurie to say “Oh, thanks very much” in a conversational, instead of an automatic way.

He came out. In the open doorway of the lavatory, the boy who had been scrubbing the floor sat back on his heels and smiled.

Laurie stopped in his tracks, balanced himself between the crutch and the bathroom doorpost, and smiled back. Well, he thought after a moment, one can’t just stand grinning like a fool. “Hello. What was that bit of Mozart you were whistling just now?”

The boy put down his floorcloth, wiped his hand on the seat of his trousers, and with the back of it pushed the hair away from his eyes. It was fairish, the color of old gilt. He had a fair skin which was smoothly tanned, so that his gray eyes showed up very bright and clear. He was working in old corduroy trousers and a gray flannel shirt with rolled sleeves.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I was thinking about something else.” Fearing perhaps to have sounded unsocial, he smiled again.

Laurie had become touched with a feeling of panic, like someone confronted with a locked door and a strange bunch of keys, none of which may fit. He said with a jerk, “I thought it might be the Oboe Quartet in F Major.” This simply happened to be one of the few he could identify by name. The boy said in a willing way, “It might have been; it’s one I’m very fond of” and stirred the cloth in the bucket, sending up a clean bleak smell of carbolic.

“Was it this bit?” Laurie said. He tried to hum a few bars of the first movement. The boy sat with a listening expression; at the end he said with serious courtesy, “Yes, it probably was that bit,” and then, as there began to be a pause, “Have you ever heard Goossens play it?”

“No. Only on a record. Have you?”

“Only the record.”

There was another pause. The boy started to work again, though not in a dismissing way, and moved his bucket into the lavatory doorway. “This is a bit of a dreary job for you,” Laurie said.

“Here. Move that mucking bucket, you lazy—, d’you think we’ve got all day?” Laurie hadn’t heard Willis coming up behind them.

The boy had started a little, but repressed it quickly; he moved the bucket, civilly but without apology. Willis stepped forward to pass it. There was a kind of forced clumsiness in his gait, a crude preparation for knocking the bucket over. Laurie swung out on his crutch and, silently, caught Willis’s eye. It was a look he had not tried on anyone since his last year at school, but apparently it still worked. Willis’s face slumped soggily, seeming to mirror a defeated ancestry as long as Banquo’s line of kings. He went inside and slammed the door. It was over in seconds.

The boy stood up. Laurie could see that he was shyly, but doggedly, working up to something. “That was very kind of you. But it will have to come out sometime, if that’s how he feels. We have to cope with all that ourselves, I mean. It’s the least we can do, after all, isn’t it?”

The brush with Willis had fortified Laurie’s self-confidence. “Well, to you it probably seems to be your business; but to me it seems to be mine. I have to live here.”

“Have you been here long?”

“Oh, I more or less crept out of the woodwork, I—”

The face of the bearded man came in at the door. He looked at them with kindly detached interest and said briskly, “When you’ve finished in there, Andrew, will you take the swill bucket down to the main kitchen? They’ll show you there what to do with it.” The boy looked up, smiled with casual but affectionate ease, said, “All right, Dave,” and bent to his scrubbing again.

Andrew, thought Laurie; the name slipped into place like a clear color-note in the foreground of a picture. Mechanically he stepped aside as the lavatory door opened; Willis came out and went off without a backward glance. “Andrew what?”

“Raynes. But we don’t use surnames much.”

“Are you Quakers? Sorry, I’m never sure whether that’s rude or not.”

“Oh, it stopped being rude about 1700. We mostly say Friends.”

“Here,” said Laurie suddenly, “you washed all that before.” He looked past Andrew into the open door. “Stop that. Leave it just as it is. I’m going to fetch him back and rub his face in it.”

Andrew, busy with the cloth, said over his shoulder, “Well, I can’t stop you. If you think it’ll do any of us any good.”

“This is my show. Just leave this to me.”

“Look. This man’s had nothing since he was born but his two hands to work with; and he’s given one of those. You can’t expect him to welcome us with flowers. Give him a chance.”

“Willis,” said Laurie crisply, “is suffering from a self-inflicted wound, caused by gross incompetence. He fumbled a grenade in the practice pit. It killed his instructor, a very good man who was decorated in the last war, and he’s never shown the slightest sign of giving a damn. I shouldn’t waste any beautiful thoughts on Willis, if I were you.” They stared, with very mixed feelings, into each other’s faces. Suddenly Laurie laughed and said, “I saw the ’potamus take wing, Ascending from the damp savannas—’ ”

Andrew laughed too; his teeth showed clear, like his eyes, against the tan. He backed out of the doorway and Laurie saw that the floor was clean again.

“You’ll hear me called Spud about the place, but actually it’s Laurie. Laurie Odell. I’d give you a hand with that, but this strapping’s a bit tight on my knee.”

“I can see Dave’s face if I let you.”

“That chap with the beard?” Jealousy breathed on him, like the first shiver of sickness. “Who is he exactly?”

“Well, he’s just Dave. I mean, nothing officially. He did a lot of this work in the 1914 war. He’s voluntary now, of course.”

“Do you like him a lot?”

“Oh, I’ve known Dave a long time.”

Laurie saw that the last patch of floor was nearly finished. “If I only had my gramophone here, we could have had some Mozart, sometime.” He tilted his shoulder against the wall; the crutch felt a little shaky. “I’ve got quite a bit of Tchaikovsky, ballet music mostly. It’s all right when you feel like it, or don’t you think so? I read somewhere once, Tchaikovsky was queer.”

He seemed to wait hours for the upturned face to change; but the pause was in his own imagination, as he realized when Andrew said with mild interest, “Was he? I hadn’t heard. He was never actually shut up, surely?”

“No, it never came out. Though I believe—” He saw his mistake, and with a painful jolt caught himself up just in time. “Not mad, you know. Just queer.” He waited again.

“You mean a bit … Oh, yes, I see.” Andrew wrung out the cloth in the bucket. “I find all Russians slightly mysterious, don’t you? Perhaps if one met more of them.”

Laurie said yes, that was the trouble, probably. He leaned heavily on the door-jamb; he had been standing too long. He hoped that Andrew wouldn’t look up for a minute; he knew that with these cold turns he went sensationally white. It would pass off, it was all a matter of will-power. His brain felt drained and light; he thought: If he’s seen it in the Bible and guessed what it meant, that’s about as much as he knows.

Andrew stood up and tipped the dirty water into the lavatory. “I must do the swill,” he said, and paused. “I say, you do look tired. Let me see you back to bed before I go.”

“God, no. I’m officially up. I’m all right. Are you detailed to this ward from now on?”

“I don’t know yet, we’re just filling in till the lists are done. Thanks for coming to talk to me.” He colored suddenly. Laurie saw why: he had let down the side, he shouldn’t have thanked a soldier for talking to him, as if he belonged to something that had to apologize for itself.

“Thanks for putting up with me, under your feet. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.” He moved to the door, with young pliant awkwardness, swinging the bucket. Laurie said quickly, “Oh, by the way—” but it was too late, he had passed into the clatter of the corridor and didn’t hear. The clank of the bucket sounded for a moment, receding. Laurie’s armpit felt wrenched by the pressure of the crutch; his arm was numb, and his leg had started to ache again. The breakfast trolley, with the haddock, was being wheeled into the ward. He followed it. There was nowhere else to go.