“I’ve heard it,” said Banks, who tried to avoid country and western music the way he did a dose of clap.
“Well, I’ve done it.” She shook her head slowly. “I even went to see a shrink.”
“Do any good?”
“Some. One of the things I realized was that I wanted to go home. I mean, that wasn’t part of being ill. The desire was real and perfectly reasonable. It wasn’t just Randy or not having the contract renewed, I could have got a teaching job somewhere else if I’d wanted. But I missed this place too much. Can you believe it? I actually missed overcooked scampi and chips. And, bloody hell, wouldn’t you know it if I didn’t miss winter too. It gets you down, all that sun, day in, day out, only the occasional flood, fire or earthquake for variety. Pretty soon you begin to feel like you’re living in some kind of suspended animation, like everything’s on hold. Or maybe you’re not really living at all, you’re in limbo. You keep telling yourself one day the snow’s going to come, but it never does. Anyway, as soon as I realized what I really wanted to do, I gave myself the best therapy I could think of. I chucked my tranquilizers down the toilet and took the next flight home. Well, almost the next flight. I had a few things to do first – including, I’m almost ashamed to admit, a little act of girlish revenge on poor, dear Randy.”
“What did you do?”
Jenny paused for a moment, then licked her lips and flashed him a wicked grin. “I planted one of those little voice-activated tape recorders in his office and taped one of his trysts. Then I retrieved the machine and sent the tape to the dean.”
“In his office?”
“Yes. Over the desk. Don’t be such a prude, Alan. It happens all the time over there. What are offices for? Oh, you should have heard them: ‘Give it to me, big boy. Fuck me. Go on. Oh, yeah. Stick that big hard cock in me. Go deep. Fuck me harder.’”
Her voice had risen, and one or two tourist families looked at her uncomfortably. “Oops, sorry,” she said, putting her hand over her mouth. “Wash your mouth out, Jenny Fuller. Anyway, there was no mistaking whose voices they were.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I left before the shit hit the fan. So if I get murdered, you know where to start looking. I should imagine he got suspended. Maybe fired. Of course, it was hardly evidence you could use at a tribunal, but they can get quite stroppy about things like that over there. Fucking your students is almost as bad as being caught smoking in a restaurant.” She tossed back the rest of her drink and looked at her watch. “Look, I’m sorry I’ll have to go. The university’s been very good to me so far, but they won’t continue to be unless I get my courses prepared. It’s great seeing you again.”
She picked up her bag, paused and rested it on her lap. Then she looked Banks in the eye, reached out and touched his hand softly and said, “Why don’t you give me a ring? We could… you know, have dinner or something together, if that’s okay?”
Banks swallowed. “I will. That would be great. And you’ve got to come out and see the cottage.”
“I’d love to.” She patted his hand, blew him a kiss and then she was gone in a whirl of red, jade and black, leaving a faint trace of Miss Dior behind in the smoky air. Banks looked down at his hand. It still tingled where she had touched him. Now that he had found the courage and desire to start a relationship with Annie, Jenny was a complication he didn’t need. But she was a friend; he couldn’t turn his back. And there was no reason at all why Annie should object to his having dinner with her. Even so, he felt more confused than he had half an hour earlier as he picked up his books and left the pub.
THIRTEEN
It took some time, but after I had run and fetched Gloria from the farm, I was finally able to piece together what had happened. Matthew himself wouldn’t say a word. He looked at us as if he remembered knowing us once, as if some sort of deep homing instinct had brought him here, but our fussing didn’t make much sense to him.
Gloria and Mother comforted him while I went down to the telephone and began the long round of calls. The Ministry was about as much help as usual, the Red Cross a little more forthcoming, but it was ultimately a doctor in one of the big London hospitals (for it was clear Matthew was ill and had probably discharged himself from hospital) who told me the most.
At first, he didn’t know whom I was talking about, because they didn’t know the name of the man who had walked out of the hospital yesterday. When I described Matthew, however, he was certain we were talking about the same person.
Matthew had been found, along with several other British and Indian soldiers, at a Japanese POW camp near Luzon, in the Philippines. All his identification was missing, and all anyone could tell about him, from the scraps of his uniform that remained, was that he was British. He hadn’t spoken to any of the other prisoners and none of them had been captured in the same place or at the same time as he had. Consequently, nobody knew where he had come from or who he was.
When I asked the doctor why Matthew wouldn’t speak and why he also refused, when offered pen and paper, to write anything down, he paused, then said, “He’s probably suffering from some form of combat fatigue. That’s why he won’t communicate. There may be other problems, but I’m afraid I can’t be any more specific than that.”
“Is that why he refuses to talk?”
He paused again, longer this time, then went on slowly, “I’m sorry to say, but when we gave him a thorough physical examination, one of the things we found was that his tongue had been cut out.”
I could think of nothing to say. I stood there, head spinning, clinging to the telephone as if it were all that was holding me to earth.
“Miss Shackleton? Miss Shackleton? Are you there?”
“Yes… I’m sorry… Please go on.”
“I’m the one who should be sorry. It must have sounded so abrupt and callous to you. I didn’t know how else to tell you. If you only knew… some of the lads we’ve got in here. Well… I apologize.”
“That’s all right, Doctor. So Matthew is physically incapable of talking?”
“Yes.”
“But he could write if he wanted?”
“There’s no reason why not. There’s some damage to the fingers of his left hand, as if they have been broken and badly reset, but his right hand is fine, and as far as I can tell, he seems to be right-handed. Am I correct?”
“Yes, Matthew’s right-handed.”
“All I can assume then is that he simply chooses not to communicate.”
“What should we do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he ran away, didn’t he? Should we send him back?”
“I can’t see much point in doing that,” said the doctor. “And, quite frankly, we need all the beds we can get. No, physically, there’s nothing more we can do for him. There’s some deformity of the spine, probably due to being forced into a cramped environment, like a box or a cage, for long periods of time. A pronounced limp in the left leg, caused by an improperly set fracture. He was also shot in the arm and the abdomen. The wounds are healed now, though by the looks of the scars the surgery was of a poor quality.”
I swallowed, trying not to think of all the suffering poor Matthew must have gone through. “And mentally?”