She did take the initiative, in a language that no one on earth but she and I could understand: ‘I’ve got a lunch date on Saturday,’ she said. ‘I expect I shall forget it.’
If I didn’t or couldn’t respond, she would drop it. This was an exploration, a tentative.
‘You’d better not,’ I said.
‘It hasn’t been imprinted on my memory.’
At that, I laughed out loud. She knew she was home. For this was a secret code, one of our versions of the exchange about the cattleya, more complicated than that but just as cherished. It went back to a time in the middle of the war, before we were married. On Saturday afternoons I used to go to her bed-sitting-room: there was a particular Saturday afternoon about which we had made a myth. The coal fire. The looking-glass. Lying in bed afterwards, watching the sky darken and firelight on the ceiling. The curious thing was, that apparently historical Saturday afternoon didn’t really exist. There were plenty of others. Once or twice, in the wartime rush, she had forgotten the place for lunch and I had had to follow her to her room. Many times we had enjoyed ourselves there. Yes, there had been a coal fire and a looking-glass. Nevertheless, we each remembered the detail of different Saturdays, and somehow had fused them into one. One that became a symbol for all the pleasure we had had together, and a signal to each other. Often the mood was formalised. ‘What did I tell you about the fire?’ To that there was a ritual reply, also part of the myth. In the hospital that morning, she made the ritual speeches, and I followed suit. Soon she was crying:
‘You’re much better.’ That also was part of the drill, but for that special moment it was true.
Resurrection, she was saying, not touching wood at all. Until the middle of the afternoon, she remained by my bedside. When she left me it was I who began to touch wood. She had gone, the reassurance had gone, it seemed strange, almost unnatural, that the vacuum hadn’t filled. Should I soon be terrified again? I threw my thoughts back, not to Margaret, but to last night, as though I wanted to learn whether it would return. No, my moods were unstable, I hadn’t any confidence in them, but I wasn’t frightened. Perversely, I wanted to ask why I wasn’t. Anything I felt or told myself now, I thought, would be part of a mood that wouldn’t last.
Still, the evening – occasionally I enquired about the time – lagged on between sleep and waking. They were taking my blood pressure every three hours, but one nurse told me that would finish next day. During the night I slept heavily, and woke only once, when they took another reading.
I didn’t know where I was, until I understood the darkness in front of my eyes. Then the night before returned, but rather as though I was reading words off a screen, without either fright or relief: with a curious indifference, as though I hadn’t energy to waste.
20: Obituary
SPONGE in my hands, warm water on my face, Mansel’s voice, the flurry of early morning.
‘They tell me you’ve slept, sir.’
‘Better, anyway,’ I said, as though it were bad luck to admit it. Eye uncovered, the lights of the room, three dimensions of the commode, standing out like a piece of hardware by Chardin. Mansel’s face close to mine. In a short time, he said: ‘Good. Qualified optimism still permitted.’
After he had blindfolded me once more, his voice sounded as in a prepared speech.
‘Now we have to make a decision, sir.’
My nerves sharpened. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing. It’s a choice of two courses, that’s all. You heard me and Maxim discuss it yesterday, didn’t you?’
‘I heard something.’
‘You’re getting on well, you know. The point is, if we’re going to get you generally fit as soon as may be, you probably ought to sit up most of today. Now that may, just possibly, disturb the eye. I’m beginning to think, I may as well tell you, that we’re very likely too finicky about keeping eye patients still. I suspect in a few years it will seem very old-fashioned. But I have to say that some of my colleagues wouldn’t agree. So, if we let you up, one has to warn you, there is – so far as the retina goes – a finite risk.’
I was beginning to speak, but Mansel stopped me.
‘I’m not going to let you make the choice. Though I fancy I know which it would be. No, I don’t think there is any reasonable doubt. Your general health is much more important than a margin of risk to the retina. Which I don’t want you to get depressed about. With a little good fortune, we ought to keep that in order too.’
He could see my face.
‘And it will be distinctly good for your morale, won’t it?’
Mansel gave an amiable, clinical chuckle. ‘Though it’s stood up pretty well, I give you that.’ He didn’t know it all, but he knew something. I was thinking, perhaps not even Margaret knew it all.
After he had given instructions that the nurses were to get me up during the morning, he was saying goodbye. Then he had another thought.
‘I wanted to ask you. Which is the hardest to put up with? Having to lie still. Or having to live in the dark.’
‘You needn’t have asked,’ I said. ‘Having to live in the dark is about a hundred times worse.’
‘I thought so. I have had patients who got frantic at being fixed in one position. But you manage to put up with that, don’t you? Good morning, sir.’
When Charles March arrived, I was already sitting up in an armchair. They had told me that he had visited the hospital twice in the last twenty-four hours, being not only an old friend but also my doctor. Each time he came, I had been asleep. Now I apologised, saying that I hadn’t been entirely responsible for my actions. Charles replied that he had dimly realised that that was the case.
I suspected that he was gazing straight into my face. How much did it tell him? There weren’t many more observant men. He said, in a matter-of-fact doctor-like fashion, that he was glad they had got me up. Mansel, in the middle of his professional circuit, had found time to telephone Charles twice about my condition, and had also written him a longish letter.
‘If either of us were as efficient as that young man,’ I said, ‘we might have got somewhere.’
It was not long after, and we were still chatting, not yet intimately, that I heard Margaret’s footsteps on the floor outside. As she came in, she exclaimed in surprise, and approaching my chair, asked how I was, said in the same breath that they must be satisfied with me to let me out of bed. Then went on: ‘How is he, Charles?’
‘I think he looks pretty good, don’t you agree?’
For some time neither of them enquired, even by implication, about my state of mind: in fact, I soon believed that they were shying off it. Margaret had seen enough the day before; and Charles, who had once known me as well as any of my friends, was being cautious. We talked about our children and relatives; it was casually, in the midst of the conversation, that she remarked: ‘What are you going to do with yourself all day, sitting there?’