‘How do you feel?’
‘I don’t know.’ So he could speak then? ‘Yes,’ he said aloud. Then again, ‘I don’t know.’ And he heard the words quite clearly, that was his own voice. He tried again. ‘I’m in a hospital.’ ‘Yes.’ That was Franklin’s voice. ‘The Battalion’s been moved down here for a couple of days. We’ll be on our way again after that. I managed to get in to see you though.’
Hilliard found difficulty in piecing together the meaning of what he was saying.
‘I’m sorry you had such a knock.’
He did not know exactly what Franklin meant by that, either. He was still uncertain what had happened to him. The nights and days slid into one another like cards and were full of disconnected noises and the pain in his leg. People came and gave him food and drink and spoke to him, he saw them staring down.
Oh God, what had he to remember? What must he try to remember?
He had heard the rain, too, pattering on and on against the windows behind his bed. Rain.
‘You’ll be here for a week or so. They won’t send you home until they think you can cope.’
‘No.’
‘Is there anything you want?’
Was there?
‘Has your mail been getting through all right?’
He did not know. He knew nothing.
The light went pale and then dark again around Franklin’s head, Hilliard tried to focus his eyes and could not. The light went very bright, then broke into millions of shiny silver pins in front of him.
After another week they let him sit up and then he read the letters which had come from his mother and father and Beth, the letters full of formal expressions of love and sympathy, behind which lay whatever they were truly feeling.
‘You’ve got another parcel. You get a lot of parcels, don’t you?’
‘Yes. Would you open it for me?’
She opened it and he made her take things around the ward again, share out figs and chocolates and cigarettes. He wanted nothing at all.
‘There’s another letter today, too.’
He looked at the postmark and the handwriting, and did not open it.
Yesterday a letter had come from the old Major, a short letter dictated to his daughter.
We hear things are improving out there. It’s a good cause. We send our regrets that you’ve had bad luck with your leg. We send kindest wishes for your recovery.
They had amputated his left leg though he still did not believe it, because of the continued pain.
‘Could you close the window? It’s raining on my pillow.’
‘Oh, we can’t have you getting wet!’
She stood up for a moment looking out. She had red hair. ‘Will it ever stop raining!’
Now that he was feeling so much better he did not care about his leg, he cared about nothing. But he wondered whether Franklin would come back and talk to him again, tell him what he wanted to know, tell him all of it.
There was no news. He had no visitors.
They let him sit up in a chair one morning. Then he knew what he must do. The letter had been on his table for ten days. He had to open the letter. Outside it was still raining.
‘Drink your soup, Mr Hilliard. You’ve got to eat and drink now.’
He drank his soup.
‘You’re going home next week.’
In the night the sound of the guns rattled the windows. Still his leg hurt him.
Dear John,
We do not know exactly where you are – whether you are in England yet or still in hospital in France. We have no news of you but we hope that you will get this letter and, when you are better, get in touch with us. We do not know, either, how much you have heard but we beg you, if you have news, whatever news it is, to write and tell us. We have only had the telegram and then a typed letter informing us that David is missing believed killed, but we have received nothing else, none of his belongings. And we had not had a letter from him either, for some time, we were becoming anxious.
We made contact with your family at Hawton, who have replied to our letter and told us that you have been wounded and have lost your leg. But the letter took a time to reach us because ours was wrongly addressed. So we are hoping that if you are not still in France the hospital will forward this to you.
John, we have only you to ask for news, you have been with David, and we can only talk of him to you. There is no one else. And you have been close to him, you are sure to have so much to say to us. Please write and we will either come and see you in hospital or where you are convalescing, or at home, or hope, most of all, that you may be able to come to us. Please do that if you can, we feel that we are friends and know you so well already, we should so like to have you here to stay. I cannot write more now, I am too anxious for this to reach you, and I am afraid of distressing you when you are ill.
But by the time he had read it another letter had come, there were two in the same handwriting, the same postmark at which he could hardly bear to look.
I am letting you know that we received a letter from a Captain Franklin – we think he was your Adjutant? He could tell us nothing at all about David except that he was believed killed in the wave of men going forwards into fire at the battle of Barmelle Wood. But he wrote very sympathetically and kindly and now we have had forwarded to us some things of David’s, mainly books and clothing and odd personal belongings. There was also an unfinished letter which he was writing to us perhaps the night before the fighting. He had not dated it. We will not send it to you for fear that it may be lost – we still have no news of you. But if and when you come here to us, we should like you to read it. Unless you have already done so, for we know David shared his letters with you.
We are still hardly able to believe in this terrible thing, because there is no certainty. We hear stories of men who have been reported dead and who have walked in at their own front doors, fit and well, weeks later, and so we cannot stop hoping against hope, just because of this lack of final, certain news. David may be alive in a hospital somewhere?
Then, he wrote to them, because he could not do anything but tell them the truth. He half-thought of inventing a story, as he had done in the past about the deaths of other men, forming the usual, smooth phrases about gallant deaths, killed instantly, having suffered as little as possible. When Fawley had blown out his own brains, he had written such a letter, none of the man’s family would ever know. He thought of it.
He wrote.
I have to tell you that I do not know anything at all, anything, about David, but that it is now very unlikely indeed that he will be alive. There are not often unidentified men in hospital because we all wear tags and these are almost always forwarded to the Division. I do not believe that David can be alive after having seen where he was that day. It is likely, as the Adjutant has said, that he was walking into the line of fire and was shot down. But I do not know.
Please do not think that I am deliberately trying to kill your hopes but it seems best to me that you should know what is the most likely truth.
I am glad that you have now his things at home with you.
I am returning to England in two days’ time now, and will probably be in hospital and then convalescent near Oxford. I am out of the war for good, of course, but cannot look ahead at all. I am feeling better and learning to manage crutches.
Please, I would rather that you did not come and see me in hospital or especially, at home. I would rather wait for a while. But I should like to have a letter if you can write to me and I should like to come and see you when I am able. It will not be for some time. I want to see you in the places I have heard about. I will let you know when it can be.