“Fair enough, so it does me in a way. But as people, you know—”
“That kid that does the ward at night, the young one, properly took to you, hasn’t he?”
“Me?” said Laurie. He went back quickly into the locker again. “Can’t say I’ve noticed it specially.”
“What I’m getting at, Spud, you want to watch it. No offense.”
“Come again?” said Laurie into the locker.
“I mean the law,” said Reg with deliberation, “that’s what I mean.” He paused to push back the wet shreds into the end of his cigarette. “ ’Course, Spud, if you can talk some sense into him, good enough. But if he tries to start in on you, that’s where you want to watch it. Because that’s an offense. Seducing His Majesty’s troops from their allegiance. High treason, that is. Got to look out for yourself in this world, ’cause no one won’t do it for you.”
“That’s right,” said Laurie. He took a long steadying draw on his cigarette. “I appreciate it, Reg. Don’t worry, I guarantee that if any seducing goes on it’ll be done by me.” He held his breath. Look out you don’t cut yourself, Reg had once said.
Reg said, approvingly, “Ah. That’s more like it. That’s all a lad like that wants, someone to make a man of him.”
After a restless night, he was awake in time for the six o’clock news. It seemed to him to contain more than the usual number of euphemisms and it occurred to him that fresh ones were steadily being coined, which met with less and less resistance. One by one the short bloody words, which kept the mind’s eye alive, were vanishing: a man-killing bomb was an anti-personnel bomb now. He remarked upon this to Neames, who was standing beside him.
Neames hitched his dressing-gown, giving Laurie a hard sideways glance. The two of them were always getting involved in arguments; but, as the only men in the ward who acknowledged the rules of logic in debate, they put up with each other for the sake of conversation. “Morale’s a munition of war,” Neames said.
“Morale’s just another blanket-word. What does it mean? Courage, or bloody-mindedness, or not asking awkward questions, or does it mean whatever we’re told it means from day to day?”
Neames’s dressing-gown was a faded purple; it made his rather sallow face look yellow. He hitched the girdle again. “I’m afraid that’s too intellectual for me,” he said. “You’d better talk to your friends about it.” He turned his shoulder, and walked away.
Laurie felt a little sinking jolt. He remembered, now, seeing last night the little group gathered around Willis in a corner. Luckily, Andrew had been in the next ward, and hadn’t heard.
He was still thinking about it while he made Reg’s bed. Reg couldn’t do it for himself, and patients whose beds were made by the staff had to be waked an hour earlier. Feeling a twitch on the opposite side of the blanket, he looked up expecting to see Reg back from the bath; but is was Dave, who must have come early on duty as he often did. He made beds with mechanical efficiency, like a trained nurse. When he caught Laurie’s eye he smiled without speaking. Often as he worked he seemed occupied with his own thoughts.
“I can manage, thank you,” said Laurie politely. “I expect you’re busy.”
“Not for the moment,” said Dave. He flicked back a corner expertly, flattened it, and tucked it in.
At the end of the ward, Andrew came in pushing the breakfast trolley. He steered it carefully around the center table at the bottom of the ward. As soon as this tricky bit was done his eyes came over toward Laurie as they always did. This time he felt rather than saw it, for he did not look. He was rather slow with his side of the bed, and Dave had to wait, which he did very patiently.
As they moved up to the top end of the sheet, Laurie looked up. He said, “You’re one of the organizers, aren’t you?”
“Not exactly, but I won’t split hairs if there’s anything I can do.” Dave picked up the pillow and slapped it into shape.
“It’s nothing much really.” They shook out the top sheet. “But the other day I was talking with one of your people, getting his angle and so on. Afterwards someone said it could have landed him in trouble, treason or some nonsense. I suppose that’s just a lot of—I mean there isn’t anything in it?”
Dave mitered a corner. “I suppose,” he said easily, “that would be Andrew.”
“Yes. Yes, Andrew Raynes.”
“I doubt whether Andrew would say anything technically treasonable. He knows the rules. He didn’t urge you to desert, for instance, or refuse to obey orders?”
“Oh, God, no. He just explained things.”
“Well, knowing Andrew, I should say the position probably is that you could make trouble for him if you wanted to, but it would depend on you.”
“Seeing I started it, that’s hardly likely.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Laurie picked up the counterpane on which ugly stencilled flowers, in a hard red and prussian blue, wound around a black trellis. Studying this pattern carefully, he said, “I suppose he told you more or less what we talked about.”
“You won’t find he’s like that.” Dave moved the center fold more to the middle. “I remember his saying some time ago that he found you easy to talk to. I didn’t warn him to be careful; it didn’t strike me as being necessary.”
“Well,” said Laurie, “thanks.” There was a curious moment in which the small space around the bed contained two different kinds of silence. It was broken by the rattle of the breakfast trolley behind them. As they turned Andrew looked from one to the other, his pleasure in their amity as plain as print.
Over his bacon and tea, Laurie felt that the only comfort would be found in full-time, party-line, nondeviationist hatred. One could warm oneself with a good thick hate by shutting all the windows and doors; but he knew, unfortunately, beforehand, that the snugness would not last, and the fug would drive him out into the cold again, gasping for air.
About a week later, on the day when Reg was liberated from his airplane splint, Laurie got his surgical boot.
He was sent into the Sister’s office to try it on. There it was, with an ordinary boot for the left foot all complete; black, shiny, hitting the floor with a clump. He had not foreseen that the design of the upper would be quite so ugly, nor the sole so thick, but after all, a cripple’s boot was a cripple’s boot. Perhaps after the war …
“Comfy, son? Because now’s the time to say. You’ve got to live with it, remember.”
“Yes,” said Laurie. “I know.” He felt sure the bootmaker’s man had meant well.
Out in the corridor he clumped stiffly up and down: it felt heavy and seemed to shift the weight to a different muscle which was unused to it; but it was pleasant to walk again without a sideways lurch. It was going to be a bit tiring at first, but this was an adaptation he would have every day of a lifetime to make. In a few years it would be like spectacles to a myope, he would only notice its absence. He walked on, toward the ward, getting ready the bit of clowning which would ease him over his entrance. One might as well learn to laugh it off, because this was not transitional like the crutch or the stick. This, henceforward, was Laurie Odell.
He walked in, ostentatiously not using the stick, twirling it like a drum major.
For the day of this event he had a firm date with Reg of several weeks’ standing. He could in fact have applied for a cinema pass before, but the airplane splint had made Reg as awkward in crowds as an antlered stag, and Laurie had waited with little enough impatience; he and Andrew took it for granted now that they would meet every evening unless something prevented it.