Reg was on the bus that took him back to the hospital. It had been one of Madge’s days. Kindly they inquired after one another’s outing and replied that their own had been fine, thanks. Each sensed in the other a certain reservation; each was grateful not to be questioned too nearly. They sat side by side, nursing their so different griefs which were yet the same grief to the inmost heart, unaware of the instinctive comfort they got from their sense of solidarity.
That night in the kitchen Andrew, opening the subject rather shyly since Laurie had not seen fit to do so, said, “I hope it was all right today, when your mother came.”
“Yes, thanks,” said Laurie. “Yes, it was quite all right.” But lest Andrew should feel snubbed or hurt he produced a few limp platitudes, which Andrew went through the form of accepting as real. It was a sad little session; but he could feel Andrew thinking as he thought, that tomorrow it would be all right.
But next morning the Sister said, “Odell, look after this carefully, won’t you, and give it to the Sister of the department as soon as you arrive.”
“Where?” asked Laurie. The pain was as sharp and sudden as a bullet, but there wasn’t any comeback. A war was on, he had been transferred somewhere else, so what? The war giveth and the war taketh away. Andrew would be in bed by now, sleeping; who would take him a message? Derek, of course. “When am I leaving, Sister, today?”
“Now you know quite—surely I told you about all this yesterday?”
“No, Sister. I went out.”
“Oh. Oh, yes, so you did. Well, you’re to go into Bridstow twice a week for electrical treatment at the City Hospital. Tuesdays, that’s this afternoon, and Fridays. Now don’t lose this card, whatever you do.”
The relief was almost too much: he wanted to laugh stupidly aloud. When he remembered that for the second evening running he couldn’t meet Andrew in Limbo, it seemed by contrast a trifle.
Bridstow had had some more raids since his last call there. The burgher solidity of the city was interrupted by large irrelevant open spaces, in some of which bulldozers were flattening the rubble out. At the City Hospital he had only to wait an hour, which was better than his expectations. Upstairs a brisk gentlewoman took him in hand as bracingly as if he had been a Girl Guide, and applied damp compresses, with electric wires involved in them, to his leg. Rhythmic waves of pins-and-needles followed, which, to his surprise, were pleasant and soothing after a time. At intervals Miss Haliburton returned to the couch where he lay, kneaded his muscles comfortingly, and talked dogs. She bred several varieties, and before long Laurie felt as unself-conscious under her ministrations as if he had been one of them. He left the hospital with an hour in hand before his bus went.
It wasn’t worth going to a cinema, and he didn’t feel like drinking alone; he thought he would walk a little to see the sights, while the knee felt so good. But he had only got as far as the cathedral green when the air raid sirens went.
It was broad daylight; on current form, it should be no more than a reconnaissance raid, delayed probably by cloud earlier in the day. He walked on among the pathetic little Home Guard trenches on the green. It was a beautiful afternoon.
“Everyone in the shelter. Come along, ladies, bring your knitting, nice and cozy inside. This way, sonny, mind how you go on the steps.”
Laurie became aware of a sandbagged cave and a fatherly person in a white tin hat. At that time they were still rounding up people in the streets and shepherding them into the shelters willy-nilly; but, living in the country, Laurie had forgotten. He said, “It’s all right, thanks, I’ll see how it goes.”
“Sorry, son, everyone in the shelter, that’s the drill. Come along, now, you’ve had enough to be going on with, won’t hurt you to take it easy.”
Laurie observed that the warden was over sixty; he had the ribbons of the Military Medal and the Mons Star. “Have a heart, Sergeant, I’ve only got a short pass.”
A thin sputter of gunfire sounded from somewhere near the river. “She’ll wait for you,” the warden said. “Don’t waste time, lad, I’ve got a job to do.”
A voice behind Laurie said, “You can’t have this one, warden. He’s a patient of mine, due for treatment. I’ll be responsible for him.”
The warden said, as one who washes his hands of a nuisance, “Okay, you’re the doctor,” and walked away. Laurie remained, confronted by the young man with the white eyelashes, who had been the target for his rather erratic humor some weeks ago during Major Ferguson’s round. He had told himself, at the time, that someday one of these little jokes of his would come home to roost.
“Well,” he said, “thanks very much.”
“Happy to oblige. I gathered you didn’t want to waste half an hour down there.” His tone was quite conventional. Hanging unspoken between them, and clearly understood, were the words, “Your move.”
A false but powerful sense of destiny attends those decisions which seem to be demanded of us without warning, but which we have in reality been maturing within ourselves. Laurie answered not from the loneliness of his emotions, but from the long solitude of his thoughts. Some instinct of his recognized, in this cautious and discreet person, one who had escaped from solitude, whose private shifts had given place to a traditional defense-system. Somewhere behind him was the comforting solidarity of a group.
Laurie said, lightly, “Well, I suppose if I look about this city I might find something a bit more entertaining than a hole in the ground.”
“Why not?” said the young man. “We’ll all get there in due course without all these rehearsals. It won’t be anything.”
“There it goes.” It was a single plane, flying very high. “What a flap about nothing.”
The young man said, “You’re a patient of Ferguson’s, aren’t you, at the E.M.S. hospital?”
“Yes. I think I’ve seen you there, haven’t I?”
“I thought I remembered you from somewhere. You won’t know my name: Sandy Reid. I’m not a doctor yet, by the way.” In the midst of an almost timid friendliness, there was something hard and wary about the way he said this. Laurie noticed it with slight distaste, but didn’t pause to consider it. He introduced himself. The young man said in a semifacetious American voice, “Glad to know you, Laurie,” and then, after a tiny pause, “How about a drink?”
The All Clear went just as they reached the pub. It was a large one, nastily modernized at vast expense. The chromium stools, the plastic leather, the sham parquet floor, and the fluorescent lighting which made everyone look jaundiced, caused him to expect that the beer too would turn out to be a chemical synthetic. A radio, slightly off the beam, was running like a leaky tap. He overbore Sandy’s protests and bought the drinks, intending to leave before another round.
This was not the first time he had touched the fringe he was touching now. He knew the techniques of mild evasion and casual escape. Though the Charles episode had been disillusioning, he hadn’t given up hope of finding himself clubbable after all. This time, he had briefly thought the right moment had come. But, after all, no: and after all, it was no one’s business but his own.
“It’s a bit tatty,” said Sandy Reid, as the drinks came over the ebonoid bar, “but one runs into people here.”
“Oh, yes?” said Laurie politely. “I suppose you can never get far from the hospital, in any case.”
“Actually I’ve got some quite civilized digs just up the hill, with a friend of mine.” He added, with a circumspect kind of pride, “We’ve been together more than a year now.”
“Oh? Good.” He saw Sandy eying him, anxiously expectant, under his eyelids; they were rather pink, reminding Laurie of white mice. Having been unhappy most of the day, he now found an unkind pleasure in being equivocal and elusive. “Do you have much trouble getting digs here? They tell me Oxford’s teeming like a Calcutta slum.”