“Yes, sir.”
“Of course, if you’re transferred to a civil hospital before that, then it’ll lapse and you’ll be luckier than you deserve, uhm?”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Uhm. What are you going to do with yourself when we discharge you, eh?”
“I’ve a year to go at Oxford, sir. After that I don’t know.”
Major Ferguson passed a hand back over his bald crown to the occipito-parietal line where the hair began. He supposed that before the war was over, and still more afterwards, he was often going to hear that tone of voice. “Uhm, well, a year to look round in, uhm? All right, you can get back to your ward, Odell.”
Reg, in pajamas and dressing-gown, was waiting for him in the dark quadrangle between the huts.
“Just slipped out. Had to find out the damage. How’d it go?”
“Fine, thanks to you. You mad with me, Reg?”
“Ah, shove it. Never had a pal what’d go that far for me. Fact.”
“So long as it worked.”
“I’ll tell you something, Spud. She cried. Cried like a child. Never forget it, long as I live.”
“Did she think you were dying?”
“She was over that. It was your letter done it.”
“Oh,” said Laurie inadequately. With a cold crawling of the bowels he reviewed it, held now by the lapse of time shudderingly at arms’ length.
“ ‘Let’s have it, girl,’ I said, ‘and I’ll take it to the Major. There won’t be no trouble if he reads this.’ But no, she wouldn’t. ‘I never had such a beautiful letter written to me,’ she says, ‘never. If you’d have written me a few like that things would have been a lot different,’ she said to me, ‘and I’m not giving it you for strangers to poke their nose in. I’d rather see the Major and tell him what’s what myself.’ And that’s what she done.”
“Well, do thank her for me when you write.”
“She’s stopping the night. Stopping at the Feathers. We’ll have a day out tomorrow, like old times.”
“That’s fine.”
They had got to the ward. Nurse Sims, scuttling through the outer corridor, acknowledged Laurie absently. His experienced instincts picked up at once the sense of emergency, even before he saw her go into the side ward and shut the door quickly after her. A blurred, crazy-sounding mutter was going on inside. He turned to Reg. It’s not operating day; who’s that?”
“ ’S okay, Spud.” Reg looked away and spoke with spurious cheerfulness. “Old Charlot had a bit of an upset. Shell-shock or some job. I dunno.”
“Charlot?” The muttering had got louder now and he could hear it quite easily through the door. He said with the idiocy of helpless protest, “But he was all right this morning. I talked to him.”
“That’s right. I missed the start of it with Madge coming. Some of them reckon it was the bomb, but—”
“Bomb?” Fear for Andrew slid between his ribs. “Anyone hurt?”
“Nah, nothing to it. Some flipping Jerry on the run. Far end of that field there; broke the odd window in Ward D. No, if you ask me, I reckon it was this mobile gun. New issue, quick-firing job, shells come clipped on a belt, noisy bastard it is. Seems they brought it right up the lane here, silly muckers; might have been in the ward by the sound, Purvis says. See, when the bomb dropped, old Charlot took it same as anyone. But soon as they heard the first burst from this gun, he shouted out something in French, and heaved himself clean off the bed. Machine-gunned them in the boats, didn’t they, when he stopped his packet? Well, done up in all that plaster, you can see how heavy he’d fall.”
“God, yes.”
“Must have hit his head; been like this ever since.”
“It might only be concussion.”
“That’s it,” said Reg helpfully. Nurse Sims came out, looked at them as nurses do when they find patients discussing other patients, and told them sharply to hurry up and get into bed. When she had gone Reg said, “Your pal Andrew’s got a nice job tonight. Got to sit in there and see he don’t do it again.”
Perhaps he wouldn’t see Andrew all night, then. He thought that this is what always happens when one’s anticipations are overkeyed. As he passed the door he could hear Andrew’s voice, delivering some reassurance in careful schoolroom French, and then the mutter again.
For more than an hour Laurie lay wide awake beside the flat empty bed from the side ward which had been put in Charlot’s place. At last, from a change of light in the corridor outside, he knew that the side ward door had opened. He got on his dressing-gown hastily and slipped out. It was remarkable how quickly he had ceased to care very much whether people were noticing, and tonight he didn’t think about it at all.
Andrew was standing in the open doorway, looking out. Without any greeting he said quickly, “Oh, Laurie, good, it’s you. Will you stay with him for a minute and keep him as quiet as you can? I’ve got to get some clean things and I don’t like to leave him.”
Laurie said, “Yes, of course.” He had never seen Andrew like this before; but then he had never seen Andrew with any urgent responsibility on his hands. At any other time Laurie would have found it interesting. But he had longed to unburden his heart; this concentration of Andrew’s seemed to make common cause with the indifference of circumstance. Laurie walked into the side ward feeling the kind of resentment which, in people too fair to justify it, refuses to confess its own existence.
The injured man was lying with his head resting on a towel; Laurie realized that he had vomited on the sheet and pillow, and that was why Andrew needed clean things. Charlot’s eyes were open; he looked exhausted, yet painfully, mechanically alert. His eyes moved toward Laurie, but they were flickering, and it was impossible to know whether he recognized anyone or not. As Laurie looked down, all of a sudden he forgot his own troubles. Simple and unself-conscious as he was, still Charlot had turned like any other man his chosen face to his fellows; now, dreaming awake and revealing his dreams, he was more unprotected than in his sleep. One saw him naked in fear, or in need, and though the objects of these feelings were illusion, still it seemed not decent to spy on him. He had begun to talk again, but in so dull and blurred a way that probably even a speaker of his own patois would have made nothing of it. His thick chin, firm at other times, looked heavy and flaccid on the pillow, his mouth was half open, his lips crusted and dry.
Just then he lifted his arm gropingly, and fumbled at the wall as if he were searching for something to pull himself up on. Laurie settled him back. “Eh bien, Charlot” he said experimentally. “Hello, cock. Look, it’s Spud.”
Charlot grabbed clumsily at his wrist and muttered something excitedly, like a warning or appeal. Laurie said, “Tranquillise-toi, mon vieux, regarde alors, tu es ici avec moi.”
The man on the bed opened wide his oxlike brown eyes and his fingers tightened. Weeks of inactivity had softened the calluses on his big hands, but their grip was still something to remember. Just then the door opened and he let go. Laurie rubbed his bruised hand. “Did he hurt you?” Andrew asked.
“No, it’s all right. I’ll help you fix the bed.”
“Would you really? Nurse Sims is sure to be busy.” He stood looking at Charlot, in his intentness oddly austere; then, as if fully aware of Laurie for the first time, “No, of course you mustn’t, you’re always in pain by this time of night.”
“No. They’ve fixed that.” Just as Andrew looked up, Charlot started to move about. He seemed suddenly terrified; his blunt hands dragged and scrabbled at his plaster jacket. Andrew said, “He’s forgotten what it is, he thinks he’s been tied up or something. Du calme, Charlot, personne ne vous fera mal.” But it was only when Laurie spoke that Charlot turned his head. Laurie loosened his hands from the plaster and he was quiet again. “You’re the only one he seems to recognize,” Andrew said.