In the end, however, the pain must have eased or fatigue overcome it, for he slept deeply, and when he began to dream, it was about none of the things which had filled his mind when he fell asleep. It was a vivid dream, and too direct to fascinate an analyst. After he woke he thought it surprising; but he knew that at the time it had been full of familiar recognition, and that he had seemed to come home to it all with longing and deep release, after an unbearably long absence which must never be allowed to happen again. It was the kind of thing one can make a joke of next morning, if one can find some uninhibited friend to listen: but that would be impossible for some days, and in any case one could hardly relate such a dream to the person concerned in it.
He slept again after, and in the morning he only remembered it dimly. Soon it was put out of his mind altogether, for he heard from his mother by the morning post. Canon Rosslow, the lifelong friend of Mr. Straike, had been appointed to a colonial see suddenly vacated by death; and as it was unthinkable that anyone else should officiate at the wedding, it had been arranged that this should take place by special license the following week. She had applied in writing to the hospital, asking that Laurie should be given a couple of nights’ leave of absence, in view of the very special occasion.
11
NEXT DAY MAJOR FERGUSON sent for Laurie, and told him that he was to be transferred the day after tomorrow. He added that he had written to the matron, enclosing Mrs. Odell’s letter, and he didn’t fancy she would make any difficulties.
This ended Laurie’s hopes that the transfer would supply him with some kind of alibi. There was no way out of it now; he would have to go. Remembering in time, he thanked Major Ferguson for his kindness in arranging it.
He had, as a matter of fact, fully expected to be transferred that day. He had keyed himself up to it, at a pitch which could not be maintained for long. He was still unsophisticated enough to feel shocked when he found that the reprieve gave him feelings of anticlimax, exhaustion and dismay. Andrew was in bed, he had arranged with Derek to call him if Laurie had to go. Laurie sent him a message with the news, so that he could sleep.
The rest of the day stretched before him, a long aimless blank. He loafed out by himself and ran into Nurse Adrian, who was off duty, in the lane. She seemed as much at a loose end as he, and they walked on together. It was a keen, gray day with an edgy wind; the dead leaves, crisp and hard, were being scoured along the road with a gritty rattle. She remarked on the ease with which he was walking and said the treatment must be doing good.
“Too much,” he said. “It’s made them ambitious. But Sister’s told you, of course.”
“No. Do you mean you’re being transferred?”
“Yes, on Monday. It’s a bit of an uprooting all around, one way and another. My mother’s being married next week, too.”
She asked one or two questions; she didn’t seem bored or perfunctory but as if she actually wanted to know. Because of the thoughts that occupied the foreground of his mind, this seemed unbelievably generous of her. Even the passing illusion that he had struck roots somewhere, and would be missed, was comforting, especially from a woman. Women still stood to him for background and stability, as they do to children, because they had never stood for anything more.
Presently she said, “Will you live at home when you’re discharged?”
“Well, I don’t suppose so.”
“Where are you going, then?”
So much had happened lately that the question had not presented itself, till now, as something close at hand. “Quite honestly,” he said, “I haven’t the least idea.”
In fact, he thought, he would have to start planning immediately. His exhibition covered his fees at Oxford, and he had still nearly four hundred and fifty pounds in the bank, the bulk of a legacy from his grandmother which had come to him at twenty-one, and which he had hardly drawn on because of the war. For the time, at least, he could live anywhere; term didn’t start for a couple of months. He would find some place where Andrew could go easily on his day off, try to catch up with his reading. At this point he became aware that Nurse Adrian was scrambling through her pockets in a quiet panic. He stopped walking at once and said, “Have you lost something?”
“Only my handkerchief.” She sniffed fiercely. “I’m so sorry … have you … could you … it’s the cold wind.”
“It’s only a hospital one with a hole in it. It’s not even clean, very.” He fished it out in some embarrassment and held it out to her. It was only then he realized she was in tears.
He stood transfixed with the discovery, wondering what could have happened to her. Had she had bad news from home? Suddenly, in a flash of horrified intuition, he knew.
What on earth was he going to do? Better not take any notice, unless she said something or made a noise. She wouldn’t want to attract attention. But how to get away? A sharp gust of wind tore through a gap in the hedge; it caught the handkerchief out of her hand and whirled it away down the lane behind them. Instinctively he started to run after it, felt the stiff drag of his leg, and stopped. She had gasped at finding her face exposed, run like the wind, and snatched up the handkerchief from the bank. Now she had her back to him, so that he shouldn’t see her mopping her eyes. Oddly enough, it was the leg, and not being able to run, that settled it for him: the total sum of helplessness and ineffectuality was too much to bear. He remembered how kind she had always been. Walking firmly up to her, he put his arm around her and said, “Here, what is all this?”
As she didn’t answer, he took the handkerchief from her and dabbed her eyes with it. At this she gave a hiccup of hysterical laughter, and buried her face on his shoulder. It was virtually impossible now not to embrace her with both arms, and he did so. There they were, and he felt as much shock and bewilderment as if he had waked up to find himself stretched in the road after a street accident. Now he must think what to do next. Without a notion of the answer he asked himself what the orthodox procedure would have been: to ignore the whole thing and make conversation; seduce her (there was nowhere to go and the wind was full of dead leaves and grit); tell her he was secretly married; talk her out of it? He supposed though that in more orthodox circles all this wouldn’t have arisen, because he would be engaged to her by now. She was the kind of girl you could quite easily imagine attracting men, if their tastes were a cut above the pin-up leveclass="underline" why, he himself, even, found it easy to forgive her for placing him in this ghastly predicament; and he stroked her hair. It was nice hair, fair, fine, and nearly straight, straighter than Andrew’s and lighter. Nearly as straight as Ralph’s, he thought, running it through his fingers; how odd, what an extraordinary coincidence. He put his cheek against it and shut his eyes.
She was gulping into his neck, like a schoolgirl, and muttering something about being ridiculous and that he wasn’t to take any notice. Even his inexperience could perceive her complete physical naïveté. She was sexually backward as is scarcely any female creature except the English girl of a certain upbringing: nothing she wanted was clear to her but love. It was a need which Laurie felt just now as intolerably poignant; where a more specific approach would have alarmed and repelled him, this found out the crack in his defenses. He could no more have kept from kissing her than he could have kicked a lost puppy back into the street.
Her mouth was soft and cool, and didn’t taste of tears as her cheek had done. He felt it almost unmoving against his, in a kind of contemplative wonder. How different from the girl in London, four years ago. All at once he was horrified by his own feckless sentimentality. In a muddled tenderness born of remorse, inextricably mixed with the fear of being found out and with a more generous impulse to protect her from the insult of his pity, he pulled her closer and kissed her again.