“Good show,” said Laurie. He thought of Derek’s little refinements, of the kind to have been fiercely instilled and as fiercely cherished.
They had exhausted for the moment their store of communicable thoughts, and were strolling mutely, when Reg came up the path from the gates, Madge hooked to his arm.
Laurie was delighted to see him. They wouldn’t see much more of one another; there was a lot to talk about. Reg’s last X-ray had been a good one; he would be discharged too before long. Already they were full of plans for a celebration before Reg went back to his unit again. Seeing him approach between the huts, Laurie felt that this at least was solid. It had stood everything and there had never been any cheating.
Reg must have brought Madge back here to get the bus for the station. Laurie waved to them; Reg waved back and steered Madge over.
Willis, of course, was news. He shifted from leg to leg under the rain of congratulations. The jests with which he strove to cover his coyness got progressively lewder: Reg was obliged before long to cough. Madge parried apology with an indulgent giggle, anxious to show herself no spoilsport, without stepping down from the pedestal on which Reg had chivalrously placed her. She turned to Laurie, and tapped him skittishly on the chest with a brown paper parcel she was carrying, much as an eighteenth-century lady would have used a fan.
“Now then, Spud, own up. Don’t you tell me you’ve not had a finger in this, because I shan’t believe you.”
“Help him?” said Laurie, keeping the party going. It was his first meeting with Madge since the letter, but he had been comfortably sure that she wouldn’t refer to it with Willis there. “That’ll be the day.” This was meant to turn the spotlight on Willis again.
“Oh, go on with you. We all know who’s the Cupid around here, don’t we, boys?”
Willis guffawed obligingly. It was evident that he was ready to take Cupid on trust, as he did, probably, one word in ten of most conversations he heard. Reg’s appreciation was a little more guarded. He could be seen going through vague motions of a “Well, time we were off” kind. But Madge was well away, you could see the wit gathering like wind in a sail.
“Tell you what, Spud. What price that for a career? One of these bits in the fashion magazines, let Lady Vera solve your troubles. I can just see you sitting in some posh office with three secretaries all worked to death and the fan-mail rolling in. Onlookers see most of the game; that’s right, Reg, isn’t it?”
Laurie was only moderately embarrassed; he thought it was an accident Then he saw Reg’s face turning brick-red, and knew that it wasn’t.
He looked around at them: Madge brassing over a sudden misgiving; Willis, who had clearly decided that he knew now what Cupid meant; Reg with the same fatuous, stupefied look of injury that Samson probably wore when, in the cold dawn after the bedtime confidences, he first ran a hand over his clipped head. For a moment Laurie saw them all fixed like a row of grotesques, looking at him. He said, “It’s an idea. Well, goodbye,” and walked away toward the hospital, without looking back.
Before he had even turned the corner, after only a few seconds, he knew it was all up now. He and Reg had had it. Reg would never get over this, they would never be able to face one another alone again. By coolness, humor, and address at the crucial moment, it was just possible that Reg could have been rescued. Laurie hadn’t been equal to it, and that was that.
Back in the ward, the afternoon routine of bed-tidying was going on; Nurse Adrian and Derek were doing it together. He straightened his own bed quickly and went out again. He still thought them two very nice people, but they seemed a long way off and nothing much to do with him.
Outside the village post office the door of the red telephone box swung ajar. It had a comforting, inviting look. The search for Ralph cost him one and sixpence before their conversation began; and when it did, Ralph opened with the phrase which meant, by arrangement, that he wasn’t alone. They only talked for a couple of minutes, idle stuff to be overheard. But when Laurie came out again, he felt rather less like a citizen of nowhere.
12
THE WARD LOOKED ABOUT thirty feet high. The walls were painted brown for the first seven or eight feet. In the middle stood a towering cast-iron stove of Gothic design. The nurses, intent on mysterious tasks, wore the old-style uniform, tall starched caps, stiff aprons, black stockings and shoes. The Sister, who seemed to have been measured for the ward, stood about six feet in flat heels. Her belt was massively clasped with silver, there was a flat rigid bow under her chin. Laurie and Andrew stood in the doorway, looking at each other. Andrew said, “I’d better not come in.”
He had worked, with much trouble, his night off for last night so as to come with Laurie today. Laurie had known it would be like this, and would far rather have seen him on duty in the ward as usual; but he had lacked the heart to say so. It had all been, he thought, like the kind of deathbed one hopes not to have; going on too long, one’s nearest and dearest doing the right thing with dreadful conscientiousness and stifling guiltily their prayers for the end. He didn’t know which had been worse, Reg’s painful flux of talk or Andrew’s helpless dumbness. Nurse Adrian had lost her nerve at the last, and hidden.
As they faltered at the door, the tall Sister suddenly strode forward. “Are you the new admission?” she asked accusingly. In the end he didn’t even see Andrew go.
They showed him his bed. On one side was a terribly ill-looking boy of nine or ten, propped high on a mound of pillows; on the other, a very old man who seemed to spend nearly all day having things done to him behind screens. After the afternoon’s massage and electrical treatment, the day stretched ahead empty. Laurie realized that if he had persuaded Andrew to stay on, they could have spent most of it together. But it was better like this. He knew it as he lay, later, looking up into the dusty recesses of the ceiling, isolated by the strangeness of the place, in a pause of unlooked-for peace and rest. The first lap of the race was over, not without victory. Words sounded in his mind like winged hoof-beats: “… it sinks down in the midst of heaven, and returns to its own home. And there the charioteer leads his horses to the manger, and puts ambrosia before them, with nectar for their drink. Such is the life of the gods.”
“Hello,” said an infinitely distant voice. “What’s your name?”
Laurie perceived that it came from the next bed, and it was its faintness, rather than his abstraction, which had made it sound remote. Two hollow, inquisitive brown eyes had opened in the boy’s blue-white face. Laurie said, “It’s Spud, what’s yours?”
“Mervyn. Did you get hurt in a raid, or in the war?”
“In France. Have you been stopping a bomb or something?”
“No. I just had an appendix and it burst. Isn’t it a swiz? I say, did you come back from Dunkirk in one of those boats?”
“Just a minute. When was this operation?”
“Middle of last night. But I’ve stopped being sick now.” He had talked himself out of breath already.
“I tell you what; take it easy today and get some sleep, and I’ll tell you about the boats in the morning.”
“You be here in the morning?” he asked suspiciously. He looked like a boy with few illusions.
“Yes, of course I shall.”
“Swear?”
“On my solemn oath.”
“Okay, good enough.” He shut his eyes.
Laurie tried to recapture his private happiness; but a few minutes later a nurse appeared with a letter which had preceded him. It was from his mother. At school, and even at Oxford, she had always sent a letter ahead to welcome him. Touched, he opened it, to find it full of detailed plans for the wedding.