He got through from the telephone box very quickly. He could hear the bell ringing in the ward, and tried to picture Andrew hurrying to answer it; but the picture wouldn’t form, and when the answering voice came, it wasn’t Andrew’s.
“Is that Ward B?”
“Yes?”
“Who is that speaking?”
“This is the ward orderly, Roger Curds.” Then, after a pause, “Do you want to inquire for someone?”
It was very cold in the telephone box, which had a missing pane that let in the wind. Laurie felt his palms filmed with an icy moisture. “Doesn’t Andrew Raynes work on Ward B any more?”
“No. Andrew Raynes went to London yesterday.”
“To London?” His mind was a blind scramble of conjecture under a cold sky of fear. “Do you know how long he’s likely to be away?”
“I’m afraid not.” The rather high, pleasant voice paused tentatively; then, “Is that Laurie Odell speaking?”
“Yes. It is. Did Andrew leave a message for me?”
“Not with me; but that will mean he must have written. You’ve not changed your address lately?”
“No.”
“Well, I expect you’ll have a letter when the post comes in. I know you’re a friend of Andrew’s; I’m sure he wouldn’t move without letting you know.”
“Move?” The cold seemed to have gone through to his bones, not numbly but with a sharp eating pain. “Aren’t you expecting him back?”
“Well, not at present, I think. If you don’t hear by this morning’s post, you could always ring here in the daytime; I haven’t his address and I can’t leave the ward now, but you could easily get it then.”
“Thank you.” He rang off.
When he got back the ward seemed just the same, as if it had been fixed in an enchanted sleep through disastrous decades. Mechanically, Laurie undressed again, went into the sluice-room, and with a couple of other walking patients carried out his usual morning job, giving enamel bowls of water to such bed patients as could wash themselves.
The giving out of the patients’ mail was one of the Sister’s sacred cows. A royal prerogative, it gave way to every more urgent duty but was never delegated. Laurie could remember the letters coming around as late as eleven-thirty. He felt too sick to eat breakfast, though after the early hospital supper he was usually ravenous.
Mervyn, well on toward convalescence, was in the mood when boys are endurable only to one another, entranced with elementary jokes and building on them vast structures of silly elaboration. Laurie lost his temper at last and shut him up. He looked hurt, but not very badly; he knew already that no one keeps a sense of humor much after sixteen.
The letters came around rather earlier than usual, at about a quarter to nine. There were two for him. One was from his mother, a picture postcard of the hotel, her window marked with a cross. The other was from Andrew.
Laurie sat with the unopened letter in his hand, trying to think of somewhere to go. The nurses would be working in the bathroom; there was only one lavatory, never free for long; in a word, there was nowhere. He hid behind yesterday’s paper, and opened the letter against the middle page. Andrew’s round, young writing stood like an inset on the day’s score-card of dead pilots and fallen planes.
Dear Laurie,
Forgive me for not writing before. You will guess why, from what Ralph will have told you, but that’s no excuse. I have begun two or three letters, but they weren’t honest enough to send. Tomorrow I am going to London to work, which I think you will see is the only logical thing; so I must write today, and I find now that I can. I want you to know …
“Odell! Do put that paper down, we want to tidy the bed.”
“Sorry.”
“Sister hates newspapers about. We’ll throw it out now if you’ve done with it.”
“No, please. Not yet.”
“Well, do have the bed tidy for Mr. Sutcliffe’s round.”
I want you to know it is true if he says that when I hit him it wasn’t even self-defense. There is a belief, which I expect he shares, that a pacifist who has behaved like this must see at once his ideas were wrong. I should have thought there could hardly be a better way of proving they were right. But if that were all I had to tell you, of course I could have written days ago.
Dave says this about temptation, that in itself it is nothing but an opportunity for choice; so it is rather defeatist to feel very guilty about it, as though one were half ready to commit the sin. If I say I have had feelings about you it would have been wrong to act on, you know enough to see what I mean. As a rule it seemed not to matter very much. Often before when I have been fond of people I have got somehow caught up in it all round; but I am such an average person, it must be quite common I thought. With you it was more, sometimes you must have noticed I was difficult; but I got over that and it came to seem more like a smile when one is happy. It is the happiness one thinks about and not the smile. Toward the end I thought you felt the same. I knew I oughtn’t to be so glad of this, since it might be my fault, yet often it seemed good, in fact the only thing. Only I found that I couldn’t see things so clearly when I was alone, and I should have taken notice of that because it is the real test of everything.
Well, about Ralph. He isn’t like I imagined, so I found it hard to picture you and him as great friends. When he told me it was much more than that, I felt—I don’t know a better way of expressing this—as if I’d had an anonymous letter. I got one once, after my Board. It is like something from another world, but it has touched you, and the touch is real. So then he said why did I pretend to be shocked when I was only jealous; and that was when I hit him.
He didn’t hit me back, he just laughed and walked off. He had a right to. I knew before he was even out of sight that there could be only one reason for what I did. What he had said about me was true. He wanted to see what I would do, I suppose, and I did what he expected. But it taught me something. The thing you want to kill is really in yourself. That is why people become cruel in war, because they are doing what I did.
I don’t know what more there is to say, except this: that since one can’t refuse to know oneself, and it must have happened eventually, I would rather it was through you than anyone else.
I shall apply to do ambulance work in the line, as soon as such a thing exists again. Meanwhile, London seems the next best. I know what you will think, that I am starting to patch up my self-respect at a rather primitive level. But I find I have to do this before going on. That is another thing about me which had to be faced sometime. I daresay my father would have understood. Anyway, you will.
You will probably be amazed and embarrassed after this when I ask you to write to me. Not to answer the kind of thing I have been telling you, no one could expect that. It is only this, because I can’t see you again and shall often be thinking about you. Will you please tell me yourself that there is nothing in what he said about you and him? Of course I know there isn’t. But somehow it has got a hold on me; I can’t get it out of my mind. It will be all right as soon as I hear from you. I can get rid of it then and keep the rest. There is much more I should like to say, but now I shall never be able to say it. You know I shall remember you all my life.
Love,
Andrew
He had written an address at the bottom, somewhere in the neighborhood of the docks.
“Spud. I say, Spud. You done with the outside bit of the paper?”
Some mechanical residue in him detached the outer sheet and handed it over.
“Coo, Spud. See about that Hurricane pilot? Spud, you know what, I saw a real ace once. Honest. He came to our school about War Savings. He was wizzo. I say, Spud—”