Dave nodded and went over to the sink. In the street a lorry was approaching; that would help too. “Goodbye, Dave.”
“Goodbye,” Dave said. “God bless you.” He spoke as he might have said in the ward, “Here’s your blanket”; like a man offering in his hand something solid and real. As Laurie went, he heard him start to clatter the sink with both taps running.
It was not till Laurie had got level with the bombed houses down the street that he became aware of the sheet of paper which, because he couldn’t discard it in the house, he was still holding screwed up in his hand. He tossed it away into the road, where it landed in a little heap of rubble and broken glass. On the crumpled edge which was showing he could see “… anyon” and just below it “… dell.”
When he got out into the wide main street it seemed still quite light, but by the time he reached Paddington it was the latter end of dusk, and you could feel everywhere, in voices and footsteps and the sound of the traffic, the faint resonant overtone of a steady anticipation.
16
HE ARRIVED BACK IN the ward just before the night staff came on. The Staff Nurse said, “Oh, there you are, Odell; I suppose you know Sister’s absolutely livid with you?”
“Yes, I was afraid of that.”
“If you told that child to eat your dinner as well as his own and say you were there, I don’t think much of it. When she taxed him with it he got nervous and brought the whole lot up again.”
“No, really I didn’t. Is he all right?”
“Not much thanks to you. Get to bed now for goodness’ sake, if you don’t want me to tell her you cut your treatment as well. Lucky for you it’s her half day. All I can say is, I hope it was worth it.”
Mervyn, flattered by Laurie’s concern, waved it away. “It’s all right, it was a bit of a waste, but I ate some sweets when I got hungry again, and there was a super pie for supper, I had some more. Did you fix everything okay?”
“Yes, thanks. We’d better stop talking or Nurse won’t like it.”
“Go on, we’ve got six minutes yet. I say, Spud, you know what? I had a visitor this evening. I bet you sixpence, come on, I bet you a hundred thousand pounds you don’t guess who I had.”
“I can’t think,” said Laurie, coming near to a literal truth just then. “Someone from school?”
“Go on, you’re soppy, they come Sundays. Come on, guess. I bet you never do guess. Shall I tell you? Do you give up? Okay, then you owe me a hundred thousand pounds, see? It was Mr. Lanyon. He came right into the ward and said is Sister off duty, so then he asked Nurse if he could see me, and she said, well, don’t stay long, only she was busy, see, so he stayed for ages, he told me all about Morse, and he showed me how you sail a dhow, he drew me one, and he gave me my soap and flannel to wash, he stayed right up till they came to make the bed. I bet you’d never have guessed, would you? Would you, Spud? You’d never have guessed if you weren’t there he’d come just to see me?”
“No,” said Laurie. “Was that all you talked about?”
“Coo, no. We talked for ages.” The first bright shine of elation had gone from his voice, and there was half a question in it.
“What about?”
Already the old sharp look was coming back into Mervyn’s face; no clear suspicion, only the knowledge that he was being given at best half a truth. “Only what I was going to do when I leave school, and he asked about you, he asked where you were. So I said I didn’t know, you had to see about something on business.” He gave the sharp look again, this time a request for approval. Laurie realized that this was some kind of stock answer he had been taught to make at home, perhaps when creditors called. No doubt at the time he had simply told all he knew; this canniness was retrospective. Laurie could feel in himself all the wheels running down in a slack hopeless sense of universal defeat. “I’m glad you had a nice talk.”
“Yes, I thought he was super.” Laurie sensed, in the pause, a forlorn hope of having everything made right again.
“He tells some good stories, doesn’t he? I ought to have left a message for him, but I forgot.”
“He said he’d come back tomorrow.” A cautious relief quickened in Mervyn’s voice. “I say, Spud, did you know, it’s Sister’s day off tomorrow? Mr. Lanyon didn’t know it was, so when I told him, he said he might come and see me again, just for a minute.”
“That would be fine. But sometimes he gets orders at short notice. So if you don’t see him, don’t be upset.”
The night nurses were coming in; now there was no need to talk any more. But though the raid that night was a light one and soon over, he was awake till three, with the tight spinning wakefulness of mental exhaustion. Soon after five the lights went on and the day’s work began.
The long featureless desert of the morning passed. After dinner he dozed fitfully for about an hour, till it was time to go for his treatment and make his apologies to Miss Haliburton. After that there was nothing to do but think.
At five Laurie slipped out of the ward quietly, and waited at the head of the stairs. In the ward at the bottom someone had just died and the widow was led away crying. For a little while the flagged stone well was empty; then two housemen paused there to exchange a bit of hospital scandal and laugh; a long wait, then a very young nurse hurried away on an errand, rolling down her sleeves and pushing the hair out of her eyes. The next footsteps were Ralph’s.
The landing was too near the ward; Laurie went down, and they met on the bend of the stairs. With a kind of horror, he saw that Ralph looked exactly the same. Even now that one knew, there seemed nothing behind his smile but a certain alertness and anxiety, there was nothing to see.
He said, “Hello, Spud. What happened yesterday? If you left a message for me I never got it.” Laurie didn’t answer; he thought his face would be answer enough. Ralph looked at him again and said, “What’s been going on, for God’s sake? You look terrible. What’s the trouble, Spud, tell me about it.”
“I’ve been to see Andrew,” Laurie said, and waited.
Ralph waited too. His face betrayed nothing. If one hadn’t known, it would have seemed to show mere bewilderment passing into concern.
Laurie said, “Do you still want to know what the trouble is?”
With an anxious-sounding irritability Ralph said, “Yes, of course I do.”
Laurie remained silent; but this time it was because he had been left without words. Ralph’s fair brows came down in a straight line. He hadn’t even dropped his eyes. He said, slowly, “I suppose you mean he’s found out.”
Still Laurie stared, unbelieving. It had really seemed to him, till this moment, that he was ready for anything, that not a single illusion about Ralph was left. But he had taken for granted courage in a corner; he had imagined Ralph standing up to this as he had when Mr. Straike had asked him his name.
At first it had seemed not to matter what one said, the thing had been to get it over; but now he felt anger rising in him, pent, aching anger from hidden places, the blind undischarged poison of guilt and conflict and suppressed resistance. He said, “You should know.”
“I don’t understand. Why?”
After a short pause Laurie said, “Christ!”
“Now look, Spud,” said Ralph, suddenly crisp, “this isn’t getting us anywhere.”
“I’ve got some good news for you,” said Laurie bitterly. “He’s gone up to London. You did better than you expected there. He’s gone to work in the worst-bombed place he can find, he thinks he ought to because he hit you. I’m glad you had a good laugh about it. Are you satisfied now?”