Laurie had been thinking that Alec always seemed to save his confidences for occasions when one was incapable of taking them in. He said, “You’ll be all right, because you’re more a doctor than you’re a queer.”
Alec pushed the forms together and stood up. “You know,” he said slowly, “that’s the first sensible remark anyone’s made to me all day. Let’s hope you’re right. How could you be such a bloody fool about Ralph? Didn’t it even strike you he hadn’t a mark on him after this alleged brawl? Bunny’s been going around with a split lip for nearly a week, from walking into a lamp-standard in the blackout, he said. You don’t seem to have given the orderly boy credit for much élan. And why should he hit Ralph, anyway? Even if Ralph did put it to him, he’d never put it like that.”
“No,” said Laurie. Another bit of the letter had come back to him.
“He denied it at first,” he said. “And then, in the end, he seemed not to be denying it.”
“I suppose he just thought what the hell. Or else—” Alec smoked in silence for some moments, more evenly now, his hands pushed down into the pockets of his white coat. “Ralph’s got a simple mind in some ways, but it follows through. Unlike so many of our fraternity, he’s no good at ducking out. It was his doing in this sense, that he was the link. He let in the jungle. About one queer in a thousand has the guts to accept that sort of responsibility, and he’s the odd one.” He fell silent again, then looked up suddenly. “Just how bad was this row between you?”
Laurie saw Alec summing up his face; there seemed no need to answer.
“Final?” Alec asked. His voice had sharpened.
Laurie got up. “Will it be all right for me to use this telephone? I don’t want to leave it till morning.”
“He won’t answer it. I told you, he took the receiver off the hooks as soon as the bell started. About six-thirty.” He looked at his watch. With abrupt decision he sat down at the desk, searched the paper-rack, and got out a form. “You’d better go around there. Yes, for God’s sake go around right away. I’ll give you a pass. Family affairs, married sister ill. I’ve no right to do this; never mind, you’re not supposed to know that, you’ll be covered anyway. Here you are.” He blotted the form swiftly and pushed it at Laurie. “I’ll see the Night Nurse. I can’t help what she thinks. Get on your way and don’t loiter. He’s not like Sandy, you know.”
Laurie took the form. He didn’t ask what Alec meant by this uncharacteristic statement of the obvious. He was tired now to the point when he had begun to live on his nerves. He felt he could go on forever, that he would never sleep again.
At the door he said, “I’m sorry you’ve had this trouble with Sandy because of me.”
“If it wasn’t you,” said Alec unemotionally, “it would be something else. And it wasn’t for you, really. Ralph would never let one do anything for him. It was what most of our rows were about.” His eyes met Laurie’s. Neither had moved, but they were like people at a station who see each other receding and getting small as each departs on his different journey. Alec said, “Walk out through the front door, not the lodge. And get a move on.”
In the street outside the hospital, a taxi was unloading its freight of relatives summoned to someone critically ill. Laurie hailed it and got in. The night was black, and bitterly cold.
The drive, from which he had expected a breathing space, seemed over in a moment. He stood on the doorstep, making up his mind to ring. The landlady’s radio was on. She was a talker, who had trapped him once or twice in the hall, and he dreaded its happening now. He tried the door; it was unlocked, and he came in quietly. She was rattling away to someone in her room, using the voice she kept for men. Helped by the banisters, he hoisted himself softly up the stairs.
Ralph’s door was open and the light was on. Laurie paused at the stair-head. Suddenly he wondered why he was forcing himself on Ralph at all. It seemed formal and meaningless, an expiation important only to himself. What he had done was done. He ought to see to his own punishment; it was clear, from what Alec had said about the telephone, that Ralph wanted nothing of it or of him. Thinking about Ralph as he looked again at the door, he knew suddenly before he reached it that the room was empty.
It looked vividly different, as familiar rooms do after a strong experience. Lying on the bed was a shirt, to Laurie’s eye quite clean, which Ralph must just have changed for a still cleaner one. He always used to hurry such things out of sight like guilty secrets; to have found it seemed one more offense against him. He must only have gone out for a few minutes, Laurie thought.
He walked in, across the room and around it; he was at the point of fatigue when delays are intolerable and one tries to abolish them by continuing to make the motions of effort. It was mainly under this taut compulsion to be doing something that, when he found two or three letters on the table stuck down ready for posting, he picked them up to read the envelopes. The top one was for him. For a moment he felt only the relief of his restlessness, that here was something he could be dealing with. By the time he began to have scruples, his finger was already under the flap, and he noticed that the edge was lifting. It had been closed so recently that the gum hadn’t quite set. For no good reason this made up his mind for him, and he peeled it open.
Ralph’s clear sloped writing was packed in neat sections on a big white sheet from some kind of naval memo-pad. Laurie stood staring at it for a second or two, vaguely aware as he stood by the table of a faint smell which had some incongruous association for him, belonging to some part of his life with which Ralph had had nothing to do. The thought vanished from his mind and he began to read.
Dear Spud,
I am sorry that there seems to be no way of writing to you more quickly than by the post, if one is to avoid people reading it I should have liked you to know sooner that you are not to blame for this in any way. It was Bunny who interviewed your friend, as I suspected, but that’s immaterial. It couldn’t have happened but for me, I saw that immediately, so that I have done what you thought in another way. I am telling you this to get it straight between us, because you are bound to find out sooner or later. The real reason I am getting out is that I can see no future for me at sea, and can’t fancy myself in a shore job. I have had something of the sort in mind ever since Dunkirk. I swear that is true.
I am sincerely sorry for the harm I have done to you and to this boy. You had the right idea in the first place, knowing yourself best, and I came along and bitched up your life in every way. I can see now that I was wrong even at school; I should either have gone the whole way, which in those days would probably have shocked you and put you against it all, or shut up about it altogether. When I found you remembered, I felt it must have been what I wanted to happen. One may as well face these things.
If it is any satisfaction to you, I paid a call on Bunny just now and he has been taken to sick bay, with concussion and broken ribs as well as I could judge. He came round in time to agree it was the blackout once again. I tripped him into admitting he had been at my private papers. I shouldn’t like you to think I had ever discussed you or your affairs with him. If you should see Alec, will you tell him I owe him an apology? He will know what I mean.
You mustn’t go on being upset about this, Spud. I have never had much time for people who do this kind of thing as a form of repartee, so if you want to do anything for me, try not to think of it in that way. The fact of the matter is that if I hadn’t met you again, and had gone on as I was, I might have drifted past the point where a step of this kind ought to be taken, and I would rather have it like this. You did what anyone would in the circumstances. So don’t worry. Just lately I have been happier than I ever had the right to expect, and as one goes round the world one sees that happiness is hard to come by and seldom lasts for long. Good luck to you, Spud. We always agreed that right, left, or center, it is still necessary to make out as a human being. I haven’t done it but you will. Goodbye.