“Do you want to get back in the chair?”
“No … I was just standing here.”
The nurse had stopped a few paces away from him, one hand resting on the chair as if ready to wheel it forward quickly and slide it under Grey’s body.
“I came to see if you needed anything.”
“You can help me with my coat. I’m sweating under this.”
The young man stepped forward and presented his forearm for Grey to lean on while he took the sticks away. With one hand he unbuttoned the front of the coat, then put his big hands under Grey’s armpits, holding his weight, letting his patient remove the coat himself. Grey found it a slow, painful process, trying to twist his shoulder blades to get out of the sleeve without compressing his neck or back muscles. It was impossible to do, of course, even with Dave’s help, and by the time the coat was off he was unable to conceal the pain.
“All right, Richard, let’s get you into the chair.” Dave twisted him around, almost carrying him in the air, and lowered him into the seat.
“I hate this, Dave. I can’t stand being weak.”
“You’re getting better every day.”
“Ever since I’ve been here you’ve been putting me in and out of this damned chair.”
“There was a time you couldn’t get out of bed.”
“I don’t remember that.”
Dave glanced away, up the path. “You don’t have to.”
“How long have I been here?” Grey asked.
“Three or four months. Probably four now.”
There was a silence of memory inside him, a period irretrievably lost. All his conscious memories were of this garden, these paths, this view, this pain, the endless rain and misted sea. It all blended in his mind, each day indistinguishable from the others by its sameness, but there was that lost period behind him too. He knew there had been the bedridden weeks, the sedatives and painkillers, the operations. Somehow he had lived through all that, and somehow he had been signed off, dispatched to convalescence, another bed from which he could not get out by himself. But whenever he tried to think back to beyond that, something in his memory turned away, slipped from his grasp. There was just the garden, the sessions of therapy, Dave and the other nurses.
He had accepted that those memories would not now return, that to try to dwell on them only hindered his recovery.
“Actually, I came down about something,” Dave said. “You’ve got some visitors this morning.”
“Send them away.”
“You might want to meet one of them. She’s a girl, and pretty too …”
“I don’t care,” Grey said. “Are they from the newspaper?”
“I think so. I’ve seen the man before.”
“Then tell them I’m with the physiotherapist.”
“I think they’ll probably wait for you.”
“Can’t you do something, Dave? You know how I feel about them.”
“Nobody’s going to force you to see them, but I think you should at least find out what they want.”
“I’ve nothing to tell them, nothing to say.”
“They might have some news for you. Have you thought of that?”
“You always say that.”
While they had been speaking, Dave had leaned down on the handgrips and swung the chair around. Now he stood, pushing gently on the grips, rocking the chair up and down.
“Anyway,” Grey said, “what news could they have? The only thing I don’t know is what I don’t know.”
Dave let the chair tip down onto its two small wheels at the front, and moved around to Grey’s side.
“Shall I wheel you up to the house?” he said.
“I don’t seem to have any choice.”
“Of course you have. But if they’ve come all the way from London, they aren’t going to go back until they’ve seen you.”
“All right, then.”
Dave took the weight of the chair and wheeled it slowly forward. It was a long, slow climb up to the main house because of the uneven path. When propelling himself Grey had already developed an instinct about jolts and their effect on his back and hip, but when someone else pushed him he could never anticipate them.
They entered the building by a side door, which opened automatically at their approach, then rolled gently down the corridor toward the lift. The parquet flooring had a satin-smooth sheen, with no signs of wear. The whole place was always being cleaned; it smelled unlike a hospital, with polish and varnish, carpets, good food. The acoustics too were muted, as if it were really an expensive hotel where the patients were pampered guests. For Richard Grey it was the only place he knew as home. He sometimes felt he had been here all his life.
II
They ascended to the next floor and Dave propelled the chair to one of the lounges. Unusually, no other patients were there. At a desk in the alcove to one side James Woodbridge, the senior clinical psychologist, was using the telephone. He nodded to Grey as they came into the room, then spoke quickly and quietly and hung up.
Sitting by the other window was Tony Stuhr, one of the reporters from the newspaper. As soon as he saw him, Grey felt the familiar conflict on meeting this man: in person he was likable and frank, but the paper he worked for was a tabloid rag of dubious reputation and immense circulation. Stuhr’s by-line had appeared in the past few weeks on several stories about a royal romance. The newspaper was delivered every day to Middlecombe, especially for Richard Grey. He rarely did more than glance at it.
Stuhr stood up as soon as Grey entered the room, smiled briefly at him, then looked at Woodbridge. The psychologist had left the desk and was crossing the room. Dave stepped on the foot brake of the wheelchair and left the room.
Woodbridge said, “Richard, I’ve asked you to come back to the house because I’d like you to meet someone.”
Stuhr was grinning at him, leaning over the table to stub out his cigarette. Grey noticed that his jacket was falling open and a rolled-up copy of the newspaper was stuffed into an inner pocket. Grey was puzzled by the remark, because Woodbridge must have known that he and Stuhr had met on several previous occasions. Then Grey noticed there was someone with Stuhr. It was a young woman standing beside him, looking at Grey, her eyes flicking nervously toward Woodbridge, waiting for the introduction. He had not seen her until this moment; she must have been sitting with the reporter, and when she stood up had been behind him.
She came forward.
“Richard, this is Miss Kewley, Miss Susan Kewley.”
“Hello,” she said to Grey, and smiled.
“How do you do?”
She was standing directly in front of him, seeming tall but not really so. Grey was still not used to being the only person sitting. He wondered whether he should shake hands with her.
“Miss Kewley has read about your case in the press, and has traveled down from London to meet you.”
“Is that so?” Grey said.
“You could say we’ve set this up for you, Richard,” Stuhr said. “You know we always take an interest in you.”
“What do you want?” Grey said to her.
“Well … I’d like to talk to you.”
“What about?”
She glanced at Woodbridge.
“Would you like me to stay?” the psychologist said to her over Grey’s head.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s up to you.”
Grey realized he was unimportant to this meeting; the real dialogue was going on above him. It reminded him of the pain, lying in the intensive care unit in the London hospital between operations, dimly hearing himself discussed.
“I’ll call back in half an hour,” Woodbridge was saying. “If you need to see me before then, you can just pick up that phone.”
“Thank you,” said Susan Kewley.