The Charioteer

  “Oh, what nonsense, of course not. You’re just taking on something that’s going to be nothing but a burden to you, because you want to cheer me up.”

  “No. You’ve made a great difference, more than I can explain. I shall never forget you.”

  She said, “If you mean that, of course I should love you to write,” and he saw her look away to hide her sudden hope. For a moment he felt guilty; but after she had gone, he realized that, in the deep essentials, he had meant what she had believed him to mean.

  When he got back to the ward, Charlot’s empty bed seemed to dominate it like a grave. There was no sign of Reg. Madge was still here and they were spending the day together. Neames was there, and one or two new men he hardly knew and didn’t much care for. His solitude seemed all the more insistent because this time he had bought it for himself.

  In the asphalt walk he was drawn into conversation by Willis, of all people. Laurie couldn’t remember having ever before had speech with him alone. It emerged that he had got his discharge for the same day as Laurie’s transfer. He was going to Roehampton, to be trained to use an artificial hand and to learn a trade; he had been an unskilled builder’s laborer before the war. He seemed quite cheerful about his future. The real surprise came a few minutes later: Willis was engaged. The girl was an evacuee who worked at one of the farms. They had been walking out for some time and this morning, on getting the news, he had “got it fixed up regular.” Laurie realized that it was weeks since he had paid anything but the most perfunctory attention to Willis; in the interval there had been a considerable change. Suddenly he said, “You wait till young Derek hears about Shirl and me. This’ll shake him, not half.”

  “Pal of yours?” asked Laurie, concealing his astonishment with some care.

  “Comes from down our street, Derek. We bought our groceries off of his dad. Ain’t you heard, then? Come up and told me. He was bright at school, see, got scholarships, that’s how he comes to talk posh. Nothing toffee-nosed about him, though. Reads me his mum’s letters with all the home news, every week regular.”

  “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 res
t. 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.

  He had only attended two weddings in his life, one as a page of four, the other at Oxford in the first days of the war, a rush affair of close friends wearing their everyday clothes. Now for the first time it started coming home to him: the Best Man, the reception, the archaic vestiges of sacrifice, of capture, and of sale. Great Uncle Edward was coming to give away the bride; she was afraid it would be too much for him, but he had said no, they were a small family and Raymond would have wished it. Raymond was his mother’s only brother, who had been killed at Gallipoli. Mrs. Trevor had written again about the house, and—

  “Corporal Odell.”

  Laurie nearly sat at attention and said, “Sir?” But it was the six-foot Sister standing over him.

  “These have been left for you.” She laid a couple of new novels on the bed. Her voice was somberly reserved. Perhaps she had sampled them and considered them immoral, thought Laurie rather wildly, perhaps she didn’t think N.C.O.s ought to be able to read. When she had gone he opened them and found the note inside.

  The last time he had seen a page of Ralph’s writing it had been pinned to the House notice-board. In those days it had been rather precociously formed; it hadn’t changed very much since. The lines straight, the letters slanted a little and pressed on the down-stroke, it had under its regularity a kind of suppressed impatience; one could see how it had been conditioned by the necessity of transmitting vital information, making permanent records, issuing instructions which must not be misunderstood. It was a curiously stiff, shy letter, boyishly conventional, even at times boyishly facetious. There were three more pages and he wondered however Ralph had filled them. He turned over and read, “I was in a pub yesterday when a Pole and a Welshman had a row.” As soon as it became impersonal the letter came to life. The writing had got almost practiced; it had a genuine, natural feel. He remembered Ralph saying, “I used to keep a notebook and write all that nonsense down.”

  Something caught his eye. He looked up. The boy in the next bed had thrown all his covers off and swung a leg over the side. He was only wearing a pajama jacket.

  “Here,” said Laurie, “what goes on? You don’t get up, do you?”

  The boy muttered something about just going outside. Laurie saw he was delirious. All his operation sutures must still be in. Laurie jumped out of bed and eased him back again. The child muttered vaguely and wound his thin arms around Laurie’s neck. He had no idea where he was or who was with him. His hair and skin had a weak, sickly smell.

  “What’s this? What are you doing with this patient?”

  The Sister stood over him like a hanging judge. Laurie felt a lurch inside him. Had Major Ferguson heard something and written? Was he never to get away from it?

  “He was getting out of bed, Sister. I’m sorry.”

  “You must call a nurse, Corporal, if you see a patient needing attention—NURSE EVANS!” It was just the note he had been trying in secret to acquire when he had expected to be promoted sergeant. “Come here, Nurse Evans. Do you know that while you were frittering away your time, this boy with peritonitis would have been out of bed if he hadn’t been put back by another patient who hasn’t been more than a few hours in the ward? You must do better than this, Nurse Evans, I assure you. Now give that boy what he was looking for, and get on with your work.”

  He didn’t sleep much; the ward was taking in emergencies that week. Two arrived in the night, followed by doctors and relatives and theater trolleys. The boy Mervyn, however, slept well, and by morning had made one of those dramatic improvements peculiar to children. He had taken a shine to Laurie and wouldn’t let him alone. After lunch he demanded the Dunkirk story. Laurie stuck to the sea part, since not much of the land events seemed edifying to youth. You couldn’t be vague on your facts. He was a bright, sharp boy, and seemed to have lived with people who regarded lying to children as the natural means of keeping them quiet. The more he wanted to trust you, the sharper he got.

  “A lot of this,” Laurie explained painstakingly, “I don’t remember myself, I heard about it later.”

  “Who told you?”

  “The man who was commanding the ship told me most of it.”

  “The captain did?” Sad suspicion darkened the hollow eyes. “Go on. You’re a corporal.”

  “Yes, but we were at school together.”

  “You and the captain?” He sighed and sagged on the pillow. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” said Laurie, reaching the end of his resources. Shortly after, a snuffling, meanly respectable woman came to visit the boy. When he was taken ill she had told him that he wouldn’t have to stay in hospital and that she would be back in a few minutes to fetch him home; now she had come with more lies to explain it. The boy listened apathetically; once his eyes slid around to Laurie with a vague unformed hope. But it was time for massage; he had to leave them to it.

  Miss Haliburton had sold her dachshund puppy; but she had brought another, a bull-terrier this time. It gave Laurie a pink wink; the other eye had a black patch like a bruiser’s. It took to Laurie with fervor, and tried to get inside his blouse. Arthur measured him for the new boot.

  It was falling dark. The landings and corridors were lit with blue electric bulbs. His ward was in the oldest part of the hospital; everything was huge and dingy, with dust-trapping Victorian joinery. Before him rose the steps to the ward, a dim gaunt sweep of worn stone. He measured it with his eye and stepped forward.

  “Hi, Spud. Wait below there, I’ll come down.”

  Brisk firm feet rang on the steps; Ralph ran down smiling. It was like the sight of something green on a burnt moor. Laurie knew that his face showed it. Ralph took his arm in a quick hard grip and let go again. Laurie said, “God, it’s nice to see you.”

  Ralph said with his swift smile, “Poor old Spud, don’t you like the view? Who’s that lunatic, Alec lent me the book once, couldn’t read above half of it—chap called Kafka. This is just the setup.”

  “Or an old German film. There’s nowhere to sit. She won’t have anyone in the ward out of visiting hours.”

  “I know where we can go,” Ralph said. “I used to know this place once like the back of my hand.” He steered Laurie around a corner into a short, dimly lit passage which smelt of beeswax.
“Have a pew.”

  There was in fact a large yellow pitch-pine pew beside them, stacked with hymn books. They were in the outer lobby of the hospital chapel. They sat down. The place, angled back from the corridor and almost dark, had the nostalgic smell of truancy and escape, like lumber attics and the shut-off wings of old houses. They talked softly, almost in whispers.

  When Laurie thanked him for the books, Ralph said, “I didn’t come last night, I thought you’d be settling in.” Laurie realized that he had thought Andrew would be there.

  “I didn’t get here till late.” It was, he realized, only a simple way of not mentioning Andrew directly. Laurie still would not let his mind cross the borders of half-knowledge. It was just one thing and another; but it wasn’t possible to talk to Ralph about Andrew any more.

  Ralph said, “You’ll know the ropes by tomorrow; ring me up and we’ll try to have supper out.”

  “I can’t tomorrow; I’m going home.”

  “Home?” said Ralph sharply. “Oh—the wedding. I’d forgotten that was so soon. It won’t be a mad riot for you, Spud.”

  “Well, it’s only one day in a lifetime, I suppose.”

  “Spud, is—anybody going with you?”

  “Good God, no.”

  “Why, would you hate that?”

  “I hadn’t thought.”

  “I’ll go with you if you like.”

  Laurie was a moment taking it in. Ralph said, more formally, “I mean, of course, if it wouldn’t annoy your mother, your bringing a stranger along.” Laurie remembered then that his social contacts must have been unconventional for a good many years.

  “Good Lord, Mother would love it; you’d probably ruin the wedding for old Straike. But I think I’d better go on my own. You couldn’t get away, anyhow.”