The Happy Prisoner (7 page)

When Elizabeth came briskly in, it looked like a peaceful family scene. “Excuse me, I'm so sorry to disturb you,” she said, and was going out, but Oliver called her back. When she switched on the centre light, the family scene was disclosed as both sisters looking cross and Oliver with shadows under his eyes and his pillows slipped down so that his head looked as if it were dropping off.

“I've been hoping you'd come in,” he said. “I'm damned uncomfortable.”

“Why didn't you ask me?” said Heather reproachfully. Violet did not say anything. It was an accepted fact that she was no good in a sickroom, and she would sooner wash up the glasses than touch her brother. Once when she had come in by mistake when Elizabeth was doing his dressing, she had been invited over to have a look. She knew they had thought her churlish for taking one glance and hurrying away as if she were not interested, but she was ashamed to let them see what the sight of his stump did to her.

She was still very shy of Elizabeth, who was so deft with her hands that she made Violet drop more things than ever. She would have liked to make friends with her, for she had no real friends except Evelyn and Joan Elliot, the square and hairy dog girl at the kennels in the village, but she did not know how to begin. She had shown Elizabeth round the farm, and Elizabeth, although she had obviously lived all her life in towns and thought a heifer was a breed of cow, had seemed to like it and had shown a polite interest in the workings of the grass-drying plant, made incomprehensible by Violet's explanations. Oliver had heard her offer to take Elizabeth riding.

“Thank you very much, but I'm afraid I don't know how.”

“Teach you if you like,” Violet had thrown at her. Elizabeth had said that would be very nice, thank you, and there the matter rested until Violet could find the words to suggest it again. She was not sure whether Elizabeth wanted to be taught to ride, and on thinking it over, she was not sure whether she herself wanted to risk Brownie's mouth.

She scrambled up now as Elizabeth approached the bed, mumbled good night to her brother and went off with her skirt rucked up at the back, to see if there were anything in the biscuit tin.

Heather also wanted to be friendly with Elizabeth. She welcomed anyone new. But, as she had said to Oliver: “She's so unapproachable. You feel if you could chip off some of that polite plaster casing she walks around in, you
might
find a real
girl underneath, but honestly, I'm beginning to doubt if there's anything there. I've tried to get together with her, but she won't let her stays out one notch.”

“No girls' gossips?” asked Oliver.

“Gossip? She doesn't know the meaning of the word. I've been into her room and asked leading questions about all her photographs, but she shut up like a clam as if she thought I were being nosey. So queer. Most people will talk for ever about their relations—especially nurses. Remember Sandy's cousin Arthur in the Merchant Navy? God, how I suffered.”

She picked up her work-basket and stood now, feeling useless, watching Elizabeth critically as she pummelled pillows and drew sheets taut. “You must think us an awfully helpless family,” she said, “not being able to look after our own brother ourselves.”

“I don't see why,” said Elizabeth. “Acute heart cases need very special treatment. They should really be nursed in hospital.” This was the first time she had vouchsafed even so indirect a criticism since she came to Hinkley. Oliver and Heather exchanged glances. “That's one for you, my lad,” said Heather, her crucifix swinging forward against his chin as she kissed him on the forehead, and went out.

“Oh dear,” said Elizabeth. “I do hope Mrs. Sandys didn't think I meant to be rude. I didn't mean it like that.”

“All the same if you did,” said Oliver cheerfully. “You're quite right in theory. But you reckon without people like my mother. Hasn't she ever told you how she snatched me from out of the jaws of hell? It was one of her finest achievements. What are you going to do now—not my dressing again?”

“You know you have to have that cod-liver oil on four-hourly. It's not been done since six.”

“I wonder you don't get up in the night and do it,” he grumbled.

“I suppose I should really,” she said seriously.

“If I didn't know you so well already,” said Oliver, “I should think you were my devoted slave, but I'm forced to admit it's my stump you cherish, not me.”

“Tell me about your mother and the jaws of hell,” said Elizabeth, “and perhaps you could wind this bandage at the same time.”

.…

“As you know,” said Oliver, “I was wounded at Arnhem. The same shell that smashed up my leg left a bit of itself in my chest as well. We'd been in the attic of a house in the main street for four days, potting at a mobile gun that used to come
up the street on and off to try and blast us out. Quite a lot of the chaps got hit, and I was sure I would soon—I was stiff with fright all the time I was in that attic. I should love to be able to tell you that I fell at my gun, firing to the last, and falling back with a cry of encouragement on my lips, but I'm sorry to say that I fell simply through greed.

There were twelve of us in that house. Those who weren't working the gun or sniping used to live in the cellar—the old man who'd owned it was a specialist in Hocks, but his red wines were like prickly ink. We lived mostly on stew, made in a bucket by an absolute wizard who'd been a cook at the Savoy or somewhere. He used to have the thing simmering all day and throw in everything he could lay hands on. We'd scrounge a chicken sometimes, and once someone out on patrol sniped at a Hun and got a rabbit. This particular day, when I came down from the attic, I went over to the bucket and had a taste out of the ladle to see what lunch was going to be like.

“Not enough onion,' I said to Willie. He was the man who made the stew.

‘I haven't been able to get any today,' Willie said. ‘Every time I start out for the kitchen garden, a Heinkel comes over and drops something down the back of my neck.'

I said we couldn't eat the stuff without onion. We'd become rather eclectic about that stew. I told him what I thought about the service in his hotel and went out myself to get some onions.

The house had one of those long, narrow gardens, with flower-beds and what had once been a lawn first, then a kind of arbour and then the kitchen garden. I found the onions and put about a dozen inside my blouse. I was just turning to go back when I saw a little bay tree in a corner by the end fence. I remembered Ma and her bay leaves. She planted that tree in the tub by the front door, and when we lived in London, there was one in our Square and she used to send me out to pinch some while the gardener was having his tea. Willie, being a professional cook, would appreciate them.

‘Willie will be pleased,' I thought, and that was the last think I did think, because the shell got me halfway to the tree.

Willie must have found me when he came out to see what had happened to his onions. I don't know. When I came to, I was being gently rocked; I thought I was a baby in my cradle. I swear it. I'm not just making that up because I've read that you get a subconscious mother-craving
in extremis
, though I did read that afterwards and was gratified to think I'd run so true to form. Actually, I was in a small boat. Our advanced dressing
station was on the other side of a branch of the Rhine, and we had to take our seriously wounded across at night. There was a stiff wind blowing along the river and the boat was rocking against the little jetty. I was lying in the bottom, wrapped in a blanket like a cocoon. I thought at first that was why I couldn't breathe properly. There were some hoarse attempts at whispering going on and a lot of muffled oaths. People kept stepping over my head in muddy boots. It was damned cold and I couldn't see anyone I knew.

I knew one of the doctors at the dressing station though, a Scotsman with a little black moustache and a soft voice. He told me they were going to take my leg off before they moved me to the clearing station. I can't remember minding very much. I think I thought that it was a good idea if it was going to make it hurt less. Everyone was frightfully amused when they bared my bosom to listen to my heart and found a dozen large onions nestling in there. Then, of course, they found the hole where the bit of shrapnel had gone in, so they took that out, and ever since I've heard nothing but heart, heart, heart, and you mustn't do this and you mustn't do that, and what a miraculous escape and you're a fool to chuck it away just because you won't do what you're told.

That was in the base hospital in England mostly. I was a bit of a pest there. The ward sister was very frank and man-to-man. She was the one who kept calling me a fool and promising me death. She favoured the direct rather than the humouring technique, and when they realised that my stump was not going to heal properly, told me so with great pride as though she admired her bravery in being so honest. When my dressing was being done and the nurse called her over to have a look, she would say: ‘What did I tell you? You'll be here a long time yet,' as if it were all my fault and served me right.

I was in one of those temporary huts, a sort of annexe to the main hospital. There were twenty beds in it, lockers that looked like soap boxes turned on end, and an iron stove in the middle which always had a few unshaven men sitting round it playing cards. It certainly was rather a bleak spot, but I'll never forget my poor old Ma's face when she first came to visit me. I think she expected to find me in a private room, surrounded by beautiful cooing nurses and flowers and exotic fruit.

She was horrified to think that anyone should have put her son—
her son
— into a place where the backs of beds were not high enough to support the pillows and the bread and butter for the whole day was cut the night before. Because she was too
sympathetic, I, out of cussedness, was too cheerful. Actually, I hated the place. We all did, and used to work each other up by grumbling until gloom hung in the struts of the tin roof like a cloud of cigarette smoke. If an optimistic new patient came in, prepared to make the best of everything, we took a lugubrious delight in schooling him to our way of thought. My mother, of course, sensed the atmosphere, but I told her she was imagining things, not because I was noble, but because I couldn't stand pity from anyone just then.

She had taken rooms in the town, and was back again the next day. It wasn't visitors' day, so of course she was not allowed to see me. I could hear the argument going on in the passage outside the hut. I knew who would win, and sure enough, the old lady sailed in presently, followed by Sister, scarlet in the face. It was winter then and the windows of the hut were low, but we were not allowed to have the lights on until five. On this particular day, a leaden, soaking afternoon had made it twilight in our hut by about four o'clock. A hideous man called Stringy Salter was making up the stove with a lot of noise. He wore a red blanket round his waist and a filthy white sock over the plaster on his foot. Two other up-patients, very decent chaps really, but not prepossessing, were playing cards. One had a hacking cough and the other had a patch over one eye. We had had our tea, but I had been slow with mine because I didn't want it, and the orderly had not cleared it away. A plate with a great hunk of bread and butter and a cup without a saucer, half full of tea which I hadn't been able to drink because it was too strong, stood on my locker beside the old tin lid I used as an ashtray. The man in the bed next to me had died the night before and the springs of the bed were bare, because his mattress had gone to be fumigated. My mother sat down on the black iron and looked at me.

‘This is just terrible,' she said. ‘You can't stay here.'

‘Oh, it's all right,' I said airily. ‘It's fine. You see it at its worst today. Come on a sunny morning when we're larking about with the V.A.D.s—' At that moment, the most horse-faced of all the V.A.D.s, a brave old relic of the last war, chose to come pounding down the ward with a bucketful of dirty dressings, like a swineherd going to the sties. The orderlies were supposed to take them from the sluice out to the bins, but they usually forgot.

One of the men called out to her: ‘Annie—' That was her name, Annie. Annie Rooney they used to call her. ‘Annie, for Christ's sake, when are they going to turn these bloody lights
on?' Only he didn't say bloody, unfortunately. He had to lie flat on his back and couldn't see I had a visitor.

Annie answered him tartly: ‘You shut your noise, young Bobby Combes, or you won't get any light at all tonight.' That was her idea of a joke. She was a cheery old soul, but to one who didn't know her finer qualities, she must have sounded a bit grim. She had a voice like a nutmeg grater; she smoked like a chimney off duty and would do anything for you if you gave her a packet of cigarettes.

I could see my mother getting more and more worked up. ‘Why hasn't this bed got a mattress on it?' she asked. I told her and she got up quickly, and Sister, thinking she was going away, came up and said: ‘I shall have to ask you to leave now, Mrs. North. The ward is closed.'

‘It should never have been opened, in my opinion,' said Ma, showing a ready wit. She squeezed my hand in the gloaming and whispered that she would be back tomorrow. I must say, I never thought she would get in. Sister had redoubled her defences by having screens round the bed and saying I had had a bad day and was too ill to see anyone. I could hear them at it on the other side of the screens. I found out afterwards that the men were laying bets on the pair of them and Scotty Macrae won half a crown and a rubber air cushion when my mother came triumphantly through the screens. I don't know how she managed it, but she came every day after that, visiting hours or not, and Sister pretended not to notice her or arranged to be off duty when she came. She used to talk to me about my mother, of course, and would lay the cold end of her stethoscope on my chest and tell me that my heart was worse. ‘And no wonder,' she gloated.