The Last Enemy Richard Hillary (15 page)

‘Please, Richard,’ she said, ‘let’s not talk about Peter and me any more. Your self-realization theory is too glib to stand a real test. To pass coldly through the death and destruction of war, to stand aloof and watch your sensibility absorb experience like a photographic plate, so that you may store it away to use for your own self-development that’s what you had hoped to do, I believe?’

‘Of course it is,’ I admitted. She was really roused now, and I was pleased.

‘Well, you can’t! You know you can’t, despite that Machiavellian pose of yours. You tell me women are not as I am. I tell you, men are not as you are. Or rather, were. You remember those photographs taken of you before the crash that I saw the other day? Well, I believe that then, before the crash, you could and possibly did feel as you say you still do. I could never have liked you when you looked like that, looked like the man of the theory you still vaunt. Have you read Donne’s Devotions?’

‘Looked through them,’ I said.

‘In one of them he says this: “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind.” You too are involved, Richard; and so deeply that you won’t always be able to cover up and protect yourself from the feelings prompted in you by that involvement. You talk about my self-deception: do you really believe you can go through life to the end, always taking and never giving? And do you really imagine that you haven’t given to me, haven’t helped me? Well, you have. And what have you got out of it? Nothing! You have given to me in a way that would have been impossible for you before Peter’s death. You are still giving. You are conferring value on life by feeling Peter’s death as deeply as you do. And you are bound to feel the death, be recreated by the death, of the others in the Squadron—if not in the same degree, certainly in the same way. Certainly you are going to “realize” yourself but it won’t be by leading the egocentric life. The effect that you will have on everybody you meet will come not only from your own personality, but from what has been added to you by all the others who are now dead—what you have so ungratefully absorbed from them.’

She spoke with great feeling and much of what she said struck home. It was true that Peter was much in my thoughts, that I felt him somewhere near me, that he was in fact the touchstone of my sensibility at the moment. It was true that the mystical experience of his death was something which was outside my understanding, which had still to be assimilated, and yet, and yet… I could not help but feel that with the passage of time this sense of closeness, of affinity, must fade, that its very intensity was in part false, occasioned by being ill, and by meeting Denise so shortly afterwards; a Denise who was no mere shadow of Peter, but Peter’s reincarnation; thus serving to keep the memory and the experience always before my eyes. While here were two people of an intense lyrical sensibility, two people so close in thought, feeling, and ideals, that although one was dead and the other living they were to me as one, yet I could not feel that their experience was mine, that it could do more than touch me in passing, for that I had been of any help to Denise was in a large part due to the fact that we were so dissimilar. While her thoughts came trailing clouds of glory, mine were of the earth earthy, and at such a time could help to strike a balance between the mystical flights of her mind and the material fact of high-explosive bombs landing in the next street. But though we might travel the same road for a time, lone voyagers eager for company, yet the time must come when our ways should part. Right or wrong, her way was not mine and I should be mistaken in attempting to make it so. We must live how we can.

7

The Beauty Shop

I HAD now been in hospital something over two months and it was thought that I was sufficiently recovered for operation.

Shortly after my arrival at the Masonic the Air Force plastic surgeon, A. H. McIndoe, had come up to see me, but as I had been blind at the time I could recollect his visit but vaguely, remembering only that he had ordered the gentian violet to be removed from my eyes and saline compresses to be applied instead, with the result that shortly afterwards I had been able to see.

He was expected this time at about eleven o’clock, but I was ready a good hour before, bathed and shaved and dressings elaborately correct. The charge nurse ushered him in fussily. Of medium height, he was thick-set and the line of his jaw was square. Behind his horn-rimmed spectacles a pair of tired friendly eyes regarded me speculatively.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘you certainly made a thorough job of it, didn’t you?’

He started to undo the dressings on my hands and I noticed his fingers—blunt, capable, incisive. By now all the tannic had been removed from my face and hands. He took a scalpel and tapped lightly on something white showing through the red granulating knuckle of my right forefinger.

‘Bone,’ he remarked laconically.

He looked at the badly contracted eyelids and the rapidly forming keloids, and pursed his lips.

‘Four new eyelids, I’m afraid, but you’re not ready for them yet. I want all this skin to soften up a lot first. How would you like to go to the south coast for a bit?’

He mentioned the official R.A.F. convalescent hospital on the south coast, generously supplied with golf courses, tennis and squash courts. But as I could not use my hands, and abhorred seaside resorts in winter, I wasn’t very enthusiastic. I asked instead whether I could go down to a convalescent home a couple of miles from his hospital. He raised no objection and said that he would fix it with the Commandant.

‘And I’ll be able to keep an eye on you there,’ he added. He had got up to go when I asked him how long it would be before I should fly again. I had asked the same question on his previous visit, and when he had said ‘Six months’ I had been desperately depressed for days. Now when he said, ‘Next war for you: those hands are going to be something of a problem,’ I wasn’t even surprised. I suppose I had known it for some time. I felt no emotion at all.

He took his leave and I went off to have lunch with my mother.

Two days later, after the disentangling of a few crossed wires in official circles, Air Ministry permission came through and I was driven down to Sussex.

The house was rambling and attractive, and ideal for a convalescent home. I was greeted at the door by Matron and led in to tea. There were about twenty other inmates drinking tea, mostly Army men, not particularly exciting and with not particularly exciting complaints. About them hung the listless air and furtive manner of undertakers, born no doubt of their prolonged inactivity combined with the dreary nature of their intestinal afflictions. By dinner-time I was preparing to resign myself to a comfortable if not stimulating period of relaxation, when a couple of genial souls came rolling in very late and I met Colin Hodgkinson and Tony Tollemache.

Hodgkinson was twenty and in the Fleet Air Arm: it was not until he got up after dinner that I noticed his two artificial legs. While training in an Albacore he had come into collision with a Hurricane. His two companions and the Hurricane pilot were killed instantly and Colin was found in a field six hours later.

Tony Tollemache had crashed in March, night flying. Coming in to land, his Blenheim had turned over and caught fire, throwing him free. His passenger was also thrown free and killed; but under the impression that he was still inside, Tony had climbed in again and wandered up and down the flaming machine, looking for him. He had been badly burned on his face, hands, and, above all, legs. For this action he got the Empire Gallantry Medal and nearly a year in hospital. He had already had several operations, and he was due at the hospital in another two days for a graft on his left hand.

We sat long by the glow of the open fire talking of many things and it was late when we finally climbed the stairs to bed. As I turned on my side and closed my eyes I was content. Tomorrow I should have my breakfast in bed, be given a bath, and come down only for lunch: I was the autocrat of the bolster, the aristocrat of fine linen: there were many worse ways of spending the war.

The following afternoon an eye specialist took a look at me: the pupil of my left eye, dilated by regular treatment with belladonna, interested him particularly.

‘Can’t close your eyes at all, can you?’ he asked.

‘No, sir,’ I said.

‘Well, we’ll have to get some covering over that left eye or you’ll never use it again.’

He went into the Commandant’s office where there was a telephone, and returned a few minutes later.

‘McIndoe is going to give you a new pair of top lids,’ he said. ‘I know your eyes are still infected but we’ll have to take that chance. You’re to go in with Tollemache tomorrow.’

At the Masonic I had been the only action casualty. I had been very ill and in a private ward; subsequently I had been outrageously spoiled. Having little previous experience of hospitals, I had taken it all as a matter of course. At the convalescent home the food was exceptional and the living conditions bordering on the luxurious: as a result the new hospital was something of a shock. It was one of several hundred Emergency Medical Service hospitals. Taken over by the Ministry of Health at the beginning of the war, these were nearly all small country-town hospitals in safe areas. Erected by subscription for the welfare of the district and run by committees of local publicity-loving figures in the community, they had been perfectly adequate for that purpose. They were not, however, geared for a war-time emergency; they were too small. To overcome this difficulty the Ministry of Health had supplied them with ‘blisters’ to accommodate the anticipated flow of troops. I had heard of these ‘blisters’ and was vaguely aware that they were huts, but this hospital provided my first introduction to them.

It was of fairly recent construction and of only one storey. There were two main wards: one reserved for women and filled with residents of the district; the other for men, one half for local civilians and the other (eight beds) for action casualties. Then there were the ‘blisters’; a dental hut, and two others set at an angle to the main building.

Ward Three, housing some of the worst cases, stood about fifty yards away from the hospital. It was a long, low hut, with a door at one end and twenty beds down each side. The beds were separated from each other only by lockers, and it was possible without much exertion to reach out and touch the man in the next bed. Towards the far end the lockers degenerated into soap-boxes. They constituted the patients’ furniture. Windows were let into the walls at regular intervals on each side: they were never open. Down the middle there was a table with a wireless on it, a stove, and a piano. On either side of the entrance passage were four lavatories and two bathrooms. Immediately on the left of the entrance passage was the saline bath, a complicated arrangement of pipes that maintained a constant flow of saline around the bathed patient at a regulated temperature. McIndoe had been using it with great success for the rapid healing of extensive burns. Next to this, in a curtained-off bed, was a little girl of fifteen, by name Joan, terribly burnt by boiling sugar her first day in a factory. Joan was in this ward because there was no other saline bath in the hospital (there were only three in England), and she could not be moved any distance. She screamed fairly regularly, and always before being lifted into the bath; her voice was thin and like that of a child of seven. As the time for her bath approached there was a certain tension throughout the hut; and then everyone would start talking rather loudly, and the wireless was turned up.

For the rest, there was a blind man at the far end learning Braille with the assistance of his wife, a Squadron Leader, several pilot officers, a Czech, and sundry troops, unlikely to forget Dunkirk as quickly as most.

But my first taste of Ward Three was not yet. It was to the main building that I went for my new eyelids, and with little graciousness. Tony and I came in late, a fair measure of whisky inside us, and started noisily to get undressed. Our beds were next to each other: opposite us were two Hurricane pilots, one with his legs badly burned and the other with a six-weeks growth of beard and a thick surgical bandage over his eyes. He was being fed by a nurse.

‘Is he blind?’ I whispered to Tony.

‘Blind?’ he roared. ‘Not half as blind as we are, I’ll bet. No, me boy. That’s what you’re going to look like tomorrow when McIndoe’s through with you.’

‘Are you daft, Mr. Tollemache, coming in here late and making all that noise? If it’s trouble you want you’ll get it when Sister Hall sees you. And tell your fine friend to take his shoes off the bed.’

This was my first introduction to the Ward Charge Nurse. She rose from feeding the man with the bandaged eyes and stood feet apart and hands on hips, her cap awry, one tooth nibbling her lower lip as though it was lettuce.

Tony turned to me.

‘Begad,’ he said, ‘I forgot to warn you, it’s back in Hell’s Kitchen we are. The ward is lousy with Irish and ‘tis better to lie and rot than let them lay a finger on your dressings. They’ll give you a dig for De Valera as soon as look at you.’

‘Ach! you needn’t show off now, Mr. Tollemache. That’s not funny and I’m not laughing.’

She drew herself up to her full five feet and stalked majestically from the ward, somewhat spoiling the effect by a shrill cackle of laughter when she caught sight of the pair of red pyjamas that I was unpacking.

‘It’s the wrong address you’re at with those passion pants,’ she said. ‘This is a hospital, not an English country house week-end.’

‘Be off with you, woman,’ I said, and putting on the offending garments I climbed into bed and settled down to read.

Shortly afterwards Sister Hall came into the ward, her dark-blue uniform proclaiming her rank.

‘More Ireland,’ whispered Tony as she approached.

She stopped at the foot of my bed and I noticed that she was short, that her hair was grey, and that a permanent struggle between a tight-lipped mouth and smiling eyes was at the moment being very definitely won by the mouth.

‘Good evening, Mr. Tollemache,’ she said.

‘Good evening, Sister Hall,’ said Tony in his blandest manner.

She turned to me.

‘Mr. Hillary, both you and Mr. Tollemache are to be operated on tomorrow morning. As you know, you should have been in earlier for preparation; now it will have to be done in the morning I hope you will settle in here quickly; but I want it understood that in my ward I will tolerate no bad language and no rudeness to the nurses.’

‘My dear Sister,’ I replied, ‘I’ve no doubt that you will find me the mildest and most soft-spoken of men,’ and sitting up in bed I bowed gravely from the waist. She gave me a hard look and walked through the ward.

Tony waited until she was out of earshot. Then: ‘A tough nut, but the best nurse in the hospital,’ he said. ‘I don’t advise you to get on the wrong side of her.’

Shortly before the lights were put out McIndoe made a round of the ward followed by half a dozen assistants, mostly service doctors who were training under him. ‘You’re first on the list, Tony,’ he said, ‘and you’re second. By the looks of you both we’ll need to use a stomach pump before we can give you any anaesthetic.’

He took a look at my eyes. ‘They’re still pretty mucky,’ he said, ‘but I think you’ll find it a relief to have some eyelids on them.’ He passed on through the ward and we settled down to sleep.

In the morning we were wakened early and ‘prepped’ by Taffy, the Welsh orderly. ‘Prepping’ consists of sterilizing the area of skin to be used for the graft and shaving completely any surrounding hair. My eyelids were to be a ‘Thiersch’ graft (a layer of skin thin as cigarette paper) taken from the inside of my left arm, so Taffy shaved the arm and armpit, then sterilized the arm and bound it up in a loose bandage. He did the same thing to Tony’s leg, from where the skin was to be taken for his hand, and we were both ready to go. The Charge Nurse then trundled in a stretcher on wheels, parked it beside Tony’s bed, pushed his feet into an enormous pair of bed socks, and whipped out a hypodermic needle. This contained an injection to make one drowsy half an hour before being wheeled into the operating theatre.

‘Bet you she’s blunted the needle,’ said Tony; ‘and look at her hand; it’s shaking like an aspen leaf.’

‘Be quiet, Mr. Tollemache, let’s have less of your sauce now.’

After much protesting she finally caught his arm and stuck him with the needle. He then climbed on to the trolley, which was screened off, and after about half an hour he was wheeled away.

I hoped that the operation would not be a lengthy affair, for I was hungry and could have no food until after I had been sliced up. Finally Tony was wheeled back, very white on the unburned patches of his face and breathing ether all over the room. It was my turn for the trolley. The injection did not make me particularly drowsy, and feeling bored I asked for a cigarette from one of the others and puffed away contentedly behind the screen. But I had not counted on the sharp eyes of Sister Hall. For a second she stared unbelievingly at the thin spiral of smoke; then she was inside the screen, the confiscated cigarette glowing accusingly in her hand and herself looking down on me with silent disapproval. I gazed back innocently; but pulling the screen to with a jerk, she walked on, her measured tread the silent voice of outraged authority.

It was time for me to go. Two nurses appeared at either end of the trolley and I was off, Tony’s stertorous breathing and the coarse cries of the others following me down the ward. I was welcomed by the anaesthetist, vast and genial, with his apparatus that resembled a petrol station on wheels. As he was tying up my arm with a piece of rubber tubing, McIndoe came in sharpening his knife and wearing a skull-cap and multi-coloured gown, for all the world like some Bedouin chieftain. The anaesthetist took my arm and pushed the needle in gently. ‘Well, good-bye,’ he said. A green film rose swiftly up my throat and I lost consciousness.