The Levant Trilogy (51 page)

'Where's the doctor? Why hasn't he come round? I
must see him.'

The orderly, a big, red-haired fellow, looked
pityingly at him and said: 'Don't you get upset, sir. It'll be all right. The
physio'll be here in a minute.'

Simon let the man go then lay, impatient for
Ross to arrive. He realized that all his laughter, all his high spirits, had
been a screen to divide him from the poor devils in the wheel-chairs.

He heard them singing an old troops' song that
they had adopted as their theme song. He had taken it to be, 'Beautiful
Dreamer, Queen of my song, I've been out in Shiba too fucking long
...'

Now, hearing it again, he realized it was
something different:

'Beautiful Dreamer, Queen of my Song, I've been
here in Plegics too fucking long
...' -
and
this ward was Plegics - paraplegics, quadraplegics! They sang mournfully, going
on to the next lines:

Send out 'the
Rodney,
send the
Renown,

You can't send the
Hood
for the bleeder's gone down.

How long, he wondered, had some of them been in
Plegics? How long was he likely to be there?          

When Ross came to his bedside, Simon could
appreciate his solemnity.

Ross, seeing his distraught face, made a noise
in his throat as though acknowledging the change in him, but said nothing. With
his usual gentle efficiency, he uncovered Simon's legs and began to manipulate
them.

Looking down at them, Simon could now see how
strange they were. Not his legs at all. Having lost their sunburn, they looked
to him unnaturally white; marble legs, too heavy to move; lifeless, the legs
of a corpse.

The exercises finished, Ross pulled a pencil
along Simon's right sole, from heel to toe: 'Feel that?'

'No.'

As the blanket was pulled back over them, Simon
imagined his legs disappearing into the darkness of death. He said: 'Wait a
moment, Ross. I want you to tell me the truth.' He nodded towards the chair
bound men who seemed in the sunset light to be moving in a limbo of infinite
patience: 'Am I going to be like them?'

Ross regarded him gravely: 'How long since you
copped it, sir?'

Simon had lost count of time since he had been
picked up at Gazala but he said: 'About a month.'

'You begin worrying when it's five weeks.'

Ross went to his other patients and Simon, with
nothing to do but worry, realized it must be all of four weeks since he and
Crosbie ran into the booby trap. The Gazala dogfight had been in the middle of
December and he had followed the advance not much later. Now it was January.
Early January, but still January. Facing up to the passage of time, his
desolation became despair.

The sister, paying her evening visit, came in
cheerfully: 'And how are we today?' Meeting with silence, she asked: 'What's
the matter? Girlfriend not turn up?'

He did not reply till her ministrations were
ended, then he said: 'Sister, if that young lady comes again, I don't want to
see her.'

'You'd better tell her that yourself.'

'Please close the curtains.'

The sister, who understood the change in him,
pulled the curtains round three sides of his bed and left without saying anything
more. On his fourth side there was a window without shutters. He had to
tolerate the light but if he could, he would have blotted it out and closed
himself into wretchedness as in a tomb.

The
Egyptian
Mail
confirmed the sinking of the
Queen
of
Sparta
but in
its report there was reason for hope. A correspondent in Dar-es-Salaam had
informed the paper that one life-boat, crowded with women and children, had got
away. Its steering was faulty and it drifted for ten days before being sighted
by fishermen who towed it into Delagoa Bay. By that time the children and some
of the adults had died of thirst and exposure.

But not all. Not all. There had been survivors.

Edwina said earnestly to Guy: 'I'm sure, I'm
absolutely
sure, that Harriet is
alive.'

Guy became as sure as she was and his natural
good-humour returned. His nagging fears and anxiety were displaced by the
certainty that any day now Harriet would cable him from Dar-es-Salaam.

He said: 'She's a born survivor. After all she's
been through since war began, ten days in an open boat would mean nothing to
her.'

Dobson agreed: 'She looked frail but these frail
girls are as tough as they come.'

Guy said, 'Yes,' before being caught in an
accusing memory of why she had been persuaded on to the boat in the first
place. But all that was past. When she returned to Cairo, neither he nor anyone
else would talk her into going if she did not want to go.

Seeing Guy himself again, Edwina said: 'Oh, Guy
darling, do let's have an evening out together!'

'Perhaps, when I have some free time.'

'Let's go to the dinner-dance at the
Continental-Savoy.'

'Heavens, no.' Guy was aghast at the suggestion.
He said he would celebrate Harriet's return, preferably when Harriet was safely
back, but nothing would get him to the Continental-Savoy.

'Oh!' Edwina sighed sadly: 'Didn't you ever go dancing
with Harriet?'

'No, never.'

'Poor Harriet!'

Not liking that, Guy left her and she set out
for Helwan where she expected more cordial entertainment.

Certain of her welcome, she did not enquire for
Simon at the office but went straight down the ward to where he lay, hidden
behind curtains. Parting the curtains, she said, 'Hello,' but there was no
reply. Simon gave her one glance, filled with a suffering that disturbed her,
then turning away, pulled the cover over his face. She was perplexed by the change
in him. He was no longer her ardent admirer but a shrunken figure that seemed
to be sinking into a hole in the bed.

'What is it, Simon?' She bent over him, trying
to rouse him: 'Don't you want to see me?'

His silence was answer enough. It occurred to
him that his legs were not the only part of him that might never function
again. He not only hid under his blanket but turned his face into the pillow.
Standing beside him, she said several times: 'Simon dear, do talk to me. Tell
me what's the matter.'

He at last mumbled, 'Go away,' and unable to
bear the misery that hung over the gloomy little cubicle, she left him. At the
other end of the ward, she went to the sister's office and asked what had
caused this dramatic change in Mr Boulderstone.

The sister said, 'He'll get over it. It happens
to all of them. First, they're up in the air, thankful to be alive, then they
realize what being alive-probably means. It's not easy to accept that one may
never walk again. Still, if he's worth his salt, he'll meet the challenge. Next
time you come, I expect he'll be trying to cheer
you
up.'

'Cheer me up? But he told me he'd be out of here
in no time.'

'Even if he recovers - and I don't say there
isn't still a chance -it'll be a long haul before we get him on his feet
again.'

The sister, a homely, vigorous, outspoken woman,
gave Edwina a critical stare, weighing her ability to face up to this information,
and Edwina could only say, 'Poor Simon, I didn't know. I thought
...'
but she did not say what she thought.
She was dismayed to learn of Simon's condition and dismayed, too, that the
sister had summed her up correctly. They both knew she would not come to Helwan
again.

Returning to Cairo, she told herself the visit
had been too painful and what could she do for a man so lost in misery, he
would only say, 'Go away'? Yet she was hurt by the sister's judgement and
wondered how to discount it. By the time the train reached the station, she had
found a way out of her discomposure. She could not go to Helwan again but
someone could go in her place. She decided that Guy, so warm, so magnanimous,
was the one to take Simon in hand.

When this was put to him next morning, Guy
agreed at once. He was always ready to visit people in hospital. Of course he
would see the poor boy.

'I'll go on my day off.'

Guy's day off was often a day of work but the
following Saturday would be given up to Simon Boulderstone. He was leaving the
flat to catch the Helwan train when Dobson came in the front door. Dobson had
gone to the office and, for some reason, had come back again.

He said, 'Guy!' The unusual solemnity of his
tone stopped Guy with a premonition of evil tidings. Dobson put an arm round
his shoulder.

'Guy, I didn't telephone - I had to come and
tell you myself. We've had official confirmation that the evacuation ship was
sunk by enemy action. Only three people survived in the life-boat. We had their
names this morning. Harriet was not among them.'

Guy stared at him: 'I see, Harriet was not among
them,' then shifting his shoulder from under Dobson's arm, he hurried from the
flat.

On the day before Edwina's second visit, Simon
had come of age. He had once thought of his twenty-first birthday as the summit
of maturity, a day that would change him from a youth to a man. Having climbed
up to it through the muddle of adolescence, he would find himself on a proper
footing with the world. His parents would give him a party and someone
important, like his Uncle Harry who was a town councillor, would make a speech
and hand him a golden key, saying it was not only the key of the door but the
key to life.

As it was, the day passed like any other day. He
did not mention it even to Ross. Here in Plegics it had no meaning, but that
night he had a dream. He dreamt he was running through the English countryside,
running and leaping over miles of green grass. When he came to a hedge, he took
a very high leap, a preternatural leap. It lifted him so high into the air, he
felt he was flying and when he came down he said as he woke: 'That was to
celebrate.' The elation of the dream remained with him for several seconds then
faded, and he knew there was nothing to celebrate.

After Edwina's second visit, he began to think
of suicide. Death would solve everything, but how to achieve it? Nothing lethal
- no sleeping pills, no poisonous substances, not even the meths bottle - was
ever left within his reach. They saw to that. He was like a child in their
hands and he had begun to feel like a child, dependent, obedient, resentful.

He was wondering if he could smother himself, or
refuse to eat till he died of starvation, when someone came fumbling through
the curtains. He expected a nurse but the newcomer was not a nurse. He was a
padre.

'Thought you'd like to see one of us,' the padre
said. 'I'd've come sooner but we're in demand these days. Was talking to our
quack and he said you were in high old heart. Glad to be alive and all that.
Expect you'd like to give thanks, eh?' Getting no reply, the padre explained
himself: 'Give thanks to the One Above I meant, of course. Eh?'

Still no reply. The padre's red-skinned face,
like a badly shaped potato, remained amiable but he was puzzled by Simon's
silence. 'C of E aren't you?'

Simon nodded. He knew he had made a mistake in
putting down 'C of E'. He had been warned often enough by his old sergeant in
the desert: 'Don't never admit to nothing, sir. Whatever they ask you, you
say, "Don't know," then they can't get at you, see!' But 'don't know'
had not seemed the right answer when one was asked to state one's religion.
Anyway, it was too late to retract now. The padre, satisfied by the nod, took
out his pipe and gained time by stuffing the bowl.

'Can't get round much, can you?'

Simon shook his head.

'That's all right. We've got a special
arrangement for chaps like you. We bring the Eucharist right here to your
bedside. Chaps find it a great comfort. Now, how about after Sunday service?'

Simon shook his head again.

'You mean you're not a regular communicant?'

'I mean, I want to be left alone.'

The padre, undefeated, put his pipe in his mouth
and began to deal with the situation: 'Depressed, are you? What's the quack
been saying?'

'Nothing. He didn't need to. My legs are
useless.'

'But it's not permanent.'

'It probably is. They've been like it a bit too
long.'

'Oh, cheer up, old chap. Keep your pecker up.
Even if it comes to the worst, you're only one chap among a lot of chaps who've
been unlucky. You must remember Him. Think of His sacrifice. Think of the
sparrow's fall. Think of His love.'

Simon began to feel sorry for the padre. It
could not be easy preaching the love of God to young men whose future had been
ended before it began.

The padre went on: 'You're down now, but it
won't last. You'll jump out of it, see if you don't. And if the old legs don't
shape up, well, it's not the end of the world. You can be thankful you're a
para and not a tetra. There's still plenty you can do. You can earn a living,
you can swim, you can play games
...'

'
Games!'

'Yes, you'd be surprised. They'll teach you all
sorts of larks. And everywhere there'll be people to help you.'

What people? Simon asked himself when the padre
had gone. Who would have time for a legless man? - a legless, impotent man? He
had an appalled picture of Edwina, driven by pity, pushing him round in a chair
like a baby in a perambulator. Everyone using the soothing, patronising,
simplified speech reserved for infants and invalids.

'Not for me,' he told himself, but what was to
become of him? His brother had bled to death in No-man's-land when his legs
were blown off. Had he lived, he could have been fitted with two artificial
legs but what happened to a man whose legs were in place but no use to him? He
was simply the prisoner of their existence. No doubt people would help him.
Some girl might even offer to marry him but no, one life wasted was enough.

He wondered why the ward looked so bare. When he
had been with men on the troopship and in the desert, each had kept, like a
private reredos, his pictures of women. But there were no pictures in the
ward. It occurred to him that this fact was a symptom of the loss of manhood.
When the sister next came round, he said to her: 'No pin-ups.'

'No what?'

'Bare walls. No pin-ups.'

T should think not, indeed! We don't want our
nice, clean walls cluttered with that sort of rubbish.'

So that was it! Perhaps, after all, some spark
would remain to torment him.

That day another visitor came fumbling through
the curtains. He was afraid the padre had returned, or perhaps it was one of
those welfare workers who imposed themselves on the other ranks. But the
newcomer was not the padre and did not look like a welfare worker. Peering
short-sightedly into the shadowed cubicle, he did not seem sufficiently
purposeful or righteous of manner, and there was a largeness about him, not
only of the flesh but of the spirit, that did not suggest to Simon any sort of
organized mission. The pockets of his creased linen jacket were stuffed with
books and papers, and he held under his arm some bags of fruit and a bunch of
flowers, all badly crushed.

His appearance startled Simon into sitting up
and saying: 'Hello.'

'Hello. I'm Edwina's deputy. I live in the same
flat. My name's Guy Pringle. She asked me to come because she could not come
herself.' Guy dropped the flowers and bags of fruit on to the table and sat
down: 'I've brought you these things. If there's anything else you need, let me
know.' He began to pull books from his pockets: 'I thought these might interest
you. I can get more from the Institute library.'

'Thanks, but I'm not much of a reader.' Then,
feeling he must acknowledge Guy's gifts, he picked up a book: 'Still, I'd like
to look at them.'

While Guy talked about the books, Simon's dejection
lifted a little. Here, he supposed, was one of those who would help him but
more important than that, one from whom he was not unwilling to accept help.
He wondered how this large man fitted into the Garden City flat. When he went
there, just after Hugo's death, the inmates had all been women. There was
Edwina, of course, and a strange woman called Angela Hooper, and there was the
dark girl Harriet.

He said: 'You're called Pringle? Then you must
be the husband of Harriet Pringle?'

Guy's head jerked up. He caught his breath
before he said: 'You knew her?'

'Yes, we went together on a trip into the
desert. And we climbed the Great Pyramid and sat at the top talking about Hugo.
He was alive then. She said you met in Alex and had supper with him. He was killed
a month later.'

'Yes, I heard. I was very sorry. Harriet is
dead, too.'

'Harriet! Your wife?'

'Yes, she was lost at sea. She went on an
evacuation ship that was torpedoed and only three people were saved. But not
Harriet. Not poor Harriet.' Then, to Simon's consternation, Guy choked and put
his face into his hands, giving way to such an anguish of grief that Simon
stared at him, forgetting his own misery. He had seen men weep before. He
himself had wept bitterly over Hugo's death, but the sight of this man so
violently overthrown by sorrow shocked him deeply.

Guy gasped: 'Forgive me. I've only just heard
...'

'But if three were saved, there might be more
somewhere
...'

'No.' Guy tried to dry his face with a
handkerchief but his tears welled out afresh: 'No, only one boat got away. The
steering was broken and it drifted until it was taken-into Dar-es-Salaam. By
then there were only three people left alive.'

'There could have been other boats that went to
different places.'

'I would have heard by now. Wherever she was,
she would have cabled me. She wouldn't leave me in suspense.'

Simon, not knowing what other comfort he could
offer, shook his head despondently: 'People are dying all the time now. Young
people. I mean not people you might expect to die. People with their lives
before them.'

'Yes, this accursed war.'

They were silent, contemplating the calamity of
their time, while Guy scrubbed his handkerchief over his face and looked,
red-eyed, at Simon. Simon looked back in sympathy but as he did so, he felt -
not quite a sensation, rather a presentiment of sensation to come, then there
was a stirring in his left upper leg as though an insect were crawling under
his skin. He put his hand down and touched the spot but the skin was smooth. No
insect there. He tried to disregard it, knowing Ross would say, 'It means
nothing.'

'I suppose it will end one day,' Guy was saying,
'but that won't bring them back
...'

Simon was about to say that grief did fade in
time; that it became no more than a sadness at the back of the mind, but he
was distracted as the insect movement repeated itself in his thigh. Then a
trickle, slow and steady, rather sticky, like blood, ran down to his knee and
he again touched the spot. He looked at his fingers. There was no blood. He was
afraid to hope that the trickle was a trickle of life. Guy was speaking but he
could not listen. His whole consciousness was gathered on the area of the sensation.
A pause, then the insect moved in his other leg and the same sticky trickle
went down to his knee. Cautiously, he tried to press his thighs together and
for the first time since his injury, he felt his legs touch each other. He held
his breath before letting it out in his excitement, and he knew this was the sign
he had longed for, the sign that one day he would walk again.

In his relief, he wanted to shout to Guy,
expecting him to rejoice with him, but he was checked by the sight of the other
man wiping tears from his face.

Simon repressed, or tried to repress his joy,
but his joy transcended his sense of decorum and he could not hide his
laughter.

Guy was too absorbed by his own emotion to
notice Simon's and Simon bit his lip to control himself. Guy said it was time
for him to go. He dried his eyes and gathering up the books Simon did not want,
put out his hand. Taking it, Simon said, 'You'll come again, won't you?'

The invitation was vivaciously given but Guy
felt no surprise. Most people, having met him once, were eager to see him
again.