In the longer term, he hoped Abhaya might open up, but if he were to push now, he’d have quite the opposite effect. No, for the foreseeable future he had one option: he’d have to take his chances in the common room, and in all likelihood, that would mean poor Major Morgan, with his ferocious twitch and hurricane voice.
Abhaya came as usual with his breakfast, checked his bandage, changed the dressing, and—the newest part of their routine—wished him a good morning, which Forrester reciprocated. When she returned for the tray, he said, “I don’t want to be a bother, but I’m feeling cooped up again. Might I be able to go downstairs for an hour? I know Forbes may disapprove, but if you thought it was safe to pose the question...”
Pausing, Abhaya glanced back. “I’ll ask.”
“That’s decent of you,” Forrester told her .
As the key clinked in the door, he wondered afresh at the mystery of her presence. She must be a volunteer, a VAD. Might she be the widow of some lascar, who’d got so used to living in England that she’d chosen to stay? A possibility, but one that failed to explain how she’d ended up at Sherston. Perhaps, then, she was an officer’s wife, an exotic trophy from a tour in India. He’d heard such things went on. Perhaps she’d grown bored of that life, or her husband had grown bored of her, and here was a mutually agreeable alternative.
As with every puzzle he was confronted by, Forrester had no means to a solution, and so the contemplation rapidly became wearisome. He set it aside and took up a book instead.
Having picked a volume at random, he had managed forty pages of The Tempest before Campion came to get him. The sergeant knocked and then let himself in. His countenance was guarded, but his manner was bordering on polite. “Best get ready, sir,” he said. “If you’d still like to go downstairs, that is.”
Forrester most definitely did want to. Thoughts of information-gathering had given way to plain boredom, and more, the desire for exercise and a change of scene. He dressed hurriedly, recovered his crutches, and followed Campion out. Campion was silent as they descended through the house, and only as they reached the entrance to the common room did he say, “Orders from on high, sir: please don’t go making any trouble.”
Not dignifying the remark with an answer, Forrester hobbled to a seat near the window close to where he’d originally sat. He was uncharacteristically glad to be in company, even such company as this: men left unwhole in body and mind by the same horrors he himself had witnessed. He was glad of the general hubbub, of the raised exclamations that burst forth from it, and of the persistent snap and pop of the table tennis ball, an irregular heartbeat to the room’s activity.
Yet once he’d sat for a minute, it became apparent to Forrester that his fellow inmates were more subdued than on his previous visit. There seemed to be a ceiling on the volume of any given debate, or on any noise at all. Even the scrape of chairs and the tap of booted feet on polished boards were oddly muted.
He had looked for Morgan as he came in and had spied him tucked away behind a table to the right in a discussion with two younger men. He’d been unsure if Morgan had seen him in return. Now, Forrester watched surreptitiously, and after a while was certain that the major had caught his eye on occasions. But he made no acknowledgement, except that his twitch momentarily worsened.
Forrester had not been entirely polite when they’d first met. Probably this was all he had a right to expect. Yet no one else was paying him the least attention either, and he remembered what Morgan had told him that day—the counsel he had taken for paranoia. If they really had been warned off from speaking to him, then Morgan remained his best bet.
He disliked the idea of forcing his way into that confabulation, though. Even if the other two didn’t give him the cold shoulder, he’d have to somehow steer the talk onto the topics he was interested in. Forrester elected instead to wait, poised to seize on any opportunity.
The chance he’d been anticipating came when the matronly nurse made the call to lunch. Forrester was on his feet as fast as the crutches would allow and threw himself into leaving the room before Morgan could. Beyond the doorway, Forrester made a show of catching his breath. When Morgan appeared, he had been separated from his acquaintances by the press of the queue, as Forrester had hoped he’d be.
“Good afternoon, Major Morgan,” he said.
The tic in Morgan’s eye convulsed. “Ah, Forrester. It’s just Morgan here, you know. How are you, old chap?” Despite the friendliness in his greeting, he looked cornered .
Forrester decided to dispense with the civilities he’d planned. If he only had a few moments, he must make them count. “A dash peaky, to be honest. That business the other day has rather thrown me off my stride.”
Morgan kept his gaze firmly ahead as they entered the dining room, so that Forrester could see the way the muscles of his cheek and eyebrow cavorted but could make out nothing of his expression. “Yes. That was a queer affair, all right.”
“Do you remember much?” Forrester asked, trying and failing to sound as if he were simply making conversation.
“Not much, no. Not much at all. Coming round in my chair. Being surprised at how everyone else happened to be doing the same. That and I couldn’t recall having dropped off, though I felt I’d had the most perfect sleep of my life. Still, mustn’t complain, eh? If this is how they choose to treat us—“
Forrester started. “How they treat us?”
But Morgan was already drawing away. “Look here,” he said, “sorry to be rude, old bean, but I promised Bradshaw and McIntyre we’d pick up our chat.” And before Forrester could respond, Morgan had veered toward the two young men he’d been speaking with earlier.
Forrester tagged himself on to the end of another group, all of whom seemed to know each other and paid him no notice. Had he understood Morgan correctly? Was Forbes putting out the story that the mass unconsciousness was some new form of treatment? It was at once patently absurd and as plausible as any theory. He had to remind himself that his experience had differed fundamentally from Morgan’s: he had beheld the sleepers, where they had merely slept.
At any rate, one thing was clear. Morgan had been discouraged from talking to him, and in no uncertain terms. Forrester couldn’t guess at what would have so altered the headstrong major’s opinions, nor did he like to consider. He sensed Campion’s hand in the matter, and though he hadn’t seen him, he was confident, too, that the sergeant would have observed their brief dialogue.
Forrester trudged through lunch without registering the details, so that afterwards he could barely recollect what he’d eaten. He was half caught up in cogitating on what Morgan had said, half in speculating how he might bring the major over to his side. He was badly in need of a fresh perspective; this perpetual confinement was chipping away at his faith in his own judgement.
By the time the meal was done, Forrester had decided that, as distasteful as he found the prospect, he would lever his way into the colloquy between Morgan and his friends. Maybe one of them would let something interesting slip. If not, he’d count the failure as reconnaissance for another sally on another day. If he allowed Forbes and Campion to isolate him, then that was exactly what was going to happen, and soon no one would regard his segregation as the least bit strange.
Yet hardly had the thought formed when he spotted Campion waiting for him outside the doors of the common room. “Major Forbes says that you need your rest, sir,” he announced, and was it Forrester’s imagination, or did a knowing smirk dwell behind the words? It was as though Campion had read the sum of his intentions from his face.
More than ever, Forrester wanted to stand his ground. More than ever, he realised he must pick his fights carefully. “Yes,” he agreed, with perfect insincerity, “I am growing a little tired of all this.”
It took Forrester a good hour to settle himself. His thoughts were close to boiling point, and the frustration at having his plans disrupted was palpable, a tingling in his toes and fingertips. He tried one book after a
nother and threw each aside within five minutes, having read a page a dozen times without absorbing a single syllable. Damn that Campion, he swore, and damn Forbes too—and he wished futilely that he could dredge up even a jot of anger to support the empty sentiments. Were they sedating him? Something in his food, perhaps, that made him so infernally level-headed? Yet he had to eat, so if they were, the knowledge gained him nothing.
After an hour of half-hearted seething, Forrester got up, clumped through to the bathroom, and splashed cold water on his cheeks. That brought him round somewhat, so he took off his shirt, perched on the edge of the bath, and washed. By the time he finished, he felt his agitation was subsiding. He went back to bed and selected the Vasari, determined to make a proper go of it.
He’d eaten scantily at lunch, and as the light outside his window started to soften, so Forrester’s stomach began to grumble noisily on the subject of that earlier moderation. He attempted to gauge the hour, and to remember when Abhaya generally came with his dinner. Wasn’t it about this time?
From nowhere, pain plunged into his head. That was the literal impression, of a weight too vast for his cranium crashing down to spatter his mind. The sensation was so intensely physical that he was certain the ceiling must have collapsed, splitting his skull.
The pain vanished, as instantly as it had arrived, and Forrester was startled by the sudden relief. For such focused agony to alleviate itself, leaving not a twinge, shouldn’t have been possible, yet he could find no trace. In its absence, he felt his senses were heightened. Everything was somehow sharper. And with that, he noticed a change in the room, though one so subtle that he needed another few seconds to identify it.
The strip beneath the door, which had been faintly yellow, now was dark. The electric light in the corridor had gone out.
With a flicker, the light came back on. Forrester strained his concentration for anything else peculiar or out of place. But there was nothing, and already the pain was a distant memory. However, he remembered enough of that transitory anguish to know he’d suffered the same before, and recently. It was precisely what he’d experienced in the corridor outside Forbes’s room, when Campion had collapsed.
Did that mean the rest had reoccurred too? Was he the only one awake?
He sat, peering abstractedly at the lit gap beneath the door. Minutes passed. Finally, Forrester released his tension in a sigh, compelled himself to relax, and took his book up. How long had the previous phenomenon lasted? Sufficiently for him to return to Forbes’s office, to make his way down to the common room, to tarry there a while, and to limp out into the grounds. An hour then, perhaps nearer to two—and once again, Forrester cursed his inability to judge the passage of time. A watch was such an inconsequential thing until one needed it.
When Abhaya unlocked and opened the door, much later, she did so without knocking, and looked taken aback to see Forrester sat up in bed, staring at her in equal surprise. Yet all she said was her customary, “Good evening.”
“Good evening, Abhaya,” Forrester replied, too struck by the absurdity of the moment to say more.
She brought the laden dinner tray she carried and placed it in his lap. On a plate were slices of buttered bread, some potted meat, cheese, and half an apple, its flesh beginning to brown.
As Forrester glanced over the meagre fare, Abhaya seemed flustered. “It’s all I could find,” she explained. And quicker than he could think to assure her that it would be perfectly adequate, she’d hurried out.
Though minutes ago he’d been furiously hungry, Forrester only picked at the food. A persistent doubt made him wonder if he ought to make these supplies last. Could he be sure of when he’d eat again? If the bouts of mass unconsciousness were to continue, if their duration should increase, and if he was trapped here in this room, late meals might become the least of his worries.
He hadn’t been convinced Abhaya would return. But she did, soon after he’d finished eating. She took the tray, muttered a distracted “Goodnight,” and was almost out of the door before Forrester had gathered his wits enough to phrase the question he’d been craving to ask.
“Has something happened?” he said. Then, when she paused but didn’t answer, he pressed, “It has, hasn’t it? Another...” Struggling for the right word, he concluded that there wasn’t one and he would have to improvise. “Another of those blackouts, is that it?”
For an instant, Abhaya looked nothing like herself and much like a small, cornered creature uncertain of which way to run. “Yes,” she said.
And before he could enquire further, she was gone.
Chapter Ten
I t wasn’t yet dawn when they came for him.
He’d been still mired in the fringes of a dream he couldn’t quite remember when he heard distinctly the click of the key in the lock—and then Forrester was utterly awake. Even in the half darkness, he recognised Sergeant Campion by shape, and by the way he moved across the room. The second man behind him Forrester didn’t know; he was slighter, thin-faced, his pale hair luminous in the moonlight.
“I’ll have to ask you to get up,” Campion addressed Forrester.
“What is this?”
“I told you, sir, please get up. Major’s orders.”
Forrester felt—not scared exactly, but horribly self-conscious, and more than anything, vulnerable. He drew back the bedclothes, winced as his bare feet brushed cold boards.
“May I get dressed?” He strived to keep all intonation from his voice. Some primitive instinct warned him that these men must not be allowed to see even a hint of fear.
“There’s no need,” Campion declared. To the other man he said, “Get that gown, will you? ”
The second man dutifully brought over the dressing gown to which Campion had pointed. Forrester did his best to disguise the exertion of pulling it on. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stand without his crutches, that Campion knew so too. Yet he didn’t want to have to request them.
“Come along, sir,” Campion said.
The crutches were out of reach. He couldn’t ask now. There was nothing else for it; Forrester hoisted himself to his feet, using the bedstead’s metal arch as support. He gritted his teeth as his left leg straightened, certain the limb wouldn’t take his weight.
His leg held.
The relief was short-lived. Campion moved to brace him with an arm tucked around his shoulders, not roughly but far from gently, and together they hobbled into the corridor. There, a wheelchair waited. Although he’d have preferred the crutches—the thought of being pushed like an invalid only compounded his sense of powerlessness—Forrester lowered himself into it.
Campion leading, the other soldier wheeling, they guided him along the narrow corridor. They wound about one turn and another, and passed through an intervening doorway into a farther, more or less identical stretch of passage. Then Campion stopped at an unmarked door, knocked, and opened it without hesitating for an answer.
The room beyond was bright after the dim illumination of the corridor. Blinking, Forrester registered a small space with a trolley against one wall, a metal cart next to that, and in the opposite corner, a portable desk and folding chair. Upon the chair, a man sat. He wore a plainly cut black suit and was in his fifties at least. His face was stern, his hair virtually white.
“Can you stand?” the suited man queried.
He didn’t look up, so that Forrester took a moment to comprehend that he was the one being addressed. “Just about, I think.” The discovery was so recent that he felt almost proud to reveal it.
“Then please walk to the bed and lie down.”
The man clearly meant the trolley, which was covered with a sheet and had a single pillow resting at one end. He must be a doctor, Forrester decided. He eased himself to his feet, relying on the arm of the wheelchair, which fortunately the second soldier was holding steady.
Standing jolted queasy pain into his thigh, but again the leg held. Walking was more demanding, though the distance required only f
ive short steps. He wasn’t positive that the limb wouldn’t fail him until he’d reached the trolley and had grasped its edge. Forrester climbed up and lay flat, trying to calm the rasp of his breath. He didn’t want Campion to see what the simple effort had cost him.
When the doctor came over, he had a stethoscope around his neck. “Open your shirt, please.”
Forrester did as instructed, for all that the room was cool enough to make his flesh goose-pimple. The stethoscope, when the doctor applied it, was even colder. As he roved the instrument across Forrester’s chest, he asked, “Do you have any history of serious illness in your family?”
Forrester considered. “My mother died from cancer,” he said. “A brain tumour. My father had a mild heart attack soon afterwards. Or that’s what they supposed it was, they were never quite definite. Other than that, nothing I know of.”
The doctor drew out an electric torch, a delicate little instrument unlike anything Forrester had seen. “Open wide,” he commanded. He clicked the torch on and shone the beam upon Forrester’s throat, shifting it by degrees. With a tilt of his wrist, he angled the light directly into Forrester’s eyes. “And mental illness? ”
Asides from myself? Forrester thought, straining against the urge to blink. Then he recalled how his mother had raved in those last days, how she’d recognised him only for brief spells, and how she had cursed his father, spittle flecking her bloodless lips. But that had been the tumour, the nurses had told him, all the work of the tumour. You must not think of her as the woman you knew.
To End All Wars Page 12