The nurse bent forward to speak to him over the hubbub of conversation that had broken out while the singers found their next number.
‘Would you mind dreadfully if I went to sit with my room-mates?’ she asked. ‘I can put you wherever you like.’
George looked around. Wheelchair cases and the worst injured, some of them with nurses in attendance, were grouped together at one side. ‘Don’t worry, you go,’ George said. ‘I can manage.’
She gave a quick smile and slipped away down the central aisle. He pushed down on the wheels to move the chair along and made his way through the tight space between the wall and the back row. As he murmured, ‘Excuse me,’ to get people to shift forward a little, they turned in their seats and he saw their expressions change. Some registered shock and quickly looked away, some looked pitying and made a great meal out of moving their chairs, as if bending over backwards to be accommodating. A few heads turned to each other in conversation after he’d passed. Near the end of the row, George saw Wellings and Cook. As Wellings turned round there was a split second when he failed to recognise George, then he laughed in an embarrassed way and coloured up. As George passed on behind the row he distinctly heard him say to Cook, ‘… gone to sit with the other droolers.’
George pulled his chair up behind the others, his head pounding. They should have shown me, if I look so awful. They should have told me. He held the folded handkerchief up to his eye as if to dab it, then kept it there, half covering his face. A man beside him had a massively swollen brow and a huge, flattened nose, as if he had been broken and someone had put him back together who had only the most basic knowledge of the lineaments of the human face. His own instinctive recoil horrified him. Another had part of his jaw missing, his tongue lolling out, and further over a man had marks like train tracks running from his ear to the base of his neck. George remembered what the French soldiers called those with such disfigurements: scar throats.
The piano player found the page and played the opening bars of ‘There’s a Long, Long Trail a-Winding’ and the singing began again, swelling in volume as the VADs joined in on the chorus and some of the audience followed them.
There’s a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams,
Where the nightingales are singing
And a white moon beams.
There’s a long, long night of waiting
Until my dreams all come true;
Till the day when I’ll be going down
That long, long trail with you …
The uproar echoed in George’s head. His eyes were aching from trying to focus. He couldn’t stay here; he wanted to get out. He pushed the wheels backwards and shunted into a table, making the cups rattle in their saucers and the teaspoons chink against the china so that people glanced round at the racket – dark eyes in blurred faces, mouths opening and closing as they sang. He jerked the chair round, his armpits damp from the effort, and as the song ended and applause and stamping began, he wheeled it back towards the door, bumping on chair legs and catching his fingers painfully between the wheel and the wall. A porter swung the door open for him, his eyes still fixed on the show, and George emerged back into the blessed coolness of the corridor.
He sucked his grazed knuckles and then set off for the veranda. He wanted to be alone. The wheels moved easily over the polished floor and he became more confident and moved along faster. He knew what he was going to do.
Only a few men were in their usual places, reading and dozing; most had taken up the welcome distraction of the concert. He picked up a couple of rugs and arranged them over his knees; then he asked one of the men, Miller, who was recovering from a broken arm, if he could manage to open the doors for him.
‘Are you sure? It’s freezing out there,’ Miller said, looking curiously at him. George gave no explanation but merely nodded and Miller pushed against the door with his back until it swung open.
The going was harder on the gravel paths. George’s shoulders and collarbones ached as he shoved the wheels round, making laborious progress through the rose garden. The keen air made a dry, scratching sound as it passed through the rose bushes with their few shrivelled brown leaves. George’s eye began to stream. He seemed to have dropped the handkerchief somewhere and wiped his eye instead on the sleeve of his pyjama jacket.
George reached the fishpond and rolled the chair right up to the wall. He bent forward and looked down into the water, blinking until he managed to focus. It was as if he were looking through a ripple distorting his reflection, as if one side of his face was dragged down, yet the surface of the water was calm. He peered closer.
His flesh was swollen and darkly bruised, red and purple, in a panda-like circle around his eye, which was crazily slanted: the skin pulled down beneath and drawn into a puckered indentation where the roundness of his cheek used to be. Lines radiated from the central point like creases in a drawstring bag and a long scar ran from this crater round to the side of his face. He traced it with his finger out towards his ear. Turning sideways, he saw that his nose was flattened at the bridge as though a bite had been taken out of it, and a ridge of scar tissue led from there as well, down to the site of closure of the wound. His body became rigid as he took in the whole effect: it was as if a sculptor had grown frustrated with his work and smeared it with his thumb, a long smudge from nose to ear.
He no longer recognised himself. He refused to look away; he stared and the stranger stared back. Beneath his reflection he was aware of depth and darkness, the slightest streak of flame and hint of movement, slow and streamlined, as the fish passed to and fro, alien, infinitely strange.
15
TIN
Nurse Patterson worried about Private Farrell. Ever since she had found him outside, on Christmas Day, his teeth chattering with cold, he seemed to have slipped further into decline. Although his healing had come on apace since then, he seemed very uneasy in his mind. He had fallen into the habit of failing to get up for breakfast, endeavouring to stay asleep for as long as possible rather than face each new day. It took all her powers of persuasion to convince him to shave and to eat a little porridge.
He had been moved from the surgical ward to a convalescent ward, which was a mark of recovery that usually boosted the men’s spirits. She had thought that the progress of graduating at last from the wheelchair to crutches would have cheered him and given him more freedom to roam the hospital, or visit the chapel, but he used them only to go down to the veranda, and there he stuck, talking to no one, maybe reading only a page or two before returning to gazing out of the window.
Although he’d received post, no visitors had come, and she privately wondered if he had been less than candid about the seriousness of his injuries. She was delighted on his behalf when a parcel arrived at the postroom: a rectangular, battered-looking package in brown paper tied up with string that she imagined to be another Christmas box from his home, delayed by its journey to Belgium and back before it found him. She hurried down to the veranda to deliver it.
George was reading a book, in a corner by one of the stoves, as far distant from his fellow patients as it was possible to get. He sat with his elbow on the arm of the wicker chair, his hand cupping the damaged part of his face. Patterson had noticed this tendency to cover his face whenever he could. She thought that the time had come to tackle it head-on.
She sat down in the chair opposite. ‘I’m on my break so I thought I’d bring you this.’ She put the parcel down on the table between them. ‘Is it a gift from home?’
George closed his book, keeping a thumb on his page. ‘I should think so.’ He made no move to open the package.
‘Perhaps it’s more books, or … or a cake?’ she said encouragingly.
‘Probably more knitted stuff,’ George said. ‘Socks. Scarves. Mother is keen on knitting. Perhaps she could knit me a balaclava.’ He gave a strange little laugh. ‘I could wear it back to front.’ He looked at her, challenging her to say anything.<
br />
Sister Patterson took time to pick her words. ‘It’s healed very well,’ she said mildly. ‘The swelling has all gone now.’
‘And that’s made a difference, has it? Really?’ George took his hand away and turned to face her. The livid colours of the bruising had faded to blue and a dirty yellow and the swelling had dissipated, but this only accentuated the droop of the eye, its red inner rim exposed, its expression immeasurably sad. In his cheek, the puckering at the centre of the radiating folds was a knot of red tissue, the skin around it taut and shiny. George jabbed at it with his forefinger. ‘People stare without seeing me. They just see this. To them, I’m hardly a man.’
Patterson leant forward as if to remonstrate.
‘Oh, I don’t blame them,’ George went on. ‘It’s the first thing we’re able to perceive, isn’t it? The human face? Did you know that the focus of a baby’s eyes is exactly the distance from its mother’s breast to her face? And faces are the first things we draw, aren’t they? Symmetrical. Two dots for the eyes …’ He poked twice at the material of his trouser leg. ‘And a line for the mouth.’ He drew his finger across in a slash. ‘Even clouds’ – he gestured towards the sky through the window – ‘when you sit and watch for shapes in them, that’s what appears most easily: faces.’ He stared out of the window.
Patterson watched his shoulders trembling. She wished she could put an arm around them. She sat, still and quiet, waiting for him to get a hold of himself. Eventually he mumbled, ‘I’m sorry. I seem to have let it all get on top of me.’
‘I wonder …’ she said, watching him carefully, aware that she must broach the subject sensitively. ‘It’s not nearly as bad as you think, you know … but if you feel that it is … I wonder whether you might consider a prosthetic?’
George turned towards her quickly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, there’s a department here that makes them. Not masks that are heavy and ugly,’ she rushed on. ‘They’re thin and painted to match the person’s own skin tone and they just cover the injury, not the whole face. Not everyone feels the necessity of course; it’s entirely up to the individual.’ She stopped to watch his reaction.
He considered for a moment and then said, ‘How do they stay on?’
‘With spectacles. Like this.’ She curved her fingers around the top of her ears as if putting on a pair of glasses.
‘And it makes you look more … normal?’
‘From a distance, at least.’ She knew that she mustn’t give false hopes but she desperately wanted to help him. ‘The patients I’ve seen with them have felt more comfortable with themselves, I think.’
‘Would they be able to make one for me?’
‘I’m sure they would. Shall I make an appointment?’
‘Thank you, that would be very kind of you,’ George said, recovering his dignity.
Patterson put her hands on her knees. ‘I must get back in time for the ward round. Will you be coming up for your lunch?’
George nodded slowly.
She levered herself up, saying, ‘Enjoy your book.’ As she passed him, she let her hand rest momentarily on his shoulder before walking away.
George sat, looking at his page but not reading. He felt absurdly grateful for that momentary touch. He realised that he already assumed no one would have any fellow feeling with him, far less want to touch him in sympathy. How quickly that assumption had taken hold. Damaged faces unsettled people, making them unsure how to act. He wondered if he would ever have the courage to do the things that others considered normal everyday exchanges: offer a handshake to a stranger or say farewell to a relative by turning a cheek to be kissed. Losing a limb made you a hero, losing the symmetry of your face made you an untouchable.
He felt too restless to read so he looked out of the window for a while. It was a cold, clear January day with a gusting wind that scudded the clouds along. He watched the sparrows flitting in and out of the evergreen shrubs among the dead roses. The wind ran over the ground, rolling dead leaves along and then dropping them again, reminding him of the questing dart and forage of the creatures of no man’s land. Leaves, he said to himself. They’re only leaves.
When George returned to the ward, a nurse informed him that he was to go to the prosthetics department directly after lunch. He told himself that he mustn’t pin his hopes too firmly on this but he found himself eating his poached fish and greens quickly, itching to get going. He put the parcel, still unopened, on the shelf beneath his bedside table and set off on his crutches, tap, swing, tap, swing, through wards and corridors.
Arriving, he knocked and heard the distant sound of a woman’s voice calling, ‘Enter.’ When he opened the door, there was no one there but the sound of running water was coming from a galley kitchen to one side. The room was brightly lit by a large window and at first George thought that snow must have fallen, such was the quality and intensity of the light. Then he saw that the walls were all covered by the plaster casts of faces, brilliant white in the winter sunlight. They hung from battens at regularly spaced intervals, like death’s heads arranged on shelves in a charnel house. Some were horribly disfigured: noses reduced to a dark hole, like a skull, faces with no profile beyond forehead and lips, more ape than man, jaws askew, or become huge, bulging protuberances, or completely shot away. Others were sculpted models of perfect faces. They looked serene with their closed eyes, like ancient Greek statues, the corrected patterns from which masks would be taken.
A woman came in, drying her hands on her apron, and George turned towards her. She didn’t falter but looked straight at him, smiled and said, ‘Welcome. Isn’t it nice to have a little sunshine at last?’ She wore a white blouse with a grey bow at the neck and had her hair coiled up in a net, which didn’t suit her long face but which George imagined was eminently practical.
‘Do you have any pain?’ she asked, indicating that he should sit on the couch.
He laid down his crutches and sat on the edge of it. ‘No, it’s all healed up – well, as far as one can describe it as healed.’
She looked at him sympathetically. ‘May I?’ She held out her hands and George stayed very still while she gently felt the contours of his face. ‘The first thing we have to do is take a cast. It’s not terribly comfortable. Do you feel up to trying it?’
‘Will it cover right over my nose as well? I’m not very good about having my face covered; I don’t like being shut in, you see.’ George despised himself for the same old panic. Look where it had led. Could he not control it even now, after everything that had happened?
‘We make holes for the nose, don’t worry, but you have to stay very still with your eyes shut while I cover the whole of the rest of your face. Do you think you can do that?’
George nodded and she helped him to lie back on the wooden couch and put a cloth beneath his head that was prickly with dried spatters of plaster. She mixed water into a bucket of white powder, beating it to a smooth, creamy consistency.
‘You have to get the bubbles out,’ she said. ‘You need a completely even finish.’ She dipped pieces of bandage, soaking them in the mixture then began to lay them on to his face, trailing like seaweed. ‘Very still now,’ she said as she smoothed them, tight and wet over his skin, up to his hairline and down over his chin and neck. All the time, she talked to him and he concentrated as hard as he could so that he wouldn’t think about the smothering stuff that was covering him, sealing his eyes and mouth, encasing him.
She told him that the sculptor would make a clay squeeze from the cast she was taking; it would be an exact portrait of his face, including the injury and his closed eyes. He would use it to copy the uninjured side of his face to produce a mirror image for the mask. ‘The bit that seems almost magical,’ she said, ‘is when the sculptor opens the eye. It’s as if a sleeper is woken.’ She painted more of the mixture over the plaster bandages to make it thicker and tougher and he forced himself to remain still despite the drips running into his nose and ears. After a fe
w suffocating minutes, he noticed that as the plaster began to harden it was also getting warmer and he marvelled at the reaction taking place. It was as if skin was turning to bone.
The woman was standing back, waiting. ‘The mask itself will be made of galvanised copper, and terribly thin – thinner than a sixpence, so that it’s not too heavy. We want them to fit as closely as possible, you see, and the thinner the edges, the closer the blend to your skin.’
The plaster had hardened off completely. George remained immobile, keeping his breathing light, and tried not to think of words like death mask and sarcophagus. He was greatly relieved when she looked up at the clock and then took hold of both sides of the cast and began to release it. Agonisingly, some of his eyebrows and eyelashes came with it but he was so glad to be free of it he barely even flinched.
‘There,’ she said, holding it up carefully. ‘A neat job and no bubbles.’
George looked at the smooth white model of his face. As she turned it to inspect it from all angles, he saw first one side and then the other: his old self, his new self, an eerie duality.
She laid it gently on a bench, saying, ‘The mask will restore the symmetry. Never fear.’ She washed her hands and gave him a basin of water and a cloth to wash with. As his hands passed over his face, he thought that he would be glad to hide this ugliness from the view of others but that he would never be able to forget what lay beneath the sheet of metal.
‘We’ll let you know when it’s ready for fitting,’ she said, and held out her hand in farewell. He took it: damp, cool, perfect skin.
The Moon Field Page 23