‘I can’t,’ said Florence. ‘I simply can’t. So let’s not talk about it. How are things with you anyway, Clarissa? I want to hear about any excitements in your life. It’s so – dull here. I always imagine it down there as incredibly glamorous and dangerous.’
‘Oh – well, it’s all right,’ said Clarissa. ‘Dangerous possibly, glamorous absolutely not.’
‘Lots of handsome sea captains though, I suppose, to cheer you up and hold your hand.’
‘Florence, you have a very strange idea of life in the navy,’ said Clarissa almost sternly. ‘We work terribly hard.’
‘Well, you look marvellous on it,’ said Florence. ‘I don’t know when I last saw you looking so good. It must be the sea air.’
‘Yes, I expect it is.’ There was a silence: Clarissa jumped up suddenly, fetched her cigarette case, lit one. Florence looked at her curiously.
‘Anything wrong?’
‘Oh – no. Well – well yes, there is. Obviously. Jack.’ Her voice was unusually harsh, sharp; Florence was startled.
‘Oh Clarissa, I’m sorry. Not to have thought. How is he?’
‘He’s terribly terribly depressed. But the worst thing is, we keep quarrelling. I – well, I know it’s awful Flo, but I find it so – so hideous. I can’t help it. His face revolts me. And he knows that. And – well it doesn’t exactly help.’
‘No.’
‘Anyway he’s actually being moved to McIndoe’s hospital next week, to begin the plastic surgery. Marvellous man, he is, McIndoe, I mean. I can’t tell you how much he’s done already – for me, at any rate. With his attitude. The men there all absolutely worship him. But what he can do with Jack’s face – well—’
They had formed an uneasy truce, she and Jack; she had visited him again, determinedly honest, braver, her own morale restored by her interlude with Giles. She found it a little easier now to look at him, to smile at him; but it was still a torment. She couldn’t imagine how she could possibly ever desire him again.
Jack Compton Brown was about to join what its members described as the most élite club in the world: the Guinea Pig Club, its headquarters being Ward 3 of the Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead. The qualifications for joining it were straightforward: to have been badly burnt while serving in the Royal Air Force. It was presided over by the genius of Archibald McIndoe, who not only rebuilt the men’s faces to an astonishing degree, but their souls as well. The guiding principle of the place was that there was always someone worse off than yourself; the regime under which it was run was quite extraordinary.
Jack, desperately depressed, hopelessly demoralized, afraid of the present as well as the future, flinching from the sight of himself in the mirror, and from people flinching from the sight of him, convinced he was going to lose Clarissa, arrived from the rather more traditional atmosphere of Addenbrooke’s and found himself living in conditions more closely resembling a university common room or a school dormitory than a hospital. The men had total freedom; all discipline was self-administered. They wore what they liked, did what they liked; hours were casual, there were no restrictions on visiting. A barrel of beer stood at the end of the ward, kept permanently filled. The men were not only allowed but encouraged to go into the town, to drink, to eat at the restaurants, to visit the cinema; and the town, in a kind of corporate effort, gave the great McIndoe its fullest and most sensitive support in this. The good people of East Grinstead did not stare, point, recoil from the Guinea Pigs, nor did they treat them in any way as if they were different; they ignored them. It was therapy of the highest order. The men, all young, more than usually high-spirited and extrovert, were also given to some fairly riotous behaviour in Ward 3. It was not unusual to find patients pouring beer over one another, coming in late from trips to the town or to London quite noisily drunk, and generally horsing around. But if a man was new, if he was about to go on the slab, as the operating theatre was known, or his treatment was proving even more difficult than he had expected, he was treated with the utmost sensitivity, kindness and love.
The nurses were all chosen for their looks as much as for any other qualities, and one of their briefs was to restore the morale of the extremely red-blooded young men in their care; many of the patients and nurses married one another.
McIndoe’s greatest gift was his honesty; he never prevaricated, never fudged the truth. He confronted the men’s fears with them, with calm, unsentimental common sense; he would discuss with them what he was going to do, insist they had at least a basic knowledge of the procedure’s medical implications, encourage them to watch as he worked on other patients.
When Clarissa left Jack the first day, he sat quietly on his bed, feeling miserable and very alone, trying to adjust to his feelings, trying to assess how his injuries compared with those of the other men. He found the noise, the bonhomie hard to cope with, coming from the cloistered, cushioned atmosphere at Addenbrooke’s.
He got up and walked into the bathroom; there were mirrors on the walls. It shook him. He had been spared many sightings of his face, had been able to avoid the ordeal. He felt the now familiar, never-easing revulsion and self-pity, went and sat on the lavatory for some time, his head in his hands, and then finally, because he had to face it, went back into the ward.
It was almost empty; it was a fine day, and there was some sort of nonsense going on outside, men shouting, laughing. Jack felt unbearably lonely, buried his head in his hands again.
The door pushed open and he heard a man come in.
‘Hi,’ he said to Jack casually. ‘Welcome to Ward Three.’
‘Thanks,’ said Jack.
‘Murray Brooks.’
‘Jack Compton Brown,’ said Jack. He still didn’t look up, merely held out a hand. Then, puzzled not to find it taken, he turned his head. The man standing in front of him, grinning at him with immense cheerfulness, was not only missing an eye and a fair amount of his scalp; he had no hands.
It was at that moment that Jack began the long journey back to self-respect.
‘Well,’ said McIndoe, ‘you’ll look a lot better with a new nose. No doubt about it. Feel better too. We’ll start with that. Settled in all right, have you?’
‘Yes. More or less.’
‘Good. Watched any operations yet?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘Try it. It’s interesting, and it would help you. Now, I’ll start work on you at the end of the week.’
The night before he went on the slab, Jack couldn’t sleep. He had expected to have to put up with the usual horseplay, into which he was being slightly unwillingly drawn, but had found himself left in peace, and when the others went to bed they were quiet, talked in low voices.
He lay and thought about Clarissa, how much he loved her, how he missed her; he knew, although she denied it determinedly, that she found him unsightly, repulsive even. She had never yet managed, since his accident, to kiss him properly, fully, on the mouth. He was terrified of losing her and yet in some strange way he wanted to, and then at least the fear would be gone. He felt physically odd most of the time; full of a strange energy and a suppressed sexuality. He could not imagine that he would ever lead a normal sexual life again, and at the same time found that thought unbearable. In all his miseries, that was the worst, worse even than small children staring at him, tugging at their mothers’ hands to point him out, worse than old friends smiling with false enthusiasm, saying what fun it was to visit when he could see they were filled with horror and couldn’t wait to get away, worse than the cheerfully misguided suggestions from people like his mother that he could find a nice home somewhere for the future, there were lots of them all over the country.
‘Condemned to a future of basket-making,’ he’d said savagely to Clarissa. ‘What do you think about that?’
He looked at his watch: two o’clock. In twelve hours’ time the work would have begun, his face would be under the knife; in spite of everything he wondered if it was worth it. What if it went wrong, if th
e grafts refused to take, if the reconstruction failed, the result was no better? He suddenly felt very sick and had to rush to the lavatory; when he came back one of the night nurses was waiting by his bed. She was a particularly pretty girl, with dark red hair and large green eyes, called Caroline; she reminded him of Grace.
‘Throwing up?’ she said sympathetically. ‘Don’t worry, everyone does it. Fancy a hot drink, or would your tummy chuck that out too?’
‘I could try,’ said Jack. ‘Sounds nice.’
She came back with a mug of Horlicks. ‘They’re not starting till the afternoon, are they? That’s OK, then, you can have this. Don’t worry, Jack, this is the worst time.’
‘Oh really?’ he said and his voice was bitter. ‘Aren’t they all worst times? From now until I don’t know when.’
‘Oh you are feeling sorry for yourself,’ she said cheerfully. ‘No, of course not. You’ll look so much better when the Boss finishes with you, you won’t be able to believe it.’
‘Oh really?’ he said again. ‘Do you actually think that?’
‘I know that. You really aren’t a very bad case, you know, Jack. You still have the whole of your facial structure – well, apart from your nose. You can see. You have your legs and arms.’
‘I know, I know. Don’t make me feel guilty as well as everything else. Until tonight, I was beginning to feel more positive. Now I’m just shit-scared.’
‘Of course you are. Ward Three is full of the bravest men in England feeling scared. Want a sleeping pill?’
‘Wouldn’t mind.’
‘I’ll get you one.’
She sat in a chair writing reports while the pill took effect; suddenly, to his great surprise, he found himself reaching for her hand.
‘Thanks. Thanks, Caroline.’
‘My pleasure.’
‘It’s so nice to talk to a pretty girl again,’ he said, rather drowsily now.
‘You have an extremely pretty wife,’ she said firmly.
‘I know. But she’s gone off me.’
‘Of course she hasn’t.’
‘Yes she has. She can’t bear me touching her.’
‘Not unusual. At first,’ said Caroline. ‘It’ll be OK. Honestly.’
‘How do you know that?’ he said.
‘Well,’ she said, looking at him thoughtfully, ‘call it experience. Plus, I tell you, Jack Compton Brown, I could certainly fancy you. If you weren’t married of course.’
‘You’re just being kind,’ he said, more drowsy still, not sure even where he was any more.
‘I am not being kind. I mean it. Ask Fenella if you don’t believe me.’ Fenella was another nurse, her best friend.
‘I will. I warn you, I will. I’m not taking that sort of flirty poppycock. And talking of cocks, Caroline—’
She bent over suddenly and kissed his lips very lightly. ‘I don’t want any dirty talk on this ward. Go to sleep, Jack, straight away.’
Obediently, he went to sleep.
The first operation was not a success; nor the second. The grafting was proving difficult. Clarissa found him morose, sulky.
‘Jack, you’ve got to be positive.’
‘Oh yes,’ he said, angry now, ‘you try and be positive. Just you try it, Clarissa. Fuck off. Go and find some handsome admiral and be positive with him. Go on, get out of here.’
‘Jack—’
‘I said fuck off,’ he said. She left, and he went and locked himself in the bathroom. When he came out, Murray Brooks was sitting on the chair by his bed.
‘You,’ he said, ‘are an arsehole. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
‘Thanks,’ said Jack. ‘When I want your opinion I’ll ask for it.’
‘And it’ll be the same bloody one,’ said Brooks. Then he grinned slightly sourly.
‘Sorry. I guess I’m just jealous. At least you’ve got a woman.’
‘Oh Christ,’ said Jack. ‘I’m sorry, Murray.’
Murray’s wife had recently written to tell him she was leaving him.
Gradually his spirits lifted: a third operation saw the graft taking, over the reconstructed nose.
‘Right,’ said McIndoe, ‘we’re getting somewhere. Now you need a break. I’m sending you to Marchwood Park. Do a bit of work for your living.’
Marchwood Park was a convalescent home in Hampshire; it also had a factory which produced items for aircraft navigation. The Guinea Pigs were proud of their record there; their work was said to be of a consistently higher standard than that produced by able-bodied people.
‘I’ll miss you,’ said Caroline, the night before he left.
‘Oh I’ll be back,’ said Jack, ‘and don’t you run off with any of the others.’
‘I won’t. But what about your wife?’
‘She’s very understanding,’ said Jack.
He was feeling more cheerful about Clarissa; on her last visit she had found him joking and flirting with Caroline and been quite clearly irritated. When she left, she kissed him. Rather tentatively, but neverthless properly, on the mouth.
‘You’re a married man, Jack Compton Brown,’ she said severely, ‘and I don’t want you forgetting it.’
‘Could I really come and stay? Just for a few days?’
‘Ben, I’ve told you you can.’
‘Thank you very much. Then I’m posted to Tidworth, can’t quite believe my luck. But it’d be nice to spend a few days with the boys.’
‘How are you?’
‘Fine. Really fine. What about Sir Clifford, he won’t mind, will he?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I just wondered. Him being your husband’s father and so on.’
‘He’s looking forward to meeting you. When are you coming?’
‘In a couple of weeks. If that’s all right. They said they’d put me on the train. Then I could get the bus maybe.’
‘Maybe you could,’ said Grace, ‘and maybe on the other hand I’d meet you.’
‘I’m being an awful nuisance, aren’t I? Sorry.’
‘Don’t say sorry!’ said Grace.
‘I warn you,’ said Florence, ‘Mother’s on the warpath. Says it’s disgusting, in Charles’s house. Threatening to order you up to the Priory for an explanation.’
‘Oh Florence, how does she know?’
‘Grace, really! How long have you lived in Thorpe? Look, I must dash, take Imogen to Nanny. Got to find billeting for about six more families by lunchtime. Two of them with pregnant women. How about you? Got any room at the Mill House left over?’
‘Well, I –’ said Grace. But Florence laughed.
‘Honestly, you’re so slow on the uptake, Grace. You still never know when you’re being teased, do you?’
No, and it still upsets me when you’re rude to me, thought Grace, longing to say it but not quite brave enough. For the hundredth time, her heart went out to Robert.
‘I shall have to report this to Charles,’ said Muriel.
‘What’s that, Muriel?’
‘That you are now entertaining grown men in his house. Total strangers.’
‘Not men, Muriel. One man,’ said Grace. ‘And he’s hardly a stranger, he’s David and Daniel’s father. He’s been very ill, you know. Badly wounded.’
‘Wangled a passage home, I believe,’ said Muriel, as if Ben had sailed home on the Queen Mary enjoying games of deck tennis on the way.
‘Hardly wangled, but yes, he is home.’
‘And ducked out of going back. I do think it’s too bad. While brave men like Charles are still out there risking their lives.’
‘Yes, well, he’s been declared medically unfit,’ said Grace, ‘to go back.’
‘It’s well known how easy that sort of thing is,’ said Muriel. ‘Pull a few strings and anyone will say anything these days.’
‘I don’t think Mr Lucas is very well placed to pull strings,’ said Grace, and put the phone down quickly before she lost her temper altogether.
She drove into Salisbury to meet
Ben. It took her a while to find him; the station was milling with soldiers, all of them in uniform. Half afraid he wasn’t there, she dispatched the boys to look for him, sat down rather disappointed on the seat.
‘Hallo, Grace, I’m here.’
He was standing smiling in front of her; he looked well again, brown and no longer gaunt. She stood up, smiling back at him. She had forgotten how tall he was; the last few times she had seen him he had been lying in bed.
‘Hallo,’ she said, and held out her hand; then feeling silly at her formality snatched it back and laughed awkwardly. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to be so formal.’
‘Don’t say sorry,’ he said. ‘Goodness, that’s becoming quite a catchphrase of ours, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ said Grace. She had no idea why, but the thought that they should share anything pleased, warmed her.
‘Can’t find him anywhere – Oh Dad, Dad—’ Daniel, a small wiry hurricane, launched himself into Ben’s arms; Ben hugged him, but winced.
‘Steady, Dan. Still a bit sore.’
‘Sorry. David,’ he called, ‘he’s over here. With Grace.’
‘It’s Grace now, is it? You boys should have some respect,’ said Ben.
‘We have lots of respect. Dad, can you play football with us tomorrow? Sir Clifford says he’ll play too, we can have teams.’
‘Yes,’ said Ben, ‘yes, of course, Dan, that’d be fine.’
It was a perfect summer evening; after tea, they all sat in the garden. The boys were unusually quiet, seemed happy to stay with their father. They sat one on each side of him, leaning against him, looking at him as if they couldn’t quite believe it.
‘Well, this is nice,’ said Clifford, ‘Look, Mr Lucas—’
‘Ben.’
‘Ben. Are you a whisky man? I’ve wangled a bottle out of the hotel over at Westhorne.’
‘Clifford!’ said Grace, ‘you are naughty. How did you get it here?’
‘Milkman brought it,’ said Clifford.
‘I’d love a whisky,’ said Ben.
‘Damn fine boys,’ said Clifford later, when Grace had finally persuaded them to go to bed, gone up to kiss them goodnight. ‘You should be proud of them.’
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