A rough voice came loudly from the other end of the ward, “The man who wrote that book is a f——g good man, and don’t you forget it, Brill!”
In the silence the voice of Henniker-Sudley said equably, “Do you mind being more careful with your language, Garfield?”
“I thought you told me there wasn’t no rank in ’ospital, major.”
“It’s a question of manners, particularly if one wears the riband of the Victoria Cross.”
“They can keep the bloody thing for all I trouble, I didn’t arst for it!”
“You’re too good a soldier to let yourself down like that Garfield. There are young ladies working in this ward.”
Distant voices, a door opening; shuffle of carpet slippers as those up, in dressing-gowns, stood by their beds. The low, bird-like voice of the Duchess, shy, remote, carefully quiet because she was partly deaf, coming down the ward, saying, “Good morning—Good morning.” Murmurs where she stopped. “Good morning.” She was coming nearer.
“Good morning. How are you today?”
“Much better, thank you, your Grace.”
“Are you sleeping well?”
“Yes thank you, ma’am.”
The Good-mornings receded, the far door shut.
*
The scabs on neck, face, and chest had ceased to crack and weep, the cuckoo was singing all night and all day when he was allowed to get up. After two days of shuffling about he knew his way blindfold around the ward, knowing his whereabouts by the various angled patterns of voices, and thereby what to avoid, and, always with relief, to find his way by rubber-shod stick, down the flag-stone corridor to the lavatory, the throne as the high, box-like apparatus was called.
Then to laze about on the terrace in the sun; to be taken for a walk by one of the V.A.D.s, as he thought. At first his arm was lightly held, a delightful voice asking questions about birds, as though she were greatly interested.
Across the open spaces of the grass he stopped to listen to the off-tune calling of a cuckoo. The notes came clear as air, no longer muted by the glass windows and walls of the ward.
“That’s a queer sort of call, don’t you think?”
“In what way does it seem queer?”
“The notes seem flattened, somehow.”
“Perhaps the cuckoo feels flat.”
“You’re laughing at me!”
“Why should I laugh at you?”
The tone of her voice made him uneasy, and he attempted to pay her a compliment. “Wordsworth wrote of the cuckoo as a wandering voice. Now, I suppose, I am wandering like a cuckoo, but guided by a more charming voice.”
She ignored this pretentiousness, and said, “Doesn’t a cuckoo lay its eggs in other birds’ nests?”
“Well, some naturalists think it lays its egg first, then carries it in its bill to the selected nest of its dupe.”
“That can’t be much fun for the cuckoo, surely?”
“On the other hand, I’ve actually seen a cuckoo squatting across a hedge-sparrow’s nest, and when it had flown away, I found a larger grey egg among the hedge-sparrow’s smaller blue eggs.”
“I think it’s much more sensible to lay one’s egg in a nest already warmed for one.”
He felt foolish; and had to resist the impulse to say something startling, to break the restraint. They walked on in silence, while he wondered how he could get away. No longer was his arm held, obviously a sign that he had bored her. At last they turned back, to his relief, and as they approached the great hollow square of buildings, which increased the sound of their feet on gravel, she said, with a return of her former resilience, “You know, I fancy that Uncle Boo’n would be most interested in your cuckoo theory.” At the door of the ward she said, “You know, as a family we’re rather inclined to be that way!” She said, in her original gay voice, modulated and charming, “It has been a most interesting talk. Au revoir!”
“I must thank you——”
Thank heaven he had not asked her name, or any questions of a personal nature. Obviously she was one of the family. Left alone, he was dejected by what he felt to be his dullness. Of course she had not asked his name, or given her own; he was only one of scores of temporary members of the regiment; such people were not introduced to their class. The walk for her had been but routine duty, ‘walking’ a patient in the same way that a hound puppy might be ‘walked’—looking after it until it was strong enough to join the pack—back to the regiment and the war in France. And the sooner, the better.
He wanted to scream—he had made a fool of himself.
*
Night was broken dark rocks which he could never cross to the other side. Always the same dream, his legs dragging and finally held in black glue, a nightmare from which he awakened in terror, his body slippery with sweat, while his mind began to writhe through scenes which he tried to straighten, to find their true meaning, to connect them coherently, to resolve them into one simple sentence of truth. He must begin again. Now face up to what had happened. Begin at the Kabaret Staenyzer. How far was Bill Kidd’s refusal due to an obvious lack of respect, in turn due to his lie about his next-of-kin living in Gaultshire? How had Bill Kidd found out? Surely not through ‘Spectre’? No, ‘Spectre’ would never betray a confidence. But had it been a confidence? Was a reply to what in effect was an official question a matter of confidence? Leave that for the moment. Begin again at the Kabaret Staenyzer.
If he had insisted that Bill Kidd come back, used his authority instead of drinking whiskey with Bill Kidd and being matey he would not have needed to go and see ‘Spectre’ about it. But had he gone to see ‘Spectre’ at Byron Farm at his request, or had ‘Spectre’ asked him to go down, perhaps for another purpose? To tell him that he was being relieved of his command, that he was a washout for not enforcing his, ‘Spectre’s’, order. Whichever way it was, he was to blame.
Black depression weighed him down. He was on the rocks. What would they think of him in the regiment when they found out? It would be almost a relief, then he could resign his commission, and volunteer to go back in the ranks. In any case he must ask to resign his commission, ‘for private reasons’, then they would ask no questions. As soon as his bloody eyes were all right. But—would that not be going too far in the other direction? Was it not a sort of sho wing-off, a kind of inverted bravado, like the bicycle ride on Christmas Day, 1914? But had that been bravado? It had seemed a simple possibility, while the other fellows and the Germans were all streaming back to play a football match. Other scenes, at Heathmarket … disastrous exhibitions of bad form. O God. Oh, what a fool he had been all his life, a prey to sudden mental picturing, so that he did silly things which he never really wanted, or even meant, to do. Picturing, a pale word like rolled warm putty, breaking off when rolled thin, Father’s putty taken to make little balls, to fire out of his brass cannon at Mr. Bigge’s window next door, pale putty-picturing like a pale snake, moving without purpose through the dark rocks of the ward shattered by silence until the pale snake of his thoughts was twisted in desperation by the longer snake of the snoring of Brill in the next bed, Brill who was always talking about Colin this and Colin that. It went on and on, he tried to resist it by breathing deeply, but the air indrawn would not go in easily, he could take only small breaths, as though a part of the lungs were shut off. He must lie limp, and pray. The battle of the brain was so much more deadly than the battle of physical movement; perhaps all battle came first in the mind? Clear the mind, and there is no battle. ‘Be still, and know that I am God’. But the snoring sawed through all resolutions, and he shouted silently at Brill to stop.
Thank God, the night sister was coming down the ward. He could hear her slippers. She spoke in a whisper to the snorer, shook his shoulder. Brill sat up and said, “I wasn’t snoring, honestly!”
“Turn round,” she whispered, then her slippers were sweeping away. Soon Brill was snoring again, bubbling thickly with the boiled blood of the black bison in the Park. He wondered if
they ever ploughed with oxen, now that so many horses were in France. He forced himself to think of oxen teams slowly plodding o’er the lea; but they were snoring blood as they lumbered over the black rocks; bubbles of blood blew from their eyes, ears, and nostrils in a hot varnish of sweat. At last he could bear it no more and lifting the bandage over his eyes, peeped through clotted lids, and with a shock of joy saw a row of brilliant lights down both ends of the long table dividing the middle of the ward. At once the snoring diminished for him, and he stood up, repressing an impulse to shout, “I can see the lights, sister, I can see!” Then to enjoy his new freedom the more he sat on the edge of the bed and closed his eyes, or rather squeezed the lids into place with his facial muscles, and lapped in happiness, put back the bandage and got between the sheets, to lie with arms under head, and after a while to lift the bandage sufficiently to allow him to see the winking lights of the candles all along the promenade of the ward, between bowls of flowers which were like railed-in gardens, while the shadows on the walls were familiar and comforting for he was in England, he was free of the war, and of the disasters of the past. He began to cry with relief, he felt that ‘Spectre’ was with him, telling him that he was forgiven.
He thought back to the scene in the Bird Cage, on the calm sunny morning before the twenty-first of March, and heard ‘Spectre’s’ words again, saying that a father needed his son the more that his life was wasted away; and the beauty of the lights along the promenade of the ward, the wind in the trees of the park, murmurous through the open tops of the windows was like the sound of the sea first heard in childhood, when Father had found a gold watch on the shingle of Hayling Island, and taken it to the police, who had returned it to the owner, Father saying that he did not want his name to be mentioned, or to claim any reward. Father had always been an honourable man; he, his son, had been like Bill Kidd, but without Bill Kidd’s guts.
The lights were blurred, as he struggled for recovery, with the determination that he must not let his thoughts worry, like Shelley’s hounds, ‘their father and their prey’.
*
In the morning he was taken to the operation theatre to be X-rayed through chest and back. To his surprise the Duchess worked the apparatus, which Major Henniker-Sudley, in the ward afterwards said was the first privately to be installed in the country before the war in her ‘pet’ cottage hospital. The Duchess had qualified both as radiologist and radiographer at the London Hospital in Whitechapel.
That afternoon he was taken out in a vehicle with four small wheels, judging by the noise on the gravel drive. It was drawn by a Welsh pony called Clunbach, led by his guide. He sat in the back seat, feeling the leather upholstery to be dry and cracked, needing saddle-soap. There was a small child in the ‘brougham’—as he thought of it. She was with her nurse, taking a picnic tea to one of the lakes.
“I’ve never ridden in a bro’ham before,” he said to the nurse.
“No, sir?”
Perhaps it wasn’t a brougham, but had another name.
He could feel the child’s presence beside him, and tried to picture her from the name used by the nurse—Melissa. Not knowing what to say to the child, he remained silent. When they stopped, he got out first, and stood still.
“I think this is about the best place, out of the wind, don’t you?”
“Oh yes.”
“I’ll get the hamper out of the broo’am.”
“Oh, let me——”
“No, you must rest. Nanny, will you spread the hammer cloth?”
He sat on one corner of the rug. When they were all sitting he said, as cheerfully as he could, “I’ve been trying to determine our position from the fixed point of that off-tune cuckoo’s voice, and what I imagine to be its echo glancing off the long southern front of the Abbey.”
When there was no reply, he said, trying to make a joke of it, “I suppose you must think me a terrible bore——”
“Oh lor’, no! I think it’s all most interesting. How you think of it, I simply can’t imagine!” Then, as though to reassure him, she said casually, in a voice partly wooden with hauteur, “Most of the family is inclined to prefer birds to people, y’know. Uncle Boo’n and Aunt May would spend their lives watchin’ them through glasses all day, if they could.”
He sat silent once more, struggling with feelings of insufficiency, which prompted him to go away at once; and after many mentally-suppressed attempts to do so, he got on his feet, all control gone, and had walked a few steps over the grass when her voice said, “What wonderful hearing you have! Fancy hearing them all that distance off.” He stood there, and after a period of time heard voices. When they came near she said, “You’re just in time for tea! How awf’ly nice of you to come!” He recognised Brill, Garfield and others from the ward, but when a clear baritone slightly nasal voice cried, “Phillip! My dear old son!” he felt free at last.
“Denis!” He projected himself towards the voice, while distantly conscious of how-d’you-do’s, and the spoken name of Lady Abeline. “My dear old son!” repeated the clear, endearing voice, “Let me sit beside you, and hear all your news! You know that Tabor’s commanding now? He’s done very well, so I hear. Bad luck about ‘Spectre’, wasn’t it? But of course, you were in the same ship.”
“I—I—was in another part of it.”
“I heard about it from O’Gorman. He’s here, you know, at the command depot at the other end of the park.”
“O’Gorman is?” He felt faint.
“I expect you’ll be seeing him soon, when Lord Satchville comes on leave. The Duke, who, as you probably know, commands the depôt and wants to hold some sort of regimental Court of Inquiry, to try to get posthumous recognition for ‘Spectre’.”
Sisley looked at the bandaged face beside him, taut from prominent cheek-bones to thin line of jaw, at the fingers twirling and twisting a stem of grass; and changed the subject. The poor chap was still too shaken to talk about it, he told Major Henniker-Sudley afterwards.
*
When the bandages were taken off Phillip saw that he had no eyelashes, and that the lids were a thick bright pink like the new skin of his nose and face; while his beard that had felt to be so soft was black and ugly. The face staring at him with distaste looked as if it were suffering from some loathsome skin disease. Smoked glasses added to the complete villainy of the picture. “You swine!” he said to the face; no wonder that the child in the ‘broo’m’—not bro’ham!—had been too frightened to speak. At least he would not inflict his boring presence on them at any picnic parties in the future.
He discovered a friend in Major Henniker-Sudley, who had got a shrapnel ball in the shoulder within the first half-hour of going into action in the final German attack before Amiens. They went for walks together, and to his delight Phillip learned that Henniker-Sudley had a copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse. ‘Hen’ lent him a book by Conrad, Victory, which, he explained, was nothing to do with the war. One morning this new happiness was riven when ‘Hen’ said, “The Duke would like to have a word with you, about Harold West. Don’t be put off by his manner, he always was a bit of a recluse, you know. He’s wrapped up in country matters, especially birds and fish and that sort of thing. Rather in your own line, I gather. Odd about that cuckoo singin’ out of tune, isn’t it?”
Phillip started to make excuses. “I—I—what about my beard, ‘Hen’? I don’t think I—I—I mean, shaving——”
“My dear fellow, I don’t think it will matter in the least.”
*
When he was recalled to the operating theatre, enlarged photographs of what looked like shadows were being examined by two doctors. Questions were asked. Did he at times feel a restriction in his breathing? Were there, to his knowledge, any blue-cross shells falling that evening, with the mustard gas? Had he taken in gas before, at any time? He had? A touch of chlorine at Loos? Perhaps, as his medical history sheets were apparently mislaid, he could remember the particulars? That ‘touch of chlorine at Loos�
�, what did he mean by a touch? Any retching? No, only sickness. Did he feel puffy after walking, or taking exercise? When lying in bed? Possibility of emphysema, murmured one doctor to the other. Now, would he tell them if he had to force his breathing sometimes? He did? A developing emphysematous condition, the younger doctor murmured. Had he ever had broncho-pneumonia? No? They looked at the photographs again, pointing to one place with a pencil. They drew apart, and spoke together. He heard the younger doctor say, “There might possibly be an incipient emphysema, the over-distension of air-cells——”
They returned. The senior M.O. said, “How long have you been overseas? Just about two years in all. I see you were out in 1914. This was your fifth time? You need a long rest, to build you up. I don’t think there’s the least need to worry. What you need is plenty of sunshine, and good food. Convalescence in the west country, take everything easy, laze about. Do you fish? The very thing. I’ll put your name down for convalescence. They’ll fix you up with a place to go to, in London. And, as I said, take things easily. The intermittence in your heart is most likely due to flatulence, consequent on strain. We’ll give you a tonic; in the meantime, take it easy in the sun, and enjoy yourself.”
It was wonderful to see one’s shadow again.
Everything he saw had a beautiful shape, and colours all made perfect patterns in a manner never seen before. They absorbed sounds; voices of men and birds were part of their patterns. Print on a page was miraculously clear. On the way to the throne was an old notice, printed, he at first thought, from wooden type, but on closer scrutiny the lettering must have been based on metal, for the hair-lines were so fine: work of craftsman like Father, who wrote always meticulously, every letter clearly defined.
The notice on the wall was to do with the servants, who obviously had to jump to it; by the long letter s as a tall f, the notice had been put up in the 18th century.
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