by Zoe Sharp
“All right, young man, now let’s have a look at you,” my father said as he bent over the wound, his voice cool as though this sort of thing happened all the time.
He lifted the dressing and inspected the front of Sean’s shoulder for a few moments, gently manipulating the skin around the entry site. Although his hands moved quietly, their touch sure and delicate like a concert pianist, Sean grimaced, trying not to wince.
My father gave him a hard stare over the top of his glasses. “This is not a trial by ordeal,” he said, his tone vaguely acerbic. “I’m sure it’s all very heroic to stay so silent in the face of what must be considerable discomfort, but if you don’t tell me where the pain is greatest, I’m not going to learn where that bullet lies. I’m not a vet who can work by grunts and squeaks alone. Do you understand me?”
“Yes sir,” Sean said, his face bone-white.
He resumed his inspection, but only briefly. “All right, I think I’ve found it. It’s sitting in the belly of the deltoid muscle, not too deep.”
He glanced at Jacob and Clare. “Normally, I’d prefer to do an exploratory under a general anaesthetic,” he said, adding with grim humour, “I don’t suppose either of you two happens to be a trained anaesthetist, by any chance? No? Ah well, I had to ask.”
Instead, he injected lignocaine close to the wound and we waited a few minutes for the local anaesthetic to take effect. It was like being at the dentist, being sent out into the waiting room to read old copies of the Reader’s Digest until your mouth has gone numb enough not to notice the drill.
While we were waiting he dug into the bag again and laid out more equipment in a precise line on a piece of sterile cloth. A pack of forceps, stainless steel kidney-shaped dishes, black suture, and thin curved needles, like the unsheathed claws of a small but lethal cat.
“The adrenaline with the anaesthetic should help to stop the bleeding when I’ve completed the extraction,” my father said to Jacob, nodding to his array of tools, “but you’ll need to be ready with that swab anyway, just in case.”
He seemed to be ignoring me. I doubt I would have been much use as a scrub nurse, anyway. I didn’t want to watch as he pulled back the skin round the entry site and slid the tips of the forceps into the wound, but I found I couldn’t tear my eyes away. It seemed so barbaric.
Even Sean turned his head, preferring to stare into Clare’s fearful face as she sat on the other side of the table, still clutching his fingers. The knuckles of both their entwined hands had turned white.
The look of concentration on my father’s face as he probed the wound was profound. The time ticked by, but he refused to be hurried, making absolutely sure he had a firm grip on the bullet before he attempted to withdraw it along the same track it had followed on the way in.
When the squat, misshapen round finally emerged in a fresh welter of blood, he dropped it with a clang into the waiting dish that Jacob held out for him. The five of us let out our breath in a collective gush at its successful delivery.
My father dealt with the cleaning out and closing up process with an efficiency born of long practise, leaving a neat line of stitches as the only evidence of his invasion. Then he stood back and nodded once, as if pleased with his own handiwork.
While he taped a dressing in place over the stitches I picked the bloodied bullet out of the dish and turned it round in my fingers. The copper outer jacket of the slug had compressed to less than half its original length, mushrooming slightly. It was deformed from the initial contact with whatever had deflected its path, sent it spinning into Sean’s body.
I glanced up, found him watching me, and held the bullet up so he could see it. “It’s a nine millimetre,” I said, and the significance of that wasn’t lost on him.
It rang no bells with my father, though. He unhooked the now-empty bag of saline and withdrew the cannula. “Perhaps there’s somewhere a little more comfortable where we can move the patient to rest?” he asked Jacob.
Jacob suggested the living room, where there was a fire burning and the sofa was large enough to sleep on. Clare jumped up again and went in search of spare pillows and bedding. Between the rest of us we managed to get Sean on his feet and half-walk, half-carry him the short distance to the living room.
“He’s had enough morphine to keep him quiet tonight,” my father said, “but you’ll need to watch him fairly carefully. I’d like to think I’ve cleaned the wound out completely, but there’s always the chance that any clothing debris pulled into it will lead to infection. I’ll leave you a course of antibiotics, but if he starts showing any signs, you’re going to have to get him to a hospital, whatever the consequences. Do you understand me?”
It was my turn to say, stiffly, “Yes sir.”
Clare offered to sit with Sean for a while and Jacob, recognising that there were things that needed to be said, went to keep her company, quietly closing the door behind him.
My father moved back through to the kitchen, peeling off his gloves as he went. When I followed he was scrubbing his hands thoroughly at the butler’s sink. I watched him without speaking until he was done.
“So, Charlotte, are you going to tell me what happened?” he said carefully then, wiping his hands on a towel with vigorous efficiency.
“It’s a long story,” I said wearily.
There was a pause as he waited for me to continue. I didn’t.
He turned. “Did you shoot him?”
I couldn’t work out if I should be flattered or affronted by the question. “If I had done, he’d be dead,” I said, matter of fact, without bravado. “No, I didn’t shoot him.”
He raised a dubious eyebrow at that. “Really? I would have thought Sean Meyer was a prime candidate for it.”
“Why?”
He made an impatient gesture. “He ruined you, Charlotte, in more ways than one,” he said. It should have sounded ridiculously old-fashioned, but from him somehow it didn’t. What did surprise me was the vehemence in his tone.
“I never knew you cared,” I said lightly.
His face tightened at that, the only outward display. “Of course we cared – and still care – about you. Your mother and I had to stand by and watch you go through the torments of hell twice over because of that man.”
“I knew having a fling with Sean when he was my instructor was against the rules, and it was stupid, with hindsight, but it was my choice,” I argued. “But it wasn’t his fault that I was attacked. He wasn’t even on camp when it happened.”
“Has it never occurred to you that perhaps the very reason you were singled out as a victim by the men who raped you,” my father demanded now, “was because they found out about your relationship with Meyer?”
I tried not to flinch. He may have seen it anyway, because his voice softened slightly. “I know you weren’t allowed to say much about it, but you were doing well at your course, weren’t you? Better than most of the men you were training alongside, as I recall.”
“The marks I scored were on my own merits,” I said, suddenly defensive. Sean had been famously tough as an instructor, and not just on me. They said that if he didn’t lose a few trainees from every intake on medical grounds, he was a disappointed man.
He had seemed to know instinctively where everyone’s own personal breaking point lay, just so he could drive you up to and beyond it.
“I’m not suggesting for a moment that you received any sort of preferential treatment,” my father commented. He folded the towel neatly, put it on the draining board. “But what better salve to their wounded egos than to imagine that it wasn’t talent drawing you ahead, but good old-fashioned sex? And what better way for them to reassert their male superiority than the somewhat violent method they chose?”
I shook my head. “Sean didn’t betray me,” I said, “but then, you already knew that, didn’t you?”
He’d been gathering the soiled equipment he’d used, stowing it into his bag, and his momentary stillness told me what I needed to know. The las
t vital piece of the jigsaw dropped into place, and the picture suddenly became painfully, blindingly clear.
“After I was – after it happened,” I said, annoyed at the way I faltered, “it was my mother who rang camp asking for Sean, wasn’t it? Who else would have wanted to accuse him of letting harm come to me, of not standing up for me at the court martial? But he’d been posted before any of it happened and he didn’t know.”
I met his eyes steadily, and pressed on. “Whoever she spoke to put two and two together. It was only afterwards that she must have realised what she’d done, when they paraded the information at the civil trial. That’s why she didn’t support my appeal, isn’t it? In case it all came out that she’d been disloyal to her own daughter.”
It was a long speech, and it was greeted by a wary silence. My father sank down onto the kitchen chair next to him, suddenly looking every year of his age, defeated.
He sighed, heavily, before he went on. “Yes,” he said quietly, “I know. She went through hell wanting to confess, but your relationship was so bad by that time that she didn’t see it would help. I persuaded her not to tell you.” He looked up at me, as though resigned to accusations, and bitter rhetoric. “What do you propose to do now, Charlotte?”
I shrugged. “Nothing,” I said, tired myself, like we’d been physically sparring. “What would it solve? It wouldn’t make me feel any better to confront her now, and it certainly wouldn’t do her any good. What’s the point?”
He nodded a little at that, turning it over in his mind. “But it doesn’t explain why Meyer didn’t come forwards and speak up for you afterwards. At the time you felt that the amount of detail exposed could only have come from him. That pressure had been brought to bear from a higher authority and he’d capitulated in order to preserve his own career.”
“It wouldn’t have been so difficult for them to piece it together, not once they knew what they were looking for,” I said. “Besides, like I said, they posted him. Sean didn’t know what happened to me, nobody saw fit to tell him, and he still doesn’t know.” I pinned my father with the same kind of hard stare he so often used himself, keeping my chin up. “I want to keep it that way.”
“Why?” There was no anger in the question, only curiosity.
“For the same reason I won’t say anything to my mother,” I said, my voice neutral. “It wouldn’t do anyone any good now to open up old wounds. They didn’t give Sean an easy time of it afterwards, either, and for a while he blamed me for that without knowing why. I think I’m beginning to earn his respect again. I don’t want that to change to pity.”
My father nodded again. “That’s very – noble – of you,” he said. He stood, straightened up, and the authority he’d always carried was back, and the arrogance.
He snapped the catches shut on his bag, lifted it, and moved towards the door. “I know you think we’ve treated you poorly over this, Charlotte,” he said, with the faintest trace of a smile playing round his mouth, “but looking at the way you’ve turned out your mother and I must have done something right, somewhere along the line while you were growing up, don’t you think?”
Twenty-three
I took over watching duty from Jacob and Clare at around two the following morning, and they went gratefully upstairs to bed. I wasn’t bargaining on getting much sleep myself, too aware of every unconscious shift and murmur that Sean made.
At least, as my father had said, he’d had enough morphine to allow him to get some rest. He seemed so much younger when he was asleep, so much more vulnerable. I never thought I’d see him with his guard down so completely.
I sat in one of the armchairs to one side of the fireplace and watched him with my chin resting on my hand. The fire was warm, the crackle and dance of the flames soothing.
Eventually, they got to me.
***
The next thing I knew Clare was gently shaking my shoulder. Weak grey daylight was trickling in through the open curtains, and there was the splattery drum of rain against the outside of the glass. She offered coffee in a whisper.
I nodded thankfully, trying to roll the crick out of my neck and, with a last glance at Sean’s sleeping form, I followed her through to the kitchen. He didn’t seem to have moved an inch since last night. I’d no worries that he was suddenly going to go walkabout now.
“I checked him before I woke you,” Clare said as she bustled round the kitchen. “He doesn’t seem feverish or anything.” She plonked a freshly-brewed mug of strong coffee in front of me at the table.
“Is Jacob still asleep?”
“Oh yes.” She smiled. “He does late nights, and he does early mornings, but not both together. I thought I’d better give him a bit longer to come round or he’ll be grouchy all day.”
“Clare I’m very grateful to you, you know – to both of you,” I said awkwardly, in a rush, “for all you did last night. I had no right to ask you, really. Especially not after—”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, cutting me off as she slid into a seat opposite. She flashed a quick grin. “Tell me everything that’s going on and I’ll consider it a debt paid.”
I told her as much as I could, about Jav’s tip-off, our visit to the building site, and stumbling over Langford’s body. She made shocked exclamations of surprise, and then demanded answers I just didn’t have about who was responsible, and why.
I gave her the bare bones of our escape, too, aware again of just how big a chance I’d taken, what a difficult position I’d put my friends into, by bringing Sean here.
Clare digested the information in silence for a moment, then said, “Is Sean the one who hurt you? I mean, you’ve never said, but somehow I always knew there must have been someone.”
I was taken aback by the question, but tried not to show it. “Yes, well no, but he was all part of it.” I shrugged. “Sort of. It’s a long story.”
Clare nodded and sipped her coffee. “I could tell there was something when you brought him in here last night. I mean, I know more than anyone how far out on a limb you’ll go for your friends, Charlie. If it wasn’t for you, I’d be dead,” she said, and her face was grave. “But this was something more. You had this air of—” She flapped a hand while she searched for the right words. “Controlled panic. That’s the closest I can get to describing it. Are you still in love with him?”
Her eyes slid away over my shoulder and I thought she’d embarrassed herself with the question. Then I caught the suggestion of a movement behind me. When I turned it was to find Sean in the kitchen doorway, leaning heavily on the frame.
He was still wearing last night’s jeans which had dried blood sheening the left thigh, but no shirt. The square of white dressing was still taped efficiently to his shoulder. I skimmed my eyes over him as he came further into the room. He was holding himself awkwardly and was still pale, but his eyes were clear, and his gait was steady.
Clare jumped up, a faint flush lighting her cheekbones and the tips of her ears. “I’ll make fresh coffee,” she muttered.
Sean treated her to one of his brighter smiles. “I didn’t have a chance to thank you last night,” he said, “for offering me sanctuary.”
I suppressed a grumpy sigh as I formally introduced them. Sean clasped her proffered hand with enough deliberation to refresh the blush that was still lingering round Clare’s features. I took one look and knew she was smitten.
She hurriedly refilled the polished copper kettle on the top of the Aga and then, mumbling something about seeing if Jacob was up, she all but ran out of the room. The pair of us were left alone together in a silence that was deafening.
Sean eased himself into the chair my friend had just vacated. “So, Charlie,” he said quietly, “are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Still in love with me?” It was said lightly, without a hint of conceit. I saw the curve of his lips and for a moment I was tempted not to treat the question seriously, but then I took in the clenched fingers and decided against lev
ity.
I rubbed a hand across my eyes. They felt full of grit. I was bone tired and my brain was functioning strictly on the lower levels. This was just not the time to trawl through ancient history.
Briefly, I leaned my face down towards the tabletop, resting my chin on my fist while I considered. “No, I don’t think so,” I said at last, seriously. “What we had was a long time ago, Sean.” I raised my head to meet his eyes. “Whether you intended to or not, you hurt me more than I ever could have imagined.”
As he started to speak I cut him off, keeping my voice admirably level. “But, I got over it, I moved on. We’re neither of us the same people we were then. It would be a mistake to try and go back.”
“So why the ‘controlled panic’ last night?”