‘Nick Hay,’ Willis agreed. ‘He’s stone deaf in one ear, so his balance is shot to pieces, and staying upright on one leg is a major achievement. Did you speak to him?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘For the same reason I haven’t spoken to the squaddie. What would I say? Look on the bright side, mate, you could have lost both legs? He knows damn well what his situation is . . . a medical discharge, followed by months of hawking himself around civvie street looking for a job.’
‘Are you worried the same thing’s going to happen to you?’
‘No. The CO says he’ll support me if I want to return to the regiment.’ He frowned suspiciously as Willis glanced at his notes. ‘Unless you’ve been told something different?’
‘Only the usual. That you’ll have to prove your fitness to the medical board.’
‘That won’t be a problem.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Willis with what sounded like sincerity.
*
Sometimes Acland woke in the middle of the night, certain that maggots were devouring the raw flesh of his wounds. As a child, he’d seen a sheep die of blow-fly strike after larvae had eaten into the animal’s living flesh, and the image still haunted him. His subconscious told him that the eyes were the entry point to his brain and he jerked out of sleep in a frenzy, kneading his empty socket to stop the blinding spasms of another migraine. But he kept such episodes to himself for fear of being diagnosed as paranoid.
*
Because he interpreted Willis’s comments on withdrawal as a warning, he forced himself to socialize and phone his parents on a regular basis. He gained little from doing it except nods of approval from the psychiatrist, because his interest in other people’s affairs was zero. It was a test of his endurance to sit through vacuous conversations about wives and children who meant nothing to him, or fake a response to a joke by lifting a thumb or making a grunt of acknowledgement in the back of his throat. It helped that no one expected him to smile. He even found it curious that a lively expression could fade abruptly when the person he was speaking to remembered his disability. Once or twice, in the privacy of his room, he tested the elasticity of his reconstructed flesh in an attempt at a smile, but the ugly, lopsided grimace in the mirror looked more like an arrogant sneer than an expression of warmth. His surgeons expressed pleasure at the progress he was making, but Acland wasn’t impressed. After four months, the same number of operations and two lengthy recuperation periods outside hospital – which he chose to spend in a Birmingham hotel rather than return to his parents – his dead eye socket and tapered scar looked as livid and inelastic as they had ever done.
He found it easier to show no emotion at all, which was a truer reflection of how he felt, for without the means to demonstrate joy or empathy, the sensations themselves seemed to have withered and died.
Four
DESPITE WHAT HE’D TOLD Robert Willis, Acland hadn’t forgotten Jen. In the same way that an orderly’s smile reminded him of one of his dead soldiers, the turn of a woman’s head sometimes reminded him of her. Such recognitions left him with none of the grief that memories of his crew evoked, but he hated the brief sensations of shock they gave him. It was one of the reasons why he preferred male nurses.
When the tap came at his open door on a Friday afternoon in April, he assumed it was a cleaner. He was standing at his window, watching a woman push a double amputee in a wheelchair along a tarmac path. They were of an age, so Acland guessed they were partners, but as neither could see the other’s face their expressions said exactly what they were feeling. Both looked unhappy and frustrated, and it seemed to Acland that whatever relationship they’d had was over.
‘Charlie?’
He recognized her voice immediately, and his reaction was so extreme that he had to put a hand against the window to steady himself. He thought he was experiencing shock again until adrenalin kicked in and he knew the emotion he felt was fear. He continued to stare out of the window. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I came to see you.’
‘Why?’
She put a husk into her voice. ‘Do I need a reason, Charlie? I’d have come straight away if the hospital hadn’t kept telling me you didn’t want visitors.’
He ran his tongue round his mouth to produce some saliva. ‘Whose idea was this? Dr Willis’s?’
She avoided the question. ‘I hoped you’d be pleased to see me.’
‘Well, I’m not. The block on visitors hasn’t changed. They shouldn’t have told you where I was. Are you going to leave of your own accord or do you want me to call someone to throw you out?’
‘At least let me say sorry before I go.’
‘What for?’
‘The way it ended.’
‘I’m not interested. If I had been, I’d have read your letters.’
‘Did you get them?’ she asked with a catch in her voice. ‘When you didn’t answer, I thought perhaps the hospital was keeping them from you until your memory came back.’
‘Well, now you know.’
‘Please, Charlie.’ He heard her step into the room. ‘Couldn’t we order a pot of tea or something? I came by train and it took me ages to get here . . . and the taxi from the station was like an oven.’
‘Don’t do this, Jen.’
She sighed. ‘It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t kept going away.’
Acland told himself grimly not to be drawn into one of her blame games. ‘Not interested,’ he repeated.
There was a short silence and when she spoke again her tone had an edge to it. ‘I could have reported you. Maybe I should have done. You wouldn’t have been sent to Iraq if I had. I did think about it, you know.’
He watched the amputee put the brakes on his wheelchair to prevent his partner pushing him any further. ‘I knew you weren’t that stupid. Even a brain-dead zombie knows what mutually assured destruction is.’
She gave a small laugh. ‘But I didn’t have a regiment to be drummed out of. You might at least thank me for that.’
He didn’t say anything.
She reverted to cajoling. ‘I know you felt bad about it, darling,’ she said in her soft voice, ‘but if I’m willing to let bygones be bygones, can’t we just forget all about it?’
God! It wasn’t fear he was feeling, it was anger. Incredible anger. It ripped through his body like a tide, urging him to put his hands round her slender neck and squeeze the life out of her. ‘You need to leave,’ he said, struggling for composure. ‘I stopped caring months ago and nothing you do or say will change that.’
‘You know that’s not true.’
He half-turned to show his uninjured side. She was dressed demurely in navy blue from her neck to below her knees, with her hair twisted up behind her head. He felt goose bumps on the back of his neck as another spurt of adrenalin drenched his system. His first instinct was to look at her hands.
‘I wore it for you,’ she said, reaching up to take the clip from the back of her head. ‘Remember Gattaca? You always said you preferred Uma in uniform.’ She smiled as her blonde hair fell to her shoulders. ‘Does it bring back good memories?’
He didn’t answer.
She pulled a face. ‘You’re such a bear. I thought you’d approve for once. It’s when I showed too much that you used to complain.’ She took another step forward and dropped her shoulder bag on to his chair, eyeing him from under her lids. ‘It’s just a look, Charlie. Image is everything these days. Will Dr Willis like it? You know he’s been writing to me.’
Acland took a breath through his nose to calm himself. ‘He’s a psychiatrist . . . He doesn’t judge people on appearance.’
Her face lit with amusement. ‘Everyone does, Charlie. It’s how the world works.’ She tilted her head to one side to examine him. ‘So what’s wrong with you anyway? You look fine to me.’
‘I want you to go, Jen.’
She ignored him. ‘I can’t, not yet. You haven’t let me tell y
ou how sorry I am.’ She put the husk back into her voice. ‘It was your fault, you know. You never tried to understand how unhappy I was about you going away. I hardly recognized you when you
came back from your desert training in Oman.’
‘The feeling was mutual.’
‘It was good at the beginning.’
Was it? All he could remember now were the fights. ‘I don’t want to do this, Jen.’
‘Please, Charlie,’ she cajoled again. ‘This is really important to me, darling.’
He avoided the trap of asking why. ‘I don’t care.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘No,’ he agreed harshly, ‘but you never did understand the difference between what was real and what wasn’t. This is real.’ He slammed one fist into the other. ‘You come one step closer . . . or try that “darling” crap on me again . . . and I’ll take your head off.’
Her eyes flashed briefly, but whether in annoyance or alarm he couldn’t tell. ‘Why are you being so cruel?’
Acland pressed a finger against his dead socket, where a pain was starting. ‘I’m not. I’m being honest . . . which isn’t a word you’d understand.’ He watched her mouth thin to an unattractive line. ‘Have you run out of money? Is that why I’ve been picked for the treatment again? Maybe you think I’m going to be paid thousands in compensation.’
A line of tears appeared along her lashes and she looked baffled suddenly, as if the visit wasn’t going the way she’d expected. ‘I thought you wanted to see me. Someone keeps phoning and hanging up. I hoped it was you.’
‘No chance. I don’t even call the people I’m fond of.’
‘You never used to be like this.’
‘Like what? Bored?’ He paused. ‘I was always bored. Somewhere along the line I hoped I’d find a real person behind the pathetic pretence, but I never did. Not one I wanted to spend time with at any rate.’
‘Cold,’ she said. ‘You were never cold, Charlie. You might have been easier to live with if you had been.’
‘Don’t delude yourself. Adulation’s the only thing you ever wanted. You were halfway bearable as long as men admired you.’
‘You shouldn’t have been so jealous. They were always going to look . . . You knew that from the moment we met.’
Acland shook his head. ‘Don’t do this,’ he warned.
‘Why not? You were crazy about me. I’ve been worried sick it’s my fault that you ended up in here. Were you thinking about me when your Scimitar got hit?’
He watched her take another step towards him. ‘I swear to God, I will hurt you if you come any closer, Jen. Do you understand that? I don’t give a shit what kind of fantasy you’re in at the moment, but it doesn’t include me.’ He paused. ‘It never did. The woman I liked never really existed.’
She couldn’t or wouldn’t believe him and the teardrops fattened along her lashes in beautiful sorrow. ‘Don’t be unkind to me, Charlie. I’m so unhappy. Can’t we be friends at least?’
She lifted a hand towards his face as if she believed that touch alone could reignite the feelings he’d had for her. His response was so rapid that he caught her wrist and bent it away from him before it even reached shoulder height. ‘Not any more,’ he said icily. ‘I’ve already told you, I’m not going down this route again.’
‘You’re hurting me.’
‘I doubt it.’ He stared at her for a moment, then slowly slid his grip from her wrist to her palm and crushed the bones inside his fist. ‘How about that?’
This time the tears were a genuine expression of pain. ‘God!’ she snapped. ‘You’re breaking my fucking fingers.’
‘That sounds more like the Jen I know.’
She tried to reach her bag with her free hand and he jerked her away from it. ‘Bastard!’ she hissed. ‘I’ll get you for this.’
‘Better and better. I’d hate to think I’d been wrong about you.’ He applied more pressure to her palm. ‘Why did you come?’
She relaxed suddenly. ‘Dr Willis suggested it.’
He could smell the shampoo on her hair. ‘Don’t lie.’
‘It’s the truth, Charlie. He thought it would help you if we could talk through what happened. He says you still have unresolved issues about the relationship.’
Unresolved issues...? Would Willis use a term like that? Acland stared at Jen for a moment, then manoeuvred her backwards towards the door. ‘Then you’d better tell him he’s wrong. There are no unresolved issues at my end. He might believe it if it comes from you.’
She made another grab for her bag. ‘I need my stuff, Charlie.’
‘I know you do.’
He jerked her away from it a second time and heard her hiss of anger as she made a furious writhing movement to pull herself free, punching at his arm with her other fist. Acland managed to keep his hold because he’d been ready for her, but he’d forgotten how strong she was. He caught her flailing fist at the first attempt and, without thinking, jerked her towards him in order to exert the same crushing force on both palms. In doing so, he exposed the injured side of his face.
Of course she screamed. It was a dramatic moment. If either of her hands had been free she would have clapped it across her mouth in the cliche´d, angst-ridden gesture of Hollywood actresses. There was no banality that Jen wouldn’t use in search of attention. She gave a thready wail in mimicry of a panic attack – ‘Oh-oh-oh’
– which slowly swelled in volume as she took in the full extent of his injuries.
Impassively, he forced her wrists together so that he could clasp both in one hand, then raised the other to circle her neck with his fingers. As the tips dug into her skin, the scream petered out and she stared at him in alarm. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Shutting you up.’
She started to struggle again. ‘I can’t breathe, Charlie! I can’t fucking breathe!’
There was a flurry of movement in the doorway and a man’s voice demanded, ‘What the hell’s going on? Jesus Christ!’ Acland felt himself being grabbed from behind in a bear hug. ‘Let her go, Charles. Now! You’re killing her.’
Acland released his grip and pushed Jen away. ‘It would take more than that to kill her,’ he said, allowing himself to be manhandled to the other side of his bed. He watched cynically as she sank to the floor in a sobbing heap. ‘You’d need to drive a stake through her heart to do it properly.’
The man, one of the male nurses, pushed him roughly into the corner and told him to stay put. ‘You’ve got real problems, mate,’ he said disgustedly, reaching for the emergency bell.
*
Robert Willis arrived fifteen minutes later. He nodded to the security officer who was guarding the door and, without speaking to Acland, retrieved Jen’s bag from the chair and handed it to a nurse. He told the officer he wanted to speak with his patient privately, then shut the door and sat down. He was content to let a silence develop and, for the first time, Acland appreciated the calmness of Willis’s nature and the economy of his movements. The tic of his own furiously pumping fists began to relax under their influence. He was standing in the corner where the male nurse had pushed him. ‘What’s she told you?’ he asked at last. ‘That you tried to strangle her,’ Willis said unemotionally. ‘There’s a lot I didn’t understand. She’s fairly distraught. Are you going to sit down?’ ‘No. I like it better when I know what’s behind me.’ Acland stepped back and propped his left shoulder against the wall. ‘She said you told her to come.’ ‘I didn’t. I advised her to stay away.’ ‘That’s not what she said.’ Willis gave a small shrug. ‘Then you’ll have to choose which of us you want to believe.’ The lieutenant stared at him for a moment. ‘Does she know I’m going to London tomorrow?’ ‘Not unless she’s heard it from you. I’ve only communicated with her twice . . . once to make contact and the second time to acknowledge her email and say you weren’t interested in seeing her. The visit to London wasn’t on the cards at that stage.’
‘What about this woman I’m s
taying with?’
‘Dr Campbell? As far as I’m aware, she doesn’t even know Jen Morley exists. She certainly wouldn’t have her contact details.’ Willis leaned back and crossed one leg over the other. ‘Is that why you think Jen came? Because I wanted you to re-establish your friendship before the trip?’
‘It crossed my mind.’
‘I’m not that devious or that stupid, Charles. Why would I want to compromise your first attempt at normality? More particularly, why would I want to compromise Susan Campbell’s safety by sending her a volatile patient who doesn’t trust me?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, I suggest you start thinking about it because I shall have to inform Susan of today’s episode . . . and she may refuse to take you. Was Jen telling the truth when she said you tried to strangle her . . . or was that another invention?’
‘Not exactly. I did put my hand on her throat.’ He looked away. ‘Have you called the police?’
Willis shook his head. ‘Not yet. Jen said it was partly her fault
– you told her to leave and she refused – but in any case she doesn’t want you prosecuted.’ He tapped his fingertips together. ‘That’s not to say it won’t happen. Our head of security might decide to report you in the best interests of staff safety, although I persuaded him to wait until you’d given me your side of the story. So . . . do you want to tell me what happened?’
‘Not particularly.’
The psychiatrist clasped his fists and levelled his forefingers at Acland’s heart. ‘It wasn’t an invitation, Charles, it was an instruction . . . and don’t test me because I’m not in the mood. You’ve gone out of your way to make enemies here. You’re aggressive and rude and the consensus view is that you have a problem with women. Do you think an attempt to throttle your ex-fiance´e is going to do anything to mitigate that opinion?’
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