by John Wilcox
He lowered his head back on to the pillow. The ache had gone now and so had that pervasive drowsiness that had slipped him in and out of sleep for . . . how long? He could not be sure. Blinking in the light - it must be midday or early afternoon - Simon looked on the table in vain for his timepiece. Perhaps it was in the wardrobe. He began to pull at the sheets and blankets which encased him, then thought better of it. Instead he called out.
‘Hello. Hello. Anyone there?’
The words came out little stronger than conversational in level, but they echoed through the emptiness of the room. Almost immediately, however, Simon heard the clump of army boots approaching along a corridor and then an orderly came through the door. He was crisp in white jacket above blue patrol trousers, and when he spoke his voice was redolent of Welsh valley and chapel.
‘Did you call, Mr Fonthill, sir? Good. You must be gettin’ better.’
‘Where exactly am I?’
‘Hospital, sir. Depot hospital.’
‘Is the regiment here?’
‘Marched out yesterday and sailed this morning, sir. For the Cape of South Africa, see, to fight the black Kaffirs there.’
Simon raised a hand to his head. ‘Ah yes. I remember now. So how long have I been here, then?’
The orderly sucked in his thick black moustache. ‘Ohh, about three days, I think it is, sir. An’ you lyin’ there, ’ardly stirrin’ so they didn’t know what was wrong with you, see.’ His voice rose gently at the end of each sentence, in that mellifluous Welsh intonation, as though every phrase conveyed soft indignation.
‘Yes. Yes. I think I had better see the doctor, if you can find him.’
The orderly munched his moustache. ‘I’ll see if Surgeon Major Reynolds is about, sir.’ He turned and crashed down the corridor.
Lying back on his pillow, Simon closed his eyes in reflection. So the regiment had sailed without him! Well, he supposed it was inevitable. It could hardly wait for a young subaltern to regain his health and composure. When he was fit, would they send him on to the Cape? A special posting? He turned his head impatiently. This begged the question, would the regiment value him enough to take that sort of trouble with a second lieutenant?
Unseeingly, his gaze wandered over the ceiling as he reviewed his brief career. Sandhurst Military College, graduation and then posting, some eleven months ago, to the 1st Battalion of the 24th Regiment of Foot, his father’s old regiment, here at its depot at Brecon on the Welsh Borders. How had he performed? Well . . . he still couldn’t sit a horse with confidence, but he had enjoyed his regimental duties: leading his platoon on exercises in the hills, picket duty, firing on the range, evenings in the mess, the relationship with the men - everything but the damned riding. Now this. A setback, of course. How would it look on his record? The thought lay heavily on him as he drifted off again into a light sleep.
He was wakened by a firm hand lifting his wrist and the strong odour of tobacco. He opened his eyes and looked into the iron visage of Surgeon Major Reynolds a few inches away: a heavily bearded face with hard blue eyes and hair that swept back from the brow in firmly set grey waves.
The doctor stood silently for a moment, one hand taking Simon’s pulse, the other holding a watch. Eventually he transferred his gaze to Simon’s face. ‘Put your tongue out, boy.’
Simon did so, and half retched as a spatula rudely forced his tongue down. Then the doctor pulled down the lower lid of his right eye before the hand, rough to the skin, checked the temperature of his brow. Reynolds raised the spatula and held it before Simon’s gaze. ‘Follow this with your right eye as I move it,’ he commanded. Simon did so without difficulty.
‘Now the other eye.’ The exercise was completed.
The doctor sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘Well,’ he said, ill-humouredly, his voice more distantly echoing the Welshness of the orderly, ‘I’m damned if I know what’s wrong with you. As far as I can see, you’ve been unconscious for three days with only a slight temperature to show for it.’ He scowled down at Simon. ‘Seemed like a slight fever. Ever been in the East?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Never had typhoid or typhus? No fits in your family - epilepsy?’
‘Good lord, no, sir.’
‘You’ve never turned yellow - been diabetic?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Can you sit up - swing your legs over the side of the bed?’
‘I think so.’ Simon broke the restrictions of the tucked-in blankets and put his legs over the side of the bed. With the back of a penknife Reynolds tapped just below the kneecap of both legs in turn. Reactively, Simon’s feet swung.
‘Reflexes are fully back, anyway,’ murmured the doctor. ‘I’ve been sticking pins in you over the last three days and you’ve hardly moved, although . . .’ Reynolds spoke as though to himself, ‘you did shift a little.’ He looked at Simon. ‘How do you feel now?’
‘A bit weak. But all right, I think.’
‘Good.’ The Surgeon Major walked a few paces to the door and noticed the orderly standing quietly in the corner. ‘Don’t need you, soldier,’ he said curtly. ‘Get out of here.’
‘Sir.’ The orderly sprang to attention and marched out of the room. The doctor returned to the bed and pushed Simon back under the blankets.
‘Now,’ he said. ‘Your parents have been very concerned about you, of course, and I promised your father that I would let them know as soon as you surfaced. Do you feel strong enough to see them?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Very well. I will send a telegram to Major Fonthill right away.’ He looked down at his patient with a quick, puzzled frown. ‘You sure, boy, that you’ve never been in the East? India? The Malay States?’
Simon shook his head. ‘I’ve only been abroad twice. Both times to France.’
‘Um. Strange. Feel like food?’
‘Yes please, sir. In fact, I feel quite hungry.’
‘Do you now?’ One grey eyebrow was raised. ‘I’m not surprised after three days. Right. I’ll see to it.’ He turned and strode to the door.
‘Sir.’ Simon elbowed himself into a half-sitting position. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t really remember becoming ill. Could you tell me . . .’ His voice trailed away.
Reynolds came back to the bed. His face bore no expression and his voice was cold. ‘Very well. What do you remember?’
‘Being in the mess when the Adjutant came in and called us to attention and told us something about being posted abroad without delay, and then . . . I’m sorry, but I don’t remember anything else, except drifting in and out of sleep here. Sometimes I was half aware of people around me, but nothing else. It’s very strange.’
The doctor’s eyebrow rose again. ‘You’re damned right it’s strange.’
Simon sensed a pejorative note in Reynolds’s voice. There was no solicitude in his attitude. Simon felt himself colouring.
‘What do you mean, sir?’
Reynolds was silent for a moment. ‘Well, when the Adjutant announced the news that the 1st Battalion was being shipped in three days’ time, to handle an emergency with the black tribesmen of the Cape, you suddenly collapsed and became unconscious. Try as I might, I could neither revive you nor diagnose your illness. No sign of diabetes or poisoning - just a slight temperature, although you did not toss or turn. You just lay there, dammit, breathing steadily.’
He scratched fingers through a pepper-and-salt beard. ‘We asked your parents for help but they couldn’t enlighten us from your past medical history. Apart from being what they called “a sensitive, rather imaginative boy”,’ he emphasised the phrase heavily, ‘it seems you were fit enough, and certainly you’ve had no health problems while you’ve been with the battalion.’ He turned and walked to the door once more. ‘Now you’ve regained consciousness just after your regiment has embarked. One thing’s for sure, then, laddie - they’ve gone off without you.’ Then he was gone.
Simon sank back on to the pillow and heard the doctor’s q
uick step recede down the wooden-floored corridor, like the tap of a side-drum.
He looked out at the hill framed in the window. Surgeon Major Reynolds had a reputation as a hard man. He had gained glory as a young surgeon at Inkerman in 1854 when he had carried out twenty-four amputations in the rain under heavy Russian fire. Mess gossip had it that his perception of bravery was based on his memories of that day and of how his patients had borne the knife. Since then, malingerers had always received short shrift from him. Simon turned restlessly to the wall. Did the doctor think that he was malingering now?
The thought made him indignant. Well, damn the man! He would prove him wrong. Was he ill now? Let’s see. Slowly Simon raised first one leg and then the other, breaking loose the stern envelope of blanket and sheet that encased him. Nothing wrong there. He elbowed himself upright and cautiously pushed back the bedclothes and lowered one leg to the floor, then the other. For a moment he paused before transferring his weight and standing upright. This, he thought, is where I collapse again - but no, he could stand. Apart from that fuzzy feeling in the head, he felt quite fit and he easily retained his balance.
He was standing so, in his flannel nightgown, when the orderly entered, carrying a tray of porridge, tea and bread and butter.
‘Oh, I think you’d be better back in bed, sir,’ he said, his eyebrows raised solicitously. ‘You bin out for a long time, look you, and you must get your strength back before you start marchin’ about again. The doctor says you shouldn’t eat anything too ’eavy to start with. Mind you,’ he sniffed, ‘eat this an’ you won’t be able to get out of the cot.’
Simon smiled and looked more closely at the po-faced orderly. He realised that the big moustache dressed the bright, lively countenance of a man not much older than himself - perhaps three or four years. Dark eyes and thick black hair revealed the Welshness and the upright bearing betrayed a few years’ service, at least. The Welshman was short, about five inches shorter than Simon’s five feet nine inches, but he was extremely thick-set and the powerful shoulders made him seem almost as wide as he was tall.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Jenkins, sir, 352 Jenkins.’
‘I don’t want to know your damned number.’
‘Beggin’ your pardon, but you do, sir. See, there are seven Jenkinses in the depot holding company. We ’ave to use our last three to sort us out, look you.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Simon climbed back on to the hard bed and regarded the orderly with interest. Band boys or civilians usually did the medical orderly duties. What was this bright-eyed, obviously fit soldier doing in the depot hospital?
‘Did you volunteer for this work? What’s your regiment?’
Jenkins’s face showed surprise at the question. ‘The 24th, o’ course, sir. Same as you. An’ your battalion, too.’
Simon took a mouthful of porridge. Jenkins was right. It was awful. He grimaced. ‘I don’t remember seeing you before. What the devil are you doing here on hospital duty?’
For the first time the confident Jenkins looked slightly disconcerted. ‘Ah well, sir. I got busted is the truth of it, see.’ He pushed a rueful finger into his ear. ‘I was a corporal but I had just a drink or two and lost me stripes. But it was me ’ittin’ a colour sergeant which really did it, look you an’ I’ve bin in detention in Aldershot for a year, until yesterday. The regiment was all packed up and it was too late to take me, so they’ve stuck me in ’ere. Nobody seems to know what to do with me, see.’ The brown face broke into a grin.
Simon tried not to grin back but failed. Aldershot meant the army’s new central detention centre, gaining fame already as ‘the Glasshouse’, because of its glass-fronted design. It was also feared as a hell-hole.
‘Serves you right,’ he said. ‘Hit a senior NCO, did you? Lucky you weren’t flogged.’
‘Ah, no, sir. They stopped that six years ago, look you, except for offences committed on active service, an’ then you can only get fifty lashes, and I weren’t on active service, see, though it’s true I was actively ’ittin’ Colour Sergeant Cole.’
‘That’s enough - and don’t lecture me on army law.’ Simon tried another mouthful of the gruesome porridge. The orderly, quite unabashed by the rebuke, looked on interestedly. He showed no sign of wishing to leave. ‘How do you know so much about Queen’s Regulations anyhow?’
Private Jenkins’s face lit up. ‘I’ve bin studyin’ for my certificate, see.’
Simon allowed himself to look puzzled. He had known about the reform of flogging, although not about the fifty lashes limit. There was more to this young soldier than met the eye. ‘Certificate. What certificate?’
‘It’s the Army Certificate of Education, see,’ said Jenkins proudly. ‘It’s not that I couldn’t read, though . . .’ his face screwed into a frown, ‘sometimes I ’ad a bit of trouble with the big words, so I started about three years ago. I was doin’ quite well till I was busted, like, but at the end of my time at Aldershot they let me ’ave a few books and a bit of candle to read by at night. There wasn’t much time during the day, see.’
Simon smiled. ‘I am sure there wasn’t. Not in the Glasshouse. Bad, was it?’
The black eyes sparkled. ‘Could ’ave bin worse, sir. Better than ’ome, anyhow.’
‘All right. That will be all, Jenkins.’
‘Sir.’ The orderly crashed to attention, spun smartly - perhaps a little too ostentatiously - and marched to the door.
‘I suppose,’ Simon called after him, ‘that we are both rather in the same boat now.’
‘That’s just what I was thinkin’, sir,’ said Jenkins, beaming.
And he strode purposefully down the corridor, the thump of his boots echoing back into the room.
The porridge, heavy as it was, made Simon realise how hungry he had been. He lay back on the bed and tried to order his thoughts once again. What now? He had never collapsed before. Would it happen again, whenever he was presented with something . . . disconcerting? Was it the old complaint of childhood which he thought he had overcome years ago? Or was there some recent event which had weakened him? No. Regimental life had been uneventful. True, he had taken a fall from his horse out on the Beacons a few weeks ago which had knocked him out temporarily. But, apart from a brief headache, there had been no bad after-effects. Far more uncomfortable had been the dinner party his parents had given at their house just outside Brecon for their old friends and neighbours the Griffiths. The visitors had brought their twenty-year-old daughter. Her manner had been restrained and somehow hostile. Perhaps she resented what might have seemed to be match-making by his mother. Perish the thought! But his mind was wandering, and after a few moments more of disjointed speculation, he slipped back into sleep.
A diffident knock on the door woke him. He knew the visitor’s identity immediately and he smiled that, while others announced their arrival up that corridor like a battalion on the march, his father was able to arrive so quietly.
Major George Fonthill entered and stood at the door smiling at his son. His hair was now grey but it remained plentiful and he wore it long, so that it curled around his collar. His brown eyes were set widely apart and his mouth was full, giving his face an open, even ingenuous look. He wore a frock coat and carried a top hat. Only the erect posture betrayed an ex-soldier.
He approached the bed. ‘My dear boy, I am so glad that you are feeling better.’
Simon struggled upright. ‘Papa. How good of you to come.’
Rather self-consciously, the two shook hands. It was clear that they were father and son. Simon’s brown eyes carried the same half-hidden look of uncertainty and his face had a similar open roundness, although the son had inherited his mother’s firm mouth and squareness of jaw. The fact that father and son were both unfashionably clean-shaven marked further their resemblance.
‘Mama is not with you?’
‘No.’ Major Fonthill smiled shyly, as though sharing a confidence. ‘She is, of course, out riding, although the hunting se
ason has finished, thank goodness. Reynolds’s telegram came after she had left, so I pencilled her a note and came straight away. Had to take the dog cart. But never mind about that. How do you feel now?’
‘Quite well, really. Still a bit weak and not exactly topping, but much better. In fact, I feel a bit of a fraud.’
They smiled at each other awkwardly. Simon looked hard into his father’s face. Did he suspect him of . . . of deliberately avoiding the draft? It was not the sort of thing he would normally discuss with him. The few deeply felt matters that had arisen over the years had always lain unspoken between them. Simon decided to grasp the nettle: ‘Father, what have they told you about my illness? About how it happened and all that?’
Major Fonthill frowned. ‘Not much really. It all seemed rather peculiar. Reynolds at first thought you had contracted malaria or something like that, but you have never been to the tropics, and although I caught the thing out in India, I understand that it is not hereditary. Anyway, it seems that you have not shown symptoms of high fever.’
The Major leaned forward in his chair. ‘I am afraid that you have missed the show out in the Cape, because they immediately posted one of the subalterns from the 2nd Battalion to fill the gap. I am so sorry, my boy. It’s very bad luck.’ Then his face brightened. ‘But the most important thing is that you seem to have got through the worst now and whatever it is that hit you has receded. I would say that you will be up and about soon. I expect that they will gazette you now to the 2nd, who are in Warwick but who are expected back here to do depot duty for a while.’