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 you 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?’