Remembering the tea-cosy, Eddie flinched.
“My aunts have gone to Scotland somewhere,” he said. “I don’t know where. If you find out, don’t tell them. But I’d like to know about my father. If you can find out somehow.”
“I have to go now,” said Oils. “Ten minutes at a time.”
A nurse came in one day with mail which lay by the bed for several days.
“Shall I read it?” asked another nurse. “Well, this is nice, it’s from your aunts. It says: ‘Bad luck, Eddie dear, what a hoot.’”
“The police found them,” said Oils on his next visit, embarrassed. “Your aunts.”
“Can they be lost again?”
“I’d think so,” said Oils.
“This visiting card’s been stuck to your locker since the first day you came in here,” said the Red Cross hospital librarian, pushing round her trolley. She always stopped by his bed though he read nothing. Masks had been abandoned now. “You’re not ready to read yet, are you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I don’t blame you. These are all awful old trashy paperbacks. They have to be burnt in case they get into the general library and spread infection. They can’t get librarians for this ward. I wipe all the books in Dettol — not a nice job. Shall I read you this visiting card, it says Isobel Ingoldby, that will be the girl that brought you in, her and the schoolmaster — he’s a funny one.”
“Has she been back?”
“Yes. Several times. When you were not with us.”
“Where does she live?”
“The card has her address. It’s in London.”
“However did she find me here?”
“How did you find me, Mr. Oilseed? I’m glad you’re out of your overalls, sir.”
“You’re not infectious any more. You’re to sit up at the window tomorrow.”
“But how did you know I’d be on that particular ship?”
“There were signals sent of some sort. From Colombo. To me and to Ingoldby’s sister and maybe to others but we haven’t heard. The Admiralty tracked the ship. Ingoldby’s sister has some underground job there somewhere. Something to do with the Admiralty.”
“Underground in the Admiralty? Was it signed? What was it — a telegram?”
“It was a cable. Unsigned. I gather it came by way of a place called Bletchley Park. Where Isobel Ingoldby was.”
“Could it have been from my father?”
“No,” said Oils. “No. Sorry. I don’t think so. Singapore isn’t in touch. Some prisoners have got letters out, somehow. . but no. .”
“D’you think someone in Colombo got a message to him?”
“I’d not think so. Not unless someone knew every single one of our addresses.”
They moved him by ambulance to the South of England and Oils said goodbye, with some relief, Eddie thought. “By the way, we’ve informed Christ Church. You are not forgotten. As soon as you’re released.”
“Thanks. Thank the Headmaster for me, sir.”
“Yes. Of course. And well done again. You’re fit now.”
“But I’m going to another isolation ward. The Plymouth Naval Hospital. Whatever for?”
“The ways of medical men are very strange.”
“Sir — thanks for being so brave.”
“Nothing brave about me,” said Oils. “Matter of fact you’ve cheered me up. Glad you’re better.”
In Plymouth, in the isolation wing, he kept apart from the rest who were thoroughly dispirited, most of them gnarled old salts who swore considerably and talked of past delights. One of them had been at Gallipoli, and he talked on through the night of the horrors of the deep. “There was one sailor,” he said, “looked ninety. Homeless. Living miracle. He was so riddled with corruption — look, one day on deck he coughed up something with legs and a backbone.
“A backbone,” he said. “I’ve never forgotten it. What’s the matter with the lad? Squeamish?”
Slowly they let Eddie walk about outside along the old stone terraces. It was autumn. The air was sweet.
Then one afternoon came Isobel, striding along.
“They wouldn’t let me in before,” she said. “They didn’t tell me what you’d caught, either. Whatever have you been doing? You never left the ship, did you?”
“I a-a-ate bananas in Freetown.”
“Your stammer’s come back.”
“Only i-i-in-intermittently.”
“You’re keeping something to yourself.”
“I suppose so but I don’t quite know what.”
She leant towards him and stroked his arm. “You look like a grub,” she said. “One of those things you can see through.”
He was in tears. “Sorry. I’ll be OK in a minute. Don’t go.”
“I have to get the train back. I’ve come two hundred miles.”
“Isobel.”
“You’ve got my card and number.”
“Come next leave.”
“My next leave maybe I’ll go to Scotland to flay your aunts.”
“Don’t,” he said. “I’m nothing to do with them now. Just get me near to you. Somehow. For ever.”
“Child,” she said, and was gone.
And — six full months later—“You are passed and fit, Feathers,” said the Surgeon Commander, RN, with a facial tic and a foghorn voice who ran the hospital like a cruiser, each patient to attention each at the end of his bed. “I suppose you will now depart to Oxford?”
“No, sir. I’ve decided not.”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to join up, sir.”
“We’ve just got you shipshape. You may prove we’ve been wasting our time. A very expensive case. Expensive and unsavoury. But good show.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“You will want to join the Navy, I suppose? Return to the source of the trouble?”
“No, sir. The Army. My father was in the Army. I’d like to join his old regiment.”
“No accounting for taste,” said the Commander. “Foolish of you. The sea is pretty well ours now. The going is easier. The Army’s just about to move to the thick of the last long shove. It will be slow and bloody, and you don’t look like a soldier.”
“I think I might be, sir. Given the chance.”
He felt naked on the hospital forecourt. He travelled to Gloucestershire alone. It was as terrifying as the journey to a first school, as horrible as his first walk with Babs and Claire to the Welsh baby school when he was five. He’d been feeling ill with the Welsh winter then. There had been a pain in his chest — but every time he had turned to look back at the farmhouse, Ma Didds, as usual clutching her stomach, holding her little stick, had waved him furiously on.
He missed the safety of the hospital.
Now it was a ride in a train again into a different world, the West Country, Eastward from Plymolith, across a beautiful river, soil the red of sunset, a change of trains; and into Gloucestershire. Someone had given him a bed-and-breakfast address and a warm soft-voiced old couple saw that he had a hot water bottle. There was a boiled egg for breakfast. An egg! “Joining up?” they said. “Make the most of the egg, now.” He borrowed a bike and turned up at the recruiting office, in Gloucester; where he was expected.
There were three of them behind the desk and they looked at him with considerable interest. They spoke of his health. He had been cleared one-hundred-per-cent fit and he was brown from the air and sea off Plymouth and he looked every bit of his nearly nineteen years. His hair was curly again and auburn. His weight was now normal. His eyes were alive.
“Your father’s regiment?” they said. “The Gloucesters?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I know your father.”
“I’m afraid I hardly do, sir. I was on my way—”