“Sorry. It’s all very well for you, but Ralph does feel a bit of a hanging matter.”
“That’ll pass off, you’ll find. Drink up and I’ll get you another.”
“Not for a minute, thanks.”
“How are your drinks?” asked Sandy, who all this time hadn’t been far away. “The usual, Ralph? Oh, by the way, I’m afraid I’ve rather been committing you in your absence. Have you got your car?”
Lanyon’s face shut like a door. Laurie had seen him first take in the room with one angry, summarizing glance. “Well,” he said, “yes and no.”
“If you can’t, never mind,” said Alec easily. “It was just for Laurie. It seems he’s got to run for some godforsaken bus in about five minutes, unless someone can lift him back.”
“Oh. I see. Where to, Laurie? Surely, yes, I can do that all right. I thought Claude wanted a taxi for his bit of rent.” The soldier was still sitting where Laurie had left him, staring in front of him with a glazed, hazy eye. No one seemed to be taking the slightest notice of him.
Beside the fireplace, opposite the toy cupboard, was a gramophone on which Sandy now put a stack of dance records. Two or three couples stood up. They all danced very seriously and correctly, as if they were in a ballroom.
Lanyon said abruptly, “For God’s sake let’s sit down, and tell me what’s been happening to you.” They went over to one of the hessian divans; it was very low, and Laurie hesitated for a moment. Lanyon at once slid a hand under his elbow, and firmly lowered him down. It was smoothly authoritative and unfussy, like hospital. Then he remembered the glove. Lanyon kept the left hand in his pocket most of the time; but it was on his knee now, and Laurie could see that half of it had a padded, artificial look.
“Cigarette?” said Lanyon. Laurie was only just beginning to notice how naturally he did with one hand a great many things for which most people are apt to use both. This is Lanyon, he thought, actually sitting here and lighting my cigarette.
Suddenly Lanyon stared at him and said, “Good God! Don’t tell me they saved that leg for you after all?”
This approach to the matter gave Laurie an oddly comfortable and relaxed feeling. “More or less. They’ve been tinkering with it ever since.”
“Well, I think that’s a bloody miracle. When I saw you on deck, the only thing I couldn’t understand was why they hadn’t taken it off back at the dressing station. But they’d lost most of their equipment anyway, I suppose.”
“I expect so.” For a moment, through the press of their own concerns, there rose between them the shadowy constraint of the beaten army confronting the unbeaten navy, the suppressed withdrawal, the carefully careless tact.
“I’m the one to talk,” said Lanyon. “You know I lost my ship.”
Something in his voice reminded Laurie for the first time that this was rather more than an incident in which one was liable to be killed.
“I just heard,” he said. “I’m sorry. Had you commanded her long?”
“Five and a half months. My first; and my last, of course. In seventeen ninety-eight, missing parts were considered quite amusing, even for admirals, but all that’s terribly dated now. Well, it might have been worse; we were on the way out, not coming back. Really, there are some bloody good surgeons about nowadays. You had a great splinter of bone sticking clean through the dressing into the open air. We had some of those big gunshot jobs in hospital. They seemed to give people hell for months. Does yours?”
“Only off and on. They’ve sent me in for treatment here, to get it fixed up.”
“Why on earth don’t you get yourself transferred here altogether? Isn’t yours one of these temporary dumps? This place is quite good, or so Alec always says.”
“I couldn’t do that,” said Laurie, with an absurd prick of anxiety. “I only come in twice a week.”
“Oh, well,” said Lanyon. He picked up their glasses and made for the table, at the last moment noticing that Laurie’s was nearly full and putting it back.
While they had been talking, two or three more people had arrived. He realized that a young man, one of the newcomers, was threading among the dancers in a purposeful way, and was plainly making for the place beside him. Just then Lanyon came back. He stood over the young man, quite quietly, with the kind of expression a captain uses on a tipsy passenger he has found exploring the bridge. “Excuse me,” he said. The young man flinched like a startled fawn, and hurried away.
Lanyon sat down again with what, Laurie supposed, must be his fourth or fifth double. He seemed as self-possessed as if he had been drinking water. His voice had got louder, but so had Laurie’s; it was the only way of making oneself heard. Except for two people in a far corner who seemed to be holding hands in dead silence, they were probably the quietest couple in the room.
“I nearly didn’t come tonight.” Lanyon stared for a moment unseeingly at the dancers, then added circumstantially, “I was working on something and nearly forgot about it.”
“I refused twice,” said Laurie. “The third time Sandy happened to mention you, or I’d have refused again.”
Lanyon’s light eyes lifted, sharply, under his straight fair brows. Laurie remembered the look.
“You don’t know him well, then?”
“I don’t properly speaking know him at all. We knew each other by sight at the hospital. Till we ran into each other this evening, I didn’t know his name.”
“Oh?” said Lanyon without much expression. “Then which of these people have you met before?”
“Only you.”
He hadn’t meant to give this simple statement of fact any special significance. For some reason which he couldn’t understand it seemed to go on ringing, like glass picking up a note. Alec, he thought, tasting his drink again, was inclined to mix them strong.
“He will drown them,” Lanyon said. “Give it me, and I’ll tip it out and give you another.”
“This one’s all right.” However, since Lanyon looked impatient he finished it fairly soon. It still embarrassed him to have Lanyon wait on him. He watched him elbowing his way through the dancers, and saw someone snatch the empty glasses from him, and try to make him dance. He refused smiling; then at something the other man said he seemed to grow suddenly angry, and walked sharply off.
He sat down in silence with the two drinks and then, when they had scarcely started them, said, “For God’s sake let’s get out of here.”
“Are you due back on duty?”
“I said let’s get out, that’s all.”
“Isn’t it a bit early? I shouldn’t like to upset Alec, he seems rather nice.”
“If it’s Alec you want, I’ll fetch him for you.”
Laurie looked up; he couldn’t think of anything to say. Lanyon said, “Sorry, Spud.”
He gave the drink in his hand a look of cold irritation, as if someone had planted it on him, and put it up on a bookshelf near by.
“It doesn’t matter,” Laurie said. “We’ll go if you’d rather, I don’t mind.”
“No, it’s his birthday, I suppose there’ll be some nonsense with a cake. We’ll give it another minute or two.”
Someone dancing by leaned out (the dancing had grown a good deal less conventional) and called, “What’s he got that I haven’t?” Lanyon’s reply was swift and explicit; he added, “Go to hell.” Turning to Laurie he said, “This party’s deteriorating,” then, “Are you all right, Spud? You look a bit done in.”
The knee had started, but not specially badly; it was rather better than it sometimes was by this time of night. He hadn’t been thinking much about it, except as a background like the gramophone. As a rule, he hated to think that other people could notice anything, but, he thought, when most people asked these questions you could see them hoping to God you would say everything was fine, and they needn’t do any worrying. Lanyon sounded different: he even made one feel that some real, effective potential was actually being offered. It was absurd, but very comforting.