Something primitive stirred in Laurie, as in a solitary man beset by the creatures of a swamp or forest “Oh, no,” he said.
“I shouldn’t take that tone, if I were you.”
This, thought Laurie, is what he doesn’t tell everyone. The practiced inflection had held many chapters of inadvertent autobiography.
“You know,” he said, “Ralph’s going to wake up before long and ring the hospital to see I got back all right. If I haven’t, what do you expect me to do tomorrow? Back up your story?”
“Why, you little—”
“Yes, all right. You’ve bought this. It’s not even your car. You’re a volunteer for this job. You went to a lot of bother to drive me back. Now you damned well drive me.”
The pain jumped in his knee; he was shaking a little, but not to notice in the dark. He waited.
“Well,” said Bunny, “please don’t let’s have a scene about it in the middle of the road.”
He let in the clutch.
As the car ran on through the cold sweet autumn night, Laurie thought, All that was an impromptu. It wasn’t a deep-laid scheme or anything. He’s just a chancer.
With a cold barren weariness that quenched the dry glow of anger, he thought, What can you do about these people? The terrible thing is, there are such a lot of them. There are so many, they expect to meet each other wherever they go.
Not wicked, he thought: that’s not the word, that’s sentimentality. These are just runts. Souls with congenitally short necks and receding brows. They don’t sin in the sight of heaven and feel despair: they only throw away lighted cigarettes on Exmoor, and go on holiday leaving the cat to starve, and drive on after accidents without stopping. A wicked man nowadays can set millions of them in motion, and when he’s gone howling mad from looking at his own face, they’ll be marching still with their mouths open and their hands hanging by their knees, on and on and on. … No, Andrew wouldn’t like that.
When they got to the hospital, Bunny said, “I suppose you won’t be able to run to Ralph fast enough with all this.”
“You’re afraid of him, really, aren’t you?”
“Don’t make me laugh,” said Bunny shrilly. “He never caned me at school.”
“No,” said Laurie. “Quite.” He got out of the car. “Don’t worry; I shall never mention you to Ralph again if it’s possible to avoid it. He’s a friend of mine. It’s a good old English word and I’m using it in the literal sense, if that conveys anything to you at all. Good night.”
He got back to the ward within seven minutes of the time limit; but Andrew, he found, had finished his work and left.
He had got to see Andrew. He felt a need more imperative than any he had experienced in the keenest crisis of personal love. He wanted to recover his belief in the human status.
The late-pass men who had got off the last bus were still having cocoa in the kitchen; fairly drunk, but sober enough to be solemnly careful of the Night Nurse’s modesty, simmering with the things they had to tell when she had gone. As the door shut behind her, out it came. Laurie didn’t wait. It was no longer supposed, he thought, to be anything to do with him. He knew where Andrew would be: in the next ward, washing up and cleaning the kitchen. There were two night orderlies for four wards. He walked to the outer door; Nurse Sims came out from the linen room as he reached it.
“Odell! Whatever on earth do you think you’re up to?”
“Oh, sorry, Nurse.” He wasn’t in the least embarrassed, only occupied with the certainty that he would do what he had determined. “I’ve got to speak to Andrew Raynes for a moment. You don’t mind, do you? I won’t be long.”
“Well, really, I don’t know. I suppose you’ve got enough sense not to let Sister see you. Don’t be there all night, then, will you? What a pair you two are. I always call you David and Jonathan.”
Ward A kitchen was just the same as the one in Ward B, except that all the fittings were on the opposite sides, which gave one a feeling of stepping through the looking-glass. Andrew was at the sink with the taps running; their noise covered the sound of Laurie’s approach. Moving quietly, he got without being seen almost to Andrew’s elbow. You could tell it was his second lot of washing-up; his hands were red, the front of his hair was loose and limp. He had the look of hard concentration which Laurie recognized as his substitute for worry. Yes, Laurie thought with inexpressible comfort, Andrew was solid. One could imagine oneself being involved with him in utter disagreement, in exasperation even; but one would never chip the facing and find rubble behind. There was a number of demands one could never make on him; but perhaps this, which he had given unasked and unknowing, was in the end the best of all.
“A penny for your thoughts,” Laurie said.
“Why, Laurie!” His look of startled happiness gave Laurie a sense of sudden inadequacy; there was more joy here than his tossed mind was capable of receiving. “Where did you come from?”
“I didn’t want to turn in without saying good night.”
“I thought by the time I could get back you’d be asleep.” He was holding a dish in his hand; he stared at it, smiled, and put it aside. “Is this all right? Don’t get yourself crimed whatever you do.”
“Nurse Sims said I could. She says she always calls us David and Jonathan.”
“Does she? How nice. Did you have a good time?”
“The first part was all right. It got a bit boring later; too many people.”
“How’s Ralph?”
“He got a bit bored too.” It was a silhouette of trouble, flat now and unreal.
Laurie picked up a tea-towel and they began drying the things together.
“Did they tell you?” said Andrew. “Is that why you came?”
“Tell me what?” The moment’s security dissolved; the secret wilderness crept back again, in which no good could be assumed of the unknown.
“You just came,” said Andrew, as if a natural trust had been confirmed. “You don’t know about Dave, then?”
“No, is he ill or something?” His treacherous imagination formed a picture of Andrew spending days at Dave’s bedside, claimed by an older loyalty.
“I hope not, though it’s enough to make him. They sent for him to London. Cynthia’s been killed.”
“Is that his sister?”
Andrew stared at him. “But have I never—surely I—Cynthia’s his wife.”
“His—!” Laurie realized after a moment that stupefaction was a lame response. “I’m most terribly sorry. Was it in a raid?”
“Yes.” He stared at the cup he was rubbing, and added, “Dave’s got to identify her.”
“God, I’m sorry.”
“She was older than Dave. She must have been sixty at least.”
“Have they got any children?”
“They had one who died, and after that she couldn’t. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why Dave’s always been so kind to me.”
Laurie polished the china, thankful that with Andrew it was always possible to be silent.
“I know the same thing’s happening all over the world,” said Andrew. “But I keep thinking about him. He’ll have to go to some gray mortuary and look at whatever there is, and then fill up forms, and when he’s done that someone will read what he’s written and say probably, as they did to another c.o. I knew in similar circumstances—no, he wouldn’t want me to tell anyone, even without the name.”
“Dave’s big enough to take that,” said Laurie helplessly. Yes, he thought, I’m the one who was such good form just now at the gate. And worst of all I can feel the cold draft around my inferiority complex because I learn that he isn’t one of us.
He stayed for another five minutes or so, to the limit of Nurse Sims’s estimated patience. Shortly before he left he said, “I say, Andrew. Do you believe in the proposition that all men are created equal?”