Purposes of Love (39 page)

There was a smooth sound of brakes. The ambulance men, cheerfully capable and interested, ran up with their stretcher.

“It’s his back,” Mic said. “Possibility of a fracture.”

“Right, sir. We’ll watch after that.” They rolled the stretcher under Jan with skilled smoothness, and were about to cover him again when the man who knelt lowest took his hand away and held it out in the light of the headlamps.

“Here,” he said, “half a minute. What about this?”

Jan looked round at the palm’s wet redness. “I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t feel anything.”

“Run back and get the dressing-box, Fred.”

They got it, found scissors and slit Jan’s clothes away. When the stuff had parted Mic shut his eyes for a second, then watched while they did what could be done. The darkness, the cold and the wind’s edge were in his heart and bones. Jan glanced at the proceedings and then away, as if a momentary interest had been satisfied, or a foregone conclusion confirmed.

In the ambulance they let him have Mic’s cigarette.

By the time Mic’s arm had been splinted to his body (he had become so used by then to the pain that its partial cessation was like a shock of pleasure) they were purring in through the hospital gates. The night-porter came out and helped to unslot Jan’s stretcher from its supports and to slide it on the trolley; casually efficient, exchanging gossip with the ambulance-men over his shoulder. They wheeled it into the little ante-room beside the out-patients’ theatre, changed the blankets belonging to the ambulance for older ones, belonging to the hospital, and left him with the porter and Mic. It was a tiny cell-like place, just holding a cupboard and examination-couch; the stretcher nearly filled it.

On the journey Jan had become increasingly quiet. Now, under the unshaded light, his head might have been cut, with the reticence and precision of some archaic craftsman, out of one hard pale-brown stone. His colourless face seemed to shade into his hair, bleached hemp-fair by many latitudes of sun. His eyes did not wander, like those of the other injured men that Mic had seen.

“Who’s on casualty call?” Mic asked the porter.

“Mr. Rosenbaum. But he’s in the other theatre.”

“Will he be long?”

“Couldn’t say, Mr. Freeborn. He’s only just opened up.”

“But—” The violence that had been on Mic’s tongue died away. Everyone knew that casualties sometimes had to wait. The resident staff was hopelessly insufficient. He pictured little Rosenbaum in the theatre, his fads about his mask and gloves, his pleasantries which, recounted after, had seemed so funny. Now Mic could only think of them in terms of the extra seconds they took. He looked at Jan again. His own impatience seemed an intrusion in the presence of so much leisure. To release it he got up from the couch where he had been sitting, and wandered outside. The ambulance-men had stopped a little way off to fold their blankets up.

“Well,” said the one who had travelled inside, “we got him in, anyhow. Never reckoned we would.”

“Nice-looking chap, too,” said the driver. “I’ll need to fill-up before we go in; only about a gallon left. Looked pretty mucky, didn’t he?”

“Pelvis fractured. See it through the skin. Cuts their guts to bits, that does. Wonder to me he didn’t pip out on the way.”

“Poor bleeder. Didn’t make much fuss.”

“They don’t feel nothing, not with the spine gone.” He handed a packet of Tenners. “What was that you was asking me about your Pool coupon when the call came through?”

“Stoke and the Arsenal.”

“Ah. You want to watch Stoke. I reckon that last home match” They had gathered up the folded blankets, and passed out of hearing.

Mic stood still for a moment, looking after them, then went back into the little ante-room. A nurse had come in by the other door, and was trying to take Jan’s pulse, moving her fingers over his wrist because she could not feel it. He turned his head as Mic came in.

“Hullo. Have they fixed your arm?”

“Not yet. I was just walking about.” He saw that there was beginning to be a blueness round Jan’s eyes, and turned away.

“Don’t go.”

Mic said “All right,” and lowered himself mechanically on to the couch: then his mind became motionless in a half-dulled wonder. Had Jan said that? He himself seemed to be denying it. He was not looking at Mic; his half-shut eyes were steady, not flickering, like the eyes of the very sick and hurt, in search of reassurance or rescue.

“Stay here with me.”

“Yes,” said Mic half under his breath, “I—”

“
Well,”
said the nurse, putting her watch away and suddenly recognising Mic. “Whatever have
you
been up to?”

Mic heard her the second time. He answered something, looking at Jan’s face, composed like something carved in a calm forgotten age. But he had said it; he had said it in the end.

“What’s the matter with your arm?” asked the nurse. “Feel like a fracture?”

“No; it’s nothing really.” Mic got up, and stood near the stretcher-head. He could not be sure any longer that Jan was conscious; his eyelids had fallen lower.

“Mic?” It was Jan’s voice, though it seemed to have come from another room with a closed door between, so that one only just heard it. Mic leaned down a little and touched his sunbaked hair. It felt shockingly young and warm, and shone in the light.

“I’m here.”

The Night-Assistant’s head poked briskly round the door.

“Are you with this patient?” she asked.

Presently Mic realised that she and the nurse were both looking at him.

“Yes,” he said.

“Well, would you just come outside and give me a few particulars?”

Mic closed his hand over one of the stretcher-poles.

“Would you mind if—”

“Run along,” murmured Jan.

Mic let go of the stretcher and went out to the waiting-hall. It was a huge pillared place, with rows of benches, for the out-patients, stretching away into darkness. A solitary bulb burned over the Sister’s desk. The distant walls, half-lost in darkness, echoed like a cave.

The Night-Assistant settled herself at the desk and drew the admission-book towards her; a tome three inches thick and an arm wide, ruled in blue and red. She had taken over since Mic’s illness and they had never met. She was thin and sallow, with prominent eyes and teeth; very spruce and consciously methodical.

“We shall be admitting you too for tonight, I expect. May I have your name and address?”

Mic gave them, too quickly, and had to repeat them again.

“Age?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Are you married?”

“No.”

“Well, where does your nearest relative live?”

Mic knew this dialogue by heart; he had rehearsed it in Ramillies.

“I have none.”

“We must have
some
address. It needn’t be a
near
relation.”

“I have no relatives at all. If you’d just let Dr. Lampeter know where I am in the morning.” His piece said, he turned back towards the closed door.

“Well, your landla—”

“Oh, you’re on the
staff
here.” Her voice trailed faintly upward; but the pathological assistants were fairly small beer.

“Yes. If you’ll excuse me, I—”

The desk telephone rang.

“Yes, Mr. Rosenbaum. … Yes. … Yes, a good deal. … Very poor. … Yes.” She put back the receiver and brushed past Mic to the ante-room door. “Nurse, give that patient an ampoule of coramine and get him wheeled through into the theatre.” Returning, she blotted the admission-book carefully and ran her finger down to the next line.

“Funny my not having seen you in the labs, but I don’t go up there very often. I expect they’ll discharge you in the morning. Now what was the other patient’s—your friend’s name?”

“Jan Lingard.”

“John Lingard,” she repeated precisely, writing it down.

“J-a-n,” said Mic, his voice rising a little. He wanted suddenly to snatch the book out of her hand, to hit her over the head with it, to kill her. His hand was shaking, and he steadied it on the edge of the desk.

Looking annoyed—for the correction spoiled the neatness of the page—the Night-Assistant altered the line.

“Address?” she said. Mic gave it.

“How old, about, is he, have you any idea?”

“He’ll—he’d be thirty next month.”

Little Rosenbaum, still wearing his theatre gown and cap, crossed the hall with his scampering trot and disappeared through the door beyond.

“Would you just wait here, please?” The Night-Assistant got up and bustled after him.

Mic waited. In a few minutes the other nurse came out and hurried across the hall, her feet awaking responses from walls lost in darkness, got something from a cupboard and hurried back again. The door closed behind her. There was a long hollow silence, into which footsteps in a distant corridor dropped and dwindled, tiny, distinct and menacing.

Under the theatre door a crack of brilliant light showed; the shadows of feet came and went across it. Mic had only been in the place once, but suddenly he saw it all clearly and in minute detail; the position of the instrument-cabinets and sterilisers, the anaesthetic apparatus (they would not be needing that), the great Zeiss lamp over the table, with its diffused primrose-pale effulgence. He could picture Rosenbaum sucking his cheeks, as he did when he was pensive. “… And such a beautiful body. Beautiful, beautiful,” he used to say afterwards, with lingering melancholy.

Jan stripped well. A skin tanned like thick brown silk, over sleek hard curves of muscle; open shoulders, narrow waist; the down of his chest and belly golden with sun. On the table under the soft shadeless glare of the Zeiss, what remained of him would satisfy Rosenbaum’s standards.

“Stay with me,” he had said, perhaps for the second time in his life, perhaps for the first. But little Rosenbaum, considering the
lachrytnae rerum
over the ligatures and artery-forceps, would discover no protest in his eyes. It’s all right: I didn’t really want it.

The Night-Assistant came smartly out, walked past Mic, picked up the desk-telephone and dialled a number.

“Casualty speaking. We are sending you a patient with fractured spine, crushed pelvis and ruptured right kidney. Will you prepare for a blood-transfusion at once, please.” She took a form from the desk, and got up.

A blood-transfusion, thought Mic. Christ, why can’t they leave him in peace!

“Tell Rosenbaum,” he said, “that his blood-group’s two. It will save time.” (It had always amused Jan to be experimented on. His own group was incompatible, so he could not do even that.)

The nurse’s teeth closed like a rabbit’s over her lower lip.

“Well, I expect Mr. Rosenbaum would want a test taken.”

“I have taken it. Did you think I was guessing it, you fool. … I beg your pardon.”

“Not at all.” Both lips closed firmly over the teeth, she departed.

The theatre doors swung back. A great shaft of light stabbed the gloom and ribbed the long tiers of the benches. Out of it they brought Jan, a vermilion streak of mercuro-chrome across his temple, his face still.

Mic went up to the trolley. His eyes were half-open, but they did not move. Mic touched his arm through the blanket.

“Jan.”

With a little contraction of the lids his eyes quickened, and met Mic’s in the focus of sight. His lips moved, soundlessly.

“What is it?” Mic asked.

Jan drew in a thin breath and whispered, “Will you—”

“
Just
a moment, please.” It was the Night-Assistant, with a white card in her hand. “We haven’t got all this patient’s particulars.”

“For God’s—” Mic checked himself, and stood for a moment silent. Jan’s lips moved again; but Mic perceived that this time it was a smile that he was attempting. The porter was ready at the trolley’s head.

Mic let his hand fall. “All right,” he said. “Good night, Jan.”

He never knew whether Jan replied: the trolley was already on its way.

The Night-Assistant had her book open again, and was unscrewing her pen.

“We haven’t got the address of Mr. Lingard’s relatives. Do you know it?”

Derbyshire, thought Mic dimly. The trolley, the other nurse beside it holding the case-sheet, vanished through the door at the end of the hall. Their father lives in Derbyshire. Near … There was a pause in his mind. Like someone returning from a long journey to a place grown strange, he said,

“Yes, of course. His sister’s a nurse here.”

C
OLONNA PUT BACK THE
last scoured bedpan on the rack and, to avoid thought, picked up a tattered Western magazine she had found in the ward. There was, for the moment, a lull in the work, so she sat down on the edge of the steriliser to read it. She preferred it to sharing the table in the ward with the night-nurse in charge, who was a couple of months junior to herself. Colonna was well overdue for this position; but she had been caught coming in late the month before. Pratt, the “first,” was plodding, humourless, and pointedly in earnest; disapproved of Colonna from the bowels outward, and did nothing to smooth the situation. It had, however, this in its favour, that it allowed little opportunity to meditate.

The Western was called
The Two-Gun Dude,
and promised well. Cowboys of the classic kind were a fairyland which Colonna had never outgrown. In their company she dismissed life with its painful compromises, and became her private picture of herself. Flicking open the thumbed pages, and skipping the preliminaries with the ease of practice, she was the Dude in less than a couple of minutes. Clean-limbed, with sinews of steel and whipcord, she toted his silver-mounted guns, knotted his silk bandana, canted his elegant ten-gallon hat, confounded his hairy rivals, shot up his enemies, and kissed his pale-pink, incidental girl.

But tonight even this exorcism failed, as every other was failing.

She had given herself, in her own mind, two years to keep Valentine. Three, perhaps; perhaps four; but two at the least. There was security in the thought of years, even of brief years. But it was happening now. She did not know why. She had no experience to point her. She had always been the one to go away.