The Last Enemy Richard Hillary (16 page)

When I came round I was not uncomfortable, and unlike Tony I was not sick. I could not see; but apart from a slight pricking of the eyes I had no pain, and but for the boring prospect of five days without reading I was content. Those of us with eyelid grafts had of course to be fed and given bed baths, but we could (thank God) get up and walk to the lavatory, escorted by a nurse. Were there no nurses about, the others would sing out instructions to the needy one until he arrived safely at his destination.

Being unable to see, had, I discovered, some distinct disadvantages. As I could not read, I talked; and as everyone knows, there are few more pleasant pastimes when one is indisposed than grousing and swearing. After a few unfortunate incidents I always asked Tony if any nurses were about before opening my mouth, but Tony was unreliable, getting a hideous pleasure out of watching the consequences. Then—I think it was on the third day of my incarceration—some nurse further down the ward dropped a bed-pan with a crash that made me start up in bed.

‘Jesus Christ,’ I said, ‘what a hospital! It stinks like a sewer, it’s about as quiet as a zoo, and instead of nurses we’ve got a bunch of moronic Irish amazons.’

‘Mister Hillary!’ The voice was so close that I almost fell out of bed.

‘That’s done it,’ I thought; and I was right.

‘Not another dressing do you get until you apologize.’ Sister Hall was standing at my elbow. Tony, of course, was delighted and I could hear him chuckling into the bedclothes. I opened my mouth to apologize but no words came. Instead, I realized with horror that I was laughing, laughing in a manner that could in no way be passed off as a mere nervous titter, that could be taken, indeed, for nothing but what it was—a rich fruity belly-laugh.

Nothing was said, but I had a sense of impending doom. A few minutes later my suspicions were confirmed: I felt my bed begin to move.

‘What goes on?’ I asked.

‘Two orderlies are shipping you off next door,’ said Tony. ‘They’re going to separate us.’

Now I had no wish to be separated from Tony. He was amusing to talk to, and especially at a time when I could not see, I felt the need of his presence. Further, there is nothing more depressing than being moved in hospital just after getting the feel of a ward. So I got out of bed. The orderlies were for a moment nonplussed; but, as Tony explained to them, their orders were to move the bed, not me. I could almost see their faces clear and I heard the bed being pushed through the door.

‘Trouble ahead,’ said Tony. ‘Haven’t enjoyed myself so much for ages.’

Sure enough, a few minutes later Sister Hall returned accompanied by one of the younger surgeons, unhappy and embarrassed by the whole thing.

‘Now what’s all this?’ he asked nervously.

‘Well, among other things,’ I said, ‘I have told Sister Hall that I object to being treated as though I were still in a kindergarten.’

‘He said more than that, Doctor,’ said Sister Hall with some truth. ‘He and Mr. Tollemache together make it impossible to run the ward.’

By this time the pettiness of it was boring me, and when the harassed doctor said that he could not interfere with Sister Hall’s running of the ward I made no demur and allowed myself to be led off to the all-glass covered-in balcony extension of the ward to which my bed had been moved. I made some remark to Tony as I passed his bed but Sister had the last word.

‘And we’ll have no bad language while I’m in charge here,’ she said, and shut the door firmly behind me.

I found myself next to an Army doctor with smashed insides, sustained running into a stationary lorry in the blackout. He had difficulty in getting his breath and roared and whistled all night. I began to regret the haste of my outburst.

The hospital visiting hours were from two till four in the afternoon, a change from the Masonic and an arbitrary rule which in my present state of mind I considered nothing short of monstrous. Denise, who was now back in the A.T.S. with an important job, could get off only at odd moments but wanted to come and see me. I asked the Matron if she might be allowed to come in the morning if she could get down from London, and the Matron very reasonably agreed. Denise duly arrived and called up from the station to ask when she might appear. Due to a misunderstanding, she was told that visiting hours were from two till four, and she had therefore to kick her heels for several hours in the town. By this time I was so enjoying my sense of persecution that, even if I had realized that it was a misunderstanding, I should doubtless have chosen to ignore the fact. When, therefore, on the stroke of four Sister Hall entered and said coldly, ‘All visitors must leave now,’ I would willingly have committed murder, but Denise laid a warning hand on mine and I held my peace.

The next day McIndoe took down the dressing from my eyes and I saw again.

‘A couple of real horse blinkers you’ve got there,’ he said; and indeed for a day or so that is what they felt like. In order to see in front of me I had to turn my face up to the ceiling. They moulded in very rapidly, and soon I could raise and lower them at will. It was a remarkable piece of surgery, and an operation in which McIndoe had yet to score a failure.

Shortly afterwards I was allowed to have a bath and soak the bandage off my arm from where the graft had been taken. This laborious and painful process had already taken me half an hour when Sister Hall came in. I was down to the last layer, which I was pulling at gingerly, hurting myself considerably in the process.

‘Well, really, Mister Hillary!’ she said; and taking hold of it she gave a quick pull and ripped the whole thing off cleanly and painlessly.

‘Christ!’ I started involuntarily, but stopped myself and glanced apprehensively at Sister’s face. She was smiling. Yes, there was no doubt about it, she was smiling. We said nothing, but from that moment we understood each other.

Tony’s graft had been a success, and within a few days we were allowed out for a fortnight’s convalescence before coming in again for further operations.

As I was getting ready to go, Sister took me on one side and slipped a small package into my hand.

‘You’ll be wanting to look your best for the girls, Mr. Hillary, and I’ve put in some brown make-up powder that should help you.’

I started to protest but she cut me short.

‘You’ll be in again in a couple of weeks,’ she said. ‘Time enough for us to start quarrelling then.’

We returned after a short but very pleasant convalescence—Tony for his last operation, one top lid, and I for two lower ones.

This time when the dressings were taken down I looked exactly like an orang-outang. McIndoe had pinched out two semicircular ledges of skin under my eyes to allow for contraction of the new lids. What was not absorbed was to be sliced off when I came in for my next operation, a new upper lip. The relief, however, was enormous, for now I could close my eyes almost completely and did not sleep with them rolled up and the whites showing like a frightened negro.

Once again we retired to our convalescent home, where our hostess did everything possible to relieve the monotony of our existence. She gave a large party on Christmas night, and every few weeks brought down stage or screen people to cheer up the patients.

There had been some changes among the other inmates since our last visit, and two of de Gaulle’s Frenchmen had arrived from an Aldershot hospital. One of them, an Army officer, had been in plaster since Dunkirk, where he got an explosive bullet in the arm. The other had been in the French Air Force but had decidedly un-Gallic features. When I first saw him he was wearing a beard and looked like a Renaissance Christ. Later he shaved it off and was indistinguishable from any chorus-boy in the second row.

When France fell he was completing his flying training in Morocco. He had taken off in an antiquated trainer and landed at Gibraltar. Eventually he managed to reach England and to continue his training on Magisters with French instructors whom he described as old, blind, and incompetent. Apparently he was sent up to practise spins without having been told how to come out of them. His command of English was picturesque and somewhat erratic, yet he managed to convey to me a vivid picture of his crash.

‘I am diving at about 4000 feet,’ he said, ‘when I start the spin. I am told only two turns, so after these I think I centralize the stick and rudder and come out. Nothing happens, so I cross the controls, open the gas and push the stick further forward. I do not wish to jump out, you understand, as I have done this before and do not like. So I try an inverted loop but nothing happens. By this time I have done many turns and am feeling dizzy, so I say to myself, “I must now bale out,” and I undo my straps and stand up. When I look over the side a haystack is spinning round the plane and I am stepping over the side, when crash! And we are no more.’

A most remarkable recital! His back and one foot were broken. His body and leg were swathed in plaster of Paris, and his fellow-countryman, who was an artist, had painted the picture of the crash across his chest.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays the inmates always drove into town in the station wagon to go to the pictures. This involved sitting in the local tea-shop for an hour afterwards, eating sickening cakes and waiting for the car to drive them back. As tea-shops have the most appalling effect on me, depression descending like a fog, I seldom went along. Eliot has said the final word about them:

Over buttered scones and crumpets Weeping, weeping multitudes Droop in a hundred A B C’s.

But on our first Thursday out of the hospital our two Frenchmen asked Tony and me to accompany them, and we duly set off.

We were having tea when a pretty waitress came up and said to my bearded friend, ‘Vous ?tes Fran?ais?’

‘Oui, et vous?’

‘Canadienne-Fran?aise.’

‘Dommage que je n’aille mieux. J’aimerais vous prouver que je vous trouve gentille.’

‘Faudrait aussi que je le veuille!’

‘N’importe. J’aimerais toujours tenter la chance.’

The rest of us sat there like cold suet.

Tony and I went often to London, where we settled ourselves down in some restaurant, ordered a most excellent dinner, and surveyed the youth and beauty around us with a fatherly eye. For while we were now medically fit and perfectly content, yet we were still naturally enough drained of any exuberance of youthful vitality.

One night over a particularly good dinner I summed it up to Tony. ‘Well,’ I said, waving a vague hand at the crowded dance floor, ‘we’re a lucky pair. Here we are enjoying all the pleasures of old men of sixty. To us it has been granted to pass through all the ages of man in a moment of time, and now we know the joys of the twilight of man’s existence. We have come upon that great truth, that the warmth in the belly brought on by brandy and cigars leaves a glow that is the supreme carnal pleasure. Not for us the exacerbation of youthful flesh-twitchings, not for us palpitations and agony of spirit at a pretty smile, a slender waist. We see these things with pleasure, but we see them after our own fashion—as beauty, yes, and as a joy for ever, but as beauty should be seen, from afar and with reverence and with no desire to touch. We are free of the lusts of youth. We can see a patch of virgin snow and we do not have to rush out and leave our footprint. We are as David in the Bible when “they brought unto him a virgin but he gat no heat.”

Tony nodded owlishly and lit a cigar. Then, jabbing it through the air to emphasize his words, he spoke. Slowly and deliberately and with great sorrow he spoke.

‘Alas,’ he said, ‘it is but a dream, a beautiful, beautiful dream, but still a dream. Youth will catch us up again. Youth with all her temptations, trials, and worries. There is no escape.’ He lowered his voice and glanced nervously over his shoulder. ‘Why, even now I feel her wings fluttering behind me. I am nearly the man I was. For you there is still a little time, not much but a little. Let us then enjoy ourselves while yet we may. Waiter, more brandy!’

One night when we were in town we walked around to see Rosa Lewis at the Cavendish Hotel. Suddenly caught by a stroke, she had been rushed to the London Clinic, where she refused to allow any of the nurses to touch her. After a week she saw the bill and immediately got up and left.

When we arrived, there she was, seventy-six years old, shrieking with laughter and waving a glass of champagne, apparently none the worse. She grabbed me by the arm and peered into my face. ‘God, aren’t you dead yet either, young Hillary? Come here and I’ll tell you something. Don’t you ever die. In the last two weeks I’ve been right up to the gates of ‘eaven and ‘ell and they’re both bloody!’

A few weeks later a heavy bomb landed right on the Cavendish, but Rosa emerged triumphant, pulling bits of glass out of her hair and trumpeting with rage. Whatever else may go in this war, we shall still have Rosa Lewis and the Albert Memorial at the end.

Thus did I while away the time between operations, living from day to day, sometimes a little bored, a little depressed, aware of being restless, but analysing this restlessness no further than as the inevitable result of months in bed.

8

The Last of the Long-Haired Boys

IT was already January of 1941 when I returned to the hospital for the removal of the ledges under my eyes and the grafting of my new upper lip.

I had lunch at home, saying good-bye to London with two dozen oysters and a bottle of Pol Roget, and just caught my train. On the way down I began to regret the richness of my lunch and I was in no way cheered by the discovery that the only available bed was in Ward Three. McIndoe came round on his tour of the ward, and I asked if I might be first on the list, feeling that the great man would be at his best in the early morning. It was true that he never seemed to tire. Indeed he had been known to operate all day, and finally at ten o’clock at night, stretch himself comfortably and say to an exhausted theatre staff, ‘Now let’s do something!’

I was wakened early to have my arm ‘prepped’ by one of the orderlies. I had decided on the arm, and not the leg, in order to be spared the bother of shaving my new upper lip. We chose a piece of skin bounded on one side by a vaccination mark and on the other by the faint scar of what are now my upper lids.

Sister gave me an injection at about nine o’clock, and an hour later, wearing my red pyjamas for luck, I climbed on to the trolley and was wheeled across the fifty yards of open space to the hospital. There was something a little lowering about this journey on a cold morning, but I reached the theatre feeling quite emotionless, rather like a business man arriving at his office. The anaesthetist gave me an injection and I lost consciousness.

On coming round, I realized that I was bandaged from forehead to lip and unable to breathe through my nose. At about three o’clock Tony Tollemache and his mother came to see me; I had by then developed a delicate froth on both lips and must have resembled a perhaps refined stallion. They were very kind, and talked to me quite normally. I’m afraid I replied little, as I needed my mouth to breathe with. They went at about four. After that the day was a blur: a thin wailing scream, the radio playing ‘Each day is one day nearer,’ injections, a little singing, much laughter, and a voice saying, ‘Naow, Charlie, you can’t do it; naow, Charlie, you can’t do it; naow, Charlie, you can’t do it.’ After this, oblivion, thank God.

The next morning I awoke in a cold sweat after a nightmare in which my eyelids were sewn together and I was leading the Squadron in an Avro Tutor. In the evening one of the doctors took the bandages off my eyes. I was left with a thick dressing across my upper lip which pressed against my nose, and two sets of semicircular stitches under my eyes. Peering into a mirror, I noticed that my right eyebrow had been lifted up higher to pair it off with the left. This was also stitched. Later McIndoe made a round and peered anxiously at the scar under my right eye, which was blue and swollen. He moved on. There was comparatively little noise, but the ward smelt and I was depressed.

The next few days remain in my memory as a rather unpleasant dream. Rumour started that eight of us were to be isolated, owing to suspicion of a bug. It proved true. We climbed on to trolleys and were pushed across the yard to one of the main wards, from which a bunch of protesting old women had been evacuated. On the way over I passed a new victim of tannic acid being wheeled in to take my bed: all I could see was an ebony-coloured face enveloped in a white cowl. As we were pushed up the steps to our new quarters we were greeted by four nurses wearing masks, white aprons, and rubber gloves. Our luggage followed, and was tipped into the store-room outside.

Opposite me was Squadron Leader Gleave with a flap graft on his nose and an exposed nerve on his forehead: in Ward Three he had been unable to sleep, nor could the night nurse drug him enough to stop the pain. Next to him was Eric Lock, a tough little Shropshireman who had been with me at Hornchurch and collected twenty-three planes, a D.S.O., a D.F.C. and a bar: he had cannon-shell wounds in the arms and legs. On my left was Mark Mounsdon who trained with me in Scotland and was awaiting an operation on his eyelids. Beyond the partition was Joseph, the Czech sergeant pilot, also with a nose graft; Yorkey Law, a bombardier, blown up twice and burned at Dunkirk, with a complete new face taken in bacon strips from his legs, and no hands; and Neft, a clever young Jew (disliked for it by the others), with a broken leg from a motor-cycle accident.

We were of course allowed no visitors and could write no letters.

On the second day Neft’s face began to suppurate and a small colony of streptococci settled comfortably on the Squadron Leader’s nose. The rest of us waited grimly. Neft showed a tendency to complain, which caused Eric Lock to point out that some of us had been fighting the war with real bullets and would be infinitely grateful for his silence.

On the third day in our new quarters the smell of the bandage under my nose became so powerful that I took to dosing it liberally with eau-de-cologne. I have since been unable to repress a feeling of nausea whenever at a party or in company I have caught a whiff of this scent.

Our heads were shorn and our scalps rubbed with special soap and anointed with M & B powder. We submitted to this with a varying amount of protestation: the Squadron Leader was too ill to complain, but Eric Lock was vociferous and the rest of us sullen. A somewhat grim sense of humour helped us to pass this day, punctuated by half-hours during which Neft was an object of rather cruel mockery. He had been a pork butcher before the war and of quite moderate means, but he made the mistake of mentioning this fact and adding that foul-mouthed talk amused him not at all. From that moment Yorkey Law, our bombardier, gave him no peace and plied him with anecdotes which even curled what was left of my hair. By the evening Neft had retired completely under the bedclothes, taking his suppurating face with him.

After the huts our new ward was luxurious: the beds were more comfortable, and above each a pair of ear-phones hung on the wall. A large plain window ran the whole length of one side and ensured an adequate ventilation: the ward was kept dusted and tidy.

The nurses were efficient and not unfriendly, though the enforced wearing of masks and rubber gloves made them a little impersonal. Our language was always rough and sometimes offensive; Eric, with an amiable grin on his face, would curse them roundly from dawn till dusk, but they seldom complained. They did their best to make up to us for our lack of visitors. Tony Tollemache came down once from the convalescent home and said good-bye through the window: he was returning to Hornchurch. Otherwise we saw nobody.

It was announced that our swabs had returned. We all clamoured to know who was, and who was not, infected. Apparently two were not, but which two the doctors would not say.

On February 14 I developed earache. Short of breath and completely blocked in the nose, I gave a snort and felt something crack in my right ear. Never having had earache before, I found the experience disagreeable to a degree: it was as though someone with a sharp needle was driving it at regular intervals into the side of my head.

An ear, nose, and throat man, on a course of plastic surgery under McIndoe, came along to see me. He regarded me dispassionately for a minute, and then withdrew with Sister to the other end of the ward. That night I was put on to Prontosil and knew beyond any doubt that I had the streptococcus.

I slept fitfully, aided in my wakefulness by the pain in my ear, Eric’s snores, and the groans of the Squadron Leader.

In the morning the pain in my ear was considerable and I felt sick from the Prontosil. But it was now eight days since my operation, and the dressing on my lip was due to be taken down. For this mercy I was grateful, as the smell under my nose was proving too strong for even the most frequent doses of eau-de-cologne. At lunch-time one of the doctors took off the bandages and removed the stitches, at the same time cutting the stitches from under my eyes to the accompaniment of appreciative purrs from his satellites. I asked for a mirror and gazed at the result. It was a blow to my vanity: the new lip was dead white, and thinner than its predecessor.

In point of fact it was a surgical masterpiece, but I was not in the mood to appreciate it. I fear I was not very gracious. The lip was duly painted with mercurochrome, and the doctors departed. The relief at having the bandages removed was enormous, but I still dared not blow my nose for fear that I should blow the graft away. I took a bath and soaked the bandage off the arm from which my lip had been taken. This was a painful process lasting three-quarters of an hour, at the end of which time was revealed a deep narrow scar, neatly stitched. Sister then removed the stitches. During this little operation an unfortunate incident occurred. As soon as the stitches were out, instead of behaving in an approved and conventional manner and remaining pressed together, the two lips of the wound opened out like a fan, exposing a raw surface the size of a half orange. Everyone clustered round to inspect this interesting phenomenon but were hastily ordered back to bed by a somewhat harassed Sister.

That night I slept not at all: the pain in my ear was a continuous throbbing and I felt violently sick from the Prontosil. At about two o’clock I got up and started pacing the ward. A night nurse ordered me back to bed. I invited her to go to hell with considerable vigour, but I felt no better. She called me a wicked ungrateful boy and I fear that I called her a cow. Finally I returned to bed and attempted to read until morning.

In the conversation of the next twenty-four hours I took little part but lay, propped up in bed, watching the Squadron Leader rubbing his eye with pieces of cotton-wool. The hair from his scalp was making it acutely uncomfortable. This is not so odd as it sounds, for during a flap graft on the nose the scalp is brought down to the top of one’s eyebrow where it is neatly rolled and feeds the new nose. It is of course shaved but the hair tends to grow again.

February 17 was a Friday, the day on which an ear, nose, and throat specialist was in the habit of visiting the hospital. It was arranged for me to see him, and putting on my dressing-gown, I walked along to the Out-patients’ Department. His manner was reassuring. He felt behind my ear and inquired if it pained me. I replied that it did.

That being so he regretted the necessity, but he must operate within half an hour for what appeared to be a most unpleasant mastoid. I asked if I might be moved to Sister Hall’s ward, and after one look at my face the doctors very decently agreed.

I went back, changed into my red pyjamas and climbed once more on to the trolley. I was wheeled along to the Horsebox, the title affectionately bestowed on the emergency theatre which was the converted end of the children’s ward. McIndoe was already at work in the main theatre.

With the usual feeling of relief I felt the hypodermic needle pushed into my arm, and within five seconds I was unconscious.

For the next week I was very ill, though quite how seriously I could only judge by the alacrity with which all my requests were granted. I was again in the glass extension of Sister Hall’s ward and she nursed me all day and most of the night. I had regular morphia injections and for long periods at a time I was delirious. The bug had got into my lip and was biting deep into the skin at three places. I remember being in worse pain than at any time since my crash. After the plastic operations I had felt no discomfort, but now with the continuous throbbing agony in my head I thought that I must soon go mad. I would listen with dread for the footsteps of the doctors, knowing that the time was come for my dressings, for the piercing of the hole behind my ear with a thin steel probe to keep it open for draining, a sensation that made me contract within myself at the mere touch of the probe on the skin.

It was during my second night in the glass extension that a 2500 lb. bomb landed a hundred yards away but did not explode. I heard it coming down with a curious whirring rustle, and as I heard it I prayed, prayed that it would be near and bring with it peace, that it would explode and take with it me, the extension, the ward, the huts, everything. For a moment I thought it had, so great was the force of impact, but as I realized slowly that it had not exploded I found that the tears were pouring down my face: I was sobbing with mingled pain, rage, and frustration. Sister immediately gave me another morphia injection.

It was decided that while the excavation squad was digging it out, everybody possible must be evacuated to the convalescent home. Those who were too ill to be moved would go to Ward Three on the far side of the hospital. I imagined that I would go along with the others, but after taking a look at me McIndoe decided that it would be too dangerous to move me. Sister Hall offered to send a special nurse with me, but they thought even so the risk was too great.

Sister looked at me: ‘I’m afraid that means the huts,’ she said. At that something exploded inside me. McIndoe’s chief assistant came into the ward to arrange for me to be moved and I let fly. I had not spoken since my operation and I saw the surprise in his face as I hauled myself up in bed and opened my mouth. Wild horses, I said, would not drag me back to that garbage-can of human refuse. If anyone laid a finger on my bed I would get up and start to walk to London. I preferred to die in the open rather than return to that stinking kitchen of fried flesh. I had come into the hospital with two scars on my upper lip: now I had a lip that was pox-ridden and an ear with enough infection in it to kill a regiment. There was only one thing to be said for the British medical profession: it started where the Luftwaffe left off. An outburst to which I now confess with shame, but which at the time relieved my feelings considerably.

‘You’re not making this very easy,’ he answered mildly.

‘You’re damn right, I’m not,’ I said, and then felt very sick and lay down.

It was then that Sister Hall was magnificent.

‘I think perhaps he should stay here in his present state, sir,’ she said. ‘I’ll see if I can fix up something.’

The doctor, only too willing to have the problem off his hands, looked grateful, and left. I saw that she was smiling.