The Happy Prisoner Read online

  “Don’t read too long,” she would say going out, and he would say: “Just going to finish this chapter,” and probably go on reading for another hour. Sometimes, when she drew back the curtains in her bedroom, she would see his light shining on to the lawn and would come down again to see whether he had gone to sleep with the lamp on.

  He hoped they would come in soon. He was very uncomfortable. There were crumbs in his bed and his dressing wanted changing and the pillow in the small of his back had knotted itself into a hard lump. Heather had washed him after breakfast with a too dry sponge which did not rinse off all the soap, and Violet, coming in later, had set up his shaving things for him on the bed-table and had spilt some water which had now soaked right through the blankets and sheet to his pyjamas. He would also like to know what was for lunch before he started on the chocolate Bob had sent him from America.

  When his mother turned to come indoors, she waved and smiled in his direction, although she could not see him behind the mullions of the open casement. When she was working in the garden or sitting in a deck-chair under the cedar, she would look up from time to time and wave to show him he was not forgotten.

  She said something to Elizabeth, who also looked towards him. He was too far away to see her features, but the general effect was not unpleasing. Good.

  When she came into his room, he saw that she had china-blue eyes in a smooth, well-mannered face, neither pretty nor plain, but strangely unanimated. Yet it was not a lethargic face; it was alert and intelligent and healthy, but controlled beyond its youth.

  “This is your new nurse, darling,” said Mrs. North. “Elizabeth Gray. This is my son—Oliver. You’re going to look after him for us, aren’t you?” Elizabeth stepped forward, avoiding, either by accident or deliberately, the hand with which Mrs. North was going to lead her up to the bed.

  “How do you do?” she said politely, with a professional glance at the untidily made bed, the arrangement of the pillows and the plaster on Oliver’s chest where it showed under the open neck of his pyjamas. Being in bed gave you an advantage over people, Oliver always thought. Simply by turning your head, you could follow them as they moved about the room, conscious of your eyes. It was rather like being royalty. You waited at your ease for them to come to you, so much less at their ease because you were in bed and there was that hump under the quilt, which they were not sure whether they ought to notice or not. Even people whom he knew quite well were embarrassed when they first came to see him.

  This girl seemed completely self-possessed, but of course she was used to seeing people in bed and to humps under quilts. They smiled at each other gravely, summing one another up, wondering how they were going to like seeing so much of each other.

  “You’ll find me an awful fraud,” said Oliver. “Nothing wrong with me. I’m afraid I’m a dead loss as a case, but I don’t suppose a bit of a rest will do you any harm.”

  “Now, Oliver,” said Mrs. North hastily, terrified that he might give the girl the wrong ideas, “don’t talk like that. It’s no use your pretending you can do things for yourself, because you know quite well you can’t. Miss Gray isn’t going to think you lazy or spoiled. She’s a nurse and she knows what a man with a heart may and mayn’t do. We’ve had a long talk about you already and I’ve explained your condition exactly, so you needn’t start trying to muddle her.” She turned to Elizabeth. “I told you, didn’t I? A shell splinter just grazed the outer muscle of the heart. They say it’s healing all right at last, but of course the least exertion …”

  Elizabeth, who had formed her own opinion of the case long ago from her interview with Oliver’s doctor, listened politely to what they both had to say, and when Mrs. North at last decided to go and finish off the lunch, set about making Oliver comfortable as surely and successfully as if she had been nursing him for weeks.

  .…

  It was a lovely afternoon. The sun, which had been in and out of clouds all morning, was standing in a clear blue sky by the time it reached the spot above the hill from where it shone on to his bed. The autumn and spring suns were better than the high suns of midsummer, which were only at the right angle for his low old window in the early morning and in the evening. This sun could shine into his room from two o’clock until it set behind the elms.

  “Going out this afternoon?” he asked Elizabeth, when she came to fetch his coffee-cup. “Wish I could show you round. It’s rather a nice old place. We rent out most of the land and the farm buildings now, but Fred won’t mind where you go. Fred Williams—he’s our tenant. He lives in that cottage you can see by the poplar over there. My eldest sister works for him. D’you like farms? There’s a couple of cart foals in the paddock by the front drive, they tell me, that might appeal to you. Don’t worry about me if you want to go out. I shan’t want a thing. Never do.”

  “I might go out perhaps,” said Elizabeth, “when I’ve done the washing up.”

  “Don’t let them work you too hard. I warn you, my mother is one of these people who would die at the sink sooner than leave the plates till tomorrow.”

  He spoke lightly, but Elizabeth answered quite seriously, “It’s specified as part of my job that I should help in the house. Mrs. North has drawn me up a time-table so that I can fit that in with my nursing.” She pulled a typed sheet of paper out of her pocket and showed it to Oliver.

  He laughed. “Isn’t that typical? Every minute of the day accounted for, my poor Nurse Gray. ‘Off Duty: 2.30–4.30.’ You’ll find yourself going down to the village then to do some shopping and catch the London post. You wait. What’s this? ‘Household chores!’” He laughed again. “How the woman harks back to Ardmore, Pa. ‘9 a.m.: Major North’s breakfast. 9.15: Make beds with me upstairs. 10 a.m: Major North’s dressing.’ How the devil does she know when I want my dressing done? ‘11.1: Help Mrs Cowlin prepare lunch, when I’m not doing it. Listen for Major North’s bell—’ Look here, I never ring my bell. You can cut that out.” He rummaged on his bedside table for a pencil and Elizabeth stepped forward quickly and handed it to him. He scored heavily through a line.

  “Thanks. I say,” he said, reading on, “I hope you don’t think we’re expecting too much. It looks an awful lot set down like this but half the things aren’t necessary, and when you shake down and sort of get into the hang of things here, it’ll boil down a bit.”

  “It seems quite all right, thank you,” said Elizabeth, taking back the paper, folding it neatly and putting it back into her pocket. It would help a lot, Oliver thought, if she would give some indication of what she thought of the household.

  “What about your back?” she asked. “You ought to have that rubbed at two, oughtn’t you?”

  “Good God, no. I’m not in hospital now, thank Heaven. You go away and do your ‘Household chores’ and then get out into this sun. Get one of the girls to show you round. You’ve met them, have you—my sisters?”

  “Oh yes. Mrs. Sandys was at lunch with her little boy, and Miss North met me at Shrewsbury station. She didn’t come to lunch. She came in after we’d started and cut herself a cheese sandwich to take out. She said she hadn’t time for any more.”

  “That sounds like old Vi,” said Oliver. “She works like a black. She’s a great soul; you’ll like her.” He fixed Elizabeth with his eye, daring her to judge by appearances.

  “She seems very nice. Well, if you’re sure there’s nothing you want …” She started towards the door. He liked the pert little point of her cap at the back.

  “Nothing, thanks. I say—Nurse!” She turned, brightly prepared to hand him something or fetch a glass of water or shake up his pillows.

  “Look, I don’t think I’ll call you Nurse, if you don’t mind. It seems silly when you’re going to be more or less one of the family. I think I’d better call you Elizabeth, don’t you?”

  “Yes, whatever you like, Major North.”

  “Sandy—that was the last nurse I had—used to call me Oliver, except when she called me Boysie. That was
hell.” Elizabeth waited to see if he had anything more to say, and then went out, shutting the door carefully and quietly behind her.

  .…

  Since Oliver had come home from the hospital, it had become the family custom to forgather in his room for a drink before dinner. At six o’clock, before she padded home to her cottage in the valley, Mrs. Cowlin, looking ill-suited to anything so modern, would push open the door with her knee and bring in a tray of glasses, ice cubes, and gin, whisky, beer, or whatever Mrs. North had managed to get in Shrewsbury from the grocer, who had known Oliver for years and was sorry about him. Then would come Oliver’s younger sister Heather, with her small son David in pyjamas and a Jaegar dressing-gown, and a nursery tray containing his hot milk and one petit beurre, and a mug of cold milk and sandwiches, cake, or whatever wanted eating up, for Evelyn to have when she could be dragged indoors from the farm. Evelyn was the daughter of Mrs. North’s widowed brother, and had been staying at Hinkley during the war.

  Heather would pour Oliver a drink and usually have one herself while David had his supper, but she did not stay long unless there were someone amusing to talk to. After five years of living at home during the war, it did not amuse her to talk to her family, and Oliver had now been home long enough for the novelty to have worn off. Mrs. North would come in, have one sip of a drink, go out to do something to the dinner, come back for a nip, go out again, come back, like a bird making sallies at its drinking basin, or, rather, like a hippopotamus constantly being interrupted at its water-hole.

  Violet usually managed to come in, unless they were working late in the fields. Sometimes Fred Williams came in with her to see Oliver. Mrs. North did not like him very much and pretended that the room smelled of manure after he had gone. Sandy had always been there, with little finger crooked over a glass of sherry, making gay conversation to anyone who would listen, the furbelowed and trinketed silk into which she changed for dinner more unalluring even than her uniform.

  Oliver liked to be washed and have his bed made before six so that he could be presentable for his At Home. He could enjoy his dinner more, too, if he was rid of the stickiness and creases and aches that had accumulated during the day. Elizabeth worked in silence, answering his remarks politely, but volunteering none of her own. He enjoyed her deft, assured touch. She never knocked him by mistake where it hurt, and although he was heavy for her, she had a knack of lifting and managed to make him very comfortable. She was slightly built, but her arms were firmly rounded and strong, with a bloom of youth and health. They looked nice coming out of the short sleeves of her white overall.

  “You’ll come back and have a drink, won’t you, when you’ve changed?” Oliver asked when she had finished.

  “I ought to be helping Mrs. North with the dinner as soon as I’ve taken off my overall.” She was folding towels and gathering up his dirty pyjamas.

  “Well, you don’t have to brood over it like a witch, do you? You can come in and out. Ma always manages to. Come in!” he bellowed to a scrabbling at the door. The latch jumped madly and there was a thud and a precarious tinkle as Mrs. Cowlin entered bowed over the tray of drinks. She put it down on a table, glanced furtively at Elizabeth from under her arras of hair and crept out as if the floor of this room were made of thin ice.

  “There you are,” said Oliver. “Have one before you go.”

  “I don’t drink, thank you, Major North.”

  “Why not? Taste or principle?”

  “I won’t have one, thank you. I don’t drink,” she repeated, not answering his question. She took the washing-bowl out to the downstairs cloakroom to empty it. Oliver hoped she was not going to turn out to be like the nurse in hospital who was always smiling because she was pleased to find herself so holy. She used to tell him he must be born again, and he had caught her praying over him once when she thought he was asleep.

  .…

  A miniature oak armchair, relic of some Elizabethan nursery, was kept in Oliver’s room for David. At supper-time, he would carry it over to the bed and drag up the stool which he used for a table. As the window recess into which Oliver’s bed was built was a step higher than the floor of the room, he had a bird’s-eye view of the little boy on his low chair. He could see the cow-lick on top of his head, where the black hair gave a swirl before it shot the rapids of his forehead. When David’s head was bent over his biscuit or the knot hole in the stool, Oliver could see the arc of his lashes lying on the bulging, boneless cheeks; when it was tilted back to obey his mother’s interjections of “Drink up,” most of him was hidden by the big white china mug, except for two wet black eyes, which stared and stared and went on staring after he had lowered the mug and let out the breath he had been holding while he drank.

  “Wipe your moustache,” said Oliver, throwing down his handkerchief.

  “Yes,” said David, thinking of something else. “Uncle Oliver, I want to tell you something. How do you cut your toe-nails, if you haven’t any toes?”

  “I don’t. I file them usually. It’s safer, when you can’t see them.”

  “I want to tell you another thing—”

  “You mean ask,” said Heather, from the table where she was mixing Oliver a drink.

  “How do you know if you’ve got a hole in your sock if you can’t see your big toe sticking out?”

  “I can feel it. The edges of the hole cut into my toe when I wiggle it.”

  “You shouldn’t stuff him up, Ollie,” Heather said, bringing his drink over. “It’s going to be awfully awkward when you get up and he sees you really have only got one leg.”

  “Perhaps I shal.’ have my cork one by then. That’ll be a great thrill. He’ll be able to kick it as much as he wants.”

  “Yes, till he kicks the good one by mistake.”

  David had got up and gone to stare at the tent of bedclothes between the cradle and the foot of the bed. “Are you wiggling them now? Are you? May I look under the sheet?”

  “You may not,” said his mother, and bent to pick him up. “Come on, you can go to bed if you’ve finished your milk. I’ve got heaps to do before dinner.”

  David’s face went scarlet and began to disintegrate. He beat his mother off with both hands. “David—stop it!” She jerked her head away, her face as red as his from the same quickly-roused temper. “Look what you’re doing to my hair, you little fiend. You are not to kick me! Oh, Ollie—what does one do? I’m always having these struggles—stop it, David!” She managed to catch hold of both of his wrists in one hand and they stood breathing heavily at one another, furious. Heather’s right hand looked as if it wanted to smack the child.

  “Couldn’t he stay a bit?” suggested Oliver mildly. “It’s early yet, and he hasn’t had any reading.” David looked from one to the other judicially, wondering who would win, and saw Heather make a face at Oliver.

  “Oh, Ollie, really,” she said. “Why suggest it? I did want to get him settled early. I’ve got Susan to feed, and I must change and do my face. Stanford’s coming to dinner.”

  “Surely you don’t have to bother for him. He’d think you marvellous whatever you looked like—even first thing in the morning.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, rather snappishly. “David, now look; are you coming without a fuss? I’ve had just about enough of you today. You’ve absolutely worn me out. I do think you’re an unkind little boy, when I’ve got so much to do.”

  She made a great mistake, Oliver thought, in appealing to his better nature. It never worked. As David’s face began to go red again, he said: “Why don’t you go up and leave him here to keep me company? I’ll send him up when I get sick of him.”

  “If you’re sure he won’t be a pest. I wouldn’t have said that David was the ideal company for someone with a bad heart.” She picked up the mug and carried the stool and chair back to their place under the wall table where the drinks were. “There’s a piece of apple pie here for Evelyn—if and when she deigns to come in. If she wants anything else, there’s s
ome cake in the big green tin. Tell her not to dare touch the fruit salad; it’s for tonight.”

  As she was going out, she heard David say in what was meant to be a whisper: “Can I look under the sheet now!”

  “If you’re going to pester Uncle Oliver, you’ll have to come up with me,” she told him.

  “Once,” he said, ignoring her. “I looked under Evie’s sheet, and there was a little dog in there, and a kitten.”

  “How cosy,” Oliver said.

  “Revolting,” said Heather, and went out.

  While he was reading to David, Oliver let his mind stray and thought about his younger sister. What would John think of her when he came home? He had not seen her for more than a year, and before that, only in infrequent snatches since they were married in the first year of the war. Oliver had seldom seen them together. It was an accepted thing that they were very much in love, so he supposed they were. When Heather was touchy, people nodded at each other as much as to say: “We must make allowances for her. She misses John.”