He strangles her.
There is nothing I can do.
The man is in a white shirt and brown pants. He is big. He has short red hair and a face that smiles. The woman is a nurse. She is young, thin, with blond hair tied up.
He strangles her on the lawn on a beautifully sunny afternoon.
She is dead.
I see this through the window. The panes of glass are old and wavy. It’s the only window in my room, and it’s open by an inch.
The man is standing over the nurse’s body. He is looking at her. I don’t think he had planned to kill her. He seems to be thinking: What to do next?
Outside my window is a small garden. It’s flanked by a hedge. It must be a private place. He must have thought he was alone when he put his hands to her neck.
There had been an argument, a heated exchange. The nurse had pointed her finger at the man and had made threats. He had struck out, taking her throat into his grip. It had happened fast. He killed her quickly, in silence, and with efficiency.
The man walks away.
I can’t see where he has gone.
I am left sitting to stare at the lifeless body of the nurse on the lawn.
What can I do? Should I watch the soft breeze gently move the leaves of the hedge? Should I listen to the sound of the robin, or whatever it is, I can hear singing in the tree?
Should I admire the birdhouse?
At the rear of the garden stands a little white birdhouse. It stands about seven or eight feet from the ground at the top of a pole. It is a grand miniature house with a red roof. It has a little balcony for birds to promenade upon, and a little hole for them to step through, to go inside to hide from the storm.
I couldn’t hear clearly what the man and the nurse had been arguing about. They had spoken in whispers. Hers had been a sharper voice, with an accusatory tone. I had heard her say: “I know.” I had heard her say it more than once.
The man has come back.
He has brought something with him. It’s dirty white in color. It’s some kind of bag and he is lifting the girl’s feet. He is dragging the bag up around her legs. I think it’s a laundry sack. He is putting her into it.
Within seconds, the man has hidden the nurse’s body in the sack. He ties the rope at its opening and seals her in.
He looks at my window.
He stares.
I can’t read his mind, but I know what he is thinking. I see the change in his expression. He is concerned.
He walks up to my window.
Outside, the garden is drenched in afternoon sunlight. With the contrast in light, I imagine that the view through the window into my room is not immediately obvious.
He presses his face to the glass, and he looks directly at me.
I can do nothing.
He looks about my room.
There is nothing I can do.
He lifts up the laundry sack and hauls it over his shoulder. He walks away, out of my view.
I hear my breath. It’s racing. My vision has begun to blur. I must relax. My heart must be pounding. I can’t feel it, but it must be turning over like a motorcycle engine.
I stare at the birdhouse.
I focus on it.
It is a pleasant little house. A craftsman has spent many hours fashioning its shape and design. If I were a bird, I would be very pleased by it. I would seek refuge there.
I stare at that birdhouse until it’s all that exists.
The door to my room opens, and I’m brought back. The door is behind me. I can’t see who has opened it.
I hear soft footsteps. It’s the sound of one pair of shoes on the wooden floor.
It’s the man.
He stands at the foot of my bed. He looks at me. I’m sitting up, propped up by pillows, looking back.
The man is older than he appeared through the window. Now that he’s closer, I can see lines and wrinkles on his face. His red hair is flecked with gray. He is easily taller than six feet. He is big. He is fat. He is still smiling. His smile is infectious. I would almost like to smile back.
He studies me.
I dare not close my eyes.
He picks up the clipboard that is hung on the end of my bed. He reads it. As he reads it, he begins to nod to himself.
“Is someone there?” a voice asks.
The voice shocks me. It’s loud after the quiet of the afternoon.
The voice is from Fulton, the man in the bed next to mine. The big man glances over at him. His smile becomes a grin.
Fulton’s head is wrapped in bandages. I’ve heard that his sight will return, but for the present, he is blind.
“There is someone there, isn’t there?” Fulton demands. “I heard footsteps. If you’re trying to play a game, you can fuck off. I’m in no mood.”
Fulton is a Scotsman. That’s about all I know about him.
The big man with the short red hair places my clipboard back on the hook on the end of my bed. He quietly walks out of the room.
I am not a bowl of fruit. I am not a vase standing on a table with a selection of flowers sticking out of me. I am not an ornament. I am not a decoration. I am not a damn objet d’art.
The three doctors stand at the foot of my bed. They have the same looks on their faces as they did yesterday.
They talk about me as though I am not there. They know I can hear them. They know I can see them. They talk about me as though I am little more than a chest of drawers and incapable of perception or understanding.
I don’t know why they bother. I have been in this room for five days now, and each day in the afternoon, they visit, and they stand at the end of my bed with the same faces.
Hopeless.
They don’t say that out loud, but I hear it in their pauses. They think I am hopeless.
Nothing is hopeless. I refuse to ever accept that. I can’t feel or move an inch of my body except my eyes—I can move them, and open and close them. I will not surrender to this. It is not hopeless.
What did that Churchill fellow say? We shall never surrender.
That’s me. Me and Churchill.
I wish they would put me near a radio, or by a gramophone.
Nine days, and I’m bored.
Fulton talks a lot. He sings songs with dirty lyrics. He tells obscene jokes—the vilest, most disgusting of jokes—and he swears a lot. And all in that Scottish accent of his. Glasgow, I believe. His accent could cut a glass bottle in half.
Fulton knows I’m there. He’s never seen me, but he’s been told I’m in the bed next to his. My name is Joseph. At home I get Joe. Fulton calls me Fucking Yankee.
Fulton talks a lot. He talks a lot about his family.
I can’t talk back.
I can’t do anything.
Nurse Anne is my guardian angel. She talks to me and understands that I can’t answer. She talks to me as though I’m part of the conversation.
Nurse Anne visits several times a day. She feeds me, and she cleans me. She is intimate with me. She deals with me in a way no other human being ever has had to since I was a baby.
I’m completely immobile, but my body still functions like that of a normal man. I would happily climb aboard another aircraft for another mission with a near-certain threat of death rather than do what she does. If I ever get out of this mess, I will tell her how very grateful I am.
What I really wish I could tell her is what I saw in the garden. I saw a man in a white shirt and brown pants murder a nurse.
A murder seems so out of place during a war.
I am no innocent. I have killed. I have fired upon countless aircraft, and many have erupted in flames and spiraled to the ground. Enemy aircraft are not piloted by ill wishes and bad intentions. I have killed men. But I have not murdered a single one of them.
Those men were willing to die, as was I. Whoever takes to the air and engages is prepared to meet the end of his life. It was just my bad luck to live.
We took flak over France. I was flying escort to a bombing raid in a Mustang. The B-17s had dumped their payloads over Koblenz, and we were homeward bound, and then we got it. It was like the Fourth of July. The big bombers were getting hammered. One got it bad, and I flew through a shard shower of red-hot metal. It gutted my fuel tank and took out most of my flight controls.
By the time I saw England, I had no fuel and no play left at all in the tail. I crash-landed in a farmer’s field. Crippled. Hopeless.
A nurse does not ask to die. She is there to comfort and heal us madmen. Who was that fat man with the short red hair? Why did he murder that poor girl?
I can see my father sitting there in his armchair, smoking his pipe, listening to news of the war on his radio and clawing at his newspaper as he reads of casualties and deaths. I can see my little sister lying on her stomach on the floor, reading a book and asking questions, or talking to herself. I can see my mother, in the kitchen, worrying.
I wonder if they have heard. I wonder how long it has taken for news of my accident to travel from Britain, across the Atlantic, and to my home in Hartford.
When I was younger, I couldn’t wait until I got out of there. Now I simply can’t wait until I get back. But what will be waiting for me?
I am not a man anymore.
I don’t know what I am.
Maybe I’m just a bowl of fruit after all?
He is a cook!
Nurse Anne has found a wheelchair for me. She has taken to wheeling me about. After three weeks in that room, I was beginning to lose my senses.
Nurse Anne has parked me in the games room. I, the bowl of fruit, can watch people move and play, and talk and laugh.
The hospital isn’t really a hospital. It’s a grand house that has been commandeered by the military for the duration. It’s the country house of Lord Somebody-or-other. The good lord isn’t here. He has moved out and taken his family, his servants, and probably his good silver. He’ll be back at the end, I would say. If we win.
The games room is probably what had been the good lord’s drawing room. A table has been set up for table tennis. Men sit about, playing cards, reading, engaging in casual banter. The atmosphere is convivial. There is a gramophone. Someone likes Al Bowlly. I hear him a lot.
We are all airmen here, all with our wings clipped, all resting from the storm. It is mostly British pilots, with a couple of Poles, a couple of New Zealanders, and a couple of fellow flyboys from back home. No one I know.
The fat man with the short red hair is a cook. He works in the kitchen. He is still smiling. He has smiles for everybody.
He moves about, dressed in a white apron, with a pot of coffee and a plate of small, thin sandwiches, probably cucumber. The Brits like those.
He chats with everybody.
Everyone likes the fat man. People respond warmly to him. A Brit with a ridiculous moustache and voice remarks that he does a good job on the grub.
The fat man doesn’t smile at me. He doesn’t even bother to look at me. I am of no interest. I am no threat. He has read my clipboard. Hopeless. Can’t move. Can’t talk. Just eats and sleeps.
I overhear the cook’s name. Derek.
I stare at him.
The words are on my tongue, ready and waiting. But I can’t even open my mouth. Nurse Anne has to wedge a small piece of wood between my teeth to keep my mouth ajar so as I can breathe comfortably.
I wonder why Derek the cook hasn’t poisoned my food yet. Am I really that hopeless?
It’s a clear night, and the moon is up. The little garden outside my room is illuminated. It looks like a fairy tale through my window, with the little white birdhouse with the red roof glowing in the lunar light.
Nurse Anne and another enter my room. They remove the pillows propping me up and lay me down.
Nurse Anne wishes me a good sleep.
I stare at the ceiling. It’s lit up by the glow of the garden.
I can’t sleep. I’m thinking about that nurse. Why did she have to die? What did that fat cook do with her body? It has been four weeks now. That poor girl.
The sun is in my eyes. Nurse Anne is not aware of this. She probably thinks she has done me a favor, wheeling me outside.
She has wheeled me into the garden outside my room. The garden is quite small, just a little patch of lawn, and it is indeed very private. No other windows face onto it other than my own, and for the first time, I see my window from the other side.
I can’t see into my room—the sun is too bright. All I see is a distorted reflection of Nurse Anne, the birdhouse, and me. I know now why no one has taken me anywhere near a mirror. Even allowing for the deformation in the wavy glass, I can see I am scarred.
Nurse Anne sits in a garden chair beside me. She seems upset. She is not herself today. God forbid she should be worrying about me.
I believe I have become her special case. She has given over a great deal of her time to looking after me. She bathes me, she feeds me. She talks to me and tells me of all her dreams. In return, I keep no secrets from her.
I close my eyes.
The sun illuminates my eyelids, and I see a sort of vivid red color.
I do have a secret. There is a secret trapped inside my head that cannot get out. My only fear in my life now is that it will stay there until the day I die.
Nurse Anne moves me. She has realized the sun was in my eyes.
I wish I could put my hand on hers. Something is troubling her deeply. She is trying to hide the fact.
“I had a friend,” Anne says. She is looking at the ground. “Her name was Judy. She disappeared a few weeks ago. She was a nurse here at the hospital. We both trained together in Croydon.”
There are tears in Anne’s eyes.
I try to move my hand, to place it on hers. I try with all my will and with all my strength.
My hand remains motionless.
“We all thought Judy had left,” Anne says. “We thought she had gone back home to Swansea.”
Anne looks at me. I have never noticed how beautiful her eyes are until this moment. Pale blue. Caught in the English sunlight.
“They found Judy’s body in the river.”
Anne looks away.
“There’s a river, it’s about four miles from here. They don’t know if it was an accident, or how she came to be in it.”
Anne puts her hand on mine. “We must value our lives, Joseph. Life can be so short.”
She says no more about her friend.
I wake to the sound of an explosion. I hear aircraft. Many aircraft. I hear volleys of ground fire. I thought I had dreamed of the air-raid siren.
It’s night. I’m on my back, laid down for sleep. I can’t lift my head. I see a pale orange flickering on the ceiling of my room.
The hospital is near an airfield. It’s two miles away. It can only be that. There must have been an attack.
I hear the roar of aircraft scream over the house. Two or three of them. Spitfires. Give them hell, boys.
A doctor drags me off my bed and into my wheelchair. Another doctor gets the mad Scotsman out of his bed. Fulton’s bandages have been off for three days, but he still can’t see clearly. He is led by the hand.
Everyone is taken downstairs into the servants’ area and the kitchen. We are all lined up along the hallways. Nurses and doctors are running and yelling. There are shouts about a dogfight. It’s above the house.
The RAF has engaged a group of Luftwaffe bomber escorts. A wing of the hospital has been strafed by aircraft fire. Theirs or ours? No one knows. There have been deaths.
Oh, how I long to be in the air, to be up there at the controls and fighting. I have no doubt every man sitting on the floor, or in his wheelchair, about me, feels exactly the same way.
You don’t know life until you live on the edge of it, where your every action in the raw heat of the moment determines your fate; where a crazy idea, a sudden instinct, or just sheer dumb luck sees that you live and don’t die.
“Wait until I get back up there,” Fulton grunts. “I’ll fuck them bastards up and no mistake.”
I see Anne. She’s at the other end of the hall. She’s bandaging a doctor. He’s kneeling on the floor. It appears he has been hurt. It looks like blood on his face.
The cook is handing out cups of coffee and keeping everyone’s spirits up. Jovial is the fat man. Always cheerful is the fat man with the short red hair.
Eventually, he settles near me. He sits next to the Scotsman. He lights a cigarette. He shares it with my foulmouthed friend. They chat quietly while we listen to the fighting above the house.
I learn that Fulton is a gunner stationed at Duxford. His bomber was attacked over the channel by a Messerschmitt and he took shrapnel in the face. He was lucky to have survived. Damn lucky.
My Scottish neighbor talks about Cambridgeshire, where Duxford airfield is. He likes it there, but the airfield is soon to be transferred over to the USAAF.
“Fucking Yanks,” he says. He grins at me and then passes the cigarette back to the cook.
It occurs to me that the Scotsman is talking a lot, and that the sympathetic ear of the cook is doing a lot of listening.
The cook asks a question about the Scotsman’s barracks. The Scotsman answers. It’s a vague question, nothing significant.
It’s all surface conversation, idle talk while waiting for the fighting to finish. But underneath it, the cook is drawing out a reasonable understanding of the layout and floor plan of Duxford air base.
My God, is the cook a spy?
I close my eyes.
Of course he fucking is.
George is looking older. He’s twenty-four, like me, and he looks forty-five. He looks old enough to be my uncle. George is my good friend. I’ve known him since high school.
He doesn’t know what to say.
He looks at me and then away. He talks about the weather. He talks about the weather in New York and drums his fingers on the armrest of his chair.
George is a drummer. He’s stocky and looks as if he should be in pro football. Back in Manhattan, he plays in a swing band. Here in Europe, he’s a navigator. I bet he hasn’t seen a drum set for over a year.
George adjusts his collar. He dressed up for the visit. He’s not casual. His hair is combed. He really doesn’t know what to say.
It is subtle.
The cook makes his rounds with tea and cake in the games room. He is a happy, friendly face and always ready for some conversation. He is a fat, jolly man. He is your friend, and for a moment, he can make you forget about your pain.
This is not a battlefield, this is the drawing room of Lord So-and-so, and we’re all friends here. We’re all fellow combatants. We’re all on the same side. Our guards are down.
A young English boy—barely eighteen, shot down on his first mission and lost a leg—tells the cook about a tricky flight path he encountered.
An Australian talks about his aircraft. He’s proud of it.
Someone mentions that Hatfield airfield over in Hertfordshire has been patched up and reopened since it was bombed three months ago.
It goes on.
The cook doesn’t ask for any of this. He doesn’t solicit a word. But he is there, attentive, and ready to mop it all up, to wring it all out in his bucket.
The penalty for spying is a bullet in the head. That’s why Derek the cook killed Judy the nurse. He is a spy. She found out about him. She had said, “I know.” This was what she knew.
I will get that fat son of a bitch.
I am screaming inside.
I have spent every moment for more than a week trying to move. I have tried to move every part of my body. My legs, my arms, my toes, my fingers.
I have tried by sheer force of will to induce my throat to make a sound, any sound, so as to be led back into speaking words.
My brain is in chaos.
I can’t move. I can’t speak.
I will not surrender to this. I will not give in. I have no idea if I will ever walk or talk again, but I will not surrender. This secret must come out. It has to come out. It cannot stay buried inside my head for eternity.
Nurse Anne looks at me.
She probably wonders why I am crying.
I close my eyes.
The only part of my body I can move is my eyes. The only part of me I can feel is my eyes.
I open them.
Nurse Anne has gone. I’m in the garden and staring at the birdhouse. The sun is directly overhead, and the birdhouse looks radiant.
I’m no more than a few feet from where that poor girl was murdered. This garden was the last thing she saw. It was the last place she knew.
There is a wire on the pole.
My eyes are blurred from my tears, but I can see a wire. There is a wire attached to the wooden pole holding up the birdhouse.
The wire runs up the pole out of the ground. It goes up into the birdhouse. It’s painted white, like the white of the pole.
It is certainly a wire. There are two tiny clips holding it in place.
Blink and you would miss it. Stare at the damn birdhouse as long and as often as I have, and you will eventually see it.
A question comes to my mind: Why have I never seen a bird in the birdhouse? Not in it, not on it, not near it?
There are plenty of birds here. I hear them in the trees all the time. Is the birdhouse some kind of radio transmitter, or an antenna?
Is this how the cook transmits his information? Is this why the nurse and the cook were in the garden?
Of course it fucking is.
Nurse Anne returns. She has a handkerchief. She wipes the tears from my eyes and face.
George has brought news from home. My mom and dad send their love. My mom is praying for me every day. My sister is sending me a book, maybe someone can read it to me.
After that, George doesn’t know what else to say. He drums his fingers on the arm of his chair.
He looks at me more today. This time, he is more relaxed.
I wish I could drum back. Maybe get up a rhythm along with him. I used to be able to pick out a reasonable tune on a piano.
I get a sudden, crazy idea.
I blink.
I blink in a rhythm.
George stares at me as if I am nuts.
I keep blinking.
Finally, he gets it.
“SOS?” George says. “You’re blinking SOS?”
I blink the Morse code for YES.
He nods. He understands.
Eyes closed short for dots. Eyes closed long for dashes.
I ask him how he is.
“I’m fine,” he says. “Thanks for asking.” He looks incredulous. He laughs with amazement.
I wish I could cheer and leap from my bed. I wish I could hug and kiss the great oaf.
Wait until he hears what I have to say next!