part0015

B y the time they released Forrester, he was somewhere on the border of delirium: not unaware, not understanding either. He had no idea how long had passed. From his perspective, it might have been hours, a day—a lifetime. He’d stopped noticing the cold, which had transformed into nightmarish shapes that flitted round the edges of his consciousness. He had ceased wondering whether they’d free him, or daring to hope that they would.

Forrester watched as the soldier who’d accompanied Campion released his straps, half expecting the man to dissolve into the air. Their words washed over him, sounds devoid of meaning. His body was a useless weight.

Only as Campion and the soldier lifted Forrester between them did reality begin to reassert itself. He blinked against the brightness of the light and identified a third man in the doorway: the doctor from earlier. As they lowered Forrester into a wheelchair, the doctor knelt to scrutinise his foot. Forrester could see how his fingers moved across the pallid flesh, yet he felt nothing .

The doctor stood. “As I predicted,” he said, and he stepped aside.

Forrester was wheeled the reverse of the way they’d travelled earlier in the night, and eventually to the familiar stretch of passage, where they paused while Campion opened the door to Forrester’s room. Then the soldier pushed him across the threshold.

Abhaya was waiting inside. Her eyes widened as she saw Forrester.

“Get those bedclothes drawn back,” Campion demanded.

Abhaya did so, and Campion and the soldier hoisted Forrester up once more and deposited him on the bed. When Campion noted that he was unable even to lie flat, he helped ease down Forrester’s legs, adjusting them rough-handedly as if he were some dummy in a tailor’s window. The doctor came over and slipped a couple of tablets between Forrester’s lips, following them with water so that he had no choice except to swallow.

By then, Forrester was shivering badly. The pins and needles were returning to his foot, which might be a good sign. However, close in their wake came a renewal of the pain. Though only his right leg had been in the water, his wounded left had grown nearly as dead from disuse; as life began to return, so both throbbed agonisingly. He wanted to scream at the knowledge that mere hours ago he’d been capable of standing, that perhaps in a few days he might have been walking properly.

The doctor examined Forrester’s foot, not touching the flesh this time. “Dry it,” he said to Abhaya, “and wrap it in fresh towels. But don’t massage the skin. Be gentle.”

Abhaya did as instructed. She worked methodically and didn’t once look up at Forrester.

“All right,” the doctor told her. “You can go.”

His voice had become a drawl. It irritated Forrester that the doctor should speak to Abhaya so, and he’d have liked to say something in her defence, but his tongue was thick and heavy. He could feel the shivers abating, the prickling too. The discomfort had retreated to a dull twinge. Someone pulled the bedsheets over him, and he realised there were blankets piled on top.

He was warm. He’d never imagined he would be warm again.

The doctor leaned in and shone his torch into Forrester’s eyes. When he clicked the light off, his face was a blur without features.

“He’ll sleep now,” he slurred, and Forrester knew it was true.

Then finally they left him alone.

When Forrester woke, the sky was darkening outside his window. It must be late evening; he’d slept through an entire day. He had nebulous memories of the doctor coming in and of his foot being bandaged, but only when he dragged back the bedclothes did he verify their authenticity. His right foot was so padded with gauze that it resembled the cocoon of some giant insect.

Beneath the bandages, the skin felt raw and blistered. But at least he could feel, that was something. He spent five minutes testing the sensitivity with gentle pressure upon the bandage and moving each toe in turn. There were patches less responsive than others and some that were particularly raw, but to his vast relief, nowhere was absolutely devoid of sensation.

Just as Forrester finished his inspection, the door opened without warning and Campion came in.

“The doctor would like to know how it feels,” he said, indicating Forrester’s exposed foot .

He was tempted to say, As though it had been left for hours in a bowl of freezing water . But to provoke Campion would be to extend his presence. “Sore,” he replied. To his frustration, his voice sounded weak and scratchy.

“That’s it? Sore?”

“Fine. I’ll pass that on.” Campion reached into a pocket, took out a glass bottle, and, unscrewing the lid, tipped two white pills onto his palm. “He wants you to take these. For the pain.”

Forrester would have preferred the pain to another bout of involuntary oblivion, but he took the pills from Campion and the water from his bedside and drank them down. “There,” he said.

“Well done, sir. Need to keep your strength up.” And Campion left, slamming the door behind him.

Forrester could already feel the pills working. The tenderness in his foot and leg was fading, and so too was his brief consciousness.

He was outside the entrance to his and Middleton’s dugout. On the horizon, ruddy sunlight merged with the shattered earth. Home , he thought, I’ve come home . How had he ever been afraid of these gouged channels? This was scarcely a real place; he could see that now. Beneath the fury of the war, even topography had broken.

He brushed aside the gas blanket, descended the stairs beyond. There seemed to be more of them than he recalled. Within, the dugout was lit in pallid blues and greens. Middleton sat at the small table. He had a spread of cards before him, and Forrester gathered that he was in the midst of a round of patience.

When he looked up at Forrester, he smiled. “Hello Raff,” he said.

“It’s good to see you,” Forrester told him.

“What, even in this state?” And Middleton ran a finger across the uppermost of the neat scarlet holes strung diagonally across his chest like a dignitary’s sash.

“Even this way,” Forrester said.

Middleton nodded, and Forrester sensed that he was pleased with the answer. He watched as Middleton shuffled the cards together, placing them in a neat pile at the centre of the table. “Did you manage to send my letters?” he asked casually.

“I’ve tried. It’s been difficult.”

“And that other thing?”

For a moment, Forrester was puzzled as to what he meant. Then he remembered. “Oh yes,” he said, “I’ll look for it.”

“You won’t find it here,” Middleton observed. “You’ll need to go deeper.”

Though Middleton gave no overt signal, Forrester felt his attention being drawn to the rear of the dugout, which stretched on into interminable gloom. Yes, he would need to go deeper.

When he glanced back, Middleton was gone, and Forrester experienced a pang of sadness. He wondered if they would meet again. And could Middleton really have imagined that Forrester would think less of him for being dead?

The passage, like the dugout, was lit by rapid shudders of green and blue. As Forrester descended, the light dimmed gradually. Soon he’d lost sight of the walls, and he had an impression that they weren’t close anymore. He questioned if they were still there at all; senses he was unable to identify informed him that about him was nothing except void.

And he was no longer walking. If there was a word for his motion, he’d have chosen swimming, but the truth was that he had no word. Nor was he alone. He couldn’t see them, but he knew that they were there, and perhaps he should have been frightened. Yet what he actually felt was so much the opposite of fear, so exceeding mere joy, that he had no word for that either.

The next morning, he woke by degrees, feeling woozy and ill. Steadily the grogginess passed, however, and he realised it wasn’t sleep or the ghastliness of the night before that had caused his fatigue but the tablets Campion had forced on him. He found the water by his bedside and drank the glass off in its entirety.

Then he sat up and probed his foot. When he peeled the bandage back, the flesh beneath was red and mottled, blistered in places. Not black, though; not dead. He would not be losing toes.

He could walk. And he would. Because, somewhere in the depths of his sleep, a conviction had come over him, and now in the waking hours it remained. He would not stay here, not if he had any say in the matter. He’d escape if he possibly could.

Forrester made himself sit up, and then, using the bedstead for support, steeling his nerves against the pain he knew was coming, he stood.

His left leg held. His right foot hurt like all hell, despite its shell of bandages, but took his weight. He tentatively released the bedstead and allowed himself a moment to enjoy the accomplishment of being upon his own two feet. Then, letting the bed and wall bear his weight, he made his way into the bathroom, relieved himself, and washed. Lastly, he drank wonderfully cold water straight from the tap until he could stomach no more .

He was starting to tire. Forrester gripped the washstand and studied his face in the mirror. Dark half circles emphasised almost-black eyes—his mother’s eyes—and his lips were thin and bloodless. His hair, though short, was beginning to form into loose waves and curls at the top and sides, another maternal characteristic.

His was not, he’d always felt, a handsome face, and certainly not a strong one like his father’s. He thought then of his father as he’d last seen him, glaring from the doorway of his home, which once had been Forrester’s home also. Sentimental had been his epithet of choice for his son, and perhaps it was that, sentimentality, that Forrester read in his own features. There was weakness there, at any rate, or so it appeared to him.

Nevertheless, Forrester decided, it was not a bad face. Notwithstanding his father’s opinions, a little sentimentality might not be so awful a failing.

“You’re not about to let them beat you, do you hear?” he addressed the mirror. Much as he felt foolish, he went on. “You’ve been strong before, when you needed to be. You can be again. And as of right now, you will.”

He still felt foolish. Yet beneath that, Forrester detected the first faint stirrings of courage. There had been times when he’d been brave in France, for the men. He had done things he’d never have believed himself capable of. And prior to that, prior to the war, on occasions: that last exchange with his father, for instance, when he’d told the man who’d terrified him since childhood exactly what he thought of him.

Forrester was halfway back to bed when there came a knock on the door. Likely not Campion then, who had apparently abandoned such courtesies, but to be on the safe side, Forrester hobbled the remaining distance and tucked the sheets over himself, and only once he was settled called, “Come in.” Better for the moment that no one should know the full extent of his ability.

His visitor was Abhaya, bringing his breakfast tray. He recalled that he hadn’t eaten the previous day, and now that he’d washed away the residue of the pills, he was furiously hungry. Thank goodness they weren’t trying to starve him out. In fact, the breakfast Abhaya had brought was as excellent as all the food had been: sausage, bacon, toast, a roasted tomato in halves, and a fresh fried egg. He barely managed to say thank you before setting upon his plate, and as usual Abhaya left him to eat in peace.

When she returned, though, and as she took the tray from him, she murmured, “I’m so sorry about your foot.”

She sounded genuinely remorseful, as if her presence had been a sort of complicity. Forrester essayed a wry smile. “I’m sorry about it too.”

Abhaya lowered her voice further, almost to a whisper. “I heard the doctor say, it may take weeks to heal, but it will.”

“That’s good news,” Forrester remarked. And even if she’d only confirmed his own conclusions, it was. “Thank you for your help that morning. You were ... very gentle.”

He grasped immediately that he’d said the wrong thing. Whatever hint of openness Abhaya had revealed was gone. With a slight bow of acknowledgement, she started toward the door.

Then, in the doorway, she paused. She put the tray on the chest of drawers and, returning, delved into a pocket of her smock. “I meant to give you this.”

She held out her hand. As he took its contents, Forrester recognised the locket Middleton had entrusted him with.

The dream of that night came back to him. He remembered what the phantasm of Middleton had requested, and his own reply: I’ll look for it . Well, he hadn’t had to look far, and what a strange coincidence, that Abhaya should have chosen this of all days. Though her implication had been that she’d intended to return the locket for some time and had merely forgotten, some intuition told him the truth was otherwise. Perhaps she’d wanted to give it to him, but absent-mindedness hadn’t been what constrained her.

“I’ll keep it safe,” he said. He meant, I’ll keep it hidden , and he spoke deliberately, to make certain she understood. He slipped the locket around his neck, taking care that both chain and pendant were out of sight, taking care too that she should see how cautious he was being. Manifestly there was significance in her returning the locket to him like this, and he believed he had a notion of what it was. In however small a way, she was prepared to take his side.

“This is very good of you,” he said. “I know...” But he wasn’t sure how to complete the sentence. “I know you’re in a difficult position,” he finished finally.

He sensed she wanted to leave, yet he felt urgently that he must keep her. He was scared that their tenuous progress would fade to nothing if he couldn’t find a means of consolidating it. “Why did they do what they did?” he asked quickly. “My foot, what were they hoping to achieve?”

“They didn’t explain it to me,” she said.

“And do you know what’s going on?” Forrester pressed. “That is, here at Sherston?”

This time, she didn’t answer.

His question had been idiotically vague. He comprehended so little. What ought he to be asking? “But surely you’ve heard something?” he persisted. “How long have you been here?”

Abhaya hesitated. “Not long.”

Did that suggest she’d arrived just before Forrester himself, as Morgan had claimed to have done? “And when you came, didn’t they give you some idea of what you were in for?”

“I need to go,” Abhaya said, but without force.

“Do you know Forbes? Can’t you tell me that much? ”

“Yes. I know him.”

Forrester paused, still not confident of what he was after. “Can he be trusted?”

He thought at first that once more she wouldn’t answer. Then she said, “No. You mustn’t trust him.”

Forrester’s heart fluttered with a sense of expectancy and of menace. “Is he dangerous?”

“Yes. He’s very dangerous.”

“He’d let them hurt me again?”

“He’ll do whatever he thinks is necessary.” She said this slowly and precisely, as though determined that each word be unmistakeable.

So she did know something; more, perhaps, than he’d dared to anticipate. And she’d had experience of Forbes, that was apparent. Yet suddenly all of his other queries seemed secondary to one overwhelming question. “Would you help me, Abhaya?”

But she’d wavered as she said it. “Do you mean you’re not able to, or that you’d put yourself at risk if you did? Or is it both?” When she didn’t respond, he encouraged, “Look here, the last thing I want is to get you into any trouble. I hope you’ll believe me in that. Only, it wouldn’t take much. I may be in rather a state, but I’m not useless. I’m not without my resources. If I could once get out of this place—“

He had pushed too hard, and he’d lost her. All of that was clear in her face. Forrester cursed himself. Here had been his best shot, and he’d blown it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I see how it is. You won’t tell Forbes I asked, will you?”

“I won’t tell anyone,” she promised solemnly—and he was sure that, in this at least, he could rely on her.

He inspected the two photographs, the younger woman and the older. What had Middleton said his sister’s name was? Agatha, that was it. A stern name for one so pretty. Though she was posing in that stiff-backed, unhappy-seeming way that people always adopted for portraits, there was no hiding her attractiveness. Hers was a good kind of beauty, too, of the sort Middleton himself had possessed, a radiance that spoke of energy and life. Her features were honest and open, and despite her chestnut hair, she even had Middleton’s freckles, in speckled stripes that emphasised her eyes. They really were very much alike.

Forrester sat gazing at the locket for longer than he could say. After a while, he realised tears were drying on his cheeks. Still he sat unmoving, searching for he knew not what in that diminutive sepia image.

It was pure luck that he heard the footsteps. There was the faintest tapping, and some urge of instinct made him ball the locket in his fist and dash it beneath the bedclothes. All of that happened in a moment, which was fortunate, since a moment was all he had before the door swung open and Campion stepped in.

The sergeant looked suspicious—but then Forrester had to remind himself that suspicion was the man’s staple expression. “Now that you’ve some breakfast in you,” Campion said, “the major wants to know if you’re up for talking.”

The same impulse that had made Forrester hide Middleton’s locket warned him that he must under no circumstances divulge to Campion the truth of how he felt. Having committed to escape, he needed time to scheme, free of whatever tortures Forbes or the mysterious director might devise. “I doubt that I can walk,” Forrester rasped, making his voice frail.

“I’ll bring the chair up,” Campion proposed .

“My foot, you see ... the pain.” Then, to pre-empt Campion’s obvious reaction, “And those tablets make one so damnably groggy.”

“I’ll carry you if I have to.”

“I’m not certain I can dress,” Forrester persisted, ignoring the implicit threat. “I know I couldn’t get my boots on.”

“For goodness’ sake! It’s not a parade!” Campion shrugged, with the air of a put-upon man tasked with one impossible demand too many. “Fine, I’ll inform Major Forbes that you’re not up to a conversation. But I can’t say he’ll like it.”