Felix has held the hands of more men than she can count in the past year and a half. But still the thought of taking Nat’s again makes her shy.
They send for her when he opens his eyes. It’s obvious that he doesn’t trust what he sees.
‘Felix?’
‘Shhh . . . Yes . . . It’s me.’
‘Got to talk.’
‘I know. Later. Plenty of time.’
‘No. Can’t wait.’
Felix wonders.
‘I’m here,’ she says.
Nat tries to close his fingers round hers, and she feels their roughness catch on her own. He makes an enormous effort to lift her hand, but can’t yet manage it. So Felix takes up the weight of his hand under hers, and presses the back of her hand against his lips. They are warm and still soft, and after his kiss breaks she can feel his breath, uneven, against her skin. She rests her hand for a while on his chest, simply enjoying the fact of its rise and fall.
Nat drifts away again, no longer lucid. Felix sits and watches over him. He’s gone for some time. It’s just the anaesthetic. She’s not worried. It’s often like this. He’ll be drowsy and confused from the morphine too. She sits and waits and a kind of serenity comes over her. They drift together.
His lips move.
‘Nat?’
He looks at her, confused, eyebrows cocked. Trying to remember something.
‘Dolores,’ he says eventually. ‘Dolores.’
Felix stiffens. She thought she was prepared. She’d known for hours this was coming. But now . . . she doesn’t want to remember, ever again. If they could only pretend it had never happened. If only it hadn’t. But that’s impossible. The fact of Dolores will hang between them like a spectre for the rest of their lives. Pretending is no option. She looks behind her. The patient in the next bed is asleep, his breathing laboured, but comfortable enough. Nat’s is the last bed. The candle next to it lights only rock face. Nobody will hear.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers. ‘I couldn’t see another way.’
She listens to his breathing, and thinks how to reply.
‘I want to say everything’s all right,’ she says in the end. ‘Or never mind . . . or something like that. But you know I can’t. We have to go on minding, always, don’t we? About all of this.’
She sees him sink slightly, deflate.
‘But don’t think I’m blaming you,’ she adds quickly. ‘What’s the point in blame?’
Can he hear her?
Yes.
‘So frightened,’ he says. ‘For you. I couldn’t . . .’
‘Yes.’ She sighs. ‘Me too . . .’
‘She was going to—’
‘To kill me?’ she says calmly, and he nods, painfully, searching her face. ‘I guessed that was what you thought. But you didn’t know her . . . She couldn’t, she would never—’
‘No, Felix, she could. Dolores had a knife.’
Nat is becoming agitated, his words slurring. She must calm him down.
‘A knife? No. Shhh . . .’
‘A blade, a scalpel, then,’ he says. ‘Whatever you call it. Don’t know. Surgical thing. In her hand. I found it. After.’
Felix feels the old chill return, the shaking. ‘You’re certain?’
Nat nods again, a tiny movement. She can see how painful it has been for him to tell her this. She knows by the way he watches her shiver as she turns the information over: the impossibility, and yet the possibility of it. She’s been shying away from these thoughts for months, deliberately blocking both mind and memory at the last moment.
‘She would have used it.’
‘Don’t tell me. Please.’
‘Got to. She knew what she was doing. Promise you.’
Felix’s sharp intake of breath resonates gently round their corner of the cave, and the man in the next bed lets out a deep sigh, stirs, and settles again. Felix kneels and lays her head on the pillow beside Nat’s, and murmurs into his ear.
‘Oh God. What would I have done? If you hadn’t been there?’
She judged him so harshly, so quickly. She keeps remembering the words she used then. Who made you judge and jury? Who made her?
‘I’m so sorry, Nat. So terribly, terribly sorry. I just couldn’t bear what was happening. I couldn’t bear what had happened. What I had let happen. I still can’t.’
She feels him nod slightly. She knows she isn’t quite making sense, any more than he can completely take it in. Telling her has exhausted him. She fumbles between words and ideas, falling between them. She can’t find one solid place to stand. And she is so tired.
‘I’m so tired,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry.’ Keep trying. She sits up, trying to gather her strength, and glances hopelessly round the rows and rows of beds in the cave, and hears the sounds of people in pain. ‘This war. It’s not right and wrong any more, is it? Just wrong and wrong.’
He looks up at her, eyes narrowed. As though trying to make her out through a mist, or a fog.
‘Oh, I don’t even mean that, quite,’ she whispers, quickly. ‘Don’t tell anyone. Please don’t. What do I mean? I don’t know.’
No good. She can’t work it all out now. They’ll just have to go on talking, and go on remembering, until the pieces fit together properly, and they can make a new place to be. In time.
Nat’s focus sharpens again, and his frown becomes a smile.
‘Thought I’d ruined everything,’ he murmurs. ‘Thought I’d lost you.’
‘No. Harder than you think. Go to sleep, my darling. I’ll still be here.’
He sleeps. Felix wonders how much more time she can spare just to watch over him. It isn’t fair. There is so much other work to do. She counts out his breaths. She tells herself she will go after the next ten, the next twenty . . . Eventually Felix looks up, hardly daring to believe her luck that nobody has summoned her yet. A practicante is coming towards her, holding out a torn and bloody envelope.
‘It has your name on it,’ he says. ‘They found it in a jacket. It nearly got burned, but they were checking for ammunition. It is you, yes? Felix? Like feliz . . . the happy one?’
‘That’s me,’ she says, taking George’s note. She reads it with a complicated rush of relief, and glances at Nat.
He looks wonderfully peaceful now, his face smoothed out and still. Felix reaches across and touches his cheek with a kind of envy. She feels twisted up and hollowed out herself. Something is turning and tugging at her guts, trying to drag them out of her.
It really is no good. When George comes back, she’ll simply explain everything. It will have to be a different kind of talk now. She can’t just break it off, and leave him in the dark about all this. It had always been a mistake not to tell him about Dolores, never mind Nat. She’d been pretending to herself it wasn’t necessary. Why hurt him more? But now it is finally time. She’ll have to steel herself. George deserved to know everything. Though he won’t think so much of her now, will he? This thought comes as a physical pain. She cherishes George’s respect. It will hurt her to lose it. But at least he’ll know just how much better off he is without her. And she’s sure he’ll keep their secret.
Then she hears Kitty’s cry. ‘Oh no. Oh no. Please no.’
Kitty stumbles towards her. The news has just come up from the olive grove. Kitty keeps staring at Felix, her eyes reflecting nothing. Then she falls to her knees in front of her, and buries her face deep in Felix’s lap, spectacle frames digging into her thighs. Kitty’s voice is muffled.
‘Felix. Felix. They’ve got one of our field ambulances. A direct hit. They think it’s George.’
Felix feels herself begin to float. There is nothing she can anchor herself to.
‘George?’ she falters, her hand moving to her throat. ‘My George?’
Somewhere in the valley below, an engine starts up. Another vehicle sets off towards the river.