House of Doors

by Chaz Brenchley

  No. Not while she had any say in the matter. Certainly not so long as she had him here, sitting on her bed. For the moment he was trapped by hot cocoa and good breeding. Later – well. She needed another way to snare him. It would be no use marching him back to bed and tucking him in. An easy, superficial reassurance wouldn’t do it either.

  Well, then. If nothing easy would avail, she would do what was harder.

  And not spare him, either. If he was stubbornly determined to sweat, he could do it under her eye. Under her whip, if that was what it took to keep him here. The lash of her tongue, wielded all unkindly: he wouldn’t run away from that. Too stubborn for his own good, this boy.

  She said, ‘Why has tonight upset you so?’

  He would be staring, she thought – deliberately so, to make his point, little boy with his eyes stretched in disbelief – if his eyes would only allow it. The colonel’s handiwork was efficient, but not that artful. Those heavy awkward lids – cut from your underarms, Bed Thirty-Four, I know far too much about how you’re put together – wouldn’t open wide enough to give him the expression he was yearning for.

  He said, ‘Dusty, what happened to him . . . He’s maimed for life now, not even the colonel could fix that hand. The colonel’s not even trying. Of course I’m upset, we all are.’

  ‘Of course. But let me be brutal, Michael. You’re all more or less maimed for life, regardless of the colonel’s wizardry. Miller’s not the only one to lose his hand.’ She carefully wasn’t looking at his own, useless in his lap there, but it lay between them none the less. An unspoken truth, an artefact of war. ‘And’ – being brutal – ‘if Miller is out of the picture, that moves everyone below him one rung up the ladder, doesn’t it? Brings you one step closer to what you all seem to want so much, an actual mission overseas?’ Including you, young man. I know how low you stand, on that wretched ladder.

  Hard to be sure if he wanted to flush or turn pale. The patchwork skin on his cheeks was livid only at the seams, along the lines of his scars. ‘I–I suppose so, yes.’

  ‘And you’ve been sleeping well enough recently, you haven’t needed Major Dorian’s medication or you’d have it to hand, or else the night nurse would. It’s not the normal commerce of this hospital, to have patients trudging from one wing to another in search of a lost psychiatrist. So tell me truly, Michael, what’s on your mind? What spectre’s haunting you so thoroughly that you need a special dose to see you through tonight?’

  Empty-handed, he would have fiddled she thought with the tasselled cord of his dressing gown. Two-handed, he might have turned and turned his mug between his restless fingers. As it was, as he was, he sat painfully still, gazing down into the steam of it; and then lifted his head and met her eye to eye and said, ‘It’s the fear, you see. If it can happen to Dusty, it can happen to any of us. We train with live ammo every day, and none of us is as handy as we used to be. We’re all awkward sometimes. Things get dropped. Things that go bang, sometimes. It’s that easy, that’s the message of tonight. One clumsy moment, and all that we’re working for is gone. Or just held up, put back, months more in hospital before we can be patched together again. Any of us can do that to ourselves, at any time . . .’

  Now she’d touched the truth of him, she knew. But she still didn’t understand it. Not by a distance.

  She said, ‘Explain this to me. What is it that’s so dreadfully urgent, what makes you so mad keen to get over there?’

  His turn now, not to be understanding her. ‘Well, it’s the war.’

  ‘The war’s not going to be over, Michael. Not any time soon.’

  ‘Our part in it is. This whole project is, well, not one strike only, but a few rapid punches. Only some of us can go. The Nazis will catch on soon enough. We go now, soon, in the first wave, or we don’t go. The chances are there won’t be a second.’

  ‘And you’re frightened of missing it. I see.’ He reminded her suddenly of her father. After a moment’s thought, she told him that. ‘He joined up in ’fourteen, right at the start. He says he was terrified of its being all over by Christmas, of his not having the time to reach the front. He was in the trenches for four years, he saw all his friends killed and most of his men, he came out of it – well, I won’t say ruined, but damaged, yes. Maimed, if you like. In his mind, I mean, from confronting the truth of it, what war was really like, as against what he’d been told.’

  He seemed almost to be smiling, though it was hard to be certain. She heard her own voice die away, as she saw what little impact her words were having. He spelled it out, unnecessarily, brutal in his turn. ‘Sister Taylor. Really truly, that’s not a revelation that I need. I’ve seen the truth of war, I’ve seen the worst of it. Seen it and felt it,’ his one hand showing her, gesturing dangerously with his half-drunk cup: his face, his other hand. Had she forgotten?

  ‘I hadn’t forgotten that,’ though in fact she almost had, and she blushed at the lie of it. He might choose to see that as a compliment. He was what he was, more than the sum of his injuries, and she still found him worthwhile. Worth her time, even in the dead dark, the chill hours of the morning. ‘I’m sorry, I expressed myself badly. What I mean is, it’s not his naivety you remind me of, just his hurry to immolate himself.’

  ‘For his country’s good.’ That was flung back at her like a flag waved in the face of the enemy. Scorn and defiance, but she was ready for it.

  ‘Who was it who said that patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel?’

  ‘Samuel Johnson –’ of course he’d know that, he was all too well brought-up, this boy – ‘but—’

  ‘But nothing, young man. You don’t get to flourish me down that way. You said it yourself, you’ve seen the worst that war can do. Face to face, and altogether too close. You shouldn’t expect to go back again for a second look. There’s no need.’

  ‘I’ve done my bit, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, that is what I mean. You’ve done more than enough. There will always be other volunteers, new men.’

  ‘No one quite like me,’ he asserted.

  ‘Well, no, but enough who are like enough. Enough like you. Again, you’ve said it yourself. There are plenty here, ahead of you on the ladder. Too many for your comfort, you’re afraid they’ll squeeze you out. But if the mission’s all that matters, let them go. They’re ahead of you for a reason, they’re better equipped,’ two hands and a less ready tongue, a voice that won’t give them away.

  He said nothing. She had pushed him finally to the wall he didn’t want to breach. Determinedly, she pushed him over. ‘You know this, Michael. You know it all. And you’re still desperate to go. Or is that it, truly? Isn’t it rather that you’re desperately afraid to stay?’

  Again he made that stubborn gesture, lifting his head to meet her gaze. Now it was more effortful, and his eyes wanted to flick away but he wouldn’t let them. He’d had fire in him before. Now it was ashes, and she was sorry.

  He said, ‘What do I have to stay for? Crippled and disfigured, what kind of life is that? Listen to your own words. Face to face, you said, too close. Only it won’t be wartime, and it won’t ever be over. I’ll always be too close, and my face will always look like this. Would you want to spend a lifetime watching people stare and shy away?’

  So that was it. She supposed it had to be. She’d let him fool her at the start, or at least allowed herself to feel fooled – please, you mustn’t mind my face. I don’t, so why should you? – but at heart he was still a boy, still utterly exposed. Almost literally so, the skull beneath the skin. You couldn’t help but see it, looking at the crude mask that covered it.

  She wondered if heroic self-sacrifice in wartime always came down to male vanity in the end.

  Sometimes it’s just cruel to be kind. She tried the other thing. ‘Better to die a hero than live a cripple, is that it?’

  She put as much contempt into her voice as she could manage, a biting withering scorn for his weakness, but he didn’t seem to be withered
. He blinked in that slow deliberate learned way of his, still nothing like an instinct, and said, ‘Yes. Yes, that’s it.’

  ‘And you’re terrified you won’t get the chance. You’ll have an accident like Dusty did tonight, and rule yourself out. Or Major Black will decide against you, and give your place to someone else, someone fitter or less fit; or you’ll just run out of time, the Germans will catch on and the project will be closed down before your turn comes round. And then you’ll just have to face up to – well, to life with that face, and that hand, and all that they imply. People being shy of you, as you say. Children shrieking and running away, I expect. You probably like children, boys of your kind usually do: the way they gaze up at you with worship in their eyes, and then run off making aeroplane noises with their arms spread wide for wings. Not so much worship now, just the running away. That must be unbearable, I expect. So here you are, still hoping to escape into some glorious immolation, to go down blazing – again – and write your name in letters of fire across the history of the war; and the prospect of losing even that little hope must be terrible to you. Which is why you suddenly can’t sleep without drugs, and why you’ve come all across the hospital in chase of them. I’m still right, am I?’

  She was still trying to sound crisp and contemptuous, which was hard when she was so near tears. Little boy lost, in a world more cruel than he could cope with: he did remind her so very much of herself. It was easier for a man in some ways, but far more pitiful. She had to try to swallow down the pity, and simply let the accusation stand.

  Something at least seemed to be getting through. He had to touch his tongue to those rubbery approximate lips of his, before he could even whisper ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, Michael.’ She was abruptly sitting on the bed beside him, without consciously having decided to move. Sitting on his good side, taking the half-drunk mug from his hand and setting it safely out of reach before it could tip all over the blankets. ‘Other people’s rudeness, their ignorance – is that really worth your life? Children can still learn to love you, it’ll only take them a day to get over the way you look, and then they’ll be fascinated. You’re still a hero, you’re a war ace; that’s your own courage that you wear blazoned on your face. Like a duelling scar, but infinitely more precious. It tells everyone you meet who you are and what you did for us. You should be proud. We will be, after the war. We’ll see men like you and we’ll know your story before you tell it us, because it’ll be the story of England and how we survived . . .’

  ‘Scoundrel.’ He was trying to smile again, making a worse job of it this time, barely a manufactured twitch at the corner of his mouth. She supposed it would take as much effort as blinking, or more. He’d need to be committed.

  ‘Well. It’s mostly a lie to plead patriotism, but I think I’m allowed to celebrate it in others. We won’t bruit it abroad, but we’ll keep it as our dirty little secret. You can call me a patriot and I’ll call you a hero, but only when we’re alone.’

  She gave his arm a little shake, just to underline their pact, because she did appear to be holding it. Both hands curled around his biceps, one above the other. When had that happened? She used to cling to Peter this way, close and warm. No man else, not ever. Not her father, even.

  The arm was stiff, because this one elbow was braced against his knee. She thought he’d be leaning on both, staring down between his feet, only that his other arm wouldn’t bend this way and wasn’t reliable for leaning on. She wasn’t sure she’d be allowed to hug him that side, it might hurt his amour propre, that damned vanity again. Or it might more simply hurt him, there might still be pain. She wasn’t sure. She ought to be sure; he was her patient, after all.

  Not officially, perhaps; not on her corridor. But still. She ought to know.

  He’d slipped into a brown study. Best to leave him to it. Not literally, she wasn’t moving from his side. She wasn’t so much as shifting a finger, now that she seemed to have taken hold. This might be what he needed more than opiates, just someone to be with him. Someone he wasn’t in competition with for those few precious places, seats in a plane and a perilous fall beyond. Down and down . . .

  Her own head might have been spinning a little, she might have been falling herself, but he was looking up suddenly, twisting his head to find her, close and awkward as she was.

  Now he had the words suddenly, now they were getting there, the truth at last; and yes, poor fool of a hero, it was all about his vanity after all.

  She really should have known.

  He said, ‘Children might get used to me, perhaps – but they’ll never be my own, will they? No girl could get used to this.’

  ‘Across the breakfast table, do you mean? Or in bed, is that it?’ Yes, of course that was it. He was trying to blush again, his face like a jigsaw, all his scars standing out. ‘Do you really think that poorly of us, as a sex?’ She gave his arm a shake again, this time in simple admonishment. ‘Beauty’s not the only thing that matters, you know,’ though of course it must seem that way, at that age.

  Perhaps she was wrong, perhaps – at that age – beauty really was the only thing that mattered. Odd, that she couldn’t remember. Peter had eclipsed his own face in her mind; now when she thought about him – when she could see past his falling – it was the whole man that she thought of, his entire self. Ten years ago, though . . .?

  ‘Not all, no – but I don’t believe I’ll get as far as breakfast. I don’t believe I’ll get as far as bed. What girl will ever come close enough to see past this?’ He wanted to make that gesture of his, see my face, see me for what I am, but of course she was holding his arm and she wouldn’t let him do it. He tossed his head instead, and glowered at her, almost too close to see him at all. As it happened she could see every detail of his grafts, every stitch mark of his scarring – but if her eyes were less acute, if the light were just a little softer . . .

  I’m here. Is this close enough? She wanted to say that, but it was impossible. He needed to see it for himself, and his eyes were blurred by tears. Something deeper than self-pity, a well of clean distress. That sweet voice thickened clumsily as he said, ‘I . . . I’m afraid that I’ll die, and I will never have slept with a girl. I can get it over quickly, if Major Black will only let me; or I can hang on for forty or fifty years, behind this hideous face, and it’ll still be the thing that I carry. Do you blame me, truly, for wanting to be quick and clean and gone? And some use to my country in the going? And then not having to do this any more, not having to talk to girls while all the time I’m thinking you never will, will you? You and all your kind, you never will. Not with me, not now.’

  ‘Oh, good heavens above,’ she said lightly, not to let him see the truth of it, that she didn’t actually blame him in the least. ‘Is that all? You astonish me. I thought you pilots had these matters all arranged. There are places you can go, you know. In London, and probably closer to home, wherever your home airfield was. Don’t your fellow officers take you there to celebrate your wings? Long before your accident, someone should have done that for you, silly boy. Virginity isn’t a blight, any more than it’s a treasure. It’s just something to be attended to. And after that – well. Your future’s up to you.’ She wanted to say in your own hands, but he’d probably take that amiss. In this mood, he’d turn savage if she gave him half a chance. ‘I’ve been a nurse a long time, you know. I’ve seen men far worse hurt than you, finding themselves wives and having families. And others turning their backs on responsibility altogether, refusing to settle down, keeping girlfriends all their lives.’

  He wouldn’t be convinced so easily. He had built himself a tower of isolation, and he meant to leap from the top of it in one fabulous gesture of finality. It would take a significant effort of will now for him to step back to earth and soldier on more plainly. She had to give him better reasons, or he’d never choose to live.

  Maybe self-contempt was the spur he needed. He had enough of that, she thought, to spare.

  ‘Yo
u do actually have to ask a girl, though. First. Unless you honestly think it’s better to fling your life away, sooner than hear her say no. Some of them will say no, I’m sure; for some of them, your face may be the reason. For others, not. We’re not all that cheap or silly. A girl might still say no, but I think you’ll be surprised how many don’t. Charm and good company count for more, Michael. You’ll learn that. If you let yourself.’

  Charm and good company, youth and vulnerability and impulsiveness and hurt.

  He lifted his head one more time, looked at her too closely, didn’t try to hide the bitter anticipation in his voice as he said, ‘Will you, then?’

  Somehow, she had really not expected that.

  She had every reason in the world to say no, except that he expected it. He was boxing himself in, one last clever move and it was done; her refusal would be his confirmation, that there really was nothing to live for now.

  Boxed in herself, she couldn’t do that to him. She had no more liberty than he did; they were pieces on a board, moving each other.

  She couldn’t say yes, either. She hadn’t said yes to any man, since Peter. That was . . . long ago. She’d only had the word once, and she spent it. She couldn’t claim it back.

  Virginity wasn’t a blight, but fidelity in widowhood? That might be.

  She worried absurdly that Peter might be watching from the mirror.