The nurse walked quickly behind. Mrs. Haye was a fool, and with no medical training, even if she were an honourable. Of course it was bad for the patient to walk upstairs. If she had had her way, they would never have put him in a room two storeys up, even if he had been in it since childhood. These ex-V.A.D.’s who gave themselves such airs.
Nan was drowned in a wave of silent grief.
To see him supported between Mr. William and Robert with white bandages over his head and him so weak and feeble and who would never see again, and the nurse who was not fit to look after a sick boy she was that cantankerous.
She trailed away to a cup o’ tea in the kitchen.
Mrs. Haye went round to her sitting-room through the door in the wall of the rose garden. No solution yet, nothing found, nothing arranged. Only one or two letters of condolence left to answer. And the nurse was terrible. Terrible. The idea of carrying him up those narrow stairs. There might have been a nasty accident if the woman had had her way. And he was in such a difficult state of mind. You could not say a word to him without his taking it wrong. Really, the only thing to do was to watch him and await developments. And in two or three years’ time they would marry him to some nice girl, they would look out for one. There was—well, perhaps.
She went upstairs to dress for dinner.
He sat on a chair while the nurse got the bed ready. His head hurt him, the stairs must have done that. Poor Ruffles, it was too bad that he was finished. His head was throbbing; how he hated pain, and in the head it was unbearable. And this atmosphere of women. There was no male friend who would come to stay, he had always been too unpleasant, or had always tried to be clever, or in the movement. And now there was no escape, none. A long way away there might be a country of rest, made of ice, green in the depths, and ice that was not cold, a country to rest in. He would lie in the grotto where it was cool and where his head would be clear and light, and where there was nothing in the future, and nothing in the past. He would lie on the grass that was soft, and that had no ants and no bugs, and there would be no flies in the air and no sun above his head, but only a grey clearness in the sky, that stretched to mountains blue against the distance, through the door of his ice-house. There would be pine trees in clumps or suddenly alone, and strange little mounds, one after the other, that grew and grew in height till they met the mountains that cut off the sky. A country of opera-bouffe. And little men in scarlet and orange would come to fight up and down the little hills, some carrying flags, others water pistols. There would be no wounded and no dead, but they would be very serious.
Why couldn’t there be something really romantic and laughable in life? With sentimentality and tuppenny realism. Something to wake one out of an existence like this, where day would follow day with nothing to break the monotony, where meal followed meal and where people sat still between meals letting troubles fall into their lap. Nothing stirred.
“There, it is ready now. Take off your dressing-gown and lean on my shoulder. There we are. Would you prefer to have your dressings renewed now, or after dinner?”
“Oh, now, to get it over.”