2
They entered Albert Edward, which was a small ward of twelve beds, used just now for officers. It smelt of iodoform. Several of the beds had visitors round them. Some of the patients were in wheeled chairs, smoking. One, in bed, was singing, unintelligibly, in a high, shrill voice. At the table by the centre window two nurses stood, a probationer and a V.A.D., making swabs and talking. They looked tired, and were very young. The other two nurses, the staff-nurse and the super, were talking to two of the patients. They had learnt not to look so tired. Also perhaps the pleasant excitement of being in Albert Edward bore them up.
The staff-nurse said, 'Mr. Doye? That's his bed over there—nine. He's up in a chair this afternoon. He's in pretty bad pain most of the time. They may have to amputate, but the doctor hopes to manage without.'
Alix and Nonie went across the ward to nine, where Mr. Doye, in a brown dressing-gown, sat in a wheeled chair, smoking a cigarette and talking to the super, who was rather nice-looking and had auburn hair. In the next bed lay the singer, with fixed blue eyes and flushed cheeks and a capeline bandage round his head, carolling German songs in a high, monotonous voice.
'Quite delirious, poor thing,' the super explained to the visitors. 'His nerves are all to bits. He was a prisoner, till he got exchanged. And would you believe it, they'd never taken the shrapnel out of his head; he went under operation for it here last week.' She moved away, whispering first to Nonie behind the patient's back, 'He has to be kept pretty quiet, please; the pain gets bad on and off.'
'Hullo,' said Basil Doye, smiling at them. 'This is great.'
He had a soft, rather quick way of speaking; to-day he was huskier than usual, perhaps because he was ill. He was long and slim; he had used, in pre-war days, to lounge and slouch, but possibly did that no more. Anyhow to-day he merely lay limply in a chair, so they could not judge. His long pale face and flexible mouth and dark eyebrows were always moving and changing; so were his rather bright eyes, that kept shading and glinting from green to hazel. His forehead and rumpled hair were damp just now, either from the heat or from some other cause. His bandaged right hand was raised in a sling.
'You do look an old wreck,' said Nonie frankly. 'What did you go and do it for? A silly way of getting wounded, I call it, playing ball with bombs.'
'Rotten, wasn't it? But it would have played ball with me if I hadn't. It was bound to go off in a moment, you see, and I naturally tried to house it with the foe first; one often can. My mistake, I know. These little things will happen.... I say, you're the first people I've seen from the shop. How's it going? Who are the good people this year?'
They began to tell him. He listened, fidgeting, with restless eyes.