It was Sister B. who did the most to fit the puzzle together. Every night she would sit by his bed and question him, bringing him back to the point time after time. We were filling in more of the puzzle every night. Alfred had lived in Birmingham, had been on a canal barge, had taken coal to some place; he had won medals, had a mother, and there was a picture that he remembered. Policemen excited him to frenzy, and when he saw one of the Force he would fling apples or slippers, or any handy missile, through the window. He could play cards too. There was a gradual mental development—the most fascinating thing one can watch. But it was slow, and Alfred seemed like a rudderless boat at sea till he met Jock.
Jock is a story all to himself. Suffice it to say of him that his vocation was to be a guardian angel. Every Scottish soldier is Jock in hospital, and perhaps other hospitals have found Jocks like ours—always unselfish, cheery, uncomplaining, infinitely pitiful to every trouble but their own; still I believe our Jock would outshine theirs.
Sister B. decided to bring Alfred on a visit to Jock’s ward. I must say that the experiment was painful. A surgical ward is a very cheerful place, and poor Alfred, shaky, bewildered, pitiful, was a figure to darken the sun at that time. But Sister B. was a nurse of brave experiments. She dared and succeeded; she was resourceful and passionately interested in her patients. So she brought Alfred to this sane and happy ward, and sat him down by Jock’s bed. Jock had been wounded at Loos in September, 1915, and had remained in bed for eight months with the occasional variation of an operation and brief respites when he was up and in a wheeled chair.
Among many pathetic things I had seen, none seemed to me more pathetic than the sight of those two war-shattered boys together. Alfred, nearly speechless, his poor wits all astray, tried to make himself lucid, while Jock, with infinite pity on his face, tried to understand and to help. The one looked like an angel of mercy, the other like some poor soul in search of peace. I don’t know how they talked, but somehow they made friends. Alfred was utterly unwilling to go back to his own ward, though he returned laden with cigarettes and apples. From that day the friendship grew. Every day Alfred visited Jock, and Jock, when he could get into a chair, returned the call. Somehow they talked. Jock has infinite patience and tact; he has graduated in the college of suffering and has learnt the whole art of compassion. He found out that Alfred knew most things knowable about football, that he was, in fact, a ‘real little sport.’
The ward adopted Alfred as a sort of mascot; he might do and have what he liked. He was just an unhappy child, humoured at all points.
Then arrived someone who solved the riddle of the medals and the picture of which Alfred talked so much. This man had seen a picture of Alfred boxing another celebrated pugilist. Alfred was a well-known character in the Ring—he had won his nine medals in various contests. To name a boxer was to set Alfred blazing with excitement and fearful efforts to stammer out some story of an encounter in which he had taken part.
We learnt more of Ada at last. Ada was ‘his girl,’ and he had left the pigeons in her keeping.
‘Poor Ada,’ I said one day to Jock, ‘what would she say if she saw Alfred?’
‘Alfred writes to her,’ Jock replied solemnly. ‘At least I write for him.’
‘But,’ I objected, ‘Ada may fall in love with your letters—it’s not fair to her.’