Doug Allyn: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 799 & 800, March/April 2008

“Sorry, Sister.”

“Aye, you sound it, too,” she laughed, and although she was plumping Wilfie’s pillows, he knew it was Ron those Irish eyes were smiling at. “You said you were wanting to cheer the patient up, Ron Tyler, not set fire to his bed, now away with you and let the poor boy sleep.”

Patient? Boy? To her, Wilfie was nothing more than another brick baking in the kiln of convalescence and she hadn’t even bothered to learn his bloody name. He could understand it, he supposed. Hundreds of wounded soldiers passed through these disinfected portals, but even so. She’d not only called Ron by his full name, she’d used his rank as well—

“Help, somebody help,” Ron cried, as Sister wheeled his chair away. “I’m being kidnapped!”

“Fat lot of good it’d do me, holding you to ransom,” she joked back. “Your family’s as poor as blooming church mice!”

As their banter faded, Wilfie felt the emptiness creep up on him. Slowly, silently, it began pressing on his bandages, crushing down his spirit and suffocating his hopes.

And the worst part was, he couldn’t even cry.

“So what’s it like, this chateau, then?” he asked, as Ron sneaked him another cigarette. “Is it all slate roofs, lakes, and turrets, like the one we saw outside that village where we were billeted the first few nights after we arrived? Ven— Verr—” He could never pronounce these flaming words.

“Véziéres,” Ron said, without stumbling. “And it’s not only like that chateau, mate, it is that chateau. All crystal candelabra, the sort of place where you can’t see the wood panelling for tapestries and the ceilings are so high, giraffes wouldn’t brush against them. You know, I bet these paintings cost a pretty penny, too.”

“Stuff ’em,” Wilfie said. “Stuff the sodding lot of them.”

What use was posh furniture when he couldn’t bloody see it? So what if the silk hangings could be removed, washed, and then rehung again? And who bloody cared whether the bed was Louis ex-one-vee or ex-vee-one when you were strapped to it night and bloody day?

The length of the pause suggested he’d put his foot in it again, and Wilfie felt bad about it, he really did. Apart from Ron’s visits, time hung and wouldn’t pass. The doctor’s calls were brief and far too impersonal for Wilfie’s liking, and worse, the snotty sod talked over him, as though Wilfie was deaf, as well as swaddled like a mummy. Even the nurses who flittered in and out to change his dressings and refresh his bedpans were too busy to stop and chat. There were far worse injuries than his, they’d tell him briskly, and remind him that he could at least feel the discomfort, which was more than could be said for those poor souls down there in the morgue. The trouble was, Wilfie was too proud to say outright that he was grateful to Ron for wheeling himself along when Sister’s back was turned. But truly, if it hadn’t been for him, he’d have gone stark, staring mad, and in any case, the poor sod was only trying to cheer him up. And it wasn’t exactly a picnic for him, either. Losing one leg, then a foot, what a bugger that was. The trouble was, Wilfie wasn’t the type who could just say “Sorry” and forget it, and, unlike Ron, he wasn’t good at making conversation. Never knew what to say that didn’t come out wrong.

“Hey, Wilf, guess what?” He should have remembered. Ron never took offence. “You know that girl we used to see cycling round Véziéres?” There was genuine excitement in his voice. “The one that fancied you?”

“The ginger one with fat thighs?” Wilfie said, because to the best of his recollection none of them had looked twice at him, not even the fat one.

“No, no, no. The little blonde who worked in the baker’s.”

“Think so,” Wilfie lied. “Wore glasses, didn’t she?”

“If she did, I never saw them, but the point is, she’s outside, my old mucker. Feeding the sparrows on the lawn not fifty feet from your bedroom window.”

Oh. For some reason Wilfie imagined he’d be on one of the upper stories, floating in the air in his fairytale castle. Not wedged like a sack of coals in some dark corner on the ground floor. But yeah, it made sense, he supposed. They’d want to protect his lower-class blood from staining their precious oak parquet, or make sure his working-class vowels didn’t shock the ghosts that drifted so genteelly round the West Wing.

“Here, are you listening, Prince Charming? I said, she’s waving at you. Not that I can make out what she’s saying through the glass—”

“Then open the bloody window,” Wilfie snapped.

“Ah, but then I’d need a jemmy and they’re not hospital issue,” Ron laughed. “All the windows have been nailed shut. Keeps the germs out, apparently.”

More likely to keep the burglars out, Wilfie thought sourly.

“But let’s see if we can’t improve on the situation, shall we.” The wheels on Ron’s chair proclaimed a desperate need for grease as he scraped his way across the room towards the window. “That’s better. We’re talking with our hands and reading one another’s lips. She says her name’s Michelle. She’s asking how you’re doing, so I said you’re feeling a bit down in the dumps—”

“What the bloody hell did you tell her that for?”

“—so she said she’ll drop by again tomorrow, if that’s all right with you.” There was a pause. “Well, is it?”

Was it! “Suppose so,” Wilfie said.

And all night he couldn’t sleep for trying to picture the baker’s shop with the petite blonde behind the counter who may or may not have been wearing glasses, but for the life of him he just couldn’t place her face. By the time dawn was glowing warm through his pyjamas, he realised he’d been picturing the wrong flaming baker’s shop, hadn’t he! It would have been the other one she worked in. The one behind the ironmonger’s, not the one opposite the church!

Wilfie was always getting things bloody wrong.

In fact, that’s what got him in this mess in the first place. He was sloppy. Always had been. He’d lose concentration at a critical moment, and that’s when mistakes happened. He didn’t mean them to, of course. But somehow his mind would get distracted, or he couldn’t quite remember, especially when he was under pressure, just what it was that he was supposed to do. Was it that you had to press this lever, or not ever press the flaming thing? Clockwise or counter-clockwise to twizzle that red knob?

All that drilling, all that training, and he still got things back to front.

Like that sodding grenade. Hung on to it too long, it blew up as he was throwing it. He was lucky. It could have literally blown up in his face. And even luckier that there was no one else around. He could have killed someone with his carelessness that time. But of course, if there was no one else around, there was no one else to blame, and now Wilfie’d be a laughingstock again, he really would. So he supposed that was at least something to be grateful for. Not having to go back and face his regiment.

Ha-bloody-ha, very funny, too. But it wasn’t simply the humiliation. He’d got used to that. No, the thing was, Wilfie’d really like to get things right for once. To not screw up.

And this Michelle...

It was such a pretty name.

“Describe her to me, Ron.”

“Again?”

“I want to get the picture right inside my head.” Before the memories of real life faded, and before colours turned to black.