Barbara Cleverly - Tug of War

Varimont turned a corner and walked down a narrower corridor, pausing finally in sepulchral gloom in front of a stout oak door. Before he could insert his key in the lock Joe commented: ‘Formidable defences. You must reassure me, Varimont, that your Thibaud presents no danger to visitors.’

‘Oh, none at all. These precautions are for his protection. Be reassured, Commander. . mademoiselle. When he is not suffering a nightmare, he is calm itself. He sits, sometimes stands, looking into an internal distance. He has a slight reaction to some of his visitors. Some he obviously likes and he expresses this by reaching out to touch their arm, very briefly. Do not be alarmed should he do this, mademoiselle. It is a sign perhaps of his returning humanity.’

‘What does he do if he takes a dislike to someone?’ Dorcas thought it prudent to ask.

‘Rather embarrassing, I’m afraid! He climbs into his bed, pulls the blanket over his head and goes to sleep. Come and meet him.’

The tall slender man was sitting on his bed, under the single window, hunched and quiet. Not presented in hospital pyjamas but duly ‘spruced up’, Joe thought, in a white shirt and pressed trousers. The late afternoon sun caught his head, lighting hair that must once have been blond but was now streaked with grey. He was facing away from them and made no response to their entry or Varimont’s cheerful bellow: ‘Hello there, Thibaud old chap! And how are you doing today? Look here — I’ve brought you some visitors.’

There were chairs in the sparsely furnished room but they didn’t sit. There were brightly coloured posters on the grey walls but the visitors paid no more attention to the scenes of the Châteaux of the Loire than did the occupant of the room. They trooped in and stood awkwardly in front of the patient in a line watching him. Joe had once had to escort a terrified young lady from the cinema, passing in front of a row of people absorbed by the last reel of The Phantom of the Opera. Their faces had shown much the same expression as the one he was now studying with attention. The man’s focus was elsewhere and someone passing through his field of vision was a momentary annoyance, no more. The doctor chattered on, behaving as though his patient perfectly understood him. In the middle of a sentence and out of joint with the doctor’s speech, the man suddenly reached out and stroked his arm twice. At once, Varimont responded with the same gesture. Treating this as the establishment of some kind of communication, he drew Joe forward and introduced him.

Thibaud stared through him, his startling blue eyes expressionless, and made no movement. He must at one time have been an exceptionally handsome man, Joe thought. Even the distortion of the jaw, the pallor and the thinness of the flesh could not quite quench an impression of nobility. Joe spoke a few hearty and meaningless sentences and then floundered, running into the quicksand of indifference. Picking up Joe’s hesitation, Varimont then introduced Dorcas.

To both men’s surprise, she stepped forward without hesitating to stand directly in front of him. She made no attempt to speak. She put out a hand and gently stroked his cheek in greeting. Then she reached into her pocket and produced a rose-pink biscuit, one of the biscuits they bake in Reims to nibble with their champagne, Joe noticed. She must have brought it with her from the cake shop, he thought, as there had been no such confection on offer in the director’s office.

They watched as she snapped it in two, releasing a seductive scent of vanilla and a cloud of icing-sugar, and, murmuring, offered half to Thibaud. Joe felt Varimont, standing close by him, tense as his patient turned his head slightly. He allowed her to open his hand and then close it again over the biscuit. Dorcas carefully moved his hand towards his mouth and he began to eat. Having swallowed the first half, he opened his hand and stretched it out. Dorcas gave him the second half and he crunched his way through that too, to her evident satisfaction. When he’d finished, she tenderly whisked a crumb from his chin, crooning to him in a language Joe had not heard before.

And then Joe heard the doctor gasp in surprise. Thibaud turned to her and looked at her as though he saw her at last and he smiled. A smile of utter sweetness and childlike pleasure. And, swallowing his emotion, Joe acknowledged that of the many smiles that would be directed at Dorcas in the coming years, this was the one above all she would remember. A hand came out again, hesitantly, and reached for her shiny black head. He stroked her hair gently twice.

Standing once again outside Thibaud’s room, Joe detained the director before he could lock the door. ‘A moment, sir. That was all very interesting and involving but in no way does our encounter begin to address the problem of your patient’s nationality. I wonder, would you permit me. .?’

He outlined his plan and the director nodded in agreement. ‘Can’t do any harm and may tell us something. Carry on, Commander.’

Joe opened the door again and checked that the man had, as expected, settled back into his slumped posture, sideways on the bed, face turned away from the door.

In a loud and convincing rendering of an English sergeant major’s voice, he barked out an order.

‘Atte-e-e-nSHUN! On your feet, laddie! Stand by your bed!’ More parade ground commands followed and each was received blankly, with not the slightest twitch of a muscle. Joe went to stand directly in front of him and snapped off a smart salute. ‘Reporting for duty, SIR!’ This time the voice was that of an officer. Impossible for a trained soldier of any rank not to offer the reciprocal salute.

Not one joint of one finger moved in response. Joe looked keenly at the man’s features, awake to the slightest shifting expression.

And, finally, Joe’s efforts were rewarded. At last the face began to twitch. His nostrils flared. His upper lip trembled. His mouth opened. Thibaud gave a wide yawn, collapsed on to his bed and pulled the blanket over his head.

Joe waited until he was navigating his course with certainty back across the city before he spoke to Dorcas.

‘So — the doctor’s efforts “will have been worth it” eh? And where, pray, did you learn to juggle the future perfect tense with such confidence, miss?’

He was aware that his question sounded ponderous but he was keen to hear her answer.

She left a silence just long enough to reprove him for his condescension. ‘Well, it could have been — if I’m allowed to use a conditional perfect without incurring disapproval — in the stables of the Vicomte de Montcalme last year. Indeed, I do remember now that it was.’

‘Oooh! Hoity-toity! If you’re going to talk to me like an offended duchess — or worse, her lady’s maid — I’m going to throw you out on to the cobbles right now. Are you going to elaborate on that throwaway remark?’

‘I don’t know where you get your information about me but you must have noticed that my father is a gentleman. He may well be a painter and an English eccentric but I can tell you that these qualities make him very acceptable to aristocratic or rich people who live in the south. He can paint in whatever daubist style is fashionable but what you may not know is that he’s a jolly good portrait painter in a traditional way. His productions are “lively and perceptive”, people say — and I’d add, more importantly, flattering. Last summer he was painting the Vicomte de Montcalme and I used to go along with him and play. . ride ,’ she corrected herself hastily, ‘with the Vicomte’s children. Two sons and a daughter. The oldest boy, Félicien, was my special friend. He’ll be seventeen now. I’m quite good at copying accents, which is a help. Orlando’s been summoned back again to do an equestrian portrait of the Vicomtesse. I can’t wait to see them all again!’