Gerald Seymour - The Unknown Soldier

'Something wrong with me, is there?' Wroughton snarled.

She broke away, fled for the kitchen.

In his mind was an inventory, not of what he found but of what was not there.

Bartholomew's medical bag – gone. He forced open the drugs cabinet in the bedroom – the lower shelf was half emptied. He broke into the cupboard beside the cabinet – no operating kit there, and the packets of lint and bandages had been rifled through, as if some had been taken hurriedly. From the kitchen, stepping over the treacherously wet floor that the maid had mopped, he went into the utility room; he remembered from the one time he had been to the villa that Bartholomew kept water and fuel there. No water canister and no fuel can.

Back in the living room, alongside the chair where the cat had taken refuge, Wroughton lifted the phone and dialled the call back.

The answer came in Arabic digits for the last number that had called.

He was about to write it on the pad beside the phone when he checked himself and scrawled it on the back of his hand around an abrasion that was now scabbed. He tore off the top sheet and slipped it carefully into the breast pocket of his last linen suit.

He rang his office in the embassy, gave his instructions to his assistant, told her the telephone number. Where had that call originated from?

Wroughton looked around him, saw the bareness of Bartholomew's life. Nothing there that was personal. Rented furniture, hired fittings – as if his soul had been eradicated. How could it have been different? It came to him like a jolting blow, as violent as any of the agronomist's kicks and punches: he himself had pulled his telephone plug from the wall socket, he had switched off his mobile while he had sat naked in his own room, among his own rented furniture and hired fittings.

On his way out of the living room, going past the settee beside the door, he lifted a cushion and threw it at the chair where the cat was, but when it landed the cat had gone.

Wroughton slammed the front door shut after him.

He asked, in the new language of his life, 'How long?' The dark had settled under the awning. He could barely see the doctor's face.

The voice from the shadowed mouth was crisp. 'Let's not fuck about. You speak the Queen's English as well as I do. I haven't the faintest idea what you're asking me. In your condition, and if you want my further help, I would suggest you end the charade. You're English – if you want answers you will speak in English. So, let's start again.'

Caleb shook. He thought the doctor knelt on the manual and that his thigh pressed the launcher against Caleb's good leg. As he remembered, he had last spoken English in the taxi on his way to the wedding. Through the dusty streets of Landi Khotal, bumping in the back of the taxi, squashed between his friends and nervous, he had spoken English – but not since.

As if he walked a new road, he spoke with soft hesitation: 'How long before I can move?'

"That's better, wasn't so difficult, eh? You spoke English when you were in extreme pain. How long? Depends what you want to achieve. If you want to get off these stinking unhygienic sacks and go have a piss, because you've drained out four saline drip bags, you could probably manage that now. I'm sure Miss Jenkins will support your arm while you do it.'

'How long before I can move away?'

'If you're going in Miss Jenkins's vehicle, I suppose you could move straight after you've had your piss.' .

'By camel?'

'Still the adventurer. I believe I could have you hobbling around in the morning. If it was imperative, and you've slept, you could mount up and head for where the sunset will be – yes, in the morning. .. Is the pain bad?'

'I accept the pain.'

'I can give you morphine for it.'

'No. When I spoke, what did I say?'

'If you're intent on riding a camel tomorrow I suggest I inject you now intravenously with Ampicillin, an antibiotic, then another dose at midnight, another at dawn and one more when you head off. In addition I will give you what syringes I have, because you should take four a day for three days.'

'What did I say?'

'After that, because your arm will be a pincushion, you can take it orally – again it's five hundred milligrams a dose, four times a day.'

'You saw my face?'

'Difficult not to have, young man, when I'm bent over you and scraping that crap out of your leg – difficult not to have seen your face, and difficult not to have heard what you said. Right, let's get it into you.'

His arm was lifted and the fingers held his wrist just below the plastic bracelet. He felt the cool damp of the swab, then saw the movement, felt the prick of the needle.

The needle was withdrawn. He heard the grunting as the man pushed himself heavily up.

'You have to sleep. I'll jab you again at midnight, but you must sleep through it. Sweet dreams, my nameless friend.'

Caleb heard his shoes scuff away in the sand. He would not sleep and would not dream. He did not know what he had said, knew only that the doctor had seen his face. He tossed and the pain in his leg surged. He remembered the men who had seen his face, and all were gone. To see his face was to die. And he remembered the old man who had ridden the donkey, who had brought him to the opium smugglers – who was blind and had not seen his face – and he thought the lifeless eyes might have saved the old man.

To have seen his face was to be condemned. The doctor had.

Caleb shuddered and the pain racked him. So had the woman.

It was the start of the last day. Caleb was jolted from his sleep. A hand lifted his arm. It had been a fitful sleep, without calm. The swab wetted the skin. From instinct, because he was touched, he flinched and tried to break the grip.

'Easy, young man, easy. Don't fight me.'

The doctor's voice was soft in his ear. Then the needle went in. He gazed up and saw the outline of the man's face and above it the dark ceiling of the awning.

'Had you slept long?'

Caleb nodded.

'That's good. Funny, but sleep is a better healer than any drug. It's good that you slept and you must sleep again.'

The needle was withdrawn. His arm was lowered gently.

He remembered what he had thought before the sleep had caught him.

' Why do you help me?'

The shape towered above him. 'The question, young man, is becoming repetitive. You care not to tell me your name, and I care not to burden you with reasoning for my actions. You get your next injection at dawn. Go back to sleep.'

Caleb started up, tried to push himself higher on his elbows, to raise his back. 'That's not good enough.'

'It isn't good enough that I don't know your name, don't know where you come from, don't know where you're going and what your intentions are when you get there. Don't tell me, young man, what's "good enough" and what's not.'

He was gone. Caleb sagged. The body of the launcher was against his leg. When he had slept he had forgotten it and the pain in his leg, and he had forgotten that to see his face was to be condemned.

The kindness of the doctor and the devotion of the woman who had brought help to him did not compete with the demand of and his obligation to the family. It would be weakness if he did not destroy them. He lay on his back under the awning and felt the throb in his leg and the hammer of the pulse from the antibiotic injection. The doctor and the woman were trifles when set against the importance of the family: they had seen his face. They were condemned. They stood between him and his duty. He let his hand fall beside him, and beyond the edge of the sacking bed, his fingers lifted a pinch of sand grains and he held his hand above his chest and the sand ran from it, fell on him – not one grain of sand but a thousand. A great crowd, not one person but a thousand, passed him and among them were the doctor who was kind and the woman who was devoted. He could not cherry-pick among the crowd he walked through with a suitcase or a grip bag or a rucksack, could not say that some were his enemy and some were not – could not extricate the doctor and the woman from the crowd. To do so would be a betrayal of the family, would show weakness.