Chris Cleave - Everyone Brave is Forgiven

“You’ve done a much better job than last time,” said Hilda.

“Oh, thanks.”

“The trick is really to get a good tight curl from the start, isn’t it? And then the rest looks after itself.”

“So long as one doesn’t spare the spray.”

“It isn’t on the ration, is it? The way I see it, hair spray is proof that the War Office wants us to be happy.”

“They want us to be upstanding. Hair spray is their talisman.”

“By the way,” said Hilda, “did I tell you that poor Huw was killed?”

“Oh dear,” said Mary, the morphine making it no more serious than a bun that had rolled off downhill.

“And Clive, at the same time.”

“ ‘What a shame,”’ said Mary, wondering if Hilda was dead too and then realizing that of course she couldn’t be, since here she was now. It was hard to keep up with who was and who wasn’t.

Hilda watched herself in the mirror. Softly at first and then rising to a piercing scream, the kettle finally boiled.

“Oh,” said Mary, who had forgotten.

Outside the kitchen window, the city tended to evening. Mary looked out and remembered there was a war. She made tea in the brown glazed pot, with leaves that had been used before. Oh, that’s right, thought Mary. I came out for tea .

Something had changed in the set of Hilda’s shoulders. The stiffness had come back to her neck. There was a brittle edge — in Hilda, and also in how Mary understood Hilda’s mood. Mary found it hard to explain to herself. The morphine had levels, visible from below but not from above.

Without taking her eyes from the mirror, Hilda said, “I expect I shall hate you, once this wears off.” Her own thought seemed to surprise her, and she followed it by saying, “Oh.”

Mary poured them each a cup, in which neither of them had the slightest interest, then set to work to redo Hilda’s bandages.

Hilda said, “This wouldn’t have happened if you’d been driving.’

“You know the ambulance was too much for me. I had to stop.”

“I only carried on because I thought you’d come back. You’ve taken it all from me now. Every man I ever liked, and now my looks.”

Mary fastened the bandage with a pin, though it spoiled the hairdo a bit. “I’ve tried to make it up to you for Alistair. You know I’ve stopped writing to him.”

“ ‘Well now you might as well. He won’t want me now. No one will.”

“You mustn’t say that.”

“But you must see it.”

“Please,” said Mary, not really knowing what she asked for.

Hilda said nothing. The wireless crackled and jived.

Mary finished off the bandage and pinned it. “It will heal, you know.”

“As if anything does.”

They snagged eyes in the mirror then, and Mary caught something bleaker than she could bear in Hilda’s face. The whole world was shattered, the pieces falling away from each other. The morphine was hardening as it cooled. Soon it would shatter too.

Outside, it was looking like dusk. “I should go,” said Mary. “The raids…”

Hilda emptied her handbag on the table. Lipstick and keys clattered out. Identity card, ration book, hat pins, a dozen syrettes of morphine.

“What are you doing?”

“If you care about me at all,” said Hilda, “take all these doses away.”

“Why?”

“Because you have to live with yourself.”

Mary tried to take Hilda’s hand, but Hilda wouldn’t let her. “Please…”

“Just go. Before this one wears off completely and I tell you what I think of you.”

Mary cast down her eyes. “I suppose you rather have.”

“Please go,” said Hilda. “I don’t think I can stand you anymore.”

Mary looked at the syrettes on the table, knowing she must leave them where they were but also that it was impossible. She picked up six of the doses, turned, and left the flat without speaking. The last she saw of Hilda was her slim back and the armored black curve of her hair.

ALISTAIR HAD BRIGGS WRAP the painting in blankets and take it to the fort’s central courtyard. He followed him down. A month on, Alistair still found it hard to balance without his arm. One had never realized how quietly an arm just got on with the business of equilibrium — counterbalancing here, giving a little nudge there. One hadn’t suspected that life was a circus trick, requiring exquisite balance and grace.

“All right, sir?” said his subaltern.

“Quite, thank you Briggs.”

“You’re not though, are you sir?”

“No,” said Alistair. “Go and find the quartermaster, will you, and have him issue me a new right arm, salutes for the execution of.”

“Gives you much pain, does it?”

“Think how much pain it will save me. I can never hit my thumb with a hammer again. It’s you chaps I feel sorry for.”

“Thank you, sir. Help you with anything else, can I?”

“Left pocket of my jacket. Pillbox. Take two out, would you, and find me a drink of water?”

The man fished out the pills and brought Alistair a canteen. The truth was that the pain was a bore, worse than it had been before the amputation. The phenacetin helped only a little, and in the meantime his evacuation number was taking forever to come up. He was still only eightieth in the queue, with a mail flight leaving the island every day that enemy action permitted. Often one’s number rose up the queue only to fall down again when some brass hat pulled strings for a favorite of theirs. And the mail plane carried only two casualties home at a time, sometimes one. It depended whether the island’s garrison had found much to write home about.

“Anything else?” said Briggs.

His subaltern was skin and bone, painful to look at. Alistair supposed he might not look any prettier himself. He nodded at the painting.

“I need us to take this back to a church near the Bingemma Gap. I want you to persuade the quartermaster, using all the arts at your disposal, to issue us with a truck and a ration of petrol. Note that I have spent three months restoring this painting. It is the best work I have ever done, and it means everything to me to get it back. I don’t suppose you can help the QM not to be a bore about it?”

Briggs thought for a moment. “I shall tell him it’s maps for the anti-invasion plans, sir. If that doesn’t work, I’ll tell him I know what he does with His Majesty’s Vaseline.”

“Thank you Briggs, you are wicked in a way that is thoroughly expeditious. Bring me the QM’s chit and I’ll sign it. Don’t speak a word of this. In return, I shall issue orders for all bombs and shrapnel to miss you by at least two hundred feet from now until the day of our victory.”

“Thank you, sir. Very handy indeed.”

When Briggs brought the Bedford up and loaded the painting into the truck bed, Alistair got the cab door open and struggled into the passenger seat. Briggs drove them across the drawbridge, the fort’s gates swung closed behind them, and they were out in the blue morning.

Alistair closed his eyes, too weary for chat. At least the nausea of the infection was gone. In its place he felt a sort of grief. He must have loved the arm, in a way. He didn’t know what had become of it — whether it had been incinerated or buried. There had been no words to mark its demise. There was no ritual when one fell apart, society preferring to wait until one was lost entirely.

The surgeon had given Alistair a briefing that lacked no medical detail. Disarticulation of the elbow with amputation through the joint, pronator and dermal flaps to be folded over, stitches to effect closure, the whole to be done under anesthesia induced by intravenous barbiturate. Sound about right to you, old man? Any questions?