The Wench Is Dead

Chapter Six

I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while

(G. B. Shaw, Back to Methuselah)

At 2 a.m. the inevitable occurred; but fortunately Morse managed to attract the quick attention of the nurse as she'd flitted like some Nightingale around the darkened wards. The noise of the curtains being drawn around his bed sounded to Morse loud enough to rouse the semi-dead. Yet none of his fellow-patients seemed to stir, and she – the blessed girl! – had been quite marvellous.

'I don't even know which way up the thing should go,' confided Morse.

'Which way round, you mean!' Eileen (such was her name) had whispered, as she proceeded without the slightest embarrassment to explain exactly how the well-trained patient would negotiate this particular crisis. Then, leaving him with half a roll of white toilet-paper, and the firm assurance of a second coming within the next ten minutes, she was gone.

It was all over – consummated with a bowl of warm water and a brief squirt of some odiferous air-freshener. Whew! Not half as bad as Morse had feared – thanks to that ethereal girl; and as he smiled up gratefully at her, he thought there might have been a look in her eyes that transgressed the borders of perfunctory nursing. But Morse would always have thought there was, even if there wasn't; for he was the sort of man for whom some area of fantasy was wholly necessary, and his imagination followed the slender Eileen, as elegantly she walked away: about 5' 8' in height – quite tall really; in her mid-twenties; eyes greenish-hazel, in a delicately featured, high- cheekboned face; no ring of any on either hand. She looked so good, so wholesome, in her white uniform with its dark-blue trimmings.

Go to sleep, Morse!

At 7.30 a.m., after breakfasting on a single wafer of weetabix with an inadequate pour-over of semi-skimmed and no sugar), Morse noted with great satisfaction he NIL BY MOUTH embargo was now in abeyance, he poured himself a glass of water with the joy of a liberated hostage. There followed for him, that morning, standard readings of pulse-rate and blood-pressure, a bedside wash in a portable basin, the remaking of his bed, provision of a fresh jug of water (!), a flirting confab with Fiona, the purchase of The Times, a cup of Bovril from the gorgeous Violet, and (blessedly) not a single spoke stuck in the hospital machinery from the eminence grise installed at the seat of power.

At 10.50 a.m. a white-coated cohort of consultant-cum-underlings came to stand around his bed, and to consider the progress of its incumbent. The senior man, briefly looking through Morse's file, eyed the patient with a somewhat jaundiced eye.

‘How are you feeling this morning?'

'I think I'll live on for a few more weeks – thanks to you' said Morse, with somewhat sickening sycophancy.

‘You mention here something about your drinking habbits.' continued the consultant, unimpressed as it appeared with such spurious gratitude.

‘Yes?'

‘You drink a lot.' It was a statement.

‘That's a lot, you think?'

‘The consultant closed the file with a sigh and handed it back to Nessie. 'During my long years in the medical profession, Mr Morse, I have learned that there are two categories of statistics which can invariably be discounted: the sexual prowess of those suffering from diabetes mellitus; and the boozing habits of our country's middle management.'

'I'm not a diabetic.'

'You will be if you keep drinking a bottle of Scotch a week.'

'Well – perhaps not every week.'

'You sometimes drink two a week, you mean?'

There was a twinkle in the consultant's eye as he waved his posse of acolytes across to the bed of the weakly Greenaway, and sat himself down on Morse's bed.

'Have you had a drop yet?'

'Drop of what?'

'It's a dreadful give-away, you know' (the consultant nodded to the locker) '- that tissue paper.'

'Oh!'

'Not tonight – all right?'

Morse nodded.

'And one further word of advice. Wait till Sister's off duty!'

'She'd skin me alive!' mumbled Morse.

The consultant looked at Morse strangely. 'Well, since you mention it, yes. But that wasn't what I was thinking of, no.'

'Something worse?'

'She's about the most forbidding old biddy in the profession; but just remember she comes from north of the border.'

'I'm not quite sure… '

'She'd probably' (the consultant bent down and whispered in Morse's ear) ' – she'd probably draw the curtains and insist on fifty-fifty!'

Morse began to feel more happily settled; and after twenty minutes with The Times (Letters read, Crossword completed), one-handedly he folded back the covers of The Blue Ticket, and moving comfortably down against pillows started Chapter One.

‘Good book?',

‘So-so!' Morse had not been aware of Fiona's presence,; he shrugged non-committally, holding the pages rigidly his left hand.

‘ What's it called?'

‘Er The Blue – The Blue City.'

‘Detective story, isn't it? I think my mum's read that.'

Morse nodded uneasily. 'Do you read a lot?'

‘I used to, when I was young and beautiful.'

'This morning?'

'Sit up!'

Morse leaned forward as she softened up his pillows With a few left hooks and right crosses, and went on her way.

'Lovely girl, isn't she?' It wasn't Lewis this time who made the obvious observation, but the stricken Greenaway, now much recovered, and himself reading a book whose title was plain for all to see: The Age of Steam.

Morse pushed his own novel as unobtrusively as possible into his locker: it was a little disappointing, anyway.

'The Blue Ticket – that's what it is,' said Greenaway.

'Pardon?'

'You got the tide wrong – it's The Blue Ticket.'

'Did I? Ah yes! I, er, I don't know why I'm bothering to read it, really.'

'Same reason I did, I suppose. Hoping for a bit of sex every few pages.'

Morse grinned defeatedly.