Cold Hand in Mine: Strange Stories

as a therapeutic dead end, except for those resolved to mine it financially. He preferred to treat visibly physiological disturbances with acceptably physiological nostra. In the present case, he seriously thought of again calling in Doctor Oughtred, who had undoubtedly made a very real contribution in the earlier manifestation of the child's illness.

'Do you read the local paper, Mrs Parker?' asked Hilary, whiter than the sheets between which he lay.

'I don't get round to it,' replied Mrs Parker, in her carefully uncommitted way. 'We take it in. Mr Parker feels we should.'

'Why does he feel that?'

'Well, you want to know what's going on around you, don't you?'

'Yes,' said Hilary.

'Not that Mr Parker reads anything very much. Why should he, when he's got the wireless? The Advertiser just piles up in heaps till the waste people come for it from the hospital.'

'What do they do with it at the hospital?'

'Pulp it, I believe. You've got to do what you can for charity, haven't you?'

'Bring me all the local papers in the heap, Mrs Parker. I'm ill too. It's just like the hospital.'

'You couldn't read them,' said Mrs Parker, as before; carefully not conceding.

'I could,' said Hilary.

'How's that? You can't read.'

'I can,' said Hilary. 'I can read anything. Well, almost anything. Bring me the papers, Mrs Parker.'

She expressed no surprise that he should want to read something so boring even to her; nor did it seem to strike her that there might be anything significant in his demand. In fact, she could think of nothing to say; and as, in any case, she was always wary about what she let fall in the ambience of her employment, she left Hilary's room without one word more.

But, as much as three days later, Eileen had something to say when she brought him his midday meal (not a very imaginative one) and an assembly of pills.

'You are old-fashioned,' remarked Eileen. 'At least that's what Mrs Parker thinks.'

'What d'you mean?' asked Hilary in a sulky tone, because he disliked Eileen.

'Asking for the Advertiser, when you can't even read it.'

'I can read it,' said Hilary.

'I know more than Mrs Parker knows,' said Eileen. 'It's that little girl, isn't it? Mary Rossiter, your little sweetheart.'

Hilary said nothing.

'I've seen you together. I know. Not that I've told Mrs Parker.'

'You haven't?'

'Not likely. Why should I tell her?'

Hilary considered that.

'She's a silly cow,' said Eileen casually.

Hilary was clutching with both hands at the sheet. 'Do you know what happened to Mary?' he asked, looking as far away from Eileen as he could look.

'Not exactly. She was interfered with, and mauled about. Bitten all over, they say, poor little thing. But it's been hushed up proper, and you'd better hurry and forget all about her. That's all you can do, isn't it?'

In the end, having passed at Briarside and at Gorselands through the more difficult years of the Second World War, Hilary went to Wellington also. His father thought it a tidier arrangement: better adapted to more restricted times. By then, of course, Hilary's brothers, Roger and Gilbert, had left the school, though in neither case for the university. There seemed no point, they both decided; and their father had had no difficulty in agreeing. He had been to a university himself, and it had seemed to him more of a joke than anything else, and a not particularly useful one.

Despite the intermittent connection with Wellington, theirs had not been a particularly army family, and it was with surprise that Mr Brigstock learned of his youngest son's decision to make the army his career, especially as the war was not so long concluded. Hilary, as we have said, was no milksop, and no doubt the Wellington ethos had its influence; but, in any case, it is a mistake to think that an officers' mess is manned solely by good-class rowdies. There are as many (and, naturally, as few) sensitive people in the army as in most other places; and some of them find their way there precisely because they are so.

A further complexity is that the sensitive are sometimes most at their ease with the less sensitive. Among Hilary's friends at the depot, was a youth named Callcutt, undisguisedly extrovert, very dependable. On one occasion, Hilary Brigstock took Callcutt home for a few days of their common leave.

It was not a thing he did often, even now. The atmosphere of his home still brought out many reserves in him. It would hardly be too much to say that he himself went there as little as possible. But by now both Roger and Gilbert were married, and had homes of their own, as they frequently mentioned; so that Hilary was beginning to expect qualms within him on the subject of his father's isolation, and, surely, loneliness. Late middle-aged people living by themselves were always nowadays said to be lonely. Unlike most sons, Hilary at times positively wished that his father would marry again, as people in his situation were expected to do; that his father's views on the subject of women had somehow become less definite.

And really the place was dull. Stranded there with Callcutt, Hilary perceived luminously, as in a minutely detailed picture, how entirely dull, in every single aspect, his home was.

More secrets are improperly disclosed from boredom than from any other motive; and more intimacies imparted, with relief resulting, or otherwise.

'I love it here,' said Callcutt, one day after lunch, when Mr Brigstock had gone upstairs for the afternoon, as he normally did.

'That's fine,' replied Hilary. 'What do you love in particular about it?'

'The quiet,' said Callcutt immediately. 'I think one's home should be a place where one can go for some quiet. You're a lucky chap.'

'Yes,' agreed Hilary. 'Quiet it certainly is. Nowadays, at least. When my two elder brothers were here, it wasn't quiet at all.'

'Remind me where they are now?'

'Married. Both of them. With homes of their own.'

'Nice girls?'

'So-so.'

'Kids?'

'Two each.'

'Boys?'

'All boys. We only breed boys.'

'Only?'

'There hasn't been a girl in the Brigstock family within living memory.'

'Saves a lot of trouble,' said Callcutt.

'Loses a lot of fun,' said Hilary.

'Not at that age.'

'Particularly, perhaps, at that age.'

'How's that? You're not one of these Lolita types, like old whatnot?'

'When I was a child I knew a girl who meant more to me than any girl has meant to me since. More, indeed, than anyone at all. Remember that I never knew my mother.'

'Lucky chap again,' said Callcutt. 'Well, in some ways. No, I shouldn't have said that. I apologize. Forget it.'

'That's all right.'

'Tell me about your girl friend. I'm quite serious. As a matter of fact, I know perfectly well what you meant about her.'