'Who?'
'My Jack here.' She lifted his hand as if that helped her identify him and then let it subside. 'He was the one who was making the fuss,' she said.
'That's good, is it? Mustn't it mean he was conscious?'
'Not of his old Annie. The way he carried on it was more like he was having a bad dream and couldn't wake up.'
Hugh heard restlessness behind him. He couldn't look around, instead demanding 'Did you hear that?'
'What?' Ellen said with none of his nervous triumph.
'What this lady said.'
'Call me Annie, do.'
'We're all capable of hearing, Hugh. Nobody's lost their wits.' Rather less sharply Charlotte added 'Did your husband actually say anything, Annie?'
'He did that. Said there was someone on the screen that shouldn't be.'
This seemed remote enough for Hugh to experience some fleeting relief. 'In a cinema, you mean?'
'I wish he'd been dreaming about all the times he took me when we were courting. We used to go to the pictures twice a week and he always bought me flowers as well. I sometimes dream about that when I'm going off to sleep.' Annie's eyes grew unfocused and moist before she appeared to remember the question. 'It wasn't any picture-house,' she said. 'You'd have thought he was on about the screen around your Rory's bed.'
Hugh tried to recapture his sense of triumph but was closer to regretting his insistence. 'What did he say about it?' Ellen asked somewhere behind him.
'We couldn't make half of it out, me and the nurses. They're a credit to the hospital, let me promise you. Your Rory's in the best hands.' Hugh was afraid she'd lost her conversational way again, and was on the edge of having to prompt her when she said 'He kept saying they were hiding behind the screen. On the floor, it sounded like, or maybe they went under the bed.'
Hugh had to ask the question. 'Who?'
'Nobody they'd let in a hospital. Some man that was all bones and so dirty he left marks on the screen. Jack thought he was a big spider at first, he was going so fast, or maybe it was how he was going.'
Hugh heard movement behind him again as Charlotte said 'You seem to have understood quite a lot. Was that the half?'
It was clear to Hugh that she was inviting no more, but at the end of some visible musing Annie said 'One thing that was funny – well, you mightn't have thought it was. No, I don't think you would have.'
With enough impatience for all three of Rory's visitors Charlotte said 'What wasn't funny?'
'It was just they were doing something for your Rory and the screen really was round his bed.'
'But you didn't see anything,' Hugh urged.
'Do you know, he got me so I almost thought I did.' Perhaps Hugh's expression made her add 'Don't fret, it was just a shadow. Nobody's that thin.'
Hugh was trying to decide whether he could risk looking behind him when Annie patted her husband's hand before levering herself to her feet. 'Will you keep an eye out for him while I go to the littlest room?'
'For your husband,' Charlotte said.
'There's nobody else for me to care about.'
This silenced Rory's visitors until Annie left the ward, but as soon as the doors met with a gentle thud Hugh said 'It was him.'
'I don't know why you sound so pleased about it,' Charlotte said.
'I'm not,' Hugh said and was provoked to turn to her. 'You know what I meant.'
'Perhaps I don't want to know.'
'You do, don't you, Ellen?' When she only held up her hands and lowered them as they strayed within her vision Hugh said 'Know, I mean, not want. I don't want either.'
'Then try not being so obsessed with it,' said Charlotte.
'That won't make it go away, will it?'
As he saw that they ought to be discussing how this could be achieved Charlotte said 'What are you imagining now? What sense does it make?'
Hugh felt his face grow blotchy, and was about to protest that it wasn't up to him alone to interpret the situation when he realised 'He stopped us coming last night, didn't he?'
'And the point would be . . .'
'Maybe he doesn't like us all to be together. Maybe he doesn't want us talking about him.'
'Rory can't, Hugh,' Ellen said as if addressing a patient.
'Maybe he's going to be able to now we're here. Maybe that's what he, not Rory, we all know who we're talking about, maybe that's what he's afraid of.'
'Ellen was talking about Rory.'
This felt like several rebukes compressed into one, but Hugh might have kept at his subject if he hadn't heard the ward doors bump discreetly open. Apparently both of his cousins welcomed the excuse to look away from him. 'Thanks,' Annie murmured as she returned to her husband's bedside. 'Sorry for going on about being thin. I didn't mean anyone here.'
Ellen's gaze fell inwards and did its best to hide. Before Hugh could revive his subject, if that was advisable within Annie's hearing, the doors emitted another polite thud and let in a tall pale figure. The pallor belonged mostly to a white coat, though the doctor's hair was on its way to matching. He frowned afresh at each patient he visited, scribbling observations on a clipboard, and gave Rory what Hugh hoped was a deft examination. Charlotte was opening her mouth to speak to him, since he'd acknowledged the visitors with no more than a single nod, when Annie said 'Excuse me, doctor, could I have a word?'
'Please,' he said and indicated the exit with the clipboard.
As he marched away as if impelled by his bent head with Annie in pursuit Hugh blurted 'Shouldn't we talk to him?'
'We're going to,' Charlotte said and sprang to her feet as though escaping from a trap.
'We'd better not all go crowding round him,' Ellen said.
'Just you go, Charlotte, and you can tell us what he says.'
Charlotte hurried down the ward but stopped short of the doors, the twin windows of which framed Annie's inaudible conversation with the doctor. As whichever door Annie was beyond let her reappear in full while Charlotte dodged past the other, Hugh said urgently 'What do you think while she's not here?'
Ellen gazed along Rory's immobile body at him for so many seconds that Hugh wondered if he had spoken too low. He was about to repeat the question when she said 'I can't see how talking about it will help. It might even do the opposite.'
'You mean you believe me?' This heartened him so much it left thought behind. 'We've got to persuade Charlotte,' he said.
'No we haven't. Maybe if we don't keep talking about it it'll go away,' Ellen said under most of her breath.
'Don't mind me,' Annie called across the aisle. 'I'm not listening.'
This made Hugh feel as if someone besides Ellen were, but he had to ask 'Wouldn't Rory want us to do anything we have to that'll help him?'
'I'm sure he would, only he can't know what that is.'
'But suppose we have to –' Hugh sucked in the opposite of a gasp, which left him briefly speechless. 'Did you see that?' he cried.
Ellen shook her head vigorously and seemed dismayed by the sensation. 'What now, Hugh?'
'His hand moved. His other hand.'
'I didn't see.'
'They do,' Annie contributed, if that was the word. 'It means they're still in there somewhere.'
'Has Rory that you've seen?' Hugh enquired, however impolitely with his back turned.
'Not that I've noticed, and I've been keeping an eye.'
'Ellen, I think I made him.'
He gazed at Rory's hand in the hope it might respond – just the twitch of a finger would do. 'I wish we could,'
