The burned man, Lockett, spends most days sitting up in bed smoking a cigar and reading the foreign newspapers that George procures for him. He looks as relaxed as a man can look, and if one approaches him from the right side, one might wonder what such a robust-looking character was doing in a hospital bed. The other side is a different tale, a battlefield of dressings that give him the appearance of being held together with sticking plaster. This is practically the case. It is still not certain that he will live. An infection would finish him. There is the unseen, too. A rattle in the lungs: time will tell whether they are damaged beyond all repair.
‘How are you this morning, Lockett?’
‘All right, doctor. Was wondering if I could get a bit more of that good old Scottish stuff.’
On the first evenings, to help with the pain – and because he liked the man – George had given him generous draughts of his precious single malt. Now he wonders if it had been a mistake.
‘Lockett, it’s eleven o’clock in the morning.’
‘Well, you can’t blame a fellow for trying.’
He had refused to take any morphine for the discomfort, once he came to, saying he had seen ‘too many go down a bad road with that stuff’. To George’s dwindling supplies of Highland gold, however, he has no such objection.
‘A coffee, perhaps?’
‘Is it that filthy local stuff?’
‘Yes. Though I’ve actually started to think it superior.’
‘You’ve been here too long, doc. You’re going native. But … oh, go on, why not? It isn’t as though a chap has any other options, is it?’ He peers ruefully up at George, one eye lidded with intact, pale skin, the other ringed with raw red. If there is a message of entreaty in this look, George chooses not to receive it.
He climbs down to the kitchen on the floor below. Here is a huge Ottoman stove, enamelled in sky blue, for even the most mundane items in this house have a claim to beauty. It is a formidable, unfamiliar thing with several ovens and six hot plates. Here, presumably, magnificent spreads were once prepared. It seems the sort of house in which such feasts would have been eaten. George has only dared to make coffee upon the smallest plate … though, if truth be told, his culinary skill does not extend much further. He bought a small copper pot from the great bazaar in Stamboul – and the coffee, too, following his nose to a stall where men ground the new-roasted beans before one’s eyes, packaging it into plump, fragrant parcels.
He measures out the fine grounds, a few spoonfuls of sugar, pours in the water. He isn’t absolutely certain he has the method right yet. Every time he stops for a cup on the street he scrutinises the particular blend of flavours and decides how he will better his own recipe. This is how his mind works. He is not creative in any sense, but he can analyse and improve. It has served him well as a medical man; has helped him refine the optimum dosage of quinine without eating into precious, limited supply, to discover the most effective tourniquet for a newly severed limb. He pours two cups of the stuff, watches the brown foam rise to the surface.
Lockett gives his a dubious sniff, places it beside him to cool. George takes the first hot sip. This first mouthful is still something of a shock, the taste like a distillation of earth with only the sweetness of the sugar to make it bearable. Then he begins to savour it.
‘How did you get this then? Stuck here with us strays?’
‘What do you mean? I’m an MO – that’s what I do.’
‘No, I mean Constant’ of course’ – the soldiers’ abbreviation. ‘Couldn’t believe it when I got shipped off here. Thought I was on my way home.’
George sips – too much – scalds his tongue. ‘I volunteered, actually.’
‘You volunteered?’ Lockett frowns up at him. ‘Are you mad, doc? What was it … the money?’
‘I suppose it was. Or something like that.’
Not a complete lie. The money was an attraction, but it was not much more than he could have made with a new placement in England, from the comfort of his own home. But then there had been the challenge of setting up and running his own hospital – that had beckoned to him. So, too, the revelation of proper beds and almost-adequate resources after so many years beneath canvas, eking out supplies.
And yet, if he were to be honest with himself, none of these was quite the reason.
That afternoon, Sister comes to tell him that the man with yellow fever – the doomed case – has died. Will he come and take a look, to verify? And then, really, in this heat, the body …
He goes into the ward to see. The fellow lies there, his eyes rolled back into his head. This might mean – thankfully, perhaps – that he was in the grip of delirium while he died. While George was exploring the city, this man was slipping from life. There was nothing more they could have done for him. The rest was the body’s work, whether it had enough fight in it.
The man volunteered to come out here, like George. He remembers their conversation now: the man half in the grip of fever, with a too-bright light behind the eyes. He had wanted to see a little more of the world, before settling down for good. It is no greater or lesser tragedy than any of the deaths George has witnessed. But perhaps there is an added poignancy, in the fellow eluding death in the conflagration, only
