They woke him now to put the bedpan under him and to change the metal tube that went up inside his penis. He could roll his head and see other tubes, red India rubber, dropping away from him on both sides of the bed. They were draining the wounds, Bernat said.
She came back. She smiled down at him. He said, ‘I don’t want you to see me like this.’
She said, ‘My dear, I’ve been seeing you like this for weeks.’
Weeks?
When she was gone, he told them he didn’t want any visitors. No, she was not to visit him any more. No, he wouldn’t see the police. Keep them all away.
‘What’s that music? I hear music!’
‘It’s almost Christmas. You must sleep, Mr Denton.’
They woke him for morphine injections. He tried to stop them, but Bernat said he would be in too much pain. He remembered the men from the war who had come to like the morphine more than their wives or their children. He said he wanted to do without it, but he couldn’t.
They moved him again, this time to a nursing home. Bernat explained what had happened to him: he had two entry wounds and no exit wounds, the big, soft-lead bullets staying inside his body. One had gone in below his shoulder blade and nicked his lung, ending against a rib. The other had entered between his kidney and his spine and had broken into three pieces. The shoulder injury had gone septic, then the lower one, and they had been almost four weeks draining the wounds, waiting for him to conquer the sepsis, thinking for a while they would lose him.
‘You are a very tough cut of beef, Mr Denton.’
‘Not as tough as two.45-calibre bullets.’
‘We had to collapse your lung, but it reinflated when the sepsis ended. You have a small incision in your chest; the surgeon took the ball out that way and put the tubing in. The other injuries are healing.’
‘My leg?’
‘One step at a time.’
‘Have I lost the use of my leg?’
‘You talk nonsense. Your nerves are bruised, yes. There is wounding, yes. But you are tough. Also strong. You will walk.’
‘I’m as weak as water.’
‘Temporary only. Five weeks in a hospital bed, the great Ajax would be being weak. Soon, you get out of bed, you get stronger.’
‘When?’
‘Soon. Also, I want you to see Mrs Striker.’
‘No.’
‘You are being very cruel to her. You think you protect her but you make her life unhappy. I want you to see her.’
Denton cowered under his bedclothes. ‘I don’t want her to know me like this.’
‘That is vanity. It is wrong to put vanity ahead of the people who love us.’
He told them to let her visit. They said she was coming every day as it was and sitting outside his room. Now she sat by him, either reading silently or reading to him.
‘So you remember it was Struther Jarrold now?’ she said.
‘I’d been at Ruth Castle’s, looking for you. Then — all I remember are the dreams. Nightmares of doing the same things, over and over. And riding, a horse that made my back hurt-’
‘They moved you once, from one hospital to another. The ambulance was very rough.’
‘You were there by then?’
‘I told you I’d come back.’
‘Ruth Castle said you would. I don’t remember anything after I went down her steps.’
He tried to recall the shooting, but he couldn’t bring it back. He started to tell her about going to France with Heseltine.
‘Don’t concern yourself with it.’
‘It matters to me. Anyway, I was going to see Munro. Munro needs to be told what we found.’
‘Not yet. You’re not to be “agitated” — Bernat’s orders.’
‘Janet, good God-’
‘Shut up.’
He sighed. ‘I feel ashamed.’
‘Because somebody shot you in the back? You could hardly have prevented it.’
‘I should have. I should have seen it coming.’
‘How?’
‘I need to talk to Munro.’
‘Not yet.’ She opened her magazine. ‘Soon.’
‘You sound like Bernat. “Soon.”’
Next day, they got him out of bed. Two nursing sisters and the doctor helped him to try to stand; he swayed for a few seconds, and they put him back down.
‘You must make an effort, Mr Denton. Doctor’s orders.’
‘Go away, sister.’
‘Get up.’
‘Leave me alone.’
‘Mr Denton, get up! Oh, why are you so stubborn?’
‘Because I can’t move my leg! Because I’m a cripple, you stupid bitch!’
CHAPTER TWENTY
The surgeon who had removed the piece of bullet from near his spine was named Gallichan, a black-bearded, handsome man in his forties with the sort of good belly that announced success and appetite. Presumably Irish, he was in fact as English as the new king, whom he slightly resembled. He wore fawn trousers, a broadcloth morning coat in blue-black, a waistcoat that was daring in that it didn’t match and was silk, not wool — in fact an anachronism, pale grey with embroidered floral designs.
‘I’m told you had trouble standing,’ he said genially.
‘I’d have collapsed if they hadn’t held me up.’
‘Of course you would.’ Gallichan smiled as if this was the best news in the world. ‘Let’s have a look at this leg of yours.’ The sister pulled back the sheet. Denton didn’t want to look at it, forced himself to: the leg looked pasty-white, inert, like something made from dough. Gallichan said ‘Mmm-hmmm’ several times, very low, and hummed something unidentifiable. ‘Does that hurt?’
‘What?’
‘Mmm.’ He pushed the leg this way and that. ‘Raise your foot, please.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Raise your knee.’
He couldn’t do that, either.
Gallichan took a tool from his bag and drew it up the sole of Denton’s foot. Denton felt something like the weakest of electric currents.
‘Feel that?’
‘A little.’
‘Aha!’
Gallichan sent the sister away and then moved the sheet aside to reveal Denton’s groin. ‘Feel that?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did I do?’
‘You felt my, you know — parts.’
