The Charioteer by Mary Renault Page B

apart,
    And when the tear-drops start,
    I find a broken heart among my souvenirs.
    It was over. A low buzz of comment quivered through the ward. Nurse Sims stared at the radio, lastingly defeated; she would never be able to turn off a request program again. Laurie turned on his side, the side facing Reg. One could take delicacy too far; it didn’t help to make a man feel like a leper.
    Reg turned round. It surprised Laurie vaguely that he didn’t attempt to hide his face. His lower lip was trembling. Tears welled from under his sandy lashes.
    “I’ll send her a wire tomorrow, first thing. I never knew she felt like that.”
    He fumbled for his dressing-gown, hitching it blindly over his splinted shoulder. While Laurie was still searching for a reply he had gone down the ward. In his wake the buzz rose to an eager, satisfied muttering. If one could have turned all the lights on suddenly, Laurie thought, there would have been applause.
    He lay back on the pillow, the only one not running over with gossip and sensation, the odd man out.
    The clink and rattle of mugs on a trolley sounded beside him. The nurse usually came around at this hour, putting water on the lockers for the night. He turned over.
    “Please, Nurse …” His voice stopped. It was Andrew with the trolley.
    The forms, the shadows, the colors in the ward magically regrouped and changed. The pool of light on the Sister’s table had for the first time mystery beyond its rim.
    Andrew pushed the trolley up quietly. He was wearing old, white tennis shoes. The light shining sideways on his hair made it look fairer and brighter than in the day. Shadow made the structure of his face emphatic, the eyes deeper-set, the mouth firmer. He looked more resolute, and at the same time younger. When he smiled, as he did immediately he saw who it was that had spoken, it seemed to Laurie almost frighteningly dramatic and beautiful.
    Whispering as everyone did after lights-out, he said, “Now I know where to find you. Did you think I was going to leave you out?” He came with a mug and stood it on the locker, pausing, his fingers around the handle.
    “What are you doing here, so late?”
    “I’ve just gone on night duty. General orderly.”
    “But have you had any sleep?”
    “Oh, one hardly would the first day.” He lingered, with a curious lack of awkwardness, like a well-mannered child who assumes that, if unwanted at present, he will be dismissed without ill-feeling. Laurie at once found his mind a helpless blank.
    “What about the man next you?” Andrew said. “He’d like some water, wouldn’t he?”
    “Yes, please.” In a moment he would be gone; Laurie saw “Good night” forming already on his face.
    “That’s Reg Barker’s bed, we came off the beach together. Have you heard what happened tonight?”
    “No.” Andrew came back easily. There was a kind of trust behind the surface attention in his face. Laurie saw suddenly that it wasn’t the too-easy trust of people to whom everything has always been kind. Thankful that whispering would hide anything odd in his voice, he told the story.
    Andrew said, his eyes looking grave under their shadowy lids, “Well, if he loves her.”
    “After that?” Like someone touching the edge of a sleeve by stealth, he said, “Could you?”
    “I expect, you know,” said Andrew, “he only had room for just the one thing.”
    It was the morning of visiting day. Walking patients sat on the edges of their beds, polishing their brass. Supplies of hospital blue had not even yet caught up with the sudden Dunkirk demand upon a stricken commissariat. Many of them had arrived in rags, some half naked, or draped in the wayside gifts of shocked civilians; and few of them had not retained from this experience some traces of a savage, primitive humiliation. Even now those who got up were often dressed partly in items of uniform taken from the dead, and Laurie had asked nobody where his trousers came from.
    Matron had just