She began to take off his shoes, and he suddenly wondered if his feet were clean. Hot shame ran through him: a feeling he hadn’t experienced since a child. This feeling angered him, and he tried to stop her, only he couldn’t reach her hands. So he lay still, staring up at the multi-coloured umbrellas, angry and ashamed, hating her unfairly, blaming her for his loss of pride. She took off his shoes and socks, and then she came closer and began to fumble at his trouser buttons.
He snatched at her hands, gripping her wrists and glaring at her.
“Leave me alone,” he snarled. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She stared back at him, her small white face scared and a puzzled look in her eyes.
“It’s all right,” she said soothingly. “I’m going to set your leg. I’ll have to take your trousers off. It doesn’t matter . . . I was a nurse once . . . at least, almost a nurse.”
“Leave me alone,” he muttered, furious to find that he was blushing. He thought of his thin hairy legs and shrank from her seeing them. “You’re not to undress me.”
But she persisted with a kindly, anxious obstinacy. It was too much of an effort to stop her, and when she pulled away from him, he hadn’t the strength to hold on to her, and he lay still again, his eyes shut, his thin lips moving angrily. He let her remove his trousers, and he turned his face away.
But as she gently worked the trousers over his feet, she accidentally jarred him, sending pain shooting up his leg, making him cry out.
He called her an obscene name, but she did not know he had done so. He wanted to kick her, to make her suffer as he was suffering, but he was too afraid to make the necessary move in case he increased his own pain.
He raised his head and watched her, his eyes vicious. She had produced a blanket from the suitcase and was now covering his sound leg with it. The warmth from the blanket was comforting. She examined the broken leg in the light of the torch. Her smooth brown hand looked beautiful against his white hairy skin.
“It’s just below the knee,” she said. “I think I can set it.” She looked up at him, her eyes large and anxious. “It’ll hurt.”
“Get on with it,” he said, cringing in spite of himself. “Set it. I can stand pain. What do you think I am — soft?”
But before she even touched the broken place, he was sweating. As her hand hovered over the swollen limb he flinched, biting his lip, clenching his fists.
She seemed to sense his fear of pain, and she poured out more brandy and gave it to him.
“Try and bear it,” she implored, knowing how difficult it could be. “You won’t struggle, will you? I want to set it properly.”
“Get on with it, you slut,” he shouted, terrified. “Get on with it and stop drivelling.”
Again she missed his savagery as she had turned to bend over the suitcase again. He longed to kick her slim buttocks, to inflict indignity on her, feeling ashamed of his own cowardice and trying to blame her for it.
She produced surgical splints and bandages from the suitcase. It seemed there was nothing she couldn’t produce. The suitcase reminded Ellis of a conjurer’s chest.
“There was a first aid box in the clubhouse,” she explained. “They have everything. Even a stretcher. If there was someone to help me I could get you under cover.”
“Oh, get on with it,” he said, and closed his eyes.
He knew it would be painful, but he had no idea it could hurt as much as it did. For a second or so he lay still, feeling her hands on the broken limb. Then pain shot through his veins and was transmitted in waves through his whole body. Sourness drained from his mouth and in its place was the dry faintness, rising in his face and condensing on his forehead in sweat. He dug his fingers into the mackintosh, stiffened.
“It’ll be all right,” he heard her say. She sounded far away; then suddenly real pain — something he had never before experienced. It was too much. He cried out, tried to sit up, hitting out blindly. The pain went on, biting into him, searing at his nerves. Suddenly he felt the contents of his stomach rush into his mouth and he had a horrible feeling of being drowned. Sickness broke acidly in his mouth, but in spite of this he heard distinctly a sharp click as the fractured ends of the bone locked together.
For a minute or so he lost consciousness. The slipping away into darkness terrified him, and he clutched feebly at nothing, feeling himself sinking over the edge of a bottomless chasm. He cried out, and then plunged down and down.
Then later, when he struggled back out of the darkness, saw the light reflected on the coloured umbrellas, felt the dull ache of his leg and smelt his sickness and tasted it in his mouth, he cried out again like a child waking from a nightmare.
He felt a cold, firm hand in his. He clung to it and it gave him courage. She was talking to him, but he couldn’t be bothered to listen to what she was saying. It was enough to know she was near him, that she hadn’t gone out into the wind and the rain and left him alone.
She held his hand for a long time until he fell asleep.
CHAPTER SIX
Towards five o’clock in the morning it stopped raining, and the sun, pale behind the mist, came up from the east. The air was fresh, and a mild breeze sprang up, poking holes in the mist to reveal blue sky.
Ellis stirred, uneasily, pulled the blanket up to his chin. The sunlight coming through the umbrella roof disturbed him, and he opened his eyes. For a long moment he didn’t know where he was, what he was doing in this hole in the ground. His hand went to his leg and he flinched. There was an extraordinary lightness inside his head and his mouth was dry. As his brain awakened, he remembered what had happened the previous night and he half sat up, his heart thumping unevenly. When he saw Grace curled up near his feet, asleep, he relaxed, reassured. So she was still with him, he thought, relieved, and he studied her for the first time, regarding her as a woman whose destiny was to be linked with his and not as a deaf nuisance who was to be used and discarded as soon as possible. He was surprised to see she had several unexpectedly good points. She wasn’t as plain as he had first thought. He was aware, too, that he was seeing her at her very worst. No one could look much if hungry and dirty. She had on no make-up, her hair was tangled, her clothes awful, but now he took the trouble to study her he saw she had a well-shaped nose and chin, soft full lips. Of course, she was nobody — lacked breeding, but then he was nobody and lacked breeding, too. He knew that. They were a pair. He was a traitor, the son of a reprieved murderer. She was a thief, an ex-jailbird. A fine pair, he thought bitterly, his eyes leaving her face to probe her body. It vaguely excited him. She could be made into something, he thought. If she had money, if someone took her in hand she mightn’t be half bad. Anyway, she had been unexpectedly useful. She had set his leg, and he was confident that she had made a good job of it.
She had made him comfortable, and whenever he had awakened during the long night, she had been there to comfort him.
He moved restlessly. There was no point lying here thinking about her. She was here — to be used. Plans had to be made. He took out his watch. It was twenty minutes past five.
He reached out and touched her. She awoke instantly. Her eyes snapped open, and her head lifted from the suitcase which served as her pillow. There was no dull, vacant look on her face that most people have when they wake suddenly. She sat up abruptly, shivered.
“Come on,” he said roughly. “We’ve got to get out of here. It’s nearly half-past five.”
She rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands, stretched, scrambled to her feet.
“Does your leg hurt?” she asked as she lifted the umbrellas and closed them.
Sunshine streamed into the trench. It felt warm and good against Ellis’s chilly skin.
“It’s all right,” he said, passed his hand across his face. The lightness inside his head worried him. He thought perhaps it was because he hadn’t eaten for some time. Although he didn’t feel like eating, he added, “I’m hungry,”
She nodded. “I’ll have to see what I can do. I’m hungry, too.” She looked across the fairway towards the clubhouse. “I may find food there,” she went on, half to herself. Then she picked up the blanket which she had wrapped round herself, shook it out, folded it and laid it down. “We shall need that. There’ll be other things we’ll need, too.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Ellis reminded her. “Help me up. I can’t stay here all day.”
But she wasn’t looking at him so she didn’t know he had spoken. He kicked at her in sudden exasperated rage but she was out of reach.
“I won’t be long,” she said and scrambled out of the trench.
“Come back,” he shouted, alarmed at the matter-of-fact way she had left him. He tried to heave himself up, but she walked quickly away, too intent on the problems before her to worry about him.
For a moment or so he raged, cursing her and his leg in a futile flow of blasphemy, but then he realised the uselessness of anger. He was entirely in her hands. She was aware of the danger that threatened them, and she seemed confident. He would have to leave it to her.
He lay staring up at the white clouds as they drifted lazily above him. He had been used to fending for himself in the past and it was an odd experience to let someone else take over. He quite liked the experience, feeling heavy and apathetic, the pain in his leg dull, his strength sapped. If she made a mess of it, he thought drowsily, he would take over, but first, he would let her handle it and see what she made of it.
He dozed. His mind was disturbed by pain, his body listless. He felt feverish, and his tongue seemed too big for his mouth. He supposed he was running a temperature. It was not surprising. His clothes were still damp, and in spite of the mackintosh sheet and the umbrellas, the trench was soggy with wet sand.
Minutes ticked by but he was not aware of the passing time. It was odd how confident he was that the girl would save him or was it because he was so ill he couldn’t reason clearly? He couldn’t be bothered to work it out. All he wanted now was to lie still and doze, to imagine he was safe and not to think of the effort he would soon have to make to get out of the trench.
The hot sunshine, the sound of the breeze in the bushes lulled him. He slept uneasily, started up, slept again. Then he suddenly became wide awake, his brain crawling with alarm, conscious that he had been alone some time. Feverishly he looked at his watch. It was now five minutes past six. Where was she? he wondered. Had she taken fright and deserted him? Had someone caught her in the clubhouse? He made a tremendous effort and stood up, his weight supported on his sound leg, the strapped broken limb pounding and aching in protest. Gritting his teeth, he clung to the side of the trench and looked down the straight fairway.
He could see the clubhouse in the far distance, and as he hung there, sick with pain and worry, he saw the girl corning down the path and he caught his breath in a gasp of relief.
Well, he was up now. He’d hang on until she came. He felt that if he once lay down he would never again get to his feet. His leg was aching, shooting a dull hot pain through his body.
He felt the blood pound in his veins and a sick faintness hovering over him. But he wouldn’t give in. He spread his arms on the ground in front of the trench, clutched at the wet short grass, waited grimly.
When she saw his head and shoulders protruding above the top of the trench she broke into a staggering run. She had the suitcase with her and he could see she had a cord twisted round her wrist and she seemed to be towing something behind her.
“But you shouldn’t,” she said breathlessly as she came up. “You shouldn’t have stood up.”
“Help me out,” he said feverishly. “I can’t stand much more of this. Give me your hand.”
She bent down, gripped his wrist and pulled. Slowly he dragged himself out of the trench; the pain in his leg sent hot waves through his body. He cried out, cursing, sweat running down his face, his teeth biting his lower lip, then he flopped on to the grass, panting. Darkness came down on him, and he again felt himself hovering over the edge of consciousness. He tried to help himself as she pulled him further across the grass but it was all too much of an effort. His leg hurt sharply, and he cursed again, then he sank down on to something soft and he relaxed, not caring what happened to him.
The firm cool hand that he had come to welcome lifted his head.
“It’s all right,” he heard her say. “Drink this. It’ll do you good.”
Tea!
He opened his eyes, stared up at her. Her face was close to his. Her eyes looked big and anxious, her expression tense. She was holding a cup to his lips; the tea was sweet and strong.
He nodded, drank again. The tea cleaned his mouth, strengthened him. He emptied the cup, sighed, lay back.
“That was good,” he said.
The darkness receded, and once more the hot bright sunshine comforted him. He found himself lying on a stretcher, a rolled blanket under his head.
“I have food here,” she said, “but we’d better get to the wood first. I thought I could pull the stretcher along. I’ve brought a rope.”
It was a brilliant idea, he thought. This girl was nobody’s fool. If he had tried to crawl to the wood he might have done his leg a permanent injury. He had no thought of the struggle she would have to drag him to the wood, which was nearly a quarter of a mile away. That was her funeral, and he lay still watching her place the suitcase and the blanket on the foot of the stretcher.
Finally she was ready, and twisting the rope round her wrist, she turned and pulled. The stretcher didn’t move. The girl’s back arched, her feet dug into the soft soil. She strained, heaving against the rope, unable to make any headway at all.
He watched her, a feeling of vague excitement running through him. He longed for a whip. A cut across her legs would have got her moving, he thought savagely, and he shouted at her to get on.
She struggled grimly. He could see the veins in her arms standing out like blue worms; he could hear her laboured breathing. The foot of the stretcher lifted a few inches, but she couldn’t pull it forward. For a minute or so she strained at the rope, the whole of her weight on it, then her foot slipped and she sprawled face down on the grass. He caught a glimpse of her white thighs as she rolled over, and he half sat up, his mouth working, his eyes feverish.