Trickery Read online

  He lay listening to the noise and he felt quite certain about what it was. But where were the sirens and where the guns? That German pilot certainly had a nerve coming near Brighton alone in daylight.

  The aircraft was always far away and soon the noise faded away into the distance. Later on there was another. This one, too, was far away, but there was the same deep undulating bass and the high swinging tenor and there was no mistaking it. He had heard that noise every day during the Battle.

  He was puzzled. There was a bell on the table by the bed. He reached out his hand and rang it. He heard the noise of footsteps down the corridor. The nurse came in.

  ‘Nurse, what were those aeroplanes?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know. I didn’t hear them. Probably fighters or bombers. I expect they were returning from France. Why, what’s the matter?’

  ‘They were Ju-88s. I’m sure they were Ju-88s. I know the sound of the engines. There were two of them. What were they doing over here?’

  The nurse came up to the side of his bed and began to straighten out the sheets and tuck them in under the mattress.

  ‘Gracious me, what things you imagine. You mustn’t worry about a thing like that. Would you like me to get you something to read?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  She patted his pillow and brushed back the hair from his forehead with her hand.

  ‘They never come over in daylight any longer. You know that. They were probably Lancasters or Flying Fortresses.’

  ‘Nurse.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could I have a cigarette?’

  ‘Why certainly you can.’

  She went out and came back almost at once with a packet of Players and some matches. She handed one to him and when he had put it in his mouth, she struck a match and lit it.

  ‘If you want me again,’ she said, ‘just ring the bell,’ and she went out.

  Once towards evening he heard the noise of another aircraft. It was far away, but even so he knew that it was a single-engined machine. It was going fast; he could tell that. He could not place it. It wasn’t a Spit, and it wasn’t a Hurricane. It did not sound like an American engine either. They make more noise. He did not know what it was, and it worried him greatly. Perhaps I am very ill, he thought. Perhaps I am imagining things. Perhaps I am a little delirious. I simply do not know what to think.

  That evening the nurse came in with a basin of hot water and began to wash him.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I hope you don’t think that we’re being bombed.’

  She had taken off his pyjama top and was soaping his right arm with a flannel. He did not answer.

  She rinsed the flannel in the water, rubbed more soap on it, and began to wash his chest.

  ‘You’re looking fine this evening,’ she said. ‘They operated on you as soon as you came in. They did a marvellous job. You’ll be all right. I’ve got a brother in the RAF,’ she added. ‘Flying bombers.’

  He said, ‘I went to school in Brighton.’

  She looked up quickly. ‘Well, that’s fine,’ she said. ‘I expect you’ll know some people in the town.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know quite a few.’

  She had finished washing his chest and arms. Now she turned back the bedclothes so that his left leg was uncovered. She did it in such a way that his bandaged stump remained under the sheets. She undid the cord of his pyjama trousers and took them off. There was no trouble because they had cut off the right trouser-leg so that it could not interfere with the bandages. She began to wash his left leg and the rest of his body. This was the first time he had had a bed-bath and he was embarrassed. She laid a towel under his leg and began washing his foot with the flannel. She said, ‘This wretched soap won’t lather at all. It’s the water. It’s as hard as nails.’

  He said, ‘None of the soap is very good now and, of course, with hard water it’s hopeless.’ As he said it he remembered something. He remembered the baths which he used to take at school in Brighton, in the long stone-floored bathroom which had four baths in a row. He remembered how the water was so soft that you had to take a shower afterwards to get all the soap off your body, and he remembered how the foam used to float on the surface of the water, so that you could not see your legs underneath. He remembered that sometimes they were given calcium tablets because the school doctor used to say that soft water was bad for the teeth.

  ‘In Brighton,’ he said, ‘the water isn’t …’

  He did not finish the sentence. Something had occurred to him; something so fantastic and absurd that for a moment he felt like telling the nurse about it and having a good laugh.

  She looked up. ‘The water isn’t what?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing,’ he answered. ‘I was dreaming.’

  She rinsed the flannel in the basin, wiped the soap off his leg and dried him with a towel.

  ‘It’s nice to be washed,’ he said. ‘I feel better.’ He was feeling his face with his hand. ‘I need a shave.’

  ‘We’ll do that tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you can do it yourself then.’

  That night he could not sleep. He lay awake thinking of the Junkers 88s and of the hardness of the water. He could think of nothing else. They were Ju-88s, he said to himself. I know they were. And yet it is not possible, because they would not be flying around so low over here in broad daylight. I know that it is true and yet I know that it is impossible. Perhaps I am ill. Perhaps I am behaving like a fool and do not know what I am doing or saying. Perhaps I am delirious. For a long time he lay awake thinking these things, and once he sat up in bed and said aloud, ‘I will prove that I am not crazy. I will make a little speech about something complicated and intellectual. I will talk about what to do with Germany after the war.’ But before he had time to begin, he was asleep.

  He woke just as the first light of day was showing through the slit in the curtains over the window. The room was still dark, but he could tell that it was already beginning to get light outside. He lay looking at the grey light which was showing through the slit in the curtain and as he lay there he remembered the day before. He remembered the Junkers 88s and the hardness of the water; he remembered the large pleasant nurse and the kind doctor, and now a small grain of doubt took root in his mind and it began to grow.

  He looked around the room. The nurse had taken the roses out the night before. There was nothing except the table with a packet of cigarettes, a box of matches and an ashtray. The room was bare. It was no longer warm or friendly. It was not even comfortable. It was cold and empty and very quiet.

  Slowly the grain of doubt grew, and with it came fear, a light, dancing fear that warned but did not frighten; the kind of fear that one gets not because one is afraid, but because one feels that there is something wrong. Quickly the doubt and the fear grew so that he became restless and angry, and when he touched his forehead with his hand, he found that it was damp with sweat. He knew then that he must do something; that he must find some way of proving to himself that he was either right or wrong, and he looked up and saw again the window and the green curtains. From where he lay, that window was right in front of him, but it was fully ten yards away. Somehow he must reach it and look out. The idea became an obsession with him and soon he could think of nothing except the window. But what about his leg? He put his hand underneath the bedclothes and felt the thick bandaged stump which was all that was left on the right-hand side. It seemed all right. It didn’t hurt. But it would not be easy.

  He sat up. Then he pushed the bedclothes aside and put his left leg on the floor. Slowly, carefully, he swung his body over until he had both hands on the floor as well; then he was out of bed, kneeling on the carpet. He looked at the stump. It was very short and thick, covered with bandages. It was beginning to hurt and he could feel it throbbing. He wanted to collapse, lie down on the carpet and do nothing, but he knew that he must go on.

  With two arms and one leg, he crawled over towards the window. He would reach forward as far