The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 175

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Only twice did they break their accord of forgetfulness and silence. Once Craig asked, "Bawu, what has happened to Janine?"

"Valerie and Douglas wanted her to go and live at Queen's Lynn, when she was released from hospital, but she wouldn't go. As far as I know, she is still working at the museum. The next week it was Bawu who paused as he was about to climb back into the Bentley, and said, When they killed Roly, that was the first time I realized that we were going to lose this war." "Are we going to lose, Bawu?" "Yes, said the old man, and drove away leaving Craig in the wheelchair staring after the Bentley.

At the end of the tenth month at St. Giles', Craig was sent for a series of tests that lasted four days. They X-rayed him and stuck electrodes to his body, they tested his eyesight and his reaction time to various stimuli, they scanned the surface of his skin for heat changes that would show nervous malfunction, they gave him a lumbar puncture and sucked out a sample of his spinal fluid. At the end of it, Craig was nervous and exhausted. That night he had another nightmare. He was lying in the minefield again, and he could hear Janine. She was in the darkness ahead of him. They were doing to her what Roland had described and she was screaming for him to help her.

He could not move. When he woke at last, his sweat had formed a tepid puddle in the red rubber under sheet

The next day -the doctor in charge of his case told him, "You -did wonderfully in your tests, Craig, we are really proud of you. Now I am going to start a new course of treatment, I am sending you to Doctor Davis." Dr. Davis was a young man with an intense manner and a disconcerting directness in his stare. Craig took an immediate dislike to him, sensing that he would seek to destroy the cocoon of peace which Craig had almost succeeded in weaving about himself. It was only after he had -been in Davis" office for ten minutes that Craig realized that he was a psychiatrist.

"Look here, Doctor, I'm not a funny bunny." "No, you are not, but we think you might need a little help, Craig." "I am fine. I don't need help." "There is nothing wrong with your body or nervous system, we want to find out why you have no function in your lower body."

"Listen, Doctor, I can save you a lot of trouble. The reason I can't move my stump and my one good kicker is that I stepped on an AP mine and it blew pieces of me all over the scenery." "Craig, there is a recognized condition, once they used to call it shell-shock.-" "Doctor." Craig interrupted him. "You say there is nothing wrong with me?" "Your body has healed perfectly." "Fine, why didn't somebody tell me before?"

Craig wheeled his chair down the corridor to his room. It took him five minutes to pack his books and papers, then he wheeled himself out to the shiny maroon Land-Rover, slung his valise into the back, dragged himself up into the driver's seat, loaded the wheelchair into the rack behind him and drove out to the yacht.

In the St. Giles" workshop he had designed and put together a system of pulley and hand winches to lift himself easily up the high side of the hull to deck-level. Now the other modifications to the yacht absorbed all his energy and ingenuity. Firstly he had to install grab handles to pull himself around the deck and cockpit and below decks. He sewed leather patches on the seat of his trousers and skidded around on his backside, as he adapted the galley and the head, lowered the bunk and rebuilt the chart-table to his new requirements.

He worked with music blaring out from the speakers and a mug of gin within easy reach. music and liquor helped to chase away unwanted memories.

The yacht was a fortress. He left it only once a month, when he went into town to pick up his police pension cheque, and to stock up his larder and his supply of writing-paper.

On one of these trips he found a second-hand typewriter, and a "teach yourself to type" paperback. He screwed the carriage of the machine to a corner of the chart-table where it would be secure even in a gale at sea, and he began converting the mess of handwritten exercise books into neat piles of typescript, his speed built up with practice until he could make the keys chatter in time to the music.

Dr. Davis, the psychiatrist, tracked him down at last, and Craig called down to him from the cockpit of the yacht. "Look here, Doc, I realize now that you were right, I am a raving homicidal psychopath.

If I were you, I wouldn't put a foot on that ladder." After that Craig rigged up a counter-balance so that he could pull the ladder up after him like a drawbridge. He let it down only for Bawu and each Friday they drank gin and built a little world of fantasy and imagination in which they both could hide.

Then Bawu came on a Tuesday. Craig was up on the foredeck reinforcing the stepping of the mainmast. The old man climbed out of the Bentley, and Craig's happy cry of welcome died on his lips. Bawu seemed to have shrivelled up. He looked ancient and fragile, like one of those unwrapped mummies in the Egyptology section of the British Museum. In the back of the Bentley was the Matabele cook from King's Lynn who had worked for the old man for forty years. Under Bawu's direction, the Matabele unloaded two large crates from the boot of the Bentley, and placed them in the goods lift.

Craig winched the crates up, and then lowered the lift for the old man. In the saloon Craig poured gin into the glasses, avoiding looking at his grandfather, embarrassed for his sake.

Bawu was truly an old man at last. His eyes were rheumy and unfocused, his mouth slack so that he mumbled and sucked noisily at his lips. He spilled a dribble of gin down his shirt-front and didn't realize that he had done so. They sat in silence for a long time, the old man nodding to himself and making small incoherent grunts and burbles. Then suddenly he said. "I've brought you your inheritance," and Craig realized that the crates on the deck must contain the journals that they had haggled over. "Douglas wouldn't know what to do with them anyway." "Thank you, Bawu." "Did I ever tell you about the time Mr. Rhodes held me upon his lap?" Bawu asked with a disconcerting change of direction. Craig had heard the story fifty times before.

"No, you never did. I'd love to hear it, Bawu." "Well, it was during a wedding out at Khami Mission must have been "95 or "96." The old man bumbled on for ten minutes, before he lost the thread of the story entirely and lapsed into silence again.

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