Simonson held the letter beyond his reach. “Your Mary seems to have got this Hilda’s back up.”
I will come to the point because it is something you have a right to understand, since I know that Mary has been writing to you.
“But she hasn’t, has she?”
“Not for months.”
“Or so you claim,” said Simonson.
“Just read, will you? Or give me the letter.”
Simonson snatched it away.
I am sorry to say that she has given up her duty on the ambulances and become a slave to morphine. Out of loyalty I would have said this was her business, but now our friendship is finished and I feel a duty to you that I no longer owe to Mary. Please know that I admired you from the moment we held hands.
“You dog!”
“But it isn’t like that,” said Alistair.
“Says you. I think we must let Hilda tell us what it is like.”
The worst of it is that Mary is consorting with Negroes. She spends days at the Lyceum and carries on as if it is the most natural thing. I suppose the morphine is her only counsel in the matter. Of course it is too awful for her parents. Their name suffers—I need not tell you how people talk.
Simonson whistled. “That really is the limit.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“Of course it’s not nothing. Damn it, man—you look as if the devil has you by the scrote.”
I wish you to know that I do not hope to reopen anything between us. My circumstances have changed and I would not be an attractive proposition to you in any case. Rather, please know that I choose to close things between us by discharging the duty of honesty that I owe you for the kindness you once showed me.
“How does she sign it?” said Alistair.
“ ‘Sincerely.’ ”
“I see.”
“And of course you are thinking ‘bitterly’, but you will see that she is right, I’m afraid. If half of what she says is true then you are best off without Mary, and this Hilda has done well to warn you.”
“I should like to know Mary’s side of the story.’
‘I shouldn’t be curious. Niggers are niggers, there’s no consortable kind. And morphine—my god. It’s filthy stuff. It’s for doctors and whores.”
Alistair flushed. “Mary taught children who were killed. And there was a friend of mine she was practically engaged to, and he was killed too. One makes allowances.”
“One makes allowances, Alistair, for fatigue and pain and misjudgment. But morphine and blacks? The woman is utterly fallen.”
“Women fall differently, that’s all. We die by the stopping of our hearts, they by the insistence of theirs.”
“Oh do give it up, Alistair. She’s lost.”
“I don’t believe that. Everything can be restored. If one won’t believe that, how does one endure all this?”
“One doesn’t have a choice, which makes the decision easier.”
Alistair sighed. “Anyway, I like her. A medic once told me to find a nice girl and forget the war—and so long as I think of Mary, I can.”
“So you won’t give her up?’
“Not even if I wanted to. Doctor’s orders, you see.”
“ ‘Well, poor Hilda’s letter seems to have backfired, wouldn’t you say?”
“Hilda’s not a bad egg, you know. She is funny, and rather pretty and . . . in another life, a girl like that . . .”
“Yes, but it is rather a desperate letter.”
“It is rather a desperate war.”
Simonson put his arm around Alistair’s shoulders and they looked out at the sea.
“What shall we do about you?” said Simonson.
“There is nothing to do. I’ll accept what punishment the lieutenant colonel thinks fitting. In the meantime I’ll arrange a burial detail for Briggs.”
“Briggs won’t mind if you don’t, you know. That’s what’s so admirable in the dead—they never ask one to do anything they wouldn’t do themselves.”
“Still, I should feel bad if I didn’t organize the service.”
“How would you like to fly to Gibraltar instead, and then take a boat on to England?”
“My number won’t come up for weeks.”
“But there is an evacuation order and then there is a social order. I was at school with half of Med Command. I could have them bump you onto the next flight out.”
“I’m not wild about taking another man’s place.”
“Then you’ll be here forever, because other men are cheerfully taking yours. Come on, we can have you away before the lieutenant colonel gets to your report. You’d be doing us both a favor—he wouldn’t enjoy disciplining you any more than I would.”
“It would only catch up with me in London.”
“It might not, you know. If this war has taught me anything, it’s that no crack is too small for our procedures to fall through.”
“Listen to us. Can you imagine us thinking such aw thing, a year ago?”
“Survival hadn’t been invented, then. One can hardly blame us for not using something that didn’t exist.”
Alistair smiled. “How long this war has been.”
“I’ll say. One hardly remembers how we lived before. Lightly—not worrying much.”