ST. NAZAIRE
His next home was a comfortable little bed in a white-painted cubicle of
a boys' school that had been turned into a Base Hospital. When at length
he found himself at rest in his new bed, he sighed with contentment.
Everything was so quiet, and clean, and orderly. After the dirty
estaminet, and the feverish hurry of the Clearing Hospital, this was
indeed Peace. They gave him real broth to drink and real chicken to eat.
And that night, as he sank almost for the first time into real sleep, he
felt that heaven had been achieved.
Life began to creep slowly into his paralysed limbs. With infinite
labour he could force his first finger and thumb to meet and separate
again. His toes wagged freely. The only fly in the ointment was that the
"stuff they did their dressings with" was of a fiercer nature and hurt
more than the previous ones. Also, the dressings became more frequent.
He made great friends with the Doctor and the Sisters. One of them used
to talk of an old Major in his Regiment with a tenderness that led him
to suspect a veiled romance. He was now growing better daily, and was
assailed with the insatiable hunger that follows fever. No sooner had he
bolted down one meal than he counted the hours to the next.
One day they left a meal-tray on his chest, and apparently forgot it. At
the end of half-an-hour his patience abandoned him. He deliberately
reached out and threw everything upon the floor. The Sister came running
up to see what was the matter. He maintained a haughty silence. She
picked up the aluminium plates and cups. Her starched dress crinkled.
"Oh, you naughty boy!" she said, smiling entrancingly.
There was nothing for it: he burst out laughing.
Soon afterwards it occurred to him that, as all he had got to do was to
lie in bed and wait, this could be done just as easily in a London
hospital.
"As soon as you are well enough to travel, you shall go to England. Your
case can be better treated there," the Doctor promised him.