A Conflict of Interests by Claire Gradidge

Author:Claire Gradidge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction

18

Thursday, afternoon and evening

W

HEN NASH NEXT WAKES, EVERYTHING’S changed. No more screens round his bed, no more sweet little Nightingale sitting by, eyes anxiously fixed on him. Best of all, no more sweaty furnace heat. He’s warm, ordinarily warm. His mind is clear, clearer than it’s been for what seems like weeks, long before his collapse. He even remembers that now, parts of it anyway. A jolting, agonising journey, Jo’s voice in his ear.

He pulls himself cautiously up in the bed, careful of the tubing inserted in his left arm. Manages to half sit against the iron head rail. He could do with more than one meagre pillow.

For the first time, he’s able to take in his surroundings. He’s close to one end of a long ward. Directly in front, across the ward, there’s a row of empty beds: black iron frames made up with impeccable neatness. Everything but the frames is blindingly white. Linen, blankets, plump pillows he covets. A window demarcates the space between each bed: each window is open the same precise few inches.

He can’t see to his left, the bandages round his head cut his always limited field of vision to zero. On his right, there are more empty beds. By counting across from where he is, he reckons he must be in the fourth bed from the ward door.

‘You awake, chum?’ A voice from his left. With some difficulty he turns his head towards the sound. He can only manage to see the lower part of the next-door bed, where a large pair of feet mar the otherwise flat surface of the white counterpane.

‘I seem to be, yes.’

‘You OK? I can call the nurse for you.’

‘I’m all right,’ he says, surprised to find it’s the truth. ‘I even think I’m hungry.’

‘Cor.’ A laugh. ‘You must be better then.’

He struggles to turn his head further, wins another few inches: the sight of sturdy legs mounding the covers. A spear of pain pulls him up short. ‘Where is everyone?’ he says. Muffled through the bandages he can hear the sounds of some kind of bustling commotion, though no one has passed through his line of sight.

‘There’s a flap on,’ his unseen companion says. ‘Word is, there’s a lot of our boys on their way back from the beaches. Nurses are getting the ward ready for casualties. Due to arrive this evening.’

‘Beaches?’

‘Course, you won’t know. D-Day, chum. Invasion of France. We went in on Tuesday.’

‘Oh.’ Nash lets out a long sigh. ‘What’s the news? Not another Dunkirk?’

‘Nah, we’re doing good. Germans falling back on all fronts. Bound to be casualties, though, in’t there?’

‘Of course.’ He wants to know more, struggles to think of what question to ask first. But it seems rude to go on talking without some kind of introduction. ‘Sorry I can’t see you,’ he says. ‘My name’s Nash.’

‘Ted Warren, that’s me. Next one over from me is Mr lah-de-dah Smith call-me-Smythe. Listen to him snore.’

‘Just the three of us?’

‘That’s right. And they’re getting rid of us too, this afternoon.

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