and a pair of sofas, low metal-framed tables piled with magazines, and the cream-painted walls were haphazardly hung with institutional posters and prints. The curtains and the carpet and the air itself smelt of cigarette smoke. At the opposite end of the room from Annie’s window two old men were smoking determinedly and staring at the screen of the big television. Annie guessed that they were waiting for the day’s racing coverage to begin. A woman in a flowered housecoat was reading a magazine, and another in the chair beside her was knitting ferociously, a long knotted pink coil.
Yesterday, and the day before, Annie and Steve had met in here.
They hadn’t said anything yesterday, when they stood up to walk back to their wards, about meeting for the third time. They had looked at one another instead, and they had smiled, understanding each other perfectly, at the thought of making a date in such a place.
But before she had left her ward today Annie had looked in the mirror. She had looked at the hollows in her pale face, and she had even thought of lipstick. Then she had imagined how the colour would make a too-vivid gash in the whiteness. She had simply brushed her hair out so that it waved loosely and hid her cheeks, deciding that she must find a pair of scissors to trim the jagged ends.
She was standing with her hand on the window-sill, looking out into the street again, when Steve hobbled in. He saw her against the light, and the brightness of it shining through her cloud of hair gave it a reddish glow.
She turned towards him at once.
‘Did you get your five bob on, Steve, like I told you?’
It was one of the old men in front of the television, calling out to him.
Steve stopped, thinking, She was waiting for me.
‘Merrythought,’ the old man prompted. ‘Two-fifteen, Kempton.’
Steve shook his head. ‘No, Frank, I’m afraid I didn’t.’
The newsvendor clicked his tongue. ‘You’ll be sorry, son. It’s a cert.’ He swivelled back to face the screen.
Annie and Steve looked at each other and felt the laughter rising again. They had laughed yesterday too, like school-children, at almost nothing.
Trying to keep a straight face Annie asked, ‘How’s the leg today?’
‘Itching. Right down inside the plaster.’
The woman with the knitting peered up at him, then held out one of her steel needles. ‘Here. Poke this down inside and have a good scratch with it.’
Steve looked gravely at the implement.
‘I’d have to take my pyjamas down to get at the top of the plaster.’
The woman beamed at him. ‘Feel free, my duck.’
Her friend smothered her laughter behind her magazine.
‘The itching is probably safer,’ Steve murmured. He reached Annie’s side and turned a chair with its back to the room. They sat down in their corner, facing each other.
‘This place,’ he sighed.
‘You could afford to get yourself transferred to a smart private clinic,’ Annie reminded him sharply. ‘Peace and privacy. Menu food and real art on the walls.’
She wondered if Steve knew that she was voicing her fear that he might really go. He was sitting with his hands curled loosely over the arms of his chair, his crutches laid neatly at his feet.
‘No, I couldn’t,’ he said. ‘I want to stay here, because this is where you are.’
Annie felt the tightness of joy and panic knotted together under her ribs. It took her breath away, and the blood beat in her throat. She felt the closeness of his hand on the chair arm, and her own lying in her lap. She would have reached out, but panic suddenly overwhelmed her happiness. She lifted her arms and slotted her hands into the opposite sleeves of her robe, hugging them against her chest, shutting him out.
Steve saw the gesture and read its implication. She knew, and regretted it at once. She saw his handsome, haggard face and the grey showing in his dark hair. Steve was more than a man sitting in a hospital day room. He had been her friend and her comforter, her family and her lifeline all through the hours that still came back, renewing their terror, almost every time she slept. The memory and the fear were still potent, and Steve belonged with them, inextricably.
But he meant much more than that, because he was the man he was. Nothing to do with the bombing.
Annie was certain that it would be wrong to add fear of what Steve might demand from her to the pantheon of all the rest.
He was, and would be, her friend.
She slid her hands out of her sleeves again. She couldn’t reach out to him now, and she made an awkward little gesture instead.
‘I am here,’ she said simply. ‘Don’t go to a clinic.’
Over Steve’s shoulder she saw the woman with the knitting look up, curious. And with the intuitive quickness that seemed to link them now whether they wished it or not, Steve intercepted and understood Annie’s glance.
‘When did they unstrap your arm?’ he asked casually, nodding at it.
She took the opening gratefully. The progress of their injuries and illnesses was the common currency of ward conversation. Annie and the other women exchanged their latest details first thing in the morning and last thing at night, after the doctors’ rounds, and in between times when the nurses brought round the drugs trolley and the dressings packs.
‘This morning,’ she told him. ‘When the physio came round. It’s still strapped at the shoulder, but at least I can use the hand and elbow.’ Annie held out her arm, turning it stiffly. The woman looked down at her knitting again, uninterested. She had heard the details already.
‘That’s good news,’ Steve said. ‘They took me down to the physiotherapy room this morning. They had me pulling weights to and fro for hours, to get my arms and shoulders working.’
And he went on, talking blandly about his treatment.
But Annie knew that he wasn’t thinking what he was saying any more than she was listening. He had taken her hand as she held it out. He turned it over in his, looking at each of her fingers and at the shape of her nails. He touched his fingertips to the marks that the needles and tubes had left in her wrist. She felt the light touch as if it had been his mouth against her throat. She knew that he was looking at her, but she couldn’t raise her head to meet his eyes.
‘It’s very clever, they make the muscles work against one another, you know …’ Annie felt afraid to move in case he came closer, or let her hand drop.
Stupid, she thought dimly, don’t you know what you want?
There were half-healed cuts on Steve’s hands too. She could remember the length and shape of his fingers so clearly. Was the tactile memory so much stronger than the visual, then?
‘It’s very important. Otherwise they just fade away from lack of use …’
Annie
