because I don’t believe you tread that path in any case. And we haven’t made love, although I want you now more than I’ve ever wanted anyone in all my life.’
Annie knew that that was the truth. She felt the colour hot in her cheeks, but her eyes held his.
‘I’d lie down with you here, now, this minute, if only we could,’ she whispered.
Steve leant forward and for a second his lips were hard against hers.
‘Thank you,’ he said. He was smiling, but the pulse was still beating at the base of his throat. ‘I will remind you of that. For now, I just want to tell you something.’ He stopped, looking for the words, and Annie understood that Steve was as vulnerable as she was herself. He shrugged then, almost like a boy, and said in a voice so low that she had to strain to catch what he said, ‘You know that I love you, Annie, don’t you?’
In the silence that followed she heard the echoes in her head, I love you, Annie, and happiness fluttered against her ribs again. She lifted Steve’s hands and looked down at his knuckles, touching them gently, wonderingly, with her thumb.
From outside in the corridor came the squeak of hurrying feet and a door swung open and shut with a hiss and a bang. In the distance a trolley rattled at the big doors of the lift.
It was so quiet in the room, and the noise outside sharpened her awareness of the difference between there and here. She was hidden with Steve in this little square box. Martin told her, I love you, and that was the truth too.
‘I did know,’ Annie said at last, thinking that the words fell gracelessly, like stones. She tried to cover them, saying too quickly, ‘Steve, I didn’t …’ but he stopped her from going any further.
‘That’s all,’ he said. ‘I wanted you to know, before you go. Will you think about it, Annie?’
Very carefully, keeping her mouth steady, Annie said, ‘I won’t be able to think about anything else.’ That was her admission. Her face crumpled then and she blinked to keep back the tears. ‘I don’t want to go, Steve. I …’
Not even Annie knew what she might have said, because he stopped her with his hands to her lips.
‘Think about it,’ he repeated. Steve moved his weight awkwardly against the edge of the bed, and Annie knew that he was thinking, Bandages, crutches.
‘It won’t be long,’ she said. ‘They’ll let you go soon.’
‘Until they do, will you come and visit me?’
‘Like all the others?’ Annie smiled suddenly as she copied old Frank’s descriptive outline in the air, but Steve caught her hands and kissed them.
‘Not like that at all. Will you?’
Annie knew that she would come. The prospect of it seemed now the only way that she could bear to leave him.
‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘As often as I can. I promise I will.’
‘It won’t be long,’ he echoed, and they looked at one another soberly.
‘What will you say to Martin?’ he asked, because he couldn’t help it.
Annie let go of his hands. She turned her head to look at the window, and then walked slowly across the room. Dozens of other windows faced into the dark well. She saw the edges of curtains, cupboards, and through one window opposite the crimped edge of a sister’s cap as she sat at a desk.
Painfully, she said, ‘I won’t tell Martin anything. There isn’t anything to tell, yet, is there? I don’t want to hurt him.’ Annie realized that she was rationalizing aloud. She didn’t understand herself what was happening, not yet. ‘I have to think,’ she said softly. Steve nodded, accepting. Annie went back to him and rested her head against his shoulder. Out of the tangle of feelings, suddenly happiness was dominant again. They had come through all of it, and they had held on to one another.
With his mouth against her hair he whispered, ‘We should go now.’
Annie wanted to leave this, too, at the point that they had reached. She let herself hold on to him for a moment longer, and then she slipped out of his reach. She stooped to pick up his hated crutches and fitted them gently under his arms so that he could walk again.
Watching her, Steve thought that he had never seen anyone as clearly, with such intimacy, as he saw Annie now. With her hand at his elbow he lumbered towards the door. A cramp gnawed at his good leg so that he swayed, leaning against Annie for support, and she almost fell under his weight. They struggled for a moment before they were steady, and then they stood upright. Laughter washed over them until Annie had to hold on to the door jamb for support. She found herself thinking, How can this have happened, out of pain and fear, this laughter, and the happiness of loving a stranger?
But it had happened. There was no going back now.
‘It isn’t funny,’ Steve protested as their laughter died down. ‘I’m incapable.’ He saw the brightness of Annie’s eyes.
‘That’s just as well. Think what might have happened otherwise.’ She dodged past him, and went to smooth the hospital bedcover back into its rigid folds. ‘There. Now Sister will never guess.’
‘Don’t be so sure. She’s probably got a spyhole somewhere.’
‘Now you tell me.’
Annie peered through the glass porthole. Her face was serious again as she turned back to him, and then leant forward to touch her mouth to his.
Neither of them spoke, because in that long moment there was no need to.
It was Annie who moved first. Slowly she opened the door. She saw that the corridor was deserted and so she went quickly away, without looking back, afraid that if she didn’t leave him then she never would.
Martin came to collect her the next morning.
Annie had packed her bag, and she was waiting for him, sitting in the chair beside her empty bed, when Sylvia saw him through the open doors and called across to her, ‘Here he comes, love.’
She stood up to meet him and he kissed her cheek, both of them aware of all the others watching them. Annie felt the familiarity of him beside her, and at the same time her fear of leaving the safe, small hospital world.
Martin picked up her bag. ‘Ready?’
‘I just want to say goodbye.’
The nurses and the other patients were already waiting, lined up in dressing gowns and uniforms at the ward doors. Annie saw the sister slip out through the doors. With Martin at her side Annie said goodbye to each one of the others. Their good wishes and congratulations made a lump in her throat, and she was afraid that she was going to cry.
She was reaching the end of the row when the ward door opened again. The sister was back and there were others with her, all the men from the adjoining ward who were well enough to walk. Frankie the news vendor was at the head of them, with a big bunch of cellophane-wrapped roses in his arms. He held them out to her, beaming. ‘Here you are, my duck. You’re a brave girl. Good luck, from all of us.’
Behind
