garden, and the pale spears of crocus leaves pointing up through the broken earth beside them. When she saw the flowers it was as if she had walked into a shaft of light. The same happiness in being alive that she had felt on the day they wheeled her out of intensive care came back and took hold of her. Steve had felt that happiness, and the return of it now drew her even more strongly towards him.
For a moment, standing in the littered street, Annie forgot her anxiety and guilt. She smiled and straightened her shoulders, thinking, Whatever comes, will come. Then she began to walk again, faster, feeling herself strong and complete in her happiness. The people who passed her saw her face and looked again, watching her as she went by, but Annie didn’t see anything except the warm light and the first signs of spring.
When she slipped in through the doors of his ward at last, she saw Steve sitting in the chair beside his bed, his crutches propped up within reach. The reality of his being there made her catch her breath, because all the way up in the lift she had been preparing herself for what she would do if he wasn’t. She saw that he was thinner and much paler than the Steve she had seen inside her head, and she thought that she must have been imagining him as he would be when he could walk again, fit enough to leave the hospital. Willing that to happen. She realized too that the sense of separateness had evaporated. She was simply Annie with her heart thumping and the mixture of joy and apprehension drying her mouth.
Then he looked up and saw her and she wanted to run forward and to hold back at the same time.
Steve watched her walk towards him and he thought, She’s beautiful. I hadn’t noticed that.
As soon as she was close enough, he stretched out his hand and Annie took it. They held on to one another for a moment, all they could do under the eyes of the ward. Then Steve moved to reach for his crutches and Annie said quickly, ‘Don’t move. I’ll sit beside you.’
She brought a chair, and put it beside his.
‘Six days is a long time,’ Steve said softly. Annie saw the hunger in his face and she had to look away, over his shoulder. It was a little before visiting time, and most of the curtains were drawn while the men slept after lunch. Even so there were still one or two patients shuffling to and fro, and the nurses. One of the nurses glanced their way and then looked more carefully. She waved a belated greeting to Annie.
Did they all see what was happening? Annie wondered. They must do, of course. If it was written as plainly in her face as it was in Steve’s.
She turned back to him, closing out the ward behind them. It didn’t matter. Only Steve mattered, here.
‘Today was my first appointment,’ she said.
‘And you won’t come to see me unless you’ve got the excuse of an appointment.’
‘Not an excuse,’ she began, and then stopped. She was using the fact of having to be at the hospital as a pretext, telling herself that she could always say lightly to Martin, ‘Oh, I went up to the ward to see Steve. Just for five minutes, as I was there, you know. He looks much better.’
But of course she wouldn’t say anything to Martin. Nothing at all, beyond the facts like the queue at Haematology, and the reassurances that the doctors had doled out to her. She had stopped talking to Martin about what mattered to her, in case it came too close to this. And gave her away.
Annie’s happiness faded a little. If Martin didn’t know anything about it, it didn’t matter when she came to visit Steve. The subterfuge was for her own benefit, Annie thought, because she lacked the courage to meet what was happening face-on.
‘Don’t look like that,’ Steve said.
‘I don’t know why I’m trying to pretend not to see you,’ Annie was frowning, unravelling her motives. What had been clear, before, was murky now.
Steve leant forward and touched his thumb between her eyebrows.
‘Come when you can, that’s all. It doesn’t matter, so long as I know I’ll see you sometimes. I don’t want to make more demands on you.’
Steve shifted in his chair, trying to contain his impatience with his slow-mending leg and the public tedium of the ward while Annie sat so close to him. Her hair smelt clean, with a mild, lemony scent. And even the brief touch of her had made him sharply aware of the texture of her skin, and the masked outline of her body. Steve was suddenly aware of the weight of love, pressing and trying to force its way into the open. It was new to him, and it made him feel childish and helpless.
Annie saw his impatience and her face lightened with sympathy.
‘Shall we walk a bit?’ she asked. ‘Come on. I’ll help you stand up.’
Together, they levered him to his feet. Annie held out his crutches and Steve leant his weight on the metal legs.
‘We could go to the day room.’ He smiled at her, crookedly.
They went slowly down the ward. Annie nodded cheerfully and spoke to the people they passed.
‘No, they can’t keep me away, can they?’
Truer than you know, she thought.
Annie pushed the doors open and the stale, smoky air of the day room enveloped them. It was deserted, but the television still shouted in the empty space. Steve went to the window and looked down into the street, then leant his forehead against the glass.
‘It’s like being in prison,’ he said.
Annie came to stand beside him and he manoeuvred himself awkwardly so that he could put his arm around her shoulders.
‘It won’t be long,’ she said.
‘It can’t be,’ he answered. He wanted to kiss her but he felt as awkward as a boy with his crutches and his heavy, plastered leg. And even if he managed to reach her and fit her against him, the doors would open at once behind them, bringing in Frankie, or sister, or the first phalanx of visitors eager for a cigarette and a talk about operations.
He whispered, ‘Annie,’ feeling his helplessness again, and she moved quickly, turning her face to his and kissing him.
‘It won’t be long,’ she repeated.
I love you, he thought, and the weight of it was pleasurable now. ‘Let’s try a walk along the corridor,’ he said. They went out again, passing the round window of the side-ward and smiling, sideways conspirators’ smiles.
They moved slowly along the corridor towards the opposite wing of the hospital, close together, listening to the sound of their awkward steps on the polished floor. After a moment Steve asked, ‘How is it, being back at home? Are the boys happier now?’
‘It’s fine,’ Annie answered carefully. ‘Tiring, sometimes. They’re reacting to my desertion of them by being truculent and clinging, by turns. Copybook behaviour, which I should have been ready for, and wasn’t. If I had the energy I’d have lost my temper with them days ago. I’m relying on a kind of weary patience.’
She grinned up at him suddenly and he saw how she must be at home, ordinarily. Jealousy of Martin and her children, and their life with her, gripped him viciously. He said something as neutral as he could, looking ahead to the patch of light through the doors at the end of the corridor, but he knew that Annie
