‘I don’t give a bugger. That was how it was, see?’ Rob began to shout, pointing at the curtains of the cubicle. ‘Listen, he’s lying there somewhere. Does this matter now?’
Rob loudly demanded news of Danny from everyone who came within range, but no one would tell him anything.
‘Your friend’s being looked after. He’s in the best hands,’ a nurse tried to soothe him.
The policeman persisted. ‘Let’s talk about you, Robert. You were involved tonight as well, weren’t you? You’ve got some form, son.’
‘A fight. Three years ago.’ Rob’s mouth closed tight on the words.
‘Common assault. A heavy fine and a caution, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s all. Nothing else.’
‘Until tonight, Robert.’
The cut over Rob’s eye was stitched and his arm X-rayed. They told him that his elbow was fractured and needed to be put in plaster. There was also the possibility of concussion, and they would keep him for observation overnight if he calmed down enough to be admitted.
The divisional surgeon arrived to take a blood sample. He drew off the blood from Rob’s uninjured arm and squirted it into two phials, neatly sealing them in front of him.
‘Which one do you want sent for analysis?’
Rob shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’
The man said coldly, ‘Not really. But it’s your right to choose.’
Rob pointed a finger and scrawled his name left-handed on the form that was pushed in front of him. He had no proper interest in this now. The policeman stood in the cubicle opening, cap under his arm. Rob was to present himself with his solicitor at the police station, the next day or as soon as he was discharged from hospital.
‘I understand,’ Rob said, although he did not, not fully. He was drunk and shocked, and he couldn’t begin to follow the links of cause and effect connecting himself to tomorrow and the future. The focus of his fears was Danny.
Later, after his arm had been set in plaster, they put him to bed on a ward. The other beds were occupied by two old men who snored on their backs and a middle-aged man as thin as a skeleton who plucked at his sheets and glassily stared at the new arrival. Rob did not have to wait long for his chance. The lone nurse hurried away to some other section of the ward, and immediately he got out of bed. He put on the dressing-gown belonging to one of the old men on top of the hospital pyjamas and escaped.
The paper slippers they had given him impeded his steps. The right-angle of fresh plaster encasing his arm dragged him off balance, so sometimes his shoulder bumped against the shiny walls of the corridor.
At last he came to some heavy double doors marked Theatres. A nurse hurried round a corner with a box of sterile-wrapped dressings in her arms.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m looking for Daniel Arrowsmith.’
‘He’s in there now. Are you a relative?’
‘I was in the accident with him. I’m his brother. They said I could come up.’
‘Your mother’s waiting. Just along there, I’ll come back and show you.’
Danny’s mother. Of course she would be here.
‘Don’t worry. Tell me where, I’ll find it.’
When he was almost at the door of the waiting room Rob stopped and leaned his head against the wall. He could hear his heart thumping and the sandpapery rasp of breath in his throat.
Danny had talked about his mother. Not that often; he wouldn’t have gone on about her, not to Rob anyway, knowing what he and very few other people did know about him. He had just said something like, ‘She’s okay, my mum. She loves me.’ And then he had grinned broadly. ‘Worships the ground I tread on, in fact.’
Rob couldn’t crash into the operating theatre and demand to be told what was happening. Nor could he hide himself from Dan’s mother, although now he was here that was his impulse. The important thing was to find out how Dan was, and his mother would know. She would be able to tell him.
Before he opened the door he tried to think back. Driving, with Danny yelling him on. Rain on the windscreen. Then the brownish blur of oblivion.
The lights along the ceiling above him grew fuzzy outlines and danced into rainbows. He pushed the heel of his good hand into his eyes, then with a sudden roll he shoved his shoulder against the waiting-room door. It banged open.
She was alone, sitting in the corner by the wall. A white face, black eyebrows, hair the same colour as Dan’s. She had been sitting with her head bent and her hands clasped in her lap. But she looked up at him at once, imploringly.
Jess saw a young man with a lacerated face and a white dressing over one eye. There was black blood still matted in his reddish hair and his arm bent in plaster was held across his chest like a shield.
She knew at once who he was.
He looked crazed. Like an Old Testament prophet, slippered, half wrapped in his robe, come to denounce or defy. He seemed taller and broader and more threatening than a mere man. And in his madness he blazed with the electricity of life. She had never seen anyone who looked so alive as Robert Ellis looked in this room bleached colourless with fear. He looked at her and Jess stared back, not knowing whether to attack him or to turn and run away.
He saw her face change as recognition flooded into it.
‘How is he?’ he asked.
She looked full at him for a minute, then the shock of her response faded. She bent her head again. Her fingers locked together, her fists rested on her knees. She had no energy to bring to bear on anything but the news she was waiting for.
‘They’re operating now. To drain off the blood that’s pressing on his brain.’
‘Is he going to live?’ he brutally asked her.
‘It’s too soon to tell.’
Rob sat down on the farthest chair. As they waited in silence he watched the second hand of the wall clock sweeping out its monotonous circuits.
Jess was lonelier than she had ever been in her life. She thought she had grown used to being divorced, but she had never reckoned how it would feel to be alone in a place like this. She could have telephoned her sister and her daughter, but she knew she would have to explain and try to reassure them when she longed to share her love and terror with an equal. So she sat motionless, waiting.
At last the door opened once more.
‘Mrs Arrowsmith?’ It was the surgeon.
Jess stumbled to her feet, almost falling over Dan’s holdall.
‘How is he?’
The surgeon glanced at Rob. ‘This is Daniel’s brother?’
