A Kind Man by Susan Hill Page A

cutting down on his leg. He recalled a man’s head bent close to his own, as if he were listening. He had seen blackness and then a terrible redness in front of his eyes and nothing had been clear to him, he could not make out where he was or why.
    But then he had felt a few seconds of searing heat, as if they had opened one of the furnaces close to him so that it seemed the whole place was on fire. After that, there had been no pain only a lightness and the desire to sleep and the name of Tommy Carr on his lips.
    He had opened his eyes and seen the sky tip from side to side and thought that he was falling forwardsbut now he realised that he had been carried on a stretcher down the iron staircase.
    That was all. He had closed his eyes and slept.
    He had tried to sort out words to talk to Ellen about it and the nurse or the doctor, but there did not seem to be words and when a few came out they shushed him, though kindly, so he had fallen silent and let himself drift back to sleep. When he woke next the blinds had been drawn down against the windows and he had a terrible thirst. They brought him a pitcher of water and he drank it all but did not try to say anything else.
    They had wanted to keep him in the hospital but he was having none of it, he was fit. He got out of the bed and walked up and down to prove it to them, so that they let him go, striding out through the doors into the street with Ellen a step behind.
    Word was fire and raced round town as it had done before and no one knew what to make of any of it, or what to do or say, and so George Crab was feted and clapped on the back and Tommy Carr was left alone, for you never knew.
    It had taken Tommy a long time to walk home one night and when Eve saw him from the window her heart turned because he looked as he had looked before, his shoulders bent, his head down. But hecame into the house with a light enough step and she saw that he was not as he had been, he was stronger, and although he would never be a stout man he had lost the terrible thinness, his belt was fastened a few notches looser.
    But she asked ‘Tommy?’ as he sat down, for there was surely something. Something.
    He shook his head.
    ‘Has something happened? Has something been said? Are you not well?’
    ‘I’m fine, Eve.’
    ‘No.’
    But he would not say more, only asked about one or two things to do with the garden and the new rabbits and the way of the world and she knew she should wait. Tommy did things and said things in his own time or not at all.
    He walked to the bottom of the garden and looked over the fields and walked back, stopping to look at this or that, but she saw that he was struggling to make sense of things from the way he frowned and seemed to be absent from himself.
    And then he did tell her, as she went about gathering the last scraps for the chickens.
    ‘Would the man have died?’
    He shook his head. ‘Who knows the answer to that? Not me. I know nothing.’
    ‘And you’ve done nothing.’
    ‘Have I not?’
    ‘Nothing wrong, surely to God.’
    ‘I don’t know what has happened or will but I’m treated like a man with a running sore, that I do know.’
    But in this he was wrong. He was not being shunned. People were puzzled and they were also respectful of him, not wanting to intrude, seeing the troubled look on him and thinking they would help by leaving him alone.
    Only talk went on, talk and speculation and wonderment, and questioning and what had been vague and uncertain firmed as it was talked about and seemed to become clearer and better known. Mary Ankerby had had a stroke or a seizure and come round as if it were nothing more than a moment of dizziness. George Crab had been crushed almost to death and pinned to the ground by the weight of the metal racks, so that blood had been squeezed from his mouth and his eyes had bulged, and that night had walked out of the hospital and home, as well as anyone in the town.
    And all of it, including his own recovery,