Odell.
Planning instant escape, Laurie remembered with helpless embarrassment the gramophone. By no possible effort could he manage it himself. Unless he were to watch his mother carrying it, this inexplicable person would have to walk up to the hospital with them.
“Which of the men have you come to see?”
“Only this one.” The difference of height seemed to give Mr. Straike’s smile an avuncular quality. A five-shilling tip would hardly have taken Laurie by surprise. He felt faintly sick; but nothing would happen, he was getting stronger every day.
Mrs. Odell spoke quickly, as if to forestall awkwardness even before it had time to exist in her own mind. “Wasn’t it good of Mr. Straike? I was telling him the other day how worried I was in case the railway people broke your gramophone, you know with all these temporary porters, and he insisted on coming all this way with me to help carry it.”
She smiled at him. It was a special smile, which had been Laurie’s exclusive property ever since he could remember. To see it used, so easily and as if already by habit, upon a stranger, gave him the emotional counterpart of a violent kick in the stomach. At almost the same moment a trailing end of the smile rested on him, in a delicately admonishing way. A scrap of her last letter came back to him. One must be nice to this man, he had been recently bereaved. A new, dreadful thought ran through Laurie like cold steel. He felt that he must get away, if only for seconds, to collect himself. But common good manners, and his lame leg which made an elaborate business of everything he did, held him to the spot like a ball-and-chain. He looked at Mr. Straike, to whom it seemed his feelings must by now have been delivered in stark nakedness: but Mr. Straike was looking manly, modest, and deprecating, and murmuring something about its being a privilege.
“It’s very good of you,” said Laurie, speaking his lines like a well-trained actor in an air raid. “You really shouldn’t have; a battered old thing like that could have taken another kick or two. Shall we go up to the ward, then you can get rid of it?”
His mother, he now noticed, had a record album under her arm. It raised his spirits; his imagination in a brief idyllic flight listened to Mozart with Andrew in the woods. He took it from her and saw at once that it wasn’t the one he had asked for, or even one of his own at all.
His mother said, with a defensiveness which made her sound faintly reproachful, “We didn’t bring any of your classical records, dear, they’d be sure to get scratched in a place like this; and besides, Mr. Straike said he felt certain they wouldn’t be popular with the men. And he was a chaplain in the last war, so he does know .”
Mr. Straike acknowledged this with a short modest laugh. “Something they can sing.” He spoke like a kindly uncle explaining his small nephews. “You can’t go wrong with a good chorus. Your mother and I brought ourselves up to date and made a little expedition in search of the latest.”
Laurie could see that he ought to look into the album. Managing his stick with difficulty, he succeeded in doing so. The records were, indeed, the latest song-hits. There wasn’t one of them that the Forces’ Radio hadn’t been plugging three times a day for the last month. “That’s marvellous,” he said. “Thank you so much.”
“They’re your mother’s choice,” said Mr. Straike, gallantly surrendering the credit. “I think you’ll find they make the party go better than Mozart. After all, these lads leave school at fifteen, one must temper the wind to the shorn lamb, ha-ha.”
“They want to be taken out of themselves,” said his mother, gently making everything clear.
Laurie said yes, they did, of course. The pause that followed was broken by Reg greeting Mrs. Odell as he passed with Madge on his arm.
“That’s the man I told you about, whose eyesight Laurie saved.” Once she had taken to
Planning instant escape, Laurie remembered with helpless embarrassment the gramophone. By no possible effort could he manage it himself. Unless he were to watch his mother carrying it, this inexplicable person would have to walk up to the hospital with them.
“Which of the men have you come to see?”
“Only this one.” The difference of height seemed to give Mr. Straike’s smile an avuncular quality. A five-shilling tip would hardly have taken Laurie by surprise. He felt faintly sick; but nothing would happen, he was getting stronger every day.
Mrs. Odell spoke quickly, as if to forestall awkwardness even before it had time to exist in her own mind. “Wasn’t it good of Mr. Straike? I was telling him the other day how worried I was in case the railway people broke your gramophone, you know with all these temporary porters, and he insisted on coming all this way with me to help carry it.”
She smiled at him. It was a special smile, which had been Laurie’s exclusive property ever since he could remember. To see it used, so easily and as if already by habit, upon a stranger, gave him the emotional counterpart of a violent kick in the stomach. At almost the same moment a trailing end of the smile rested on him, in a delicately admonishing way. A scrap of her last letter came back to him. One must be nice to this man, he had been recently bereaved. A new, dreadful thought ran through Laurie like cold steel. He felt that he must get away, if only for seconds, to collect himself. But common good manners, and his lame leg which made an elaborate business of everything he did, held him to the spot like a ball-and-chain. He looked at Mr. Straike, to whom it seemed his feelings must by now have been delivered in stark nakedness: but Mr. Straike was looking manly, modest, and deprecating, and murmuring something about its being a privilege.
“It’s very good of you,” said Laurie, speaking his lines like a well-trained actor in an air raid. “You really shouldn’t have; a battered old thing like that could have taken another kick or two. Shall we go up to the ward, then you can get rid of it?”
His mother, he now noticed, had a record album under her arm. It raised his spirits; his imagination in a brief idyllic flight listened to Mozart with Andrew in the woods. He took it from her and saw at once that it wasn’t the one he had asked for, or even one of his own at all.
His mother said, with a defensiveness which made her sound faintly reproachful, “We didn’t bring any of your classical records, dear, they’d be sure to get scratched in a place like this; and besides, Mr. Straike said he felt certain they wouldn’t be popular with the men. And he was a chaplain in the last war, so he does know .”
Mr. Straike acknowledged this with a short modest laugh. “Something they can sing.” He spoke like a kindly uncle explaining his small nephews. “You can’t go wrong with a good chorus. Your mother and I brought ourselves up to date and made a little expedition in search of the latest.”
Laurie could see that he ought to look into the album. Managing his stick with difficulty, he succeeded in doing so. The records were, indeed, the latest song-hits. There wasn’t one of them that the Forces’ Radio hadn’t been plugging three times a day for the last month. “That’s marvellous,” he said. “Thank you so much.”
“They’re your mother’s choice,” said Mr. Straike, gallantly surrendering the credit. “I think you’ll find they make the party go better than Mozart. After all, these lads leave school at fifteen, one must temper the wind to the shorn lamb, ha-ha.”
“They want to be taken out of themselves,” said his mother, gently making everything clear.
Laurie said yes, they did, of course. The pause that followed was broken by Reg greeting Mrs. Odell as he passed with Madge on his arm.
“That’s the man I told you about, whose eyesight Laurie saved.” Once she had taken to
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