The Charioteer by Mary Renault Read Free Book Online Page A

eyes.”
    “Well, here’s another coming for you now. Be turning you into a flipping drug fiend, this rate.”
    Laurie rolled up his sleeve. The ice-cold evaporation of the spirit, the wasplike sting of the needle, once more set his teeth on edge. When the nurse had “settled” him, he ran his eye over the paraphernalia on the locker-top: enamel vomit bowl and cloth, tongue forceps and spatula. The absence of the notes and X-rays fidgeted him. There was a new nurse on and they might get forgotten. Well, she would probably not resent being reminded as the Charge Nurse would. She hadn’t minded his shaving the leg himself while she was called away from the screens. One glance at her face had assured him that she wouldn’t shave it far enough up, in which case Major Ferguson, who gave no marks for modesty, would make her sorry she had ever been born a country vicar’s daughter or whatever it was. It was a job for an orderly, but the whole place was in a chronic muddle.
    He ought to shut his eyes now and give his sedative a chance. He wished he could cure himself of fighting drugs and anesthetics, since this only seemed to make it worse. The Night Nurse, a comfortable person, had said that nurses were far too busy on operation days to listen to all the rubbish they heard, which meant nothing anyway and all sounded alike. Laurie, who had no great sense of his own importance, was very ready to believe this; but it never quite reassured him.
    Seeing him move restlessly, Reg said, “Doing you this late, you could have had breakfast.”
    “Hell, don’t remind me. They can’t help it here, it’s all fixed in the theater.”
    “Post’s late today. Heard from Madge yesterday, though.”
    “She and the boy okay?”
    “Had a bomb in the next street. That’s the nearest yet. She’ll have to go to her auntie in St. Albans. I keep telling her. Don’t know what makes her so obstinate.”
    Laurie, who had met Madge Barker several times, thought he could guess. Lest his face should hint at this, he got down into the bedclothes.
    “That’s right. Get yourself some shut-eye. And when they do you, you watch yourself and don’t get fresh with no officers, ’cause you’ll have to meet them again, see, you won’t be lucky like you was on that ship.”
    Laurie smothered the conversation with a sleepy-sounding grunt; this reminder came at the worst possible time for his self-confidence. He could remember very little about the crossing from Dunkirk; he had lost a good deal of blood by then, since they couldn’t keep a tourniquet on all the time, and had had some more shots of morphia. Barker, who was seeing by then as his swollen lids contracted, had told him a little. Laurie only knew that the ship was small and crowded, and that sometimes his life had seemed to be going out on a cold wave of nausea. Once, returning to himself for a few minutes, he had looked up to find a bearded face peering into his. It hung there persistently saying something and asking questions he felt too ill to deal with. Dimly he reflected that he was filthy and unshaved, and that his leg felt like some extraneous decaying mess. This attention was very flattering and suddenly, weakly funny. His inhibitions must have been at their lowest; for he remembered giving a wry kind of smile and saying, “Sorry, dearie. Some other time.” The face had disappeared rather quickly; he couldn’t remember seeing it again. Luckily, Reg Barker had his own version of this story. “Old Spud was a one coming over. The captain took a look at him to see he was still alive, like; and old Spud was that far gone, he took him for some tart and give him the brushoff. Chap with a mucking great beard and all. Laugh!”
    A fuzzy dullness was creeping over his brain. He recognized the effects of morphia and atropine, being too old a hand not to have found out by now what the syringe contained. Resolving not to doze off, he lay staring at the ceiling. He was in a punt on the Cher