Eye of the Needle(15)
Tom pushed the wheelchair, so Lucy took his groceries. Between the landward end of the jetty and the cliff top was a long, steep, narrow ramp rising high above the beach like a bridge. Lucy would have had trouble getting the wheelchair to the top, but Tom managed without apparent exertion.
The cottage was perfect.
It was small and grey, and sheltered from the wind by a little rise in the ground. All the woodwork was freshly painted, and a wild rose bush grew beside the doorstep. Curls of smoke rose from the chimney to be whipped away by the breeze. The tiny windows looked over the bay.
Lucy said, “I love it!”
The interior had been cleaned and aired and painted, and there were thick rugs on the stone floors. It had four rooms: downstairs, a modernized kitchen and a living room with a stone fireplace; upstairs, two bedrooms. One end of the house had been carefully remodeled to take modern plumbing, with a bathroom above and a kitchen extension below.
Their clothes were in the wardrobes. There were towels in the bathroom and food in the kitchen.
Tom said, “There’s something in the barn I’ve to show you.”
It was a shed, not a barn. It lay hidden behind the cottage, and inside it was a gleaming new jeep.
“Mr. Rose says it’s been specially adapted for young Mr. Rose to drive,” Tom said. “It’s got automatic gears, and the throttle and brake are operated by hand. That’s what he said.” He seemed to be repeating the words parrotfashion, as if he had very little idea of what gears, brakes and throttles might be.
Lucy said, “Isn’t that super, David?”
“Top-hole. But where shall I go in it?”
Tom said: “You’re always welcome to visit me and share a pipe and a drop of whisky. I’ve been looking forward to having neighbors again.”
“Thank you,” said Lucy.
“This here’s the generator,” Tom said, turning around and pointing. “I’ve got one just the same. You put the fuel in here. It delivers alternating current.”
“That’s unusual—small generators are usually direct current,” David said.
“Aye. I don’t really know the difference, but they tell me this is safer.”
“True. A shock from this would throw you across the room, but direct current would kill you.”
They went back to the cottage. Tom said, “Well, you’ll want to settle in, and I’ve sheep to tend, so I’ll say good-day. Oh! I ought to tell you—in an emergency, I can contact the mainland by wireless radio.”
David was surprised. “You’ve got a radio transmitter?”
“Aye,” Tom said proudly. “I’m an enemy aircraft spotter in the Royal Observer Corps.”
“Ever spotted any?” David asked.
Lucy flashed her disapproval of the sarcasm in David’s voice, but Tom seemed not to notice. “Not yet,” he replied.
“Jolly good show.”
When Tom had gone Lucy said, “He only wants to do his bit.”
“There are lots of us who want to do our bit,” David said.
And that, Lucy reflected, was the trouble. She dropped the subject, and wheeled her crippled husband into their new home.
WHEN LUCY had been asked to visit the hospital psychologist, she had immediately assumed that David had brain damage. It was not so. “All that’s wrong with his head is a nasty bruise on the left temple,” the psychologist said. She went on: “However, the loss of both his legs is a trauma, and there’s no telling how it will affect his state of mind. Did he want very much to be a pilot?”
Lucy pondered. “He was afraid, but I think he wanted it very badly, all the same.”
“Well, he’ll need all the reassurance and support that you can give him. And patience, too. One thing we can predict is that he will be resentful and ill-tempered for a while. He needs love and rest.”
However, during their first few months on the island he seemed to want neither. He did not make love to her, perhaps because he was waiting until his injuries were fully healed. But he did not rest, either. He threw himself into the business of sheep farming, tearing about the island in his jeep with the wheelchair in the back. He built fences along the more treacherous cliffs, shot at the eagles, helped Tom train a new dog when Betsy began to go blind, and burned off the heather; and in the spring he was out every night delivering lambs. One day he felled a great old pine tree near Tom’s cottage, and spent a fortnight stripping it, hewing it into manageable logs and carting them back to the house for firewood. He relished really hard manual labor. He learned to strap himself tightly to the chair to keep his body anchored while he wielded an axe or a mallet. He carved a pair of Indian clubs and exercised with them for hours when Tom could find nothing more for him to do. The muscles of his arms and back became near-grotesque, like those of men who win body-building contests.
Lucy was not unhappy. She had been afraid he might sit by the fire all day and brood over his bad luck. The way he worked was faintly worrying because it was so obsessive, but at least he was not vegetating.
She told him about the baby at Christmas.
In the morning she gave him a gasoline-driven saw, and he gave her a bolt of silk. Tom came over for dinner, and they ate a wild goose he had shot. David drove the shepherd home after tea, and when he came back Lucy opened a bottle of brandy.