House of Doors by Chaz Brenchley

‘Tubby,’ he said, ‘people call me Tubby around here,’ and once perhaps it had not been ironic. Certainly the jacket he wore had been cut for a wider man. He looked almost gaunt within its loose folds as they fell around him. The sick burn fat, as do the sorrowful. She had been plump herself, once, it seemed an age ago. Blame the ration, and never worry. What did she need of flesh?
    Besides, he was still talking, distraction, what she was here for: that dreadful voice, savage and precise. ‘No talking shop in the mess.’
    â€˜Squadron Leader Jones.’ Matron was professionally sharp, conspicuously not calling him Tubby, and not actually repeating herself even though each word was the same. This was a conversation, unless it was a ritual dance, each step prefigured and familiar.
    â€˜You can say what you like, Matron –’ even if that was just his name, apparently – ‘but rules are rules—’
    â€˜And rules change, when you cross the border.’ That was his neighbour on the other side, another of these too-thin young men in ill-fitting uniform that might once have shown his frame to advantage. ‘We’ve been over this, Tubby.’ Over it and over it, Ruth was guessing. ‘This isn’t your mess, it’s Matron’s tea table. We don’t wear our own ranks in here.’ Which was true, she realized, and one of the things that jarred: bare epaulettes on all these uniform jackets. ‘And we don’t fetch our own rules either.’
    â€˜Matron flings our ranks around willy-nilly.’
    â€˜Not willy-nilly. Only to scold. Isn’t that right, Matey?’
    â€˜I’ll thank you, Flying Officer Kaye, not to call me Matey.’ But she said it with a glimmer of humour around the purse of her mouth, and it raised a grin in him. He was lucky, he could still grin. His damage was elsewhere. Ruth couldn’t see it immediately, and she wasn’t going to peer, nor pry, no: but she was sure that it was there to be found. To be learned about. As and when. There were orderlies down the table, but orderlies had their own proper uniform, RAMC fatigues, familiar in any military hospital from here to Timbuctoo. Every military hospital Ruth was familiar with put their walking wounded in uniform too, uniform uniform, regulation and distinctive. Something was different, apparently, here.
    No, everything was different, apparently, here. Driving out into the world, Tolchard had worn a normal uniform jacket, with insignia. So had his friends fetching cider for the colonel. She was starting to think that perhaps they had only a few such, which they shared between them on exeats. Here in the house, the patients wore their own old uniforms, but stripped of rank. That was only indicative of something that ran far deeper and mattered far more. Something that she kept glimpsing, but could not seize.
    Something that she wanted to blame on Aesculapius, whether or not that was fair. She wasn’t stupid; she was fully aware that it wasn’t only the most obvious patients around this table who exhibited damage. If she were bolder, she might wonder what Matron’s secret was.
    Though she’d never be bold enough to ask.
    There were other questions, though, and she’d been invited to ask those. The uniforms were easy, were obvious; and there was her own uniform too, not regulation, she needed to ask what to do about that. She opened her mouth and was interrupted by a blast of singing that would have drowned out last orders in an East End pub, and she could barely hear herself as she said instead, ‘ Beer , Matron? At teatime?’
    In a hospital? – but she wasn’t of course going to add that. And didn’t need to, because it was absolutely inherent in her tone of voice, in her question.
    Matron’s face was eloquent in its response, and actually more informative than what she said.
    â€˜By special dispensation, yes.