The Gale of the World by Henry Williamson Page A

him get out of the bed to sit on the commode. It was spite, that was it, pure spite! He was quite capable of attending to his own motions, and of removing the apparatus for urination. O, why hadn’t Elizabeth engaged the two nurses, it would only be for a month at most, and would costwell under a hundred pounds. Life afterwards would be fairly comfortable, only he would have to regulate his intake, as the doctors called it, of liquids.
    For a week Elizabeth had been living in his cottage, and had come to see him only twice in that period, after the will had been signed. Everything to her, everything! A simple will, revoking all other wills, including the last one, leaving all to Phillip. Now, according to Elizabeth, Phillip was being divorced, and for cruelty. What could have happened? When he had seen him with Lucy, and her brother and his wife, during the war—a visit as unexpected as it was delightful—they had seemed to be the best of friends. Ah, well, one can never tell. Cruelty, too. Phillip had always been a wild boy, but never cruel.
    Ah! No! Had he not pushed little Mavis in the nursery fire, when he was not yet three years old? He had grown up to be a little coward, going round with his bully boy, urging him to fight for him! There was that boy in the Backfield, what was his name —never mind, his father had come up from Randiswell later in the afternoon, with his boy whose face was covered in blood and his nose swollen. Phillip had said it was because Mavis had been lying in the long grass of the Backfield with the boy. So Phillip had only been protecting her honour. The whole thing was disgraceful, Hetty said there was no harm in it at all, the boy was very shy—and so he had hidden himself, beside Mavis, in the long grass!
    His sigh ended in a groan. Mavis had turned against him ever afterwards, and used her second name, Elizabeth. Ah, the christening , his dear little daughter, his best girl! And then to behave like that, and hardly having reached the age of twelve! It was as though it happened yesterday. That was the point when he had found himself alone in his own house. Hetty and the children taking sides against him. Work, work, work for the family—and what had been his reward—to be regarded as an ogre in his own home.
    His thought returned to little Myra. She had written him such a loving letter before his operation, and again when he was back in his room. And the two letters, kept under his pillow, had gone! Then his talisman had been taken from him: his lavatory paper roll! Had Myra been to call at the home? You could not trust that Matron. She was almost brutally rude, refusing to listen to his just complaint that no-one came when he rang the bell for a bed-pan, and saying abruptly that it was against the rules forpatients after abdominal operations to use the commode ‘on their own’. An uneducated woman: ‘to use the commode’ was sufficient . How else would one use a commode? While anyone else, and most certainly a woman, was in the room?
    Richard was in pain. Sometimes the pain arose up like a great tooth-ache and at times the pain came in waves. It was after the doctor had given him injections of penicillin. And spots had broken out all over his legs and chest, followed by throbbing headaches. The doctor said it was the penicillin fighting an infection , and had given him another dose, with worse headaches, and vomiting, to follow. And his lavatory roll, kept hidden halfway down the bed, had been taken away. His sheet-anchor! Almost his only friend, a comforter during the sleepless hours of the night. For then in an emergency he could use the commode, and not disgrace himself. As he had when at boarding school, by wetting the bed. And been caned every time that happened, in school at Slough. Still, he had been only a bit of a boy, no doubt it was done for the best.
    And now the same terror was with him in the dark hours of the night.
    Even sunlight through the window had no power to