In Spite of Everything
by Charles Lacey
Chapter 9
Paul
I don't suppose there can be many people who are grateful for having been badly injured in a bomb explosion, but that was how Aiden and I met again. I was pretty badly damaged, and my first memory after the explosion was half waking, wondering where I was, and seeing a face above me that seemed familiar. I think I was several hours coming back to consciousness after pretty major surgery, but when I opened my eyes and saw Aiden bending over me I thought we'd both died and I was 'coming round' in Heaven.
But we hadn't, and before long the thing I was most conscious of was pain. I seemed to be nothing but cuts and bruises. But it was indeed Aiden who was with me, and when I realised that it was indeed he, I had to get my hand out from under the bedclothes to hold his hand. Greater love hath no man than this, says the Bible, that a man lay down his life for his friend. Well, thank God Aiden was not called upon to lay down his life for me, but he just dropped everything else and nursed me devotedly. I later found out that Major Harding, the surgeon who had patched me up, internally as well as on the outside, was fully aware of our relationship, and helped to arrange things so that Aiden could be with me almost continually. My gratitude to him for this as well as for the life-saving surgery he performed on me continues undiminished to this day.
I'd taken most of the blast from the mortar bomb. One eye was badly damaged with a retinal detachment. Several ribs were broken and the ends had punctured several internal organs. The heat had blistered one side of my face. I'd instinctively flung up my right arm to shield my eyes, otherwise I'd have lost both of them. My left arm was broken in five places and there were numerous surface injuries from flying fragments. I also got a nasty wrench to one ankle as the force of the explosion propelled me sideways. What with one thing and another I was a fine mess.
We'd hoped that Aiden would be able to come back to England with me, but as it happened his unit was moved back to North Africa shortly before I was due to be discharged. Captain Colston, who took over from Major Harding, was a brisk, no-nonsense man who looked me over and discharged me then and there, though I was still walking only with difficulty. There was the usual nightmare train journey. I was allowed a seat, since I obviously couldn't even stand for more than a short time. And then we embarked on the troop ship back to Blighty. Thank God, some of the lads who were going on leave helped me, or I don't think I would ever have got to Bombay, never mind boarding the ship. I spent most of the journey in my bunk. Fortunately it was a reasonably smooth passage with good weather. But we got back to Southampton, where, inevitably, it was raining, and I was transferred by Army lorry to the hospital at Netley.
My first week at Netley was spent recovering from the journey. But after that, the surgeons there clearly thought there was nothing more to be done, and sent me back home. The plaster had been removed from my arm, and I was learning to use it again. I was able to walk short distances, with the help of a sturdy Army issue walking stick, and while the sight in my left eye was still very blurred I could see well enough with the other.
Dear Grannie! No mother could have been more kind and thoughtful than she was. I was back in my own little bed, the one that my father had made, and she brought me breakfast on a tray each morning before I got up. Gradually the wounds healed, and it was a good day when I went out, stick in hand, to take my first walk. Grannie had written to Dad to tell him I was home, and he came over as soon as he could manage. He'd fought in the Great War, and been gassed in the trenches. He did eventually recover, though his chest was always weak and he used to get dreadful coughs and bronchitis in the winter. But it was good to see him again. Dad told me that my mother had said I might come home again, but by now my home was in Derby with Grannie and I had no desire to return to an atmosphere of constant moralizing and fault-finding. I think Grannie was very relieved. She had got used to having me around, and now that my strength was returning I was able to help her with some of the heavier household chores. She was well over seventy and becoming a little frail, though still full of life and energy.
Every three months I had to go to the Army depot in Derby to be examined by a doctor in order to see whether I were fit enough to return to active service. Apart from my comfortable, rather humdrum life with Grannie, I had only two desires in life: one was to be with Aiden, preferably on a permanent basis, and the other was to kill as many Germans as I could. I still remembered with bitterness the bomb that had killed the Grimbolds. It was a bright Spring morning when I went to the Depot to be examined, and was told that I was fit for 'home duties' but not for active service overseas. The problem was that the vision in my left eye was still very poor. It was not until after the war ended that I was able to go to the eye hospital at Moorfields, in London, to have the retinal detachment repaired.
So I returned home to Grannie's to await my call to what would be in effect a desk job somewhere in Britain. It eventually came. I was seconded to a place in the Home Counties, so secret that I am still not allowed to say where it was or what was done there, but I was delighted to find that my wood-working skills were called upon. I suppose I was a sort of glorified caretaker or handyman, really, but I enjoyed my time there, and met some of the most gloriously barmy people I have ever come across. I remember that one of my many tasks was to keep an eye out for, and rescue, stray coffee mugs from the canteen. One of the dottiest of the boffins, though when you got to know him he was utterly charming, kept his coffee mug chained to a radiator to prevent my returning it to the canteen. Another one had the disconcerting habit of taking a mug of tea outside where he would sit by the lake and think. When he had finished his tea, rather than take the mug back he would hurl it into the lake. I wonder to this day how many mugs still lie in the mud at the bottom!
I had become certain of one thing, and that I was homosexual. At that time, of course, it was still illegal, although in most places it was quietly ignored, unless one was outrageously effeminate. It turned out that 'The Prof', as he was generally called, the boffin who chained his mug to the radiator was 'family', as were two or three other men at the same establishment. But I didn't take the opportunities I might have had, as my heart was still Aiden's. We wrote to each other when we could, although I had to be very careful what I wrote to him as every outgoing letter was scrutinized before it was allowed to be posted. And I strongly suspect that incoming mail was examined too. Mail coming in had to be sent to an address in London from where it was brought every day by a courier on a motorbike.
Aiden was still serving with the RAMC. He'd been in Egypt for quite a while. Some of the tales he told about General Montgomery were scarcely believable! But I thanked the Lord that he was not on the front line fighting; in theory hospitals were safe from bombing, though that wasn't always the case. Slowly the tide of the war was turning, and the Germans and the other so-called "Axis powers" were finding it harder to keep going. News kept coming in: I listened to the nightly bulletin on the wireless. It gave me a little link with Grannie as I knew she would be doing the same thing. I wrote to her when I could; there wasn't much I could put in the letter as I had to keep silent about my activities.
In June 1944 came 'D-day' as it was called; the day when British and American troops landed in Normandy. We were beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel. With my defective eyesight I would not be able to go on active service, but in my own very small way I was making a contribution to activities that frustrated the efforts of the enemy and saved the lives of a good many British servicemen. With that I had to be content.
Aiden was allowed a fortnight's home leave, and I arranged to have a week's leave at the same time. I was very touched that he came first to see me, before going to see his mother. I'd asked Grannie about it and she said, "of course your friend must stay here. You make a bed for him and he can share your room." Timber, of course, was completely unobtainable and even second-hand furniture was at a premium (most of what there was, was reserved, quite rightly, for those made homeless by the Blitz), but I managed to get hold of a second-hand mattress that was reasonably clean and we put that on the floor in my bedroom. I met Aiden at Derby station and brought him home. He was just the same gentle, sweet boy he had been when we were younger. His looks had changed from boy to young man, but he was still stunningly handsome. It was during that visit that I saw him naked for the first time. He had the same beautiful soft skin that he'd had as as boy, and the same silken hair, though of course at that time it was cut short in an Army crop. The same warm brown eyes, that reminded me of chocolate. He had little body hair, just a fuzz on his shins and forearms, and a narrow line leading down from his belly-button. But one glace at what was below that, and at his neat little bottom, and I started to get very excited indeed.
We talked non-stop for two days! On the third day he went out to look for some chocolate (he wasn't lucky with that as it was still rationed) and while he was out Grannie, whose shrewd old eyes missed nothing, said, "Paul, I like your friend; he's such a kind man and very good looking too. Are you going to live together after the war?"
Aiden and I had never discussed this; I think we had both just assumed that we would. But I stared at Grannie in astonishment. "Paulie, my dear" she continued, "I've known you since you were a tiny child. And I've come to know you very well indeed since you have been living here. I've always known you were different. Even as a little boy you seemed to want to put right everything that was wrong in the world. You and Aiden are just right for each other."
All too soon my week's leave was over and I had to go back to work. But the war was starting to go our way now and there was real hope that it might end within a year.
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