Read Online Winds of Eden by Catrin Collier - Free Book Online

deaths?’
    â€˜Yes, but sending me here will brighten the atmosphere in the ward for the other patients.’
    â€˜Are you sure you should be walking about?’ She was concerned by the pain lines etched deep around Charles’s eyes and the way his hand shook when he offered her a cigarette.
    â€˜I’m not walking, I’m wheeling. A man can’t lie in bed for ever. Colonel Allan gave me a three-hour pass as a test as well as a treat. If I – or rather my leg – behaves he intends to discharge me at the beginning of next week.’
    â€˜To convalesce in India?’
    He shook his head. ‘My wound isn’t severe enough to warrant a spell of leave.’
    â€˜Rubbish! You sure you’re not playing truant?’
    â€˜Absolutely. Ask Colonel Allan if you don’t believe me.’
    â€˜I will the next time I see him,’ she asserted. ‘You’re obviously sick. I bet he only let you come here as an experiment because he needs your bed for an officer who’s freezing in one of the ancillary tents outside the hospital. If you don’t survive he gets your bed, if you do, he still gets the bed early next week. You’re a kill or cure venture.’
    â€˜I love the way you Americans murder the English language. I am no longer “sick” as you so quaintly put it. If I’m discharged next week, I won’t even be a convalescent but officially fit for duty.’
    â€˜That I don’t believe.’
    â€˜Provided they let me keep this chair, I’m quite capable of sitting behind a desk and pushing papers from one side to another. It might not be interesting or even constructive, but it’s all the brass has been doing in Basra HQ since Ctesiphon.’
    â€˜Have you found somewhere to stay if you’re discharged from the hospital?’
    â€˜Major Chalmers offered me a room in his bungalow.’ The waiter appeared. ‘Whisky, sherry, brandy, gin?’ Charles asked her.
    â€˜A gin and tonic would be lovely, thank you. It’s been a long foul day.’
    â€˜A double gin and tonic for the lady and I’ll have another brandy and soda please on my account.’
    The waiter went to the bar.
    â€˜Two brandy and sodas after your last bout of fever?’ Angela admonished him.
    â€˜Three brandies, to be mathematically exact. They brought me here early.’
    â€˜You’re yellow.’
    â€˜When Harry saw me before Ctesiphon he said if it was spring he could lose me in the daffodil meadow in Clyneswood.’
    â€˜That sounds so like Harry.’ She smiled at a memory she didn’t voice. ‘Clyneswood – is that the house where Harry grew up?’
    â€˜It’s beautiful.’ Charles’s eyes misted. ‘As is John’s family home, Stouthall. Harry’s family home is Tudor. It dates back to the Elizabethan age. John’s is newer, only two hundred years old. I envied both of them their family history and their lives occupying the same rooms their ancestors had done for centuries.’
    â€˜Every family has a history.’
    â€˜My father’s, his father’s, and so on back to caveman days is army camps and soldiering. My father bought a house close to Clyneswood when he retired from the Indian army. It’s nice enough from the outside. Inside it’s military quarters. There’s nothing there that couldn’t have come out of a kitbag apart from the furniture and that’s good-quality, dull, and unimaginative. Replicas of the pieces in every officers’ mess in the Empire. But enough of me, John, and Harry. You look exhausted,’ Charles moved so the waiter could set down their drinks. ‘I know Sister Margaret’s a slave driver and your brother and Dr Picard exacting, but surely you can stop working in the hospital now? All the Turkish casualties who are still breathing are down from Ctesiphon and there won’t be any more fighting until we go