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bouncing in his carpet roll.
    “I must admit this is the weirdest thing I have ever
done.” Oliver mused, “Rather puts an end to my plan for finishing the evening
with a hot coffee at Lyons.”
    “Once you have dropped this at my house you will still
have time to go. They open until nine.”
    “I think you missed my point.”
    Clara reconsidered his statement and it dawned on her
what he had actually been trying to say.
    “Oh.” She was silent a moment, “You know, Annie makes a
jolly good coffee. It would be the least I could do, after tonight’s events,
but to offer you a drink before you leave for home.”
    “It would be damn impolite of me to refuse.”
    “It would indeed.”
    Oliver grinned.
    “I accept your invitation Clara Fitzgerald.”
    “Jolly good.” Clara smiled, “Because you didn’t have the
option of refusing.”

Chapter Four
     
    There were two things Tommy really detested in this life;
one was waiting, the other was having to visit the doctor. Naturally quite
often these two hated things came together at once, producing an effect of such
tension and frustration in Tommy that he would swear to himself he would never
be forced to do either again unless he was dying. Of course, Tommy had at one
time thought he was dying. It was during that long, cold night in No Man’s
Land, when he stared at the stars and tried not to cry out in pain. He still
remembered the chilling sensation of the Flanders mud seeping into his clothing
and the terror that he might be sucked beneath it and drowned – he had seen
that happen before to men and horses.
    When they found him he was almost delirious with pain. A
bullet had shattered into his pelvis, crippling him and leaving him in agony.
They came for him in a brief lull in the shelling. The stretcher men ducking as
they nipped over the mud, hoping to avoid an enemy bullet. It was one of those
all too infrequent moments when both sides called an unofficial ceasefire so
they could collect their wounded. You just had to hope you were rescued before
some uptight colonel spotted the truce and ordered the bullets to come hurtling
again.
    Tommy had been lucky. Not that he had felt lucky at the
time or, for that matter, for many months afterwards. He had never walked
since, though the doctors in the military hospital were convinced he should be
able to. Nothing medically wrong with the legs, they would continually state.
Well, in that case, why can’t I move them? Tommy would retort. And they would just
shrug and silently imply it was something to do with his thinking. As if Tommy
hadn’t tried to move his legs! Wouldn’t he love to get up and walk if he could?
    After three years of immobility Tommy had surrendered the
small amount of hope he had left that he would ever walk again. What was the
point of holding on to such illusions? He had to get on with his life, even if
it was not what he had expected it would be. Naturally he was bitter about it,
hard not to be, but one made the best of things, didn’t one?
    Which made him wonder all the more why he had allowed
Clara to convince him to do that most hated of things – visit a doctor. Here he
was in the front parlour-cum-waiting room of a man called Dr Cutt (which name
alone failed to inspire confidence) awaiting yet another verdict of “nothing we
can do.” Annie had wheeled him there and gone to do the shopping, he assumed
this was so she could avoid being persuaded to take him home before seeing the
doctor. There was something terribly humiliating about knowing your actions and
choices were dictated by the presence of other people. Tommy found his mood
rapidly going from merely frustrated to morose. A young man should not find
himself immobile, he told himself, better to have died than live as an invalid.
    He was about ready to let himself tumble into despair
when a head appeared around the parlour door.
    “Mr Fitzgerald?” A man with a broad round face and small
glasses smiled at him. He had to be eighty