Mrs Harrison had mislaid her ear trumpet again, which was as good a pretext as any to step outside the stifling day room and escape into the labyrinthine innards of the convalescent home.
"No, don't trouble, I think I saw it on the hall table," I said to whichever of the overworked nursing staff had raised the alarm. In truth, I had no idea where the errant ear trumpet might be located, but I could not bear to spend another minute in that oppressive room, with its smell of lye soap and rancid vegetable matter.
On my third day in this place, I still had very little idea of its arcane geography. In seeking the library, for a stolen half-hour of blessed solitude, I found myself instead at the end of a narrow passage leading out on to the rear patio and the grounds beyond.
Opening the little door, I stood there for a moment, taking in the mild, sweet air, looking across the verdant lawns that swept down to woodland and the lake beyond. I so wanted to see the lake, but thus far the nurses had only allowed me a slow perambulation of the kitchen garden at the side of the house, with frequent rest stops at every one of the stone benches we passed.
When I was stronger, they had promised I could go further. I took an experimental breath. There was only a little wheezing. I was sure I was much better than they thought me, after all.
But it was afternoon now, which meant that the male patients had the run of the grounds. We ladies had had our chance before luncheon. All the same, the lawns were very sparsely populated. I spotted one very elderly gent using a walking frame at the far edge, trailed by a nurse. Apart from him, I saw three younger men, sitting on a bench together in the rose garden, laughing and coughing. I think one of them was smoking, which was surely not permitted, although perhaps he was one of the few non-tuberculous cases among us. There were a handful of these, I had been told.
I put a slippered foot out of doors, looking each way to make sure I was not observed. The scent of the newly-mown grass rose to my nostrils, rich and alluring. The sun warmed my skin, where the fringes of my wrap left it uncovered.
Hang it all. The morning had been cloudy and shiverish. I needed to bathe in this light and freshness, while I had the chance. I launched myself off from the patio and began to walk down the sloping lawn, towards the woodland. I was going to see that lake.
The whisper of wind in the trees grew louder as I approached the copse, interspersed with the wistful bubbling of birdsong. The honeyed warmth of the lawn gave way to shadowy coolness, sometimes emerging into dappled shade or occasional patches of full sunlight. The deliciously rank odour of wild garlic, something I had forgotten all about, wafted up from the stalks that brushed my legs. Was it so long since I was in a wood? I tried to remember.
Epping Forest, when I was fourteen. Bluebells. A gipsy encampment. I had grabbed Joan's hand and we had run away, giggling. Mother had whipped us for getting dirt on our pinafores.
Ten years since, and now both Mother and Joan were gone from this world.
There were no bluebells in this wood, for the season was too advanced, and no gipsy encampment either. Still, some things remained familiar. The rake of a bramble across my hand, the pungency of old leaf mulch, the strange stillness in a place of such determined life.
My lungs began to ache and misgivings dampened my adventurous spirit. What if I should need to take a long rest, here in this deserted place, and then found myself unable to climb the slope back to the house? Perhaps I should turn back now.
But the sound of a splash, very near, made my heart jump, replacing the discomfort in my lungs. Was it some kind of large fish? Or even an otter, or some other large animal, swimming so close by? The lake had to be within a few feet of me. The chance to dip my toes into a ripple of sun heated water was too good to pass up.
Sure enough, once I was through the next thicket, the lake waters lapped just a few paces away from me, fringed by deep green reeds. Their lazy stillness was churned up some yards out by…
Heavens! A swimmer, a human swimmer. A man.
I stepped quickly back, concealing myself beneath the cloak of a weeping willow. For some moments, I saw only a faceless bobbing head and a pair of arms powering through the water until he tired and rose up on his feet, wading towards a shore not far from my little spot.
He was chest deep at first, but he moved easily against the water's weight. He was certainly not one of the consumptive youths I had seen in the dining hall; indeed, I had not seen him before at all. I am sure I should have remembered such a figure as this. He strode through the lake like a vengeful god, bearded and broad-shouldered. With each pace, a little more of his body became uncovered, the water falling away like a veil.
My mother's voice came, unwelcome, into my head. Your lascivious eye will be the ruination of you, madam. I have seen the way you look at the men in the street. Satan will find his way between your legs, mark my words.
So far, Satan had not found his way between my legs, and neither had anybody else, but I began to fear that mother was right about my lascivious eye. It could not tear itself from the body of this strange man, fascinated by the strength and damage it found there.
For every curve of muscle, there seemed to be an answering scar; for every pleasing sinew, a mark of suffering. As he came closer, his face sharpened, showing signs of some bitter agony that would never leave him, although one could not possibly know its nature.
I cowered in my weeping willow hidey-hole, feeling a prickle of fear along with the obscure compassion his condition aroused in me. I should not care for him to find me here.
Soon enough, he was close to the shore, and that part of a man no decent woman was supposed to look upon came into evidence. I opened my eyes especially wide, waiting for lightning to strike me down, but the sun shone on and the world continued in its rotation.
His legs appeared finally and, now he was out of the water's embrace, it was clear that he walked with a strange sort of limp, although it did not seem to be caused by an evident leg injury. Rather, he had to put out his arms a little to steady himself as he gained the shore, and got up on to the bank by moving on to all fours rather than taking a high step out.
I wondered, as I watched him, what was the nature of his illness. He was a man who must once have been extraordinarily finely made, but had been battered into a hollow version of his former self. Perhaps, I surmised, a soldier.
A little pile of clothes stood near him, and I expected him to put them on, but instead he donned only a pair of long johns and then he pulled himself back into an upright position using the trunk of a tree until he was able to grip an overhanging branch with both hands. He then proceeded to pull himself up, his feet leaving the ground, many times in rapid succession.
This undertaking looked both strenuous and rather painful, but he worked doggedly on, ignoring the building sweat on his brow and the gritted teeth that told of Herculean effort. Eventually, with an anguished grunt, he dropped to the ground.
I watched him there, recovering his breathing and his composure, my lascivious eye having overtaken every other impulse in my being for that time. He was like some beast or spirit of the woods – human only in the particularity of his form. In his eyes, he was wilder than any man I had ever looked upon.
On his back, high up towards his shoulder, were thick black marks in some unfamiliar eastern script I took to be Chinese or Japanese. Perhaps, then, a sailor?
Apparently undefeated, he scrabbled once more to his feet, where he stood for some time, his arms out to either side until he appeared to be satisfied. He commenced then to lash out at the defenceless air, jabbing at some invisible opponent with fists clenched tight. Whomever that invisible opponent might have been, I pitied him, for the blows rained down hard and fast and with an impact I shivered to imagine.
Cloaked in that hidden place, I felt as if I had been transplanted to the middle of some olden tale. There was something of enchantment in the scene, by virtue of its very peculiarity, and in the sylvan surroundings, and most of all in the figure of the shadow-boxing man. Such ferocity in the midst of such tranquillity made for a confounding combination.
Suddenly, his face twisted and, bellowing violent curses, he fell heavily sideways on to the ground. I lurched forward from my hiding place, alarmed at his distress.
While he reached, desperately and futilely, for a long walking cane deposited beside his clothing pile, I hastened along the bank towards him.
"Oh, sir, are you hurt?" I called. "I can go to the house and fetch help…"
I pulled up, a couple of yards from him, stopped in my tracks by the look he turned on me. If sheer ocular malevolence had magical properties, I should then by all rights have been no more than a heap of ashes in the grass.
"Away with you," he snarled. "Get away, do you hear?"
His fingers closed around the striven-for walking cane and he brandished it towards me. I jumped back, my heart in thunderous gallop.
"I am sorry," I stammered. "I thought only to…forgive me."
There was no more to be said to this mask of hostility. I turned and fled through the wood, heedless of the brambles and nettles that might have impeded my progress. It was not until I was halfway up the lawn slope that I remembered I should not have been able to run at all.