May 1946

She lay in the crook of my arm, her head on my shoulder, a small hand playing with the hair on my chest, both of us satisfied and drowsy with the afterglow of some extended lovemaking, the covers wrapped snugly around us against the chill of the frigid autumn day.

I kissed her copper curls lazily and, following the mounds our bodies formed under the pale yellow covers with my eyes, mused wistfully, "Looking at us now, it'd be so easy to pretend everything's fine."

"Well, it is, isn't it?" She tilted her head way back to frown at me upside down. "We're together, cosy and warm, and I've just had wonderful sex with a wonderful man. So yes, I do think everything's fine. No need to pretend."

"Aw, you know what I'm getting at, don't you? You know what's under the covers."

"The man I love?"

"The damaged man you love, you mean."

"Oh, Mick." She pushed herself up on her elbows and said, "Don't get started like that again, please. You know perfectly well I don't have any issues with your leg, and you shouldn't either. Why'd you want to pretend? It's no use anyway. It won't change a thing. Don't get me wrong, I understand how much you must wish things were different, but they are the way they are. We have no choice but accept reality and make the best of it."

"You don't understand nothing", I said acidly, coming up on my elbows myself, grabbing a fistful of bed linen to keep myself from smashing something against the wall.

Try not being able to drive or swim or run and see how you would like having to get used to all those constraints, I wanted to shout at her. Try having to ask someone for help when you simply want to take a cup of tea into the next room but can't because you've got your hands full with the crutches. Try crashing to the floor and lying there, waiting for someone to pick you up when all you'd wanted was go take a leak at night and forgot in your half-sleep that you had this new little problem of a missing leg. Try lying on your back for weeks on end, stuck in a giant plaster cast, totally helpless, or getting up finally to find you're so weak that even going to the goddamn toilet is a challenge. Then you might know what I'm talking about.

I didn't say any of this, but I glared at her blackly, almost hating her for a terrible moment, with her intact body and her sensible attitude towards my troubles. She certainly was not wrong in what she'd said, but this factual view of things seemed so cold to me.

I didn't want to have to explain why I felt the way I felt. I wanted her to understand without explanation.

"Mick …", she began.

"What if I can't simply accept it all, like I was some kind of saint? What if I don't want to? I want my life back, you know. All of it. I can't simply push a button and – snap! – accept that a large part of it has gone down the drain. I can't just sit around and be a good little invalid with a blanket over my knees – oh, wait, make that knee, let's face the fact that I only have one of them left. I can't just accept that all I can possibly expect from life is collecting an amazing collection of rare stamps or write my memoirs or become a chess champion, no matter that I'd rather do some proper work and be a proper man."

"Oh, Mick, please don't make it so much worse than it really is", she said unhappily.

"No need to make it worse. It's bad enough as it is", I retorted, untangled myself from the covers and began to collect my clothes that were strewn all over the floor by the bed. My shirt was just out of reach, and it took three attempts until I managed to snatch it up with the tip of a crutch.

This was symptomatic of my perennial dilemma – if I asked for help, it was always embarrassing; if I did something myself, it was usually awkward. How I hated having to make a fool of myself, one way or the other, to get things done.

I felt Evelyn's eyes on my back, but I couldn't bring myself to turn around. I didn't want to talk it over right now, and I didn't want to hear any apologies.

She didn't speak to me until I had got dressed and left the bedroom.

I went through into the living-room, following a sudden craving for something strong.

I knew she kept a few bottles of liquor, probably leftovers from back when that prick Phillip was alive, in the little cabinet below the window.

Its door was stuck and I had to pry it loose with some effort. When it finally gave, I almost fell over with the jolt and hit my hipbone painfully on the marble windowsill.

At last I found a bottle of fine Scotch whisky, still about a third full, and got it onto the side table without further accidents. I didn't bother to fetch a glass, I just plonked myself down in the wing chair by the table and took a generous swig.

Evelyn didn't come looking for me the way she usually did after we'd had a clash. I could hear her noisily pottering around in her study.

By the time she did enter the living-room, the level of amber liquid had diminished considerably.

It had not helped much, though, so I had put the cork back in the bottle and was staring into space, utterly discontented with everything.

From where she stood when she came in, she couldn't have seen the bottle on the table behind me, and I didn't think I was visibly inebriated, but the first thing she said was, "Are you drunk, Mick?"

"What if I were? Why don't you just accept it?" I scoffed.

"Dammit, Mick, I know you hate your life right now, and I guess what I said in bed was a very dumb thing to say, but getting sozzled doesn't solve anything." She walked over briskly and stowed the bottle back where it belonged. "I don't want this to become a habit."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, worry about yourself, will you? I'm surely not going to end up an alcoholic just because I feel like getting sloshed once in a while. Can't you simply leave me alone for once?"

"Fine, if that's what you want, I'm gonna leave you alone", she shouted hotly. I'm not going to listen to you any more, or encourage you or try to make you see your stupid life is still worthwhile. But don't come crying when you feel you do need someone to hold your hand after all!"

Part of me wanted to holler back at her, and I was already drawing a deep breath to do so, but I suddenly felt very tired and not at all ready to engage in another senseless shouting match. A headache was beginning to throb in my temples, and I said wearily, "Can we stop yelling at each other, please? I don't want us to quarrel again."

She looked flabbergasted and almost a little disappointed when she asked pointedly, "So what is it you want?"

"Except my old life back, you mean?" I said flatly. "I guess I only know what I don't want. I don't want to be pitied, and I don't want to be mothered. I just want to live my stupid life and maybe, just maybe, I'll even learn how to be a happy invalid."

She pursed her lips in distaste and remained silent, which was very untypical of her who usually needed to have the final word and hardly ever let a "cripple" or "invalid" fly.

She stood for a while, clutching the back of an armchair, picking at the upholstery agitatedly. I could see her jaw working as the cogs were turning busily in her mind.

Finally, she threw up her hands in a gesture of defeat and said, "I'm sorry, I just can't seem to find the right thing to say to you. When I said … what I said earlier, I didn't say it to hurt you. I just thought … oh well, never mind. I only wish there was actually something I could do to make you happier with your life."

"I also wish there was", I said darkly. "But you were right, all those wishes and what-ifs aren't any use now. I guess you'll simply have to live with things the way they are, and I will, too. My leg isn't going to grow back after all. Better accept it, huh?" My attempt at a sarcastic laugh failed miserably. It sounded more like a sob.

She said nothing, but she came over and perched on the arm of my chair, and when the silly, childish urge to cry made my lips quiver wretchedly, she still didn't speak.

She simply held me while I gave in to my misery and heartache over a life that would never be all I wanted it to be.


She was very quiet and pensive for the next couple of days, and when we were sitting at the kitchen table one afternoon over a cup of coffee, she casually asked me, "Say, Mick, what kind of kid were you?"

"Huh?" I was totally taken aback, puzzled as to where that question suddenly came from.

"What kind of kid were you?" she repeated.

"Why d'you want to know? What's that to do with anything?"

"Well, when your mother told you that you couldn't do something, did you just give in and let it be because she said so? I don't think so." She raised a knowing eyebrow. "I think you'd rather go and do it anyway, and with all the more relish."

"Can't deny it", I replied, thinking of the countless times I had come home wet or bloodied or with my pants torn and stained because I had waded right into a tidal pool or fallen off my bicycle or snagged my clothes in the bramble hedge at the back of the garden which I used to crawl through instead of walking all the way round to the little gate at the front. This memory of days long past made me smile ruefully.

"So why are you so sure that pessimist doctor fellow – what was his name again? Stiles? - got it right?" she asked. "What's keeping you from getting someone else's opinion? There's got to be some good specialist in Sydney. Why not go and hear what he says? If he confirms what Stiles told you, well, then we'll have to deal with it somehow. If he doesn't, all the better. And honestly, I can't believe someone as young and strong as you shouldn't stand a real chance of making it work if he set his mind on it."

I had no valid argument against this, only an undefined, irrational fear of another doctor sealing my fate with an uninvolved, matter-of-fact assessment – a feeling so vague that she wouldn't have accepted it as an excuse.

So I had gone to see Dr. Baker, who had been rather displeased to hear of the dispiriting advice his colleague had left me with and emphatically told me there was absolutely no reason why I shouldn't at least give it a try.

"Well, surely walking with an above-knee prosthesis requires significantly more energy than a below-knee one, which is why we only see a relatively low success rate, but you have all the prerequisites of someone who will make it work. Everything's healed very well, the sutures couldn't look any better, you're in good general health, and you seem to be quite fit physically. I'd like to see you again in a couple of months, and I can't think why you shouldn't be walking in here on two legs then."


Two months later, almost to the day, I had walked into Dr. Baker's office with nothing but my seahorse cane. He was highly satisfied with me and said with a conspiratorial smirk, "I've a good mind to give my competent colleague in Brisbane a call."

"Well, maybe I ought to thank him in fact. Who knows if I'd have made such good progress if you hadn't recommended Helen, of all people, for torturing me back into shape", I replied with a chuckle.

"She's something else, isn't she?" the doctor said with a grin.

"Oh yes, she is", I said wryly and grimaced, which made him laugh.

But it hadn't been Helen's pitiless regimen alone that had brought me this far.

There was another woman who was truly something else.

She was waiting for me outside the doctor's office, rejoicing when I said I'd passed the examination with flying colours.

That evening, she took me downtown for a fancy dinner to celebrate the occasion and wouldn't hear of me picking up the bill.

It was a beautiful night out, with a lavish three-course menu and a good bottle of wine and Evelyn radiant in a dark green silk dress, a single large pearl, perfectly round and unblemished, shimmering at her neck.

For once, I even felt at ease in the dark suit and the navy and burgundy paisley tie Evelyn had chosen for me.

But what I enjoyed most of all that night was moving about the restaurant without people staring at my nonexistent leg, however discreetly.

Against all odds, I was back on my feet. Still a bit insecure on the fake one, but back nevertheless.