Chapter Three
The only sound in the cellar was Hawkeye's hoarse breathing as he shuddered in Margaret's arms.
"Charles!" she said sharply. "Did you hear me?"
Charles dropped to his knees and touched his fingers to Hawkeye's wrist. Then he took him by the shoulders, frowning as he felt the tremors racing through the other man's body.
"Pierce, look at me. Look at me! Listen to my voice."
Hawkeye's eyes - the eyes of a drowning man - latched onto his.
"Good; that's good," said Charles. "Now listen. We are in no danger here. We have air and we have light. People know where we are, and they will be working to get us out as soon as they can." He spoke carefully and distinctly as he might to a child.
Hawkeye nodded jerkily. "I know, I know." His voice was a tight stutter around chattering teeth. "I'm okay."
Charles ignored the lie and continued in the same calm but firm tone. "Your pulse is much too fast and if you can't control your breathing, you are in danger of hyperventilating. Concentrate on your breathing. Try to calm down a little."
"I know the s-s-symptoms, Charles," said Hawkeye, swallowing convulsively. "What do you think I'm try…trying to do?" To their amazement, he laughed – a short, shuddering exhalation of breath. "What now? Are you going to hit me, like … like the hero in the movies?"
Charles's appalled expression and the gasp from Margaret beside him brought him round faster than any slap in the face. "I'm sorry, Charles, I'm sorry," he stammered. "It's just – I'm hanging on by a thread here, you know? I'm sorry….."
Charles patted the hand gripping his forearm and muttered a vague reassurance, trying not to show how unsettled he was. The humour, the confidence, the Hawkeye had evaporated from the man before him, to be replaced by this panic-stricken stranger with Pierce's face, who hardly seemed to know what he was saying.
Hawkeye pushed himself to his feet suddenly, nearly knocking Margaret over. He looked up at the hatch. "I bet if ... if we all push together we can shift it," he said, and he clambered back up the steps. There was desperate hope on his pale face as looked down at them. "Come on!"
Margaret started to protest, but Charles caught her eye and nodded. His own attempt had convinced him that they would have to sit it out and wait for rescue, but perhaps Hawkeye needed to find that out for himself. The three of them pushed together, perched on the narrow stairs, but with no success. Hawkeye was the last to give up, punching the stubborn wood and cursing before slumping down onto the steps, his burst of frantic energy spent.
Margaret took his arm gently. "Why don't you over come by the light so I can look at that cut?" she said.
"Cut?" He touched his cheek, then shook his head. "No, I uh, I need to stay over here, by the….by the way out."
"Fine," said Margaret. "I'll bring the light over."
Charles followed her across the cellar. "I've never seen such an extreme phobic reaction," he whispered. "I didn't know about this, Margaret."
"I only found out when we had to evacuate to that cave last month," replied Margaret softly. "He was terrified - he just couldn't stay in there."
"I was with patients; I hardly saw either of you the whole time. Colonel Potter told me that the two of you had gone back to the camp."
"He couldn't get away fast enough. The shells were nothing to him compared to being in that cave." She looked over to where Hawkeye sat, his shoulders hunched, elbows on his knees and the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes. "Charles, what can we do?"
Charles considered for a moment. "If we were back at the camp, I'd give him a light sedative, just to take the edge off and calm him down."
"If we were back at the camp, he wouldn't need calming down," said Margaret tetchily. "And we haven't got a sedative, Charles."
Hawkeye's flat voice made them both jump. "Hey you two, I'm losing my mind, not my hearing."
Margaret picked up the lamp and carried it over to where he sat on the steps. As she crouched in front of him, she could see the strain on his face as he fought a very real, very personal battle for control.
Charles bent to look at Hawkeye's cheek and pressed a clean handkerchief against the cut. "The bleeding's nearly stopped," he said. "Are you hurt anywhere else?"
"I'm fine; I'm fine." Then he realised how ridiculous it sounded, and the words came out in a rush. "No, I'm not. I'm full of adrenaline with nowhere to go. I don't know whether to stand up, sit down, curl up in a ball or run in circles. I keep telling myself everything's going to be fine, but there's something inside me screaming that the walls are closing in, that the roof's going to collapse – that I'm going to die in this place. My heart's going like there's a woodpecker loose in my chest. I'm dizzy; I'm cold; I'm sweating; my head's pounding and there's every chance I may be reacquainted with our picnic very soon." He bit his lip. "I really, really need to get out of here," he whispered.
He started to wipe his hands against his thighs, up and down, up and down. Margaret was suddenly convinced that he would do this until his palms were bleeding and his clothes worn away, and she gently put her hands over his and held them still. He looked down as if surprised, but her touch seemed to calm him a little.
"Wandering hands," he said with a weak smile, and she saw a faint spark of the Hawkeye who had flirted with her earlier.
"Pierce," said Charles, after a rapid mental review of everything he knew about phobias and how to cope with them, "have you been in a situation like this before? Is there anything you've learned in the past that might help now?"
"Plan A, avoid small spaces. Plan B, if Plan A fails, get out fast. Plan C, if avoidance and escape are impossible but there's advance warning, is to go with what I heard you suggesting to Margaret. Flying's a classic example – not the flying, you understand, but the being crammed into a metal tube with other people. I either drink enough so that I don't care, or else I prescribe myself a little something to get through." He shivered suddenly. "I've never got as far as Plan D, but it seems to consist of 'fall apart and babble like a fool'."
Margaret started to say something, then stopped, frowning. "What?" said Hawkeye.
"Well, I don't know if I should be suggesting this, but there's still some beer over there." She waved a hand towards the place where she had dropped the bottles earlier. "What the hell - if you think it might help…" She looked at Charles, who shrugged as if to say it couldn't do any harm.
"Margaret, I never thought I'd hear myself say this but no thanks. My stomach's giving me very strong Do Not Disturb messages."
"You're doing fine," said Margaret, and she got up from her crouch to sit beside him, holding his hand in her lap. "It won't be long."
"How do you know?" he whispered, and his eyes begged for reassurance.
"Because if it was you up there and us down here, you'd be digging with your bare hands to get to us. Our friends will be doing just that, and they'll have radioed for help from the camp too. Just because we can't hear anything doesn't mean there's nothing happening – we can't hear the storm either." And there's no monster in the closet and no boogeyman under the bed and mommy will always be here to keep you safe.
Her common sense and her practical tone seemed to ease the chaos of his thoughts a little. His breathing was less ragged, and that unnerving staccato quality had gone from his speech. "Well, now you both know what it takes to turn me into a quivering wreck, let's compare notes on the subject," he said with a hideous forced cheeriness. "Margaret told me a while back that she doesn't like loud noises – a perfect qualification for a military career if ever there was one – so what's your particular Achilles heel, Charles? Where's the chink in the Winchester armour?"
Charles hesitated, his brow furrowed. He hated to discuss private matters, especially when they might leave him open to criticism or worse, ridicule, but he also knew that Hawkeye needed to be distracted from thinking about what was happening. He moved away from the steps and sat down with his back to the wall, his face slightly in shadow.
"If you repeat this outside this cellar your life will not be worth living, Pierce," he said eventually. "Clowns." There was silence. "Well, go on – laugh."
"I didn't hear you laughing at me," said Hawkeye.
Margaret nodded. "Tell us, Charles."
Charles picked at the dirt floor with a finger, not meeting their eyes. "When I was about three years old," he said, "there was a birthday party for my mother. Friends, family and neighbours were invited, and because there were a number of children present, my parents had arranged for an entertainer. He was dressed as a clown, complete with white face, red nose and painted smile, but as well as doing the usual ridiculous things with pies and water to make us laugh, he also performed magic tricks. Towards the end of his act he asked for a volunteer and my mother was chosen, presumably by prior arrangement. And he made her disappear. A basic trick with a screen, I realise now, but I was only three and to see my mother vanish was simply….. terrifying. I screamed and screamed. I was inconsolable; even when my mother came back to comfort me, I could not be calmed. Eventually I had to be put to bed." He swallowed. "Later that night, I heard my father saying how embarrassed he had been when I made a scene in front of everyone."
"Oh, Charles," said Margaret.
Charles glanced around the cellar uneasily as if he expected a grinning, painted face to emerge from the gloom. "Ever since that day, the sight of a clown – even a picture of one - has made me break out in a cold sweat. Occasionally I have dreams about them chasing me down an alley at night and I'm ……." He stopped and looked up at them, blinking. "However, clowns are not something one often comes across unexpectedly, and certainly not in a war zone in South Korea, so I am probably safe for the foreseeable future." He smiled that little gone-before-you-see-it smile they had seen before in moments of discomfort and wiped the dirt from his hands.
"You know, if we work things out carefully, we could come up with a perfect plan for the future," said Margaret. "Hawkeye can take my kids to the fireworks, you can play hide-and-seek with his, and I'll be at the circus with yours. It's a perfect arrangement."
"I don't think I could cope with more than one Pierce at a time," said Charles, slightly alarmed at the thought of three or four miniature Hawkeyes running rings around him, leaping out at each other from dark hiding places and plotting together to play ever more inventive and outrageous tricks on other kids.
"No really, Charles, I can see you as a sort of indulgent uncle figure."
"What, you mean beaming benevolently as the local youths destroy my rosebeds with their ball games?"
She smiled at the mental picture. "No, I just think as you mellow in your old age, you might.…"
"Pardon me, Margaret - old age?"
"Well, not old old, just – oh, help me out here, Hawkeye!" she laughed.
Hawkeye didn't respond. He was staring off into the darkness, absently picking at a fingernail, his face blank.
"Hawkeye?" Margaret realised that rather than distracting him, their conversation had passed him by completely. Guilty that she hadn't been paying him more attention, and suddenly frightened, she shook his shoulder and called him again and at last he turned to look at her, his face still distant. "Have you heard anything we've said?" she asked.
"Yeah, sure," he said vaguely. "Sure….um, clowns."
"Hawkeye," said Charles softly. "What's happening?"
For a moment Hawkeye didn't answer, but just as Charles was about to ask again he said, almost to himself, "It's like trying to hold back a flood, and there's this cold black stuff leaking through, trickling into my head. I can feel it." He rubbed his eyes. "God, I'm so tired. It would be so easy to just let it come, you know?"
He looked from Charles to Margaret. "Do you think this is what it feels like to lose your mind?" he said.