Free The Charioteer by Mary Renault

say; tomorrow would do. This was silly, for he might have known Reg would never let it pass.
    “He don’t have it taken mornings,” said Reg promptly. “He gets up.”
    The man withdrew his thermometer from Laurie’s arm. “Then I’ve waked you for nothing. I’m extremely sorry. I won’t do it again.”
    “It’s all right. I never sleep much after the work starts.”
    “Go on,” said Reg, more in sorrow than in anger. “Day before yesterday you slept till the breakfast come round, you know that.”
    The bearded man as he passed on gave Laurie a slow smile which seemed, oddly, both sophisticated and good. He went on to Charlot, to whom he spoke in fluent idiomatic French. Reg said, in a hoarse whisper, “Here. What’s he doing here? You’re not telling me he’s still military age. Nor anywhere near.”
    Laurie looked again. “No, of course. He must be a good fifty. Perhaps it was all a mistake.”
    He looked along the ward. Another man, wearing a coarse, gray cotton coat like the first, was pulling out the beds one by one to sweep. No, thought Laurie with sinking spirits, this one wasn’t over age. He was a small man, with a small licked-down mustache, and looked about twenty-six. Eager conscientiousness informed his every movement. Chapel type, Laurie decided; and thinks damn is pretty serious swearing. This really is going to be rather hell.
    “Proper little pipsqueak,” hissed Reg.
    “Doesn’t look as if he’d pass a medical,” said Laurie hopefully.
    “Go on. Course they’re c.o.s. It’s written all over them. Search me what the old boy’s here for, though.”
    Laurie glanced after the bearded man, now several beds away. Neames, looking straight ahead, allowed his temperature to be taken as if by an automaton. The next bed was Willis’s.
    Willis was a towheaded youth, whom Neames had early christened the Missing Link. He had never seemed to resent this, though he was quarrelsome by nature; Laurie deduced that he didn’t know what it meant. Willis always made him feel uncomfortable. One felt he should have been given a choice at the outset, whether or not to be born. It must have taken generations of conditioning to breed him, in some dockside warren neglected by angels and the borough inspector.
    Reg said, “Watch this, this’ll be good.”
    “Willis gets up,” said Laurie. “He’s only got to say so. What the hell did they send them here for, this bloody Government’ll lose us the war.”
    It was often quite hard to hear what Willis said, even when he was not chewing. It was the prevailing hush which carried his voice along the ward.
    “You can take that—thing away, and put it where the—monkey put the—nuts. I don’t want none of you—’s touching me.”
    The c.o. replied as if to an expected social commonplace. “I expect not, it’s awkward for both of us. Still, we’ll have to get on with it, I suppose.”
    “You—off and get on with it somewhere else. See?”
    “This is a lot of silly bull,” said Laurie. He sat up, and reached for his crutch. But the little c.o. had just pulled out his bed from the wall where it was, and he couldn’t reach it.
    “I say, Reg.” But Reg had hitched his dressing-gown over his shoulder, and was shuffling down the ward.
    “Here,” he said to the c.o. “Didn’t they give you no list of the men that gets up?”
    “No,” said the c.o. with a friendly smile. “I ought to have asked for it.”
    “You only want it mornings. Evenings they take them all round, barring the chaps out on passes. I reckon that’s soft, not giving you no list. Asking for it, that is. Here. You turn that paper over and I’ll give you one now. Save tempers all round, that will.”
    When they had finished he turned around. “And when you done your funny number, Willis,” he said over his shoulder, “you remember there ain’t been no comfort in the ward since the maids went, and if this lot’s transferred there won’t be none again. What you want them