Strange Meeting

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He was afraid to go to sleep. For three weeks, he had been afraid of going to sleep.

But then, because of some old, familiar sound or smell, suddenly recalled, in this room of his overlooking the rose garden, he recalled also the trick he had used as a child, to keep himself awake.

He wanted to stay awake.

In the hospital, it had been different. Because of the pain in his leg, and because he could not bear the noises of the ward at night, the sounds of hoarse breathing and death, and the crying of the Field-Gunner in the next bed, he had only wanted to sleep. He had asked them to give him something, had tried and failed to get whisky or rum. He had even tried to bribe Crawford.

Crawford…

He remembered Crawford’s eyes, and his soft jowls, folding inwards towards the small nose, and mouth and chin. Crawford, standing at the foot of his bed. It had not surprised him, their meeting there. Nothing like that was surprising now. Though, at first, Crawford had been busy with the Field-Gunner, had not come near Hilliard until the following day. Then, as always, in the past, their pointless, mutual dislike.

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