Theo was injured at Christmas.
It was a rare occasion that they were all there, so they made something of a party of it. On that evening, Dougie had brought a friend along, a dour Scotsman. Benedict didn’t get the feeling that Theo had known him that long, but he brought some good whiskey with him and they had some French pinard, the rough red stuff all the poilus carried, and some brandy. By the time they decided to cook something, they were all pretty drunk. The Scotsman had spent time in India and insisted he could make the standard-issue bully beef into some exotic Indian dish.
“It cleanses your gut,” he’d said. “They’d all be dead of gut rot, those Indians, without it.” He had packages of bright-colored powder he waved at them. “You can smell the spice on them. Those women—fine, fine-looking lassies, and what they don’t know about pleasing a man could fill a book.” He looked happy for the first time since he’d arrived.
“You’ve got that wrong, old chap,” said Dougie. “You mean what they do know could fill a book.”
The Scotsman seemed put out by this. Some of the yellow powder trickled out of the package. Theo bent down, scooped it up, and threw it in the skillet, licked his fingers, made a face, and laughed. He was enjoying himself. With Dougie and the Scot, Theo was a different man: a coarser, older man. Yet at one point he’d pulled out his half-written cantata and hummed the opening bars to them, conducting himself and an imaginary organ. Dougie had yawned and flapped his hand at him.
“Enough—you sound like McIver’s bagpipes.”
Benedict was sent to bring up onions from a string they’d found in the cellar. The smell beneath the house was rank, and his head was reeling as he levered himself up again through the trap door. With bright yellow hands, Theo started opening the cans of beef, digging in the tip of a bayonet. It was one they used to poke the fire.
“Bloody quartermasters,” said Dougie, slurring now. “Sadists. The stuff tastes like excrement, and they seal it up so we can’t even get at it.”
Theo was trying to roll back the lid. The can’s contents smelled nauseating. Afterward, Benedict was certain he’d felt the sharp pain in his own hand, had even lifted it to support it with the other arm, before he heard a sudden gasp from Theo.
“Blast it.” He held his hand up, blood dripping from a cut in the web between the thumb and finger. The parting of the flesh was visible.
Dougie laughed. “Drip it in, man. It’ll add flavor.”
“It damn well hurts.” Theo pulled out a cloth from under the bed and wrapped it around the injury. “You dig the bloody stuff out.”
And they’d eaten the beef, which tasted rather better with the Scotsman’s strange powders. But Benedict felt giddy and had a throbbing headache from the wine and the whiskey. He fell asleep on the floor. When he got up to be sick in the night, someone had removed his tunic and boots and put them tidily over the foot of the bed. But the tunic smelled of vomit even after he’d sponged it.
The next day, Theo had gone on duty early and Benedict left for two nights in Albert. When he returned, he was surprised to find Theo on the bed, sitting against the wall, flushed and sweating, his eyes bright. His shirt was open, moisture shining in the hollow at the base of his neck.
“For God’s sake, you’re ill.” Benedict felt a slight sense of panic, and pain seemed to leap from his fingers. “And you smell to high heaven.”
“My fucking hand,” Theo said, but with no rancor.
“Let me see.”
“No. If you see, I’ll have to see, and I won’t like what’s there.”
But he fell back, hot and exhausted, and let Benedict unwrap the layers of grimy cloth. The wound smelled. It was puffy and red, and bluish streaks ran up his arm.
“For God’s sake, Theo. You need to see the M.O.”
“No. I just need to rest it. I’m not having some sawbones take my arm off. I need to fly.” His face creased in pain.
Benedict fetched some water, held Theo’s head while he was sick, although only bile came up as he retched. He felt the fine, wet hair on the corded muscles at Theo’s neck, and the tremors that occasionally ran through his body; he saw the mauve eyelids. And all the time his own hand, which was supporting Theo, throbbed and burned. Then he tried to rinse the cut, but Theo gasped every time he touched it. Finally, he fetched him a small brandy, and after a while Theo let him dab the injured hand. Eventually Benedict just held the suppurating hand in his own on the cleanest cloth he could find; it was actually his undershirt. The day got darker, Theo fell into a restless sleep, grimacing from time to time, and Benedict lay down beside him, occasionally propping himself up to wipe Theo’s brow and always feeling the radiant heat of his skin down the full length of his body.