‘You be quiet, then you’ll be all right,’ said a woman’s voice, not the same one. He had a glimpse of starched cuffs moving near his pillow. ‘They’ll be coming to move you in a minute.’

‘What are the screens for?’ he asked, suddenly quite coherent.

‘The screens?’ she said. ‘Just to make it comfortable for you. To make it nice and comfortable for you.’

‘Careful, now, Perkins,’ said a man’s voice. ‘This is a serious case.’

Voices murmured for a few moments, then suddenly they began to drag him in two. The top half of his body was twisted and dragged off. The revolving blankets fell on his face. Death, decomposition, rebirth, lingering death, the cycle began again. Vaguely beneath it all he felt the sensation of being wheeled along. Then he was flung, suddenly and violently, down a pit shaft. He crashed into the coal dust at the bottom. The sea flooded into the workings, and his head, which had bounded from his shoulders at the impact, showed signs of drowning.

‘You’re awake this morning, are you?’ said the sister with brisk semi-indifference. ‘This is Dr. Bulcastle. He’s going to see what can be done to put you right again.’

Grey eyes looked at him over half-moon glasses. Then they dropped and looked through the glasses at his legs.

‘I want you to tell me if you can feel this,’ came the doctor’s creamy, rather tired voice. But he did not do anything.

‘Feel what?’ said Charles. He wished the man would get on with it. He wanted to sleep, because he had a delicious certainty that death awaited him if he could only get properly to sleep.

The idea of death had possessed his mind with its beauty and necessity.

‘Can’t feel it, eh?’ said the creamy voice.

An ant seemed to be crawling over the sole of his left foot.

‘My foot,’ he said.

‘Feel something in the foot, do you?’ The creamy voice had taken on a note almost of urgency. ‘Which one?’

‘That one,’ he muttered.

‘Good. There’s a chance.’

‘What’s the matter with me?’ he asked faintly.

‘The matter,’ said the voice, tired again. ‘Well, apart from abrasions and a broken collar-bone, and considerable concussion —that’s wearing off now, of course—the main trouble is that the lamina of your lumbar vertebrae are pressing on the spinal cord. It’s induced paralysis of the legs. But the fact that you can feel something when I scratch the soles of your feet, as I’ve been doing with this pair of scissors, shows that we’ve a fair chance of operating successfully. Can you tell us what happened to you?’

‘Happened,’ he said wearily. He closed his eyes. Tell us what happened to you, Veronica, Bunder wouldn’t stop. Tell us what happened to Dogson. Finish with the whole thing. Tell us what happened, partner. Bernard. Need somebody to look after you. Yes.