Captain Cat Read online

to learn how to use the keys on a braille lap top, all kinds of things. She even downloaded a spoken version of 'Under Milk Wood'.

  It was strange, I'd never been much of a reader, certainly never interested in poetry, stuff like that. Entertainment for me had always been watching something on a screen. But now I couldn't watch anything, so I had to listen to the words instead. And there were so many words in that Welsh play. I'd sit and listen them over and over again on my earphones.

  UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR'S VOICE

  'It is spring, moonless night in

  the small town, starless and

  bible-black, the cobble streets

  silent and the hunched,

  courters'-and-rabbit wood limping

  invisible down to the sloeblack,

  slow, black, crowblack, fishing

  boat-bobbing sea'.

  DAVE DAVENPORT -- NARRATION

  It sounds crazy I guess, but there was a depth in there, as if the words were tunnels you could follow, but every time you went into them you'd go off in a different direction. I had to talk to somebody about it, and Marie was the only one I dared to. I never thought the day would come when a trooper and an Army Captain would talk about literature and poetry. We did though. She was . . . kind. It's the only word that fits her: I think it's the word that Dylan himself would have used to describe Marie because there's not a better one. Not that I can think of anyway.

  A very kind woman and a hell of a nurse because of it. She even began to call me Captain as well, as a joke -- Captain Cat, that is. And whatever we talked about, I was always as randy as hell whenever she was near me. We discussed all kinds of things but the one question I never asked her was whether she was married, or what the deal with her private life was. No, I never asked and she never gave anything away about what she did outside the hospital.

  One day though she asked me what I was going to do when I was discharged and became a civilian again. I had no idea so I said I might become a permanently drunk poet like poor old Dylan Thomas. I didn't need any eyes for that job and it'd give me plenty of time to meet the girls.

  I must have had some kind of a brainstorm next because I stroked the inside of her arm lightly and whispered:

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  'I have the plague of love, my

  lady, and I caught it from your hands'.

  That surprised her, I guess: she didn't know I'd borrowed a Shakespeare audio CD from the hospital library.

  Then I heard Marie take a deep breath herself and just for a second her fingertips were stroking my arm instead of the other way around. And then she was gone and it was all over. Until she came back about half an hour later and asked me if I wanted to come down the gym for a while. Of course I said yes.

  She took my hand to lead me down the corridors and my knuckles brushed against some kind of soft material, not stiff like her uniform. Marie said she was wearing a tracksuit. She said she wanted to work up a sweat as well.

  She asked me if I was still raging against the dying of the light. It seemed somehow important, the way she asked the question.

  Anyway, I said "yes", and Marie said "good". "Good for you, Dave" and then she gave my hand a really tight squeeze, with my stomach turning a somersault because I thought that maybe I was finally going to get a chance to have her.

  Yeah, I know. In the movies the blind guy would have been a very noble self-sacrificing character who would have said he didn't want any woman screwing him just because she felt sorry for him. Well, bugger that for a game of soldiers -- I'll take it any time I can get it for whatever reason I can get it. I guess I feel about sex the way Dylan used to feel about booze. Never knock back the offer of a free drink.

  Then I had another thought, a nasty one. Maybe the hand squeezing thing was Marie's way of putting me off, not turning me on. Because it was her left hand she was holding my hand with, and I could feel her wedding ring on it. Maybe she was waiting for me to say something about it. But I didn't. I wasn't that big a fool.

  I also kept my mouth shut when Marie turned right instead of left before we got to the gym. She opened a door, led me inside, and then locked the door behind us.

  "This isn't the gym, Marie," I said. "We're at the other end of the corridor. This is a small room, not used much, the air smells musty."

  MARIE LEE

  It's a bedding store room, Dave. There's a mattress on the floor. And I've turned out the light. Neither of us can see the other one now. Fair enough?

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  Fair enough.

  (F/X: Couple making love)

  DAVE DAVENPORT - NARRATION

  It was a lot more than fair. It was the best sex I'd ever had. Until we were lying together on the mattress afterwards and I touched her face and felt the tears on Marie's cheek.

  I asked her why she was crying and she said it was for me. I told her to be careful. Tears could make a woman as blind as I was.

  She asked me if it had bothered me, being with a woman whose face I'd never seen. I said no, I'd never been more fired up. I said it was the first time I'd felt really alive since my last memory of the dawn light on the Afghan mountains.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  Marie, until you came along I felt I was totally on my own. And now, thank God, I'm not.

  MARIE LEE

  I'm only here for you while you're in hospital, Dave. And I've never gone this far in nursing a patient before. I want you to understand that.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  I know you wear a wedding ring. You don't have to tell me anything else: I can follow the plot. Here today, gone tomorrow, that's me.

  DAVE DAVENPORT -- NARRATION

  But on the way back to the ward Marie asked me a question which surprised me.

  MARIE LEE

  Dave, the first time I spoke to you, you remember what happened?

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  Well, there were those grapes . . .

  MARIE LEE

  I meant afterwards. What happened afterwards. I was supposed to be giving you a hard time, but not that kind of a hard time.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  There was an unexpected and purely involuntary transfer of blood from one part of my body to another, I admit that. But I thought I'd managed to cover it up very well.

  MARIE LEE

  No, Dave, not really. Not from me or the other three nurses who were standing around your bed and grinning at both of us. But what we couldn't understand was what caused it. I mean, under the circumstances.

  DAVE DAVENPORT -- NARRATION

  Oh God, it had been even more embarrassing than I'd realised. But I tried to explain in a way that made sense.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  Captain Lee, you have a very sexy voice -- especially when you sound angry. You'd make a fortune on those fantasy phone lines from the sort of men who like to be bawled out before getting balled. And I could smell your perfume, of course. Whatever it is you use, that stuff is mind blowing.

  DAVE DAVENPORT -- NARRATION

  It was odd, the way Marie spoke next, as though her mind had started to move onto something else.

  MARIE LEE

  My perfume. Yes, I can believe that. I've noticed two or three times lately that you seem to know I'm around even before I've said anything. Even when I've only just walked into the ward. I think your sense of smell is getting sharper all the time.

  DAVE DAVENPORT - NARRATION

  I hadn't thought of it before, but Marie was right. It was always my nose that fired me up first whenever she was around, even with all the antiseptic smells of the hospital masking her scent. In fact the next day I was so sure she was walking in I turned my face towards the ward door and waved. Then I heard her footsteps and knew I'd been right.

  Yes, everybody walks differently. I was finding that out as well.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  Good morning, Captain Lee. You know, I think you're right about my sense of smell getting stronger. That's supposed to be something that happens to
people when they go blind, isn't it? Their other senses get sharper?

  MARIE LEE

  OK, so you can smell my perfume and recognise it. But can you identify the ingredients in it?

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  You're asking me if I can identify what's in your perfume? You're joking, right?

  MARIE LEE

  No, it's a serious question. I'll tell you what, I'll lean over you to adjust your pillows and maybe that will give you a better chance. Want to try?

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  (laughs)

  OK.

  DAVE DAVENPORT -- NARRATION

  I was about as baffled as I'd been by anything in my life. Not that I cared. Especially as Marie gently blew into my left ear while she was fiddling with the pillows. A good thing I wasn't connected up to a blood pressure monitor or the alarm bells would have gone off. And, crazy idea or not, as I tried to concentrate I found I could get some idea of what I was breathing in.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  Roses -- you smell of roses.

  MARIE LEE

  That would have been a good guess even if you couldn't smell anything. About three quarters of all perfumes contain rose scent. The roses in this scent are damask roses grown in the Middle East. They're gathered at night when their scent is strongest. Believe it or not, the oils with the scent in them are evaporated out of the rose petals in a still using five star petrol as a solvent.

  DAVE DAVENPORT -- NARRATION

  What would you have said to a statement like that? All I could manage was a feeble sort of a joke.

  DAVE DAVENPORT

  But not many men know that, right?

  MARIE LEE

  Not many women do, either. I only know myself because I was doing some research on the net last night. And if you want to know why, I'll tell you, but not here. It'd be bad for discipline for a soldier to be heard calling an officer