***
Rest, warmth, and effleurage. When Bond came round again, he was lying face downward on his bed and his whole body was bathed in exquisite sensation. Beneath him was the soft warmth of an electric blanket, his back glowed with the heat from two large sun lamps, and two hands, clad in what felt to be some particularly velvety fur, were rhythmically passing, one after the other, up and down the whole length of his body from his neck to the backs of his knees. It was a most gentle and almost piercingly luxurious experience, and Bond lay and bathed himself in it.
Presently he said sleepily, “Is that what they call effleurage?”
The girl’s voice said softly, “I thought you’d come round. The whole tone of your skin suddenly changed. How are you feeling?”
“Wonderful. I’d be still better for a double whisky on the rocks.”
The girl laughed. “Mr. Wain did say dandelion tea would be best for you. But I thought a little stimulant might be good, I mean just this once. So I brought the brandy with me. And there’s plenty of ice as I’m going to give you an ice-pack presently. Would you really like some? Wait, I’ll put your dressing gown over you and then you can see if you can turn over. I’ll look the other way.”
Bond heard the lamps being pulled away. Gingerly, he turned on his side. The dull ache returned, but it was already wearing off. He cautiously slipped his legs over the side of the bed and sat up.
Patricia Fearing stood in front of him, clean, white, comforting, desirable. In one hand was a pair of heavy mink gloves, but with the fur covering the palm instead of the back. In the other was a glass. She held out the glass. As Bond drank and heard the reassuring, real-life tinkle of the ice, he thought: This is a most splendid girl. I will settle down with her. She will give me effleurage all day long and from time to time a good tough drink like this. It will be a life of great beauty. He smiled at her and held out the empty glass and said, “More.”
She laughed, mostly with relief that he was completely alive again. She took the glass and said, “Well, just one more, then. But don’t forget it’s on an empty stomach. It may make you dreadfully tight.” She paused with the brandy bottle in her hand. Suddenly her gaze was cool, clinical. “And now you must try and tell me what happened. Did you accidentally touch the lever or something? You gave us all a dreadful fright. Nothing like that has ever happened before. The traction table’s really perfectly safe, you know.”
Bond looked candidly into her eyes. He said reassuringly, “Of course. I was just trying to get more comfortable. I heaved about and I do remember that my hand hit something rather hard. I suppose it must have been the lever. Then I don’t remember any more. I must have been awfully lucky you came along so quickly.”
She handed him the fresh drink. “Well, it’s all over now. And thank heavens nothing’s badly strained. Another two days of treatment and you’ll be right as rain.” She paused. She looked rather embarrassed, “Oh, and Mr. Wain asks if you could possibly keep all this, all this trouble, to yourself. He doesn’t want the other patients to get worried.”
I should think not, thought Bond. He could see the headlines, “PATIENT TORN NEARLY LIMB FROM LIMB AT NATURE CLINIC. RACK MACHINE GOES BERSERK. MINISTRY OF HEALTH STEPS IN.”
He said, “Of course I won’t say anything. It was my fault, anyway.” He finished his drink, handed back the glass, and cautiously lay back on the bed. He said, “That was marvelous. Now how about some more of the mini treatment. And by the way. Will you marry me? You’re the only girl I’ve ever met who knows how to treat a man properly.”
She laughed. “Don’t be silly. And turn over on your face. It’s your back that needs treatment.”
“How do you know?”
***
Two days later, Bond was once more back in the half-world of the nature cure. The routine of the early morning glass of hot water, the orange, carefully sliced into symmetrical pigs by some ingenious machine wielded, no doubt, by the wardress in charge of diets, then the treatments, the hot soup, the siesta, and the blank, aimless walk or bus ride to the nearest tea shop for the priceless strength-giving cups of tea laced with brown sugar. Bond loathed and despised tea, that flat, soft, time-wasting opium of the masses, but on his empty stomach, and in his febrile state, the sugary brew acted almost as an intoxicant. Three cups, he reckoned, had the effect, not of hard liquor. but of just about half a bottle of champagne in the outside world, in real life. He got to know them all, these dainty opium dens—Rose Cottage, which he avoided after the woman charged him extra for emptying the sugar bowl; The Thatched Barn, which amused him because it was a real den of iniquity—large plates of sugar cakes put on one’s table, the piercing temptation of the smell of hot scones; The Transport Cafe, where the Indian tea was black and strong and the lorry drivers brought in a smell of sweat and petrol and the great world (Bond found that all his senses, particularly his palate and nose, had miraculously become sharpened), and a dozen other cottagey, raftery nooks where elderly couples with Ford Populars and Morris Minors talked in muted tones about children called Len and Ron and Pearl and Ethel, and ate in small mouthfuls with the points of their teeth and made not a sound with the tea things. It was all a world whose ghastly daintiness and propriety would normally have sickened him. NOW, empty, weak, drained of all the things that belonged to his tough, fast, basically dirty life, through banting, he had somehow regained some of the innocence and purity of childhood. In this frame of mind the naïveté and total lack of savor, surprise, excitement, of the dimity world of the Nice-Cup-of-Tea, of the Home-Made Cakes, and the One-Lump-or-Two, were perfectly acceptable.