Fourteen“I’m done for, mon cher. Done for.”
Charles Durant groaned and lifted an arm to his bandaged eyes. “Even if I survive this, I will never work again. And how can a man live if he can’t work?” He spoke in a raspy whisper, the words coming in laborious bursts with long pauses between each phrase.
Alex leaned into his bedside. “Don’t talk, Mr Durant. You’ll tire yourself out. I just wanted to come and see what you needed. How I could help.”
“You’ve already been wonderful, son. The food you brought, paying for the doctor, arranging the nurse to feed me and change my dressings. Merci beaucoup, is all I can say.”
Durant’s simply furnished room in Mrs O’Donnell’s boarding house was hot and stuffy at the fag end of a long, dusty day. Wisps of goose down from a tear in the bedcover dance
