Well, that’s that, thought Sister Langtry, feeling an enormous relief. All I was worrying about was rain! It always affects them this way. Affects me, too.
‘How silly,’ she said to Michael, handing him a bucket of muddy water.
He was putting the finishing touches on the sluice room after the swabbing party had downed tools and was taking a well-earned rest on the verandah.
‘What’s silly?’ he asked, tipping the water down the drain and wiping off the galvanized iron with a rag.
‘I’ve had a feeling there was trouble brewing, but I think all it was was rain brewing. After all this time in the tropics you’d think I’d know better.’ She leaned her back against the door jamb and watched him, the intent thoroughness with which every single task was done, the smooth roundedness of the whole.
After the rag was draped to dry over the edge of the bucket he straightened and turned, eyeing her with amusement. ‘I agree, you’d think so.’ He reached past her to pluck his shirt off a nail behind the door, and put it on. ‘It gets you down after a while, doesn’t it? Never anything by halves up here. I never remember getting in a tizzy about a couple of days of rain back home, but up here I’ve seen it lead almost to murder.’
‘Did it in your own case?’
The smiling eyes looked arrested for a moment, then continued to smile. ‘No.’
‘If not rain, why?’
‘That’s my business,’ he said, quite pleasantly.
Her cheeks reddened. ‘It’s also mine, considering the circumstances! Oh, why won’t you see that it’s better to talk about things? You’re as standoffish as Ben!’
The shirt was buttoned and tucked in, all without any self-consciousness. ‘Don’t get upset, Sis. And don’t worry about me.’
‘I’m not worried about you in the least. But I’ve been in charge of X long enough to know that it’s better for my patients to talk things out.’
‘I’m not your patient,’ he said, poised as if he expected to see her move out of his way.
She didn’t. She continued to stand where she was, more exasperated than angry. ‘Michael, of course you’re my patient! A pretty stable patient, admittedly, but you can’t have been admitted to X for no good reason!’
‘There was a very good reason. I tried to kill a bloke,’ he said dispassionately.
‘Why?’
‘The reason’s there in my papers.’
‘It’s not a good enough reason for me.’ Her mouth straightened, set hard. ‘I don’t understand your papers. You’re not a homosexual.’
‘How do you know?’ he asked coolly.
She drew a breath, but met his eyes very directly. ‘I know,’ she said.
Whereupon he laughed, head thrown back. ‘Well, Sis, it doesn’t matter to me why I’m here, so why should it matter to you? I’m just glad I am here, that’s all.’
She moved away from the door, into the room. ‘You’re fencing with me,’ she said slowly. ‘What are you trying to hide? What’s so secret you can’t bear to tell me?’
For a moment he was startled into dropping his ever-present guard, and she caught a glimpse of someone who was very tired, a little bewildered, and troubled within himself. And seeing these things, she was quite disarmed.
‘No, don’t even bother to answer that,’ she said, smiling at him in genuine friendship.
He responded by softening his expression into an affection purely for her, and said, ‘I’m just not a talker, Sis, when it comes to myself. I can’t talk.’
‘Are you frightened I might sit in judgment?’
‘No. But to talk, you have to find the right words, and I never seem to manage to find them. Or at least not at the right time. About three o’clock this morning they’ll all be there, right where I want them.’
‘That’s true of everyone. But all you have to do is start! I’ll help you go on, because I want to help you.’
His eyes closed, he sighed. ‘Sis, I do not need help!’
She gave up—for the moment. ‘Then tell me what you think of Benedict,’ she said.
‘Why ask me about Ben?’
‘Because you’re succeeding with him, where I never have. Please don’t think I’m resentful. I’m too glad to see it happen. But I am interested.’
‘Benedict.’ His head lowered while he thought. ‘I told you, I’m not good with words. What do I think of him? I like him. I pity him. He’s not well.’
‘Dating only back to that incident in the village?’
Michael shook his head positively. ‘Oh, no! It goes back a long way further than that.’
‘Is it because he lost his parents at an early age? Or because of the grandmother who brought him up?’
‘Maybe. It’s hard to tell. Ben’s not sure who he is, I think. Or if he is sure, then he doesn’t know how to deal with what he is. I don’t know. I’m not a mental specialist.’
‘Nor am I,’ she said ruefully.
‘You do all right.’
‘If I’m honest with myself, Ben’s the only one I fret about after Base Fifteen.’
‘When he gets out of the army, you mean?’
‘Yes.’ She searched for the right words, not wanting to wound Michael’s feelings; he was trying so hard with Ben. ‘You see, I’m not sure Ben’s going to be capable of living independently of some kind of enclosed unit. Yet I don’t feel it’s fair to him to suggest that he be placed under detention.’
‘A mental asylum?’ he asked incredulously.
‘I suppose that’s what I mean. They’re all we’ve got for people like Ben. But I hesitate to do that.’
‘You’re wrong!’ he cried.
‘I may well be. That’s why I hesitate.’
‘It would kill him.’
‘Yes.’ Her face was sad. ‘As you see, my job’s not all beer and skittles.’
His hand came out to grip her shoulder hard, shake her. ‘Just don’t do anything in a hurry, please! And don’t do it without talking to me first!’
It was a heavy hand; she turned her head to look at it. ‘Ben’s improving,’ she said. ‘Thanks to you. That’s why I’m talking to you now. Don’t worry!’
Neil spoke from the doorway. ‘We thought the pair of you must have gone down the drain,’ he said lightly.
Sister Langtry stepped back from Michael, whose hand had fallen away the moment he became aware of Neil. ‘Not quite down the drain,’ she said, and smiled at Neil a little apologetically; then she was annoyed with herself for feeling apology. And annoyed with Neil, for more obscure reasons.
Michael remained where he was, watching the slightly proprietary manner in which Neil ushered Sister Langtry from the sluice room. Then he sighed, shrugged, and followed them out onto the verandah. Ward X was about as private a place to conduct a private conversation as the middle of a parade ground. Everyone kept tabs on everyone else; and that was particularly true of Sister Langtry. If they didn’t know where she was, who she was with, they couldn’t rest until they found her. And sometimes they did a little mental arithmetic to make sure she was apportioning her time correctly among all of them. All of them? The ones who mattered. Neil was a master at mental arithmetic.
2
By dawn of the next day the weather had settled to an intoxicating balminess which caused everyone’s mood to soar. The cleaning chores done, the men gathered on the verandah while Sister Langtry went into her office to catch up on her paperwork. The beach would be open in the afternoon, and would be relatively crowded; only when it was closed did the patients of ward X realize how much it meant to be able to shrug off clothes and cares, switch off thought, swim and sun and doze themselves into pleasant stupor.
With half the morning still to get through, the usual fretting apathy was missing, everyone was so looking forward to the beach. Luce disposed himself to sleep on one of the verandah beds, Neil persuaded Nugget and Benedict to play cards at the table, and Michael took Matt up to the far end of the verandah, where some chairs sat beneath the back wind
ow of Sister Langtry’s office, isolated enough to command peace.
Matt wanted to dictate a letter to his wife, and Michael had volunteered to act as his amanuensis. So far Mrs. Sawyer didn’t know about Matt’s blindness; he had insisted that it be kept from her, that he wanted to tell her himself, that no one had the right to deprive him of his request. Pitying him. Sister Langtry agreed to comply, knowing his real reason to be a despairing hope that before he met his wife again some miracle would have happened, and the blindness would have passed away.
When it was finished, Michael read the letter back to him slowly.
‘…and so because my hand has not yet healed properly, my friend Michael Wilson has volunteered to write this to you for me. However, you must not worry. All is going well. I think you are sensible enough to know that if the injury was a serious one they would have sent me back to Sydney a long time ago. Please do not worry about me. Give Margaret, Mary, Joan and little Pam a hug and a kiss from Daddy, and tell them it won’t be long now. I miss you very much. Look after yourself and the girls. Your loving husband, Matthew.’
All the letters home were stilted, the efforts mostly of men who had never expected to be far enough away from home and their loved ones to have to put pen to paper. And besides, the censors read everything, and you never knew who the censors were. So most men kept themselves polite and aloof, successfully resisting the temptation to pour out their miseries and their frustrations. And most men wrote home regularly, the way children do who are sentenced to a boarding school they loathe; where happiness and busyness are, the urge to communicate with loved ones far away diminishes very quickly.
‘Will that do?’ asked Matt anxiously.
‘I think so. I’ll put it straight into an envelope now and give it to Sis before lunch… Mrs. Ursula Sawyer… What’s the address, Matt?’
‘Ninety-seven Fingleton Street, Drummoyne.’
Luce came strolling down the verandah and flopped into a nearby cane chair. ‘Well, if it isn’t little Lord Fauntleroy about his good deeds!’ he said provocatively.
‘If you sit in that chair wearing nothing but shorts you’ll be striped like a convict,’ said Michael, slipping Matt’s letter into his pocket.
‘Oh, bugger the stripes!’
‘Keep it clean and keep it down, Luce,’ said Matt, gesturing accurately toward the open louvers of Sister Langtry’s office.
‘Hold on a tick, Mike! I’ve got a letter for Matt’s wife you can post along with that one,’ Luce said, too softly for any but the three of them to hear. ‘Like me to read it? Dear madam, did you know your husband’s as blind as a bat?’
Matt was out of the chair too quickly for restraint, but Michael placed himself between the frantic blind man and his tormentor, and held Matt firmly. ‘It’s all right, mate! He’s just being nasty. Calm down, now! It’s all right, I tell you! He couldn’t do that even if he wanted to. The censors would catch it.’
Luce watched, enjoying the spectacle, and made no attempt to draw up his legs when he realized Michael had decided to put Matt with the others at the table. But rather than make an issue of it, Michael chose to guide Matt around the outflung legs, and so departed in peace.
After they were gone, Matt to the table and Michael into the ward, Luce got up and went to the verandah railing, leaning on it, his head cocked to hear the murmur of Michael’s and Sister Langtry’s voices through the open window; though his position and pose indicated that he was not listening should the inhabitants of the office look his way, he was still within earshot. Then the office door closed, all was silent again. Luce slipped past the card-players and went into the ward.
He found Michael in the dayroom buttering bread. Fresh crusty bread was the only culinary thrill, and a recent one at that, which Base Fifteen had to offer its inmates. Patients and staff alike consumed vast quantities of the bread at every opportunity, for it was excellent. By nine o’clock in the evening and the last cup of tea of the day, there was never any of the fairly generous daily ration left.
The dayroom was not a kitchen, simply a food repository and utensil cleaning/storing area. It had a rough counter and cupboard unit running under one louvered opening and along the wall between it and the sluice room next door. There was a sink beneath the window, and a spirit stove on the counter some distance away from the sink. It lacked any sort of device to keep food cold, but there was a wire-mesh meat safe hanging on a rope from the roof joists and dangling in lazy turns like a Chinese lantern.
Tucked in the far corner of the bench was a small spirit-fired sterilizer in which Sister Langtry boiled up her hypodermic equipment and what few instruments she was ever likely to need, in the unlikely event of ever needing them at all. As a matter of good practice she kept two syringes, hypodermic needles, suture needles, a pair of suture needle holders, mosquito forceps and straight forceps permanently sterile in case a patient injured himself, required sedation by injection in a hurry, or was attacked, or attempted suicide. When ward X had first been opened there was heated debate as to whether its patients might be permitted to keep their razors, belts and other potential instruments of destruction, and whether kitchen knives should be kept under lock and key. But in the end it was admitted to be impractical, and only once had a patient availed himself of a suicide tool, luckily unsuccessfully. Violence of one patient toward others had never been sufficiently premeditated to review the decision, for patients who could not be managed under Base Fifteen’s conditions did not remain there.
After dark the dayroom was alive with cockroaches; not all the hygiene in the world could eliminate them, for they flew in from outside, crawled up through the drain, dropped from the thatched roof, almost popped into existence out of nothing. If a man saw one he killed it, but there were always others to take its place. Neil was in the habit of organizing a full-scale hunt once a week, in which every man except Matt was expected to bag at least twenty cockroaches, and that probably kept the cockroach population down to something tolerable. However, the dreary little room was always very clean and tidy, so the pickings for scavengers of any kind were scant.
Luce stood in the doorway watching Michael for a few moments, then reached into the pocket of his shorts, withdrew his makings, and began rolling a cigarette. Though Michael was five inches shorter than Luce’s six feet two, they looked well matched, each shirtless, broad in chest, wide in shoulders, and flat-bellied.
Turning his head toward the left, Luce saw that the door to Sister Langtry’s office opposite the dayroom was firmly closed.
‘I never manage to get under your skin, do I?’ he asked Michael, tobacco tin back in his pocket and both hands lazily rolling a cylinder out of the shreds he had plucked from it; a little sheet of rice paper dangled from his bottom lip, and fluttered as he talked.
When Michael didn’t bother to answer, he repeated it in a tone calculated to make anyone jump: ‘I never manage to get under your skin, do I?’
Michael didn’t jump, but he did answer. ‘Why should you want to?’ he asked.
‘Because I like getting under people’s skins! I like making people squirm. It breaks the God-awful monotony.’
‘You’d do better to occupy yourself being pleasant and useful.’ The way Michael said it, there was a vicious bite to it; he still felt Matt’s distress.
The half-made cigarette fell unheeded to the floor, the rice paper flew away as he spat it out; Luce crossed the dayroom in one bound and grasped Michael hard about the upper arm, swinging him roughly around.
‘Who do you think you are? Don’t you dare patronize me!’
‘That sounds like something you had to spout in a play,’ said Michael, looking steadily up into Luce’s face.
For perhaps a minute they didn’t move, simply stared at each other.
Then Luce’s hand relaxed, but instead of falling away it cupped itself around Michael’s biceps, its fingers caressing the angry marks which were beginning to flare up under the skin he had gripped so hard.
&nb
sp; ‘There’s something in you, our Michael, isn’t there?’ Luce whispered. ‘Sister’s darling little blue-eyed boy and all, there’s something in you she wouldn’t like one bit. But I know what it is, and I know what to do about it.’
The voice was insidious, almost hypnotic, and the hand slipped down Michael’s forearm, over his fist, gently forcing him to drop the butter knife. Neither man so much as took breath. Then as Luce’s head came closer, Michael’s lips parted, he hissed an intake of air between clenched teeth, and his eyes blazed into life.
They heard the noise simultaneously, and turned. Sister Langtry was standing in the doorway.
Luce’s hand dropped from Michael’s casually, not too quickly or guiltily, then with the action completed he moved naturally one pace away.
‘Aren’t you finished yet, Michael?’ asked Sister Langtry, voice not quite normal, though the rest of her seemed so, even her eyes.
Michael picked up the butter knife. ‘Nearly, Sis.’
Luce left his side, gave Sister Langtry a wickedly gleeful look as he passed her, and went out. The forgotten cigarette lay on the floor, tendrils and paper moving in a little wind.
Taking a deep breath, Sister Langtry walked into the room, not aware that she was wiping the palms of her hands against her dress, up and down, up and down. She stood where she could see Michael in profile as he began to cut the buttered bread into small segments and pile them on a plate.
‘What was all that about?’ she asked.
‘Nothing.’ He sounded unconcerned.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure, Sis!’
‘He wasn’t… trying to get at you, was he?’
Michael turned away to make the tea; the kettle on the spirit stove was boiling fiercely, adding its steam to an atmosphere already laden. Oh, God, why wouldn’t people leave him alone? ‘Trying to get at me?’ he repeated, hoping simple obtuseness would deflect her.
She tried desperately to marshal her thoughts and her emotions into some sort of disciplined order, aware that she had rarely been so upset, so thrown off balance. ‘Look, Michael,’ she said, speaking without a tremor, ‘I’m a big girl now, and I don’t like being made to feel like a little girl again. Why do you persist in treating me as if whatever you’ve got on your mind is too much for me to cope with? I’ll ask you again—was Luce making some sort of advance to you? Was he?’