Michael tipped a great bubbling stream of water between the kettle and the waiting empty teapot. ‘No, Sis, honestly he wasn’t. He was just doing a Luce.’ A faint smile turned up the corner of his mouth; he put the kettle down on the stove, turned out the flame, and swung round to face her fully. ‘It’s very simple. Luce was just trying to find a way to get under my skin. That’s how he put it himself. But he can’t. I’ve met men like Luce before. No matter how I’m provoked, I’m never going to lose control of myself again.’ One hand closed into a fist. ‘I can’t! I’m afraid of what I might do.’
There was something about him; funny, Luce had used those words, too. Her gaze fixed on his bare shoulder to one side of the fair hair on his chest, not sure if the skin was pearled with sweat or steam. Suddenly she was terrified to meet his eyes, felt light-headed and empty-bellied, as helpless and inadequate as a girl in the grip of her first crush on some remote adult figure.
The color drained from her face, and she swayed. He moved quickly, sure she was going to faint, and put his arm about her waist, supporting her with sufficient strength to remove all sensation of weight from her feet. Nothing else could she feel save his arm and side and shoulder, until, horrified, she felt something surge within herself that squeezed the flesh of her nipples into tight hard tingling ridges and swelled her breasts painfully.
‘Oh, God, no!’ she cried, wrenching herself away, and turning it like lightning into a protest against Luce by pounding her fist softly on the counter. ‘He’s a menace!’ she said through clenched teeth. ‘He would destroy anything just to watch it twitch.’
She was not the only one so affected; Michael’s hand when he lifted it to brush the sweat from his face shook, and he half turned away from her, forcing himself to take easy breaths, not trusting himself to look at her.
‘There’s only one way to deal with Luce,’ he said, ‘and that’s not to let him get under your skin.’
‘What he needs is six months on a pick and shovel!’
‘I could do with that myself. All of us in X could,’ he said gently, and found the strength to pick up the tray. ‘Come on, Sis. You’ll feel better after a cuppa.’
She managed a travesty of a smile and looked at him, not knowing whether to be ashamed or exalted, and searching his face for something to reassure her. But save for the eyes it was quite impersonal, and the eyes gave nothing away except a high degree of emotional excitement, for the pupils were dilated. Which could as well have been because of Luce.
There was no sign of Luce in the ward, nor on the verandah. The card-players abandoned their game somewhat thankfully at sight of the teapot, for its advent had been expected for some time.
‘The more I sweat, the more tea I drink,’ said Neil, draining his mug at a gulp, then holding it out for more.
‘Salt tablet time for you, my friend,’ said Sister Langtry, trying to get the correct degree of cheerfulness and detachment back into her voice.
Neil glanced at her quickly; so did the others.
‘Is anything wrong, Sis?’ asked Nugget anxiously.
She smiled, shook her head. ‘A slight attack of the Luces. Where is he?’
‘I have a feeling he took himself off in the direction of the beach.’
‘Before one o’clock? That doesn’t sound like Luce.’
Nugget grinned, his likeness to a small rodent enhanced by the appearance of two prominent upper incisors. ‘Did I say he was going swimming? And did I say which beach? He just went for a walk, and if he happens to meet a nice young lady—well, they stop and talk, that’s all.’
Michael sighed audibly, smiling at Sister Langtry as if to say, See, I told you there was nothing to worry about, and stretched back on the seat as he lifted his arms to put his hands behind his head, the heavily developed pectorals tightening, the hair in his armpits flattened and glistening darkly with sweat.
She felt her color going again, and managed with a huge effort to put her cup down in its saucer without spilling tea. This is ridiculous! she thought, fighting back stubbornly. I am not a schoolgirl! I’m a grown and an experienced woman!
Neil stiffened, reached out his hand to close it over hers reassuringly. ‘Here, steady on! What’s the matter, Sis? A touch of fever?’
She stood up perfectly. ‘I think it must be. Can you manage if I go off early? Or would you rather I asked Matron for a relief until after lunch?’
Neil accompanied her into the ward while the others sat on at the table looking worried, Michael included.
‘For God’s sake don’t inflict a relief on us!’ Neil begged. ‘We’ll go right round the bend if you do. Will you be all right by yourself? It might be better if I walk you to your quarters.’
‘No, Neil, truly. I doubt if it’s anything more than that I just don’t feel myself today. The weather, perhaps. It promised to be so cool and dry earlier, but now it feels like a soup tureen. An afternoon’s rest should put me right.’ She parted the fly-curtain and smiled at him over her shoulder. ‘I’ll see you this evening.’
‘Only if you feel better, Sis. If you don’t, don’t worry, and no relief, please. The place is as quiet as the grave.’
3
Sister Langtry’s room was one of a bank of ten similar rooms constructed in typical Base Fifteen style, side by side in a row and fronted by a wide verandah, the whole rickety structure standing ten feet above the ground on piles. For four months she had been the block’s only inhabitant, an indication not of antisociality on her part, but of a mature woman’s starvation for privacy. Since joining the army in 1940 she had shared accommodation, four to a small tent during her casualty clearing station days. When she had first come to Base Fifteen it had seemed like a paradise, though she had been obliged to share her room, the same she still occupied, and the block had vibrated shrilly with the sounds of women living far too close to each other. Little wonder then that as the nursing staff shrank those left on it put as much space between each other as they could, and wallowed in the luxury of being alone.
Sister Langtry let herself into her room and crossed immediately to the bureau, opened its top drawer and withdrew a bottle of Nembutal grains one and a half. There was a carafe of boiled water lidded with a cheap glass tumbler on top of the bureau; taking the glass off, she poured a little water into it, and swallowed the tablet before she could change her mind. The eyes looking back at her from the corroded depths of the little mirror on the wall above the bureau were dark-ringed and blank; she willed them to remain that way until the Nembutal took effect.
With practiced ease she found and removed the two long grips that fixed her veil in place and lifted the entire edifice off her sweat-lank hair, placing it empty and stiff on a hard chair, where it sat mutely mocking her. She subsided onto the edge of her bed to unlace her daytime duty shoes, put them neatly together far enough away to ensure that she wouldn’t kick them getting in and out of bed, then stood up to remove her uniform and underclothes.
A cotton robe of vaguely Oriental design hung on a nail behind the door; she shrugged it on and went to take a shower in the clammy cheerless bathhouse. And finally, skin clean, decently clothed in limp cotton pajamas, she lay down on her bed and closed her eyes. The Nembutal was working, giving her a sensation not unlike that following too much gin, vertiginous and faintly nauseating. But at least it was working. She sighed and struggled to abandon her grasp on consciousness, thinking, Am I in love with him, or does it have a far different name than love? Have I simply been away too long from a normal life, been subjugating my physical feelings too harshly? It could be that. I hope it’s that. Not love. Not here. Not with him. To me he doesn’t seem the kind of man to esteem love…
The images blurred, rocked, fused; she fell asleep so thankfully that she was able to tell herself it would be paradise never to have to wake up from sleep again, never, never…
4
When she walked up the ramp of X about seven that evening she met Luce just outside the door; he would have nipped
by her smartly, but she stepped across his path, looking grim.
‘I’d like to see you for a moment, please.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, Sis, fair go! I’ve got an appointment!’
‘Then break it. Inside, Sergeant.’
Luce stood watching her while she removed her slouch hat with its red-striped grey band, hung it where her red cape hung during the day; he liked her better in her night gear, a small soldier all in grey.
Settled behind her desk, she looked up at him to find he was lounging against the wall by the open door, arms folded, ready for a quick getaway.
‘Come in, shut the door, and stand to attention, Sergeant,’ she said curtly, and waited until he complied. Then she continued. ‘I’d like you to explain to me exactly what was going on in the dayroom this morning between you and Sergeant Wilson.’
He shrugged, shook his head. ‘Nothing, Sis.’
‘Nothing, Sister. It didn’t look like nothing to me.’
‘Then what did it look like?’ he asked, still smiling, still, it seemed, more amused at her than perturbed.
‘As if you were making some sort of homosexual advance to Sergeant Wilson.’
‘I was,’ he said simply.
Taken aback, she had to pause for a moment to search for the next thing to say, which was, ‘Why?’
‘Oh, it was just an experiment, that’s all. He’s a fairy. I wanted to see what he’d do.’
‘That’s slander, Luce.’
He laughed. ‘Then he can sue me! I tell you he’s a great big fairy.’
‘Which doesn’t explain why you were the one making the advance, does it? Leaving Sergeant Wilson out of it, you’re not the slightest bit homosexual.’
So suddenly the movement made her draw back involuntarily, he slid his hip onto the desk and sat side-on, leaning his face so close to hers that she could see the extraordinary structure of his irises, the multitude of differently colored streaks and flecks which gave them such a chameleon quality; his pupils were slightly enlarged and lustrous with reflections. And her heart took off at a gallop, remembering his effect on her during those first two days in the ward; she felt drowsy, hypnotized, almost bewitched. But what he said next jerked her out of the spell, away from the power.
‘Sweetie, I’m anything,’ he said softly. ‘Anything you like to name! Young, old, male, female—it’s all meat to me.’
She couldn’t prevent the gasp of revulsion. ‘Stop it! Don’t say such things! You’re damned!’
His face came even nearer, his clean and healthy smell curled around her. ‘Come on, Sis, try me! Do you know what your trouble is? You haven’t tried anyone. Why don’t you start with the best? I’m the best there is, I really am—oh, woman, I can make you shiver and yell your head off and beg for more! You couldn’t imagine what I can do to you. Come on, Sis, try me! Just try me! Don’t throw yourself away on a queen or a fake Pom who’s too tired to get it up any more! Try me! I’m the best there is.’
‘Please go,’ she said, nostrils pinched.
‘I don’t usually like kissing people, but I am going to kiss you. Come on, Sis, kiss me!’
There was nowhere to go; the back of her chair was so close to the wall that it barely permitted her room to seat herself. But she pushed the chair back so sharply it whacked against the windowsill behind her, her body reared back in a convulsion of outrage even Luce could not mistake for anything but what it really was.
‘Out, Luce! Immediately!’ She clapped her hand across her mouth as if she was going to be sick, eyes fixed on that fascinating face as if she looked on the devil himself.
‘All right, then, throw yourself away,’ he said, and stood up, plucking and rubbing at his trousers to ease his erection. ‘What a fool you are! You won’t get any joy out of either of them. They’re not men. I’m the only man here.’
After he had gone she stared at the closed door with rigid attention to its construction until she felt the horror and the fright begin to ebb, and wanted so badly to weep that only a continued inspection of the door prevented the tears from coming. For she had felt the power in him, the will to have what he wanted at any cost. And wondered if that was how Michael had felt in the dayroom, impaled on those staring goatish eyes.
Neil knocked, entered and closed the door, one hand behind his back concealing something. Before he sat down in the visitor’s chair he produced his cigarette case and offered it across the desk. It was a part of the ritual that she should make a token demur, but tonight she snatched the cigarette and leaned to have it lit as if she needed it far too badly to remember to demur.
Her boots scraped on the floor as she moved her feet; Neil raised one eyebrow.
‘I’ve never known you to sit down without taking off your boots first, Sis. Are you sure you’re fit to be here? Any fever? Headache?’
‘No fever or headache, doctor, and I’m quite all right. The boots haven’t come off because I caught Luce going out just as I was coming in, and I wanted a word with him. So the boots were rather forgotten.’
He got up, came round the desk and knelt in the tiny space to one side of her chair, patting his thigh. ‘Come on, foot up.’
The buckles on her webbing gaiter were stiff; he had to work at them before they came undone, after which he peeled the gaiter off, loosened the laces of her boot enough to lever it off, and rolled her sock up over the trouser bottom. Then he performed the same service for her other foot, sat back on his heels and twisted to look for the pair of rubber-soled canvas shoes she wore in the ward after dark.
‘Bottom shelf,’ she said.
‘That’s better,’ he said, the sandshoes laced to his satisfaction. ‘Comfortable?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
He returned to his chair. ‘You still look a bit washed out to me.’
She glanced down at her hands, which trembled. ‘I’ve got the Joe Blakes!’ she said, seeming surprised.
‘Why don’t you go on sick parade?’
‘It’s only nerves, Neil.’
They smoked in silence, she looking purposely out the window, he looking intently at her. Then, as she turned to stub out her cigarette, he put the piece of paper he had been concealing down on the desk in front of her.
Michael! Just the way she herself saw him, fine and strong, eyes staring up at her so honestly and directly it seemed impossible to believe anything unmanly could ever lurk behind them.
‘It’s the best one you’ve done yet; even better than Luce, I think,’ she said, gazing down greedily at the drawing, and hoping she had not visibly jumped when she saw what he had brought her. Handling it carefully, she gave it back to him. ‘Would you pin it up for me, please?’
He obliged, fixing it at each corner with a thumbtack, positioning it at the right-hand end of the central row, next to himself. It outshone him, for in trying to depict himself his detachment had failed, and the face on the wall was weak, strained, attenuated.
‘We’re complete,’ he said, and sat down again. ‘Here, have another cigarette.’
She took it almost as hastily as she had the first one, drew a deep breath on the smoke, and while exhaling said to him rapidly and artificially, ‘Michael represents to me the enigma of men,’ pointing to the new drawing.
‘You’ve got your signals crossed, Sis,’ Neil said easily, not betraying that he understood how difficult it was for her to broach the subject of Michael, nor betraying his own obsessive preoccupation with the subject of her and Michael. ‘It’s women who are the enigma. Ask anyone from Shakespeare to Shaw.’
‘Only to men. Shakespeare and Shaw were men. It cuts both ways, you know. The opposite sex is the terra incognita. So every time I think I have men solved, you give some sort of complicated wriggle and you’re off again. Swimming in the opposite direction from me.’ She tapped ash off her cigarette and smiled at him. ‘I suppose the chief reason why I like running this ward on my own is because it’s such an excellent opportunity to study a group of men without other women
interfering.’
He laughed. ‘How very clinical! Say it to me, by all means, but don’t ever say it to Nugget or he’ll come down with a combined case of bubonic plague and anthrax.’ The expression in her eyes was a little indignant, as if she was about to protest that he misjudged her, but he continued smoothly before she could actually interrupt, wondering if she might yet be deflected by a mildly facetious response. ‘Men are basically the simplest of creatures. Not quite down to protozoa, perhaps, but certainly not up in the angels-on-a-pinhead class of conundrum.’
‘Rot! You’re a bigger mystery than any number of angels on a pinhead, and far more important! Take Michael—’
No, she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t bring herself to talk about what had happened between Michael and Luce in the dayroom, though walking from her quarters back to X she had decided Neil might be the only person who could help her. But she suddenly saw how telling him about them would expose herself, and she couldn’t do that. And then there was her awful scene with Luce; she’d end in telling him about that as well, and there would be murder done. She closed her mouth, didn’t finish the sentence.
‘All right, then, let’s take Mike,’ Neil said, as if she had produced a finished statement. ‘What’s so special about our ministering angel Michael? How many of him could we fit on a pinhead?’
‘Neil, if you say things that sound like Luce Daggett, I swear I will never speak to you again!’
He was so startled he dropped his cigarette, bent to pick it up and then sat staring at her with suspicion and consternation. ‘What on earth provoked that?’ he asked.
‘Oh, drat the wretched man! He rubs off,’ was all she would say.