‘Woop-Woop?’ asked Sister Pedder, affronted. ‘Well! I know it’s not Sydney, but it’s not quite Woop-Woop either, you know!’
‘Don’t get shirty, young Sue; Woop-Woop is just Luce’s nickname for his home town,’ soothed Sister Langtry.
‘Oh, Luce Daggett!’ said Sister Dawkin, comprehending. She bent a fierce eye on Sister Pedder. ‘If you’re seeing him on the sly, ducky, you’d better wear your tin pants—and don’t let him reach for his tin-cutters.’
Sister Pedder reddened and bridled; fancy being stuck on neuro with this old dragon! ‘I assure you that there’s no need to be concerned about me,’ she said haughtily. ‘I knew Luce when we were both children.’
‘What was he like, Sue?’ asked Sister Langtry.
‘Oh, not much different.’ Sister Pedder began to lose her defensiveness, liking the fact that Sister Langtry was interested in her. ‘All the girls were crazy about him, he was so handsome. But his mother took in washing, which made it a bit difficult. My parents would have killed me if I’d looked sideways at him, but luckily I was a couple of years younger than Luce, so by the time I got out of the primary school he had already gone to Sydney. We all followed his career, though. I never missed one play he did on radio because our local station used to rebroadcast them. But I missed seeing him when he was in that play at the Royal. Some of the girls went down to Sydney, but my father wouldn’t let me.’
‘What was his father like?’
I really don’t remember. He was the stationmaster, but he died not long after the start of the Depression. Luce’s mother was very proud, she wouldn’t go on the dole. That’s why she took in washing.’
‘Does he have any brothers? Any sisters?’
‘No brothers. Two older sisters, very pretty girls. They were the handsomest family in the district, but the girls came to no good. One drinks and the less said about her morals the better, and the other got herself in the family way and still lives with her mother. She kept her baby, a little girl.’
‘Was he good at school?’
‘Awfully clever. They all were.’
‘Did he get on with his teachers?’
Sister Pedder laughed a little shrilly. ‘Good lord, no! The teachers all detested him. He was so sarcastic, and yet so slippery they could never manage to pin him down hard enough to have much excuse to punish him. Besides, he had a habit of always getting back at the teachers who did punish him.’
‘Well, he hasn’t changed much,’ said Sister Langtry.
‘He’s much handsomer now! I don’t think in all my life I’ve ever seen anyone so handsome,’ said Sister Pedder, lapsing into a reverie and smiling.
‘Oooops! Someone’s riding for a fall!’ Sister Dawkin chuckled, eyes twinkling, but not unkindly.
‘Don’t take any notice of her, Sue,’ Sister Langtry said, trying to keep her source of information in a receptive frame of mind. ‘Matron’s on her back and she’s got heat oedema.’
Sister Dawkin removed her feet from the bucket and rubbed them sketchily with a towel, then picked up her shoes and stockings.
‘There’s no need to talk about me as if I wasn’t even here,’ she said. ‘I am here, all thirteen and a half stone of me. Oh, my feet do feel better! Don’t drink the water in the bucket, girls, it’s full of Epsom salts. I’m off; I’ve got time for a quick nap.’ She pulled a face. ‘It’s those darned boots we have to wear after dark do my feet in.’
‘Have you elevated the foot of your bed?’ called Sister Langtry after her.
‘Years ago, love!’ came the faint reply. ‘It’s a lot easier to look for the pair of boots that are never there, and I don’t mean my own, either!’
This raised a laugh, of course, but after their spurt of amusement died the two sisters left at the table could do no better than an uncomfortable silence.
Sister Langtry sat wondering whether it was advisable to warn Sister Pedder about Luce, or at least make the attempt. In the end she decided that was where her duty lay, and reflected how unpalatable duty often was. She was well aware of the special difficulties young Sister Pedder faced at Base Fifteen, how friendless and isolated she must feel in this nest of senior sisters. There weren’t even any AAMWAs for her to mix with. Still, Luce was a definite menace, and Sister Pedder looked ripe, nubile and ready for mischief. And since Luce represented childhood and home town, her guard would be down.
‘I do hope Luce isn’t giving you any trouble, Sue,’ she said at last. ‘He can be difficult.’
‘No!’ said Sister Pedder, coming out of her daze with a start.
Sister Langtry picked up her cigarettes and matches and dropped them into the basket at her feet. ‘Well, I’m sure you’ve been a nurse long enough to be able to look after yourself. Just remember that Luce is a patient in X because he’s a little disturbed. We can handle that, but we can’t handle you if it rubs off.’
‘You make him sound as if he was a leper!’ said Sister Pedder indignantly. ‘After all, there’s no disgrace in battle fatigue; it happens to a lot of fine men!’
‘Is that what he told you?’ asked Sister Langtry.
‘Well, it’s the truth,’ said Sister Pedder, with just enough doubt in her voice to make Sister Langtry think something had happened which had given Sister Pedder pause to wonder already. Which was interesting.
‘No, it is not the truth. Luce has never been any closer to the front lines than the orderly room of a base ordnance unit.’
‘Then why is he in X?’
‘I don’t think I’m at liberty to tell you more than that he displayed some rather disagreeable characteristics which made his COs feel he might be better off in a place like X.’
‘He is strange sometimes,’ said Sister Pedder, thinking of that hideously passionless, automatic, merciless ramming, and of those savage bites. Her neck had been so deeply bruised, the skin broken in places, that she had thanked her lucky stars for the precious little container of pancake makeup she had bought at the American PX in Port Moresby on her way up here.
‘Then take my advice, and don’t see Luce any more,’ said Sister Langtry, picking up her basket and rising to her feet. ‘Truly, Sue, I’m not coming a matron act at you, and I’m not preaching. I have absolutely no wish to pry into your personal business, but Luce happens to be my business in every way. Steer clear of him.’
But that was too much for Sister Pedder to take; she puffed up with indignation, feeling chastised and belittled. ‘Is that an order?’ she asked, white-faced.
Sister Langtry looked surprised, even a little amused. ‘No. Orders come from Matron.’
‘Then you can stick your damned advice up your jumper!’ said Sister Pedder recklessly, then gasped. The precepts and disciplines of her training were too fresh still for her to be able to say things like that without immediately becoming devastated by her own temerity.
However, her retort fell sadly flat, for Sister Langtry had gone from the room without appearing to hear it.
She sat on for a few moments longer, chewing at her lip until the skin shredded, torn between the huge attraction she had for Luce and the feeling that Luce didn’t really care two hoots about her.
Part 4
1
It took almost a week for Sister Langtry’s rigidly suppressed feelings of confusion and embarrassment over her weakness in the dayroom to evaporate. Thank God Michael didn’t seem to suspect anything, for he was his normal courteous, friendly self at all times. A great salve for her pride, perhaps, but not much help with the pain she suffered in other areas of her being. Still, every day she continued to survive was one day less ward X had to go, one day closer to freedom.
When she walked into the ward one late afternoon about two weeks after the incident in the dayroom, she almost collided with Michael coming out of the sluice room in a hurry, worn and dented metal bowl in one hand.
‘Put a cover over that, please, Michael,’ she said automatically.
He stopped, torn between the urgency of h
is mission and her seniority.
‘It’s for Nugget,’ he explained. ‘He’s got a terrible headache and he feels sick.’
Sister Langtry stepped around him and reached one hand into the sluice room, where some drab but clean cloths sat on the shelf just inside the door. She took the bowl from Michael and draped a cloth over it.
‘Then Nugget’s got a migraine,’ she said calmly. ‘He doesn’t get them very often, but when he does he’s quite prostrated, the poor little chap.’
She walked into the ward, took one look at Nugget lying very still on his bed, a cool damp cloth over his eyes, and drew up a hard chair noiselessly to the side of his bed.
‘Is there anything I can do, Nugget?’ she asked him softly, putting the bowl down very quietly on his locker.
His lips barely moved. ‘No, Sis.’
‘How long to go?’
‘Hours yet,’ he whispered, two tears trickling from under the cloth. ‘It’s just come on.’
She didn’t touch him. ‘Don’t worry, just lie quiet. I’ll be here to keep an eye on you.’
She remained sitting beside him for perhaps another minute, then got up and went into her office.
Michael was waiting there, looking anxious. ‘Are you sure he’s all right, Sis? I’ve never seen Nugget lie so still! He hasn’t even squeaked.’
She laughed. ‘He’s all right! It’s just an honest-to-goodness migraine, that’s all. The pain is so acute he doesn’t dare move or make a noise.’
‘Isn’t there something you could give him?’ Michael demanded, impatient at her callousness. ‘How about some morphine? That always does the trick.’
‘Not for migraine,’ she said positively.
‘So there’s nothing you’re prepared to do.’
His tone annoyed her. ‘Nugget is in no danger whatsoever. He’s simply feeling ghastly. In about six hours he’ll vomit, and that will relieve the worst of his pain immediately. Believe me, I’m very sorry for what he’s going through, but I do not intend to run the risk of making him dependent upon drugs like morphine! You’ve been here quite long enough to understand what Nugget’s real trouble is, so why are you making me out to be the villain of the piece? I’m not infallible by any means, but I do not appreciate being told my business by patients!’
He laughed heartily, putting his hand out to grip her arm and giving it a friendly little shake. ‘Good for you, Sis!’ he said, grey eyes alight with more than warmth.
Her own eyes lit up; she was consumed by an enormous rush of gratitude. There could be no mistaking the way he was now looking at her. In that moment all her doubts were resolved; she knew she loved him. No more misery, no more self-examination. She loved him, and it felt like the end of a journey she had not wanted to make.
He searched her face, then his lips parted to speak; dumb with longing, she waited. But he didn’t speak. She could literally see his mind working, watched the love driven out by… fright? Caution? The grip on her arm changed its quality, from a caress to a merely friendly touch again. ‘I’ll see you later,’ he said, and walked out the door.
Luce didn’t even give her the time to think about it; she was still standing numbed when he walked in.
‘I want a word with you, Sis, and I want it now,’ he said, white-faced.
She moistened her lips. ‘Certainly,’ she managed to say, and put Michael out of her mind.
Luce advanced until he stood before her desk; she went to her chair and sat down.
‘I’ve got a bone to pick with you.’
‘Sit down, then,’ she said calmly.
‘It’s not going to take long enough, pet,’ he said, lips lifted back from his teeth. ‘Why did you queer my pitch with little Miss Woop-Woop?’
Sister Langtry’s eyes opened wide. ‘Did I?’
‘You know bloody well you did! Everything was coming along beautifully, and now suddenly out of the blue she starts telling me that it isn’t proper for her to associate with the likes of Sergeant Luce Daggett, because your talk with her made her see a lot of things she didn’t see before.’
‘Nor is it proper for the two of you to associate in a clandestine manner,’ said Sister Langtry. ‘Officers do not engage in intimate relationships with men from the ranks.’
‘Oh, come off it, Sis! You know as well as I do that those rules are broken every night in this bloody place! Who else is there except men from the ranks? The MOs? There’s not an MO in Base Fifteen who could get it up for Betty Grable! The officer patients? The only ones left are crocks who couldn’t get it up for the Virgin Mary!’
‘If you must be cheap and vulgar, Luce, you might at least refrain from blasphemy!’ she snapped, her face set, her eyes hard.
‘But it’s a cheap and vulgar subject, sweetie, and I feel like doing a lot worse than blaspheming. What a prissy old maid you are! No gossip in the mess about Sister Langtry, is there?’
He leaned forward across the desk, hands on its edge, his face looming within inches of her own, as it had loomed once before, but with a far different expression now.
‘Let me tell you something! Don’t you ever dare to interfere with me, or I’ll make you wish you’d never been born! Do you hear? I was enjoying little Miss Woop-Woop in more ways than you’ll ever know, you dried-up scrubber!’
The epithet penetrated where he could not be sure that anything else he said did; he saw her flare of pain and outrage, and pressed home this unexpected advantage with all the venom he could summon.
‘You really are dried up, aren’t you?’ he drawled. ‘You’re not a woman, you’re just an apology for one. There you are, dying to go to bed with Mike, yet you can’t even treat the poor coot like a man! Anyone would think he was your pet dog. Here, Mike, heel, Mike! Do you really think you’ll get him to sit and beg for it? He’s not interested enough, sweetie.’
‘You can’t make me lose my temper, Luce,’ she said, coldly and slowly. ‘I prefer to treat your personal aspersions as not made at all. No exercise in the world is as futile as a post-mortem, and that’s what this is, a post-mortem. If Sister Pedder has thought better of her association with you, I’m glad for both your sakes, but especially for hers. Ranting at me is not going to change how Sister Pedder feels.’
‘You’re not an iceberg, Sister Langtry, because ice melts. You’re stone! But I’m going to find a way to pay you back. Oh, yes I am! I am going to make you weep tears of blood!’
‘What idiotic melodrama!’ she said contemptuously. ‘I’m not frightened of you, Luce. Disgusted and sickened by you, yes. But not frightened. Nor can you bluff me the way you do the others. I see through you; I always have seen through you. You’re nothing but a petty little confidence trickster!’
‘But I’m not bluffing,’ he said airily, straightening. ‘You’ll see! I’ve found something you think belongs to you, and I’m going to take great pleasure in destroying it.’
Michael. Her and Michael. But Luce couldn’t even begin to destroy that. Only Michael could. Or she could.
‘Oh, go away, Luce!’ she said. ‘Just go away! You’re wasting my time.’
‘The dirty bitch!’ Luce said, looking at his curled hands as if they astonished him, looking at the bed where Benedict sat hunched apathetically, looking at the ward crowding in around him. ‘The dirty bitch!’ he said again more loudly, straight at Ben. ‘Do you know who I’m talking about, you barmy fucker—do you? Your precious Langtry, the dirty bitch!’ He was beside himself, too obsessed by his own hatred to remember that Ben was not a man he usually provoked. He just wanted to lash out at anyone, and Ben was the only one around. ‘You think she cares about you, don’t you?’ he asked. ‘Well, she doesn’t! She doesn’t care about anyone except Sergeant bloody hero Wilson! Isn’t that a laugh? Langtry in love with a shirt-lifting pansy!’
Ben came slowly to his feet. ‘Don’t say it, Luce. Keep your filthy tongue off her and Mike.’ His tone was gentle.
‘Oh, come off it, you stupid drongo! What do I need to do to show
you? Langtry’s nothing but a silly old maid in love with the biggest queen in the A.I.F.!’ He moved across the space between his own bed and Benedict’s with a slow, sideways gait that made him look immense and powerful. ‘A queen, Ben! That’s Mike I’m talking about!’
The rage was gathering in Benedict, and in rage he grew too, his dark dour face sloughing its layers of dejection and apology off until something deeper and more appalling began to show like bones at the bottom of a wound. ‘Lay off them, Luce,’ he said calmly. ‘You don’t even know what you’re talking about.’
‘Oh, but I do, Ben! I do! I read it in his papers! Your darling Mike’s a queen!’
Two small bubbles puffed out at the corners of Ben’s mouth, thick and glistening. He began to tremble, a quick, minute shaking. ‘You’re a liar.’
‘Why should I lie? It’s all there in his papers—he buggered the arses off half his battalion!’ Luce stepped back a pace hastily, deciding that he didn’t want to be too close to Ben. ‘If Mike’s a queen,’ he taunted, unable to stop himself, ‘what does that make you?’
A thin, wailing scream came ripping out of Benedict, a very quiet scream, but before his tensed muscles could react in the violence that leaped ahead of his body like a great shadow, Luce began to emit a staccato series of noises which sounded eerily like the chattering of a submachine gun. Benedict jerked and recoiled, his whole body jumping in time to the volley.
‘Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah! Remember that, old son? Of course you do! That’s the sound of your gun killing all those innocent people! Think of them, Ben! Dozens of them, women and children and old men, all dead! You murdered them in cold blood just so you could come to X and crawl to scum like Mike Wilson!’
His rage drowned in another, greater torment, Benedict subsided onto the bed, head back, eyes closed, tears flooding down his face, a human vacuum of despair.
‘Get out of here, Luce!’ said Matt’s voice from behind Luce’s shoulder.
Luce jumped, but as he remembered that Matt couldn’t see, he turned, wiping the sweat from his face. ‘Go to hell!’ he said, as he pushed roughly past Matt and plucked his hat off his bed. He put the hat on his head with a nonchalant air and walked away down the ward to the front door.