'Hello there,' he said, seating himself beside her. 'I wondered where I might find you.'
She could barely speak. His dark eyes looked steadily out at her from a face softened by the night. She could detect the faint scent of carbolic on his skin, the characteristic smell of the fabric of his uniform. His hand lay on the table in front of her and she fought an irrational urge to touch it.
'I wondered if you'd like to dance,' he said.
She stared at that hand, faced with the prospect of it resting on her waist, of his body close to hers, and felt a swell of panic. 'No,' she said abruptly. 'Actually, I - I was just leaving.'
There was a brief silence.
'It is late,' he conceded. 'I was hoping to get up here earlier, but we had a bit of an incident downstairs in the kitchens, and a few of us got called to sort it out.'
'Thank you, anyway,' she said. 'I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening.' There was a lump in her throat. She gathered up her things, and he stood up to let her pass.
'Don't go,' said Margaret.
Frances spun round.
'Go on. For God's sake, woman, you've kept me company all bloody night and now the least you can do is have a turn round the dance floor. Let me see what I'm missing.'
'Margaret, I'm sorry but I--'
'Sorry but what? Ah, go on, Frances. There's no point in both of us being wallflowers. Shake a leg, as our dear friend would have said. One for Jean.'
She looked back at him, then at the crowded deck, the endless whirl of white and colour, unsure whether she was fearful of entering the throng or of being so close to him.
'Get on with it, woman.'
He was still beside her. 'A quick one?' he said, holding out his arm. 'It would be my pleasure.'
Not trusting herself to speak, she took it.
She wouldn't think tonight about the impossibility of it all. About the fact that she was feeling something she had long told herself it was unsafe to feel. About the fact that there would inevitably be a painful consequence. She just closed her eyes, lay back on her bunk, and allowed herself to sink into those moments she had stored deep inside: the four dances in which he had held her, one hand clasping hers, the other resting on her waist; of how, during the last, even as he kept himself, correctly, several inches from her, she could feel his breath against her bare neck.
Of how he had looked at her when he let go. Had there been reluctance in the way his hand had separated slowly from hers? Did it hurt anyone for her to imagine there had been? Was there not a strange emphasis on the way he'd lowered his head to hers and said, so quietly, 'Thank you'?
What she felt for him shocked and shamed her. Yet the discovery of her capacity to feel as she did made her want to sing. The chaotic, overpowering emotions she had experienced this evening made her wonder if she was in the grip of some seaborne virus. She had never felt so feverish, so incapable of efficiently gathering her thoughts. She bit down on her hand, trying to stop the bubble of hysteria rising in her chest and threatening to explode into God only knew what. She forced herself to breathe deeply, tried to restore the inner calm that had provided solace in the last six years.
It was just a dance. 'A dance,' she whispered to herself, pulling the sheet over her head. Why can't you be grateful for that?
She heard footsteps, then men's voices. Someone was talking to the marine outside the door, a young substitute with red hair and sleepy eyes. She lay, only half listening, wondering if it was time for the watch to change. Then she sat up.
It was him. She sat very still for a minute longer, checking that she was not mistaken, then slid out of her bunk, her heart hammering in her chest. She thought of Jean and grew cold. Perhaps she had been so blinded by her own attraction to him that she had not seen what was before her.
She placed her ear to the door.
'What do you think?' he was saying.
'It's been a good hour,' the other marine replied, 'but I don't suppose you've got a choice.'
'I don't like it,' he said. 'I don't like doing it at all.'
She stepped back from the door, and as she did, the handle turned and it opened quietly. His face slid round it, an echo of its earlier self, and he had caught her there, shocked and pale in the illuminated sliver of the passage lights.
'I heard voices,' she said, conscious of her state of undress. She grappled behind her for her wrap, and flung it on, tying it tightly around her.
'I'm sorry to disturb you,' his voice was low and urgent, 'but there's been an accident downstairs. I was wondering--Look, we need your help.'
The dance had ended in several unofficial gatherings in various parts of the ship. One had emigrated to the sweaty confines of the rear port-side engine room, where a stoker had been waltzing a bride along one of the walkways that flanked the main engine. The accounts he'd had so far were unclear, but they had fallen into the pit that contained the engine. The man was unconscious; the bride had a nasty cut on her face.
'We can't call the ship's doctor for obvious reasons. But we need to get them out of there before the watch changes.' He hesitated. 'We thought . . . I thought you might help.'
She wrapped her arms round herself. 'I'm sorry,' she whispered. 'I can't go down there. You'll have to get someone else.'
'I'll be there. I'll stay with you.'
'It's not that . . .'
'You don't need to worry, I promise. They know you're a nurse.'
She had looked into his eyes, then, and understood what he thought he was saying.
'There's no one else who can help,' he said, and glanced at his watch. 'We've only got about twenty minutes. Please, Frances.'
He had never used her name before. She hadn't been aware he knew it.
Margaret's voice cut quietly through the darkness. 'I'll come with you. I'll stay with you. If you'd feel better with a few of us around you.'
She was in an agony of indecision, thrown by his nearness.
'Just have a look at them, please. If it's really bad we'll wake the doctor.'
'I'll get my kit,' she said. She reached under her bunk for the tin box. Opposite, Margaret got up heavily and put on a dressing-gown that now barely stretched round her belly. She gave Frances's arm a discreet squeeze.
'Where are you going?' said Avice, and pulled the light cord. She sat up, blinking sleepily as they were thrown into the light.
'Just for a breath of fresh air,' said Margaret.
'I wasn't born yesterday.'
'We're going to help a couple of people who have been hurt downstairs,' said Margaret. 'Come with us, if you want.'
Avice looked at them, as if weighing up whether to go.
'It's the least you could do,' said Margaret.
She slid off her bunk and into her peach silk robe, walked past the marine, who held the door back, a finger to his lips, and followed them as they went silently down the passageway towards the stairs.
Behind them, the red-headed marine shuffled back into place, guarding a cabin that was now empty but for a sleeping dog.
They heard the voices before they saw them: from deep in the belly of the ship, down what seemed to Margaret endless flights of stairs and narrow corridors until they reached the rear port-side engine room. The heat was intense; struggling to keep up with the others, she found herself short of breath and frequently had to wipe her brow with her sleeve. Her mouth tasted of oil. And then they heard a shrill weeping, punctuated by a hushed commotion of voices, male and female, some arguing, some cajoling, all underlaid by a momentous thumping and clanging, the sound of the great heart of the beast. Perhaps in response to the noise, Frances's pace quickened and she half ran, with the marine, along the passageway.
Margaret reached the engine room several seconds after everyone else. When she finally opened the hatch, the heat was such that she had to stand still for a moment to acclimatise.
She stepped on to the walkway inside and looked down, following the sound. Some fifteen feet below them, in a huge pit in the floor a lit
tle like a sunken boxing ring, a young seaman was half lying on the ground, his back to the wall, supported on one side by a weeping bride and on the other by a friend. A game of cards had apparently been abandoned on a crate in the corner and several upturned beakers lay on the floor. In the centre a huge engine - a labyrinthine organ of pipes and valves - pumped and ground a regular, deafening beat from its huge metal parts, its valves hissing steam periodically as if to some infernal tune. On the far side, tucked under the walkway, another bride held the side of her face and wept. 'What's he going to say, though? What will he think of me?'
Ahead, Frances was running towards the ladder that led down into the bowels of the engine, her feet silent on the ribbed metal floor. She pushed her way through the drunken crowd, fell to her knees and examined what lay beneath the blood-soaked dirty cloth wrapped round the man's arm.
Margaret leant on the metal cable that acted as a safety rail to watch as one of the other girls peeled the injured woman's hand off her head and dabbed a livid wound with a wet cloth. Several ratings hovered at the edge of the scene, still in their good uniforms, pulling away oversized oxygen canisters and bits of guard rail. Two smoked with the deep breaths of those in shock. Around the walls the engine's pipes glowed in the dim light.
'He went over and the canisters fell on him,' one man was shouting. 'I couldn't tell you where they hit him. We're lucky the whole lot didn't go up.'
'How long has he been unconscious?' Frances's voice was raised to be heard over the engine. 'Who else is hurt?' There was no caution in her demeanour now: she was galvanised.
Beside her, the marine, loosening his good bootneck collar, was following her instructions, searching out items in her medical kit. He called instructions to the remaining seamen, two of whom darted back up the ladder, apparently glad to be out of the way.
Avice was standing on the walkway with her back to the wall. The uneasy look on her face told Margaret that she had already decided this was not a place she wanted to be. She thought suddenly of Jean, and wondered, briefly, whether any of them was safe, given the punishment meted out to her. But then she glanced at Frances as she bent over the unconscious man, checking under his eyelids with one hand, rummaging in her medical kit with the other, and knew she couldn't leave.
'He's coming round. Someone hold his head to the side, please. What's his name? Kenneth? Kenneth,' she called to him, 'can you tell me where it hurts?' She listened to him, then lifted his hand and pulled each finger. 'Open that for me, please.' The marine reached down to where she was pointing, and took out what looked like a sewing kit. Margaret turned away. Under her feet the walkway vibrated in time with the engine.
'What time did they say the watch was changing?' asked Avice, nervously.
'Fourteen minutes,' said Margaret. She wondered whether she should go down and remind them of the time, but it seemed pointless: their movements were filled with urgency.
It was as she turned away that a man drew her attention. He was seated on the floor in the corner, and Margaret realised that in several minutes he had not taken his eyes from Frances. The peculiar nature of his gaze made her wonder if perhaps Frances's robe was too revealing. Now she saw that his attention was not quite salacious, but neither was it kindly. He looked, she thought, oddly knowing. She moved closer to Avice, feeling uncomfortable.
'I think we should leave,' Avice said.
'She won't be long,' said Margaret. Secretly she agreed: it was a terrible place. A bit like one might imagine hell, if one were that way disposed. Yet Frances had never looked more at home.
'Sorry to do this to you, Nicol. I couldn't leave him. Not in the state he was in.'
Jones-the-Welsh pulled at his bootneck collar with a finger, then glanced down at the oil on his trousers. 'Last time I let Duckworth talk me into a bit of after-hours entertainment. Bloody fool! My drill's ruined.' He lit a cigarette, eyeing the no-smoking signs on the walls. 'Anyway, matey, I owe you.'
'I think it's someone else you owe,' said Nicol. He looked down at his watch. 'Christ! We've got eight minutes, Frances, before we have to get them out of here.'
Beside him, on the floor, Frances had finished cleaning the cut on the bride's face. The girl had stopped weeping and was in a state of white-faced shock, exacerbated, Nicol suspected, by the amount of alcohol she appeared to have drunk. Frances's hair, wet with sweat, hung lank round her face; her pale cotton robe, now stuck to her skin, was smudged with oil and grease.
'Pass me the morphine, please,' she said. He got the little brown bottle out of her box. She took it, and then his hand, which she placed on a pad of gauze on the girl's face. 'Keep hold of that,' she told him. 'Tight as you can. Someone check Kenneth, please. Make sure he doesn't feel sick.'
With the fluency born of long practice, she removed the top from the bottle and filled a syringe. 'Soon feel better,' she said to the injured girl, and as Nicol shifted to give her room, she placed the needle next to her skin. 'I'll have to stitch it,' she said, 'but I promise I'll make them as tiny as I can. Most of them will be covered by your hair anyway.'
The girl nodded mutely.
'Do you have to do it here?' said Nicol. 'Couldn't we get her upstairs and do it there?'
'There's a WSO patrolling the hangar deck,' said one of the men.
'Just let me get on with my job,' said Frances, with the faintest hint of steel. 'I'll be as quick as I can.'
They were carrying Kenneth out, passing him between them up the ladder, shouting to each other to watch his leg, his head.
'Your friend here isn't going to say anything, right?' Watching them, Jones scratched his head. 'I mean, can we trust her?'
Nicol nodded. It had taken her several attempts to thread the needle; he saw that her fingers were trembling.
He was struggling to find ways in which he might thank her, express his admiration. Holding her, upstairs, as they danced, he had seen this awkward girl relaxed and briefly illuminated. Now, in this environment, she was someone he no longer recognised. He had never seen a woman so confident in duty and he knew, with a pride he had not felt before, that he was in the presence of an equal.
'Time?' said Frances.
'Four minutes,' he said.
She shook her head as if faced with a private impossibility. And then he couldn't think at all. At the first stitch, one of the girl's friends had passed out, and Frances's mates were told to take her outside and pinch her awake. The stitching was interrupted again when two of the men started to brawl. He and Jones waded in to separate them. Time inched forward, the hands of his watch moving relentlessly from one digit to the next.
Nicol found himself standing, glancing at the hatch, convinced even over the deafening sound of the engine that he could hear footsteps.
And then she turned to him, face dirty, and flushed from the heat. 'We're all right,' she said, with a brief smile. 'We're done.'
'A little over a minute and a half,' said Nicol. 'Come on, we've got to get out of here. Leave it,' he called to the ratings, who had been trying to fix the guard rail. 'There's no time. Just help me get her up.'
Margaret and Avice were standing by the hatch on the walkway above them, and Frances motioned to them as if to say they could leave now. Margaret waved as if to say they'd wait.
He stood and offered his hand so that she could stand. She hesitated, then took it, smoothing her hair from her face. He tried not to let his eyes drop to her robe, which now clearly outlined the elegant contours of her chest. Sweat glistened on her skin, running down into the hollow in dirty rivulets. God help me, thought Nicol. There's an image I'm going to struggle to forget.
'You'll need to keep that dry,' she murmured to the girl. 'No washing your hair for a couple of days.'
'Can't remember the last time I got to wash it anyway,' the girl muttered.
'Hang on,' said Jones-the-Welsh, from beside him. 'Don't I know you?'
At first she seemed to assume that he was addressing the injured girl. Then she registered that he wa
s talking to her and something hardened in her expression.
'You were never at Morotai,' said Nicol.
'Morotai? Nah.' Jones was shaking his head. 'It wasn't there. But I never forget a face. I know you from somewhere.'
Frances, Nicol saw, had lost her high colour. 'I don't think so,' she said quietly. She began to gather up her medical kit.
'Yeees . . . yes . . . I know it'll come to me.' Jones shook his head. 'I never forget a face.'
She stood, one hand lifted to her brow, like someone suffering with a headache. 'I'd better go,' she said to Nicol. 'They'll be fine.' Her eyes met his only briefly.
'I'll come up with you,' he said.
'No,' she said sharply. 'No, I'll be fine. Thank you.'
Bits of bandage and kit had skittered under the walkway, but she seemed not to care. She gathered her robe tightly around her, and picked her way past the engine towards the stairs, her kit under her arm.
'Oh, no . . .'
Nicol tore his gaze from Frances to Jones-the-Welsh. The man was staring at her and shaking his head, bemused. Then a wicked smile flickered across his face.
'What?' said Nicol. He was following her towards the ladder and reached for the jacket he had slung over a tool case.
'No . . . can't be . . . never . . .' Jones glanced behind him and suddenly located the man he apparently wanted to speak to. 'Hey, Duckworth, are you thinking what I'm thinking? Queensland? It isn't, is it?' Frances had climbed up the ladder and was now walking towards the other girls, head down.
'Saw it straight away,' came the broad Cockney accent. 'The old Rest Easy. You wouldn't credit it, would you?'
'What's going on?' said Avice, from above. 'What's he talking about?'
'I don't believe it,' said Jones-the-Welsh, and burst out laughing. 'A nurse! Wait till we tell old Kenny! A nurse!'
'What the hell are you talking about, Jones?'
Jones's face, when it met Nicol's, held the same amused smile with which he greeted most of life's great surprises, whether they were extra sippers, victories at sea or successful cheating at cards. 'Your little nurse there, Nicol,' he said, 'used to be a brass.'
'What?'
'Duckworth knows - we came across her at a club in Queensland, must be four, five years ago now.'