An Indecent Obsession (17 page)

‘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.

‘Sis, do you count me your friend? I mean someone really on your side, with you all the way?’

‘Of course I do! You don’t have to ask me that.’

‘Is it really Luce who’s troubling you, or is it Mike? I’ve known and suffered Luce for over three months without feeling the way I do at the moment—ever since Michael arrived, as a matter of fact. In just two weeks this place seems to have turned into an unstable boiler. I keep waiting from minute to minute for it to explode, but so far it keeps seething up into the danger zone and flopping again. To wait for something to explode that you know must explode is a most unsettling feeling. Like being back under fire.’

I knew you were a bit down on Michael, but I didn’t realize it went so deep,’ she said, tight-lipped.

‘I am not down on Michael! He’s a splendid chap. But Michael is the difference. Not Luce. Michael.’

‘That’s ridiculous! How could Michael make everything different? He’s so—so quiet!’

Well, here goes nothing, he thought, watching her carefully. Did she know what was happening to her, to him, to all of them?

‘Perhaps because
you
’
re
different. Since Michael came,’ he said steadily. ‘You must surely realize that we tend to take our moods and attitudes from you, even Luce. And since Michael came you are a very different person—different moods, different attitudes.’

Oh, God. Keep your face straight, Sister Langtry, don’t let it give away a thing. It didn’t; it looked at him with an almost polite interest, smooth and calm and impassive. Behind it her brain raced to cope with all the implications of this interview, and to formulate a behavior pattern which would if not pacify Neil, at least seem logical to him. Given what he knew of her, and he had just made her realize that he knew her better than she suspected. Everything he said was true, but she couldn’t admit as much to him; she was too aware of his frailty, his dependence upon her. And damn him for trying to force an issue with her that she hadn’t managed to sort out yet in her own mind!

‘I’m tired, Neil,’ she said, her face suddenly showing all the strain of the long difficult day. ‘It’s just gone on too long. Or I’m proving too weak. I don’t know. I wish I did know.’ She wet her lips. ‘Don’t blame it all on Michael, please. It’s far too complicated to deserve a simplification like that. If I’m different, it’s because of things inside me. We’re coming to an end, something else is about to begin. I think I’m preparing for that, and I think all of you are, too. And I’m so tired. Don’t make it any harder, please. Just support me.’

Something extraordinary was happening to Neil; he could actually physically feel it while he sat listening to an Honour Langtry who almost admitted defeat. As if in seeing her brought low his own inner resources were growing. As if he fed on her. And that was it, he thought exultantly; she was suddenly as human as he, a person with limits to her energies and endurance, and therefore fallible. To see her thus was to understand his own strengths instead of being forever paled by hers.

‘When I first met you,’ he said slowly, ‘I thought you were made of solid iron. Everything I didn’t have, you had. Lose a few men in a fight? You’d grieve for that, yes, but it wouldn’t put you in a place like X. Nothing in the whole wide world could put you in a place like X. And I suppose at the time you were what I needed. If I hadn’t needed that, you couldn’t have helped, and you did help. Enormously. I don’t want you to crack now. I’ll do everything in my power to stop you cracking. But it’s so nice to feel the balance tip a little bit my way for a change!’

‘I understand that,’ she said, smiling. But then she sighed. ‘Oh, Neil… I am sorry. I really do feel a bit under the weather, you know. Not that I’m pleading it as an excuse. I’m not. You’re quite right about my moods and attitudes. But I can deal with them.’

‘Just why is Michael in X?’ he asked.

‘You know better than to ask me that!’ she said, astonished. ‘I can’t discuss one patient with another!’

‘Unless he’s named Benedict or Luce.’ He shrugged. ‘Oh, well, it was worth a try. I didn’t ask from idle curiosity. He’s a dangerous man. He’s got so much integrity!’ The moment it was out he regretted saying it, not wishing to see her draw away when she had suddenly come so close to him.

However, she didn’t recoil or become defensive, though she did get to her feet. ‘It’s high time I put in an appearance on the ward. Which is not a dismissal, Neil. I have too much to thank you for.’ At the door she stopped to wait for him. ‘I agree with you, Michael is a dangerous man. But so are you, and so is Luce—and Ben, for that matter. In different ways, perhaps, but yes—you’re all dangerous.’