Green for Danger (5 page)

Frederica whisked off up the ward. The lights flickered with the thudding of the guns. A bomb fell somewhere close. The old man stirred and groaned, “Bombs! Bombs! The bombs!”

“No bombs,” said Esther reassuringly. “Only guns; not bombs.”

He lost even his feeble interest in the bombs. “The
pain!
”

“Just bear it for a little bit longer,” she said, her hand on his wrist. “Just while I get your clothes off and clean you up a little bit; and then you shall go off to sleep and forget all about it.” Standing with the basin balanced on her hip, towels over her arm, she looked down at him pityingly. Poor old boy; poor, frightened, broken, pitiful little old man.… She wrung out a piece of gauze in the hot water, and began gently to wash his face.

3

Night Sister had left out four quarter-grain tablets of morphia on a tray in the little bunk. Frederica looked up the prescriptions book. “Three ‘stat' and one ‘s o s'. Will you give them, Esther? One to your man, and one each to the hernias; the appendix seems to be dozing off, so we'll leave his s o s till he seems to want it. I'll deal with this asthma question. Yes, all right, Wilson, I'm coming!”

Esther lighted the tiny spirit lamp, dropped one of the tablets into a teaspoon, added sterile water and re-sterilised the whole over the flame, mixing in the dissolving tablet with the needle of the hypodermic syringe; sucked up the solution into the syringe and carried it over, with a piece of iodined gauze, to one of the hernia patients. “There you are,” she said, smiling at him, dabbing at the tiny puncture with the gauze. “That'll set you up till the morning!”

He smiled back at her hazily. “Thank you, nurse.”

She gave the second injection to the other hernia, and a third to the fractured femur. He was becoming increasingly conscious, muttering wildly to himself: “Bombs! The bombs! All gone … all of us gone this time!”

“This will ease the pain now, and make you go to sleep.”

“All of us gone; all my mates gone.… All sitting there and the whole place came down on top of us.” He struggled up from his pillow, muttering wildly: “It's going to hit us! It's going to hit us …” and after a pause began to mumble softly to himself: “The effete and spineless remnants of Churchill's once-great England … cowering in their rabbit holes from the might of the German air force.…”

Frederica came and joined her at the foot of the bed. “What the dickens is he talking about?”

“He seems to be quoting something; I suppose he's a bit lightheaded.”

“All gone,” insisted the man, moaning to himself. “All gone and me the last!”

Frederica was the perfect nurse. If she was moved by the sight of suffering or sorrow or fear, she gave no sign of it, and her dry, matter-of-fact little manner often brought balm where more gentle methods failed. She said now, softly but quite brusquely: “You mustn't talk any more. Give yourself up to the morphia and let yourself go to sleep. Try not to look forward, try not to think or worry.… Everything's going to be quite all right. Just lie still and let yourself go to sleep.” The monotonous repetition, the level voice, soothed and comforted him. He relaxed against his pillow and did not speak again. She clicked off the remaining lights in the ward and arranged a couple of screens round him, leaving him in almost total darkness; on the centre table a lamp shone in an unshadowed pool upon the layer of fine plaster shaken down from the ceiling by the guns and bombs; she passed a cloth over the dust, and five minutes later it had settled there again. The men moved restlessly, resigning themselves to the long night; there were still one or two to call out: “Good-night, nurse! God bless, nurse! Aren't you coming to kiss me good-night, nurse?” Outside the guns grumbled and reverberated round the base of the hill, a flare hung, dripping stars, in the shell-splintered sky, the drone of the bombers was rent now and then by the frightened scream of a falling bomb.…

4

Esther replaced the syringe on the tray, blew out the spirit lamp, and wiped the teaspoon clean. “Well, darling, I think my work of mercy is over for the night.”

“Yes, and thank you a thousand times, sweetie, for all you've done. They're expecting another in from Resuscitation, and I don't know how I'd have managed without you.”

“You're sure you're O.K. now?”

“Oh yes, perfectly, now that I've finally got the ward under control. That's the worst of these blessed air-raids; they do unsettle the men.”

“I suppose Woody and I will have to plunge down to that mouldy shelter. The one and only advantage of night duty is that you
can
stay above ground. Do you think we dare just go to bed and see if we can get away with it?”

“My dear, last time Joan Pierson and Hibbert did that, the Commander routed them out and drove them down to the shelter just as they were, and now everybody knows that Hibbert goes to bed in her vest and knickers.”

“Well,
we
don't go to bed in our vests and knickers. Com's welcome to drive me forth in my Jaeger pyjamas. I hope Woody's got some tea.”

“Have some here, Esther, before you go.”

“No, no, I'd better go over to quarters; she'll be wondering what's happened to me. Good-night, darling. God bless!”

“Happy sheltering,” said Frederica. She added, with rarely spoken sympathy: “You do look tired, my dear; and I'm afraid it's my fault!” and came over and gave her a brief little peck of apology and gratitude.

5

It was long after ten. Esther departed, and Frederica made herself the inevitable cup of tea and settled down to innumerable small jobs left over from the evening's work. A shadow fell across the table. “Hallo, Freddi.”

“Oh, hallo, Barney; I wondered if you would come. I saved some tea for you; it's only just made.”

“I need it,” he said wearily. “We're having a rotten time. Perkins is on his seven days' leave and there's no one else to give anæsthetics, so we've just been working all out in the emergency theatre. Some of the casualties are awfully bad; they've had two deaths already in Resuscitation. You've got another fellow to come in here; did you know? Compound fracture of the tibia and fibula. They've cleaned up the wound and put on an extension; he'll be along very shortly. I thought I'd slip along and see you while we had a little lull.” He put his tea down carefully and came round the table and took her into his arms. “Frederica—I just get through my days, waiting for this moment!”

She returned his kisses lightly and pushed him gently away. “You ought to be concentrating on your work, Captain Barnes, not thinking of your young woman!”

If he was hurt he did not show it; but after a moment, as he sat stirring his tea, he said suddenly: “Frederica, you would never let me down? Would you?”

“Of course not, darling,” said Freddi; but a little too lightly; a little too readily.

He sat staring at his tea, speaking more to himself than to her. “That would be too much cruelty,” he said slowly. “I—I couldn't bear that. Cruelty and dishonesty—those are two things that I just can't stand …”

“Sometimes a person has to—has to chose between them. I mean, sometimes if you don't want to be cruel, you have to tell, or act, some lies.”

He went very white and stood up suddenly, looking down into her wide, grey eyes. “Well, Freddi—always remember this: I'd rather have cruelty than dishonesty. I'd rather be hurt than deceived.…”

Something broke in her, and she went up close to him, grasping at his coat sleeves with her little hands, straining herself against him as though both giving and taking comfort. “Oh, Barney—I'm sorry, darling. Don't look like that, my dearest; you break my heart, I'll never hurt you
or
deceive you, Barney, honestly I won't, I swear I won't.…”

He looked down at her sadly, at the lovely little face and deep, deep into the limpid eyes. “Oh, Freddi,” he said, “my little love—don't frighten me! The bare thought of ever losing you, makes me sick and dizzy.… You're mine, Freddie, aren't you? Promise me you'll always be mine, Freddi,
promise
me.…”

She closed her eyes, pressing her forehead against his shoulder. “Yes, darling, I promise you; always, all my life.”

A man called from the ward. “All right. I'm coming. Look, Barney, you must go, dearest. The tib. and fib. will be in soon, and I must get all this cleared off.… (Yes, all right, nurse is coming!) Good-night, my love.”

The appendicitis case had woken and was in some pain. She gave him the last injection of morphia and went back to the bunk. The casualty in the corner bed was moaning softly; she shone her torch for a moment on his face, but his eyes were closed, and she went back to her work; but again there was a step at the door and Gervase Eden came in. “Hallo, Nurse Linley, my lovely one!”

“Oh, hallo, Gervase,” she said uneasily.

“You look like an orchid, Frederica, sitting there with the light shining down on your hair. How do you manage to be so full of colour when you're wearing a plain grey dress?” He saw the look that lit up her eyes and added hastily: “I got that out of a book!”

“And you've been going round looking for a female in a grey dress ever since, to try it out on,” said Freddi, laughing; but her heart did a foolish little somersault in her breast.

“Why the devii can't I just ask for Night Sister, and not go and make jokes that they take too seriously?” thought Eden, exasperated with himself. He hastened to ask where Night Sister was.

“On one of the other wards; do you want her?”

“Not a bit,” said Eden, and Frederica smiled again. “For a moment, Gervase, you looked at me as if I was Sister Bates!”

“My dear—have I got a special look for Sister Bates?”

“Gervase, of
course
you have! You look at her all cross and withdrawn, like this!” She assumed an expression of hideous ferocity, screwing up her lovely little face, drawing together the delicate eyebrows, pursing her full, red Burne-Jones mouth, in an effort not to laugh. “Do I look funny, Gervase? Do I? Do I look like you looking at Sister Bates?”

“Oh, Freddi,” he said, “you don't look funny at all. You only look adorable.…”

Something shivered between them as real and potent as an electric shock; and she was in his arms, pressing her body against him, reaching up to him for kisses that he could not restrain. “Oh, Freddi—Oh, God! Oh, Freddi.…” But in a moment he had pushed her away from him, unfastening her hands from his shoulders, shifting away to the other side of the table, nervously fingering his tie. “I'm sorry, my dear. I—I lost control for a moment. I'm sorry; I shouldn't have done it.” He stood silent, violently pressing his forehead against the back of his hand. “I feel such a rotter, Freddi. Do forgive me and forget all about it.” He ignored the fact that, of the two, it was she who had most completely ‘lost control'.

“There's nothing to forgive, Gervase. But as for forgetting.…”

He refused to recognise the significance in her tone. “Just let's pretend that it never happened, Freddi. I feel so rotten about it.” He said deliberately: “Rotten to Barney, I mean,” and added, smiling shakily, “You must obviously never make funny faces again!”

She stood in stricken silence, staring at his face; and, at a step in the passage, escaped into the ward. Sister Bates came into the bunk. She said, spitefully, sick with jealousy and anger: “Oh, there you are, Major Eden! I thought I should find you here!”

“I'm making my rounds,” said Eden, who had finished them half an hour ago.

“Do you kiss the nurses in every bunk, when you're making your rounds?” she said furiously, blurting it out in her pain and despair.

“No,” he said coolly. “Only the sisters.”

He had not meant to say it, like that; he had not meant to refer to the past when she had been on night duty, when she had followed him round from ward to ward, when she had ‘happened' to be in every bunk he arrived at. He had only just meant to pass it off as a light joke, to protect Frederica from her jealous curiosity. He said apologetically: “I'm sorry, my dear; I didn't intend any wise-cracks. But I was not making love to Freddi Linley, and, to be honest, I don't know what business of yours it would have been if I had.”

She looked at him bleakly. “Oh, Gervase—how can you say such a thing?”

“My God!” thought Eden; but he said, kindly and patiently: “Look, Marion—we must have this out, once and for all. You and I had a little affair. I never pretended to you for a moment that it was more than that. These things can't last for ever, and they don't. It was charming and it was delightful and I'm very grateful for all the fun we had together—but now it's over.”

“It isn't over for me,” she said desperately. “After all you said to me, Gervase—all you promised me: you can't just leave me flat like this.”

“I never said a word to you that you could have taken as a promise of any sort.”

“You told me you loved me …”

But he interrupted her, saying sternly: “I never said those words to any woman in all my life.”

“Oh, words!” she cried passionately. “Who cares about words? Men think that they can do what they like, can treat you as they like, and as long as they don't say those three magic words, ‘I love you', they're free of all responsibility in the matter. Well, you aren't free, Gervase. Kisses can be promises and—and just looks and silences.… Whatever you may have said about loving me, you let me love
you;
and now I'm not going to be thrown away because you've gone and fallen for a silly little chit like Frederica Linley. I shall go to Barnes and tell him about it. I shall tell him he must put a stop to it, that it's ruining his life and mine.… I won't let you go, Gervase. I can't; it would kill me. I'm not going to.…” She broke off and cried, wretched and helpless: “You
can't
be in love with her!”