‘I hope it isn’t serious, Sister,’ said Michael, concerned. ‘He does look sick.’
‘Huh!’ said Neil.
‘He’s all right,’ said Sister Langtry, apparently unperturbed.
‘It’s only his soul that’s sick,’ said Matt unexpectedly. ‘The poor little coot misses his mother. He’s here because here is the only place that can put up with him, and we put up with him because of Sis. If they had any sense, they would have packed him off home to Mum two years ago. Instead, he gets backaches, headaches, gutsaches and heartaches. And rots like the rest of us.’
‘Rot is right,’ said Neil moodily.
There was a tempest blowing up; they were like the winds and the clouds at this same latitude, thought Sister Langtry, eyes travelling from one face to another. All set for fair weather one moment, swirling and seething the next. What had provoked it this time? A reference to rotting?
‘Well, at least we’ve got Sister Langtry, so it can’t be all bad,’ said Michael cheerfully.
Neil’s laughter sounded more spontaneous; maybe the storm would abort. ‘Bravo!’ he said. ‘A gallant soul has arrived in our midst at last! Over to you, Sis. Refute the compliment if you can.’
‘Why should I want to refute it? I don’t get too many compliments.’
That cut Neil, but he leaned back on the bench as if perfectly relaxed. ‘What a plumping lie!’ he said gently. ‘You know very well we shower you with compliments. But for that plumper, you can tell us why you’re rotting in X. You must have done something.’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact I have. I’ve committed the terrible sin of liking ward X. If I didn’t, nothing compels me to stay, you know.’
Matt got up abruptly, as if he found something at the table suddenly unbearable, moved to its head as surely as if he could see, and rested his hand lightly on Sister Langtry’s shoulder. ‘I’m tired, Sis, so I’ll say good night. Isn’t it funny? Tonight’s one of those nights I almost believe that when I wake tomorrow, I’m going to be able to see again.’
Michael half rose to help him through the barrier of the screens, but Neil put out a hand across the table to restrain him.
‘He knows the way, lad. None better.’
‘More tea, Michael?’ asked Sister Langtry.
He nodded, was about to say something when the screens jiggled afresh. Luce slid onto the bench beside Neil, in the place where Matt had been sitting.
‘Beaut-oh! I’m in time for some tea.’
‘Speak of the devil,’ sighed Neil.
‘In person,’ Luce agreed. He put his hands behind his head and leaned back a little, looking at the three of them through half-shut eyes. ‘Well, what a cozy little group this is! I see we’ve lost the riffraff, only the big guns are left. It’s not ten o’clock yet, Sis, so there’s no need to look at your watch. Are you sorry I’m not back late?’
‘Not at all,’ said Sister Langtry calmly. ‘I knew you’d be back. I’ve never yet known you to stay out one minute past ten without a pass, or commit any other breach of regulations, for that matter.’
‘Well, don’t sound so sad about it! It makes me think nothing would give you greater pleasure than to be able to report me to Colonel Chinstrap.’
‘It wouldn’t give me any pleasure at all, Luce. That is your whole trouble, my friend. You work so darned hard at making people believe the worst of you that you literally force them to believe the worst, just to have a little peace and quiet.’
Luce sighed, leaned forward to put his elbows on the table and prop his chin on his hands. Thick and waving and a little too long to meet the strict definition of short-back-and-sides, his reddish-gold hair fell forward across his brow. How absolutely perfect he is, thought Sister Langtry with a shiver of real repulsion. Perhaps he’s too perfect, or the coloring is impossible to absorb. She suspected he darkened his brows and lashes, maybe plucked the one and encouraged the growth of the other, but not because of sexual inversion; purely out of overweening vanity. His eyes had a golden sheen, were very large and set well apart below the arch of those too-dark-to-be-true brows. Nose like a blade, straight, thin, flaring proudly at the nostrils. The kind of cheekbones which looked like high, purely structural supports, the flesh beneath them hollowed. Though it was far too determined to be called generous, his mouth was not thin, and had the exquisitely defined edges one usually saw only on statues.
Little wonder that he knocked me sideways when I first saw him.… Yet I’m no longer attracted by that face, or the height of the man, or his splendid body. Not the way I am to Neil—or to Michael, come to think of it. There’s something wrong with Luce, inside; not a weakness, nor merely a flaw, but something that is all of him, innate and therefore ineradicable.
She turned her head slightly to look at Neil, who in any company save Luce’s would pass for a handsome man. Much the same sort of features as Luce’s, though far less spectacular coloring. Most handsome men looked better with the sort of lines graven into the flesh of the face Neil had; yet when those lines appeared on Luce he would change from beauty to beast. They would be the wrong lines, perhaps. Would indicate dissipation rather than experience, petulance rather than suffering. And Luce would run to fat, which Neil never would. She particularly liked Neil’s eyes, a vivid blue and fringed with fairish lashes. He had the sort of brows a woman might like to stroke with one fingertip, over and over and over again, just for the sheer pleasure of it.…
Now Michael was quite different. He might pass for the very best kind of ancient Roman. Character rather than beauty, strength rather than self-indulgence. Caesarish. There was a contained singularity about him which said, I’ve been looking after others as well as myself for a long time now, I’ve been through heaven and hell, but I’m still a whole man, I still own myself. Yes, she decided; Michael was enormously attractive.
Luce was watching her. She felt it, and brought her eyes back to him, making their expression cool and aloof. She defeated him, and she knew it. Luce had never been able to discover why his charm hadn’t worked on her, and she was not about to enlighten him, either about his initial impact on her, or the reasons why it had been shattered.
Tonight for a change his guard was down a bit; not that he was vulnerable, exactly, more that perhaps he would have liked to be vulnerable.
‘I met a girl from home tonight,’ Luce announced, his chin still propped on his hands. ‘All the way from Woop-Woop to Base Fifteen, no less! She remembers me, too. Just as well. I didn’t remember her at all. She’d changed too much.’ His hands fell; he assumed a high and breathlessly girlish voice, conjuring for them an image so strong Sister Langtry felt physically thrust into the middle of that encounter. ‘My mother did her mother’s washing, she said, and I used to have to carry the basket, she said. Her father was the bank manager, she said.’ His voice changed, dropped to become Luce at his most superior, most sophisticated. ‘That must have won him a lot of friends with the Depression on, I said. Foreclosing right, left and center, I said. Just as well my mother didn’t have anything worth foreclosing on, I said. You’re cruel, she said, and looked as if she was going to cry. Not at all, I said, just being truthful. Don’t hold it against me, she said, big black eyes all wet with tears. How could I ever hold anything against anyone as pretty as you, I said.’ He grinned, quick and wicked as a razor slash. ‘Though that wasn’t being at all truthful. I’ve got one thing I’d love to hold against her!’
Sister Langtry had adopted his earlier pose, elbows on table, chin on hands, watching fascinated as he mimicked and postured his way through the story.
‘So much bitterness, Luce,’ she said gently. ‘It must have hurt a great deal to have to carry the bank manager’s laundry.’
