Luce shrugged, tried unsuccessfully to assume his normal devil-may-care insouciance. ‘Yah! Everything hurts, doesn’t it?’ His eyes widened, glittered. ‘Though in actual fact carrying the bank manager’s laundry—and the doctor’s, and the headmaster’s, and the Church of England minister’s, and the dentist’s—didn’t hurt half so much as having no shoes to wear to school. She used to be in the same school; I remembered her when she said who she was, and I even remember the kind of shoes she used to wear. Little black patent-leather Shirley Temples with straps and black silk bows. My sisters were much prettier than any of the other girls, and prettier than her, too, but they had no shoes of any kind.’

‘Didn’t it occur to you that those with shoes probably envied you your freedom?’ asked Sister Langry tenderly, trying to find something to say which would help him see his childhood in better perspective. ‘I know I always did, when I went to the local public school before I was old enough to be sent away to boarding school. I had shoes a bit like the bank manager’s daughter. And every day I’d have to watch some wonderfully carefree little urchin dance his way across a paddock full of bindy-eye burrs without so much as a wince. Oh, I used to long to throw my shoes away!’

‘Bindy-eyes!’ exclaimed Luce, smiling. ‘Funny, I’d forgotten all about them! In Woop-Woop the bindy-eyes had spines half an inch long. I could pull them out of my feet without feeling a thing.’ He sat up straighter, glaring at her fiercely. ‘But in the winter, dear well-educated and well-fed and well-clothed Sister Langtry, the backs of my heels and all around the edges of my feet and up my shins used to crack!’—the word came out like a rifle shot—‘and bleeeeeed’—the word oozed out of him—‘with the cold. Cold, Sister Langtry! Have you ever been cold?’

‘Yes,’ she said, mortified, but a little angry too at being so rebuffed. ‘In the desert I was cold. I was hungry and I thirsted. In the jungle I’ve been hot. And sick, too sick to keep down food or drink. But I did my duty. I am not an ornament! Nor am I insensitive to your plight when you were a child. If my words were wrong, I apologize. But the spirit in which they were intended was right!’

‘You’re pitying me, and I don’t want your pity!’ cried Luce painfully, hating her.

‘You haven’t got it. I don’t pity you. Why on earth should I? Whatever you came from doesn’t matter. It’s where you’re going that does.’

But he abandoned the mood of wistfulness and self-revelation, turned bright, metallic, chatty. ‘Well, anyway, before the army grabbed me I was wearing the best shoes money could buy. That was after I went off to Sydney and became an actor. Laurence Olivier, stand aside!’

‘What was your stage name, Luce?’

‘Lucius Sherringham.’ He rolled it out impressively. ‘Until I realized it was too long for the marquees, that is. Then I changed it to Lucius Ingham. Lucius is a good name for the stage, not bad for radio, either. But when I get to Hollywood I’ll change the Lucius to something more swashbuckling. Rhett or Tony. Or if my image turns out more Colman than Flynn, plain John would sound good.’

‘Why not Luce? That has a swashbuckling air to it.’

‘It doesn’t fit with Ingham,’ he said positively. ‘If I stay Luce, the Ingham has to go. But it’s an idea. Luce, eh? Luce Diablo would thrill the girls, wouldn’t it?’

‘Daggett wouldn’t do?’

‘Daggett! What a name! It sounds like a sheep’s bum.’ His face twisted as if at some half-remembered pain the years since had dulled. ‘Oh, Sis, but I was so good! Too young, though. I didn’t have enough time to make a big enough dent before King and Country called me up. And when I get back, I’ll be too old.… Some smarmy little bastard with high blood pressure or a rich father to buy him a discharge will be out there in my lights. It just isn’t fair!’

‘If you were good, it can’t make any difference,’ she said. ‘You’ll get there. Someone will see how good you are. Why didn’t you try for one of the entertainment units after they were formed?’

He looked revolted. ‘I’m a serious actor, not an old music-hall comedian! The men in charge of recruiting for those units were old vaudeville types themselves; they only wanted jugglers and tappers. Young men need not apply.’

‘Never mind, Luce, you will get there. I know you will. Anything anyone wants as badly as you want to be a famous actor has to happen.’

Sister Langtry became aware that someone in the far distance was groaning; she came reluctantly out of the insidious spell Luce had woven, almost loving him.

Nugget was making a terrific racket somewhere up near her office, and probably waking up Matt.

‘Sis, I feel so crook!’ came the wail of his voice.

She got to her feet, looking down at Luce with genuine regret. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Luce, I really am, but if I don’t go, you’ll all pay for it later tonight.’

She was already halfway down the ward when Luce said, ‘It’s not important. After all, I don’t feel crook!’

His face was twisted again, bitter and frustrated, the glorious little moment of approbation and limelight snatched away by a child’s peevish howl for Mummy. And Mummy, as all mummies must, had gone immediately to minister where ministry was really needed. Luce looked down at his mug of tea, which had cooled off enough to smear a thick ugly scum of congealing milk across its surface. Disgusted, he lifted the mug in his hand, and very slowly and deliberately he turned it upside down on the table.

The tea went everywhere. Neil leaped to his feet away from the main stream of it, dabbing at his trousers. Michael moved just as quickly the other way. Luce remained where he was sitting, indifferent to the fate of his clothes, watching the slimy liquid course over the edge of the board and drop steadily onto the floor.

‘Clean it up, you ignorant bastard!’ said Neil through his teeth.

Luce looked up, laughed. ‘Make me!’ he said, biting off each of the two words and giving them an intolerable edge of insult.

Neil was shaking. He drew himself up stiffly and curled his lip, face white. ‘If I were not your superior in rank, Sergeant, it would give me the greatest of pleasure to make you—and to rub your nose in it.’ He turned on his heel and found the opening between the screens as if more by chance than design, not floundering, but blinded.

‘Sez you!’ Luce called after him, shrill and mocking. ‘Go on, Captain, run away and hide behind your pips! You don’t have the guts!’

The muscles in Luce’s hands unlocked, went limp. Slowly he turned his face back to the table and discovered Michael busy with a rag, mopping up the mess. Luce stared in pure amazement.

‘You stupid drongo!’ he said.

Michael didn’t reply. He picked up the dripping rag and the empty mug, piled them among the other things on the makeshift tray, lifted it easily and carried it away toward the dayroom. Alone at the table. Luce sat with the light and the fire in him dying, willing himself fiercely and successfully not to weep.

9

Of her own choice entirely, Sister Langtry worked a split shift. When ward X was founded shortly after Base Fifteen, about a year earlier, there were two sisters on Matron’s roster to care for its patients. A frail and antipathetic woman, the second sister was not the right temperament to cope with the kind of patients ward X contained. She lasted a month, and was replaced by a big, bouncingly brisk sister whose mentality was still in the jolly-hockey-stick schoolgirl stage. She lasted a week, and demanded a transfer not because of anything done to her personally, but after watching Sister Langtry deal with a terrifying episode of patient violence. The third sister was hot-tempered and unforgiving. She lasted a week and a half, and was removed at Sister Langtry’s heated request. Full of apologies, Matron promised to send someone else as soon as she could find someone suitable. But she never did send anyone, whether because she couldn’t or just forgot, Sister Langtry had no way of knowing.