Her face showed a dismay Luce had not been able to bring to it. ‘Oh, God! Only a month?’

‘Give or take a week. We’ll just squeak out ahead of the Wet as it is.’ He frowned at her, perplexed. ‘You stump me, you really do. The last time we had a serious heart-to-heart, you sat there looking like death warmed up wondering how you were going to get through to the end. Now you look like death warmed up because the end’s definitely in sight.’

‘I wasn’t well then, ‘she said stiffly.

‘If you ask me, I don’t think you’re well now.’

‘You don’t understand. I shall miss ward X.’

‘Even Luce?’

‘Even Luce. If it were not for Luce, I wouldn’t know the rest of you half so well.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Or know myself for that matter.’

Michael knocked on the door and poked his head around it. ‘I hope I’m not interrupting, Sis—tea’s made.’

‘Did you manage to get milk?’

‘No trouble.’

She got to her feet immediately, relieved to be able to break off her conversation with Neil so naturally. ‘Come on, then, Neil. Grab the bikkies, would you? You’re closer to them than I am.’

Waiting until Neil found the biscuit tin, she stood back to let him precede her out the door, then followed the two men into the ward.

2

By Nugget’s bed she signalled Neil and Michael to go on without her, and slipped behind the screen someone had put around his bed. He lay without moving and did not acknowledge her presence, so she merely changed the cloth over his eyes for a fresh one before leaving him in peace.

At the refectory table she discovered Luce was missing, looked at her watch and was surprised to find it much later than she had thought.

‘If Luce isn’t careful he’s going to blot his copybook at last. Does anyone know where he is?’ she asked.

‘He went out,’ said Matt brusquely.

‘He lied,’ said Benedict, rocking back and forth.

Sister Langtry looked at him closely; he seemed odder, more enclosed, and the rocking was something new.

‘Are you all right, Ben?’

‘All right. No, all wrong. It’s all wrong. He lied. There’s an adder in his tongue.’

Sister Langtry’s eyes met Michael’s; she lifted one eyebrow in a mute query, but he, as puzzled as she, shook his head quickly. Neil was frowning, mystified too.

‘What’s all wrong, Ben?’ she asked.

‘All of it. Lies. He sold his soul a long time ago.’

Neil leaned across to pat the thin bowed shoulder near him reassuringly. ‘Don’t let Luce worry you, Ben!’

‘He’s evil!’

‘Have you been crying, Ben?’ asked Michael, sitting down next to him.

‘He was talking about you, Mike. Dirty talk.’

‘There’s nothing dirty about me, Ben, so why let it bother you?’ Michael got up to fetch the chess set, and began to lay it out on the table.

‘I’ll be black tonight,’ he said.

‘I am black.’

‘All right, then, I’ll be white and you can be black. My advantage,’ said Michael cheerfully.

Benedict’s face twisted, his eyes closed, his head reared back and tears began to catch the light between his lashes. ‘Oh, Mike, I didn’t know there were any children there!’ he cried.

Michael paid no attention. Instead, he moved his king’s pawn two squares forward, and simply sat waiting. After a moment Benedict’s eyes opened, saw the move through a wall of tears; he duplicated it quickly, snuffling like a child, wiping his nose on the side of his hand. Michael advanced his queen’s pawn to stand alongside the king’s pawn, and again Benedict duplicated the move, his tears beginning to dry. And when Michael lifted his king’s knight over the pawn in front of it and set it down ahead of his king’s bishop, Benedict chuckled, shaking his head.

‘You never learn, do you?’ he asked, toying tenderly with a bishop.

Sister Langtry heaved an enormous sigh of relief and got up, smiling a good night to everyone before leaving. Neil also got up, but walked around the table to where Matt was sitting, quite forgotten in the little crisis.

‘Come and have a talk with me in my room,’ Neil said, touching him lightly on the arm. ‘Colonel Chinstrap gave me something this afternoon I’d like to share with you. It’s got a black label, just like Luce, but inside—ah! It’s pure, unadulterated gold.’

Matt looked bewildered. ‘Isn’t it lights out?’

‘Officially I suppose it is, but we all seem to be a bit wound up tonight, which is probably why Sis has gone off duty without tucking us up. Besides, Ben and Mike look settled to chess. And don’t forget Nugget—if we do get to sleep before he heaves up his guts, he’ll only wake us.’

Matt’s movements as he got up seemed a little fumbling, but he was smiling with keen pleasure. ‘I’d love to come and talk. And solve your riddle. What’s labelled black yet inside is pure gold?’

Neil’s cubicle was just that, a space six feet wide by eight feet long, into which he had managed to jam a bed, a table and one hard chair, besides several shelves nailed rather precariously to the walls where he wasn’t likely to stand up and hit his head on them. It was littered with painter’s impedimenta, though someone in the know would have seen immediately that he had limited his techniques to less permanent and messy media than oil. Pencils, papers, charcoal, brushes, jars of dirty water, tins of children’s watercolors, tubes of poster color, crayons and pastels. There was absolutely no order in the chaos; Sister Langtry had given up long ago trying to make him keep the cubicle tidy, and merely bore with fatalistic calm Matron’s endless strictures about the state of Captain Parkinson’s room. Luckily he could when he wanted charm the birds out of the trees, even, as he said most disrespectfully, a silly old chook like Matron.

The perfect host, he got Matt settled comfortably on the bed and swept various bits and pieces off the hard chair onto the floor before seating himself on it. There were two small tooth tumblers and two bottles of Johnnie Walker black label Scotch whisky sitting on the end of the table. Neil slit the seal and prized the cork carefully out of one bottle, then poured a generous measure into each glass.

‘Cheers!’ he said, and drank deeply.

‘Mud in your eye,’ said Matt, and did the same.

They gasped rather like two swimmers coming up after a dive into unexpectedly frigid water.

‘I’ve been a sober man too long,’ Neil said, his eyes watering. ‘God, this stuff packs a punch, doesn’t it?’

‘It tastes like heaven,’ said Matt, and drank again.

They paused to breathe deeply and savor the effect.

‘Something must have happened tonight to push Ben off the deep end,’ said Neil. ‘Do you know anything?’

‘It was Luce, chattering like a machine gun and taunting Ben with killing civilians. Poor old Ben burst out crying. Bloody Luce! He told me to go to hell and pushed off out somewhere. I think that man’s possessed.’

‘Or else he really is the devil,’ said Neil.

‘Oh, he’s flesh and blood, all right.’

‘He wants to be mighty careful, then. Otherwise, one of us might put his mortality to the test.’

Matt laughed, holding out his glass. ‘I’ll volunteer.’

Neil refilled the glass, then refilled his own. ‘God, how I needed this! Colonel Chinstrap must be a mind reader.’

‘Did he really give it to you? I thought you were joking.’

‘No, it came from him in person.’

‘What on earth for?’

‘Oh, I expect it’s a part of his ill-gotten hoard, and he worked out how much he can get through himself before Base Fifteen folds up. Then he decided to be Father Christmas and give the surplus away.’

Matt’s hand trembled. ‘We’re going home?’

Cursing the loosening effect of the whisky on his tongue, Neil looked at Matt gently, but of course all the gentle looks in the world couldn’t penetrate blindness, real or imagined. ‘About a month to go, old son.’

‘So soon? She’ll know!’