House of Doors (29 page)

‘Have you, indeed?' Her bristling aggression didn't seem to trouble him at all. He made a note on the clipboard in his hand and said, ‘May I ask what's the matter with them?'

‘Dolley has a broken nose, I think. Rawlinson passed out.' There, let that stand as the official record. No doubt he'd want to debrief them, but not until the morning, and even then she didn't think they'd make much sense. Meanwhile, attack was still and always the best form of defence. ‘May
I
ask what you think you're doing, sending men to break into the women's quarters at dead of night?'

‘Training. They'll do worse things, if I pass them fit.'

‘I'll do worse things, if I catch them at it again.' Which was as good as to say
I disabled your two tough fighting men, I alone, a startled girl
. Which was as good as to guarantee he would not find them fit.
Dolley and Rawlinson, I may just have saved your lives,
although they would not thank her for it. ‘I will not stand for this, Major Black. Have them sneak around their own wing as much as you like, but I have better things to do than patrolling ours. I want your word, please: no more missions on the women's corridor. I'm sure it adds a little spice to the occasion, but it's not necessary for them, and it's not fair on us.'

He made a noise of non-committal, which was fuel to her fire. She snapped, ‘I'll see you in the morning, then. In the colonel's office. Ten o'clock.' Colonel Treadgold would back her up, he'd do anything now that worked against the major, however petty; and she could play the petty tyrant guarding her girls, and slather one more layer of deceit and hypocrisy over what she had done tonight. And what she had meant to do.

She really wasn't sure that they could do it again, she and Michael. Already that was an ache in her heart, something missing, a new-found treasure lost. But the attics would never feel like safe ground again, and she didn't know where else they could go. It was a big house, there were sure to be other rooms, empty corridors; and there were outhouses, sheds, possibly lodges in the woods. But she hated that sense of hole-in-the-corner conspiracy, and didn't want to seal it in Michael's head that sex, love, romance was something to be conducted in the shadows. There was a legitimate thrill, of course, in the illicit rendezvous, in secrecy and private codes and hidden places. She could feel the surge of it in him with every public glance and every dangerous liaison. He loved what lay between them, the hush of it as well as the rampant. And she loved that, she loved the simple excitement in him as well as she loved his more complex character, as well as she loved his handmade face. Even so, she would so much rather be making love to him with the lights on. Teaching him that there was no disgrace in it, in any of it, not in her nor him nor anything they did together.

And she couldn't have that, and didn't quite see how she could have him at all any more.
I'm afraid I may have to give you up, my beautiful boy
, and she couldn't bear the thought of it but of course would bear the reality, as she had borne so much already. That was what one did. One kept calm and carried on. And tried to save the life of one's beloved, regardless of whatever private vows one made to give him up.

The morning's interview would only be a skirmish, no victory for either side. Really she wasn't pursuing it to disgrace Major Black, only to lend more cover to the night just gone, further to muddy a story that was already far from clear. To keep anyone from placing Michael anywhere near her.

She put herself to bed, and waited for sleep. And waited, and waited, and refused to let her weak and skittish mind dwell on what she was missing: a hot body and male sweat, youthful energy and awkward affection, all his clumsiness and hunger to learn. Hunger to touch. Oh, she did miss being touched. That above all, perhaps, that licence to be familiar with someone else's body.

So she lay there wanting and so not sleeping, although she waited for it. Waited till the sun rose and so did she, weary to the bone of her and so very much not looking forward to the day.

She did her duty, by both staff and patients. She ate a bite of breakfast because that was a duty too – one had to keep healthy for one's work – and scrupulously avoided anywhere she might have seen Michael. And time methodically inched around to her ten o'clock appointment, and that was a duty too, to throw some sand into the machinery of Major Black's project. To support the colonel in his campaign, hopeless though she thought it. To do whatever she could to limit the major's scope, to slow him down, to give him pause for thought.

To save Michael's life, if she could only manage that.

If she could manage only that.

At ten o'clock sharp, she tapped on the colonel's door.

‘Come in!'

She had the door open and was halfway through before she realized. That was not the colonel's voice that summoned her, nor the major's either.

It was Aesculapius who sat in an easy chair before the fire, who smiled up at her and gestured her towards the other chair.

A quick glance around confirmed that they were alone in here.

She took the proffered seat cautiously. ‘I've been ambushed, haven't I?'

‘No, no, not at all. We simply felt that it would be more useful if you talked to me rather than the major.'

You're a major too. But you like people to forget that, don't you?
Aloud, she said, ‘Actually, I wanted to speak to the major and the colonel together. I suppose you must have told him, unless you make free of his quarters as liberally as he does of yours. But—'

‘We
all
felt it would be better for you and I to talk. Of course the colonel had a voice in that decision; this is his facility, after all. And, as you say, his office. Which he has been gracious enough to cede to me for the nonce, so that we can have this little chat in circumstances that don't include the, ah, tools of my profession.'

His couch, he meant.
I don't think you're crazy,
he was saying.
Only misguided.

And, what, she should let him be her guide?

Sooner than that, she tried to take charge herself. ‘Well then, you talk to me, if you speak for the triumvirate. Explain to me why anyone should think it's all right for Major Black to send his men to break into the nurses' bedrooms while they're asleep, and rifle through their things, and—'

‘Sister Taylor,' he said, with a smile that was not yet long-suffering but could clearly turn that way, should the occasion demand. ‘This isn't really going to be a discussion about exposing innocent nurses to moral danger, is it? I don't believe for a moment that that's actually what's troubling you. Our female staff is as carefully chosen, every one of them, as you were yourself. I should know, I did the choosing. There's not a shrieking Nancy among 'em. Nor a shrinking violet. If men come down their corridor, I'm confident that every one of them would know what to do.'

Goodness. He couldn't truly be saying what she thought she was hearing. Could he? Perhaps he could. She was fairly sure that there were only nurses here at all for the benefit of the men's morale; male orderlies were perfectly able to do all the work of the wards. She could see the colonel and Major Dorian on the same side for once, perhaps uniquely:
the sight of a pretty face
and
a soft voice in their ears, a soft hand where they're most sore
, the two of them nodding in agreement,
it'll do wonders for the men.

It would be no surprise, if Aesculapius meant more than that. Or if he expected more.

Or if he knew more, that too. She said, ‘To be sure, we can look after ourselves. And each other. But we shouldn't need to, that's my point.'

‘No, indeed. You're here to look after the men.' He was  . . . growing harder to misunderstand. She supposed she ought to be shocked. Then he said, ‘I'm sure there's not a woman on your corridor who wouldn't behave exactly as you do yourself, should the occasion demand it,' and she was truly shocked, because he might as well have spelled it out.

Had Michael talked? Bragged? Confessed, perhaps, to his psychiatrist as he might have to his priest? No, she didn't believe that. Wouldn't believe it. He couldn't be so careless of her welfare. He might have perfect trust in Major Dorian – or more, he might be desperately eager to satisfy the man who could sign him off as fit for Major Black's enterprises or do the other thing, stand him down, forbid him utterly – and she still thought he would have better care of her.

If anything, she thought he was less eager now. She thought she had taught him to find a value in himself and in his life. Not enough yet to have him stand himself down, but that would come. Nothing worked so well on a young man's self-image than knowing himself beloved. She still wished that she could kiss him in the light, to show him that it wasn't his face they had to hide. She'd kiss him in the dining hall if she could, under the stare of the whole hospital. She'd told him that, but her words would never have the impact of her lips on his skin.

Presumably something in her or in him, something between the pair of them had too much visible impact, even when they sat at separate tables. Aesculapius had picked up on it, and was obliquely letting her know. Enjoying himself.

Was it a threat? She wasn't sure. Which made it a poor threat, which meant that it was something else, because he wouldn't leave her in any doubt if he meant to threaten her. Mind games were his profession and his stock-in-trade. He wanted her to know that he knew about Michael, and to be sure that he would keep it quiet; which meant that this meeting really was about something other than its ostensible purpose, her ostensible protest.

She might as well just sit back, then, and wait for him to tell her what he wanted.

He said, ‘I don't know exactly what happened last night, and I don't propose to put you through the mill to make you tell me.'

She said, ‘I've written out a full report.'

‘I know,' he said, ‘I've read it. You heard a noise upstairs, and quite properly girded your loins, took up your torch and went to investigate. You were assaulted in the dark, defended yourself admirably, and then found that your assailants were Major Black's trainees.'

‘Colonel Treadgold's patients,' she corrected him. ‘Yes. So I took them back to their ward.'

‘Indeed. And then you bearded the major in his den, and so this. Quite so. Some of the major's trainees – I beg your pardon, some of our patients – are grown quite adept at interrogation, and I have no doubt they could win a different story from you, given time. Or at least a more thorough one, with fewer puzzling lacunae. I know how Dolley got his broken nose, but I'd love to know what happened to Rawlinson.

‘Still,' he went on, waving her response aside before she could even begin to form one, while she was still drawing breath without a notion what to do with it, ‘you're free, white and twenty-one, and we can hardly give over a British subject to the major's less salubrious methods. Actually, I've half a mind to put your name forward to join Major Black's team in your own right. You're clearly lethal in an enclosed space, and yet you look so naive, no one would ever suspect you of anything worse than gullibility. How is your German, by the way?'

‘Non-existent,' she said, determinedly cheerful, while her palms sweated on the arms of her chair.

‘Well, Herr Braun could attend to that. You're clearly very bright. Too bright for your own good, I'd suggest – but not too bright for ours. What I'd actually like to propose, Sister Taylor, is that you should help us to train the men for Major Black's adventures. In addition to your regular duties, of course. It'll eat into your free time, I'm afraid' –
you won't be able to slip away so readily with young Tolchard
, he was saying – ‘but we all have to make sacrifices in these times, and I do believe that your input would be useful. More than useful.'

‘I don't understand,' she said. ‘What in the world do I have to offer your assassins?'

She chose the word deliberately – for impact, yes – but he only smiled. She wasn't quite sure if she was being patronized or applauded. Both, probably.

He said, ‘Well, you can teach them to rough-house at close quarters. Those were two of the major's finest, and you disabled them both in short order. Sometimes a soldier's not best placed to see what's needed. He looks for the military solution, the big guns. They need to unlearn that, and improvise with whatever comes to hand. As you did last night. Fighting from weakness is an art these men have to acquire, and they might best learn it from a woman.

‘More than that, though,' he went on, lifting a hand again to stifle her, ‘you can teach them to be confident in themselves. Lamed and twisted as they are, we can only do so much. The colonel can patch their bodies, and the major can train them up. I can work on their minds. Much as it pains me to admit it, though, that's not the last requirement. These boys have souls. I'm sorry for the word, it comes with too much baggage, but it's the best I can manage, the closest to what I need to say. We're asking them to do something tremendous, and they need every possible weapon in their armoury if they're to stand any chance of achieving it. I do believe that you can help. I've seen what a difference you've made already, and not only to the men on your own corridor.'

He meant Michael again, of course. He wasn't seriously suggesting that she should sleep with a whole platoon of men, of course not – though she'd like to accuse him of it, just to hear his laugh, and then his comeback – but he was asking her to make a commitment to them. For the benefit of their morale indeed: to make them feel better about going off to their deaths, and to help them do it better.

She said, ‘You do realize that I'm totally opposed to your whole project here? That I stand with Colonel Treadgold? I want to make these men well and healthy, I want to restore them, not send them off to destroy themselves.'