The UnTied Kingdom (4 page)

Cold hate and revulsion churned in Harker’s gut. ‘Wheeler? What the hell was she thinking?’

‘I don’t know, Will.’ She looked genuinely upset. ‘I’ll try and get him shunted back out again–’

‘Preferably into the river,’ Harker said viciously.

‘–but I don’t know if I’ll have any luck.’

‘And this time, I ain’t diving in to the rescue. Sask, what the
hell
? It’s your damn regiment!’

More to the point, it was his damn regiment.

‘Yes, I know,’ she said. ‘She went over my head, she can do that, she’s the General. And I’ll do what I can, but I’ve got more important things to worry about than checking every single officer coming in when I’m losing dozens every day.
’

‘I know,’ Harker said through gritted teeth, ‘but this is Sholt we’re talking about. You put him in my company, you can have my resignation tomorrow.’ The horrifying thought occurred to him that she just might. ‘
Sask
,’ he said. ‘Do
not
put him in my company.’

‘I won’t,’ she assured him. ‘He hasn’t been assigned to a company yet, that’s what he’s here for. But you do need a captain.’

‘Promote Charlie.’

Saskia sighed heavily. ‘I can’t just–’

‘She’s up for it anyway. Been doing Smith’s job for ages.’

‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ Saskia said, steel in her eyes.

‘Do
something
, Sask,’ he said, and he didn’t care that by now the whole mess was listening to him fight with his CO. ‘Because I swear, if that man comes near me or any of my men, I’ll bloody kill him.’

Saskia raised her hands. ‘Calm down, Harker. I’ll do what I can. Go and see this Carpenter woman, will you, and stop thinking about Sholt.’

She left, and Harker glared at the rest of the mess, daring any of them to make a comment.

Every single officer looked away. Harker looked up at the clock and watched the minute hand thud into place. Nine o’clock, and his day had already gone to hell.

Chapter Four

Also unhappy with the way the world was turning, Eve woke up to find herself still in the sickly yellow hospital ward, her ankle throbbing and her stomach growling. A nurse wearing a starched hat and an apron with a red cross on it appeared with a lap tray bearing a steaming bowl of slop that might have been porridge.

She refused to answer any questions Eve directed at her, including why she was dressed like an extra from
Oh! What A Lovely War
.

Finally, yesterday’s doctor with the cartoon mouth appeared, clipboard in hand.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Pissed off,’ Eve said.

He continued to consult his chart. ‘Any pain in your ankle?’

‘Yes, but it’s not as annoying as the pain in the arse standing in front of me.’

‘Any nausea?’

Eve glared at him, irritated that he wasn’t responding. ‘No.’

‘Do you think you can walk?’

‘I don’t know. But without any clothes, I’m not about to –’ she broke off as the doctor held up a bundle she recognised as yesterday’s clothes. ‘Oh God, I love you.’

He grinned, the first reaction he’d given her. ‘Sure, that’s what they all say. There’s a shower,’ he pointed to a door on the far side of the room, ‘or if you don’t think you can stand, I’ll get one of the nurses to give you a sponge bath.’

‘I think I can manage,’ Eve said in horror. ‘Is there any shampoo?’ she asked hopefully, tugging at the strawlike mop that had once been her hair.

‘Of a sort,’ he said, and Eve nearly swooned.

The shower was rudimentary, and gave her flashbacks to school changing-rooms, and the shampoo was little more than a large bottle of liquid soap, but she felt immeasurably better for having scrubbed the river dirt away. Drying her hair with a threadbare towel, she got dressed in her own clothes, which mercifully had been cleaned, if not ironed, and hobbled out to have her ankle rebound in bandages.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said as she went back into the ward, where the doctor was talking to someone whose back was to Eve, ‘I don’t think I know your name, Doctor …?’

‘Haran,’ the doctor said, smiling that cartoon smile.

‘And it’s Captain Haran, actually,’ said the other guy, turning, and it was Will.

‘Captain,’ Eve said, nodding, smiling at Will, feeling better for just seeing him. A friend. Someone who was nice to her. He smiled back, but he looked tense. ‘I see you were allowed out,’ she said.

‘I don’t have a dodgy ankle,’ he said. ‘How is it, by the way?’

‘Oh, it’s fine. Well, not fine, but you know.’

Any minute now, you’re going to start blushing
, Eve thought. He wasn’t even that good-looking. Clearly, things had got even worse than she’d realised.

How long had it been since she’d even flirted with someone?

‘Major Harker wants to see you,’ Captain Haran said, as Eve perched on the edge of the bed to have her ankle re-strapped.

‘Does he, now?’

‘Yes. But his office is on the other side of the courtyard, and up some steps. Do you think you can manage it?’

Eve flexed her ankle, and winced. Wordlessly, Will fetched a pair of wooden crutches.

‘You guys really need to modernise,’ Eve said, but she took the crutches and made a few experimental hops. ‘So, what’s this Harker guy like? Do you know what he wants?’

Will and the doctor looked at each other. ‘He wants to talk to you,’ the doctor repeated.

‘Wants to know why you were flying over the Thames with that parachute thingy,’ Will supplied.

‘I told you, it was a TV thing.’

‘Why,’ Will sounded uninterested, ‘were you on TV?’

Eve chewed her lip, thumping the wooden crutches on the lino floor. ‘Uh,’ she said. ‘I … Okay, remember I said I was in a band? Well, they used to be kind of famous. I … used to be kind of famous.’

This elicited no reaction. Eve wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

‘Thought you said you were a temp,’ Will said. ‘Other people’s lives.’

‘Yes,’ Eve said shortly. ‘I had a disagreement with the taxman.’

‘What kind of disagreement?’ Will asked.

‘You’re not very curious, are you?’ she snapped. ‘The kind where he said I hadn’t paid any taxes and I said I had, and then we both discovered my accountant had been scamming me.’

‘Not your fault, surely?’ Captain Haran said.

‘Nope,’ Eve agreed, testing her weight on the crutches, ‘but the thing about the taxman is, if your money isn’t paid, it’s you they come after. Even if it’s someone else’s fault. So now I live in a tiny bed sit with damp on the walls in a building that looks like Cell Block H, and pay pretty much everything I earn straight to those lovely people at the Inland Revenue.’

There was a short silence.

‘Anyway. Maybe I’ll sue the TV company,’ Eve said with a lightness she didn’t feel. She was good at pretending it didn’t bother her any more.

‘If you’re paying all your money to the taxman, how will you afford a lawyer?’ Will said.

‘Well, I’ll …’ Eve shrugged, taking an experimental step. ‘I’ll complain really loudly.’

Will smiled at that, not a proper grin but something more genuine than she’d seen from him so far, and some of the dark cloud that had settled over her when she’d brought up the taxman lifted. She followed him out of the ward and down a broad corridor, where a couple of nurses in their ludicrous starched caps were talking over a clipboard. They broke off, watching Eve hop after Will.

‘Don’t see many civilians in here,’ he explained, and she nodded. He led her out into the cool sunshine, down a set of steps that had a ramp laid over them. At the bottom of the ramp, a soldier in a wheelchair was smoking a cigarette and flirting with a couple of girls in khaki. He had, Eve was horrified to note, no right arm.

‘Marley.’ Will slowed down to greet him. ‘How’s it going?’

Marley grinned. He had a vicious scar on his face that skimmed one eye, making the lid droop. ‘Can’t complain, sir.’

‘Can’t salute, either,’ Will noted. ‘Suppose that means you’re off?’

‘Nah, I’m gonna teach.’ Marley grinned at the two girls. ‘Off to Basic Training. I can still run drills with one arm, can’t I?’

‘Don’t see why not,’ Will said. He clapped Marley on the back. ‘Take care.’

‘Yessir,’ Marley said, and went back to flirting with the two young recruits.

‘Will,’ Eve said as she hopped after him, ‘what rank are you?’ The epaulettes where she might have looked for insignia on his greatcoat were torn, but even if they hadn’t been, Eve would have been none the wiser. All she could remember were stripes for sergeant, and he didn’t have any of those. But did that mean he was of a higher rank, or lower?

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Why’s that important?’

‘It isn’t. It’s just, he called you sir.’

‘Well, he doesn’t know me well enough to call me Will.’ He grinned at her, and Eve smiled back. He did have a nice grin. ‘Smoke?’

He held a battered packet of cigarettes out to her. Eve shook her head. ‘No? Well, your loss.’

He lit up and loped across the courtyard, which was busy with troops marching about. Holding open a door for her, he said, ‘Now. We have to go up two flights. Reckon you can manage it?’

‘Is there any alternative?’

‘I could carry you.’

His eyes sparkled a bit as he said it, and Eve couldn’t help letting her gaze run over his broad shoulders, remembering the muscular frame she’d seen last night in the hospital bay.

‘I think I’ll manage,’ she said, her voice coming out a little higher than she’d intended.

Will winked and stood by to let her pass, and Eve was sure she was blushing.

‘Right,’ he said, as she hopped up the steps ahead of him. ‘Harker’s going to want to know why you were flying over the river last night.’

‘I told you,’ Eve said. ‘TV.’

‘Are you sure? You can tell me.’

She looked back at him over her shoulder. He lifted his eyes from her backside in its tight denim, and grinned at her.

‘Pervert,’ she said, without malice.

‘You were clocking me outside.’

‘I was trying to assess if you were strong enough to carry me,’ Eve said, as loftily as she could manage, and started hopping again.

‘I have to warn you,’ he said from behind her, ‘the office’ll be full of men who only get to see women in baggy khaki. Hope you don’t mind being stared at.’

Eve looked down at her t-shirt, which was tight and pink, and said, ‘I’ve appeared on stage in hot pants and feathers in front of ten thousand people. I can deal with a couple of soldiers.’

‘Hot pants?’

‘Yeah. They were lime green.’ She shuddered. ‘Goodness knows who thought that one up.’ And she didn’t know how she’d had the nerve to wear things like that. The last time Eve had seen her thighs they’d been in no condition to mince around at the end of a pair of hot pants.

Of course, as she recalled it the hot pants had been Louisa Butcher’s idea. Louisa, who’d always had photogenically perfect legs. Eve had always suspected she did it on purpose.

‘What stage was this?’ Will asked, as she reached the top of the flight, and he pointed round the corner to the next one.

‘Uh. I can’t actually remember. I think it was the European tour.’

‘Recent?’

‘No, Grrl Power broke up five years ago. You really don’t listen to pop music, do you?’

‘Nope,’ Will said. ‘Was this the tour that took in the not-capital-of-Denmark?’

‘Copenhagen
is
the capital,’ Eve said, rolling her eyes and smiling to herself.

‘It is not!’

‘Look, have you been there?’

‘No, but–’

‘Well, I have.’ She turned and stuck her tongue out at him. ‘So ner.’

‘That’s mature,’ Will said, but he was smiling.

Eve reached the top of the stairs and he stepped around her to open the door there, into a large, busy room full of people poring over large maps or reading thick sheaves of paper. It reminded Eve of a lot of the offices she’d temped in, only in this one, everyone was in khaki, and there were no computers. Maybe that wasn’t ‘military’.

Several people, men and women, nodded to Will as he entered the room and made for a desk piled excruciatingly high with paperwork, and plenty of the men did, indeed, give Eve a thorough up-and-down that made Will grin.

Then something caught his eye, and his grin faded.

A man was making his way over to them, and Eve hoped like hell this wasn’t Major Harker, because he had a smile that made her feel vaguely queasy. His eyes had an odd flat look to them, and they darted around like those of a lizard.

‘Sir,’ he said, and his voice had the cakey, whining quality of someone who has spent too long trying to ingratiate themselves. He smiled a sickly smile, a lizard smile, and Will’s face grew grimmer.

Thank goodness he was subordinate to Will. If this guy had turned out to be Harker, Eve would have jumped out of the window.

‘Sholt,’ Will said shortly. ‘Heard you were back.’

‘Indeed, sir,’ Sholt said, and Eve half-expected him to start twisting his hands and declaring that he was ‘ever so ’umble’, like Dickens’ two-faced character, Uriah Heep. ‘Transferred to the 75th this week, sir.’

‘Heard that, too,’ Will said.

‘Put a special request in, sir. Wheeler saw to it, sir. Heard C Company is in need of a captain, sir, now old Captain Smith has gone to Basic Training.’

Will’s gaze travelled slowly to the pips on Sholt’s shoulder. There were three. Deliberately, he took off his greatcoat, and Eve could see the rank insignia on his jacket. One crown. She didn’t know what that meant, but it was still a higher rank than Sholt, it had to be, or else why was Sholt calling Will ‘sir’?

‘I will take a captain from Lieutenant-Colonel Green’s command, or Major Dennison’s,’ Will said in a low voice that was so full of anger and menace that Eve had a sudden yen to hide behind something heavy. The man who’d looked strong and capable five minutes ago looked big and downright frightening now. ‘I will promote from within the ranks. I will take a rat off the street, Lieutenant, before I allow you in my company.’

Sholt’s obsequious smile only widened and became more hideous. ‘Begging pardon, sir, but I’ve already put in for the transfer, sir. None of the other companies need a captain, sir. Only C company, sir. And it’s Captain now, sir,’ he pointed to his pips. ‘Promoted in the field, sir.’

Will’s face turned to granite, and he leaned in close. Eve couldn’t help but notice that all the other officers had gone quite silent.

‘Oh no,
Lieutenant
,’ Will said deliberately, ‘you won’t beg my pardon on this. You’ve a list a mile long of things to beg my pardon on, and they all come higher than this. And one day, Lieutenant Sholt, you will beg indeed.’

Sholt’s horrible smile grew a fraction more horrible before he said, ‘It’s up to the good Colonel now, isn’t it, sir? Newly promoted too, sir. Colonel Harker – oh no, sir,’ his smile turned, if possible, a little more sly, ‘that’s not her name any more, is it, sir? Changed back to her maiden name, I couldn’t help but notice. No longer using your name, is she, sir?’