The Ship of Brides(77)
Author: Jojo Moyes

With the fluency born of long practice, she removed the top from the bottle and filled a syringe. ‘Soon feel better,’ she said to the injured girl, and as Nicol shifted to give her room, she placed the needle next to her skin. ‘I’ll have to stitch it,’ she said, ‘but I promise I’ll make them as tiny as I can. Most of them will be covered by your hair anyway.’

The girl nodded mutely.

‘Do you have to do it here?’ said Nicol. ‘Couldn’t we get her upstairs and do it there?’

‘There’s a WSO patrolling the hangar deck,’ said one of the men.

‘Just let me get on with my job,’ said Frances, with the faintest hint of steel. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

They were carrying Kenneth out, passing him between them up the ladder, shouting to each other to watch his leg, his head.

‘Your friend here isn’t going to say anything, right?’ Watching them, Jones scratched his head. ‘I mean, can we trust her?’

Nicol nodded. It had taken her several attempts to thread the needle; he saw that her fingers were trembling.

He was struggling to find ways in which he might thank her, express his admiration. Holding her, upstairs, as they danced, he had seen this awkward girl relaxed and briefly illuminated. Now, in this environment, she was someone he no longer recognised. He had never seen a woman so confident in duty and he knew, with a pride he had not felt before, that he was in the presence of an equal.

‘Time?’ said Frances.

‘Four minutes,’ he said.

She shook her head as if faced with a private impossibility. And then he couldn’t think at all. At the first stitch, one of the girl’s friends had passed out, and Frances’s mates were told to take her outside and pinch her awake. The stitching was interrupted again when two of the men started to brawl. He and Jones waded in to separate them. Time inched forward, the hands of his watch moving relentlessly from one digit to the next.

Nicol found himself standing, glancing at the hatch, convinced even over the deafening sound of the engine that he could hear footsteps.

And then she turned to him, face dirty, and flushed from the heat. ‘We’re all right,’ she said, with a brief smile. ‘We’re done.’

‘A little over a minute and a half,’ said Nicol. ‘Come on, we’ve got to get out of here. Leave it,’ he called to the ratings, who had been trying to fix the guard rail. ‘There’s no time. Just help me get her up.’

Margaret and Avice were standing by the hatch on the walkway above them, and Frances motioned to them as if to say they could leave now. Margaret waved as if to say they’d wait.

He stood and offered his hand so that she could stand. She hesitated, then took it, smoothing her hair from her face. He tried not to let his eyes drop to her robe, which now clearly outlined the elegant contours of her chest. Sweat glistened on her skin, running down into the hollow in dirty rivulets. God help me, thought Nicol. There’s an image I’m going to struggle to forget.

‘You’ll need to keep that dry,’ she murmured to the girl. ‘No washing your hair for a couple of days.’

‘Can’t remember the last time I got to wash it anyway,’ the girl muttered.

‘Hang on,’ said Jones-the-Welsh, from beside him. ‘Don’t I know you?’

At first she seemed to assume that he was addressing the injured girl. Then she registered that he was talking to her and something hardened in her expression.

‘You were never at Morotai,’ said Nicol.

‘Morotai? Nah.’ Jones was shaking his head. ‘It wasn’t there. But I never forget a face. I know you from somewhere.’

Frances, Nicol saw, had lost her high colour. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said quietly. She began to gather up her medical kit.

‘Yeees . . . yes . . . I know it’ll come to me.’ Jones shook his head. ‘I never forget a face.’

She stood, one hand lifted to her brow, like someone suffering with a headache. ‘I’d better go,’ she said to Nicol. ‘They’ll be fine.’ Her eyes met his only briefly.

‘I’ll come up with you,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘No, I’ll be fine. Thank you.’

Bits of bandage and kit had skittered under the walkway, but she seemed not to care. She gathered her robe tightly around her, and picked her way past the engine towards the stairs, her kit under her arm.

‘Oh, no . . .’

Nicol tore his gaze from Frances to Jones-the-Welsh. The man was staring at her and shaking his head, bemused. Then a wicked smile flickered across his face.

‘What?’ said Nicol. He was following her towards the ladder and reached for the jacket he had slung over a tool case.

‘No . . . can’t be . . . never . . .’ Jones glanced behind him and suddenly located the man he apparently wanted to speak to. ‘Hey, Duckworth, are you thinking what I’m thinking? Queensland? It isn’t, is it?’ Frances had climbed up the ladder and was now walking towards the other girls, head down.

‘Saw it straight away,’ came the broad Cockney accent. ‘The old Rest Easy. You wouldn’t credit it, would you?’

‘What’s going on?’ said Avice, from above. ‘What’s he talking about?’

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Jones-the-Welsh, and burst out laughing. ‘A nurse! Wait till we tell old Kenny! A nurse!’

‘What the hell are you talking about, Jones?’

Jones’s face, when it met Nicol’s, held the same amused smile with which he greeted most of life’s great surprises, whether they were extra sippers, victories at sea or successful cheating at cards. ‘Your little nurse there, Nicol,’ he said, ‘used to be a brass.’

‘What?’

‘Duckworth knows – we came across her at a club in Queensland, must be four, five years ago now.’

His laughter, like his voice, carried over the noise of the engine to the ears of the exhausted men and the brides heading wearily out on to the walkway. Some had stopped, in response to Jones’s exclamation, and were listening.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, man.’ Nicol looked up at Frances, who was nearly at the hatch. She stared straight ahead, and then, perhaps at the end of some unseen internal struggle, allowed herself to glance down at him. In her eyes he saw resignation. He found he had gone cold.

‘But she’s married.’