An Indecent Obsession

Time to get going. Time to walk Matt, Benedict, Nugget and Michael to the assembly point. It was her duty to do so. Neil as an officer would leave separately, she didn’t yet know when. They’d tell her in due time.

As she walked, other thoughts than Michael began to intrude. There had been a conspiracy among the patients of ward X. A conspiracy in which Michael had been a willing party. And Neil was its ringleader. It didn’t make any sense. Oh, it made sense to keep her in ignorance of what had really happened in the bathhouse until the cause of death was officially established and any inquiry closed. But why was Neil so against Michael’s wish to tell her now, when it couldn’t possibly matter? Neil knew her well enough to understand it was not in her nature to go ru

What had Michael said, right at the last? They made a pact. Matt’s wife and children would not go hungry. No doubt Nugget would get through medicine without starving, either. Benedict would not go to a mental asylum. Michael and Neil… They had split up the responsibilities between them, Michael and Neil. But what did Neil get out of it, if he was furnishing the money for Matt’s family and Nugget’s education? Two weeks ago she would have said, nothing; but today she wasn’t so sure.

That hurt Neil didn’t seem to have, his apparent acceptance of her rejection with sufficient tranquillity and lack of concern to make her feel he couldn’t possibly be hurt. And who had been talking to Michael, that he came out with all those antiquated class differences between them? She clutched at this prideful straw eagerly. Someone had been working on Michael, trying to convince him he had to give her up. Someone? Neil!

5

The evacuation was very well organized. When she reached the assembly point with her four men they were snatched from her very quickly, barely time for a hug and a pecking kiss from each. And afterward she couldn’t even remember how Michael looked at her, or how she looked at him. It seemed futile to linger hoping for another sight of them, so she slipped through the knots of waiting men and shepherding sisters, and walked back to X.

Second nature to tidy and straighten up; she went down the length of the ward smoothing the sheets, adjusting the nets for the last time in the Matron Drape, opening lockers, folding up the screens which hid the refectory table.

Then she went into her office, kicked her shoes off without unlacing them and sat down in her chair with her feet tucked under her, something she had never done before in that official seat. It didn’t matter. There was no one to see, ever again. Neil was gone too. A harassed sergeant with a clipboard informed her of Neil’s departure. She didn’t understand what or who had slipped up, but it was too late to do anything about it anyway. And perhaps it was better not to be obliged to confront the ringleader of the conspiracy. There would be too many uncomfortable questions to ask him.

Her head drooped, propped on her hand; she dozed, and dreamed not unpleasantly of Michael.

It was about two hours later that Neil came swinging across the compound behind ward X, whistling jauntily, looking neat and at home in his captain’s uniform, swagger stick tucked into the crook of his arm. He leaped lightly up the steps at the back of X and came into the dim and lifeless interior. Shocked, he pulled up sharply. X was empty; its emptiness shouted at him. After a moment he began to move again, but less surely, less lightheartedly; he opened the door to his cubicle and received another shock, for all his baggage was gone. There was not a trace of Neil Parkinson, troppo patient, left.

‘Hello?’ came Sister Langtry’s voice through the thin wall. ‘Hello; who’s there, please?’

She was sitting in a pose he had never seen before, not dignified, not professional, side-on to her desk, with her legs curled up under her on the chair, and her shoes empty on the floor. The room was full of smoke; her own cigarettes and matches lay in full view on the desk. And she looked as if she had been sitting so for a very long time.

‘Neil!’ she said, staring. ‘I thought you were gone! They told me you went hours ago.’

‘Tomorrow for me. What about you?’

‘I’ll be detailed to special one of the serious stretcher cases all the way to wherever we’re going—Brisbane or Sydney, I suppose. Tomorrow or the day after.’ She stirred. ‘I’ll find you something to eat.’

‘Don’t bother, honestly. I’m not hungry. I’m just glad I didn’t have to go today.’ He sighed luxuriously. ‘I’ve got you all to myself at last.’

Her eyes gleamed. ‘Have you really?’

The way she said that gave him pause, but he sat back easily in the visitor’s chair, and smiled. ‘Indeed I have. And not before time, too. It took some wangling, but the colonel’s still a little sensitive about the whisky, so he managed to get my departure postponed. And he gave me a clean bill of health while he was about it. Which means I am no longer a patient in ward X. For tonight I’m merely a tenant.’

She answered obliquely. ‘Do you know, Neil, I loathe the war and what it’s done to us? I feel so personally responsible.’

‘Assuming the guilt of the whole world, Sis? Come now!’ he chided gently.

‘No, not the whole world, Neil. Only that share of the guilt which you and the rest withheld from me,’ she said harshly, and looked at him.

He drew a long, hissing breath. ‘So Michael couldn’t keep his damned mouth shut after all.’

‘Michael was in the right of it. I was entitled to know. And I want to know. All of it, Neil. What did happen that night?’

Shrugging, mouth screwed up, he settled himself as if to embark upon a rather boring anecdote he secretly felt was not worth the telling. She watched him closely, thinking that the wall behind him, stripped now of its drawings because they resided in her baggage, threw his face into an intense relief it had always needed.

‘Well, I had to have another drink, so I went back to the whisky,’ he said, lighting a cigarette and forgetting to offer her one. ‘The racket Luce was making woke up Matt and Nugget, so they decided to help me finish the second bottle. That only left Benedict to look after Luce, who had gone to bed. I’m afraid we did rather forget Luce. Or maybe we just didn’t want to have to remember him.’

As he talked the memory of that night began to move in him, to regenerate something of its original horror, and his face reflected this vividly. ‘Ben dug into his kit and found one of those illicit souvenirs we all have tucked away somewhere—a Japanese officer’s pistol. He made Luce take his own razor, and he marched Luce to the bathhouse with the pistol right against his ribs.’

‘Was it Ben who told you about marching Luce to the bathhouse?’ she asked.

‘Yes. That much we got out of him, but as to what actually happened inside, I have only the sketchiest of ideas. Ben gets confused about it himself.’ He lapsed into silence.

‘And?’ she prompted.

‘We heard Luce screaming like one damned, all the way from the bathhouse, screaming, screaming…’ He grimaced. ‘But by the time we got there it was far too late for Luce. It’s a miracle no one else heard, except that the wind was blowing toward the palm grove, and we are a long way from civilization. We were too late—I said that, didn’t I?’

‘Yes. Can you give me any idea of how Ben did it?’