San Andreas Part 11

She kept her expression in place. 'Lieutenant Ulbricht?'

'Who else? I've just seen him. Looks fair enough to me. I think she's daft.'

'The trouble with you, Archie McKinnon, is that you have no finer feelings. Not as far as caring for the sick is concerned. In other ways too, like as not. And if she's daft, it's only because she's been saying nice things about you.'

'About me? She doesn't know me.'

'True, Archie, true.' She smiled sweetly. 'But Captain Bowen does.'

McKinnon sought briefly for a suitable comment about captains who gossiped to ward sisters, found none and moved into Ward A. Sister Morrison, suitably bundled up, was waiting. There was a small medical case on a table by her side. McKinnon nodded at her.

'Would you take those gla.s.ses off, Sister?'

'Why?'

'It's the Lothario in him,' Kennet said. He sounded almost his old cheerful self again. 'He probably thinks you look nicer without them.'

'It's no morning for a polar bear, Mr Kennet, far less a Lothario. If the lady doesn't remove her gla.s.ses the wind will do the job for her.'

'What's the wind like, Bo'sun?' It was Captain Bowen.

'Force eleven, sir. Blizzard. Eight below. Nine-ninety millibars.'

'And the seas breaking up?' Even in the hospital the shuddering of the vessel was unmistakable.

'They are a bit, sir.'

'Any problems?'

'Apart from Sister here seeming bent on suicide, none.' Not, he thought, as long as the superstructure stayed in place.

Sister Morrison gasped in shock as they emerged on to the upper deck. However much she had mentally prepared herself, she could not have antic.i.p.ated the savage power of that near hurricane force wind and the driving blizzard that accompanied it, could not even have imagined the lung-searing effect of the abrupt 8oF drop in temperature. McKinnon wasted no time. He grabbed Sister Morrison with one hand, the lifeline with the other, and allowed the two of them to be literally blown across the treacherous ice-sheathed deck into the shelter of the superstructure. Once under cover, she removed her duffel hood and stood there panting, tenderly ma.s.saging her ribs.

'Next time, Mr McKinnon - if there is a next time - I'll listen to you. My word! I never dreamt - well, I just never dreamt. And my ribs!' She felt carefully as if to check they were still there. 'I've got ordinary ribs, just like anyone else. I think you've broken them.'

'I'm sorry about that,' McKinnon said gravely. 'But I don't think you'd have much fancied going over the side. And there will be a next time, I'm afraid. We've got to go back again and against the wind, and that will be a great deal worse.'

'At the moment, I'm in no hurry to go back, thank you very much.'

McKinnon led her up the companionway to the crew's quarters. She stopped and looked at the twisted pa.s.sageway, the buckled bulkheads, the shattered doors.

'So this is where they died.' Her voice was husky. 'When you see it, it's all too easy to understand how they died. But you have to see it first to understand. Ghastly - well, ghastly couldn't have been the word for it. Thank G.o.d I never saw it. And you had to clear it all up.'

'I had help.'

'I know you did all the horrible bits. Mr Spenser, Mr Rawlings, Mr Batesman, those were the really shocking cases, weren't they? I know you wouldn't let anyone else touch them. Johnny Holbrook told Janet and she told me.' She shuddered. 'I don't like this place. Where's the Lieutenant?'

McKinnon led her up to the Captain's cabin, where Naseby was keeping an eye on the rec.u.mbent Lieutenant.

'Good morning again. Lieutenant. I've just had a taste of the kind of weather Mr McKinnon has been exposing you to. It was awful. How do you feel?'

'Low, Sister. Very low. I think I'm in need of care and attention.'

She removed oilskins and duffel coat. 'You don't look very ill to me.'

'Appearances, appearances. I feel very weak. Far be it from me to prescribe for myself, but what I need is a tonic, a restorative.' He stretched out a languid hand. 'Do you know what's in that wall cupboard there?'

'No.' Her tone was severe. 'I don't know. I can guess, though.'

'Well, I thought, perhaps - in the circ.u.mstances, you understand - '

'Those are Captain Bowen's private supplies.'

'May I repeat what the Captain told me?' McKinnon said.

'As long as Lieutenant Ulbricht keeps navigating, he can keep on broaching my supplies. Words to that effect.'

'I don't see him doing any navigating at the moment. But very well. A small one.'

McKinnon poured and handed him a gla.s.s of Scotch: the expression on Sister Morrison's face was indication enough she and the Bo'sun placed different interpretations on the word 'small'.

'Come on, George,' McKinnon said. 'This is no place for us.'

Sister Morrison looked faintly surprised. 'You don't have to go.'

'We can't stand the sight of blood. Or suffering, come to that.'

Ulbricht lowered his gla.s.s. 'You would leave us to the mercy of Flannelfoot?'

'George, if you wait outside I'll go and give Trent a spell on the wheel. When you're ready to go back, Sister, you'll know where to find me.'

McKinnon would have expected that her ministrations might have taken ten minutes, fifteen at the most. Instead, almost forty minutes elapsed before she put in an appearance on the bridge. McKinnon looked at her sympathetically.

'More trouble than you expected, Sister? He wasn't just joking when he said he felt pretty low?'

'There's very little the matter with him. Especially not with his tongue. How that man can talk!'

'He wasn't talking to an empty bulkhead, was he?'

'What do you mean?'

'Well,' McKinnon said reasonably, 'he wouldn't have kept on talking if you hadn't kept on listening.'

Sister Morrison seemed to be in no hurry to depart. She was silent for some time, then said with a slight trace of a smile: 'I find this - well, not infuriating but annoying. Most people would be interested in what we were saying.'

'I am interested. I'm just not inquisitive. If you wanted to tell me, then you'd tell me. If I asked you to tell me and you didn't want to, then you wouldn't tell me. But, fine, I'd like you to tell me.'

'I don't know whether that's infuriating or not.' She. paused. 'Why did you tell Lieutenant Ulbricht that I'm half German?'

'It's not a secret, is it?'

'No.'

'And you're not ashamed of it. You told me so yourself. So why - ah! Why didn't I tell you that I'd told him? That's what you're asking. Just never occurred to me.'

'You might at least have told me that he was half English.'

'That didn't occur to me either. It's unimportant. I don't care what nationality a person is. I told you about my brother-in-law. Like the Lieutenant, he's a pilot. He's also a lieutenant. If he thought it his duty to drop a bomb on me, he'd do it like a shot. But you couldn't meet a finer man.'

'You're a very forgiving man, Mr McKinnon.'

'Forgiving?' He looked at her in surprise. 'I've nothing to forgive. I mean, he hasn't dropped a bomb on me yet.'

'I didn't mean that. Even if he did, it wouldn't make any difference.'

'How do you know?'

'I know.'

McKinnon didn't pursue the matter. 'Doesn't sound like a very interesting conversation to me. Not forty minutes' worth, anyway.'

'He also took great pleasure in pointing out that he's more British than I am. From the point of view of blood, I mean. Fifty per cent British to start with plus two more British pints yesterday.'

McKinnon was polite. 'Indeed.'

'All right, so statistics aren't interesting either. He also says that his father knows mine.'

'Ah. That ts interesting. Wait a minute. He mentioned that his father had been an attache at the German Emba.s.sy in London. He didn't mention whether he was a commercial or cultural attache or whatever. He didn't just happen to mention to you that his father had been the naval attache there?'

'He was.'

'Don't tell me that his old man is a captain in the German Navy.'

'He is.'

'That makes you practically blood brothers. Or brother and sister. Mark my words, Sister,' McKinnon said solemnly, 'I see the hand of fate here. Something pre-ordained, you might say?'

'Pfui!'

'Are they both on active service?'

'Yes.' She sounded forlorn.

'Don't you find it funny that your respective parents should be prowling the high seas figuring out ways of doing each other in?'

'I don't find it at all funny.'

'I didn't mean funny in that sense.' If anyone had ever suggested to McKinnon that Margaret Morrison would one day strike him as a woebegone figure he would have questioned his sanity: but not any longer. He found her sudden dejection inexplicable. 'Not to worry, la.s.sie. It'll never happen.' He wasn't at all sure what he meant by that. It'll never happen.' He wasn't at all sure what he meant by that.

'Of course not.' Her voice carried a total lack of conviction. She made to speak, hesitated, looked down at the deck, then slowly lifted her head. Her face was in shadow but he felt almost certain that he saw the sheen of tears. 'I heard things about you, today.'

'Oh. Nothing to my credit, I'm sure. You can't believe a word anyone says these days. What things, Sister?'

'I wish you wouldn't call me that.' The irritation was as unaccustomed as the dejection.

McKinnon raised a polite eyebrow. 'Sister? But you are a sister.'

'Not the way you make it sound. Sorry, I didn't mean that, you don't make it sound different from anyone else. It's like those cheap American films where the man with the . gun goes around calling everyone "sister".'

He smiled. 'I wouldn't like you to confuse me with a hoodlum. Miss Morrison?'

'You know my name.'

'Yes. I also know that you started out to say something, changed your mind and are trying to stall.'

'No. Yes. Well, not really. It's difficult, I'm not very good at those things. I heard about your family this morning. Just before we came up. I'm sorry, I am terribly sorry.'

'Janet?'

'Yes.'

'It's no secret.'

'It was a German bomber pilot who killed them.' She looked at him for a long moment, then shook her head. 'Along comes another German bomber pilot, again attacking innocent civilians, and you're the first person to come to his defence.'

'Don't go pinning any haloes Or wings on me. Besides, I'm not so sure that's a compliment. What did you expect me to do? Lash out in revenge at an innocent man?'

'You? Don't be silly. Well, no, maybe I was silly to say it, but you know very well what I mean. I also heard Petty Officer McKinnon, BEM, DSM and goodness knows what else was in a Malta hospital with a broken back when he heard the news. An Italian Air Force bomber got your submarine. You seem to have an affinity for enemy bombers.'

'Janet didn't know that.'

She smiled. 'Captain Bowen and I have become quite friendly.'

'Captain Bowen,' McKinnon said without heat, 'is a gossipy old woman.'

'Captain Bowen is a gossipy old woman. Mr Kennet is a gossipy old woman. Mr Patterson is a gossipy old woman. Mr Jamieson is a gossipy old woman. They're all gossipy old women.'

'Goodness me! That's a very serious allegation, Sister. Sorry. Margaret.'

'Gossipy old women speak in low voices or whispers. Whenever any two of them or three of them or indeed all four are together they speak in low voices or whispers. You can feel the tension, almost smell the fear - well, no, that's the wrong word, apprehension, I should say. Why do they whisper?'

'Maybe they've got secrets.'

'I deserve better than that.'

'We've got saboteurs aboard.'

'I know that. We all know that. The whispers know that we all know that.' She gave him a long, steady look. 'I still deserve better than that. Don't you trust me?'