overwhelm them both.
“If you’d like to get it over with, folks, you can come in now.”
They went in to the sacrifice together. A row of narrow campbeds and two attendant nymphs waited for them expectantly, and an older nurse shuffled documents upon a small table, and peered up at them over rimless glasses.
“Good evening!” she said briskly. “Names?” But she beamed at Kitty and didn’t wait for an answer. “Oh, yes, of course!” she said, ticking off one of the names in her list. “This is a very nice gesture you’re making, we do appreciate it, my dear. It does me good to see you young people setting an example.”
She was being very matey indeed, Dominic thought, evidently Kitty was really somebody; but then, a girl who drove a Karmann-Ghia was bound to be somebody. But if only the old battle-axe had let her give her name! He tried to read the list upside down, and was jerked out of his stride as the blue-grey eyes, bright and knowing, pin-pointed him and sharpened into close attention. “Name, please?”
He gave it. She looked down her list, but very rapidly, because she was only verifying what she already knew. “I haven’t got your name here, apparently we weren’t expecting you.” She looked him up and down, and the hard, experienced face broke into a broad and indulgent smile.
“No, I just came in, , , ” he was beginning, but she wagged an admonishing finger at him and rode over him in a loud, friendly, confident voice which stated positively: “You’re never eighteen, ducky! Don’t you know the regulations?”
“I’m sixteen,” he said, very much on his dignity, and hating her for being too perceptive, and still more for trumpeting her discoveries like a town-crier. She had made eighteen sound so juvenile that sixteen now sounded like admitting to drooling infancy, and his position was still further undermined by the unacknowledged fact that he had been sixteen for precisely one week. This formidable woman was perfectly capable of looking at him and deducing that detail to add to her score, “I thought it was from sixteen to sixty,” he said uncomfortably.
“It’s from eighteen to sixty-five, my dear, but bless you for a good try. We can’t take children, they need all their strength for growing. You run along home and come back in a couple of years’ time, and we’ll be glad to see you. But we shall still need your parents’ consent, mind.”
The younger nurse was giggling. Even Kitty must be smiling at him under cover of the gleaming curtain of her hair. Not unkindly, he had sense enough to know that, but that didn’t make the gall of his humiliation any less bitter. And he really had thought the minimum age was sixteen. He could have sworn it was.
“Are you sure? It used to be sixteen, didn’t it?”
She shook her head, smiling broadly. “I’m sorry, love! Always eighteen since I’ve been in the service. Never mind, being too young is something time will cure, you know.”
There was absolutely nothing he could do about it, except go. Kitty craned round the nurse’s shoulder from her campbed and saw him turn towards the door, crushed and silent. The old fool needn’t have bellowed at him like that. The poor kid was so mortified he wasn’t even going to say good-bye.
“Hey, don’t go!” said Kitty plaintively after his departing back. “Wait for me, and I’ll give you a lift.” She made it as near a child’s wail for company as she decently could, to restore him to a good conceit of himself, and threw in the bribe to take his mind off his injuries, and the sudden reviving gleam in his eyes as he looked round was full repayment. She put it down to the car, which was intelligent of her though inaccurate. “You could at least come and talk to me,” she said. “I was counting on you to take my mind off this beastly bottle.”
Nobody believed in her need to be amused and distracted, but girls like Kitty are allowed to pretend to as many whims as they please.
“Well, if you really want me to, , , ” he said, recovering a little of his confidence.
“That’s all right,” said the matron, beaming benevolently, “by all means wait, my dear, nobody wants to drive a willing lad away.” He gave her a look she was too complacent to understand; she couldn’t even pat a child on the head, he reflected bitterly, without breaking its neck, the kind of touch she had. But she was no longer so important, now Kitty had called him back.
“Here you are,” said the young nurse, planking a chair down beside Kitty’s campbed. “You sit down and talk to your friend, and I’ll bring you both a nice cup of tea afterwards.”
Dominic sat down. Kitty was looking at him, and studiously avoiding looking at the bottle that was gradually filling up with her blood; but not, he observed, because she felt any real repugnance for it. She was shaking with giggles, and when his slender bulk was interposed between her and the official eyes she said in a rapid, conspiratorial whisper: “These people kill me!”
That made everything wonderful by standing everything on its head. He made a fool of himself and she didn’t seem to notice; they behaved according to their kind, only slightly caricaturing themselves, and they killed her.
“I really did think it was all right at sixteen,” he said, still fretting at the sore place, though he couldn’t help grinning back at her.
“Sure,” said Kitty, “I know you did. I never thought about there being a limit at all, but it’s only sense. Am I done yet? You look, I don’t like to.”
He didn’t like to, either; the thought of her blood draining slowly out of the rounded golden arm gave him an almost physical experience of pain. “Nearly,” he said, and averted his eyes. “Look out, here comes our nice cup of tea.”
It wasn’t a nice cup of tea, of course, when it came; it was very strong and very sweet, and of that curious reddish-brown colour which indicates the presence of tinned milk. When they were left to themselves again to drink it Kitty sat up, flexing her newly-bandaged arm, took an experimental sip, and gave the cup a look of incredulous distaste.
“I know,” said Dominic apologetically. “I don’t like it with sugar, either, but you’re supposed to need it after this caper. It puts back the energy you’ve lost, or something.”
“I don’t feel as if I’ve lost any,” admitted Kitty with some surprise, and looked thoughtfully at her bandage. “I’m still not sure what they’ve got in that bottle,” she said darkly. “Wouldn’t you have thought it would be beer?” She caught his lost look, and made haste to explain, even more bafflingly: “Well, after all, that’s what I live on.”
He was staring at her helplessly, more at sea than ever. He hoped he was misunderstanding her, but how could he be sure? He knew nothing about her, except that she was the most charming and disturbing thing that had ever
