I'm nothing. Nothing!'
'It's all right, Sean old chum,' Peter Marlowe said, deep with pity. 'No need to worry. You're very important. Most important person in the whole camp, if the truth be known.'
'I wish I were dead.'
'That's too easy.'
Sean turned and faced him. 'Look at me, for the love of God! What am I?
What in God's name am I?'
In spite of himself, Peter Marlowe could see only a girl, a girl in pathetic torment. And the girl was wearing a white skirt and high heels and her long legs were silk-stockinged and her blouse showed the swell of breasts beneath.
'You're a woman, Sean,' he said as helplessly. 'God knows how - or why
- but you are.'
And then the terror and the self-hatred and the torment left Sean.
'Thank you, Peter,' Sean said. 'Thank you with all my heart.'
There was a tentative knock on the door. 'On in two minutes,' Frank called anxiously through the door. 'Can I come in?'
'Just a second.' Sean went to the dressing table and brushed away the tear stains and repaired the makeup and stared at the reflection.
'Come in, Frank.'
The sight of Sean took Frank's breath away, as it always had. 'You look wonderful!' he said. 'You all right?'
'Yes. Afraid I made a bit of a fool of myself. Sorry.'
'Just overwork,' Frank said, hiding his concern. He glanced at Peter Marlowe. 'Hello, good to see you.'
'Thanks.'
'You'd better get ready, Frank,' Sean said. 'I'm all right now.'
Frank felt the girl's smile, deep within him, and automatically fell into the pattern that he and Rodrick had begun three years before and bitterly regretted ever since. 'You're going to be marvelous, Betty,' he said, hugging Sean. 'I'm proud of you.'
But now, unlike all the countless other times, suddenly they were man and woman, and Sean relaxed against him, needing him with every molecule of being. And Frank knew it.
'We'll - we're on in a minute,' he said unsteadily, rocked by the suddenness of his own need. 'I've - I've got to get ready.' He left.
'I'd, er, better be getting back to my seat,' Peter Marlowe said, deeply troubled. He had felt more than seen the spark between them.
'Yes.' But Sean hardly noticed Peter Marlowe.
A final check of the makeup and then Sean was waiting for a cue in the wings. The usual terrored ecstasy. Then Sean walked on and became.
The cheers and wonder and lust poured over her - eyes following as she sat and crossed her legs, as she walked and talked - eyes reaching out, touching her, feeding on her. Together she and the eyes became one.
'Major,' Peter Marlowe said as he and the King and Rodrick stood in the wings watching, 'what's this Betty business?'
'Oh, part of the whole mess,' Rodrick replied miserably. 'That's the name of Sean's part this week. We've - Frank and I - we always call Sean by the part he's playing.'
'Why?' the King asked.
'To help him. Help him get into the part.' Rodrick looked back to the stage waiting for his cue. 'It started as a game,' he said bitterly, 'now it's an unholy joke. We created that - that woman - God help us. We're responsible.'
'Why?' Peter Marlowe said slowly.
'Well, you remember how tough it was in Java.' Rodrick glanced at the King. 'Because I was an actor before the war, I was assigned the job of starting the camp theatricals.' He let his eyes stray back to the stage, to Frank and Sean. Something strange about those two tonight, he thought.
Critically he studied their performances and knew them to be inspired.
'Frank was the only other professional in the camp so we started to work getting shows together. When we got to the job of casting, of course, someone had to play the female roles. No one would volunteer, so the authorities detailed two or three. One of them was Sean. He was bitterly opposed to doing it, but you know how stubborn senior officers are.
'Someone's got to play a girl, for God's sake,' they said to him. 'You're young enough to look like one. You don't shave more than once a week.
And it's only putting on clothes for an hour or so. Think of what it'll do for everyone's morale.' And however much Sean raved and cursed and begged, it did no good.'
'Sean asked me not to accept him. Well, there's no future in working with uncooperative talent, so I tried to have him dropped from the company.
'Look,' I said to the authorities, 'acting's a great psychological strain…''
''Poppycock!' they said. 'What harm can come of it?''
''The fact that he's playing a female might warp him. If he were the slightest way inclined…''
''Stuff and nonsense,' they said. 'You damned theatrical people've pervert on the brain. Sergeant Jennison? Impossible! Nothing wrong with him!
