either.'
'Leave all that other stuff to the engine-room staff — after we've had a bite, that is. You'll be requiring some assistance?'
'Ferguson and Curran will be enough.'
'Well, that leaves only one thing.' Patterson regarded the deckhead. 'The plate glass for your bridge windows.'
'Indeed, sir. I thought you — '
'A trifle.' Patterson waved a hand to indicate how much of a trifle it was. 'You have only to ask, Bo'sun.'
'But I thought you — perhaps I was mistaken.'
'We have a problem?' Dr Singh said.
'I wanted some plate glass from the trolleys or trays in the wards. Perhaps, Dr Singh, you would care — '
'Oh no.' Dr Singh's reply was as quick as it was decisive. 'Dr Sinclair and I run the operating theatre and look after our surgical patients, but the running of the wards has nothing to do with us. Isn't that so, Doctor?'
'Indeed it is, sir.' Dr Sinclair also knew how to sound decisive.
The Bo'sun surveyed the two doctors and Patterson with an impassive face that was much more expressive than any expression could have been and passed through the doorway into Ward B. There were ten patients in this ward and two nurses, one very much a brunette, the other very much a blonde. The brunette, Nurse Irene, was barely in her twenties, hailed from Northern Ireland, was pretty, dark-eyed and of such a warm and happy disposition that no one would have dreamed of calling her by her surname, which no one seemed to know anyway. She looked up as the Bo'sun entered and for the first time since she'd joined she failed to give him a welcoming smile. He patted her shoulder gently and walked to the other end of the ward where Nurse Magnusson was rebandaging a seaman's arm.
Janet Magnusson was a few years older than Irene and taller, but not much. She had a more than faintly windswept, Viking look about her and was unquestionably good-looking: she shared the Bo'sun's flaxen hair and blue-grey eyes but not, fortunately, his burnt-brick complexion. Like the younger nurse, she was much given to smiling: like her, the smile was in temporary abeyance. She straightened as the Bo'sun approached, reached out and touched his arm.
'It was terrible, wasn't it, Archie?'
'Not a thing I would care to do again. I'm glad you weren't there, Janet.'
'I didn't mean that — the burial, I mean. It was you who sewed up the worst of them — they say that the Radio Officer was, well, all bits and pieces.'
'An exaggeration. Who told you that?'
'Johnny Holbrook. You know, the young orderly. The one that's scared of you.'
There's nobody scared of me,' the Bo'sun said absently. He looked around the ward. 'Been quite some changes here.'
'We had to turf some of the so-called recuperating patients out. You'd have thought they were being sent to their deaths. Siberia, at least. Nothing the matter with them. Not malingerers, really, they just liked soft beds and being spoiled.'
'And who was spoiling them, if not you and Irene? They just couldn't bear to be parted from you. Where's the lioness?'
Janet gave him a disapproving look. 'Are you referring to Sister Morrison?'
That's the lioness I mean. I have to beard her in her den.'
'You don't know her, Arch
'Maggie?'
'When we're off duty, always. She's in the next ward.'
'Maggie! Good lord! I thought she disapproved of you because she disapproves of me because she disapproves of me talking to you.'
'Fiddlesticks. And Archie?'
'Yes?'
'A lioness doesn't have a beard.'
The Bo'sun didn't deign to answer. He moved into the adjacent ward. Sister Morrison wasn't there. Of the eight patients, only two, McGuigan and Jones, were visibly conscious. The Bo'sun approached their adjacent beds and said: 'How's it going, boys?'
'Ach, we're fine, Bo'sun,' McGuigan said. 'We shouldn't be here at all.'
'You'll stay here until you're told to leave.' Eighteen years old. He was wondering how long it would take them to recover from the sight of the almost decapitated Rawlings lying by the wheel when Sister Morrison entered by the far door.
'Good afternoon, Sister Morrison.'
'Good afternoon, Mr McKinnon. Making your medical rounds, I see.'
The Bo'sun felt the stirrings of anger but contented himself with looking thoughtful: he was probably unaware that his thoughtful expression, in certain circumstances, could have a disquieting effect on people.
'I just came to have a word with you, Sister.' He looked around the ward. 'Not a very lively bunch, are they?'
'I hardly think this is the time or place for levity, Mr McKinnon.' The lips were not as compressed as they might have been but there was an appreciable lack of warmth behind the steel-rimmed spectacles.
The Bo'sun looked at her for long seconds, during which time she began to show distinct signs of uneasiness. Like most people — with the exception of the timorous Johnny Holbrook — she regarded the Bo'sun as being cheerful and easy-going, with the rider, in her case, that he was probably a bit simple: it required only one glance at that cold, hard, bleak face to realize how totally wrong she had been. It was an unsettling experience.
The Bo'sun spoke in a slow voice. 'I am not in the mood for levity, Sister. I've just buried fifteen men. Before I buried them I had to sew them up in their sheets of canvas. Before I did that I had to gather up their bits and pieces and stick their guts back inside. Then I sewed them up. Then I buried them. I didn't see you among the mourners, Sister.'
The Bo'sun was more than aware that he shouldn't have spoken to her like that and he was also aware that what he had gone through had affected him more than he had thought. Under normal circumstances it was impossible that he should have been so easily provoked: but the circumstances were abnormal and the provocation too great.
'I've come for some plate glass, such as you have on the tops of your trolleys and trays. I need them urgently and I don't need them for any light-hearted purposes. Or do you require an explanation?'
She didn't say whether she required an explanation or not. She didn't do anything dramatic like sinking into a chair, reaching out for the nearest support or even putting a hand to her mouth. Only her colour changed. Sister Morrison had the kind of complexion that, like her eyes and lips, was in marked contrast to her habitually severe expression and steel-rimmed glasses, the kind of complexion that would have had the cosmetic tycoons sending their scientists back to the bench: at that moment, however, the peaches had faded from the traditional if rarely seen peaches and cream of the traditional if equally rarely seen English rose.
The Bo'sun removed the glass top from a table by Jones's bedside, looked around for trays, saw none, nodded to Sister Morrison and went back to Ward B. Janet Magnusson looked at him in surprise.
'Is that what you went for?' The Bo'sun nodded. 'Maggie — Sister Morrison — had no objection?'
'Nary an objection. Have you any glass-topped trays?'
Chief Patterson and the others had already begun lunch when the Bo'sun returned, five sheets of plate glass under his arm. Patterson looked faintly surprised.
'No trouble then, Bo'sun?'
'One only has to ask. I'll need some tools for the bridge.'
'Fixed,' Jamieson said. 'I've just been to the engine-room. There's a box gone up to the bridge — all the tools you'll require, nuts, bolts, screws, insulating tape, a power drill and a power saw.'
'Ah. Thank you. But I'll need power.'
'Power you have. Only a temporary cable, mind you, but the power is there. And lights, of course. The phone will take some time.'
