I wait, my breath held, my body wrapped tightly around Con’s. She stirs in her sleep but doesn’t wake. Her skin is still hot, but perhaps cooler than earlier.
I hear Angus say, ‘I hope you’re not fibbing to me, miss.’
‘And I hope you’re not threatening me. Or Major Bates will be hearing about it. I’ll be telling him that you’re coming in here, disturbing the men who are trying to sleep and recover. Now,’ her voice wobbles, ‘I’ve work to do, if you don’t mind.’
And I hear her footsteps tapping towards the door, followed by his slower, heavier tread, then the sound of the door opening, and her saying, ‘Don’t be disturbing us again.’
The door shuts behind Angus and I wait.
Bess’s tense face appears around the curtain. I smile at her. ‘Thank you,’ I whisper. ‘Thank you.’
She gives a curt nod and taps away.
I lay my cheek on Con’s hot chest and listen to her steady breath, where the wheeze, it seems, has faded. And I put my hand on my own chest and pray for the rhythm of her heart to fall into time with mine.
Over the next weeks, Con improves, and life descends into a steady pattern, with few alterations. The nurses rise in the morning with the whistle and don’t go to bed until nearly midnight. All tasks outside the camp, such as feeding the chickens, or Bess’s visits to her family in Kirkwall, have to fit around the demands of the infirmary. The work is unrelenting: washing wounds and changing sheets; fetching food and water; administering pills and powders. We are all exhausted – Bess and I, along with another young nurse from Kirkwall, Anne, who says very little and sometimes cries because she is scared of rumours she has heard: that the prisoners may try to hurt her, or that the Germans will be trying to invade, or that everyone who lives on this island will go to an early grave through some misadventure. Anne’s terrors are endless, it seems, but her fear makes Bess braver with me and more conversational, I think.
For six days, Bess manages to keep Angus MacLeod from knowing that Con and I are there, and then, when he discovers the truth, she is as good as her word, and tells Major Bates that he is a menace and must be kept away from the infirmary.
‘The prisoners say he beats them,’ she whispers to me.
I nod, remembering Cesare’s bruises. I wonder where he is now. I like to imagine him in Major Bates’s office, still, surrounded by paperwork. Warm and safe.
Sometimes I look out of the infirmary window at the morning reveille, the men standing to be counted, swaying, half asleep. I fold sheets as I stare out at the lines and lines of brown-uniformed prisoners, trying to see him. But through the grimy window, they all look like the same man: thin and stooped and broken. Hunger is ageing them, bowing their shoulders, making them shuffle and stumble. When they first arrived, Con and I used to hear snatches of songs that they would sing together, but now I hear only the shouts of the guards.
Con’s fever fades and she begins to eat again. She is wary of Bess at first, but gradually, she thaws. She begins to return Bess’s cautious smiles; she thanks her for the bread, the stew, the water.
And then, after two weeks, I hear laughter from behind the curtain and find Bess and Con rolling bandages. I watch them talking and try not to feel a stab of jealousy at their heads, close together, at their shared smiles over some story that I haven’t heard.
Con looks up and sees me; her face is bright. I haven’t seen her look so happy since before the Royal Elm. Or perhaps for longer. Perhaps I haven’t seen her so happy since before we decided to leave Kirkwall.
‘You look too thin, Dot,’ she declares. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’
I perch on the side of her bed. ‘You’re one to talk.’ I poke her collarbone.
‘My nurse hasn’t been feeding me properly.’ She grins.
‘My patient’s been running me off my feet.’ It feels good, this gentle barbing of each other. It feels like something from long ago.
After a pause, she says, ‘I want to stay in the hospital. As a nurse.’
I put my arms around her, and I feel, beneath the thin skin and the prominent bones, some of the old strength in the Con I remember from before we came here, as if she’s cast off that fragile, bitter armour and I can feel her returning to herself, opening up again, like an oyster revealing a pearl.Cesare
Cesare thrusts his shovel into the rock of the quarry again and again, listening to the clang of spade on stone, but nothing quells his rage. It is three weeks since MacLeod made him return to the quarry, and although Cesare has been back into the office twice to help with some minor administrative tasks, Major Bates seems uncertain about allowing him to do paperwork. Cesare understands that MacLeod must have said something against him. When he asks about being allowed to go up to the bothy to finish the girls’ roof, the major shakes his head.
‘It’s been repaired. One of the guards did it. Besides, they’re not living there any more.’
‘Where are they going? Where are they living?’ The questions are out before he can stop himself.
Major Bates puts down his pen and frowns. ‘And why would I tell you that?’ His voice is hard, his face closed-off, and Cesare realizes that his reaction must somehow have confirmed one of the lies that MacLeod has told about him: that he is dangerous, perhaps, or unstable.
So Cesare presses his lips together and shrugs. This pretence of mute stupidity seems to reassure the major that he means no harm towards the girls, but Cesare
