Ellis Peters - George Felse 02 - Death and the Joyful Woman (2 page)

“I’m scared of it, too,” said Dominic.

It wasn’t true, he hadn’t given the actual operation a single thought; but it was generously meant, and it never occurred to him how difficult he was making it for her to hit upon a reply which would be equally graceful to his self-esteem. But she managed it, some natural genius guiding her. She gave him a pleased look, and then a doubtful one, and then a wonderful smile.

“I don’t believe you,” she said confidently, “but it’s jolly nice of you to say it, anyhow. If I yell when they prick my ear for a sample, will you promise to yell, too, so I won’t feel alone in my cowardice!”

“I shall probably be the first to yell,” he said gallantly, hot with delight and embarrassment.

A door opened with a flourish upon their solitude, and a plump young nurse put her head out into the hall. “My, my!” she said, with that rallying brightness which is almost an occupational hazard in her profession. “Two of us here before time! We
are
eager to help, aren’t we?”

“Yes, aren’t we?” said Kitty like a meek echo, dragging her eyes away from Dominic’s before the giggles could 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 camp-beds 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 camp-bed. “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 happened to him. And there
was
her performance that evening at the Boat Club dance.

“Oh, I don’t mean it’s actually my staple diet,” she said quickly. “I just meant it’s what I
live
on—it’s what pays the bills, you know. I ought to have told you, I’m Kitty Norris. If that means anything? No good reason why it should,” she hurried on reassuringly. “I’m just Norris’s Beers, that’s all I meant.” She said it in a resigned voice, as though she was explaining away some odd but not tragic native deformity to which she had long become accustomed, but which might disconcert a stranger.

“Oh, yes, of course,” said Dominic, at once relieved and mortified. What must she think of him for almost taking her literally? And he ought to have known. Katherine Norris the beer heiress was in and out of the local news headlines regularly, he must surely have seen her photograph occasionally. It couldn’t have done her justice, though, or he wouldn’t have failed to recognise her. Her name was prominent on about a third of the pub signs in the county, all those, in fact, which weren’t the monopoly of Armiger’s Ales. And hadn’t she been going to marry old Armiger’s son at one time? Dominic groped in his memory, but local society engagements and weddings did not figure among the events he was in the habit of filing, and he couldn’t remember what was supposed to have happened to break off the merger. It was enough to be grateful for the fact, no need to account for it. “I should have realised,” he said. “My name’s Dominic Felse.”

“Cheers, Dominic!” She drank to him in the acrid, sugary tea. “Did you know this used to be a bottle of stout once? I mean they used to give the victims stout to restore them afterwards. Old man Shelley told me so. I’m being done, Dominic, that’s what.”

“Norris’s stout?” asked Dominic, venturing timidly on a joke. It had a generous success; she threw back her head and laughed.

“Too true! I’m being done two ways,” she said indignantly as she swung her feet to the floor and shook down her sleeve over the already slipping bandage.

It was nearly at an end, he thought as he followed her out.

The transport had arrived and was disgorging its load of volunteers on the forecourt; the evening had closed in as it does in late September, with swiftly falling darkness and sudden clear cold. She would get into the Karmann-Ghia and wave her hand at him warmly but thoughtlessly, and drive away, and he would walk alone to the bus stop and go home. And who knew if he would ever see her again?

“Where can I take you?” she said cheerfully, sliding across from the driving-seat to open the other door.

He hesitated for a moment, worrying whether he ought to accept, whether he wasn’t being a nuisance to her, and longing to accept even if he was. “Thanks awfully,” he said with a gulp, “but I’m only going to the bus station, it’s just a step.”

“Straight?” said Kitty, poker-faced. “That where you spend your nights?”

“I mean I’ve only got to catch a bus from there.”

“Come on, get in,” said Kitty, “and tell me where you live, or I shall think you don’t like my car. Ever driven in one of these?”

He was inside, sitting shoulder to shoulder with her, their sleeves brushing; the plastic hide upholstery might have been floating golden clouds under him, clouds of glory. The girl was bliss enough, the car was almost too much for him. Kitty started the engine and began to back towards the shrubberies to turn, for the transport had cramped her style a little. The bushes made a smoky dimness behind her, stirring against the gathering darkness. She switched on her reversing light to make sure how much room she had, and justified all Dominic’s heady pride and delight in her by bringing the car round in one, slithering expertly past the tail of the transport at an impetuous speed, and shooting the gateway like a racing ace. They passed everything along Howard Road, and slowed at the traffic lights.

“You still haven’t told me where I’m to take you,” said Kitty.

There was nothing left for him to do but capitulate and tell her where he lived, which he did in a daze of delight.

“Comerford, that’s hardly far enough to get going properly. Let’s go the long way round.” She signalled her intention of turning right, and positioned herself beautifully to let the following car pass her on the near side. The driver leaned out and shouted something as he passed, gesticulating towards the rear wheels of the Karmann-Ghia. Dominic, who hadn’t understood, bristled on Kitty’s behalf, but Kitty, who had, swore and grinned and waved a hand in hasty acknowledgment.

“Damn!” she said, switching off her reversing light. “I’m
always
doing that. Next time I’m going to get a self-cancelling one. Don’t you tell your father on me, will you? I do
try
to remember. It isn’t even that I’ve got such a bad memory, really, it’s just certain things about a car that trip me up every time. That damned reversing light, and then the petrol. I wouldn’t like to tell you how many times I’ve run out of petrol inside a year.”

“You haven’t got a petrol gauge, have you?” he asked, searching the dashboard for it in vain.

“No, it’s a reserve tank. I thought it would be better, because when you have to switch over you know you’ve got exactly a gallon, and that’s fair warning.”

“And is it better?” asked Dominic curiously.

“Yes and no. It works on long journeys, because then I don’t know how far it will be between filling stations, so I make a point of stopping at the very first one after the switchover, and filling up. But when I’m just driving round town, shopping or something, I kick her over and think, oh, I’ve still got a gallon, I needn’t worry, plenty of time, pumps all round me. And then I clean forget about it, and run dry in the middle of the High Street, or half-way up the lane to the golf links. I never learn,” said Kitty ruefully. “But when I had a petrol gauge on the old car I never remembered to look at it in time, so what’s the use? It’s just me. Dizzy, that’s what.”

“You drive awfully well,” said Dominic, reaching for the nearest handful of comfort he could offer her. That self-derisive note in her voice, at once comic and sad, had already begun to fit itself into a hitherto undiscovered place in his heart like a key into a secret door.

“No, do you mean that? Honestly?”

“Yes, of course. You must know you drive well.”

“Ah!” said Kitty. “I still like to hear it said. Like the car, too?”