An Indecent Obsession by Colleen McCullough Read Free Book Online Page B

on the poor chap?’
    ‘I’m just jealous,’ he said flippantly, and drew his cigarette case out of his pocket. It was plain heavy gold, expensive-looking, and bore his initials in one corner. No one else in the ward smoked tailor-mades, but at the moment no one else in the ward was an officer.
    He flipped the case open and offered its contents to her, lighter ready in his other hand.
    She sighed, but took a cigarette and held it while he lit it. ‘I should never, never have let you talk me into sneaking a smoke with you while I’m on duty,’ she said. ‘Matron would hang, draw and quarter me. Besides, I’m going to have to throw you out in a tick. I’ve got to plough through Michael’s papers before Colonel Chinstrap arrives.’
    ‘Oh, God! Don’t tell me we’ve got to put up with him tonight!’
    She looked amused. ‘Well, actually it’s me has to do any putting up with, not you.’
    ‘And what brings our stalwart chief so far down the compound after dark?’
    ‘Michael, of course. I rang and asked him to come, because I have no instructions about Michael. I don’t know why he’s here in Base Fifteen or why he’s been slotted into X. Personally, I’m mystified.’ She sighed suddenly, and stretched minutely. ‘Somehow it hasn’t been a very nice day today.’
    ‘As far as I’m concerned, no day in X is ever a very nice one,’ Neil said somberly, leaning to tap his cigarette into the spent shell case she used as an ashtray. ‘I’ve been moldering in X for nearly five months, Sis. Others seem to come and go, but here I sit like a lily on a dirt tin, a permanent fixture.’
    And there it was, the X pain, in him and in her. So galling to have to watch them suffer, to know she was incapable of removing the cause of their suffering, since it was rooted in their own inadequacies. She had learned painfully that the good she did them during the more acute stage of illness rarely extended to this long-drawn-out period of almost-recovery.
    ‘You did have a bit of a breakdown, you know,’ she said gently, understanding how futile a comfort that must sound. And recognizing the beginning of an oft-repeated cycle of conversation, in which he would castigate himself for his weaknesses, and she would try, usually vainly, to point out that they were not necessarily weaknesses.
    He snorted. ‘I got over my breakdown ages ago, and you know it.’ Extending his arms in front of him, he clenched his fists until the sinews knotted, the muscles shaped themselves into ridges, unaware that it was when she watched a small display of physical power like this that she felt a sharp jerk of attraction to him. Had he known it, he might have nerved himself to make a positive move toward cementing his relationship with her, kissed her, made love to her; but in almost all circumstances Sister Langtry’s face never betrayed her thoughts.
    ‘I may not be any good as a soldier any more,’ he said, ‘but surely there’s something useful I could be doing somewhere! Oh, Sis, I am so terribly, terribly tired of ward X! I am not a mental patient!’
    The cry moved her; their cries always did, but this man’s especially. She had to lower her head and blink. ‘It can’t be too much longer. The war is over, we’ll be going home soon. I know home’s not the solution you want, and I understand why you rather dread it. But try to believe me when I say you’ll find your feet in seconds once the scenery changes, once you’ve got lots to do.’
    ‘How can I go home? There are widows and orphans at home because of me! What if I meet the widow of one of those men? I killed those men! What could I possibly say to her? What could I do?’
    ‘You’d say and do exactly the right thing. Come on, Neil! These are just phantoms you’re exploiting to torment yourself because you haven’t enough to do with your time in ward X. I hate to say stop pitying yourself, but that is what you’re doing.’
    He wasn’t disposed to listen, settling