Green for Danger by Christianna Brand Read Free Book Online Page A

just my misfortune to look like a blinking machine and all the time be a raging furnace underneath. Oh, well!” she shrugged her little shoulders and smoothed down her apron and settled her starched white veil, “I suppose I’d better stop having inhibitions and look to my suffering patients.” The man in the corner bed said something as she went over to him, taking his hot hand in her cool and gentle one, she thought: “Anyway, thank goodness Esther and Woody don’t know!”
    6
    Esther had just arrived back from the ward and was sitting in their quarters with Woods, discussing Frederica’s infatuation. A benevolent providence had placed a small row of labourer’s cottages at the main gates of the park, and here the V.A.D.s were accommodated, three or four to each little two-roomed house. The cottages were small and dark and inconvenient, but the plumbing was adequate and each had a tiny kitchen with a gas stove; to three girls unused to community life and especially to life among sixty women of greatly varying ages and drawn from every imaginable class, their cottage was a haven of privacy and relaxation and peace. Frederica, being on night duty, did Box and Cox with Esther in the room upstairs; Woods had a camp bed in the communal sitting-room.
    The whole place rocked with the deafening roar of the guns, but the bombs seemed fewer and the flares were dying down. They sat very comfortably with their feet on the fender, drinking cups of cocoa, in defiance of all orders that nobody was to remain in their quarters after black-out, during a raid. Esther said thoughtfully: “What people can see in Gervase, I never could understand. I mean, he’s nice and he’s funny, but he’s as ugly as anything, so thin and grey and, well, he must be at least forty.…”
    â€œThanks very much,” said Woods.
    â€œWell, I don’t mean that, darling, you know what I mean. He’s not a glamour boy; and he never seems to try and make women like him.”
    â€œAh, but you’re a lady icicle, Esther.”
    â€œWell, I must be, because I seem to be the only female in the hospital who can see Gervase Eden without swooning at his feet. How did the great Act go to-night?”
    Woods grinned. “Not bad at all. I caught up with Casanova as he came out of the concert, and I put on a terrific air of indifference and tried to look anxious to get away, and it was such a change for him, poor lamb, that he fell for it like a log.”
    â€œMind you don’t fall yourself, Woody. That would be a laugh!”
    â€œI should say it would,” agreed Woods, cackling with ribald mirth. “However, it would do no harm, Esther, and the effect would be the same. Frederica would see that some other female has only to whistle and off he goes like a shot.”
    â€œShe must know that anyhow; look at poor old Bates.”
    â€œAh, yes, but it’s one thing for Gervase to sicken of Bates and turn his attentions to Freddi; and quite another for him to start running after fat old Woody, right in the first stages of his affair with Frederica!”
    â€œAre you so sure it’s an affair, darling?”
    â€œWell, Freddi goes round looking like a love-sick hen all the time he’s about; and love may be blind, but if it gets any worse, Barney’s bound to see it. Barney wouldn’t take a thing like this lightly, you know, Esther. It would break his heart, but he’d just write Freddi off for ever: he loves her too much and too sort of deeply , for her to try playing fast and loose with him. It’s as much for Barney’s sake as Frederica’s that I want to put an end to it if I can.”
    â€œI hope this won’t get you into a mess though, Woody,” said Esther, still not satisfied.
    Woods sat staring into the fire, a shawl clutched round her bosom, her exquisite legs stretched out towards the blaze; the lines of laughter ironed, for a moment,