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

out of her face. She said slowly: “My dear, I’m past getting into messes. I’ve led a bit of a comic life, Esther, one way and another, getting in and out of messes and not doing any harm to anyone, that I could see; except perhaps to myself; and even then I don’t know—I don’t think I’d have it any other way if I could do it all over again. Freddi’s different. She’s so young and she’s so pretty and attractive; she must settle down with Barney, Esther, and run his house and have lots of lovely babies and be a little Madam … the charm about Freddi is that she’s so cool and sure and—well, sort of pleased with herself; isn’t she? Not in a nasty way, I don’t mean, but just rather funny and sweet. If she went and got herself a past, she’d lose all that; she’d lose her faith in herself, and, you know, I don’t believe she’d marry Barney. She wouldn’t be able to deceive him, and yet she wouldn’t be able to confess her weakness by telling him. I don’t know. I may be all wrong; I’m rotten about knowing people’s characters … but anyway, if I can prevent her from going off the rocks with this Don Juan of hers, by fair means or foul, I will. I don’t think there’s the earthliest chance of my getting hurt in the process, but if I do, well, I’ve been hurt before and I can take it again.” She belched vigorously and patted her chest. “My Godfathers! That stew!”
    â€œWell, I hope it works, Woody, and I hope you ever get any thanks from Frederica, if it does!”
    â€œI don’t want any thanks,” said Woods calmly; and Esther, looking at her, sitting there bundled up in shawls, fat and jolly and rather common, with her made-up face and shining, shrewd, dark eyes, said to her lovingly: “No, darling, you never do.”

CHAPTER III

    1
    I t was always a miracle, after a heavy raid, to look out in the morning and see one’s world still intact about one. Esther walked across the grounds with Woody, wrapped in her short red-lined cape against the cold, dawn air. “I believe there’s a new crater in the field over there … that must have been the one that fell at about ten. I could have sworn it was nearer.”
    â€œStick of three,” said Woody comfortably, in the familiar jargon of life under the blitz. “Look, there’s another one, up in the woods—you can see where it’s broken the branches of the trees. Good thing it wasn’t a bit more to the left or the third would have given the Sisters’ Mess a conk. That would have shaken them up!”
    â€œNever run, except for a land mine!” said Esther, mimicking Matron.
    The fractured tib. and fib. was agreeably surprised to see her, on the ward. “Hallo, I haven’t met you before!”
    â€œI’ve met you ,” she said, smiling, not pausing in her assault upon his person with a large wet flannel. “I saw you last night being wheeled across from the theatre, but you weren’t taking much notice at the time.”
    I can’t have been,” he said grinning.
    He was a young man, a slim, blond, smiling young man with bright blue eyes and something pleasant and clean and reliable about him. Esther was profoundly bored with dependable young men, but she recognised in him something a little different from the ordinary run. She said kindly: “How are you feeling to-day?”
    â€œOh, I’m not too bad for seven o’clock in the morning. They say I’ve fractured my tibia and fibula or something. What does that mean?”
    â€œIt means that you’ve broken the two bones running down the front of your leg; they generally get sort of—overlapping, you know, and you have to have them pulled apart so that the bones can meet and have a chance to unite again. I expect you’ll be strung up like this to an extension frame for a little