Simon woke as Job left the tent. He rolled over, and without thinking he too stretched. His right elbow dug into Colin’s ribs and his feet thumped squarely into Kate’s stomach.
“Oops. Sorry. Forgot we were so crowded.”
Silence. After a while Simon too got up and crawled out. Kate turned over and gasped as her raw back bore her weight. Colin sat up, moving his shoulders stiffly. She watched him through half-closed eyes. He straightened up very gingerly indeed, opened his shirt, glanced suspiciously at her apparently sleeping face, and pulled up his undershirt. His flesh was deeply bruised.
“Oh Colin!” She sat up, quite vexed with his childishness. “You need some ointment on those, and bandages.”
“I thought you were asleep!” He sounded almost sulky.
“Well I’m not! Let me have a look at you.” She rolled out of her sleeping bag and crawled across the tent towards him. He remained as he was, watching her as she moved. “Come on,” she snapped, at her most businesslike, “let’s have it off.”
His eyes opened wide. “I hope the others can’t hear . . .”
“You know very well what I mean!” She felt herself blushing, and covered her confusion by rummaging in one corner for the first aid box, and extracting from it a tin of ointment and bandages.
“You’ll have to help,” he said.
His vest had become entangled with his left arm. Briskly she undid the straps on his chest and removed both.
“There. Now, let’s have a look at you.” There were welts up his back from the rope, and she dabbed them liberally with the purple ointment. His ribs and chest were another matter, however. On his right side, running from under his arm down to the arch of his solar plexus was a great crusted bruise.
“That’s nasty,” she said, reaching for the iodine, keeping her voice very practical indeed because of the tightness in her chest. “This might sting a little,” she said.
It burned like a hot poker and he winced. Above it, from collar-bone to nipple was another wound, equally bad. She poured iodine over that too, swabbing carefully, acutely aware of how the silky fur on his chest rubbed against her fingers, her palms, the sides and backs of her hands.
She glanced up, and his deep green eyes were searching her face. She suddenly thought of the first time she had seen those eyes. How cold they had seemed to be then. How warm they seemed now.
“I’d better bandage you,” she said. He nodded. She got the roll of white material out and held one end high on his chest. His hand came up to hold it for her, and covered her hand for a moment.
“Thank you,” she said stupidly.
“That’s OK.”
She rolled the bandage round and round him as he leaned forward, sideways and back to facilitate the operation. They were both intensely aware of the small, unavoidable bodily contacts of the operation. Her hands against his chest, arm, back; his hand against her arm. Their thighs touching – even through six layers of material. Arms touching. Her hair in his face, on his shoulder. Her breath against his neck; his against hers. Her breasts against his chest, shoulders, arm. His chest, shoulder, arm against her breasts.
“There,” she said after a while. She was breathing deeply and could not disguise the fact.
“Got a safety pin?” he asked.
“Oh. Yes.”
She turned to get it, and the skin on her back stretched into scalding pain. When she turned back she was pale and there were tears in her eyes. He took the pin without comment and fixed the bandage comfortably.
“Now you,” he said.
“What did you say?” she gasped.
“Now you. Take off your shirt and vest.”
“Colin. I . . .”
He picked up the ointment. “What do you want? A chaperone? Hurry.” His eyebrows met briefly in a frown, then he was smiling. “I’ll be gentle, I promise.”
“That’s a line I’ve heard before.” She undid the shirt. She tried to do it quickly, unconcernedly, in a matter of fact way, but it still felt like a strip-tease. She glanced up. He was reading the instructions on the tin of ointment. As her eyes flicked down again, his flicked up. She took the bottom of the vest and pulled it out of the top of her jeans and sealskin overtrousers, loosened it gingerly at the back, crossed her arms and pulled it up in one fluid, unintentionally erotic movement. By the time she had got her head untangled from the warm material, he was reading the instructions on the tin again.
“You’ll have those off by heart soon,” she said, relaxing her shoulders and crossing her hands in her lap. His eyes did not meet hers directly, they paused at chest level for a moment, then moved up.
“If you would lean forward . . .” He held up his arms, the left ending just below the shoulder. She leaned to the left until her shoulder rested against his chest. The ointment was cold, and stung. She hollowed her back automatically and crushed her breasts against him. She froze, intensely aware of the contact.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Did that sting?”
“No. Cold,” she said.
She bowed her back again, and he rubbed gently. Because there was nowhere else she could put them with any degree of comfort, she put her arms lightly round his waist. His hand on her back felt very good indeed. Her eyes half closed. There was a little smile on her face. She moved her cheek unconsciously against him like a child seeking assurances. She lost all sense of time, but it seemed a very long while before the hand stopped caressing her back and Colin said, “All right. Finished.”
Obediently she sat up, returning her hands to her lap like a schoolgirl. They looked at each other. Her arms came sinuously around his neck and held him in an iron grip as their lips crushed together.
Then Simon Quick erupted through the tent flap screaming, “Colin. Jesus, Colin, they’re back! They’re out here now going round and round the floe!”
For a moment after Simon’s head withdrew from the tent, Colin and Kate stared at each other, the desire slowly draining from their faces. Outside, Simon called again, “Colin!”
Colin began to dress, Kate content to help him strap on his arm before pulling on her own vest, so that while she was pulling on her grubby Arran pullover he was already on his way out on to the floe.
The desire which had come upon her with such unexpected but devastating force was gone now, replaced by an empty feeling which at first she thought was remorse, but which she soon realised was in fact a mixture of anger and fear. Anger at having been interrupted so soon; fear that they might never have another chance. She dragged on her gloves and mittens, pulled back the flap and crawled out.
The three men were standing on the corner of the floe where the split brought about by the walruses joined the line cut by the plane crash which had broken when the ghost berg fell. The obvious place for them to have stood was on the low hill, but the whole area beyond the camp, still a good thirty yards to the sea, was hopelessly rotten – so much so that two of the great walrus corpses had silently sunk through the ice while they had slept. The hole in the rotten ice made by the walrus Job and Simon had killed seemed to be growing.
Kate went over towards the three men and joined their line. She thrust her hands deep in the pocket of her anorak. They struck against the Very pistol. It was the closest thing to a gun that they had left. She had better look after it, she thought. Heaven knew when they would need it – what they might need it for. She narrowed her eyes and looked over the water. The backs of the ripples were almost white; the sea regaining its infinitely burnished mirror-surface between the burning floes.