He was silent for almost a minute, panting softly and licking his lips. Then he whispered, "My dear Maude, I am not a man who is accustomed to begging. I have never begged anything from anyone in my life. But now, please hear me out. Without you, Maude, my existence will have very little meaning. Why should I worry if the sun rises, Maude, if I can no longer expect to see you during the day? Why should I bother to eat and drink, to keep myself alive, if I can never be with you? Maude—"
He gagged and choked on phlegm. Dr Fields lifted his head up, and called Nurse Queensland to bring him a glass of water. Nurse Queensland was there in a moment, a bustle of starch. She was one of the nurses of the old school. Trained at Barts. Served in field hospitals on the Somme. A red face, a nose that looked like a fire-alarm button, and a bust as broad and white and crisp as the Slessor Glacier.
"He's delirious," said Dr. Fields. "He keeps talking to someone called Maude."
Nurse Queensland said, "I saw boys like that at Passchendaele, just before they died. Talking to their sweethearts back home just as if they could see them standing right there in front of them. Perhaps some of them could. When you've been through a war like the last one, you believe in the supernatural."
"At least there won't be any more wars like that one,' said Dr. Fields. He had himself served for a year on a troopship in the Mediterranean, and he had seen eighteen-year-old boys go through agonies that not even he could understand, after years of medical practice. How do you cope with boys who haven't even lived yet, but whose arms have gone, whose faces have gone, whose sex has been reduced to gristle? He let Sir Peregrine's head fall back on the pillow, and stood up. The old man was breathing more evenly now. His eyes were closed, and to all appearances he was deep in a dreamless sleep.
"You ought to have a rest now, Dr. Fields," said Nurse Queensland. "Don't you worry about the commodore. I'll take care of him."
Dr. Fields looked down at Sir Peregrine and nodded. "Very well, Nurse. I am sure you can manage. There's one thing, though. If he should talk of Maude... well, don't disillusion him. Tell him that she should be back with him very shortly, and that he mustn't worry about her."
Nurse Queensland said, "Poor old chap. He's probably been worrying about his Maude all his life, if he could only have told anyone about it."
"Yes," said Dr. Fields. "That's usually the way."
FORTY-NINE
Dick Charles had arranged to meet Lady Diana at two o'clock in the morning, after he came off duty. But because Rudyard had relieved him a few minutes early, he was able to change and wash him face and make his way down to her stateroom by a quarter of two. He cleared his throat, adjusted his blue silk necktie, and knocked. He smelled rather strongly of a German cologne he had bought two him ago in Hamburg.
He had been thinking about Lady Diana all day, except when the storm had demanded his full attention. At first he had been confused. Then, when he had begun to understand what they had been doing together, and all the Freudian implications of it, he had been seriously frighted. After the storm, though, he had begun to think of her again, and his fright had turned slowly to curiosity, and then to a peculiar kind of renewed desire.
He was breathless and jumpy as he waited outside Lady Diana's door, and he kept glancing nervously up and down the corridor to make sure that nobody was watching him. Ships, at night, were full of wanderers. People who felt sick, and who found their cabins claustrophobic. People who couldn't sleep, because of the endless drumming of the turbines. People who were surreptitiously visiting or returning from beds that were not their own. In third, they called such wanderers "the glass-o'-waterers", because even if they were caught outside some pretty girl's cabin with their pyjama pants around their ankles, they would explain that they had left their own berths for "a glass-o'-water".
Quite abruptly, Lady Diana's door was opened. But instead of Lady Diana, in her revealing silk negligee, a very tall man stood there, and by the way his collar was flapping and his trouser fly was gaping open, it was plain that he had only half-finished dressing.
"Yes?" the man demanded, in a sharp upper-class accent.
"Buh-buh-buh—I-I—buh—" stammered Dick.
"Well?" the man wanted to know. "What do you want?"
"I, uh, I, uh, I was j-just making certain that everyone was cuh—was cuh—was
comfortable."
"At two o'clock in the morning? My dear chap, if they're not comfortable by two o'clock in the morning, they're never going to be comfortable. Good night."
But before he could close the door, Lady Diana called out, "Who's that? That isn't Dicky, is it?"
"Oh," said the tall man, taken aback. "Are you Dicky?"
"W-well, I'm D-dick," said Dick.
"Ah,' said the tall man, in the manner of someone who has just been told that they have dropped their hammer through the conservatory roof. "So you're Dick. Or Dicky. Well—ah—that puts a different—ah—complexion on things. What?"
The last "What?" was so explosive and so interrogative that Dick thought he had actually been asked something. "Er, yes," he answered. It was a response that was strictly in accordance with the Keys Shipping Line Handbook of Passenger Service. "If you have any doubt about a question that a passenger has put to you, always answer yes and then ascertain afterwards whether whatever it is that he has requested is either possible or practicable. This rule does not apply, of course, to questions relating to dangerous, revolutionary, unpatriotic, immoral, offensive, or religious matters." Dick had always wondered what he would say if a passenger asked him, "Is there a God?"
Lady Diana appeared, in a pale blue concoction of flowing silk and frothing lace. She was drinking something bright blue in a martini glass. There was a maraschino cherry in it which looked mauve.
"My darling Dick, you must come in. You're early."
For a moment, the tall man completely blocked the doorway, but when Lady Diana prodded his arm with one of her long fingernails and said, "Come on, now, dear," he reluctantly stepped back and let Dick past. Dick gave him a smile which he hoped was cheerful, but which was actually horribly distempered (as he saw when he glanced at the mirrors over the mock fireplace).
"You must meet, er, Walter," Lady Diana gushed. 'He's my chiropractor. Aren't you, Walter? I don't know how I could survive without him. That's why he's coming to America with me. I never know when I might need him, night or day. Once my neck gave way when I was at the ballet. Just gave way! All I could do was stare down into my lap. Fortunately it was Swan Lake and I detest Swan Lake. I keep expecting one of the corps de ballet to lay an egg."
"Walter" was buttoning up his trousers and fastening his cufflinks. He looked extremely disgruntled.
"He has to change, you know, into his white uniform, don't you, Walter?" explained Lady Diana. 'That's why he's somewhat, well, deshabille." Rather impatiently, she added, "Hurry up, now, Walter. It doesn't take all night just to do up your cufflinks, does it?"
"No, madam," said "Walter", in a voice as heavy as West Indian treacle being poured into a bowl of junket. "Whatever you say, madam."