and certainly not at the moment the Pole, but a few. I don’t know how long those conditions might last so I thought you might like to have a look now. I assume that Sister Morrison has staunched the flow of blood.’
‘There never was any flow of blood,’ she said. ‘As you know perfectly well, Mr McKinnon.’
‘Yes, Sister.’
She winced, then smiled. ‘Archie McKinnon.’
‘Wind’s dropped a lot,’ McKinnon said. He helped Ul-bricht on with outer clothing. ‘But those are just as necessary as they were before. The temperature is still below zero.’
‘Fahrenheit?’
‘Sorry. You don’t use that. It’s about twenty degrees below, Centigrade.’
‘May his nurse come with him? After all, Dr Sinclair went with him last time.’
‘Of course. Wouldn’t advise you to come on the wing bridge, though.’ McKinnon gathered up sextant and chronometer and accompanied them up to the bridge. This time Ulbricht made it unaided. He went out on both wing bridges in turn and chose the starboard from which to make his observations. It took him longer than it had on the previous occasion, for he found it necessary to take more sights, presumably because the Pole Star was hidden. He came back inside, worked on the chart for some time and finally looked up.
‘Satisfactory. In the circumstances, very satisfactory. Not my navigation. The course we’ve been holding. No idea if we’ve been holding it all the time, of course, and that doesn’t matter. We’re south of the Arctic Circle now, near enough 66.20 north, 4.20 east. Course 213, which seems to indicate that the wind’s backed only five degrees in the past twelve hours. We’re fine as we are, Mr McKinnon. Keeping the sea and the wind to the stern should see us through the night and even if we do wander off course we’re not going to bump into anything. This time tomorrow morning we’ll lay off a more southerly course.’
‘Thank you very much, Lieutenant,’ McKinnon said. ‘As the saying goes, you’ve earned your supper. Incidentally, I’ll have that sent up inside half an hour. You’ve also earned a good night’s sleep – I won’t be troubling you any more tonight.’
‘Haven’t I earned something else, too? It was mighty cold out there, Mr McKinnon.’
‘I’m sure the Captain would approve. As he said, so long as you’re navigating.’ He turned to the girl. ‘You coming below?’
‘Yes, yes, of course she must,’ Ulbricht said. ‘I’ve been most remiss, most.’ If remorse were gnawing it didn’t show too much. ‘All your other patients –’
‘All my other patients are fine. Sister Maria is looking after them. I’m off duty.’
‘Off duty! That makes me feel even worse. You should be resting, my dear girl, that or sleeping.’
‘I’m wide awake, thank you. Are you coming below? It’s no trouble now, ship’s like a rock and you’ve just been told you won’t be required any more tonight.’
‘Well, now.’ Ulbricht paused judiciously. ‘On balance, I think I should remain. Unforeseeable emergencies, you understand.’
‘Luftwaffe officers shouldn’t tell fibs. Of course I understand. I understand that the only foreseeable emergency is that you run short of supplies and the only reason you’re not coming below is that we don’t serve malt whisky with ward dinners.’
The Lieutenant shook his head in sadness. ‘I am deeply wounded.’
‘Wounded!’ she said. They had returned to the hospital mess-deck. ‘Wounded.’
‘I think he is.’ McKinnon looked at her in speculative amusement. ‘And you, too.’
‘Me? Oh, really!’
‘Yes. Really. You’re hurt because you think he prefers Scotch to your company. Isn’t that so?’ She made no reply. ‘If you believe that, then you’ve got a very low opinion of both yourself and the Lieutenant. You were with him for about an hour tonight. What did he drink in that time?’
‘Nothing.’ Her voice was quiet.
‘Nothing. He’s not a drinker and he’s a sensitive lad. He’s sensitive because he’s an enemy, because he’s a captive, a prisoner of war and, of course, he’s sensitive above all because he’s now got to live all his life with the knowledge that he killed fifteen innocent people. You asked him if he was coming down. He didn’t want to be asked “if”. He wanted to be persuaded, even ordered. “If” implies indifference and the way he’s feeling it could be taken for a rejection. So what happens? The ward sister tells her feminine sympathy and intuition to take a holiday and delivers herself of some cutting remarks that Margaret Morrison would never have made. A mistake, but easy enough to put right.’
‘How?’ The question was a tacit admission that a mistake had indeed been made.
‘Ninny. You take his hand and say sorry. Or are you too proud?’
‘Too proud?’ She seemed uncertain, confused. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Too proud because he’s a German? Look, I know about your fiancé and brother and I’m terribly sorry but that doesn’t –’
‘Janet shouldn’t have told you.’
‘Don’t be daft. You didn’t object to her telling you about my family.’
‘And that’s not all.’ She sounded almost angry. ‘You said they went around killing thousands of innocent people and that –’
‘Those were not my words. Janet did not say that. You’re doing what you accused the Lieutenant of doing – fibbing. Also, you’re dodging the issue. Okay, so the nasty Germans killed two people you knew and loved. I wonder how many thousands they killed before they were shot down. But that doesn’t matter really, does it? You never knew them or their names. How can you weep over people you’ve never met, husbands and wives, sweethearts and children, without faces or names? It’s quite ridiculous, isn’t it, and statistics are so boring. Tell me, did your brother ever tell you how he felt when he went out in his Lancaster bomber and slaughtered his mother’s fellow countrymen? But, of course, he’d never met them so that made it all right, didn’t it?’
She said in a whisper: ‘I think you’re horrible.’
‘You think I’m horrible. Janet thinks I’m a heartless fiend. I think you’re a pair of splendid hypocrites.’
‘Hypocrites?’
‘You know – Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The ward sister and Margaret Morrison. Janet’s just as bad. At least I don’t deal in double standards.’ McKinnon made to leave but she caught him by the arm and indulged, not for the first time, in the rather disconcerting practice of examining each of his eyes in turn.
‘You didn’t really mean that, did you? About Janet and myself being hypocrites?’
‘No.’
‘You are devious. All right, all right, I’ll make it right with him.’
‘I
