He rose to his feet, scooped Liz up in his arms and headed for the door, turning pointedly when he got there and waiting for one of them to open it for him.
‘You’re not taking her there yourself!’
His lips twitched. ‘I know there hasn’t been a man in the nurses’ home since Florence Nightingale was a girl, but this is an emergency, Sister.’
‘And anyway,’ put in the student nurse, doing her best to be helpful, ‘it’s not really a man - it’s only Dr Buchanan.’
Adam lifted his fair brows. ‘I’m not quite sure how to take that. But will somebody please open this bloody door!’
Sister MacLean could do the eyebrow-raising trick too. ‘There’s no need to swear, Dr Buchanan,’ she said primly. She opened the door and walked beside him as he carried Liz along the corridor. He gave her a formal little nod.
‘I apologize for my language, Sister. Now, can we have some of that brandy you keep for emergencies?’
‘By all means,’ said Sister MacLean with dignity, apparently not at all fazed by the fact that he knew about her secret drinks supply. ‘How much?’
‘Well,’ he said, waiting again whilst she opened the door which led into the nurses’ dining room, on the other side of which lay the home. ‘Why don’t we all have a glass?’
‘Certainly, Doctor.’
He was there when she went to sleep and he was there when she opened her eyes again the next morning.
His long length was propped uncomfortably in a chintz-covered armchair which had always seemed a reasonable size but which looked far too small with him sitting in it. He was ruffled and unshaven, but when she opened her eyes and wished him good morning he shot up out of the chair to feel her pulse and lay his hand against her forehead.
‘Hmm,’ he said, after a minute. ‘That all seems normal enough. How are we feeling, sleeping beauty?’
‘Well, I don’t know how you’re feeling,’ she said, half closing one eye and regarding him through the other, ‘but I’m starving. I’m that hungry I could eat a scabby dog.’
He laughed. ‘Och, MacMillan, see you and your way with words? Scrambled eggs on toast?’
Liz shuddered. ‘Yellow liver? No thanks.’ She was one of the many who found the slab-like concoction made from dried egg powder completely unpalatable. ‘You know what I’d really like? A bacon roll.’
‘Then a bacon roll you shall have. Even if I have to go out and wrestle wild pigs the length of Byres Road to get it. Back in two shakes. I’ll get Cordelia to come and sit with you.’
In the event, he didn’t have to go that far. He managed to sweet-talk one of the hospital cooks into parting with two thin slices of precious bacon and putting them into two rolls for him. He carried them back triumphantly to Liz’s room, Cordelia tactfully disappearing when he got there.
Liz told him to eat one of the rolls himself, and they sat chatting quietly over their impromptu breakfast.
‘What about Sister MacLean? Does she want me to report what happened?’
‘Apparently not,’ he said, between mouthfuls of roll. ‘Cordelia told her what you’d said and she can understand your point of view.’ He looked contemplative. ‘She’s not a bad old stick sometimes.’
Liz smiled. ‘I suppose not, though I’ll deny ever having said that.’
‘Eat up,’ he said. ‘You’re still looking a bit pale.’
She obeyed the instruction but then, distracted by the cooing of a pigeon which was sitting on the window ledge outside, turned and looked in the direction of the sound. She studied the bird for a long time. When she eventually spoke, her eyes were still fixed on it.
‘I wonder where Mario is right now,’ she said. Her voice was full of wistfulness.
Adam laid his half-eaten bacon roll back down on the plate, a dull ache in his jaw. The punch which Eric Mitchell had thrown at him two days before had just begun to throb.
Thirty-nine
‘Join the Army!’
‘Well, the medical corps,’ he said. ‘The RAMC.’
‘But why, Adam? Why now?’
He shrugged. ‘Because I reckon it’s time I did my bit, I suppose.’ He turned to look out of the window of the ward kitchen.
Liz came round in front of him, peering up into his face.
‘But you’re doing your bit here. None better. You’ve worked like a dog since the war started. Right from the
Athenia
, through the Blitz, all of that.’
He shrugged again. ‘Maybe I fancy myself in a uniform.’
She recognized the flippant answer for what it was. She was looking at a man who’d set his mind to a course of action and who wasn’t going to be dissuaded from it: for some reason which he wasn’t prepared to share with her.
‘I’ll miss you,’ she said at last.
‘Will you?’ He hadn’t moved from the window, standing there staring out, his arms folded across his broad chest.
‘Of course I will. How am I going to cope without you?’
‘You’ll survive.’ He turned at last from his contemplation of the rooftops of Partick.
‘Look, Liz, I’ve got to get on. I’ll see you later.’
The door swung closed behind him. Liz stared at it in dismay. She’d become so used to his company, so accustomed to taking her troubles to him and having him make them better. Had she put too much pressure on him when he already had so many stresses in his work? Was it her fault that he was going away?
She tried discussing it with Cordelia, but she seemed unable to shed much light on Adam’s decision.
‘Perhaps it’s the soldiering bit,’ she suggested eventually. ‘Sooner or later it gets to most of them. They feel they should be out there - doing their bit for king and country, defending their womenfolk against the vile Hun, that kind of thing.’ She grimaced.
Liz looked at her doubtfully. ‘But he’s doing his bit here. You know how hard he works.’
Cordelia, uncharacteristically unhelpful, shrugged.
‘I wondered if it had anything to do with me, Cordelia.’
‘Eh... how exactly do you mean, Liz?’
‘He’s helped me so much,’ she replied, ‘always been there ready to help me, given me a shoulder to cry on. Maybe I’ve asked too much of him.’
‘In which case,’ Cordelia pointed out, ‘I’m as much to blame.’
‘So you don’t think that’s what’s making him want to go away?’
‘No, Liz, I don’t think that’s what it is.’ She squinted down at the watch pinned on the bib of her apron. ‘Good grief! Is that the time? I really must be getting on.’
Central Station was thronged as usual when Liz saw Adam off. At her insistence, he found himself a seat, deposited his things on top of it to book it and then jumped back out on to the platform. He’d said his farewells to his mother earlier that morning in Milngavie. Liz was surprised that Amelia wasn’t here now - nor Cordelia either - but Adam told her how upset his mother had been, although doing her best not to show it.
‘Maybe I should have taken French leave,’ he said, ‘like they did the night before the Battle of Waterloo.’
Liz struck a dramatic pose. ‘Well, we could go for the scene in the romantic film where you say—’
‘It’s not goodbye, darling, it’s only
au revoir
? he supplied. ‘Or maybe we’ll all be saying
auf Wiedersehen
if things don’t look up.’
She punched him lightly in the chest. ‘Nonsense. Now the Army’s got you on its side, we’ll have the war finished in a fortnight. Winston doesn’t know it yet, but he’s got a new secret weapon.’
‘I’m touched that you have such faith in me,’ he murmured. There was a pause. ‘Liz...’ he began, but she had started speaking at the same time as him.
‘You look very dashing,’ she said, taking in the picture he presented in cap and uniform, his tall frame surmounted by a casually unbuttoned greatcoat.
‘I don’t feel very dashing,’ he confessed. ‘Why don’t you and I go down the coast together instead? A walk on the beach and lunch in a pub with a roaring fire?’
‘Sounds lovely, but it’ll have to wait till you come back. What were you going to say just now? I think I interrupted you.’
‘Oh... nothing really. Mind your back.’ He pulled her out of the way of a raucous group of sailors who were heading up the platform complete with attendant girlfriends.
‘You will write, won’t you?’ Liz asked, once the noisy crowd had passed. ‘Keep me posted. It’s bad enough having to worry about Dominic Gallagher.’ For Dominic, appropriately enough for a Flash Gordon fan, was now a trainee pilot in the RAF.
‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ said Adam lightly. ‘I’m a medic, remember? I’m the one who’ll be patching up the other chaps.’
‘So you won’t go and fling yourself in front of any bullets?’
‘Would you care?’
‘I would care,’ she assured him, uncomfortably aware of the tiny pause before she had answered him. She glanced away. To their left one of the sailors and his girlfriend were locked in a passionate embrace. Adam followed Liz’s gaze.
‘Looks like he’s trying to perform a tonsillectomy,’ he muttered. ‘By suction.’
‘Maybe I should give
you
a kiss. For luck.’
Adam turned his attention away from the couple and looked down very intently at Liz. And there was another of the pauses which seemed to be characterizing this conversation.
‘Kissing in public is vulgar, MacMillan,’ Adam drawled, the blandest of expressions on his face. ‘Don’t you know that?’
‘Kiss my hand, then,’ she suggested, extending it to him with a gaiety she was very far from feeling. ‘Like the gentleman you are.’
Mario had kissed her hand in all manner of extravagant ways. From Adam Liz expected the swift equivalent of a peck on the cheek, perhaps a joking comment to go with it. Instead, he took her hand, lifted it to his mouth and pressed a long kiss against the softness of her palm. He had his eyes closed, his eyelashes, much darker than his hair, thick and feathery against the smooth skin underneath them. She was reminded suddenly of a wet night in Buchanan Street.
She stood and watched his train pull out, waiting till it went out of sight. Then she wished she hadn’t. It gave her a real empty feeling. She would miss him, of course she would. He was a good friend. She just hadn’t been prepared to miss him quite so much.
Adam wrapped his greatcoat more tightly about himself and settled into a corner of the compartment. The train was bloody freezing. The junior Army officer sitting opposite him was telling another - in great detail - what he’d got up to with a girl he’d picked up during his leave.
The young lady had clearly been very accommodating, but Adam didn’t think any woman deserved to be talked about like that. He loathed men who boasted of their conquests. The naval officer sitting beside him was, however, listening in with interest. It looked as if he’d be pitching in with his own story soon.
Great, he thought glumly, exactly what I need - God knows how many hours locked up in a train full of sexually frustrated and overtalkative servicemen.
Honesty compelled him to admit that he himself might not be much better. When it came to sexual frustration he was something of an expert. He could write the bloody book.
He had promised Mario he would look after her. He had kept his promise well. Whenever he had seen that she was tired or fed up or depressed, he had offered a drink, or a trip to the cinema. Nobody, not even Cordelia, had ever known what it had cost him to spend so much time in her company and be forced to treat her like a sister.