A Cleft Of Stars

'Let me get it for you. I. . I can't explain'

The constraint and touchiness was back in full force between us. I watched her with growing puzzlement as she avoided what were clearly containers for the water and filled instead a cup which she took from the table. I felt her concern for my thirst was more like the professional sympathy of a nurse for a patient than that of lover for lover. She had several small sips from my cup when I had finished. The same sort of feeling was evident when we went back to the pilot, acting like compassionate strangers in seeing to his wound. I used the derringer flick-blade to cut away his flying-jacket. The wound had almost stopped bleeding and we bathed it clean. It looked harmless for so deadly a thing — a small bruised blue-black swelling on the collarbone with a puncture in the centre.

Nadine eyed me questionably when I proceeded to cut away the clothing behind his neck.

'Look,' I pointed out. 'There's no exit mark. That's bad. It means that the bullet went in from the front, smashed his collarbone and penetrated deeper still. If it's ended up lodged against his spine, he's had it. On the other hand, it may have shattered into fragments when it hit bone. Then he may still have a sporting chance. Rankin's rather fond of dum-dum bullets.'

She swung back on to her heels and the thing which separated us flared lip.

'He's fond of dum-dum bullets-' she echoed. 'You know that!'

'Yes — I know that.'

'Guy,' she burst out. 'You're not here with me. . you haven't come back. . from something I don't, can't understand. . please. . I can't reach you. . please. I dropped my eyes and tugged the ripped sleeve clear of the wound. Then I looked up at her. There was something in her eyes I had never seen before. I should have taken her in my arms. But like a shell-shocked impotent I could not reach for the love I needed.

Instead I answered harshly: 'I found a man's head with the back of it blown away. Only a dum-dum bullet does that. Rankin fired the shot.'

She buried her head in her hands as if I had thrown the horrible thing on the ground in front of her.

'The head was off its body,' I went on. 'Rankin spent half last night trying to do the same to me.' I got up. 'Save yourself any feelings you may have about the way I roughed him up. I want him alive for one reason only.'

She looked up at me from where she knelt with a kind of uncomprehending despair. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, I wanted to be alone. I wanted to think, think, think. I even asked myself the savage question, looking down on her lovely face, whether a love born of so strange a thing as The Hill had the strength to neutralize the acid which was eating into me.

'See here, Nadine,' I said more gently. 'A great deal has happened since. . since my. I could not bring myself to use the word 'walkout' to her face. 'I'm sorry if I sound half out of my mind. Yesterday. last night. .' The words would not come. I temporized and got a grip on my voice.

'Let's strap up Talbot as best we can. He could be dying. From the limp way he hung on my shoulder I'd say he's paralysed from the neck down. He needs a doctor and hospital care. So does Rankin. I want to check on him also.'

'Guy,' she replied raggedly, 'I want this thing your way. You've been through some awful hell you won't tell me about. Not long ago you would have. What is between us has slipped somehow. I don't know where anything begins or ends. But I'd like you to understand that for me it is simply enough that I've found you.'

My rawness erupted again. 'Sands?' I demanded.

'Don't say it like that! Yes, Dr Sands told me, but it was my idea! And I talked Peter into flying me to The Hill to look for you! He'd just bought the Tiger Moth for himself. He thought it was a bit of a lark. We told Father we were off together to a flying rally. He was all for it — daughter on the rebound with his personal pilot. He was only too glad to think I was getting you out of my system — a blasted jail-bird he called you — does all this really matter to you, Guy?'

'And you expected to find the flown bird?'

I regretted the crack the moment it slipped out. She brought her voice under control and said softly, with only a shadow of rebuke. 'I expected to find you. The man I loved. I haven't. I have the person of Guy Bowker, it's true, but not. . not. '

Trying for a breathing-space to sort things out inside myself, I fenced: 'This man's going to die while we stand here talking. Somehow we've got to get him to hospital in Messina.'

My brusque voice annoyed but steadied her. 'We can put the mattress from Rankin's bed in your Land-Rover,' she said. 'I'll hold him firm over the rough bits of track.'

'There isn't a Land-Rover.'

'It's not possible!'

'Mine's a shoestring outfit. Everything I have can fit into a couple of gunny-bags. In fact, it's all lying rignt now at the foot of The Hill.'

Did you walk? Through this sort of country?'

'No. I bought a boat in Messina. It's made out of an old flying-boat float with an outboard motor, but it goes. And it's shallow enough for the river.'

'But there's scarcely any water! Peter and I followed the river upstream from Messina.'

'It probably looks worse from the air than it really is. There are pools and shallow channels connecting them. You have to look for them, hard. Plenty of sand.'

'How did you manage to get over that?'

'Portage. The hard way. I dragged the Empress of Baobab as I call her across the sandy bits at the end of a rope. I guess I've got harness sores on my shoulders as a result. I'll never forget those sixty miles of pulley-hauley.'

'You really were keen to lose the world and me, Guy.' '

The boat's our only transport for Talbot.'

'From what you say it would be madness to attempt it.' 'In the first place I doubt whether we'd get him alive to the river. I've moored near a big pool at the confluence.' 'And. . Rankin?'

'It's about time we took a look at him too.'

We went outside to where he lay. His face was puffy and mottled and he was deeply unconscious. His breathing frightened me. When I pulled open his shirt Nadine flinched. The red-and-purple welt across his chest looked far worse than Talbot's wound.

'You. . you did that, Guy?'

It was one of those rhetorical questions which, under the circumstances, threw me on the defensive. 'You saw,' I rejoined. 'He had two guns and a knife. I was unarmed.'

She didn't reply immediately but gestured towards the looming, shimmering Hill.

'It was a place of love — that is what it meant to me. All the things that go with love. Now somehow it's changed, horribly, into something else. You're part of the change. . oh, Guy, Guy, doesn't the queen's ring still mean what it did?'

I could not face her hurt, pleading look: there was too much to explain all at once.

'Nadine, neither of us is in any shape for the questions which are uppermost in our minds. We're pretty well at the limit. Let's leave it and get some rest. I'll clean up first. We'll talk later and also try to make a plan about these two. I can't see that we can do anything for them at present. We're as marooned here as if we were on a desert island. Now give me a hand with Rankin.'

She looked at me penetratingly for a moment; and when she spoke her voice sounded less overwrought. "I'm almost afraid to touch him for fear of what it might do to him.'

We brought the stretcher over to him and, as gently as we could, lifted him on to it. We gave Talbot the truckle bed. When we had finished, the uncomfortable vacuum seemed once more to envelop us. This time it was Nadine who eased things.

'What we need is tea and something to eat. I'll fix it.'

The snack meal was a silent, strained little affair with only an occasional commonplace exchanged between us. Afterwards I sat on the rock floor by the cave entrance, meaning to keep watch over the terrain, on which the sun was beating remorselessly down. Nadine went inside. I loaded the magazine of Rankin's Mauser and put it by me — against what sort of contingency I wasn't quite sure. The unwinding process caught me unawares, and I fell asleep. It was dusk when I snapped into wakefulness. The Mauser had gone from my side and there was a soft leather cushion for my face to rest on.