Are you hurt? Sally asked Nettice. But Nettice needed to wait for breath.
I got sucked down, she said, her lips beginning to shiver a little. I was very deep and gone. I was very deep.
She paused for the breath she had not yet fully got back after her long fall through the layers of the sea.
I was beyond what you could believe I could ever come up from. The horse was down there. It came up underneath me. It tangled its mane in my hand. It got beneath me and brought me up here to you. It was an instrument of God.
Some yards off, the horse was laboring and still protesting.
Save it, poor beast! called Nettice. It labored away and turned to give them one last flash of a panicked, unexpectant eye. Its neck sank and the nostrils tried to hold their place above the sea. It reached a point—fifty yards away or more—where its hindquarters began to drag it down backwards. So it went under, whinnying until choked off.
It was God’s will for you, Nettice, said Slattery crazily.
But Nettice howled for the loss of her pony. The suck of water was now what Sally heard above all. The hollow cries of others seemed to disperse somewhat as all the parties to the Archimedes’s disaster drifted further apart.
An unmeasured time passed in the water. Naomi was hushed, and reassured Mitchie still, and Honora chattered from an instinct that while she was full of talk she could not be consumed by the sea. The boy with the shrapnel spike cried out once and again. But those things were to be expected. What was not expected was that a soldier or sailor secure on the loops of rope would let go as if he had seen a better prospect nearby. The sergeant yelled after them but they were no longer regimental enough for him to stop them.
Where are all the destroyers and troopships and such? Sally heard Naomi ask. We see them all the time when things are normal.
The sergeant said, It may be they’re too frightened to come near. The U-boat, you understand.
No one tried to paddle with that little plank. Where would they paddle to? They were on a sea lane, were they not? They were on a sea that was all sea lane.
Patience, said Mitchie so clearly. Do we have water on this float, Nurse Durance?
No, Matron, Naomi admitted.
Mitchie should be raging with uncontained, overflowing pain.
Well, said Mitchie, one wouldn’t expect…
Naomi leaned over the side of the raft. She whispered to Sally. You come up here and I’ll go down there.
Not yet, said Sally. I’m happy, she lied.
She chose not to be up there with Mitchie’s great damage and be powerless before it. Honora—offered the same—said, Don’t know if I could manage it without showing the world my fat arse.
The sergeant laughed but without prurience. The other soldier with the younger boy, the original occupants, were utterly silent.
After a further interval, Naomi leaned over the side and confided to her sister that Mitchie’s pelvis was intact. The upper thighs though—hopeless. Compound fractures both. I’ve got a soldier’s belt on one and some of my blouse on the other.
Sally leaned her forehead against the raft’s black rubber flank while Naomi began to lift Nettice, who was vulnerable for lack of a preserver. Nettice was light to lift and of surprising agility. The sergeant did not help but not out of ill will. After so much presence and command he had gone suddenly silent. The high intoxication of his reaching the raft waned in him. He lost his powers of command as awful surprise and cold entered him.
When Nettice disappeared aboard Sally thought it grew suddenly cold in the water. Ridiculous to think such a thing. But you could believe the little woman—in rising to the deck of the raft—had shed off upon them the iciness of the depth she’d been to. In the surf back home, all you did was cry to your sister or to young Macallister, Getting cold! Going in! Into the golden strand where the sun was warm honey on quivering shoulders. She’d half-imagined till now that she had the same choice here. But now she knew by a reflection of her own coldness in Honora’s blue lips that she didn’t. One of the soldiers along the loops of ropes began to sing raggedly.
Through lack of memory or life force he ceased.
Thank Christ, yelled someone from the far side of the raft. Don’t need that papist shite!
For the Inniskilling Fusiliers, it was known, were from a divided Ireland—though the sea was willing to accommodate them all equally.
She could not separate herself from the cold. It seemed determined to be her. The idea of being incarnate cold put her in a panic she was hard-pressed to manage. She felt cheated that—with all it was cracked up to be—the Mediterranean could prove so bitter in the early or midsummer. Best not to say a word about it, though the useless words about the shivers pressed against her lower lip like a sneeze. Nor did she think that climbing aboard would help. She believed it would exhaust her more than give her warmth.
Are we all here then? called Naomi. She made a graceful reconnaissance over the side. No doubt over all four sides. She was the authority. Yes, Naomi could be heard, checking the unseen side of the raft. Five handsome soldiers and a sailor this side. Are we holding on? Are we downhearted, boys?
That was the stupid thing the troops always called: Are we downhearted? As their troop ships took them off to get minced.
Two of them at least replied. We’re still having a committee meeting on the downhearted business, Nurse.
Ragged half-witticisms.
You’ve got the tay going there, have you, Miss? And, What time’s the shuffleboard start?
A copper tank—a cube of about a yard each way—came cruising unevenly along. Two men held on by some sort of railing soldered to two of its sides. It seemed likely to roll at any encouragement but was kept steady by its two passengers’ life jackets.
Holding one of its handles was Sergeant Kiernan and, grabbing the other, an orderly whom Sally had seen but whose name she did not know. They were twinned. Each relied on the other to keep their cube steady.
Honora called to him. She seemed pleased to be able to make her complaint in person. This is nothing like what you told us, Sergeant Kiernan. All that Greek god claptrap. Never this cold at Clifton Gardens!
Kiernan was actually smiling! Keep angry with me, Nurse, he suggested. Angry people have a lot of staying power.
He made the water more habitable. A sort of hope floated up with him and raised the temperature for the moment.
He asked who was aboard and Naomi told him. Two wounded men. And Sister Nettice. And our three soldiers here.
Naomi—not quite in Sally’s line of sight from her position in the water—was doing a census for Kiernan. Apparently she inspected the young man with a steel fragment now.
This young fellow… he’s dead, I’m afraid.
The man’s sergeant roused himself, combating the decree. Are you right sure of that, Miss? he asked, sounding half hostile.
Feel the pulse, Naomi suggested. There is none.
Oh, Jamie, said the sergeant, doing his own assessment. Oh, Jamie.
Ease him down then, said Kiernan. That’s my suggestion.
Yes, said Naomi. I’ll take his life preserver first.
“He will swallow up death in victory,” intoned the sergeant in a grievous voice, “and the Lord God will wipe away tears…” He’s my fookin’ nephew.
What would you like me to do then? asked Naomi.
Let him go, said the sergeant with resignation. Let him go.