LITMIR.BIZ

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And us, of course.’

      ‘Are we very far from a—a settlement?’

      ‘An hour’s flight—someone goes once a fortnight to pick up provisions and post; the Coastal Express calls too with the odd crate.’

      She had to be content with that. The men fell to talking technicalities once more, leaving her to contemplate the awe-inspiring landscape.

      The sun was still shining brilliantly as Jeff brought the seaplane down close to a flat, lichen-covered tongue of rock, the mountains towered all round them with a narrow strip of rock between them and the sea, and scattered along it were wooden huts and what Annis vaguely supposed to be wireless stations; there was a round building too, standing well away from the rest. It looked remarkably lonely even in the late evening sun, but not for long. As they came to rest on the iron grey water she could see men emerging from the huts and running towards them. Two of them got into a small motorboat tied to a rickety pier and started towards the plane.

      ‘We’re here,’ said Freddy unnecessarily.

      There was nothing lacking in her welcome; any doubts Annis might have still been harbouring were drowned in the enthusiastic greeting she got from the men. There were more than a dozen of them, shaking her by the hand the moment she stepped rather gingerly on the rock, telling her their names, declaring that she was the answer to a prayer—just what the doctor had ordered.

      ‘I wasn’t aware that I had done any such thing,’ drawled a voice behind her, and to the accompaniment of shouts of laughter Annis turned round, bristling a little because the voice had held mockery.

      Its owner suited the scenery very well. He was large and rugged, with great shoulders and towering over everyone there. Good-looking too, only his dark eyes were cool and his mouth was a thought too straight for her liking. Not so very young either, she decided; his thick dark hair was grey at the temples.

      She held out a hand. ‘How do you do?’ she said in her sweetest voice.

      CHAPTER TWO

      THE HAND which grasped hers was hard and firm and cool, and when she looked at the doctor’s face she could see no trace of mockery there; she must have imagined it.

      He said in a deep slow voice: ‘Hullo, Annis, I’m so glad you have come—we’ve been taking it in turns to cook and we’re all very bad at it.’

      She said with a touch of frost because he had called her Annis without even asking: ‘I’m a nurse.’

      He said gravely: ‘We have almost no sickness here and—we hope—only occasional accidents, but if there is a mass outbreak of measles I, and I’m sure the rest of the team, won’t grumble.’

      There was general laughter at that and she laughed too, not because she found it very amusing but because it was so obviously expected of her. She looked up and saw the gleam in the doctor’s eye; probably he wanted to annoy her. ‘I don’t know your name…’ she reminded him gently.

      ‘Jake—Jake van Germert. I hope you’ll call me Jake—we’re all on the best of terms; you’ve met most of us, but there are several on duty. You’ll meet them in the morning.’ He looked over the men’s heads to speak to a short, fat man, a good deal older than the rest of them. ‘How about Freddy taking Annis to their hut, Willy, while we dish the supper.’

      She vaguely remembered shaking the fat man’s hand. Presumably he was the boss; he looked mild and absent-minded and probably had a remarkable brain. He smiled at her now and came to take her arm. ‘Lead on, Freddy. Annis, you can have ten minutes to make your beautiful self even more beautiful and then you shall have supper, such as it is.’

      The hut, which looked bare and unwelcoming from the outside, was a surprise. Its furniture was comfortable and the covers and cushions were brightly coloured. Two rooms led from the small living room, small too, but her bed looked comfortable and there was a good sized cupboard and a dressing table. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but she was agreeably surprised now. It wasn’t for a few days that she discovered that she and Freddy had been moved into the hut shared by the boss and the doctor, who had taken up quarters in one of the other huts, which while comfortable, had no living room and was more cramped. She unpacked a few things, did her hair and her face and with Freddy beside her, crossed the bare rocky ground between them and a larger hut which, he explained, was their communal centre, where they ate and played cards, and played records and spent their leisure. ‘We go climbing too,’ he added, ‘and fishing; it’s pretty quiet in the winter, though.’

      The understatement of the year, thought Annis. It seemed pretty quiet now, with nothing but the seabirds calling and the gentle wash of the icy water against the rock. ‘Holidays?’ she asked.

      ‘Oh, rather, everyone goes to Norway in turn— there’s a plane or they can go by the Coastal Express. I’ll go in a couple of months, though; I’ll be finished by then. Jake’s going too—he’s got a practice in Holland, you know.’

      ‘No, I didn’t know,’ said Annis dryly as they went into the hut.

      The men had certainly done their best. There was a long table running down the middle of the room and although there were no flowers, there were lighted candles, rather dimmed by the midnight sun but nevertheless festive. She was sat at the centre of the table, with the boss on one side and the senior engineer on the other. The doctor, she was vaguely annoyed to find, was sitting as far away as possible.

      The meal was, perforce, out of tins and whoever had opened them had been lavish with the can-opener—there was more than enough for everyone and a good deal over, and Annis found it a little pathetic the way they asked her every few minutes if the food was good. She praised it lavishly, hoping her inside wouldn’t rebel against the strange mixture which it was sampling. Everyone must have had a hand in preparing the meal; she worked her way through soup, cod, covered with a rich sauce which seemed to contain everything in the cookery book, a variety of vegetables, and rounded off with a steamed pudding. Over coffee they explained that they were due to fetch their stores very shortly, when she would find a much larger selection of groceries. They looked at her hopefully as they said it and she hoped that Freddy hadn’t made her out to be up to Cordon Bleu standard.

      They had had drinks first and wine with their meal, although she suspected that the men would have preferred beer. She was touched with their welcome, though, and resolved privately to feed them well as well as nurse them, although it seemed unlikely that there would be much of that; a tougher bunch of men she had yet to meet.

      ‘Where did your cook come from?’ she asked the boss.

      ‘Oslo—Sven’s sister…’he nodded across the table towards a fair young man who didn’t look more than twenty. ‘She was a nurse too, and a typist. Do you type, Annis?’

      She was glad that she could tell him that yes, she could type. ‘Not very well,’ she explained, ‘but I’m a bit rusty at it.’ Her pretty mouth curved in a smile. ‘Is there an awful lot to do?’

      ‘No, no—just once or twice a month, reports and so on, very simple.’

      ‘You’re not English?’ she asked him. ‘Although you speak it perfectly.’

      ‘Finnish—we are a very mixed bunch, mostly Norwegians though, with a couple of Swedes and of course Jake, who is Dutch.’

      ‘Yes, someone told me. What a blessing everyone speaks English, because I can’t understand a word of Norwegian or Finnish or Dutch—I don’t think I’d know them if I heard them.’

      He laughed comfortably. ‘We shall all teach you a few words and you will get quite expert.’

      The dinner party broke up presently, and Annis said goodnight to everyone, thanked them prettily for her welcome and dinner and made for her hut, secretly appalled at the doctor’s cool: ‘Don’t forget you are on duty tomorrow morning at seven o’clock, Annis. The shifts change over at eight so that the men going on duty breakfast at seven-thirty and the men coming off at

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