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Could they really be so uninterested? Frances wondered Could any uine, faced with so ht, she could see nothing in their manner to justify her discomfort Eventually she had allowed her own sheet to drop around her, had adjusted herself so that her seht the maximum of the breeze that whispered across the deck And when she did see one of the ly in their direction, still dressed in his high-necked tropical rig, she was forced to the conclusion that it was probably the women’s coolness that they coveted, rather than their bodies

She irls around her had slept soundly, the lack of several nights’ sleep a deht have kept the so many people made her uncoracefully, to give in to wakefulness, simply to enjoy the freedom to sit out there without fear of discovery She wrapped her cotton sheet loosely round her shoulders, and trod carefully to the edge of the group, from where she could just make out the foamed movement of the ship in the ocean Eventually she found a spot away fro into the distance

‘You all right?’ It was said quietly, so that only she could hear

Thea few feet away from her, his face carefully turned to the front

‘I’m fine,’ she murmured She kept hers towards the sea, as if they were in mutual pretence that they were not in conversation

He stood there for some tis beside her, braced a little as if in preparation for some unseen swell

‘You like it up here, don’t you?’ he asked

‘Very ht sound a little silly But I’ve found the sea makes me feelwell, happy’

‘You didn’t look very happy earlier’

She wondered that she could talk to him like this ‘I suppose the emptiness of it all overwhelmed me,’ she said ‘I didn’t feel comfortedthe way I usually do’

‘Ah’ She felt, rather than saw his nod ‘Well, she rarely does what you expect her to’

They were silent for a while, Frances unbalanced because they were no longer divided by a steel door Initially she had pulled her sheet up round her neck so that she was almost totally enclosed by it Now, she decided that was silly, a kind of extreme reaction to his presence And she let it slide down over her shoulders While reddening at her own audacity

‘Your whole face changes when you’re up here’

She glanced up at hirasped that he had overstepped some mark because he kept his eyes on the ocean ‘I kno it feels,’ he added ‘It’s why I like to stay at sea’

What about your children, she wanted to ask, but couldn’t frame it so that it didn’t sound like an accusation Instead she stole a peep at his face She wanted to ask him why he seemed so sad when he had so much to return to But he turned and their eyes locked Her hand lifted of its own volition to her face, as if to shield herself from him

‘Do you want me to leave you alone?’ he said quietly

‘No,’ she said The as out before she had had time to think about it And then both silenced, by aardness or surprise that she had said anything, he stood beside her, her personal sentry, as they stared out over the dark waters

The first slivers of light, fierce and electric, appeared thousands of miles distant on the horizon shortly before five He told her of how the sunrises could change, depending on which part of the equator they were travelling through, so of the sky with crea, short-circuiting the sky into dawn He told her how, as a young recruit, he had been able to list nearly all the constellations, had taken some pride in it, had watched theic of their reappearance hours later, but that when the war started he couldn’t look forthe distant hum of an enemy plane ‘It’s spoilt for me now,’ he said ‘I find it easier not to look’

She told hi shells in the Pacific ht duty, she would watch through theflap of her ward tent, wondering at e beauty even in those colours, she said War – or perhaps nursing – had taught her to see it in just about anything ‘It’ll coive it ti similar sentiments to the woundedthe?’

It took hi