Free A Time of Secrets by Deborah Burrows Page A

hint of a whine in my voice. The last thing I wanted was to go through it all again, and I was worried that I’d caused real trouble for Eric.
    ‘Thank you, Sergeant Aldridge.’ His voice was dismissive. ‘That will be all.’
    Standing to attention, I saluted. He returned salute in a perfunctory manner, one that seemed to emphasise his boredom with me, the army and the world. I turned, but before I reached the door I heard his voice.
    ‘Sergeant?’
    I turned to face him. ‘Yes, sir?’
    ‘Have you seen a doctor about that hand?’
    ‘No, sir. It’s only sprained, I think.’
    ‘You should see a doctor.’
    ‘Is that an order?’
    ‘Do I have to make it an order?’
    ‘No, sir.’
    ‘Are you going to see a doctor?’
    ‘No, sir.’
    We looked at each other for what seemed like an age, but must have been seconds, really. The fact that Lieutenant Ross’s face had been punched so brutally no longer surprised me. What surprised me was that it hadn’t happened sooner. I refused to let him stare me down, and eventually the corner of his mouth lifted almost imperceptibly and he dropped his gaze to the papers on the desk in front of him.
    ‘That will be all.’
    I turned and walked out of the room.

Seven
    W hen I showed my injured hand to Captain Nancy Gabriel on Monday morning she took one look at it and ordered me to visit the infirmary in the Victoria Barracks. The hand did look most impressive, as overnight it had swollen to twice the size of the other and was now coloured a deep purple across the knuckles and down almost to the wrist.
    ‘I tell you, Sergeant, you’ve got to stop with the bare-knuckle fighting,’ said Jim Pope, the private who’d been ordered to take me there. In a jeep, no less! He chuckled at his own wit.
    I laughed politely, but gripped the edge of my seat firmly with my right hand. Jim was a cheerful twenty-year-old with a very freckled face, who loved driving the natty American jeeps. He especially loved to drive them very fast. In fact, a jeep had definite possibilities as a lethal weapon in the hands of Private Jim Pope. If we’d let him loose in Crete I suspected that it would have been the Germans who’d have ended up in retreat, and not the Allies. When he tore out of the front gate of Goodwood onto Toorak Road, I wished I had two hands available to grip the seat.
    ‘Watch it,’ yelled Jim to three unwary AWAS girls who stepped out onto the road from Fawkner Park. ‘They should look where they’re going,’ he said indignantly as they scurried back to the safety of the footpath.
    At the corner he pulled hard at the wheel and we rounded into St Kilda Road at speed. I was almost thrown out entirely when a military truck appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and forced Jim into evasive action. Nothing daunted, he raced along the busy road, only to pull up hard behind a stationary tram.
    ‘What’s got his goat?’ asked Jim a minute or so later. He was nodding towards an elderly man who was shaking his fist at us.
    ‘You shouldn’t have pulled out so suddenly from behind that tram,’ I said.
    Jim made a snorting sound. ‘We didn’t touch him.’ He looked across at me. ‘Did we?’
    ‘Watch the road, Jim,’ I said, through gritted teeth.
    I really thought my end had come when an American jeep darted out of Domain Road in front of us, missing our jeep by inches and almost forcing us into the South African Soldiers Memorial. Jim braked violently, swore, and stepped on the accelerator to pass the other jeep. The young GI who was driving the jeep in front picked up speed and made a very rude hand gesture. Jim accelerated hard and came alongside him. The two vehicles were now neck and neck, but Jim was in the tram lane and I nervously eyed the approaching traffic.
    ‘Mercy dash,’ Jim yelled to the other driver, pointing at me.
    I held up my hand as evidence. The American grinned, threw me a mock salute and pulled back, so we did manage – just – to avoid colliding with a