‘I was beginning to think you were on duty tonight.’
‘I was...painting my toenails.’
He could tell she wished she could bite back the words the instant they fell from her lips. Still, he couldn’t help his eyes from dropping down to the dusty, unflattering sandals that the charity workers tended to wear around here. Although they probably beat the hot desert boots his guys had to wear in such heat.
Glossy, bright red nails stared back at him, and he felt the corners of his mouth tug.
‘Very dainty.’
‘You’re laughing at me,’ she accused.
‘Not at all,’ Hayden corrected. ‘I’m laughing with you. There’s a difference.’
She grunted slightly but didn’t answer immediately.
‘Looks nice,’ he added.
‘I know you might think it sounds silly,’ she informed him airily, ‘but it’s amazing how a hint of something like this can restore some degree of femininity, especially in a place like this.’
‘Right,’ he gritted out.
The last thing he needed was to be reminded of how gloriously feminine Bridget was. Like he wasn’t barely keeping a grip of himself as it was.
Her expression changed and she looked almost disappointed. As if he had somehow let her down.
It should concern him how much that got to him.
‘I’ve been here less than a week, but I know that as the months go by something like seeing my toenails a pretty colour could lift my mood. We go around all day in combat trousers and neck-choking Ts, covered in dust, or mud, or worse—blood. A bit of nail polish helps you to feel like you’re still a woman underneath it all.’
‘I wasn’t judging,’ he heard himself say.
‘Well...good.’ But she still didn’t look convinced, and before he realised it he was speaking again, a soft smile pulling at his mouth.
She had softened him.
‘Have you ever read the diary of Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin?’
‘I don’t know who that is...’ She frowned.
‘He commanded a field ambulance brigade in Belsen concentration camp back in 1945.’
‘Oh.’
‘In his diary, he recalls how he and his men were crying out for supplies to help with diphtheria, dysentery, severe malnutrition. Their conditions were inhuman. There was so much equipment his brigade needed but couldn’t get hold of. Then the British Red Cross arrived, and shortly afterwards a crate of lipstick turned up.’
She watched him closely, her attention piqued. Something shifted through him.
‘It wasn’t what his men wanted at all, it wasn’t going to help heal those people, yet it ended up being an act of genius. After years of being treated worse than animals, nothing more than the number tattooed on their arm, the women were suddenly given something to restore their humanity. A humble red lipstick. It made them feel like they were people again, like they were alive. So, yes, Birdie, I understand how the simple act of painting your nails could be uplifting.’
For a moment he could see her pondering and he wished he knew what was going on in her head.
‘I wish lipstick and nail varnish could help everyone.’ She exhaled deeply at last. Relaxing a little and letting her guard down again. ‘I had a patient this morning, a young girl barely older than fifteen who had been caught with a spear blade. The local men had been out hunting and she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
He nodded in empathy, though a part of him lamented the fact that she’d had to slip back into her old routine of dodging the personal and sticking with the work-related in order to talk to him.
‘The injury was severe, and they’d treated her the best they could, using what medicines they had available to them, but she needed surgery. She was feverish, hallucinating and there were clear signs of sepsis, and we don’t have the surgical facilities here in Jukrem, so we were lucky we happened to have a surgeon visiting from the main hospital for a couple of days, who was able to carry out a full hysterectomy and save her life,’ Bridget continued, oblivious. ‘But I realised that in a small community like this great value would have been placed on her fertility. Essentially, without being able to have children, she has fewer prospects.’
‘Yeah. It’s a crappy situation. You save her life on one hand but condemn her with the other. Sometimes you must feel like you can’t win.’