“Oh, just standing. But with encouraging looks on their faces.”

“You must be their constant thought,” he said.

“No,” she said. “There are ears and babies. And I do not want to be in anyone’s thoughts constantly.”

She shut her eye, was quiet a moment, then said, “The imagined is not the contrary of the real, John.” And after a longer pause, “I can smell the sea.”

He started to tell her about the prawn seller, who had indeed left both the scent and somehow the image of the sea behind her, but Emily was asleep before he had finished. He crossed the ward and returned the tract to the woman with the red hair.

“I have been among the worst,” she said, accepting the book from him.

“I too,” he said, and for three or four seconds they stood regarding each other as if the secret marks of the fire were on them.

There was one more visit before the day was out. Rizzo was changing Emily’s dressing. Lacroix waited for them just inside the ward. At the end of Emily’s bed was a screen of wood and white linen and through the linen he saw Rizzo’s outline, leaning and rising like a living watermark. After a few minutes the surgeon appeared around the side of the screen carrying a tin dish with the old dressing in it. They greeted each other. Lacroix kept his eyes off the dish, the pinkish linen. Rizzo said he would order tea and toast for them all. In the meantime Miss Frend was now in a condition to receive visitors.

She was pushing herself up into a sitting position. She did not need his help, thank you, though she allowed him to rearrange her pillows, then focused on his face, frowned and said, “I do not care how I look,” which made him laugh.

Rizzo rejoined them (smells of soap), and when the tea tray arrived in the arms of a man who looked winded by his climb from the kitchens, the surgeon poured for them all. The screen gave them privacy. Emily drank her tea, had a second cup and finished that also. They spoke about the hospital, about Glasgow, about the islands, the white house by the sea.

“Mr. Lovall,” she said, “arrived on a cow.”

Rizzo nodded. Perhaps he thought her mind was straying, touched still by whatever he had given her from his pharmacopoeia. But the conversation—polite, aimless—was evidence of something. At the very least there was nothing to evoke the room above them, what had taken place there, would take place there again. When the pot was empty and they had eaten the last of the cold toast, a bell was swung somewhere down in the belly of the hospital.