Raging Sea, Searing Sky

by Christopher Nicole

  ‘You’re good for my image too,’ he told her, wondering if Uncle Clive had sold the Navy the defective shells which had failed at Jutland.

  ‘Oh, Lewis,’ she said, squeezing his hand. ‘If only you were five years older.’

  ‘Is that important?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re just too young,’ she complained, and added with a touch of the petulance she had shown in Hyde Park, ‘you shouldn’t be here at all.’

  Which didn’t lessen her pride at having the youthful hero in her care. And Matron, who was a worldly wise woman and realised that the quickest way to get a wounded sailor back on his feet was to make him want to do that, encouraged her girls to set up personal relationships with the patients. Thus when Lew was able to leave his bed, so slowly and weakly, his big muscles wasted by the weeks of inactivity, it was May who helped him on to the gallery where he could sit in the late summer sunshine, and it was May who held his arm and made him put it round her shoulders as she assisted him to walk the few steps which were all he could immediately manage. That she was doing the same for half a dozen other convalescents did not bother him. It was just magnificent to be able to touch her, and see her every day.

  *

  Father came down whenever he could, but Lew had only been in the convalescent home a month when he was unusually serious, and yet elated as well. ‘Lew,’ he said. ‘I’m leaving the Embassy.’

  ‘To do what?’ Lew cried in dismay.

  ‘I’ve been recalled to Norfolk. I’m being given a command. The Vermont.’

  ‘Oh, Father,’ Lew cried. ‘I’m so proud.’ The Vermont was one of the United States’ newest battleships.

  Father obviously was too. ‘But it burns me up to have to leave you,’ he said. ‘The people here tell me it’ll be at least another two months before you’ll be fit again.’

  ‘I’ll be seventeen,’ Lew said.

  ‘That’s a fact. Lew, I’ve put the situation before the Admiralty.’

  Lew waited.

  ‘And they’re agreeable to give you an honourable discharge,’ Joe said. ‘So you can come home to the States.’

  ‘I don’t want to go back to school, Father,’ Lew said. ‘I just couldn’t now.’

  ‘Not even Annapolis?’

  ‘Annapolis? Oh, Father...’

  Joe McGann grinned. ‘I’ve been corresponding with the Navy Secretary too. He, all America, is proud of you, Lew. And no one can argue against your experience. You’re still a little young, but when you come home, you’ll be given a place. A commission will be a formality.’

  ‘Oh, Father,’ Lew said again. ‘But...I’d rather see this war out. It can’t take too much longer, can it?’

  ‘You may be surprised about that,’ Joe said.

  ‘Then there’s all the more reason. Will the Royal Navy have me back?’

  Joe gazed at him for several seconds. Then he grinned and squeezed his shoulder. ‘I should think they’ll be glad about that,’ he said. ‘When they fight their next battle.’

  So, get well, in time for the next battle. Because the next time the Grand Fleet would know more about what it was doing, and the signalling would be better and the gunnery, and besides, it would have a new commander-in-chief, for Admiral Jellicoe, if not condemned for his caution, had yet been promoted to a desk job as a Sea Lord, and Sir David Beatty had been given the fighting command in his place.

  Get well, and enjoy May. ‘Matron says you’re to get dressed and go walking properly,’ she told him at the beginning of August. ‘Come along now.’ Because she could be very bossy when she chose.

  A new uniform had been provided, and she helped him put it on. May Gerrard, helping him to dress. It was impossible to be unaffected, but she had been trained to the usual nursing attitude of treating men’s little foibles as mere nuisances, and besides, she had helped him so often in the past it hardly seemed important, even if there hadn’t been eleven men watching. ‘There we are,’ she panted. ‘Now, here are your crutches.’

  He fitted the padded pieces of wood under each arm.

  ‘But you must try to take the weight on your leg whenever you can,’ she said. ‘Mr Porter is waiting for you.’

  ‘Aren’t you coming?’ he asked in alarm.

  ‘Good heavens no, Lewis, I have people to attend to here.’

  There was a disappointment, but he was rather relieved that she wasn’t with him when he became entangled in the crutches and fell down the steps; quite apart from the embarrassment of it, she would never have been able to help him back up; Mr Porter was a big strong male nurse, but it took him some time, and he decided that Matron’s optimism had been premature.

  ‘Oh, Lewis,’ May said when he was helped back to his bed. ‘Now you’re all bruised.’

  She applied soothing ointments, and Matron came in to look at him, and Dr Sutton to examine him, and it was decided it had just been an accident. Next day there were two male nurses to assist him, and he actually got down the path, although it was terribly exhausting and he again found the crutches very difficult to handle. But gradually he got the mastery of them, and in a fortnight was moving quite briskly, even if he was still subject to total exhaustion. By then Father had been down to say goodbye. ‘Take care,’ Joe McGann said. ‘And remember, if you change your mind...’

  ‘I’ll be home,’ Lew promised. ‘Maybe I’ll wind up serving on Vermont.’

  ‘That would be great,’ Joe said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Lew said. ‘But Father...you do understand?’

  ‘Of course I understand, boy,’ Joe McGann said. ‘I just hate to think of being three thousand miles away from you. But remember I’m there.’

  *

  ‘Now I’ll have to be your family,’ May said when the captain had gone.

  ‘I’d like that,’ Lew told her.

  ‘Would you, Lewis? Would you?’

  He held her hand. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  She gave a crooked little smile. ‘Are you going to pretend you were in the Navy a year and didn’t have lots of girls?’

  ‘None of them were the least like you,’ Lew said.

  She made a moue. ‘Anyway, it’s against the rules to fraternise with the patients.’

  He held her hands tightly. ‘I’ve been breaking rules all my life.’

  ‘I know,’ she said seriously. ‘And telling lies to innocent girls.’

  ‘I never told you my age on the Lusitania,’ he protested. ‘You guessed it.’

  ‘You must have thought I was a total fool.’ She flushed at the memory of it.

  ‘I thought you were a dream come true,’ he said.

  She gazed at him for several seconds.

  ‘But I’m only just coming up to seventeen,’ he said sadly.

  She freed her hand. ‘Seventeen is a lot older than fifteen,’ she commented, enigmatically.

  But encouragingly. He felt almost as he had done on board the Lusitania the night she had invited him to her cabin. How he wanted to ask her just what she had had in mind — but that would be better kept. Now he knew what he had in mind, and that was far more exciting. For overlaying the daily presence of her, touching him, doing things to and for him, was the memory of Wanda taking off all of her clothes before him, and then lying down beneath him. The thought of May doing that could set his heart pounding its way out of his chest. Would she do that? May Gerrard was not a prostitute, but an extremely well-bred young woman who might even become the niece of a lord or something. Yet there was something wrong with her. Or was the word ‘wrong’ just an example of his New England Puritan thinking? She obviously liked men, in a big way. As Robby Robson would have said — he wondered if Robby was still alive? — she had ants in her pants, and again as Robby would have said, ‘When you meet a girl like that, boy, it’s such fun picking them all out.’ Robby’s expressions, however vulgar, were peculiarly stimulating.

  Therefore it was even doubtful if May was a virgin. Presumably that should make him mad. But it only made him want her the more.
<
br />   Something she could of course tell, both by his words and expressions and the way he reacted to her touch. But she continued to be as enigmatic as ever.

  *

  His recovery took much longer than he had anticipated. It was nearly Christmas before he could get around without the crutches, and even then Dr Sutton told him he needed at least another couple of months before he could be returned to duty. May apart, it was the most frustratingly lonely period of his life. It was lonely because he alone of all the patients in the home had no relatives to come visiting him, and although Father, and Uncle Billy, and his Long Island cousins, wrote regularly and sent him all manner of parcels it was still depressing to be the only one not surrounded by eager women, young and old, on visiting day. And it was frustrating because the war just ground on and on and on. While he had been desperately wounded two great land battles had commenced, with the Germans launching their greatest attack of the conflict so far against the French at Verdun, and the British attempting to relieve the pressure on their Allies by counter attacking in the Somme. Both attacks had failed, and hundreds of thousands of men on each side had been killed or wounded, with no commensurate gain. The same thing seemed to be happening in the east, where the Russians and the Germans and the Austrians were slogging it out, and in the south, where the Italians were fighting the Austrians. Compared with the fighting on land very little was happening at sea, although there were rumours of another sortie by the High Seas Fleet, but this time it had avoided battle altogether and gone scurrying back to port as soon as it had learned that Beatty was at sea. Far more worrying was the news that the submarines were getting more and more successful in the North Atlantic.

  In November, Mr Wilson was re-elected President, on a platform which had definitely rejected the idea of the United States ever entering the European War, which, as Father wrote:

  Seems definitely to be that. On the other hand, we are hearing disquieting rumours that the Germans are intending to resume unrestricted submarine warfare — which they had abandoned following American protests over the sinking of the Lusitania — and God alone knows what will happen should they sink an American ship. I know it must be galling for you to be stuck in hospital when there is so much going on, and I wish I could be there with you. But at least it is good to know you are safe.

  There was a ball on Christmas Eve, to which all the convalescents were invited, and the nurses wore pretty gowns instead of uniforms and danced with those able to move about. Lew was in great demand, and he was happy to stay on the floor, because he had that very morning been given the best of Christmas presents, from Dr Sutton. ‘I think we can let you go, in a couple of weeks,’ the doctor had said.

  ‘A couple of weeks, sir?’ Lew had cried.

  ‘Well, let’s make it a month. End of January. Can you stand that?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir,’ Lew said. He felt ready to leave now; his leg seemed as strong as ever, although he would carry a deep and ugly scar for the rest of his life. Only the separation from May caused him the slightest regret.

  ‘So you’re off,’ she said, looking up at him as they circled the floor. She wore her favourite dark blue and her hair was loose; she was entrancing.

  ‘I guess I am. Heck, do you realise that I have been in hospital, counting Edinburgh, for seven months, all but?’

  ‘You’re lucky to have two legs,’ she pointed out. ‘What are you going to do when you leave here?’

  ‘Go back to sea, I guess.’

  ‘And get shot up again?’

  He grinned. ‘I think I’ve been sunk enough times. Three could be my lucky number.’

  ‘Then the next time will be four,’ she said.

  The music stopped, and they were standing by a doorway leading from the mess hall, which was being used as a ballroom, into the corridors to the wards. Still holding her hand, he moved towards it.

  She checked herself. ‘Against the rules,’ she said.

  ‘For just five minutes.’

  She hesitated, and her tongue came out for a moment, then she stepped through, into the empty corridor, and to the right, so that they were in the angle of the door and completely hidden from the people in the room. And in the same instant was in his arms, and if he had found her hungry on board the Lusitania she was starving now. Her body worked on his, her tongue seemed to scour his mouth, her hands slid up and down his back, down to his buttocks and up to his shoulders. While he was doing the same, caressing her bottom, her shoulders, sliding his hand round in front to hold her breasts. Then she did the most amazing thing of all, as her hand went down his front to hold him, through his pants. There was a lot to hold.

  ‘God,’ she whispered, ‘To see you there, every day, to touch you...’

  Once again he knew the utterly compelling realisation that she could feel exactly as he did, in reverse, and that she wanted everything he did too.

  ‘May.’ He swept her from the floor, glorying in his returned strength. ‘There’s no one in the ward.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Put me down, Lewis.’

  He sighed, and obeyed. ‘Because I’m seventeen? And you’re nineteen?’

  ‘Because we’d be caught, and we’d both be in trouble.’

  She remained against him.

  ‘Oh, heck,’ he said, holding her again. ‘I’m going to be gone in a month.’

  Once again her tongue came out, cautiously. ‘Do you really love me, Lewis?’

  ‘Love you? I adore you.’ Now was no time for worrying whether that was true or not.

  She stared at him for several seconds. Then she said, ‘When you are discharged from here, you’ll be given a week’s compassionate leave, to visit your family, before you have to join a ship.’

  ‘What good is that? I don’t have a family in England.’

  Once again the tongue. ‘Don’t you, Lewis? I’m due for some leave as well. Would you like us to take it together?’

  He didn’t know whether he was standing on his head or his heels, as she could see. ‘You mustn’t say a word to a soul,’ she told him. ‘I’ll leave here before you, so as not to arouse any suspicions. I’ll tell you where to go.’

  The rest of the evening, the rest of the month, passed in a daze. May refused to dance with him again that night, as several people had observed them leave the room for five minutes and there was some bantering from his ward mates, but more than one of the other nurses had also taken their favourite patients for a brief breath of air, although Lew did not suppose they had all made assignments.

  An assignment! A whole week, together. With all that implied. Could it be possible? It seemed more and more unreal as the days went by, and May was the same old May. When, the next day, he attempted to give her a squeeze, she frowned and shook her head severely. So he had to be patient, and pray that she would not again have second thoughts. It was the third week of the month when she said, very softly, as she made his bed — he was now able to sit in the chair beside it and watch her — ‘Take the train to Lyme Regis, on the south coast, and go to Mrs Cartwright’s boarding house. Don’t forget, now, Lyme, and Mrs Cartwright’s boarding house.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘Just do it,’ she said, and gave one of her crooked smiles. ‘Unless you’ve changed your mind?’

  He hadn’t done that. And to think that she hadn’t either! Next day she said goodbye to all the ward. ‘I’ll be back in a fortnight,’ she said. ‘But you won’t be here, Mr McGann.’ She held out her hand. ‘May I wish you every success in your next assignment?’

  Then she was gone, and he had five more days to wait. Five days in which she would be doing, what? But he didn’t care. Just five more days. Then four, three, two, one...Matron was in Dr Sutton’s office when he reported. He had already had his final examination, and carried his new kitbag.

  ‘Well, Lewis, there were times I thought I’d never get rid of you,’ Dr Sutton said with a smile. ‘Now, here is a railway warrant for a week’s compassionate leave, and then another for you to
report to Portsmouth one week from today. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Where will you spend the week, Lewis?’ Matron asked. She knew he didn’t have any family.

  ‘Some friends of my father’s have asked me to stay with them, Matron.’

  ‘Oh, how nice. I was so afraid that you’d be all alone.’

  ‘No, Matron, I won’t be all alone.’

  If he could believe it. It was actually possible to get from Gloucestershire down to the Dorset coast fairly easily, although all the way his heart was singing while his mind alternated between wild exhilaration and total despair, that she might not be there. What would he do then? He simply had no idea.

  But then, he had no real idea what was going to happen if she was there. His imagination couldn’t cope.

  Lyme in January was a cold and depressing place, the sea slate grey and menacing, the empty streets filled with a whistling wind. The stationmaster gave him directions to Mrs Cartwright’s house, clearly bewildered that he should wish to come to such a place out of season for his precious furlough, and he humped his kitbag and walked down the street, to find himself on the front, where the wind was even stronger, and as the tide was out the little harbour looked a dreadfully depressing mud flat, on which the fishing boats rested on their legs.

  The boarding house was not difficult to locate, and he knocked on the door, feeling more nervous than ever before in his life, while his teeth were chattering, although he was wearing a greatcoat.

  ‘You’ll be Mr McGann,’ Mrs Cartwright said. She was a tall and somewhat severe looking woman, but she had a twinkle in her eye.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘I’m expecting you. Come in out of the cold.’

  He stepped inside and she closed the door. ‘We don’t get many visitors this time of year,’ she remarked. ‘Lord, but you’re chilled. I’ll make you up a pot of tea.’

  Lew shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He desperately wanted to ask, but he didn’t dare.