As he held and kissed her, she knew it was no good expecting something which had never existed. Flowers she’d got (why?) but not because he’d known how she was. And honest common sense she’d got, because he was dead right about it being her decision. Love she’d got—of a kind; and right now as he held and comforted her she knew that limited though it was it was enough to smooth out all resistance or disappointment in her. At arm’s length she could keep herself intact from him, but the moment he touched her he could have asked her to strip naked and stand on her head and she would have done it. Why? For God’s sake why?
Moving from him, she said, ‘I’m sorry, Andy. Everything you say is right. I suppose, well, I sort of got myself worked up about it, not knowing whether to phone and tell you about it and all that.’
‘I understand. And I’m sorry, too, if I didn’t handle it right. After all’—he smiled, the brown skin wrinkling round his blue eyes—‘it’s not a situation I’ve been faced with before. Coming on top of all this other stuff I wasn’t up to it. Am I forgiven?’
She nodded and came to him again. As she pressed against him, knowing where the touch and the embrace would lead, that she would be lifted from her feet and carried to a bed, and knowing there would be no fierceness in his love-making, but a slow, relaxing gentleness, she made up her mind. No matter what he wanted, no matter whether after this ship business he left her and she never saw him again, she would keep the child. Boy or girl it would have something of him, something that really and truly belonged to her, and with that she would be content. As he put her on the bed and began to strip her and she lay back with her eyes shut, feeling his familiar hands about her, she told herself, Be content, Belle. Be content with small scraps of happiness because that’s all you’re ever going to get. And let’s face it, one way and another in this crumby life that’s all most people get though you don’t see them going round with long faces about it.
Two days later he went back to Devon. They were two days in which he had spent all his time with Belle, looked after her and been considerate and gentle, not from design, but because there had developed in him a new conception of her which arose from pity. Until now he had seen her as someone to be used and handled because she was part of a problem which he had to master. First of all in connection with Sarling, and now in this ship business. But all her life he realized she was going to be used and handled. For the first time in his life he was sorry for someone and the feeling was a luxury. But he knew that it was a luxury—so far as she was concerned—that he would cut off sharply the moment the helicopter lifted him from the foredeck of the Queen Elizabeth-2.
But in the following days in Devon while the kindness of thought towards her persisted, something else grew from it. Always he had been able to face the fact that if disaster struck then he would write himself off. It was no idle exercise in final heroics. He just knew that this would be, had to be, his way. He had known this almost from the moment of the success of his first swindle years and years ago. But now if he killed himself some part of him would be left behind, the child that Belle carried—and he knew that she would carry it and keep it. Through the child in Belle he would have continuity … but not on the terms he wanted. Was this then some further irony that the fates were threatening him with? The Raikes line would go on … but through a bastard fathered on a woman who never in a hundred years would he have dreamed of taking to Alverton Manor. So now he found himself thinking about the child more and Belle less, and there was an obstinate certitude in him which made him think of it always as a boy. He could see him, well looked after by Belle, but dragged about from flat to flat … ignored perhaps by any man she married, but more likely tolerated and indulged by a succession of lovers … growing up not as he would have wished. The thought hurt him. Things could go wrong and he would have to bow out knowing that all that was left of him would be the boy, unfathered, unplaced, knowing nothing of Alverton and the Raikes blood. It was then that, though he was now dead, a stronger hatred than ever for Sarling came back, a hatred that carried over into his feelings against Mandel and Benson who had picked up the weapon from Sarling’s hands and used it still against him.
Three days before the ship sailed he went back to London. Belle was going down to Southampton on the boat train on the morning of the sailing. He went down to Southampton the day before to stay the night at the Dolphin Hotel which was quite close to the docks. There would be no contact between them until he walked into her cabin just before sailing time.
Over lunch together before he went down to Southampton, he said, ‘You know what you’ve got to do. We’ve been over it often enough. You’ve got nothing to worry about. While the ship’s going over to Le Havre I’ll take you over the ground. It’ll be quite safe to do it together. People will be milling round getting settled and the stewards won’t have got to the stage of recognizing faces. It’s after Le Havre that we’ll have to be careful.’
Belle nodded. He had drilled her often enough about her part, and she knew that she could do it and would do it. The moment you were really on your way things became easy. At this moment she was not concerned with any of the ship detail. She was thinking ahead to New York and after. She was staying there a week and then flying back. It was the moment of arriving back that was in her mind. What happened then? She wanted to ask him but knew it would be unwelcome. In fact she was almost glad that she couldn’t ask him because she didn’t want to hear him say, ‘Well, we’ll meet a couple of times, clear up the financial end, and that will be that.’ And either you have the baby or don’t, my girl, she thought. And have it she would. And he was going to know. The fact that she had it might bring him back some time.… Oh, Belle, she censured herself silently, for God’s sake stop dreaming.…
He stood up briskly and moved to his bedroom for his overnight case. He couldn’t take it aboard with him from the hotel. It held a new pair of unmarked pyjamas, a new set of toilet gear, six gas canisters, a Very light pistol and four cartridges, an automatic pistol and a small jemmy for dealing with the door of the Officers’ quarters should this be locked. The next morning he would take a taxi to Southampton Station and leave the case, with only the pyjamas and toilet gear in it, at the Left Luggage depot and then go on to the docks with the rest of the stuff in his overcoat and suit pockets.
He came back, carrying the case and his overcoat and looked down at her, his face breaking into a slow smile. She remembered the first time she had ever seen him. Herself, as nervous as a kitten, and him, slitting open Sarling’s note and reading it without any movement of face. She remembered how through her nervousness she had felt sorry for him and had tried to show her sympathy. What a waste that had been. He needed nothing from anyone that he could not take without help. Oh, yes, she loved him, was trapped by her love for him, but at least she understood him.
He put down his case and coat and she stood up and went into his arms. He gave her a hug and kissed her, and then with a boyish grin said, ‘Miss that boat train and I’ll break your neck. Goodbye, love.’
He went and she watched him through the window get a taxi. He went off without looking up, and it suddenly came to her then that ever since the day she had told him about the child he had never made any other reference to it. He was useless to her and she was making a bloody fool of herself over him. If she had any sense she would go and get a train now, to anywhere but Southampton, and trust to luck that neither he nor any of Benson’s lot would ever find her. Go and live quietly somewhere, have the baby, and live happily ever after with her memories.
Going to her bedroom to make up her face, she had almost convinced herself that that was exactly what she would do. In the bedroom, lying on her dressing table was a bouquet of red roses which he must have smuggled into the flat. Propped against it was a note. To you both—with all my love, Andy.
She sat down on the bed holding the note, tears coming into her eyes. Surely, surely to God, underneath somewhere or the other, whether he knew it or not, what he had w
ritten must be the truth? It must be. Must be.
Chapter Thirteen
He took a taxi from his hotel to the station and left his case. He came out and took another taxi to the docks. He had the jemmy for the door, the Very pistol and four cartridges in one pocket of his coat, the automatic and three of the canisters in the other pocket and three in his suit pockets. He carried nothing on him to identify him except his passport and American visa. Neither his suit nor any of his clothes were marked.
He paid off the taxi short of the Ocean Terminal. It was a mild morning, a few high clouds being pushed up Channel by a steady westerly wind. The boat train was not in yet but a lot of passengers were arriving by car and taxi.
The Queen Elizabeth 2 lay alongside looking as though she had never moved since he had last seen her. He went into the Terminal and up to the top floor, showed his boarding permit—made out in a false name—at the visitors’ checkpoint and then went aboard into the Midships Lobby on Two Deck. As he moved into the rotunda-shaped lobby a ship’s photographer was taking photographs of people coming aboard. Later these would be displayed for purchase in the glass cases in the Shopping Area. Raikes put a hand up, twitched at his nose to hide his face and turned away from the photographer, losing himself in the movement of people. He went up the stairway to One Deck and then walked aft along the starboard side past the Beauty Salon and the Barber Shop and then out on to the One Deck Lido. Here he leant over the rail and watched the movement on the quay below and the passengers coming aboard. The boat train came in. He stayed, watching the movement of people, waiting to spot Belle, a green hat and a yellow coat … she liked bold colours. All the way down in the train he knew she would have been nervous, but it would go when she stepped aboard. Away across the water on the French side, near Loudeac, Berners and his party would be up, preparing to pass a long day, living for the darkness and midnight. Leaning over the rail, other people around him, he felt detached from it all, devoid of personality and of urgent purpose. At midnight, when he would stand out here and see the signal light flare up redly into the darkness from the helicopter, he would come coldly and efficiently alive and move up past the quarterdeck and the upperdeck to the boat-deck where he would go forward to see the Captain. The plan had been made. His confidence was entirely in it. Standing there, waiting for Belle, there was no thought in his mind of the child she carried.
He hung around until long after the boat train was in, then he walked forward and took a lift down to Four Deck. He went along to her cabin on the port side and she let him in. He held her in his arms and kissed her, did it with a warmth he didn’t feel, gave her the words she wanted, and saw as he stepped back from her that she was wearing round her neck a single row of pearls which she had worn when he had first seen her. With her, he knew, that would be from design not accident … but not, he was sure, because she felt that she should wear them now as a symbol of parting.
He locked the cabin door and waited while she emptied her suitcase, putting her things in drawers and the wardrobe. When the case was empty he put the automatic, the canisters, the Very pistol and cartridges and his coat, scarf, gloves and hat in it. Without a word, she locked the case and put it away.
He said, ‘Now I’m going to take you round and show you the ground. Remember it’s easy to get lost on a ship like this, so we’ll confine ourselves only to the parts which you will have to know. The whole ship will be milling like a beehive until long after she sails so nobody’s going to notice us.’ He gave her a quick grin and then cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. ‘From this moment you don’t have a thing to worry about. It’ll all go like clockwork.’
He slid his hands down and touched her pearls. ‘ You wore these the first day I saw you.’
‘A bad day for you.’
He shrugged. ‘In some ways. It made things a little more difficult. But nothing is ever entirely bad.’ His hands left her and he turned to the door, then paused and looked back at her. ‘There’s something I want to tell you. I hope you’ll agree. I want you to have the baby.’
‘Oh, Andy—’
‘Have it. We can talk about all the rest later.’
He opened the door for her. She went out, hiding her face from him, not wanting him to see her happiness, a happiness which she was projecting far ahead of this moment. I love you with red roses, and now this … Oh, yes, she knew he could be a devious bastard but not so deep that he would bother to say something like this when, so far as this plan was concerned, it was unnecessary. He knew she was his. He didn’t have to do or say anything out of the ordinary to keep it that way … But he was doing it. Doing it because he couldn’t help himself. Because there was something working in him which he couldn’t ignore.
Just be patient, Belle, she told herself, don’t rush anything, and particularly not him. There’s no need. It’s there in him, growing all the time.
She walked round with him, his hand sometimes holding her arm, steering her, hearing his voice as he explained things and, out of loyalty to him, she pushed her happiness away and concentrated on everything he said. On paper, over diagrams, she had done all this before, but now she was actually aboard the ship and the blueprints were real and solid … wood veneers and blue carpets, cabin doors and stairways, stewards and passengers and visitors moving around, tugs hooting and gulls calling and, somewhere in the bowels of this ship, the gold bullion already aboard.
He took her forward to A Stairway and they climbed up to the boatdeck. Looking over the handrail she could look down the stairwell through the decks, a drop of almost a hundred feet. From the top of the stairway on the boatdeck he took her back along the length of the deck, showing her the 736 Club, the Coffee Shop and the Juke Box, the Theatre, the run of shops and the two-tiered Double Room at the stern and, although she knew she would never have to do it, but knew too—because this he had impressed on her—that she must know that she could, he pointed out to her the places where she could drop the canisters, showing her where to stand, and where to toss them so that she could move unobtrusively away to safety herself. And while he spoke, casually, quietly, people moved around them laughing and talking. They went down the starboard side and then back along the portside to the top of the stairway.
He said, ‘Use this spot as point of reference. From here, you can get a lift down to Four Deck and then you’re only a few seconds from your cabin. Or you can go down the stairway. On the deck below this—the upperdeck—is the Look-Out Room. It’s a big lounge with a bar, and windows that look out over the foredeck. Tonight when all’s going well you can go there and watch the bullion lift. There are little blinds on the windows to stop glare at night but you can pull them aside. When you see them lift me off the deck you can go back to your cabin and sleep without worry.’
He took her down to the Look-Out Room and standing by the window showed her the foredeck. From here, he took her down to One Deck and along to the Deck Lido at the stern.
‘This is where you’ll wait with me tonight until we get Berners’s signal. Then I shall leave you and you’ll stay here until you see the first Very signal from the wheelhouse. You can’t miss it because it will be high in the air. If it doesn’t come within the time period you know what to do.’ He held her arm and looked at her. ‘We don’t have to discuss that one again, do we?’
‘No, Andy.’
‘Good. When you get the second wheelhouse signal, throw the canisters over, and then you can go forward and up to the Look-Out Room and watch the lift. And remember this, after that second signal your job is done. You’re just a passenger for New York and you know nothing. Now, you go back to your cabin. Call the steward and tell him you’re a bad sailor for the first few hours aboard and you’re going to rest and don’t want to be disturbed. As soon as the ship’s clear into the Channel I’ll come along and be with you until about half an hour before we make Le Havre. And don’t forget the cabin drill. If I’m in there with you and the steward ever knocks, we both go into the toilet compartment,
turn the shower on and you stick your head out and call to the steward to come in.’
Belle found her way back to her cabin without difficulty. Raikes went back to the Look-Out Room, ordered himself a drink and through the windows watched the preparations for the liner to be taken out.
A little after midday the Queen Elizabeth 2 was warped and nosed free from her berth by tugs. From the ship passengers waved to their friends and the crowd ashore. A band played, and the coloured streamers between ship and shore tautened and broke as the water gap widened. Tugs hooted, sirens blew, and taxi drivers kept a finger on their, horns in salute. The red and gold Cunard house flag stiffened a little in the breeze, gulls wheeled overhead, the sun edged through the high clouds, brightening the putty-coloured sun decks, and the lifeboats in their sage-green davits threw slow-moving shadows as the ship was manoeuvred. It was not just a ship that moved away from the quayside, but a holiday resort that moved and floated a place and a world of its own. Down in the Look-Out Room a few tables from Raikes, a gentle alcoholic was served his fourth brandy on a white-topped Arkana table. In the Britannia Restaurant the figurehead stared straight ahead of her at the glass swing doors and had no thought of ancient sisters who once lodged beneath bowsprits and never had the salt taste of spume from their lips. In one of the cabins de luxe a kleptomanic matron discovered that all the coathangers in the wardrobe were continental type and no use as keepsakes to steal thus saving the Company an average loss of eight thousand hangers a year. Some people, even before the lift and feel of the sea in the Solent had welcomed the liner, were already criticizing the drab design of the Hardy Amies stewards’ uniforms of khaki jackets and dark blue trousers, the incongruity of the stained glass window in the Q4 Room and the poor lighting of the Perspex panels designed by Rory McEwen, and others were missing the grandeur and ‘ Palm Court’atmosphere of the old Queens and of the days when Tallulah Bankhead had asked a steward, ‘What time does this place get to New York?’ People were already buying souvenirs and presents in the shop arcades. There were four people at prayer in the Synagogue, and a small trickle going through the Art Gallery which held forty-five thousand pounds’ worth of pictures. In the Grill Room a waiter dropped a set of salt and pepper containers designed by Lord Queensbury, and seasoned travellers who liked their travel to be leisurely and comfortable were already searching for the small bar and the friendly barman so that they could avoid the late night drunks in the main bars. But of the thousands of people who saw the ship move down Southampton Water, many of whom had seen hundreds of ships move down, the old Queens, the Carmania and Franconia, few were not moved by the sight and wished they were aboard.
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