Not Thinking of Death

by Not Thinking of Death (retail) (epub)

  ‘Both motors running slow ahead grouped down, sir.’

  ‘Very good.’ Mottram glanced round: ‘Messenger…’ He told Harper – who was clutching a container of Protosorb to his chest, had been coming through on his way aft – ‘Pass the word – we’ll remain at diving stations, but I want everyone to settle down, keep quiet and still. All being well, we’ll surface in about two hours.’

  If air and battery lasted that long. Battery might, with the motors driving her at only about two and a half knots, but air probably would not. Even if it did – which presumably you’d find out only by not falling into a coma – after two hours’ run you’d still be surfacing within sight of the coast.

  Chapter 20

  In Tumult’s wardroom, during the course of the afternoon Chalk had written a long letter to Patricia. Up to now all their communications had been by telephone, but Suzie had put this in his mind when she’d told him over the ’phone from Carlisle, ‘I write to him, when he’s away.’ He’d also foreseen the prospect of taking Tumult out on her next patrol, around 5th–6th July, with Patricia still away; having that on his mind during the two or three weeks at sea – not even knowing whether she’d be there when he got back. A total void, complete ignorance of where, or when… He’d put it this way in the letter, Where or When being one of their favourite songs – with Pat’s own words substituted for one couplet: The clothes you aren’t wearing/You weren’t wearing then…

  The tune ran through his mind now, reminding him of one particular time and place – how he’d wanted her in his arms but also to stand back and feast his eyes on her, and she’d told him, ‘It’s called having your cake and eating it, my darling.’

  In the Mess, alone, he sat at the bar and asked for a beer. It was thin, watery stuff, but a half-pint cost only twopence and one acquired a tolerance of it. Thoughts of Patricia running on, meanwhile – how dreadful it would be if she wasn’t back by the time he had to push off again, so that he wouldn’t know what to expect when he got back – whether there’d be an answer to this letter, or a message that she’d called.

  Or nothing, and still no answer to the telephone.

  Might ring Betty, he thought. He should have done so anyway – to ask how she and the children were, and whether Mama was still hanging on, and all that – and it was remotely possible that she’d have seen Patricia before she’d left. She went down to Betty’s for weekends sometimes: might have been there and said something like ‘Won’t be seeing you for a month or so’ – something of that kind… But he thought he would not telephone Suzie this evening. He’d have no news for her, and by this time tomorrow he might have. The flotilla’s Staff Officer (Operations)’s estimation was that midday tomorrow was the earliest one could hope to hear; there was to have been a deadline for the landing-party to be back on board, and it would be at least twelve hours after that before Mottram would risk breaking wireless silence. Perhaps longer. Give it another twenty-four hours or so, the SO(O) had suggested, before we start any serious worrying.

  Consciousness of Tracker’s previous existence as Trumpeter, Chalk recognized, was an entirely personal thing. A personal aberration, even. Others seemed not to give it a thought. Chris Van Sommeren, for instance, had only been concerned about it for Suzie’s sake – knowing about Dymock and the ordeal she’d been through then. For himself though – when he let it into his mind at all – and in dreams, very much uninvited – he saw their faces – groups as well as individuals – and heard their voices: saw fear, hope, resignation, courage. Dymock’s courage, in particular, and Andrew Buchanan’s spectre presented itself more often than most. Most clearly of all, the statements he’d made about his wife: She’s so straight; there’s no question…

  Zoe, straight?

  * * *

  Buchanan must have had his doubts, Chalk had realized since. To have talked about it at all. He’d either have been trying to convince himself, or as it were testing the water, looking for some reaction from Chalk that might have told him something, one way or the other.

  He’d seen her once – about six months ago. He’d been with Patricia at the Café Royal, and she’d been one of a party of about eight men and women; one of the men was not in uniform. He’d only seen them when he and Patricia had been leaving, and Pat had confirmed – with obvious delight – that the rather fat civilian who’d had Zoe on his right was George Lindsay, Lord Spynie’s son: he did have a porcine look, as Patricia had once said he had – referring at the same time, he’d remembered, to Buchanan’s ‘tarty’ wife. Lindsay was undoubtedly of military age, had presumably to be in what was known as a ‘Reserved Occupation’ – meaning exempt from the general call to arms. It would be on the grounds of running a business or businesses vital to the war effort, perhaps. Chalk had wondered how it would feel to be a civilian – male, and his own age roughly, and although overweight seemingly able-bodied – in London in the winter of 1940.

  At that stage he hadn’t been sleeping with Patricia. On that crucial night – it had been his last before returning to Dundee – he’d taken her to the restaurant in Wardour Street where they’d dined on numerous occasions, and earlier in the evening she’d introduced him to an establishment called Le Petit Club Francais, in a mews behind St James’s Street, packed with Free French and run by a Welshwoman called Olwen; Patricia knew it through her job, had been taken there by Frenchmen. It was the closest Chalk had ever come to her SIS environment; he hadn’t liked the place, and they’d never been there again. About – three months ago, this had been. They’d finished their meal and he’d paid the bill, and he’d put his hand on hers amongst the coffee-cups: it was about the tenth meal they’d had there, perhaps the twentieth time they’d been out together in London. They were looking at each other, not saying anything at that moment, and her hand had turned, the rather long, smooth fingers caressing, intimate, so clearly symbolic of physical contact in a deeper sense that to him it was instantly, powerfully arousing. She’d known it too: asked quietly, ‘Home?’ Meaning that little flat of hers – where she’d asked him as he followed her in and pushed the door shut behind them, ‘Want a drink?’

  ‘Don’t think so. Do you?’

  ‘No.’ That smile of hers: Dietrich would have given the world to be able to smile like that. ‘I don’t think there is any, anyway.’

  ‘We don’t have to waste time, then.’ She’d been in his arms: no waste of time at all. No sense of time either, or location – no sense of anything but – amazingly – Patricia.

  Later – in the dark, all of London blacked out around them and for some reason no raids that night – she’d murmured, ‘This isn’t going to be a casual affair, is it?’

  ‘Most certainly is not!’

  ‘Truly? How you feel?’

  ‘I don’t know how to describe how I feel. I could burst, with the – the strength of it, the – I simply can’t begin to—’

  ‘That’s exactly—’

  ‘You’re more beautiful even than I thought you were. Too beautiful to be real. Pat – darling – I never dreamt—’

  ‘Oh, I did.’

  ‘Really?’

  A soft laugh in the darkness. ‘Once or twice.’

  But he hadn’t really considered the possibility until just recently, when he’d had finally to accept that his marriage had gone phut. By that time he’d already been in love with her: fooling himself that it was something from which he could extricate himself without tears on either side when he had to – when he and Diana patched things up, had been the rather vague assumption.

  He’d told her earlier that he hadn’t much liked Le Petit Club, and he’d sorted out the reasons by this time. The first was that he’d disliked the ambience of intrigue, different groups of French obviously loathing each other – she’d explained some of the basic politics to him – and two – much more personally – because it had felt like an anteroom to another world, the one she vanished into, where he couldn’t follow her and where his imagination put her in the m
ost appalling danger.

  He’d asked her, ‘Do you have to go on with it?’

  A sigh… Then: ‘Do you have to go on with your thing?’

  And later, in the dawn – when he’d mentioned it again, his dread of her next departure – ‘I can’t talk about it, Rufus. Simply can’t. In any case, you’re off on patrol again – when, this next week?’

  Shades of Mrs Nat Eason: his own recognition then that it was those left behind who suffered.

  * * *

  He touched the letter in his reefer pocket. He hadn’t stuck it down, intended to add to it from time to time, whenever there was something worth adding – like news of Tracker and Van Sommeren… Sipping at a second half-pint of beer-flavoured water, leafing idly through the day before yesterday’s London Evening News: someone returning from leave must have left it here. The front-page headline was BLITZ OVER: MOSCOW’S TURN NOW. Because Hitler had invaded Russia, which had been his ally. Perhaps, he thought, the British communists – the Daily Worker in particular – would stop referring to it as ‘a boss’s war’ now.

  ‘Wotcher, Rufus.’

  Tim Hart, Threat’s CO, with his own first lieutenant. Chalk glanced at them. ‘Off tomorrow, aren’t you?’

  A nod. ‘Bosch is already trembling in his jackboots. Have another?’

  ‘No, thanks. Going up for a bath, in a minute.’ He looked down at the paper again, paging over. An item about the garrison in Tobruk still holding out against encircling Germans only emphasized what had already become fairly obvious, that General Wavell’s recent offensive had ground to a halt.

  ‘Lieutenant-Commander Chalk, sir.’ A Wren stewardess, in the doorway. ‘Telephone, sir…’

  ‘Thanks.’ He threw the paper down, asked the Wren as he passed her, ‘Male or female?’

  Prim little smile: ‘A lady, sir.’

  Patricia?

  * * *

  ‘It wasn’t her, of course.’

  Chalk was knocking his pipe out on the palm of his left hand, tilting it for the wind to blow the ash away. It was a stiffish southwesterly which had been coming up during the past hour and was now creasing the sea down there in white ridges, the spray flying like smoke where it broke against the rocks.

  He blew through the pipe, and pushed it into a pocket.

  ‘It was an ATA girl, calling to tell me that Suzie had had what she called “a slight mishap” with a Spitfire. She was in a hospital in St Albans, suffering from mild concussion, a sprained ankle and all-over bruising. No lasting damage, anyway; she’d been very lucky. And she’d asked this girl – whom I’d met at that party Suzie and her chums gave at White Waltham – to let me know that her father was on his way down and would be taking her home to convalesce in Scotland. Would I please contact her there, at Glendarragh, when I had news for her.

  ‘She shouldn’t have been flying, this girl told me: she’d been in a highly nervous condition, several of them had seen it and begged her to report sick. All on account of the postponed wedding, was their view, it seemed.’ He shrugged. ‘I told Miss Who’sit that there was a great deal more to it than just that. As indeed there was. Suzie’d given no indication of stress of that order, mind you, when she’d been talking to me – not a quaver. But that was Suzie, you see. Dare say I should have known better, added my persuasive efforts to her ATA friends’ urgings. Wouldn’t have made any difference, though. She’d gone through a truly hellish period, during and after the Trumpeter business: and I suppose she’d seen a repetition coming – perhaps even subconsciously – or just wouldn’t give way to it. Point of fact, it was what I’d been frightened of, I should have been more perceptive – not just impressed by her stamina, as I had been… Anyway – I got the number of the hospital, and spoke to the matron: Miss Cameron-Green was flat out, she told me, and would remain so – in purdah, not taking telephone calls – until her father came for her next day. I asked her to tell Suzie I’d rung and I’d be in touch with her later at her parent’s house.

  ‘Then I rang Glendarragh and spoke to Lady C-G. Sir Innes was on his way south, she told me, by the overnight train, would be collecting Suzie from the hospital at about noon next day and bringing her back with him that night. Night of the 25th – the wedding day, as it would have been – and she asked me whether I couldn’t even guess at when the wedding might take place. Damn-fool thing to ask, in the circumstances… I asked her in return whether they’d heard anything of Patricia, and she told me no, they hadn’t. “We’re rather concerned for her, you know. Actually, Innes is going to speak to some man to whom he has an introduction – in London tomorrow, see if he can’t find out something… Rufus, may I ask you – while I have the chance – whether you’re serious, about Patricia?”

  ‘“I can’t tell you how serious. Never more so in my life. Never anywhere near so.”

  ‘“What of Diana?”

  “‘To all intents and purposes, that’s over. Will be formally, legally, in due course. As soon as I can tie her down to it. She hasn’t given me a chance to discuss it with her – she knows I want to—”

  ‘“I see. Well… I’ll tell Suzie you telephoned.”

  ‘Not the most enthusiastic of potential mothers-in-law. But I suppose one couldn’t expect much else, in the circumstances. What I’d said about Diana was the truth of the situation, though: she seemed to be happy enough with things as they were – me as husband-in-waiting in the background – whom I’m sure, knowing Diana, she’d expect to be able to call to heel whenever she wanted to – boyfriend Jacques Frogface in the foreground, and of course her beloved flying. She qualified to fly four-engined bombers, by the way, at about this time. As Suzie did too, later on. Only about a dozen of them did. Oh, I told you this, didn’t I? Imagine, though – those damn great machines, and a slip of a girl at the helm – eh?’

  ‘Yes.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘But—’

  ‘I know.’ Checking his time. ‘We’ve got half an hour or so, anyway. Even though she does drive like a maniac… Where was I? Oh, yes… After the Glendarragh call, I got through to Betty – whom I’d failed to reach when I’d tried before – and as I’d more or less expected she didn’t know anything about Patricia. But her children were well, and her husband – Dick – was in Crete, she told me. We’d pulled out of Greece by then. And our mother was pretty well on her way out, I really ought to get down and see her as soon as I could, etcetera.

  ‘And that was that. No news of Tracker, not a whisper of Patricia’s whereabouts – well, easy to guess where, it was the when that mattered, when would she reappear – oh, and Suzie crocked up. Not on the whole the happiest set of circumstances.’ He shrugged, gazing out to sea. ‘Then at lunchtime I was given news that really put the kybosh on it.’ He turned to face me. ‘Emanating from Lord Haw-Haw. The night before, apparently, he’d come on the air from Berlin with his “Jarmany calling” programme, and claimed that a British submarine, HMS Tracker – he’d named her – had been sunk off the coast of Norway. She’d landed a party of “Norwegian communist saboteurs”, he called them, all of whom had been killed or captured.

  ‘Imagine. Not so much “news”, as a bombshell. I had it from the SO(O), who sent his messenger asking me to drop in at his office – before lunch, this was… D’you remember those Haw-Haw broadcasts? Sometimes there was a factual basis to his sneers, but a lot of it was absolute tosh. For instance, by that time he’d two or three times announced the sinking of the carrier Ark Royal – which was still going strong, then. So there was a chance this was yet another load of bull. On the other hand, if it wasn’t true how had they identified the submarine as Tracker? The SO(O) had an answer to that one – they’d caught the Norwegians and screwed it out of them. It was possible, obviously, but at the time he and I both felt he was grabbing at straws.

  ‘However – Lady C-G had said Sir Innes would be home with Suzie at about midday. I was in our Mess by about one – lunchtime – and I rang Glendarragh expecting to get Sir Innes and warn him – prime him with the hop
e of it being a lie. They might not have heard, you see, but on the other hand they might. One listened now and then to Haw-Haw, primarily for laughs – you didn’t have to believe his rubbish, but it still somehow got around, didn’t it. You’d be asked “Hear what Haw-Haw had to say last night, old boy? Sunk the Ark again, no less!” So they could have heard, and for Suzie it could be the straw that broke the donkey’s back. This ATA colleague of hers had reckoned she mightn’t be far off a nervous breakdown: and that’s not like catching a cold, you know, there can be lifelong damage done. Their real concern had been that she’d crash – which she had, although she told me it was an engine fault, not hers – and the ATA accepted her accident report, when she sent it in… Anyway – I rang Glendarragh – half my pay was going on telephone calls, but there wasn’t much I could do about it – and got Lady C-G again. The others hadn’t arrived yet: MacKenzie had taken the brake to meet them at Tyndrum, but the train was probably running late. Often did – you’d have bombing somewhere along the line during the night, and consequent hold-ups. Trains took shelter in tunnels, sometimes… But why, she asked me, was I ringing? Did I have news? I told her no, I didn’t, but there’d been this enemy propaganda claim of a submarine being sunk on that coast, and if Suzie happened to hear of it it might do her no good at all. So I’d telephoned only to warn her that if it did come to their ears, it wasn’t necessarily the truth.

  ‘“But—” she asked me – “it may be?”

  ‘“I doubt it. They landed some Norwegians, for a certain purpose, and if they were rounded up that could be how the Germans got to know they’d come by submarine. The boat’s name, even.”

  ‘“Did they give the name?”

  ‘“I think they did. I’ve had this information second-hand, mind you, I don’t listen to enemy broadcasts all that much.”