“Unlikely, I’d have thought. The other seaman would be in the muck up to his neck!”
“I read Howard’s report on the drowning, that rating who was the brother of Bizley’s late commanding officer. God knows what the family will have to say about that. Maybe it was only a coincidence. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“I knew about that, of course.” Vickers frowned. “My ships and their morale are more important right now than anything.”
“I agree. But if Bizley lied to play the hero there is no way I can put the lid on it. The boss would have my guts for garters!”
“Shall I have a word with Howard?”
“No. This is between us for the moment. You might mention the possibility of a DSO. I think he’s more than earned it.”
They both relaxed and sipped their drinks. The worst had been faced up to. The machine would take over from now on.
“Can we expect anything new in the near future?” It felt cleaner to get back to the war.
Naish pressed his fingertips together. “A lot of troop convoys. The really precious cargoes. It will be all or nothing this year, I think, both here in the Atlantic and in the Med. The allies will have to make a stab at an invasion down there—to do that they need troops from everywhere. The Germans will know that too unfortunately—so it’s business as usual, only more so!”
Just yards away in one corner of the large operations room, Second Officer Celia Lanyon was being shown over the layout by another Wren officer. Her name was Evelyn Major, a rather plain girl who had been a teacher at a fashionable girls’ school in Sussex. She even referred to her Wren ratings as “chaps” when she spoke to them, and Celia could well imagine her waving a lacrosse stick and calling “Play up, you chaps!” But she certainly took her job at naval operations very seriously. Celia stared at the busy girls on the moving ladders, others sorting the great clips of signals that continually came and went to the hundreds of ships out on the Atlantic at any given time. Her glance lingered on an RAF squadron leader and the other girl said quietly, “He’s married. Anyway he’s only a Met officer.” She flushed and exclaimed, “What a twit I am—your husband was a flier, wasn’t he?”
Celia walked to another table where the little pointers were marked with the various warship names, anything from a battle-cruiser to a lowly Asdic trawler. She touched the one now shown to be in port. Gladiator.
Evelyn did not miss it. “You know her captain, don’t you?” She smiled. “Dishy.”
Celia stared at her. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, he’s such a nice bloke, a lot of my chaps get hot pants when he calls in for something. We heard he came to see you when Jane bought it.”
Celia relaxed slightly. Maybe she was right. Maybe it was better so. Too much grief could tear you apart.
“Yes, he did.” She lifted her chin with something like her old defiance. “As a matter of fact he telephoned me when the ship got in. To see if I was back from leave.” She hesitated, knowing what Evelyn might think. “We’re going out to dinner this evening.”
“You know you’ve been put into my quarters to share the place?” She saw her nod and wondered if she should continue. “It’s hard to be alone up here. I don’t mind of course, can’t see the point really. But should you want …” She looked embarrassed. “Well, I can always clear off for the night.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Look, I know what you’ve been through, but I think you’re exactly what he needs. There was some talk …”
“Talk? What about?”
“You must have seen it with the Fleet Air Arm boys. Full of bluster and dash, but shit-scared underneath. Round-the-bend, because there’s nobody who cares enough to listen.”
“Afternoon, ladies!” Captain Vickers strode past, towering over both of them and leaving a tang of Scotch in his wake.
It gave Celia time to recover herself. She asked, “Commander Howard, you mean? Tell me—I must know.”
The girl called Evelyn touched her sleeve. “He’s nearly cracked up more than once. Just take a glance at the wall-chart. Every one of those crosses is a ship on the bottom. Can you imagine what it’s like out there, month in month out? Holding on, existing while others are being slaughtered?”
Celia stared at the solitary name Ohio Star. He had been so casual about it on the telephone, and then she had seen the news report in the paper. Not just obscure names any more. Not this time. Names she knew, names he had mentioned. His most of all.
“Thank you for telling me. I’ve been too busy feeling sorry for myself. And yes, I do want to share your billet.”
“If you feel it coming on again, my girl, just spill it all to your Auntie Evelyn!” She glared at a small Wren who was staring at her uncertainly. “What is it, old chap?”
“We thought you should know, ma’am. The C-in-C has just left Hoylake golf course and is on his way.”
“Thanks.” She grinned at Celia. “You’d better escape while you can. See you here tomorrow. Sharp.” She watched Celia walk away, then pause momentarily to glance up at the huge wall-chart, her lips slightly parted as if she were seeing something evil.
Second Officer Major said briskly, “Come on, chaps, no time for slacking, eh?”
But the mood eluded her, and all she could think about was those two lonely people. Together.
At such short notice the small restaurant, in what had once been one of the port’s famous hotels, was not quite what Howard would have liked. One wing of the hotel had been burned out in an incendiary raid, and the empty, blackened windows greeted new arrivals like melancholy eyes. Once it thrived on the great ships which plied the Atlantic between England and the Americas, but now, like so many of the servicemen who stayed or visited there, neither the hotel nor life as it had been lived in those pre-war days, would ever be the same again.
But the food was good, the fish especially fresh and well-cooked, although it was hard not to think of the trawler-men who still plied the sea, with far worse now than the weather to worry about.
Howard watched the girl, who sat directly opposite him, and wished they were quite alone. But the place was almost full, mostly naval officers with their female companions. It was fairly easy to distinguish between the wives and the lovers, and he wondered if Treherne ever came here.
She said, “I am enjoying myself.” She studied his face gravely. “It was good of you to ask me.” Then she smiled and he felt his heart leap. “Oh, come on, David—we’re behaving like school children! I was so nervous when you rang I almost made some stupid excuse not to come.”
He laughed. “I was feeling like a junior midshipman!”
She asked, “What about now?”
He reached across the table and took her hand in his. He saw a few heads turn at nearby tables, but for once, did not care.
“I’ve thought about you a hell of a lot, Celia.” He saw her eyes widen at the easy use of her name. “Kept me going when …” He shrugged. “Well, when things got a bit grim.”
“It was bad, wasn’t it?” She could hear her new friend’s voice. Because nobody cares enough to listen. “Tell me. I want to be part of it, try to help.”
His voice was almost distant. “You need a break from it some-times—but you can never have it. Every month you give to the Atlantic is more experience, more understanding of the enemy you hardly ever see … It gets to you, and sometimes you want to give up.” He raised his eyes and looked directly into hers. “I expect you’ve seen the plot, the wall-charts, and all the other exhibits here. But they’re ships you see being moved all over the place, ships with men, flesh and blood, who have to take everything the enemy can pitch at them. The skipper of the ammunition ship, for instance.”
She glanced down as his fingers tightened around hers and knew he was back there, reliving it.
He said, “Tough as old boots. Just a handful of his men and his pretty Chinese wife floating on a mountain of explosives! But he’ll be back at sea soon
, you’ll see.”
She said, “If I had known, if I had only understood how bad it was. You might have all been killed.”
He smiled. “As it turned out, the blessed ship went down all on her own. I doubt if the convoy knew anything about it when it passed safely through.”
An elderly waiter came to the table. “Will you try the sweet, sir?” His tired eyes moved between them and he wondered if he should offer them the room with the double bed and the coal fire, for an hour or so.
She shook her head. “No, thanks. But I should like some coffee.”
The waiter sniffed. “It’s not proper coffee, like the old days, miss.”
As he shuffled away she said, “I wonder what they think we get?”
She realised that he was still holding her hand and when she looked at him she was startled to see the bright intensity in his eyes. “What is it? Tell me.”
He replied quietly, “We’re friends, Celia, and I want it to be something much more than that.”
He expected her to pull away but she said steadily, “I’m still here, David.”
“When you came to see me—that first time, remember? I knew you were so unhappy, and my father said that you blamed yourself for what had happened. I don’t see you could be blamed for anything like that. I was there, I saw it. It’s something you have to harden your soul to, otherwise I, for one, would be useless.”
The coffee came and they did not see it.
Then she said, “There was a big scene on the last night when I was with him.”
Her lip quivered and Howard said, “Don’t talk about it if it troubles you so much. Nothing is worth that.”
She faced him in her direct way and said, “Well, I think it is. You see, I have always been a bit—sheltered, isn’t that what they say of girls who won’t play games? I went to an expensive school where about the only men I ever saw were a clergyman and the gardeners.” She shook her head with something like disbelief. “How I ever got the nerve to apply for the WRNS I’ll never know. Dormitories packed with young girls all trying to outdo each other with their so-called adventures. A lot of them knew my father was a rear-admiral—well, he was a captain then—and they used to pull my leg about it. Was it just a game to me, they used to ask. I was never more serious about anything. I got my commission and went on attachment to the Fleet Air Arm … that was where I met Jamie. He seemed to be so full of life—nothing ever appeared to trouble him. I knew he had an eye for the girls—I think everyone knew. More than an eye in a few cases. Because I didn’t ‘join in,’ and maybe because I was an admiral’s daughter … I seemed to attract him. It was a kind of madness. I was envied for once, admired even for the way I handled it. I don’t know if it would ever have worked out. He got very depressed when they told him he was to be grounded. Flying was his life, I should have realised that sooner. Flying, and all the adoration that went with it.”
The waiter’s shadow was across the table. “Would you like the bill, sir?” She would go to the ladies’ to powder her nose as they always did. Then he would put it to the young lieutenantcommander about the empty bedroom.
Howard said, “Two brandies.” He saw her start to protest and added, “Large ones.” He faced her again and said, “Sorry about that.” He waited, knowing that she was fighting it again.
She said, “He was seeing some girl, one he’d known at his old airfield. We had a blazing row about it, and he told me about the job he had volunteered for. I asked him not to do it. He’d risked his life countless times. Luck can’t last forever.”
She broke off and asked abruptly, “Do you have a cigarette?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, I’m a pipe man, but I’ll get the old retainer to find some.”
She shook her head so that her hair fell across her forehead, and Howard could easily picture her as a schoolgirl. “I don’t smoke, David. I just thought this might be the time to begin.”
She watched the waiter place the glasses carefully on the table and said, “This will do, though.”
Howard watched; she was unused to brandy too, he thought. It was best not to recall Vallance’s Horse’s Necks, which had grown larger and larger over the past months.
She faced him calmly. “He stormed out of the house, telling me he’d do what he liked, and no stuck-up bitch would change him.” She swallowed some more brandy and looked at him, her eyes very green in the reflected lights. “He came back that night so drunk he could barely walk. A different man, like somebody else—a stranger. Do you want me to continue?”
Howard said nothing. She was going to tell him anyway, no matter what it might do to her.
She said, “He wanted me. He kept pulling at me, telling me I’d soon be rid of him. I tried to calm him, to find the man I had married—in the end I was fighting him off.” She gripped his wrist until her nails broke the skin. “He hit me in the face and threw me on the bed.” Her eyes were quite level and unmoving. “Then he raped me.”
“Dear God!” Howard pictured it as it must have been. Lust, anger, madness. And she had been made to submit to that and to the memory which had tormented her until now.
She said simply, “The rest you know. He was killed shortly afterwards.”
Howard said quietly, “If he hadn’t been I think I would have done it for him.”
She released her hand very gently and said, “The waiter is coming back. I’m told he makes ‘arrangements’ for certain officers and their girlfriends.” She looked for her bag. “So if I was ever in a position like that, I’m not sure I could …” She broke off as the waiter put down the bill on a dented tray.
“Everything all right, miss?”
Her voice was surprisingly calm. “A very nice meal, thank you.”
To Howard she said, “Take me home will you, please? I’ll show you where I live.” As they walked to the door several heads turned to watch them, something which Howard resented more than he would have believed possible. She said, “That will give the old goat something to ponder on!”
But Howard knew it was to cover what she had been trying to tell him. That she might never be able to make love again.
As they walked through the darkened streets and watched the first searchlights criss-crossing the sky she said, “You see, David, I do care. Very much. I never thought I would again. Perhaps I didn’t even know what I wanted.”
He turned her lightly in his arms. It was not happening. Another dream. “I love you, Celia. I’ll not change.” He held her, and they kissed gently, as if they were meeting for the first time. “I’d never do or say anything to hurt you.”
Her hands were gripping his jacket as if she would not let him go, and at the same time knew that she must.
She said, “I know that, David. That’s why I want it to be right.”
They stood apart as two policemen walked past, their steel helmets shining in the faint searchlights.
All right for some, they would say.
Howard said, “I’d like to see you again as soon as we get back.”
“Get back?”
“Well, you’ll know soon enough when you go to your new job in ops. We’re off again now that the maintenance commander has put a rocket under the Asdic people. Don’t worry—we’re getting pretty good at it now.”
“I’ll be watching and thinking about you.” She lifted her head and looked at his outline in the darkness. “I’m glad I told you about …”
He kissed her lightly on the mouth. “Come on, I’ll walk you the rest of the way.”
The smouldering ammunition ship, the inability to listen for U-Boats, even the next convoy; they were all far away.
This was now; and David Howard was young again.
There’s a sight for sore eyes, sir!” Treherne levelled his binoculars and studied the convoy, which was making a wide turn, hard sunlight flashing from tiers of scuttles and across the spacious bridge of the leading ship. Three ocean liners, well known on pre-war cruising posters, none of them a stranger to the Atlantic
for those lucky enough in the Depression to be able to afford such luxury. Even their dull grey paint could not disguise their majestic lines, and even as the signal lamps began to blink between Vickers’s group and the convoy’s own close escort, it was possible to see that the leading ship’s upper decks were packed with soldiers. They were mostly American, and had been handed over to their new escort in mid-Atlantic.
Howard loosened his coat; it was surprisingly hot in the open bridge, and he tried to estimate how many troops were crammed into each liner. All bound for Britain, and then after further training, to some point where an invasion must be launched.
“Port fifteen.” Howard glanced at the gyro-repeater. Like the other commanding officers in the group, he knew what to do. Half of them would sweep astern of the convoy’s close escort; the rest would take station further to the south. The original escorts must have had their work cut out to keep pace with those powerful ships, he thought; it had made refuelling for the destroyers doubly difficult at sea because the liners stopped for nobody.
“Midships … Steady.”
“Steady, sir. Course zero-four-zero.” Howard smiled. The right direction anyway. They would be back in port in a couple of days if this weather held.
“Aircraft, sir. Bearing Green four-five. Angle of sight two-oh!”
“Disregard.” Treherne lowered his glasses. Even that was different now. The chill of despair when you sighted any aircraft was less evident. This one was a big Sunderland flying boat, crossing the convoy while the soldiers stared up at its great whale-shape and waved their caps.
Howard heard the clatter of feet on a ladder and knew Bizley had arrived to relieve Treherne for the afternoon watch. Was it noon already?
Bizley seemed to have recovered his old self-confidence, Howard thought. He was discussing course and speed and the air recognition signals as if he had been doing it all his life. At least he and Finlay were avoiding another clash, so Vallance’s wardroom would be more peaceful.
Howard climbed on to his chair and thought of the girl he had walked home to her billet, the one she shared with the second officer they called “Auntie.” It was still hard to believe it had happened, or how it had begun. She was shy; probably still very shocked by what she had told him. But it meant more than that to Howard. She had trusted him. He would never repay it with some clumsy attempt at love. But as he had held her outside the darkened doorway he had felt her pressed against him, and had known then how much he had wanted her.
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