‘Just like a fairy tale.’
‘Wasn’t it? But the show never took wings on Broadway. Perhaps it was too English. It ran for a few weeks, then died. By this time war had broken out in Europe and I stayed on. The producer was putting on another musical at another theatre and he gave me a part. Let’s Go has been running ever since.’
The producer’s name was Henry Hanks. Sterne wondered whether there had been anything going between her and Hanks that might have influenced him when it came to giving this lift to her stage career. That sort of thing happened, so he had heard. The Hollywood casting couch was notorious. But he dismissed the thought as unworthy. Why should she not have been taken for her talent alone? He knew she had plenty.
‘So,’ she said, ‘that’s me brought up to date. Now what about you? How did you come to be a soldier-sailor?’
He told her. He told her about Dunkirk and about the sinking of his first ship.
‘Oh, David,’ she said; and he could tell how concerned she was for his safety. ‘Why did you have to go and put your neck in it?’
‘That’s a good question,’ he said. But he gave no answer to it. Perhaps he did not know the answer himself.
She asked about the Lakoses. ‘How are they getting on?’
‘You didn’t hear?’
‘Hear what?’
‘They were arrested. They’d been passing secret information to the Germans from a transmitter in the attic. The bookshop was just a front, a meeting-place for spies.’
She was amazed. ‘I can’t believe it. They were such a nice couple. I liked them.’
‘So did I. But you never know, do you?’
She was silent for a few moments, evidently turning this revelation over in her mind and feeling pretty sad about it. Then she said:
‘How about the writing? I don’t suppose you get the chance to do any these days.’
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘You’d be surprised. There are long hours of utter boredom at sea when nothing much is happening and you’re not on watch or doing chores. Of course you’re always aware that a torpedo could come bursting in on you at any moment, but you can’t be thinking about that all the time. You’d go crazy.’
‘It must be terrible,’ she said; and she gave a little shudder.
‘Ah, it’s not so bad. I’d rather be in a ship than in a submarine. In one of those tin cans life must be hell.’
‘And so you are writing. What are you on now?’
‘Well, I’ve started a novel.’
‘Oh, lovely. How’s it going?’
‘By fits and starts. I carry it around with me and add to it whenever I get the chance.’
‘Is it good? Oh, but it must be.’
‘I’m not so sure.’
‘Well, I am,’ she said. ‘I believe in you. I always have.’
Which was nice to know.
*
One evening he went to see Let’s Go. Angela gave him a ticket. He enjoyed the show and thought she was splendid. He could tell that she was a favourite with the audience, and he could see why. She was delightful, and he had not realised that she could sing so well. Hers was not the chief part but it was an important one, and her name was up in lights. She was obviously on the way up, and it depressed him a little, because he wondered whether he would ever be able to keep pace with her. But he was glad for her sake.
He went to her dressing-room after the final curtain. She was sitting in front of a mirror and cleaning up, but she turned and gave him a kiss. He caught the mingled odour of sweat and grease-paint and powder, and it excited him. It was so powerfully sensual.
‘So what did you think of it, darling?’
‘I loved it. You were marvellous. I never dreamed you could be so good.’
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘you would say that, wouldn’t you?’
But he could see that she was pleased.
‘I don’t need to say it. The audience must tell you. You had them eating out of your hand. Is it always like this?’
‘There are good nights and not so good nights. But mostly they’re good.’
He had something to tell her now, and he wondered how she would take it. He hated the necessity, but he had no choice.
‘This is the last time I shall see you – for the present. Some other time perhaps. Who knows?’
She stared at him and seemed to go rigid. ‘What are you saying?’
‘We sail tomorrow. Shore leave ends at midnight.’
‘Oh no!’ It was like a wail of anguish. ‘Not so soon.’
‘Yes, so soon.’
‘Then we must go to my place. We must hurry.’
He shook his head. ‘There’s no time. I couldn’t get back to the ship before the deadline. I must say goodbye to you here.’ He glanced at his wrist-watch. ‘I’m driving it pretty close as it is.’
She stood up, pushing the chair away from her. ‘Then we must do it here. Lock the door.’
He did so, and when he turned he saw that her dressing-gown was lying on the floor and she was kicking off her shoes.
‘Hurry, David, hurry!’
Someone knocked on the door. ‘Miss Street! Are you in there?’
‘Go away!’ she screamed. ‘Go away, go away!’
Whoever it was went away and left them to themselves.
They acted with a kind of desperate frenzy, as though they both knew it might be the last time ever between them. For tomorrow a ship would slip down-river to that wide dark lethal sea where the U-boats lurked, and he would be in that ship. And there was nothing that she could do to protect him, except maybe pray. And what good would that do? What good at all?
‘I love you, David,’ she whispered. ‘Oh God, I love you so much. Why do you have to go?’ She wept and the tears ran down her face and streaked it with mascara. ‘Why, why, why?’
And when he was leaving she kissed him for the last time, and wiped her eyes and said:
‘Take care of yourself, my darling.’
And he promised he would, and knew that no amount of taking care would help him if his time had come, because that was the way of things.
Chapter Twenty – LIFE IS SWEET
He was in the water and the life-jacket was all that was keeping him afloat. It had all happened so suddenly. The torpedo must have struck amidships. It was the middle of the night and he had been on watch with Danny Wicks. He had heard a great roar beneath him and Danny giving a cry, and then he was flying through the air, caught in some upward blast that flung him clear of the ship and dumped him in the sea.
The shock of immersion in the chilly water cleared his brain, and he realised what had happened. He realised too that something was wrong with his right arm; it was hurting like hell and he was unable to use it. It did not occur to him for the moment that it might be broken; that realisation was to come later, but for the present he was aware only of the pain.
The superstructure of the ship loomed above him, and he had a fear that if it toppled over on that side it would fall on him and thrust him under. He made a desperate effort to swim away from it, but the right arm was useless and he was hampered by the duffel-coat he was wearing under the life-jacket.
He could see nothing of Danny Wicks, and indeed he was never to see the kid again; nor any of the rest of his men, because they had been asleep in the cabin above the engine-room and that was where the torpedo had struck. They had stood no chance of survival.
Now he noticed that the ship was moving away from him. It had been going forward at a rate of maybe seven knots when it had been torpedoed, and though the engines were immediately put out of action, the momentum of the six thousand ton ship was carrying it on. It had been the last ship in the convoy on the starboard side and Sterne himself was now being left behind by all the vessels.
He felt sure the Northern Light would not take long to sink; its cargo of tanks and guns and trucks would ensure that once the water came pouring in the end would not be long in coming. He could not tell whether any of the lifeboats had
been launched; it was possible that they had been damaged by the explosion and rendered useless. Very soon he had lost sight of the vessel; it had vanished into the darkness, as had the other ships. He heard a distant explosion and saw a flicker of light far ahead, which could only mean that another ship had been torpedoed. But that was far away from where he floated like a human buoy with the little red battery light clipped to the shoulder of the life-jacket shining dimly through the gloom. He had switched it on with only the faintest hope that it might be seen. But by whom? It was so small, a mere pinpoint in a vast expanse of heaving ocean.
Suddenly he heard gunfire from the direction of the convoy, and starshells were going up, revealing the dark outlines of the ships, small in the distance. He guessed that a U-boat had been discovered on the surface and some of the warships were firing at it. But his interest in this was minimal. It was not his affair any more; he was out of it, left behind. He could taste the salt on his tongue and feel the pain in his arm and had a terrible sense of having been abandoned. He was so completely alone. Could there be a worse loneliness than this? Floating with his head just above the water and all around him this heaving waste that was home only to the cold-blooded creatures that were born in it. He had a feeling that this was it; this was the last farewell; he was finished.
But he did not want to be finished; there was so much he had yet to do in life. He had recently been reading George Borrow’s Lavengro and some words uttered by Jasper Petulengro came into his mind.
‘There’s night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon and stars, brother, all sweet things; there’s likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?’
Yes, life was very sweet; especially when you were no more than twenty-five years old. He did not wish to die.
But there was a numbness in his body now that seemed to be climbing up through his legs and his torso like a creeping death. Would he ever again feel the wind on the heath?
It seemed to be a long time since the Northern Light had passed out of his sight. He thought of crying out for help, but who would have heard him? He thought of those words Angela had spoken at parting: ‘Take care of yourself, my darling.’ And this was how he had taken care of himself. But how could he have acted any differently? If the bullet had your name on it, that was you done for, kaput, worm’s meat.
He felt that his whole body was turning to ice. He was no longer aware of the pain in his arm; the arm might not have been there for any awareness that he had of it. But that was true of the entire body; it just did not exist any more; he was nothing but a head floating around without plan or purpose.
The book had gone of course; that unfinished manuscript which he had carried around with him from ship to ship. It was lost for ever. And maybe it had been no good anyway; but he would never know now, because he would never write it again even if he had the chance to do so, which now seemed most unlikely.
He was beginning to lose consciousness and he was making no effort of will to stay awake. Where was the sense in it? It would be no more than a prolongation of the agony. Why not let go now, just let go? Perhaps there was an after-life, perhaps a better land far far away, perhaps –
He let go. No more wind on the heath. No more sweet life. Nothing.
*
The first thing he became conscious of was a voice saying: ‘He’s coming round.’
Then gradually he realised that he was lying on a bunk, well wrapped-up in blankets; and he knew he was in a ship because of the motion and the throbbing of the engines. What he could not understand was how he came to be there, for the last thing he remembered was floating in the water with the numbness taking over his body and all life gone.
A man was bending over him. ‘How are you feeling now?’
He stared up at the man. ‘Who are you?’ The crazy thought came into his mind that he really was dead and that Charon’s boat had been brought up to date as a ship and Charon himself had been transformed to a much younger man in a white jacket.
The man himself put paid to this idea. ‘Name’s Watkins, but that’s immaterial. Important thing is, you’re alive. You were damn near a goner, and that’s a fact.’
He learned more about it later. It was the little red bulb on his life-jacket that saved him. The rescue ship, devotedly searching in the area where the Northern Light had gone down, had found him when all hope of there being any other survivors had almost gone. A lookout had spotted the light as it appeared intermittently when he floated on the crest of a wave, vanishing when he slid into the following trough. The ship had already picked up a few others in a lifeboat, the only one to be successfully launched as the freighter went down; but none of these men were gunners.
‘You’re a lucky man,’ Watkins said.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose I am.’
*
He was sent to a hospital in Southport. A doctor on board the rescue ship had done his best on the broken arm, but it needed more attention. When he became convalescent he was allowed to go for walks and sit on a bench in the spring sunshine. His arm was still in a sling and he was dressed in one of those shapeless blue suits which seemed to have been made from flannelette by little old ladies with hand-operated sewing-machines in country cottages.
When he was passed fit again for duty he was allowed to go home on leave. He spent the time pottering around on the farm and visiting old friends. He paid a call one morning at the offices of the Bury and North Suffolk Morning Post. Rita was still working there at the reception desk, but she was no longer Miss Webb; she was Mrs Atkins. She was delighted to see him and thought that he was looking well, but thinner. She told him that soon after they were married Cyril had joined the R.A.F. He was now an air-gunner, flying in Lancasters.
‘I’m horribly worried about him,’ she said. ‘It’s so dangerous, isn’t it? I mean so many of them get shot down.’
‘Oh,’ Sterne said reassuringly, ‘I’m sure he’ll be lucky.’
It was a lie of course; he was sure of nothing of the sort. There was no more reason why Cyril Atkins should not be shot down on one of his flights over Germany than there was why he himself should not be lost at sea. They were both in the hands of the gods.
Mr Martin spared him a few moments of his valuable time and assured him that he was not forgotten on The Post.
‘Boys like you are doing a wonderful job for King and Country. And don’t imagine that those of us who, for reasons of age or other considerations, are unable to step into uniform are not conscious of the great debt we owe to you fighting men. We are; yes, most certainly we are. Our thoughts go with you wherever you may be.’
All of which sounded to Sterne too much like the opening sentences of an editorial for the paper. There was a certain lack of sincerity about the words. He doubted whether Arthur Martin had given a single thought to his former employee in the past few years.
‘Not,’ Mr Martin said, ‘that we don’t suffer hardships ourselves. For us who keep the home fires burning, so to speak, life is not all cakes and ale. No, not by any means.’
‘I’m sure it’s not,’ Sterne said.
*
He did not see his one-time tennis partner, Phyllis Chambers, but he heard that she was now in the A.T.S. and had a commission. It amused him to reflect that if they ever met when in uniform he would have to salute her and address her as ma’am.
*
One day he went for a cycle ride and found himself in Breckland. At the side of the road was heathland with masses of young green bracken and a few Scots pines growing here and there. There were scarcely any clouds in the sky, and high overhead some almost invisible aircraft were marking the blue dome with long white vapour trails. A light breeze stirred the bracken. It was the wind on the heath and life was very sweet, as Mr Petulengro had said. But tomorrow his leave would be finished and soon he would be at sea again. The War would not stop for him.
Chapter Twenty-One – SOMETHING
It was the meat ru
n to Argentina again this time. A different gun-team, a different ship. The Ocean Star was a passenger-cargo liner, fast enough to sail unescorted. The voyage to Buenos Aires via Jamaica was uneventful, the return via Freetown equally so. More beef for the dinner-tables of Britain.
A few weeks later he was in a filthy old steamship on the Russia run to Murmansk in mid-winter. Snow and ice and bitter winds, and attacks from enemy planes and U-boats. No picnic, that. Then more Atlantic convoys, but never the good fortune of another visit to New York. Boston, Philadelphia, and Halifax in Nova Scotia, but never the city he desired so much to see again for one reason only: she was there.
He had heard from her a few times, though she was not much of a letter-writer. The letters sometimes took quite a while to catch up with him. He learned that Let’s Go was still running and that she was still doing her stint at the Stage Door Canteen. He was not so pleased about that; he thought of all the American servicemen who went there and maybe tried to date her. He felt jealous and frustrated because he could not be with her. He wrote long letters to her and posted them in various ports. He could not be certain that all of them reached her, but he knew that he must have written at least a hundred words for every one of hers that he received in return.
And then, after a long gap with no letter at all, he had one from a different part of America, from a state on the other side of the continent – California. She was in Hollywood.
‘Darling David,’ she wrote. ‘It’s all happening to me and I’m being rushed off my feet, so you’ll have to excuse this hasty note. I simply haven’t the time to write a long letter, but I had to tell you the news. Well, Let’s Go was finally taken off on Broadway, and what do you think? Just when I was afraid I might be out of a job for goodness knows how long, this sweet man turned up with a truly stupendous offer to go into films. I hardly needed to think about it for a minute before accepting. I mean it’s not the sort of chance anyone in their right senses would turn down, and I’m not that stupid. So here I am in Hollywood amongst the stars and things are really moving. No time for more now, but I’ll try to keep you posted. All my love, Angela.’
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