The Man who Missed the War

by Dennis Wheatley

  Time stood still for Philip. The search seemed to go on interminably, and the strain of waiting was so great that he was now almost tempted to cry out himself in order to end it. He felt he should have known that, if the Germans once set about making a search, they would do it with their usual thoroughness. The chances of his remaining undiscovered were practically negligible, and when they found him he thought that the odds were a hundred to one that they would kill him.

  They had finished one side of the compartment, shifting every box and package in it. Now they were starting on the other. Philip was cursing himself for not having got out Eiderman’s gun. If he had had that he might at least have put up a fight with it; but he had not even thought of the weapon since noticing it among the things of his Gloria had saved from the launch. On the appearance of the U-boat he had not even recalled the fact that he possessed a pistol, and he had been much too occupied with Gloria to think of it until he had got her under cover, and the search was already under way.

  Somewhere, sounding a long way off, a whistle blew. The faint blast was instantly followed by a loud shout of warning.

  ‘Achtung! Achtung!’

  A crate was dropped with a crash. There was a swift scampering of feet towards the manhole, then a fainter cry.

  ‘Frisch! Frisch! Ein Englischer flieger!’

  ‘Good God!’ gasped Philip. ‘What fantastic luck! An R.A.F. aircraft.’

  Turning to Gloria he fumbled for her hands and pressed them. ‘Bless you for keeping quiet, Gloria—bless you! We’d both be dead or dying now if you hadn’t—or I would anyway—shot out of hand before they bolted.’

  Gloria pulled away her hands and tenderly felt her jaw as she muttered: ‘You—you just wait! You’d wish you were dead if you knew what was coming to you!’

  But Philip did not hear her. Throwing caution to the winds in his excitement, he pushed aside the cases behind which they were lying and, while the boots of the Germans were still clattering overhead, made for the manhole. As the search-party had rushed out still clutching their torches the place was in almost total darkness again, and during the past twenty minutes they had shifted two-thirds of the cargo. In consequence, whichever way Philip turned he stumbled into obstacles. Soon he had lost his sense of direction altogether, and a good two minutes elapsed before he finally found the door.

  The first thing he noticed when he got outside was that the mist had lifted. He could see the U-boat clearly now, and the little boatload of men from the raft were at that moment scrambling on to her deck. The British aircraft was roaring up from the direction of Gibraltar. Evidently the U-boat had been lurking there in the hope of catching some of the shipping passing through the Straits; but the R.A.F. patrol had spotted her.

  With lightning speed the Germans, conforming to a perfect drill, pulled in their dinghy and made a dash for the conning-tower. As the last man disappeared and the conning-tower hatch snapped shut, the submarine was already submerging. By that time the aircraft had circled into the U-boat’s fore and aft line and was almost dead overhead. Her first depth charge sent up a great ragged pillar of water while the U-boat’s periscope was still feathering the surface, and not more than thirty feet beyond it.

  ‘Well done!’ yelled Philip, as two more spouts of water rocketed upwards. ‘Go on! Go——’

  His sentence was never completed as at that second the concussion from the first explosion hit the raft. Philip bit his tongue, and Gloria would have been thrown off her feet if she had not clutched at him to save herself. Twice more the raft shuddered and rocked. By the time it settled down again the water spouts had disappeared and the aircraft, having circled once, was heading back towards Gibraltar.

  The realisation that, instead of watching the action, they should have been doing everything possible to attract the attention of the crew of the aircraft to themselves dawned on Philip and Gloria too late for them to do much about it. In the hope of rectifying their stupid omission they both climbed hastily on to the open surface of the raft and waved the lengths of torn sail which they always kept there ready; but the aircraft did not turn round, and it soon disappeared from view.

  So far as they could see there was no wreckage on the gently heaving water, and they felt that if the U-boat had been badly hit or forced to come up to the surface the aircraft would have remained on the scene to make certain of her kill. Her flying off so quickly suggested that she had either used all her depth charges or that her fuel was running low, so she was returning to base to pick up further supplies and would come out again as soon as possible in an endeavour to locate the U-boat and have another shot at her. The occcupants of the raft could only hope for that or that their presence had already been seen and reported.

  As Philip was about to jump down into the well again he heard a sudden patter of feet behind him. He half-turned, wondering what could possibly have caused Gloria to break into a run. Too late he realised that she was running at him. Her right foot shot out with all the force of her muscular body behind it and caught him square on the bottom, precipitating him in a wild flurry of arms and legs over the five foot drop into the well.

  He fell with one arm doubled under him and both his knees and head came into violent contact with hard substances. For a moment he lay there dazed, then he painfully began to pick himself up, while she stood there on the edge of the drop, her hands on her hips, her blue eyes flashing.

  ‘Maybe that’ll learn you to be using your fists on a girl!’ she declared angrily. ‘And there’s lots more of the same coming to you yet.’

  His head was now aching as though it were about to split, and feeling it gingerly he found that a bump had risen on it the size of a small egg. His knees were also aching but they did not worry him so much as his arm, in which he feared he had broken something. Knowing that he was in no state to enter into an argument, he forbore to answer, but turning his back on her got through the manhole into their sleeping place and lay down to wait until the worst of the pain from his numerous injuries had subsided.

  He was allowed little time to do so. Barely a minute had elasped when he heard her shouting for him. ‘Boy, come here! Come and see what those devils have done to our kitchen.’

  He ignored her summons, so she came and popped her head through the manhole and cried: ‘Would you believe it now? Those vandals have smashed our cooking-stove to smithereens, and the water distiller that you made so cleverly. They’ve stolen lots of our stores too. I’ve had no time yet——’

  She stopped in the middle of her sentence. Most of her drawings had been sadly stained with sea water during the great storm; but they still had a decorative value, and she had fixed up a number of the best on the walls that formed the inner corners of the two cargo-containers in which they used the limited free space to lounge in dull weather or sleep at night. In the dim light of the sleeping place certain additions to her drawings had not caught her eve before, but having noticed one her glance flashed round, and she saw that one of the German sailors had defiled them all with crude obscenities. Being mainly nudes they lent themselves particularly readily to the grotesque and misplaced sexual symbols with which they had been garnished.

  Climbing through the manhole she stared, with head bent, at each of the drawings in turn, the flush on her face gradually deepening from pink to crimson. Suddenly she gave a sob and sinking to her knees burst into tears.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ muttered Philip unsympathetically. ‘You don’t have to worry about the cooker because we’ve got others. As soon as I’m feeling fit enough I’ll unpack one for you.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ she wailed. ‘Oh, Boy, have you seen what they’ve done to my drawings? How can men be such beasts?’

  Dropping down beside him she let her head fall on his shoulder, expecting him to comfort her as he had done a number of times before on occasions of crisis during the past three months. Instead, he jerked violently away, crying:

  ‘Oh God! My arm!’

  Her tears ceased as
suddenly as they had begun, and she knelt up to peer down at him in the semi-darkness. ‘What is it, Boy? Is it really hurt you are?’

  ‘Of course I am. What the hell do you expect? By kicking me over the edge like that you might have broken my neck.’

  ‘Well, you should not have hit me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have if you’d had the sense to listen to reason.’

  ‘An’ then to threaten to choke the life out of me body——’

  ‘I had to try to stop you from giving us away somehow. I’m still wondering why you didn’t at the end, when you had the chance?’

  ‘ ’Twas because you said please, and seemed so scared. You were like a little child rather and appealed to the mother’s heart in me. I’m glad though that I didn’t call out now. From the way they’ve smashed our things for no reason at all and their filthy scrawls all over me drawings they couldn’t have been very nice people.’

  Philip groaned. ‘These Germans are not nice people!’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ murmured Gloria; ‘but it’s no good going on at me in this way. I’m not the President. I can’t bring the United States into the war alongside Britain and France.’

  ‘No one said you could. I’m only asking you to take a realistic view of things and not behave like an irresponsible little fool if these Nazi swine come back and pay us another visit.’

  She sat back quickly on her heels. ‘Say now! D’you think they might?’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t look as if the U-boat was sunk, does it? So, if they surface near us, there’s quite a chance that they might think it worthwhile to come and collect some more of our stores.’

  ‘We haven’t checked up on what they’ve taken yet. How d’you feel now? Are you all in one piece enough to come help me have a look around?’

  ‘I’m feeling like hell!’ Philip declared frankly. ‘My head will get better in an hour or two, but I’m worried about my arm. I’m afraid I’ve broken something in it.’

  Gloria immediately expressed genuine contrition for having really hurt him, then helped him off with his coat. They gently prodded the arm all over but could find nothing definitely wrong with it, and Philip decided that he must have wrenched his shoulder. She made him a sling for his arm and put a cold compress on his head, then they made a tour of inspection to see what loss and damage they had sustained owing to the coming of the Germans.

  After making a full examination they came to the conclusion that, while two or three Germans—about a third of the party—had spent the whole hour or more of which the visit had consisted in searching for them, the others had employed themselves transporting a selection of stores to the U-boat. The licentious additions to Gloria’s drawings had no doubt been made by one of the men while waiting for the dinghy to return and load up again for a second or third trip, and the cooker had probably been slashed with a heavy hatchet, then kicked over in a moment of vindictive rage just before the Germans had abandoned the raft. The newly discovered radio had been stolen and, consciously or unconsciously complying with the tradition of professional burglars, one of the visitors had left his card in the form of an unpleasant mess on the kitchen floor.

  All things considered, the results of the visitation might have been far more serious. There were five more oil cookers and two more radio sets among the cargo which could easily be got out. The fresh water still could be mended in a day, and there was such a large quantity of food among the cargo that the Germans had not had time to make off with even a twentieth part of it. The only permanent injury sustained was the mutilation of six of Gloria’s best drawings, with which she had hoped to impress some leading Art Master in Paris sufficiently to induce him to take her at a very modest fee. When Philip suggested that she could cut off the heads and other untouched parts and throw the spoilt bits away she would not hear of it, but said that later on she would try to get the marks out; where that was impossible she could cover them with extravagant draperies under which the form of the original figures would still be discernible to the artist’s eye. Meanwhile, the drawings were left as they were.

  During the afternoon Gloria got on with the cleaning up while Philip sat on the open deck nursing his injured arm and keeping a sharp look out for the R.A.F. aircraft; but to his disappointment it did not return. They went to bed that night still shaken by their ordeal of the morning but hopeful that other aircraft reconnoitring for U-boats from Gibraltar might find them in the course of the next few days.

  When a week had passed and they had seen only one aircraft in the far distance they had to adjust their ideas once more. They might still be lucky and have a plane fly right over them or meet a ship which would come close enough to see their signals, but they needed no telling now how staggeringly vast are the open spaces of the ocean and how few and far between, once one is off the great Trade Routes, are the ships that plough it.

  After almost touching the north-western tip of Spain they zigzagged in a south-westerly direction until they were too far out to be within sight of shipping passing along the Portuguese coast. Their best chance of being picked up had been as they crossed the great shipping way between America and the Mediterranean ports, but now they were passing out of this into a much less frequented zone off the north-west coast of Africa. There was a chance that they might run into a ship on the South African service or that the raft might be washed up on Madeira or the Canaries but Philip thought it more likely that, unless another storm interfered, the North-East Trades would carry them on to the African coast. When that would happen was almost unpredictable. Ever since they had been torn away from the Gulf Stream they had no longer been travelling under a steady impulse but much more slowly and erratically. On average they were now drifting at the rate of about ten miles a day in a generally southern direction, so it seemed that they should strike the bulge of Africa in anything between forty and eighty days.

  The one thing that now kept them reasonably cheerful was the weather. During the latter part of August and the first half of September, while they were crossing the west and central Atlantic, it had, in the main, been pleasantly warm; but as the days began to shorten bathing from the launch had lost much of its attraction, and during the first weeks on the raft an occasional nip in the October wind had given warning that Europe’s winter was about to set in. But now, although it was early November, day by day it was gradually becoming warmer again. Whenever the wind blew from Africa, having crossed hundred of miles of scorching sands, it was soft and balmy, and the sea began to take on a new colour: a real, deep, brilliant blue.

  For long hours they could now forget their extraordinary predicament and the uncertainties of the future while lounging like a couple of holiday-makers on the broad flat deck of the raft. Day after day the sky remained a cloudless, cobalt blue, and they swam or lay basking in the sunshine, idly watching for the appearance of the schools of porpoises, dolphins and flying-fish that inhabited these pleasant waters.

  For some days after the brush with the U-boat Philip had remained almost hors de combat, but his sprained shoulder gradually got better. He was then able to sort out the muddle in which the Germans had left a good part of the cargo and open up several fresh cases to make good those they had taken away. Having provided Gloria with a new cooker, he next unpacked another wireless. To his great relief it worked, so they were once more able to listen in.

  He was amazed to find that, during the five weeks they had been without news, nothing seemed to have happened at all. Polish resistance had almost ceased before he had been cut off from the world, and apparently the Germans and the Russians had now divided Poland amicably between them. That was hardly surprising, but the lack of activity on the Western Front struck him as quite extraordinary. Like most uninitiated people he had expected the Allies to launch an autumn campaign while the Germans were still to some extent occupied in the East. They had done nothing of the kind, yet it was transparently clear that no nation could hope to win a war by simply sitting down behind a great fortified wal
l and making rude faces at the enemy.

  This lack of activity consoled him to some extent for not being able to get into the fight. Somehow it seemed to make the whole war much less urgent because it more than ever confirmed his own view that the conflict would be a long one. Britain had dropped so far behind in the armaments race that it was going to take a long time for her to equip her new forces. The crux of the whole thing was, as he had always felt so intensely, could she keep her supply routes open against the U-boats long enough to equip her new armies and create a really powerful air force? He had striven so hard to help in that and prove to his country that there was a way out so he felt that fate had played him a scurvy trick in cutting him off from home before he had even had a chance to turn in the highly satisfactory results of his experiment. But there was nothing he could do about it now, so he settled down to wait as patiently as he could for a landfall.

  One thing, however, had begun to trouble him strangely and, because of it, he could no longer enjoy complete peace of mind for any length of time. As he tried to analyse this new feeling of his he came to the conclusion that he had first been conscious of it soon after the Nazi submarine men had been on board the raft; in some subtle, rather frightening way it had originated from the befouling of Gloria’s drawings.

  Ever since that day of their first bathe from the launch, when he had made her take off her Union Jack waistcoat and she, in a gesture of defiance, had pulled off her shorts as well, they had always bathed naked together, and gradually they had drifted into the habit of dressing and undressing in front of each other without giving it a thought.