Gibraltar Road

by Philip McCutchan

  Mr Ackroyd’s face altered, an expression of fear and puzzlement coming over it. After a time he whispered, “Ah had it, yes. Ah took it.”

  Well, this was progress of a sort—but not the sort Shaw liked. That technician’s theory was undoubtedly confirmed, but equally certainly Ackroyd hadn’t got that part now. As Shaw, his face strained and anxious, bent forward to go on with his questions, the blank look came back to Ackroyd and Shaw felt desperate. Ackroyd began his dirge again: Dum-da, dum-da, dum-da, dum-da. . . .

  “Shut up, for God’s sake!” As soon as Shaw snapped that at Ackroyd he regretted it. Debonnair looked at him warningly, but it was too late. Mr Ackroyd sobbed a little and drooled. Shaw cursed, felt his fingers grip the oars tighter . . . if only he could make the little blighter understand. He said despondently, “Debbie, you have another go. See if he knows what’s happened to that missing part, will you?”

  She waited a while until Ackroyd had quietened. Then, almost rocking the skinny frame in her arms like a baby, she began on him—quietly, soothingly, flatteringly at times, pressing always. She went on and on, and in time remembrance began to come back to Mr Ackroyd of something that he knew was desperately important and had seemed just lately to have developed some connexion with women—first that bitch, then an old, wrinkled-up crone somewhere or other, and now this good-looking tit-bit . . . tit-bit! Now then!

  Suddenly a new light came into Mr Ackroyd’s eye.

  “Eh?” he asked.

  It wasn’t much of a reaction, but they hardly dared to speak in case they made him lose it again; after a moment Shaw nodded at the girl, and she went on with the process. Slowly Mr Ackroyd looked away from them both, looked down at his clenched fists. He opened his right hand ... he looked at that hand for a long time without speaking. Then he looked up and said slowly, “Teeth. A little piece of metal, lass, with teeth.”

  Shaw hazarded, “Teeth . . . to engage into another moving part, a—a sort of cog?”

  “Ay, lad, that’s reet, that is. Teeth.” Ackroyd held up his hand. Across the palm, just visible in the moonlight, Shaw noticed a line of indentations, little red pits and bumps. Ackroyd went on, “Ah had that, ah had. Yes. Ah ’ad it all the while.” There was a tearful, upset note in his voice now. “Mind, ah never told that bitch a bloody thing, not a bloody thing. And ah ’oong on to that piece of the mechanism. See, ah knew it were important, very important. And ah had it.

  And ah never said one word, not the ’ole time, ah didn’t.”

  “Good man.” Somehow Shaw believed this unlikely-looking little hero whom Gibraltar knew as a finicky, standoffish, nervy type who ran a mile at a loud noise. He asked gently, “Look, Mr Ackroyd, if it’s important we ought to get it back, oughtn’t we? I mean—”

  “Course we ought . . . why ever did I let it go?” Mr Ackroyd’s voice was panicky now; a moment later, however, it faded away again, drifted off as he developed a spasmodic facial twitch which Shaw found painful to watch; drifted off, when Ackroyd spoke again, into nonsense. Shaw clenched his hands, a feeling of utter desperation coming over him again. Gibraltar was waiting ... he shook Ackroyd a little, tried to stop the meaningless meander about some one called Ernie Spinner in Liverpool.

  In the end he succeeded. Ackroyd stopped. He said slackly, “Ah’ve joost remembered where that part is, lad.”

  He grinned up at Shaw. Shaw could have sworn he saw a wink on the drawn white face.

  He asked quickly, “Yes, old chap? Where?”

  Mr Ackroyd gave a tired chuckle, put his hand to his mouth as though about to say something confidential. Shaw felt his scalp tingle, felt the rising irritation ... at any moment Ackroyd might forget again. Ackroyd said:

  “Roody woman rammed it down ’er tits.”

  There was a brief pause, then a sudden, irrepressible giggle from Debonnair. “Ah don’t knaw, ah’m sure, but ah’d have said it’d be roody uncomfortable down there. Prickly, like.”

  Shaw let out a long sigh, and heard Debonnair still giggling away in the stem. There was a tired smile on his lips as he said wearily, “Well, now we know, we’re not much for’arder—not until we find Karina. And then it probably won’t be down her—er—”

  “Exactly,” agreed Debonnair primly.

  Main Street was quiet at this early-morning hour just past midnight, except for a few drunks and one or two ladies of easy virtue hanging about, from force of habit, round the entrances to night-clubs, and the M.P.’s, and the Naval Patrol with their measured tread and the blancoed belts and gaiters moving solemnly along from the Picket House, and the infantrymen stationed by their trucks. Grim-faced, sunburnt men behind the steering-wheels, smoking the cigarettes which they—some of them—hurriedly squeezed out in their fingers as the Governor came round.

  Hammersley thought bitterly: Do they really think I’m going to have their names taken for smoking at a time like this, when it could be about the last packet of Players or Woods they’ll ever open in their lives?

  Then he knew he had to shake himself—and the men— out of such thoughts; a time like this was one of the times when discipline was needed more than ever, the very time it justified itself. He didn’t worry about those men, the older ones, who’d had the common sense to douse their dog-ends when they saw him—that was in itself an act of respect, an acknowledgment of basic and ingrained discipline. Those men would be all right. But when a group of young soldiers carried on smoking as he went past, and stared at him superciliously as much as to say: Go on, you bastard, you just try choking us off now and see what happens, mate . . . then Hammersley went into action.

  He roared, “Company Commander!”

  A sergeant came forward at the rush, halted, saluted. “Beg pardon, sir, the officer’s gone along—”

  “Very well, Sergeant, you’ll do. Once you’ve done your buttons up, that is.” His voice was sharp, his face pugnacious. The N.C.O. fumbled at his buttons. “Those men.” Hammersley pointed with his cane. “Why are they smoking?”

  The sergeant stared woodenly into space. “Sorry, sir. I reckon they feel . . . well . . . what’s it matter, kind of, sir.”

  “I see.” Hammersley looked at him, felt years older again. “And do you feel like that too, Sergeant?”

  “Well, sir.” The man swallowed. A biggish Adam’s-apple wobbled uncertainly in a long brown throat. “Yessir. I do, sir.”

  “All right.” Hammersley climbed out of the staff car. He raised his voice deliberately, so that the men could hear. He said, “In that case I’ll see you’re broken to the ranks. . . . If you can’t take charge you’re not fit to wear your chevrons. What’s your name?”

  The man was shocked, Hammersley could see that. His face had gone a dull mud colour. Hammersley thought, That’s done him a power of good—he’s more worried about that now than the rumours he’s been fed with, and he’ll be able to look forward to writing to his M.P. about me. The sergeant said, “Smith, sir.”

  Hammersley looked towards the A.D.C. “Note that, Captain Harrison.” To the soldier he said, “Very well, then. That’ll be all for now.” Then he walked over to the men—he noticed that they’d snuffed those cigarettes now, were coming, though slowly, to attention, straightening their caps.

  He said, “All right, at ease. Now listen to me. I’m not having any soldiers under my command slouching around in public as I’ve just seen you men doing.” What he wanted to say was, This Rock has been garrisoned by British soldiers for over two hundred years, and maybe you’re the last regiments who’ll ever come here, because when the civilians leave at noon to-morrow—to-day, rather—that’ll very likely be the end. It’s you who’ve got the duty of seeing Gibraltar, not through a mere siege, but off the world’s map, and if you can’t take a pride in yourselves at this stage you’re going to let down all those, Foot and Guns, who have gone before.

  He said none of that; for one thing it was too old-fashioned a bunch of sentiments altogether, and for another there was—as ever—the secrecy which had
prevented him all along from taking these men into his confidence.

  What he did say, with a nice parade-ground snap in his voice, was: “If I catch you like that again I’ll have all your names taken and you’ll be up before your Commanding Officers at next Defaulters.”

  He stared them out and then he swung round, walked back to his car. Before he drove away he noticed the difference; they’d smartened up, were tending to grin ruefully at one another—a good sign, that, and as much as to say, ‘Well, reckon we did ask for that.’

  What one of them actually said, though H.E. never knew it, was: “If the old beggar’s so sure there’s going to be another muckin’ Defaulters, there can’t be much to bloody well worry about, eh?”

  Hammersley had got down to Irish Town, and his car was circling Casemates, the parade where the ancient Ceremony of The Keys had taken place regularly ever since the start of the Great Siege in 1779, when he heard the roar of the motor-cycle coming fast along Main Street, and then a moment later the dispatch rider zoomed up and dismounted.

  He approached the General, gave him a swinging salute.

  He handed over a sealed envelope and stepped back. Hammersley opened it, read it, crushed it in his hand. It was from the captain of H.M.S. Cambridge, addressed to the Flag Officer, and it read simply: Ostrowiec left harbour at 0030 hours local time. Have intercepted and searched without result. Ostrowiec proceeding on passage to Gdynia.

  So that was the last hope gone—almost.

  There was always Shaw, of course. . . .

  Hammersley turned away, the square shoulders sagging a little.

  Further questioning of Ackroyd had produced no lead to Karina; the little man’s usefulness was exhausted, at any rate for the time being. There was always the chance, Shaw knew, that Karina would be waiting for them when they came into land. Against that possibility was the fact that she wouldn’t know precisely where they intended to come ashore, and also the fact that she wouldn’t want to risk the attentions of the Civil Guard after the affair of the fishing-boat. Anyway, and most important, he had to make contact with her. From what he’d picked up before leaving Gibraltar, he was pretty sure that Ackroyd without that metal fitting would be just as useless as no Ackroyd at all, in so far as the immediate safety of the Rock and its inhabitants was concerned.

  They’d had a little current with them, and it was still full night when they rounded Carnero; Shaw decided to land on the beach at Getares. They made in for the shore a little farther on, cold and wet and played out. Ackroyd had lapsed into a sort of delirium again, and Shaw hadn’t been able to get any more sense out of him at all. They came in slowly, inched in towards Getares beach just beyond the dim outline of the whale-oil factory which lay to the southward. There was no one about in that wild spot so far as they could see—Shaw thought it unlikely that the authorities would be worrying about them, considering that those Civil Guards back near Tarifa hadn’t appeared to have noticed their boat, and had succeeded in scaring off the visible intruder—the fishing-vessel; much more likely, they’d be concentrating any remaining efforts on trying to find that car, with Karina in it, which had started up so suddenly behind them on the Jerez road and had roared off so fast towards Algeciras. They couldn’t help finding some significance, some linking between that and the fishing-boat, obviously. Nevertheless, Shaw had to remember that his party could be picked up if they were seen before they were clear of the rowing-boat, or before they had managed to lose themselves in less suspicious surroundings, and he felt for the assurance of his revolver— the water wouldn’t have hurt it, nor would the self-sealed ammunition be damaged.

  Shaw was ready to quell Ackroyd if he made any undue noise on the way in; but in the event he didn’t need to— the little man was in a bad way now, he thought; probably his efforts at speech had tired him.

  The boat ran smoothly, silently except for a slight sough of wood on sand, up Getares beach; and as they got out Shaw gave it a shove. It drifted out to sea again. It was safer that way.

  They made their way up the beach.

  Shaw was shivering with fatigue by this time, felt that he’d never be able to think this thing out properly, plan the next move. Desperately he wanted sleep. The going was rough —wild and open—and his stumbling feet caught the upthrust tussocks of grass and the small buried rocks, nearly sending him headlong a score of times. When they reached the lee of a large building on the beach—which Shaw remembered as a restaurant which he had patronized under somewhat easier circumstances when duty and pleasure had brought him this way before—he called a halt.

  Thankfully he eased Ackroyd to the ground.

  Debonnair, he saw, was cold and tired but bearing up well. He took her arm, and they sat down together on the soft, fine sand of the higher part of the beach. It still seemed to retain some of the day’s warmth. He said:

  “Look, Debbie. There’s a lot to do yet. We’ve got to find Karina. Don’t ask me how yet.” He sighed, rubbed the side of his nose. “I suppose all we can do is to keep our eyes skinned for her and Don Jaime’s car. She’s sure to be around, with her hooks out for Ackroyd.”

  “Poor Don Jaime!” She snuggled up to Shaw’s body. “I doubt if he’ll see that car again somehow, and he was so good to us.” She had a sudden idea. “I suppose you couldn’t contact him again, by phone?”

  “Too risky, and it wouldn’t help much now.” Shaw drew her closer, giving her what little warmth there was in him. “I’m sorry about the car too—lucky he’s a rich man—bat the British Government’ll find a way of footing the bill if anything drastic happens to it.” He paused. “It’s Domingo Felipe I’d like to contact, but that’s impossible now. What I’ll have to do is to get in touch with the British Consul here, if Karina doesn’t pick us up first—actually, that’d probably be the best way of contacting her, really. Just let her find us.”

  “And then outsmart her?”

  He nodded, gave a huge yawn. He was silent for a while, dribbling sand through his fingers, thinking. “Seriously, I believe it might be best to make ourselves fairly conspicuous in the hopes that she shows herself.” He shivered, starting to yawn again as though he would never stop. Then he added, “There used to be good contacts here once, but I’d rather find out from the Consul if they’re still operative before I stick my neck out.”

  “Think they mightn’t be operative any more?”

  He brooded, looking out to sea where the Rock stood out beneath the bright moon, bathed in silver. “Times change, you know, and so do loyalties, Debbie.” He squinted thoughtfully into the night. “Though it’s largely a matter of pesetas, of course.”

  She nodded, then looked critically at Shaw, noticed again the tired lines under his eyes. As though reading her thoughts, Shaw said, “You’re going to get some sleep. No one’ll look for us here now, I’m pretty sure of that, but we’ll have to keep a watch out all the same—and keep Ackroyd quiet too, if he starts up again.”

  She grinned up at him. “Sounds as though he’s a gramophone,” she said. “Anyway, I’m taking the first watch. Darling, you’re dead on your feet and you know it,” she added, as he started to talk her down.

  He still protested. “You should never have come, really. And if you hadn’t I’d have had to manage.”

  “Look, you obstinate man.” The girl reached up, took the thin, sensitive face in her hands, kissed it passionately as though her lips could eradicate the lines of worry and exhaustion. “It so happens I am here and I’m going to be some use. Get it? I’m taking the first watch—say two hours?—and after that you can stay awake as long as you like. You’ve got the thinking to do—I’m only dogsbody. You can’t think on no sleep for two nights, poppet.”

  She’d said two hours because she knew he’d never agree to longer, but she meant to leave him to have his sleep out if she could. Actually he was practically asleep already; he had the greatest difficulty in keeping his eyes open at all. Debonnair made him lie down on the sand, rolled Mr Ackroyd over so that
the two lay side by side, keeping each other warm. In ten seconds, still wet through, Shaw was fiat out.

  Debonnair looked down at him fondly, feeling almost maternal. Then, rocking her neck a little and shaking out her hair, she stared out to sea, listening to the sounds of the night and the gentle slop-slop of the waters of Algeciras Bay down the beach. After a moment her glance went back to Shaw and Ackroyd, lying together almost like lovers, and she felt a silly little pang; Esmonde was a dear, but, Heavens, he was such a stick. She felt the desire run through her body like fire, a passionate flame. And that wasn’t for the first time. Esmonde Shaw, she sometimes felt, was oddly like a woman in that one particular: in regard to her, it was marriage he wanted and nothing less. Too damn silly, really, but awfully sweet of course . . . it wasn’t as though he didn’t feel the same as other men, hadn’t had a woman before . . . suddenly, impulsively, the girl’s eyes misted over and her hand reached out softly to touch his cheek in the dimness. She felt she was going to give in one of these days, marry him whatever his work was; or make him surrender to his desires and leave the Service, and go and live in some stinking little suburban villa in Hounslow—would it be?—or Walton-on-Thames . . . or Esher . . . that was what the boy seemed to want to do, didn’t he?

  Damn it, she told herself suddenly, I can’t do that to him, however much he thinks he’d like it. She found then that her cheeks were wet with tears.

  A few of the ships were beginning to come in already, the faster ones and the nearer ones which consisted in the main of the smaller units of the British Mediterranean Fleet and some shipping which had not been far off the Rock when Hammersley’s urgent hastener had gone out. Some entered from the eastward during Debonnair’s vigil, and she saw their lights coming round Europa to turn into the Bay. She traced their progress, five miles across the water, to the outer anchorage or in through the breakwater to secure alongside the moles, and as she watched them come she wondered. Though she had gathered quite a lot, she’d never asked Shaw for all the details; as always, it was he who had to volunteer the information, and she accepted the risks without question. That there was some awful threat hanging over Gibraltar, of course, she knew. Now she realized that this influx of shipping, so suddenly, must clearly be connected with that threat, and perhaps for the first time she began to see the size of this thing that Shaw had been assigned to.