by Alan Evans
Quartermain nodded, “If it comes off, and ignorance of the dock gates is only one of the obstacles in the way, then I agree it must be by the end of March.” He was silent a moment, scowling, then: “Churchill says the whole strategy of the war turns on Tirpitz. The threat of her breaking out keeps a large force of our capital ships tied-up in the north and there’s still no guarantee they could keep her from the convoys—and our lives depend on them. Stop the convoys and this country starves. So we have just ten weeks to shut St. Nazaire or it’s our necks in a noose.” He stood up, jerking the creases out of his jacket as if shaking off the mood and reaching for his cap. “Where did you intend spending your leave?”
Ward noted the use of the past tense. “London, sir. My home is in Northumberland and that’s too far to travel with just two days.” In wartime, with train services disrupted or delayed, the journey alone could take at least twelve hours.
“Good. I want you to come to London tomorrow: Richmond Terrace, just off Whitehall. Ask for me after lunch and we’ll show you what we’ve got and see if you can add to it, possibly put a few more pieces into the jigsaw.” He moved to the door. “And remember, keep your trap shut.”
Ward stood on the deck of Boston and watched the little admiral stride jauntily to his car.
Ten weeks. Or our necks in a noose.
*
Quartermain was back in his office in Richmond Terrace in the late afternoon. He spent some minutes standing at his window staring out at Whitehall and the Cenotaph, the headstone for a million dead. The Navy lost eighteen thousand at Jutland alone and Quartermain had known many of them. That was twenty-odd years ago and now there was another generation of young men at war. He had thought he was done with war. It was a bloody business in which some things had to be left to chance, calculated risks but never taken lightly.
He thought back over his interview with Ward, comparing the man he had seen with what he had previously learned of the young lieutenant. Quartermain was sure Ward would do. Strong, quick, no genius but with a good head on him and able to think on his feet. A good man in a boat. If the job called for a boat—and that was not yet known—then Ward was the man for it. No ties. That was important. When all the avoidable risks were cleared away this job would still be dangerous.
That last word reminded him and he turned back to his desk and the telephone, asked for the number of the office in Baker Street. “Maurice? James here. The matter we discussed at lunch the other day…Tonight? Good. Thank you.” He replaced the receiver.
So they were bringing Geneviève out tonight. That too was a risk, but unavoidable since he needed to see her, had questions to ask and instructions to give, and his radio contacts were far too fleeting.
He shifted uneasily at the thought, got up from the chair and paced the room, pausing to open the door and look at the Wren at the desk outside. He growled, “Is everything all right? Your quarters? No problems?”
“No, sir, thank you.”
He closed the door and resumed his pacing. So far they had only lost one aircraft and the agent it carried since they started these pick-ups and deliveries, but he would know no peace of mind until Geneviève was safe. And they had ten weeks, no more than that. If they failed and Tirpitz broke out into the Atlantic…He swore, loud enough for the girl outside to hear and wince.
*
The next day, Friday, Ward travelled up to London in a crowded train. These days the trains were always crowded, just as London teemed with uniforms: French, Dutch, Polish, Australian, Canadian…He thought that soon there would also be Americans. He booked in at the small hotel he had first used because it was cheap, when living on his pay as a sub-lieutenant. He still went there out of habit and because it served him well enough. He was not looking forward to his afternoon with Quartermain. He knew nothing of how docks were built and felt he would make a fool of himself. If all the experts had already done their best it was a fat lot of good asking him to wade through the papers. He was the captain of an escort destroyer, and that was a job he knew. He was not fitted for this intelligence caper.
Richmond Terrace stood on the Thames embankment, close by the river that led to the sea, as befitted the headquarters of Combined Operations. There was a sand-bagged sentry post at the entrance and a soldier standing on guard. The sandbags were daubed with the white paint that had broken out all over London and every other British city and town, on steps, kerbs, corners of buildings and in lines down the middle of the roads, all to help people groping their way through the black-out. The sentry wore a steel helmet and a respirator case of khaki webbing strapped on his chest. He stood rigidly at ease but as Ward approached he snapped to attention, shouldered a Lee-Enfield rifle and cracked his flat right hand on the stock.
Ward returned the salute as he went in. A messenger took him to Quartermain who glanced at his watch and grunted, “Good of you to come.” Ward thought wryly that he had little choice. Quartermain said abruptly, “I’ll be busy all this afternoon but the RAF’ll look after you.” And he sent Ward on his way to the office of a pipe-smoking squadron-leader.
There was a table with one bulky file resting on it. The squadron-leader sat Ward down before the file and said, “Don’t write anything down, old chap.” Then he left Ward to it, went back to his desk and his pipe.
The file was labelled CHARIOT: Ward found it alternately fascinating, then bewildering in its technical complexity.
He had the facility to scan a page of a balance sheet and absorb its contents instantly, a gift remarked on by his father, but he took his time with this file. He worked his way through it twice to be sure, then sat back and stretched despondently, realised the afternoon had all but gone.
The squadron-leader said around his pipe, “Any luck?” And when Ward shook his head: “I thought I saw you hesitate once—and look back in the file.”
Ward hesitated now. “Well…there was one name, Peyraud, one of the designers. I knew a Peyraud before the war, met him in a hotel in Paris in 1939. He was some sort of engineer.”
“Oh? What sort of chap? What was his full name? Where did he come from?”
“His first name was Alain but I don’t know where his home was.”
“Which hotel was it, then?”
Ward told him and thought back: “He was around sixty, grey-haired, about six feet tall and thin.” The squadron-leader waited but Ward said, “That’s all, sorry.”
“Ah! Well, anyway, it was worth a try. No stone unturned and all that.” He escorted Ward to the front door and shook his hand. “I understand you’re having a spot of leave. Good show!”
Ward jammed his cap on his head and stalked up Richmond Terrace into Whitehall. He felt his failure keenly, remembering the capital ships lost by the thinly-spread Navy in the last few weeks, six including Ark Royal. The gaps they left must be filled but the only ships available had to be kept in the north instead, because so long as St. Nazaire was open to Tirpitz she might break out into the Atlantic and that threat had to be guarded against. So St. Nazaire must be shut, and quickly.
Ward strode on up Whitehall, his spirits lightening. There was a crisp coldness to the air after the confines of the Headquarters building. The land lay in the grip of winter and there were piles of swept, dirty snow at the sides of the road, but the sky was clear and a winter sun shone, without heat but with cheer. Ward looked up at it and thought, About time you showed!
On the corner ahead of him a man was selling the early edition of an evening paper, thin because newsprint was in short supply. A car slid past Ward, stopped at the kerb just short of the corner and a girl got out of the back and went to buy a copy. As Ward came up he took in that she had long legs, walked well on the high heels and had saved or somehow wangled silk stockings, a rare luxury now in this war of shortages and rationing. Blonde hair bent over her purse as she got out change and handed it over. The face lifted as she turned back to the car. Cheeks stung to colour by the cold, a wide mouth, green eyes—
Ward said
, “Good God! You!”
The girl halted—of necessity since he stood in her path—and looked up at him, startled. He saw that and apologised. “Sorry! But aren’t you—” He paused, realising he did not know her name, then went on, “Didn’t we bring you back to England in Saracen? From St. Nazaire?”
“Yes.” She smiled, then her eyes flicked away. Ward followed the direction of her gaze and saw the driver getting out of the car. He was tall, a young man about Ward’s age, dressed in a rumpled blue suit and his eyes were watchful. The girl said, “It’s all right.”
The man nodded, ducked back into the car, but remained watchful.
The girl turned back to Ward. “I—regret. It is a car from my work. Yes, I remember you brought me. I was angry because I did not wish to come.” But she was smiling now.
“Er—yes.” He recalled her anger and that he had been short with her, in fact bloody rude. He said awkwardly, “I wanted to explain my reasons but I didn’t get the chance.” That was not entirely true. He had been busy but the truth was he had forgotten about her until too late when he found that she, like the Polish infantry, had been taken ashore.
She shook her head, “I understood, after a little while, that it had not been possible to take me back.”
She did not seem to be bearing a grudge. He held out his hand, “Jack Ward.”
She shook it, “Catherine Guillard.”
He said, “So you stayed. And you have a job.”
“Yes.”
She did not explain and he thought that she probably worked in Whitehall for one of the Ministries, and this was one of their cars. He grinned, “Hush-hush, eh?”
“I am sorry?”
“Hush-hush.” He explained, “You’re not allowed to talk about it.” The phrase was a commonplace but she was foreign and this scrap of vernacular must have escaped her.
Catherine nodded, “Yes.”
“All right, we won’t talk about that, then.’’
“We are going to talk?” She looked up at him in solemn surprise.
Were they? Well, he was on leave, he had nothing else to do and now that he looked at her she was quite a pretty girl. She was older, poised, the gawkiness gone. “Of course. Look, I know I’ve apologised and you’ve been good about it, but I want to make it up to you. How would you like to go out for a bite to eat tonight, and some dancing?”
“Well—” Catherine hesitated. It was a long, time since she had gone out to dinner with a young man and she had not forgotten this one, so tall and with the black eyes under the black brows. The eyes were not hostile now, he was not scowling and looked like a man who might smile easily, but otherwise he was just as she remembered him. He was possibly a shade leaner and that made him appear even taller. His features had hardened and she did not recall so many wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, but the scar—
Ward misinterpreted her hesitation: “You’re not married or anything?”
Catherine smiled, “No. Are you married—or anything?”
“Good Lord, no!” Anyway, this was different: he owed the girl a dinner and that was all there was to it. “So you don’t need to worry about that.”
She had been worried about something else but instead she said, “I do not have a wardrobe.”
“Nobody dresses up these days.” But she would surely know that. He said, “You look fine to me now.”
“I do not look fine.” She was bundled into a heavy coat against the cold. “I have a dress but it is not formal.”
Ward rode over that objection, “The dinner won’t be formal. So you’ll come? Great! I’ll pick you up around seven. Is that all right? Where do you live?”
She told him and then turned to the car. “Now I must go.
He handed her in, closed the door and lifted a hand in salute as the car pulled away. Its registration was civilian, not official, so he concluded it was some vehicle her Ministry had requisitioned. He walked back to his hotel because he wanted the exercise. He did not think once about Quartermain or CHARIOT.
*
He called for Catherine Guillard on the stroke of seven that evening at her address in a quiet row of houses behind Baker Street. As soon as the taxi stopped the girl came out of the house and closed the door, so she had clearly been waiting in the hall and looking out for him. She wore a dress with a coat open over it: both were simple but new—and obviously very expensive. Ward wondered at that and the silk stockings. Usually the people of these islands were drab because clothing was restricted in style and cut, as well as being rationed. Had she some sort of black-market wangle? Or a boyfriend in the trade? Anyway, it was none of his business.
He thought she seemed nervous and so he said, “Very nice!”
She smiled at that, “Thank you.”
He took her to the Dorchester. The Perseus Group owned some big hotels but this one belonged to the Mc-Alpines. There were people in the restaurant who knew Ward as they had known his father, one of them a man from Shell, another from Vickers. The menu was impressive until you read the cautionary notice that a meal was restricted to three courses and only one of those a main course. The whole country was on short commons, one pound of meat, four rashers of bacon and a two-inch cube of butter—to last a week. Everything else came in the same meagre portions. The maximum price for a meal was five shillings but restaurants like that at the Dorchester were allowed to make a house charge of six shillings to cover linen, bread rolls and so forth, and a half-crown for dancing. Ward calculated that with drinks and the taxi fare later he wouldn’t get much change from a fiver. He grinned. He could afford it. He had still not spent a penny from the Perseus Group. He had enough without that, if only because he so rarely got the chance to spend his naval pay.
He and Catherine talked easily. In fact he did most of the talking, though he did not notice it at the time, mainly about Boston and her crew but carefully, without giving away any secrets.
Catherine smiled, “You are proud of her.”
He shrugged and grinned. “She’s a cantankerous old bucket, sometimes, but we’ve got a good ship’s company and my Number One, that’s the Joe Krueger we were talking about, is a terrific bloke.”
All he learned of Catherine was that she had a room in the house behind Baker Street and he supposed it was a block of flats or a hostel for girls working in the Ministries. She did not talk about her family and home in France and he understood that could be painful for her. She was curious about his own home on the Northumberland coast.
They danced a lot, Ward adequately, the girl very well. At the start of the evening she was reserved, watchful, but by the end they were laughing together. He decided she was a very pretty girl and watched to see the turn of her head and her smile.
So when he took her home in the taxi he tried to kiss her but she stopped him, firmly. “No. Please.”
That set him off-balance. Did she think he would try to seduce her in a taxi? Then he remembered this girl was alone in a foreign country. He knew little about her but liked her and wanted to know more. Fat chance of that, and he said without hope, “I don’t suppose you could get a day off tomorrow?” Saturday was a working day.
She asked, “You go to your ship tomorrow?”
“Not till late. And there’s a train at six in the evening.”
She thought a moment, then: “I could see you tomorrow afternoon.”
That cheered him up. “Fine. Where and when?”
“Here.” The taxi had turned off Baker Street and stopped outside her house. “At two?”
“I’ll be here on the dot.”
He handed her out of the cab and watched as she rang the bell. The door opened. There was a curtained blackout cubicle just inside and he caught a glimpse of the shadowy figure of a man. Then she turned to wave and the door closed behind her.
He went back to his hotel happy. He had enjoyed himself and without Catherine he might have spent the evening alone. It was a bit of luck meeting her.
*
The next
morning he paid his bill and left his case behind the desk at the hotel, arranging to call for it in the evening.
He lounged about in the hotel, read the papers, drank coffee, lunched at twelve-thirty, and then set off impatiently to walk the mile-and-a-half to Baker Street.
Reading the papers had brought his mind back to the war—and CHARIOT. Quartermain had told him flatly he could not join it—even if it took place. It had to, he was certain of that. After the sinking of H.M.S. Hood with the loss of a thousand men, the Navy had taken its revenge and sunk Bismarck. But what if Bismarck had escaped into St. Nazaire and made repairs, had lived to continue her Atlantic marauding, or if Tirpitz now broke out, sure of a haven in St. Nazaire? The Atlantic convoys, Britain’s lifeline, were stretched thin already, the U-boats dangerously close to cutting them off altogether. It was no wonder Churchill had suggested that the whole strategy of the war hinged on Tirpitz…
Ward was scowling when he reached the house behind Baker Street but the sight of Catherine soon took his mind off the war. She ran quickly down the steps to meet him, shrugging into her heavy winter coat as she came. They walked and talked and this time she did her share, chattering of France before the war. Some of the shop windows in Oxford Street were boarded over, the glass blown out of them in the bombing. Others were criss-crossed with adhesive tape to prevent them shattering from blast and the girl peered in, eagerly curious.
They sat for a while in Hyde Park. Air-raid shelters were sunk in the ground and a battery of anti-aircraft guns poked their long snouts out of sand-bagged gunpits. Beyond the bare branches of the trees the fat-bellied barrage balloons floated over London, silver-grey against the cold blue of a winter sky. Ward and the girl laughed a lot that afternoon and they stayed out so long that he had to hail a taxi to take her home. He had enjoyed himself immensely and he told her so as he stood with her outside the house, the early winter dusk around them.