For Valour (8 page)

Wishart smiled. “I—I think so, Bob. I was a bit scared at the time.” He seemed to consider it. “Very scared.”

“You were fine. Just do your job and keep with your mates. The Skipper can worry about the rest of it.”

Wishart tried another sip. “Poor Mister Seton took it badly.”

Forward shrugged. “Nearly shit himself, more likely!”

Wishart looked away, feeling his cheeks flaming. It was always the same. Some of them did it deliberately to embarrass him, like the big sailor who had moved away up the bar after Forward's quiet words. He had not met anyone like him before. Tough, confident, and somehow dangerous.

He ventured, “I heard that you're getting your hook back soon.”

Forward glanced at the clock. “Jimmy-the-One seems to think so.” He smiled, and was momentarily a different person. “Don't worry, Ian, I'll not let it go to my head!”

Then he froze, the noise, the laughter and the smoke blurred into one. And yet his voice was quite calm when he spoke, so calm that it almost unnerved him.

“Here, chum, what have you done with the paper?”

The man, one of the soldiers, pushed it towards him between two tight groups of drinkers.

Not much in the papers these days. Four pages for the most part and that was it.
The war, you know.

It was a London edition. Yesterday's. A photograph of two Spitfires doing something spectacular, and one of Montgomery addressing his troops somewhere. It was such a small piece, and yet it filled the paper, screamed at him, like she had that night.

Following the murder of the prostitute Grace Marlow at Chelsea as reported in Friday's edition, police are now following new leads which they hope will identify her killer. Witnesses have come forward, said a police spokesman, and an arrest is anticipated.

It was impossible, of course. And tomorrow it would be forgotten. Thousands were being killed every day. Why should they waste their time on her? He almost spoke her name.
Grace.

“Are you all right, Bob?”

He looked at his slightly built, fair-haired companion. Chalk and cheese, as his awful granny would have put it.

“Sure thing. The bloody beer, I 'spect.” He punched his arm. “Let's catch the boat. We can share a tot.” He winked, although his mind was still reeling. “A proper drink, eh?”

Wishart was not sure what had happened, or how he had helped in some way.

He smiled into the steady rain and tilted his cap over one eye. The unknown sailor was right about one thing.

What
would
his mother have said?

Lieutenant Driscoll lightly touched the peak of his cap and reported, “That's the last of our visitors, Number One.”

Together he and Fairfax stood by the companion ladder and watched the motor boat's frothing wake until it was lost in the darkness. Fairfax said wearily, “Good party, I thought.”

“Big mess bills after that lot!”

Fairfax walked between the ranks of depth charges. A good party, but, as usual when old ships got together, it had gone on too long. Noisy, too, and as the gunnery officer had so dourly remarked, with a lot of booze to be paid for. Perhaps he should have asked some women, nurses or a few Wrens, but there had not really been enough time. He stared into the rain. That had not been the reason and he should admit it. He had just wanted to blot it all out. The stark memory of the stricken
Grebe,
men floundering in the blazing fuel, a soundless picture of destruction. A drifting mine. Of all the bloody luck. It happened . . . But it was not that. The voice again.
Admit it.
It had been the unspoken reprimand when the Captain had reminded him of their first duty, and of what had happened the other time they had tried to perform a simple act of humanity.

It was all the more painful because he had always been able to share his thoughts, even his doubts, with his previous Captain. Martineau was reachable in matters of ship's routine, or the advancement or otherwise of individuals, but there was always the shutter, like that moment on the bridge, after which he became remote.

The ship seemed strangely quiet now. The libertymen were all offshore, a few barely able to pass Driscoll's eagle eye as they lurched aboard from the busy M.F.V.s that ferried seagoing personnel around the harbour. No defaulters, and even at the party there had been only a few breakages when two of the guests had decided to become fighting bulls, using chairs for horns. His opposite number in
Zouave
had arrived late, but had been the last to leave. Fairfax tried to clear his head.
Zouave
's Number One had gone to collect a parcel from the naval club. While they had been privately discussing their respective Captains he had mentioned seeing Martineau at the club, with a Wren officer. It was not disloyalty; first lieutenants looked upon such a trust as self-preservation.

But the Wren, who was she? Martineau's wife had walked out on him. It was rarely that simple. Suppose Martineau's behaviour with another woman had prompted it?

He had asked his opposite number what the Wren had looked like.

He had replied thickly, “Didn't see her face. Young, though.” He had regarded his empty glass sadly. “But still, you don't look at the mantelpiece when you poke the fire, do you?”

But all in all, it had been a good party.

Now they could go back to war.

Second Officer Anna Roche sat on the edge of the iron bedstead and studied the neat array of kit laid out and waiting for tomorrow.

She had closed the adjoining door but could still hear the monotonous drip of the tap there. This was a temporary place, where nobody stopped long enough to get it fixed. She glanced around the room. It had been a hostel for serious anglers before the war, and there had still been a few stuffed and mounted fish in glass cases when she had first been billeted here, most of them since shattered during an air raid. Someone had told her that most of the prized trophies had proved to be made of plaster.

Tomorrow, then. Transport to the station, travel warrant and ration card, something to read on the train. She grimaced.
Trains.
She shivered and buttoned the thick pyjama jacket up to her throat; it was ugly but practical. If you had to run to the deep shelter in the night, you could not afford to be fussy.

She looked at the uniform on the chair, her best, with the two blue stripes and CANADA stitched on each shoulder. It still made people stare and ask her questions, which she found amusing considering the whole of England seemed to be full of foreign uniforms. It had taken a lot of getting used to. She smiled wryly. Even for a girl who thought she knew it all.

She loosened her hair and flicked it over her collar, remembering how he had looked at it, then she stood up and walked to the wall mirror. Even that was cracked. She had grown up after crossing the Pond, or thought she had. But it was still there. The hurt, the disbelief, and something utterly alien. Shame.

Suppose he had still been in the ship, and that he had been there in the naval club when she had barged in. Looking for what? Revenge, reconciliation? She touched her breast, and felt the sudden urgency in her heart. Over. It was over. He was dead. Missing him, blaming him, hating him, it was pointless now.

It would be Christmas soon. In Toronto the decorations would be up, peace or war. Friends calling, but fewer now with many of the men overseas and in uniform of one kind or another. Even her kid brother Tim was over here somewhere. Turned down for the navy, he was in an infantry regiment and the last she had heard he was under training, and probably fretting at being away from the action.

What would Liverpool be like? Some of the others tried to make light of it; some had called it a dump.
Best seen over the stern of a fast-moving ship!

She thought of the course she had just attended, at an antisubmarine establishment called HMS
Osprey,
stuck out like a miniature Gibraltar on Portland Bill.

Now it was time for the real thing. The Battle of the Atlantic was vital, and deadly for those who fought it. She would be part of a team, under a senior officer who had apparently given the go-ahead for her appointment. She was twenty-four years old. Ancient, compared to the last intake of Wrens she had seen.

She heard a door slam, feet on the stairway. Second Officer Naomi Fitzherbert had been down to the basement, where a bath had been installed in the middle of nowhere. They were about the same age, but that was as far as it went. Naomi was of “a good family,” as they called it over here, and her father was a lord, with little money apparently, but a lord nonetheless.

She was the sort of girl with whom Anna would never have believed she could share a room, let alone actually become fond of. She could be outrageously rude, offhand even with certain senior officers who might have imagined a chance for themselves. She would miss her more than anyone.

The door banged open and her room-mate strode barefooted across the cracked linoleum floor.

“Would you bloody well credit it! The hot water's
off
again! They couldn't organize a bottle-party in a brewery, this bloody bunch!” She paused, the towel barely covering her full breasts. “You'll be well out of it!”

She often walked about their quarters in this fashion, and Anna had once believed she might be
one of those,
like a girl they had whispered about at her school, and another with less concern at university.

She looked now at Anna's kit and said, “I hope it suits you, girl,” then sat heavily on the opposite bed and searched in her bag before pulling out a pack of duty-frees.

They watched the smoke twisting into the bedside lamp.

Then Naomi asked, “How was it?”

She was on her feet, her fingers entwined as she moved about the room.

“I should have known. I wrote to him. He would have written back. Said
something.
” She faced her friend, her eyes desperate again. “If I hadn't been in such a rush, getting back from Portland . . .”

She sat down beside her and felt the arm around her shoulders. “I heard about
Hakka
coming in. It was all a bit hush-hush. Otherwise . . .”

Naomi shrugged and inhaled, and it brought on a fit of coughing. “You'd have gone to the club anyway, if I know you, girl.”

Anna nodded, unable to find the words. Naomi was the only one who had known the whole story; she was like a rock when it came to secrets. Now the whole base probably knew, if anyone cared that much any more.

Liverpool would be a new beginning.

“What's he like?” She stared at her. “
Him.
The V.C.”

She thought about it, the stares, the old man in the white coat, the hall porter with the knowing smile.

“He was nice. I would have been annoyed, if I'd been him.”

Her friend grinned. “You kill me, you really do sometimes! You're a very attractive girl, and there'll always be men trying to impress you, touch you up—you've met a few of them!” It was not working. Maybe she could no longer shock her, shake her out of it long enough to seize another chance.

Anna said softly, “When I realized who he was, I was surprised. I think that's what I felt. He guessed what had happened, and he was trying to help.” Deep in her own thoughts, she did not notice her friend's sudden sadness. She was going. In the navy you had to expect it.
You shouldn't have joined if you can't take a joke.

But Naomi would miss her more than she cared to admit. She would go back to being the
Hon Fitz
as she was called, but not to her face.

Anna was still thinking of their brief exchange, her own astonishment when she had found herself touching the medal ribbon. And the photograph; what had he done with it?

She said, “Anyway, he was really nice about it. I think he's had a bad time.” Then she looked up. “Don't worry, I won't make the same mistake twice! I'm not
that
stupid!”

They both stared at the shuttered window as the siren wailed again. The All Clear.

Naomi exclaimed, “Well, that's a bloody change!” She watched Anna climb into bed, and sighed a little, wistfully.

Never say goodbye.

Martineau rolled over in the bunk, entangled in a blanket, fighting to come out of the dream. He was sweating and his heart was pounding like a drum, and his legs were over the side of the bunk feeling for his shoes before he realized that there had been no alarm. The bunkside telephone was buzzing in its leather case, as if an insect was trapped there.

He had to clear his throat. “Captain.”

Fairfax. Who else had he expected? He peered at the nearest scuttles, but the deadlights were still screwed in place; the ship was motionless. Nothing had changed.

Fairfax said, “I'm sorry to disturb you, sir. The guardboat is coming over with some despatches.”