Someone Special (51 page)

‘Up periscope!’

Marvellous words; and presently they were wallowing out on to the surface of the Bay of Bengal with fresh air rushing in and the men beginning to grin stiffly, to compare notes.

Far overhead, they could see a plane, a silver dot against the blue of the sky. On either side the ocean stretched, calm and placid beneath the sun. A radio message came through and a sub-lieutenant hurried to the bridge with it. Good news or bad? A recall, or orders to return to enemy waters?

The sub-lieutenant came down into the engine room. He was smiling. ‘We’ve been recalled to Trincomalee,’ he said cheerfully. ‘And the radio says we got the U-boat and the troop-carrier, so that’s all right. We’ve done our
bit, now the Yanks are going to take over. This means a long leave; it might even mean Blighty!’

There was some cheering then, though it was subdued. No one had quite got over their recent experience and, besides, they were on the surface, a sitting duck if they were caught by an aircraft or an enemy vessel. Snip, having done all that he should, was about to go to his bunk when he noticed something lying on the floor at his feet. He had been standing on it – a bit of paper, oily, dirty. He bent and picked it up. It was his photograph of Nell. He grinned ruefully at it and her steady gaze seemed to hold his own.

‘You’re in a bit of a mess, old lady,’ Snip told her, trying to wipe the oil and grime off the picture with only limited success. ‘But it doesn’t matter, because I’ll be seein’ the real thing after all. Well, there’s a turn up for the books. Nell Makerfield, you and me is goin’ to get married!’

Nell went through the days in a daze of unhappiness so deep that not even the VJ-Day celebrations in August meant much to her. National events such as Labour winning the election blared across the headlines, but she was not yet a voter and, apart from feeling sorry for Winnie who everyone knew had won the war, she did not worry overmuch about politics.

She did not worry about the new bomb which had caused the Japs to surrender, even though she thought the name – atomic bomb – quite catchy. All these things were happening in a world outside her own capsule of misery and self-disgust. She often thought about the poor idiot who had chased her across the woods and meadows on the day when she had met Dan again. Hester had explained that the man was touched in the head because of in-breeding, close relatives marrying. If she and Dan had gone ahead, unknowing, they might have produced a human misfit like that.

So when she got leave Nell did not return to the Gulliver gaff, though she wrote a couple of times to Hester – stiff, difficult letters. None of it was Hester’s fault, she knew, yet she could not help wishing that her mother had been a nicer sort of girl who had simply made love with and then married the man she loved, the way Nell had meant to do. If only Hester had been sensible, hadn’t been wooed by a sophisticated lover and the moonlight shining on the face of the waters and lighting up the silvery sand … if only! Her daughter could have loved the man of her choice, married him, had children by him. Indeed, if Hester had said nothing, Nell and Dan might have gone ahead in all innocence; ah, but the consequences of such innocence could have been so hideous that Nell could not bear to contemplate them. The recollection of the idiot’s snatching hand and greedy, animal-like face still had the power to send a shudder through her.

So when she got a couple of days’ leave she went to visit Fleur at her mother’s in Ipswich. Cissie’s husband, Ronnie Chelsworth, had left the Army when he and Cissie married. He had used his gratuity to buy property and the pair of them settled down to farming it. Nell had gone over by bus from the Withies; she really needed a change, but she fretted for her old friends.

‘Snip will be coming home soon I suppose,’ Fleur said when the two of them met outside the cinema. ‘It’ll be fun to see Snip again, won’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Nell said dully. It was not being able to tell anyone which was hardest, she thought. And not being able to tell Dan was worst of all. But what was the point of telling him? Why should she expose him to the sense of sick shame which had flooded over her when she understood that she and Dan might be half-brother and sister? The sensible, practical side of her mind knew that it was no one’s fault, that it was just a horrible accident of birth, so she told herself to forget it, put it out of her
mind. Telling Dan would simply make things worse; all Dan needed to know was that she had made a mistake and wouldn’t be getting in touch again.

There was no point, though, in telling Dan while she was still at the farm; it would be too easy for him to come and see her. When she left the Withies, she would not leave a forwarding address, which suited her fine. So she was working out her time, knowing she would not be needed once the troops came home, and helped by the fact that Dan wrote miserably, saying he had been posted to Aden and would not be able to see her before he left.

‘But never mind, sweetheart, we’ll meet just as soon as I get back and I can’t be away for longer than twelve months because that’s the length of the Aden tour,’ his letter said. ‘Keep your pecker up and think of me each day as I’ll think of you. And at least neither of us will have to worry about the other being bombed, because we’re out there to help with getting the chaps home, we’re not fighting anyone. Tons of love, little Nell, your Dan.’

‘You must be worried about Snip, though. Is he anywhere near Japan, where that awful atomic bomb went off? Not that they’d have exploded it with any of our people in the area, I don’t suppose. Lots of our troops are still out east, so they’d have to be careful, wouldn’t they?’

‘Dunno; in his last letter from Trinco-whatsit, Snip said the Americans seemed to want to see the back of the Brits, so he rather thought his next lot of orders, after the refit, would be for Blighty. But that was three or four weeks ago, I’ve not heard since.’

‘Well, I hope he hasn’t been blown up,’ Fleur said reproachfully. She clearly felt that Nell should have been more interested in the fate of her old friend. ‘By the way, what happened to that chap you talked about … Danny,
was it? I really thought the two of you might meet up when the war finished.’

The two girls were queueing for the cinema, waiting impatiently to have their withers wrung by yet another Great Romance. This time it was
Now Voyager
, with Bette Davis and Paul Henreid, last time it had been
Random Harvest
with Greer Garson and Ronald Colman, two stars who were great favourites with both girls.

‘His name’s Dan, not Danny. He’s in Aden now and I’ve just written to him to say I’m sorry but it’s all off,’ Nell said briefly, unable to resist telling someone that the deed had been done, though she would not have dreamed of giving reasons. ‘There’s no point in going on when you know you’ve made a mistake. Dan wasn’t for me.’

‘No,’ Fleur agreed. She shot a quick look at Nell out of the corner of an eye whose size was almost doubled by the enthusiastic, if inexpert, use of mascara. ‘No, if you’ve made a mistake you should always own up. Only I thought … is that why you’ve been so quiet, Nell?’

‘No. Why should it be?’ Nell snapped. ‘How could I be anything but quiet with you chattering away? Anyhow, I told Dan it’s over and asked him not to write again. He won’t be home for a year, his tour lasts that long. By then I’ll be miles away from Withies.’

‘Yes, you’ll be back with Gullivers by then, I daresay,’ Fleur said brightly.

‘I shan’t, or if I do join a fair, it won’t be Gullivers,’ Nell said. She surprised herself by her words but realised she was speaking no more than the truth. She would not live with her mother and Ugly Jack again, not because she disliked either of them but because she had outgrown them. ‘I couldn’t go back to being a daughter again, you see. I’ve been independent for too long.’

‘Yes, and your Mum’s had Jack to herself for too long; I know they say they’d love you home, but sometimes it must seem a sort of backward step,’ Fleur said, with
surprising shrewdness. ‘But now the war’s over we’ll be able to do all sorts of things. No one will make us work in factories or shops if we don’t want to, we’ll have a choice.’

The queue edged forward, the two girls with it. Nell examined Fleur’s last remark and found it flawed. ‘We shan’t be able to choose at all,’ she said scornfully. ‘You are a little silly, Fleur! With the fellers coming home us girls won’t have a chance of a decent job, just you wait and see.’

The return of HMS
Hesperides
to Trincomalee had been in the nature of a triumph. As they slid into harbour, with the seamen standing at ease on deck, a great cheer rose from the many hundreds of sailors lining the decks of other shipping. Having received confirmation of what they had done, the little
Hesperides
was flying her Jolly Roger with two red bars, one with a U in the middle, to indicate their ‘kills’, and the rest of the Navy was giving them a cheer for their exploits. It was a good moment, and it was followed by an excellent few days’ leave while necessary repairs were done in dry dock. Then, of course, it was back to work as usual.

The submarine was many days out of port and riding on the surface of the Java Sea when Snip’s own personal disaster struck. They were on their way home, having been ordered back to England, and were instructed to travel on the surface; with the war now officially over, there should be no need to dive. But
Hesperides
was not the bright young thing she had been four years earlier, when Snip had joined her. She was tired and creaking, and her engines needed constant nursing, constant small adjustments. Consequently, when a bearing was found to be defective Snip, with the skill born of long practice in many similar situations, set to at once. He was working when he should have been resting, the sweat dripping off
him into the machinery, his mind for once more on his next meal than on the job in hand. A screw toppled and dropped, Snip reached for it … and there was a horrible choking, screaming sound. His right hand had been seized by the machinery and all but ripped off.

The agony was unbelievable; appalling. The screams worried him, too, because he had no idea they were his own. Passing out, which he did when the stokers tried to move him, was the only relief he was to get for three long days. He remembered almost nothing of the rest of the voyage, coming round and passing out in constant pain, seeing dimly remembered faces coming and going, hearing boots on the deck, clattering down the companionways, having nightmares which were almost better than wakefulness. Finally, he came round to find himself being rocked like a baby in a big cradle. Perhaps I am a baby, he thought hopefully; perhaps it was all a nightmare and I’m just a soft, cuddly baby rocking in my cot.

The thought gave him pleasure, but then he opened his eyes and looked around him. There it was – machinery, men’s feet in heavy boots, the thrum and clatter of engines. He moved and pains shot up his arm, though not with the vivid, scarlet agony he had come to expect. This pain was fainter, duller. He turned his head a little to look around him. A face swam into his vision.

‘All right, mate?’

‘Where …?’

The face grinned understandingly. ‘You’re in a flying-boat, cobber. On the Sulu Sea. We’re taking you back to Sydney, where the doc will clean up for you. Guess it’ll be amputation, but that’ll be better than gangrene, eh? I’ve given you a shot of morphine which should dull the pain for a bit.’

Snip thought he had imagined what the man was saying, because who had heard of a boat which flew? There were
boats that dived and boats that didn’t, but a boat that
flew
? It seemed preposterous.

‘Sure, sure,’ he said sleepily. ‘Pigs have wings, eh?’

The man snorted a laugh. ‘Pommy bastard,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘You go to sleep now.’

For once, Snip was happy to follow instructions.

The next time he came round he was being carried. The sensation, once again, was that of a child, very young and defenceless, being pushed in a pram by an adult.

Snip opened an eye. He could see a dusty pavement, more feet – good God, was he going mad? That last set of feet had worn high-heeled sandals and a narrow gold chain had circled one slender ankle. Snip’s other eye opened and he stared wildly around him. He was in a street, being carried along a pavement on a stretcher. Even as he looked, the street disappeared and he was in a large, clean-smelling building. He saw girls in white aprons, and the familiar smell of disinfectant caused his stomach to clench with apprehension. This was a hospital, he hadn’t dreamed any of it; somehow he had been whipped from a submarine thousands of miles from land to this modern hospital, where they were going to clean up his hand.

‘He’s awake. He’s probably pretty confused, but he took a couple of looks around just now,’ a woman’s voice said. ‘Straight to theatre, sir?’

A confirmatory rumble. Snip was past wondering now; he was just letting it happen. He was transferred to a wheeled trolley which whizzed along a great many corridors and, eventually, into a small antiseptic-smelling room. Someone lifted his good hand and took his pulse; the fingers on his wrist were slim and cool. He didn’t open his eyes; better not. If this was a dream, he might as well stay in it. He had no desire to return to the nightmarish agony of the engine room on the
Hesperides
.

Suddenly, just as someone rolled up the sleeve on his good arm, a horrible thought entered his head. Suppose they had got it wrong? Suppose they thought it was his good arm which needed ‘cleaning up’ and then amputating? His eyes shot open as a needle was plunged into the muscle. Another smiling face looked down at him.

‘Relax, soldier, you’ll be asleep before you can count to twenty and back on the ward and demanding a drink in no time. You’re in good hands, couldn’t be better.’

‘It’s my right,’ Snip said, slurring the words horribly as the stuff began to circulate in his veins. ‘It’s my right …’

‘That’s it, soldier, every man has the right to a good surgeon in times of need and this feller …’

Snip felt the icy tingle spread through his body, felt his fingers and toes lose power and feeling, and shuddered down into darkness.