The Lion at Sea (33 page)

‘We’d wipe the floor with them!’

Kelly wasn’t so sure. ‘There are still a lot of Victoria’s heavy weather men afloat, Charley. The Germans have proved they’re good and I often wonder if we’re as good as we think we are.’

Charley looked shocked. Set on a path towards being a naval wife, she had tried hard to absorb naval thinking and the habit of naval self-confidence, and Kelly’s ideas didn’t seem to fit into them. ‘But that’s blasphemy, Kelly! The Germans are good only because they’re new. They have no tradition!’

‘Sometimes I wonder if we have too much. It’s true you can build a ship in two years and it takes two hundred to build a tradition, but there are a lot of people who think that tradition’s all that’s necessary, and there’s a lot that’s out of date.’

Charley began to feel she’d got herself in deep waters. ‘I don’t understand, Kelly.’

Kelly wasn’t sure he did himself. But since his return home, he’d been doing a lot of reading and asking a lot of questions and it seemed to him that, while Germany’s nautical house had been put in more efficient shape since 1914 Britain’s had gone rather the other way.

He pulled a face and smiled. ‘I’m just wondering if we aren’t placing too much reliance on the big gun,’ he said.

Charley frowned, puzzled. With the war now two years old, she had begun to grow cynical herself at the pratings of the press and the older generation. With casualties running into hundreds of thousands, the exhortations to fight for God, King and Country were wearing as thin as the claims that Britain had the finest army in the world. Like many of her friends, she had taken to helping in the casualty wards of London hospitals and she had often come away with the thought that those people who talked glibly of a holy war and their pride in the army ought to see the mustard gas cases, while God, King and Country often seemed a dangerously voracious trio.

Nevertheless, Kelly was still different enough to frighten her a little. Was this the young man she’d promised herself, ever since she’d been able to understand, that she would one day marry? There was a tension about him she’d never seen before. Even after surviving the sinking of
Cressy
he’d not been quite so hard as he was now. Despite being heavily in touch with the emotions of her friends who’d been caught up in the war, she found his attitudes worried her because he was an extrovert character, self-confident enough to breast the miseries of the times without too much difficulty, and she had a feeling that he knew things she could barely imagine. She had no doubts about his courage, of course. She’d never doubted that, and he wore ribbons to prove it, but there seemed an awful lot of sacrilege in what he said. She changed the subject hurriedly.

‘Was it awful being a prisoner, Kelly?’

‘Bit smelly. The Turks stink like goats –
old
goats.’

‘You were very brave to escape as you did.’

‘It wasn’t me. It was the Arabs who died.’

It was easier, he noticed, to think now of Ayesha dead without something sticking in his throat. There was a lot to be said for the resilience of youth. When he’d left Cairo, he’d promised himself he’d never forget her. Probably he never would but youth continued to find the world full of excitement, and it was hard to dwell too long on death. The best warriors were all young. Not only were their muscles elastic; so were their minds.

An anti-aircraft gun down the road banged and Charley put her hand on Kelly’s arm.

‘I think we’d better hide under the stairs,’ she said.

‘I’d rather go outside and have a look.’

She stared at him in alarm but, deciding that if it were good enough for Kelly, it was good enough for her, she agreed.

‘I’m not sure it’s safe,’ she said. ‘Everybody’s picking on the government about the way they’re allowed to come over. Everybody’s very angry.’

‘I expect it’s wind-up among the hot-air merchants of the press.’

‘Well, people have been killed.’

‘Nothing like the number the Government and the Press Lords have killed between them in France.’

She looked quickly at him, puzzled once more by his bitterness. The telephone went and she answered it, grave, sober and a little anxious. She looked at Kelly as she replaced the instrument. ‘That’s the local police station,’ she said. ‘Mother picked up the sergeant when he ran into a lamp post on his bike in the black-out and filled him full of brandy. Ever since, he keeps us up-to-date with what’s happening. He says five zeppelins have crossed the coast and are headed for London. It looks like being a noisy night.’

They went on to the front steps. Several people were arguing round a gas lamp which was still alight, then a policeman wearing a placard saying ‘Take cover’ on his chest appeared and a man in ragged clothes shinned tip the post, opened the glass and smashed the mantle.

‘Look! Kelly, look!’

Charley was pointing upwards. Searchlights had sprung up all over London and at the junction of half a dozen beams a long cigar-shaped object, yellow in the light, was lifting its nose lazily upwards. They saw puffs of smoke as though from exhausts as it moved, then, with gathering speed, it vanished from sight in the cloud. Guns began to fire from every direction and they could see the sparkle of shell bursts in the sky. A woman ran along the street in a panic. ‘I can hear another one coming,’ she was screaming.

Over the city, dark with the absence of lights, they saw the glow of flames and more little red flashes high in the sky over Woolwich, where the searchlights were groping into the darkness.

‘They’ve gone,’ Kelly said.

A searchlight only a few streets away came on, piercing the darkness and illuminating Charley’s upturned face. Following the beam, they saw that the cigar-shaped aircraft had reappeared, above their heads this time, and immediately guns began to fire.

‘Oh, Lor’,’ Charley said. ‘They’re right above us! I’m going under the stairs!’

Kelly grinned. ‘Perhaps I’ll come with you.’

The Upfolds had cleared the area under the staircase and laid mattresses in there in case of the need for shelter. On a shelf was a bottle of sherry and a bottle of brandy and they helped themselves as they sat on the mattresses.

‘I’m told they never hit anything,’ Kelly said self-importantly. ‘At least nothing that they’re hoping to hit.’

As he spoke there was a whistling noise and then a crash. Kelly looked at Charley in the light of the candle.

‘Seems I was wrong,’ he said.

She looked scared and, as another crash made them jump, she edged nearer. A third crash seemed to shake the house and the brandy bottle tottered and toppled over. Kelly caught it and, as he put it back, he realised Charley was clutching him.

‘It’s all right, old thing,’ he said. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

‘To me, it is.’

There was another crash, this time apparently just outside the front door, and they heard glass tinkling. Charley flung herself at Kelly and buried her head in his uniform.

‘It’s all right!’

Tenderly, he lifted her chin and kissed her and, still clutching him, she kissed him back, fiercely, in a way she’d never done before. Immediately, he was aware of a new feeling in his loins. He’d always regarded her merely as the girl next door, the girl he was eventually going to marry, and always in an uncomplicated asexual way, but now, suddenly, with her young breasts pressing against his chest, her legs warm against his, he was aware that she was far more than just that.

‘Steady on, old thing,’ he said uncertainly.

‘I don’t want to steady on!’ Her voice was shaking and she clearly had no intention of letting go.

There was another whistle and another tremendous crash and a roar of tiles sliding off a roof, and Kelly pushed Charley down and flung himself across her in case the stairs came down on them. As the din died away he found her staring up at him, her lips parted, her eyes bright and a little worried, but also suddenly full of a new fierce determination.

‘Charley–’

‘It’s all right, Kelly.’

‘Charley–’

‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Kelly,’ she snapped. ‘Stop pretending!’

‘I’m not pretending.’

‘Yes, you are. I’m nearly seventeen now and I’m frightened and I want you. And you know I want you. It’s often occurred to me that if they drop a bomb on me and I go to my Maker without ever having you, I shall never have been fulfilled.’

She took his hand and placed it firmly on her breast and the softness of her flesh under his fingers stirred him.

‘Charley–’

‘Kelly, for Heaven’s sake, stop saying “Charley!”’

Guiltily, Kelly still hesitated, but she clutched him more tightly.

‘You’re not frightened, are you?’

‘Yes.’

‘What of? Me?’

‘No, Your mother.’

By this time, however, he was ridden full pelt by his desire and he knew it would be difficult to draw back. Navigating carefully through the shoals of thought, he made a last feeble effort.

‘Suppose they come back?’

‘Suppose they do?’ She sounded indifferent, and, reaching up, she gave him a kiss so experienced it made his blood run hot.

‘Who taught you to kiss like that?’ he asked.

‘Nobody.’

‘Then how did you know?’

‘Love and how to set about it’s the only thing girls ever talk about.’

His pulses quickened and their mouths searched for each other in the shadows.

‘We ought to be under cover,’ Kelly said insanely.

Charley giggled. ‘I bet you mean “under covers.”’

She grabbed for him clumsily and, choked with emotion, he began to fumble with her dress. Her lips sought his again, desperately, urgently.

‘Oh, Kelly!’

There was something in her voice that was plaintive and imploring and young, something that begged him to be gentle, and, realising what was happening, he sat up abruptly.

‘For God’s sake, Charley,’ he croaked. ‘I nearly–’

She drew away from him, her face frustrated and sullen. ‘And why not? I’m not a child!’

‘Still too much of a child for that.’

She started to weep quietly with disappointment and misery. ‘You might be killed,’ she said. ‘I might be hit by a bomb. Anything might happen. I might never see you again, and I’ve never had any – well – any experience. I don’t know what to do and I expect you’ve been with lots of girls.’

‘No, I haven’t.’ Well, he thought, not many. Just as many as any normal sailor came across in his life at sea.

‘I bet.’ She was still sullen. ‘I know sailors.’

‘You only know me.’

‘That’s what I mean.’

He put his arms around her, but this time he was careful not to let his emotions run away with him. ‘Not now, Charley,’ he urged. ‘Not this time.’

‘I can’t see why not.’

‘Because I promised. That’s why not.’

‘You’re very honourable all of a sudden.’

He stiffened. ‘I’ve always been honourable where you’re concerned, Charley.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s the trouble.’

Then she gave a little giggle, recovering quickly. ‘It’s all right, Kelly. Mother’s bound to start sounding me out and it’ll be nice to be honest.’ She kissed him gently. ‘And thank you. You
are
honourable where I’m concerned. I’m not sure it suits me always, but it’s nice to know I rouse such emotions in you.’

Kelly frowned. ‘I’m damned if you do,’ he said frankly. ‘In fact, you rouse the most dishonourable emotions.’

Crammed into the compartment of a train heading north, Kelly began to wonder if he’d been a damned fool. After all, there
was
a war on and morals
had
gone by the board a little. All the same, he decided firmly, Charley
was
different. Charley was Charley and that was all there was to it.

They’d continued to see each other until his leave had ended. They’d gone to the cinema and the theatre and driven into Surrey for the day in a little runabout Kelly had bought out of back pay, returning almost hysterical with laughter because, unable to get up the Hog’s Back in bottom gear, they had ground up it all the way in reverse, to the amazement of the drivers of motor cars and traps travelling in the opposite direction. Despite their happiness, however, they were both aware of a change that had taken place between them and now, suddenly, they were wary of each other, skirmishing almost, conscious overnight that their relationship was different. They were no longer children, no longer merely next-door neighbours. They were adult and Charley was frighteningly womanly.

Kelly shifted in his seat, wondering if Charley’s devotion was not even sometimes too much of a good thing. With the uncertainty of a very young man, he even saw himself trapped by it. He’d never asked for it, indeed, had never worked to produce it. It had developed quite naturally from the normal friendship of two close friends.

He frowned. Sometimes, he thought, it took his breath away. She had it all cut and dried and what was he supposed to do if he met someone else? Charley had never had any doubts and that in itself served to worry him more. Marriage was something older men considered; young men didn’t even bother to think about it. The world was full of girls, all interesting and as far as Kelly could make out, most of them itching to get close to a young man. Wasn’t it a little unwise to tie himself down to one, to arrange his future before he’d even lived his present?

Then he remembered that he hadn’t tied himself down. There had already been other girls and he knew that Charley knew there’d been other girls. It said something for her character, in fact, that she’d never shown the slightest sign of jealousy, as though, despite her youth, she’d accepted that he was a sailor and was going to meet other girls, and that she must not concern herself with them.

He sighed. There was a great deal more to this business of living than met the eye. In a ship, in the company of men, at sea as part of a unit that was based on comradeship and loyalty, life was twice as simple. Ashore it was full of complications.

He shifted his position again. His limbs were cramped by the crowding in the compartment and the corridor outside was packed with more men. A sailor was singing.