Battlecruiser (1997) (25 page)

She clutched his shoulder and exclaimed, ‘Oh, my God, that poor woman!’

The girl they had seen earlier . . . Sherbrooke tried to clear his mind.
Earlier
was just minutes ago. The one the Jaunty would have labelled a torn lay with her legs apart, her skirt up to her waist, her eyes staring at the solitary light bulb as if fascinated by it.

She said, ‘Help her, Guy. I think . . .’

Sherbrooke bent over her and felt for a pulse, for a heartbeat. He could smell the perfume; it was very strong, like Stagg’s aftershave.

He dragged her skirt down over her bare thighs and stood.

‘She’s dead, Emma.’ He held her again, knowing she was feeling the full effect of shock.

She said in a small voice, ‘But she’s not marked. She was just standing there. Talking.’

The manager staggered to his feet, shaking himself like a dog, then he looked at the damage and exclaimed, ‘Bloody hell! That was nasty!’ He picked a long needle of broken glass from his hand, and saw the dead woman for the first time. He looked at her for a long moment, and then said softly, ‘Poor old Mavis. Never did no ’arm to nobody.’

Torches flashed, and helmets appeared in the sagging doorway.

The first one was a policeman, who looked at Sherbrooke and the girl clinging to his arm and said, ‘You two O.K.?’ and then bent over the corpse. ‘Direct hit round the corner. The rest of the street is unmarked.’ He straightened his back and took out his notebook. ‘Hit-and-run. Probably going for the power station or the railway – they just follow the river on bright nights like these. But this time they drew a blank.’ He glanced down at the staring eyes, watching him from the floor. ‘Except for a few poor souls, that is.’

A car squealed to a halt outside: reinforcements. The policeman said, ‘Got somewhere to go?’ and then, as though noticing Sherbrooke’s four gold stripes, ‘Sir?’

She replied, for both of them, ‘Number seventeen.’

He grinned. ‘Oh, well, that’s all right then. No damage there.’

Figures passed them, ambulancemen carrying a stretcher with a red blanket, a fireman with an extinguisher. To them, it was all routine.

‘Let’s get out of here.’ Sherbrooke put his arm around her shoulders and guided her toward the doorway, shielding her from the sight of the dead woman being rolled onto the stretcher. A fireman put one of her shoes and a handbag under the blanket and covered her face. As they crunched out into the street, he heard one of the stretcher-bearers
whistling softly to himself. His own gesture of defence.

A hand reached out, and someone said, ‘Your cap, sir.’

‘Thanks.’ He had not even noticed it had gone.

He jammed it over his unruly hair and felt the grit around the rim.

‘Can you make it, Emma? If not, I’ll carry you.’

She looked at him, her face very clear as the moon showed itself again beyond the river.

‘Just hold me, Guy. Don’t leave me. Not yet.’

There were people everywhere, when earlier the street had been like a grave, calling to one another, some laughing with relief when a familiar face showed itself.

Sherbrooke walked through the crowd, knowing he would never forget this, his only experience of the civilians’ war. It was something which had always remained at a distance, reaching him only across a table when some rating lost his parents or wife in one of these raids, which were so frequent that they rarely got a mention in the press. Hit-and-run. Like that day in Portsmouth . . .

Some wag called from the darkness, ‘Up the navy!’ Another gave a cheer.

Sherbrooke called back something, although he could never recall what he had said, and no words, however jocular, could relieve what he felt.

They stopped in front of an undistinguished house, and she said, ‘It’s all right, thank God. Just as he said!’

He waited while she searched for her key in the darkness. Blast was a strange thing. The bomb had fallen around the corner, but in a narrow intersection the blast could have gone in any direction. These houses were untouched. He was reminded of an incident aboard
Pyrrhus
, when German bombers had attacked a convoy of empty ships returning from Murmansk. Strange that the memory had become lost, swallowed up by everything else
that had happened, and that it should choose this night to return to him.

Minutes before the air attack, he had been talking with a young signalman on the cruiser’s bridge. Another bitter, bitter day, when any contact between bare skin and instruments or fittings could end in frostbite. The signalman had been holding up an old magazine to shield Sherbrooke while he tried to light his pipe.

Then the attack had begun, the air torn apart by chattering pom-poms and Oerlikon guns, so that the solitary bomb had exploded almost unnoticed between the bridge and B Turret. Sherbrooke had scarcely felt the blast, but the young signalman had been killed outright. His body was completely unmarked, like the woman in the wine shop.

‘Got it!’ She pushed open the door. ‘Come in and close it, will you?’

She sounded breathless, as if it had only just happened. She called, ‘It’s only me, Ellen!’ There was no reply and she said, ‘She must be out. She has the other flat, you see. I feed her cat when she has to be away.’ Again, she was speaking fast, as if afraid she might break down.

They climbed the stairs in the darkness, and he tried to imagine her living here or in some other temporary place, getting up and going to work, wondering each day if the flat would still be here when she returned. And Captain Thorne, sharing her official life while she thought only of her missing husband, a man she said she could hardly remember.

Another door, and she switched on a light, her eyes moving quickly to a window to make sure that the curtains were drawn.

She turned towards him, and said, ‘Your hand! What have you done?’

He looked at his right hand, covered with blood, some already dry, but with a deep cut just below the cuff of his shirt.

‘Sit here.’ She led him to a chair. ‘I’ll clean it. It must have happened when you were looking after that poor woman.’

Sherbrooke tried to ease the pain in his back; he seemed to ache all over. Then he raised his arm, afraid that some of his blood might stain the furniture. It all seemed so ridiculous that he wanted to laugh.

She knelt by the chair and held out a small, dainty towel. ‘It’s only damp, I’m afraid. The water’s cut off. It often happens during a raid.’ Then she said, ‘What is it?’ and looked up at him, her eyes suddenly very calm, her voice steady. ‘Tell me.’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing.’ He tried to control it, but his hand was trembling so badly that he could not stop it. ‘I – I can’t . . .’

She wrapped the towel around his bloody wrist and held it with both hands, and with great gentleness. He could feel himself giving in, breaking.
Please, not now. Not in front of her. Please . . .

She said, ‘Don’t talk, Guy. Don’t try to explain. Not to me. You don’t have to. It makes you more of a man, not less.’ She continued to grip his hand. ‘Do you have any cigarettes? I could light one for you.’ She saw him shake his head. ‘I don’t smoke, myself.’ It triggered off another small memory. ‘Not one of my vices.’

He said, ‘I’m a pipe-smoker . . . used to be, anyway.’ He saw her reaching into his jacket pocket. ‘Splashed out and bought myself a really good one after I came out of hospital.’

She looked directly into his eyes. ‘I know. I understand.’ She took away the rough bandage and said, ‘It’s stopped, I
think. But don’t move. I’ll get something for it in a minute.’

He watched her as she placed the pipe and pouch of tobacco on the floor beside her knees. Her hair was still hanging down her back, dishevelled by the blast. He wanted to touch it. To hold her very tightly, as he had in the shop.

She was saying, ‘My dad smokes a pipe. I’ve done this for him a few times.’ She smiled, perhaps at another memory. ‘I like to see a man with a pipe.’ She held it out, pleased with her efforts. ‘There. Try that.’

They shared it in silence, Sherbrooke holding her hand while she watched the smoke drifting up to the ceiling.

He said, ‘I feel better already.’ He squeezed the hand he held. ‘Really.’

‘I don’t know whether to believe you or not. I promised you a drink.’

She stood up, undecided.

‘I must go, Emma. If you think you’ll be all right.’

As if to mock their anxiety, they heard the distant wail of sirens sounding the All Clear, and from nearby there was a spurt and gurgle of water as the supply was switched on.

‘That settles it,’ he said. ‘I’ll need to find a taxi.’

She frowned, and came to a decision. ‘You can’t go looking like this. Give me time to clean up your uniform. I’ll wash your shirt – it will be ready before you leave. No arguments now. I mean it.’

‘I promised you this wasn’t going to happen.’

‘It
won’t.
Now go to the bathroom and take off your jacket and shirt. I’ll find the Scotch.’ She smiled at him. ‘Truce?’

He washed his hands and then his face in the basin, and saw her personal things arranged on a shelf below the
mirror, the carefully hoarded cologne, her cosmetics, a few yellow daffodils in a jug. He heard her call, ‘I’ve got an old robe you can put on. My brother gave it to me for wearing in the shelter – it’s miles too big for me!’

Then he saw her reflected in the mirror, looking in at him.

‘What are those marks, Guy?’

He swung round and took the thick robe from her, embarrassed, not wanting her to see.

She asked again, ‘What are they? You never told me.’

He glanced at his injured hand, but it was quite steady now. He answered, ‘When I was in the water.’ He let the blood and dirt flow out of the basin, not looking at her. ‘The ice.’

She said, ‘Never be afraid to tell me . . . to show me.’

He allowed her to take him back to the other room.

‘Let me hold you, Emma.’

She did not resist as he put his arms round her, in a close embrace, like the moment when she had first realized what had happened in the shop. The screams and the falling glass, the staring eyes, the stretcher-bearer who had whistled in defiance of death.

And here, in this room she still hardly knew, there was peace. The sense of what was happening, the danger it would bring, was replaced by yearning.

She felt his hand on her spine, and imagined how it would be to make love with him. Strong, sensitive hands, holding, caressing, demanding of her . . .

She said, ‘I really will get that drink now.’ She leaned back in his arms and looked into his face. ‘We both knew this would happen. I told myself I should end it before it began, but I thought we might still . . .’

He said, ‘Be friends?’

She did not respond. ‘Of course I find you attractive –
what woman wouldn’t? Some of the people I meet . . . What I’m trying to say . . .’

He touched her mouth with his fingers. ‘Don’t say it. I
know.
I feel so alive when I’m with you that I want to ignore all the risks, all the pain that might come to you because of me.’

She slipped away from his arms, and he walked to the window and peered through a slit in the black-out curtain. Moonlight, no beams sweeping the clear sky, no bright sparks of flak above another part of this great city.

He heard her voice somewhere, and thought for a moment that somebody had called to see her. He stared down at her brother’s dressing gown.
Oh, this is Captain Sherbrooke, who’s just dropped in for a drink.
How would that look?

She came in, smiling at the confusion on his face. ‘I phoned the night staff. They’ll send a car for us in the morning, and drop you off at the Admiralty first.’

‘You are a very smart girl.’

She brought two glasses and filled them carefully. She seemed happy, at ease, until she asked, ‘The day after tomorrow, then?’

So easily said, and yet it meant so much.

‘Yes, back to Greenock. Get the machine in motion.’

She took a sip, and said, ‘This will knock me out, and I promised you some sandwiches.’ She tried again. ‘You know, I think I’m beginning to see your ship as a rival.’

He smiled, feeling her leaning against him on the small sofa.

‘Don’t. She’s my protector, in a way. I can’t explain it.’

She saw that his glass was empty. ‘I’ll bet you didn’t even taste that!’

She watched him refill it, watched his hand, his serious profile.
Stop it now.

He said, ‘I’ll remember this when I’m away.’

‘Until the next time.’

He looked at her over the rim of the glass. ‘Yes. The next time.’

‘Promise?’

He said, ‘I think you should turn in.’

She nodded gravely. ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

‘I’ll bunk down here. That will make it quite safe.’ But the humour eluded him.

‘I agree. Call me if you need anything.’ The door closed, and he was alone.

Nobody would believe it.
Least of all me.

He did not hear her come in later and switch off the light, nor feel her remove his shoes.

She crouched by the sofa, looking at him as he slept in the darkness, remembering him with his men and with the dead prostitute in the off-licence, and whispering to him.

‘We both knew this might happen. I love you, but I can never say it. Our future could have ended tonight, if that bomb had come our way. It would be all over without ever beginning.’ She wanted to touch his hair, but dared not. ‘So why do we have to pretend? If you wanted me now, I wouldn’t be able to resist, because I want you, too. And you, dear man, ashamed as you are of your honourable scars, might hate me for it.’

The following morning they were both awake early, he unable, at first, to remember where he was. They barely spoke, and then only like two people who had just met.

The car arrived on time, and dropped Sherbrooke at the Admiralty as arranged.

He walked past two saluting sailors, scarcely noticing them, and made his way to the operations office where he was to meet Stagg.

Much to his surprise, Stagg was already there, tapping his watch with one finger.

‘Where the hell have you been, Guy? I’ve had half of London out looking for you! The club said you hadn’t even been there!’ It was like a cruel game, and he knew Stagg was enjoying it.