The Cruel Sea (1951) (67 page)

‘In the galley, sir.’

Ericson swallowed. ‘I think we’ll have them in the sickbay for the rest of the trip.’

‘Sir,’ said Lockhart, ‘that looks like the Admiral waiting on the quay.’

‘Oh.’ Ericson, who was much preoccupied with bringing
Saltash
alongside, against a breeze blowing her offshore and a brisk tide under her stern, merely grunted. Then he said: ‘Stop starboard, slow astern port,’ and then: ‘I wonder what brings him here?’

‘It could be us.’

‘Stop port,’ said Ericson. ‘Hurry up those heaving lines, or she’ll blow out into the stream again . . .’ He took a quick look through his glasses at the quayside, and nodded. ‘Yes, it is us,’ he said. ‘That’s really very nice of him . . . Slow ahead port . . . I hope we don’t do any damage as we come alongside.’

‘Stern wire ashore, sir . . . I think he’d be prepared to forgive us, in the circumstances.’

The water between the quay and the ship began to boil as it was squeezed outwards: the wash of their screws surged and sucked at the oily wooden piles.
Saltash
edged nearer, cheating the wind, using the tide skilfully; the windlass on the fo’c’sle started a solid clanking as the head rope came in. The Admiral, catching sight of Ericson on the bridge, waved cheerfully, and Ericson saluted.

‘Better have a piping party, Number One,’ said Ericson. ‘This looks official.’

‘Will you meet him, sir?’

‘Yes. In fact I’ll go down now, in case he does something athletic without waiting for the gangway. Take over here, and finish it off.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t disgrace me, will you?’

It was a good ten minutes before
Saltash
was securely berthed, and Lockhart could give the crossed hands signal which meant ‘Wrap up your mooring wires’, and then ring off the engines. He delayed some moments longer on the bridge, savouring the fact of homecoming; watching the signalmen stowing away their flags and books, and the men on
Saltash’
s fo’c’sle talking to other men on the quay, and the tide running past their hull, and the fair estuary of the Clyde which they had not seen for six long weeks. It was nice of the Admiral to come down to meet them, though after the rough convoy, and the U-boat at the end of it, they did perhaps deserve a little cherishing. Lockhart had watched the Admiral come aboard, while the pipes shrilled, and had seen him shake Ericson’s hand, and talk smilingly for a moment, and then go below with him; he himself might be sent for presently, to share in the congratulations, but it did not matter either way – they had their U-boat, they were home again,
Saltash
was secured alongside after yet another convoy, they were due for a boiler clean . . . He called down to the quartermaster, still in the wheelhouse: ‘Pipe leave to the port watch from seventeen hundred to oh-eight-double-oh,’ and then he gathered his belongings together and made his way down the succession of ladders to his cabin. He was tired, and there was an ache in his legs, and he felt grimy and unshaven; but a hot bath and a couple of quick gins would cure most of that, and there was, at last, the blessed night for sleep.

From the passageway he saw a shadow move within his cabin, and he thought: ‘Oh God, what is it now?’ and he pulled aside the curtain, and there, standing by his desk, was Julie Hallam.

They looked at each other for a long moment, he smiling, she grave and shy. Finally she said: ‘Your steward is shocked. But he let me in.’

He took her hand and pressed it. ‘Of course he did. No rules apply to you . . . Julie, how lovely to see you, and how lovely of you to be here at all.’

‘The Admiral came down to congratulate you, so I thought I’d come too.’

‘I didn’t see you on the quay.’

‘I was hiding behind a crane. My congratulations are different.’

Suddenly she put her arms right round his neck, and said: ‘Oh darling, I’m so glad you’re back.’

He could not remember that she had ever called him ‘darling’ before, and as his arms closed round her he felt weak with surprise, and with emotional reaction. How incredible to come back to this . . . He said: ‘I’m afraid I’m rather bristly,’ but he kissed her none the less, and her lips met his warmly. Then he pushed her away with gentle hands, so that he could look at her face, and he said: ‘Are you really Julie?’

She laughed, giving him a complicated, confederate look, and said: ‘Well, anyway the uniform is the same.’

‘You seem different – you even feel different. What have you been doing?’

‘Waiting for you – watching the plot – wondering what was going to happen next . . . Oh darling,’ she said again, ‘what an awful convoy! Those aircraft all the time – and the destroyers – I thought you’d never get there. And then the weather on the way back, and that U-boat to finish up with. We must find you a shore job after this,’ she said, suddenly grave. ‘I can’t go through all that again.’

Now what is this, thought Lockhart – but he did not really want to know: the wonderful change was enough. To have Julie in his arms cured all his tiredness, and made the bare cabin unbelievably warm and bright: to have Julie in his arms, renewing the sweet past so willingly and adding so much to it, was a moment already overflowing. He kissed her again, and this time it was not a short kiss; and presently she turned in his arms and began to murmur into his ear: ‘I didn’t know anything about loving anyone, until a little time ago. I didn’t relate things like parting or danger to you at all. The war was just the war, a convoy was just a collection of ships. You were you – everything was separate and manageable . . . It was when I read your signal: “Engaging enemy destroyers”, that I started to know all about it, and you and I were suddenly right in the middle of the pattern, and you were in frightful danger from it. I’ve never felt involved before, but from that moment I was terribly involved, and it was all you – you were the convoy, you were everything.’ She pressed him closely to her, rubbing and smoothing the rough surface of the duffle coat. ‘You suddenly became very precious to me,’ she went on, in a low, gentle voice, ‘and I knew I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you, and after that there was just the endless waiting for you to come back – four weeks, nearly five . . .’ She smiled. ‘You see? – the uniform may be the same, but inside, inside . . .’

‘You’re sweet,’ he said, ‘and I love you. What happens now?’

‘Anything you say – anything you want.’

‘Are you really Julie?’ he asked again.

‘New model,’ she answered. Her face looked especially lovely as she said this, her eyes were full of tender readiness. ‘I feel like a woman now, and it’s totally new, and I don’t mind who knows it or what it involves. Say what you want us to do.’

‘I’m due for leave,’ he said, hesitating.

‘When?’

‘As soon as I’ve got things clewed-up here – in about four days.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘Anywhere.’

‘Somewhere with me,’ she said.

A shaft of sunlight, traversing the open porthole, moved gently on the cabin floor; but they did not see it. For now they were looking at each other, and their looks were no longer complicated, but charged with a simple need, a simple relief. He said: ‘I love you, Julie,’ and she answered: ‘That is now a very two-sided arrangement,’ and held up her mouth to be kissed.

It was a cottage, lent to them by a school friend of Julie’s whose work had taken her to London. It was a cottage not without drawbacks.

It lay deep in the wilds, at the foot of a glen near Loch Fyne: it was served by a single daily bus, and there were no shops nearer to it than five miles away. The place was old, stone built, draughty: its wood fires smoked, its oil lamps, romantically dim, gave to every room a profound reek of paraffin. The roof over the kitchen leaked, and the kitchen itself boasted a villainous old cooking range, from which food emerged either crisped to a cinder or stone cold. There were low, head cracking beams in all the passages, and a staircase well designed for the twisting and wrenching of legs and ankles. The plumbing was primitive, the hot water system uncertain and often mutinous. It was damp. There were clearly mice. There was no one to look after them.

It was wonderful.

It was not wonderful all at once, but it became so within a little while, as soon as the main astonishing margin of their meeting had been crossed. When they got off the village bus, self-conscious with their suitcases, it was still early afternoon; before them was a half-mile walk up the deserted glen, and the half-mile seemed to take them deep into constraint and uncertainty. It will be all right as soon as I kiss her, Lockhart thought, opening the garden gate and standing aside for Julie to enter; everything will come out straight, she will be just as she was in the cabin. But why then was this not a kissing moment? . . . When they started to explore the house, they did so almost in silence: Julie mounted the stairway alone, while Lockhart, listening to her footsteps and knowing that she was entering what was perhaps to be their bedroom, stood below and wondered if, after all, this was going to be a success.

Presently he heard her coming down the stairs again, and then she stood standing in the doorway, watching him, gauging his mood. Then she said: ‘What next?’

After a moment he answered: ‘It’s damp. I’m going to light lots of fires.’

‘Do that . . .’ Then she smiled, equally at herself and at their joint embarrassment, and crossed nearer to him, and said: ‘We can’t expect to step into this all at once,’ and then, more certainly: ‘You can take it for granted that I
do
want to be here with you’; and after that it was, for the next few hours, all right.

But there was still the evening, and then the night.

Darkness came early on that November day; soon after sunset, the glen filled with shadows, the small house merged gradually with its background, and the frosty night descended, holding them hidden in its firm hand. They ate, they talked, they listened to music on the old battery radio; the house was now warm, their setting seemed private and unassailable. But to Lockhart, the darkness brought back with it straightaway the constraint of the afternoon. It was new and moving to be with her alone, in this enclosed world on which he had been fixing all his thoughts: she looked lovely – her hair loosely bound, her eyes dark and large in the lamplight: she wore a housecoat so feminine, so gracefully accented to her body, that it made her seem another person altogether. But against the implication of desire, there was tension between them, the sweet defeating tension of uncertainty: perhaps she had caught it from him, perhaps hers was of her own making, but on his side it sprang from a doubt as to whether, even now, they were to be lovers. Certainly, the right true end of love was there for them, but he could not decide whether they were due to reach it, or whether it was something she did not really want.

He sensed in her the same continued change which had brought them together – not dependence, but a readiness to give the lead into his hands: he sensed it, he could see it often in her glance and hear it in her voice, and he was mortally afraid of misusing it, of crossing too soon or too robustly the frontiers of her will and compliance. Worse things than diffidence sprang from this fear. Perhaps he had even made the whole thing up, he thought, with something like panic lest he should commit himself upon false ground: perhaps she had never meant that they should be lovers, but just that they should spend their leave together. Perhaps he did not deserve so beautiful a woman, perhaps he would be no good anyway.

It was she who cured the foolish moment of uncertainty, and she cured it with a single swift stroke which recalled, on the instant, the old Julie, the capable and competent person who disposed decisively of ships and people, and always looked round for more. Though this disposing was on a somewhat different plane . . . They had been listening to the radio, he standing by the fire, she lying back on the sofa; and seemingly on an impulse she got up and walked across and kissed him. It seemed natural now that, as they stood clasped gently together, still listening to the music, the beating of their hearts should begin to overlay it . . . A woman’s voice on the radio sang a song with the phrase: ‘To hold you close to my eager breast’, and at the words he felt Julie’s body stir under the thin material of her dress, and then she lifted her head and said softly: ‘Did you hear that? – that’s exactly what it feels like.’

Lockhart said: ‘That is what it feels like to me, too,’ and she smiled lovingly, and, as if to explain beyond question the urgency which now began to flow from all her body, she answered: ‘I think I am wooing you,’ and after that it came all right once more, and it came all right for ever.

Perhaps it was the contrast which was most moving: the tender refuge after strife and slaughter, the softness welcoming his hard body. It was, indeed, a contrast for both of them: he had come from the rough demanding school of war, she from her astringent dedication in the same field. They had been preoccupied, and therefore celibate; it had suited them until they met, and then it suited them no longer. But the surrender of this celibacy was overwhelming: it did all things: it astonished by its sweetness, it drowned in sensual fervour, it cleared magically the brow . . . There had been nothing in their previous meeting, nothing indeed in their lives so far, which had promised or pointed to such a tempest of feeling and such a relief thereafter.

Lockhart awoke some time before dawn on that first night, after the deep drugged slumber which had claimed them both; and when he felt her stir near him, and heard her murmur: ‘You should be still asleep,’ he answered: ‘There are other times for sleep,’ and he struck a match and lit the candle by the bedside, for the pleasure and comfort of seeing her again. What he now found in her was as moving as all the offering of the previous night, all the ready tumult. Her face on the pillow was tenderly relaxed, framed by the dark wayward crown of hair: her eyes, large and soft, now regarded him as if he were a beloved child which had done something especially pleasing, especially to be rewarded. Her eyes had been lovely before, on a cool plane of perfection: now, having seen and answered his ardour, and then softened to release and sleep, they had a residual contentment which caressed him, and the air between them, with grateful recognition, with warmth and a happy langour she need not deny.