The Light Heart (42 page)

He arrived at Paddington without luggage a few minutes
before the train to Fishguard left, and sat silent and withdrawn in a smoking-compartment with a couple of civilians and a man he suspected of being an American journalist.

About three in the morning, at the last station before
Fishguard
, the Intelligence Police came through the train
examining
identity cards and papers. They passed Oliver’s credentials without comment, but the American journalist was politely questioned and removed from the train. They drew up on the quay at Fishguard in the first grey dawn, and Oliver stepped down stiffly to see the steamer waiting in a busy hiss of steam, and a young Navy man sent by the Admiralty picked him out of the thin stream of passengers and luggage with a friendly query about his bags.

“I haven’t got any,” said Oliver. “Not even a razor on me.”

“I’ll lend you one,” said the Navy man cheerily. “You’d like a cup of tea, I expect, and then you can get a spot of sleep on the way across, sir.”

The steamer blew perfunctorily, and Oliver went aboard, piloted by his Admiralty chaperon who was inclined to treat him as though he was a bit decrepit. He drank the hot tea which was brought to him. He didn’t sleep. But that was none of the Admiralty’s business.

Fishguard to Rosslaire is the shortest route across the Irish Sea, and the tiny village is connected by rail with Cork and Queenstown. The journey through the green Irish countryside took several hours. Oliver endured it stoically, smoking the Admiralty’s cigarettes when his own gave out, and staring blindly at the windows.

He was only now beginning to realize the quixotic, headlong thing he had done, rushing off like this to see for himself what had happened to Phoebe Sprague. The explanation he had given his General was in its way quite true. There was no one else to come, and she would be alone and frightened, perhaps badly hurt, perhaps—But Maia wouldn’t see it that way, Maia would know why he had come. Maia would be sure now of a lot of things she had never been able to prove. And with the
blank focus of his eyes on the window frame rather than the spring landscape beyond it, he couldn’t feel that it mattered much any more, what Maia could prove. All that mattered was that Phoebe Sprague should be still alive when he got to Queenstown.

It was late forenoon when he arrived there, and survivors had been coming in all night. Some of them were still roaming the streets, clad fantastically in odds and ends, searching for lost friends and relatives, repeating the same names and the same questions hopefully, or desperately, to passersby on the chance of a clue.

Oliver joined them in a walking nightmare, and made his way first to the little Cunard Office on the quayside. There he found a huddle of half-demented survivors gathered round a list which was now and then added to, where it hung pinned to a board. Oliver took his turn at the list, which was pitifully short, and there was no one there named Sprague, or Day. His uniform and red tabs drew the respectful attention of the driven young man in charge, who said the hotels were full of people who might easily not be listed yet, as some of them weren’t—weren’t in a condition to give their names, as you might say, and then there was the hospital, and—apologetically—of course there were the morgues. “I should begin with the Queen’s Hotel if I were you, sir,” he finished helpfully.

The conviction was growing on Oliver that if Phoebe were—able—she would have got her name on the list or filed some sort of message by now. A visit to the post-office telegraph station in the square yielded nothing. There had been no message signed Sprague or Day. He went on, and entered the lobby of the first hotel he came to. Weeping, hysterical women, tense, overwrought men, silent, motionless figures, some rudely bandaged, lying on the sofas and in the chairs and even on the floor—the place smelt of vomit, and urine, and blood. He paced grimly among the oblivious crowd, looking into tragic faces distorted by grief and horror. She was not there. A sympathetic manageress gave him the register to search.
It was worthless. He thanked her and left the hotel, drawing a long breath as he reached the clean, salty air of the street.

He was accustomed to war, and to the sights and sounds and smells of war. But this was not war, this was murder. These people weren’t soldiers, trained to endure, these were civilians, old people, women—he realized with a separate shock that he had not as yet seen a child survivor. He walked on down the sunlit street, through straggling, odd-looking, seemingly
aimless
groups of people, looking for the next hotel, and came to the Town Hall, which had been turned into a temporary morgue with officers of the Irish Constabulary at the door. A woman was being led away from it, weeping into her hands. He paused a moment, and then with a jerk of his chin
approached
the door.

“I am looking for Miss Phoebe Sprague,” he said, sounding to himself exactly like a hundred other voices he had heard that morning, and the man said stolidly, “We haven’t got their names, sir. These haven’t been identified. You may as well go in, though.”

“No, don’t go in—I’ve just come out, and she’s not there,” said a sensible voice, and Oliver turned to see a young man in a mussy knicker-bocker suit standing at his elbow. “My name is Kendrick,” the young man went on, holding out his hand. “Heard what you said, and I’m looking for her myself.”

Oliver brought himself together with an effort and shook the young man’s hand.

“You knew her,” he said gropingly. “You were on the ship, of course—”

“We were standing together as the ship went down, and I couldn’t find her—afterwards. I’d like to help you if I can.”

“Thank you. My name is Campion. I’m a sort of relative. That is, our families are all mixed up together by marriage. I came over from London as soon as I heard.”

“I’ve done the hospital,” Kendrick said matter-of-factly. “And the Queen’s Hotel. And this is my second morgue. Where have you been looking?”

“Just the hotel, and the telegraph office, and the office on the quay. They’ve got a list there, but she isn’t on it.”

“I know. Well, what next? There are several more hotels, small ones, and another morgue. Let’s do the hotels first.” Kendrick took his arm in a friendly way and started off across the square to where the door to what was hardly more than a pub stood open. “They were carrying some stretchers in there a little while ago. I figure she must be pretty well knocked out or she’d have been heard from by now. She had a life-belt on—I saw to that. Mind the step, sir—”

The furniture of the tiny bar parlour was all pushed to one side to make room for several stretchers which had been laid on the floor. A local doctor, working in his shirtsleeves with a bloody basin on the floor near by, was kneeling beside one of them. Oliver and Kendrick stepped round and over him into the room, and there on the next stretcher lay Phoebe, covered by a coarse blanket, her long hair, which always curled when it was damp, spilling off on to the uncarpeted floor. Her eyes were closed and she looked asleep except for the rigid line of her mouth and chin, set against pain.

With a little sound of pity and concern Oliver dropped on one knee and laid a cautious hand on the blanket over her heart.

“Phoebe,” he said. “Phoebe, darling—you’re all right now, we’ve got you.”

Slowly her lids lifted and her eyes, smudged with purple shadows, gazed up at him. Her lips parted and quivered, but no words came. Kendrick stood looking down at them, aware of drama.

“Are you hurt?” Oliver was saying gently, and his hand drew back the blanket to reveal her right arm roughly splinted and a swathing of linen bandage round her shoulder. “Who did this?” he asked, and touched the splint.

“On the—trawler.”

“Did they give you anything for the pain?”

“No.” Tears welled up and ran down into the edge of her
hair, following the track of endless other tears all night long whenever consciousness returned.

Kendrick laid his hand on the doctor’s shoulder.

“Anything for pain?” he asked.

“It has run out,” said the doctor, with a brief gesture of despair. “All gone, hours ago.”

“The chemist?”

“All sold.”

“The hospital?”

“Perhaps. But I’ve no one to send.”

“Stay here with her,” said Kendrick to Oliver. “I’ll see what I can find.”

When he returned from the hospital, bringing some precious little white pills, he found Oliver still crouched beside the stretcher on the floor with Phoebe’s hand in his. They raised her head to a glass of water and she cried out with pain, and it was all they could do to help her swallow two of the pills. The doctor then set her arm with rough efficiency, and splinted it again, bandaged up her shoulder and said the ligaments were torn, with some damage to the collar bone though it was not broken. It would be painful and useless for some time, and she had been many hours in the water, and he advised the hospital at once.

“No,” said Phoebe firmly. “I want to go on to London.”

“I want you to,” said Oliver. “But he may know best.”

“Help me to sit up,” said Phoebe. “Those pills are working. Hold my head straight—it’s like a gigantic stiff neck—”

They raised her again with agonized care, and she sat groggy and shaking, with her good shoulder braced against Oliver, and tried to smile.

“If I have some food now I think I can get on my legs,” she said. “I’m all right from the waist down. Just kind of numb. They took away my jacket to dry it and I never got it back. Can you buy me something to travel in? I’m still a bit damp.”

It was now past the time for serving hot lunch, and Kendrick went away to interview the woman who ran the little hostelry
A bank-note changed hands, and Phoebe was helped out into the kitchen and placed in a big chair beside the hearth. Every move was painful to her, but Oliver fed her eggs and bacon and she drank hot tea with Irish whiskey in it, while Kendrick went out and bought her a tweed coat and a soft hat to match, and some hairpins.

Then the men retired from the kitchen, and the landlady twisted up Phoebe’s hair into a bun and skewered it with pins and brought her a basin of hot water and towels and helped her to make what toilet she could in spite of the bandages. She had been wearing a good tweed suit and its skirt and linen blouse had stood the wetting well and were now mussily dry. Luckily she had not lost her shoes.

Revived by the food and drink and fortified by another of the little white pills, and most of all comforted by Oliver’s presence in Queenstown, Phoebe felt sure that she was good for the journey to London. As Kendrick was an able-bodied male alien, the port of Fishguard was closed to him and he had to go by way of Dublin and Holyhead, but Oliver’s General had arranged for Phoebe’s entry by the route he had come, and Kendrick promised to turn up in St. James’s Square on Monday.

“I don’t have to worry about you any more,” he said to Phoebe as he saw them off in a reserved compartment on the Rosslaire train, and he kept her left hand in his, looking down at her with his quirky smile. “It’s up to the British Army now to get you to London, and you’ll be in good hands.” When Phoebe found nothing to reply to that which would de-compromise Oliver at once, Kendrick turned to him and said, “Well, good luck the both of you. And don’t let the grass grow under your feet.”

“Oh, Mr. Kendrick, please—!” Phoebe began anxiously. “Oliver isn’t—we aren’t—”

“Oh, all right, if you say so. But I’ve got eyes, haven’t I?” he grinned, and left them with a cheery wave.

“I’d better write him a letter—he’ll be at Claridge’s,” Phoebe said hastily. “I’d better tell him straight out that he’s made a
mistake—that you have a wife. Or else he’ll make some kind of break in front of everybody when he comes to call.”

“Don’t worry about it now,” said Oliver, and unfolded a rug. “Just put your feet up and lean back on this cushion and rest. I’m not at all sure I ought to let you attempt this journey yet.”

“Think I was going to let you out of my sight?” Phoebe sighed, allowing herself to be tucked up nearly full length on the seat of the carriage. She smiled up at him over the edge of the rug. “How did you manage this, anyway, things being as they are?”

“I just walked out,” he said laconically, folding the rug under her feet with a little pat.

“And will there be hell to pay when we get to
London?”

“All sorts of it. Go to sleep.”

“What did you tell the War Office?”

“That you were a sort of relative—young and helpless—travelling alone. The War Office
has a very kind heart.” He bent over her as the train began to move out of the station, one hand braced on the seat behind her head. “I should have given myself away just as badly if I had tried to stick it out in London till we knew what had become of you.”

“You
have
given us away now, haven’t you!”

“Yes, I suppose I have. Go to sleep.” He kissed her lightly on the lips as she lay looking up at him, and then sat down on the seat opposite and opened a copy of the
Bystander.

And almost before she knew it, lulled by the motion of the train and more hot food and little white pills, and most of all by the comforting, beloved presence near-by, Phoebe fell asleep.

V
IRGINIA
was waiting at Paddington with a motor car, and by that time Phoebe was running a temperature of 102° and had to be put to bed with bronchitis and a torturing cough. During
the wretched weeks which followed she never ceased to be thankful that she had managed to reach London before she collapsed, and even Maia was reduced to seething silence by the gravity of Phoebe’s condition.

Thus Phoebe was spared the sort of scene which might have occurred if she had entered the house in St. James’s Square with Oliver in any other circumstances, and only Oliver knew what he had to bear of innuendo and recrimination in private. He stuck pleasantly and firmly to his statement that it was only decent that someone of the family should have gone to
Queenstown
, and that he was the only one in a position to arrange it, and that without him she might have died there, alone, of the effects of the exposure from which they were still fighting to save her with the best care London could provide. And except for Maia’s knowing silences and oblique, hostile glances, he considered that he had got off quite lightly.