The Watch Below (10 page)
Authors: James White
Radford was silent for a long time. When he finally did reply it was
not to answer Wallis's question.
He said, "When the Dicksons bundle up it will leave the Murray girl
out in the cold, or at least without someone to keep her warm. Which
is a pity, because she is still in a bad way mentally from the effects
of the torpedoing. I'd even go so far as to say that her nightmares
and general fidgets during the sleeping periods are partly the cause
of Jenny Wellman's looking for a new sleeping partner. Only partly, of
course. But the fact remains that without the comfort and reassurance of
Miss Wellman, the Murray girl's sleep is likely to be seriously disturbed,
which means that ours will be likewise. So I was thinking -- "
"You can
stop
thinking!" Wallis burst out, with feelings close to panic.
"Dammit all, Doctor, are you trying to organize an orgy or something!"
The surgeon lieutenant did not answer that question either. Instead he
said, "No matter how long we are here, sir, I don't think that we would
ever reach the stage of fighting each other to the death for the only
available woman, or anything equally melodramatic. At the same time I can
see certain difficulties arising if the matter isn't settled fairly soon.
"You are the logical one, sir," the doctor went on. "Compared with myself,
the age difference is much smaller, and I'm married already in any case.
You should think about it, sir."
Wallis glared at the doctor and thought about it, and then with equal
desperation tried not to think about it. There was no room for thoughts
of the convoy or anything else in his mind, even though the sound of
Miss Murray's still trying to speak to it filled the whole ship.
Bang-bang-bang, she was saying doggedly: Bang, bang, bang. Bang-bang-bang.
. . .
X
Surgeon Lieutenant Radford could not make everyone agree to taking a bath,
but he won a minor victory by getting them to periodically change their
clothes. It was a matter of added warmth, he had insisted, as well as of
simple hygiene. The uniforms which they stood up in -- and lay down in and
did everything else in -- were so dirty and greasy that they were poor
insulators at best, and in their present surroundings the heavy serge
would be impossible to clean. Besides, it was a well-known fact that a
light, open-weave garment was warmer than a thick, closely woven type,
provided that there was protection against moving currents of air. He
did not have to remind them that Gulf Trader was singularly free from
moving currents of air.
The new outfits were made from sacking and took the shape of a one-piece
coverall with an attached hood. They were washed in sea water and dried
by first battering them against the nearest bulkhead to remove most of
the water and then whirling them around rapidly in the air. As well as
keeping the people warm who were not serving on the generator, the doctor
said that the constant washing and battering dry would soften the fibers
of the sacking so that they would soon feel comfortable against the skin.
But they found that each needed two of these outfits worn one on top of
the other to keep warm, and the girls were kept busy making them for a
long time. Dickson began talking about sweatshops and poor, down-trodden
workers and his plans for forming a union for their protection, several
times a day. Marriage had not changed Dickson's sense of humor, Wallis
thought: it was still lousy.
Apart from working the generator and sewing sacks together there was not
very much for them to do except think about their troubles; and that was
something to be avoided, because they had so many that to dwell on them
was simpiy asking for more trouble -- such as the Murray girl's crying
in her sleep, their sitting and either staring silently at nothing or
arguing endlessly and senselessly about nothing at all until they were
close to murder.
The time, according to the doctor, was late May. It was a little warmer
in the ship, but still bitterly cold. The air was definitely going stale.
Wallis lay with the doctor under their heap of sacking and tried not to
think about these things. What little experience he had of air going foul
told him that it should be hot and stuffy and that he should have a dull
headache and be inclined toward shortness of breath. He was sure that his
breathing was faster and there was no doubt about his headache, but the
air was so cold that it did not seem to be stuffy at all. In these
circumstances it was hard to tell just how foul the air had become or to
estimate the time left to them before it became unbreathable. At the same
time there was always the possibility that it was not nearly so foul as
he thought it was, and that it was bad mainly because he thought about
it too much.
But it was difficult not to think about things. All around him there was
silence and he had to listen hard to hear the sighing and gurgling sounds
of the sea pressing against their hull, the even breathing of the doctor
beside him, or the low muttering that told of Miss Murray's having bad
dreams again. Wallis was beginning to feel comfortably drowsy. He thought
that if he could find something pleasant, or at least constructive,
to think about he might go to sleep.
In some ways their position was similar to that of survivors in an open
boat. In a lifeboat there is food and water enough to live, but men grow
cold and sleepy and die if they don't find ways of exercising their muscles
and keeping awake. In Gulf Trader it was their minds rather than their
bodies which needed the exercise if they were to continue to survive,
and, just as in the hypothetical lifeboat, the exercises they performed
could be utterly senseless in themselves.
He fell asleep thinking about guessing games and ideas more suited to a
children's party than to the dark and frigid hold of a sunken ship. . . .
Wallis was awakened, he did not know how much later, by the sound of Miss
Murray's crying. It was not a loud noise, just the low, gasping, sobbing
sound of someone who is trying vainly not to make any sound at all. Miss
Murray didn't like disturbing people, and usually everyone kept still and
pretended to be asleep so that she would not feel bad when she did. But
tonight she was crying so quietly that everyone but Wallis seemed still
to be asleep, so he didn't even have the comfort of knowing that he was
not suffering alone. The sound went on and on, stopping only long enough
to let him hope that she had gone back to sleep, then starting again.
After what seemed like hours of listening to her and staying perfectly
still Wallis could stand it no longer. He wriggled carefully from under
the sacking so as not to let the cold in on the doctor and sat up in
the darkness.
He had no idea what he was going to do or say to her that would make her
stop crying, only that he had somehow to put an end to that terrible,
not quite silent sobbing before it made him run amuck. A few quiet words
of reassurance might do it, or a pat on the back, or a gentle reminder
that she needed her sleep, that they all needed sleep. Then again, that
might simply make her worse. The thought came suddenly to him that if he
did anything at all, considering the highly nervous state she was in,
she might get the wrong idea and start screaming that she was being
assaulted or something. But when he found the torch and switched it
on he saw that she was sitting up, wide awake, and shivering. Her arms
were folded tightly against her chest, her head was bowed so that her
cowl hid her features, and the only motion about her was the constant
steaming of her breath.
Wallis moved across and gently shook her shoulder. He had to do it several
times before she took notice; then she said, "I'm cold."
A number of angry and impatient replies rushed to Wallis's lips, like
weren't they
all
cold and what did she expect when she was sitting
on top of all the blankets instead of lying inside them? She had been
given all the sick-bay blankets to make up for the loss of Jenny, and
they were much warmer than the sacking everyone else had to be satisfied
with. But Wallis fought back the things he wanted to say and said instead,
"I've been meaning to check the water level in the coffer dam. Maybe a
walk aft would warm us both up. . . .
As they were passing through the old sick bay into Number Twelve and
they both began fighting for breath, Wallis said, "The air is quite
fresh. If we die of asphyxiation it will be purely psychological."
She gave a small laugh, the sort a junior officer has to give when a senior
makes a crack which is supposed to be a joke.
After they had checked the coffer dam bulkheads and climbed up and down
the ladder often enough to be fairly warm, Wallis stopped her as they were
returning through the sick bay. He pointed to the litter which had belonged
to Dickson and asked her to sit down, then hooked the torch onto a projecting
pipe and sat beside her. Not too close.
After a couple of false starts, he said, "You know, being caught down here
when the ship was torpedoed was probably a good thing for us. If we'd been
up top the chances are that we would have spent some time in the water and
a much longer time, maybe three or four days, in a lifeboat or raft. We might
not have survived that, and you girls certainly would not have done so,
injured and unable to exercise as you were. You're still alive and you
could have been dead.
"I know it's cold," he went on, "and the air is going foul. But summer
is coming and the doctor is beginning to show results with his beans,
and we have plenty of food and just enough water and we're dry. It might
be a long time before we're rescued, but we will be, eventually. So there
is nothing immediate to be afraid of, nothing for you to lose any sleep
over. . . ."
There was no response for a long time; then she said, "I understand, sir.
We can't get torpedoed again down here."
Wallis grinned suddenly. "That's it exactly," he said.
"I used to be good looking, you know," she said. "And I know what a burned
face looks like. My . . . my boyfriend bailed out of a burning plane.
His face was . . . was . . . He used to tell my parents that we were
Beauty and the Beast."
His smile must have looked somewhat strained, Wallis thought, as he said,
"It says a lot that his looks didn't matter to you. Even so there are
going to be a great many people scarred by this war, and war-scarred
heroes earn special respect. The same applies to war-scarred heroines,
although in their case the plastic surgeons would make an extra effort
to repair the damage. But you're lucky. If the surgeons can't fix you
up completely, and the doctor tells me that they probably can, you'll
be able to compare operations with your boyfriend."
His tone must have been a bit too hale and hearty, too insensitive.
She began to cry again. Wallis put his arm across her back and patted her
shoulder awkwardly. The movement caused her cowl to fall away from her
face, revealing the devastated left side spotlighted by the hanging torch.
Even the hair on that side was affected; it was gray at the roots and
patches were missing, and the only good thing about it was that it hid
her damaged ear. Wallis had helped the doctor to dress that ear a few
times and he didn't particularly want to look at it again. But the most
horrifying thing about the Murray girl's face was that the right half
of it was smooth and unblemished and beautiful.
"I'm sorry," said Wallis. "I shouldn't joke about things like that."
"We were engaged," she said suddenly. "Just before he was killed."
"I'm sorry," said Wallis again, wishing that he was dead himself,
or somewhere out of this acutely embarrassing position.
"Don't be," said the girl. "I didn't like him very much. But he felt
so awful about his face that it seemed the right thing to do at the
time. I used to tell him that his bad looks made my good looks better
by comparison, and it made him laugh sometimes. But the second time he
was shot down he wasn't able to bail out.
"Maybe he would have wanted me -- he knew what it felt like to be this way,"
she went on, so quietly that Wallis had to bend closer to hear her.
"But nobody else will. Your war-scarred heroes will want, will deserve,
Beauties, not another female Beast like themselves. I can't see myself,
but the side of my mouth feels tight and my eye feels wrong and my face
is . . . is like the bark of a tree. Can you imagine anyone looking
at it without wanting to turn away and be sick? Can you imagine anyone
wanting to kiss it?"
"Yes," said Wallis.
The trouble with a lie, he thought, is that if it is to sound like the
truth it has to be supported from several different directions.
Well-meaning, kindly lies seemed worst of all in this respect. All he
wanted to do was to make her feel better, from motives selfish as well as
selfless; he wanted to stop her crying so much and upsetting everyone,
and to feel better generally, and to stop having the bad dreams which
kept her and everyone else awake. Merely telling a lie, though, he knew
instinctively, would not be enough. Radford and Dickson would never know
how hard he was working to ensure their sleep.
Briefly, lightly, he kissed her on the mouth.
She did not seem angry, or surprised, or anything in particular. Wallis
felt that his lie was not convincing, that he was making a proper hash of
things generally. He said brightly, "You kept your eyes open. I thought
all girls closed their eyes when they were being -- "
"I wanted to see if you closed yours," she said dully, "and I think you did.
You couldn't look at me close up and you couldn't bear to touch me for more
than a second."
Wallis badly wanted to leave just then. His rule-of-thumb psychology was
not working out, and because of his meddling Miss Murray was in a worse
state now than when he had started. His well-intentioned lying had not
come off, probably because it had been a ridiculous and
unbelievable
lie, the sort of lie which calls black white. Maybe if he had mixed a
little more of the truth into it, cruel though the truth was, the lie
might have been believed. Or maybe not. But there was still time to
try again.
not to answer Wallis's question.
He said, "When the Dicksons bundle up it will leave the Murray girl
out in the cold, or at least without someone to keep her warm. Which
is a pity, because she is still in a bad way mentally from the effects
of the torpedoing. I'd even go so far as to say that her nightmares
and general fidgets during the sleeping periods are partly the cause
of Jenny Wellman's looking for a new sleeping partner. Only partly, of
course. But the fact remains that without the comfort and reassurance of
Miss Wellman, the Murray girl's sleep is likely to be seriously disturbed,
which means that ours will be likewise. So I was thinking -- "
"You can
stop
thinking!" Wallis burst out, with feelings close to panic.
"Dammit all, Doctor, are you trying to organize an orgy or something!"
The surgeon lieutenant did not answer that question either. Instead he
said, "No matter how long we are here, sir, I don't think that we would
ever reach the stage of fighting each other to the death for the only
available woman, or anything equally melodramatic. At the same time I can
see certain difficulties arising if the matter isn't settled fairly soon.
"You are the logical one, sir," the doctor went on. "Compared with myself,
the age difference is much smaller, and I'm married already in any case.
You should think about it, sir."
Wallis glared at the doctor and thought about it, and then with equal
desperation tried not to think about it. There was no room for thoughts
of the convoy or anything else in his mind, even though the sound of
Miss Murray's still trying to speak to it filled the whole ship.
Bang-bang-bang, she was saying doggedly: Bang, bang, bang. Bang-bang-bang.
. . .
X
Surgeon Lieutenant Radford could not make everyone agree to taking a bath,
but he won a minor victory by getting them to periodically change their
clothes. It was a matter of added warmth, he had insisted, as well as of
simple hygiene. The uniforms which they stood up in -- and lay down in and
did everything else in -- were so dirty and greasy that they were poor
insulators at best, and in their present surroundings the heavy serge
would be impossible to clean. Besides, it was a well-known fact that a
light, open-weave garment was warmer than a thick, closely woven type,
provided that there was protection against moving currents of air. He
did not have to remind them that Gulf Trader was singularly free from
moving currents of air.
The new outfits were made from sacking and took the shape of a one-piece
coverall with an attached hood. They were washed in sea water and dried
by first battering them against the nearest bulkhead to remove most of
the water and then whirling them around rapidly in the air. As well as
keeping the people warm who were not serving on the generator, the doctor
said that the constant washing and battering dry would soften the fibers
of the sacking so that they would soon feel comfortable against the skin.
But they found that each needed two of these outfits worn one on top of
the other to keep warm, and the girls were kept busy making them for a
long time. Dickson began talking about sweatshops and poor, down-trodden
workers and his plans for forming a union for their protection, several
times a day. Marriage had not changed Dickson's sense of humor, Wallis
thought: it was still lousy.
Apart from working the generator and sewing sacks together there was not
very much for them to do except think about their troubles; and that was
something to be avoided, because they had so many that to dwell on them
was simpiy asking for more trouble -- such as the Murray girl's crying
in her sleep, their sitting and either staring silently at nothing or
arguing endlessly and senselessly about nothing at all until they were
close to murder.
The time, according to the doctor, was late May. It was a little warmer
in the ship, but still bitterly cold. The air was definitely going stale.
Wallis lay with the doctor under their heap of sacking and tried not to
think about these things. What little experience he had of air going foul
told him that it should be hot and stuffy and that he should have a dull
headache and be inclined toward shortness of breath. He was sure that his
breathing was faster and there was no doubt about his headache, but the
air was so cold that it did not seem to be stuffy at all. In these
circumstances it was hard to tell just how foul the air had become or to
estimate the time left to them before it became unbreathable. At the same
time there was always the possibility that it was not nearly so foul as
he thought it was, and that it was bad mainly because he thought about
it too much.
But it was difficult not to think about things. All around him there was
silence and he had to listen hard to hear the sighing and gurgling sounds
of the sea pressing against their hull, the even breathing of the doctor
beside him, or the low muttering that told of Miss Murray's having bad
dreams again. Wallis was beginning to feel comfortably drowsy. He thought
that if he could find something pleasant, or at least constructive,
to think about he might go to sleep.
In some ways their position was similar to that of survivors in an open
boat. In a lifeboat there is food and water enough to live, but men grow
cold and sleepy and die if they don't find ways of exercising their muscles
and keeping awake. In Gulf Trader it was their minds rather than their
bodies which needed the exercise if they were to continue to survive,
and, just as in the hypothetical lifeboat, the exercises they performed
could be utterly senseless in themselves.
He fell asleep thinking about guessing games and ideas more suited to a
children's party than to the dark and frigid hold of a sunken ship. . . .
Wallis was awakened, he did not know how much later, by the sound of Miss
Murray's crying. It was not a loud noise, just the low, gasping, sobbing
sound of someone who is trying vainly not to make any sound at all. Miss
Murray didn't like disturbing people, and usually everyone kept still and
pretended to be asleep so that she would not feel bad when she did. But
tonight she was crying so quietly that everyone but Wallis seemed still
to be asleep, so he didn't even have the comfort of knowing that he was
not suffering alone. The sound went on and on, stopping only long enough
to let him hope that she had gone back to sleep, then starting again.
After what seemed like hours of listening to her and staying perfectly
still Wallis could stand it no longer. He wriggled carefully from under
the sacking so as not to let the cold in on the doctor and sat up in
the darkness.
He had no idea what he was going to do or say to her that would make her
stop crying, only that he had somehow to put an end to that terrible,
not quite silent sobbing before it made him run amuck. A few quiet words
of reassurance might do it, or a pat on the back, or a gentle reminder
that she needed her sleep, that they all needed sleep. Then again, that
might simply make her worse. The thought came suddenly to him that if he
did anything at all, considering the highly nervous state she was in,
she might get the wrong idea and start screaming that she was being
assaulted or something. But when he found the torch and switched it
on he saw that she was sitting up, wide awake, and shivering. Her arms
were folded tightly against her chest, her head was bowed so that her
cowl hid her features, and the only motion about her was the constant
steaming of her breath.
Wallis moved across and gently shook her shoulder. He had to do it several
times before she took notice; then she said, "I'm cold."
A number of angry and impatient replies rushed to Wallis's lips, like
weren't they
all
cold and what did she expect when she was sitting
on top of all the blankets instead of lying inside them? She had been
given all the sick-bay blankets to make up for the loss of Jenny, and
they were much warmer than the sacking everyone else had to be satisfied
with. But Wallis fought back the things he wanted to say and said instead,
"I've been meaning to check the water level in the coffer dam. Maybe a
walk aft would warm us both up. . . .
As they were passing through the old sick bay into Number Twelve and
they both began fighting for breath, Wallis said, "The air is quite
fresh. If we die of asphyxiation it will be purely psychological."
She gave a small laugh, the sort a junior officer has to give when a senior
makes a crack which is supposed to be a joke.
After they had checked the coffer dam bulkheads and climbed up and down
the ladder often enough to be fairly warm, Wallis stopped her as they were
returning through the sick bay. He pointed to the litter which had belonged
to Dickson and asked her to sit down, then hooked the torch onto a projecting
pipe and sat beside her. Not too close.
After a couple of false starts, he said, "You know, being caught down here
when the ship was torpedoed was probably a good thing for us. If we'd been
up top the chances are that we would have spent some time in the water and
a much longer time, maybe three or four days, in a lifeboat or raft. We might
not have survived that, and you girls certainly would not have done so,
injured and unable to exercise as you were. You're still alive and you
could have been dead.
"I know it's cold," he went on, "and the air is going foul. But summer
is coming and the doctor is beginning to show results with his beans,
and we have plenty of food and just enough water and we're dry. It might
be a long time before we're rescued, but we will be, eventually. So there
is nothing immediate to be afraid of, nothing for you to lose any sleep
over. . . ."
There was no response for a long time; then she said, "I understand, sir.
We can't get torpedoed again down here."
Wallis grinned suddenly. "That's it exactly," he said.
"I used to be good looking, you know," she said. "And I know what a burned
face looks like. My . . . my boyfriend bailed out of a burning plane.
His face was . . . was . . . He used to tell my parents that we were
Beauty and the Beast."
His smile must have looked somewhat strained, Wallis thought, as he said,
"It says a lot that his looks didn't matter to you. Even so there are
going to be a great many people scarred by this war, and war-scarred
heroes earn special respect. The same applies to war-scarred heroines,
although in their case the plastic surgeons would make an extra effort
to repair the damage. But you're lucky. If the surgeons can't fix you
up completely, and the doctor tells me that they probably can, you'll
be able to compare operations with your boyfriend."
His tone must have been a bit too hale and hearty, too insensitive.
She began to cry again. Wallis put his arm across her back and patted her
shoulder awkwardly. The movement caused her cowl to fall away from her
face, revealing the devastated left side spotlighted by the hanging torch.
Even the hair on that side was affected; it was gray at the roots and
patches were missing, and the only good thing about it was that it hid
her damaged ear. Wallis had helped the doctor to dress that ear a few
times and he didn't particularly want to look at it again. But the most
horrifying thing about the Murray girl's face was that the right half
of it was smooth and unblemished and beautiful.
"I'm sorry," said Wallis. "I shouldn't joke about things like that."
"We were engaged," she said suddenly. "Just before he was killed."
"I'm sorry," said Wallis again, wishing that he was dead himself,
or somewhere out of this acutely embarrassing position.
"Don't be," said the girl. "I didn't like him very much. But he felt
so awful about his face that it seemed the right thing to do at the
time. I used to tell him that his bad looks made my good looks better
by comparison, and it made him laugh sometimes. But the second time he
was shot down he wasn't able to bail out.
"Maybe he would have wanted me -- he knew what it felt like to be this way,"
she went on, so quietly that Wallis had to bend closer to hear her.
"But nobody else will. Your war-scarred heroes will want, will deserve,
Beauties, not another female Beast like themselves. I can't see myself,
but the side of my mouth feels tight and my eye feels wrong and my face
is . . . is like the bark of a tree. Can you imagine anyone looking
at it without wanting to turn away and be sick? Can you imagine anyone
wanting to kiss it?"
"Yes," said Wallis.
The trouble with a lie, he thought, is that if it is to sound like the
truth it has to be supported from several different directions.
Well-meaning, kindly lies seemed worst of all in this respect. All he
wanted to do was to make her feel better, from motives selfish as well as
selfless; he wanted to stop her crying so much and upsetting everyone,
and to feel better generally, and to stop having the bad dreams which
kept her and everyone else awake. Merely telling a lie, though, he knew
instinctively, would not be enough. Radford and Dickson would never know
how hard he was working to ensure their sleep.
Briefly, lightly, he kissed her on the mouth.
She did not seem angry, or surprised, or anything in particular. Wallis
felt that his lie was not convincing, that he was making a proper hash of
things generally. He said brightly, "You kept your eyes open. I thought
all girls closed their eyes when they were being -- "
"I wanted to see if you closed yours," she said dully, "and I think you did.
You couldn't look at me close up and you couldn't bear to touch me for more
than a second."
Wallis badly wanted to leave just then. His rule-of-thumb psychology was
not working out, and because of his meddling Miss Murray was in a worse
state now than when he had started. His well-intentioned lying had not
come off, probably because it had been a ridiculous and
unbelievable
lie, the sort of lie which calls black white. Maybe if he had mixed a
little more of the truth into it, cruel though the truth was, the lie
might have been believed. Or maybe not. But there was still time to
try again.
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