A Bridge Of Magpies (9 page)

We stood and looked at her rusty plating. Jutta's interest took the chill off the sense of static disaster which the years hadn't softened.

She said unexpectedly, 'Sorry I was like that back there, •

Struan.'

'Forget it. We're here now.'

'It's just that it meant - means - so much.'

I was on the point of asking for the explanation which I felt was becoming overdue; but I decided to play it gently for the moment.

'You a historian, Jutta?'

'Sort of;

She didn't seem inclined to elaborate. It
was faith,
not fact, which had made me trust her in the first place. But patience isn't one of my strong suits. She intrigued me.

I said, 'The South African sun didn't give you that complexion.'

61

She flushed, which made it better still. `No. London. I flew here, only a couple of days ago.'

'That's a very long way to come for a view of a rotting old hulk. Especially one that's out of bounds.'

'I told you, you could almost call it my cradle.'

'A small reason for a big journey.'

'Maybe. Don't come the cop again, Struan. You're nicer without.'

'Let's try the other side of the wreck.'

We caught the force of the wind there because the hulk had acted as a windbreak before. Now the spray came in jets when the breakers burst against the rocks. I found the wreck's air of desolation total and depressing. The weather side was red with rust. Crabs scuffled up and down the rotting plates and there was a population of tide-things a man's height up from the keel. Some smashed remains of lifeboats hung from perished falls.

`Jut
means davit in Danish,' Jutta

'You're aJl sea.'

'Maybe too much so, Struan.'

I waited for the follow-up to this cryptic remark but it didn't come. Instead, she occupied herself with studying the ship's side, trying to find a way in. Finally we located one and slipped and scrambled up on to the deck. It was a grim spectacle. Looters and strippers had picked the place clean. Green slime clung to a lot of the metal 'tween-decks and the stairways were dangerous.

'What are you searching for, Junta?'

'My mother's cabin.'

`Number?'

'I don't know. The most I could discover was that it was among the single accommodation on the starboard side.' `

Single? How's that?'

'She wasn't married.'

'I see.'

'You don't. But you're too polite to pry.'

It was wartime.'

`Wartime: Her voice took on an edge. 'If you only knew how that fogs everything I That simple question you asked about her cabin–you can't begin to guess the involvements it took to get the simple answer:

'Jutta, what do you hope to find in your mother's cabin?'

62

She side-stepped my question. Instead she said, 'here's
a
passageway. It might lead to the cabins.'

It did, but it was wet and half-dark. The liner had taken the torpedoes on her port side and probably all the passengers on the opposite side, where we now were, had got away safely. If they'd left anything behind in their flight, the looters had taken it. Every cabin was a bare steel shell. Coffin seemed a better description.

I sniffed. 'Seals! Whew!'

We explored until it was impossible to go farther because the 'tween-decks had collapsed. Jutta was very withdrawn
when we
found nothing.

We retraced our steps to the bridge. It had shared the fate of the cabins. All the instruments, even the wheel, were missing. We had a wonderful view of the Bridge of Magpies, which seemed close enough to reach out and touch. The pillars on which the twin legs of the arch
rested
were striated by the weather–like the engine of a giant motor-cycle. At its highest point the structure narrowed to a mere couple of feet thick, which gave the whole thing an airy lightness. We shared the scene and the silence. It was companionable and felt good. Maybe what we were sharing was something more indefinable, more basic,

'Why magpies?' I asked.

'Not a clue. The name bad the American code-breakers stumped, too.'

'Please, teacher!'

We laughed at and with one another.

'Do I sound as bad as that?'

'Professor!'

'It's all back there amongst my things: everything about
U-160's
mission.'

'Mission?'

'You heard the tape. It wasn't an operational cruise,' '

There was enough shooting.'

'Nevertheless, it wasn't. The first buzz of it emerged when Pearl Harbour intercepted a Japanese Fleet message to U-boat Headquarters. Those code-breaker boys were hot stuff, real super-stars at their job, but the name Bridge of Magpies had them beat. As a result the signal got shelved. It should have been passed on to the British because these waters were in
the
Royal Navy's
sphere
of operations; but it never was.'

63

`What's at the back of all this sleuthing of yours-Jutta?'

You could almost hear the barrier clang down between us! I wasn't so far along with her as I'd imagined.

She said shortly, `To do with–my mother.'

`Whom you never knew. That's a load of filial piety, Jutta.'

`Please don't needle me, Struan. You've been very sweet and considerate bringing me here. Don't spoil it now.'

'Would it spoil it to tell you I've suddenly thought of something?'

'About my mother?'

'It's what you want, isn't it?'

'Yes ... no.' Her eyes–sea-green
as
deep water –had been on my face, but now she looked away. 'Tell me. The moment's gone, anyway.'

I put my hand
on
her shoulder. Irrelevantly, I thought: Gigi must just
be
about opening the jetty bar now. That careless bit of breast that aJways showed. I wondered what Jutta's breasts were like. There was almost no shape to her because of' the suede jacket

'Breekbout–that's my Man Friday–told me yesterday that there's an old graveyard back of the beach in the sandhills. Maybe your mother's buried there.'

Her reaction wasn't what I'd expected. She certainly wasn't suffering from an overdose of mother-fixation. She put her
hand
on
mine
and said coolly, matter-of-factly, 'Let's go and look.'

We left the wreck, collected her paraphernalia, and hiked away into the wind-carved sandhills, which followed the coast's indentation like a half-cupped hand. Farther inland was a plain with shifting, smaller sandhills and beyond them showed the dark line of a range of fretted-rocky outcrops. We made brand new footsteps in the wind-scoured surface. The dusty smell of the desert was still damped by a sprinkling of dew. The sun shone but the wind was cold.

We stopped for
a
breather. Her gear was more cumbersome than heavy.

'What was "the sound
of guns" mentioned on the tape,
Jutta?'

I
was
watching her closely, waiting for the shut-down in her eyes that had followed my earlier questioning and had made them seem to be looking at me from another place. 64

But it didn't happen this time.

'I don't know what, you're talking about'

Nor did she: but she was fascinated by what I had to tell her about Convoy WV.5BX and why
Gousblom
had broken away from it into the channel. I left the C-in-C out of it, of course.

When I'd finished she said speculatively,
'Seems
I'm not the only one who's done homework. You're pretty well informed for a headman.'

'It was Possession's main event for a century. The story gets passed on from mouth to mouth.'

'I wonder.'

I kept wondering, too–about her. I decided to risk my sixtyfour dollar question.

'I'd like to go over all this material of yours about Possession.'

Her eyes disappeared into another time-track.

'It's copyright. Mine.'

'Does that mean no?'

'I said,
it's
mine?

'Let's get on,' I snapped.

The anger lay between us and soured the rest of the hike. Her brush-off burned me up because now I reckoned she'd turned on the charm to get her way with me about the wreck and play me for a sucker. I swore to myself that once we'd seen over the graveyard I'd have an ironclad reason out of her for being on the Sperrgebiet. Or else.

We negotiated the corner of the last dune blocking off the graveyard. I was in the lead.

I caught sight of a
cluster
of mounds and some derelict crosses. 1 also spotted something else.

I pulled Jutta back into the angle of the dune; then unslung my binoculars and brought the graves into sharp definition.

A man was kneeling at one of them, his hands busy in the sand.

'Was your mother's name Joyce?' I whispered.

She nodded.

'Then Kaptein Denny is either robbing her grave or caching something in it?

'Is that it?'

'The cross is pretty crude–looks like a piece of wreckage.'

I
read, ' "Joyce Walsh . . ." Come back, you little idiot!'

She'd jumped up and sprinted towards the kneeling figure. I snicked back the rifle bolt, made sure it was loaded-and ran after her. Because of the wind, Kaptein Denny didn't hear her coming until she
was
very close. When he did, he threw us a startled glance, leapt up and scuffed the mound with his foot so that a scatter of things–some of them bright seashells–went flying.

I
was up to him in a moment. I slipped the rifle's safety catch. He had a knife in one hand and in the other some rings and jewellery-and what appeared to be a rather timeworn passport. Jutta was confronting him as if she couldn't believe her eyes.

'You bastard!' I exclaimed. 'Fishing ... balls! You bloody grave-robbing bastard!'

His face was a mask; he didn't retaliate; just came towards me holding out the battered passport. I wasn't dumb enough to fall for that one.

I kept the gun steady on him. `The knife–drop
it 1
At my feet!'

He hesitated-unflappable and therefore dangerous. But he saw I'd blast him if he tried any tricks. He gave
a
slight shrug and threw it open.

'Now
the passport!'

It joined the knife.

'Hold out your hand!'

There were a couple of rings and some trinkets in his palm.

I
risked a glance at the things he'd kicked away: a tiny coloured porcelain figurine and some smashed painted shells which had been stuck together to imitate flowers.

'Now get off that grave!'
I
ordered. 'You're under arrest. Where'd you get that loot from?'

He indicated the mount The wind had long ago blown the shabby cross askew–by contrast, most of the other graves were unmarked–and the sand had filed away the lettering, which appeared to have been burned in with a hot
iron.
It read, 'Joyce Walsh. Died in childbirth, July 1943. R.I.P.'

Jutta's thoughts were a millisecond ahead of mine. She snatched up the passport, flicked it open,
paged through it
rapidly, concentrating on the wording and franking-stamps. Before she'd reached the last page
her eagerness seemed
to 66

have evaporated.

Her voice was dry and level as if she'd experienced some big let-down.

'My mother's.'

'Yes,' said Kaptein Denny. 'The rings–I took them from her fingers myself.'

'Christ, you're a cool one!' I exploded.

Jutta said in the same level-unemotional voice, 'If that's true, you didn't do it just now. That grave's not been disturbed.'

She was right. It certainly hadn't been dug up and unless the body lay six inches deep he couldn't have got at it. Kaptein Denny left me out of what he had to say next. 'I made that cross. The liner captain gave me your mother's passport so I'd get the name right. I took the jewellery. I've kept them all . . . it's a long time now.'

'You were there!'

'I was there. These things belong to you now, Miss Jutta.' `

Jutta ! ' I echoed. 'You're mighty quick off the mark for a charter skipper.'

'I've known Miss Jutta a long time. From the moment of birth, in fact.'

'Rescuer Jutta exclaimed. 'It was
you! Kaptein Denny!'
He remained unruffled. 'I rescued a lot of people that night. Your mother among them. You were born in my boat.'

'Don't play the fool with me,' I snapped at him. I put up the gun but kept my foot on the knife. 'Let's have your story straight–and quick.'

'I was in the Possession channel that night
U-160
sank the
City of Baroda...:

'Doing what?'

'Fishing.'

It was too pat. Fishing nets a multitude of sins.

'In wartime? With enemy subs around?'

'I was fishing.'

I let it go.

'I saw the liner beached. It was a wild, stormy night. The passengers wouldn't have stood a chance in the seas that were breaking over the rocks. I took off a lot of them –

including Miss Jutta's mother, as I said.'

Jutta fiddled with the rings. She was clearly lining up on his 67

side. Maybe she'd never left it. Maybe that's why both of them were ashore the same day ..

`You must have known all along who I was when
I
came to you in Luderitz for a boat-why didn't you say?' `

The time wasn't then.'

`You vanished before the survivors from the
City of Baroda
could even say thank you. No one was ever
able
to identify their rescuer.'

'It's the way I'm made.'

I
said, 'It takes a power of modesty to dodge a couple of warships out hunting a U-boat. Yet you succeeded.'

`They concentrated on the mouth of the channel near the Kreuz shoals where the oil slick was.
I
took my boat round the other way.'

Òkay,'
I
said. 'You were super-modest. It's all in the past and it doesn't matter a damn to me whether you wanted modesty or a medal. What concerns me is the present ..

'It's Miss Jutta's birthday,' he interrupted. 'It's also a deathday. I'm a Malay. That was a rite for her mother's spirit you interrupted.'