Convoy (14 page)

‘But even when (on a morning like this I think it’s “if”) we get enough escorts to smash the packs, we still have your problem, or rather the single-Ted-boat-in-the-middle. The insider. We’ll be losing five hundred ships a year, working on the present number of our merchant ships at sea and the losses. But to win the war we’ve got to have double or quadruple the number of merchantmen. Unless you produce some answers, Ned old boy, we’re going to double or quadruple our losses, too…’

‘Why pick on me?’ Yorke grumbled. ‘Christ, I’m no A/S specialist, nor a submariner like you!’

‘And that’s why Uncle chose you. He had a hell of a fight with the Second Sea Lord’s office – they wanted to send you off in another destroyer.’

‘But why me?’ Yorke persisted.

‘You are a bore, you know,’ Jemmy said amiably. ‘All the other days in the week when we could discuss this, and you have to choose a morning when my brain is raw. Well, the anti-submarine boys think their bloody Asdics and hydrophones give them all the aces. It’s quite useless to show ’em the figures of losses and ask ’em what happened. They say too few ships, a bad winter with too much rough weather, the summer too fine so the Teds use planes to hunt the convoys. They say we should never have given the French the secret of Asdic, then the Teds wouldn’t have got it when France fell.’

‘And the submariners?’ Yorke prompted.

‘They’re just as bigoted. They say that if they had as many boats as Doenitz and as many convoys at sea as we have, they’d sink the lot. In other words, the A/S boys and the submarine boys all have axes to grind. Uncle, for reasons not clear to me in my present befuddled state, thinks you have four virtues.’

‘Only four?’

‘As far as he’s concerned, four are enough. You aren’t an A/S specialist, you’re not a submariner, you’re reasonably experienced in escort work, and you hate the Teds.’

‘What makes hating the Teds so important?’

Jemmy sighed. ‘The Innocent Abroad… The strongest motives that drive men – which means they’ll plot, scheme and work overtime to achieve them – are lust, greed, jealousy and hatred. There may be others, and you can juggle the order, but Uncle reckons (and I agree) a good whiff of hatred for the Teds clears the mind wonderfully.’

‘It’s not doing much for you this morning.’

‘I was sabotaged last night by my friends. Here, take your bloody diagram and buzz off for the weekend. The Croupier over there is about to go, Joan and I have plans, and she has to lock up the shop.’

Clare snuggled back in the deep, wing-back armchair, the flames in the fireplace flickering to light the comfortable sitting room and make her black hair seem a deep purple. Dusk in central London on a Saturday afternoon – boring, peaceful, cheerful or the dead end of the week: it could be any of these things. There was a faint smell of hops from the brewery on the other side of Palace Street; occasionally a distant train gave a whistle as it came in over the Thames bridge into Victoria Station, as though it was the railwayman’s equivalent of touching wood in case a bomber lurking in the clouds made an attack.

She was happy and at peace. She wore a corn-coloured dress of wool, cunningly cut so that although it appeared a normal fit, her body moving inside it seemed to be nude; dark but sheer silk stockings (the first time he had ever seen her in anything other than black uniform stockings or thick woollen country-wear ones that matched comfortable brogues) which revealed, almost flaunted, slim legs that invited him to speculate about the thighs above the hem of the dress.

It was hopeless, he realized; he had not heard her few sentences because, from the comfortable depth his own armchair, he had let his imagination speculate about her body. In hospital it was always sheathed in the sexless nurse’s uniform; on their country walks it was hidden in tweed suits or heavy coats.

‘…Do you?’ she asked.

‘…Do I what?’ he mumbled. ‘Sorry, darling, I was daydreaming.’

‘So I noticed. You’d even put the dress on a hanger.’

‘On a hanger?’

‘Yes, after taking it off me.’

‘Oh dear, was it as obvious as that?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be; it’s very flattering for a girl just up from the country.’

‘Warms the room, too.’

‘How is the arm, darling?’ The question was sudden and, he realized afterwards, deliberately so.

‘Getting better. Hurts in the cold. The muscles feel as though they’re a fraction of an inch too short.’

‘What about the grip?’

‘Improving. I wouldn’t want to be hanging on the edge of a cliff using only that hand, but it seems to belong to me now.’

‘Sister Scotland and the physiotherapist want me to do tests before I go back.’

‘Are they worried?’

‘No, just interested. They loved mothering you.’

Yorke looked startled. ‘I’d prefer being mistressed to being mothered.’

‘By Sister Scotland?’

‘Well, maybe not.’

Her nose was slightly hooked, her lips full, her skin golden, as though she still had the early-autumn remainder of a good summer tan. He knew her eyes were brown but by firelight they were black, large and emphasized by the high cheekbones.

‘You’re off again,’ she said.

‘No, I’m examining your face. Dictating notes to a lot of spotty medical students who need the obvious explained to them. “Now this patient, female, has two eyes, a mouth, nose and two ears, one on each side of her head…”.’

‘Professor Jepson at Charing Cross Hospital: you sound just like him. A wonderful surgeon but a fearful bore. The patient has no defects for you to point out, Dr Yorke?’

‘If lack of height is a defect, I should point out five feet one inch is not Amazonian. The bust measurement is not stated, nor waist and hips. Legs slim, quite acceptable where examined. Feet small, elegant in court shoes, when they – the shoes – have not been kicked off… Temperature normal, pulse normal–’

‘In fact the pulse is “elevated”,’ she interrupted. ‘That means it’s beating faster than usual.’

‘Why? You’re not feeling ill, are you?’

She laughed at the alarm in his voice. ‘No, but a girl’s pulse is allowed to beat faster when she’s alone in a strange man’s house and about to meet his mother for the first time. What a dragon!’

‘She’s not! You’ll like her.’

‘As far as nervous girlfriends are concerned, all men’s mothers are dragons at the first meeting. They may improve as time goes on.’

Yorke nodded. ‘Yes. I wonder why they usually start off so badly?’

‘They don’t always, of course. If it is obviously just a mild flirtation, mum is charming. If it is more serious, mum breathes smoke and flames or is as bright as a glacier on a sunny day.’

‘But why? Jealousy?’

Clare held out her hands towards the fire, as if to warm them. ‘Jealousy? Yes, I suppose so, but of a very involved sort. Being protective, I think. Even though the son is ten feet tall and twenty-five years old, he’s always a baby to the mother, who sees him becoming involved in another womb… She’s afraid of losing him, feels the girl can’t be worthy… One of the oldest stories in human relationships.’

‘The more polite mothers control their feelings. Put on a mask. Go through the drill.’

‘I know. It’s hypocrisy, but it’s more pleasant.’

‘Most of the world runs on hypocrisy. One has to work with a number of people one dislikes. But there have to be smiles and handshakes and so on.’

‘The social conventions,’ Clare murmured.

‘Exactly. Machinery needs oil to make it run smoothly. It’d work very briefly without the oil, and then seize up. Society is the same. So are the social conventions hypocrisy or society’s lubricating oil?’

She shrugged her shoulders and said: ‘The rebels call it hypocrisy but I prefer the lubricating oil.’

‘This is a hell of a conversation to be having on our first real afternoon together,’ he grumbled.

Clare looked at her watch and said, a practical note in her voice: ‘Your mother is due home any moment, and I have nothing to deter me from my duty, which is to put on the kettle and prepare some bread and butter.’

‘I’ll help.’

‘I can fill a kettle and slice a loaf without help, but you can come and admire me.’

She watched him stand up. ‘I’ve seen you in pyjamas, uniform and uniform trousers and a heavy jersey. I’ve never seen you in proper civilian clothes before.’

‘You’ve seen me naked too. Half and half, rather, when I had those blasted blanket baths.’

‘Yes, and I’m not sure who was the more embarrassed.’

‘I was. I was afraid I’d…’

‘Quite, but you didn’t. Men usually don’t, as a matter of interest. Shyness is very inhibiting. Anyway, there’s only a dinner jacket left. And tails and topper.’

‘You’re still ahead of me, anyway.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I’ve seen you in nurse’s uniform, country tweeds, and now an ordinary dress.’

‘Well, that’s–’ she paused and blushed. ‘I see what you mean.’ She nodded towards the door. ‘I’ll start preparing tea. You had better pull the blackout curtains, otherwise a warden will be banging on the door saying we’re showing lights.’

‘It might be a noisy night,’ he said. ‘Half moon, broken cloud, not much wind…’

‘I’ve been in London since the blitz started,’ she reminded him. ‘Willesborough is a new experience.’

They both heard the front door opening. ‘Damn!’ Clare exclaimed. ‘I wanted the kettle boiling when your mother arrived!’

Both women were secretly pleased to find that their original fears had been groundless. Mrs Yorke had quickly realized that Ned’s latest girlfriend was far from being a grasping young widow thirsting (lusting?) for a quick wartime romance and some good jewellery in payment, and Clare had found that Ned’s mother was gentle, decisive, well able to look after herself and certainly, not (as Clare had once feared) attempting to interfere in Ned’s life.

They were nibbling at some dried-up and bright yellow fruit cake made with powdered egg when Clare had realized that Ned was the head of the house: he owned the house (and probably everything in it) and his mother lived there as – well, guest, housekeeper, mother, châtelaine. It was obvious neither of them ever thought about it – the house near Willesborough was closed up and likely to be requisitioned ‘for the duration’, so Mrs Yorke quite naturally lived here in Palace Street, with a small oil portrait of her husband on the wall in the dining room and a photograph of him in a silver frame beside her bed. One day Ned would marry and Mrs Yorke would move out to leave the house to the new Mrs Yorke, but that was usual: these were the rules by which people like the Yorkes lived their lives.

Ned had – at Clare’s request – taken her into the room to show her the photograph of his father. The similarity between the two men was almost alarming, yet now she had met Mrs Yorke she saw that Ned had her smile, her chin, and her rather dry humour. The three Yorkes must have been an affectionate, closely knit family, and Clare had (inquiring about some other portraits on the dining-room wall) discovered the Yorkes had been shipowners until the First World War. They had flourished – according to Mrs Yorke, who seemed to view them with affectionate irony – in Nelson’s day, continued to run their ships profitably during the Crimean War, started to find profits were becoming sporadic at the time of the Boer War, and finally gone under at the end of the Kaiser’s War.

The various members of the family had not starved but Clare sensed that Yorke House and the Palace Street house represented all that was left of Ned’s share: death duties, a need to adapt a Bentley attitude to an Austin income, meant that they had learned from experience that it was better to have a few of the best rather than a lot of the second best; they would never come to terms with Bakelite and chromium plate but they understood the decline that Gibbon was describing.

She was surprised – startled and frightened in an odd sense she could not explain to herself – to find Ned was the last of the Yorkes: in one war the family had been all but wiped out. Four of five Yorke sons had died fighting in the Kaiser’s War, and the fifth had been Ned’s father. Only two of the four had been married; only one had a child, a girl, who was Ned’s first cousin, a don and a spinster at one of the women’s colleges. So from five Yorkes the family had been mown down – Clare was satisfied with the phrase; it summed up all its dreadful tragedy – from five brothers to one son.

Because she was a woman with her normal sensitivity heightened by a new and unexpected love, Clare looked across at Ned and wondered if in fact the family was not already as good as wiped out. She could see him lounging comfortably in grey flannel bags and a tweed sports jacket, the left hand held awkwardly, almost askew, because he still had not become accustomed to it. Although the uniform, the DSO, the war, the Battle of the Atlantic, were for the moment ignored, away to the westward was the broad sweep of the Atlantic, torn by torpedoes and bombs. Ned knew all the time and accepted it, and so did his mother, but Clare suddenly realized with a shock that was almost physical that within months of going back to sea he would probably be killed: that was simple mathematics, not cowardliness or heroics. She realized at that moment that Ned so accepted it as his duty that he never even hinted at it, and that was his mother’s attitude. She could see her son depart for the war and death, and accept it as duty: his duty to go; her duty to have had a son who was available to go if the need arose.

It was not blind acceptance of fate, though; Clare needed only to remember the ribbon of the DSO, and Ned’s determination to get his left arm working again. A functioning left arm and hand meant returning to sea, going back to his beloved destroyers. It was a miracle that had saved his arm – and as far as she was concerned another that had just given him an appointment in the Admiralty. It must be an odd job and presumably would not last long, and she was slightly irritated that he would not talk about it. She knew him well enough to understand he was not being deliberately reticent to disguise the fact he had been given a glorified clerk’s job because of his arm. No, he was not talking about it because it was something secret and something which had made him preoccupied, almost tense, since he left Willesborough. Well, anything that kept him on land was welcome. She was being selfish – or was it protective? Men fought for their country; women fought for the men they loved.