Dust On the Sea (11 page)

She pointed along a passageway. ‘That's where Lady Duncan abides.' She giggled. ‘Tinker. A bit of a battle-axe, but she's quite sweet really, though she'd hate to admit it!' There was a long pause. ‘Would you like to see the “bazaar K.D.”? Was that what you called it?'

‘I would.'

It was a large room, with slatted louvres at the windows which he sensed would overlook the garden and the pool, where two strangers had been standing together.

He saw the khaki drill jacket lying on a chair, her uniform cap on another.

She picked up the jacket, and said, ‘What time is your car coming?'

‘Midnight. But if you think Lady Duncan will be back before that, I can call the base . . .'

She turned towards him and said, ‘Eight hours.' She put out her hand as he tried to hold her, to reassure her. ‘It's not all that much.'

He said, ‘It's a lifetime.'

She let her hand fall. ‘Then make it a lifetime.' She held her face against his while he touched her neck and her damp hair. He felt her back stiffen as he found her spine and pulled her closer to him, until they were together. Then she freed herself and gripped his hand, as she had in the café.

She could not look into his eyes, but watched his hands on her robe.

Then she faced him again, her chin uplifted, her voice quite steady as the robe fell around her ankles.

‘Take me, Mike. Love me. It's what you want, isn't it?'

She kissed him, even as he picked her up and laid her on the bed. She seemed so light, so supple that he ached for her.

He sat beside her, holding her, exploring her, until she drew him down and kissed him again. There was no hesitation, no lingering doubt or reserve. Their mouths were pressed together, open, their tongues driving away all caution.

He threw off his clothes, and she exclaimed, ‘You're all brown! You have a beautiful body, Mike!'

Only once did the anxiety show itself. ‘It's been so long. I want it to last.' She fell back, her eyes tightly closed as his shadow moved over her, then she arched her back to find him, to receive him. She cried out, the sound like an echo in the empty house, but the pain passed
within a second, and she returned his passion with a fervour which broke down any remaining control.

Afterwards, she lay beneath him, her heart like a small, trapped hammer against his body. When he moved as though to leave her she gripped his shoulders until her nails broke the skin. ‘No. Stay. I want to feel you like this . . . a part of me.'

Later, how long he did not know, she left him and walked across the room, her nakedness somehow natural and without artifice or hesitation. She returned with two glasses of wine. They had proably been chilled, but he would not have noticed. They kissed, and kissed again, and her hands aroused him in a way he would have thought impossible.

‘I love you.' He scarcely recognised his own voice. He was so used to covering emotion, hiding his feelings and his fears, that to say it was like being freed from something.

She whispered, ‘I couldn't wait. I needed you. Don't talk of love – just be glad we found it and took it while we could!'

Eventually they left the bed, and Blackwood put on his uniform.

The staff car arrived an hour early, but the S.N.O.'s secretary did not come to the house. In his job, he probably knew all about discretion.

She walked with him to the big room, lit now by a solitary lamp. The untouched plates and cups had disappeared.

When she opened the door he felt her shiver. The night was much colder; this was a place of extremes and contrasts.

Blackwood saw the shaded lights of the car, and the
jeep parked in the same place. Or maybe it was a different one.

She put her arms around his neck and raised herself on her bare toes.

‘Touch me.' She gasped as he opened her robe and stroked her breasts, her hip.

‘I shall see you soon, Joanna. I must.'

She smiled in the darkness, and then laid her fingers on his mouth.

‘Don't hope for too much.'

And then he was moving down to the gates. Once he turned, thinking she had called after him, but the door was closed, black against the peeling white stucco.

The paymaster lieutenant was apologetic. ‘Sorry, old son.' He had seen the girl's robe in the doorway. ‘There's a bit of a flap on, I'm told. Nothing we can't handle.' He let in the clutch and pulled out on to the road.

Blackwood concentrated on the dim light given off by the shaded beams. He must remember every last detail. What she said. What they did. How she had given herself without shame or restraint. He could still feel her, like the moment he had entered her. And the scratches on his shoulders where she had clung to him. Her warmth when he had shown concern for the fading bruises on her body. No wonder she hated flying.

A bit of a flap on
. There usually was. And it was almost Christmas Day. But afterwards, he would see her again, as friends, as lovers. As one. He thought then of his father. How pleased he would have been.

The girl stood quite still in the same room, facing the wall mirror, testing each reaction; testing her strength.

She could hear the muffled murmur of voices from
downstairs, the driver, and maybe one of the military policemen, the redcaps. She straightened her tie and ensured that the collar was properly attached and fastened. Then she put on her jacket, remembering his face in the crowd, raising her arm to look at the two stripes on the sleeve. Heard his voice again.
Flight Officer Gordon
. She fastened each button, slowly and deliberately, watching her reflection all the time. A stranger again.

She could see the bed behind her, where they had loved with such abandon, such need. In the past, it had been so different. He had been experienced, and often demanding, but even then she had known he was measuring each hour they had together.

But nothing like this. She had not merely submitted; she had returned his love in ways she had hardly dared to contemplate. Given herself again and again.

She glanced at the case and the paper parcel by the door. She had packed the khaki drill tunic and slacks last of all, holding on to the memory. She shook her head angrily. It was no use; memories would destroy her.

They had talked, too, lying side by side on that bed. About her brother who had been killed, and about his own doubts, of which she knew he had never spoken to anyone else. Of his admiration and pride in men like her brother, like so many of his young marines. They had volunteered because they had believed in it; because they cared.

She had watched him, his profile etched against the mosquito netting.

‘I had no such moral commitment. It was my life, my career, whether I wanted it or not. Because I am a Blackwood and all that it means. I needed to see what drew such men to the Corps, to the real war. Not seen
through a bomb sight at ten thousand feet, or the rangefinder of a cruiser's gun turret . . . or even through the periscope as it comes down, while the submarine is already diving, twisting away, when the torpedoes are still speeding towards their target.'

She had said, ‘And have you seen it now?'

He had rolled over, and laid his head very gently between her breasts.

He did not need to answer her question.

She heard Lady Duncan's voice; she had arrived in the middle of the night. It was time.

The sealed envelope had been waiting for her; she had heard the motor-cycle sputtering away. The message was as brief as it was urgent.

Lastly she placed her cap on her dark hair, and stared at herself in the mirror. Then she picked up the case and the small parcel, and took one final look at the room. It was Christmas Day.

She opened the door, and heard the conversation stop instantly, like a radio being turned off.

It had been beautiful, the most wonderful thing which had ever happened to her. And, perhaps, to him.

She closed the door behind her. But it was just a dream.

‘Ah, there you are, my dear. The car's here for you!'

Only a dream.

Captain Mike Blackwood lay on his back, his hands behind his head while he stared into the darkness. He was fully dressed and wide awake, his ears picking out the motor gunboat's internal sounds, the muted tremble of the big Rolls-Royce engines, the clatter of loose gear, or someone moving on deck above his bunk. Sounds which had become familiar in so short a time since they had climbed aboard, yet again under cover of darkness to maintain any vestige of secrecy in such a crowded harbour.

The M.G.B.'s small company were taking it well, he thought. Overcrowded at the best of times, it had been no easy thing to accommodate ten Royal Marines and two officers. They had all somehow found spaces to sit down, even sleep, once they had become used to the motion and the occasional bursts of speed, to avoid other vessels, to dodge enemy aircraft, or merely to make up distance: to the marines it could have been anything.

It was the same gunboat in which Blackwood had been carried to the schooners before
Lucifer
. Even the purpose behind that seemed hard to understand any more; it refused to fit into a pattern.

Like his men, Blackwood was fully trained, and
probably more experienced than any of them except the characters like ‘Sticks' Welland, and the withdrawn Despard, trained to assess any situation as he found it, and to react accordingly. Doubt and personal safety did not come into it. In his mind he could picture the chart as if he had just been studying it with Gaillard and the boat's skipper, Lieutenant David Falconer, the veteran who had once been a schoolmaster. At least his pupils would know the truth about this war, if he ever went back to teaching. If he lived that long. On the first night at sea in company with two other M.G.B.s, Falconer had touched on it only briefly. This little special squadron had consisted of eight boats when he had arrived in the Med. Now there were only three. He was not resigned, and not bitter. It was his war; the rest was somebody else's problem.

It had reminded Blackwood of his father, and one of those rare evenings at Hawks Hill when he had spoken about that other war, of the appalling waste and horrific casualty lists, because the general staff had been unable to adapt to a type of warfare which had outreached their experience and imagination.

He had said more than once, ‘You should always remember. Individuals can win or lose a war. Not some unthinking mass of men, a flag on a map, or simply because it is something which needs doing. Remember the lonely men, the ones who are always on the prongs of an advance, or those left to cover a retreat. The
individuals.
'

Blackwood often recalled those words. He had thought of them at the hastily convened conference in the operations room after his whirlwind drive from Rosetta. As the S.N.O.'s secretary had commented, ‘There's a bit of a flap on.'

Blackwood had imagined there had been a reverse in the desert war; even after all the Desert Rats' success, it could still happen. Or perhaps another convoy had been attacked, the one which would eventually bring the full marine detachment to Alex. Or that the Americans who had landed in North Africa in Operation
Torch
had been overwhelmed by the more experienced and hardened troops of the Afrika Korps. But again, that was another war, and despite all the efforts of war correspondents and broadcasters there was not much love for the Americans. In England there was a standard reply when asked what was wrong with the Yanks anyway?
Three things. They're overpaid, oversexed and over here!
In Devon, Blackwood had seen the same sentiment scrawled on the back of an army Bedford truck.
Don't cheer, girls. We're British!

But the conference had nothing to do with allied friction. There had been various expressions of surprise and even annoyance when Commander St John had made his announcement. Admiral Darlan, the governor-general of French North Africa, was dead. Not killed in an accident, or murdered by terrorists as well he might have been, but shot by a haphazard assassin who had walked into his room and emptied a revolver into him without threat or explanation.

The ordinary squaddie in the line or Jolly Jack bargain-hunting in the
souk
might have been excused for saying,
so what? Who cares?
Darlan was, after all, a Nazi puppet, who had shown his bias by accepting high office from France's new German masters, rather than making any attempt to rouse resistance against the enemy.

In England, there was only bitterness that men like Darlan had chosen to collaborate and to betray. But to the
confused and unhappy French inhabitants of North and West Africa, Darlan had represented a form of unity. Perhaps he had been biding his time, waiting to change sides yet again, now that the Allies were gaining ground despite all that the German army and the Luftwaffe could throw against them.

Blackwood had seen the reports of the fierce resistance encountered by the Americans landing at Oran and other strategic points, not from the Germans, but from the French army. It would not be forgotten by young American soldiers who had come so far to do so much, as they had believed, to help free the French nation.

But with Darlan alive and ready to keep peace amongst his own people and the allied invaders, to say nothing of his dealings with Berlin, there was some show of that elusive unity.

Individuals can win, or lose a war.

Blackwood stretched, but his movements were restrained by his webbing belt and ammunition pouches.

And now there was another contender, Admiral Avice, one of Darlan's trusted commanders and a man known to favour closer ties with the Vichy government, and therefore with Germany.

Blackwood pictured the chart again. At this very moment the gunboat was lying almost stopped in the Strait of Sicily, that savagely contested channel between Sicily and Cape Bon in Tunisia. It was barely seventy miles across at the narrowest part, where the sea bed was littered with ships of every kind, and their crews with them. The hard-fought convoys to Malta, just to keep that island alive, even though enemy airfields were only a short flight away; submarines, minefields and dive-bombers; men against machines. Because of its position, the
Strait had become vital to both sides. From Sicily and the Italian mainland stores and weapons were being forced through to the Afrika Korps, which was now in full retreat, at least from the Libyan desert. And at the other side of the campaign was the port of Bone, which had been seized after the landings of
Torch
. All the thousands of men, tanks, ammunition and supplies for the First Army and the Americans had to pass through Bone. Bombed around the clock and with too few R.A.F. or American planes to defend it, it was a lynchpin which could still swing either way.