Dust On the Sea (18 page)

Two grapnels thudded into the bulwark, and the slack was taken in sharply until both hulls rose and fell in an ungainly embrace.

Blackwood felt his mouth go dry as he saw the Italian
officer lean over the small bridge and point, jabbing the air with his hand to attract attention above the growl of engines.

One of the fenders had been dragged over the unused canvas where a seaman had been pretending to work. His Tommy gun lay exposed in the weak sunlight, and even as the man snatched it up the Italian machine gunner threw himself on his mounting.

Shots cracked out, and Blackwood felt a bullet slam into the deck by his feet.

It was too late. It was too late.

And then, as if responding to a shouted command, he was out on to the deck and sprinting for the grey hull which seemed to tower over him. He felt his fingers tearing on rusting wire, and heard shouts, and the sudden stammer of a machine gun. But he could not stop himself; he was clinging to the Italian's guardrail, and felt the sea dragging at his legs as the trapped water burst upwards between the two hulls.

Somehow his mind recorded the sound of Despard's Bren, unhurried, single shots, and as he ran across the slippery planking he realised that the boat's commander was hanging head down from his flying bridge, his blood running down the side like paint.

He saw the seaman with the Tommy gun clamber over the stern, only to fall kicking against a covered motor boat. Someone had fired from inside the boat; the sailor had no face but was still struggling, refusing to die.

The Italian crew had fled below. All they had to do was wait. They could prevent anybody from taking the wheelhouse and securing the boat's controls.

He heard Despard yelling, ‘Take cover, sir!
Get down!
'

It seemed as if the explosion came from beneath his
feet. He heard the shot, but not the sound of shattering glass. He was on his knees, his head lowered as the agony burned into his thigh like molten metal. His head was reeling and he knew the voice gasping out in senseless fury was his own.

And through it all filtered the logic of training and hard-won experience. The shot had come through a skylight. From below.
I should have known. Should have seen it.

And the two hulls were still tethered together.

He tried to stand, but it was too much for him. There was so much blood. He had failed them.

And yet he was on his knees again, his mind suddenly frozen, compressed into small, agonising decisions.

The grenade was in his fist, and he heard the pin rattle on the deck although he did not recall pulling it. He felt the lever stir against his fingers. The voice of some forgotten instructor. ‘Four seconds, sir. Three, once it leaves your hand!'

He opened his fingers and watched the lever fall into his blood. It was live.

It was like something in slow motion: another shot from below, a sudden chorus of shouts, followed instantly by a muffled explosion. He felt the remainder of the skylight's glass dropping around him, and heard one lingering scream, like an animal caught in a trap. And then nothing.

He tried to touch his wound, but to his surprise there were other hands already there. He heard Despard's voice. ‘Give me a shell-dressing! Hold his leg!'

Men were hurrying about, and through a haze of pain he heard the strident roar of engines. They must have cast off from the little schooner. It was over. The grenade had
done it. Contained by this elegant steel hull, it would have been devastating.

He tried to focus his eyes and gasped, ‘What's this?'

Despard answered almost gently, ‘Rum. I know officers aren't supposed to drink the stuff, but to hell with O.L.Q.S.!'

And here was Carson. ‘I've got her, Mike! Have you home and dry in no time in this thoroughbred!'

Blackwood laid his head back on somebody's knee.

‘We did it.' His voice seemed to come from far away, through a long tunnel.

Despard watched him grimly. ‘You did it, you mean.' He glanced up and saw Carson framed against the sky, where the Italian commander had been standing. It was something else he would never forget. Carson was not looking ahead, or up at the tattered White Ensign which he had brought with him from somewhere. He was staring astern at the listing shape of the schooner which he had just scuttled.

He heard Blackwood ask, ‘Is it bad, George? Tell me.'

Despard looked at the blood-soaked dressing, recalling the solitary figure on this deck, like someone driven, or possessed.

‘Nothing vital, sir. You'll be fine. Really.'

He felt the scarred hand grope for his.

‘You did bloody well, George!'

Despard laughed. Had he been anyone else, he might have wept.

‘Not bad for a ranker, eh?' he said.

That night, St John's patrols found them.

The bicycle was very old and heavy and Diane Blackwood had wondered more than once if she should have kept to the main road. The lane, which led directly from the village of Alresford, seemed much wider than she remembered, and she guessed it was because of the increased use both by farm vehicles and those army units in this part of Hampshire. She saw a farm gate and decided to dismount. The lane was certainly no less steep.

She looked across the fields and saw part of a rooftop above the next slope. Hawks Hill. She licked her lips, suddenly dry, and looked next around at the hedges and long grass. There would be early daffodils here soon. It was hard to believe so much had happened to her in so short a time. Impossible.

She straightened her skirt, quite used now to seeing herself in Wren's uniform. The old bike, which she had borrowed from the postmaster, was no respecter of women, and the crossbar had made her skirt ride up her thighs when she was not paying attention. It had brought immediate and appreciative whistles from passing soldiers, and a few moist glances from men she now knew to be Italian prisoners of war, with coloured patches stitched to their uniforms to make them easy to detect. One soldier
had told her that they need not have bothered; the Eye-Ties were having such a cushy time over here that they would never escape even if they were politely asked.
Live better than we do
, the squaddie had remarked. It was probably true.

She had seen other looks down in the village.
The Blackwood girl is back. Surprised she's not an officer by now
. If only they knew.

She was based at Southsea, right next door to Portsmouth, another strange experience at first. Eastney Barracks had always seemed a part of her life, even though she had never been there before. Her father had mentioned it often enough, and Harry Payne had a thousand stories about it, as did most Royal Marines, she supposed. She was still not quite sure what she had been expecting when she had been accepted for the W.R.N.S. It had begun tamely. Drilling on the square, instructed and chased by sergeants who somehow managed to control their language. Most of the time.

She lived with other Wrens in a pleasant-looking house on the sea front at Southsea; it had a green roof and was called ‘Pantiles', but once inside it was a part of the service. Iron bedsteads and not much space, girls who thought nothing of walking naked to or from the bathrooms, and others who remained too shy to say anything at first.

It was presided over by a grey-haired second officer, who, it was said, had once been a teacher at Roedean or another of the top schools. She addressed her Wrens as ‘chaps' and kept an eagle eye on every hour of leave from duty. A sleeping-out pass was unheard of under her command.

But she knew her job well. She was never slow to warn
her ‘chaps' about certain officers at the barracks, the older ones, especially the married variety. ‘Gropers', as she described them.

‘Just tell me if one of them tries it, and I'll have him on a skewer in front of the Colonel!' She meant it.

Diane removed her jaunty cap from her dark chestnut hair and held it in the watery sunlight. It was the biggest change so far. Instead of the H.M.S. cap tally with which she had first been issued, her cap now sported a brass Royal Marines badge, mounted upon a patch of scarlet cloth. Old Harry Payne would like that. She smiled, thinking of the way people looked at her, anywhere away from a place used to marines. She was that much of a rarity. There were so many foreign servicemen and women in England now, French, Poles, Danes, even Czechs, that one old lady in Winchester had asked her if she was a Norwegian, as she had once enjoyed ‘such a happy holiday there'.

At Eastney they had put her to work in the records office, and she had been given a badge to stitch to her right sleeve, the letter W, a writer. Necessary without doubt, but not what she had hoped for, boats' crew, or Signals, working at a base alongside the ships and the danger. The Wrens were reputedly the most popular of the three women's services, and there was a waiting list to prove it. So a writer she would be.

That was until three days ago, when the adjutant had sent for her and told her that Mike had been wounded. He was not on the second officer's list of gropers; he was considerate in every way and had assured her that he would personally keep her informed. Mike was not in danger and the worst was over. His eyes had said,
until
the next time
, but they all knew that. Then he had said, ‘I'm told you can drive. I can use you, if that's true.'

She could remember exactly when her father had insisted that she take driving lessons, not as the pampered daughter of a country gentleman, but as a working woman. It was rarely a car she drove in any case, more often the old van from the farm, humping fodder for the horses, or carrying machinery in need of repair to the local blacksmith. No wonder the estate had almost gone bankrupt, she had thought often enough.

But driving was comparatively rare amongst young women, and the Royal Marines had no facilities for training them.

The grouchy second officer had pouted a bit, but Diane had thought she was secretly quite pleased. Another of her chaps was doing well.

‘One thing, my girl – just keep out of the back seat. They're a randy lot!'

Once she would have blushed, as she had done at the language some of her companions used, and the details of their affairs, most of which she guessed were only in their minds. But she felt something else, something new. A comradeship, a loyalty, which went far deeper than the coarse jokes and the suggestive glances. She straightened her skirt again and tugged at the underwear beneath it. It would be worth it just to wear some of her own things. She smiled. Passion-killers, they called issue underwear. They had a good point.

She stared at the front tyre and exclaimed, ‘
Bloody hell!
' and then looked round quickly, ashamed at her easy profanity.

She replaced her cap and took the handlebars. It would be a long push, then.

When she returned to Southsea some of her new friends might regard her driving job as favouritism.
Just keep out of the back seat
. She wheeled the bicycle to one side as she heard a vehicle on the road behind her. Grinding gears, with a total disregard for service property. It had to be the army.

She braced herself.
Want a lift, Jenny? What's a nice girl like you doing out here?
She was used to it, or should be by now. But once or twice she had given some back. It had usually shocked them, perhaps because of what everyone called her posh accent. It worked, though.

‘Need a helping hand? It's miles from anywhere.'

She faced the lane. It was a fifteen-hundredweight Chevrolet truck, with a divisional crest painted on one scratched wing. The man who had spoken was a passenger, a soldier with a Royal Engineers cap badge. A sapper; and as he leaned out of the window she saw a lieutenant's pips on his shoulder. He had an open face, one used to the outdoors. The driver, she noticed, was staring straight ahead, probably wondering what the hell they were doing here. It only needed a tractor to come from the opposite direction and there would be an interesting stalemate.

She said, ‘I've got a puncture.' She hesitated. ‘Sir.'

He grinned. ‘I'll put it in the back.' He did not order his driver to do it, but climbed down himself. He was quite tall. There was something both different and oddly familiar about him.

She took a grip on her imagination. ‘Just up the road, then. Thank you.'

He waited for her to climb in, and then sat carefully beside her. ‘Must be beautiful here in the good weather.' He laughed. ‘If you ever get any!'

That was it. The accent was Australian. No. Not quite.

‘You stationed around here, miss?'

She smiled. ‘No.'

He nodded seriously. ‘That's the ticket. Careless talk, and all that.'

She ventured, ‘You're a New Zealander, sir?'

He turned as if surprised. ‘Clever girl. Yes, Auckland. Seems a long way away.'

He leaned forward suddenly.

‘
Stop!
Stop right here!'

She felt the slam of brakes and sensed the driver's resentment.

He said quietly, ‘That must be it. It's got to be.' He looked at her. ‘Sorry about this. It's only for a minute. I've always wanted to see it.'

She looked past him. It was only the old gamekeeper's tower, now a water storage tank, and beyond it the superb Tudor façade of the main building, unspoiled by time, by war, by all the missing faces.

‘Hawks Hill,' she said.

‘I wonder if I could walk down and have a closer look?' He seemed to realise something. ‘Would you mind?'

She shook her head. ‘It's where I was going, anyway.' She took his proffered hand and stepped down on to the wheel-torn verge.

She knew that the driver was revving his engine with his boot and peering meaningly at his watch, eager to leave. Just as she knew the importance of this moment, without understanding it.

He did not release her hand. ‘Where you were going, did you say?'