For Valour (22 page)

He smiled. “They're keeping you busy, I see.”

She said, “I was glad to see your first lieutenant get his decoration from the Admiral. We were all very proud.”

He waited. There it was again. Pride. Then he said directly, “Is she going to be all right?”

She studied him gravely. “They think so.” She hesitated, then took his arm. “It's wrong to get so fond of people, that's what they keep telling us, but I do. I care for both of you.” She thrust out a piece of signal pad. “This is the hospital. Give her my love, will you?” Then she turned and hurried back into her room.

I care for both of you.
Not an easy thing for her to say.

Nor could she have known just how much it meant.

Fairfax and Kidd sat in
Hakka
's wardroom, sipping their drinks and half listening to the bored voice of a B.B.C. news announcer as they waited for Tonkyn to serve supper, for that was all it was with most of the ship's company ashore.

“So we're off again soon, Jamie?” Kidd wondered what he would think if he told him about Evie.

“Looks like it. The whole group this time. The Old Man has been at H.Q. for most of the day.”

Kidd almost smiled.
The Old Man.
He knew that Martineau was thirty-three years old, a year younger than himself. The navy's way.

The emotionless voice broke into his thoughts.

“The Secretary of the Admiralty regrets to announce the loss of HMS
Linnet
on active service. Next of kin have been informed.”

Not where, or how. Was that all it took? Like a pencilled cross on a chart, soon forgotten. He clenched his fist around his glass. He should be used to it by now.

Fairfax said, “Sloop. She was out in the Med for a time. Put in more sea miles than many newer ships.”

Kidd eyed him warmly. Fairfax never seemed to change; promotion, and now the little blue and white ribbon of the D.S.C., he was still the same.

Fairfax put down his glass with deliberation.

“I know I mentioned it before, Pilot—that A.F.O. about possible promotion and command openings for R.N.R. types with your ‘qualifications.'” He smiled. “Well, that's how their lordships describe them!” Then he was serious again. “What about it? You could do it standing on your head.”

“I'm not so sure about that.”

“Oh, come off it. I've been with you up on that bloody bridge, remember?”

Kidd said, “After the war, always assuming we win it, and we're still in one piece, what sort of life will the sea have to offer me? I had it rammed down my throat often enough what happened after the last lot. Greedy owners cutting down on crews, officers selling their souls just to get a berth. It will be worse this time.” He shook his head. “I'm not sure I could take it, starting all over again. And promotion?” He waved one hand and slopped gin over his sleeve. “This lady'll suit me.” He made up his mind. “And besides, I'm going to get married.”

Fairfax jumped to his feet and reached down to hug him.

“You crafty, secretive old bugger! You're a lucky chap! Not sure about her, though!”

Kidd grinned self-consciously, glad that he had told him. “It'll be you next, you'll see.”

Then he said, “So I don't want to change things just now.” He gazed at the ship's crest above the empty fireplace. “She owns a small hotel over the water, in Birkenhead.” He regarded his friend steadily. “I love her. Very much.”

Fairfax had never seen him in so serious a mood before. He thought of Martineau striding ashore without even changing into his proper rig. Once, he might have pitied both of them. Now all he felt was envy.

Martineau ran up the last few steps of the light cruiser's accommodation ladder and touched his cap in a brief salute to the quarterdeck.

She was only a small cruiser, not unlike the one rammed and sunk by the
Queen Mary,
but after
Hakka
she seemed like a battleship.

They were all present. Quartermaster and boatswain's mate, Royal Marine bugler, midshipman of the watch and various other figures, all of whom reminded him of that other navy, in peacetime, before the brutal ugliness of war. Perhaps that was the navy's secret strength. Able to hold on to something, tradition, ceremonial, routine; he could not imagine it otherwise.

He was met by a lieutenant, who said, “The Captain is expecting you, sir.” He lowered his voice. “But he asked me to show you to his lobby first. There is a shore telephone call for you.”

Martineau followed the midshipman, his mouth suddenly dry. It was probably someone from Derby House, but he knew it was not.

“In here, sir.” He did not see the midshipman's eyes as he stood back from a door. He was seeing someone else entirely: the destroyer ace, the man who had won the V.C. after ramming a German cruiser. A man who feared nothing.

He picked up the telephone. She must have heard the sound, and said, “It's you, Graham.” So close that she could have been in the next cabin, or beside him.

“Are you all right, Anna? Tell me.”

“Yes. I can't talk about it, we might get cut off. But you know what's happening, Crawfie told you. She's quite a dear, just like Naomi said. I didn't really believe her.”

“I tried to call you again. I wanted to hear you, talk to you.”

“I know . . . they told me. It was a lovely thing to do.” Her Canadian accent was even softer on the telephone. “I was a bit out of it. I'd just heard about poor Caryl . . . I still can't believe it.”

He heard the catch in her voice and sensed the urgency.

He said, “You'll be hearing from my mother. I called her. She'd love to put you up.”

There was a long pause, then he heard her exclaim, “She doesn't even know me!”

Maybe
put you up
was only a British expression. He said, “I must see you again, soon. So much to talk about, so much to share.”

She said, “In the hospital room.” Her voice broke. She tried again. “You kissed me. I didn't want you to go.”

“I didn't want to leave.”

She gasped, as if moving to a different position. “Ouch! That hurts!” Her voice was suddenly stronger. “I didn't want you to see me like that. I couldn't even see you.”

“How are your eyes, Anna?”

A longer pause. She was tired, or drugged, perhaps, for the journey to Manchester. Not all that far away, Raikes had said. It was if you were heading up into the ice, to the unseen enemy.

“They're fine. Really. You mustn't worry about me. Take care of
yourself.
Will you do that? For me?”

He gripped the telephone harder to steady himself.
How can I tell her? I am afraid. I am afraid.

She said intensely, “You will be careful. Promise me, Graham. I want to see you again . . . so much. You probably think I'm just another nut!” She laughed, and turned away in a fit of coughing. There was another voice in the background. Authority.

He said, “I think you are a wonderful girl, and a very brave one too.”

A metallic voice intoned, “This line is needed, please finish your call.”

She said quietly, “Be very careful. You see, I think I'm in love with you.”

The line went dead, and no amount of clicking would shift it.

Somebody must have helped her to hold on to the line until she knew he was aboard. Crawfie? Or the paymaster twoand-a-half called Nobby?

In her work at Operations she would have known about the Russian convoy proposals, just as she would be aware of the enormity of the risk. Choosing the right measures, the best times of the year, discussions, signals, counter-proposals, with the Admiralty always in the background to stir things up. She had been going on duty that night when the bombs had buried her alive.

Her voice was with him again, as if she had just spoken aloud.

You see, I think I'm in love with you.

And now they were off once more, and she knew where he was going, and, more to the point, what it was costing him.

A steward had materialized out of the shadows. “The Captain is through here, sir.”

She might already be regretting what she had said. But just to see her, to hold her, was like a dream in itself.

The cruiser's Captain had several other guests, none of whom he knew except by sight. He was able to join in, even to answer questions about the Norwegian campaign, but it was like being an onlooker, someone else playing a part.

She had never spoken of
Hakka
's previous Captain, the one who had wronged her, maybe more than she knew or would admit.

It did not matter.
You see, I think I'm in love with you.
That was the only thing that did.

It was bitterly cold that night in Liverpool, and some two hundred miles to the south it was not much different. London was settling down, bracing itself for another night of air raids: the river, dockland, which had been flattened in places by the first attacks, or further south, the factories, the warehouses, and the railways.

The air raid sirens had already been sounded; that meant nothing any more. The attack might take the form of high-level bombing, massive incendiary raids to light the way, or a sneak hit-and-run assault on individual targets. The enemy airfields were, after all, only twenty miles or so across the English Channel.

But at Lavender Hill police station it had all the makings of a normal night: blackout shutters in place, the white-painted sandbags piled around the entrance and yard, a fire in the grate, a cat curled up on the station officer's rug enjoying the heat.

The night duty relief had already been paraded, given their instructions and gone out to their various beats. They were a mixed bunch because of the war and the suspension of police recruitment, old hands and special constables, and a sprinkling of War Reserve men. Enough, but only just.

With his back to the fire and leaning on one elbow, the station sergeant, who would have been retired but for the war, was going through the daily Occurence Book, a fresh mug of tea within easy reach. The cells were almost empty: two army deserters awaiting military escort, a drunk who had been found smashed in a shop doorway sleeping off his booze-up, and a vagrant who needed a bed for the night. The station sergeant could remember when that same man had been an earnest young tailor, a cutter in the factory near Clapham Junction. Then one evening he had gone home to his little house in Clapham as usual. There had been no house. No wife, no kids, just a bomb crater. His real life had ended then and there.

In the Job, as the cops called it, homelessness was nothing new, and in wartime it could only get a bloody sight worse.

But in Battersea it was all quiet. So far.

The constable on reserve duty passed through to poke the fire but paused, blinking in the hard gaslight as the station sergeant said, “Give them stray dogs something to eat, will you, Tom? They'll be collected tomorrow, poor little sods.”

He picked up his pen. “Now then, about that accident down at Arding and Hobbs. Could you get me the book . . .”

He swung round, irritated, as the blackout curtain moved aside and a P.C. in a cape peered in at them.

The station sergeant said, “Bloody raining again, is it?” A glance at the old clock. “What are you doing back, Mason? You only just went out.”

The policeman's mouth split into a great grin. “I've got Jack the Ripper with me, Skipper. Says 'e wants to see you—
especially
you!” It seemed to amuse him, and the other constable moved closer to share it.

The station sergeant was not amused. It would be a long enough night without this.

Jack the Ripper was the nickname given by the local officers to a man called Roy Harper. A mechanic by trade in a small way, he had, like many others, fallen on unexpectedly prosperous times working in one of the countless factories, some no more than huts, which had blossomed everywhere to help the war effort. And to make far more money than any poor serviceman who would eventually be called to use the product.

Harper chose night work, which was even better paid, but unknown to most people he would often take an hour or so off to visit a prostitute. On one such night not long ago he had been found covered in blood, running from the scene of a savage murder. The station sergeant had seen some of the photographs, and with over thirty years in the Job, he had still been sickened.

The case had gone through magistrate's court, with Harper protesting his innocence, although circumstantial evidence had been found at the girl's Chelsea apartment to connect him with the killing.

Harper hardly fitted the part, and without more solid evidence the case had been thrown out without going before a judge. Harper had since become something of a local celebrity, and made a point of visiting the station whenever he could, to offer his “advice.” To the other cops, Jack the Ripper was a joke. To the station sergeant he was not.