The Dangerous Years (18 page)

‘What are you offering me?’ he asked.

‘Tyrwhitt’s asked for you on his staff.’

‘Tyrwhitt!’

More than any other sailor, Sir Reginald Tyrwhitt had come out of the war with an unsullied record, and had been the only man who had held the same command through the whole four years of hostilities without a breath of criticism.

‘He’s got a reputation second to none,’ Verschoyle pointed out earnestly. ‘With him, you’ve got somebody worth having behind you.’

Kelly drew a deep breath, aware of a sense of guilt. ‘Where is he?’ he asked.

‘In this country at the moment.’ Verschoyle smiled. ‘But he won’t be for long. He’s got the China Station.’

Kelly’s face fell. ‘I’m not interested,’ he said.

Verschoyle sighed. ‘For God’s sake, you make me tired! You want to be an admiral, don’t you? I’ve seen some of your reports: “Has on one occasion after another acted with unfailing promptitude.” “Has proved himself an officer of exceptional value and unerring decision.”’ He gestured angrily. ‘You’ll never become an admiral salt-horsing the seven seas. You might win a lot of gongs, but that’s all. You’ve either got to take the senior officers’ war course, run one of the manning depots, or appear on somebody’s staff. I know these things.’

It was true enough, Kelly thought. Trust Verschoyle to know the score. He’d had his finger on the nerve centres of the Navy ever since Kelly had known him, full of gossip, sure of his facts, always certain how to move to his own advantage.

‘When?’ he asked slowly, his heart thumping suddenly. ‘When must I leave?’

‘At once. Tyrwhitt leaves later but he wants somebody in Shanghai ahead of him to do a bit of fact-finding and be ready to brief him when he arrives. There’s an RAF experimental flight on its way tomorrow. They’re setting up a new route to prove they can reinforce foreign stations quicker than we can and they’ve got room for a passenger. You’ll pick up a ship in Calcutta. For a chap with your go-ahead attitude, an insight into how the other services operate might well be very useful.’

It was an exciting and tempting prospect. Kelly thought of his letter to Charley, wished for a moment he’d been to see her first and fixed up the wedding date, then changed his mind again.

‘Couldn’t it wait for a week?’

Verschoyle looked up. ‘Worried the Little ’Un’ll up and marry somebody else?’ His smile was cynical but there was also an unexpected trace of sympathy in it.

‘Yes,’ Kelly said.

‘Why not get her to follow you and marry her out there? Fleet Chaplain. Ceremony on the quarterdeck. All the usual fuss. She’d love it. Get it fixed. That ass Kimister’s beginning to be a bit insidious and you’ve landed on your feet, if you only knew it. So don’t be bloody naive and turn it down. Tyrwhitt knows you’ve just arrived back in this country and, with the Navy List cut to ribbons by that idiot, Geddes, it doesn’t pay anybody to turn things down. Not even me. And I’m filthy rich.
Still
.’

Kelly nodded. What Verschoyle said was true. There were too many cold-eyed politicians eager to reduce the navy to impotence.

‘I’ll take it,’ he said abruptly.

Verschoyle smiled. ‘Tyrwhitt’ll be pleased,’ he said. ‘What about your personal affairs?’

‘The only personal affairs I have are in my sea chest.’

‘I was thinking of the Little ’Un.’

‘Oh!’ Kelly smiled ruefully. ‘I’d better get over there now and make things right. She’ll want to know.’

‘Don’t forget the Fleet Chaplain and the quarterdeck ceremony. I’m told you can have a wonderful honeymoon at Wei-Hai-Wei. I might even call in and have a glass of champagne with you. I’m heading that way myself. They’ve given me the destroyer,
Wanderer
– or rather I’ve made sure they’ve given me
Wanderer
. And, believe it or not–’ Verschoyle’s smile widened – ‘that ass Kimister’s going too!’

Charley greeted Kelly ecstatically. His telegrams had clearly delighted her and set her mind at rest, but she seemed more wary than in the past and, after kissing him solemnly, she stood back at arm’s length to stare at him.

‘You’re thinner, Kelly,’ she said.

‘Hungry, perhaps.’

‘And there’s some grey in your hair.’

‘That hurricane frightened the life out of me.’

She smiled. ‘It makes you realise how long we’ve known each other.’

She took his hand and led him into the morning room, and though she said no more he knew very well what she was implying. This time, she was telling him, is it.

But she avoided the subject and gave him a drink. As he waited for her to pour it, he glanced about him, noticing the room looked a little shabbier, as though curtains and covers needed replacing. And on the wall over the fireplace, there was a small painting surrounded by the darker hue of a square of wallpaper, as though a larger painting had been taken down.

She saw his eyes on it. ‘We sold it,’ she said frankly. ‘It was worth a lot of money.’

He took the drink and sat with her on the settee. ‘Are things bad, Charley?’

She gave him a little smile. ‘My father’s pension doesn’t provide for everything, you know, and I’m afraid he invested badly. He had his money in coal and you know what’s happened there. We shall be selling the house soon. Mother’s going to live with her sister in Dorset. She’s a widow, too.’

‘And you and Mabel?’

‘Mabel’s running a dress shop in Knightsbridge.’

‘Running a shop?’

‘It’s different these days, Kelly, and actually she’s rather good at it. She never thought about anything but clothes, as you know, and perhaps it’s just as well, because what she learned is standing her in good stead. I still have the job at Esher, but I don’t want to stay there for the rest of my life.’

‘You won’t,’ he promised.

She looked at him without speaking and it wrenched at his heart to see the doubt in her eyes. Then she smiled, making an effort.

‘But they’ve given me a week off while you’re home,’ she said. ‘I thought we could do a few things together.’

He drew a deep breath, hating himself. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said in a rush, ‘I have to report to RAF, Hendon. I’m leaving the following day by air for China.’

The silence that followed his words was painful. She didn’t raise her eyes.

‘I see,’ she said at last. ‘And me?’

‘It makes no difference.’

She looked up at last. ‘But it does, Kelly,’ she said quietly. ‘It makes a lot of difference. I’ve been waiting for you to crook your finger for a long time now. I think I’m tired of waiting. I’m sorry, because – because –’ she looked at him, trying to say that she’d always loved him and still did, but she couldn’t manage to make the words surface. ‘I’m not like Peter Ibbetsen’s girlfriend, you know.’

Kelly frowned. ‘I don’t know him. What ship’s he in?’

She gave him an angry look. ‘He’s a character in one of George du Maurier’s novels,’ she explained sharply. ‘They were separated for most of their lives but they still managed to remain in love. I got into the habit of reading things like that. I thought they’d sustain me. But in the end I found them hard to believe. You’re no good to me in China. Letters are a poor substitute for a warm body alongside you in bed.’

Her bluntness startled him and for the first time he realised she was a grown woman with a woman’s instincts, no longer a young girl to be treated with care. He groaned inwardly. He’d already accepted the appointment and he knew he couldn’t back out of it now. He tried to make her understand that he hadn’t overlooked her part in it.

‘Actually, it makes things easier,’ he said. ‘It’s a staff appointment. With Tyrwhitt.’

‘No! No, Kelly!’

‘Look, Charley, listen–’

‘I’m tired of listening, Kelly.’

‘For god’s sake, Charley, hear me out–!’

‘Kelly–’ her eyes were blazing now ‘–I’ve been hearing you out since I was seventeen. Too much water’s passed under the bridge. Mabel’s missed her chance and, if I’m not careful, I shall too. Do you think I enjoy working in that solicitor’s office? It’s dusty and it’s fusty and I think he fancies getting me into bed. No, Kelly! No! No! No!’

Her refusal to listen made him angry. ‘There were things I’d hoped to talk to you about,’ he said stiffly. ‘That’s why I came here. But I’m in the Navy, and I not only have to do my duty, I also have to take my chances or get left behind. This is a chance and I’ve got to grab it with both hands. Nobody gets very far without influence or patronage. Jacky Fisher said patronage was a damn good thing, in fact–’

‘Damn Jacky Fisher! I think I’ve lived with Jacky Fisher all my life!’

Her face was pink with anger and her eyes were blazing. He stepped forward and reached for her hand. If she was a woman – the thought flashed through his mind – then he’d better treat her like a woman and not like a little girl. Perhaps the best way to shut her up was to push her down on the settee and make love to her there and then. His mind was still working as her hand came round unexpectedly and the whack as it struck his cheek sounded like a pistol shot in the room.

He dropped her fingers as if they were red hot. He had reached the end of the line at last and he knew it. Without saying a word, he picked up his hat and stalked out, his face pale, the red weal where her fingers had caught his cheek startlingly bright on his skin.

Charley was still huddled on the settee when Kimister arrived. With the maid long since dispensed with, there was no one to answer the door and he pushed inside to find her curled up, dry-eyed, among the cushions.

She’d longed for Kelly’s return. Her life since his departure had been a series of torments, with her at one moment bitterly resenting his professional life apart from her, hating the Navy, hating his ship, even at times hating Kelly; yet the next swearing she’d try to understand and not expect to share that other esoteric existence of which she knew so little. But somehow, somewhere, it had gone wrong and, sick with disappointment and disgust at herself, she could only go over it all again and again, dissecting it, pulling it apart strand by strand like a scrap of tapestry, to try to discover where the weave had gone awry.

Kimister sat down alongside her quietly.

‘Charley! What’s happened?’

She didn’t reply, then, as he put his hand out to touch her, she suddenly flung herself into his arms and began to sob on his chest.

Kimister was startled. She’d never before encouraged him to hold her and his adoration had been mostly muted and uncertain. He lifted her face and, taking the opportunity that was presented with a boldness that surprised him, kissed her on the lips. She didn’t resist, but there was no encouragement either, then, unexpectedly, he found her clutching him more tightly.

He had no idea what he owed his luck to, but he’d learned a lot from his Russian baroness in Novorossiisk and he didn’t argue. What he didn’t know was that jealousy, envy, a sense of being left out, all combined to make her impulsively anxious to hurt Kelly.

‘Mabel’s in London,’ she murmured. ‘And Mother’s in Dorset.’ She knew she was behaving like an idiot but, surging up inside her now, sweeping her along with it, was a growing anger, a sense of having been used and dropped.

Kimister was still eyeing her uneasily. ‘Charley–’

‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake,’ her voice became harsh ‘–use your sense, Albert.’

‘Charley–’

‘Stop saying “Charley,” like that. Do you want me or don’t you?’

For a moment Kimister was speechless. He’d arrived to bewail his appointment to the Far East and, despite her apparent and inexplicable fury that didn’t seem to go with what she was offering, he was receiving an unexpected consolation prize.

He swallowed. ‘I’d marry you tomorrow if you’d have me.’

It was dusk outside, dark earlier than normal after a grey and cloudy day. Charley rose abruptly and, going to the hall, turned the key in the front door. To Kimister, unaware of her agony, she looked defiant rather than loving.

She stared at him with steady eyes and he had an uncomfortable feeling that he was staring at someone who was offering herself as a sacrifice.

‘I wasn’t talking of marriage,’ she said.

They knew they were approaching the Yangtze miles before they saw land. The water became grey-yellow and oozy, and the brown patched sails of junks stood out on the horizon like drab moths. The mouth of the river was thirty miles wide with only a thin purple line in the distance to show where China lay.

Calcutta had been followed by Colombo, Penang and Singapore, and then Hong Kong with its mats of bobbing junks, and still troubled, still hurt by Charley’s attitude, Kelly had found the only cause for joy in the whole trip had been the appearance on board of Lieutenant-Commander Archibald Fanshawe, with whom he’d served in the cruiser,
Clarendon
, before the war. Fanshawe hadn’t changed with the years and was the same cheerful, cynical soul he’d been in 1914. Like Kelly, he couldn’t afford to marry nor take a chance with his career, but unlike Kelly, he was already an old China hand.

The Whangpoo, where the ship dropped anchor, was a yellow-brown stream twelve miles up the Yangtze, teeming with sampans that swarmed about like drab water beetles. Tugs fussed round vessels anchored in midstream; and river steamers, their tiers of decks making them look top-heavy, slid between the straying junks that manoeuvred clumsily on the strong tide.

‘What’s it like, Fan?’

‘China?’ Fanshawe shrugged. ‘Well, things are what you might call in a state of flux just now. The place’s full of foreign concessions and treaty ports set up in Victoria’s Happy and Glorious, but they continue to exist at the moment only by courtesy of the gunboat flotillas, because nobody loves us any more. In addition, there’s a nationalist uprising going on which doesn’t help matters, with one government in Canton trying to overthrow another in Peking. You might say it’s a bit of a lottery these days.’

He paused to watch a junk slide past, ghostly against the lights, so close they could see its red-brown sail was webbed like a bat’s wing and decorated with patches. The rhythmic chant of the crew straining at the huge stern oar came across the water with the nauseating smell that passed with it.