“Christmas câme, an’ it was as cold as the clappers with everything frozen up. Do you know what duty Bert gave me on Christmas Eve, kid?”
The youngster shook his head.
“Goin’ round the camp pulling W.C. chains to keep ’em working! Yeah, that was Bert!” McTyre took a deep breath, and blew smoke out through his long nose at the memory. “And even that didn’t convince me. Every time I pulled a chain I’d think about the duck and forgive ’im.
“Christmas morning I was off duty at eight. At a minute past eight I was gettin’ my pass from the Guard Room. As I went out of the gate I saw Bert goin’ down the road ahead of me. My bus stop was down that way, so I followed him. When he reached the wood he turned off into the field and, curious now because he was off schedule, I hid behind some bushes and watched him. He looked around, didn’t see anybody, then walked across the snow towards the pond. He let out a whistle, and sure enough that duck came waddlin’ up just like a dog glad to see ’im; so ’elp me, you could see the trust on the bloomin’ thing’s face. I stood there watching, thinking maybe Bert had come over early to give it a Christmas present or something. But I was wrong, kid. By the centre I was wrong! Do you know what he did?”
The erk shook his young, puzzled face.
For one moment McTyre paused, as if reluctant to destroy such cherubic innocence. Then he gave a cynical grin and hitched up his overalls. “All right; then I’ll tell yer, kid. I’ll tell yer how I know Bert’s a bastard through an’ through.”
And tell McTyre did before slouching away to see the villain of the piece in person. The shocked expression on the young erk’s face left him in no doubt that he had proved his point.
25
Adams closed the door of Grenville’s billet with some attention to detail, painfully aware of his procrastination. He turned slowly, inwardly wincing at the unfriendly stare that met him.
“What do you want?”
Adams was not completely certain what he wanted —that was part of the trouble—and having had too much to drink did not help matters. His eyes, distressed and slightly puzzled, began wandering round the billet as if soliciting aid. None came from the tallboy in the opposite comer, none from the few photographs of planes and crews on the walls, and the flying suit hanging from a peg near the bed seemed positively contemptuous. The photograph on the top of Grenville’s locker gave him great hopes until his shortsighted eyes discovered it to be of an elderly, whitehaired woman. Adams felt a sense of injustice at the odds. It was going to be very, very difficult....
“What’s the matter with you? What do you want?” Adams glanced hastily back at the bed on which Grenville, fully-clothed but for his tunic, had risen on one elbow to stare at him. A heavy shadow from the reading-lamp on the locker lay over the pilot’s forehead and eyes, giving his severely bruised face an almost Satanic expression. Adams discovered the words he had so carefully memorized on the way over from the inn had all fled in dismay, leaving him sorely tempted to follow them. He cleared his dry throat and blurted out the first thing that came to him.
“I’ve come to you about Hilde, Roy.”
The sudden silence hurt his ears. Then Grenville rose higher on his pillow. “What do you mean?”
Adams braced himself. This was it, now or never. He took three jerky steps forward. “Roy; I like that girl. She’s the nicest kid I’ve known in years.” His own words brought a shock to Adams, confirming the suspicion that so far he had avoided meeting face to face. But there was no time to consider himself and Valerie now. That would have to wait until later. Ignoring the regret that lay like a heavy bruise in his mind, he went on: “I can’t bear seeing her being hurt like this.
There’s a limit to anything____”
“Go on,” Grenville said, watching him with that devil’s face from the shadows.
“As you know, the poor kid got the news about her brother last week. She took it well—too well, somehow. She doesn’t talk about it, doesn’t cry, doesn’t say anything—but you can feel how bad it is underneath. And we can’t do anything: not a damned thing. That’s why I’m here tonight—to ask you to come over to see her.”
Grenville was sitting upright on his bed now. Adams saw his expression and went on with a rush:
“You’re making it ten times worse for her, Roy. She must know you’ve heard about Finn—it’s over a week now—and yet you haven’t been to see her. To her it must seem as if the whole world has let her down. That’s the look she gets in her eyes sometimes and I can’t stand it. . . .” Tears suddenly blinded Adams. He blinked them back, cursing the treachery of the drink that was making him maudlin. “She’s never said a word about you, but I know what she’s thinking. For God’s sake go over and help her, Roy, before it’s too late. You’re the one person that can. You don’t have to tell her what happened....”
“Get out of here, you drunken sot!” Grenville said, with sudden viciousness.
Adams waved a plump hand in a half-protest, then let it fall to his side. “Call me what you like, Roy, but do me this one favour.”
Grenville was on his feet now and moving threateningly forward. “I said get out, damn you!”
Adams drew back one step, then stood his ground, dazed at his courage. As if in reward memory returned to him, bringing back some of his prepared arguments. He snatched gratefully at one. “What about Bergman?
You and he were good friends. How would he feel if he knew you’d never gone to see her?”
Grenville halted. The sound of his breathing came to Adams, harsh and uneven.
“You know what he’d want,” Adams went on with renewed hope. “He’d want you to comfort his sister. Any man would.”
The purple and yellow bruises stood out evilly against the pale background of Grenville’s face. His swollen lips sneered at Adams.
“You fool. What comfort can I bring her? I killed Bergman, remember?”
Adams caught the despair as well as the derision in Grenville’s voice, and relief brought weakness to his legs. The worse was over: now he had a chance. He motioned to a chair and sank into it without opposition from Grenville.
“Roy; you’ve got to look at it differently.” As he spoke Adams realized how sober he had become. “You were ordered to destroy that building. That alone excuses you from blame ...”
Contempt blazed in Grenville’s eyes. “Don’t tell me that, Adams.”
“But it’s true.”
“True be damned. If it were true there wouldn’t be a guilty man in this war. Every Nazi who tortures his prisoners could be excused: every S.A. devil who throws children into gas-chambers could plead innocence. A man has a greater moral duty to himself than to the State, and you know it. I didn’t kill Bergman because of an order, damn you.”
Adams wetted his dry lips. “AH right. But you did kill him to save him from torture. You can’t deny that.”
Grenville’s laugh was not pleasant to hear. “And is that what you want me to tell Hilde—that he was being tortured? Or has the telegram already given her those little details?”
Adams was silent. Grenville jeered at him. “You want me to go over and console her! I’m to tell her that everything’s all right, that her brother didn’t die in action as she thinks, but was put into a torture cham- ber where half a dozen sadists went to work on him. That we didn’t like this at all in case he talked, and so I, being the squadron’s best murderer, was sent out to finish him off. Well; is that what you want?”
The arguments Adams had prepared earlier had covered no more ground than this, and he felt defeat close at hand. And the intense hunger of Grenville’s eyes made him miserably aware that it was not only the girl he was failing....
“Get out, you fat fool!” Grenville suddenly gritted. “Get out and leave me alone!”
In his desperation, Adams’ words stumbled over themselves like a small child’s running feet. “I didn’t want you to tell her anything of your part in his death. ... But if you can’t see her without doing it, t
hen even that’s better than not seeing her at all. Her brother’s dead, but you’re alive, Roy. You’re the one thing she has left. . . . It’ll be a shock for her to hear it, I know, but later on she’ll be more proud of him than ever. And she’ll understand why you did it and think even more of you too.”
“What a fool you are,” Grenville sneered.
“But can’t you see—it’s better for her to know the truth than to think the whole world has let her down. Her brother’s loss she can understand now—she knows he is dead—but she will never understand why she has lost you. Why haven’t you bothered to go over—you, the one person in the world who can comfort her? She’ll wonder that for the rest of her life. It’s enough to break the kid’s faith in everything. Can’t you see that?”
Grenville’s face was very pale. “Why should I matter so much to her?”
“Why? How can anybody answer that? Why do people care for one another—God knows why. But she’s got you deep in her system and unless she knows why you’re acting this way, it’s going to ruin the kid. Think of her feelings”—Adams was shouting now. “Damn it, if you’d ever been in love you wouldn’t need telling all this. She doesn’t know the job is coming off tomorrow night, but she must know it’s coming off soon. She knows you might not come back from it, and yet the precious minutes are ticking by without her • 204 seeing you.... It’s enough to turn her mind. Blast you; you’ve got to see her. If you don’t, I’ll tell her the whole story myself. I will; I mean it.”
Grenville’s reply was not the vicious one Adams had expected. Low, with all anger gone, it caught him completely by surprise.
“There’s something you don’t know, Frank. When I first took Finn up with me, she thought I was exposing him to unnecessary danger and told me so. Now you’re trying to tell me she’ll forgive me for deliberately killing him. You’re wrong. She’ll get the shock of finding out the truth, she’ll loathe me, and she’ll discover what happened to Finn in the bargain. How is any of that going to help her?”
“Better loathe you and get you out of her system than go on fretting about you for the rest of her life,” Adams said, the sweat trickling down his face. “But she won’t loathe you. She’ll understand. Go and find out, for God’s sake.”
At his words Grenville’s expression had suddenly changed. He stared at Adams for a long moment with an indefinable look in his eyes. Then, without speaking, he eased his stiff shoulder into his tunic and picked up his cap.
“Are you going over?” Adams breathed.
Grenville turned back at the door, his lips twisting. “Yes; I’ll go and put things right. I don’t like being a disease in anyone’s system.” A second later the door slammed behind him.
Adams sank weakly back into the chair, not certain from Grenville’s expression whether to feel relief or anxiety.
26
Grenville waited in the hall while the innkeeper went upstairs to call her.
“Miss Bergman! There’s Squadron-Leader Grenville to see you....”
She came running breathlessly down the stairs, pausing on the bottom step. Her face was pale, and Grenville saw the glisten of crushed tears under her lashes. With an impatient movement of her hand, she brushed them away. She gave a smile, and the courage of it pierced him like a knife.
“Hello, Roy. How good it is to see you again.”
“Hello, Hilde. Sorry I’ve been so long in coming over.”
As he stepped forward, the shaded hall-light fell on his face, revealing its heavy bruises. She let out a low exclamation of concern.
“Your face—does it hurt you very much?”
He shook his head, glancing towards the sitting-room door. “No; I’m all right now.”
Her face clouded as she followed his eyes. “Valerie is in there—listening to a radio play. It will be difficult to talk. . . . Shall we go upstairs to my room? It will be quiet there.”
He did not want that, but could think of no suitable protest. In silence he followed her up the stairs and into her room. As he had feared, its atmosphere caught him at once. She had not lived long in the room, but it had already taken her personality for its own. It lay all around him, in the restful murmur of a clock, the graceful fold of a curtain, the white shoulder of a pillow. He felt trapped and afraid.
“I came to talk about Finn,” he muttered. “I should have come before, but somehow .. .”
“You had not fully recovered from your wounds,” she said quickly. Relief came into her eyes, and he realized she had already found an excuse for his behaviour.
“It wasn’t that,” he protested, but she cut off his w’ords with a fluttering gesture of her hand.
“There’s no need to apologize. I quite understand. You were not fully recovered, and the news came as a shock to you. I had forgotten what good friends you and he were.”
There was a ring of self-condemnation in her voice. Grenville realized she would always find an excuse for him if an excuse could be found. This was what Adams had meant by saying he was deep in her system. That look in her eyes on coming down the stairs had been another sympton of it.
He knew the feeling himself. It was like having another life inside one, crying for the birth his raid had made impossible. Adams had been right: it must not be left to torture her throughout the years. One way or another it had to be killed. The truth would do that, but would also hurt her too deeply. There was another and better way....
Her voice was like the sweet chiming of a clock heard through the grip of a nightmare.
“What is it, Roy? What are you thinking?”
She was standing no more than a yard from him, her eyes fixed with concern on his face. He noticed for the first time that she was wearing a simple black frock that unintentionally set off the whiteness of her skin and the bright gold of her hair. The faint perfume that always clung around her drifted towards him, evoking a thought-image as clear as the one given by his eyes. The one image superimposed on the other made her more real than reality.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked again, uncertainly.
His mind answered her. Why? Because this is the last time I shall see you like this. In a few seconds the thing that makes your eyes warm when you look at me will be dead, and you will never be the same again, not to me....
Another moment and he knew he could never find 207 the strength to do it. He dragged his eyes from her and looked down at his watch.
“I haven’t got long,” he muttered. “I only dropped in for a few minutes.”
“You are going—so soon ...?”
He nodded, not meeting her eyes. ‘Tm afraid I must. The boys are throwing a party in Highgate, and I’ve promised to take a friend of mine along. I’m late as it is —she’s already been waiting over half-an-hour.” His voice was deliberate with meaning. “It’s as well we’re old friends or there’d be trouble.”
She looked dazed, unable to understand. He went on quickly:
“She moved up here a couple of weeks ago. Got herself a room in Highgate.”
He saw the delayed action of the shock strike her now. Her words were as involuntarily as a cry of pain.
“A girl! But I had no idea. . . . You have never spoken of her before.”
Grenville forced a sheepish grin, believing the bruised skin round his lips would split with the effort. “I should have mentioned it, I suppose. Sorry if you got any wrong ideas.”
“But the things you said that day in the car. . . . You said you did not want anyone worrying about you. You made it sound-”
“I made it sound simpler than it was,” he broke in roughly.
Her voice had a dead sound. “So when you said that after the war things might be different, you were talking of . . .” She suddenly turned away, moving as if blinded. Her hand moved in the fluttering gesture he knew so well, then fell helplessly to her side. It was a few seconds before she turned back to face him. Her face appeared frozen with shock, but tears were falling down her cheeks like the beads from a
broken necklace. She made no sound with them, and the silence was like a tightening cord round Grenville’s temples. He had to speak to break it.
“After all, I’ve never pretended to be over-keen. You can’t say that I have.”
Her eyes closed to hide her shame. “That is true. But I misunderstood the reason. ... I see now. . . . The fault has been mine, not yours.”
Grenville had been praying for anger, not forgiveness. He turned quickly to pick up his cap, hiding his face. He heard her voice again, still bewildered.
“But it is so hard to believe.... You have never been unkind before. Why have you chosen this time to tell me? Why not before, or ... or even a little later? I would so much like to know that.”
Grenville knew now that there was no gentle way of killing anything. He lifted the knife and struck. “Surely that’s obvious enough. I didn’t tell you before because it was quite pleasant and I was enjoying it. I’m telling you now because she has come here, and it has to end at once. That’s why. Sorry.”
He dared not hold out his hand, dared not to touch her. At the door he paused and turned back, with the excuse he was making certain of his murder. But his eyes failed him: he saw nothing but the white blur of her face and the misted brightness of her hair. Then he was outside, with the black fields and pitiless stars a part of the agony that racked him.
27
The briefing-room was packed to capacity. At one side of the table on the platform, a group of men were con-fering quietly. Among them were Davies, Barrett, and Grenville. The silence was aggravated by the shuffle of feet, the whispers of conversation, and the scratching of matches. In the centre of the table stood the contour model of the Svartfjord, covered with a cloth. Nervous eyes pulled away from it, examined the empty blackboard alongside it, then wandered round the walls, which were covered with diagrams of German aircraft set in gun-sights with the correct aiming deflections. Battle slogans were everywhere, giving such admonitions as: “It’s the One you don’t see who gets You,” “Always watch the Hun in the Sun,” “Remember your Cockpit Drill,” as well as the ubiquitous “Careless Talk costs Lives.” From the ceiling dangled scale models of Focke-Wulfs, Domiers, and Messerschmidts, as well as Allied aircraft, all of them turning uneasily in the rising smoke from over thirty cigarettes. Eyes wandered back to the covered model on the table. The tension could be felt, catching at the throat.
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