‘I guess we’re both married to the Navy, Lew. To the idea. Besides, I’m not sure I could ever again...’ she buried her face in her drink.
‘Oh, hell...’
‘I’m fighting it, believe me. I know if I give in I’m done. So I’m not going to give in. But marriage...anyway, aren’t you married to the Navy?’
‘Well...sure. But...’
‘You’re a man, so it makes sense. Can’t it make sense for a woman?’
‘Sure. Maybe it can. But that’s no reason we can’t be married to each other as well.’
‘And the next time the Navy wants me to go and do something, you’re going to say yes?’
He gazed at her. ‘You mean, you’d go, again?’
She shrugged. ‘So I have a stiff back. And some memories for my scrap book. And a few scars. I’d say you have all of those.’
‘For God’s sake, I’m a...’
She put her finger to his lips. ‘Don’t say it, Lew.’
His shoulders sagged. ‘So it’s goodbye.’
‘It can never be goodbye, now. Any time you’re in Annapolis, and I’m here too, I want you to come to see me. I’m just not the mothering, slippers by the fire, three meals a day, martini when the door open, type. I guess. But Lew...’ she squeezed his hand. ‘You’re in Annapolis now, and I’m here too. You never did take a close look at my scars, did you? There’s no time like the present.’ She made a moue. ‘I need to know, if I’m still a woman. And there’s only one man in the world can tell me that.’
*
Again, he had never supposed love could be so frustrating. They were two adult human beings, both in their mid-thirties, who had experienced everything life had to throw at them, just about. But Brenda was more adult than he, knew that marriage between them, unless she abandoned her profession, would be a disaster. Having suffered so much, she was not prepared to quit now. But who had forced her into that profession?
The fact was, he was coming to realise this approach to women had always been totally selfish. Glorying in his immense strength and courage and health, he had sought only the adventure of life, and part of that adventure had been the feminine sex. Now, he wanted a single woman more than anything else in life, but she also wanted things from life, and they did not entirely depend on her sexual appetites.
But to live, without women...he had done so before, for two years, in Shanghai, carried on a wave of anger and outrage. Now he wanted his children back, even if they were not his children. And he wanted a woman, of his own, regardless of her warts. Warts and all, he thought. But how to find one? That he did not know, because, whoever she was, she would have to measure up to the two most entrancing feminine creatures in the world.
Perhaps, then she would have to be made of steel. Because Admiral Slater had been quite right. With the collapse of the various disarmament treaties consequent upon the re-emergence of Germany as a world power and, more important to American eyes, the decision of Japan to defy international opinion and go her own way, the western world realised that rearmament could be a matter of life and death. For the Navy, this meant new battleships to replace the old, now very old, veterans of the First World War. To Lew’s desk at the design office there came the plans for the North Carolina Class.
The two ships, the first battleships to be laid down for the United States since the end of the war, were the results of twenty years of study and consideration of other vessels, and of potentials. Traditionally, American battleships had always been relatively slow, but heavily armoured and heavily gunned, too. Bearing the fast Japanese ships in mind, however, as tension between the two countries had increased during the thirties, the design for the North Carolina and the Washington was intended to increase the speed to over thirty knots, while maintaining hopefully both the armour and the armoury. But the original designs had all been based on the fourteen-inch gun, which was the maximum calibre allowed by the Washington Treaty — even if both the British and the Japanese already possessed sixteen-inchers. The Chief of Naval Operations in Washington, however, insisted upon sticking to the letter of the treaty, both arming his ships with twelve fourteen-inch shells — and having the armour designed to resist fourteen-inch shells — which weighed fifteen hundred pounds each — at a range of thirty thousand yards.
The ships were at this stage when Lew arrived at the design office, with the first keel due to be laid within two years. But by now it had become apparent that both the Japanese and the British — and, it was rumoured, even the Germans — were laying down new battleships which would be armed with fifteen or sixteen-inch main batteries. This created a serious situation, for a sixteen-inch shell weighed two thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds, or half as much again as a fourteen-inch. A battleship armed with nine sixteen-inch guns could therefore deliver a salvo of twenty thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds, as against the eighteen thousand pounds of a twelve gun fourteen-inch reply. The orders came immediately to replace the designed four fourteen-inch batteries with three sixteen-inch, and wherever possible to compensate the armour — but it was too late to redesign the propulsion machinery, so a slower speed had to be accepted, and the ships were once again a compromise.
Yet they were clearly going to be magnificent fighting vessels, displacing forty-four thousand tons deep loaded, powered by four-shaft General Electric oil-fired turbines which could develop one hundred and twenty-one thousand horsepower, and give a maximum speed of twenty-eight knots. The belt armour was twelve inches thick, and the deck armour five and a half inches. The nine sixteen-inch, in three turrets, were backed by twenty five-inch, in ten twin turrets, and by twenty-eight antiaircraft guns, and each ship would also carry three aircraft. The complement would be one thousand, eight hundred and eighty men. The first keel was to be laid in October 1937, with completion hopefully three and a half years after that.
No sooner had the plans for the South Carolinas finally been approved than there appeared those for the South Dakotas, which were to comprise four battleships, in which hopefully all the mistakes and compromises of the North Carolinas would have been ironed out. But a whole new generation of battleships was only a part of the massive rebuilding programme undertaken since Mr Roosevelt took office. A third, small, aircraft carrier, the Ranger, had already been added, and on the stocks were two medium size, twenty-five thousand tonners, Yorktown and Enterprise. Now orders came for a third in this Yorktown class, Hornet, as well as a new small carrier, Wasp.
The replacing of the heavy cruiser fleet had actually been undertaken in the twenties, but these had been severely limited both by the Washington Treaty and by the London Treaty of 1930. Here too the wraps started coming off, and a ship like the Wichita, which mounted nine eight-inch guns and displaced thirteen thousand tons, could at last be considered. Destroyers had been entirely neglected since 1922, but were already being built as fast as possible, and the first of the new ships, the Farragut class, were monsters compared to vessels like Carlton, displacing more than two thousand tons and armed with five five-inch guns and no fewer than eight twenty-one inch torpedo tubes. The Porter class, which arrived on Lew’s desk soon after he reached the office, were almost mini-cruisers, with their two and a half thousand ton displacement and their eight five-inchers. There was also a whole new generation of submarines coming off the slips, or waiting to go on them. A quick look at the schedules was sufficient to start the blood racing through the arteries of any Navy man, the more so as, while President Roosevelt reiterated his determination not to allow the United States to be drawn into any of the conflicts which seemed to be boiling up all over the world, from Manchuria to Abyssinia to Spain, it was hard to believe that such a mighty fleet as was coming together under the Stars and Stripes would not be used, one day.
*
In many ways the next two years were happy ones, for Lew. His work was at once fascinating and exhausting. And rewarding. He lived in an apartment in Arlington, not far from where he and May had been thirteen years before, and conveni
ently close to Annapolis. He went down to see Brenda whenever he had a weekend to spare — and whenever she was there. Because she was gone for lengthy periods from time to time, and he knew she was undertaking more work for the Intelligence Section, but she never chose to discuss it with him, and he never probed. Just as he never probed her mind for her emotional responses to his presence, and to lovemaking. She had accumulated some locked rooms in her personality, and he had learned to accept compromise, and her love whenever she was there to give it to him, and to stop himself from wondering what she was doing, who else she was ‘conning’ into helping her, what other ordeals she might be undergoing. If he still felt guilty that it had been he who had pushed her in the direction of such work, he at least could no longer pretend that she did not enjoy it, or even that they could ever settle down together as man and wife in total domesticity, however much he dreamed that that day might arrive, some time in the future. But the ever present desire for her, which had to be so carefully controlled and often entirely subdued for fear of stirring horrific memories, left him unsatisfied as a man, even if he could never tear himself away, or stop himself from wanting to see her. And then in 1937 she wrote him to say she was leaving Annapolis, and that she did not know when she would see him again. It was like a kick in the stomach, because he did not know whether she was off on some dangerous mission for the Intelligence Department, or whether she had met some man more suitable as a husband — and he could not ask.
He had never felt so lonely in his life. His experience, the steady bounce, it seemed to most observers, from heroism to insubordination and back again, had limited his friendships in the Navy, although men like Harry Pimm kept in touch. Too many others had realised that Brenda Lloyd, for the love of whom — so far as anyone knew — he had risked his career up the Yangste, was actually Brenda Walsh that was, and if Danny had quit the Navy, a sadly disillusioned man, he had left a lot of friends behind. Lew was thus enormously gratified to receive a letter from Hashimoto, not long after he had taken up his new duties. He had been tempted to write himself, first, but he had decided against it. If Hashimoto had indeed become a secret service officer for Japan, and if he was indeed happy to be a part of the Japanese aggression in China, then he would undoubtedly have to be considered a potential enemy, or perhaps an actual one, given Lew’s involvement in the Wu-Yang coup d’état. But his letter was as charmingly friendly as ever, and indeed, he revealed considerable admiration. ‘Your feat is the talk of Tokyo,’ he wrote. ‘A piece of American heroics which belongs with your mythical past. We are studying to see how our own commanders can be imbued with such a spirit of derring-do. Alas, men such as yourself are born, and not made.’
If Lew felt the praise was somewhat fulsome, he was delighted to have regained his oldest friend, and they began to correspond regularly, a fact he made sure to impart to his superiors. His crowning reward came in the spring of 1937, when he at last received his captain’s stripe. He had now spent two years in the design office, and began to think in terms of a command at sea. Clive, who kept in regular touch, had passed out from Dartmouth and was serving as a midshipman on HMS Warspite. Lew longed to see him, as he longed to see Joan and Wally. He even contemplated using his next long furlough to visit England, presuming Brenda was not available, and was in fact sitting at home one evening consulting various shipping schedules, when his doorbell rang.
He got up, opened it, and gazed at May.
For a moment he was too surprised to speak. Or even to think. May was now thirty-nine years old, but where one might have expected that the life she had led would have resulted in a broken down wreck, he found himself looking at a tall woman, voluptuous without being fat, in a pale blue linen summer dress, worn under a blue and white striped bolero jacket, and hemmed just below the knee. She wore no stockings and her feet were in blue canvas sandals, while she carried a matching handbag and a blue hat with a black band. She looked as if she had stepped straight out of Vogue.
She gazed at him, her mouth puckered into the semblance of a smile. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me in?’ she said at last.
Lew stepped back, and she stepped past him. Her perfume lingered on the air. ‘Arlington,’ she said. ‘A place of memories.’
Lew closed the door. ‘Not all of them pleasant.’
‘Few memories are, all pleasant.’ She sat down on the settee, crossed her knees.
‘I had no idea you were in the States,’ he said lamely. It was impossible to look at May, at her legs and her poise and her face and her hair, still worn unusually short for her, and not be affected.
‘I wanted to surprise you.’
‘Why?’
She shrugged. ‘As you never sued me for divorce, I thought perhaps...there might still be a light burning in the window.’
It was safest to be angry, he decided. ‘You have got to have the gall of a rhinoceros.’
‘Why, yes, I suppose I do have that, Lewis. But as there is still a light burning in my window...’
He thought of the last time he had seen her, lying naked on a bed between two servants. And perhaps she could read his expression, because she flushed, slightly. ‘I’ve brought you some photographs of the children.’
‘Bribery and corruption,’ he remarked, and went to the bar. ‘Drink?’
‘Are you going to have one?’
‘Sure, I need one.’
‘So do I.’
He mixed a batch of martinis, rattled the shaker. May opened her bag and began laying photographs on the table. He poured, and sat beside her. She raised her glass. ‘Happy days.’
‘Happy days,’ he agreed, and began looking at the snapshots.
‘Isn’t Clive handsome in his uniform?’ she said. ‘And so tall. A true McGann.’
He turned his head to look at her, and this time she didn’t flush.
‘I think he is, a true McGann,’ she said. ‘I always did.’
‘But you couldn’t be sure.’
‘I guess I couldn’t,’ she agreed.
He picked up the one of Joan. ‘Now she,’ he said, ‘is a true May Gerrard, mark two.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘She is quite incredibly beautiful.’
‘Thank you,’ May said.
‘So what’s she going to do with herself? Go on the stage? Or maybe films. Seems to me we could do with a new Harlow.’
‘Would you want that, Lew?’
‘Do I have any say in the matter?’
‘You have just as much say as you wish to. They are your children. Anyway, Joan hasn’t decided what she wants to do yet.’
Lew picked up the photograph of Wally. He might have been looking at himself twenty years ago. This time May made no comment.
He refilled their glasses. ‘Where are you staying?’ he asked.
‘You tell me. My bags are downstairs.’
He moved away from her, sat on the other side of the room. ‘Do you really suppose, after everything that has happened, that you and I can just take up again.’
‘I would like to do that, yes.’
‘And do you really suppose I would like to?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But there was only one way to find out. It’s not something you can discuss by letter. I know the children would be so happy.’
He gazed at her, and she gazed back. It was incredible, he thought, but he could not look at her without realising how much he still wanted her, without remembering that week in Lyme, and so many weeks since. But those memories were overlaid with that last one.
‘Or are you suited?’ she asked, quietly.
Suited, he thought. Oh, Brenda. How was it possible to love, perhaps equally, two such different women? Perhaps because they were so different. But...Brenda was Brenda. Brenda had to be loved like the china doll she was, not the way May had always loved, would still love, he had no doubt. And Brenda would never sit there and ask to be taken back. But May was doing so with such immense dignity. He wondered if he should reject that, ma
ke her actually beg, act the shit he had so often been. And the fact was that he was very curious.
‘You mean you are no longer suited,’ he remarked.
‘I don’t think I ever was, except with you.’
‘Are you still...?’
‘Randy as hell?’ She smiled. ‘I get that way. But maybe I can control it better. I know I can control my drinking. I only drank so much because I...wanted so much, I guess.’
‘And the men?’
‘God knows. I feel, Lew. I always have. And I like to feel. All over. It’s something I have to have, and helping yourself can get boring. But I only ever wanted to be randy with you, Lewis. Won’t you give it a try? I should tell you that since Uncle Clive died, I’ve gained full possession not only of Daddy’s estate, but I’ve inherited his, as well. I’m worth a lot of money, Lewis. They’re talking about millions.’ She gave a quick smile. ‘You’ll see I’m prepared to throw in the kitchen sink. And now you have a shore job here in Washington...’
‘There’ll be a sea posting, any moment.’ To think about being married to a millionairess was somehow indecent.
‘Then I’ll promise to be good.’ She made a moue. ‘I suppose I have done that before.’
‘Yes.’
She gazed at him for several seconds. Then she said, ‘Well, then, I guess that’s it.’ She finished her drink and stood up. ‘It has been so good seeing you again, Lewis. And I have so enjoyed reading about your exploits. Do you think I could use your phone to call a cab?’
She was May. She had only ever been May, and he had known exactly what she was and how she was when he had first fallen in love with her. So there were times when she had nearly driven him out of his mind...and he didn’t suppose there weren’t going to be times like that in the future. But that too was simply because she was May. And she was the mother of his children.
And if what she said was true, he had probably betrayed her more deeply than she had ever betrayed him — because he had loved, elsewhere. But Brenda was lost to him...and he did not know if she would ever come back again. And he was so lonely. And May was so beautiful.
Raging Sea, Searing Sky Page 33
