Dead and Alive

by Hammond Innes

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Hammond Innes

  Dedication

  Title Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  TREVEDRA

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE HULK IN THE COVE

  CHAPTER THREE

  OFF THE ROCKS

  CHAPTER FOUR

  OUTWARD BOUND

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TROUBLE IN NAPLES

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE TRAIL ENDS IN TUSCANY

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE FRENCH GIRL

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  OFF THE VIA ROMA

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE MAN WHO WAS PARALYSED

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE LITTLE OCTOPUS

  Copyright

  About the Book

  When David Cunningham returns to the Cornish coast to mourn a wartime love affair, he little imagines the mysterious quest that awaits him: it will lead him to the Mediterranean, to danger and a life of adventure, to the dark world of racketeering in Naples, the bleak hills beyond Tivoli, and a woman with a tragic past.

  Proceeds from this book will be donated to ASTO (Association of Sail Training Organisations) – a charity which promotes adventure at sea for young people.

  About the Author

  Ralph Hammond Innes was born in Horsham, Sussex, on 15 July 1913 and educated at Cranbrook School, Kent. He left school aged eighteen, and worked successively in publishing, teaching and journalism. In 1936, in need of money in order to marry, he wrote a supernatural thriller, The Doppelganger, which was published in 1937 as part of a two-year, four book deal. In 1939 Innes moved to a different publisher, and began to write compulsively, continuing to publish throughout his service in the Royal Artillery during the Second World War.

  Innes travelled widely to research his novels and always wrote from personal experience – his 1940s novels The Blue Ice and The White South were informed by time spent working on a whaling ship in the Antarctic, while The Lonely Skier came out of a post-war skiing course in the Dolomites. He was a keen and accomplished sailor, which passion inspired his 1956 bestseller The Wreck of the Mary Deare. The equally successful 1959 film adaptation of this novel enabled Innes to buy a large yacht, the Mary Deare, in which he sailed around the world for the next fifteen years, accompanied by his wife and fellow author Dorothy Lang.

  Innes wrote over thirty novels, as well as several works of non-fiction and travel journalism. His thrilling stories of spies, counterfeiters, black markets and shipwreck earned him both literary acclaim and an international following, and in 1978 he was awarded a CBE. Hammond Innes died at his home in Suffolk on 10th June 1998.

  OTHER NOVELS BY HAMMOND INNES

  Air Bridge

  Attack Alarm

  Atlantic Fury

  Campbell’s Kingdom

  Delta Connection

  Golden Soak

  High Stand

  Isvik

  Killer Mine

  Levkas Man

  Maddon’s Rock

  Medusa

  North Star

  Solomons Seal

  Target Antarctica

  The Angry Mountain

  The Big Footprints

  The Black Tide

  The Blue Ice

  The Doomed Oasis

  The Land God Gave to Cain

  The Last Voyage

  The Lonely Skier

  The Strange Land

  The Strode Venturer

  The Trojan Horse

  The White South

  The Wreck of the Mary Deare

  Wreckers Must Breathe

  To

  DOROTHY

  Six years is a long time. Please accept this as a gesture from one whom circumstances have made a rather poor husband.

  Monte Aventino

  Rome, 1946

  HAMMOND INNES

  Dead and Alive

  CHAPTER ONE

  TREVEDRA

  As soon as she opened the door I was certain I should not have come. The little farmhouse, cream-washed against the green of the valley side and the grey granite outcrops, looked just as I had known it before. There was the same sound of running water in the rock below the rotten planks of the water wheel. There was the same smell of dung and new-mown grass. And there were spring flowers bright in the lichen-covered wall. The warmth of the setting sun swept time aside and memory took me by the hand and we came back tired and happy after a day in the sun and the sea. There would be chicken and fresh peas and new potatoes and a great bowl of Cornish cream to be eaten with whortleberry jam.

  And then Mrs. Penruddock opened the door and I knew I had been a fool to come back to Trevedra. The lines of her face and the greying hair told me of the passage of the years and I remembered that Jenny would never walk with me again through the purple and gold of the slopes above the granite cliffs.

  It was loneliness that held my hand as I entered that house, so packed full of memories. The dim hall was just the same—but the hat-stand was bare. It was our room that I was shown into. I went over to the window and gazed down the Rocky Valley to the sea. The land was warm in the dying sun. And I felt a desperate urgency to pick up my suitcase and run out of Trevedra—run without stopping until I was in the train and on my way back to London.

  Sarah—we’d always called her Sarah—touched my arm. “How is she?” I sensed by the sympathy in her voice that she knew.

  “She’s dead,” I told her bleakly.

  She didn’t say anything. That somehow made it harder. And I felt an awful desire to put my head in her arms and cry.

  Instead I said, “We weren’t married when we came here. We said we were. But we weren’t.” I said it brutally, unsteadily—I wanted to dam her sympathy at all costs.

  But all she said was, “I knew that. But you were in love. That’s as good when the world is going mad and you haven’t much time.” The sun had gone down now and the valley was darkening with the chill of the night. A fresh breeze, tanged with the sea, blew in through the window. “Did you ever get married, Mr. David?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, and turned away from the window. “No, we never got married. She married an R.A.F. officer while I was out in the Mediterranean.”

  I started to unpack. I had to do something.

  She said, “I understand how you feel, dear. Mr. Penruddock died just two years ago. His ship went down off Anzio. It’s hard to forget—this house is too full of memories.”

  I searched despondently for the right thing to say. But when I looked up, she had gone. The white of the bed that Jenny had slept in showed emptily in the gloom.

  For supper that night there were lamb cutlets and fresh peas and new potatoes. But there was no whortleberry jam and only a small bowl of cream to go with the gooseberry tart. The room was warm with the lamplight and a blazing log fire. When she had cleared away Sarah came in and sat in the big cross-patched arm-chair and her knitting needles clicked rhythmically as I sat and smoked and stared into the flames.

  I asked her who ran the farm now. “My younger son,” she said. “He’s over to my daughter’s at Bude to-night. There’s a big sale to-morrow. We could do with some calves. My eldest is still abroad. He took a regular commission. He’s in China now.”

  “And your husband?” I asked. “Why did he go to sea?”

  She put down her needles and looked into the fire. “It was after Dunkirk,” she said, and her voice was soft. “He was a sailor, not a farmer, you know. We were married in Penzance just after the last war. I was nurse to Mr. Cavanna’s children—he had the mines out to Redruth. My husband and I met when he was on survivor’s leave. His ship was torpedoed off the Lizard. He was firs
t mate in those days. But by the end of the war he had his Master’s certificate and his own ship. He was a farmer’s son, but he’d run away to sea. He’d got it in his blood.

  “But then, after the war, cargoes became difficult and at length his ship was laid up with the others. And he came to me than and said, ‘Sarah, we must go back to the land. You’d like that, with your own house and all, wouldn’t you?’ The youngest of Mr. Cavanna’s children was away to school then, so we came up to Tintagel and bought this farm. Let me see now, that was in 1924. It was good land and close to the sea—and though the sea was in his blood he never wanted to go back.

  “That is, not until Dunkirk. He was at the wireless all day. After that he couldn’t work, but wandered day after day along the cliffs. I knew what was in his mind. And I said, ‘When are you going down to Plymouth?’

  “That made it easier for him. He had been worrying about me and the farm. George had been in the Territorials and was in Egypt. But Mervin was already working on the farm. He was sixteen. Mr. Penruddock showed him everything, and he was away a week later. They made him a first mate on an old tramp called the William Pitt. A year later he was master of one of the new Liberty ships and was away to North Africa, landing supplies for the First Army. His ship was hit at Salerno the following year. And then two months later it went down off Anzio. They say it was a glider bomb. She was loaded with petrol and ammunition.” She sighed and began to knit again. “There were no survivors. The Admiralty sent me a telegram. It arrived when I was milking the cows and I remember the poor beasts were very uncomfortable because I couldn’t go on, but went up on to the cliffs, which I hadn’t done since he’d left.

  “And then a nice young man, whose family live over by Bridgewater, came and told me all about it. He was about your age and very awkward, poor lamb. He’d been the skipper of a landing craft that had been unloading my husband’s ship.”

  Strange how the threads cross and recross on the loom of life. “His ship was the Black Prince, wasn’t it?” I said.

  She paused at her knitting and looked at me over her glasses. “How did you know?” she asked.

  “I was at Anzio, too,” I told her. “I had one of the landing craft. We were quite close to the Black Prince when it happened—near enough for my eyebrows to be singed by the heat, and our paintwork to be blistered. It was quite instantaneous, you know,” I added hastily.

  She nodded slowly. Her gaze had wandered back to the fire. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I know. I’m glad it was sudden, like that. I’ve seen men back here—there’s young Billy Arken over to Boscastle, both legs gone and his side and face all shattered. Better to die quickly when the time comes. But it’s hard on the ones left behind.”

  The click of the needles filled the silence of the room again. A log slipped in the grate—a momentary flame and a shower of sparks.

  “Why did you come back here, Mr. David?” she asked. “You should have known better. Memories are for the old. You’re still a young man.”

  I sucked at my pipe. Hell! Why had I come back?

  “I’m not quite sure,” I told her. “But I think I know. I think it is because I have lost my roots in England and I am trying to find them again.”

  “Was there no other girl?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but——” The fire flared and the gilt hands of the grandfather clock in the corner glinted. “No, there wasn’t—I know that now. Jenny was an impulsive creature. She was like a child with those lovely laughing eyes and mass of untidy hair. She bubbled with the joy of life. It was like a fountain that made every moment with her exciting. We hadn’t known each other long when we came here. That was in July, and in August I was called up because I was in the Reserve.

  “She wasn’t the person to remain faithful to an absent lover long. I knew that. She wouldn’t agree to an engagement. She said we’d get married as soon as I came back and the war was over. We were young and optimistic in those days. Then Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain—a young R.A.F. pilot officer: I got the news at Derna. I was an A.B. at the time in a destroyer, and we were supporting Wavell’s men on their way west.

  “Then we came home for a re-fit and I was up for a commission. King Alfred, that’s the shore station for cadets, was quite near my people and I got home quite a bit. I met a girl I’d known since I was a kid—and, I don’t know, she was kind and sweet and we got on well together. It was a dose of freshness and England after the Med. and we got engaged. A man needs something to anchor him when he’s abroad for months on end and the war looks like going on for ever.

  “In all I was the better part of a year in England. Then I was given a landing craft and in due course took it out on the North African landing. Then the Sicily show—that was when I heard from Jenny for the first time since that note at Derna telling me she was married. It was a pitiful little note—an airmail letter card telling me that her husband was dead, shot down in flames on a train-busting raid over the Pas de Calais.”

  The knitting needles had stopped clicking. “Was that when you realised you didn’t love the other girl?” Sarah asked.

  “No,” I said, “I don’t think so. It was the next letter, which came a month later, I think, that told me that. It was from her mother. Jenny was dead—killed by a stray bomb in a nuisance raid on London. For some strange reason she had left me all her jewellery. I’ve got it in my suitcase now—little trinkets, some of them that I’d given her, some I didn’t recognise, including a platinum wedding ring, and some old Scotch jewellery, stones set in solid silver, which her grandmother had given her when she was twenty-one.”

  “Why didn’t you break off the engagement with the other girl, man, if you knew you didn’t love her?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Because I was a long way from home, I suppose,” I said. “I needed Pat. I was out there three years—Salerno, Anzio, Elba, South of France, Greece. I was thinking of home and how the cherry blossom would look on the old grey stone of the little church down by the river. You’ve never been to Italy, have you? Their churches are all pretentious with stucco and baroque—like the glamorous East, there was nothing sincere about it. I longed for the plain mellow stone of England. And somehow Pat fitted into the picture.”

  “Then what in heaven’s name are you doing down here?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Five years is a long time. In five years you form a picture, coloured by imagination. And when I came back I thought it would be like it had been with Jenny. I had told her to fix it so that we got married at a registry office right away, the day I came down, so that we could get away the same day to some quiet little country pub where I could wallow in the beauty of the country and have a wife with me.

  “Instead, she meets me with her mother. Things aren’t fixed. She wants a church wedding, bridesmaids and confetti. I’m to stay with my people and we’re to prospect for a house. Oh, God, you’ve no idea! They talked of rationing and domestic affairs. Her mother, a pleasant stupid woman, was with her all the time. A playful brother, who was something on the Urban District Council, twitted me about Signorinas. They talked of the good times we’d had in the Middle East and Italy and of what I was going to do now—would I, who had no job and no qualifications, be able to support a wife? It was horrible. Pat was even stupid enough to suggest a honeymoon in Italy with my getting a job in U.N.R.R.A. or something. That was the end. I’d had it. I left her a note and wired you. That was yesterday morning.

  “You see,” I said. “I’ve nothing in common with them. I’m a foreigner in my own country. I came here because I have memories here—memories of something that was real. And—and somehow I knew you’d be a help. I knew I’d be able to talk to you.”

  “I’m glad you came, Mr. David,” she said. “Now if you’ll just open that cabinet over there, you’ll find a decanter and some glasses.”

  When I had poured whisky out for both of us, she said, “There’s a man down at Bossiney needs some help, I’m told. He’s trying to get one of yo
ur landing craft off the rocks with local labour and he’s finding it difficult. It came ashore in a gale on its way home from the Mediterranean—it must be more than a year ago. Somehow it drove straight up the cove and lodged high and dry on the rocks on the beach. You might stroll over in the morning.”

  “Yes,” I said, “it will pass the time.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE HULK IN THE COVE

  IN THE morning I climbed the valley side where the short, sheep-cropped grass was thick with rock flowers and watched the long Atlantic rollers march against the grey cliffs and thunder in a roar of surf up the entrance to the valley. The wind was out of the west, about force six. It was cold and the driven spume salted my face. The whole coast beneath the lead-grey sky was surging white, and every now and then a dull boom marked a mounting plume of spray as it climbed a nearby cliff-face.

  As I walked across the bluff to Bossiney I could see Barras Head and the jagged ruins of Arthur’s Castle on the headland beyond. Inland, the grey slates of Tintagel sprawled at the foot of the hills.

  As I topped the rise above Bossiney, I saw the Elephant Rock that guards the starboard entrance to the cove. I stopped and looked at the angry sea that tossed and fumed against the base of it. I did not see how it was possible for a landing-craft to have got into the cove—unless it were one of the little L.C.V.P.s or A.L.C.s. And Sarah had described it as a biggish craft that practically filled the end of the cove.

  I came at length to the path over the cliff top and gazed down into the cove. The tide was high and filled the cove, so that the sandy bottom was a swishing surge of white surf. It looked a wicked enough spot even in that slight sea, all rocks and swirling water. And at the end of the cove, below the sweep of the valley top and the overhanging granite cliffs on the far side, was a landing-craft. It was an L.C.T., one of the Mark Fours. It was wedged sideways on the rocks, clear of the water. And it was intact.

  It was quite fantastic. It seemed to fill the tiny cove and its rusty plates and flaking paintwork merged into the dark mass of the cliffs. How it had managed to get there God only knows—it was one of those freaks of the seas that sometimes happen. It must have been swept in, its flat bows aimed at the cliffs, rolling high on the top of a mountainous wave, hit a sloping rock and swung broadside on the breaking wave to lodge where it was. What a terrifying moment it must have been for the man at the helm—or had there been no one but the seas to guide it to that incredible lodgment?