Tides of Valor

by Peter Albano

  Never had he had a dream like this. He pushed her onto her back and pressed her down into the mattress with his weight. Dear God, Please don’t let me wake up, he cried to himself. But this was no dream. She was real. The flesh was hot and silky and yielding under his hands. Hair long and flowing like satin. Frantically, he kissed the pulse in her throat, the round, swollen breasts. Ran his hands over the hard stomach, the smooth curve of the muscles of her sides and thighs, not believing what he had found. Her breath was short in his ear and she breathed as if she were gulping air. He reached between her legs. She gasped and began to tremble. Spread her knees. Pulled him into a position as old as mankind. Stiffened and moaned as he gripped her buttocks and thrust deep into her. Then she locked him into the crucifix of her limbs, meeting and riding his frenzied assault with twisting, thrusting hips.

  He lost himself in the pure essence of unleashed desire that he had never known before.

  When it was over, she slid from the bed, slipped on a silk negligee, and walked to the door. Before closing the door behind her, she turned, long hair swaying and glowing like a halo in the dim hall light behind her. Her voice was soft, “You were very good, cousin.”

  He whipped the brush in the shaving mug with furious circular motions, foaming lather running down the sides and flicking onto the mirror. He looked into the mirror with loathing. The eyes were bloodshot and watery, the blond stubble on his cheeks and chin glistening in the light over the mirror like dead wheat. He didn’t see Lieutenant j. g. Rodney Higgins in the mirror. No, indeed. He saw a beast. An animal who had copulated with his cousin. The fearful beast in his nightmare had been himself. It was a warning. He should have known.

  Animals mated with their mothers, sisters, cousins. He was an animal. It made no difference that he had been drunk. Asleep. It made no difference that Marsha had ignited the whole thing. Had invaded his dream and stolen it. The only thing that counted was that it happened. Marsha was a slut. Worse than that, she had morals that would shame an alley cat. He should have been forewarned at the table. Although he had only seen her a half-dozen times in his entire life, he had seen that look burning deep in her eyes before.

  He brushed a thick layer of shaving cream on his face as if he were trying to hide from himself. He stropped the long straight razor with short, snapping motions and then skimmed uneven swaths of cream and stubble from the smooth skin. But the mind raced on. He had to face his mother, grandmother, aunt, and maybe Marsha in a few minutes at the breakfast table. His mother was brilliant and probably knew. Would know by just watching him. By judging his attitudes, emotions, looks. And his grandmother was no fool. The servants. Everyone could sense a sexual thing between two people. It was impossible to hide. And they all knew Marsha better than he did—except for one thing, of course.

  His stomach rumbled and he tasted a revolting gorge of sour wine and bitter acid. He’d leave. Had to leave. It would never happen again, but he couldn’t live under the same roof with that carnal bitch in heat.

  The razor pulled and he winced. Quickly he stropped the razor again and then scraped the last hair from his chin. After wiping a few thin runnels of cream from his cheeks, he slapped his face with bay rum. Then he turned to the door.

  When Rodney entered the breakfast room, a large alcove off of the kitchen with a bay window to let in the morning sun, no one was there except Travers. Ellen took her breakfast in her room, but the other members of the family usually ate together: Rodney’s favorite breakfast was already on the table; cornflakes topped with strawberries, rye toast, and milk. As Rodney seated himself, Nicole entered and poured a cup of steaming black coffee with the obligatory, “Bonjour, monsieur.” The tone seemed cold, eyes narrow and blank.

  Rodney answered with a “Bonjour, Nicole.” The maid left.

  Travers volunteered some information. “Your mother kept a late hour last night, sir. She sent word to the kitchen that she would be a little late this morning.” He placed a copy of The New York Times on the table next to Rodney. “The paper, sir.”

  “Thank you, Travers.” The butler left.

  Sipping his coffee, Rodney felt the veil of anxiety lift slightly. Maybe his mother had not even been home when Marsha entered his room. Maybe she had been satisfying her own desires. He hated to think of his mother that way. Somehow it seemed dirty and beneath her. But years ago he realized Brenda had her needs—and she met them. At least, she didn’t do it with young boys. She had probably spent most of the night with Hamilton. But everyone else had been home.

  He poured some milk over his cereal and added a single spoonful of sugar. He opened the paper. The front page was sickening. More reports of Allied disasters in North Africa. The island of Malta was being pulverized by German and Italian bombers. It was the most bombed place on earth. More sinkings by U-boats. And German air raids on England continued despite heavy losses. There were more rumors reported from Sweden and Switzerland of large German troop movements along the Russian border. He drank more coffee. “They’re going to do it,” he said to himself.

  Travers entered, carrying the silver coffee service. He volunteered more information, “Your aunt and cousin left early, sir. They had an appointment at the university.”

  “Oh?”

  “Something about a sorority.” He refilled Rodney’s cup.

  “Thank you, Travers.”

  As the butler left, Brenda entered. Wearing a green silk robe, she appeared beautiful despite fatigue that had awakened incipient lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes. As usual, her hair was perfectly coiffed, her face touched with just the right amount of cosmetics. Immediately Travers and Nicole materialized, fawning over their mistress, pouring coffee, placing her toast and mixed fruit in front of her. “Thank you, thank you,” Brenda said. The servants fled the room as if they knew something unsavory was about to happen.

  After sipping her coffee, Brenda opened the conversation casually, “Your aunt and cousin had an appointment at Columbia.”

  “Travers told me.”

  “Marsha’s joining a sorority.”

  Rodney nodded at the good news, not trusting his voice.

  “She’s moving out today.”

  Rodney felt small consolation in knowing he could remain at home. His mother had been blunt. She knew or suspected something. He felt she could pierce his innermost thoughts like a torch in darkness. Despite a lack of appetite, he brought a spoonful of cereal to his lips, tried to focus his eyes on the Times.

  If Brenda’s mind was occupied with Marsha, she dismissed the girl quickly. It was Nathan. As always, Nathan was paramount. She studied Rodney over her cup. “You were awfully hard on your brother last night, Rodney.”

  “I’m sorry, Mother. But he wasn’t exactly polite to me.”

  “You were too harsh.”

  “I won’t take insults from anyone, Mother. If it will please you, I’ll leave.”

  A pained look tightened her face. “You know that wasn’t necessary. You only have three weeks. I want you here—at home. You belong here.”

  Sighing, Rodney pushed the paper aside. “I’ll avoid him, Mother—avoid arguments when I see him.” He took her hand. Stared into the blue eyes rimmed with fatigue. “You’re working too hard, Mother.”

  “I was out late.”

  He knew the statement was true, yet a screen. Brenda kept her hands firmly on the operations of Ashcroft Mills. Perhaps this was her man, the substitute for her first husband lost on battle cruiser Lion and the second snatched away from her during a bloody raid on the German works at Ostend. Each morning her chauffeur, Desmond Hallcraft, drove her to the Chrysler building at the corner of Forty-second and Lexing ton. The offices of Ashcroft Mills occupied the entire sixty-second floor. Despite young, energetic managers, Brenda oversaw the operation with unusual business acumen; especially the negotiating of new contracts. Huge orders for uniforms, tents, and sheets were pouring
in from the government. In addition, direct lines connected her to the offices of Carlisle Mills, Limited, in London. Liaison had always been difficult and clumsy.

  In Rodney’s happiest memories were frequent trips to England, usually in the summer, when he, Nathan, and Regina were out of school. The trips were made necessary because of a provision in his father’s trust prohibiting sale of the interest and requiring conveyance of the holdings to Geoffry’s sons upon Brenda’s death.

  Rodney loved those days. England was beautiful in the summer, especially in Kent where the Higginses’ great ancestral manor house, Penwyck, sat majestically, surrounded by its manicured sylvan grounds. Many joyous afternoons were spent there racing through the maze of hedges, flower gardens, trees, and orchards with his brother, sister, and cousins, Trevor and Bonnie, who were the children of Lloyd and Bernice. When they tired of hide-and-seek and kick-the-can, they invented new games; sheep and herder, policeman and bad men. And he loved his grandparents, Walter and Rebecca Higgins, and his uncles, Randolph Higgins and Lloyd Higgins, and Lloyd’s wife, Aunt Bernice. Walter Higgins died in 1927 and Rebecca followed in 1930. However, the vacations continued and Rodney grew very close to his uncles and cousins, Trevor and Bonnie.

  Rodney’s favorite had been the perennial bachelor and flamboyant pilot, his uncle, Randolph Higgins. “You’ve heard from Uncle Randolph?” Rodney asked. “You still write him? It’s been over three months since I saw him.”

  “Of course. I just got a letter from him last Tuesday. He’s well and his squadron is operating in the southeast of England. That’s all I know. Apparently, the rest is classified. He just writes about family, food shortages, and his men.” She drummed the table. “You saw Bonnie and Trevor?”

  “Yes, Mother. Bonnie is a nurse and is engaged to a midshipman named Boggs. Trevor is a lieutenant in the navy.”

  “You met this Boggs?”

  “Yes. Nice chap.” Rodney did not mention the instant dislike he had seen between Boggs and his Uncle Randolph. Rodney finished his coffee and gestured to Travers who refilled the cup. “Randolph’s too old to be flying fighters, Mother.”

  The timbre of Brenda’s voice was edged with bitterness. “He’s like your father. He’s got to be in the thick of it and his squadron’s in the southeast where the fighting’s heaviest.’’ She turned away, face a rictus of anguish.

  “But most of the Blitz is over, Mother,” he reassured her. “The Luftwaffe came off with a bloody nose.” He knew there had been strong feelings between his mother and Randolph who had never married. It had been more than the bond of affection expected between brother-in-law and sister-in-law. Even as a little boy, Rodney had seen the looks—hot, deep looks reserved for lovers or those who wished to become lovers. But he had never seen physical contact; not a touch, not even a handshake. It was as if neither dared cross this barrier, not even casually.

  Brenda stared down at the intricate designs in dark blue and rich golden hues of the Maksoud rug under her feet, spoke to the past in a halting voice, “Randolph’s too conscientious—dies with every dead boy. He was shot, crashed, burned, and broke down in 1917.” She looked up, her misty eyes searching for reassurance. “You think the worst of it’s over—you think he’s safe, now, Rodney?”

  “Why of course, Mother. We all know the heavy fighting’s over and I’m sure he spends most of his time in his office like a good CO should. He’s probably relaxing in an easy chair, reading the London Times right now.”

  III

  The English Channel

  June 19, 1941

  Major Randolph Higgins eased the throttle of the Spitfire Mark VB a notch by pulling back on the lever attached to the quadrant on the left side of the cockpit. A finger on a control handle on the instrument panel thinned the mixture and then a quick adjustment of the black knob of the propeller lever on the throttle quadrant brought the propeller to coarse pitch. He watched his rev-counter drop to two thousand rpms, manifold pressure thirty inches, and airspeed to 180 miles an hour. With its twelve cylinders starving for petrol, the Rolls Royce Merlin skipped a beat, trembled its objections, and then settled down into its usual steady roar. It would take no more. A red light low on his instrument panel caught his eye. The fuel low-level indicator light was glowing its warning. Grunting, he reached forward and turned the selector switch to the fuselage reserve tank. He had another fifty minutes in the air. No more. He banked toward the Channel, leaving the East Sussex coastline behind.

  It was an unusually clear day with almost unlimited visibility. The sky was heron-egg blue marred only to the west where fast-moving caravans of clouds stretched low over the horizon. Reflecting the rays of the sun, the fluffy tops were gilded with silver and platinum while dark grays shadowed their undersides. Off the East Sussex coastline, he could see thermals of gulls circling on wide-stretched pinions over a cluster of fishing boats, wings glinting like polished metal in the sunlight.

  The entire summer had brought warm, soft sunny weather. True, from time to time scuds of rain had swept in from the North Atlantic and early or late mists and fog had blotted out the coastline. Only a week before sudden blasts of cold winds drove across the Channel, herding thick thunderclouds before them. Everyone had been taken by surprise and both Germans and English canceled operation. Because changes of weather usually came in from the Atlantic and moved eastward, the RAP knew what the elements were going to be before the Luftwaffe. All British fighters stood down before the full fury of the storm struck. Intelligence reported that the Germans had lost a fighter and a Focke-Wulf long-range patrol bomber.

  Staring through his bulletproof windscreen, Major Higgins could see the coast of Belgium to the east, Calais almost directly ahead, and France to the southeast. The coast of Normandy was visible all the way to Le Havre and he could see inland hundreds of miles, the tableau of the vast landscape obscured only in the far distance by a bluish ground haze. Clusters of houses, roads like brown streaks, and the ribbons of canals were visible. Here and there railroad tracks caught the sun and reflected the light like burning threads. He could see inland as far as Saint Omer, Pauquembergues, and Etaples. Freshly plowed fields appeared as brown patchwork interspersed with the lush green of maturing oats and barley. Stands of trees stood guard like battalions of silent green sentries. And it was occupied—all occupied by the Germans.

  The major liked his Spitfire Mark VB. Very advanced aerodynamically, the Spitfire was the first all-metal fighter built in Britain. It was a sturdier and faster aircraft than the Hawker Hurricane that had been the most numerous RAF fighter during the height of the. Battle of Britain, Powered with the new Merlin 45 engine, his fighter had 1440 horsepower and a top speed of 370 miles an hour. It was equipped with the three-bladed De Havilland constant-speed, variable-pitch propeller that was a vast improvement over the two-bladed wooden club attached to the shaft of the first Spitfire he had flown—the Mark I. His firepower had been improved, too. The Spitfire Mark I had packed a good punch with eight 0.303 Browning machine guns. However, now with the newly strengthened B-type wing, his machine could deliver a much heavier weight of fire from its battery of two drum-fed Hispano-Suiza twenty-millimeter cannons and four 0.303 machine guns.

  Although the major had flown for thirty years, designed aircraft with Tommy Sopwith and Geoffrey de Havilland, single-handedly modified the S.E.5 into what was to become the famous S.E.5A of the Great War, held flying license number twenty-three, flight still seemed an impossible adventure. Often, especially alone at high altitudes sucking on his oxygen like a baby at his mother’s teat, he felt like a gnat suspended in an infinite void. There was nothing between him and disaster except a flimsy wing bending with the invisible blows of the air, a straining engine, and a fragile structure of aluminum and wire. At these moments, he knew he was experiencing something far beyond a triumph of human skill; it was a miracle.

  Flying was a singular existence. In the air a man found his own spirit, p
assed through an invisible barrier and emerged into a different universe. Here he found a new awareness of his body, yet fathomed only a bare perception of it. This was the realm of the gods and he became a ruler of a sort who controlled his destiny with a bare touch of rudder, a breath on the stick. The essence of reality was here and the prospect of horrible death was a constant companion. Lurking danger tortured some men. It was a tonic to the major. These were the moments when he was most alive. What predator, no matter how savage or courageous, stalked a quarry that could shoot back with machine guns?

  He scanned the horizon with the short jerky movements of the experienced fighter pilot, never focusing on one spot, but, instead, moving quickly around the vault of the sky, depending on his peripheral vision to detect fly specks that could sprout wings and turn into Messerschmitt (ME) 109s in a blink. But there was no sign of the enemy. Things had been quiet for weeks. Something was brewing in eastern Europe and apparently everyone knew it except the Russians. Rumor had it Hitler was preparing a very unpleasant surprise for his new bedmate, Joseph Stalin.

  Still, the Luftwaffe’s Luftflotte Zwei (Air Fleet Two) continued with occasional harassing raids on the south coast and London had been hit once just a week before by a dozen Heinkel 11Is in a sneak night raid. And Major Erich Kochling’s Jagdstaffel Vierter (Fourth Fighter Squadron) still operated out of its field west of Hardelot Plag on the Pas de Calais. The inventor of the “finger four” subunits or Schwarm tactics, Kochling was a ruthless butcher who boasted fifty-two victories. Twenty-four had been easy kills in Spain where he had flown with the Condor Legion, his 109s sweeping the skies clean. Twenty more were hapless Polish antique aircraft destroyed in 1939. However, eight British roundels decorated the Nazi killer’s tailfin. Two had belonged to Randolph’s men.