Into the Fire

by Into the Fire (retail) (epub)

‘Oh. That.’ She shook her head. ‘Surprise, that’s all. One hardly expects—’

  ‘You’ve got to start being Jeanne-Marie Lefèvre now – you know?’

  ‘Oddly enough, I do.’ She nodded. ‘And thanks – for everything, Marilyn. Heaven knows where any of us would be without you.’

  They hugged each other. ‘God bless you, Rosie.’

  * * *

  She saw Marilyn off to catch her train back to London, waving goodbye to her from the top of the paddle-steamer’s gangway, and she’d still been there when Sub-Lieutenant Ball brought his C.O. along to meet her. M.G.B. 600’s captain was an R.N.V.R. lieutenant by name of Hughes: pink-faced, fair-haired, solid, she guessed in his early thirties. He told her that in ‘real’ life he was a solicitor in Ross-on-Wye. He didn’t chat for long, though, only long enough to offer her the use of his cabin. ‘More closet than cabin, really – but you’ll want to get some shut-eye, won’t you? Weather looks like holding for a while, you shouldn’t find it too uncomfortable.’

  Even that brief meeting had been more than she’d have expected. She’d been told that the gunboat’s officers and crew were discouraged from socializing with their passengers – for security reasons, also because agents usually preferred to be left to themselves. As in fact was the case with the two other passengers, Frenchmen, who came off from shore in the motorboat after it had landed Marilyn and went straight on board the gunboat. They’d either be B.C.R.A., she guessed – de Gaulle’s lot, Bureau Central de Renseignements et d’Action – or independents of some kind. There were several groups or factions, not all of them the best of friends – especially French Gaullists and non-Gaullists. In fact S.O.E. and B.C.R.A. had very little to do with each other here in England, at administrative levels, largely because de Gaulle resented the existence of S.O.E. and their potential control of a secret army which he felt should more appropriately be under his wing; but agents in the field still helped each other when the need arose. Anyway, these two would presumably be landing with her in Ball’s dinghy in pitch darkness on some rocky beach: they could hardly ignore each other’s existence, and she asked Ball when he came back to her who they were. All he knew was that the name of the little one had been listed as Mitterrand and then changed to Morland. Neither would be his real name, she guessed.

  Glancing round: still no sign of Ben. ‘Should I go on board too?’

  The gunboat’s engines were started at that moment. A deep, resonant growl from the other side of the old steamer. Ball told her – having to raise his voice, over the volume of sound – ‘Warming through.’ That boyish grin: ‘Don’t worry, you won’t be left behind. That’s only two engines’ worth, incidentally, we run on four once we get outside. But – yes – actually I came to suggest it. I’ll take you down. Oh, and the pilot said he’ll show you over the boat, if you like, before we shove off.’

  ‘Pilot?’

  ‘Navigator. Ben Quarry – chap you saw – you knew each other vaguely some time ago, he said.’

  * * *

  Vaguely… As in a glass darkly, she thought. A whole lot of glasses. Whatever had been in them. Micky Finns in that nightclub, she’d thought ever since. Some gut-rot hooch: there was a lot of it about. She was remembering, though, as she followed the boy down, the moment when she’d first set eyes on Ben. Coming down the stairs in Baker Street – angry, thoroughly depressed – down into the hall and through it to the street door, thinking God’s sake, I need a drink … Except, though – shaking her head: the tears she’d been holding at bay – since a flood of them the night before – well, strong drink such as she felt the need of might not help at all. If the reaction up there had been Yes, Mrs Ewing, you’re an answer to our prayers – well, that would have been the right medicine. Instead of which – that stupid man’s ‘Daddy knows best’ attitude… And the problem which then faced her: what the hell could she do? The idea of life continuing just as it had before Johnny’s death appalled her.

  Try S.I.S.?

  Yes. First thing, tomorrow. She had actually thought of them before. But having a connection already with S.O.E.

  … Well – Foreign Office, a call to them might point her in the right—

  The front door had crashed open, inwards, and this naval lieutenant had come barging in, colliding with her. She was only on her feet because they were grasping each other’s arms.

  ‘Hell -sorry—’

  ‘Probably my fault – partly—’

  ‘Definitely was not.’ Still hanging on to her. Tallish, and enough of him that she couldn’t easily have got past. ‘You know damn well it wasn’t.’

  ‘You’re Australian.’

  ‘Got it in one. Work here, do you?’

  ‘No. I do not.’ She’d pulled free. ‘As it happens.’

  ‘Meaning, if it’s any of my damn business?’

  ‘No – not at all. But if you’d let me by, please—’

  ‘You have a – kind of strained look. If it’s from being crashed into by strange Australians—’

  ‘It’s not.’ She made herself smile, relax a little. ‘It’s just that I’ve had a very bad day – including an interview just concluded, with an idiot.’

  ‘Might a drink help?’

  ‘It might.’ She nodded. ‘Might well. Thanks for the inspiration.’

  ‘What I meant was,’ – he’d put a hand on her arm again – ‘well, all I have to do here is get a signature for this’ – a long brown envelope which he’d pulled out of his greatcoat pocket: red seals on it, something secret obviously – ‘have your idiot make his mark for it, maybe. Then – fact is I’ve something terrific to celebrate.’

  ‘Loss of Singapore?’

  ‘Now don’t spoil it. I really do have something to celebrate – forget bloody Singapore. And drinking alone’s no fun, is it? Look – one for my good news, another to drown your sorrows. You can tell me about ’em – I’m deaf in one ear, I’ll lend you the other. What d’you say?’

  He looked almost imploring: he really did want her company. And it was certainly a better prospect than that stinking train, cold sober, then about twelve hours’ solitary in the digs in Sevenoaks where until a day ago there’d always been the hope that Johnny would come breezing in. Sevenoaks being where she worked, and close enough to Biggin Hill where he’d been stationed. He’d got himself to and fro in an MG midget, a 1936 TC in which he’d claimed he only touched the ground at corners. She’d have to do something about that little car, she realized, ring the adjutant or someone.

  She’d nodded. ‘All right.’

  ‘Good on you, that’s marvellous!’ He’d virtually shouted the last word. ‘Look, I’ll be two minutes, maximum. Don’t go and vanish now, uh?’

  Alone, she began to wonder if it mightn’t be more sensible if she did just that. Whether either a drink or two or a sympathetic hearing mightn’t bring on the tears: the two together might just about guarantee it. It struck her again what a different world this would have been around her if that man upstairs had said ‘Yes’ – or even ‘In a month or two, when we will be recruiting women agents’…

  ‘That was half a minute – OK?’

  He’d called it down to her, and she’d turned, looking up at him as he came bounding down the stairs. Brown, curly-looking hair – pushing his naval cap more or less straight on it. Not good-looking as Johnny had been – Johnny had known it, too – but not bad looking, either. Blue eyes, light-brown hair, and this sort of wild enthusiasm. Raising a forefinger in warning: ‘I’ll open the door this time…’

  * * *

  He hadn’t changed much, either. Except for the beard. On the gunboat’s deck, cluttered with weaponry and other gear – holding both her hands in his: ‘Rosie, how absolutely marvellous!’

  Familiar word, familiar tone of voice: even to the shouting, which of course was necessary, over the engines’ noise. But he looked slightly less wild than he had in her mental image of him.

  ‘What a surprise, Ben.’ Searching for something to say that
wouldn’t reflect the past, or any lingering emotional involvement. ‘You were going off on a course in navigation – and here you are, a full-blown navigator!’

  ‘Be odder if I’d wound up as a full-blown pastry-cook.’

  ‘Oh, you haven’t changed.’

  ‘Give you a quick tour of this vessel, shall I? Upper deck first – before they get busy. Haven’t long, see.’ He looked across at Ball: ‘Sub, will you dump that in the skipper’s cabin?’

  The suitcase. Ball nodded. ‘I was going to.’ He disappeared with it. Ben asked her, ‘How’ve you been, Rosie?’

  ‘All right. Fine.’

  ‘And you got what you wanted.’ There was a reek of petrol suddenly: then it cleared, just as suddenly. ‘Despite that bloke turning you down. Crikey, you were spitting mad, weren’t you?’

  Shaking his head, gazing down at her. ‘Doesn’t it scare you mad, now you’ve got it?’

  What she’d wondered earlier – whether any of them even guessed… No comment, though. She pointed: ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Well, OK. The guided tour.’ He reached up, grasping one of the lower rails that ran around some kind of gun-mounting. ‘What we call the bandstand. That’s a twin Oerlikon up there, twenty millimetre. And further aft here, six-pounder Hotchkiss. For’ard there’s a two-pounder and twin point-fives. And Vickers in the bridge. We’re a D-class motor gunboat, incidentally. Length one-twenty feet, crew of thirty plus four officers, displaces about a hundred and twenty tons. I did try to get in touch, Rosie. Slightly disadvantaged by not knowing your surname, or for that matter where to start – except the R.A.F. at Biggin Hill. I tried there, nobody knew of anyone called Rosie. Didn’t at S.O.E.’s ‘F’ Section either – which was a long shot, obviously, seeing as they’d turned you down.’

  ‘I asked you not to try.’

  He nodded: glancing round, then turning back to her. ‘That’s why I – desisted.’

  ‘This tiny little boat is the one I’ll be landed in, I gather.’

  It was on this starboard side, about midway along between the ‘bandstand’ and the six-pounder. A sailor was tightening lashings over its canvas cover. Ben nodded. ‘Ten-foot SN dinghy, special design for the job. Nick Ball’s job. Two oarsmen, and he steers from the back end with a scull, compass between his knees.’

  ‘Sounds – primitive…’

  ‘Not easy. Best way of doing it, though. And he knows his stuff, don’t worry… Christ, Rosie, I wish you weren’t doing this. Here we get to see each other again at last, and—’

  ‘What’s that?’

  He sighed, moving aft with her. ‘Depth charge. One the other side too. Mostly for use against E-boats. Not that we go looking for them, it’s all softly, softly, this racket… And that – before you ask, and not that you actually give a damn – that’s chemical smoke apparatus. When we need to lay a screen… Better be quick now, I’ll just point out the main features. Oh, Petty Officers’ mess down there.’ He led the way back towards the bow. ‘Engine-room hatch. As you can hear… There you have the mast – carries our W/T aerials and also radar – a 291… Quick shufti in the bridge now? Up here. Very quick, skipper’ll be down in two shakes. Oh, hi, Don.’ Introducing yet another R.N.V.R. lieutenant as they came off the ladderway into the rest of the bridge. ‘Don Shepherd, our first lieutenant.’

  She smiled at him and nodded, and he saluted her. A Johnny type, she thought – smoothly handsome. Too smooth – as Johnny had been. He’d turned to Ben: ‘Shoving off any minute, you know.’

  ‘Right.’ Ben pointed. ‘The wheel. And this is Petty Officer Ambrose, who handles it, steers us hither and yon.’

  ‘How do, miss.’ A voice called from a voicepipe, and he stooped to it. Ben pointed again: ‘Down there – where we’ll go now, out of these blokes’ way – is my plot. Chart-room’s another word for it.’ He went ahead down steps into a cramped, low-roofed space with a chart-table on this port side – a chart spread on it, which was how she knew what it was – a rack of books, manuals – some dials and switches and so forth. Windows gave a view forward and to the sides. A voice called, ‘C.O.’s coming aboard, sir!’

  ‘Down here now, Rosie.’ Another ladderway, this one near-vertical. ‘Galley flat, we call this. Wardroom’s here to port; French passengers’ll be dossing in there. That’s the galley, next to it. And this side, starboard – officers’ heads – lavatory, with a washbasin, the one you can use – then this is the W/T office, and last but by no means least, skipper’s cabin. Door at the end there leads into the for’ard mess, some of the ship’s company’s living space. Are you a good sailor, by the way?’

  ‘Rotten.’

  ‘Looks like it’s going to be smooth enough, anyway. Here you are, C.O.’s cabin – all yours. But Rosie—’

  The noise had doubled, suddenly. He paused, touched his good ear. He was deaf in the other, she remembered him telling her that evening in London, from having been blown up in a motor torpedo boat in the winter of 1941. Telling her now, ‘That’s the two centre engines warming up. We leave harbour on just the outers, go on to four then and work up to cruising speed. Twenty-three knots, this trip. Rosie – you’ll need something to eat before you turn in, won’t you?’

  ‘Since you mention it…’

  ‘So come up to the plot, when you feel like it, after we’ve sailed. I get the pleasure of your company, you get some nosh. Sandwiches – all right?’ She was in the cabin, and he was stooping in the small doorway, on the point of shutting it. There was a lot of noise and movement overhead by this time. ‘Rosie – tell me your surname?’

  ‘Can’t. Not allowed to. Sorry.’ Then, seeing his expression, ‘Honestly, Ben. Officially I can’t.’ Officially, in fact, she didn’t have one at this stage; only her code-name, and the French pseudonym, which wouldn’t have been any use to him. Eighteen months ago she hadn’t let him know it, because – well, partly because it was Johnny’s name, not hers. Her thinking had been confused and contradictory even before she’d got drunk, but essentially she’d wanted to be herself, not Johnny’s widow. She’d told him – told Ben Quarry, in the taxi after they’d left Baker Street – that her name was Rosie, and that she’d been born Rosalie de Bosque.

  * * *

  Alone in the cabin, she kicked off her shoes and got up on the bunk. Remembering that taxi-ride: that she’d still been asking herself what the hell she was doing, but telling him ‘My father was French. A lawyer – actually in Monte Carlo. He died when I was twelve. Until then we hardly spoke anything but French, but we came home then – Mama being English, family here, and so forth.’

  ‘Where, exactly?’

  She hadn’t answered this. Hadn’t told him anything about her wireless-operator’s job in Sevenoaks, either. So – she realized now, without any really clear recollection of her reasons at the time – she’d obviously not wanted him to be able to track her down.

  Because she’d had some intention right from the outset to behave the way she had?

  She was sure she hadn’t. Not even a thought of it.

  She’d told him about Johnny at some point: she’d thought she had, knew it now because otherwise he wouldn’t have tried to find her via Biggin Hill. On a more practical level, though, she might have not wanted to be traceable because at that stage she couldn’t have been sure she’d want to see him again.

  He’d told her – in the New Yorker, in Park Lane, to which they’d taken the taxi from Baker Street – ‘I speak a few words of French, myself. Very few, mind you.’

  ‘Australian schoolboy French?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Australian-messing-around-in-Paris French. I was there a couple of years, but most of my chums weren’t French speakers, and I’m no linguist. Middle ’37 to September ’39. Trying to be an artist, would you believe it?’

  ‘No reason I shouldn’t.’

  ‘Want ice in that?’

  ‘Please.’ In her gimlet. Swirling it then to get some of the ice to melt and weaken it. ‘You haven’t yet told me what th
e good news is that we’re celebrating.’

  He touched her glass with his. ‘My imminent return to seagoing. That’s what.’

  ‘Good thing, is it?’

  He’d swallowed some whisky. ‘Nothing short of bloody marvellous. Even miraculous.’ He put the glass down half-empty. ‘Is this going to bore you, Rosie?’

  She’d laughed. ‘Bit late to worry about that.’

  ‘I’ll give it to you in a nutshell. I was at sea – Coastal Forces, small, fast craft called M.T.B.s. Motor torpedo boats. Wearing one stripe, not two; I joined as an O.D. – Ordinary Seaman, that stands for, don’t ask me how – then got commissioned, for some reason, and shortly after – well, blown up, sort of. Winter of ’41, this was, night action off the Dutch coast. We got a real pasting – Hun destroyers – but we got the boat back – that’s to say the others did – with me in it, not all that conscious. Which is why I don’t have a functional eardrum now on this side, and I was thereafter no bloody use to Coastal Forces. See, in M.T.B.s, and M.G.B.s. – gunboats, no torpedoes – we’d often enough stop engines off that coast or on the convoy route and lie quiet in the dark, listening for E-boats. Hear ’em for bloody miles, when you’re out there. But lacking one eardrum…’ He’d paused, and engaged the barman’s attention: ‘Same again, please.’ Glancing back at Rosie: ‘OK?’

  ‘Second and last – as agreed.’

  ‘But I haven’t told you my story yet. And there’s still yours to come … Where’d I got to – well, the naval hospital at Haslar, is where I was. And this lieutenant-commander – something to do with Coastal Forces, I forget what. Must have included officers’ appointments, anyway. This was after they’d stitched me together, I was about ready to come out. Spring of last year. This bloke sort of ticked off various items – M.T.B.s., talks some French – must’ve shot that line when I got commissioned, so it’d have been on my record – ditto pre-war residence in Gay Paree, and yachting – before I’d left Brisbane I’d sailed quite a lot. Anyway, the geezer winds up with “So happens, Quarry, there’s a staff job in London needs filling, connected with all those things, including Coastal Forces. And as you’re now unfit for sea duty…’