by Max Hennessy
‘What are you doing in Dover, Charley?’ he asked quietly.
‘I live here.’ She answered his question but volunteered nothing further.
‘In this place?’
‘Yes.’
‘What happened to the American?’
‘He was killed. In an automobile accident. Six months after I arrived. We’d planned our wedding.’
There was nothing much he could say except that he was sorry.
Her shoulders moved in a slight shrug but there was still no expression on her face. Remembering the times she’d greeted him with delight, and the laughter he’d heard from her, he found her expressionlessness heart-breaking.
‘So why here?’ he asked.
‘When the war started, I came home and got a job with the Navy. They employ a lot of civilians.’
There was an uneasy silence and he felt he had to say something. ‘I saw Mabel at Victoria,’ he said.
She managed a small smile at last, a ghost of a smile that made him think that perhaps he was getting through to her.
‘She’s got fat but she seems very happy,’ she said. ‘George was in France, but he was one of the first out. She telephoned. He’s been sent to a depot near Cheltenham.’
‘I’m glad,’ Kelly said. ‘And I’m glad Mabel’s happy.’ He paused before he went on. ‘Did you marry again, Charley?’
‘No.’
He couldn’t believe that nobody had tried. ‘Is – is there a man?’
‘No,’ she said quietly.
‘Never?’
‘I’m not a nun,’ she said coldly. ‘There was one in the RAF but he was lost in a raid on Kiel last year.’
Oh, God, he thought, remembering the photograph he’d seen, what had she done to have to endure so much unhappiness?
‘I’m sorry.’
She shrugged again. ‘I’m over it now,’ she said. ‘I think there must be limits to a person’s comprehension of sadness.’
He found his mind was becoming hazy and, as the cup of tea tilted, he jumped and realised he’d been falling asleep.
‘I’m afraid I’ve spilt it on the cover,’ he said.
She said nothing but took it from him and pressed him down in the bed.
His eyelids drooped and when he wasn’t expecting it, she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. Automatically he tried to grab her but she’d gone before he could get his hands free and he lay back, disappointed, a little sad, unutterably lonely and desperately depressed still by what he’d seen at the other side of the Channel.
But he was also too tired to care, and as his eyelids drooped again, he allowed himself to drift into sleep.
He remembered waking up and seeing the room flooded with sunshine, but he was quite indifferent and allowed himself to drift off again. When he came round once more, it was dark outside and the curtains were drawn against the blackout.
He lay for a while trying to remember what had happened, then he wondered where Rumbelo and Boyle had got to and remembered that Le Mesurier had not turned up. He’d have to get the man an award of some sort, he felt. He’d been a tower of strength, civilian or not, drunk or sober, and he deserved something. The thought of his dying when they’d almost made it jerked at his heartstrings and he remembered seeing Crested Eagle, Fenella, Grenade and Jaguar hit by bombs, and Crested Eagle on fire and sinking in the fairway with all the French and all the wounded on board that they’d just rescued from Fenella. Unexpectedly, he found there were tears in his eyes and, as he blinked them away, he found Charley watching him from the doorway. She was wearing a neat skirt and a blue and white-striped linen blouse.
‘Kelly! What is it?’
He tried to tell her but he choked over the words. She came to the bed and knelt beside it, with her hands on his.
‘Oh, Kelly!’
He put his arms round her and they clung together like sorrowing schoolgirls.
‘Don’t say anything now, Kelly,’ she said quietly. ‘Just go to sleep.’ She kissed him again and tried to draw away but he couldn’t bear to let her go and clung on to her, pulling her to him. For a moment they stayed like that, their faces only an inch or two apart. It was impossible to tell her that she represented all the things they’d lost across the other side of the Channel. She represented peace, England, his youth, his whole life even, in a way nobody else ever had.
Her head turned uncertainly as he kissed her throat but she didn’t resist, and as his hand came up to her breast he felt her tense and saw her eyes fill with tears.
She gave a little moan, still, after all the wasted years, crucified by her longing for him. ‘Oh, Kelly!’ she whispered again.
‘Why did you go away?’
She turned a lost face towards him. Love, he decided, was a sort of self-immolation that left you dizzy but with her in his arms again, he didn’t care. There had been many times in recent years when there’d been a loneliness it had seemed impossible to endure, but suddenly, now, he felt he was no longer on his own. They kissed with a painful intensity and then she was crying hard sobs with taut lips and clenched teeth, small and lost like a child, as if she were putty in his hands.
Their lovemaking was intense and left him shocked by its sheer carnality and passion. It was fierce and twice as powerful because it was a relief from the agony across the Channel, a relief from exhaustion and ugliness and misery. When he woke again it was daylight. There was a man’s dressing gown over the end of the bed and he wondered if she’d borrowed it for him or whether it belonged to someone who stayed with her, some man who’d slept in her bed as he had.
He found her in the tiny kitchen, listening to the news on the radio and making coffee on an electric cooker. She was quite different from the previous night. She’d regained control of herself and was cool and distant. He moved to her and put his arms round her, but she slipped away and placed a cup, saucer and plate on the table. Moving to her again, he tried once more but again she slipped away.
‘No,’ she said. ‘That was last night. It’s different now.’
‘Why?’
She turned angrily. ‘What am I supposed to be Kelly? Disappearing the way you did every time, you could hardly expect when we meet again that I should just hold the bedclothes back for you to slip in beside me. Just because it happens to suit you and the Navy says it’s all right. I was in love with you, Kelly. Always.’
He couldn’t believe his ears. Her tones were sharp when he’d expected gentleness.
‘You behaved last night as if you still were,’ he said.
She refused to meet his eyes. ‘I was carried away,’ she said. ‘It was all that agony at the docks. It seemed to demand some self-sacrifice. Call it my war effort.’
He watched her, baffled, his thoughts sad and splintered with pain, but she made no attempt to show any sign of warmth. He didn’t believe her, couldn’t believe her. Their behaviour the night before could never have been the result only of the sweeping emotion that had run through the country, proud, giving – but still impersonal. She’d held him to her, moaning softly, whispering and calling out his name in ecstasy.
He sat down, uncertain how to react. She filled his cup and he sat smoking a cigarette from a packet she pushed across. After a while he became aware of the radio and realised he was listening to Churchill’s words. They were from a speech he’d made and somehow they had more in them to stir the blood than he’d heard for years from the tradesmen of the thirties who’d masqueraded as diplomats and statesmen.
‘We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender–’
As the announcer faded, she switched off the radio. In the silence, Kelly’s voice sounded loud.
‘What day is it?’
‘Wednesday. You slept for two days.’
He sighed and moved uneasily. ‘I think I’d better go and make my number wi
th the admiral.’
She gave him a quick look. ‘You always made sure you made your number with the admiral, didn’t you, Kelly?’
He stared at her, disappointed with her reactions, angry at her attitude, and frustrated by the perplexed gropings of his mind.
‘I’m still in the navy, Charley,’ he said.
She looked at him steadily, accusing him for all the years of ambition, all the years of conforming when she’d felt he should have put her first. ‘You always were, Kelly,’ she said.
His brows came down. ‘Dammit, Charley, there’s a war on!’
Her eyes flashed and she went pink with rage. He’d always been brisk with her but now it acted like an electric shock. Reaching across him, she snatched up the photograph of the man in the wing commander’s uniform and slammed it down in front of him, so that the dead man’s face stared up at him, her sole souvenir.
‘Do you think I don’t know?’ she snapped.
Two
By a miracle the country had come through. There was no army worth mentioning and survival depended on elderly gentlemen with Great War medals standing guard on cross roads armed with shotguns, pitchforks and – for God’s sake! – pikes. Ageing generals were serving in the Local Defence Volunteers – the Look, Duck and Vanish Brigade, as it was known – under men who’d been their subalterns but had the advantage of being younger and more active, and Kelly heard that Admiral Tyrwhitt, his former chief, had enlisted as a private.
They had rescued over 300,000 men from France, when the expected total had been in the region of 20,000, and, though they had no weapons and there seemed to be not a single gun or tank in the whole country, they still had the nucleus of an armed force; moreover, an armed force with the skill and knowledge obtained from crossing swords with the Nazis.
It was clear they’d been lucky. Thanks to Gort and the Navy, the country had survived. If Dunkirk had failed, it was doubtful if Britain could have withstood the Nazis because Churchill still wasn’t securely in the saddle and in the ranks of his ministers he’d been obliged to accept men who’d once been appeasers. But at least, now, for the first time, there was the feel of a strong hand on the wheel. Dunkirk had burned with self-sacrifice and high endeavour like an incandescent flame and had awakened something spontaneously all over the country, and the cricket, the half-days and the long weekends had stopped overnight. Self-indulgence became something to be ashamed of, and men and women at last found the direction and the encouragement they needed.
Virtually unemployed, without a ship, Kelly found himself once more under Corbett. He had a room at the Castle and Dover had suddenly become the front line. Yet there was a curious calm about the country so that he somehow couldn’t imagine it panicking, perhaps even a feeling of relief that there were no longer any doubtful allies to worry about and they could go it alone.
With six British and three French destroyers lost and twenty-three others badly damaged in nine days, the Navy was stretched to its limit. To redress the balance a little and despite the horror it produced among those who could foresee a whole decade of bitterness and distrust, the French Fleet at Oran was destroyed by gunfire by Admiral Somerville’s ships from Gibraltar to prevent it falling into the hands of the Germans. As a French expert, Kelly was flown to the Rock to act as interpreter, but the affair had been concluded before he arrived and he was promptly flown back, wondering if Archie Bumf had escaped and what he made of it all. Meanwhile, the government was negotiating with West Indian bases for fifty old American first-war vessels to take the place of the lost destroyers, because the U-boats had already begun to step up their assault on the convoys in the Atlantic.
In their efforts to subdue British resistance, the Germans had also started bombing Channel convoys, an operation that had soon changed to an all-out assault on RAF stations in the south, and everybody guessed it was the prelude to an invasion.
Slipping back to Thakeham to collect kit to replace that which he’d lost at Dunkirk, Kelly found only Paddy at home.
‘Mother’s gone to see Brother Kelly,’ she announced. ‘They fished him out of the sea with nothing worse than a broken toe and a bad cut on his head.’
They hugged each other, thankful not to be in mourning, and sat down to a meal of bacon and eggs cooked by Paddy in Biddy’s kitchen.
‘How’s Hugh?’ Kelly asked.
‘Doing his daredevil pilot thing,’ Paddy said, suddenly becoming serious. ‘He’s converting to Hurricanes. The RAF’s asked for volunteers from the Navy to help out.’
She gave him a quick look and, behind the smile, he saw the fear in her eyes. Young men were being killed every day along the south coast of England in an effort to prevent the Luftwaffe wrenching the command of the sky from the RAF, and he tried to anaesthetise her fear with distractions.
‘How about you? When are you going to lead him to the post?’
‘As soon as there’s time.’ She gave him a fleeting smile. ‘We’ve all been a bit busy lately, haven’t we?’
During the weekend Hugh telephoned to say he’d finished his conversion course and as Kelly, on his way back to Dover, kissed Paddy goodbye, he held her gently for a while.
‘Take it easy,’ he said quietly. ‘It might never happen.’
‘On the other hand,’ she replied in her forthright manner, ‘it jolly well might. I know what his chances are because we’ve had one or two pilots in the hospital and I’ve talked to them.’ She lifted her eyes to his, steady and fearless and willing to face what lay ahead. ‘But I’m ready for it. We’ve already been to bed together and I regret nothing, only the fact that the bloody war’s somehow got in the way at a time when we need to be so close you couldn’t shove a fig leaf between us.’ She lifted her face to gaze frankly at him. ‘I’ve applied to join the services.’
‘Which one?’
‘The Navy, of course.’ She managed a shaky grin. ‘Can you imagine what Hugh or Father, or Brother Kelly – or you, for that matter! – would say if I joined one of the less senior services?’
Back in Dover, Kelly found himself listening every evening to the news, wondering when he was going to hear that Hugh was no longer alive. The country’s future hung on a thread as fragile as a spider’s web. RAF pilot casualties were enormous and Hugh was already in action, he knew, because Rumbelo, informed from home via Biddy, had told him he was.
When work permitted, he saw Charley. But she’d changed from being an enthusiastic girl to a prickly woman. She seemed prepared to accept him in a matter-of-fact sort of way that he found difficult to accept, and they rarely talked about the life she’d lived in America and never about the past. She was friendly but never encouraging, and he found himself falling hopelessly in love with her again. When she’d always been available and he’d expected her to marry him, he’d taken her for granted, but now her very inaccessibility worked on his system like an aphrodisiac.
In September, he was sent to Harwich and from there to Felixstowe, to sort out problems at HMS Beehive and pick up information for the establishment of new motor torpedo boat bases at Portland and Fowey and the setting up of a new command to deal solely with coastal forces. The place was full of noisy young men, most of them Hostilities-Onlys, and his rank didn’t bother them in the slightest, though they were somewhat in awe of his medal ribbons and once they found what they represented were inclined to shove enthusiastically with their elbows to make room for him at the bar.
Because they’d not been moulded by the long education and apprenticeship of the regulars, they had far less respect for their elders than the products of Dartmouth, but they also had fewer inhibitions. They were astute enough to show respect for what was admirable in naval tradition, but brought a fresh breeze of ribald derision into a service where conservatism was a common characteristic. Those recalled elderly officers who grumbled about their indifference to the niceties of dress when entering or leaving port or the way they made mating sounds at the Wrens from the ship’s deck had been inclined at fir
st to go red in the face with anger but by this time they were all growing used to each other, and as the newcomers tried to look like professionals and began to use King’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions as if it were a Bible, the older men became more and more amateur in appearance and used it to prop up the broken leg of a table.
The war was now in its second stage as they drew breath after Dunkirk. Slowly the country rearmed itself. Tank, field gun and fighter deliveries mounted steadily. The embers had only glowed after Dunkirk but, with Churchill blowing on them, they blazed into a fire of enthusiasm. With the Germans in possession of the Atlantic seaboard from Norway to Spain, however, the main problem remained the convoys and supplies from America, and Kelly knew that his time ashore was growing short.
His first leave since the war had begun took him to London to attend to his father’s affairs. From there he went to Thakeham. Biddy greeted him warily and he guessed that Rumbelo had told her that Charley was around again. Rumbelo had never made any bones about his attitude. He’d never agreed with Kelly’s marriage to Christina and, given the chance, Kelly suspected he’d scheme to the limit to bring them together. Biddy was more circumspect and careful to show neither doubt nor pleasure, concentrating solely on the pride she felt at her son being given a DSM in the rash of medals that had resulted from Dunkirk.
‘Tell him to apply for a commission, Biddy,’ Kelly advised. ‘I’ll push it with everything I’ve got.’
He spent the week going through his father’s papers. As he’d expected, the old man had left him nothing but the title. He’d never really known him, anyway, and in the confusion after Dunkirk had not even been to his funeral. He suspected, in fact, that he’d still been asleep when they’d put the old man away, and all he had left of him were his old uniforms with their tarnished braid and a few relics of his service under Victoria.
