Storm Island
Page 37
"The prisoner-of-war."
"Why not?"
Slim tapped his head. IJse your noddle. When the storm clears, we'll
be here and the U-boat will be at the bottom of the bay in the island.
So who'll get there first? The Jerries."
"So why are we doing it?" Smith said.
"Because the people who are giving the orders are not as sharp as yours
truly, Albert Parish. You may laugh!" He dealt another hand.
"Place your bets. You'll see I'm right. What's that, Smithie, a
penny? Gorblimey, don't go mad. I tell you what, I'll give odds of
five to one we come back from Storm Island empty-handed. Any takers?
What if I say ten to one? Eh? Ten to one?"
"No takers," said Smith.
"Deal the cards."
Slim dealt the cards.
Squadron-Leader Peterkin Blenkinsop (he had tried to shorten Peterkin
to Peter, but somehow the men always found out) stood ramrod-straight
in front of the map and addressed the room.
"We fly in formations of three," he began.
"The first three will take off as soon as weather permits. Our target
He touched the map with a pointer." is here. Storm Island. On
arrival, we will circle for twenty minutes at low altitudes, looking
for U-boats. After twenty minutes, we return to base." He paused.
"Those of you with a logical turn of mind will by now have deduced
that, to achieve continuous cover, the second formation of three
aircraft must take off precisely twenty minutes after the first, and so
on. Any questions?"
Flying-Officer Longman said: "Sir?"
"Longman?"
"What do we do if we see this U-boat?"
"Strafe it, of course. Drop a few grenades. Cause trouble."
"But we're flying fighters, sir there's not much we can do to stop a
U-boat. That's a job for battleships, isn't it?"
Blenkinsop sighed.
"As usual, those of you who can think of better ways to win the war are
invited to write directly to Mr. Winston Churchill, number ten Downing
Street, London South-West-One. Now, are there any questions, as
opposed to fat-headed criticisms?" There were no questions.
The later years of the war had produced a different kind of R.A.F
officer, Bloggs mused. He sat on a soft chair in the scramble room,
close to the fire, listening to the rain drumming on the tin roof, and
intermittently dozing. The Battle of Britain pilots had seemed
incorrigibly cheerful, with their undergraduate slang, their perpetual
drinking, their tirelessness, and their cavalier disregard of the
flaming death they faced every day. That schoolboy heroism had not
been enough to carry them through subsequent years, as the war dragged
on in places far from home, and the emphasis shifted from the dashing
individuality of aerial dog-fighting to the mechanical drudgery of
bombing missions. They still drank and talked in jargon, but they
appeared older, harder, more cynical: there was nothing in them now of
Tom Brown's Schooldays. Bloggs recalled what he had done to that poor
common-or-garden housebreaker in the police cells at Aberdeen, and he
thought: It's happened to us all.
They were very quiet. They sat all around him: some dozing, like
himself; others reading books or playing board games. A bespectacled
navigator in a corner was learning Russian.
As Bloggs surveyed the room with half-closed eyes, another pilot came
in, and he thought immediately that this one had not been aged by the
war. He had a wide grin and a fresh face that looked as if it hardly
needed shaving more than once a week. He wore his jacket open and
carried his helmet. He made a beeline for Bloggs.
"Detective-Inspector Bloggs?"
"That's me."
"Jolly good show. I'm your pilot. Charles Calder."
"Fine." Bloggs shook hands.
"The kite's all ready, and the engine's as sweet as a bird. She's an
amphibian, I suppose you know."
"Yes."
"Jolly good show. We'll land on the sea, taxi in to about ten yards
from the shore, and put you off in a dinghy."
"Then you wait for me to come back."
"Indeed. Well, all we need now is the weather."
"Yes. Look, Charles, I've been chasing this bloke all over the country
for six days and nights, so I'm catching up on my sleep while I've got
the chance. You won't mind."
"Of course not!" The pilot sat down and produced a thick book from
under his jacket.
"Catching up on my education," he said.
"War and Peace." Bloggs said: "Jolly good show," and closed his
eyes.
Percival Godliman and his uncle, Colonel Terry, sat side by side in the
map room, drinking coffee and tapping the ash of their cigarettes into
a fire bucket on the floor between them. Godliman was repeating
himself.
"I can't think of anything more we can do," he said.
"So you said."
"The corvette is already there, and the fighters are only a few minutes
away, so the sub will come under fire as soon as she shows herself
above the surface."
"If she's seen."
"The corvette will land a party as soon as possible. Bloggs will be
there soon after that, and the coast guard will bring up the rear."
"And none of them can be sure to get there in time."
"I know," Godliman said wearily.
"We've done all we can, but is it enough?"
Terry lit another cigarette.
"What about the inhabitants of the island?"
"Oh, yes. There are only two houses there. There's a sheep farmer and
his wife in one they have a young child and an old shepherd lives in
the other. The shepherd's got a radio -Royal Observer Corps but we
can't raise him: he probably keeps the set switched to Transmit. He's
old."
"The farmer sounds promising," Terry said.
"If he's a bright fellow he might stop your spy."
Godliman shook his head.
"The poor chap's in a wheel-chair."
"Dear God, we don't get any luck, do we?"
"No," said Godliman.
"Die Nadel gets all the luck there is."
THIRTY-THREE
Lucy was becoming quite calm. The feeling crept over her gradually,
like the icy spread of an anaesthetic, deadening her emotions and
sharpening her wits. The times when she was momentarily paralysed by
the thought that she was sharing a house with a murderer became fewer,
and she was possessed by a cool-headed watchfulness that surprised
her.
As she went about the household chores, sweeping around Henry as he sat
in the living-room reading a novel, she wondered how much he had
noticed of the change in her feelings. He was very observant: he did
not miss much, and there had been a definite wariness, if not outright
suspicion, in that confrontation over the jeep. He must have known she
was shaken by something. On the other hand, she had been upset before
he left, because Jo had discovered them in bed together: he might think
that that was all that had been wrong.
She had the strangest feeling that he knew exactly what was in her
mind, but he preferred to pretend that everything was all right.
; She hung her laundry on a clothes-horse in the kitchen to dry.
"I'm sorry about this," she said, 'but I can't wait forever for the
rain to stop."
He looked uninterestedly at the clothes and said: "That's all right."
He went back into the living-room.
Scattered among the wet garments was a complete set of clean, dry
clothes for Lucy.
For lunch she made a vegetable pie using an austerity recipe. She
called Jo and Henry to the table and served up.
David's gun was propped in a corner of the kitchen. Lucy said: "I
don't like having a loaded gun in the house, Henry."
"I'll take it outside after lunch," he said, "The pie is good."
"I don't like it,"Jo said.
Lucy picked up the gun and put it on top of the Welsh dresser.
"I suppose it's all right as long as it's out of Jo's reach."
Jo said: "When I grow up I'm going to shoot Germans."
"This afternoon I want you to have a sleep," Lucy told him. She went
into the living-room and took one of David's sleeping pills from the
bottle in the cupboard. Two of the pills were a heavy dose for a
i6o-pound man, she reasoned, therefore one quarter of one pill should
be just enough to make a 50-pound boy sleep in the afternoon. She put
the pill on her chopping-block and halved it, then halved it again. She
put a quarter on a spoon, crushed it with the back of another spoon,
and stirred the powder into a small glass of milk. She gave the glass
to Jo and said: "I want you to drink every last drop."
Henry watched the whole thing without comment.
After lunch she settled Jo on the sofa with a pile of books. He could
not read, of course; but he had heard the stories read aloud so many
times that he knew them by heart, and he could turn the pages of the
books, looking at the pictures and reciting from memory the words on
the page.
"Would you like some coffee?" she asked Henry.
Real coffee?" he said, surprised.
"I've got a little hoard."
"Yes, please!"
He watched her making it. She wondered if he was afraid she might try
to give him sleeping pills, too. She could hear Jo's voice from the
next room:
"What I said was, "Is anybody at home?" called out Pooh very loudly.
"No!" said a voice... and he laughed heartily, as he always did at
that joke. Oh, God, Lucy thought: don't let Jo be hurt.
She poured the coffee and sat opposite Henry. He reached across the
table and held her hand. They sat in silence, sipping coffee and
listening to the rain and Jo's voice.
"How long does getting thin take?" asked Pooh anxiously.
"About a week, I should think."
"But I can't stay here for a week!"
He began to sound sleepy, and then he stopped. Lucy went and covered
him with a blanket. She picked up the book, which had slipped from his
fingers to the floor. It had been hers when she was a child, and she,
too, knew the stories by heart. The flyleaf was inscribed in her
mother's copperplate: "To Lucy, aged four, with love from Mother and
Father." She put the book on the sideboard.
She went back into the kitchen.
"He's asleep."
"And...?"
She held out her hand. Henry took it. She tugged gently. He stood
up. She led him upstairs and into the bedroom. She closed the door,
then pulled her sweater off over her head.
For a moment he stood still, looking at her breasts. Then he began to
undress.
As she got into the bed, she thought: Give me strength. This was the
part that she dreaded, the part she was not sure she could manage:
pretending to enjoy his body, when really all she could feel was fear,
loathing, and guilt.
He got into bed and embraced her.
In a little while she found she did not have to pretend after all.
For a few seconds she lay in the crook of his arm, wondering how it was
that a man could kill so coldly and love so warmly.
But what she said was: "Would you like a cup of tea?"
He grinned.
"No, thank you."
Well, I would." She extricated herself and got up. When he moved, she
put her hand on his flat belly and said: "No, you stay there. I'll
bring the tea up. I haven't finished with you."
He grinned again.
"You're really making up for your four wasted years."
As soon as she was outside the room the smile dropped from her face
like a mask. Her heart pounded in her chest as she went quickly,
naked, down the stairs. In the kitchen she banged the kettle on the
stove and rattled some china for realism. Then she began to put on the
clothes she had left hidden in the wet laundry. Her hands were
shaking so much that she could hardly button the trousers.
She heard the bed creak upstairs, and she stood frozen to the spot,
listening, thinking: Stay there! Stay there! But he was only shifting
his position.
She was ready. She went into the living-room. Jo was in a deep sleep,
grinding his teeth. Dear God, don't let him wake up, Lucy prayed. She
picked him up. He muttered in his sleep, something about Christopher
Robin, and Lucy closed her eyes tightly and willed him to be quiet.
She wrapped the blanket around him securely. She went back into the
kitchen and reached up to the top of the Welsh dresser for the gun. It
slipped from her grasp and fell to the shelf, smashing a plate and two
cups. The crash was deafening. She stood rooted to the spot.
"What happened?" Henry called from upstairs.
"I dropped a cup," she shouted. She could not suppress the tremor in
her voice.
The bed creaked again, and there was a footfall on the floor above her.
But it was now too late for her to turn back. She picked up the gun,
opened the back door, and, clutching Jo to her, ran across to the
barn.
On the way she had a moment of panic: had she left the keys in the
jeep? Surely she had: she always did.
She slipped in the wet mud and fell to her knees. She burst into
tears. For a second she was tempted to stay there, and let him catch
her and kill her as he had killed her husband; then she remembered the
child in her arms, and she got up and ran on.
She entered the barn and opened the passenger door of the jeep. She
put Jo on the seat. He slipped sideways. Lucy sobbed: "Oh, God!" She
pulled Jo upright, and this time he stayed that way. She ran around to
the other side of the jeep and got in, dropping the gun on to the floor
between her legs.
She turned the starter.
It coughed and died.
"Please, please I' She turned it again.
The engine roared into life.
Henry came out of the back door at a run.
Lucy raced the engine and threw the gearshift into forward. The jeep
leaped out of the barn. She rammed the throttle open.
The wheels spun in the mud for a second, then bit again. The jeep
gathered speed with agonizing lang our She steered away from Henry. He
chased the vehicle, barefoot in the mud.
She realized he was gaining on her.
She pushed the hand-throttle with all her might
, almost snapping the
thin lever. She wanted to scream with frustration. Henry was only a
yard or so away, almost level with her, running like an athlete, his
arms going like pistons, his bare feet pounding the turf, his cheeks
blowing, his naked chest heaving.
The engine screamed, and there was a jerk as the automatic transmission
changed up, then a new surge of power.
Lucy looked sideways again. Henry seemed to see that he had almost
lost her. He flung himself forward through the air in a dive. He got
a grip on the door handle with his left hand, and brought the right
hand across. Pulled by the jeep, he ran alongside for a few paces, his
feet hardly touching the ground. Lucy stared at his face, so close to
hers: it was red with effort, twisted in pain; the cords of his