Dust on the Sea (1999)

by Reeman, Douglas

  She held out her left arm and stared at the burn. Sometimes she forgot about it, and with her sleeves rolled up in an attempt to keep cool she had seen several people glancing at it. But nobody ever asked. Not in this place, at least.

  She often tried to imagine what it was like for him. And there was something else, which at first she thought was also imagination. Claud Porter had deliberately broken off a conversation with a Royal Marine officer about the possibility of regrouping the Commando in Sicily when he had seen her, as if . . . She pushed the thought away. Nothing must happen to Mike. Not now.

  The door opened slightly and she saw one of the Wrens peering in at her.

  ‘You’re wanted, Joanna. Mother Beaufort’s been asking for you.’

  Joanna straightened her skirt, giving herself time. Was it like this for everyone, the terrible leap of the heart when the dreaded telegram arrived, or some senior officer sent for you to give you the news?

  But not Squadron Officer Anne Beaufort. She was the senior W.A.A.F officer in the Pit, and was confined to dealing with Special Operations personnel.

  It was not a good idea to keep her waiting. She stared at herself almost defiantly. There was nothing she could do to improve her appearance, and, in any case, it was not exactly the Savoy down here.

  A W.A.A.F. corporal greeted her nervously.

  ‘Go right in, ma’am.’

  Joanna smiled. Ma’am. She was probably younger than the corporal.

  Squadron Officer Beaufort was on her feet, facing the door, when she entered. Joanna could not have described her, except to say that she exuded an air of complete self-confidence and control without seeming to make any effort. She wore, as always, a perfectly tailored service uniform, without a crease or a fold; nobody had ever seen her in battledress.

  Her features were strong, elegant rather than beautiful. Joanna had heard some of the women discussing how she always managed to appear so perfect, her hair never unkempt or out of place.

  ‘Ah, here you are, Joanna.’ She did not look at the clock, but the implication was plain. ‘I hope I didn’t drag you away from something urgent?’ Joanna felt her cheeks colour, like a schoolgirl on the carpet. ‘No matter, you’re here. That’s the main thing.’

  There were some flowers on the desk, and Joanna wondered who had put them there. Anne Beaufort wore no rings, and she had heard no mention of a man in her life.

  She said, ‘I was asked to deal with someone’s effects. One of our people lost his life recently. There are always loose ends, you know.’

  Joanna waited, her heart suddenly pounding. Was Mother Beaufort really so cold-blooded that she could speak of a man’s death so casually, as loose ends?

  ‘I cannot tell you anything much about it, but then you are well aware of the need for secrecy. Otherwise you would not be here. Now.’

  She opened a drawer and took out a small package. She laid it on the desk and then looked at the girl over it.

  ‘What passes between us is private, Joanna. I am still not entirely sure that I should have taken it this far. However . . .’ She unfastened the package and removed a wrist watch. ‘I believe this belongs to you?’ She did not hand it to her, but dangled it in the hard light like a piece of evidence. ‘In fact, your name is engraved on the reverse. Rather careless to be wearing it on a top secret mission, I’d have thought?’

  Joanna braced herself. She’s playing with me. Maybe enjoying it. Like that woman.

  She said, ‘My father gave it to me for a birthday present.’ She lifted her chin. ‘In Marseilles, as it happens.’ She could not keep up the defiance. ‘I lost it when I was taken prisoner. I thought they’d stolen it.’

  Beaufort nodded. ‘As we thought. Apparently he was going to return it to you. You must have made quite an impression on him.’

  The man she had never seen face to face, who had saved and protected her, held her while German boots had scraped only inches above their hiding-place. The man she had wanted to destroy for what he had done when the terror had slowly ebbed away.

  ‘He’s dead, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes. Another mission. The plane crashed – brewed up. No chance for him, or any of them.’ She held out the watch. ‘So here you are. Mystery solved.’

  Joanna turned it over in her hands. Perhaps the last piece in the puzzle, just as the doctor had described. The final barrier. Two people flung together, escaping from terror and something too terrible even to contemplate. Like that woman, and the drawer filled with glittering instruments of torture.

  Each of them had come through it, and had clung to the other for support.

  Had she tried to fight him off, to scream as she had truly believed? Or had she allowed him to take her, out of gratitude, and perhaps for the sake of her sanity?

  Only one man knew or guessed the truth, and he was far away, in Sicily with his men, men she had seen greeting him with such genuine pleasure in Alex.

  She realised that Squadron Officer Beaufort had come around the desk, and had laid her hand on her shoulder.

  ‘These things happen in wartime, Joanna. It’s better this way. No sense in having some relative wondering about the watch, is there?’

  Joanna moved away, and wished she could be alone for a few, precious moments.

  ‘No, ma’am. No sense at all.’

  Beaufort frowned. ‘For God’s sake smarten yourself up before you go back on duty. We have to hold up our corner here, so to speak!’

  Her abruptness helped more than anything to save Joanna. It might never leave her, but it was over.

  When she allowed her mind to explore it again, she felt only pity. Now she could understand what Mike and men like him were going through, and how they were expected to overcome what they dreaded most. Fear.

  Squadron Officer Beaufort watched the door close. Pretty little thing. Courageous, too. She glanced at the vase of flowers and smiled. But not for me.

  Then she pressed the bell and faced the door. Not a hair out of place. She was glad that she had gone against her better instincts for once. All the same, she knew Joanna Gordon would never wear that watch again.

  ‘I’ve never heard of anything so underhanded, so bloody insensitive to the realities of war!’

  Major Claud Porter was relieved that he had chosen the secret signals room for this meeting with his superior. It was in the deepest part of the underground complex, and was said to have the thickest walls.

  He regarded the folder on the metal table, which had increased in size since his friend in Intelligence had first shown it to him, and was now covered with the rubber stamps and signatures of all those who had been privileged to see it. He frowned. Too many people. Even the First Sea Lord had gone through it, or someone in his tight little department had signed on his behalf. Not the Prime Minister, not so far. But he might well ask to see it; he liked to know a little about everything and in the end Sir Clive Burgoyne would make certain of it. No matter what Major-General Vaughan claimed, there was no love lost between them.

  Porter was tired, like everyone else in Special Operations, but not too drained to be unaware of the dangers to Vaughan and to the Corps, to say nothing of the men in the field. Two weeks had passed since marines and soldiers had stormed ashore, and the total collapse of German and Italian defences in Sicily was imminent. Not months but days, and almost every objective had been taken and held. The human cost had not been insignificant, but compared to what might have happened there was plenty of cause for pride at what had been achieved.

  Vaughan exclaimed, ‘And all because of some wild allegation, probably made out of spite, or to get some special treatment for himself!’

  Porter waited. There was no point in going over it all again. At any minute a messenger might come, and he would be required to deal with some new crisis. He thought Vaughan was being unfair, and that, in his heart, he knew it: Marine Gerald Finch was crippled, half blind, and discharged from the Corps, the only life he had ever known, and he had not wavered in his allegation
that the then major Marcus Gaillard had cold-bloodedly killed men too badly wounded to escape from the advancing Japanese. The Judge Advocate of the Fleet had noted his story; very soon one of the less reputable newspapers would sniff it out. Like the hero who had won a Victoria Cross, and had been ‘discovered’ stripped of his rank and scrubbing floors in a canteen. The papers had made the most of that, as usual, and blame had been laid heavily and unjustifiably.

  If Gaillard’s actions were investigated, questions would be asked, not, perhaps, why he had taken the alleged action, but why he had been appointed to command in the first place. And, more to the point, who had recommended it?

  Porter had explained it as cautiously as he dared. Major-General Vaughan himself would be the scapegoat, and would almost inevitably become a target for the popular press.

  He said, ‘The point has already been made, sir. Force Trident has achieved everything it was required to do. It is now proposed to regroup the two Commandos already involved, enlarge them, and prepare them for the next step, into Italy.’

  Vaughan glared at him. ‘I know that, Claud, but not yet! You’ve seen the reports. Morale is high, Gaillard is doing a good job with Trident. He has the tenacity and the drive to see it through to the end. And I am thinking ahead. The Commandos will be regrouped and expanded. It will be on to Germany before too long – we’ll show ’em, eh?’

  Porter persisted, ‘Lieutenant-Colonel Gaillard could be withdrawn and brought back here, sir. Some new appointment can be found. The Judge Advocate might well be satisfied.’

  Vaughan looked past him. ‘It is without honour, Claud. Bring a chap back from the war he’s helped to fight for so long, one with a D.S.O. to his credit – how would you feel if it were you?’

  Porter looked at the file. ‘I’d be more concerned if it were you, sir.’ He was aware of Vaughan’s anger and anxiety, and felt only compassion for him. A marine’s marine. But no match for the tactics of Whitehall and Fleet Street.

  Vaughan said bluntly, ‘What would you suggest? Speak as a friend if you like, no strings.’

  ‘It is almost certain that a full colonel will be appointed to an enlarged Commando. In fact, I did hear that Colonel Fitzroy was in line for it.’

  Vaughan studied him thoughtfully. ‘Alex Fitzroy, eh? Knew he’d do well when he married his colonel’s daughter.’ He frowned. ‘He could do it, all right.’

  Porter relaxed very slightly. He always took great pleasure in seeing Vaughan at his best. No list or file could match his true strength, his gift for picking out a name or recalling a face. Or some cheeky subaltern who had married his colonel’s only daughter.

  Vaughan took a few paces across the box-like room. ‘Now, if young Blackwood had a bit more seniority . . .’ He grinned. ‘But he don’t!’

  Porter looked surreptitiously at his watch, and thought of what he had heard concerning Flight Officer Joanna Gordon, and the wrist watch which had been returned to her. A lucky girl. And so was Blackwood, given the chance . . .

  It came to him quite suddenly. Blackwood had disliked Gaillard from the outset, ever since he had been appointed to the new company, and perhaps before that. Personalities clashed as often in the Corps as in any other organisation, and Blackwood had made every effort to conceal his true feelings. But they had been revealed, however briefly . . .

  He said, ‘In all fairness to Lieutenant-Colonel Gaillard, I think he should receive some advance warning of a possible regrouping. Otherwise, he would think it out of line if he were left completely in the dark.’

  Vaughan passed his chair and patted his shoulder as he went. ‘I agree. Trident will be pulled back soon. They paved the way, they were the first. It’s the obvious time for it!’

  Porter sat in silence, impressed and saddened by Vaughan’s struggle with himself, his sense of responsibility to those men, some of whom had probably died even as they spoke in this stuffy concrete box under London.

  Vaughan said quietly, ‘It was so different in that other war. Men you cared about, loved even.’ He tried to smile. ‘Some right bastards too. But you saw them every day, knew them, good and bad. And you were there when they bought it, so many of them that you stopped asking yourself how it would happen. You only wondered when.’ He waved one arm, seeming to embrace all of them. ‘Now I have to sit and watch from a distance, snug and safe. Different war, but the same men.’ He reached for his cap. ‘The weapons are dirtier, that’s all, Claud.’

  He paused in the doorway, filling it.

  ‘I’ll be at lunch with the admiral. You’ve got the number.’ Still he lingered, as though uncertain. ‘You’ll deal with Gaillard, won’t you?’

  Porter picked up the file and looked at it, and murmured, ‘I think he already knows, sir.’ But he was alone.

  Captain Mike Blackwood tossed the shaving water from his mug into a pile of wreckage and dabbed his face with a piece of towelling. It was none too clean, but, like the hot water Archer had scrounged from an army field kitchen, it seemed a luxury. He raised his steel shaving mirror and held it to the light. The first proper shave for . . . he frowned, trying to remember . . . ten days. Days of almost continuous vigilance, exchanging fire with a retreating enemy. He must not forget all that because of a few moments of rest.

  He looked around the room. It had been a cottage, unremarkable, and no different from all the others he had seen. This village had been fought over in the first full days of combat, and it was little more than rubble now. He found himself thinking, not for the first time, about the people who had once lived here, and if they might one day return to rebuild their houses and resume those hard, simple lives. A shirt, still dripping from Archer’s efforts, hung in a shaft of sunlight; it might still be damp when he put it on again, but it would be clean.

  He heard Archer whistling quietly to himself as he completed his ritual of stripping and cleaning his rifle, and was amused by his apparent satisfaction when he had used the pull-through and squinted along the barrel. He bent down to replace the mirror in his battledress pocket. All the old sweats joked about it. Over the heart to stop a bullet. Not bloody likely, they said. But they all did it.

  Force Trident had been pulled back from the line, wherever that was. In Sicily it could be any building, or any hill, day or night. You just had to keep going.

  He had watched the danger weld his marines into something more than a weapon, had witnessed their growing self-dependence and determination, and sudden acts of incredible courage.

  Now the war was at a distance, with only the far-off rumble of artillery and the vapour trails of friendly aircraft cutting across a clear sky. At a distance. Or so it seemed in this battered village with its unpronounceable name.

  He had seen plenty of prisoners being escorted back to the beaches where they had first waded ashore; they had all been Italians so far. The only Germans they had seen had been dead.

  Ten days. Was it possible? Since those first wild moments when they had linked up with Canadian patrols, and had pushed inland to occupy the high ground. By taking it at the very beginning of the attack, they had given a very necessary protection to the beach perimeter.

  They had lost twelve men killed, and sometimes now it was hard to recall their faces, let alone their names. A pair of boots beneath a blanket, an outthrust hand. It was better that way.

  Archer handed him a mug of steaming tea, the same mug he had used for shaving.

  ‘All the comforts of ’ome, sir!’ Nothing seemed to get him down.

  Just three days ago they had received a supporting bombardment from the navy. A monitor, the Roberts, her big fifteen-inch guns mounted in a high turret like tusks, had fired her shells far inland to pound the enemy’s artillery and armour into scrap. She could not be much different from the monitors at Gallipoli, about which his father had spoken, slow, ugly, but, to the troops ashore, so reassuring.

  His father had also told him of the moment when the fleet had been withdrawn from the peninsula because of the arrival of U-Boats in
the Mediterranean. ‘When we saw the sea empty of our ships, we knew there was no way forward for us and the P.B.I.’

  Each time Roberts had fired, he had heard Archer counting off the seconds, and once he had said, ‘Bit too close for comfort, that one!’

  Most of the wounded had been moved to the beaches and were probably in hospital by now. Lieutenant Hannah had been given a hero’s send-off, and was expected to make a good recovery.

  Gaillard had mentioned the incident only once. ‘He was a bloody fool to risk his life for a man already as good as dead.’ He had looked up, his eyes like dark buttons in the sunlight. ‘And you were an even bigger one for going after him! As my acting second-in-command you are important, not only to me but to the men who rely on us. Bear that in mind in the future!’

  He was right, of course, and Blackwood knew it from his own experience. He also knew that he could not have acted otherwise.

  There were reports of more reinforcements arriving shortly; there was never any shortage of rumours. Eat, sleep, keep your head down, and survive. The rest was rumour.

  Archer watched him over the rim of his own mug. It was so quiet compared with the past few days he could hardly credit it. Like all the traffic stopping on Armistice Day in the East End; no matter what you were doing, you all stopped. He could remember his father in his police uniform, very erect and strangely sad. Bus and tram drivers getting down from their cabs to stand in silence. He had often thought about the Great War as it must have been . . . not the war the boozers bragged about in the Salmon and Ball on a Friday night after they’d been paid, but the unspeakable truth. And the officers, what had made them different? Archer had once competed for a Blackwood medal at the barracks, and thought it must be quite a load to carry, coming from a family like that. He thought of his friend, Ted Pratt, whom he had seen earlier cadging food from the army. He smiled. Pratt . . . it was the right name for him. But even he had his moments. Like the buzz he had started. Sergeant Paget had heard him going on about it, and had shut him up smartish. He knew that the sergeant and Captain Blackwood were pretty close. You could feel it. Like old mates, with only the barrier of rank which no outsider could ever grasp.