He had meant to do nothing more than look, gasp an abject apology, and return to the conservatory. Just to look at her, once, had been his dream for so long it had to be realized. Her reaction, so different from the angry surprise he had expected, had taken his breath away. For a moment he had ceased acting, and been genuinely afraid of what he had done. But only for a moment. The sight of her lying there, smiling at him, of her breasts, so much fuller than he had expected them to be, and her buttocks, her pale silky pubic patch and her long legs, even the slight stretch marks that discoloured her pouting belly, had made him harder than ever before in his life. The idea that she actually wanted him to make love to her had caused him to droop again with apprehension, but he had soon been ready again, and by then she had been assisting him, sliding down his trousers and putting her hands inside. His entire life to that moment had never possessed a moment like that — but it had immediately been surpassed when she had allowed him to touch her in turn.
Then memory became fuzzy, as they had writhed against each other in a huge spasm of damp warmth, and he had been aware mostly of touching and feeling, rather than seeing and knowing. Oddly, his principal recollection was of his tunic, which he had not had the time to take off, being stained with the milk oozing from her nipples as he had hugged her too tightly. She had been amused at that. ‘My baby,’ she had said. ‘My baby. You must come to Mother again, some time.’
‘Oh, yes,’ he had promised.
He had not been able to. Even when the regiment had paused for that one night in the depot, there had been no time. But he had written her a letter, explaining. And when next he was home he would see her. He had no doubt about that. Because there was so much to do and to say to her. She had to love him, the way she had given herself to him. Of course she was a lot older than he, and as Ian Mackinder’s widow, light years wealthier, he had no doubt. And he was a long way from twenty-one. What Grandpa would say were he to announce he wanted to marry Annaliese Mackinder did not bear thinking about. Or the General, for that matter. But he would be twenty-one, eventually; when that happened, he was prepared to face even the General. Because if she loved him, as she did, all things had to be possible.
‘Visitors ashore,’ rang through the ship’s Tannoy. ‘Visitors ashore.’
‘Just like if we were taking a bloody pleasure cruise,’ Payne commented.
‘Personnel to the upper decks if desired,’ came another voice, that of Sergeant Butler.
‘Let’s go,’ Griffiths said, and led them into the corridor, which was suddenly jammed with men, all trying to gain the stairs leading up. Christ, if we were torpedoed, Bert thought. None of us would ever get up from down here in time. It was the first time he had ever been aware of being afraid. Not even when he had watched those fellows brewing up in that fierce tank battle in Flanders, during the retreat to the coast, had he been actually afraid. But the sea was an alien element to him. And he had so much to live for.
He was carried upwards in the flood of men, and reached the deck, to stare through the evening at the blacked-out houses of Plymouth, too many of them just gaunt shells as a result of German bombing raids. There were thousands of people out there, on the other side of the fence which protected the dock area, going about their business, making tea and reading the newspapers, listening to the wireless and perhaps even making love, apparently unaware that several hundred men were at that moment embarking to fight for their lives; on the dock beneath him Bert could see only a handful of stevedores and policemen.
‘Bit different to the last time, eh, Bert?’
Bert came to attention. Fergus Mackinder had this habit of treating him as a friend. An inferior friend, of course. But still a friend. ‘Yes, sir,’ he agreed.
In October 1939 there had been the regimental band playing, and cheering crowds. Not a sneaking away into the dusk. Just a year ago, he thought. What a year!
‘Well, we must be sure to finish the job and get home again in a hurry,’ the adjutant said. ‘Eh, Bert?’
‘Yes, sir!’
‘Because when we do, I’m going to be married, Bert.’
‘Are you, sir? Congratulations. May I ask to whom, sir?’
‘Why, to my brother’s widow. We got engaged two days ago. Seemed sort of natural, don’t you know? Good night, Bert.’
*
‘Action stations! Action stations!’
The words pumped through the ship, and the troopers rolled out of their bunks, cursing and swearing, pulled on their clothing and grabbed their rifles, before gathering in a huddle in the corridor and making their way up the stairs to the deck.
This was becoming routine, now. There had been seven U-boat alarms since leaving Plymouth. There had been three in Biscay, and each had been terrifying. Then they had gained the security of Gibraltar, sheltering beneath both the rock and the warmest blue skies most of them had ever seen. For two days they had basked, the entire regiment being allowed ashore to bathe in the sea, feeling like tourists — and very properly dressed in the costumes, which concealed them from shoulder to thigh, that had been issued with their tropical kit — while the population had stared.
Then they had been on their way again. Only four days to Malta, they had been told. But they had been a long four days: a submarine alarm every night.
They emerged into the darkness of the decks and fell in at their assembly points. Hopefully, if the ship was torpedoed, most of the men would be saved; they had been assured that there were sufficient lifeboat places for them all. But once again they would be without tanks, and as useful as a regiment of ants.
The utter darkness of the warm night was a place of sounds rather than sights. They could hear the whoop whoop of destroyers charging to and fro, and they could see the bright phosphorescent gleam of the wakes. As their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness they could make out the shapes of the other ships in the convoy, lumbering along, every man in the fleet with his fingers crossed. They saw no submarines, and no torpedo tracks. And there were no explosions.
‘Just another false alarm, eh, Corporal?’ asked the adjutant.
Bert was on the outside of his men, against the rail, and here was Mr Bloody Mackinder pushing his way through the throng. Doing his duty, of course. Mr Bloody Mackinder was always doing his duty.
No doubt he would do his duty when he had put his ring on Annaliese’s finger and crawled on to her belly, Bert thought. But suppose he never did? Suppose this ship were to lurch suddenly, and someone fall against him, and pitch him over the side? It could happen.
But not in a calm sea. And not Bert Manly-Smith, he thought sadly. It was not his type of thing...perhaps in North Africa. But perhaps not even then. Because the poor chap wasn’t at fault. The fault was at least partly his, for not making the effort to go up to Broad Acres when they had been at the depot. There had been no time. But he could have made time. The real fault was Annaliese’s. German bitch, he thought, as he had thought a hundred times since the evening they had left Plymouth. She had taken what she had wanted from him, but she had never intended to give anything in return. She was a Mackinder, and he was a common soldier. So, she would marry her dead husband’s brother. Good luck to her. But he would know more about her than Mr Bloody Fergus Mackinder ever would.
How he wished they were on their way to fight Germans, rather than Italians.
*
‘Aboukir Bay,’ remarked Johnny Wilkinson, peering at the coastline unfolding itself before them through his binoculars. ‘My God, Fergus, what history lies over there.’
Wilkinson was given to flights of fancy, Fergus well knew. There was a difference of just six months in their commissions, which was the only reason Johnny was Colonel and he was adjutant. They had served together and fought together long enough to be friends. But it was still a grim thought that he might have to follow Johnny Wilkinson through his career, step by step, six months behind.
‘It looks bloody hot,’ he remarked.
‘Feels hot, too,’ the Col
onel agreed. ‘Makes a change from shivering in Flanders, eh?’
They had been wearing tropical kit for several days, the men seeming oddly weedy in their shorts as their bare knees glowed either too white or too sunburned; too many of them were knock-kneed, a strange failing for cavalry troopers, even if most of them had never sat a horse. Too many of them were calfless as well, and sadly lacking in shoulder. Perhaps the sun and the heat would fill them out, and broaden them out. The old regiment had been composed of professional soldiers, men who had been fighting fit and proud of it. Too many of these recruits had never been truly fit in their lives in depression-ridden England.
All things to be remedied, Fergus reflected — even if they did not seem to bother the CO. Wilkinson was one of those men who ambled through life with good-humoured insouciance. There was much virtue in this attitude. Fergus had never seen Johnny Wilkinson either in a flap or in a hurry. He remembered him at Dunkirk lighting his pipe and saying ‘Damnation!’ when the blast from a bomb had knocked him over and blown out his match. That was the only time Fergus had ever heard him swear. Such a relaxed attitude undoubtedly communicated itself to his men.
But Johnny Wilkinson had not watched his brother killed and then posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, and Johnny Wilkinson did not have a father named Murdoch Mackinder who possessed every decoration in the book save the Military Cross — he had never had the time for that — or a line of ancestors every one of whom had been a soldier of the utmost distinction. Johnny Wilkinson was not in a hurry, to avenge and to follow.
And Johnny Wilkinson was not engaged. There was another reason for haste. It was odd, that after their conversation back in August he had had no real doubts Annaliese would say yes when he asked her, yet he had still been as nervous as a kitten. Time had been so short, and he had been still feeling the effects of Mom’s and Dad’s obvious if carefully muted unease about the idea. He didn’t know if they might have somehow forbidden the concept in his absence.
But she had said yes without hesitation, and he had held her in his arms for the first time. A moment to treasure. There might have been more. Almost he had felt that she would have welcomed him in her room that night. It would have been simply done, with the servants and Aunt Philippa all safely asleep. And he had certainly been tempted. But then he had reflected that he was Fergus Mackinder. When he took his wife to bed it would be on her wedding night. And if Annaliese had in her past been forced to yield to men’s passions, she would be the more reassured to know that her future husband was both an officer and a gentleman.
He was sure she had been relieved at his decision.
So, all to fight for, and win for. He had every intention of doing that — so long as Johnny Wilkinson didn’t slow him up too much.
*
‘Alexandria,’ Colonel Wilkinson said, sitting outside his tent and gazing at the rooftops and minarets, which were some four miles away. ‘Do you realize that city is more than two thousand years old, Fergus? I can hardly wait to have a closer look at it.’
Fergus thought they had looked at it closely enough already. The transports had been piloted through the myriad shipping in the huge harbour, their decks crowded with eager men looking the height of absurdity in their sun helmets with the sky-blue flashes and with their stockings rolled down just above their boots. They had disembarked on to even more crowded quays, surrounded by fellaheen, who mixed with the British officials and sailors and soldiers, shouting questions, offering advice, calling for ‘baksheesh’, and stinking to high heaven, while their women, surprisingly unveiled, had gazed at the troopers from doelike eyes concealed by long black lashes. The rest of them was entirely concealed as well, by their haiks, or long cloaks, but when they moved they revealed shapely brown feet, bare except for their sandals, and no one could doubt there was a lot of shapely brown body under each haik. The men had rustled with anticipation, which was something to concern any adjutant. But he was more concerned with the apparent lack of security: every one of the spectators might have been an Italian spy.
They, and everyone else, had watched the tanks being swung ashore, leaving no one in any doubt that this was an armoured regiment; some of the bastards had even attempted to climb up and look inside, and had had to be driven away almost physically. The crowds had cheered as the men had manned their machines and trucks, the engines had been started — with some anxiety after nearly two weeks at sea — and the regiment had moved off in a clank of exhaust fumes. Dad had told him of landing in places like Bombay and Berbera and Basra, and marching the regiment behind its band through the streets of those tropical towns with the maximum of pomp and ceremony...but where was the point in leaving England in such secrecy to arrive here in such publicity?
They had rolled through the town, the trucks with the staff and the medical section and the mechanics and the cooks and the rest of the support leading the tanks, expecting to move straight up to the line. According to the reports they had been given, the Italians were at a place called Sidi Barrani, fifty miles inside the Egyptian border, and only two hundred and fifty miles from Alexandria itself. But outside the city they had been met by a staff major, who had directed them to pitch the tents with which they had been issued on this benighted spot. The men had been delighted. There was food already cooking, they were on firm land again and utterly safe from any submarine, and they were situated on the edge of a vast beach.
‘I’d mount a perimeter guard, if I were you, Colonel,’ the Major had said. ‘These people are absurdly light-fingered. But you chaps have been in India, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, and if we saw anyone not wearing uniform prowling around the camp we blew his head off,’ Fergus said, already thoroughly bad tempered.
‘My dear fellow, you can’t do that here,’ the Major protested. ‘Our business is to keep the Gyppoes happy. And I’ll tell you, it hasn’t been easy since the Eyeties made their move.’
‘So when do we go up to the front?’ Fergus asked. ‘Well, I suppose we can move you in a month.’
‘A month?’ he bawled.
‘My dear fellow, nothing’s likely to happen before then. The Eyeties advanced with five divisions against our two, last month. Well, we had to fall back, of course, although we made them pay for every step they took. So they got across the border, to Sidi Barrani, and there they dug in. Would you believe it? They haven’t moved another step since then.’
‘So they’re waiting for reinforcements,’ Fergus said. ‘They could start advancing again at any moment.’
‘Well, that’s possible, I suppose. If they do, you’ll get sent up, of course. But before then, your chaps have to be acclimatized. Can’t go rushing off into battle, don’t you know, without acclimatization. Next thing, half your command will be down with sunstroke.’
‘If we stay here too long, half our bloody command will be down with VD,’ Fergus growled.
‘Ah, that’s something you have to watch,’ the Major agreed. ‘I have here a list of the best houses. I’d recommend you have that mimeographed and distributed amongst your NCOs. Oh, and by the way, old man, if I might make a suggestion, don’t let your men loose except in parties of at least half a dozen, and tell them to stay off the wine. They won’t, but they might drink a little less. Oh, and you’ll have to learn how to manage in the desert, eh?’
‘Manage in the desert?’ Fergus demanded.
‘I’ll send along a man. Sergeant-Major Blair. Just the fellow. It’s not as easy as it seems. Well, Colonel Wilkinson, I hope you’ll be comfortable. Couldn’t ask for much more, eh?’ He had gestured at the sea, which lay virtually at their feet in deep blue profusion, the sky, which contained not a cloud to suggest that it ever rained, and the desert, which stretched in a brown miasma inland for as far as the eye could see. ‘I’ll bet it’s raining at home. Oh, by the way, the boss will probably be up to inspect you in a day or two. I’ll try to get you fair warning. Toodle-oo.’
He had boarded his staff car and bounced away, leaving F
ergus furious and even Wilkinson slightly irritated.
‘The fellow seems to think we’re wet behind the ears,’ the Colonel remarked, following which he had sunk into the camp chair provided by his batman and made his remark about Alexandria. To which he now added, ‘The chaps look happy enough.’
The ‘chaps’ were having the time of their lives. They had pitched their tents, in orderly rows which reminded Fergus of bivouacking on the North West Frontier, save for the mass of parked tanks and trucks behind (instead of horses), had stripped off, and were splashing about in the sea like children — no costumes today: Fergus reflected that if he had thought their knees too white he hardly had a description for the myriad naked backsides being presented to his gaze.
‘I’ll set sentries,’ he decided, and rounded up his squadron commanders. ‘Captain Bentley, A Squadron will be responsible for the western perimeter. That faces the enemy, incidentally. Captain Allack, B Squadron will take the southern perimeter, the desert flank. Captain Romerill, C Squadron will take the eastern perimeter, looking towards Alexandria. At the moment, that’s the most dangerous flank, in my opinion. I want sentries patrolling, day and night. Understood?’
‘Understood,’ they agreed.
‘As soon as we can get them out of the water,’ Allack suggested.
They had all been lieutenants only six months ago. Promotion was clearly going to be rapid in this war — but it was also going to sort out the men from the boys.
‘I suggest you do that now, Mr Allack,’ Fergus told him. ‘What is the situation as regards leave, sir?’ inquired Romerill. ‘The lads have been asking.’
‘I’ll organize a system of passes. Tomorrow.’
The Triumph Page 5
