Love For An Enemy

by Love For An Enemy (retail) (epub)

  ‘Mitcheson.’ He pronounced it distinctly, separating its three syllables. ‘Ned Mitcheson.’

  ‘Commander Ned Mitcheson, Lucia. My stepdaughter, Commander; Lucia Caracciolo. She has been my stepdaughter for precisely—’ checking his wristwatch – ‘one hundred and ten minutes. It’s why I’m so conscious of the relationship – so proud of it.’ Smiling at his wife. ‘I have a great deal to be proud of. As you can see for yourself eh?’

  He was a bit heavy-handed, Mitcheson thought. Even for a Frog. But a nice man, he wasn’t just saying it, he’d meant all that…

  Then, facing Lucia, he’d forgotten him.

  3

  Recollection came episodically, in and out of dream. She was in his mind because he wanted her there, hauled her back into it when she’d slipped away. And around her, the inseparable images, scenes, emotions… Half awake now, very little element of dream left in it. Probably more than half: distantly aware of peripherals, the familiar background noise and motion. So he hadn’t long, had to reckon on disruption at any moment, clung meanwhile to the memory of that first evening with her in the Auberge Bleue, Alexandria’s most stylish nightclub-restaurant, to which a bunch of them had gone on from the wedding. Himself and Currie, Lucia and her cousins Solange and Candice – the latter having overcome her mother’s objections that she was far too young for nightclubs only after Currie personally guaranteed that he’d look after her and bring her home before midnight – and the brother, the opinionated Bertrand. Seydoux junior was twenty-three, pale and heavy-set, recently promoted by his father to manage one of the smaller family businesses; the promotion had gone to his head, Lucia told Mitcheson.

  It was already happening: had begun to happen in those first moments at the Seydoux house. As if they’d always known of each other, had been as it were flying blind until that moment an hour or two earlier, their first sight of each other and Jules de Gavres’ rather unctuous ‘My stepdaughter, Commander…’

  Stepdaughter in an orange calf-length dress with shadowy flower-shapes on it. Nothing about it that even her grandmother (if she’d had one) could reasonably have shaken a stick at, but still sensationally revealing. To his eye, anyway. The beholder’s – and already the desirer’s. He’d thought later, watching her when she’d been dancing with a friend of Bertrand’s – an Italian, by the look and sound of him – that even wrapped in a horse-blanket she’d have knocked you sideways. While in the tactile sense, when he was dancing with her – chez Seydoux, and later at the Auberge Bleue for more or less the rest of the night, except for the supper interval during which he barely noticed what he was eating, kept his eyes on her, on the response in her own briefer, flickering glances, watching in particular the way her lips moved when she spoke or smiled, and her neck and throat – so slender, delicate, incredibly alluring – she’d had him giddy, on the ropes… She’d whispered when they were dancing again, ‘You shouldn’t look at me so much.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they’re watching us.’ He was holding her closely but when he loosened his hold he found that she didn’t move away. Even though there’d been a moment of some embarrassment early on, until he’d made a necessary adjustment, and she’d clearly been aware of it. She told him: ‘Candice is a sweet creature, I adore her, but you can see she’s bubbling over with excitement, she’ll be tattling to everyone!’

  ‘Est-ce d’importance?’

  ‘Is it not to you?’

  ‘Candice’s bavardage – du tout. But this – toi, Lucia – nothing more so, ever…’

  Currie left early, in fulfilment of his promise to take Candice home by midnight. Mitcheson and Lucia were dancing, didn’t see him leave, but he’d left some money in an envelope on which he’d scrawled with Solange’s eye-pencil Good night, sweet prince. Will settle later if there’s any shortfall, and Bertrand suggested ‘We’ll all be leaving soon, uh?’ Despite his having let Currie leave the party when he, Bertrand, could just as well have taken his younger sister home, let Josh stay here with Solange. Mitcheson checked the time – he’d had no idea what it might be – and asked Lucia how she felt; she told her cousin, ‘You go, if you wish.’ Bertrand did wish: he had work to do in the morning, he said, responsibilities… ‘If you don’t mind?’ This to Solange, and more of a demand than a query; Lucia murmured ‘Pauvre petite’, but Solange shrugged, making the best of it, and whispered something that had them both giggling as they kissed goodnight. Lucia wouldn’t tell him afterwards what the joke had been; but they were alone then, dancing, forgetting the time again – until she pointed out ‘We’re almost the last, you know?’

  In fact by the time he’d settled the bill, which was enormous, they were the last. But there was a gharry waiting, and one bit of the dream which he felt he’d remember when he was ninety – even if that was begging a rather obvious question, in the summer of 1941 – was the clatter of the horse’s hooves and the cab’s creaking in this night-time quiet, Lucia’s arms and scent and her hungry mouth, lithe body under its skimpy covering, and the doubt in his mind – acute to start with but fading as the minutes passed – as to whether pushing his luck now might wreck it in the longer term. The nag slowing to a walk, then; pressure of her hands flat against his shoulders, her murmur, ‘We’re here Ned, we must be very quiet now, please.’ He helped her down, paid the gharry-man – probably over-tipped him, since there was none of the customary grumbling, only some reference to Allah – and followed her into a softly lit, marbled entrance and wide, curving stairs.

  There were four apartments on the ground floor and four more above them, apparently. A squarish building, he guessed most of it concrete with marble surfacing, but he wouldn’t have cared if it had been a mud hut with a hole in the roof to let the smoke out. She turned to look down at him from a higher stair with a finger to her lips – looking so absolutely stunning in that pose that it had become yet another snapshot in his memory, in retrospect almost as erotic a picture as any that came later… But tiptoeing then: at any rate keeping the heels of his white buckskin shoes off that shiny-hard surface.

  The front door of her flat was blue, but in this light all one saw was that it was darker than the wall around it. Her key turned in the lock, and she put a hand behind her to draw him in. Pushing the door shut then, very quietly.

  ‘Lucia—’

  Resisting gently… ‘Viens…’

  No light, except the dawn’s through big windows; she’d kicked her shoes off and crossed the room to draw the curtains back. Soft carpet underfoot, light-coloured. It seemed to be quite a large flat. In fact, as she explained next day, she’d been living here with her mother; the flat had been bought for them originally by Maurice Seydoux when they’d arrived from Italy in the summer of 1938. Now that Maman would be living in Cairo, it was Lucia’s entirely.

  Bedroom. They’d passed other doors. She left him again to open these curtains too, then came back to him, into his arms. ‘How long do you have?’

  ‘Oh, for ever!’

  Slight exaggeration: but it was a glorious fact that he didn’t have to be back on board next day. This day, now. He’d cleared himself for a night ashore, put a toothbrush in his pocket and booked a room at the Cecil, after Currie had warned that the party at the Seydoux house might well go on all night. And as it turned out, Lucia didn’t have to go to work in the morning either. She worked for the Swedish consul as his secretary-assistant, but there was no pressure of work at this time and he was a very easy-going boss. She’d only have to telephone.

  She took her mouth off Mitcheson’s. ‘For ever?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Let’s believe it. I want to believe it.’

  ‘Want you—’

  In mid-morning, in the sunlit and predominantly white room – white bed, carpets, cupboards, off-white walls – the dress which she’d let fall on that spot where they’d been standing made a vivid splash of orange. But there was so little of it – as much as you’d have thought might make a head-scarf, a banda
nna… Looking at it over her shoulder – she was sitting on the bed cross-legged, straight-backed, facing the window and the sun, and he’d crawled up behind her to nuzzle the exquisitely sculptured angle of her neck and shoulder, cupping her breasts in his palms and feeling the nipples harden into them – squinting at that brilliant little scrap of cloth, which incredibly had enclosed this – this perfection, which was now turning in his enclosing arms, squirming round to face him, and one hand moving to feel his jaw: ‘You need to shave. I’ll be in ribbons.’ Then: ‘Why isn’t this blond, like on your head?’

  ‘Head’s not blond either. Sort of light brown, gets bleached by the sun, that’s all. Lucia, you’re the most beautiful – by a million miles, even in my wildest dreams – you are a dream, you’re thrilling, even just to look at… Tell you honestly, I never—’

  ‘Tell me honestly one thing. Are you married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Engaged?’

  ‘No. What about you? Involved at all?’

  ‘Yes. Now I am.’

  ‘Damn right.’ Falling back, pulling her with him. ‘Damn right you are!’

  * * *

  ‘Captain, sir—’

  He was already awake: and knew from the messenger’s tone of voice that this was no emergency, no reason to fling himself off the bunk and to the ladder. Remembering then, too, that he’d scheduled a course alteration for 0200 and had told them to shake him at ten minutes to the hour.

  ‘Ten to two, sir.’

  ‘Thanks, Cooper.’

  Check the log first, to see that distance-run coincided well enough with the mileage she should have covered. The log, in fact, being what was really under test. Behind him meanwhile Cooper was shaking Teasdale for his watch. Mitcheson pushed off from the chart-table, muttered as he headed for the control room ladder: ‘Tell the officer of the watch I’m coming up.’ Into the stream of cold air sucking down through the tower: climbing into it. Wind and sea had been rising during the past few hours; when he’d turned in, lulling himself to sleep with thoughts of Lucia, there’d been none of the slamming and crashing which was all around him now as he climbed. Spray flying like a burst of hail as he pulled himself up into the bridge… ‘All right, Sub?’

  ‘Just about to blow round, sir. Hadn’t really noticed, but it’s getting a bit wet. Might leave it for Teasdale now, though.’

  ‘Do that.’ ‘Blowing round’ meant opening the low-pressure valves on the tanks and running the blower for a while to replace air which tended to leak out when she tossed around. The new watch could see to it, after they’d taken over. He was looking out to port, where Tobruk should have been on a bearing of about 220 degrees, but there was nothing to be seen, no searchlights in action; the defenders were being allowed a few hours’ sleep, evidently. The check wasn’t vital, anyway, it was only sound practice to take advantage of whatever navigational aids might offer, since you could never know for sure when you’d get another. If there should be a particularly heavy mist in the early morning, for instance, when Spartan would be creeping into the gulf with the mainland coast close on her port hand and shallows and islands ahead.

  But there’d be no mist, with this wind.

  ‘Bring her round to two-seven-oh, Sub.’

  McKendrick ducked to the pipe. ‘Control room! Port ten!’

  ‘Port ten, sir. Ten of port wheel on, sir.’

  ‘Steer two-seven-zero.’

  ‘Two-seven-zero, sir… Permission to relieve officer of the watch, sir?’

  Mitcheson said: ‘No. Wait till I’m down.’ McKendrick was giving the helmsman that answer when the Tobruk air defences sprang back into action: searchlight-beams lancing up into the night sky then swinging over, fingering around in search of attackers approaching from the south or southwest. Thuds of distant AA fire then: from a distance of about fifteen miles. Sighting over the gyro repeater, Mitcheson found that the bearing was indeed within half a degree of 220.

  ‘All right, Sub. I’ll send him up.’

  Small as the course alteration had been, there was noticeably more roll on her now, with the weather just that much broader on the bow. He hoped the wind would hold to give them a broken surface in the gulf when they got in there and needed to have the periscope up for longish periods.

  Teasdale, dressed for his watch and sipping at a mug of cocoa, was waiting in the control room. ‘Morning, sir.’

  ‘Morning, pilot. You can go up. Tobruk’s just switched on the illuminations again. You’ll need to blow round, presently.’

  He saw that Lockwood, the second coxswain, was P.O. of this watch. Although he was only a leading seaman, he was about due for advancement and meanwhile performed some of the duties of that higher rate. He asked Mitcheson: ‘Want kye, sir?’

  ‘No, thanks. Rather get my head down again. Busy day coming.’

  Lockwood nodded. A big man, with his legs straddled against the roll and an arm up over his head, that hand latched over a rung of the ladder. ‘Reckon we’ll find a target in there, sir?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine. If we don’t, though, there’s always another day.’

  Letting go of the ladder, he displayed that hand with two fingers crossed. Telling the messenger: ‘Shake the watch, Scouse.’ Mitcheson went on into the darkened wardroom, straightened the heap of blanket on his bunk and climbed up. His next shake – barring emergencies between now and then – would be at 0420. By that time Spartan would be entering the Gulf of Bomba, and it made sense to have her dived and out of sight well before the darkness thinned. If anything was going on in there, for instance, there might well be patrol boats around.

  Thinking of Lockwood again, the sickening loss of his young family in that Devonport bombing, and the stolid way he’d taken the shock or seemed to… He’d got very drunk, that day – causing no-one any trouble, his shipmates had taken care of that, looked after him; it would have been their tots of rum – ‘sippers’ or ‘gulpers’, depending on individuals’ generosity – that had been supplied as anaesthetic in the first place. He’d had about thirty-six hours’ sleep, and when he’d been back on his feet he’d assured Mitcheson in a private interview that he was fit for duty, did not want the compassionate leave which he could have had if he’d wanted, definitely preferred to remain in Spartan and ‘get on with it’. Meaning – as he’d confided to C.P.O. Willis, the coxswain, Willis then telling Mitcheson – that all he wanted was to get even. Drown Krauts. Or Eyefies, as second best, but preferably Krauts. It was no kind of flannel, Willis had said: ‘No bull, just ’ow it’s took ’im, like.’

  * * *

  ‘Five of starboard wheel on, sir.’

  ‘Steer two-seven-five.’ He glanced towards the ’planes-men. ‘Thirty feet.’

  ‘Thirty feet, sir—’

  The helmsman centred his wheel, taking that small amount of rudder off her. ‘Course two-seven-five, sir.’ And the hydroplanes were tilting, to bring her nosing up closer to the surface. It was six-thirty: he’d dived her two hours ago, anticipating the dawn and with the battery fully charged, and since then she’d been paddling slowly southwestward at forty feet. She’d be only about four miles offshore now, in the eastern approaches to the gulf. Navigation wasn’t solely by dead-reckoning; there was a continuous check from soundings – depths – from the echo-sounder. It was on the forward bulkhead, to the helmsman’s right, drawing a continuous outline of the seabed under them. Depths were shown on the chart and you could match the two, know fairly accurately at any moment how far you’d come.

  Mitcheson looked round at the artificer – it was Fergusson, known to his mates as ‘Baldy’ – raising his hands slightly, and the periscope came glittering up.

  ‘Thirty feet, sir.’

  He grabbed the periscope’s handles, jerked them open. They were folded up when not actually in use so that the ’scope would fit into the well in which it lived when it was lowered. There was a raised sill to the well, a rim a few inches high against which the toes of Mitcheson’s plimsol
ls pressed now as he swung around, making a fast all-round check… Then a second circuit, more slowly. Colourless, white-streaked sea splashing around the top glass: dawn-lit sky. No mist. Although it wasn’t fully light yet, when he trained the ’scope fine on the port quarter the spreading flush of the new day had him blinded.

  In high power, the desert coast was a low smear with no interesting features whatsoever. Unless one could muster any excitement over a pair of sandhills – which he looked for and found, having seen mention of them in the Pilot – Admiralty Sailing Directions. There should have been a watchtower to the right of them, but he couldn’t see it. When the light improved, maybe. Unless the military had knocked it down. A vaguely discernible headland just abaft the beam had to be Ras el-Carrats.

  He searched again for aircraft. Nothing. Didn’t want any either, in this shallow water. Sixteen fathoms – a hundred feet, say; so at periscope depth the submarine had about fifty feet of water under her. Not a lot to hide in, should the need arise.

  He stepped back, and the artificer sent the tube slithering down into its hole. Mitcheson reckoning that to be sure of not missing anything that might be worth seeing on this coast he was going to have to put it up at intervals of not more than five minutes, for say two minutes at a time. And Spartan’s track as he’d pencilled it on the chart – thirty-five miles of it, following this depth-contour – at say three knots… Well, the reconnaissance was going to take up all the daylight hours.

  Six-forty now.

  ‘Sub – I’ll take the rest of this watch. You can get your head down.’