This was Friday. She might well have taken the afternoon off from her job at the Swedish consulate. Would have, if she’d been going at all.
He’d brought Spartan in last evening – 20 September – an hour or two before sunset. Couldn’t have got ashore before this. Had tried to telephone, but there’d been no answer to the first few rings and he’d hung up then because his end of it – in the wardroom ante-room – hadn’t been all that private. There’d been a lot of detail to attend to, always was when you first got back. Then the delight of a bath, shave, clean gear, before a session with Captain (Submarines); and later – inevitably – a party in the wardroom bar. First night in from patrol: every single time you’d sworn you’d turn in early, but it had never happened yet.
He’d tried to get her on the ’phone again this morning, and early this afternoon, and still drawn blank. Moment of truth coming now, therefore – in the coolness of the apartment block, its marbled surfaces echoey as he ran up the stairs. On the upper landing, with her blue-painted front door in front of him, he took his cap off and pushed it under his left arm; then he was reaching to the bellpush, when the door jerked open.
‘Very well! Very well!’
Young male – narrow shiny-black head – backing out, shouting into the flat as he did so. An Italian, name of – an effort of memory produced it – Angelucci. Ettore Angelucci. A friend of Bertrand Seydoux’s, Lucia’s rather nauseating cousin. Mitcheson hadn’t seen this one since the wedding, when just minutes after he’d first set eyes on Lucia the Italian had butted into their conversation, asking her to dance with him, and she’d declined: ‘If you don’t mind, Ettore – not just this moment?’
He’d looked angry then, and he looked furious now. Throwing the door shut – slamming it then his face slackening in surprise, confronting Mitcheson.
‘Commander Mitch—’
‘Signor Angelucci, isn’t it.’ He didn’t smile.
‘But I thought—’
He’d cut that short. Mitcheson stared at him, thinking: Thought what? That I was away at sea? Ludicrous – the classic sailor’s homecoming; knock on the front door, nip round to the back and catch the bastard sneaking out… He reached past him, touched the bellpush. ‘If you’re quick, you might get the gharry I came in.’
‘Ah,’ A nod. ‘Quite so.’
Embarrassed, and off-balance: but still with that supercilious look about him. Really a stage Italian, Mitcheson thought, watching him strut away to the stairs. All he needed was a moustache with curly ends to it and a chestful of medals – and maybe an ice-cream cart… She had danced with him later, he remembered. Stiff-armed, and her responses obviously perfunctory. He remembered watching them for a moment and thinking: ‘No competition there.’
Wasn’t now, either. Not from that quarter. He turned back to the door, as Lucia re-opened it.
A glare of hostility: then a double-take…
‘Ned!’
She’d sagged against the door. Literally. She looked pale, huge-eyed: wearing well-cut white slacks and a blue-striped shirt that hung outside them. Then she was in his arms, inside the door; he shouldered it shut. ‘You all right?’
‘I will be – now. Ned, Ned—’
‘What was that about?’
‘Oh, nothing!’
‘Left with a flea in his ear, didn’t he – your friend Angelucci?’
‘I didn’t ask him to come – believe me. And he’s not my friend, not at all! He’s gone now, anyway – forget him. Ned, you’re back so soon!’
‘Sorry for the shock.’
‘Silly – not shock – but I might be dreaming, or—’
‘Shorter trip than usual. Got back last night, but I couldn’t ’ve got ashore till now. Lots to do, you know – always is, and – actually I did try to telephone, but fact is, I won’t be long in, this time.’
‘Here now, is what matters. If it’s true, I’m not hallucinating?’
‘You’re not. And you’re even lovelier than—’
‘Like a witch. Oh, God, I must look—’
‘—fantastic. That’s what. Lucia darling. I’ve thought of you every minute, every—’
‘Liar!’
‘Every spare minute, but—’
‘Me too.’
‘I won’t call you a liar, but—’
‘Believe it. All the time, Ned. I’ve only to think of you, and—’
‘Think hard now. Because I’m—’
‘I know.’ Moving against him, hard. ‘Think I don’t know?’ A small laugh: like a catch of breath… ‘Still can’t believe it. Thought you were hundreds of kilometres away. You got back last night?’
‘Evening. Tried telephoning, early on, but you must have been out. Then I tried to get through to you at your office this morning and the line was engaged all the time, and after lunch nobody answered. I was thinking you might’ve swanned off to Cairo.’
‘Well – listen…’
They were in the sitting room now – somehow. He’d stifled that – instead of listening – with his mouth on hers, the catch of her bra jumping open in the velvet hollow between her shoulder-blades. He pulled the lacy whisp out from under her shirt and started on the shirt’s fiddly little buttons, the warmth of her breasts against his hands through the cotton. Hands shaking now, all right… Up for air, from that long-lasting kiss. ‘Darling. Lucia, darling. You’re – God, you’re everything! Lucia – I love you. I’m in love with you. I’ve never felt like this in my life before.’ He had the shirt open; her breasts were round and firm, hard-nippled in his hands. ‘You’re so beautiful, there aren’t words. A man would weep—’
‘A man could go and lock the door.’
‘He could indeed.’ Stooping to kiss her breasts, their risen tips. ‘If he was super-human, so he could tear himself away—’
‘Please, be super-human?’
He guessed, on his way to do it, that her anxiety to have the door locked might have something to do with Angelucci – that she might imagine he’d be hanging round. In the last minutes he’d forgotten him, but the puzzle was back in mind now. It was a puzzle, too. When she’d protested that Angelucci was not her friend, she’d been telling nothing but the truth: there was no question, one knew it. So why would he have been here? And what would there be to row about?
He knew very little about Lucia’s private life or former associations – whoever there might have been. One could assume there would have been: she was twenty-three, stunningly attractive, and Alexandria was – Alexandria… She’d had one lover, she’d told him, in her last months in Italy when she’d been seventeen: ‘lover’ in his way of seeing it, she’d said, but in her own – in retrospect anyway – more rapist. He’d been a leader in some Youth movement, all the girls had been after him and she’d seen it as a feather in her cap to go out with him. Schoolgirl crush, in fact: and water under the bridge now, anyway: another country, another age, as irrelevant to Lucia herself as it was to him.
Mitcheson knew of course about her father – all that background, which did matter enormously, had influenced her profoundly – but much less about her life here in Egypt up to the time he’d met her. Partly because if there’d been romantic involvements he wouldn’t have wanted to know about them anyway, but more fundamentally because the nationality thing, however much one tried to ignore it, had been – still was – quite enough of a complication to be going on with. With the enemy on the Egyptian frontier – ‘at Alexandria’s gates’ was the popular journalistic cliché for it – and ‘the enemy’ including those who were – technically – her own people… Anything much beyond that seemed trivial, in comparison. It had been like this mutually and implicitly: a shared instinct, almost. Even an historic instinct: all down the ages, hadn’t it been more or less standard practice to keep the band playing loudly enough to drown out the thunder of the guns? An overdramatization, of course; but it wasn’t so far out: and in precisely that same area another aspect of this Angelucci business was that any connection with
Italians – other than with Lucia herself, who didn’t count as such – for a man in Mitcheson’s position might come under the heading of skating on thin ice.
He locked the door, went back to the sitting room.
‘Front door is locked, Mam’selle.’
Mam’selle wasn’t there. ‘Lucia?’
‘In here, Ned.’
Bedroom. She was flipping the coverlet off the pillows. Turning to face him: shirtless. If she’d looked somewhat waif-like ten minutes ago, she didn’t now. She looked – breathtaking. Asking him – unfastening the top of those smart white slacks – ‘Can you stay tonight?’
‘Afraid not. Have to be on board by cock-crow. Tomorrow night, though – if that suits you. Because as I said—’
‘Ned—’
‘It doesn’t?’
‘I don’t know how to tell you this. It’s too awful. My darling, if I’d thought there was the slightest chance you’d be back so soon—’
‘You’ve arranged to go up to Cairo?’
‘You see, I promised. And Maman was so delighted, at such short notice I don’t see how I could just—’
‘No. Of course not. You must go. In fact – as I said – I’d guessed you might have gone this afternoon.’
‘I would have. I’d fixed it at the office, everything. But Jules – my stepfather – was having to attend a big Gaullist meeting at the French Club at Ismailia – big dinner, important people, some from London even – and that was all right, I’d be with Maman and he’d be back with us tomorrow. But then—’
‘Change of plan?’
‘She had to go with him – the dinner needs a hostess, apparently – and they’re spending the night there. So I go up by the early morning train, get to them for lunch. I did promise, you see, and Maman’s so looking forward—’
‘Of course. You can’t possibly let her down.’
‘Oh, Ned—’
‘My good luck you didn’t leave before this. My fantastically good luck.’
She was naked except for minuscule white pants. He shut his eyes. ‘Except I can’t stand it. You’re too perfect. Too utterly exquisite.’
‘You are overdressed. As well as—’
‘I know. Been locking doors.’
She was in his arms: murmuring, ‘—as well as the most understanding, kindest…’ Kissing – putting a stop to the testimonial – and his hands all over her: this wasn’t the first time with her that he’d wished he had a dozen hands instead of only two. Recalling as from a distance that a moment ago he’d been about to ask her again about Ettore Angelucci – get it over and out of the way.
‘Ned—’ A shrill squawk. ‘Damn buttons!’
Brass ones – each with a crown and an anchor embossed on it. Hard, cold, abrasive… ‘Sorry.’
* * *
He woke slowly: in the belief at first that he was still in a dream. But waking into it, not out of it: her dark hair in his face, her soft breathing, her cheek damp on his chest, an arm round his neck and a leg across his thighs.
As fine a dream as you’d ever have. He thought, The only way to wake…
Except he was going to have to be back on board tonight – would have had to be anyway, having work to do in the morning. And that it wasn’t unlikely he’d have sailed for patrol again by the time she got back from Cairo. At least, that he wouldn’t get another chance to see her again before he sailed.
But count your blessings. She might have been there now.
Glow of evening sunlight. Dying sun glowing in almost horizontally via the other window, tingeing the room’s whiteness with pale gold. The shade of her skin, near enough: the light gilding her only a little more. He lay squinting down at the curves of hip and shoulder: at sculptural perfection, to be photographed in one’s memory, saved for harsher, lonelier times.
Might take her to that Greek taverna later on, he thought. Or perhaps to Al Akhtar’s. Not Simone’s – because no self-respecting female would dream of setting foot in that place, she’d told him once. She was waking, as he looked down at her. He’d at least had the sense not to mention that Simone’s was more or less Josh Currie’s home from home. Or for that matter that Currie had told him, before the wedding, that she – Lucia – was ‘stand-offish’.
Josh had probably made a pass at her at some time, and been repulsed. Something like that. Where women were concerned, one had come to realize, Josh Currie was not one to let ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I will’.
But – stand-offish, for God’s sake…
A change in her breathing was the first sign of waking. Then her head turned: her mouth was against his chest, the arm sliding down from his neck. She was working the fingers of that hand – pins and needles, he guessed. Looking up, then: her head back and the brown eyes blinking at him sleepily.
‘Hello, Ned.’
Smiling down at her. ‘Lovely evening.’
‘Wasn’t it a lovely afternoon?’
‘Loveliest ever. For me, anyway.’
‘For me too. I was thinking just as I woke – I’m happy, Ned.’
‘Good. Good.’
‘Are you?’
He thought about it for a moment. Then compromised: ‘When I’m with you, or thinking about you, or when I know I’ll be with you very soon… Then, yes.’
‘You always give the most truthful answer you can, don’t you?’
‘When it’s possible, why not?’
‘There are times when you’re unhappy, then.’
‘Oh – not unhappy, exactly. But – too much aware of – well, other factors – to be – you know, consciously happy.’
‘By “other factors” you mean the war?’
‘Not as such – no. After all, war’s my business. Profession. And – well, since I now have this reputation to live up to – giving you honest answers, I mean – it is my job, and – I was thinking about this just the other day – there’s always satisfaction in doing one’s job well, isn’t there?’
‘Being good at killing people?’
‘No. That’s not part of it. I mean, it’s not one’s – aim. Sinking ships – yes. Because we have to win this war, and that’s one of the things that helps towards it. Obviously, when you sink ships people get drowned. But – all I can really say is we didn’t start it, Lucia.’
‘I know. I know very well—’
‘And we had no option but to fight.’
‘I know that too. But getting back to the subject, Ned – if it’s not the war, what is it – what are they, these “other factors”?’
‘In a word, I suppose – uncertainty. But—’ He hesitated. Stroking her shoulders, smoothing her hair back behind her neat, dark head…
‘Uncertainty of what kind?’
‘Difficult to express in words because – well, you might think I ought to have the answers to my own questions. A man should be able – by and large – to know what he’s after and – well, go after it. But what I want is you. Not just a few hours of you or a day and a night, but you. But how – the way things are, not the war itself but the way it ties us up – and my job – I mean, I’m under orders, have to do what I’m told – I have as much control over my own destiny as – well, as a leaf in the damn wind – you know? OK – how we all are, and I know it’s unavoidable, how it has to be, but – what have I got to offer, how can I do more than dream?’
‘Tell you something?’
‘Wasn’t making much sense, was I. Don’t bother to tell me that, I know it.’
‘But you were! The most wonderful sense! Ned – darling – I told you I was happy? Huh? Now I’m – delirious! That you should have such thinking in your head, even! Ned, my darling – no – don’t – no, please… Me – let me… Ned, Ned… Oh, now look at you! Oh, my word! Oh, goodness! Effrayant, celui, c’est de géant—’
‘Hardly. Still needs his hat on, though. Here.’
‘Oh, ce sacré capot—’
‘Don’t want to find yourself waddling into the consulate, do you?’
/> ‘Pas si joli, maintenant. Oh, le pauvre…’
‘Don’t worry about him. Having the time of his life.’
‘Et je l’adore! Vois – vais l’engouffrer. J’engouffre – toi, cheri, toi! Comme – ah, ça! Ça… Ned, cheri – incroyable… Huh! Pour toi aussi? Toi?’
‘Toi – Lucia, you are – I’m going to have to give you English lessons, but – as you are now, this moment – Lucia, I knew you were beautiful, but—’
‘Like this, Ned? Ça? Comme ça? My darling? My love? Listen – give you my answer to those thoughts you have? You leaf in the wind, you? Oh, some leaf! Listen – nothing for you to do, or me, nothing we can do – uh? Only be us. And hope, be happy, love. This – huh? This? I love you, Ned – did I say it before? Not from here, I’m sure not, not from such – oh, this moment now, this – oh – Ned, Ned, oh – oh Ned yes…’
* * *
Sun almost down. Sunset’s shadows in the room, and he could visualize how it would be in the harbour four miles west of here, the sun’s last moments blazing out beyond the breakwater and the harbour entrance, bugle-calls silvery from the big ships at their moorings, Royal Marine guards presenting arms and the ensigns sliding down.
Here, the clip-clop of a gharry horse’s hooves, and beyond it the last falling cadence of a muezzin’s call to prayer. The hum and rattle of an eastbound tram.
Lucia’s scent. Lucia – pictures in the mind…
Also, recollection of his own sudden outpouring of – longing? Completely unpremeditated, unexpected: he’d hardly been aware there were such pent-up urges in him until he’d heard it – from himself. With a sense – ironically enough, in the circumstances – of impotence. Or frustration… But in that spasm of release he’d told her a lot more than he would have done if he’d given any forethought to it.
It had simply burst out. Like a morning after, remembering what one’s said or done when drunk.
Write to Elizabeth, now? Having said – admitted – that much to Lucia, could one in decency not write?
Lucia stirred, sighed. She was on top of him, the way she’d flopped – her legs straddling him, her face at his throat.
Love For An Enemy Page 15
