by Irene Carr
So Sophie shared the meal and afterwards Peter went with her, hurrying, to catch the last tram. Sophie squeezed his hand. ‘I was pleased to see you.’
Peter answered, ‘It was lucky you were here. I won’t be home for long. The Chatterton has paid off.’
Sophie laughed. ‘So you’ll be throwing your money around.’ Sailors were notoriously open handed with their pay. Then she realised what his words also meant and said with dismay, ‘You’re out of a job, then?’
Peter shrugged. ‘I’ll have to look for another ship. And I won’t be tossing my money away. I have to buy some books. One of the mates lent me his but I want my own for the next trip.’
‘Books? What for?’
So he told her how Harry Latimer had urged him, ‘Get your tickets to be a mate . . .’
Sophie had to jump on the tram then as the conductor yanked on the bell cord. She called down from the platform to Peter, ‘I’ll drop you a line with my address! Let me know what ship you get!’ so leaving him no chance to argue or refuse. She waved to him as the tram pulled away and he lifted a hand in reply. But Peter, after that first moment of pleased surprise, had kept his distance – and kept her at a distance.
When Sophie arrived home she found only a note left by her mother for her father. She concluded that he must be coming home and was glad, but felt unhappy about Peter.
Jack arrived in a taxi at midnight, returning from a fruitless visit to Greece. He read the note that Chrissie had left for him, saying that she would not be home until late. He was disappointed but told himself there had to be a good reason. He mixed a stiff whisky and took it up to bed. Tomorrow he would continue the fight to save the Ballantyne yard. He was not finished yet.
Chrissie returned at one in the morning. The storm had passed and the night sky was clear and sprinkled with stars. She saw Jack’s overcoat tossed over the back of a chair in the hall and the note she had left for him lying opened on the table. She kicked off her shoes and ran lightly upstairs. In the bedroom she undressed without putting on the light and slipped into bed with the sleeping Jack. Then she woke him.
Chrissie had asked Randolph Tourville, ‘Did you hear Chamberlain’s agreement with Hitler?’
He had, as had everyone. ‘Promising “peace in our time”.’
Chrissie shook her head. ‘I don’t believe it. Hitler won’t stop now. He moved into the Rhineland, then Austria, now he has Czechoslovakia. He intends to rule Europe. There’s a war coming and we’ll need ships. Remember 1917 when the U-boats nearly starved us into surrender? Your oil won’t be worth a penny if you haven’t ships to move it.’
Tourville said drily, ‘I know all this, and we have a programme to buy a new ship every year for the next five years. There’s one building on the Tyne now.’
Chrissie said, ‘I think Hitler has a programme, too – and you should speed up yours. Buy another tanker this year.’ Then as he stared at her, impressed by her grasp of world politics, she pressed him, ‘Suppose Hitler went to war in the next twelve months?’
Tourville said slowly, ‘It is possible.’ He was silent a long time, then said, ‘I’m the boss but I have a board of directors representing a hell of a lot of shareholders. That board doesn’t want to spend the money now.’
‘Tell them if they don’t spend it now they won’t have it for long.’
Tourville had grinned at her then. ‘I’ll do it.’ They had gone on to discuss details.
Tourville had also volunteered to put up the money for the rebuilding of the original Railway Hotel: ‘I think you’re a good investment, Mrs Ballantyne.’ He went on wrily, ‘This has not been the evening I expected. You’re an honest woman and Jack is a lucky man.’
Chrissie had told him the simple truth that had given her the confidence to seek him out: ‘Jack is the only man for me, always was and always will be.’ As she had told young Sarah Tennant: ‘Be sure of your man. And let him be sure of you.’
So that Saturday morning Chrissie and Jack shared a cheerful breakfast with a subdued Sophie. Jack was eager to go to the yard and break the news that the White Elephant was sold and work could start again, while Chrissie had similar good tidings for the hotel. Then the post arrived. One of the letters was in a buff envelope that bore the words: ‘On His Majesty’s Service’. All three guessed what it contained. Jack opened it, scanned its contents quickly then laughed at Chrissie and Sophie. ‘They’ve found Matt and Helen!’
It was agreed reluctantly by both Chrissie and Jack that he should stay to work in the yard now it was active again and also to handle the negotiations with Tourville. Chrissie would go to Spain.
When Jack dropped her from the Ford she almost ran into the hotel. During the drive into town she had planned what she had to do, so as she hastened across the foyer she called to Dinsdale Arkley: ‘I need to see you now, please!’
He came limping into her office and Chrissie remembered how she had first taken him on when he came home from the war, invalided out of the Army after losing a leg. That had been twenty years ago and she congratulated herself now on a wise decision taken then, because she could leave the management of the hotel in safe hands. ‘I have to go away for two or three weeks, maybe longer, and you’ll be in charge . . .’ Then she went into details of what she wanted done in her absence and Arkley wrote them down in his notebook.
They had been at it ten minutes when Mrs Featherstone, the housekeeper, tapped at the open door. Normally cheery and bustling, she was now tearful and explained, ‘I have to give me notice in, Mrs Ballantyne.’ Her husband had been given a better-paid job in the South and they were moving in a week’s time. Chrissie consoled her and reassured her when she wailed, ‘You’ve always been good to me, Mrs Ballantyne, and I don’t like letting you down all of a sudden like this.’
Chrissie said, ‘We don’t want to lose you, but you and Mr Featherstone have to take this opportunity. We’ll just have to manage.’
When Chrissie had finished with Arkley she spent the morning clearing her desk and planning her trip with a railway timetable and numerous telephone calls to shipping agents. Then, with all settled save one pleasurable duty, she ate a late lunch in the hotel dining-room, her mind still churning with details of times and routes.
Afterwards she sought out Sarah Tennant and told her, ‘Mrs Featherstone is leaving and I want you to take over her job . . .’ Sarah listened to her open mouthed, delighted and excited at the promotion, as Chrissie explained, ‘I have to go to Spain. We’ve heard where Matt and Helen are.’ Then she remembered another letter received that morning and mentioned its news as she turned away, her thoughts already running ahead to her trip. ‘And Tom will be home in a week or so.’
Sarah said, ‘Oh! That will be nice.’ She tried to keep her voice neutral as Chrissie walked away, told herself it did not matter to her when Tom came home. But in truth she did not know if she was thrilled or frightened.
Sophie accompanied her mother as far as London. They parted there, Sophie to go back to the Beaumont Band on the South Coast, Chrissie to take the cross-Channel packet from Dover. Sophie hugged her mother. ‘Take care, Mummy. Bring them back.’
‘I will.’ Chrissie prayed that she could.
And so they parted.
Tom Ballantyne came home a week later on the sleeper, and his father met him at the station. Even in his preoccupation, Tom noticed the change in his father: the worry lines smoothed out, the old familiar grin back on his face. Tom was glad to see him and to hear the news that had wrought the transformation, but after the first warmth of their meeting Tom was impatient to be away. As the porter put his suitcases into the taxi Tom asked his father, ‘Can I see you at home later? I have some . . . things to clear up.’
Jack mentally raised his eyebrows but only said, ‘That’s fine.’
Tom crossed the road to the Ballantyne Hotel and asked the receptionist, ‘Where is Sarah Tennant, please?’
‘Why, Mr Ballantyne! It’s lovely to see you again. Your mother did sa
y you were coming home.’ The girl remembered his question and finished, ‘I think she’s on the first floor. I saw her go up—’ But she stopped there because Tom was already taking the stairs three at a time. He found Sarah in the corridor, giving instruction to a pair of new chambermaids, girls a year older then herself. Because of them she did not try to evade Tom when she saw him coming, presuming he would pass her by in that company. She was wrong.
Tom smiled at the two girls and nodded. ‘Excuse us.’ He took Sarah’s arm and she found herself steered through the open door of an empty room. Then the door closed behind them.
‘Tom!’ She knew the girls would be giggling, couldn’t hear them but could picture it. Her anger rising, she demanded formally, ‘What do you think you’re doing, Mr Ballantyne?’
‘I’m trying to talk to you because you didn’t answer my letters. No!’ As she started towards the door he stepped in front of it so that she almost walked into him. Then as she drew a breath he urged, ‘What are you afraid of? Me?’
Faced with the direct question and with him hanging over her, Sarah could only admit, ‘No. I . . .’
Tom went on quickly, ‘So just listen for a minute. Hear me out because I won’t let you go till you do.’
Sarah saw that he meant it, and realised they stood very close together. She took a half pace back so she could breathe. ‘Well?’
Tom was tongue-tied at first, fumbling at how to start. ‘I know what upset you that day, what you heard those girls say, but it wasn’t – isn’t true. I knew somebody like that. She wanted to marry the boss’s son, though it was her mother who put her up to it. But it’s not like that with you and you’re not like her. I was talking to a friend – ’ He paused on the word for a second. Dagger a friend? Well, he was now. Tom went on, ‘This friend of mine was about to get married. He was having to leave home and go down south to find work but he was taking this girl with him and he said he was happy. He’d got all he wanted and he didn’t care about anything else.’ He stopped to draw breath, then asked, ‘See?’
Sarah said hesitantly, ‘You mean, no more hiding? Out in the open like ordinary people?’
‘We are ordinary people and we ought to give ourselves a chance and never mind what anybody says.’
Sarah remembered that his mother had said something like that, but her gaze slid to the door, remembering the girls giggling outside. ‘I don’t think it will be as simple as that.’
Tom admitted, ‘No, I don’t suppose it will.’
‘But you don’t care.’
‘No.’
So long as he got what he wanted. Now Sarah recalled that Chrissie had also said, ‘Just be sure of him.’
Sarah took a half pace forward into his arms.
Sophie travelled north again. She had written Peter a short letter, to give him her address, that was friendly and only mildly affectionate. She tore up a half-dozen drafts before posting the final copy. He had read it over and over. When Sophie had returned to her lodgings one evening, after singing at a thé dansant, she found his letter awaiting her. He had found another ship. She was on a train early the next morning and at eight that night she went with him as he went to join the Florrie Dawe.
As the tram clanked and swayed across the bridge he said drily, ‘She’s not really new. In fact she’s older than me by ten years, but she’ll do.’
Harry Latimer had told him, as they stood in the shipping office in Tatham Street, ‘It’s her or nothing. We ship in her or we stay on the dole.’ So Peter had signed on.
Sophie asked, ‘Is she a good ship?’
‘She was still afloat the last time I saw her.’ Peter grinned at her. He did not tell her of Harry Latimer’s doubts: ‘She’s been laid up for years and she’s rusted to hell, had her hull repaired with cement.’
Peter had questioned, disbelieving, ‘Cement?’
‘Aye.’ Harry explained, ‘It’s a cheap way of curing leaky seams and rivets. You get a carpenter to make a wooden box to fit over that section of the hull then you fill it with cement.’ While Peter digested this, Harry added, ‘And her skipper is a wrong ’un. He’s lucky he hasn’t lost his ticket afore now. The mates aren’t any better.’ But as Harry had said, it was sign on in her or go on the dole.
Peter told Sophie now, ‘She’s a ship and she’ll do.’
So when Sophie stood on the quayside, cold in a biting wind, and watched him walk up the gangway she had no more worries than any woman seeing her man off to sea. Except that he had not kissed her. She took another tram to the sea front and watched his ship steam out between the piers and fade into the night.
As the sleeper took her back to the South Coast that night she prayed that he would come back safely – and for her mother and her mission.
23
Helen Diaz looked up from stooping over the wounded man in the cot. The rifle-fire seemed to rattle all around the big old house that was serving as a forward field hospital in this Catalonian village. She thought she caught the odour of the firing, a whiff of cordite mingling with the hospital smell of disinfectant and the pungent cigarette smoke of the patients. When she, Matt and the rest of the medical team first arrived at the house, the front line had been five miles away at Gandesa. It was closer now.
They had found the house without working electricity or running water. They had all – doctors, nurses, orderlies, ambulance drivers – laboured to turn it into a forward field hospital and succeeded. It was far from perfect but it worked. The operating theatre was below on the ground floor, in what had originally been the slaughter house, because it had a concrete floor which was easily washed down. The handbasins for washing, and the steriliser, stood in one corner with the water tank outside. The ambulance drivers, Matt among them, had to keep the tank filled. Water was brought up to the house in tanks on the backs of trucks. They had become used to hard conditions. Before they came to the house they had slept in the open and Helen had hated the scampering of the rats. Now she had a tiny cupboard of a room she shared with a Spanish nurse.
She had finished replacing the Spanish soldier’s dressing and now she patted his shoulder, her smile crinkling the corners of her dark eyes. He looked up at her apathetically, exhausted. He was one of six men on the narrow cots crowded into the room. The few small, weak lightbulbs made the ward a place of shadows. Helen was the only nurse, in her white uniform and a white cap that covered what was left of the glossy, black hair she had cut short soon after arriving in Spain.
She washed her hands in a dented tin bowl, dried them on a scrap of towel then moved to the window and looked round the edge of the black-out curtain. The sun had set, and fat-bellied black clouds hung low overhead. She could just make out the village square below, its dirt surface churned into mud by soldiers’ boots. The rain fell steadily, dripped from the eaves of the houses and the blackened branches of the trees. The road that ran through the village passed across the far end of the square and a constant stream of men trudged along it. Then, as she watched, the men scattered and a battery of guns galloped through. The horses tossed their heads, the men on their backs lashing them on with whips, while the guns bounced on their iron wheels and hurled up sprays of mud. When the fourth and last gun passed the men returned to the road and trudged on.
‘That’s very heavy firing.’ Luis Zamora, the young doctor, spoke behind Helen. As she turned to face him he said, ‘And those soldiers have been going through for the past hour. I’m going to find out what’s happening. Are you all right here?’
‘I can manage,’ she said with confidence: Helen had learnt a lot in a very short time since she came to Spain.
Luis smiled. He had come to rely a great deal on this girl. He left her now and Helen heard him tramping down the stairs. She had a sense of unease born of her experience since she came to Spain. It had taught her that anything unusual might spell danger. In recent months she had seen enough of death and destruction, pain and grief. But duty called and she went to another man and started replacing the dressi
ng applied hastily in the field.
Luis returned ten minutes later, breathless from running up the stairs. He panted, ‘It’s a retreat! I spoke to an officer. He wouldn’t stop but he told me that Franco’s men attacked under cover of an artillery barrage. The line held for an hour or two but then it broke. He said their troops were right behind him. You’ve got to get out. Grab what things you can but be ready to move in five minutes. I’m going to tell the others.’ Then he was gone.
Helen ran to her little room, tore off the white uniform and pulled on the clothes she wore off-duty: a soldier’s trousers, shirt and boots. With her short hair she looked like one of the troops now. She picked up her pack and threw some clothes into it. As she stepped into the corridor again she heard shouting in the hall below, echoing up the stairwell.
When she reached the head of the stairs she saw that the hall, lit by a single swinging bulb, was filled with soldiers, but they were strangers in strange uniforms. The little corporal who had sat at the table in the hall that was the reception area was being hustled out of the door into the street. Luis Zamora in his white coat stood with his back to the wall and a rifle muzzle was pointed at his chest.
One man, an officer from the insignia on his tunic, looked up the stairs and saw Helen. He shouted at her to come down and pointed his pistol at her. She descended the stairs, realising that she was now a prisoner, but in her shock and fear her first thought was for Matt. It seemed he had rarely left her side since they had sailed for Spain. He was always there, remonstrating, arguing, outraged or admiring, repairing the ambulance, making her a bed, putting up her tent, cleaning her shoes, teaching her how to drive. She made sure that he ate, and drove while he slept, looked for him when her nursing duties were done, delighted in arguing with him daily. They were a smooth-working, mostly happy team.
