“Rough?” Cole said because he could think of nothing else and because he wanted her to continue talking.
She chuckled dryly and he sensed the worn condition of her soul. “Rough. Yes, that’s it. I often go home and have a good cry.” She dropped the cigarette at her feet and looked at him, making a valiant attempt to mask her pain. “Anymore, that doesn’t seem to be enough. Sometimes there are simply no tears left.” She wasn’t embarrassed about her emotions, that she felt so much of what she saw. “What about you, Lieutenant Cole? Have you seen the effects of war, firsthand?”
“No,” he said. “Not really. I’ve seen what everyone else has seen, I guess. The destruction. I’ve seen dead people laid out on the sidewalk. I just control my emotions.”
She smiled in wonderment. “Control your emotions? How does one do that?”
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Just something that I learned as a kid. Keep an even keel.” It was his turn to smile, watching her eyes respond to his words. “Why? Don’t tell me you let everything get to you. If you do that, Rebecca, you’re going to end up a basket case.” He thought calling her by her first name sounded natural.
“Basket…?”
“Nuts.”
“I should think it would be the other way around, Jordan.”
When she said his name it was as if he were hearing someone else say it for the first time. He berated himself for acting like a child, for letting his feelings run away with him. But it felt wonderful, somehow, her soft voice speaking his name. He tried to calm his emotions.
“I suppose that I should be going,” she said.
“Don’t you have a few more minutes?” he pleaded carelessly.
She stood and looked down at him, smiling. “I cannot run in these silly shoes and I must not be late. Noonan, you know.”
“Can I walk with you?” He held up the bottle. “I’ve got to see Dickie anyway.”
“I shouldn’t let Noonan see that,” Rebecca said. “Regulations state that I must inform the head nurse of all irregularities.”
“Can you be bribed?”
“Do you have an extra pair of silk stockings?”
Cole laughed and began to walk with Rebecca, feeling her presence at his side. Silk stockings were nearly impossible to obtain, except through the black market, and even then they cost most people nearly a week’s wages.
“Is your wife here with you?” she asked as he basked in the warmth of the weather and the comfort of having her nearby.
“No,” he said. “I mean I’m not married. Engaged once but it didn’t work out.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. As they walked Cole felt suddenly very protective of her. He wanted to put his arm around her small shoulders and draw her close to him so that nothing could harm her. He folded his arms clumsily behind his back, fighting back the impulse.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” he said. “Better to find out before the marriage than after it.”
They walked slowly, neither in a hurry to part — their pace evenly matched despite their difference in height.
“That’s an oddly detached way of putting it. Almost clinical, in fact,” she said.
“Nothing else to it.”
“Who…?” she began and then quickly added, “Oh, now I’m being much too nosey.”
“She did,” Cole said. Ruth was taller than Rebecca, her hair much darker and her eyes equally as dark. Overbearing, Cole had reported to his friends, but that was his excuse. You never talk, she had said to him, you never tell me what you’re thinking. What you’re really thinking. Nothing, Cole responded most of the time, brooding over her attempts to intrude on his thoughts, on the feelings that he so carefully tended and cultivated until they were stunted and withered. “Funny,” he said. “That’s the first time I ever told anyone the truth about my engagement.”
“That’s understandable,” she said. “I’m sure the parting was very painful.”
“No,” Cole lied as he felt Rebecca’s caring eyes examining him. “It wasn’t.”
Chapter 5
Captain George Hardy was blinded as the detonation destroyed his night vision and devoured the darkness. An instant later the shock wave from the exploding freighter shook Firedancer viciously. Flaming debris shot crazily into the air, fantastically graceful arcs of fire that ended abruptly in the coal-black North Atlantic.
Hardy clapped the 7x50 Barr and Stroud binoculars to his eyes, straining to make out the dying vessel across the columns of the convoy.
“Bridge, W.T. Bridge, W.T.,” the wireless/telegrapher operator called through one of the brass voice tubes banded together on Firedancer’s tiny bridge.
Lieutenant George Land, number one of Firedancer, pulled one flap up of the Russian sealskin helmet. He had been feeling sorry for himself because he was tired and cold, and the oil-skinned duffel, overcoat, oilskins, scarves, balaclavas, and that damned helmet didn’t help keep the frigid air of the North Atlantic from stealing into his body. All that was gone now. Men were dying out there.
“Bridge, W.T. What is it?”
“Merchant ship Mecoy struck by torpedo. Requests immediate assistance.”
Hardy, his grim features frozen in the phosphorescent glow of the emergency action station switch, shot Land a glance before the officer could speak. “We do not leave this station, Number One, until ordered to do so. Has he heard from Captain D?”
Land leaned into the voice tube. “W.T. Bridge. Have you any orders from Captain D?” The captain in command of the destroyer flotilla would have to give them permission to abandon their station and precede either to the assistance of the Mecoy, or to hunt for the U-boat.
“Nothing, sir,” W.T. replied.
Land looked at Hardy, who merely turned away. “Right,” Land said softly into the tube. How heartless could the man be? Couldn’t he signal Captain D and request permission to leave his station and go help those poor bastards on the Mecoy? They couldn’t last more than a minute or two in the freezing water.
Another blast tore the darkness far on the port beam of H.M.S. Firedancer. Land found that he could not help himself; his eyes were drawn to the bright death that glowed seductively in the night. He noticed Hardy watching as well and wondered what the man must be thinking.
“St. Luke, Number One, chapter fifteen, verse four,” Hardy said into the darkness, but it was obviously meant for Number One. “‘What man of you having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the other ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost until he find it?’” Hardy adjusted his duffel and pulled his scarf tight around his neck. “Well? Are you that type of officer?”
“Bridge, W.T. St. John struck by a torpedo. Captain D advises he expects an attack in Firedancer’s quadrant.”
Hardy leaned over the voice tube, his eyes still on Land. “Reply, ‘Signal acknowledged. Standing by.’ Well, Number One. I see by your silence that you have not made a decision. ‘Indecision’ is not good enough out here. ‘Indecision,’” Hardy added, “kills sailors and sinks ships.”
Land felt warmth spread over him despite the cold as he fought back his anger. There were times when he found Hardy tolerable and once or twice he actually enjoyed the man’s company. There were other times, most of the time in fact, when he couldn’t stand to be around the sharp-tongued, ill-mannered officer.