She said, “Yes, Esmonde, I know you think you would. And you would, too — for a month or so, perhaps. After that you’d start looking at me and thinking to yourself, Why, the old hag! If it wasn’t for her I’d be off again somewhere to-morrow. She’s the millstone — she’s the old woman in the corner by the fire who’s got me on to the 8.15 racket where it’s Mr This and Mr That and what did you see on the telly last night? And then the office, with a nice little desk and a chair and dozens of other people all half dead from the waist up. And I’d be responsible — me, and the dormitory of little cots upstairs! You ought to realize what it’d be like… that’s how you’d feel, Esmonde — wouldn’t you?” She was facing him now, breasts heaving a little, eyes almost angry. “Wouldn’t you?”
“I would not.”
“Yes, you would! Anyway, I’d always be feeling that about myself, and come to that I don’t think I’m cut out to be an 8.15 wife myself. I do want you to get out, but in a way I–I’m frightened.” She looked at him accusingly. “Esmonde, if you really feel that way — why don’t you get out, now?”
Shaw flushed. He said, “Darling, I’ve tried to. I’ve told the Old Man — not once, but often. Again to-day.”
“And he said no, so you’re still in it. Esmonde, you’re hopeless. You know damn’ well they wouldn’t keep you at it if you were firm. But that’s not the reason.” The girl came close to Shaw, took his hands in hers. “That’s not the reason,” she repeated, “and I’ll tell you what the reason is: you don’t really want to get out, not deep down, because you’re a Man! A damn’ stupid, pig-headed Man, and without being in the least conceited about it you do know you’re the best man they’ve got, and you feel you’ve got to do your duty for England and the Service and — and all the other things Men think are important. You’re just old-fashioned, and ought to have been pensioned off years and years ago.” Her voice broke a little as she went on, “Well, it’s not much comfort to you or me, but a lot of those people who sleep tight every night and go safely to the office and yammer about their delphiniums and cabbages ought to be bloody well glad there are men like you and — and — and — I know I’m difficult and bad for you and I seem to keep contradicting myself, but I love you, oh, God, I do — but I’m not going to marry you — not yet… oh, Esmonde!"
Shaw had crushed her tight in his arms, arms which emotion had made into steel-wire hawsers, his mouth seeking hers and fastening upon it urgently with force enough to squeeze the last breath from her body…
Two mornings later Shaw drove in a taxi through the main gates of Portsmouth Dockyard off the train from Waterloo. The taxi halted briefly while the Admiralty constable checked Shaw’s right of entry, then drove on past the boatyard and turned left for the South Railway jetty, where the masts and upperworks of the Cambridge were visible, a thin white trail of steam twisting upward. And as the taxi disappeared a loafer who had been leaning against the high brick wall of the dockyard as Shaw arrived lit a cigarette and strolled casually away, across the road and along the Hard past Gieves, the naval tailors, and Saccone and Speed, where the Fleet bought its wardroom bar stocks, and the Keppel’s Head Hotel… the Navy’s landmarks of departure and return. The loafer wandered aimlessly along to the bridge over the mud-flats leading to the Harbour station, and then he strolled casually back toward a coffee-stall near the bus-stop. He had a cup of coffee, lit another cigarette. He waited. Then, a little later, as the cruiser slipped from the berth and made out to sea past the old grey walls of Fort Blockhouse, he walked off towards a telephone-box.
CHAPTER FOUR
A cold wind knifed through Shaw’s body as he stood on deck off Ushant, comfortably dressed in an old leather-patched brown tweed jacket, eyes stinging with the salt, enjoying it, and breathing deeply as the cruiser headed south into the Bay of Biscay and the gathering storm. He appreciated the heave of a deck beneath his feet, the gale ruffling the greying brown hair into a curling mop sticky from the salt in the atmosphere, while white clouds streaked out across a clear blue sky above the tumbling, swooping water.
All last night Shaw had lain queasily, stretched out in his bunk as the Cambridge met the beginnings of the bad weather. Having no duties to perform, nothing to make him get on his feet, was a bad thing really. It had been nine hours of sheer misery, a misery of listening to the groans and creaks of the ship as she cut through the seas and took green water over her fo’c’sle-head, of listening to the wind’s shriek and the mounting rollers battering at the scuttle-glass beyond the deadlight’s steel, of watching his dressing-gown float out into the compartment from the hook behind the door, fall and then rise again until it stood almost at right angles, hovering there until the next slow drop back to remain unnaturally pressed against the woodwork. Bodily the bunk bore him upward, heaving hard into the under-side of his body and then dropping him with a swooping shudder which made the stomach pain worse. Nine hours, and then Shaw got up. He got up unsteadily, his face a pale green, hair rumpled and sweaty, and a foul taste in his mouth, his body cold with hunger and the fatigue which results from the constantly changing muscular efforts necessary to keep one’s body safely in a leaping bunk.
It was that sensation of hunger that made Shaw realize he was better. He washed, dressed, and went out on deck. He’d be in time for breakfast in the wardroom after a good blow. He stood there for a while, out on the quarterdeck, refreshing himself and blowing out the fug of the cabin and the shore, liking the keen wind and the tearing, white-capped waves which hit the ship and slopped aft from the fo’c’sle, or were whipped into spray by the mounting gale. Now that he’d got his sea-legs he could start to enjoy this heaven-sent interlude. The Cambridge was no destroyer, and her motion, though she rolled a lot, was quite different from what he recalled of those war-time North Atlantic days — slower and much more stately.
During breakfast Shaw’s mind went back to his recent interview with Captain Carberry — The Voice. Carberry, as usual, had done him proud. Carberry had put him right in the picture regarding recent developments in Spain — politically and diplomatically and topographically, bringing Shaw’s own knowledge right up to date. Carberry had warned him of a tightening up by the carabinero section of the Guardia Civil on the Spanish side of the La Linea frontier post, of a markedly increased antipathy towards British subjects entering from Gibraltar. He had put Shaw wise to the best ways of getting through both the Spanish control and the British Lines beyond the North Front if he should want to enter Spain incognito to pick up information about Karina’s intentions. Carberry had told him more about Don Jaime, and about that Malaga contact, Domingo Felipe, who could, Carberry had said, be picked up any evening in a certain one of the numerous bars in Torremolinos; this Felipe would be briefed meanwhile by other contacts in Spain, round Barcelona way, so that he would be able to make himself known to Shaw. Because of this, Carberry had strongly advised Shaw to make a point of contacting Jaime if he did enter Spain, and thus get himself within the ambit of Domingo Felipe. Carberry had provided Shaw with documentation to cover every foreseeable contingency — including a Spanish workman’s day pass from La Linea into Gibraltar. All these papers were now in a plain package in the Captain’s safe. And in Shaw’s baggage as the old cruiser pushed on south for the Straits was a set of Spanish workman’s clothing which was so genuine that it carried even the sour smell of unwashed hombre—dirty, sand-coloured corduroys, faded blue shirt, black beret. They could come in handy.