When he returned to the room the bedside light was on. She was in the centre of the bed. Her eyes were on his face as he sat on the blankets, her lips moist in the small yellow glow.
He said quietly, “You look lovely. I wish I could give you more. Everything.”
She kept her eyes on his as he pulled down the sheet, tensed as his hands moved around her pale, uplifted breasts and across the smooth skin of her belly. He saw that her fingers were bunched into tight fists at her sides, saw the fierce pumping of her heart beneath one curved breast, beating to match his own.
He threw his clothes blindly on the floor and made to turn off the light, but she said huskily, “No. Let me see you, too. Please.”
They came together slowly at first. All sound was blotted out by their hearts and blood, all vision obscured but each other.
Still and still he tried to prolong it, seeing the urgency in her eyes, the way her body was trembling as he knelt above her, feeling the soft smoothness of her in the space she had offered between her knees.
She gasped, “Now! Keith, now!”
He touched her, raised her to him, and then felt her lifting, arching her spine to draw herself even further around him.
It was pain and darkness, ecstacy and passion, which left them breathless and spent. Like a single being. A piece of living sculpture.
Later, as he switched off the light and moved from the bed, he knew she was awake, watching him as he opened the curtains and let the hazy moonlight explore their private world.
He saw her, her pale limbs almost silver in the strange light. He returned to the bed, stroking her, feeling her coming alive again, sensing her longing, his own immediate response.
She sat beside him, pushing him back on the bed, her voice muffled in lost words as she bent across him. It was like another perfect torment. Her hands, her mouth, her whole being were everywhere, until once more they were spent.
When she leaned above him she saw that he was at last asleep, his legs relaxed, his breathing regular and untroubled. Gently she smoothed his hair from his face and then took one of his hands, watching to make certain she had not awakened him.
She held the hand against her breast and said simply, “Sleep, my darling. I am here.”
With a minimum of haste the majority of Warlock’s ship’s company hurried ashore to make every minute of their liberty count.
Some, like Galbraith, went home to their wives. Galbraith was a Scot, but like many of the flotilla’s officers, lived in the South, near Canterbury. His wife was a sturdy, uncomplaining woman, and she had given him two girls. They were all his pride and joy, and the only thing which spoilt every leave was knowing that he would soon have to go back to a ship.
Others, like Rankin, were less happily married. He had taken his wife too soon, before he had “bettered himself,” as his mother had observed more than once. As he sat in a badly ventilated train speeding south to his home on the outskirts of London he pictured her face. Once very pretty, as all barmaids were supposed to be, she had become slovenly, even sluttish. He was equally certain that she shared several beds when he was away. He would have it out with her. He sighed, edging away from a snoring army officer. No, he wouldn’t. He never could. But when the war was over he would not go back to her. He yawned, tasting the vast amount of gin which had kept him aboard long after the last libertymen. Perhaps, this time, she would be different. Kind to him.
In an hotel room not far from the one where Warlock’s captain lay in a heavy, dreamless sleep, Vaughan was cursing himself for drinking too much. He drank very little as a rule, but the Wren officer had made it sound like part of a bargain. “I’ve met men like you,” she had said. “Get you sloshed, and then take advantage.” But she had got sloshed all the same, and so, unfortunately, had he. He slung his jacket on a rickety chair and looked down at her sprawled on the bed. She was still in uniform, and her hair was in abandon as she tried to see what he was doing.
She said, “I’d better be going.”
He sat beside her and unbuttoned her jacket. She seemed to sober up, and gripped his wrists, staring at him with something like horror.
“But you’re a doctor!”
He fumbled with her shirt, feeling her breast hot under the material, the blood thundering in his brain. She struggled, and the cloth tore open.
She gasped, “My shirt! What’ll my girls think!”
He pulled the torn shirt up and over her shoulders with a kind of madness.
She said as he half fell across her. “Anyway, I can’t. Not at this time of the month.”
Vaughan jerked up violently and glared at her.
“You silly bitch!”
He slipped and fell against the table, knocking an ancient wash-hand-basin into clattering fragments.
Someone banged angrily on the dividing wall. “What have you got in there, mate? A ruddy tiger?”
Vaughan and the girl stared at each other, stunned and confused.
Then with a rueful grin she threw the rest of her clothes on to the floor and said, “Come here, Doctor! We’ll make the best of it!”
He saw himself in a mirror, flushed and wild-eyed. He grinned down at her. “Coming, Tiger.”
Another train which was already nearing London well ahead of Rankin’s contained at least two more of Warlock’s company.
One was Able Seaman Jevers, going home, despite all his plans and caution. To be absolutely certain. To know he was safe for all time.
Another was Midshipman Allan Keyes, wide awake as he enjoyed the luxury of an almost empty first-class compartment. He did not want to fall asleep in case any of the next few hours and days might be marred by his dreams. Nightmares.
He concentrated on his destination, and the girl who had not forgotten him after all. Georgina Dare.
Opposite him, his eyes half asleep and red-rimmed, was a merchant navy chief officer. He watched Keyes’ fresh face, the way he kept looking at a photograph. He sighed. Poor little sod. His sort never stood a chance. Not for long.
15
Time for Thought
Vice-Admiral Nick Brooks held a cigarette in one of his wizened hands and studied Drummond coolly. In the big map room deep below the Admiralty the air was dry, like the admiral. Almost lifeless.
Drummond tried to glean something from the charts on the walls, but there was nothing to give him a clue.
It had been a strange, unreal four weeks since Warlock had gone into dry dock at Rosyth.
Other commanding officers had often known such an existence, but he had just not considered it. He had seen fellow captains sharing their lives between ships in for repairs and their other demands of homes or families, but it had been outside his true understanding. Until Sarah.
Beyond the dockyard and the hotel, life for the rest of the world had continued. The promised and expected invasion of Italy had got under way, and after the grim and deadly conflict at Salerno the Allies were now beginning to make real headway. But to the Warlock, and others like her, that was a war apart. In the busy dockyard, affairs were only concerned with putting right damage done by enemy and weather in the Atlantic, the North Sea and on all the urgently required convoys.
He knew that in earlier days he would have felt restless, fretting at the delays which were keeping him and his ship on the sidelines. This time it was totally different. His need for the girl, her responding love which she had given completely, had made a new life for him, something real and precious.
She was out there now, waiting for him, in a London little different from his last visit when he had met her at Beaumont’s press conference.
Brooks said, “No captain can expect to get much rest when his command is in dock for repair and overhaul. I would have been to see you myself in Scotland, but affairs here and in the Mediterranean have kept Special Operations rather occupied.” He blew out a stream of smoke and patted ash from his crumpled grey suit. “But in view of your work, the splendid dash of the attack into Norway, I would like you to hear some news from me now.” He gave a wintry smile. “Yesterday our midget submarines were able to penetrate all the net defences and minefields, and laid their charges beneath the German battleship Tirpitz in Altenfjord as planned. Actual damage is still unverified, as we had losses, and Norwegian reports say that some of our midget submarine crews were taken prisoner. However, there is no doubt at all that Tirpitz is out of the war for a considerable while. Long enough for us to concentrate on her remaining large consorts. Long enough to plan her final destruction by — more conventional means. ” He showed his long upper teeth. “But for your attack, and the destruction of the fuel dump, Tirpitz would certainly be ready to put to sea when we could least contain her. As for the German midgets, ‘Negroes’ and the like, there again, the damage and losses you inflicted will have put the enemy well behind in training and supply. It was a fine piece of work. Imaginative in planning, determined in execution.”