She loved it fast. He grew swiftly bigger and harder, she hotter and wetter. She angled her sturdy hips to give them both the maximum pleasure. She was no longer calling his name, just uttering gasps. It never took either of them very long to climax. They wanted each other far too urgently for niceties. He felt her insides tighten and ripple around him, dragging him into her world. She bent down and bit his neck, her command to join her in bliss. He obeyed, pouring himself into her. For a long moment she held him like that, a prisoner of her teeth and claws and loins. Then, with a shuddering sigh, she nestled languidly beside him again. ‘Oh, I feel good, I feel sooo good. Do you feel good?’
‘You didn’t give me time to get any protection on, honey.’ He got his breath back. ‘You’re going to get pregnant, Rosie.’
‘I want our baby.’ Her voice was thick and dreamy. ‘I can’t wait to have our baby. How many babies will we have?’
He laughed breathlessly. ‘Let’s start with just the one and see how it goes.’
‘I want five. Six! Tell me about our house.’
‘Well,’ he said, gathering her in his arms, ‘it will be in Pasadena. The sun always shines there. And it will be cosy and neat and bright and full of happiness.’
‘With a garden?’
‘Oh, sure. Not like the big gardens you’re used to, but it will be pretty, with lots of flowers.’
‘And I’ll sit there with our baby.’
‘Yes, you will.’
‘I can’t wait.’ She gave a great sigh. ‘When will we be married?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that. I think it should be as soon as possible.’
She propped herself up on one elbow, excited. ‘Tomorrow?’
Cubby smiled. ‘It can’t be tomorrow, honey.’
‘When, then?’
‘Perhaps soon after we arrive in New York.’
‘In St Pat’s?’
‘Not in St Pat’s,’ he said regretfully. ‘It’ll have to be a registry office. Your family aren’t going to be happy. But they wouldn’t have come even if it was in the cathedral.’
Rosemary thought about that for a moment. Then she lay back down again. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I can still wear white, can’t I?’
‘Of course you can.’
‘And have a bouquet?’
‘White roses.’
‘White roses and cream lilies.’
‘You’ll be so lovely.’
‘You’re my Cubby hubby. My hubby Cubby.’
‘I’m yours.’
‘You’re mine.’
They were her last words. She fell into one of her swift, deep slumbers, her body becoming heavy and inert against him. He held her close to his heart, aching with love, knowing that in half an hour he would have to wake her and send her back to her own room again.
The Western Approaches
The blazing wreck lit up the night, a spectacle which almost the entire crew of U-113 had come on to the deck to see. It was their first kill of the war. Initially, there had been cheering and congratulations, but these had died down as they watched the stricken ship consumed in the fire which had been started by the two torpedoes they’d launched just after midnight.
She was the Robert Recorde, a 3,000-ton merchantman, built in Newcastle upon Tyne, registered in Cardiff, carrying a cargo of timber from Canada to the Clyde. This information had been provided by one of the survivors, whom they’d fished out of the sea, a sixteen-year-old boy rating named Howell Lewis. He was badly burned, and they’d dropped him near one of the lifeboats to be picked up. There were only three of these. The rest had been shattered when Todt had ordered the bridge and radio room to be machine-gunned. The British sailors huddled in the lifeboats shouted at the submarine as U-113 rumbled between them, playing its searchlight around the floating wreckage. The U-boat crew stared back silently, some taking turns to use the night-glasses.
‘What are they saying?’ Todt asked Hufnagel, who was beside him in the conning tower.
‘They say their lifeboats are taking on water,’ replied Hufnagel, who spoke some English. ‘And they say they have wounded. They are asking for medical assistance.’
Krupp, the medical officer, was on the bridge. ‘We could give them some first-aid supplies, Captain. We have enough.’
One of the lifeboats, which seemed to have an officer in it, began to row raggedly towards the U-boat, the men on board calling out hoarsely. Todt drew the Luger from his holster and fired three shots towards them. There was a scream and the sailors huddled for cover in the boat, dropping their oars. ‘Tell them I’ll use the flak gun on them,’ Todt commanded Hufnagel, who relayed the warning in English. To drive the point home, Todt ordered the machine gun to be trained on the lifeboats. The men in them fell silent, with sullen faces.
The Robert Recorde was settling in the water, but the torpedoes had evidently not done enough to send her to the bottom quickly. One of them, in fact, though it had made contact, had failed to explode. Flames were pouring up into the night sky in long, rolling surges of orange, shedding enough heat to make some of the observers shield their faces. Hufnagel watched through his binoculars. A lukewarm attitude towards National Socialism had slowed his progress through the ranks. Then he had fallen in love with Masha Morgenstern, practically on the morning of the Nuremberg Laws. As a result, he had waited in vain for his own command; while Todt had benefited from accelerated promotion. Hufnagel, not a jealous man, regarded it as part of his duty to encourage and advise his younger commander. ‘She’s full of wood. She’ll burn all night. Like a beacon.’
They were only a hundred miles east of Rockall. Hufnagel was right to be concerned. Fascinated as he was by the blaze, Todt gave the order to the deck gun crew. ‘Five rounds, rapid fire. Amidships. Waterline.’
The blasts from the deck gun lit up the sea and the boats in it. There were cries of rage or despair from the survivors in the lifeboats. For the first few moments it seemed the target was unaffected, despite the gaping holes that the explosive shells had torn in her hull. Then Robert Recorde began to sink fast. She went down by the bows, her rusty stern rising out of the water, ignominiously revealing her rudder gear and her single screw. For a few minutes, the stern of the merchantman towered over the scene, unearthly in the U-boat’s spotlight. Then, with a long groan, she sank into the depths. With the flames extinguished, the night rushed in and the stars began to be visible. The air became icy.
‘Waidmannsheil,’ Hufnagel said quietly to the captain.
Leaving a bridge watch strapped to the deck rail to endure the cold and the rough sea, the crew went below. It was their first kill and some of the excited younger men clamoured for a tot of schnapps, or at least a bottle of beer from the store that clinked in the galley. But Todt did not give the order. Instead, he retired to his quarters and drew the thin curtain which separated him from the crew.
The boat’s gramophone was in the captain’s quarters, connected to a series of speakers attached to the bulkheads throughout U-113. Also in the captain’s quarters was the boat’s collection of gramophone records, personally selected by Todt. These included the Unser Führer set of Adolf Hitler’s speeches as well as recordings of Beethoven, Wagner and Bruckner. A hiss from the speakers announced that Todt had put the needle on to a record and shortly, the opening chords of Bruckner’s mighty Eighth Symphony rolled through every compartment of the boat.