Dive in the Sun (34 page)

Curtis looked down at the soft, relaxed face, and remembered what had still to be done. Their real danger might still
be
ahead, and yet the thought of leaving her behind seemed an even greater risk.

There was a distant rattle of gunfire, and the doctor shuddered and ran towards his car.

The priest shrugged. ‘That may be many miles distant.’ His fine old head was raised to the stars, and Curtis thought he looked like a saint.

‘Nevertheless, Father, I think it might be unwise to risk leaving her here.’

As if in answer, the girl’s arm moved up slowly like a ghost and hung weakly across his shoulder.

The priest nodded gravely. ‘Maybe it is better.’ He rested his hands on them for a moment and, as another burst of firing awakened the echoes, he gathered his robe around his thin body and started off along the road. Once he called back, but Curtis could not hear his words.

Gently, and with infinite care, he gathered her up in his arms and walked slowly towards the pale shape of the
Ametisa
. Her hair was warm against his cheek and as he looked at her he saw a tear on her cheek, although she seemed to be smiling.

A tiny silver light caressed the horizon and the moon seemed to shrink away from the dawn’s threat, but Curtis was unwilling to notice either as he stepped carefully on to the deck and made his way aft to the cabin.

The lines snaked aboard and with an urgent flurry of foam the huge screw churned the mud and sand from the bottom of the cove, as the little ship tore herself eagerly from the jetty and tacked round smartly towards the sea. The fishing boats bobbed and faded behind her, and the cove was soon lost in the gloom, but above, on the high cliff road beside the smoking pillbox, the priest watched them go. He saw the sails shake out and climb easily into place, and saw the ship heel over, like a sea-bird spreading its wings. Then she was gone.

He thrust his hands into the folds of his robe and, with the crucifix swinging against his chest, he plodded towards his church.

AN ITALIAN SEAMAN
emerged from the fo’c’sle and walked stiffly to the lee rail, a bucket of scraps dangling from his hand. He sniffed the keen breeze, and without effort emptied the bucket over the side. For a moment he watched the rubbish twist and dance in the eddies of the bow-wave and then turned his lined face to the empty horizon, his lips pursed into a silent whistle.

Duncan stopped his restless pacing across the poop and watched him with dulled eyes. He felt strangely relieved when the man had returned to the fo’c’sle, and by keeping his back to the stooped helmsman, he was able to retain the impression of isolation. A stronger breeze ruffled the water, which in the early morning light had the solid surface of old pewter, and the sails boomed hollowly and made the slender vessel cant over even more on to her side, so that the hissing water creamed close to the dipping rail.

Duncan noticed none of these things, and merely stared vacantly at the sweeping bowsprit.

His eyes were tired and gummed up with strain and weariness. He no longer relied on his natural resistance to the elements, and it took conscious effort to refrain from shuddering each time a plume of spray spattered across the damp planking and doused his face with stinging salt.

He glared moodily around the ship, taking in the taut rigging and the worn billowing squares of the sails. The schooner had become part of their lives. In fact it had drawn all of them to its own service. They were no longer a team, and it even seemed that each of them was trying to keep away from the other.

He wrinkled his tanned forehead in concentration. It was useless trying to imagine what the future would bring, and the
past
was so mixed-up and confused, that he found it difficult to space out the events into separate periods. He stared fixedly up at the mastheads and cursed aloud. The skipper had been right about him. His mouth drooped as he recalled Curtis’s cold eyes as they stood outside the deserted pillbox. It had been easy before. Routine; an objective; and the savage exhilaration of victory. He flexed his muscles, but it gave him no pleasure.

A sound behind him made him turn, and he saw Jervis walking slowly from the aft hatch, his dark hair rippling in the keen air.

Jervis nodded and stood in silence beside him.

Now that the ship was serenely on her course again, he, too, was aware of the empty feeling of peace with foreboding; a calm spell of unreality, like a ship passing through the storm centre of a typhoon.

He cleared his throat and saw the seaman at the wheel raise his black eyes momentarily from the compass and stare at him, his face empty. ‘Everything quiet?’ He did not want to speak, and yet the silence was more threatening than the expression of loss on Duncan’s face.

‘Too damned quiet!’ Duncan moved his shoulders beneath his rumpled battledress, and his stubbled chin rasped against the upturned collar.

‘I haven’t had a chance to speak to you about what happened,’ began Jervis suddenly. ‘I expect you’re all thinking it was my fault?’ He waited half-defensively for the other man to attack. Duncan did not answer, but merely grunted.

Jervis hurried on, ‘I know I was wrong now! But at the time something made me act as I did. I felt out of place.’ He faltered. ‘How can I begin to explain? I saw the skipper and you acting as if you’d always been doing this sort of thing, and I just knew there was something lacking in me!’

Duncan sighed. ‘I shouldn’t give it a thought if I were you. It doesn’t matter any more.’

Jervis stared at him and felt vaguely cheated. The reply was flat and indifferent, and he did not know how to continue, although every memory was a torment. ‘Can’t you understand?’

‘Understand? What is there to understand? It wasn’t your fault. I thought it was at the time, but now …,’ he paused and looked down at his boots, ‘I guess it’s just the way it panned out!’

‘I didn’t measure up to my own standards,’ Jervis persisted.

Duncan smiled, his eyes strangely sad. ‘All men are equal, I’m told. That doesn’t have to mean they’re all the same!’

Jervis bit his lip. ‘Oh damn!’ He had seen the round shape of the captain appear above the hatch coaming.

Duncan grinned at the captain but felt the effort almost cracking his face. He was pleased to see the man, if only to shut Jervis up. He felt irritated and ashamed that Jervis still looked up to him in the same stupid, trusting manner. He was too complicated, too stuffed full of tradition and values. What did they count out here in this damned old scow? He watched Jervis leaning on the rail, his face furrowed as if in pain.

‘
Buon giorno!
’ The captain scratched his stomach and pulled a pair of black cheroots from his shirt. He gave one to Duncan and jammed the other between his thick lips.

‘We are making the good time, yes? Soon we shall see a beautiful ship maybe, an’ then we will be safe an’ treated like heroes!’ His paunch shook with merriment. ‘Good, eh?’

‘What happens if it’s a German ship?’ Duncan answered sourly.

‘I shall tell them you forced me to bring the ship here, an’ maybe they give me the Iron Cross!’ He laughed loudly, and the lookout in the bow turned his head to watch.

Duncan smiled in spite of the gnawing uncertainty in his bowels. ‘A wooden one, more likely!’

The surface of the sea was split into long paths of different hues. The horizon was silver, and the grey pewter had given way to streaks of green and dark blue, whilst above, the sun had lost its first watery pallor and climbed steadily and confidently along its well-tried path towards the blue emptiness of the sky.

Some of the sun’s early warmth seemed to penetrate the dirty glass panels of the cabin skylight and give new life to the dingy carpet and the stained, chipped furniture.

Curtis sat crouched on the edge of the bunk, his body swaying mechanically at each roll of the hull, his eyes heavy and sore with fatigue and concentration.

The girl on the bunk lay quite still, and it was some time before he realized that her eyes were open and watching him with quiet tenderness.

His brain summoned his body to life, and he leaned over her, his tired face anxious.

‘Feeling better? Would you like something to drink?’

He supported her head in his hand and held a glass of wine to her lips. The warmth of her head coursed through his hand and seemed to give strength to his arm. Her head fell back on the rough pillow and she smiled up at him. He pulled the blanket up to her chin, and thought how strange had been the fate which had thrown them together.

‘Tell me about it, please.’ Her voice was soft and pitched very low.

‘About your fall?’ he asked lightly, knowing what she really wished to hear.

‘About my father. How he died.’ Her voice was without bitterness and her eyes were lacking in accusation, the sadness making them instead dark and strangely still.

‘Not now, Carla.’ He looked away. ‘Later, when all this is over.’

Her hand moved from the blanket and found his.

‘Did you do it?’

He squeezed her cold fingers. ‘No. We ran into an ambush. Partisans.’

Some of the old fire flashed into her watching eyes. ‘The carrion! It is what we can expect now!’ But still the tears did not come.

‘I am sorry.’ he began simply. ‘Things moved too fast. We were powerless.’ He expected: her to remove her hand, but it remained in his, growing warmer with the contact.

‘The ship is quiet.’ She spoke softly, and Curtis found he was conscious of the water rippling past the hull and the muted beat of the engine. They might have been alone together in the ship. Alone and at peace.

‘We might be lucky today,’ he said at length. ‘We might meet a friendly ship. If only we had a radio! Or if we——’ He stopped as she squeezed his hand.

‘I shall be sorry to leave the
Ametisa
.’

He looked at her anxiously, but her face was quiet and relaxed.

‘The future will be kinder, Carla.’

‘There is no future, I think.’ She moved restlessly beneath the blanket. ‘What will become of us?’

Curtis looked desperately around the cabin. ‘Well, we’ll get away from all this. Find somewhere we can relax, and try to forget what has happened.’

She struggled up on to her elbows, her eyes pleading. ‘Please do not say that! We are together here, and here only! If we get to safety, it will be good for the others, but you and I,’ she sank back wearily, her throat trembling, ‘we will be lost. We have no place together!’

He tried to speak with confidence. ‘The war won’t last forever! Why, it might be a matter of months! And then I shall take you away and make you see me as somebody different!’ He grinned shakily.

She closed her eyes and moved her. head from side to side. ‘The war may also last for years. The Germans will go on fighting until they are all destroyed, or they have destroyed you. Then you will have to fight all the others—the Japanese, perhaps the Russians!’

Curtis smiled. ‘They’re our allies.’

‘The Germans were our allies, too,’ she answered quietly.

Curtis went cold. ‘But suppose you’re wrong, Carla? Surely it’s not hopeless?’

She opened her eyes and smiled, but her mouth quivered. ‘Be content with now!’

He sat in silence as she fell into another exhausted sleep, her hand small inside his own.

She was right, he thought bitterly. All his plans and dedicated self-made suffering seemed unimportant now. Even the nightmare which had robbed him of his courage and changed him into a haunted figure seeking an impossible
penance
for what he had done. He studied the girl’s quiet face. She had once asked him what he was trying to prove. Now, none of that mattered, and he knew that his real atonement would be losing her.

He heard Duncan’s hoarse voice above his head, and he gently released her fingers and covered her bare arm with the blanket. He stood up and looked round the cabin once more. The lamp swung peacefully from its bracket and the sunlight moved back and forth in shimmering reflection on the deck-head.

He did not want to leave the place, fearing what he might find outside, where reality could only bring more danger and misgivings.

Duncan was running for the hatch as he emerged, blinking on the warm deck. He saw the man’s craggy features lined with something like the anger of one who has been cheated.

‘Aircraft!’ he shouted. ‘Port bow!’

Curtis ran to the rail, his fair hair blowing across his forehead. At first he could see nothing, although the high-pitched whine of the engine cut into his brain like a knife.

It was low down, its thin, wafer-edged shape mingling with the fresh dancing water, as it weaved and curtsied over the wavetops, the silver arc of its propeller seeming to touch the spray which reached up to touch it.

Barely a mile from the schooner, it swerved aside and clawed its way lazily towards the sun, which flashed angrily across the perspex cockpit cover and lighted with fire the dull Black cross on the fuselage.

Duncan watched it apprehensively. ‘They finally found us!’ he said.

Taylor squinted at the aircraft, as with effortless grace it climbed upwards, until it seemed to be pinioned by one of the schooner’s tapering masts, and with his jaw set in a tight grimace, he ran lightly to the engine-room hatch. He swung one leg over the coaming and looked questioningly at Curtis.

‘Full revs, Skipper?’

Curtis nodded, his eyes still on the enemy.

The old diesel thundered into renewed effort but, in contrast, the breeze suddenly died and the sails, suddenly stripped of their power, hung limp and steaming in the warm sunlight.

‘Go to the hold, Steve,’ he said quietly, ‘and explain the situation to the soldiers. Keep them together and ready to leave the place quickly.’

Duncan ducked his head beneath the boom to follow the plane. ‘What d’you reckon he’s up to?’ He sounded calm, almost relieved that the waiting was over.

‘Having a good look at us, and probably wirelessing his base at the same time. We shall soon know.’

Duncan started for the hold, his eyes falling on the Italian captain’s face. The man was not looking at the aircraft, but staring round at his ship with sudden fear.