The Man who Missed the War (23 page)

He was amazed to find that, during the five weeks they had
been without news, nothing seemed to have happened at all. Polish resistance had almost ceased before he had been cut off from the world, and apparently the Germans and the Russians had now divided Poland amicably between them. That was hardly surprising, but the lack of activity on the Western Front struck him as quite extraordinary. Like most uninitiated people he had expected the Allies to launch an autumn campaign while the Germans were still to some extent occupied in the East. They had done nothing of the kind, yet it was transparently clear that no nation could hope to win a war by simply sitting down behind a great fortified wall and making rude faces at the enemy.

This lack of activity consoled him to some extent for not being able to get into the fight. Somehow it seemed to make the whole war much less urgent because it more than ever confirmed his own view that the conflict would be a long one. Britain had dropped so far behind in the armaments race that it was going to take a long time for her to equip her new forces. The crux of the whole thing was, as he had always felt so intensely, could she keep her supply routes open against the U-boats long enough to equip her new armies and create a really powerful air force? He had striven so hard to help in that and prove to his country that there was a way out so he felt that fate had played him a scurvy trick in cutting him off from home before he had even had a chance to turn in the highly satisfactory results of his experiment. But there was nothing he could do about it now, so he settled down to wait as patiently as he could for a landfall.

One thing, however, had begun to trouble him strangely and, because of it, he could no longer enjoy complete peace of mind for any length of time. As he tried to analyse this new feeling of his he came to the conclusion that he had first been conscious of it soon after the Nazi submarine men had been on board the raft; in some subtle, rather frightening way it had originated from the befouling of Gloria’s drawings.

Ever since that day of their first bathe from the launch, when he had made her take off her Union Jack waistcoat and she, in a gesture of defiance, had pulled off her shorts as well, they had always bathed naked together, and gradually they had drifted into the habit of dressing and undressing in front of each other without giving it a thought.

At first, Philip had been a little shy of looking at her when she was nude, but he had posed for her many times as a model, and she so obviously regarded his form as just a matter of masses, curves and lines that he soon began to look on hers in the same way. But now, for the first time, he became conscious of her body. He would catch himself looking at it, and he began to hurry over some small task in order to get up on deck when she was about to swim so that he could watch her undressing.

They had on more than one occasion discussed sex relationships, and Gloria had made her own views perfectly clear. She said that she thought it a great mistake for a girl to make a habit of going to bed with odd men because she felt temporarily attracted to them or because they could give her a good time. That sort of thing nearly always ended badly for the girl, and, having seen quite enough of the seamy side of life, she was convinced that the game was not worth the candle. On the other hand, she was no prude and had declared that, if she fell in love with a man who was unable to marry her, she would be quite willing to live with him. But, to her, marriage was the thing. If a girl married reasonably well, she argued, it gave her security
from want, the respect of decent people, and enough leisure after the housekeeping was done to pursue any hobby or art in which she might be interested.

‘What about babies?’ Philip had asked on one occasion.

‘Yes,’ was the reply. She definitely wanted babies. She hoped that she would find a husband who was well enough off to give her a housegirl, so that she would not become a household drudge but could go on with her painting. If she could she felt sure that she would be able to earn sufficient to pay for a nurse. If not, that would be too bad. She was very fond of children, and she meant, if she could afford to bring them up in comfort, to have two girls and two boys. She added with somewhat startling frankness that virginity was a definite asset so far as marriage was concerned, since the steady, marrying type of man was much more likely to make a girl his wife if he knew her to be chaste; that was why she was still a virgin.

Remembering all this, Philip knew that any temptation to seduce Gloria that he might experience must be rigorously suppressed, although, had he felt otherwise, he was so inexperienced that he would hardly have known how to set about it. Yet, the fact remained that he could no longer keep his eyes off her in the daytime or sleep at night because of her presence.

Towards the end of November he realised that she had become aware of the change in the way he regarded her. As it was so much warmer they had taken to sleeping up on deck instead of in the stuffy cargo-container; and she began to slip over the side for an early swim before, as she thought, he was awake, excusing herself later in the morning from bathing with him. Later in the day she would try to choose a time when he was busy or asleep to swim again. She no longer walked about without anything round her middle, but even while sunbathing wore a coloured towel in the form of a loin-cloth.

Unfortunately, this scanty raiment, the colour of which she varied almost every day from the wholesale stock that formed part of the cargo, made her body even more alluring and, with an apparent perversity in view of these new reticences, she began to take much more trouble with her hair, trying out different styles, each of which seemed to make her more attractive.

Much sun-bathing had tanned her body a lovely golden-brown,
and her skin was satiny-soft. A dozen times a day Philip found himself aching to stretch out a hand to stroke her, and whenever she brushed against him, as she occasionally did when getting down into the well or through one of the manholes, his heart seemed to stop, and it was all he could do to keep himself from trembling.

During the first week in December they were suddenly seized with a new excitement. The sun now played a much greater part in governing their lives than the time signals sent out by the wireless; and waking as usual at dawn one morning they saw land to the south-east of them.

Philip knew that they were in the latitude of the Canary Islands, and later that day he was able to confirm that the land, now due east of them, was Fuerteventura. In the meantime, two other pieces of land had become visible in the west. They were more distant than the first, but their great peaks towering to the clouds, made them quite unmistakable as Grand Canary and Tenerife. The channel between the islands was fifty miles wide at its narrowest—and they were too distant from either to make out even the houses upon the nearest, let alone any human beings who might have been on the shore.

By nightfall they were entering the channel and a few scattered lights appeared along the coast of Fuerteventura. On the off-chance that some of these might be the lights of fishing boats which would approach nearer, they stayed up into the small hours, but most of the lights had disappeared long before midnight, and the remainder seemed to be fixed and possibly were the breakwater beacons to tiny village harbours.

Next morning Fuerteventura was still in sight and, as they were only drifting slowly southwards, remained so for the whole of the day. In the afternoon a small fishing fleet of native craft with dhow-like sails passed within two miles of them but failed to see their signals. When evening came Fuerteventura was dropping below their limited horizon, although the more distant Tenerife was still visible, owing to the much greater elevation given to it by its 12,000 feet volcano; but the morning after that both had disappeared and the castaways were once more surrounded by an unbroken prospect of shimmering blue sea.

It was about three weeks later that Gloria discovered the rum.
On the face of it, the discovery could not have been better timed as it was made on Christmas Eve. In fact, Gloria was hunting through some of the still unexplored cargo to see if she could not find some exotic additions to their Christmas dinner.

Her first impulse was to call to Philip to come down and help her open the case, but she suppressed it on the sudden thought that it would be much more fun to save her find as a surprise for him next day; so she opened the case herself, got out a bottle and mixed the whole of it with an equal quantity of orange juice which she had been saving for the following day’s celebration.

Next morning they exchanged the presents they had been surreptitiously making for each other. Hers to him was a portrait of herself, and as she gave it to him she said rather shyly:

‘It seems a fool of a present when I’m within a few yards of you day after day. But we must be rescued some time, and I thought maybe ’twould be a sort of souvenir for afterwards, if you ever wanted to think of me at all.’

‘But, Gloria, it’s lovely and a most charming thought,’ he assured her quickly. ‘I shall think of you often, too. After all, we’ve been alone together now for over four and a half months, so we know each other better than lots of couples who’ve been married for a year. I mean, that is …’ he broke off a little awkwardly, then added with a rush: ‘I could never forget you.’

His present for her was a piece of barbaric jewellery which he had made himself. It was a collar, in the Egyptian fashion, of many necklaces, a pendant to hang between the breasts and bracelets to match. He had made them from several hundred coffee beans, patiently stringing them together before colouring them in a bold effective pattern with some of Gloria’s own paints. She was delighted with it, especially as he had gone to so much trouble on her behalf: a fact which pleased her more than the prettiness of her new ornaments which were just the type to appeal to her. She stripped off her other jewellery, to which she had clung tenaciously through all their hazards, and insisted on his putting on his presents to her. With nervous fingers he fixed the clasp of the collar at the back of the neck.

Philip had favoured having their Christmas dinner in the middle of the day, but Gloria had pointed out that, as they always had their main meal at midday, it would make more of a
change to feed at night. Besides, if they had only a light snack between breakfast and dinner, they would have much better appetites. In consequence, they spent most of the day lazing and sleeping, and it was not until the sun was going down that Gloria produced her rum and orange concoction. She had cooled it as they did their water by keeping the vessel containing it out in the sun all day but wrapped in a succession of wet cloths.

As she produced the drink and poured out two generous rations, he exclaimed: ‘By Jove! So you kept a bottle of the orange squash up your sleeve for the big occasion! How clever of you!’

She smiled and handed him a tumbler. ‘I kept back quite a number of our fruit drinks. But this is something special.’

He took a pull and smacked his lips. ‘You’re right there! Whatever have you put in it?’

‘Have a heart, now! Don’t be tellin’ me that, as well as hidin’ away that case of rum for all these months, you don’t even know the stuff when you taste it.’

‘I suppose I ought to,’ he laughed. ‘I’ve had it in puddings and I rather like it; but I don’t think I’ve ever been offered it as a drink before. Scotch, gin and brandy are the three spirits one finds in most English homes and as I happen to like none of them I’m practically a teetotaller, except for an occasional glass of Madeira or Port.’

‘No wonder you never thought to search for this case of rum, then. But there have been times when I’d have given the eyes out of me head for a nip to quiet me tummy against the bad weather.’

The bad weather of which she spoke seemed a long way behind them now. The sea, quiet as a mill pond, lapped gently at the edges of the raft, whose great bulk floated with such solidarity that it might almost have been a square flat-topped rock. As the sun went down, a ball of golden glory, into the waters to the west and the violet twilight of the tropics closed in about them, they began their meal.

Gloria’s artistic imagination enabled her to make the best of their strangely assorted resources by boldly serving together various foods, the mixture of which would normally have been regarded as queer, and she had been at great pains to overcome the definite limitations with which they were faced by the complete
lack of certain items. This evening she had surpassed herself, but, even so, the real high spot of the feast proved to be the liquor that went with it.

The rum and orange mixture appealed to Philip’s sweet palate, and the disguised alcohol had none of the sharp breath-taking quality which he so disliked. Gloria made no secret of the fact that, after all these weeks on the wagon, it was a great treat to be drinking just for the enjoyment and fun of the thing once more. As the meal progressed they drank drink for drink, toasting each other and each other’s countries, and clinking glasses and knocking back ‘no heel-taps’ to the damnation of the Germans. After an hour they were both merrily tipsy; by the time they had finished dinner they were laughing uproariously at entirely pointless jokes and feeling absolutely on top of the world.

They tuned in to some hot jazz on the wireless and began to dance, but had to give up because they were too unsteady on their feet, so they sat down side by side and began to make the night hideous by a raucous rendering of sentimental choruses.

Presently the moon came up. Between them they had finished the first bottle of rum that Gloria had mixed with the orange squash, and Philip went to get another.

‘Y’know—y’know,’ he declared thickly, as he pulled the cork, ‘if thish’s being tight… I like it.’

Gloria shouted with laughter, then she suddenly stopped and said quite seriously: ‘Si’ down! Si’ down, you’re rockin’ t’boat.’

He sat down heavily, poured her a noggin of neat rum and slopped three fingers into his own tumbler.

As they drank he spluttered a little, laughed immediately he recovered and tipped the rest of the potion down his throat. He now felt very flushed and hot. Suddenly, an idea came to him. ‘I got it!’ he cried. ‘Shwim! Let’sh go for a shwim!’