Twelve Seconds to Live (2002) (23 page)

She did not speak or move. Someone had closed the door behind her. They were alone.

‘Another incident, just now. A magnetic mine. Old hat, I suppose somebody said, after all we’ve discovered lately!’

She felt the sudden bitterness, anger, despair.

She said quietly, ‘You knew, didn’t you? I saw it in your face, your eyes.’

‘There was nobody else available. How many times have I heard that? And the bad thing is, it’s usually true. There aren’t enough, like that poor devil in the midget sub, who are brave or skilled enough to do it.’

He moved as if to turn away, shut her out. She said, ‘No, tell me. Hold me, if it helps.’

He put his hands on her shoulders, her hair against his face.

‘He was only twenty. And he trusted me. Now he’s dead.’ She felt his body shake. ‘It was his first beast.’

Afterwards, she thought it had sounded like an epitaph. For the young sub-lieutenant, and perhaps for the unknown German who had died alone.

Masters was to meet Elaine de Courcy sooner than he had expected or dared to hope. The parents of the sub-lieutenant who had been killed had requested that a service be held at the base, so that his friends and some of those he had served with could be present. John Mannering had not been in the service long enough to have many of either, but Captain Chavasse had been sympathetic, even eager to oblige, and with what outsiders might regard as unseemly haste it was arranged.

A firing party of gunnery ratings, drilled and vetted by a senior lieutenant who had, as one three-badged able seaman remarked, ‘buried more poor Jacks than any undertaker’, and a naval chaplain made an impressive display. Even the weather had eased. A lingering mist on the Channel hid the division between sea and sky, but there was sunshine too, and a light breeze to ruffle the sailors’ collars and lift the White Ensign.

They met outside the wardroom building and shook
hands formally, like strangers. She said, ‘I had no time to tell you I was coming. Captain Wykes is here, too.’ She smiled quickly and he realized that he was still gripping her hand.

He released it. ‘Sorry. It’s been a bit of a rush down here.’

Surely Wykes had not come this far for a memorial service for someone he had never even met. He was too busy, and their lordships would not be amused. The girl turned away slightly to watch the naval guard stamping into position and picking up their dressing, a gunner’s mate breaking the silence with hoarse barks of command.

Surely it was no coincidence that she had come with Wykes; he had almost expected to see the French
capitaine
here as well.

Close to, in the fresh light, she was even more striking. She wore a dark fur coat, one hand holding the collar closed against her throat, but unlike the other women he had already seen her hair was covered with a silk scarf, not any sort of hat. On her, it seemed right.

He was still troubled, unnerved even, by his reactions that night, when he had been told about the subbie’s death. He had tried to remember every part of it, her warmth, her body when he had held her. He wanted to smile, to mock himself and his clumsiness. But it would not come.

She faced him again, her hand shading her eyes from the watery sunshine.

‘I had a quick look at the little church when we arrived. They care for it very well.’

Masters watched the gunnery officer making a final inspection of the firing party.

It was like sharing a secret. So she knew the church . . . Maybe she did not care. He found that he was going over it again. When she had been called away; a car had arrived to take her back to London. Just like that.

She had put the greatcoat over his arm and had been thanking him, at the same time waving to the driver and Wykes by the door. He said, ‘We shall meet again soon.’ And she had turned her face, a lock of hair falling across her cheek as he had kissed it. A second, no longer. And she was gone.

He had not imagined it. After she had gone he had held the collar of his greatcoat to his face. The same perfume still lingered in his quarters, something he knew he would never forget.

She was not a girl; she was perhaps the same age as himself. Intelligent, confident, someone used to men being interested, persistent if the chance offered itself.
I know that look. I recognized it
, she had said of Sally. The Frenchman, perhaps? Others?

Chavasse, with his secretary Brayshaw at his elbow, had reappeared, his eyes directed briefly at a bugler and then at the chaplain. He was ready.

The others took their places, including a Wren officer, the one who had been with Critchley’s widow on that other occasion. He had seen an officer of his own rank looking at him, giving a discreet wave, his successor at H.M.S.
Vernon
.

And the bereaved parents, the subbie’s mother in tears, her husband grim-faced, watching the firing party
critically, comparing them, perhaps, with something from his past.

They had already spoken; Masters could still feel it like a slap in the face.

‘Well, I suppose you couldn’t be expected to be everywhere, to know what’s happening all the time!’ Which was exactly what he
had
meant, and who could blame him?

The chaplain had opened his book, his surplice billowing around him in the breeze. They should have asked the padre from Lulworth, the fisherman. He, at least, would have understood.

The coffin was in position, a new flag folded over it, and Masters had seen the hearse parked near the main gates, ready to take the young officer back to his home town.

There would not be much to put in the ground. There rarely was.

Caps removed, heads uncovered, the bugler moistening his mouthpiece with his tongue. Only the firing party stood fast, the gunnery officer’s face like stone. Masters could imagine what he was thinking. As a sub-lieutenant he had once been involved with an admiral’s funeral. Peacetime: sword and cocked hat on the coffin, guard and band. Everything.

But all that really stuck in his mind was the senior gunnery officer who had been in charge of the ceremonial.

And during the period of Resting on the Arms Reversed, an expression of deep melancholy will be worn by all officers present . . . until Carry On is sounded.

She said suddenly, ‘Hold my arm, please. I’m no good at this kind of thing.’

He slipped his hand into the sleeve of her fur coat, and gently gripped her wrist above the glove.

After all the preparation the service seemed to last only a few minutes. The chaplain did not once look at his prayer book; he knew it by heart, Masters thought. He felt her shiver, although her skin felt warm in his grasp. Remembering someone, or something?

‘The days of man are but as grass: for he flourisheth as a flower of the field. For as soon as the wind goeth over it, it is gone: and the place thereof shall know it no more.’

Masters saw the dead subbie’s mother lean forward as if to touch the draped coffin, her husband reaching out to restrain her.

Then the bark of commands.

‘Firing party,
load
!’ The metallic, precise clatter of rifle bolts.

‘Pre-
sent
!’ The rifles angled towards the misty sky, the ratings’ caps all in line, chinstays down.

‘
Fire
!’

He held her wrist more tightly as the crash echoed across the inlet in a single blast. Some gulls rose, flapping angrily from the water, and beyond the main gates Masters saw an old man stop on the road and remove his battered hat while he faced the sea.

‘Re-
load
!’

‘
Fire
!’

Someone was sobbing uncontrollably, and Masters heard Wykes break into a fit of coughing.

‘Order
arms
!’ The rifles came down together. Chavasse would be pleased; H.M.S.
Excellent
, the gunnery school, could have performed no better.

‘Thank you.’ She seemed very calm, but the blue-green eyes were misty. Like the sea. She repeated, ‘Thank you.’ She was trying to smile. ‘David.’

It was almost over. The coffin had gone, the firing party were having their rifles inspected, bolts worked smartly in and out to make certain that not even an empty blank cartridge should escape the lieutenant’s notice.

People began to move towards the wardroom building where the mess stewards would be waiting. All part of the drill, as Coker would put it. Chavasse was talking to Brayshaw, pointing at something, probably telling him to make sure the flag which had draped the coffin did not go astray. It was otherwise unused, and would be needed for the Trafalgar display.

A passing lieutenant said to his friend, ‘I hope mine’s as quick as that when the time comes!’

‘Can’t wait, can you?’ They both laughed.

Masters said, ‘Don’t mind them. They care enough to be here.’

‘I know that,’ she said.

He saw Wykes disentangling himself from another group of officers and heading towards them.

She said, ‘You don’t have to take your hand away, you know.’ She twisted her wrist, but that was all. ‘Unless you feel that you must?’

Wykes returned the salute and cleared his throat noisily. ‘Smoke from those blanks. Still, went pretty well, I thought?’

Masters smiled. There was something very reassuring about Wykes; he could have been commenting on a regatta or a cricket match.

Wykes raised a hand to someone, but came directly to the point uppermost in his active mind.

‘I have some fresh information for you. We shall have to stay overnight at your quarters, I’m afraid – don’t want to make things look too obvious, do we?’ He did not wait for an answer; he never seemed to. ‘We shall be undisturbed that way, eh?’

The girl said, ‘You could have mentioned it earlier.’

Masters felt her hand slipping away from his. Her surprise was genuine; it must have taken her completely aback.
The perfume.

Wykes was saying, ‘You have a good staff there, as I recall. Nothing fancy, but something decent to drink, I hope?’

Then he sighed. ‘We’d better show our faces inside, I suppose. I hate this part of it.’

They followed him towards the queue by the wardroom entrance.

She said, ‘I’m very sorry.’ She was calm again. In control. ‘He does things like this. He’s in another world sometimes.’ Then, as if to change the subject, ‘There’s a pretty girl, one of your admirers, obviously!’

Masters saw a dark-haired Wren who had been talking with a Royal Marine driver, apparently discussing his car.

He exclaimed, ‘Don’t salute, not today!’ and saw the uncertainty vanish, her face open in a smile as he took her gloved hand in his.

He said, ‘This is Leading Wren Margot Lovatt.’ And then, ‘Light duties, remember? You shouldn’t be here, really, and you know it.’ They stood looking at one another, then she said, ‘I wanted to come back. Needed to.’

The burly Royal Marine said, ‘I’m keepin’ an eye on ’er, sir!’

‘Do that, will you?’

She murmured, ‘Thank you for saying that.’

He released her hands and saluted her.

‘Come on, I need a drink.’

He realized he had taken Elaine’s arm, that she had not resisted.

‘The girl who was in the car crash? I heard about it. She was lucky, very lucky to all accounts . . . That was a nice thing you did just now. Obviously she thinks the world of you.’ She was watching his face, his eyes.

‘Her brother was serving under me in
Tornado
. When she went down.’

‘But she stayed with you, all the same.’ She braced herself as Wykes and another captain came towards them.

She knew what she had just witnessed. What it had cost him, and the Wren, in their different ways.

She was moved by it, and disturbed; it had affected her more than she would have believed possible. And vulnerable, which must never happen again.

She took a drink from a passing steward and swallowed some without tasting it. She knew Wykes was observing her even as he was sharing a joke with the
other captain. If she could not go through with it, he would drop her like a hot brick.

She turned and looked at Masters.

‘Your little Wren had the right idea!’

A telephone jangled outside and a steward hurried through the throng, his eyes everywhere, searching for someone. She saw Masters tense, like that night at Portland, then relax with something like physical effort as the steward found the officer he was seeking.
And I will not see you suffer because of me.

Somewhere a bugle blared.
‘Hands to dinner!’
Some wag would always call,
‘And officers to lunch!’

Masters touched her arm and felt her hesitate, like that barrier when they had first met. It was never far away.

‘We’re almost the last to leave.’ He felt her move her arm, the tension gone.

She glanced around the room, where children had once danced and drilled to an out-of-tune piano.

Now, only the ghosts remained.

The small van with
Royal Navy
painted on the side stopped at the top of a steep slope and stood rattling tinnily while Sub-Lieutenant Michael Lincoln and his assistant climbed out. The driver said, ‘I’ll try and chase up your transport when I get back to base, sir.’

Lincoln shaded his eyes and stared down the slope, which appeared to lead directly to the sea. The Channel had many faces, he thought. This morning it was flat calm, hardly a ripple, the horizon touched with a faint silver thread. There was a three-ton Bedford lorry parked by a pile of crates, where a gap had been opened in the
rusting barbed wire barrier, and some Royal Marines in their camouflaged denims were sitting or standing around them. One was throwing a piece of driftwood for a rough-haired terrier to fetch and recover with unending energy.

An officer was standing apart from his marines and looked up when he saw Lincoln. He made a point of peering at his watch. The car which was to have brought them to this desolate-looking beach had broken down minutes after leaving the inlet. Lincoln felt a growing resentment. It was not an emergency, anyway.

‘Got all we need?’ It was something to say. Downie never needed to be reminded.