A Bridge of Magpies

'You've done a lot of homework, Jutta.'

'Yes. It took years?

Again, no more. She smiled, though, and I was pleased to see the pinched look go from her face. I left the explanations for later.

We traversed the dome of rock which comprises Doodenstadt, winding and back-tracking through the 'streets' to get to our objective. The strange geological formation projected into the sea on one hand and into the desert on the other. At shoe-leather distance the lost city impressed me still less. We couldn't board the liner from the landward side. You could have driven a train through the torpedo holes in her. It was a miracle she'd stayed afloat long enough to be beached. Also-it must have been a spring tide that put her high up where she was.

We stood and looked at her rusty plating. Jutta's interest took the chill off the sense of static disaster which the years hadn't softened.

She said unexpectedly, 'Sorry I was like that back there, •

Struan.'

'Forget it. We're here now.'

'It's just that it meant – means – so much.'

I was on the point of asking for the explanation which I felt was becoming overdue; but I decided to play it gently for the moment.

'You a historian, Jutta?'

'Sort of;

She didn't seem inclined to elaborate. It was faith, not fact, which had made me trust her in the first place. But patience isn't one of my strong suits. She intrigued me.

I said, 'The South African sun didn't give you that complexion.'

She flushed, which made it better still. `No. London. I flew here, only a couple of days ago.'

'That's a very long way to come for a view of a rotting old hulk. Especially one that's out of bounds.'

'I told you, you could almost call it my cradle.'

'A small reason for a big journey.'

'Maybe. Don't come the cop again, Struan. You're nicer without.'

'Let's try the other side of the wreck.'

We caught the force of the wind there because the hulk had acted as a windbreak before. Now the spray came in jets when the breakers burst against the rocks. I found the wreck's air of desolation total and depressing. The weather side was red with rust. Crabs scuffled up and down the rotting plates and there was a population of tide-things a man's height up from the keel. Some smashed remains of lifeboats hung from perished falls.

`Jut means davit in Danish,' Jutta

'You're aJl sea.'

'Maybe too much so, Struan.'

I waited for the follow-up to this cryptic remark but it didn't come. Instead, she occupied herself with studying the ship's side, trying to find a way in. Finally we located one and slipped and scrambled up on to the deck. It was a grim spectacle. Looters and strippers had picked the place clean. Green slime clung to a lot of the metal 'tween-decks and the stairways were dangerous.

'What are you searching for, Junta?'

'My mother's cabin.'

`Number?'

'I don't know. The most I could discover was that it was among the single accommodation on the starboard side.' `

Single? How's that?'

'She wasn't married.'

'I see.'

'You don't. But you're too polite to pry.'

It was wartime.'

`Wartime: Her voice took on an edge. 'If you only knew how that fogs everything I That simple question you asked about her cabin-you can't begin to guess the involvements it took to get the simple answer:

'Jutta, what do you hope to find in your mother's cabin?'

She side-stepped my question. Instead she said, 'here's a passageway. It might lead to the cabins.'

It did, but it was wet and half-dark. The liner had taken the torpedoes on her port side and probably all the passengers on the opposite side, where we now were, had got away safely. If they'd left anything behind in their flight, the looters had taken it. Every cabin was a bare steel shell. Coffin seemed a better description.

I sniffed. 'Seals! Whew!'

We explored until it was impossible to go farther because the 'tween-decks had collapsed. Jutta was very withdrawn when we found nothing.

We retraced our steps to the bridge. It had shared the fate of the cabins. All the instruments, even the wheel, were missing. We had a wonderful view of the Bridge of Magpies, which seemed close enough to reach out and touch. The pillars on which the twin legs of the arch rested were striated by the weather-like the engine of a giant motor-cycle. At its highest point the structure narrowed to a mere couple of feet thick, which gave the whole thing an airy lightness. We shared the scene and the silence. It was companionable and felt good. Maybe what we were sharing was something more indefinable, more basic,

'Why magpies?' I asked.

'Not a clue. The name bad the American code-breakers stumped, too.'

'Please, teacher!'

We laughed at and with one another.

'Do I sound as bad as that?'

'Professor!'

'It's all back there amongst my things: everything about U-160's mission.'

'Mission?'

'You heard the tape. It wasn't an operational cruise,' '

There was enough shooting.'

'Nevertheless, it wasn't. The first buzz of it emerged when Pearl Harbour intercepted a Japanese Fleet message to U-boat Headquarters. Those code-breaker boys were hot stuff, real super-stars at their job, but the name Bridge of Magpies had them beat. As a result the signal got shelved. It should have been passed on to the British because these waters were in the Royal Navy's sphere of operations; but it never was.'

`What's at the back of all this sleuthing of yours-Jutta?'

You could almost hear the barrier clang down between us! I wasn't so far along with her as I'd imagined.

She said shortly, `To do with-my mother.'

`Whom you never knew. That's a load of filial piety, Jutta.'

`Please don't needle me, Struan. You've been very sweet and considerate bringing me here. Don't spoil it now.'

'Would it spoil it to tell you I've suddenly thought of something?'

'About my mother?'

'It's what you want, isn't it?'

'Yes… no.' Her eyes-sea-green as deep water -had been on my face, but now she looked away. 'Tell me. The moment's gone, anyway.'

I put my hand on her shoulder. Irrelevantly, I thought: Gigi must just be about opening the jetty bar now. That careless bit of breast that aJways showed. I wondered what Jutta's breasts were like. There was almost no shape to her because of' the suede jacket

'Breekbout-that's my Man Friday-told me yesterday that there's an old graveyard back of the beach in the sandhills. Maybe your mother's buried there.'

Her reaction wasn't what I'd expected. She certainly wasn't suffering from an overdose of mother-fixation. She put her hand on mine and said coolly, matter-of-factly, 'Let's go and look.'

We left the wreck, collected her paraphernalia, and hiked away into the wind-carved sandhills, which followed the coast's indentation like a half-cupped hand. Farther inland was a plain with shifting, smaller sandhills and beyond them showed the dark line of a range of fretted-rocky outcrops. We made brand new footsteps in the wind-scoured surface. The dusty smell of the desert was still damped by a sprinkling of dew. The sun shone but the wind was cold.

We stopped for a breather. Her gear was more cumbersome than heavy.

'What was "the sound of guns" mentioned on the tape, Jutta?'

I was watching her closely, waiting for the shut-down in her eyes that had followed my earlier questioning and had made them seem to be looking at me from another place. 64

But it didn't happen this time.

'I don't know what, you're talking about'

Nor did she: but she was fascinated by what I had to tell her about Convoy WV. 5BX and why Gousblom had broken away from it into the channel. I left the C-in-C out of it, of course.