Once their hands had touched across the table and he had found himself holding her fingers, as her husband must have acted.
Perhaps that had done it, he thought.
When they had returned to the flat last night they had stood in the centre of the room without speaking.
Then he had remarked, ‘No sirens yet. We’ll get a good sleep for once.’
She had been unable to look at him. ‘Don’t sleep in the kitchen. Not tonight, Philip.’ That was all.
He had held her without yearning, lifting her chin to look into her eyes, to see a pulse beating in her throat like a tiny, trapped creature.
It had started like a brushfire, and had ended with them both sprawled naked and breathless across the bed. He had hurt her; she had not had a man since her husband had gone overseas. She had cried out in pain and in a wild desire which neither of them had expected. Just once, when she fell asleep on his shoulder, she had spoken his name. Tom. It was a secret Sherwood knew he would keep.
Later he had stood by the window and waited for the first hint of morning. The clink of a milkman’s basket, a policeman’s boots on the pavement below. Men and women had died, probably in their thousands, while they had been making love in this room, he had thought. But that had been somewhere else.
He thought desperately, I must not see her again. I can’t. Any connection now would make me careless and unaware. It might also break her heart.
Her name Svas Rosemary. It was better to leave now, brutally and finally. They had had their precious moment, both of them. In war that was rare indeed.
Ransome leaned on one elbow and plucked his shirt away from his chest. With the deadlights screwed tightly shut for another night alongside the dockyard wall the air felt clammy and unmoving, in spite of the deckhead fans and a breeze from the Medway.
He stared at the pile of ledgers and files through which he had worked with barely a break, but could find no reward in what he had done. As if the day had been empty.
Dockyard reports to check and sign, signals to read, orders from the Staff Officer Minesweeping, from even higher authority at the Admiralty, which all had to be examined; translated was a more apt description.
Dockyard foremen had come and gone, and his own heads of departments, from the first lieutenant to Wakeford the leading writer, once a physics master at a grammar school, had all visited this cabin to increase or diminish his workload.
Now it was done. Even a personal letter to Tinker’s father, although he wondered if it could make any difference to him. Had he acted correctly with Hargrave? No matter what he had told old Moncrieff he still felt some lingering doubts.
But the other rumour was now a fact. Rob Roy and the flotilla would soon be heading for the Mediterranean, to a real war, where it would take every ounce of skill and endurance to carry out the work for which this class of warship had been designed. It would not just be ‘putting up with it’, a conflict of boredom punctuated occasionally by stark and violent death and destruction. It was no time to start changing the team around. He had met the new sub, Tritton, a likeable youngster who probably saw the dangerous grind of sweeping mines as something glamourous. Fallows might have to leave soon when his promotion was announced. He might end up as somebody’s first lieutenant. Better them than me, he thought. But be did know bis job. In war that was vital, at the top of the stakes. In another year, there would be even more eager, barely trained amateurs filling gaps left by the Fallows of this world.
He thought about his brief meeting with Surgeon Lieutenant Sean Cusack RNVR. He had not been what he had been expecting. If small ships were fortunate enough or otherwise, to carry a doctor, they were usually little more than medical students with stripes on their sleeves. He pictured Cusack as he had sat opposite him that afternoon in the other chair. In his thirties, with dark, almost swarthy features and the brightest pair of twinkling blue eyes he had ever seen.
He had said in reply to Ransome’s question, ‘I got fed up with the R.N.H., and one damned barracks after another. I am in the navy, so why not a ship, I asked myself?’ He had chuckled at Ransome’s surprise. ‘It’s the Irish in me, I suppose.’ Then he had said with equal candour, ‘There’ll be a lot of stress in a job like this one, eh?’
He had sat back in the chair, his head on one side like a watchful bird. It had made Ransome feel defensive, unguarded.
He had replied, ‘I suppose that’s true. You tend to think death is the only enemy, that you can cope with all else, like a sort of god. When you discover you can’t, it leaves you raw. Vulnerable.’
‘Like the boy Tinker I’ve been hearing about.’ The blue eyes had barely blinked. ‘Perhaps I could have helped. I have some experience in that field.’
Ransome had made some excuse and the new doctor had departed.
He reached down to the cupboard and took out one of Mon-crieff’s bottles of Scotch. He poured a full measure and added a dash of soda. The first today. What would Cusack have made of that, he wondered?
The ship felt quiet and still, with only occasionally footsteps on deck, and the creak of rope fenders between the hull and Ranger alongside.
A full flotilla, with more new faces, different characters to know and understand.
They might be working with the fleet, taking part in an invasion which must not fail. If it did, all the sacrifices which had left a bloody trail from Dunkirk to Singapore, Norway to Crete, would be wasted. There would be no second chance. If they put a foot back into Europe, no matter where, it must advance. Otherwise it would not be a question of a retreat, or a strategic withdrawal as the war correspondents optimistically described them. It would mean an inevitable defeat. He thought of his parents as he had seen them on this last leave. No, it must not fail.
There was a tap at the door and the doctor looked in at him, his eyes everywhere as he took in the piles of papers and files which filled the desk and part of the deck too.
‘And there’s me been enjoying meself with my new comrades, sir!’
‘What is it, Doc? Your cabin not to your liking?’
Cusack stepped into the light. ‘I’m such a fool. I completely forgot in all the excitement of joining the ship today!’ He held out a letter. ‘This was given in my care at the gates, to hand to you. To be sure, you’d have got it faster if they’d entrusted it to a blind man!’
He watched as Ransome took the letter and examined it without recognition.
Cusack said, ‘A woman’s hand, I’ll wager, sir.’ He nodded. ‘I’ll be off to finish unpacking and to put my strange S.B.A. straight on a few facts of life.’
Ransome looked at the handwriting. It was addressed correctly, c/o G.P.O. London, but the writer had upgraded his rank to Commander. Somebody’s wife or mother trying to dodge the rules and red tape, he decided.
He said, Thanks, Doc. One thing before you go.’
The doctor’s eyes fell hopefully on the Scotch but Ransome asked, ‘Are you from the north or the south of Ireland?’
Cusack pretended to be offended. ‘No true Irishman comes from the North, sir!’ He withdrew quickly.
Things might be very different with him around.
Ransome glanced at the bulkhead clock. An early night, a drink in Ranger, or a walk along the wall to clear his thoughts.
Orders would be arriving tomorrow.
He looked at the unopened letter and noticed it was postmarked Plymouth.
Something made him reach for his knife and he slit it open.
First he turned the neatly written letter over and then he felt a chill run down his spine. It was signed, Sincerely, Eve Warwick.