Sanders sat opposite him with a pretty, dark-haired girl who laughed a great deal. Smith’s invitation had come through Sanders because the subaltern and Sanders were old friends. Sanders had been apologetic. “I can put ’em off — make some excuse, you know — although they were very keen I should ask you.” Smith had hesitated but accepted, telling himself it was a chance to relax and briefly forget the war, but now he was regretting it. He found he was something of a celebrity. A lot of people wanted to talk to him because the action in the Pacific had been widely reported. He did not like it. He told himself he should be pleased, he was pleased that some people thought well of him but the fact was that it embarrassed him and he did not wish to talk about the Pacific.
There was a lot he wanted to forget. He thought he might have enjoyed the luxury, war-time shabby though it was, the air of gaiety that sometimes bordered on wildness, if he could have been one of a party like those young Flying Corps officers. He envied them. They seemed to be Canadians and hell-bent on enjoying themselves. But then he told himself brutally that he was not one of them nor like them and if he was miserable it was his own bloody fault.
He found Eleanor Hurst’s direct gaze disturbing. And Hacker, the remarkably young Lieutenant-Colonel on the Staff asked him some probing questions. There was a toughness about his dark good looks. The subaltern had muttered earlier, “Son of a friend of mother’s. Wangled himself a cushy billet as a temporary Brasshat on movements or something in Dunkerque.”
Hacker was attentive to Eleanor Hurst. They talked, sometimes in low tones, their heads close together. In the general conversation Smith learned that Hacker’s commission was only for the duration of hostilities but he could hardly be called a ‘temporary gentleman’. He was wealthy, an all-round athlete and a Doctor of Philosophy. Smith learned none of this from Hacker, who talked well but not of himself. Hacker made Smith feel shabby and awkward. This was very much Hacker’s world.
Smith tried to stick it out but as Mrs. Pink badgered him with questions about the action in the Pacific his answers became monosyllabic. Until Mrs. Pink was leaning towards him, her voice shrill and affected, “You showed them, Commander! The only way! We’ve got to finish them off for good no matter what it costs!”
But Smith had taken all he could stand. He had a fleeting vision of the Kapitänleutnant dying before his eyes. ‘No matter what it costs’? He knew the cost and had seen men paying it in blood and broken bodies. He shoved back his chair and made a little bow to his hostess. “If you will excuse me.” To the subaltern: “Good luck.” And then he was gone, walking quickly to the door and out of their sight.
In the Strand he turned towards the river, away from his hotel because it was too early to return there. This was summer but the night was chill and a fine rain falling. He walked quickly through the gloom of a wartime, blacked-out London, unaware of the rain. He knew that to most of them his behaviour had been offhand to the point of rudeness, but he could not help that. He was restless, on edge. He did not want to go back to sea nor to any more parties like that. He did not want to go back to the hotel. He did not know what he wanted.
The horse slowed from a trot to a walk and a cab rolled alongside him, keeping pace. He did not notice it until she called “Commander!”
He turned and saw the face of Eleanor Hurst at the pulleddown window of the cab and stared at that face, a pale smudge in the darkness of the cab with the eyes catching the faintest of light. The cab stopped and so did he. She said, “If that’s the only uniform you have then you’d better keep it dry.” She pushed the door open.
He still stared at her but after a moment he stumbled into the cab and sat in a corner and the cab jolted away. He did not say “Thank you”. They sat in silence as the horse alternately trotted and walked eastward through the dimly-lit streets, it seemed for a long time. When the cab stopped for good it was in a street hard by the river, a cobbled street flanked by warehouses, but slotted between two of them was a little house. It looked to have been one of a terrace, the rest torn down on either side to make room for the warehouses. Its front door opened from the pavement without any garden or yard before it. A knocker and handle gleamed brassily and above the door was a fanlight.
Eleanor Hurst was down before he could precede her. The cabbie said, “One and tuppence, sir.” Smith fumbled out his change and handed up three sixpences. “Thank ye, guv. G’night.”
Eleanor had gone and the door stood open. He passed through and found himself in a sitting-room. There was a fire in the grate and before it a guard. In the firelight he saw her standing by the table in the middle of the small room, reaching up. She said, “Close the door.” As he did so there was the snap of a match, then the brief hiss and plop! as the gas ignited and lit the room. He saw that at the back of it was a door that led to a kitchen. To his left a flight of stairs ran up out of the sitting-room to the floor above.
She still held the burning match in her fingers and looked at him over its flame until it burned down and she shook it out, dropped it in the fire-place.
“Would you like a drink, Commander?” She nodded to a glass-fronted cabinet that held a row of bottles, a syphon. Her voice was different now, husky. He shook his head, still standing by the door.
At the foot of the stairs she paused, her back to him. “Commander. What’s your name? Your first name?”
“David.”
She nodded and went up the stairs.
He should leave. This was a strange young woman; not bold, nor wild, but too cool. He knew nothing of her. He had got himself into trouble enough. The door was behind him. He was still wondering, hesitating, when she called him.
“David?” A question. Asked of herself? Doubting?
He went up to her.
In the night she woke and lifted on to one elbow to look down at him. She wondered if he thought she took home every man she met. At home in Dorset some had said that the Hurst girl would come to no good. She looked at him and thought they could be right but he had looked so — lost. Now he slept as if drugged but she was afraid and slid over on top of him, woke him, demanded him.
He stayed with her for the rest of his leave. On the first day he paid his bill at the hotel and brought back his valise and stood it against the wall close by the door. They took a train into the country and walked. Or they wandered down by the river. They did not go to the West End, to its shows or its restaurants. They went to bed when it suited them and lay late in the mornings. They did not talk much, but enough. He found she was cool and she was wild and she was bold. He thought he learned a great deal about her but in fact he did not.
On the second day of his leave they took a cab to the house of a distant cousin of Eleanor’s. He was in France with the Royal Flying Corps and they borrowed his motor-car. In the cab Eleanor said, “It’s a fourteen-horse Foy Steele two-seater with a double dickey-seat behind.”
Smith said, “Oh.” And: “There’s a chauffeur?”
“A chauffeur? No!” She laughed. “Why?”
“Well, I can’t steer one of the things. Never tried.”
“That’s all right. Driving is what I do. I drive a Staff car, carting Generals and what-not all over London. Just at the moment I’m on leave.” She glanced at him, amused but with an edge to her voice now. “Or did you think I spent my time comforting lonely officers?”