Laurie, his mind still on his own troubles, said, “He guessed?”
“No. He was killed.”
“Oh!” said Laurie involuntarily. Ralph looked at him for a moment, then back to the road again.
“It happened just when the situation was becoming absolutely impossible. The ship was too small, we lived in each other’s pockets; I got to know his girl friend nearly as well as I knew him. Charming manners; he never gave you any excuse to brush him off. He was a highly efficient officer, he seemed to like me, he was dead keen on the ship. I tried to get him promoted away, but he was too young. I didn’t see how I was ever going to get rid of him, unless I told him why. Something had to happen. When it did, it seemed obvious that I must have made it happen—I feel it still, sometimes.”
“Yes, of course. One would know it was impossible and feel it just the same.”
“That’s a thing you never know when you’re commanding. You’ve had a hand in everything.” He laughed quickly and added, “I grew the beard round about then.”
“Some things can’t be thought about. The more you try to be honest with them, the more they lie to you. I’m only beginning to know that.”
“You know a hell of a lot, don’t you, Spud; more than you let on.”
Laurie attempted no reply. He felt haunted by untold parts of the tale, which came to him like certainties.
“Don’t make too much of it,” said Ralph, watching the road. “Believe me, it wasn’t a romantic story.”
“I know. If it had been it would have been easier, in a way.”
“Yes. That’s an odd thing for someone like you to see.”
The next thing Laurie was aware of was the squeak of the brakes.
“Sorry I can’t take you in, Spud. It’s all red tape, there’s nothing here really that wouldn’t bore German Intelligence into a coma. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
Alone in the car beside a high wall topped with wire, Laurie could hear Ralph speaking to a guard, then his feet ringing crisply into the distance, then silence. He dozed lightly, kept from sleeping by the cold. At last he heard Ralph’s voice again, with some other man’s, coming nearer, milling over the small stuff of people who work together.
“Was it all right?” he asked when Ralph came out alone.
“Yes, he let me have the whole tackle. I found him at a party so he was fairly mellow. The difficulty was getting away. Sorry I’ve been so long.”
He had had another couple of drinks at the party, Laurie thought. It was not extremely obvious, and betrayed itself chiefly in his own consciousness of it. He had become much more taciturn, and drove with elaborate precision, as if he were taking a test.
Laurie was feeling drowsy again. When the car stopped he thought at first that he had slept through to the end of the run. Then he looked around him and saw that Ralph had pulled onto a farm track just off the road.
“I’ll have to stop for a minute or two, Spud. I’m sorry.”
“What’s the matter?” He felt the tilt of the car on the rutted ground and asked, “Had a puncture?”
“No. Just one party too many. I can always tell”—he was speaking with carefully articulated distinctness—“when my reflexes get bitched up. Luckily my inhibitions stay good till a much, oh, very much later stage. Don’t give it a thought, Spud. I know when to go on again.” He pushed off his cap and slid back in the seat, his head tilted against the folded hood. “You’ve got the cigarettes.”
“Shall I light one for you?”
“Yes.”
He smoked in silence for some minutes. Laurie could think of nothing to say.
“I think from now on I shall change over to the system of Saturday night blind, sober all the week.”
“It comes cheaper, they say.”
“You make me laugh, Spud. This shocks you more than finding me mixed up with Sandy’s crowd, doesn’t it?”
“Hell, where do you think I’ve been living?”
“Falling down on an errand of mercy, m-m?”
“Oh, go on, he’s not bleeding to death.”
“All the same if he was, you might have said; why didn’t you?”
“Because I didn’t think it.”
“You see, Spud, if you will interrupt yourself without previous notice in this arbitrary and irrational manner, you must put up with a bit of disorganization.”
“What was that?”
“Don’t be unreasonable. I can’t keep saying arbitrary and irrational just to please you.”
A wash of cold sweet air stirred across them, like an eddy in water. Drawn along the meadows, a belt of mist began to appear in a milky glimmer.
The smoke of their cigarettes was growing visible, lifting almost straight into the sky. Across one of Ralph’s temples, where the tilt of his cap had let it bleach in the weather, the hair in this faint light looked silver, and his head like bronze.
“Spud, there’s no need for you to keep falling over yourself to be tactful, because it’s of no consequence, so you can just as well say. Did you really mean to do it, or not?”
“Mean to do what?”
“Oh, come. You never used to creep out of things.”
“I won’t out of this if you tell me what it is.”
“At Dunkirk. When you sent me up.”
“Of course not. I told you.”
“You looked at me when you said it.”
“In the army you somehow don’t think of seeing people you know with beards. I just thought ‘beard’ … I daresay it was partly not having died.”
“Who’s supposed to be drunk, you or me?”
“Well, the thing was that I’d felt rather bad just a while before. I expect it was just seasickness really; but I seem to remember thinking, This is it, I must let go now. Then I woke up and there was this officer with a beard. It was reaction, I think. Street-urchin sort of thing, really.”
“God, that’s funny.” He lay back laughing to himself.
“The chap lying next me thought it was funny, too.”
“That’s really all you remember?”
“Yes. What did happen, actually?”
“To see you sitting there saying, ‘What did happen?’ It’s so bloody ridiculous, I can’t tell you. Well, now, what happened, yes. I’d just had my pom-pom gunner shot. It was awkward taking the gun just then, my sub had got put out of action the trip before, but there wasn’t anyone else so I was stuck with it. I couldn’t hit the bastard, he got away. Then up comes Norris with some garbled story, would I tell them if someone was dead. I told him where to go, and then suddenly there was a lull and time on my hands, so I went over. You shouldn’t have been there really, the order was no wounded on deck, but we were full up below and we always finished up with a few odd ones. I was picking my way between them when a gingery man with a couple of black eyes seemed to grab me by the ankle. ‘ ’Ere, sir, Spud ’ere ain’t gone, is ’e? There’s a sailor ’ere keeps sayin’ ’e’s ’ad it. Don’t you let ’em put ’im overboard, sir, I swear I seen ’im breathe.’ There’s no question of doing that,’ I said, ‘in any case, on a short crossing like this.’ Then I looked to see what it was all about, and it was you. Have you got the cigarettes?”
“I shouldn’t think you’d have recognized me very easily.”
“Now that was the uncanniest thing I’ve ever seen. You were dead white, of course, and, well, here’s a thing you wouldn’t know about, but that day, when you knocked at my study door and came in, I suppose what with the awkwardness and one thing and another … Well, anyway, there you were. No, light it for me, you’ve got the lighter.
“So I felt your pulse, only I couldn’t feel anything except that you were as cold as a corpse, so I opened your tunic or whatever you call those workhouse slops the army wears now—can’t you remember any of this?”
“I expect I might have just afterwards. It’s all gone now.”
“It’s funny, that, really damned funny. I felt for your heart and it seemed I could feel something just faintly ticking over; and then you moved a bit. ‘Hello, Spud,’ I said, ‘how are you feeling?’ The next man had told me your name so he didn’t think anything of my knowing it. I think I said, ‘Hold on, Spud, we’ll get you home all right,’ or something like that. And then you opened your eyes, very deliberately, and seemed to give me a good look up and down. ‘Sorry, dearie,’ you said, smiling to yourself in a private sort of way. ‘Sorry, dearie, some other time.’ Then you turned away as if that were about enough. Famous last words.” He drew once or twice on the cigarette and added, “I heard you were dead about three weeks later.”