They slipped over the side of the boat, and paddled ashore. He might have carried her, he thought suddenly, but it did not seem a necessary thing to do: her body which he had never touched, her perfume which he knew only faintly, were not appropriate to the innocent moment they were sharing. But perhaps this thought of his had also reached her, for when they had spread their rugs and unpacked the picnic basket, and settled down side by side, there was an unusual constraint between them. It was the first time that their isolation had been so complete, so unguarded: it was the first time, also, that they had seen each other out of uniform, and the simple clothes they were wearing somehow made it easier for them to think of each other as a man and a woman, bringing nearer to the surface a sensual awareness of their proximity, associating, for the very first time and with the utmost significance, her loveliness, his masculinity.
They talked desultorily, but it had no flow, no ease: they lay silent, enjoying the sun, but it was a restless enjoyment: they looked fleetingly at each other, but the looks were complicated and unreal. At last she frowned, and sat up straight, and said: ‘This is quite different from any other time. Why is that?’
He might have guessed that she would thus present the problem for their joint inspection, promptly and candidly . . . He said: ‘It’s being alone, I think. In complete isolation. It hasn’t happened to us before.’
‘But surely’ – she paused, and frowned again – ‘why should we be shy, or ill at ease, over that? It’s not as if we were babies.’
Babies, he thought – why have I now only one image when she says ‘babies’ like that? What is happening to us so quickly? – or is it only to me . . . ? He spoke almost at random: ‘Julie, we’ve met five or six times in the past eight months. Each time we come to know each other a little better, and I think we enjoy it a little more.’ She nodded in agreement. ‘It’s been a process of exploration – very sweet, too. But it’s been progressive all the time.’
‘So it should be. That’s been the best part of it.’
He was becoming shy now, and, he noticed with faint alarm, rather breathless. Surely he should be past that sort of nervousness . . . I want her, he thought in confusion, looking at her breast and shoulders under the thin shirt: I knew that I would, but it isn’t as simple as that, after all – I want her in so many different ways, apart from the breast, the mouth that promises to be soft. I want her and must have her, on any terms she chooses. But the more closely bound, the better . . . He drew an uneven breath.
‘It’s still progressive,’ he said with difficulty, ‘but now we’ve come to the point when – you’re so lovely – I am a man—’
She said: ‘Oh!’ suddenly, and then: ‘I know very well that you are a man.’ He was aware of tension in her manner also: she was looking away, she might even have coloured slightly. Presently she asked: ‘Couldn’t that be postponed a little longer?’
‘It doesn’t feel like it.’
‘No, it doesn’t, does it?’
‘You know that I love you.’
She nodded her head. ‘Now I do.’
‘And you?’
‘Wait for a few moments.’ She was staring at the water, undecided, troubled as he had never seen her before. But already the air was lighter, the honest day more beautiful, because of what they had said. Now they knew, at least, where the margin of their delight was set.
She was silent for a long time, while the small waves lapped the beach and the sun blessed them; but when she spoke it was in a happier, more confident voice, as if she too were glad that the plain words and thoughts were now before them.
‘I wish,’ she said, turning towards him, ‘that there could be a straightforward “yes” to that question, but it wouldn’t be an accurate answer. We share a lot, don’t we? – that’s been true from the very beginning: we’ve seen it and we’ve felt it happening, and parts of it have been lovely.’ Her eyes, grave and tender, were now regarding him with every sort of honesty. ‘It began during that very first walk home from your party, when we came together at last after having to be apart for the whole evening. Probably we knew that this was the way it would go. You said’ – she smiled vividly – ‘”the walk made the party,” and then we said goodnight.’
‘I thought of kissing you, and then I thought not.’
‘That was the first thought we shared . . . Now we are here, suddenly peaceful in the middle of war: you love and want me, and I—’ She paused, and afterwards her voice was stronger. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘people are always asking me to marry them, or sleep with them.’ From her, in that firm and honest tone, it did not sound crude or awkward. ‘In a war, in my job, surrounded by lots of people, it’s bound to happen: no special merit is attached. Sometimes I think about the proposition, quite seriously, and then there is a false note, or the man is too quick, or the day is too dull, and I walk away from it again.’ For some reason, she leant forward at that moment, and touched his bare arm: her soft fingers were immensely comforting, so that the bleak and terrible thoughts of other men making love to her, which had started to devour his brain, melted away on the instant. ‘Now there is you,’ she went on, ‘and you are none of those bad things. There have been no false notes, you have matched my own pace, my own will, and no day with you is dull.’
He covered her hand with his own, and felt it move slightly. He looked up and said: ‘As long as we both tremble a little, I don’t think we need tell anybody about it.’
‘Oh, I can tremble for you . . . Look,’ she said again, ‘with you I am on the edge of love, the very edge. There are things about you I like, things about you I respect, things that I love already, other things that are surprising. This afternoon, we’ve discovered something else – or almost discovered it.’
As she paused again, he nodded, and said: ‘A new thing, but in line with the rest. The senses, the first stirring. It has been sweet.’
‘It has been frightening . . . I don’t mean that I’ve been afraid of suddenly looking up and finding you lying on top of me: I mean that it is altogether a new thing, and I have never felt it so strongly before.’
‘And with all that?’
‘With all that, the edge of love still.’
He got up, crossed the two paces between them on the rugs, and deliberately sat down again, close to her.
‘You mean, I spoke too soon?’
‘Not quite – it had to be said.’ She leant towards him. ‘When you are near to me, I know it had to be said. But as far as my answer is concerned, perhaps it is too soon – perhaps one single meeting too soon.’
‘When you are near me,’ he said unsteadily, ‘I have to say: “May I kiss you?”’
‘And I,’ she answered, not hesitating, ‘have to say: “Oh yes, the situation certainly covers that”.’
Her lips were wonderfully soft, her cheek and hair fragrant, her body as compliant and as ravishing to his senses as he had known it would be. He murmured: ‘Julie . . .’ between two kisses, and he felt a trembling of her lower lip which might have been nervousness, could have been desire. The sky seemed to turn over as he opened his eyes again, to find her looking at him with a gentle, delighted surprise.
She said: ‘You have all the talents.’
Smiling, taking from her the cue for a cooler moment, he asked: ‘The edge of love, still?’
She nodded, laughing with him now. ‘But the edge is nice, too.’ She leant forward, kissed him briefly and assuredly once again, and then said, with infinite composure: ‘Were you asking me to marry you?’
He stared at her. ‘What else?’
‘Kissing you put all sorts of other things into my mind.’
He realised that she had suddenly been made immensely happy, and deeply moved at the same time, and he wanted to match that mood with his own. He said, slowly: ‘I was asking you for that, too . . . Of course I want you, in all the ways there are, including being your lover as soon as possible. But marriage seemed the way for us.’
‘And dedication?
The war?’
‘Sweet,’ he said – the first endearment between them seemed to constrict his throat – ‘I just don’t know the answer to that, any more. The war’s still there to be fought, and we both still have to fight it. Long ago, it seemed to me that one could only do that by concentrating all the time, and excluding every other distraction. Now that seems – long ago.’
‘We’ll talk,’ she said, watching his face. ‘It doesn’t matter now. The edge of love,’ she murmured. ‘How patient are you?’
‘With hope, very patient.’
‘No hurry for an answer?’
‘No hurry in the world.’
‘But you said: “Lovers as soon as possible”.’
‘That was because I’d just kissed you. Kissing you means wanting you, on the instant. There were indications that – I don’t think there’s any polite way of putting this – it seemed to me that you are turning me into a very effective lover, just with two kisses and an arm round my shoulder.’
She smiled faintly, colouring again. ‘I felt something like that, too.’
‘It’s all right for you,’ he grumbled. ‘No one can tell.’
She laughed. ‘I suddenly know you very well. It’s a tremendous relief.’
‘How lovely,’ he said, touching her cheek, ‘to have someone who always understands what I’m talking about . . . And now I really want a drink.’
They held hands all the way back. Sometimes he said ‘Julie’, sometimes he leant over and kissed her: she seemed, on that slow return journey, to be exquisitely tender and near to him, as if they had already become lovers. At the foot of the loch they turned and set course for Hunter’s Quay; and there, coming through the boom, a reminder of something which was not yet resolved, was a line of escorts – two frigates, four corvettes – punching the tide as they hurried for home after delivering their convoy. The two of them watched the ships in silence: they passed quite close, and the successive waves of their wash set the little dinghy dancing. When they were past, Julie said: ‘You are thinking: “There is Allendale’s group”, and I am thinking: “There is the war again”.’
‘We’ve managed to escape it for a long time.’ He pressed her shoulder. ‘Never leave me, Julie.’
As if she had not heard him, she said: ‘I know where you’re going tomorrow. Take care of yourself.’
Surprised, he asked: ‘Something special?’
She inclined her head, very slowly. ‘It’s said to be the coldest journey in the world.’ And she said again, her eyes on his face: ‘Take care of yourself.’
6
North Russia . . . Chief Petty Officer Barnard, the bearded coxswain of Saltash, surveying the shoddy waterfront of Murmansk, decided that this place was right in line with most of the other places he had visited during the war – it was not worth the trip. A pale sun, peering like a froggy, myopic eye from the lustreless sky, picked out the length of the wooden quay, and the snow continually trodden to dirty slush, and the jumble of rooftops that lined the harbour. Murmansk – from this viewpoint, at least – was simply another harbour, with its equipment a little less efficient, its armed sentries a little more obtrusive, and its air a damned sight colder; and to get there, they had endured everything that the enemy had to offer in the way of attack, and had lost, in the process, a dozen ships, three escorts, and upwards of twenty planes from their carriers. They had made, in fact, an expensive, tiring, and extremely noisy excursion, and it was to be hoped that the Russians were duly grateful for the effort.
Barnard stirred inside his thick hairy duffle coat, and beat his gloved hands together, and stamped his feet on the iron deck. Murmansk was unspeakably cold – he had never been more glad of his beard – but then, the whole of the trip had been like Murmansk in that respect, inflicting on them a seeping, searing sort of cold which found its way everywhere. The convoy, ‘evasively routed’ as usual, had coasted past the thick pack ice round Bear Island and North Cape: in these Arctic wastes, there was no night, no real darkness at all, and over them, all the time, was the same cold grey light, falling on a flat sea also cold and grey. Saltash, and her fellow escorts, and the convoy, might have been a selection of scale models, placed, for further effect, on a false glass ocean decorated with falling snow. All the drama had come from the enemy, and it had come thick and fast, in every imaginable and vicious form.
Presumably these convoys had to go to Russia, thought Barnard: but by God, the price was a stinger! Jerry had tried everything on this trip, and it had paid him a classy sort of dividend. They’d had U-boats, they’d had torpedo bombers and dive-bombers, they’d had a destroyer sortie from one of the Norwegian fiords, they’d had swarms of E-boats – and it was damned cheek them joining in the Battle of the Atlantic. At one time there had even been a threat that the Scharnhorst would come out of hiding and add to the fun. Of course, there had been bags of escorts round the convoy – three groups altogether, with Saltash in charge of the lot. The skipper must have had something to carry in his head, all right . . . And there had been a big-ship escort as well, three cruisers and a battleship, mooching about to the north of them, ready for trouble. But imagine the Scharnhorst, with four turrets of fourteen-inch guns, getting in among the merchant ships before their own battleship could come within range. The German destroyers had been quite bad enough, when it came to ships being outgunned by other ships.
Perhaps, thought Barnard, the destroyers had been worst of all. They’d come roaring down from the north-eastwards, three of them in line ahead, big as bloody cruisers, and then turned outwards and began to pour hell into the ships nearest to them. One of the corvettes had bought it straight away – she’d steamed straight towards the leading destroyer, plucky little bastard, and been blown out of the water for her trouble, before she even got within range. There was nothing that corvettes could do about destroyers, and nothing much that frigates could do either – though Saltash had come streaking across to join in, with everyone on board soiling their pants on the way. Destroyers – six-inch guns . . . Luckily the skipper must have sent a signal straight away, as soon as the destroyers were sighted, because before anything else could happen, two of the cruisers had popped up over the horizon, and the destroyers had mucked off, without waiting to be told. They’d done enough damage, anyway – a corvette sunk, and three merchant ships set on fire; but it might have been a lot worse, and they didn’t come back for more, on that or any other day.
Perhaps, thought Barnard, the destroyers weren’t as bad as the torpedo bombers: they were both new weapons to Saltash, as well as to everyone else, but the bombers came over every day, for eleven days at a stretch, and in the end it got you down. Sometimes it was ordinary bombing, with the planes high up, and nothing much happening until the bombs arrived and the whole sea jumped, and the ships went up in smoke; sometimes it was dive-bombing, and the planes came screaming down, pointing straight at you, and flattening out at the very last moment; but usually it was torpedoes. The torpedo planes were the hardest of all to spot; they came in low over the water, little specks of things hard to see in the grey light: then they started weaving, so that you couldn’t keep them in the gunsights, and then they dropped their torpedoes, almost within touching distance, so that there was no time to dodge, and then they got to hell out of it, while you were waiting for the bang . . . Saltash had shot one of them down with her two-pounder, but one plane hardly made a dent; because the torpedo attack went on for eleven days, and it happened four times a day – just as quickly as the planes could nip back to Norway and refuel – and they came over in droves from every bloody angle in the compass, twelve of them, twenty of them at a time, dropping their fish all round the convoy so they were bound to hit something. And when the ships were hit, and went down, there wasn’t much chance for the poor sods on board, because of the cold.
Perhaps, thought Barnard, the cold was worse than the destroyers and the torpedo bombers put together. The cold was everywhere, inside the ship as well as out: you couldn’t ge
t warm, not if you stretched yourself out on top of the galley stove. They must have shovelled tons of snow off the upper deck: they must have thawed out the guns a dozen times, using a steam hose that damned nearly got frozen up itself. Near to the ice, when Saltash was level with North Cape, and a bit of wind got up, the cold was like a scraper running over your raw face. One of the seamen, who’d taken off his gauntlets to open an ammunition locker, had torn off the whole of the skin of one palm and left it stuck to the locker like half a bloody glove, with him staring at it as if it was something hanging up in a shop. But that wasn’t as bad as what happened to the poor bastards that got dropped into the drink.
There, you couldn’t last more than a few minutes – the cold got you as soon as the water touched your body. There was one time that Barnard remembered specially, because it topped the level for the whole trip. One of the Seafires from a carrier, trying to intercept some high-level bombing, had got into trouble, and the pilot had to bale out ahead of the convoy. While the parachute was still in the air, Saltash had her whaler down and rowing towards the spot where he was going to fall – about a mile away. But even a mile had been too far, in that sort of weather. The pilot had waved when he landed in the water, and the coxswain of the whaler had waved back: it took them not more than three minutes to get to him, but in those three minutes he was stone-cold dead – frozen as stiff as a bloody plank. That was how you could die, up in these parts – in three minutes, between waving and rescue, between a smile and a fixed-for-ever grin.