Douglas Reeman - In Danger's Hour

She ran up the great spiral staircase to her room. She did not even see the flaking paint, the rough notices pasted to the wall which gave directions about the nearest air-raid shelters, what to do in a gas attack, how to deal with an incendiary if one fell through the ceiling.

She arrived in her room and stood panting by the window before drawing the heavy black-out curtains. There had been snow, but most of it had melted.

Perhaps he would be home for Christmas? She threw herself on the bed and pressed the old teddy bear against her face.

She thought of his brother, the irrepressible Tony, who was still in the naval hospital. He was to be home for Christmas; he had written to her, had told her about meeting Ian in Sicily. It had taken several attempts before she could control her tears and read it.

She had made a point of visiting Fowey to see his parents. His father had hugged her warmly and treated her like one of the family. His mother had kept a polite distance, playing much the same role as the Canon downstairs. She had gone to see his old boat, the Barracuda, and the foreman Jack Weese had pulled her leg about sailing off with her before young Master Ian got home for good. It could all have been so different. She closed her mind to the other thought. That it might still change.

She opened a drawer and took out his precious letters, and lastly the big newspaper article written by the celebrity w.n correspondent Richard Wakely. It was very much like the broad cast, so that when she read and reread it she heard his familial voice describing the scene just as he had witnessed and shared it. The shrill scream of Stuka dive-bombers, the roar of ships exploding, the troops fighting their way up the Sicilian beaches.

Richard Wakely had been right there beside Ian. Could have reached out and touched him. Wakely’s cameraman had taken several action pictures, and one of them had been of Ian.

He had been looking up at the sky, pointing with one arm while smoke rose behind him like an evil presence.

She looked at the picture now. Ob, dearest of men, 1 love you so.

Wakely had finished his broadcast like the article, with his usual flourish.

‘Together, that young captain and I had looked into the face of death, and come through yet again.’

She had written to the newspaper and had asked if it was possible to purchase a copy of the print of lan’s picture. So far there had been no response.

She walked into her small bathroom and turned on the taps. She saw the unopened jar of bath salts by the window. They didn’t make it any more. As the lady in the shop had said wistfully, ‘I expect it’s used for explosives now!’

Eve would save it, as she had – She felt her face flushing and left the bathroom. Then she did something she never normally did. She locked the bedroom door, and stood in front of the wardrobe mirror for several tormenting seconds, while the hot water hissed into the huge bath like a pool of lava.

Very deliberately she opened a flat drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe and took out the nightdress. She carefully removed the little sachet of rosebuds and rosemary although their fragrance remained in the fine white silk, as it had for the two years since she had bought it. She smiled and held it up against herself while she watched the image in the mirror and remembered. She had almost emptied her post office savings account to buy it, in the days before rationing had made such luxuries beyond the reach of all but the very rich and the black market. She had taken two buses to go to another district and withdraw the money, in case the local postmistress might tell her mother what she had done.

She made up her mind, and pulled the jersey over her head and slipped the trousers down to her ankles.

Her heart was beating painfully; she kept her gaze on her own reflected stare as she tossed her underwear on to the bed and stood quite naked, with the nightdress held up to her chin. She would not put it on until…

Two years she had had it. She had known then, and before that, that she had wanted him. If he had turned instead to another, she would never have married. She did not know how she was so certain. She just knew.

Her mother called, “Will you be long, dear?’

She smiled and carefully folded the sachet inside the nightdress before slipping it into its special bag.

‘Ten minutes, Mummy!’

She walked, naked, across the cold room and into the steamy embrace of the bath.

Soon. They would make up for all things lost. Together.

The big staff car seemed to be hurtling into complete darkness. With the headlamps almost blinded by the regulation shields to prevent them being seen from the air, objects loomed out of the shadows as if the driver had lost control.

Commander Bliss muttered, ‘God Almighty, I’m glad she knows the road!’

She was a leading Wren from the C-in-C’s staff at Plymouth, a small, wiry girl who seemed to be enjoying the drive, a conflict between herself and the car.

Sherwood saw pale cottages, their small windows blacked out, crouched by the roadside, then gaps where the fields took over again, gaunt hedgerows which shone in the dipped beams from the melted snow, and once a horse staring over a gate, its eyes like bright stones in the glare.

Up to Exeter and away from the sea to Honiton in Devon, the windscreen wipers fighting a losing battle against the mud and slush thrown up from the road by other vehicles. Most of the latter were military, Sherwood noticed, huge lorries which seemed to fill the breadth of the unmarked road.

In the front seat beside the driver, Leading Writer Wakeford sat stiffly back in his swaying seat, and Sherwood got the impression he had both feet pressed against the floor – as well he might Sherwood kept thinking of Ransome’s attempt to keep him from this unexpected assignment. He had heard about Wakeford’s letters, which he had left in safe keeping, and wondered why he had not done the same. Just a note, a few words to try and explain why he had left her asleep, why he had not even written to her.

If this job went badly wrong… He glanced out of the streaked window so that he could avoid opening another conversation with Bliss. He seemed to speak of little else but The War, in capital letters. It was like being cooped up with the nine o’clock news, he thought.

The mine might easily explode. Something new could have been added. Bliss had stopped the car once to make a telephone call: when he had returned he had said that the mine was still intact. He had sounded almost relieved, as if it would have spoiled his record to lose it.

Sherwood thought of the girl called Rosemary, the way they had clung to one another, had demanded so much that they were totally spent.

A letter would have made it worse for her; that is, if she cared after what he had done.

He thought too of the men who shared his life in Rob Roy, a typical small ship’s company. How long would they remember him if things went wrong? He forced a smile. Just a dog-watch, as the old sailors said.

He could picture some of them now, making their different ways to all points of the compass. The luckier ones would already be home, down at the local pub, or picking up the pieces of a broken marriage, discovering peace away from their messmates, from everything. Others might still be wondering what they would find. A gap where the house had once stood, sympathy, and a feeling of utter loneliness.

He thought of Rosemary again. She was alone. Could she remember her husband, the soldier called Tom? Had she been loving; him on that last, desperate night in Mayfair?

Sherwood heard his bag rattle behind the seat as the car lurched over to avoid a man pushing a bicycle. The man shouted something after them and the little Wren murmured, ‘Stupid sod. trying to get his name in the papers.’ She seemed to remember her senior passenger and added, ‘Sorry, sir.’