He bent over her, his hand moving round her breasts, down over the smoothness of her body, until he could feel the fire which burned inside her.
‘For ever.’
She closed her eyes tightly as he came down on to her, her
strong legs encircling him, making him a prisoner and a victor.
Then, as he pulled her up to enfold him she opened her eyes and gave a quick gasp of pain. They were one.
Blake lay very still staring up at the ceiling, conscious of the girl’s breath against his chest, the beat of her heart. She was lying very close to him, one leg across his, her arm around his waist.
He moved his eyes to the window and saw the edges of the curtains turning pale grey as the dawn opened up across the city.
He felt completely spent and yet elated at the same time. They had made love at first with tenderness and then with an almost desperate abandon which neither of them had ever experienced.
Blake moved his fingers down her spine, planting each memory of her in his mind, to hang on to, sustain him until. . . .
She stirred drowsily. ‘Is it time?’
‘Soon.’
He knew that the instant they were parted he would remember all the right words. Like so many desperate faces he had seen in this war. At railway stations, on a dockside. All the trite, usual sentences when a heart was bursting or a man or woman needed only to say
I love you
.
She ran her fingers over his chest, her breath suddenly unsteady. ‘I never did take you to see Cook’s cottage at Melbourne.’ Her hand moved more slowly, as if it and not she was sensing his returning desire. ‘Next time.’
‘Yes.’
He pushed her gently on to her back and kissed her hard, their mouths opening as if to devour every precious moment. She writhed from side to side as he kissed her again, on her breasts, her stomach, everywhere, until they could hold nothing back.
Then they lay motionless, listening to each other’s frantic breathing, not wishing to break the moment with words.
They were still lying together when the telephone rang beside the bed.
Blake put it to his ear. It was Quintin. How typical of the man to make it his own personal business.
‘Time to make tracks, Dick.’
Blake pictured him in his wheel-chair, his littered office with its maps and lines of filing cabinets. It is men like him who should get the VC, he thought.
He said, ‘I’m on my way.’
‘Good. Transport’s laid on. All you have to do is
be here
.’ He seemed to hesitate and then said, ‘Tell Claire that her desk is waiting for her.’
Blake raised himself on one elbow and looked down at her face. ‘Did you hear that, Claire?’
‘Yes. I’ll be there.’
He kissed her again and then held her arms to her sides. ‘If I don’t leave now, I’m never likely to. There’ll be a car coming for me. You stay and have breakfast in bed. One of those great Aussie affairs, you know, steak, eggs and chips!’
He slipped off the bed and dressed with feverish haste. He would not even stop to shave. Any second now and she would give way to the tears which had been lurking very near as soon as the telephone had rung. Perhaps for much longer.
As if reading his thoughts she said softly, ‘I’m all right. Really.’
He tried to smile. ‘I know. Like me.’
He opened the curtains and stared across the water. A fine day, the rain clouds gone in the night and neither of them had noticed. He turned and looked at her. Like a beautiful nymph, sprawled on the bed, her nakedness making her seem innocent. He saw the glint of the champagne bottle. Only one glass each, that was all they had allowed time for.
Blake bent over the bed and she sat upright instantly, her arm round his neck, her free hand feeling his unshaven face, his hair, his body.
He felt her touch the ribbon on his jacket as she said, ‘No more like this, darling. Promise you’ll take care?’
‘It’s a promise.’ He kissed her lightly. ‘I’m off.’
It was like a terrible and yet beautiful dream. One second
he was there, looking at her body, her eyes wide as she tried to see him clearly through the early morning gloom. Now, he was standing on the well-used carpet, the door shut behind him.
He thought he heard her call out, or perhaps it was a cry for them both.
In the lobby he found a bleary-eyed driver waiting for him, some girls with brooms and cleaners waiting to begin a new day.
‘Looks like a great day, Cap’n.’ The man took his bag and fell in step beside him.
Blake paused on the pavement and stared up at the hotel, but with all the windows he was not certain which one was hers.
The driver slid behind the wheel and swung away from the pavement with a scowl. Another stuck-up Pom, he thought. And me just being friendly.
Lieutenant-Commander Scovell’s eyes followed Blake around the
Andromeda
’s day cabin like needles.
‘I must say, sir, I’ve been wondering what all the flap was about. So we’re going after the enemy in earnest and the decoy ship was
just
a decoy after all?’
Blake had been back aboard for two hours, each minute of which had been crammed with making and answering signals, dealing with the dockyard manager and his men, as well as trying to keep Scovell’s questions at arm’s length until the ship was at sea.
Now it was almost that time. The brows had been hoisted away by the dockyard cranes, the last man had been checked aboard who might notice something different and shout his doubts to a chum on the pier.
The cabin shook steadily to the engines’ pulsating beat as Weir and his men made their final tests.
He said, ‘In earnest, Number One. If we make a mess of it, it’ll be a long chase at best. At worst, the enemy will disappear into thin air.’
He tried not to think of Fairfax and his pretty wife. Now he
was already in his strange command, probably going over all the things he would have to remember, just as he was doing.
Scovell shrugged. ‘I’ll not be sorry to get out of it.’
Blake regarded him thoughtfully. All Scovell could see was his own command, another step up the ladder while there still was one.
It made life simpler to be like Scovell, he thought.
He said, ‘I shall speak with the ship’s company later on. I’ll leave it to you to spell it out to the wardroom.’ He eyed him gravely. ‘But just the facts, Number One. I don’t want them to think it’s another useless patrol, right?’
Scovell gave a thin smile. Then he asked, ‘Bad flight, was it, sir?’
‘Average. Why?’
Scovell gathered up his file of defaulters, requestmen and his changes in the watch-bill with a kind of panache.
‘I noticed you’d not had time to shave, sir?’ His eyes were opaque, like the shark’s.
‘I’ll attend to it right away. First things first. . . .’
Scovell glided to the door. ‘Rather like Francis Drake, sir. Still time to beat the enemy afterwards, what?’
Blake stared at the door. It was the nearest thing to a joke he had ever heard the first lieutenant make.
He wondered if Claire was in her office yet. Quintin had had her flown back by a later aircraft. He was obviously taking no chances.
Around and above him the ship was becoming more restless, eager to leave. Machinery clattered from somewhere, and he heard wires and fenders being hauled along the deck overhead, the occasional sarcasm of an impatient leading hand.
‘Come on then, Ginger! Wot do you think this is, a bleedin’ pleasure cruise?’
The harsher note of a petty officer who had no doubt noticed that the skylight on the quarterdeck was open and unshuttered, which meant that the captain was just beneath their feet.
Blake walked to the adjoining bathroom and switched on a light above the mirror. He had almost expected to see a
shadow staring at him, but the face looked younger, more relaxed than he could remember.
He frowned. That could be dangerous for what he had to do.
A shadow covered the scuttle and he saw the funnel of a tug gliding past, ready with a helping hand when needed.
Blake had the razor in his hands but the soap was drying on his face as his mind drifted away once more. When he touched his ribs he thought he could feel her, the way her hair had brushed over him like silk, had driven him to a frenzy.
He gave a great sigh.
The boy captain.
He was certainly acting like one.
‘Signal from
Bouncer
, sir.
Are you ready?
’
Blake re-crossed the bridge, the watchkeepers and special sea-dutymen parting to let him move freely.
Bouncer
was the tug at the stern, puffing out smoke and looking as aggressive as her name as she idled under the port quarter.
Sub-Lieutenant Walker had a handset to his lips, and called, ‘Singled up to head and stern ropes and back spring, sir.’
‘Very well.’
Blake walked back over the scrubbed gratings. He had to put all else behind him. This steel tower, the bridge, was his domain. To it, and so to his brain, went every telephone line and voice-pipe. Others did the work, his was the responsibility of using it. And winning.
Some smoke was drifting from the cruiser’s trunked funnel, but little enough.
As he peered over the screen and looked aft along the length of his command, Blake saw the disorder of getting under way already forming into patterns. The quarterdeck party under Lieutenant Friar, the torpedo officer, and squat Mr Donkin, the gunner.
Wires rose and fell from the jetty as
Andromeda
rocked slightly on another tug’s wash.
A handful of dockyard workers had come from huts and sheds to watch, and Blake found himself wondering if the spy
was looking, too, from his office somewhere at the end of the yard. What sort of a man would do it? He had seen Quintin just prior to being driven to the ship from Melbourne, and he had merely remarked, ‘I’ll let you know. When you’ve got rid of the raider.’
Blake could understand a man who spied for his country. But to pass information to an enemy who was intent on killing your own people was beyond him.
‘Ring down stand by.’
He looked forward where Scovell, hands on hips as usual, was watching the forecastle party fighting with coils of mooring wire, as if uncertain which would win.
The telegraphs jangled, and in his mind’s eye Blake moved through the bowels of his command. From Couzins, the burly coxswain, sealed in his steel wheelhouse with his quartermasters, along to the boiler rooms, to the engines, the gearing and the rudder controls. Noise, the sweet smell of oil, and furnace heat which defied every fan when the revolutions mounted.
Andromeda
would go out stern-first. Once clear of the jetty and moored vessels she would make a fine sight, he thought. If he ever saw it, it would be when he left her for the last time.
He stepped on to the port gratings. ‘Let go aft. Tell
Bouncer
to take the strain.’
He saw the Toby Jug waddle to the special flags he kept for the rare occasions they needed tugs.
‘All clear aft, sir.’ Walker sounded keyed up.
From his compass platform Lieutenant Villar took a couple of test fixes, his gaze lingering on the ancient tower in the dockyard, the device which in the old days had signalled the exact time to every ship in harbour so that their chronometers would be reasonably accurate. After this commission Villar intended to request a transfer to the South African Navy. A ‘friend’ had written to him about his wife. They had only been married for three months when Villar had been sent to join
Andromeda,
and she was ‘getting around’ already. Villar had considered it as calmly as he knew how. If it was the man he suspected, he would need crutches before long.
‘I’ve got the charts you asked for, sir.’
Wright, his young yeoman, was looking up at him with something like awe. Theirs was a strange relationship. Charts and notebooks, fleet orders about the removal of a buoy here, a wreck in a channel there.
Villar gave his wolfish grin. ‘Well done, Shiner. I’ll make a navigator of you yet.’
The stern was already moving slightly from the jetty, the dripping rope fenders being hauled inboard and rushed further forward as the well-bruised piles edged dangerously near to the paintwork.
‘Slow ahead port.’
Blake waved his arm to Scovell and saw his men slack off the spring which, as the ship nudged forward, lifted until it was bar taut. Slowly but surely, using the pull of the tug and the springing action of the wire, the cruiser angled away from the jetty, the oily water bobbing alongside, waiting to be filled by another hull.
‘Stop port. Let go forrard.’
Blake raised his binoculars and looked towards the town. Some of his men leapt into view as the lenses passed across them. A serious-faced signalman folding up the Union Jack which had been hauled down at the instant
Andromeda
had got under way. Scovell, watching his men, one foot tapping with impatience. And the captain of the forecastle, the bearded Musgrave, ‘Hydraulic Jack,’ pushing an inexperienced seaman aside as the head-rope came snaking dangerously past his ankles.
Blake wondered if Musgrave still remembered the dead men on the island, or if his face would be appearing across the table again as a defaulter, full of all the old excuses.
It was like this, y’see, sir. Me an’ my oppo was set on by a bunch of squaddies, etc., etc.
Set on? Blake had known him lay out three military policemen single-handed in Alexandria.
‘All clear forrard, sir.’
Blake turned and looked at the anchorage. A few ships in the distance, nothing dangerously close.
‘Slow astern together. Tell the other tug to stay in company.’
The tannoy bleated, ‘Fall in for leaving harbour!’
Wires were finally being vanquished by gloved seamen and were slowly vanishing into lockers and stores until the next time. On forecastle and quarterdeck the men were falling into line, their caps like white flowers, moving slightly to the ship’s stern-first thrust.
‘Stop engines.’ Blake looked at Walker’s youthful eagerness. ‘Here we go, Sub.’
The land was swinging past as the cruiser continued to drift with her way and current, until the long jetty, seemingly filled with warships, lay across the bows, with a tiny gap between a destroyer and a partly repaired minesweeper. It did not seem possible that
Andromeda
had fitted into so small a space.