Most Secret (17 page)

He put his raincoat on and went out to it. “ ’Morning,” he said a little awkwardly. “Have you had your breakfast?” He was oppressed by the knowledge that he was bad with girls.

She smiled at him and said: “Yes, thank you, sir. I had mine in the Wrennery before I came out.”

He got into the bucket seat beside her. “All right. You know where we’ve got to go to?”

She slipped the gear in and the van moved down the road. “I think I know the place,” she said. “They marked it on the map for me last night.”

The morning was bright and fresh, the sun shone, and the little birds chirped at them from the hedges. The old underpowered van ground its way very noisily and rather slowly up the long steep hill out of the town.

Sub-Lieutenant Rhodes said diffidently: “She doesn’t get along so fast, does she? Do you think we’ll make it by eleven?”

“I think so, sir. She does a steady thirty on the level.”

“I suppose she’s very economical in petrol.”

The Wren said: “She does about twenty-five to the gallon. That’s why she doesn’t go so fast, I suppose.”

They relapsed into shy silence. The old van trundled noisily through the Devon lanes to Totnes and on towards Newton Abbot. Once Rhodes lit a cigarette and offered one to his driver, not quite certain in his own mind whether he was violating the King’s Regulations by doing so. The Wren refused the cigarette and drove on in silence; the relationship between officer and rating was maintained, though the awkward tension in the van increased.

Rhodes did not dare to turn and look at his driver. He became very much aware, however, that the Wren was rather an attractive girl. He thought it was a pity that she was so shy.

They reached their destination with a quarter of an hour to spare. It was a bare, scorched hill behind a little country house that had been taken over by the Army and neglected; there was a small camp of hutments in the field beside it. They passed two sentries who scrutinised their passes and drove the van into the car-park.

Immediately it became most evident to Rhodes that this was not a party of his grade at all. The cars that came into the park disgorged colonels and brigadiers, air commodores and group captains, admirals and captains in profusion. They parked diffidently between the Bentley of a divisional commander and the Packard of a vice-admiral. There seemed to be nobody there lower in rank than a commander. Sub-Lieutenant Rhodes got out of the van awkwardly and looked around, trying to brush the dust from his jacket.

He said to the Wren: “You’d better hang about here. I don’t suppose it’ll last more than an hour.”

She said: “Very good, sir.” She watched him as he made his way towards the demonstration, suddenly rather sorry for him. He looked terribly diffident and out of place, she thought, amongst all those high officers.

Twenty minutes later the show was in full swing.

*     *     *     *     *

By noon the show was over, and the Packard and the Bentleys were sliding out on to the road, bearing their admirals and generals back urgently to their more humdrum work. The little Austin van was the last left in the car-park, but it was nearly one before Rhodes came back to it. A subaltern walked with him to the van; the Wren heard the last words of their conversation.

“It’s terribly good of you to give me all this dope,” said
Rhodes. “If I think of anything else I’ll give you a ring.”

The army officer said: “Okay—you’ve got the number?” He dropped his vocie. “If you think any more about that other thing, come up again and have a chat about it.”

Rhodes said: “I will do that. Thanks so much for your help.”

He got into the van. The Wren pressed the starter and they moved out on to the road. As soon as they were clear of the sentries he turned to her.

“I say,” he said enthusiastically. “Did you see the big one?”

She said: “I saw them all. I got a good view from the bottom of the bill.”

“Aren’t they the cat’s whiskers?”

The Wren hesitated. She did not quite know what to say. Never in all her life had she imagined such appalling, terrifying things as she had seen in the last hour. She could not force herself to think of them as—weapons.

She said weakly: “What are they supposed to be for?”

He said: “Burning up Germans.”

She was silent for a moment, sick and horrified. Presently she said: “Are you allowed to do that to … to people?”

“The Germans use them. As a matter of fact, they’re all right in the Hague Convention.” He paused. “But did you see the
distance
that the big one goes?”

She said vehemently: “But they’re beastly things.”

He turned and glanced at her; she was flushed and rather pretty, evidently feeling strongly about it. He shrugged his shoulders.

“The Germans started using flame-throwers—at any rate, in modern times. If we can build more horribly, outrange them, smother them with their own blazing oil … so much the worse for them.”

He relapsed into silence, thinking moodily about his dog. He knew that he had offended the girl. He was not surprised; indeed he had expected it would happen some time or another; he was bad with girls. The only thing that he was really good with was animals, he thought. The little friendly creatures that depended on you, that had to be cared for, that must never be let down. Those were more satisfactory companions than any girl.

The Wren drove on in silence, shocked and hurt. She had not been in the Navy very long, and this was the first time that
she had seen the use of weapons and what they entailed. She was twenty-two years old; in civil life she had kept the books and acted as cashier in a shop in Norwich, run by two aunts. The aunts had created a high-grade business in antique furniture and art fabrics; the shop itself was an old Tudor house, carefully and rather expensively modernised. The Wren had led a very sheltered life until she joined the Navy, mostly with women. With men she was usually on the defensive; she did not understand them. Generalising, she considered men to be brutal and insensitive. Sub-Lieutenant Rhodes confirmed her views.

I am sorry to say that their high sentiments broke down before the pressure of their baser appetites. At twenty minutes past one Rhodes said awkwardly:

“Have you had lunch?”

“No, sir.”

“We’d better stop and get something.” And then he realised that he had forgotten all about his cheque the day before. He had meant to cash it, and he hadn’t. He fumbled awkwardly in his trouser pocket, feeling the milled edge of the coins; he had about four and sixpence. This was terrible.

The Wren was a girl of his own type, although she was a rating. He had never had anything to do with Wrens before, but it seemed to him to be essential that he should offer to pay for her lunch. Four shillings and sixpence might possibly buy lunch for one at one of the hotels along their route; it certainly would not provide for two. He wrestled in silence with this problem for a few minutes as they drove on; then said casually:

“We’d better stop and get a snack at the next pub we come to. Bread and cheese and beer.”

The Wren said: “Very good, sir,” a little distantly.

Presently they came to the “Coach and Horses”; he made her pull up outside it. “This’ll do,” he said, getting out. “I expect they can fix us up with something here.”

The girl did not move from her seat. She smiled at him brightly. “I’ll wait till you’re ready, sir.”

He was appalled. “But won’t you come in and have something to eat?”

“No, thank you, sir. I’ll just wait here.”

“But aren’t you hungry?”

She was very hungry, and she was getting very much annoyed with this young man. She said curtly: “I’ll just wait here, if you don’t mind, sir. We aren’t supposed to go drinking
in public-houses with officers.”

He was very much embarrassed. He stood there looking at her, slowly blushing; even in his confusion it did not escape him that she grew prettier than ever when she was angry. Knowing that he was blushing, he grew irritated himself.

“There’s no need for you to blow that kind of raspberry at me,” he said. “I was offering to pay for your lunch, but I’ve only got four and sixpence on me, so this is the best I can do. I forgot to cash a cheque before I came away.” He withdrew his hand from his trouser pocket and looked at the contents. “Four and eightpence halfpenny, to be exact.”

She felt suddenly that she had been very rude, but she did not know what she could say. “It’s frightfully kind of you to want to pay for my lunch,” she said. “But I’ve never been inside a public-house in my life.”

He said: “I say, I’m awfully sorry. You’d rather go on till we find a café, would you?”

“But you want beer, don’t you?”

“Not specially.”

She knew he wanted a glass of beer; men always did, so she believed. She was awkward and embarrassed in her turn, and uneasily conscious of two pounds ten shillings in a note-case in her pocket. He had done his best to be friendly, after all. She said:

“Do you have to drink whisky and beer and stuff like that in there?”

“No—you can have something soft. Would you like a glass of lemonade? I expect they’ve got that.”

She got out of the car. “All right,” she said. “Which door we go in at?”

He took her into the private bar; it was deserted and empty. Rhodes ordered a pint of mild, a lemonade, and bread and cheese for two. The girl glanced around her at the clean wiped tables, the varnished woodwork, and the brewery advertisements, vaguely disappointed. She had expected to see a haunt of vice; instead it was all rather like a church vestry.

Rhodes brought the plates to her at the table. “I say,” he said. “Would you mind telling me your name? Mine’s Rhodes—Michael Rhodes.”

She said: “I’m called Barbara Wright.”

They talked for some little time about the road, and Dartmouth, and the Navy. Presently she came back to the subject that was troubling her.

“Those things you went to see this morning,” she said. “We aren’t going to have them in Dartmouth, are we?”

He did not answer that, mindful of security; moreover, he did not know. He said: “The Germans will be using them against us when they invade. We’ve got to be prepared.”

She said: “We aren’t using them—on our side—are we?”

Again he did not answer her directly. He said: “The more we do with things like that the sooner the war will end. It’s a good weapon, that. Put a dozen of those up at the head of a beach and hold your fire till you can get the first detachment landing. Then turn up the wick on them and frizzle them up. The others will think twice about coming ashore.”

She said no more. The memory of the violent spouts and gusts of burning oil that she had seen, the intense red flame, the clouds of billowing black smoke, sickened and disgusted her. People who worked out weapons of that sort, she thought, were pagans, far remote from mental contact with all ordinary people.

Presently they went out to the car, and got going again.

A quarter of an hour later one of the little tragedies common on the road occurred to them. A flight of sparrows rose up from the hedge in front of them and flew forward and across the path of the van. The quick flight of the birds made it impossible to help them, and three of them disappeared squarely between the front wheels below the line of the radiator. The Wren was startled to feel the officer beside her flinch and turn to look back through the canvas body of the van. She turned with him and looked back at the road behind. A little heap of feathers was fluttering and leaping in the middle of the road.

They both drew in their breath together; instinctively the girl had slowed down as she turned. Rhodes said: “I say—I hate leaving it like that.”

She was amazed. “Would you like to stop, sir?” she enquired.

He said eagerly: “Would you mind? I won’t be half a minute.” The officer got out and went back down the road, stooped and deftly tweaked the sparrow’s neck. It collapsed and lay still. When he looked up, the Wren was at his side.

He said apologetically: “I hate leaving them kicking. You can’t help hitting them, but I always feel you ought to stop and do your best for them. If you aren’t in too much of a hurry.”

She said: “I feel like that, too. I hate leaving them.”

He picked up the limp body and laid it on the grass verge by the roadside; together they walked back up the road to the van in silence. The girl was bewildered and a little confused. She felt that this young officer was behaving very oddly; she knew him to be a callous and insensitive man, full of enthusiasm for the most devilish things. It simply was not in the picture that he should have any feelings for the gentle things in life.

Through the hot afternoon they trundled back through Devonshire towards the coast. They were talking more freely now, telling each other the story of their lives. Rhodes told her all about his work on soya oil and Titania foot tablets, but he said nothing about Ernest; that lay too deep. The girl listened with interest and satisfaction; her first judgment had been quite correct. This, she thought, was a young man of no account. The things that he was interested in were either rather nasty, like soap and foot tablets, or they were loathsome, nightmare matters that she would not think about. He was a pleasant, well-set-up young man, she thought, but not one that one would care for as a friend. There was no depth of feeling in him.

She told him, as they drove, about her life in the old Tudor house in Norwich. She told him about the famous authors and artists that came to her aunts’ shop, and how nice it was when Queen Mary came shopping in Norwich, from Sandringham, and how her aunts had put up Dr. Cronin for a night when he was on a lecture tour. Rhodes listened, politely making the appropriate comments, wondering how anyone could put up with a girl for company when they could get a dog—or even a buck rabbit. He thought it was a pity that such an attractive young woman should be interested in such footling things. He was slightly resentful because he had thought that she looked intelligent, and she was patently not so.

By the time they reached Totnes they were on terms of amused tolerance, each feeling very much superior to the other, which was satisfactory for both of them. And then Rhodes gave the girl another jolt.