The Man who Missed the War (17 page)

Twice more she came at him and he dodged her round the table; then an idea for getting the best of her suddenly came to him. Stooping forward he seized the water jug and flung its contents in her face. Temporarily she was half-blinded, and even as she let out a scream of rage he grabbed her wrist. One sharp twist and the knife clattered upon the deck. As it did so she kicked him on the shin. Letting go of her wrist he drew back his hand and delivered one sharp slap on the side of her face. Suddenly, she seemed to go quite limp. Her arms fell to her sides, and she burst into tears.

This time he did not attempt to comfort her. He just said: ‘If you put on any more of these homicide acts I shall shut you up in the forward compartment, where you trapped me the other day, and keep you there. Now you’d better get undressed and go to bed.’

He spent the next hour up on deck, and when he returned to the cabin he found her apparently asleep. Having got into his bunk, he did not waste any time speculating on his future relations with his difficult passenger, but read until he felt sleepy, then put out the light.

Hours later he woke with a start. The portholes showed the grey blur of early morning. There was a sudden tightness in his throat as he saw the vague outline of a figure bending over him. It flashed into his mind that Gloria had got hold of the knife again and meant to stab him to death in his sleep. Thrusting out his hands with a half-strangled cry, he sat up.

She stepped back with a grim laugh. ‘So—’tis frightened you are! An’ I don’t wonder! But there’s no need to be. ‘Tis just that I’ve spent most of the night thinkin’, and I’ve somethin’ to tell you.’

‘Eh! Well, er—what is it?’ he muttered, not very cordially.

‘I’ve been thinkin’,’ she went on, ‘that rude as you are there may be something in what you say. But I can alter me speech and me ways, whereas you’ll never be able to alter the bones of your face!’

Having fired this devastating shot, she turned on her heel and got back into her bunk. From it, a quarter of an hour later, faint snores announced that she was sound asleep, whereas Philip found it impossible to drop off again; not from any hurt to his vanity, which troubled him little, but from wondering how he was going to put up with his tormentor for another seven to ten weeks without wringing her neck and throwing her over the side.

His disposition was naturally a kindly one, but he caught himself feeling almost a smug delight when the following afternoon dark clouds began to pile up in the east, a rising wind broke the surface of the sea into a million white-capped wavelets, and spray began to blow on to the deck of the launch. After as perfect a week as he could have hoped for, it now looked as though they were in for a really dirty spell, and that, he felt, would at least give Gloria something other than rubbing him up the wrong way to think about.

By nightfall the seas had increased to a strength which caused him to consider the advisability of casting off from the rafts, but he knew that if he once did that, virtually single-handed as he
was, it would be impossible for him to pick up the cables again until the rough weather abated; and, as the storm might last for several days, during which he could not go altogether without sleep, he feared that he might lose the convoy. Having decided to remain hitched to Number One Raft, he became so concerned as to whether the cables would hold during this, their first really severe test, that he forgot all about Gloria and, wrapped in his oilskins, spent the night either on deck or in the cockpit of the engine-room.

Morning dawned with the sea still running high, but on looking back as the launch rode over the highest wave crests Philip could count six of the rafts in a rough line behind him, so he had little doubt that the other four, though out of sight in the troughs beyond more distant waves, were still linked securely in the chain. With sober satisfaction he went down to the cabin to see about some breakfast.

It was immediately apparent that during the night Gloria had been extremely ill, but at the moment she was sleeping. He cleared things up and got himself some coffee, toast, and marmalade, refraining from cooking anything in case the smell might make her worse. She wakened just as he had finished, and he tried to persuade her to have something to eat, but all she could manage was the juice of a grapefruit.

Having bathed her face and provided her with a clean basin, he went on deck again. The sky was still dark and the storm by no means over. He spent the morning as he had spent most of the night—at the controls of the launch, checking her for a few moments to let the cable slacken, letting in the gear to give her enough speed to secure steering way, heading her towards the next big wave, then, immediately it was past, cutting out and reversing his engine again before she could be brought up with a jerk by the cable attaching her to the raft.

Playing the launch thus was not unlike being a great fish on the end of an angler’s line. It was a terribly tiring business, and he had been at it for many hours. By midday he was desperately weary, and decided that he must get some sleep. Within a few minutes of his having shut off the engine the launch had swung round sideways on to the waves and begun to wallow badly. He could not help that. The worst that could happen was that
she would drift into one of the rafts, and he felt confident that if she did the waves were not now strong enough for serious damage to be caused by the collision.

Below he found that the greatly increased rolling of the launch had brought on another bout of Gloria’s sea-sickness. As soon as it had eased a little he gave her a drink of water and sponged her face; then still fully dressed, he flung himself exhausted on his bunk.

When he awoke it was evening. The launch was still rolling horribly, but Gloria was asleep. He got himself some cold food and put a plate of biscuits and fruit near her against her waking; then he went back to the engine-room for another long spell of fighting to keep the launch on a more or less even keel. At four o’clock in the morning he threw in his hand again, shut off the engine and fell asleep where he sat.

On the third day the storm gradually abated, but it was not until the evening that Philip felt he could really take things easy. By that time, Gloria, now a rather wan and pathetic little figure, was sufficiently restored to get up and cook a dish of scrambled eggs for their supper. Both of them were so done up that they went to bed immediately they had fed, and slept the clock round.

It was now the 21st of August. Having made a tour of rafts in the morning and found all well, except that eight of the sails had blown out, Philip shot the sun at midday. Once again, owing to lack of definite checks on speed and direction, many of his calculations had to be based on guesswork, but, using such data as he had and being reasonably conservative when in doubt, he came to the conclusion that, although the storm had driven them somewhat to the southward of their course, it had in the main been well behind them and helped them considerably; so much so that they were now fully 700 miles from the American coast. That afternoon and the following morning he spent in re-fitting the sails that had been blown out by the storm and servicing the beacons, so he had little time either to improve his relations or quarrel further with Gloria.

Good weather now seemed set fair to bless them again, and to while away the time Philip suggested two forms of recreation: bathing and fishing.

At first, Gloria was a little nervous of going over the side of the
launch, but after he had done so she said that she would like to if only she had something suitable to wear. He offered her a pair of his white shorts, and told her that there were numerous flags in the locker, and that out of some of them she could make herself a top. Two hours later she came up from the cabin, and his eyes almost popped out of his head with fury when he saw that she had selected his one and only Union Jack to cut up and make into a kind of ill-fitting waistcoat.

That the gesture had been deliberate he had no doubt at all, as he knew that in the United States the Stars and Stripes, or ‘Old Glory’, as the Americans called it, is treated with a reverence which far surpasses the respect which any other people give to their national flag. He was so angry that he could have hit her, but he controlled his wrath with the mental reservation that he would not let the insult go unavenged.

When she had swum about for a quarter of an hour she called up to him to help her back on board. Looking down at her he shook his head.

‘No, since you have chosen to cut up my country’s flag and make it look ridiculous, I am now going to make you look ridiculous—or at all events ashamed. I’m not going to help you up till you take it off, and you can walk back to the cabin with your top half naked.’

With a completely expressionless face she heard him out, then trod water while undoing the offending waistcoat, wriggled out of it and threw it up to him, before grasping the hand he held out and scrambling up on deck.

She made no attempt to turn her back as he held out a towel that he had fetched ready to cover her directly he had won his point. Instead, to his utter amazement, she stripped off the white shorts, flung them squelching at his feet, and drawing herself up stood there stark naked in front of him.

‘You poor sap—fool, I mean!’ she corrected herself quickly. ‘I guessed cutting up the old Jack would make you pretty sore, but if you think ‘tis ashamed I am of my own body you’ve got me all wrong. I earned me fees to go to an art school by sitting as a model an’ half the art students in New York have seen me in the nude. ‘Twas only to save your blushes, prig that you are, that I made meself the wee coat.’

With a laugh at his obvious discomfiture she turned away and walked slowly down the steps to the cabin.

Her sudden correction of the word ‘sap’ to ‘fool’ had not gone unnoticed by him. Since she had recovered from her sea-sickness she had been less talkative, and except when she was excited she now clearly made an effort to choose her phrases with some care. He knew too that she had started to use the shower twice a day, so it looked as if she really meant to carry out her boast that she could change her speech and her ways.

His resentment at being called a prig was sufficient to cause him to decide that he would bathe naked himself the following morning; but the moment he came on deck he regretted his decision. Gloria was sitting up in the forward part of the launch, and she deliberately stood up to get a better look at him. It was the first time in his life that he had ever disported himself in front of a girl wearing nothing, and, as he felt, rather than saw, her eyes run over every part of him appraisingly, his face went absolutely crimson. In his haste to escape what he felt to be her positively indecent interest he stubbed his toe, mucked his dive and did a belly-flop in the water.

Two minutes later she climbed gingerly over the side, also naked, and having lowered herself into the water began to swim towards him. For a moment, for no conceivable reason, he panicked wildly, then he saw her smile as she said:

‘ ’Tis a nice body you have. One that any man might be real proud of, an’ I’d like to draw it. Will you let me?’

Somehow the request restored his self-confidence, but at the thought of her last effort he replied: ‘What, and let you portray me as “the living skeleton”? No thanks.’

‘I wouldn’t do that,’ she laughed. ‘Your hips are almost too thin, but your shoulders an’ legs are the tops. I guess I was pretty naughty yesterday—cuttin’ up that Union Jack. I’m sorry. It’s just that I get awful angry when I think about bein’ cooped up here for so long. D’you realise that but for you ‘tis in Paris I’d be this very day? For the delay to me—my career—you sure owe me a little practice. Will you be obligin’ me now?’

Mollified by her apology, and entirely forgetful that, had she not come aboard the launch, it was much more likely that she would have been under arrest as a stowaway than enquiring
about art schools in Paris, Philip consented almost before he realised what he had done—and that afternoon found him posing as her model, instead of trying his hand at fishing as he had intended.

They bathed together again the following afternoon, then he gave her a second sitting, and afterwards they fished for two hours; catching one large round spikey fish which they threw back into the sea and three smaller ones which made very good eating for their supper. When he turned in that night Philip felt for the first time that his relations with Gloria were beginning to show a definite improvement, but, unfortunately, there was soon to be a new cause for contention.

On August the 24th the Chancelleries of Europe were rocked by the news that Ribbentrop and Stalin had signed a Russo-German non-aggression pact in Moscow. Philip learnt of it from the B.B.C.’s ten o’clock news bulletin on the morning of August the 25th, and the more he thought about the matter the more worried he became. He had always felt that so long as Russia and Germany continued in a state of latent antagonism there was some hope that the peace of Europe would be preserved. Hitler had promised his people so definitely that never again would they be called on to wage war on two fronts simultaneously, yet he never let pass an opportunity of denouncing the Bolsheviks as the arch-enemies of the New Order in Germany and the cornerstone of his diplomacy was the Anti-Comintern Pact. While he kept up his policy of insulting and vilifying Russia it seemed that he would be taking a very considerable risk if he picked a quarrel with the western democracies; since, once he was fully committed to a war with them, what would there be to prevent Russia deciding that her last chance of self-preservation lay in forcing a two-front war on him before he had, perhaps, defeated France and Britain, and she had to face him on her own?

But now the whole picture had been altered overnight. By this non-aggression pact Hitler had secured his rear, so he was now free to make the most outrageous new demands on the smaller Powers, and no doubt ready if his bluff were called to support it by force of arms.

From this fateful morning onward Philip listened in to every
major news bulletin, not only in English but also in French and German; and it was this which drove Gloria nearly into a frenzy. She liked the radio for its dance-music, and she did not mind hearing the news once a day, but to have to listen to bulletins every hour that Philip was not busy in either servicing the rafts or in the engine-room was more than she could bear. Yet every time he came down to the cabin he could not resist the temptation to ignore her protest: and switch on the radio.