Anne Laurie got home to Chester Square just before six-thirty p.m. on this dark, wet Saturday, having hoofed it all the way from the Admiralty despite a steady, soaking rain. She’d given up waiting for her omnibus, left the queue as several others had done, then had the damn thing pass her before she’d covered more than 100 yards. Her route on foot wasn’t all that far, though – the length of the Mall, then Buckingham Gate and through the last bit to the square. She’d have had to walk that part of it anyway. She shared the flat with Sue Pennington, sharing the rent too, but only after it had been quite heavily subsidised by Sue’s father, who owned a brewery.
There were three letters on the doormat. She skirted around them, hung up her dripping mac and stood the umbrella in the stand, went into the bathroom and dried her hands before coming back and scooping them up. Two were for Sue and the other for her – Forces’ Mail, from Harry St Clair, his handwriting clearly recognisable even if he hadn’t filled in ‘sender’s name’ on the back.
He was a major now: on his last short leave he’d been a captain, and in 1916, when he and Charles had gone into the field, they’d both been subalterns.
Charles had been killed about six weeks after landing in France. He and Anne had married three weeks before that, and Harry St Clair had been best man at their wedding.
Read this later, she decided. To get warm and clean was the priority. Including removal of wet shoes. Good strong shoes, part of her kit as a 3rd officer in the Wrens, which she’d had to become in order to work in the Intelligence Division, although she contrived hardly ever to wear the uniform – except for the shoes, in this sort of weather. Item two now anyway – in slippers, riddle out the stove and feed it some coal. Sam Lance was coming for her at eight, taking her to the Ritz. If she gave the stove half an hour to itself after the riddling, might get about two inches of warm water which she’d leave in the bath in case Sue wanted it.
Sue was a cryptographer, and like Anne was employed by ID – Intelligence Division of the Royal Navy – but more specifically in that Holy of Holies Room 40, the ultra-efficient and ultra-secret organisation that intercepted, decoded and/or decyphered virtually every signal the German Navy sent. Others too – diplomatic stuff, on occasion. Including an extremely hush-hush item that was known to the few who’d heard of it as the Zimmermann telegram. Room 40 – which in fact was now known as ID 25 and occupied not only Room 40 but about a dozen others as well, in the Admiralty’s Old Building – had broken that. Anne had assisted in the translation and her boss, ‘Blinker’ Hall – her ultimate boss – had kept it in his own quite extraordinarily capable hands, rather than allow it to become lost or simply wasted in those of senior admirals or politicians. He’d handled it to such good effect that it had been largely instrumental in coaxing America into the war. He’d been plain Captain Reggie Hall RN then, was now Rear-Admiral Hall, KCMG – a genius who when he thought it necessary worked twenty-three-and-a-half hours a day and was adored by everyone who worked under him.
Apart from Sue, the cryptographers were all male, all extremely brainy as well as interesting in themselves, drawn from many different backgrounds: academics, former diplomats, scientists, businessmen, two naval schoolmasters, a barrister, an historian, and so on. Most of the young civilians had by now been forced into naval uniform, which annoyed them.
Anne was no cryptographer. Couldn’t even manage the Times crossword. At least, not often. Her contribution to the business was her fluency in the German language. French as well, but German was what the Division as a whole and ID 25 in particular had need of. Many of the cryptographers had some German and a few were bilingual, but a fair proportion were mathematicians, not linguists. In any case, decrypting was their trade.
Stove now filled, could be counted on to do its best. Somewhat limited best, admittedly. One put on gloves for the riddling process, otherwise had to wash off coal-dust in very cold water, the stove not being up to much until it got into its stride. As Sam Lance had commented when she’d explained this to him, ‘Do without the gloves, you have the makings of a vicious circle there.’
He was American, a lieutenant-commander in the US Navy, one of six assistant naval attachés working at and out of the American Embassy. His boss, the naval attaché, Captain Powers Symington USN, had become a close friend and admirer of Blinker Hall. As had Admiral Sims, the US Navy chief here. Blinker briefed Sims virtually every day, withholding no information that could be of use or interest to him, only giving him to understand that the intelligence came from agents in the field, not Room 40. The existence of Room 40 and its codebreakers was a closely-guarded secret, with which the powers in Washington were not to be trusted.
Sims, as it happened, agreed on that point. Not in relation to Room 40, which he’d never heard of, but on Washington’s weak security.
No hurry now: the stove had to be given time. Get out a dress that was fit to wear – well, she knew which one – and a few other things, then read Harry’s letter. She could visualise him as he’d have been when writing it: hunched in a dugout lit perhaps by a storm lantern, Harry in mud-stained khaki writing the letter maybe on a board or a book on his knee, and from outside the rumble or mutter of the guns. He was a very, very nice man, she thought, and was obviously a good soldier; he’d been a staunch friend of Charles’s and had been stricken by his death. When she thought of him, she saw Charles too: Harry’s face squarish with a blunt nose and a thick black moustache, Charles’s longer and narrower with a slightly cleft chin and a brown moustache. And that quirky smile she’d loved.
To kill a man like that, she’d asked herself. Like squashing a bug. She’d thought about it, puzzled over it a thousand times. The futility and cruelty of it, the stupidity. And the numbing shock that bloody telegram had brought her.
Thousands – millions – of equally bloody telegrams, of course: and the same applying to every one of them. Obviously. It was just that one’s own was the one that opened one’s eyes to the irrevocability, the lasting remorse, the injury that no-one ever could ‘kiss better’.
Returning to the sitting-room in dressing-gown and slippers, she picked up Harry’s letter, slit it open with her thumb and dumped herself on the sofa. He’d written,
Dearest Anne. Just a few lines while I have the chance to let you know that all is as well as I suppose one could expect it to be. In fact things have been looking up, rather, as I imagine you know – with the bird’s eye view of everything that you must have in your job – at least as I imagine it – you must in any case have a clearer view of events and probabilities than any of us here can, with our noses more or less literally in the mud. There is an awful lot of that stuff about. But there’s hope too, now – which is amazing, wonderful. I must say this, Anne – if only Charles was around to see it and feel it! Of course, one mustn’t count one’s chickens. It may not be quite on its last legs yet. Personally I think it is, but – anyway, the one thing I do want to say, Anne, is that when it is over, if I’m still here and in one piece, if I could muster the damn nerve and cheek to – well, I’ve got to put it in plain words – not to replace Charles, which no one ever could, but to refill a little of the space he occupied in your warm and lovely heart? Now I’ve gone further than I’ve dared go before, but please, just give it thought? What sort of future I’d be able to offer you I can’t say, but my uncle—
She looked up, palming the letter, hearing Sue’s key in the door. Read the rest of it later: there were only a few more lines. She wouldn’t marry him, though. Might well marry Sam. Marrying Harry St Clair would seem like trying to replace Charles. Stay friends with him for life – please God – but not—
No. Harry as one might love a brother, Sam – well, as a lover. Not that he was her lover, in that sense.
Didn’t want to be rushed into it, was all. Wanted to be certain. Did not want to remarry while still at war.
Was that only prevarication? Reluctance to commit oneself to any second marriage – replacement marriage as it might seem to be?
‘Anne, you home?’
‘Sure am!’
A groan. ‘Talking American these days, are we?’
‘That was just slang, not necessarily American, it’s common parlance. Did you get a tram, or—’
‘A lift, from Danny Boy.’
‘Oh, did you, then?’
Sue in the doorway, spotting her letters on the Chinese table, darting in and snatching them up, inspecting both and dropping them. ‘Nothing.’ A sigh. Anne knew who it was Sue was hoping to hear from. She was shortish, fair-haired, rather stocky, in a tweed skirt and jacket. Freckles on her nose. When she could get away, she hunted with the Grafton; despite the brain power – which didn’t stand out a mile but was there, all right – she was not by nature or inclination an indoor girl. Looking again at her letters: ‘Correction – not “nothing”, by any means. I only meant they can wait, one doesn’t exactly drool… Stove OK?’
‘Pulling itself together, I hope. Thought I’d bath, then you could top it up, by which time—’
‘Good wheeze. What time’s Uncle Sam coming for you?’
‘You’re impossible. But – eight.’
‘Remind me, he’s – thirty-five, is it?’
‘Thirty-two.’
‘And you’re twenty-four.’
‘And a widow-woman. That ages one, you know.’
‘In your mind it may, but no other way. I’d have guessed you were twenty-two at most. I’ve some news that should interest you, Anne.’
She’d got up, to go and try the water, but now paused. ‘Good news, I hope?’
‘The German family you knew, the’ – a second’s hesitation as memory faltered – ‘von Mettendorffs, the son a U-boat commander?’
‘What about him – or them?’
Controlled alarm, and contrived lack of any great interest, Sue noted. The same guarded manner Anne had affected when telling her about them – oh, eight or nine months ago, when amongst names in an intercept from U-boat Command listing new submarine appointments had been that of von Mettendorff, Otto, Oberleutnant zu See, appointed to UB81 in the Flanders flotilla, in command. In the course of a routine meeting at which Sue had been present, Anne had told a fleet paymaster by name of Thring, who’d set up the Operations Division’s U-boat tracking-room, ‘This one – von Mettendorff, first name Otto – must be the brother of a girl I knew at the Berlitz School in Frankfurt.’ She’d added, ‘I met him only briefly – but I’m pretty sure his name was Otto, and he was transferring to U-boats, doing some conversion course. For what that information’s worth…’
She’d shrugged, making it clear that to her it wasn’t worth a row of beans, she was only mentioning it – disclosing it – as a matter of form. It had also emerged – because Anne had later mentioned this too – that in her interview for the Intelligence Division job a year earlier, when she’d applied for transfer from the Foreign Office after Charles had been killed – she’d felt the need of a change, and Sue had told her there might be a job going for another fluent German-speaker – she’d put it on record that she’d had this friend Gerda with whom she’d shared student digs in Frankfurt where she’d been studying German at the Berlitz School. She’d also spent some of the summer holiday period as a guest of the family on their estate in Saxony – summer of 1913, that had been – and in the course of it briefly met Gerda’s brother Otto, then a junior naval lieutenant – or sub-lieutenant, he might have been, she wasn’t certain; her stay on the estate near Dobeln had only overlapped with his few days’ leave by – she thought – one day.
‘Could have been two or even three. Honestly don’t remember.’
Thring had told her, ‘It’s no great issue, anyway. Many of us have met dozens of ’em, here and there. The fleet review at Kiel, for instance – all hobnobbing like Billy-oh.’ A second thought then, and he’d contradicted himself: ‘Well, actually not all that much hobnobbery… Anyway, quite right of you to own up – eh?’
He’d chuckled at the concept of ‘owning up’. Anne had been slow to react to what had been intended as a joke, and Sue had suspected then, as now, that she must have known Otto von M. rather better than she’d willingly have ‘owned up’ to. This seemed to Sue to be the only viable explanation. And so what? Had a bit of a fling with a Hun – pre-war, and when she’d have been not long out of school, for heaven’s sake. No-one else’s business; just interesting, that was all. He must have been a very personable young Hun, she thought. Anne was discriminating to a fairly high degree. Sam Lance, for instance, whom she’d been more or less fending off for quite some time now, was a most attractive as well as thoroughly decent man, and she was still barely encouraging him at all. Unless she was doing so on the sly, of course…
Telling Anne now, ‘This wasn’t an intercept – came by landline from C-in-C Plymouth. On the twenty-second. Torpedo Depot Ship Hecla, being towed towards Devonport – having hit a mine while being moved from Rosslare in County Wexford a week or so earlier, apparently – got herself torpedoed and sunk by UB81 – commanded by your friend Otto von Thingummy. Mettendorff.’
Silent for a moment, staring… Then: ‘Hardly my friend… Anyway, what—’
‘Destroyers depthcharged his submarine to the surface, then opened up with their guns, scored several hits before it went down, quote, leaking air and oil, unquote, and – then not a peep. As you might say, kaput. No doubt of identity either – the U-boat’s, that is – broad daylight and on the surface, U81 on its conning-tower plain to see.’ She shrugged. ‘Cross him off your Christmas card list.’
Anne had subsided on to the sofa again while listening to this. Had seemed at first startled, but now – Sue thought – sort of deadpan. Maybe just not giving two hoots about it: after all, every U-boat destroyed was something to celebrate. Although it still did look as if she was finding it hard to – well, almost to comprehend, you’d think. Touching her back-swept, blue-black hair: ‘I can’t help feeling sorry for Gerda. We were really good friends – and she thought the world of him… She and I, though – imagine it – trying to convince ourselves there couldn’t be a war – getting on as we did, being as like-minded as – well, as we thought we were. Although the country as a whole was fairly anti-British at that time. Well, anti-foreigner, say…’
Gabbling a bit, Sue thought. Quite unlike her. Highlighting the sister as a way of leaving him in the shadows?
Sam Lance was a large, brown-haired man, clean-shaven, with hawkish features in which it was still a surprise to her to find kind eyes. Brown ones, as it happened. He looked especially handsome tonight, in US Navy uniform with a wing collar and black bow-tie, providing what he referred to dismissively when she’d complimented him on it on some previous occasion as ‘the tuxedo effect’. He’d lavished praise on her, though, claiming to be stunned speechless all over again by her ‘sheer damn beauteousness’ in a mid-green silk dress which was the newest evening-wear she owned and was well up with the fashion, full-skirted and lowish-cut with narrow shoulder-straps, hem-line a clear inch above her ankles. Sam had asked Sue, holding Anne’s coat while she slid her arms into it, ‘Isn’t she really something?’
Sue had agreed, ‘Something, all right.’ Anne meeting her privately derisive look, knowing that in Sue’s opinion both the décolleté and the hemline were going it a bit; Sue teasing her with: ‘As long as they have heating in that place now. Did you read how many Londoners died of ’flu just this past week?’
‘Now, Sue—’
Anne told him, ‘She’s trying to embarrass me.’
‘Only because I’m envious. Makes it a compliment, don’t you think? Truth is you both look tremendous. I hope you have a really spiffing evening.’
In the hired car, Anne said, ‘This Spanish flu really is terrifying. Death-roll for last week more than two thousand just in London!’
‘Two thousand two hundred and twenty-five, as I read it. We have it on the rampage back home too. Heck – everywhere, isn’t it. They say China and India are the worst. Anyway, let’s not let it spoil our evening.’
‘Absolutely not! Three cheers for us, and devil take the rest!’
‘No, that’s not quite—’
‘I know, I know. Teasing you. What I was going to say, Sam – the Ritz, such extravagance…’
‘Hah. Only live once. And I have an idea to put to you, so I need to have you in a complacent mood.’
‘I’m already about as complacent as I could be, but if it’s what I think it might be—’
‘It’s not. On that we have a deal.’
He’d asked her more than once to marry him, and she’d asked him to ask her again when the war was over. Telling her now, ‘Reason I accept the delay is (a) I don’t have any choice, and (b) it can’t go on much longer, truly can’t. This is no time or place for talking shop, but – well, OK, still hurdles to be crossed, but the truth is the Germans are finished, their Army’s broken and on the run, country’s starving – thanks to your Navy’s four-year blockade…’
He’d checked, leant forward: ‘You getting all this, driver?’
No reply or reaction. There was a glass screen between the driver and his passengers, and seemingly it did its job. Sam flopped back beside her. ‘They’re out of Flanders, did you hear? Or as good as. Belgians have taken Ostend and Zeebrugge. Might guess at something like six weeks at most, I’ll come knocking on your door again?’
She told him, ‘Six weeks or however long it takes, if you still want to ask me then, Sam. Since you may think I’m behaving like a spoilt brat, meanwhile.’
‘On the contrary, I understand entirely. After your Charles.’ His large hand had covered one of hers. ‘I said “understand” – I mean that one appreciates it’s – well, beyond understanding.’
Charles was most of the reason. She’d had doubts then of wartime marriage – not doubts of him or of her feelings for him, or of his for her, but marrying in war at all, and in this one in particular, at a time when the likely period of survival for a young officer in the trenches had been given variously as three or six weeks – which they’d both been well aware of and dismissed as not applying to them, and had been taught almost immediately that it certainly did – had… After which she’d thought she might as well stop living; with the other thing constantly in mind as well, brought back into her mind like some incurable and unmentionable sickness – less the thing itself by that time than whether Charles had believed her – as he’d professed to – or whether he’d died in disbelief, or at least doubt.
In all other ways you might say it didn’t matter now, had been to all intents and purposes expunged by those depthcharges and the gunfire. Could say that. If you were looking for a let-out, you could. Knowing very well that that was all it would amount to, that they could have burnt him at the stake and it wouldn’t make a shade of difference to how Charles had felt about it, in his heart of hearts – being no kind of simpleton. It was how he’d felt then that mattered, the state of mind in which he’d died – not who’d died since, or how.
Sam was saying, ‘– no time or place to talk shop, but on that subject – German government wanting to throw in the towel – you’d think it’d be easy, wouldn’t you. But there are these complications – as you’d know, I dare say. After all, we get most of what we know from your department. Division, I should say. Long and short of it, however – well, my own guess would be five or six weeks. Could even be less.’
‘Depending on which way various monkeys jump.’
‘That’s nicely put – if were talking about the same monkeys.’
‘We’d better not, though, had we.’
‘Hah.’ A pat on her arm. ‘You’re not only a beautiful woman, you’re a very smart one.’ The car was running up St James’ Street towards Piccadilly, edging over for the left turn. ‘Nearly there… Should one assume your work keeps you generally au fait with the broader strategic situation?’
‘No. Not at all. Really, far from it. All I get to know is whatever happens to be dropped in my lap. Or said or argued in my hearing… Oh, here we are!’
Still raining, but well enough sheltered under the Ritz portico. Doorman with a very large midnight-blue umbrella; Sam helping her down and telling the hire-car driver, ‘Eleven, all right?’ Anne reflecting that it had been absolutely right of Harry to have written as he had: she’d guessed that he’d been getting round to it, and she’d be able to concoct an answer now that would disappoint him, obviously, but shouldn’t too badly hurt his feelings or destroy their friendship.
The thing about Gerda von M’s brother Otto, though: when Sue had started telling her about it she’d had a vision of his having survived, being fished out and taken prisoner, in which event it would have been on the cards that she might have had to sit in on his interrogation.
Which would have been – extraordinary. She’d had a dream about it once. Not all that far-fetched either; strangely realistic. She had taken part as interpreter in a few interrogations.
‘Penny for those deep thoughts?’
She let the smile break through. ‘Sorry.’ Gaze wandering around the glittering foyer, and back to him. ‘Gist of them is I really do love being out with you, Sam.’
The entrée she chose was a chicken and mushroom pâté with Melba toast, and they both ordered Dover sole, which the head waiter had assured them were the size of small whales; Sam had ordered champagne. Chatting then about this and that, including his family, who had what sounded like a biggish house on the coast a few miles from the naval base at Norfolk in Virginia. They had a commercial boat-yard there which by the sound of it had been a thriving concern and was now, with war contracts, a booming one. Sam wasn’t regular Navy, but he’d been on the Reserve all his adult life.
‘You said your father has a cousin or somesuch with him now, in your absence?’
‘One of my two brothers-in-law, guy by the name of Tad Noakes, has joined him. My sister Jennie’s husband. Younger sister Gina’s in the fashion business in New York. Nice guy her husband, Colin.’
‘You mean the other brother-in-law is less nice?’
‘I’m just a little wary of him, tell you the truth. He’s an accountant by training, sharp businessman I suppose, whereas Dad and I – well, we’re boat-builders. I spent my first years out of college working right there in the yard.’ He put his fork down, spread his hands: ‘With these. I mean, real work. Then joined the old man in the office – had a stab at designing too. So there’s a difference in approach and outlook between me and Tad, and I anticipate he won’t be exactly eager to move over. When the time comes, I mean.’ One hand rested on one of hers for a moment. ‘When this is over finally and—’
‘He’ll have to move over, won’t he?’
‘Sure. Only I may have to throw my weight around a little, and I’ll be at a disadvantage, I guess, in that the business will have changed so much. Jennie’ll be no help, I can see that, coming. She has a keen eye for which side her bread’s buttered.’
‘And your father?’
‘Getting old. Maybe a little hazed himself by all the changes.’
‘But you’re his son, spent most of your life working with him, know it from the ground up?’
A nod. ‘Sure.’
‘Well, doesn’t that entitle you—’
‘Could still have some fights on my hands.’
‘And you’ll win them. Point of fact – as you say, when this is over – war ends, war contracts end, you’re back to where you were, except you may need new projects. Exit Tad, enter Sam – and if there are Navy contracts still going, won’t your overseas service make you the man to get them?’
Smiling at her. ‘You’re what’s called the bee’s knees, you know. I’m nuts about you – love you, want you, can’t take my eyes off you… We like this thing they’re playing, don’t we?’
‘We adore it!’
After you’ve gone…
In his arms then on the crowded dance-floor. Most of the men in uniform, and all the women pretty. Well, a lot of them were… And this scent of victory – the certainty of it in men’s eyes, joy of it in girls’ voices. As well as each other’s closeness. She did love him: or would get to. Not as she’d loved Charles, but that had been in another world: or it might be that she’d been a different person.
And left me crying…
Sam wouldn’t do that, she thought. Sam was a rock. Music coming to an end, though.
‘That was lovely.’
‘Sure was. But listen to me now…’
Breaking the spell somewhat abruptly and surprisingly, in the lingering aftermath of that song, but still holding her. Straight from the shoulder then: ‘I’ll be gone in about a week, Anne. Just for a while. Be able to tolerate that, will you?’
‘How long a while and going where?’
‘Well, I’ll tell you.’ Back to their table first, though, to await the fish. He told her, leaning close, ‘Orkney Islands, Scapa Flow. One of the assistant attachés has to visit our Sixth Battle Squadron every so often, and it’s come round to my turn.’
‘I thought the Fleet had moved down to the Forth.’
She’d glanced round to check on their closer neighbours first, then just murmured it, with the thought that most people probably knew it anyway. By ‘the Fleet’, referring to the Grand Fleet, now commanded by Beattie, who’d been Jellicoe’s number two at Jutland, and comprising as well as that host of British dreadnoughts the US Sixth Battle Squadron under Rear-Admiral Hugh Rodmer. Sam nodding, reaching to top up their glasses. ‘It has. Our lot included, since they’re part of it. But Scapa’s still in use, off and on, and our battle squadron’s due to call in there for a day or two – actually half the squadron, half at a time, that is, re-fuelling break from covering the Northern Barrage and Norwegian convoys, so forth. I’ll be taking dispatches for Admiral Rodmer – by hand of officer stuff, you know?’
‘I suppose I shouldn’t have asked, and you shouldn’t be telling me. Next question, though, how long will you be away?’
‘Well – listen.’ His hand covering hers again. ‘You’re thinking I’m telling you this kind of suddenly and maybe not too well. Sort of blurting it out. Reason for that is I suspect I may have a job persuading you – well, in a nutshell, persuading you to come with me. How d’you react to that now?’
Bewildered, frowning… ‘What is this, Sam?’
‘Not what you might think, there’s no’ – he smiled – ‘no ulterior motive, as one might call it—’
‘You’re either mad or joking. I couldn’t possibly. Even if there was any kind of reason that made sense, I wouldn’t be allowed to. I actually do have work to do, and anyway they’d never—’
‘Your mother lives in Argyll, right?’
Still frowning. ‘How is that relevant? Hundreds of miles from Scapa Flow!’
Her mother lived at the head of a sea-loch not far from Oban, with her eccentric Scottish artist husband, Angus McCaig. Anne’s father had died of heart failure when she’d been twelve and they’d been living in France, and her mother had re-married when she, Anne, had been at the Berlitz in Frankfurt, seven years later. Grandparents had more or less supported mother and daughter in the interim, and had made it possible to afford the Berlitz venture.
Sam was telling her, ‘I hope you won’t think I had a damn cheek raising this with him rather than talking to you first, but I’ve met recently with a Royal Navy commander whom you know – name of Hope, very nice fellow and an influential guy in your Division?’
‘He’s the big white chief, to all intents and purposes. Reports to Rear-Admiral Hall directly. Anyway, what—’
‘Sir. Miss…’
Waiter, with the fish. In the next few minutes of comparative silence she was wondering what he’d have had to talk about with Bertie Hope, the salt-water boss of ID 25 whose considerable sea experience and expertise balanced the civilian geniuses’ ignorance of naval matters. But why on earth Sam should want her with him in the Orkney Islands… Apart from the obvious – which was too obvious, and really not his style.
Any case, who’d pick the Orkneys for anything of that kind?
‘Some fish, those!’
‘Indeed they are, sir.’ Grey-haired, as waiters tended to be, these days. She wondered whether they’d all lose their jobs when the young men came back. She smiled at this one. ‘Marvellous-looking fish!’
‘Would’ve been swimming in the sea only this morning, Madam.’
‘The poor things.’
She liked ‘Miss’ better than ‘Madam’. Although of course she was Madam – wore a ring which he’d no doubt spotted. Mightn’t he have guessed she was playing fast and loose – her husband at the front, maybe, and dining expensively with this Yank? No sign that he had, anyway: he’d gone off still smiling at her sympathy for the sole. Conceivably, she supposed, she and Sam could have been wife and husband; or the incidence of widowhood in this era was so great you didn’t bother to question it – or the morality of dining with a man who was not one’s husband.
Would she have, she wondered, if Charles had been alive? Might she ever have?
Sam relieved her of the need to answer that, breaking into her muddled thought sequences with ‘In Commander Hope’s view there’s no reason you shouldn’t visit Scapa, if you felt so inclined and had leave due to you and I was there to see you came to no harm, and – hang on now – and you were accompanied by a chaperone. He said he thought it mightn’t be a bad idea at all – all of you cooped up there handling stuff about the Grand Fleet and Scapa for quite some while now and never getting a glimpse of anything outside the walls of Admiralty. He has a point, I’d say – although I have a better one, as I’ll explain in a moment. As for a chaperone, what chance do you think there might be of persuading that nice little Sue to come along?’
‘She’d think what I’m thinking – that the idea’s ridiculous!’
‘Well, hold on – it may seem so at this juncture, but when you think it through—’
‘She wouldn’t want to think of it. Any time she’s let out of London all she wants to do is hunt. And as we’re at the start of the hunting season, Sam—’
‘Someone else, then. Hope said you have three German interpreters in your outfit now, and the other two could handle your work between them easily enough for – well, a fortnight, maybe. But one of the other women – one of those you call typewriters, for instance—’
‘A fortnight…’
‘We’d go by rail to northeast Scotland, place called Thurso, embark in a destroyer at – oh, Scrabster, just across the bay from Thurso; land an hour or two later at Stromness – which is right on the edge of the Flow, on an island they call Mainland. You’d travel on first-class railway warrants – only condition being you’d have to wear uniform, being an officer in your women’s naval service, even though you don’t exactly advertise it?’
‘Wrens – WRNS, Women’s Royal Naval Service. And no, I don’t. It was only that to work in ID I had to be given a commission and a rank – and 3rd officer, which is what I’m supposed to be, is the lowest. I never wear the uniform, if I can help it. Never even did what they call the basic training course – two weeks at the Crystal Palace learning to march and salute and all that. I’m an impostor, really – simply because the admirals prefer people to look as if they belong… But you’re bullying me, Sam, I don’t want—’
‘I’d never bully you. Never. Let me explain, though?’
‘All right.’
‘What I’d get out of it is I’d get to meet your mother – which I’d like very much, for reasons that must – well, how or when she and I would meet otherwise… See, when they surrender or there’s an armistice – if that’s what it’s to be called – well, heaven knows, but I could be sent off somewhere or other at no damn notice at all. To a sea-going job – which in other respects would be just dandy – or back to the USA, even. And if it so happened that you were giving me the answer I crave – well, if I had met your mother she’d know the sort of guy I am, might not necessarily throw a fit when you told her. Huh?’
‘I dare say we will be all at sixes and sevens. But – I don’t know, Sam—’
‘Oh! D’you mean—’
‘I mean about the rest of it. I don’t want to be committed, or feel I am, and have you – or my mother, either – assuming—’
‘Wouldn’t be like that. I guarantee it wouldn’t. And up there – in Argyll – I wouldn’t hang around, I’d like to meet her, tell her of my hopes and then clear out. Where we’d get out of the train on our way south – having landed back at Scrabster, see – is some small station called – hold on, I have a note of it—’
‘Crianlarich.’
‘That sounds about right. You’d know your way around up there, of course. There’s a branch-line from there to Oban, but—’
‘Oban, Sam, not oh-ban.’
‘Oban. Right. But it’s no great distance, and if the connections aren’t all that frequent, I was studying the map and I thought maybe I’d have a car meet us. My personal contribution to the expedition. Then depending on how it worked out – time of day or night, whatever – I’d leave you there, with or without your chaperone – after coming so far you’d want at least a few days with your mother, I guess—’
‘Want but might not get. If we’ve been away a fortnight—’
‘I was including a stay in Oban in that estimate. In the Orkneys I’d want no more than a day or two days. Unless one had to wait, if they weren’t in harbour when we got there. But on top of that, say two days’ travel in each direction?’
‘Your fish is getting cold, Sam.’
‘Ah…’
‘It amazes me that Commander Hope should even have listened to such a wild idea!’
Sam nodded. ‘Because I’m one of these Yankee fellows. Liable to have crazy notions. Best to humour ’em, don’t you know?’
‘It’s still extraordinary.’
‘Then again – and your forgiveness, please – I told him in the strictest confidence that I’m desperate to marry you, you won’t give me a yea or nay until it’s over, and – the chance to meet your mother, only opportunity I might have. He kind of liked it, I believe. Bit of a romantic – uh?’
‘I’d never have imagined so.’
‘Thinks well of you, I might say. Mentioned that you’re far from work-shy, and – well, I deduce that he has a soft spot for the beautiful young widow. Incidentally, I made it clear you did not have the least notion of this scheme, I wanted to know might it be feasible at all, and if I found it was I’d see how you might feel about it. As I now have done.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t blame you for your hesitance – especially for your determination not to appear committed. But—’
‘You’re so patient, I’m ashamed of myself – taking such advantage… But – may I think about it – the Scapa thing – let you know tomorrow?’
Slow smile and a couple of blinks. Then: ‘I’m patient because I know what I want. But you’re saying you might agree to this crazy proposition?’
‘I’d like to sleep on it, and—’
‘Sunday, tomorrow. Sleep late on it, and—’
‘It’s my duty Sunday, and I have to go down to Portsmouth. So I’ll have plenty of time in the train to ruminate. Call me in the evening, at the flat?’