Storm Island Read online

she'll turn around in a shoebox."

  "Marvellous, marvelous. You boys are certainly knocking the stuffing

  out of the Luftwaffe, what?"

  We got sixty yesterday for eleven of our own," David said, as proudly

  as if he had shot them all down himself.

  "The day before, when they had a go at Yorkshire, we sent the bally lot

  back to Norway with their tails between their legs -and we didn't lose

  a single kite!"

  Uncle Norman gripped David's shoulder with tipsy fervour.

  "Never," he quoted pompously, 'was so much owed by so many to so few.

  Churchill said that the other day."

  David tried a modest grin.

  "He must have been talking about the mess bills."

  Lucy hated the way they trivialized bloodshed and destruction. She

  said: "David, we should go and change now."

  They went in separate cars to Lucy's home. Her mother helped her out

  of the wedding dress and said: "Now, my dear, I don't quite know what

  you're expecting tonight, but you ought to know ' "Oh, mother, don't be

  embarrassing," Lucy interrupted.

  "You're about ten years too late to tell me the facts of life. This is

  1940, you know!"

  Her mother coloured slightly.

  "Very well, dear," she said mildly.

  "But if there is anything you want to talk about, later on..."

  It occurred to Lucy that to say things like this cost her mother

  considerable effort, and she regretted her sharp reply.

  "Thank you," she said. She touched her mother's hand.

  "I will."

  "I'll leave you to it, then. Call me if you want anything." She

  kissed Lucy's cheek and went out.

  Lucy sat at the dressing-table in her slip and began to brush her hair.

  She knew exactly what to expect tonight. She felt a faint glow of

  pleasure as she remembered.

  It was a well-planned seduction, although at the time it did not occur

  to Lucy that David might have plotted every move beforehand.

  It happened in June, a year after they had met at the Glad Rag Ball.

  They were seeing each other every week by this time, and David had

  spent part of the Easter vacation with Lucy's people. Mother and

  Father approved of him: he was handsome, clever and gentlemanly, and he

  came from precisely the same stratum of society as they did. Father

  thought he was a shade too opinionated, but Mother said the landed

  gentry had been saying that about undergraduates for six hundred years,

  and she thought David would be kind to his wife, which was the most

  important thing in the long run. So in June Lucy went to David's

  family home for a weekend.

  The place was a Victorian copy of an eighteenth-century grange, a

  square-shaped house with nine bedrooms and a terrace with a vista. What

  impressed Lucy about it was the realization that the people who planted

  the garden must have known they would be long dead before it reached

  maturity. The atmosphere was very easy, and the two of them drank beer

  on the terrace in the afternoon sunshine. That was when David told her

  that he had been accepted for officer training in the R.A.F, along with

  four pals from the university flying club. He wanted to be a fighter

  pilot.

  "I can fly all right," he said, 'and they'll need people once this war

  gets going they say it'll be won and lost in the air, this time."

  "Aren't you afraid?" she said quietly.

  Not a bit," he said. Then he covered his eyes with his hand and said:

  "Yes, I am."

  She thought he was very brave, and held his hand.

  A little later they put on swimming costumes and went down to the lake.

  The water was clear and cool, but the sun was still strong and the air

  was warm. They splashed about gleefully, as if they knew this was the

  end of their childhood.

  "Are you a good swimmer?" he asked her.

  "Better than you!"

  "All right. Race you to the island."

  She shaded her eyes to look into the sun. She held the pose for a

  minute, pretending she did not know how desirable she was in her wet

  swimsuit with her arms raised and her shoulders back. The island was a

  small patch of bushes and trees about three hundred yards away, in the

  centre of the lake.

  She dropped her hands, shouted "Go!" and struck out in a fast

  crawl.

  David won, of course, with his long arms and legs. Lucy found herself

  in difficulty when she was still fifty yards from the island. She

  switched to breaststroke, but she was too exhausted even for that, and

  she had to roll over on to her back and float. David, who was already

  sitting on the bank blowing like a walrus, slipped back into the water

  and swam to meet her. He got behind her, held her beneath the arms in

  the correct lifesaving position, and pulled her slowly to the shore.

  His hands were just below her breasts.

  "I'm enjoying this," he said, and she giggled despite her

  breathlessness.

  A few moments later he said: "I suppose I might as well tell you."

  "What?" she panted.

  "The lake is only four feet deep."

  "You rogue!" She wriggled out of his arms, spluttering and laughing,

  and found her footing.

  He took her hand and led her out of the water and through the trees. He

  pointed to an old wooden rowing-boat, rotting upside-down beneath a

  hawthorn.

  "When I was a boy I used to row out here in that, with one of Papa's

  pipes, a box of matches, and a pinch of tobacco in a twist of paper.

  This is where I used to smoke it."

  They were in a clearing, completely surrounded by bushes. The turf

  underfoot was clean and springy. Lucy flopped on the ground.

  "We'll swim back slowly," David said.

  "Let's not even talk about it just yet," she replied.

  He sat beside her and kissed her, then pushed her gently backwards

  until she was lying down. He stroked her hip and kissed her throat,

  and soon she stopped shivering. When he laid his hand gently,

  nervously, on the soft mound between her legs, she arched upwards,

  willing him to press harder. She pulled his face to hers and kissed

  him open-mouthed and wetly. His hands went to the straps of her

  swimsuit, and he pulled them down over her shoulders. She said:

  "No."

  He buried his face between her breasts.

  "Lucy, please." No."

  He looked at her.

  "It might be my last chance."

  She rolled away from him and stood up. Then, because of the war, and

  because of the pleading look on his flushed young face, and because of

  the glow inside her which would not go away, she took off her costume

  with one swift movement, and removed her swimming-cap so that her dark

  red hair shook out over her shoulders, and knelt in front of him,

  taking his face in her hands and guiding his lips to her breast.

  She lost her virginity painlessly, enthusiastically, and only a little

  too quickly.

  The spice of guilt made the memory more pleasant, not less. If it had

  been a well-planned seduction then she had been a willing, not to say

  eager, victim, especially at the end.

  She began to dress in her going-away outfit. She had startled h
im a

  couple of times, that afternoon on the island: once when she wanted him

  to kiss her breasts, and again when she had guided him inside her with

  her hands. Apparently such things did not happen in the books he read.

  Like most of her friends, Lucy read D. H. Lawrence for information

  about sex. She believed in his choreography and mistrusted the

  noises-off: the things his people did to one another sounded nice, but

  not that nice; she was not expecting trumpets and thunderstorms and the

  clash of cymbals at her sexual awakening.

  David was a little more ignorant than she; but he was gentle, and he

  took pleasure in her pleasure, and she was sure that was the important

  thing.

  They had done it only once since the first time. Exactly a week before

  their wedding they had made love again, and it caused their first

  row.

  This time it was at her parents' house, in the morning after everyone

  else had left. He came to her room in his dressing-gown and got into

  bed with her. She almost changed her mind about Lawrence's trumpets

  and cymbals. David got out of bed immediately afterwards.

  "Don't go," she said.

  "Somebody might come in."

  "I'll chance it. Come back to bed." She was warm and drowsy and

  comfortable, and she wanted him beside her.

  He put on his dressing-gown.

  "It makes me nervous."

  You weren't nervous five minutes ago." She reached for him.

  "Lie with me. I want to get to know your body."

  "My God, you're brazen."

  She looked at him to see whether he was joking, and when she realized

  he was not, she became angry.

  "Just what the hell does that mean?"

  "You're just not... ladylike!"

  "What a stupid thing to say ' "You act like a - a - tart."

  She flounced out of bed, naked and furious, her lovely breasts heaving

  with rage.

  "Just how much do you know about tarts?"

  "Nothing!"

  "How much do you know about women?"

  "I know how a virgin is supposed to behave!"

  "I am ... I was ... until I met you..." She sat on the edge of the bed

  and burst into tears.

  That was the end of the quarrel, of course. David put his arms around

  her and said: "I'm sorry, sorry, sorry. You're the first one for me,

  too, and I don't know what to expect, and I feel confused ... I mean,

  nobody tells you anything about this, do they?"

  She snuffled and shook her head in agreement, and it occurred to her

  that what was really unnerving him was the knowledge that in eight days

  time he had to take off in a flimsy aircraft and fight for his life

  above the clouds; so she forgave him, and he dried her tears, and they

  got back into bed and held each other tightly for courage.

  Lucy told her friend Joanna about the row, saying it was over a dress

  David thought to be brazen. Joanna said that couples always quarrelled

  before the wedding, usually the night before: it was the last chance to

  test the strength of their love.

  She was just about ready. She examined herself in a full-length

  mirror. Her suit was faintly military, with square shoulders and

  epaulettes, but the blouse beneath it was feminine, for balance. Her

  hair fell in sausage curls beneath an atty pill-box hat. It would not

  have been right to go away gorgeously dressed, not this year; but she

  felt she had achieved the kind of briskly practical, yet attractive,

  look which was rapidly becoming fashionable.

  David was waiting for her in the hall. He kissed her and said: "You

  look wonderful, Mrs. Rose."

  They were driven back to the reception to say goodbye to everyone,

  before leaving to spend the night in London, at Claridge's; then David

  would drive on to Biggin Hill and Lucy would come home again. She was

  going to live with her parents: she had the use of a cottage for when

  David was on leave.

  There was another half-hour of handshakes and kisses, then they went

  out to the car. Some of David's cousins had got at his open-top MG.

  There were tin cans and an old boot tied to the bumpers with string,

  the running-boards were awash with confetti, and "Just Married' was

  scrawled all over the paintwork in bright red lipstick.

  They drove away, smiling and waving, the guests filling the street

  behind them. A mile down the road they stopped and cleaned up the

  car.

  It was dusk when they got going again. David's headlights were fitted

  with blackout masks, but he drove very fast just the same. Lucy felt

  very happy.

  David said: "There's a bottle of bubbly in the glove box."

  Lucy opened the compartment and found the champagne and two glasses

  carefully wrapped in tissue paper. It was still quite cold. The cork

  came out with a loud pop and shot off into the night. David lit a

  cigarette while Lucy poured the wine.

  "We're going to be late for supper," he said.

  "Who cares ?" She handed him a glass.

  She was too tired to drink, really. She became sleepy. The car seemed

  to be going terribly fast. She let David have most of the champagne.

  He began to whistle St. Louis Blues.

  Driving through England in the blackout was a weird experience. One

  missed lights which one hadn't realized were there before the war:

  lights in cottage porches and farmhouse windows, lights on cathedral

  spires and inn signs, and most of all the luminous glow, low in the

  distant sky, of the thousand lights of a nearby town. Even if one had

  been able to see, there were no signposts to look at: they had been

  removed to confuse the German parachutists who were expected any day.

  (Just a few days ago in the Midlands farmers had found parachutes,

  radios and maps; but since there were no footprints leading away from

  the objects, it had been concluded that no men had landed, and the

  whole thing was a feeble Nazi attempt to panic the population.) Anyway,

  David knew the way to London.

  They climbed a long hill. The little sports car took it nimbly. Lucy

  gazed through half-closed eyes at the blackness ahead. The downside of

  the hill was steep and winding. Lucy heard the distant roar of an

  approaching lorry.

  The MG's tyres squealed as David raced around the bends.

  "I think you're going too fast," Lucy said mildly.

  The back of the car skidded on a left-hander. David changed down,

  afraid to brake in case he skidded again. On either side, the

  hedgerows were dimly picked out by" the shaded headlights. There was a

  sharp right-hand bend, and David lost the back again. The curve seemed

  to go on and on forever. The little car slid sideways and turned

  through 180 degrees, so that it was going backwards; then continued to

  turn in the same direction.

  Lucy screamed: "David!"

  The moon came out suddenly, and they saw the lorry. It was struggling

  up the hill at a snail's pace, with thick smoke, made silvery by the

  moonlight, pouring from its snout-shaped bonnet. Lucy glimpsed the

  driver's face, even his cloth cap and his moustache; his mouth was open

  in terror as he stood on his brakes.

&nbs
p; The car was travelling forward again, now. There was just room to pass

  the lorry if David could regain control of the car. He heaved the

  steering wheel over and touched the accelerator. It was a mistake.

  The car and the lorry collided head-on.

  FOUR

  Foreigners have spies: Britain has Military Intelligence. As if that

  were not euphemism enough, it is abbreviated to MI. In 1940, MI was

  part of the War Office. It was spreading like couch grass at the time

  not surprisingly and its different sections were known by numbers: Ml9

  ran the escape routes from prisoner-of-war camps through Occupied

  Europe to neutral countries; MI5 monitored enemy wireless traffic, and

  was of more value than six regiments; MI6 sent agents into France.

  It was Ml5 that Professor Percival Godliman joined in the autumn of

  1940. He turned up at the War Office in Whitehall on a cold September

  morning after a night spent putting out fires all over the East End:

  the Blitz was at its height and he was an Auxiliary Fireman.

  Military Intelligence was run by soldiers in peacetime, when in