Gibraltar Road Read online

  “Give me time to doll-up and put a face on.”

  Actually she didn’t use make-up to any extent—for one thing, she just didn’t need it. She gave a little gurgle of happiness and blew a kiss down the unresponsive receiver. As she clicked the call off her eyes were very slightly misty.

  Shaw didn’t talk much in the taxi. A drip of rain ran down his collar from where he’d squelched through London’s filthy weather from Great Portland Street station to Albany Street. And that damned pain in his guts nagged at him, as it would nag all the way to the Spanish-Gibraltar frontier at La Linea. He felt abominably ill in body, depressed in spirit; but he did his best to shake himself out of it by just sitting there and consciously relaxing, liking the nearness of the girl in the intimacy of the dark taxi, enjoying her perfume and the nice feeling that to-night was all theirs, the bitter-sweetness of having to get the most out of the short, calendar-threatened time before good-bye.

  During dinner, across the wine-glasses and the gleaming white napery of their table, beneath the softly shaded lights of the room walled with tiles from the ancient Andalusian orange-town of Seville, he gave her the cover-story. Quietly he said, “I’m off the day after to-morrow, Debbie.”

  The tawny body gave a small shiver, and she felt a little knot of sadness gathering in her throat; she crumbled a piece of bread, looked at his sensitive face outlined sharply against the red glow from the electric ‘brazier’ by the wall behind their table. She thought—suddenly compassionate and understanding: He’s worried, very worried, and a lot of that is my fault, because I’ve only to say the word and he’d be happy, or at least as happy as he’s ever likely to be until the outfit finally take their hands off him. But that’s the way I’m made and I can’t help it. Or I could help it if I really wanted to, and there’s the rub; the whole point being that I don’t really want to, or rather not altogether and definitely not yet, and really that makes it all the worse. Get me a psychiatrist, she thought, and he’ll tell me I’m nothing but a crazy, mixed-up kid!

  All she said was, “I thought you were on the move, darling,” lowering her gaze now to fiddle with the gold watch-bracelet that Shaw had given her some while before. She knew her security record was absolutely O.K., Grade A, first-class, and all the rest of it, but she made a point of refraining from asking questions. In general it was safe enough for Shaw to talk to her, and he knew it, and did sometimes ask her for ideas, but he always had to do the volunteering; and in a restaurant you obviously had to stick to the cover-story anyway.

  He said, “I’m leaving the Service, Debbie.”

  He saw the query in her eyes—she couldn’t help that; it wasn’t in the least what she had been expecting, and he answered the unspoken plea. He shook his head slightly, his eyes wary. He said, “The Navy—the whole show. I’m going on the retired list.”

  She didn’t know whether or not to believe him. Joy and relief showed for an instant, before the automatic thought came to her: There’s more behind this! They wouldn’t be retiring him, even with the Golden Bowler, chucking a useful man on the shelf, not unless it was at his own request, and somehow she didn’t think it would be. But she made herself smile at him, and she said:

  “Oh, goody! Now you’ll have to let me get you that high-level job with E.P.C., Esmonde.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve got a job already.”

  “Quick work!” She lifted an eyebrow. That little gesture, so wonderfully attractive, was like a knife in the heart to Shaw, sent the most extraordinary feelings through his whole body. He grinned at her, mouth tight and drawn as though it resented being forced into a grin.

  “I suppose it is,” he said. “But it’s a case of a job for the boys, I’m afraid. I’m an Admiralty civilian—Inspector of Establishments in Armament Supply.”

  “Which is?” she queried.

  Briefly he told her. He added that his first routine inspection was to be of the Gibraltar depot. Shaw was a good agent, and he convinced people. Debonnair was almost convinced after a while; it sounded genuine enough, but there was one test which couldn’t fail, and it was a test no one but she herself could make. Because of it she said no more, but just waited for him to say something. While she waited she studied him obliquely, saw the hurt that he couldn’t keep out of his eyes as he talked on, almost aimlessly, covering up what he was leaving unsaid. That hurt was there because he wasn’t sure that she would understand . . . understand the way his mind worked. But she did; she thought, if he tells me it’s all right for us to get married now I’ll know he really is retiring. If he doesn’t—then all this is hooey, and he’s off, as I suspected, on another job. Because he’s too goddam decent to make this an excuse for getting me to change my mind and say yes; it would be under false pretences, and he’d never do that to me even for the outfit, even for England. Shaw, she knew, was the kind of man who put homely things first, and believed that national decency, which he wouldn’t confuse with some narrow concept of morality— he wasn’t the kind of man, for instance, to take up silly postures about people sleeping together if they felt so inclined —was firmly based on the decent feelings of the ordinary people who made up the nation. A queer sort of agent—yes, maybe; but she hadn’t noticed that he was the less thought of because of it.

  When he didn’t say anything she knew—and, of course, she understood. Her hand stole under the table to squeeze his. For an instant their thighs touched; emotion showed momentarily in Shaw’s face. His quick thoughts had been running on bitterly behind the gay chatter from the other tables, the inconsequential rubbish, the laughter aroused by shared jokes, the lights, the hovering attentions of the waiters, the olive hand which deferentially plied the half-forgotten carafe.

  Shaw took up his glass, lifted it, frowning as the girl watched him; squinted through the red glow as the lights shone behind the crystal, saw the pinky-red pool of its reflection thrown on to the cloth. Like blood, that glass . . . He thought of a man dying in a dark alleyway, of the sudden flick of steel behind a dirty bar in a Tunis back street, a body somersaulting over rocks outside Mers-el-Kebir, in North Africa, somersaulting into a ripple of silver moonlight on the Mediterranean. All these things and so many more he had seen and done; and all were there yet in his mind, a dark backcloth to his imaginative thoughts. But maybe Spain would be a piece of cake compared with the past. Couldn’t be worse. He ran his fingers slowly along the edge of a table-knife . . . the blade was thick, blunt. That surprised him. Ridiculous. In a way it had been a shock to find that knife so blunt to the touch—all knives weren’t blunt like that. But Spain, now . . . the full red glow on the tablecloth, the blood in the glass, the blood which was only wine—it could be symbolic merely of the blood on the sand—bullfights, bottles of wine, a maddened crowd sweating in the close-packed stone seats of the ring, the vicious dark-red spurt as the picadors thrust home with their lances, shielded legs dangling from the scraggy horses’ sides, straw-bloated against the gashing horns of the sacrificial victim. . . .

  He gave a hard laugh, put down the glass. His fingers shook a little. Dear God, he thought, it’s really time I quit, the way my mind’s working.

  The girl looked up quizzically, and he smiled across at her. He said, “I was just reminding myself that I’m a bit of a clot and oughtn’t to think too much.” He touched her hand, a look of rueful amusement coming into his eyes now. “Joe Soap—that’s me.”

  “A nice Joe Soap.”

  He remained silent. She watched his eyes; they were nice ones, she’d always thought. “Penny?” she asked softly.

  “Oh . . . never mind. Not worth even that.” He passed it off with a quick pursing of his lips. But the thoughts wouldn’t go, not even with the girl there opposite him looking troubled. He thought: Yes, I’m Joe Soap and I’m Esmonde Shaw and the day after to-morrow I’ll still be Esmonde Shaw, but on the retired list and Admiralty Inspector of Armament Supply. And Heaven knows who else I’ll have to be, whatever the Old Man says, when I get into Spain and on Karin
a’s track. Karina, he thought, Karina! Will she have changed much in the intervening years? She was quite a few years younger than he was—she’d begun her career early.

  There were many gaps in the story of Karina, and not even the F.O. or M.I.5 or the outfit had managed to fill them in satisfactorily. Shaw had a memory, a very vivid and enchanting one, of thick auburn hair, slightly slanting greenish eyes, and a supple figure which did all sorts of things to a man. Skin oddly like Debonnair’s—that lovely golden colouring, but without the tawniness of the girl herself. A small, oval face, full of life and danger-signals. That auburn hair longish, as well as thick. And there, with Karina’s body, the enchantment ended; for, of course, she was a bitch, and a clever bitch who’d pulled fast ones on both him and the Old Man, and Shaw himself realized quite well that, though he’d gone more than half-way towards falling for her in those days, the attraction was purely, passionately physical. And nothing more. He’d been a bit more impressionable then, maybe—younger, anyhow—and he hadn't met Debonnair. He had an idea, and it made him feel ashamed, that Karina really had been in love with him in her own fashion.

  Suddenly he had a recurrence of that nasty feeling that he was going to muff this job, muff it right from the word go. The nagging pain in the pit of his stomach grew into a ball of fire, gave him an extra jab of hell as though in sympathy with his thoughts. . . .

  “Darling, do come back to Martinez. I don’t know where you’ve been, but really . . Shaw looked up, the greenish slanting eyes of his imagination faded into big hazel ones smiling at him in concern. Debonnair said softly, eyes bright beneath the long lashes, “Tell me all about the ship you’re going out in. I know how you’ll love being back at sea again. And for Heaven’s sake stop worrying, Esmonde! Life isn’t as bad as all that.”

  He lifted his shoulders, pursed up his mouth, shoved some table silver about in front of him. “There’s nothing much to tell you about the old Cambridge.” But, making an initial effort, he began to yam about the sea in general.

  And when he began to talk about the sea like that, easily as he did after a time, the years fell away and it seemed to Debonnair, watching him fondly and not really listening to a word he was saying—only following the light in his eyes and wanting to smooth away the lines in a dear face—that he was like a boy again, a boy about to join his first ship. Or like a man serving a life sentence and forgetting the present in a talk with an old friend who brings back the past to him, the galling bitterness easing away temporarily. It almost made her say something rash. Or something darn wise . . . her heart told her that she didn’t know which she would have called it.

  He knew she’d tumbled to it, of course, much later that night in the flatlet’s tiny sitting-room softly lit by the glow of the gas-fire, when they were very close to each other, and he knew it was useless to keep up the formal pretence any longer. Shaw’s arm was round her, his brown hand, strong and large but with long, sensitive fingers, caressed her hair. She leant against him, feeling the hardness of his body pressed into hers, her head pillowed on his chest beneath his chin, her face pale but rose-tinted in the fire glow. She said, half dreamily answering a plea of his, a plea that he’d made scores of times before, “It’s no use, darling; you see, I know what it’s like.” She frowned a little and glanced upward at him, lifting her head. “I’ve known so many people who—do your job, my pet. I’ve known their wives too. I’ve seen what it does to them.”

  “Is it so much worse for a wife?” asked Shaw gently. “So much worse than—now?”

  She nodded, her hair fanning against his nostrils, fresh and lightly scented. She looked at him curiously. She knew he’d had plenty of experience of women, but sometimes, she thought, you’d hardly know it. “But, darling, of course it is. Husbands and wives are much more to each other. . .

  She bit her lip, hard. “There’d be children.”

  “I’d hope so.”

  “I know, Esmonde. But I wouldn’t like to have children whose father was always away, mysteriously, and who—who—”

  “Might never come back. Might just—disappear—be shot as a spy. Very awkward to explain to them.”

  “That was rather unkind, darling.”

  He felt the stiffening of her body, the slight withdrawal. Gently he disengaged himself, stood up, fumbled for a cigarette. Debonnair sat silent, looking into the fire.

  “You’re quite right, of course,” Shaw said, as the sudden match flickered over his face, strength outlined in shadow and light. He blew out smoke. “You see—I’d want children, lots and lots of them. And a home . . . just a little place in the country, maybe, somewhere right away from the kind of life I’ve had, somewhere we can dig in and stay, get to know people—ordinary normal nice people who sleep sound in their beds at night and don’t have to jump through the roof when the phone rings. People who can read about murders and intrigue and spy rings and agents provocateurs in the paper at breakfast and say, ‘Poor chaps, and it’s tough luck, but thank God I’m not one of them’—and then turn to the sports page, finish their kippers, shove on their bowlers, and catch the 8.15 to the office and ask the other fellows in the carriage how their tomatoes are coming along—”

  Debonnair’s giggle broke into his oratory—which he was ready to admit had become a trifle impassioned. He stopped. Debonnair, the giggle stifling into a throaty little chuckle, said, “And just think how you’d loathe all that!”

  He said vigorously, “But I wouldn’t, don’t you see? I mean it. God! How I’ve dreamed of it. Debbie, I’d love it.” Shaw wasn’t much of a one for continued high living; his pay and his expense account allowed him, if he wanted to and if he used discretion, to indulge in all London had to offer when he wasn’t on a job; the romance, the glitter of the West End was his, had been his for more years than he cared to remember, when he wanted to use them; and he didn’t stint what he spent on Debonnair whenever she would let him, so it was all hers too, for the asking. But they both knew that it wasn’t real, knew how spurious it all was, that it didn’t lead anywhere. Neither of them wanted that as a life. Yet a routine existence was the one point, other than the basic one of getting married while he was still with the outfit, on which they didn’t see eye to eye ... it might be aiming low in a way, Shaw thought, but it had a reality, a solidity. He had a mental image of a cottage, and as he saw that picture now—the old, half-timbered walls, the stone, the shady garden, possibly the thatch—he said again, “I’d love it.”

  She said, “Yes, Esmonde, I know you think you would. And you would, too—for a month or so, perhaps. After that you’d start looking at me and thinking to yourself, Why, the old hag! If it wasn’t for her I’d be off again somewhere to-morrow. She’s the millstone—she’s the old woman in the corner by the fire who’s got me on to the 8.15 racket where it’s Mr This and Mr That and what did you see on the telly last night? And then the office, with a nice little desk and a chair and dozens of other people all half dead from the waist up. And I’d be responsible—me, and the dormitory of little cots upstairs! You ought to realize what it’d be like . . . that’s how you’d feel, Esmonde—wouldn’t you?” She was facing him now, breasts heaving a little, eyes almost angry. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “I would not.”

  “Yes, you would! Anyway, I’d always be feeling that about myself, and come to that I don’t think I’m cut out to be an 8.15 wife myself. I do want you to get out, but in a way I—I’m frightened.” She looked at him accusingly. “Esmonde, if you really feel that way—why don’t you get out, now?”

  Shaw flushed. He said, “Darling, I’ve tried to. I’ve told the Old Man—not once, but often. Again to-day.”

  “And he said no, so you’re still in it. Esmonde, you’re hopeless. You know damn’ well they wouldn’t keep you at it if you were firm. But that’s not the reason.” The girl came close to Shaw, took his hands in hers. “That’s not the reason,” she repeated, “and I’ll tell you what the reason is: you don’t really want to get out, not dee
p down, because you’re a Man! A damn’ stupid, pig-headed Man, and without being in the least conceited about it you do know you’re the best man they’ve got, and you feel you’ve got to do your duty for England and the Service and—and all the other things Men think are important. You’re just old-fashioned, and ought to have been pensioned off years and years ago.” Her voice broke a little as she went on, “Well, it’s not much comfort to you or me, but a lot of those people who sleep tight every night and go safely to the office and yammer about their delphiniums and cabbages ought to be bloody well glad there are men like you and—and—and—I know I’m difficult and bad for you and I seem to keep contradicting myself, but I love you, oh, God, I do—but I’m not going to marry you—not yet . . . oh, Esmonde!"

  Shaw had crushed her tight in his arms, arms which emotion had made into steel-wire hawsers, his mouth seeking hers and fastening upon it urgently with force enough to squeeze the last breath from her body. . . .

  Two mornings later Shaw drove in a taxi through the main gates of Portsmouth Dockyard off the train from Waterloo. The taxi halted briefly while the Admiralty constable checked Shaw’s right of entry, then drove on past the boatyard and turned left for the South Railway jetty, where the masts and upperworks of the Cambridge were visible, a thin white trail of steam twisting upward. And as the taxi disappeared a loafer who had been leaning against the high brick wall of the dockyard as Shaw arrived lit a cigarette and strolled casually away, across the road and along the Hard past Gieves, the naval tailors, and Saccone and Speed, where the Fleet bought its wardroom bar stocks, and the Keppel’s Head Hotel . . . the Navy’s landmarks of departure and return. The loafer wandered aimlessly along to the bridge over the mud-flats leading to the Harbour station, and then he strolled casually back toward a coffee-stall near the bus-stop. He had a cup of coffee, lit another cigarette. He waited. Then, a little later, as the cruiser slipped from the berth and made out to sea past the old grey walls of Fort Blockhouse, he walked off towards a telephone-box.