‘And that’s not all.’ She sounded almost angry. ‘You said they went around killing thousands of innocent people and that-‘
‘Those were not my words. Janet did not say that. You’re doing what you accused the Lieutenant of doing – fibbing. Also, you’re dodging the issue. Okay, so the nasty Germans killed two people you knew and loved. I wonder how many thousands they killed before they were shot down. But that doesn’t matter really, does it? You never knew them or their names. How can you weep over people you’ve never met, husbands and wives, sweethearts and children, without faces or names? It’s quite ridiculous, isn’t it, and statistics are so boring. Tell me, did your brother ever tell you how he felt when he went out in his Lancaster bomber and slaughtered his mother’s fellow countrymen? But, of course, he’d never met them so that made it all right, didn’t it?’
She said in a whisper: ‘I think you’re horrible.’
‘You think I’m horrible. Janet thinks I’m a heartless fiend. I think you’re a pair of splendid hypocrites.”
‘Hypocrites?’
‘You know – Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The ward sister and Margaret Morrison. Janet’s just as bad. At least I don’t, deal in double standards.’ McKinnon made to leave but she caught him by the arm and indulged, not for the first time, in the rather disconcerting practice of examining each of his eyes in turn.
‘You didn’t really mean that, did you? About Janet and myself being hypocrites?’
‘No.’
‘You are devious. All right, all right, I’ll make it right with him.’
‘I knew you would. Margaret Morrison.’
‘Not Ward Sister Morrison?’
‘You don’t look like Mrs Hyde.’ He paused. ‘When were you to have been married?’
‘Last September.’
‘Janet. Janet and your brother. They were pretty friendly, weren’t they?’
‘Yes. She told you that?’
‘No. She didn’t have to.’
‘Yes, they were pretty friendly.’ She was silent for a few moments. ‘It was to have been a double wedding.’
‘Oh hell,’ McKinnon said and walked away. He checked ail the scuttles in the hospital area – even from the relatively low altitude of a submarine conning-tower the light from an uncovered porthole can be seen for several miles – went down to the engine-room, spoke briefly to Patterson, returned to the mess-deck, had dinner, then went into the wards. Janet Magnusson, in Ward B, watched his approach without enthusiasm.
‘So you’ve been at it again.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know what I’m talking about?’
‘No. I don’t know and I don’t care. I suppose you’re talking about your friend Maggie – and yourself. Of course I’m sorry for you both, terribly sorry, and maybe tomorrow or when we get to Aberdeen I’ll break my heart for yesterday. But not now, Janet. Now I have one or two more important things on my mind such as, say, getting to Aberdeen.’
‘Archie.’ She put a hand on his arm. ‘I won’t even say sorry. I’m just whistling in the dark, don’t you know that, you clown? I don’t want to think about tomorrow.’ She gave a shiver, which could have been mock or not. ‘I feel funny. I’ve been talking to Maggie. It’s going to happen tomorrow, isn’t it, Archie?’
‘If by tomorrow you mean when daylight comes, then, yes. Could even be tonight, if the moon breaks through.’
‘Maggie says it has to be a submarine. So you said.’
‘Has to be.’
‘How do you fancy being taken a prisoner?’
‘I don’t fancy it at all.’
‘But you will be, won’t you?’
‘I hope not.’
‘How can you hope not? Maggie says you’re going to surrender. She didn’t say so outright because she knows we’re friends – we are friends, Mr McKinnon?’
‘We are friends, Miss Magnusson.’
‘Well, she didn’t say so, but I think she thinks you’re a bit of a coward, really.’
‘A very – what’s the word, perspicacious? – a very perspicacious girl is our Maggie.’
‘She’s not as perspicacious as I am. You really think there’s a chance we’ll reach Aberdeen?’
There’s a chance.’
‘And after that?’
‘Aha! Clever, clever Janet Magnusson. If I haven’t got any plans for the future then I don’t see any future. Isn’t that it? Well, I do see a future and I do have plans. I’m going to take my first break since nineteen thirty-nine and have a couple of weeks back home in the Shetlands. When were you last back home in the Shetlands?’
‘Not for years.’
‘Will you come with me, Janet?’
‘Of course.’
McKinnon went into Ward A and passed up the aisle to where Sister Morrison was sitting at her table. ‘How’s the Captain?’
‘Well enough, I suppose. Bit dull and quiet. But why ask me? Ask him.’
‘I have to ask the ward sister’s permission to take him out of the ward.’
‘Take him out – whatever for?’
‘I want to talk to him.’
‘You can talk to him here.’
‘I can just see the nasty suspicious looks I’d be getting from you if we started whispering together and the nasty suspicious questions I’d be getting afterwards. My dear Margaret, we have matters of state to discuss.’
‘You don’t trust me, is that it?’
‘That’s the second time you’ve asked me that silly question. Same answer. I do trust you. Totally. I trust Mr Kennet there. But there are five others I don’t know whether to trust or not.’
McKinnon took the Captain from the ward and returned with him inside two minutes. After she’d tucked him back in bed, Margaret Morrison said: ‘That must rank as the shortest state conference in history.’
‘We are men of few words.’
‘And that’s the only communique I’ll be getting?’
‘Well, that’s the way high-level diplomacy is conducted. Secrecy is the watchword.’
As he entered Ward B he was stopped by Janet Magnusson. ‘What was all that about, then? You and Captain Bowen, I mean.’
‘I have not had a private talk with the Captain in order to tell all the patients in Ward B about it. I am under an* oath of silence.’
Margaret Morrison came in, looked from one to the other, then said: ‘Well, Janet, has he been more forthcoming with you than with me?’
‘Forthcoming? Under an oath of silence, he claims. His own oath, I have no doubt.’
‘No doubt. What have you been doing to the Captain?’
‘Doing? I’ve been doing nothing.’
‘Saying, then. He’s changed since he came back. Seems positively cheerful.’
‘Cheerful? How can you tell. With all those bandages, you can’t see a square inch of his face.’
‘There are more ways than one of telling. He’s sitting up in bed, rubbing his hands from time to time and twice he’s said “Aha”.’
‘I’m not surprised. It takes a special kind of talent to reach the hearts and minds of the ill and depressed. It’s a gift. Some of us have it.’ He looked at each in turn. ‘And some of us haven’t.’
He left them looking at each other.
McKinnon was woken by Trent at 2.0 a.m. ‘The moon’s out, Bo’sun.’
The moon, as McKinnon bleakly appreciated when he arrived on the port wing of the bridge, was very much out, a three-quarter moon and preternaturally bright – or so it seemed to him. At least half the sky was clear. The visibility out over the now almost calm seas was remarkable, so much so that he had no difficulty in picking out the line of the horizon: and if he could see the horizon, the Bo’sun all too clearly realized, then a submarine could pick them up ten miles away, especially if the San Andreas were silhouetted against the light of the moon. McKinnon felt naked and very vulnerable. He went below, roused Curran, told him to take up lookout on the starboard wing of the bridge, found Naseby, asked him to check that the falls and davits of the motor lifeboats were clear of ice and working freely and then returned to the port wing where, every minute or two, he swept the horizon with his binoculars. But the sea between the San Andreas and the horizon remained providentially empty.
The San Andreas itself was a remarkable sight. Wholly covered in ice and snow, it glittered and shone and sparkled in the bright moonlight except for a narrow central area/ abaft of the superstructure where wisping smoke from the shattered funnel had laid a brown smear all the way to the stern post. The fore and aft derricks were huge glistening Christmas trees, festooned with thick-ribbed woolly halliards and stays, and the anchor chains on the fo’c’s’le had been transformed into great fluffy ropes of the softest cotton wool. It was a strange and beautiful world with an almost magical quality about it, ethereal almost: but one had only to think of the lethal dangers that lay under the surrounding waters and the beauty and the magic ceased to exist.
An hour passed by and everything remained quiet and peaceful. Another hour came and went, nothing untoward happened and McKinnon could scarcely believe their great good fortune. And before the third uneventful hour was up the clouds had covered the moon and it had begun to snow again, a gentle snowfall only, but enough, with the hidden moon, to shroud them in blessed anonymity again. Telling Ferguson, who now had the watch, to shake him if the snow stopped, he went below in search of some more sleep.