He was thinking that even with her brown hair a little scattered from the wind up top, her face a little flushed from excitement, she had a quality that caught at his attention.

  It was not the standard prettiness of blue eyes, of a smiling generous mouth, of a small nose that was still a cameo of classic modelling, but something much more, much rarer, and yet so simple that the only words for it seemed inadequate.

  You could only say that in one glance at her you knew that without being naive or stupid she was utterly without guile or coquetry or deceit, that her mind was as clean-cut and untrammelled as her sapling figure in its plain white silk dress, and that whatever she did would be as real and honest and dependable as his ship. To Bentley, who had known so many other fascinations, this was one of the most arresting qualities that he had ever known.

  He gestured to a steward, and brought his head back, looking at her through a leisured breath of smoke.

  “And you’re the famous cruiser catcher,” she said.

  He answered lightly. “I never knew I was so fascinating.”

  “I’m afraid you are. And I expect you’ve been told that often enough before.”

  “You wouldn’t like me if you knew me.”

  “Why not?”

  “My glamour would dwindle. I brush my teeth just like anyone else; and sometimes I burp.”

  “You haven’t seen me without my make-up.” He inspected her again critically.

  “I might survive it,”

  “And I’m lazy and untidy, and I have expensive tastes.”

  “I,” he said, “have just been promoted. I’m dizzy with extra spondulicks. I’m so swamped under with increased pay that I’ll need someone with expensive tastes to help me lighten the load. But I warn you—there won’t be any peace or stability while I’m spending it.”

  “I’m not so peaceful and stable myself,” she said seriously. “But our papers up here gave you a very big spread. Especially the Sunday edition. Did you see that? Pity. If you like to drop into the office tomorrow I’ll rake out a couple of copies for you.”

  “You’re a reporter?”

  “I’m a reporter. And not fashion stuff, thank you. Having been obliged to read all about your adventure in the line of duty, sort of thing, I was anxious to meet you. We couldn’t get a photograph. Well, now I’ve met you, and you’re stuck with it.”

  She could say things like that, in a way nobody else could have said them and got away with it. Bentley had met most kinds of coquetry and invitation, and he had had to dodge the pursuit of a few hungry women: but this was none of those things. She looked him in the face when she said it and said it straight out as if it were the most natural thing to say because it was just the truth: but there was a little speck of laughter in each of her eyes at the same time, as if she wondered what he would think of it and didn’t care very much, anyway.

  “You’re very frank,” he said.

  “You won’t believe me,” she said, “but I never told anyone anything like this before in my life. So if you think I’m completely crazy you’re probably right.”

  He blew smoke slowly through his lips and gazed at her, smiling a little. It was rather nice to gaze at her like that, with the indirect lighting from the bulkhead behind them on her bronze head, and feel that it was the most obvious and inescapable thing for them to be cosily together in the corner of the vociferous room.

  He took up his glass again. He had to say something, and he didn’t know what it would be.

  The first-lieutenant beat him to it.

  “G’evening,” he said thickly. “Sorry to intrude, sir. But you can’t keep the prize of the evening all to yourself, sir.”

  “This is Lieutenant Smith,” Bentley introduced. He looked at her, and she smiled delightedly at the sudden frown on his face.

  “Anne,” she said. “Anne Peters.”

  “There you have it,” Bentley grinned.

  “Drink, sir?”

  “Thanks,” the first-lieutenant mumbled. He took the glass from the steward’s tray and focused on it with intense deliberation. He held it rather like a binnacle holds a ship’s compass, rocking under and around it, but holding it in miraculously isolated suspension. He lifted his head in a swaying movement and said something to Anne.

  Bentley had leaned back to place his glass on the pantry bench. He did not hear what Number One said to her, but he heard, distinctly, a growling voice from outside the door on his left.

  “When’s this mob gonna go home, sir?”

  A thin frown appeared above Bentley’s nose. He turned his head to hear better.

  “I’ve got no idea, cox’n,” Hanson answered with a weak laugh. Bentley could now see one of his hands, which apparently had been about to pull the curtain back for him to enter when Snade had caught up with him.

  “We’re not keeping the troops awake forrard, are we?”

  “No, sir. But this mob’s keepin’ me and my crew awake. When are they gonna shove off home?” the thick voice repeated surlily.

  Without excusing himself, without drawing any attention to himself at all, Bentley sidled out along the bulkhead and stepped out into the passage outside the wardroom door.

  Hanson saw him first, because he felt the movement on the curtain as Bentley slipped through the door. Snade was about to speak again. He looked up and saw a pair of gimlet eyes probing into his.

  Bentley’s eyes flashed to Hanson. “What’s this about?” he clipped.

  Hanson swallowed. For a long, narrow-lidded moment Snade glared at Bentley. Then he spoke.

  “I was askin’ the officer of the day what time the boat’d be required to take guests ashore,” he said.

  Bentley wasted no time.

  “You’re a liar,” he said, with a whip-snap of anger. “And you’re drunk.”

  Snade stared back at him, breathing through his open mouth. Bentley’s eyes were suddenly very clear and hard.

  “Have this man relieved immediately from the motor-boat. Place him in my report. Insubordination and drunk on duty.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bentley’s eyes flicked down to Hanson’s face. He thought he saw a hardening there. Perhaps all the youngster needed was some moral support. He was sure he was right when Hanson said, curtly:

  “All right, Leading-Seaman Snade. Report to the quarter-deck.”

  Bentley waited no longer. Easing the hardness from his expression he re-entered the wardroom. He was perfectly within his rights placing Snade in his report.

  Danvers would have left the ship by the time captain’s defaulters would be ready: and in any case he would not wish to be bothered with this late offence.

  As he eased himself through the laughing crowd, Bentley was annoyed as much at Hanson as he was at Snade. It was clear to him that discipline must be shockingly slack if a rating could speak like that about officer’s guests, and to an officer.

  And then he reflected that the real fault lay not with Hanson after all. It lay squarely on the shoulders of the officer at the other end of the room, grinning affably round his pipe stem.

  “What was that all about.” Anne’s frank voice came from beside him.

  He looked at her quizzically, then took out a cigarette. She held a lighter out, smiling at him over its little golden spear-point of flame. He nodded his thanks and blew a sword of smoke at the deck-hand.

  “Nothing for you to write a story about,” he said, with equal frankness. “Where’s Number One?”

  “Gone from me. Not to my regret. This is a new dress. Beer would stain it horribly.”

  Bentley stroked an ashtray with the end of his cigarette to avoid commenting on his first-lieutenant’s state of sobriety—or lack of it. She said:

  “You have a car?”

  “No, not here. Why?”

  “I like to be driven home, that’s all.”

  “I’m taking you home?”

  “It’s so nice of you to ask me.” Her smile was impish. “Who knows, I might get a story after all.”

  “Not from me you won’t.”

  “Oh? The strong silent type?”

  “Like hell. I really lapped up all that publicity. How do you think we poor naval types get promoted? Outside influence, that’s what.”

  “Now you’re laughing at me.”

  “That’s right,” he grinned boyishly. “That frankness of yours is catching. Where do you live?”

  “Not far. New Farm. You don’t want to go yet?”

  “I do. But I can’t. Yet.”

  “Pity you don’t have a car.” She made a little moue at him. “Just when I’d decided you were my target for tonight.”

  “Under no circumstances can we have you disappointed,” he said, unsmiling. “I shall borrow the ship’s jeep.”

  “How very nice of you,” she said, as seriously. “Now that the main problem of the evening is settled. I’d like to meet some more of my hosts.” She smiled back at him over one shoulder. “Maybe I’ll get a story yet.”

  Bentley introduced her around. There were stories enough in the room, he thought. If you had the experience to appreciate them. How did Danvers really feel, grinning round that damned pipe of his? Genuinely happy? To him destroyer Wind Rode was a bucket, something to get away from. To Bentley, the old ship was the dearest thing on earth—or water. How did it feel to be passed over? To be sent, from command of your own vessel, to a cruiser or carrier in a junior capacity, to do as someone more successful told you? Maybe Danvers was not sensitive enough to care. He certainly seemed carefree enough.

  And the gunner? And Symons? How did the college-trained officer really feel about the ex-lower deckman who had been given his job? Did he blame himself or Danvers? If the captain, he must hate his guts. A repressed detestation which could corrode a man’s soul. He must have hopes that the new commander would reinstate him.

  That thought, as Anne was joking with the engineer, brought Bentley back to thinking of himself. He had for many years been in the position of hoping for senior officer approval. Now he was the arbiter of the hopeful one’s fate.

  His blood ran quick with pride. He had risen from the despised rank of midshipman, ‘snotty,’ to the command of a British warship. Nothing could erase that fact. Luck and merit were mingled in the event, but the event stood. It would be on the records of the Navy so long as the Navy existed.

  The quick pride eased. Command? He had been appointed to command this ship, but he had not yet commanded her. That would take more than a flimsy message from the Navy Board. And what it took would have to be in him, alone.

  He looked around the rowdy room. The officers were more affected by liquor than he would have cared to have them. But this was Danvers’ last night, wasn’t it? There was also a war on. A savage war, and not so far away, either. The significant thing to his mind was that none of them, except the gunner and the engineer, felt that he had to restrain himself. Or was the new skipper over-critical?

  Take it easy …

  He touched Anne’s arm. She turned at once from the engineer.

  “I think we can clear out now,” he said in a low voice. He had decided that no one would miss him now.

  For answer, she smiled goodbye at the engineer and eased her way to the door, unobtrusively picking up her bag from the table as she passed. Three minutes later they were in the fresh coolness of the upper-deck, the steely arch of the bridge rising in delicate tracery across the stars above them.

  “You have a phone?” he asked.

  She nodded, and gave him the number. He waited, while the quartermaster at the gangway wrote it down, then said:

  “Call me there if required. I’m taking the jeep.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the seaman answered, politely, but without interest. His tone was in marked contrast to the feeling of subdued excitement beginning to twirl in Bentley’s stomach.

  But his lean face was composed and expressionless as he helped her down the gangway and handed her into the jeep on the pier. He walked round the bonnet and got in the other side. She watched him. The chiselled leanness of cheekbone and jaw were picked out vividly as he lighted a cigarette. Anne, glancing at the flame momentarily reflected in his quizzical grey eyes, felt a surge of yearning and pride.

  He knew Brisbane, and they drove through the Valley and turned right for New Farm almost without speaking.

  Surrounded and shadowed by spreading poinciana trees, the block of four flats was dark. Anne preceded him and opened a door on the left of the entrance hall. Without switching on the light she reached back, fumbled a moment, took his hand and led him in. He smelt perfume. He heard the door click to behind him, and then she turned on the light.

  “Not that it matters.” she said, looking up at him. “But one may as well be discreet.”

  He stood directly in front of her. and his eyes were over her.

  “You’re old enough,” he said. “Why should you care?”

  He had his answer in something yielding and yearning that was suddenly pressing against him, holding his mouth with lips that fulfilled all the urgent indications that he had noticed before and hoped would come to fruition.

  Bentley woke up with the shrill of the telephone bell splitting his ear-drums. He was off the divan and on his feet in one smooth, soundless motion.

  “It could be for me,” Anne said, sleepily. She rolled over and stretched out one bare brown arm and switched on the table lamp.

  He took up the receiver without answering her. “Yes?”

  “Is that the captain, sir?”

  “Yes, what is it. Hanson?”

  “Sorry to trouble you, sir. But the captain—that is Lieutenant-Commander Danvers thought …”

  “What is it, man?”

  “It’s Snade, sir. He tried to get ashore in his motor-boat. He’s pretty tight, sir, and rammed the gangway.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “We hauled him back onboard, sir.”

  “He’s under close arrest?”

  “Well … no, sir. He’s pretty helpless. Must have got a lot more liquor somewhere.”

  “Put him under close arrest at once! Is the wardroom clear?”

  “Not quite—there are about half a dozen still aboard.”

  “Get rid of them. Tell the officers concerned to get their guests ashore. At once.”

  “Yes, sir. Number One is organising that now, sir. Er—that’s not all.”

  “What?”

  “Snade punched at the Buffer.” There was a pause before Bentley asked:

  “Did he hit him?”

  “A glancing blow, sir. No damage to the Buffer.”

  The fact of the attempted blow was damage enough, Bentley thought grimly. He said:

  “What happened then?”

  “The Buffer let him have one back, to quieten him sir.”

  “What the …!”

  Hanson could hear his captain’s deep breathing.

  “Why the devil didn’t you stop him?” Bentley rasped.

  “I didn’t have time, sir. Are you—will you come back on board, sir?”

  “Get Snade under close arrest. And get those women off. I’m coming now.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Bentley dropped the receiver back and looked up. She stood in the kitchen doorway, slim and fresh in something lacy and sheer as glass, her short auburn curls making her look very young and almost boyish.

  “That scrambling sound,” she said, “is eggs in my kitchen. When you’re ready.”

  “I’m sorry, Anne.” He busied himself with his shirt and tie. “I must get back to the ship.”

  “Serious?” She came towards him and stood in front of him, tightening the knot of his tie further up under the collar.

  “Yes,” he said briefly. “Quite serious. A leading seaman struck a petty officer. That’s worth everything in the book. But the clot of a P.O. lashed back at him. And that’s even worse.”

  “Oh!” She smoothed a strand of his hair back. “Surely he was entitled to defend himself?”

  He shook his head. “Under no circumstances. If that was allowed you’d have free-for-all between officers and men.” He took up his cap and looked at her, worriedly.

  “It’s complicated then?” she asked, and her own small face was concerned.

  “Complicated to hell. If I’m not careful I’ll lose both men.”

  She understood at once.

  “The day after you take command?”

  He nodded. And then his quick, warm smile sparkled at her.

  “Sorry about this. Thanks—thanks for a lovely night.”

  “You were most welcome to it,” she said, huskily. She pressed her cheek in against his for a moment, then drew back and tossed a curl back with a little jerk of her head.

  “Phone when you want to.”

  Driving on to the pier, Bentley had to swing his jeep hard left to avoid a car which came at him, weaving. It shot past, leaving a trail of drunken laughter. The carefree hilarity contrasted markedly with his own feeling of worried anger.

  Danvers was waiting for him on the quarter-deck, pacing up and down on the far side.

  “I’m damned sorry about this,” Danvers said as he came towards him. “I’ll stay and handle it.”

  “Not at all,” Bentley answered. That was the last thing he wanted. He had his own ideas of how to handle the business. “What happened?”

  They fell naturally into step, walking up and down the gear-cluttered quarter-deck. Hanson watched them covertly from the gangway, glad that the whole extraordinary affair had been taken from his own thin and inexperienced shoulders.

  It appeared, Danvers told him, his voice low and serious, that Snade had his own store of liquor on the mess-deck. Just after midnight he had tried to get ashore in the motor-boat He was too far gone to steer with any degree of accuracy, and had rammed the gangway trying to get clear of the ship. Hanson had heard the crash, and the quartermaster had hauled Snade inboard. Brought out of his hammock to charge Snade, the chief bosun’s mate had just ordered ‘Off cap,’ when Snade had lurched forward and swiped at him. Acting instinctively, the Buffer had hit back, and Snade lost all interest in the proceedings.

 

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