Dust On the Sea Read Online Free Page A

protests as the door slid open again. It was the ticket inspector, a torch in one hand.
    â€˜Waterloo in ’alf an ’our, gents!’
    Blackwood leaned back as the W.A.A.F. officer returned to her seat. She murmured, ‘Thank you.’ She sounded relieved, he thought.
    The door banged shut again. He remembered leaning from this carriage window, and looked at it now. He had leaned out to touch his sister’s face, and to kiss her. He had been aware of her anxiety, for him, not for herself. Some hurrying soldiers had whistled.
Lucky sod. Bloody officer
–
it’s all right for some.
And so on.
    The last running figures, the final good-byes; so much to say in so short a time, and no words to offer.
    She had held him, staring up at him. ‘I didn’t want to worry you, Mike. Spoil things.’
    There had been the shrill of a whistle. The train, this train, had given a jerk.
    She had clung to him, keeping pace with the carriage. ‘I passed my medical. My papers came through.’
    â€˜Medical? Papers?’ He must have sounded stupid.
    She had been dragged away from him, her eyes filling her face.
    â€˜I’m joining up, Mike!’
    Even then, at the moment of separation, he had known its importance to her.
    He had shouted, ‘I love you, Diane!
We’ll show them!
’
    The rest had been lost in the din and the smoke from a passing goods train. Show whom? Did she really understand?
    He had sat down, and had seen his fellow passengers avert their faces. Only the W.A.A.F. officer had looked at him, with what he thought was a reminiscent pain in her eyes.
    Maybe he was not feeling the full effect of it yet, like the funeral service, and the two Royal Marine buglers who had sounded the Last Post afterwards. Part of something else. Something he could never be.
    It was exactly eight o’clock in the morning when Blackwood found himself at the appointed building. The air was still damp and cold, and the sky so dull it was barely possible to distinguish the buildings in and around Trafalgar Square; even the little admiral was lost from view on the top of his column.
    He still could not believe he had done so much in so short a time since stumbling from the overloaded train at Waterloo Station. A petty officer with a Naval Patrol armlet had met him at the barrier and had guided him to a waiting car without hesitation, no easy thing amid the stampede of uniforms pushing through the gates, either to avoid losing their tickets, which might be used again if the collectors were too busy to notice, or to dodge the hard-faced line of redcaps and R.A.F. police, the enemies of all servicemen anywhere.
    Then a quick drive to a private room, where he had been given just a few moments to shave and change into aclean shirt and down a cup of awful tea before being whisked away by the same petty officer.
    It had been too much after the lengthy, uncomfortable journey, and he felt like death. He also knew the services well enough to accept that it was probably a complete waste of time. As Major-General Vaughan had said in Scotland, others could do it. They probably had.
    The building was not what he had expected; it was more like an old shop, with sandbagged barriers and wire grills to protect the windows.
    The petty officer watched him without curiosity. It was obviously better not to ponder on the fate of the officers he collected and ferried to this rendezvous.
    He did say, almost apologetically, ‘Used to be a big wine merchant’s place, sir. So they tells me.’ It was enough. He guided him through the doors and past two steel-helmeted policemen, either guarding the entrance or merely sheltering from the drizzle outside. Then there was a counter, and another petty officer standing behind it.
    He glanced at Blackwood’s identity card, and said, ‘I’ll take you down, sir.’ He almost smiled, but not quite. ‘They doesn’t like to be kept