Sheila

Sheila. Alec Barr sighed. He had nearly forgotten Sheila. Sheila what? Audrey? No. Aubrey, that was it. With the short-cropped black curls, the milky Irish skin to go with the blue-purple Irish eyes, the good breasts showing firm under the simple sweater. Lovely Sheila.

And that was a very long time ago. Like in 1943—March 1943, if he remembered right. Alec had been a humble lieutenant (junior grade) in charge of a Naval gun crew in a raggedy-seat service called the armed guard. The armed-guard officers and enlisted men were placed aboard the merchant ships that comprised the convoys which lugged America's vast production to dreary places like Murmansk and Calcutta and the Persian Gulf.

"Fish food" was what they called the armed guard in the early days of the War, when the Luftwaffe owned the skies and the Nazi submarine wolf packs were bold enough to hang around American river mouths, to blast the Allied shipping before the ships actually put out to sea. The armed guardsmen were shoved aboard the merchant vessels ostensibly to man the guns, but actually to prevent a wholesale diversion of American merchant marine to Russia if the Russians suddenly signed a separate peace with Germany.

Alec had been arbitrarily ordered into the armed guard, like so many other civilian officers with no real mechanical skills—teachers, lawyers, writers (like Alec)—after a brief indoctrination. Three months after he bought his first uniforms, Alec found himself shooting at submarines (with a five-inch cannon that certainly was salvaged from a courthouse lawn) on a coastwise trip from Charleston, South Carolina, before he even had a chance to form convoy in New York. For target practice, he directed his raw crew to shoot at the masts of sunken ships that stuck up like antennas along the American coastline.

Each convoy running upward of a hundred of the slow Liberty ships had a technical commander with the honorary title of "Commodore," who received the signals from the protecting destroyer escorts and corvettes for relay to the other ships in station. This commodore was arbitrarily selected by the Naval port director, at a convoy conference before the long files of ships formed outside and headed hopefully for Murmansk, shepherded through the angry gray Atlantic by a pitiful complement of American, English and Canadian corvettes and DEs. Alec's ship was so chosen, on his second run, to herd the thin-skinned sheep, invariably laden with high explosives or high-octane gasoline, through the wolf packs of Unterseebooten that attacked from New York to the North Cape, and the Heinkels and Dorniers that filled the skies like angry crows once the depleted convoys rounded the North Cape. Murmansk was the death run; the Russians were starving for matériel, and the Luftwaffe had temporarily eased up in the Battle of Britain to concentrate on Russia and the supply lines that were victualing Russia. England, almost knocked out in the first blitz, was breathing again, and clearing up some of the rubble.

The wolf packs beat the living hell out of Convoy Fox, all the way from Sandy Hook to the coast of Scotland. Flares lit the night into ghoulish noon. Depth charges thumped shockingly against the fragile bottoms of the eight-knot merchantmen that plowed through dense fog, scraping bows against sterns and butting into one another like milling cattle. It was cold beyond belief; the machine guns and Oerlikons were thawed with blowtorches. Beards clotted into icicles—everyone was bearded, because the touch of steel on skin stripped patches in its path.

There was a 24-hour general quarters, and there was one period when Alec barely got off his feet for eight days, snatching cat naps in the wheelhouse occasionally when he came down from his station on the flying bridge. Once, when the attack lulled, he took a chance and stripped off his paper-lined convoy suit to shower his stinking body. As he soaped himself, the attack alarm sounded and he hit the freezing deck naked except for a helmet.

No day or night passed that failed to record the massive display of exploding ammunition ships or the flaming, greasy-smoking destruction of tankers. Slightly hit ships and vessels two-blocking the black ball for engine trouble drifted back and out of convoy and were left sorrowfully to be picked off at leisure by the submarines. There was no attempt to rescue the survivors of stricken ships. In that ice-floed water, life expectancy was something under five minutes.

As the crippled convoy hove into Loch Ewe, in northern Scotland, Alec reflected bitterly that he was the last survivor of a shoreside poker game which had been running in New York before the trip started, and that three of the four departed participants owed him money.

As commodore, Alec climbed down the accommodation ladder into a leaping launch run by black-stockinged, pink-cheeked WRENs for a conference on the future of Convoy Fox. A head count showed 32 ships lost out of 120— and the worst was yet to come when they rounded the Cape.

The British Naval Officer In Charge was very young for a three-ringer. He wore weary red-rimmed blue eyes and a long, curly blond beard.

"You chaps proper bought it this run," he said. "I've been onto Operations and we see little sense in continuing the slaughter. The whole bloody Luftwaffe is waiting for you to round the Cape. London's as peaceful as a parson right now. Been nothing over it for weeks—for which thank God, as I believe we only had about six operable Spits left to throw up."

The NOIC paused for a second and looked at the small cluster of Americans.

"Of course I know this convoy's an all-American show, but you belong to us now. What would you say to a shot at the estuary? Nothing much around to trouble you but the odd E-boat. Nip in and be discharged in a week and off again as bright as buttons."

He looked at Alec, who grinned.

"I say 'Aye,' and also thank God. There's no Luftwaffe at all over London?"

The NOIC shook his head.

"Pulled out to devote themselves to the Russkies—and anything that's going to old Ivan. I rather imagine the Murmansk thing has about had it. It'll all be going through the Gulf now, and then overland from Abadan. Not that this'll be too easy on you chaps, but at least it'll be warmer. I believe you blokes run a dry Navy. Fancy a tot of rum?"

"I'd fancy a tot of canned heat, if necessary," Alec said. "I'm still frozen."

• • •

The pontoons of the antisubmarine nets swept back next morning and the convoy reformed, with corvettes hooting alongside, to make the quick and dirty run to the mouth of the Thames. They had only the tiniest troubles with E-boats, which made swift abortive sorties and withdrew after two were blown out of the water. They sailed tranquilly into the Thames, and Alec's ship tied up at the Royal Albert Docks.

She had been made fast a very short time when another bearded boy—this time a lieutenant—came aboard.

"You're to secure your guns and batten down your ammunition lockers," he said. "There'll be no repeat no fighting on your ship if Jerry does pay us a visit. We have our own gunnery control and we don't want any of your eager chaps shooting down our chaps by mistake. You can secure your ship and grant full liberty. We'll put our own people aboard."

He looked keenly at Alec.

"I should smarten up a bit if I were you," he said. "At least trim the beard and break out the number ones. You're required at your H.Q. tomorrow at 0900. Something to do with Intelligence and also Public Relations—shoot the gen back home to build morale. After that, I rather imagine you'll be free until you sail." He stuck out his hand and smiled. "Have fun. Pay no attention to the shambles. London's still a bright town, even behind the blackout curtains. Any amount of frustrated females milling about, and a sly grogshop behind every third door. I'm told there's a fine place in Orange Court that serves a marvelous black-market steak. Somebody'll clue you in."

He turned to go and then swung back.

"I forgot. They'll be sending a motorcar for you at 0815. Wouldn't like to have you lost in the bus system, what's left of it."

Alec shook his head as he went back to his tiny quarters with LT. (J.G.) Alexander Barr, Gunnery Officer stenciled on the door. It seemed to him that the British were very casual about their War, which they appeared to be losing by land, by sea and especially in the air. The Russians were being steadily beaten back; the amateur American mother's-boy Army was being clobbered in North Africa, Rommel was running wild in the western desert, the supply lines from America—if his baby was any example—were being amputated, and the R.A.F. had been almost totally destroyed over Britain.

He went to the tiny stall shower down the alleyway and scrubbed himself raw. He shaved off the scraggly beard with relief and decided that the first thing he would do was yell for the gunner's mate (continued overleaf) third, who had been a barber, and get himself a free haircut. Then he would see to his guns and his ready boxes, batten down the magazine and take a little stroll ashore, to get his land legs back (the old bucket had taken an 80-degree roll, 40 degrees on one side and 40 on the other, damned near capsizing her, and he had still kept his footing) and then maybe inquire if there was a pub near the docks where a man might buy a pint of mild and bitter and perhaps a chunk of cheese that didn't taste cabbagy like everything else in the ship's freeze box.

Alec Barr was more than mildly exhilarated as he dressed. The dress blued felt festive on his freshly washed hide, after weeks of smalling his own sealed-in stink in the convoy Teddy-bear suit with its felt face mask.

He had come through twice now, while others had died in the mountainous snow-capped waves of that cruel Atlantic, which was as gray as death, as permanent as forever. Many had died, but he, Alexander Barr, was still alive.

And he had, he thought, done a good job, although he had been frightened out of his skin. Not only frightened at sea, but frightened at the idea of indoctrination school. Alec Barr owned no mechanical aptitude whatsoever; he could barely switch a typewriter ribbon, and the simple mechanics of changing a tire always managed to bark his knuckles. He had memorized his way through navigation and gunnery and seamanship, and had graduated with the others without cheating.

In actual practice gunnery, on the shooting ships, he had scored well, since at least, as a fair shotgun hand, he understood the axioms of leadoff that appeared to baffle the unsophisticated gun crew he was supposed to be training. He accepted his first ship at Charleston with trepidation, but managed to make out a port-and-starboard watch list with the aid of a regular-Navy gunner's mate second who had been banished to the armed guard for his considerable shoreside sins.

Now it all seemed pretty easy. He had his crew well in hand. He had learned much of practical value on these last two runs. The armed-guard complements were generally drawn from the dregs of recruitment—callow farmer lads from Iowa, bullyboys from New Jersey, street fighters from Brooklyn. Destroyers and DEs and cruisers got the cream. The ragtag went to a service nobody wanted, under officers who din't know port from starboard, and who still called bulkheads "walls" and ladders "stairs" and decks "floors."

Alec owned one particularly abrasive character, a squat, beveled boy from New Jersey, a Polish kid named Zabinski. Every ship has a problem child, and Zabinski was Alec's cross. It anybody was drunk and in trouble ashore, it was Zabinski. If anybody was smoking in the magazine while the Baker flag was up for ammunition loading, it was Zabinski. If anybody was smoking on watch, or asleep on watch, or overleave, it always seemed to be Zabinski, whose pockmarked flat face wore a constant air of stupidity combined with sullen arrogance.

Having read The Bluejackets' Manual and the Naval regulations, Alec tried it all, from confinement to ship to extra duty to patient pleading. Zabinski was impervious to it all. He would say "Yah," forgetting the "sir," and lumber sullenly away, his flat hat on wrong, his neckerchief askew, his blouse sloppy.

One day Alec lost patience. He also lost confidence, because it seemed that Zabinski was gradually taking his ship away from him. God knows, it was tough enough running a small, underpaid Naval complement on a merchant ship in which the Chinese messboy made twice Alec's salary, and on which the armed guard was bitterly resented as upstarts by the merchant personnel. Discipline was tough enough without Zabinski around to foul it up.

One day Alec, tried beyond endurance, called Zabinski to his small stateroom.

"I've tried to reason with you," Alec said to the sullen Pole. "I've punished you with everyting short of a general court. Nothing seems to get through that thick Polack skull of yours. I have come to the conclusion that the only thing you might understand is force. So I propose to peel these bars off my collar and take you out on the hatch, and Zabinski, I'm going to beat hell out of you—beat the bejesus out of you in front of my crew and the merchant crew as well. I've got some boxing gloves; Navy regs say that they should be used for recreation. We are going to have some recreation."

A slow smile spread over Zabinski's thick lips.

"Dat's OK wide me, lootenant," he said. "I allus wanted a crack at a goodamn officer."

"You got it," Alec said. "Let's go."

They climbed onto number-three hatch after Alec had announced the exhibition of skill and science for recreational and morale purposes, and the hatch was surrounded by grinning merchant personnel, whose grins increased when they saw the men stripped to shorts. Alec was lean and ropy, but Zabinski was a beer keg of lumpy muscle. He shadowboxed briefly in one corner of the hatch and Alec, who had covered sports as a younger man, felt his heart sink when he watched Zabinski's footwork. The waddling clumsiness was gone; this man had been in rings before. Zabinski slid his feet the right way; he feinted and ducked and slipped and countered invisible punches in the air.

"The old man shoulda asked one of us," one of Alec's men whispered to another. "That dumb Polack was runnerup middleweight in the Jersey Golden Gloves. He's a cinch to cream the boss."

It did not take Lieutenant (j.g.) Alexander Barr overlong to discover that he was in a nonroped ring with a semiprofessional. Zabinski toyed with him, using only a snaky left that chewed steadily at Alec's face, an occasional short right that landed in the stomach with controlled force. Alec's arms were longer, and occasionally he got in a punch, and Zabinski did not bother to move his head when the glove landed.

They were fighting two-minute rounds, with the merchant skipper holding the clock, and from the first five seconds of the first round, Alec knew that Zabinski could knock him kicking with a single punch if he wanted to. But Zabinski did not want to; he was toying with his commanding officer, and the snickers grew into laughter from the hatch side. Alec could see himself losing his ship, as Zabinski smirked and fed him light doses of leather.

In the third round, his face a bloody smear, and his middle pounded pink, Alec held up a glove and said "Time!"

"I can't see," he said. "I'm going up to my quarters and fix up a couple of cuts. Take a breather, Zabinski. I'll be right back."

He turned and ran up the ladder to the boat deck and went to his stateroom. In the stateroom was a safe. Among the extra duties allotted to an armed-guard officer was that of temporary paymaster in foreign ports. Alec dabbed the blood off his face, stuck a piece of adhesive on a split brow and twirled the dials of his safe. He reached in and drew out a paper-wrapped roll of ten-cent pieces. He inserted this roll of dimes into his glove, flexed his fingers comfortably around the silvered weight, laced the glove tightly and slid jauntily down the ladder, gloved hands supporting his body on the rails, feet not touching the steps, in the most approved seamanlike manner. He leaped up on the hatch and said, "OK, let's go!" toughed gloves with Zabinski and bored in.

It had pleased Zabinski to allow Alec to hit him occasionally in smirking disregard of Alec's punching power, and also because it gave him a beautiful opportunity for a short and hurtful counterpunch. He would look over his shoulder and laugh at his audience when he took Alec's best punch on the chin.

Now he reprised his act, Jabbing lightly at Alec's face and then dropping his hands to give Alec a shot at his chin. Alec saw daylight, with the rock-ribbed chin in front of it, and swung from his heels. The silver-weighted glove crashed into Zabinski's chin, and you could hear (continued on page 202) Sheila (continued from page 94) the jaw break from Norfolk, Virginia, to Archangel, Russia. It started breaking under one ear and broke all the way round to the other ear.

Zabinski was out cold, flat on his face. Alec looked briefly at Zabinski, and then stared coldly at his own men, then even more coldly at the merchant seamen. He jerked his head. Blood squirted from his face.

"Somebody throw some water on him," Alec said. "When he comes around take him to the chief engineer's cabin. We'll have to fix up some sort of hawsepipe to feed him through, and I am no goddamned mechanic." He leaped lightly off the hatch, pushed his way through the gaping crowd of sailors and went up to his room to clean his cuts and restore the roll of dimes to the safe.

After that Alec Barr had no more personnel trouble aboard ship, and his crews chipped seconds off the time it took to get the guns manned and ready at the bull-horn blare of general quarters.

Yes, he had his crew in hand, and what was more important, he had come through. If he could make it back and make one more out and back again... well, you were due for rotation on this run after six months—if you lived.

And Alec figured to live. He had seen others of his training chums foul with the death smell, the death feel on them, and they had mostly gone boom within two convoys. Alec didn't feel like going boom. He felt like getting out of this ammunition-ship business and writing some pieces about it that would sell to the magazines, and then he would graduate to finer things, preferably shore-based in a comfortable billet.

But at least, he thought, I've done it, and I'm glad they hit me with a tough one first crack out of the box. My old man tried to go to war in the first big one—he grinned—possibly to get away from my mother, and he wound up with influenza before he got transplanted from the National Guard. He didn't even die of the flu. He didn't even get sick in uniform. He got sick at home, in bed, while Mother was being very big as an amateur nurse with a red cross on her cap. Alec remembered very clearly her coming home in the evenings, full of Florence Nightingale enthusiasm, to a house where everyone lay ill, including Grandpa, Grandma, Daddy and himself.

• • •

A putty-colored car driven by an uncommunicative A. T. S. driver, a mousy short-haired female who briefly curtailed his efforts at friendly conversation, conveyed Alec to American Naval Headquarters.

My God, Alec thought, surveying the shattered East End, the fire-gutted buildings, the vast bomb craters, the old Hun certainly gave this place a working over.

He found the Naval people very friendly, not at all so condescending as the Stateside desk jockeys. Intelligence had a brief crack at him, after a look at his logbook, and then turned him over to the public-relations department, which seemed more interested in Alec personally than in the actual fate of the convoy.

"You see," the PR lieutenant commander said, rather apologetically, "you're the first convoy up the Thames since the big blitz started, and as such you're hot news back home. And the fact that you're hot exactly unknown makes you even more newsworthy. The Army's been doing a lot of Joe Blow stories from North Africa, and the Marines are getting in their whacks from the Pacific, and the Navy's sort of sucking on the hind teat publicitywise Stateside. See if you can tell me how it was and, as a novelist and playwright, exactly what you felt."

"I was just sort of numb, most of the time, during the attacks," Alec said, thinking: Barr, my boy, you'll keep most of the how-it-was for yourself for future reference. Give Navy the facts and you keep title to the conjectures. You'll be sure to need them in a book someday.

"There's really not much to tell," Alec said. "It was cold as charity and we had storms most of the way over and a lot of fog and a great deal of trouble keeping station. I personally was more frightened of some of those merchant-ship farmers we call captains colliding with me than I was of the submarines. We were under attack most all the way to Scotland. I actually saw only one submarine. The DEs depth-charged one up to the surface right in the middle of the convoy and we all turned to on him and blew him to bits."

"You have a hand in it?"

"I don't know. Everybody was shooting, including my boys. Who actually hit him is hard to say. But somebody did."

The PR lieutenant commander smiled.

"Saving most of it for yourself, eh? You'll need clearance from Censorship in Washington, you know."

"I know." Alec smiled back. "I wasn't planning to do any writing at this very moment. I was more or less planning to get myself a little bit tight and explore the pleasure potential of the town. Remember, we've been a long time at sea. And how about hotels?"

"There're several where we can billet you. But I know the PR gal at the Savoy pretty well. If you can afford it I can book you in there."

"Book me in there," Alec said. "I used to look at it when I was a kid in the merchant marine and wondered how it would be to live in it. Where's the action, otherwise?"

"Friend." the PRO said gravely, "the action is exerywhere. I would recommend the American Bar at Grosvenor House—downstairs. I would recommend a little club called the Deanery, just across the square from the Dorchester—that's Park Lane, and the Deanery is on Deanery Street. I would recommend any lobby, any bar, any café, any street corner, any park, in London. They tell me it's busy in Washington. Washington is a nunnery compared to London in this year of our Lord. The bombing released a certain amount of British glandular reserve on the distaff side."

"Fair enough," Alec said. "If you'll ring up your friend at the Savoy, I'll just go back to the ship and pick up some clothing. Where's newspaper headquarters, mainly?"

"Savoy again. Quent Reynolds runs a sort of open house for everybody there. Know him?"

"I know him," Alec said. "Who else is around I might know?"

"Harrison Salisbury. Walter Cronkite. Tom Wolf. Ed Murrow. Red Mueller. Any number. They're Savoy by day and Deanery by night."

"I'll bear it in mind," Alec said. "That all, Commander?"

"I guess so. Write some good pieces and don't forget to clear it with Washington, or they'll have your tripes, as well as your stripes."

"When and if I write, I'll clear. Thanks."

"It must be kind of fun to go to sea," the PRO said wistfully.

"In a grisly kind of way, it is," Alec said, leaving. "It makes the land seem so steady under your feet."

• • •

London, charred and scarred and bomb-pitted, blacked-out and hell-dark by night, beset by shortages and austere to the point of starvation, slave to the queue and the ration book, still owned an almost violent gaiety. There seemed to be a total absence of fear, and the bravery was not bravado.

London was—well, chirpily cheerful by day and riotous at night. By day the parks, Green and Hyde, were blanketed by home-leave soldiers making love to their girls under newspapers. By night, in the bars and private drinking clubs and sly-groggeries, you needed no introduction. You walked into the "American" bar in any major hotel, nodded at a lady and left shortly thereafter for your digs or hers. She might have been a duchess or a tart.

Alec continued to feel the strange exultation of war. America, safe beyond the sea, could know nothing of this feeling. Amelia, his wife whom he had left in Washington, knew nothing of bombs or bombing, of submarines and sinking ships, of the kind of—well, friendship, fellowship—that war engendered. Polish fliers, R.A.F. types with sweeping mustaches, bearded Naval types, WAAFs, WRENs, A.T.S. and ATC girls—girls from Ireland and Scotland and Wales who had come in to work for this ministry or that, and who were out on the razzle after working hours—all drank and danced and freely fornicated out of war's peculiar friendship.

There was some resentment of the growing number of enlisted American personnel, which crowded the pubs and outbought the poorly paid local soldiery for the favors of the local lassies, but that was mainly confined to the outlying county towns. In London everyone was nearly on his own, on equal footing, except that the officers kept mainly to their own terrain, while the enlisted men worked the enlisted ranks of the ladies, apart from the tarts around Piccadilly and in the Strand, on Curzon Street and along the Mall.

With such a profusion of femininity, it was unusual that Alec did not meet Sheila Aubrey in the Deanery or at Sandy's or in one of the cocktail lounges.

He met her as he hurriedly ducked into a doorway when the Luftwaffe launched the first massive wave of the second blitz, three days after Alec had nursed his convoy up the estuary.

She was terribly pretty, Alec thought, black hair crisp and curly, snug to her head, eyes almost purple in their blueness, milky skin and body hintingly full in the greatcoat over long slim legs. Irish, for sure, he thought, as she followed him behind the heavy felt curtain.

He took out a package of cigarettes and shook it at her.

"Smoke?" he said. "This ought to be over pretty soon."

"Thank you," she looked at him levelly. "I don't think it'll be over pretty soon. Not from the sound of it." She accepted a light. "This sounds like it might well be a big one. I'd almost forgotten what it was like."

"I wouldn't know," Alec said. "It's my first. But I'm afraid it's also partially my fault."

She looked at him through the smoke and raised an eyebrow.

"How could it possibly be your fault?" Another bigmouth Yank. In a minute he'll make a pass at me. Blackout makes the whole world kin.

"Well, I didn't exactly order it from Berlin," Alec shouted over the ack-ack. "But I sort of brought a convoy up the estuary the other day, and I suppose Jerry got wind of it. I've been told you've had quite a holiday from our friends upstairs until now. Perhaps this little visit is a gesture of discouragement for future Naval activities of my sort."

"They do have quite an intelligence setup," she shouted back and smiled now. "Thank you so much for livening things up for us. I'm afraid we were growing soft—and the weather's been so lovely lately, you'd scarcely know there was a war on if you didn't listen to the B.B.C."

"My name is Alec——" The rest of his words were drowned as a bomb struck nearby, and the building trembled. There was a crash of glass. The drone of motors, uplit by the thunder-rattle of antiaircraft batteries, made him shout—"Barr!"

"How do you——" There was another tremendous explosion on the other side, and increased intensity of ground fire—"do." she shouted. "We're lucky for tonight. They won't drop another in the same neighborhood. I'm Sheila——" Another tremendous explosion rocked the building again—" Aubrey!"

"Your intelligence is all wet," Alec shouted. "Lightning does strike twice in the same—— "Still another explosion. "Somebody up there is looking for us. What did you say the name was?"

"Aubrey. Sheila Aubrey," the girl shouted. "Listen." There was a lessening thrum of motors overhead. "Our chaps have them on the run. They really shouldn't have given us a chance to mend our fences. You'll hear the all clear in a moment. See. The ack-ack's dying."

In a few minutes the all-clear siren wailed.

"That's all for tonight," the girl said. "Home to beddy-byes for me. I get up early in the morning. The Air Ministry needs me. So nice to have met you, Lieutenant—you said Barr? Even if you did bring this revisitation on our heads."

Alec glanced at his watch.

"It's very early yet. I don't suppose I could interest you in a drink and perhaps a bite of supper? I've done all the damage I'm capable of for one evening." He smiled, rather shyly. "I'm rather short on companionship in this big town. New boy."

The girl looked at him coolly, appraisingly, seemingly conducting a short argument with herself, and then nodded.

"I suppose. You don't really look like that kind of Yank. I don't mean to be rude," she said hurriedly, "but I——"

"I think I know what you mean," Alec said, taking her elbow as they stepped out into the street. "Overfed, oversexed and over here. I don't bite. And I'm also a happily married man, if that means anything. We're not too far from a place called the Deanery, where quite a few of my Stateside chums hang out—newspaper people, correspondents, radio types, like that."

"The Deanery is just fine," she said. "I live a few blocks away, in Hill Street. It's walkable."

The Deanery was crowded, smoke-filled, noisy, bar-jammed, tables filled, wild with the hysterical exhilaration that follows air raids in which you don't get killed. Half of London seemed to have used it as an air-raid shelter. All the press corps, it seemed, had been drinking at the Deanery when the first wave of bombers came over.

"This is no good," Alec said. "Perhaps we'd better try the Grosvenor or the Dorchester."

"They won't be any better, not tonight," Sheila Aubrey said. "See here. Working at the Air Ministry entails a few perquisites. I'm just a hop and a skip away. I've a tiny flat with a few rather illegal things in the fridge. If you'd like—only thing is, I've no grog, except possibly a little sherry."

"That I can fix with my vulgar American money," Alec said, and fought his way to the bar, where he importuned the bartender. The bartender nodded negatively and then changed the nod to a smile, backoning to Alec to follow him in the general direction of the W.C. A moment later Alec emerged with a slightly bulging jacket.

"Let's go," he said. "Home to Hill Street." He gurgled slightly as he walked.

• • •

The flat was tiny; one small bedroom, a slightly larger lounge, a gas-ring-cumrefrigerator kitchen in an alcove, and a bath in which one might reach everything from any given position. But it was bright and cheerfully chintzy behind the heavy blackout drapes, and there were daffodils on a small coffee table in front of a burnt-orange sofa. Alec sat a bottle of Scotch on the coffee table.

"It's probably homemade," he said. "But this is the best I could do. At that place. At this hour."

"It's a miracle," she said. "That's the first full bottle of private whisky I've seen since the War started—or almost." She slipped out of her coat and took it to the bedroom. "It's not very large," she said. "But at least I don't have to share it. There's only room in the bath for one pair of stockings at a time. There should be one tiny ice tray in the fridge if you like ice in your whisky, as I'm told most Americans do."

"I can take it or leave it," Alec said. "In this instance I'll take it. You?"

"Just with a spot of soda. I like it warm. I'll be with you in a moment. While you're seeing to the ice, you might check what's in the larder. There should be some cheese and biscuits and possibly some sausage. Or I can make you an egg; yesterday was ration day. Certainly there's Spam, courtesy of your people."

"Sounds like a feast," Alec said. "I'm one of the few members of the military who actually like Spam. Hell's horns, woman, you've got kippers and sardines as well. You must be running a black market."

"A girl does the best she can," Sheila Aubrey said, coming out of the bedroom. She had done something to the black curls, had freshened her lipstick, and was wearing a simple jersey over a tweed skirt. The jersey showed curves that had been hinted but not verified.

"Tell me about you," Alec said when they sat with their drinks.

"Simple. Born Irish. Raised British. I was orphaned early—father in the I.R.A. business, mother of heartbreak, I should suppose. A sort of renegade aunt sent for me and I grew up in Sussex, hence no Irish accent. Went to school until the War came, and then I went to work. I didn't fancy uniforms very much—I mean, I couldn't see being a Wren or a Fanny—so I got a job in the Ministry. That's about it."

"That's all of it?"

"Well, there was a fiancé, sort of." Sheila Aubrey poked a thumb at the sky. "R.A.F. type. Didn't come back one day. Nothing much since but work. I decided early on not to become a member of the officers' mess. Not that it's easy these days, with everybody hurling themselves into bed after one cocktail..."

"It would be difficult to resist the impulse to attempt to hurl you," Alec said, and held up a hand. "Have no fear. I appreciate the hospitality, and shall not presume."

"If I thought you might I wouldn't have brought you home," Sheila Aubrey said. "It's the only home I've got. My aunt rather unfortunately got bombed out. What about you?"

"Writing type," Alec said, adopting her clipped phrasing. "Moderately successful. Married. Childless. That's about it."

"What kind of writing?"

"Newspapers, first. Then articles for magazines. Then books. Most recently, a play. It was still running when I left." He lit two cigarettes and passed her one.

"Thank you. What is the play called?"

"Not Without Laughter. Not a very good play, I'm afraid. But very commercial."

She frowned.

"I've read about the play, and I think I've read a book of yours. If you're that Barr, what are you doing in a Navy uniform? Why aren't you a war correspondent? Or if you're married, why didn't you just stay home? I believe they defer married men over there."

Alec laughed and tipped another inch of Scotch into both glasses.

"I didn't want to miss it. I wanted to be the first Barr to actually go to war. Grandpa contrived to get captured by the Yankees early, and my father caught the flu about the time World War One ended. I wanted to be a reluctant hero and see it from the inside."

"You're pulling my leg," she said. "I can't believe——" and then the alert screamed again outside, and the thrumming was heard again.

"Oh, God, they're back," she shouted above the uproar. "I thought they were gone for good tonight. I don't mind it once, but twice——"

Alec saw her shaking, and put an arm gently round her shoulders.

"Shush," he said, in a kindly roar. "They'll be gone again soon. And we've had our near misses for tonight. At least this is——" another bomb drowned his voice.

"—what?"

"A better bomb shelter than that doorway. We've got whisky and lights inside and the percentages with us."

After the all clear Sheila Aubrey said:

"I don't really mean to be a ninny. But it does get on one's nerves. I mean, after it's happened often enough, and the windows blow out, and the lights go, and there's always a great hole where something familiar has been——" she was still trembling.

"Stop it. I'll have a look outside." He doused the lights, drew back the black-out curtains and gazed at the night. Half of London seemed ablaze.

"It was pretty bad," he said soberly. "I'll have to wait, I imagine, before I can start beating my way back to the Savoy. Until the streets clear a bit, anyhow, and the fire brigade does its chores."

"You can't go back to the Savoy tonight," Sheila Aubrey said. "It's too far to walk. You'll have to stay here. And anyhow, I want you to stay here—I don't want to be alone tonight. And I don't mean what you think I mean. I don't—I mean..."

Alec smiled.

"I know what you mean. And I know you don't. Sure, I'll stay, and gratefully. I'll just curl up on the divan and sweat out the dawn. Or we can both sit up and talk until morning."

Sheila turned and kissed him lightly on the cheek. She smiled, mistily.

"It's not that I would actually mind so very much, but tonight, I—I just want someone near me without—I want to be held without——"

"I'll hold you, without repeat without," Alec Barr said. "On that you can depend."

• • •

Alec Barr lay in bed, his left arm cramped by the head that nestled into his shoulder, afraid to move for fear of waking the girl who now was sleeping sweetly. He was wearing skivvies, and the girl was wearing pajamas. She was very soft and fragrant as she breathed evenly beside him.

Alec Barr looked at the ceiling, considered his benumbed arm and smiled wryly. He had stroked her into slumber as one might gentle a horse or a child. He shook his head slightly.

Of all the women in London you might go to bed with, he thought, the sailor fresh from the sea has to wind up with a platonic roommate. Here I lie abed with a beautiful girl I've not so much as kissed. My wife would never believe it. He dozed lightly before he was wakened by a slight touch on the shoulder.

"There's tea, if you'd like some," Sheila said, coming into the room in a dressing gown. "Did you sleep at all? And I'm sorry I was such a mess last night. But thank you, Alec. Thanks terribly."

Alec scrubbed the back of his hand across his face. His mouth was dry and gummy.

"Slept like a log," he lied. "And no thanks necessary. You wouldn't have such a thing as a razor handy, would you? I hate to walk into the Savoy, if it's still standing, with a green beard like this one. Navy regs and all that."

"I would indeed," she said. "And also the egg we didn't eat last night."

"There were quite a lot of things we didn't do last night," Alec said, getting into his pants. "It was sort of an unusual night."

Sheila Aubrey smiled and wrinkled her nose.

After he had shaved and breakfasted, Sheila said, "I'm quite free this evening, if you have nothing better to do. I'm off early. Fiveish."

"I have nothing better to do I wouldn't cancel. Meet me at the Savoy—in the bar?"

"Love to," she said, and kissed him briefly on the cheek as he went out the door to search for a cab.

Alec logged in later with Naval Headquarters and was informed that his ship had taken a hit in last night's bombing. Nothing really severe, but troublous enough to warrant the attention of the commanding officer. The number-one stern gun was loose from its moorings, and a couple of Oerlikons were past redemption. There was some damage below decks. It would be appreciated if——

Alec was driven down to the East End by another mousily anonymous female driver, to find a British repair crew already busy with blowtorches and welding apparatus. Four P.M. still saw him busy. He went ashore and rang up the Air Ministry, and was eventually put through to a Miss Aubrey in Coding.

"I'm dreadfully sorry," he said. "But I'm afraid our Savoy date is off. My old bucket took a little beating from that business last night, and I'm up to my ears with your countrymen, who seem to want to work around the clock. There's some damage down below that can be repaired at night—damage that'll prevent discharge unless it's fixed fast, and we are aiming for a speedy turnaround. Sorry. Maybe tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow's fine," Sheila Aubrey said. "But I've a better idea. If you finish any time before midnight, why don't you come round to the flat and we'll have another quiet evening. Maybe we won't even have to shout. There's still some of your whisky left."

"Lovely. If I can possibly wind up here, you'll find me knocking on your door."

Alec got out of his working khaki at eight P.M., and whistled while he shaved carefully again and flicked a quick brush over his blues. You had to hand it to the limeys, he thought. They had accomplished in a day what it would take a week to do in Hampton Roads back in the States. The battered old bucket had been welded back as good as—or possibly better than—new. Maybe the blitz had taught the limeys how to turn to and get things done in a hurry—the air-raid wardens, the fire-brigade boys, the bomb-disposal squads. He whistled. Here it was only just past eight and with luck he'd be back in the West End by nine. If he was just lucky enough to find a taxi...

The evening promised much. What a lovely girl, this Sheila, whom he'd met in the doorway—what a beautiful girl, what a nice girl, what a sweet girl—and after his exemplary behavior of last night, what a gorgeous promise of things, more serious things, to come. He whistled and silently applauded himself for taking no advantage of proximity last night. When the moment came it would come, with full eagerness on both sides, because time was short and she knew time was short, that he'd be shipping out again in a week or less.

Sheila was no tart, no military mattressback, like the easy ones he'd seen in the hotels and bars and clubs. But at the same time she was all woman—she'd been engaged and semiwidowed in wartime, and she knew the briefness of time in war. There was no thought of his wife, of infidelity, here. This was wartime in London. There were submarines beneath the sea and aircraft overhead. Time was short, and time was also sweet. And tonight Sheila would come as sweetly into his arms, and not merely for comfort, like a child in the dark.

God smiled. Alec walked off the docks and beheld a taxi. The cabby was agreeable, he was going back to the West End anyhow.

"Took a proper pounding, we did, last night," the hacker said, almost with pride. "Where to, guv?"

"Hill Street," Alec said. "And step on it as much as you can. I've got a lovely lady waiting."

"Too right, guv," the hacker said and winked. "Nuffink like a war for lovely lydies, eh?"

"Too right," Alec said shortly, and settled back in the corner of the cab to meditate on fate and blackouts and air raids and doorways and lovely girls named Sheila.

They were coming into Grosvenor Square when the air-raid siren went.

"Cor," the driver said. "'E's back agyne. I can just get you to Grosvenor 'ouse, unless you want a shelter?"

"Make it Grosvenor House," Alec said. "Damn it to hell. In another five minutes I'd have been at Sheila's. Well, I can beat it over there after the all clear."

"Wot was that?" the driver asked, as the thrumming grew and the antiaircraft began to bark in the distance.

"Nothing," Alec said. "Step on it."

The driver drew up in front of Grosvenor House. Alec paid him and dashed inside. The lobby was jammed, and so was the American Bar downstairs, but he managed to wriggle through to the bar and extract a large Scotch from the bartender.

Jerry was over in force tonight, and he seemed to have abandoned the dock area for a repeat run on the West End. The crump of big bombs rattled the windows. Once the hotel appeared to have been straddled—how close it was difficult to say. The ack-ack batteries in Hyde and Green Parks rattled your teeth as well as the windows, and you could hear the scream of the Spitfires over the steady thrumming of the big bombers. After half an hour the thrumming died again, as on the night before, and the ack-ack faded as the Nazi striking force headed back to Holland.

"Nasty one, that," the man next to Alec said. "I don't mind it so long as they concentrate on the docks. It's when they plonk one straight down the Café de Paris that a bloke feels uncomfortable. Bastards got no class-consciousness. That's the trouble with the Hun."

When the all clear sounded Alec stepped out into the night again and once more found London stabbed and ringed round with fire. Ambulances screamed, and the rescue-and-fire teams were already at work.

He picked his way through rubble in the general direction of Hill Street, uncertain still of London topography, and after several blocks, concluded that he was lost. But no—the fires were bright enough for him to pick out a sign Hill Street. He recognized the corner.

His feet carried him numbly in the direction which they'd taken last night, in the dark, and suddenly his stomach twisted.

There was no bell to ring.

There was no door for him to knock on.

There was no house behind the door.

There was no girl in the house that was not behind the door which had no bell for him to ring.

There was no girl. There would never be a girl—not that girl.

• • •

Alec Barr awoke next morning, his mouth brassy and foul from whisky. The girl—some loose-lipped wench he had collected somewhere, he couldn't remember, was gone. His pillow was still wet with what, he supposed, were tears.