Eye Of The Needle

PART SIX

Lucy woke up slowly. She rose gradually, languidly, from the warm void of deep sleep, up through layers of unconsciousness, perceiving the world piece by isolated piece: first the warm, hard male body beside her; then the strangeness of Henry's bed; the noise of the storm outside, as angry and tireless as yesterday and the day before; the faint smell of the man's skin; her arm across his chest, her leg thrown across his as if to keep him there, her breasts pressed against his side; the light of day beating against her eyelids; the regular, light breathing that blew softly across her face; and then, all at once like the solution to a puzzle, the realisation that she was flagrantly and adulterously lying with a man she had met only forty-eight hours before, and that they were naked in bed in her husband's house. For the second time.

She opened her eyes and saw Jo. My God… she'd overslept.

He was standing beside the bed in his rumpled pyjamas, hair tousled, a battered rag doll under his arm, sucking his thumb and staring wide-eyed at his mummy and the strange man cuddling each other in bed. Lucy could not read his expression, for at this time of day he stared wide-eyed at most things, as if all the world was new and marvellous every morning. She stared back at him in silence, not knowing what to say.

Then Henry's deep voice said, "Good morning."

Jo took his thumb out of his mouth, said, "Good mornin'," turned around and went out of the bedroom.

"Damn, damn," Lucy said.

Henry slid down in the bed until his face was level with hers, and kissed her. His hand went between her thighs and held her possessively. She pushed him away. "For God's sake, stop."

"Why?"

"Jo's seen us."

"So what?"

"He can talk, you know. Sooner or later he'll say something to David. What am I going to do?"

"Do nothing. Does it matter?"

"Of course it matters."

"I don't see why, the way he is. You shouldn't feel guilty."

Lucy suddenly realised that Henry simply had no conception of the complex tangle of loyalties and obligations that constituted a marriage. Any marriage, but especially here. "It's not that simple," she said.

She got out of bed and crossed the landing to her own bedroom. She slipped into panties, trousers and a sweater, then remembered she had destroyed all Henry's clothes and had to lend him some of David's. She found underwear and socks, a knitted shirt and a V-necked pullover, and finally right at the bottom of a trunk one pair of trousers that were not cut off at the knee and sewn up. All the while Jo watched her in silence.

She took the clothes into the other bedroom. Henry had gone into the bathroom to shave. She called through the door, "Your clothes are on the bed."

She went downstairs, lit the stove in the kitchen and put a saucepan of water on to heat. She decided to have boiled eggs for breakfast. She washed Jo's face at the kitchen sink, combed his hair and dressed him quickly.

"You're very quiet this morning," she said brightly. He made no reply.

Henry came down and sat at the table, as naturally as if he had been doing it every morning for years. Lucy felt very weird, seeing him there in David's clothes, handing him a breakfast egg, putting a rack of toast on the table in front of him. Jo said suddenly, "Is my daddy dead?" Henry gave the boy a look and said nothing. Lucy said, "Don't be silly. He's at Tom's house."

Jo ignored her and spoke to Henry. "You've got my daddy's clothes, and you've got mummy. Are you going to be my daddy now?"

Lucy muttered, "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings…"

"Didn't you see my clothes last night?" Henry said. Jo nodded.

"Well, then, you know why I had to borrow some of your daddy's clothes. I'll give them back to him when I get some more of my own."

"Will you give my mummy back?"

"Of course." Lucy said, "Eat your egg, Jo."

The child went at his breakfast, apparently satisfied. Lucy was gazing out of the kitchen window. "The boat won't come today," she said.

"Are you glad?" Henry asked her.

She looked at him. "I don't know."

Lucy didn't feel hungry. She drank a cup of tea while Jo and Henry ate. Afterward Jo went upstairs to play and Henry cleared the table. As he stacked crockery in the sink he said, "Are you afraid David win hurt you? Physically?"

She shook her head "No."

"You should forget him," Henry went on. "You were planning to leave him anyway. Why should it concern you whether he knows or not?"

"He's my husband. That counts for something. The kind of husband he's been… all that… doesn't give me the right to humiliate him."

"I think it gives you the right not to care whether he's humiliated or not."

"It's not a question that can be settled logically. It's just the way I feel."

He made a giving-up gesture with his arms. "I'd better drive over to Tom's and find out whether your husband wants to come back. Where are my boots?"

"In the living room. I'll get you a jacket." She went upstairs and got David's old hacking jacket out of the wardrobe. It was a fine grey-green tweed, very elegant with a nipped-in waist and slanted pocket flaps. Lucy had put leather patches on the elbow to preserve it; you couldn't buy clothes like this anymore. She took it down to the living room, where Henry was putting his boots on. He had laced the left one and was gingerly inserting his injured right foot into the other. Lucy knelt to help him.

"The swelling has gone down," she said.

"The damned thing still hurts."

They got the boot on but left it untied and took the lace out. Henry stood up experimentaUy.

"It's okay," he said.

Lucy helped him into the jacket. It was a bit tight across the shoulders.

"We haven't got another oilskin," she said.

"Then I'll get wet." He pulled her to him and kissed her roughly. She put her arms around him and held tightly for a moment.

"Drive more carefully today," she said.

He smiled and nodded, kissed her again-briefly this time-and went out. She watched him limp across to the barn, and stood at the window while he started the jeep and drove away up the slight rise and out of sight. When he had gone she felt relieved, but also empty.

She began to put the house straight, making beds and washing dishes, cleaning and tidying; but she could summon up no enthusiasm for it. She was restless.

She worried at the problem of what to do with her life, following old arguments around in familiar circles, unable to put her mind to anything else. She again found the cottage claustrophobic. There was a big world out there somewhere, a world of war and heroism, full of colour and people, millions of people; she wanted to be out there in the midst of it, to meet new minds and see cities and hear music. She turned on the radio; a futile gesture. The news broadcast made her feel more isolated, not less. There was a battle report from Italy, the rationing regulations had been eased a little, the London stiletto murderer was still at large, Roosevelt had made a speech. Sandy Macpherson began to play a theatre organ, and Lucy switched off. None of it touched her, she did not live in that world.

She wanted to scream.

She had to get out of the house, in spite of the weather. It would be only a symbolic escape… the stone walls of the cottage were not, after all, what imprisoned her; but the symbol was better than nothing. She collected Jo from upstairs, separating him with some difficulty from a regiment of toy soldiers and wrapped him up in waterproof clothing.

"Why are we going out?" he asked.

"To see if the boat comes."

"You said it won't come today."

"Just in case."

They put bright yellow sou'westers on their heads, lacing them under their chins, and stepped outside the door.

The wind was like a physical blow, unbalancing Lucy so that she staggered.

In seconds her face was as wet as if she had dipped it in a bowl, and the ends of hair protruding from under her hat lay limp and clinging on her cheeks and the shoulders of her oilskin. Jo screamed with delight and jumped in a puddle.

They walked along the cliff top to the head of the bay, and looked down at the huge North Sea rollers hurling themselves to destruction against the cliffs and on the beach. The storm had uprooted underwater vegetation from God only knew what depths and flung it in heaps on the sand and rocks. Mother and son became absorbed in the ceaselessly shifting patterns of the waves.

They had done this before; the sea had a hypnotic effect on both of them, and Lucy was never quite sure afterward how long they had spent watching silently.

Its spell this time was broken by something she saw. At first there was only a flash of colour in the trough of a wave, so fleeting that she was not certain what colour it had been, so small and far away that she immediately doubted whether she had seen it at all. She looked for it but did not see it again, and her gaze drifted back to the bay and the little jetty on which flotsam gathered in drifts only to be swept away by the next big wave. After the storm, on the first fine day, she and Jo would go beachcombing to see what treasures the sea had disgorged and come back with oddly coloured rocks, bits of wood of mystifying origin, huge seashells, and twisted fragments of rusted metal.

She saw the flash of colour again, much nearer, and this time it stayed within sight for a few seconds. It was bright yellow, the colour of all their oilskins. She peered at it through the sheets of rain but could not identify its shape before it disappeared again. Now the current was bringing it closer, as it brought everything to the bay, depositing its rubbish on the sand like a man emptying his trouser pocked onto a table.

It was an oilskin: she could see that when the sea lifted it on the crest of a wave and showed it to her for the third and final time. Henry had come back without his, yesterday, but how had it got into the sea? The wave broke over the jetty and flung the object on the wet wooden boards of the ramp, and Lucy realised it was not Henry's oilskin, because the owner was still inside it. Her gasp of horror was whipped away by the wind so that not even she could hear it. Who was he? Where had he come from? Another wrecked ship?

It occurred to her that he might still be alive. She must go and see. She bent and shouted in Jo's ear: "Stay here. Keep still. Don't move." Then she ran down the ramp.

Halfway down she heard footsteps behind her. Jo was following her. The ramp was narrow and slippery, quite dangerous. She stopped, turned and scooped the child up in her arms. "You naughty boy, I told you to wait!" She looked from the body below to the safety of the clifftop, dithered for a moment in painful indecision, discerned that the sea would wash the body away at any moment, and proceeded downward, carrying Jo.

A smaller wave covered the body, and when the water receded Lucy was close enough to see that it was a man, and that it had been in the sea long enough for the water to swell and distort the features. Which meant he was dead. She could do nothing for him, and she was not going to risk her life and her son's to preserve a corpse. She was about to turn back when something about the bloated face struck her as familiar. She stared at it, uncomprehending, trying to fit the features to something in her memory; and then, quite abruptly, she saw the face for what it was, and sheer, paralysing terror took hold of her, and it seemed that her heart stopped, and she whispered, "No, David, no!"

Oblivious now to the danger she walked forward.

Another lesser wave broke around her knees, filling her Wellington boots with foamy saltwater but she didn't notice. Jo twisted in her arms to face forward. She screamed, "Don't look!" in his ear and pushed his face into her shoulder. He began to cry.

She knelt beside the body and touched the horrible face with her hand. David. There was no doubt. He was dead, and had been for some time. Moved by some terrible need to make absolutely certain, she lifted the skirt of the oilskin and looked at the stumps of his legs.

It was impossible to take in the fact of the death. She had, in a way, been wishing him dead, but her feelings about him were confused by guilt and the fear of being found out in her infidelity. Grief, horror, relief: they fluttered in her mind like birds, none of them willing to settle. She would have stayed there, motionless, but the next wave was a big one.

Its force knocked her flying, and she took a great gulp of sea water. Somehow she managed to keep Jo in her grasp and stay on the ramp; and when the surf settled she got to her feet and ran up out of the greedy reach of the ocean. She walked all the way to the clifftop without looking back. When she came within sight of the cottage, she saw the jeep standing outside. Henry was back.

Still carrying Jo, she broke into a stumbling run, desperate to share her hurt with Henry, to feel his arms around her and have him comfort her. Her breath came in ragged sobs and tears mixed invisibly with the rain on her face. She went to the back of the cottage, burst into the kitchen and dumped Jo ungently on the floor.

Henry casually said, "David decided to stay over at Tom's another day."

She stared at him, her mind a disbelieving blank; and then, still disbelieving, she understood. Henry had killed David.

The conclusion came first, like a punch in the stomach, winding her; the reasons followed a split-second later. The shipwreck, the odd-shaped knife he was so attached to, the crashed jeep, the news bulletin about the London stiletto murderer: suddenly everything fitted together, a box of jigsaw pieces thrown in the air and landing, improbably, fully assembled. "Don't look so surprised," Henry said with a smile. "They've got a lot of work to do over there, although I admit I didn't encourage him to come back."

Tom. She had to go to Tom. He would know what to do; he would protect her and Jo until the police came; he had a dog and a gun.

Her fear was interrupted by a dart of sadness, of sorrow for the Henry she had believed in, had almost loved; clearly he did not exist-she had imagined him. Instead of a warm, strong, affectionate man, she saw in front of her a monster who sat and smiled and calmly gave her invented messages from the husband he had murdered.

She forced herself not to shudder. Taking Jo's hand, she walked out of the kitchen, along the hall and out of the front door. She got into the jeep, sat Jo beside her, and started the engine.

But Henry was there, resting his foot casually on the running board, and holding David's shotgun. "Where are you going?

If she drove away now he might shoot- hat instinct had warned him to take the gun into the house this time?-and while she herself might chance it, she couldn't endanger Jo. She said, "Just putting the jeep away."

"You need Jo's help for that?"

"He likes the ride. Don't cross-examine me!"

He shrugged and stepped back.

She looked at him for a moment, wearing David's hacking jacket and holding David's gun so casually, and wondered whether he really would shoot her if she simply drove away. And then she recalled the vein of ice she had sensed in him right from the start, and knew that that ultimate commitment, that ruthlessness, would allow him to do anything.

With an awful feeling of weariness, she threw the jeep into reverse and backed into the barn. She switched off, got out, and walked with Jo back into the cottage. She had no idea what she would say to Henry, what she would do in his presence, how she would hide her knowledge if, indeed, she had not already betrayed it. She had no plans. But she had left the barn door open.

"That's the place, Number One," the captain said, and lowered his telescope. The first mate peered out through the rain and the spray. "Not quite the ideal holiday resort, what, sir? Jolly stark, I should say."

"Indeed." The captain was an old-fashioned naval officer with a grizzled beard who had been at sea during the first war with Germany. However, he had learned to overlook his first mate's foppish conversational style, for the boy had turned out against all expectations to be a perfectly good sailor.

The "boy" who was past thirty and an old salt by this war's standards, had no idea of the magnanimity he benefitted from. He held on to a rail and braced himself as the corvette mounted the steep side of a wave, righted itself at the crest and dived into the trough. "Now that we're here, sir, what do we do?"

"Circle the island."

"Very good, sir."

"And keep our eyes open for a U-boat."

"We're not likely to get one anywhere near the surface in this weather and if we did, we couldn't see it unless it came within spitting distance."

"The storm will blow itself out tonight-tomorrow at the latest." The captain began stuffing tobacco into a pipe.

"Do you think so?"

"I'm sure."

"Nautical instinct, I suppose?"

"The weather forecast."

The corvette rounded a headland, and they saw a small bay with a jetty.

Above it, on the cliff top, was a little cottage standing small and square, hunched against the wind.

The captain pointed. "We'll land a party there as soon as we can."

The first mate nodded. "All the same…"

"Well?"

"Each circuit of the island will take us about an hour, I should say."

"So?"

"So, unless we're jolly lucky and happen to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time…"

"The U-boat will surface, take on its passenger, and submerge again without us even seeing the ripples," the captain finished. "

Yes."

The captain lit his pipe with an expertise that spoke of long experience in lighting pipes in heavy seas. He puffed a few times, then inhaled a lungful of smoke "Ours not to reason why," he said, and blew smoke through his nostrils.

"A rather unfortunate quotation, sir."

"Why?"

"It refers to the notorious charge of the Light Brigade."

"I never knew that." The captain puffed away. "One advantage of being uneducated, I suppose."

There was another small cottage at the eastern end of the island. The captain scrutinised it through his telescope and observed that it had a large, professional-looking radio aerial. "Sparks!" he called. "See if you can raise that cottage. Try the Royal Observer Corps frequency."

When the cottage had passed out of sight, the radio operator called: "No response, sir."

"All right, Sparks," the captain said. "It wasn't important."

The crew of the coastguard cutter sat below decks in Aberdeen Harbour playing blackjack for halfpennies and musing on the feeblemindedness that seemed invariably to accompany high rank.

"Twist," said Jack Smith, who was more Scots than his name. Albert "Slim" Parish, a fat Londoner far from home, dealt him a jack. "Bust." Smith said.

Slim raked in his stake. "A penny-ha'penny," he said in mock wonder "I only hope I live to spend it."

Smith rubbed condensation off the inside of a porthole and peered out at the boats bobbing up and down in the harbour. "The way the skipper's panicking. you'd think we were going to bloody Berlin, not Storm Island."

"Didn't you know? We're the spearhead of the Allied invasion." Slim turned over a ten, dealt himself a king and said, "Pay twenty-ones."

Smith said. "What is this guy, anyway, a deserter? If you ask me, it's a job for the military police, not us."

Slim shuffled the pack. "I'll tell you what he is-an escaped prisoner of war."

Jeers.

"All right, don't listen to me. But when we pick him up, just take note of his accent." He put the cards down. "Listen, what boats go to Storm Island?"

"Only the grocer," someone said.

"So the only way he can get back to the mainland is on the grocer's boat. The military police just have to wait for Charlie's regular trip to the island, and pick him up when he steps off the boat at this end. There's no reason for us to be sitting here, waiting to weigh anchor and shoot over there at the speed of light the minute the weather clears, unless…" He paused melodramatically. "Unless he's got some other means of getting off the island."

"Like what?"

"A U-boat, that's what."

"Bollocks," Smith said. The others merely laughed.

Slim dealt another hand. Smith won this time, but everyone else lost. "I'm a shilling up," Slim said. "I think I'll retire to that nice little cottage in Devon. We won't catch him, of course."

"The deserter?"

"The prisoner of war."

"Why not?"

Slim tapped his head. "Use your noddle. When the storm clears we'll be here and the U-boat will be at the bottom of the bay at the island. So who'll get there first? The Jerries."

"So why are we doing it?" Smith said.

"Because the people who are giving the orders are not as sharp as yours truly, Albert Parish. You may laugh!" He dealt another hand. "Place your bets. You'll see I'm right. What's that, Smithie, a penny? Gorblimey, don't go mad. I tell you what, I'll give odds of five to one we come back from Storm Island empty-handed. Any takers? Ten to one? Eh? Ten to one?"

"No takers," said Smith. "Deal the cards."

Slim dealt the cards.

Squadron-Leader Peterkin Blenkinsop (he had tried to shorten Peterkin to Peter but somehow the men always found out) stood ramrod-straight in front of the map and addressed the room. "We fly in formations of three," he began.

"The first three will take off as soon as weather permits. Our target," he touched the map with a pointer "is here. Storm Island. On arrival we will circle for twenty minutes at low altitudes, looking for a U-boat.

"After twenty minutes we return to base." He paused. "Those of you with a logical turn of mind will by now have deduced that, to achieve continuous cover, the second formation of three aircraft must take off precisely twenty minutes after the first, and so on. Any questions?"

Flying-Oflficer Longman said, "Sir?"

"Longman?"

"What do we do if we see this U-boat?"

"Strafe it, of course. Drop a few grenades. Cause trouble."

"But we're flying fighters, sir there's not much we can do to stop a U-boat. That's a job for battleships, isn't it?"

Blenkinsop sighed. "As usual, those of you who can think of better ways to win the war are invited to write directly to Mr Winston Churchill, number 10 Downing Street, London South-West-One. Now, are there any questions, as opposed to stupid criticisms?" There were no questions.

The later years of the war had produced a different kind of RAF officer, Bloggs thought, as he sat on a soft chair in the scramble room, close to the fire, listening to the rain drumming on the tin roof, and intermittently dozing. The Battle of Britain pilots had seemed incorrigibly cheerful, with their undergraduate slang, their perpetual drinking, their tirelessness and their cavalier disregard of the flaming death they faced up to every day. That schoolboy heroism had not been enough to carry them through subsequent years, as the war dragged on in places far from home, and the emphasis shifted from the dashing individuality of aerial dogfighting to the mechanical drudgery of bombing missions. They still drank and talked in jargon but they appeared older, harder, more cynical; there was nothing in them now of Tom Brown's Schooldays. Bloggs recalled what he had done to that poor common-or-garden housebreaker in the police cells at Aberdeen, and he realised: It's happened to us all.

They were very quiet. They sat all around him: some dozing, like himself; others reading books or playing board games. A bespectacled navigator in a corner was learning Russian.

As Bloggs surveyed the room with half-closed eyes, another pilot came in, and he thought immediately that this one had not been aged by the war. He had an old-fashioned wide grin and fresh face that looked as if it hardly needed shaving more than once a week. He wore his jacket open and carried his helmet. He made a beeline for Bloggs. "Detective-Inspector Bloggs?"

"That's me."

"Jolly rood show. I'm your pilot, Charles Calder."

"Fine." Bloggs shook hands.

"The kite's all ready, and the engine's as sweet as a bird. She's an amphibian, I suppose you know."

"Yes."

"Jolly good show. We'll land on the sea, taxi in to about ten yards from the shore, and put you off in a dinghy."

"Then you wait for me to come back."

"Indeed. Well, all we need now is the weather."

"Yes. Look, Charles, I've been chasing this fellow all over the country for six days and nights, so I'm catching up on my sleep while I've got the chance. You won't mind."

"Of course not!" The pilot sat down and produced a thick book from under his jacket. "Catching up on my education," he said. "War and Peace."

Bloggs said, "Jolly good show," and closed his eyes.

Percival Godliman and his uncle, Colonel Terry, sat side by side in the map room, drinking coffee and tapping the ash of their cigarettes into a fire bucket on the floor between them. Godliman was repeating himself. "I can't think of anything more we can do," he said.

"So you said."

"The corvette is already there, and the fighters are only a few minutes away, so the sub will come under fire as soon as she shows herself above the surface."

"If she's seen."

"The corvette will land a party as soon as possible. Bloggs will be there soon after that, and the Coastguard will bring up the rear."

"And none of them can be sure to get there in time."

"I know," Godliman said wearily. "We've done all we can, but is it enough?"

Terry lit another cigarette. "What about the inhabitants of the island?"

"Oh, yes. There are only two houses there. There's a sheep farmer and his wife in one-they have a young child-and an old shepherd lives in the other. The shepherd's got a radio-Royal Observer Corps-but we can't raise him… he probably keeps the set switched to Transmit. He's old."

"The farmer sounds promising," Terry said. "If he's a bright fellow he might even stop your spy."

Godliman shook his head. "The poor chap's in a wheelchair."

"Dear God, we don't get much luck, do we?"

"No," said Godliman. "Die Nadel seems to have cornered the market."

Lucy was becoming quite calm. The feeling crept over her gradually, like the icy spread of an anaesthetic, deadening her emotions and sharpening her wits. The times when she was momentarily paralysed by the thought that she was sharing a house with a murderer became fewer, and she was possessed by a cool-headed watchfulness that surprised her.

As she went about the household chores, sweeping around Henry as he sat in the living room reading a novel, she wondered how much he had noticed of the change in her feelings. He was very observant: he didn't miss much and there had been a definite wariness, if not outright suspicion, in that confrontation over the jeep. He must have known she was shaken by something. On the other hand, she had been upset before he left over Jo discovering them in bed together… he might think that that was all that had been wrong.

Still, she had the strangest feeling that he knew exactly what was in her mind but preferred to pretend that everything was all right.

She hung her laundry to dry on a clothes-horse in the kitchen. "I'm sorry about this," she said, "but I can't wait forever for the rain to stop."

He looked uninterestedly at the clothes. "That's all right," he said, and went back into the living room.

Scattered among the wet garments was a complete set of clean, dry clothes for Lucy.

For lunch she made a vegetable pie using an austerity recipe. She called Jo and Faber to the table and served up.

David's gun was propped in a corner of the kitchen. "I don't like having a loaded gun in the house," she said.

"I'll take it outside after lunch. The pie is good."

"I don't like it," Jo said.

Lucy picked up the gun and put it on top of the Welsh dresser. "I suppose it's all right as long as it's out of Jo's reach."

Jo said, "When I grow up I'm going to shoot Germans."

"This afternoon I want you to have a sleep," Lucy told him. She went into the living room and took one of David's sleeping pills from the bottle in the cupboard. Two of the pills were a heavy dose for a 12-stone man, so one quarter of one pill should be just enough to make a 3-stone boy sleep in the afternoon. She put the pill on her chopping block and halved it, then halved it again. She put a quarter on a spoon, crushed it with the back of another spoon and stirred the powder into a small glass of milk. She gave the glass to Jo. "I want you to drink every last drop." Faber watched the whole thing without comment.

After lunch she settled Jo on the sofa with a pile of books. He could not read, of course, but he had heard the stories read aloud so many times that he knew them by heart, and he could turn the pages of the books, looking at the pictures and reciting from memory the words on the page.

"Would you like some coffee?" she asked Faber.

"Real coffee?" he said, surprised.

"I've got a little hoard."

"Yes, please!"

He watched her making it. She wondered if he was afraid she might try to give him sleeping pills too. She could hear Jo's voice from the next room: "What I said was, 'Is anybody at home', called out Pooh very loudly. 'No!,' said a voice… and he laughed heartily, as he always did at that joke." Oh, God, Lucy thought, please don't let Jo be hurt… She poured the coffee and sat opposite Faber. He reached across the table and held her hand. For a while they sat in silence, sipping coffee and listening to the rain and Jo's voice. "Dow long does getting thin take?" asked Pooh anxiously. "'About a week, I should think.'

"'But I can't stay here for a week!'"

He began to sound sleepy, and then he stopped. Lucy went and covered him with a blanket. She picked up the book that had slipped from his fingers to the floor. It had been hers when she was a child, and she, too, knew the stories by heart. The flyleaf was inscribed in her mother's copperplate: For Lucy, aged four, with love from Mother and Father." She put the book on the sideboard.

She went back into the kitchen. "He's asleep."

"And…?" He held out his hand. She forced herself to take it. He stood up, and she went ahead of him upstairs and into the bedroom. She dosed the door, then pulled her sweater off over her head.

For a moment he stood still, looking at her breasts. Then he began to undress.

She got into the bed. This was the part she was not sure she could manage: pretending to enjoy his body when all she could feel was fear, revulsion and guilt.

He got into bed and embraced her.

In a short while she found she did not have to pretend after all.

For a few seconds she lay in the crook of his arm, wondering how it was that a man could do what he had done and love a woman as he had just done.

But what she said was, "Would you like a cup of tea?"

"No, thank you."

"Well, I would." She extricated herself and got up. When he moved, she put her hand on his flat belly and said, "No, you stay there. I'll bring the tea up. I haven't finished with you."

He grinned. "You're really making up for your four wasted years."

As soon as she was outside the room the smile dropped from her face like a mask. Her heart pounded in her chest as she went quickly down the stairs. In the kitchen she banged the kettle on the stove and rattled some china, then began to put on the clothes she had left hidden in the wet laundry. Her hands were shaking so much she could hardly button the trousers.

She heard the bed creak upstairs, and she stood frozen to the spot, listening, thinking, Stay there! But he was only shifting his position.

She was ready. She went into the living room. Jo was in a deep sleep, grinding his teeth. Dear God, don't let him wake up. She picked him up. He muttered in his sleep, something about Christopher Robin, and Lucy closed her eyes tightly and willed him to be quiet.

She wrapped the blanket tight around him, went back into the kitchen and reached up to the top of the Welsh dresser for the gun. It slipped from her grasp and fell to the shelf, smashing a plate and two cups. The crash was deafening. She stood fixed to the spot. "What happened?" Faber called from upstairs.

"I dropped a cup," she shouted. She couldn't camouflage the tremor in her voice.

The bed creaked again and there was a footfall on the floor above her. But it was too late now for her to turn back. She picked up the gun, opened the back door and, holding Jo to her, ran across to the barn. On the way she had a moment of panic: had she left the keys in the jeep? Surely she had, she always did.

She slipped in the wet mud and fell to her knees. She began to cry. For a second she was tempted to stay there, and let him catch her and kill her the way he had killed her husband, and then she remembered the child in her arms and she got up and ran.

She went into the barn and opened the passenger door of the jeep. She put Jo on the seat. He slipped sideways. Lucy sobbed, "Oh, God!" She pulled Jo upright, and this time he stayed that way. She ran around to the other side of the jeep and got in, dropping the gun onto the floor between her legs.

She turned the starter. It coughed and died.

"Please, please!'

She turned it again.

The engine roared into life.

Faber came out of the back door at a run.

Lucy raced the engine and threw the gearshift into forward. The jeep seemed to leap out of the barn. She rammed the throttle open.

The wheels spun in the mud for a second, then bit again. The jeep gathered speed with agonising languor. She steered away from him but he chased after the jeep, barefoot in the mud. She realised he was gaining on her.

She pushed the hand-throttle with all her strength, almost snapping the thin lever. She wanted to scream with frustration. He was only a yard or so away, almost even with her, running like an athlete, his arms going like pistons, his bare feet pounding the muddy ground, his cheeks blowing, his naked chest heaving.

The engine screamed, and there was a jerk as the automatic transmission changed up, then a new surge of power.

Lucy looked sideways again. He seemed to realise that he had almost lost her and flung himself forward in a dive. He got a grip on the door handle with his left hand, and brought the right hand across. Pulled by the jeep, he ran alongside for a few paces, his feet hardly touching the ground. Lucy stared at his face, so close to her; it was red with effort, twisted in pain; the cords of his powerful neck bulged with the strain.

Suddenly she knew what she had to do.

She took her hand off the wheel, reached through the open window and poked him in the eye with a long-nailed forefinger. He let go and fell away, his hands covering his face. The distance between him and the jeep increased rapidly. Lucy realised she was crying like a baby. Two miles from her cottage she saw the wheelchair.

It stood on the cliff top like a memorial, its metal frame and big rubber tyres impervious to the unending rain. Lucy approached it from a slight dip, and saw its black outline framed by the slate-grey sky and the boiling sea. It had a wounded look, like the hole left by an uprooted tree or a house with broken windows; as if its passenger had been wrenched from it. She recalled the first time she had seen it in the hospital. It had stood beside David's bed, new and shiny, and he had swung himself into it expertly and swished up and down the ward, showing off. "She's light as a feather-made of aircraft alloy," he had said with brittle enthusiasm, and sped off between the rows of beds. He had stopped at the far end of the ward with his back to her, and after a minute she went up behind him and she saw he was crying. She had knelt in front of him and held his hands, saying nothing. It was the last time she had been able to comfort him. There on the cliff top, the rain and the salt wind would soon blemish the alloy, and eventually it would rust and crumble, its rubber perished, its leather seat rotted away. Lucy drove past without slowing.

Three miles further on, when she was halfway between the two cottages, she ran out of petrol.

She fought down the panic and tried to think rationally as the jeep shuddered to a halt.

People walked at four miles an hour, she remembered reading somewhere. Henry was athletic, but he had hurt his ankle, and even though it seemed to have healed rapidly, the running he had done after the jeep must have hurt it. She must be a good hour ahead of him, she calculated.

(She had no doubt he would come after her; he knew as well as she did that there was a wireless transmitter in Tom's cottage.)

She had plenty of time. In the back of the jeep was a half-gallon can of fuel for just such occasions as this. She got out of the car, fumbled the can out of the back and opened the tank cap.

Then she thought again, and the inspiration that came to her surprised her by its fiendishness.

She replaced the cap and went to the front of the car. She checked that the ignition was off and opened the bonnet. She was no mechanic but she could identify the distributor cap and trace the leads to the engine. She lodged the fuel can securely beside the engine block and took off its cap.

There was a spark plug wrench in the tool kit. She took out a plug, checked again that the ignition was off, and put the plug in the mouth of the fuel can, securing it there with tape. Then she closed the hood.

When Henry came along he was certain to try to start the jeep. He would switch on, the starter motor would turn, the plug would spark and the half-gallon of petrol would explode.

She was not sure how much damage it would do, but she felt certain it would be no help.

An hour later she was regretting her cleverness.

Trudging through the mud, soaked to the skin, the sleeping child a dead weight over her shoulder, she wanted nothing more than to lie down and die. The booby trap seemed, on reflection, dubious and risky: gasoline would burn, not explode; if there was not enough air in the mouth of the can it might not even ignite; worst of all, Henry might suspect a trap, look under the bonnet, dismantle the bomb, pour the petrol into the tank and drive after her.

She contemplated stopping for a rest but decided that if she sat down she might never get up again.

She should have been in sight of Tom's house by now. She could not possibly have got lost even if she had not walked this path a dozen times before, the whole island just was not big enough to get lost on.

She recognised a thicket where she and Jo had once seen a fox. She must be about a mile from Tom's home. She would have seen it, except for the rain.

She shifted Jo to the other shoulder, switched the shotgun from one hand to the other, and forced herself to continue putting one foot in front of the other.

When the cottage finally became visible through the sheeting rain she could have cried with relief. She was nearer than she thought-perhaps a quarter of a mile.

Suddenly Jo seemed lighter, and although the last stretch was uphill-the only hill on the island-she seemed to cover it in no time at all.

"Tom!" she called out as she approached the front door. "Tom, Tom!" She heard the answering bark of the dog.

She went in by the front door. "Tom, quickly!" Bob dodged excitedly about her ankles, barking furiously. Tom couldn't be far away; he was probably in the outhouse. Lucy went upstairs and laid Jo on Tom's bed.

The wireless was in the bedroom, a complex-looking construction of wires and dials and knobs. There was something that looked like a Morse key; she touched it experimentally and it gave a beep. A thought came to her from distant memory, something from a schoolgirl thriller-the Morse code for S.O.S. She touched the key again: three short, three long, three short.

Where was Tom?

She heard a noise, and ran to the window. The jeep was making its way up the hill to the house.

Henry had found the booby trap and used the petrol to fill the tank. Where was Tom?

She rushed out of the bedroom, intending to go and bang on the outhouse door, but at the head of the stairs she paused. Bob was standing in the open doorway of the other bedroom, the empty one.

"Come here, Bob," she said. The dog stood his ground, barking. She went to him and bent to pick him up. Then she saw Tom.

He lay on his back, on the bare floorboards of the vacant bedroom, his eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling, his cap upside down on the floor behind his head. His jacket was open, and there was a small spot of blood on the shirt underneath. Close to his hand was a crate of whisky, and Lucy found herself thinking irrelevantly, I didn't know he drank that much. She felt his pulse.

He was dead.

Think. think.

Yesterday Henry had returned to her cottage battered, as if he had been in a fight. That must have been when he killed David. Today he had come here, to Tom's cottage, "to fetch David," he had said. But of course he had known David was not there. So why had he made the journey? Obviously, to kill Tom. Now she was completely alone.

She took hold of the dog by its collar and dragged it away from the body of its master. On impulse she returned and buttoned the jacket over the small stiletto wound that had killed Tom. Then she closed the door on him, returned to the front bedroom and looked out of the window.

The jeep drew up in front of the house and stopped. And Henry got out.

Lucy's distress call was heard by the corvette.

"Captain, sir," said Sparks. "I just picked up an S.O.S. from the island."

The captain frowned. "Nothing we can do until we can land a boat," he said.

"Did they say anything else?"

"Not a thing, sir. It wasn't even repeated."

"Nothing we can do," he said again. "Send a signal to the mainland reporting it. And keep listening."

"Aye, aye, sir."

It was also picked up by an MI8 listening post on top of a Scottish mountain. The R/T operator, a young man with abdominal wounds who had been invalided out of the RAF, was trying to pick up German Navy signals from Norway, and he ignored the S.O.S. However, he went off duty five minutes later, and he mentioned it to his commanding officer…

"It was only broadcast once," he said. "Probably a fishing vessel off the Scottish coast-there might well be the odd small ship in trouble in this weather."

"Leave it with me," the C.O. said. "I'll give the Navy a buzz. And I suppose I'd better inform Whitehall. Protocol, you know."

"Thank you, sir."

At the Royal Observer Corps station there was something of a panic. Of course, S.O.S. was not the signal an observer was supposed to give when he sighted enemy aircraft, but they knew that Tom was old, and who could say what he might send if he got excited? So the air raid sirens were sounded, and all other posts were alerted, and antiaircraft guns were rolled out all over the east coast of Scotland and the radio operator tried frantically to raise Tom.

No German bombers came, of course, and the War Office wanted to know why a full alert had been sounded when there was nothing in the sky but a few bedraggled geese. So they were told.

The Coastguard heard it too.

They would have responded to it if it had been on the correct frequency, and if they had been able to establish the position of the transmitter, and if that position had been within reasonable distance of the coast. As it was, they guessed from the fact that the signal came over on the Observer Corps frequency that it originated from Old Tom, and they were already doing all they could about that situation, whatever the he11 that situation was.

When the news reached the below-deck card game on the cutter in the harbour at Aberdeen, Slim dealt another hand of blackjack and said, I'll tell you what's happened. Old Tom's caught the prisoner of war and he's sitting on his head waiting for the army to arrive and take the bugger away."

"Bollocks," said Smith, with which sentiment there was general agreement.

And the U-505 heard it.

She was more than thirty nautical miles from Storm Island, but Weissman was roaming the dial to see what he could pick up and hoping, improbably, to hear Glenn Miller records from the American Forces Network in Britain, and his tuner happened to be on the right wavelength at the right time.

He passed the information to Lieutenant Commander Heer, adding, "It was not on our man's frequency."

Major Wohl, who was still as irritating as ever, said, "Then it means nothing."

Heer did not miss the opportunity to correct,him. "It means something," he said. "It means that there may be some activity on the surface when we go up."

"But this is unlikely to trouble us."

"Most unlikely," Heer agreed.

"Then it is meaningless."

"It is probably meaningless."

They argued about it all the way to the island.

And so it worked out that within the space of five minutes the Navy, the Royal Observer Corps, MI8, and the Coastguard all phoned Godliman to tell him about the S.O.S.

Godliman phoned Bloggs, who had finally fallen into a deep sleep in front of the fire in the scramble room. The shrill ring of the telephone startled him, and he jumped to his feet, thinking that the planes were about to take off.

A pilot picked up the receiver, said "Yes" into it twice and handed it to Bloggs. "A Mr Godliman for you."

"Hello, Percy."

"Fred, somebody on the island just broadcast an S.O.S."

Bloggs shook his head to clear the last remains of sleep. "Who?"

"We don't know. There was just the one signal, not repeated, and they don't seem to be receiving at all."

"Still, there's not much doubt now."

"No. Everything ready up there?"

"All except the weather."

"Good luck."

"Thanks."

Bloggs hung up and returned to the young pilot who was till reading War and Peace. "Good news," he told him. "The bastard's definitely on the island."

"Jolly good show," said the pilot.

Faber closed the door of the jeep and began walking quite slowly toward the house. He was wearing David's hacking jacket again. There was mud all over his trousers where he had fallen and his hair was plastered wetly against his skull. He was limping slightly on his right foot. Lucy backed away from the window and ran out of the bedroom and down the stairs. The shotgun was on the floor in the hall where she had dropped it. She picked it up. Suddenly it felt very heavy. She had never actually fired a gun, and she had no idea how to check whether this one was loaded. She could figure it out, given time, but there was no time.

She took a deep breath and opened the front door. "Stop!" she shouted. Her voice was pitched higher than she had intended, and it sounded shrill and hysterical. Faber smiled pleasantly and kept on walking.

Lucy pointed the gun at him, holding the barrel with her left hand and the breech with her right. Her finger was on the trigger. "I'll kill you!" she yelled.

"Don't be silly, Lucy," he said mildly. "How could you hurt me after all the things we've done together? Haven't we loved each other, a little?"

It was true. She had told herself she could not fall in love with him, and that was true too; but she had felt something for him, and if it was not love, it was something very like it.

"You knew about me this afternoon," he said, and now he was thirty yards away, "but it made no difference to you then, did it?"

That was partly true. For a moment she saw in her mind's eye a vivid picture of herself sitting astride him, holding his sensitive hands to her breasts, and then she realised what he was doing.

"Lucy, we can work it out, we can still have each other-"

And she pulled the trigger.

There was an ear-splitting crash, and the weapon jumped in her hands, its butt bruising her hip with the recoil. She almost dropped it. She had never imagined that firing a gun would feel like that. She was quite deaf for a moment.

The shot went high over Faber's head but all the same he ducked, turned, and ran zigzagging back to the jeep. Lucy was tempted to fire again but she stopped herself just in time realising that if he knew both barrels had been emptied there would be nothing to stop him turning and coming back.

He flung open the door of the jeep, jumped in and shot off down the hill. Lucy knew he would be back.

But suddenly she felt happy, almost gay. She had won the first round: she had driven him off… But he would be back.

Still, she had the upper hand. She was indoors, and she had the gun. And she had time to prepare.

Prepare. She must be ready for him. Next time he would be more subtle. He would surely try to surprise her somehow.

She hoped he would wait until dark, that would give her time… First she had to reload the gun.

She went into the kitchen. Tom kept everything in his kitchen- food, coal, tools, stores-and he had a gun like David's. She knew the two firearms were the same because David had examined Tom's, then sent away for one exactly like it. The two men had enjoyed long discussions about weapons.

She found Tom's gun and a box of ammunition. She put the two guns and the box on the kitchen table.

Machines were simple, she was convinced; it was apprehension not stupidity that made women fumble when faced with a piece of engineering. She fiddled with David's gun, keeping the barrel pointed away from herself, until it came open at the breech. Then she figured out what she had done to open it, and practiced doing it again a couple of times. It was surprisingly simple.

She loaded both guns. Then, to make sure she had done everything correctly, she pointed Tom's gun at the kitchen wall and pulled the trigger. There was a shower of plaster, Bob barked like he'd gone mad, and she bruised her hip and deafened herself again. But she was armed. She must remember to pull the triggers gently so as not to jerk the gun and spoil her aim. Men probably got taught that kind of thing in the army.

What to do next? She should make it difficult for Henry to get into the house.

Neither of the doors had locks, of course; if a house was burgled on this island, one would know that the culprit lived in the other house. Lucy rummaged in Tom's tool box and found a shiny, sharp-bladed axe. She stood on the stairs and began to hack away at the bannister.

The work made her arms ache, but in five minutes she had six short lengths of stout, seasoned oak. She found a hammer and some nails and fixed the oak bars across the front and back doors, three bars to each door, four nails to each bar. When it was done her wrists were in agony and the hammer felt as heavy as lead, but she was still not finished.

She got another handful of the shiny four-inch nails and went around to every window in the house, nailing them shut. She realised, with a sense of discovery, why men always put nails in their mouths: it was because you needed both hands for the work and if you put them in your pocket they stuck into your skin.

By the time she had finished it was dark. She left the lights off.

He could still get into the house, of course, but at least he could not get in quietly… He would have to break something and thereby alert her and then she would be ready with the guns.

She went upstairs, carrying both guns, to check on Jo. He was still asleep, wrapped in his blanket, on Tom's bed. Lucy struck a match to look at his face. The sleeping pill must have really knocked him out, but he was an average sort of colour, his temperature seemed normal, and he was breathing easily. "Just stay that way, little boy," Lucy whispered. The sudden access of tenderness left her feeling more savage toward Henry.

She restlessly patrolled the house, peering through the windows into the darkness, the dog following her everywhere. She took to carrying just one of the guns, leaving the other at the head of the stairs; but she hooked the axe into the belt of her trousers.

She remembered the radio, and tapped out her S.O.S. several more times. She had no idea whether anybody was listening, or even whether the radio was working. She knew no more Morse, so she could not broadcast anything else.

It occurred to her that Tom probably did not know Morse code. Surely he must have a book somewhere? If only she could tell someone what was happening here… She searched the house, using dozens of matches, feeling terrified every time she lit one within sight of a downstairs window. She found nothing.

All right, perhaps he did know Morse.

On the other hand, why should he need it? He only had to tell the mainland that there were enemy aircraft approaching, and there was no reason why that information shouldn't go over the air… what was the phrase David had used?… au clair.

She went back to the bedroom and looked again at the wireless set. To one side of the main cabinet, hidden from her previous cursory glance, was a microphone. If she could talk to them, they could talk to her.

The sound of another human voice-a normal, sane, mainland voice -suddenly seemed the most desirable prospect in the world.

She picked up the microphone and began to experiment with the switches. Bob growled softly.

She put the mike down and reached out her hand toward the dog in the darkness. "What is it, Bob?"

He growled again. She could feel his ears standing stiffly upright. She was terribly afraid; the confidence gained by confronting Henry with the gun, by learning how to reload, by barricading the door and nailing down the windows… all evaporated at one growl from an alert dog. "Downstairs," she whispered. "Quietly."

She held his collar and let him lead her down the stairs. In the darkness she felt for the bannister, forgetting she had chopped it up for her barricades, and she almost overbalanced. She regained her equilibrium and sucked at a splinter in her finger.

The dog hesitated in the hall, then growled more loudly and tugged her toward the kitchen. She picked him up and held his muzzle shut to silence him. Then she crept through the doorway.

She looked in the direction of the window, but there was nothing in front of her eyes other than the deep blackness.

She listened. The window creaked at first almost inaudibly, then louder. He was trying to get in. Bob rumbled threateningly, deep in his throat, but seemed to understand the sudden squeeze she gave his muzzle.

The night became quieter. Lucy realised the storm was easing, almost imperceptibly. Henry seemed to have given up on the kitchen window. She moved to the living room. She heard the same creak of old wood resisting pressure. Now Henry seemed more determined: there were three muffled bumps, as if he were tapping the window frame with the cushioned heel of his hand.

Lucy put the dog down and hefted the shotgun. It might almost have been imagination, but she could just make out the window as a square of grey in the blank darkness. If he got the window open, she would fire immediately.

There was a much harder bang. Bob lost control and gave a loud bark. She heard a scuffling noise outside. Then came the voice. "Lucy?"

She bit her lip.

"Lucy?"

He was using the voice he used in bed deep, soft, intimate.

"Lucy, can you hear me? Don't be afraid. I don't want to hurt you. Talk to me, please."

She had to fight the urge to pull both triggers there and then, just to silence that awful sound and destroy the memories it brought to her.

"Lucy, darling…" She thought she heard a muffled sob. "Lucy, he attacked me. I had to kill him… I killed for my country, you shouldn't hate me for that."

What in the world did that mean…? It sounded crazy. Could he be insane and have hidden it for two intimate days? Actually he had seemed saner than most people and yet he had already committed murder… though she had no idea of the circumstances… Stop it… She was softening up, which of course was exactly what he wanted. She had an idea. "Lucy, just speak to me…"

His voice faded as she tiptoed into the kitchen. Bob would surely warn her if Henry did anything more than talk. She fumbled in Tom's tool box and found a pair of pliers. She went to the kitchen window and with her fingertips located the heads of the three nails she had hammered there. Carefully, as quietly as possible, she drew them out. The job demanded all her strength.

When they were out she went back to the living room to listen. "… don't cause me trouble and I'll leave you alone…"

As silently as she could she lifted the kitchen window. She crept into the living room, picked up the dog and returned once again to the kitchen. "… hurt you, last thing in the world…"

She stroked the dog once or twice and murmured, "I wouldn't do this if I didn't have to, boy." Then she pushed him out of the window.

She closed it rapidly, found a nail, and hammered it in at a new spot with three sharp blows.

She dropped the hammer, picked up the gun, and ran into the front room to stand close to the window, pressing herself up against the wall. "… give you one last chance!"

There was a scampering sound, from Bob, followed by a terrible, terrifying bark Lucy had never before heard from a sheepdog; then a scuffling sound and the noise of a man falling. She could hear Henry's breathing, gasping, grunting; then another flurry of Bob's scampering, a shout of pain, a curse in a foreign language, another terrible bark.

The noises now became muffled and more distant, then suddenly ended. Lucy waited, pressed against the wall next to the window, straining to hear. She wanted to go and check Jo, wanted to try the radio again, wanted to cough; but she did not dare to move. Bloody visions of what Bob might have done to Henry passed in and out of her mind, and she badly wanted to hear the dog snuffling at the door.

She looked at the window… then realised she was looking at the window; she could see, and not just a square patch of faintly lighter grey, but the wooden crosspiece of the frame. It was still night, but only just, and she knew if she looked outside the sky would be faintly diffused with a just-perceptible light instead of being impenetrably black. Dawn would come at any minute, she would be able to see the furniture in the room, and Henry would no longer be able to surprise her in the darkness.

There was a crash of breaking glass inches away from her face. She jumped. She felt a small sharp pain in her cheek, touched the spot, and knew that she had been cut by a flying shard. She hefted the shotgun, waiting for Henry to come through the window. Nothing happened. It was not until a minute or two had passed that she wondered what had broken the window.

She peered at the floor. Among the pieces of broken glass was a large dark shape. She found she could see it better if she looked to one side of it rather than directly at it. When she did, she was able to make out the familiar shape of the dog.

She closed her eyes, then looked away. She was unable to feel any emotion at all. Her heart had been numbed by all the terror and death that had gone before: first David, then Tom, then the endless screaming tension of the all-night siege…

All she felt was hunger. All day yesterday she had been too nervous to eat, which meant it was some thirty-six hours since her last meal. Now, incongruously, ridiculously, she found herself longing for a cheese sandwich.

Something else was coming through the window.

She saw it out of the corner of her eye, then turned her head to look directly at it.

It was Henry's hand.

She stared at it, mesmerised: a long-fingered hand, without rings, white under the dirt, with cared-for nails and a bandaid around the tip of the index finger; a hand that had touched her intimately, had played her body like an instrument, had thrust a knife into the heart of an old shepherd.

The hand broke away a piece of glass, then another, enlarging the hole in the pane. Then it reached right through, up to the elbow, and fumbled along the windowsill searching for a catch to unfasten.

Trying to be utterly silent, with painful slowness, Lucy shifted the gun to her left hand, and with her right took the axe from her belt, lifted it high above her head, and brought it down with all her might on Henry's hand.

He must have sensed it, or heard the rush of wind, or seen a blur of ghostly movement behind the window, because he moved abruptly a split-second before the blow landed.

The axe thudded into the wood of the windowsill, sticking there. For a fraction of an instant Lucy thought she had missed; then, from outside, came a scream of pain, and she saw beside the axe blade, lying on the varnished wood like caterpillars, two severed fingers. She heard the sound of feet running. She threw up.

The exhaustion hit her then, closely followed by a rush of self-pity. She had suffered enough, surely to God, had she not? There were policemen and soldiers in the world to deal with situations like this. Nobody could expect an ordinary housewife and mother to hold off a murderer indefinitely. Who could blame her if she gave up now? Who could honestly say they would have done better, lasted longer, stayed more resourceful, for another minute?

She was finished. They would have to take over: the outside world, the policemen and soldiers, whoever was at the other end of that radio link. She could do no more…

She tore her eyes away from the grotesque objects on the windowsill and went wearily up the stairs. She picked up the second gun and took both weapons into the bedroom with her. Jo was still asleep, thank God. He had hardly moved all night, blessedly unaware of the apocalypse going on around him. She could tell, somehow, that he was not sleeping so deeply now, something about the look on his face and the way he breathed let her know that he would wake soon and want his breakfast.

She longed for that old routine now: getting up in the morning, making breakfast, dressing Jo, doing simple, tedious, safe household chores like washing and cleaning and cutting herbs from the garden and making pots of tea… It seemed incredible that she had been so dissatisfied with David's lovelessness, the long boring evenings, the endless bleak landscape of turf and heather and rain…

It would never come back, that life.

She had wanted cities, music, people, ideas. Now the desire for those things had left her, and she could not understand how she had ever wanted them. Peace was all a human being ought to ask for, it seemed to her.

She sat in front of the radio and studied its switches and dials. She would do this one thing, then she would rest. She made a tremendous effort and forced herself to think analytically for a little longer. There were not so many possible combinations of switch and dial. She found a knob with two settings, turned it, and tapped the Morse key. There was no sound. Perhaps that meant the microphone was now in circuit.

She pulled it to her and spoke into it. "Hello, hello, is there anybody there? Hello?"

There was a switch that had "Transmit" above it and "Receive" below. It was turned to "Transmit." If the world was to talk back to her, obviously she had to throw the switch to "Receive."

She said: "Hello, is anybody listening?" and threw the switch to "Receive." Nothing.

Then: "Come in, Storm Island, receiving you loud and clear."

It was a man's voice. He sounded young and strong, capable and reassuring, and alive and normal.

"Come in, Storm Island, we've been trying to raise you all night… where the devil have you been?" Lucy switched to 'Transmit', tried to speak, and burst into tears.

Percival Godliman had a headache from too many cigarettes and too little sleep. He had taken a little whisky to help him through the long, worried night in his office, and that had been a mistake. Everything oppressed him: the weather, his office, his job, the war. For the first time since he had got into this business he found himself longing for dusty libraries, illegible manuscripts and mediaeval Latin.

Colonel Terry walked in with two cups of tea on a tray. "Nobody around here sleeps," he said cheerfully. He sat down. "Ship's biscuit?" He offered Godliman a plate.

Godliman refused the biscuit and drank the tea. It gave him a temporary lift.

"I just had a call from the great man," Terry said. "He's keeping the night vigil with us."

"I can't imagine why," Godliman said sourly.

"He's worried."

The phone rang.

"Godliman."

"I have the Royal Observer Corps in Aberdeen for you, sir."

"Yes?"

A new voice came on, the voice of a young man.

"Royal Observer Corps, Aberdeen, here, sir."

"Yes?"

"Is that Mr Godliman?"

"Yes." Dear God, these military types took their time. "We've raised Storm Island at last, sir… it's not our regular observer. In fact it's a woman."

"What did she say?"

"Nothing, yet, sir."

"What do you mean?" Godliman fought down the angry impatience. "She's just… well, crying, sir."

Godliman hesitated. "Can you connect me to her?"

"Yes. Hold on." There was a pause punctuated by several clicks and a hum. Then Godliman heard the sound of a woman weeping. He said, "Hello, can you hear me?" The weeping went on.

The young man came back on the line to say, "She won't be able to hear you until she switches to 'Receive,' sir ah, she's done it. Go ahead."

Godliman said, "Hello, young lady. When I've finished speaking I'll say 'Over,' then you switch to 'Transmit' to speak to me and you say 'Over' when you have finished. Do you understand? Over."

The woman's voice came on. "Oh, thank God for somebody sane, yes, I understand. Over."

"Now, then," Godliman said gently, "tell me what's been happening there. Over."

"A man was shipwrecked here two, no, three days ago. I think he's that stiletto murderer from London, he killed my husband and our shepherd and now he's outside the house, and I've got my little boy here… I've nailed the windows shut and fired at him with a shotgun, and barred the door and set the dog on him but he killed the dog and I hit him with an axe when he tried to get in through the window and I can't do it anymore so please come for God's sake. Over."

Godliman put his hand over the phone. His face was white. "Jesus Christ…" But when he spoke to her, he was brisk. "You must try to hold on a little longer," he began. "There are sailors and coastguards and policemen and all sorts of people on their way to you but they can't land until the storm lets up… Now, there's something I want you to do, and I can't tell you why you must do it because of the people who may be listening to us, but I can tell you that it is absolutely essential… Are you hearing me clearly? Over."

"Yes, go on. Over."

"You must destroy your radio. Over."

"Oh, no, please…"

"Yes," Godliman said, then he realised she was still transmitting. "I don't… I can't…" Then there was a scream.

Godliman said, "Hello, Aberdeen, what's happening?" The young man came on. "The set's still transmitting, sir, but she's not speaking. We can't hear anything."

"She screamed."

"Yes, we got that."

Godliman hesitated a moment. "What's the weather like up there?"

"It's raining, sir." The young man sounded puzzled. "I'm not making conversation," Godliman snapped. "Is there any sign of the storm letting up?"

"It's eased a little in the last few minutes, sir."

"Good. Get back to me the instant that woman comes back on the air."

"Very good, sir."

Godliman said to Terry, "God only knows what that girl's going through up there…" He jiggled the cradle of the phone.

The colonel crossed his legs. "If she would only smash up the radio, then."

"Then we don't care if he kills her?"

"You said it."

Godliman spoke into the phone. "Get me Bloggs at Rosyth."

Bloggs woke up with a start, and listened. Outside it was dawn. Everyone in the scramble hut was listening too. They could hear nothing. That was what they were listening to: the silence. The rain had stopped drumming on the tin roof.

Bloggs went to the window. The sky was grey, with a band of white on the eastern horizon. The wind had dropped suddenly and the rain had become a light drizzle.

The pilots started putting on jackets and helmets, lacing boots, lighting up last cigarettes.

A klaxon sounded, and a voice boomed out over the airfield: "Scramble! Scramble!"

The phone rang. The pilots ignored it and piled out through the door. Bloggs picked it up. "Yes?"

"Percy here, Fred. We just contacted the island. He's killed the two men. The woman's managing to hold him off at the moment but she clearly won't last much longer."

"The rain has stopped. We're taking off now," Bloggs said.

"Make it fast, Fred. Good-bye."

Bloggs hung up and looked around for his pilot. Charles Calder had fallen asleep over War and Peace. Bloggs shook him roughly. "Wake up, you dozy bastard, wake up!" Calder opened his eyes.

Bloggs could have hit him. "Wake up, come on, we're going, the storm's ended!"

The pilot jumped to his feet. "Jolly good show," he said.

He ran out of the door and Bloggs followed, shaking his head.

The lifeboat dropped into the water with a crack like a pistol and a wide V-shaped splash. The sea was far from calm, but here in the partial shelter of the bay there was no risk to a stout boat in the hands of experienced sailors. The captain said, "Carry on, Number One."

The first mate was standing at the rail with three of the ratings. He wore a pistol in a waterproof holster. "Let's go," he told them.

The four men scrambled down the ladders and into the boat. The first mate sat in the stern and the three sailors broke out the oars and began to row.

For a few moments the captain watched their steady progress toward the jetty, then he went back to the bridge and gave orders for the corvette to continue circling the island.

The shrill ringing of a bell broke up the card game on the cutter. Slim said, "I thought something was different. We aren't going up and down so much. Almost motionless, really. Makes me damn seasick." Nobody was listening: the crew were hurrying to their stations, some of them fastening life jackets as they went.

The engines fired with a roar, and the vessel began to tremble faintly. Up on deck Smith stood in the prow, enjoying the fresh air and the spray on his face after a day and a night below. As the cutter left the harbour Slim joined him. "Here we go again," Slim said.

"I knew the bell was going to ring then," Smith said. "You know why?"

"Tell me."

"I was holding ace and a king. Banker's Twenty-one."

Lieutenant Commander Werner Heer looked at his watch. "Thirty minutes."

Major Wohl nodded. "What's the weather like?"

"The storm has ended," Heer said reluctantly. He would have preferred to keep that information to himself.

"Then we should surface."

"If your man were there, he would send us a signal."

"The war is not won by hypothesis, captain," said Wohl. "I firmly suggest that we surface."

There had been a blazing row while the U-boat was in dock between Heer's superior officer and Wohl's; and Wohl's had won. Heer was still captain of the ship, but he had been told in no uncertain terms that he had better have a damned good reason next time he ignored one of Major Wohl's firm suggestions.

"We will surface at six o'clock exactly," he said. Wohl nodded again and looked away.

The sound of breaking glass, then an explosion like an incendiary bomb: Whoomph…

Lucy dropped the microphone. Something was happening downstairs. She picked up a shotgun and ran down.

The living room was ablaze. The fire centred on a broken jar on the floor.

Henry had made some kind of bomb with the petrol from the jeep. The flames were spreading across Tom's threadbare carpet and licking up over the loose covers of his ancient three-piece suite. A feather-filled cushion caught and the fire reached up toward the ceiling.

Lucy picked up the cushion and threw it through the broken window, singeing her hand. She tore her coat off and threw it on the carpet, stamping on it. She picked it up again and draped it over the floral settee. There was another crash of glass. It came from upstairs. Lucy screamed. "Jo!"

She dropped the coat and rushed up the stairs and into the front bedroom. Faber was sitting on the bed with Jo on his lap. The child was awake, sucking his thumb, wearing his wide-eyed morning look. Faber was stroking his tousled hair.

"Throw the gun on the bed, Lucy."

Her shoulders sagged and she did as he said. "You climbed the wall and got through the window," she said dully. Faber dumped Jo off his lap. "Go to Mummy." Jo ran to her and she lifted him up.

He picked up both guns and went to the radio. He was holding his right hand under his left armpit, and there was a great red bloodstain on his jacket. He sat down. "You hurt me," he said. Then he turned his attention to the transmitter.

Suddenly it spoke. "Come in, Storm Island." He picked up the microphone. "Hello?"

"Just a minute."

There was a pause, then another voice came on. Lucy recognised it as the man in London who had told her to destroy the radio. He would be disappointed in her. It said, "Hello, this is Godliman again. Can you hear me? Over." Faber said, "Yes, I can hear you, professor. Seen any good cathedrals lately?"

"What?… is that-"

"Yes." Faber smiled. "How do you do." Then the smile abruptly left his face, as if playtime was over, and he manipulated the frequency dial of the radio. Lucy turned and left the room. It was over. She walked listlessly down the stairs and into the kitchen. There was nothing for her to do but wait for him to kill her. She could not run away; she did not have the energy, and he obviously knew it.

She looked out of the window. The storm had ended. The howling gale had dropped to a stiff breeze, there was no rain, and the eastern sky was bright with the promise of sunshine.

The sea…

She frowned, and looked again.

Yes, my God, it was a submarine.

Destroy the radio, the man had said.

Last night Henry had cursed in a foreign language… "did it for my country," he had said.

And, in his delirium, something about waiting at Calais for a phantom army…

Destroy the radio.

Why would a man take a can of photographic negatives on a fishing trip?

She had known all along he was not insane.

The submarine was a German U-boat, Henry was some kind of German agent… spy?… this very moment he must be trying to contact that U-boat by radio…

Destroy the radio.

She had no right to give up, she couldn't, now that she understood. She knew what she had to do.

She would have liked to put Jo somewhere else, where he could not see it-that bothered her more than the pain she knew she would feel-but there was no time for that. Henry would surely find his frequency at any second and then it might be too late. She had to destroy the radio, but the radio was upstairs with Henry, and he had both the guns and he would kill her. She knew only one way to do it.

She placed one of Tom's kitchen chairs in the centre of the room, stood on it, reached up and unscrewed the light bulb.

She got down off the chair, went to the door and threw the switch. "Are you changing the bulb?" Jo asked.

Lucy climbed on the chair, hesitated for a moment, then thrust three fingers into the live socket.

There was a bang, an instant of agony, and then unconsciousness.

Faber heard the bang. He had found the right frequency on the transmitter, had thrown the switch to "Transmit" and had picked up the microphone. He was about to speak when the noise came. Immediately afterward the lights on the dials of the wireless set went out.

His face suffused with anger. She had short-circuited the electricity supply to the whole house. He had not credited her with that much ingenuity.

He should have killed her before. What was wrong with him? He had never hesitated, not ever, until he met this woman.

He picked up one of the guns and went downstairs.

The child was crying. Lucy lay in the kitchen doorway, out cold. Faber took in the empty light socket with the chair beneath it. He frowned in amazement.

She had done it with her hand. Faber said: "Jesus Christ Almighty."

Lucy's eyes opened. She hurt all over.

Henry was standing over her with the gun in his hands. He was saying, "Why did you use your hand? Why not a screwdriver?"

"I didn't know you could do it with a screwdriver."

He shook his head. "You are truly an astonishing woman," he said as he lifted the gun, aimed it at her, and lowered it again. "Damn you." His gaze went to the window, and he started. "You saw it," he said.

She nodded.

He stood tense for a moment, then went to the door. Finding it nailed shut, he smashed the window with the butt of his gun and climbed out. Lucy got to her feet. Jo threw his arms around her legs. She did not feel strong enough to pick him up. She staggered to the window and looked out.

He was running toward the cliff. The U-boat was still there, perhaps half a mile offshore. He reached the cliff edge and crawled over. He was going to try to swim to the submarine.

She had to stop him.

Dear God, no more…

She climbed through the window, blotting out the cries of her son, and ran after him.

When she reached the cliff edge she lay down and looked over. He was about halfway between her and the sea. He looked up and saw her, froze for a moment, and then began to move faster, dangerously fast.

Her first thought was to climb down after him. But what would she do Then? Even if she caught him, she couldn't possibly stop him.

The ground beneath her shifted slightly. She scrambled back, afraid it would give way and throw her down the cliff.

Which gave her the idea.

She thumped on the rocky ground with both fists. It seemed to shake a little more and a crack appeared. She got one hand over the edge and thrust the other into the crack. A piece of earthy chalk the size of a watermelon came away in her hands.

She looked over the edge and sighted him.

She took careful aim and dropped the stone.

It seemed to fall very slowly. He saw it coming, and covered his head with his arm. It looked to her as if it would miss him.

The rock passed within a few inches of his head and hit his left shoulder. He was holding on with his left hand. He seemed to lose his grip and he balanced precariously for a moment. The right hand, the injured one, scrabbled for a hold. Then he appeared to lean out, away from the face of the rock, arms windmilling, until his feet slipped from their narrow ledge and he was in midair, suspended; and finally he dropped like a stone to the rocks below.

He made no sound.

He landed on a flat rock that jutted above the surface of the water. The noise his body made hitting the rock sickened her. He lay there on his back, arms outflung, head at an impossible angle.

Something seeped out from inside him on to the stone, and Lucy turned away. Everything seemed to happen at once then.

There was a roaring sound from the sky and three aircraft with RAF circles on their wings flew out of the clouds and dipped low over the U-boat, their guns firing. Four sailors came up the hill toward the house at a jog trot, one of them shouting, "Left-right-left-right-left-right."

Another plane landed on the sea, a dinghy emerged from inside it and a man in a life jacket began to row toward the cliff.

A small ship came around the headland and steamed toward the U-boat. The U-boat submerged.

The dinghy bumped into the rocks at the foot of the cliff, and the man got out and examined Faber's body. A boat she recognised as the Coastguard cutter appeared.

One of the sailors came up to her. "Are you all right, love? There's a little girl in the cottage crying for her mummy."

"It's a boy," Lucy said, "I must cut his hair."

Bloggs steered the dinghy toward the body at the foot of the cliff. The boat bumped against the rock and he scrambled out and-onto the flat surface.

Die Nadel's skull had smashed like a glass goblet when he hit the rock. Looking more closely. Bloggs could see that the man had been somewhat battered even before the fall: his right hand was mutilated and there was something wrong with his ankle.

Bloggs searched the body. The stiletto was where he had guessed it might be: in a sheath strapped to the left forearm. In the inside pocket of the expensive-looking bloodstained jacket, Bloggs found a wallet, papers, money, and a small film can containing twenty-four 35mm photographic negatives. He held them up to the strengthening light: they were the negatives of the prints found in the envelopes Faber had sent to the Portuguese Embassy.

The sailors on the cliff top threw down a rope. Bloggs put Faber's possessions into his own pocket, then tied the rope around the body. They hauled it up, then sent the rope down for Bloggs.

When he got to the top, the sub-lieutenant introduced himself and they walked across to the cottage on top of the hill.

"We haven't touched anything, didn't want to destroy evidence," the senior sailor said.

"Don't worry too much," Bloggs told him. "There won't be a prosecution."

They had to enter the house through the broken kitchen window. The woman was sitting at a table with the child on her lap. Bloggs smiled at her. He could not think of anything to say.

He looked quickly around the cottage. It was a battlefield. He saw the nailed-up windows, the barred doors, the remains of the fire, the dog with its throat cut, the shotguns, the broken bannister, and the axe embedded in the windowsill beside two severed fingers. He thought, What kind of woman is she?

He set the sailors to work: one to tidy the house and unbar the doors and windows, another to replace the blown fuse, a third to make tea.

He sat down in front of the woman and looked at her. She was dressed in ill-fitting, mannish clothes; her hair was wet; her face was dirty. Despite all that, she was remarkably beautiful, with lovely amber eyes in an oval face.

Bloggs smiled at the child and spoke quietly to the woman. "What you've done is tremendously important," he said. "One of these days we'll explain, but for now I have to ask you two questions. Is that okay?" Her eyes focused on him and after a moment she nodded. "Did Faber succeed in contacting the U-boat by radio?" The woman just looked blank.

Bloggs found a toffee in his trousers pocket. "Can I give the boy a sweet? He looks hungry."

"Thank you," she said.

"Now, did Faber contact the U-boat?"

"His name was Henry Baker," she said.

"Oh. Well, did he?"

"No. I short-circuited the electricity."

"That was very smart," Bloggs said. "How did you do it?"

She pointed at the empty light socket above them.

"Screwdriver, eh?"

"No. I wasn't that smart. Fingers."

He gave her a look of horror, disbelief. The thought of deliberately… he shook himself, trying to put it out of his mind. And thought again, What kind of woman is she?…

"Right, well, do you think anyone on the U-boat could have seen him coming down the cliff?"

The effort of concentration showed on her face. "Nobody came out of the hatch, I'm quite sure," she said.

"Could they have seen him through their periscope?"

"No," she said.

"This is good news, very good news. It means they don't know he's been… neutralised. Anyway…" He changed the subject hastily. "You've been through as much as any man on the front line. More. We're going to get you and the boy to a hospital on the mainland."

"Yes," she said.

Bloggs turned to the senior sailor. "Is there any form of transport around?"

"Yes a jeep down in that little stand of trees."

"Good. Will you drive these two over to the jetty and get them onto your boat?"

"Surely."

Bloggs turned to the woman again. He felt a tremendous surge of affection mixed with admiration for her. She looked frail and helpless now, but he knew she was as brave and strong as she was beautiful. Surprising her and himself he took hold of her hand. "When you've been in hospital a day or two you'll begin to feel depressed. But that's a sign you're getting better. I won't be far away and the doctors will tell me. I'll want to talk to you some more, but not before you feel like it. Okay?"

At last she smiled at him, and he felt the warmth. "You're very kind." she said. She stood up and carried her child out of the house.

"Kind?" Bloggs muttered to himself. "God, what a woman."

He went upstairs to the radio and tuned it to the Royal Observer Corps frequency.

"Storm Island calling, over."

"Come in, Storm Island."

"Patch me through to London."

"Hold on." There was a long pause, then a familiar voice, "Godliman."

"Percy. We caught the… smuggler. He's dead."

"Marvellous, marvellous." There was undisguised triumph in Godliman's voice. "Did he manage to contact his partner?"

"Almost certainly not."

"Well done, well done!"

"Don't congratulate me," Bloggs said. "By the time I got here it was all over, bar the tidying up."

"Who…?"

"The woman."

"Well, I'm damned. What's she like?"

Bloggs grinned. "She's a hero, Percy."

And Godliman, smiling on his end now too, understood.

Hitler stood at the panoramic window, looking out at the mountains. He wore his dove-grey uniform, and he looked tired and depressed. He had called his physician during the night. Admiral Puttkamer saluted and said good morning.

Hitler turned and peered closely at his aide-de-camp. Those beady eyes never failed to unnerve Puttkamer. "Was Die Nadel picked up?"

"No. There was some trouble at the rendezvous. The English police were chasing smugglers. It appears Die Nadel was not there anyway. He sent a wireless message a few minutes ago." He offered a sheet of paper.

Hitler took it from him, put on his spectacles, and began to read:

YOUR RENDEZVOUS INSECURE YOU CUNTS I AM WOUNDED AND TRANSMITTING LEFT HANDED FIRST UNITED STATES ARMY GROUP ASSEMBLED EAST ANGLIA UNDER PATTON ORDER OF BATTLE AS FOLLOWS TWENTYONE INFANTRY DIVISIONS FIVE ARMOURED DIVISIONS APPROXIMATELY FIVE THOUSAND AIRCRAFT PLUS REQUISITE TROOPSHIPS IN THE WASH FUSAG WILL ATTACK CALAIS JUNE FIFTEENTH REGARDS TO WILLI

Hitler handed the message back to Puttkamer and sighed. "So it's Calais, after all."

"Can we be sure of this man?" the aide asked.

"Absolutely." Hitler turned and walked across the room to a chair. His movements were stiff and he seemed in paim. "He is a loyal German. I know him. I know his family."

"But your instinct…"

"Ach… I said I would trust this man's report, and I shall." He made a gesture of dismissal. "Tell Rommel and Rundstedt they can't have their panzers. And send in that damned doctor."

Puttkamer saluted again and went out to relay the orders.

When Germany defeated England in the quarterfinal of the 1970 World Cup soccer tournament, grandpa was furious.

He sat in front of the colour television set and muttered through his beard at the screen. "Cunning!" he told the assorted experts who were now disgecting the game. "Cunning and stealth! That's the way to defeat the damned Germans."

He would not be mollified until his grandchildren arrived. Jo's white Jaguar drew up on the drive of the modest three-bedroom house, and then Jo himself, prosperous-looking in a suede jacket, along with his wife Ann and their children, went in. Jo said, "Did you watch the football, pop?"

"Terrible, we were rubbish." Since he'd retired from the Force and had more leisure time he had taken an interest in sports.

"The Germans were better," Jo said. "They play good football. We can't win it every time."

"Don't talk to me about bloody Germans. Cunning and stealth, that's the way to beat them." He addressed the grandson on his lap. "That's the way we beat them in the war, Davy, we tricked them proper."

"How did you trick them?" Davy asked.

"Well, see, we made them think…" His voice became low and conspiratorial, and the little boy giggled in anticipation. "We made them think we were going to attack Calais-"

"That's in France, not Germany."

Ann shushed him. "Let your grandpa tell his stories."

"Anyway," grandpa continued, "we made them think we were going to attack Calais, so they put all their tanks and soldiers there." He used a cushion to represent France, an ashtray for the Germans, and a penknife for the Allies. "But we attacked Normandy, and there was nobody much there but old Rommel and a few popguns."

"Didn't they find out about the trick?" David asked.

"They nearly did. In fact, there was one spy who did find out."

"What happened to him?"

"We killed him before he could tell."

"Did you kill him, grandpa?"

"No, your grandma did."

Grandma came in then, carrying a teapot. "Fred Bloggs, are you frightening the children?"

"Why shouldn't they know?" he groused. "She's got a medal, you know. She won't tell me where she keeps it becawe she doesn't like me showing it to visitors."

She was pouring tea. "It's all over now and best forgotten." She handed a cup and saucer to her husband.

He took her arm and held her there. "It's far from over," he said, and his voice was suddenly gentle.

They looked at each other for a moment. Her beautiful hair was greying now and she wore it up in a bun. She was heavier than she used to be. But her eyes were still the same: large and amber and remarkably beautiful. Those eyes looked back at him now, and they both were very still, remembering.

Until David jumped off his grandpa's lap and knocked the cup of tea to the floor and the spell was broken.