"Innes, Hammond - Dead and Alive" - читать интересную книгу автора (Innes Hammond)

over her glasses. 'How did you know?' she asked.
'I was at Anzio, too,' I told her. 'I had one of the landing craft. We were
quite close to the Black Prince when it happened - near enough for my eyebrows
to be singed by the heat, and our paintwork to be blistered. It was quite
instantaneous, you know,' I added hastily.
She nodded slowly. Her gaze had wondered back to the fire. 'Yes,' she said.
'Yes, I know. I'm glad it was sudden, like that. I've seen men back here -
there's young Billy Arken over to Boscastle, both legs gone and his side and
face all shattered. Better to die quickly when the time comes. But it's hard on
the ones left behind.'
The click of the needles filled the silence of the room again. A log slipped in
the grate - a momentary flame and a shower of sparks.
'Why did you come back here, Mr David?' she asked. 'You should have known
better. Memories are for the old. You're still a young man.'
I sucked at my pipe. Hell! Why had I come back?
'I'm not quite sure,' I told her. 'But I think I know. I think it is because I
have lost my roots in England and I am trying to find them again.'
'Was there no other girl?'
'Yes,' I said, 'but -' The fire flared and the gilt hands of the grandfather
clock in the corner glinted. 'No, there wasn't - I know that now. Jenny was an
impulsive creature. She was like a child with those lovely-laughing eyes and
mass of untidy hair. She bubbled with the joy of life. It was like a fountain
that made every moment with her exciting. We hadn't known each other long when
we came here. That was in July, and in August I was called up because I was in
the Reserve.
'She wasn't the person to remain faithful to an absent lover long. I knew that.
She wouldn't agree to an engagement. She said we'd get married as soon as I came
back and the war was over. We were young and optimistic in those days. Then
Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain - a young R.A.F. pilot officer: I got the news
at Derna. I was an A.B. at the time in a destroyer, and we were supporting
Wavell's men on their way west.
'Then we came home for a re-fit and I was up for a commission. King Alfred,
that's the shore station for cadets, was quite near my people and I got home
quite a bit. I met a girl I'd known since I was a kid - and, I don't know, she
was kind and sweet and we got on well together. It was a dose of freshness and
England after the Med and we got engaged. A man needs something to anchor him
when he's abroad for months on end and the war looks like going on for ever.
'In all I was the better part of a year in England. Then I was given a landing
craft and in due course took it out on the North African landing. Then the
Sicily show - that was when I heard from Jenny for the first time since that
note at Derna telling me she was married. It was a pitiful little note - an
airmail letter card telling me that her husband was dead, shot down in flames on
a train-busting raid over the Pas de Calais.'
The knitting needles stopped clicking. 'Was that when you realized you didn't
love the other girl?' Sarah asked.
'No,' I said, 'I don't think so. It was the next letter, which came a month
later, I think, that told me that. It was from her mother. Jenny was dead -
killed by a stray bomb in a nuisance raid on London. For some strange reason she
had left me all her jewellery. I've got it in my suitcase now - little trinkets,
some of them that I'd given her, some I didn't recognize, including a platinum