Back to Battle by Max Hennessy Read Free Book Online Page B

off the bed in an instant. As he unlocked it, it flew open in his face and Teresa flung herself at him. All the mischief, all the taunting had gone from her face and her cheeks were covered with tears.
    ‘What’s happened? Where is he?’
    ‘Neila took him,’ she sobbed. ‘Neila took him last night. They took him to the Cabo Mayor wireless station near the Miramar Palace. They shot him and threw his body into the sea.’
    Her fingers clutched his, tense and hard, and she began to cry in soft muted whimperings. Holding her tight, trying to comfort her, harrowed by her tears, all he was able to do was say ‘Please don’t cry’ and stroke her hair. Then, with her crouched against him, his lips in her hair, they slipped down against the pillows, clutching each other. Lifting her head, he laid his lips on hers and suddenly he found they were exchanging racking kisses that left their mouths numb. At last she seemed to relax and he saw she was staring at him with a strange, wondering look. For a second, they remained like that, their faces only an inch apart, then his hand slipped under her shirt above the trousers she wore, and he felt the warm skin in the hollow of her back and the sudden quivering tension of her body.
    She shuddered in a spasm of pain and there were new tears on his cheek, then she was moaning softly against him, her face hidden in the curve of his neck, her fingers digging into his muscles, and he reached up and pulled the sheet over them.
     
    When they woke the following morning, Kelly could hear the thudding of shells in the distance and somewhere not far away the tap-tapping of a machine gun. It sounded slow and old, as though it were a relic from the Great War. Then he became aware of Teresa’s head against his shoulder. He felt faintly guilty, feverish and absurd, but, as he turned to look at her, he saw her eyes were open, large and wondering and blue. As his lips touched hers, her arms went swiftly round his neck.
    ‘Marry me, Teresa,’ he said.
    ‘We are already married, George Kelly,’ she said. ‘As married as we’ll ever be. More married than my professor will ever be now.’
    He tried to extract a promise but she remained wary and noncommittal as if she had no confidence in the future.
    ‘I wonder if it’s all been worthwhile,’ she said, as though she doubted even her own beliefs. ‘I wonder how much difference it will make when the war’s over who won. Who’ll be any better off in all the poverty and debt? People don’t meet these days as they should, and falling in love is like being on a bicycle back-pedalling. You put in a lot of hard work and get nowhere. Love includes having a future, too.’
    ‘There is a future,’ he insisted. ‘Come with me when I leave. We can be married in St Jean de Luz.’
    She smiled in a way that seemed to imply willingness but she still made no promises.
    They left the hotel together. It was clear the end was near because the guns now seemed to be only at the end of the street. Teresa looked tired but she seemed to have recovered her spirits.
    ‘I’m glad what happened between us did happen,’ she admitted. ‘With all the world dying about us, it makes it all the more sensible that the rest of us should go on living.’
    They spent the day in the old Citroën trying to contact people and send them to the British Club. They were all ready with what they could carry, all save Mrs. Fotheringay, who had disappeared from the address where Kelly had found her the previous day, and they decided she’d gone alone to join Miss Jenner-Neate.
    When they reached the club in the evening it was drizzling a little and the streets were empty. ‘Looks a bit like Liverpool on a wet day,’ Kelly said. ‘With the shops shut, the Irish away at Blackpool and the Protestants staying at home and keeping the King’s Peace.’
    The smashed rooms contained thirteen depressed-looking people and Miss Jenner-Neate was in a fury.
    ‘Mrs. Fotheringay’s dog’s