Gibraltar Road by Philip McCutchan Read Free Book Online Page A

really . . Shaw looked up, the greenish slanting eyes of his imagination faded into big hazel ones smiling at him in concern. Debonnair said softly, eyes bright beneath the long lashes, “Tell me all about the ship you’re going out in. I know how you’ll love being back at sea again. And for Heaven’s sake stop worrying, Esmonde! Life isn’t as bad as all that.”
    He lifted his shoulders, pursed up his mouth, shoved some table silver about in front of him. “There’s nothing much to tell you about the old Cambridge .” But, making an initial effort, he began to yam about the sea in general.
    And when he began to talk about the sea like that, easily as he did after a time, the years fell away and it seemed to Debonnair, watching him fondly and not really listening to a word he was saying—only following the light in his eyes and wanting to smooth away the lines in a dear face—that he was like a boy again, a boy about to join his first ship. Or like a man serving a life sentence and forgetting the present in a talk with an old friend who brings back the past to him, the galling bitterness easing away temporarily. It almost made her say something rash. Or something darn wise . . . her heart told her that she didn’t know which she would have called it.

    He knew she’d tumbled to it, of course, much later that night in the flatlet’s tiny sitting-room softly lit by the glow of the gas-fire, when they were very close to each other, and he knew it was useless to keep up the formal pretence any longer. Shaw’s arm was round her, his brown hand, strong and large but with long, sensitive fingers, caressed her hair. She leant against him, feeling the hardness of his body pressed into hers, her head pillowed on his chest beneath his chin, her face pale but rose-tinted in the fire glow. She said, half dreamily answering a plea of his, a plea that he’d made scores of times before, “It’s no use, darling; you see, I know what it’s like.” She frowned a little and glanced upward at him, lifting her head. “I’ve known so many people who—do your job, my pet. I’ve known their wives too. I’ve seen what it does to them.”
    “Is it so much worse for a wife?” asked Shaw gently. “So much worse than—now?”
    She nodded, her hair fanning against his nostrils, fresh and lightly scented. She looked at him curiously. She knew he’d had plenty of experience of women, but sometimes, she thought, you’d hardly know it. “But, darling, of course it is. Husbands and wives are much more to each other. . .
    She bit her lip, hard. “There’d be children.”
    “I’d hope so.”
    “I know, Esmonde. But I wouldn’t like to have children whose father was always away, mysteriously, and who—who—”
    “Might never come back. Might just—disappear—be shot as a spy. Very awkward to explain to them.”
    “That was rather unkind, darling.”
    He felt the stiffening of her body, the slight withdrawal. Gently he disengaged himself, stood up, fumbled for a cigarette. Debonnair sat silent, looking into the fire.
    “You’re quite right, of course,” Shaw said, as the sudden match flickered over his face, strength outlined in shadow and light. He blew out smoke. “You see—I’d want children, lots and lots of them. And a home . . . just a little place in the country, maybe, somewhere right away from the kind of life I’ve had, somewhere we can dig in and stay, get to know people—ordinary normal nice people who sleep sound in their beds at night and don’t have to jump through the roof when the phone rings. People who can read about murders and intrigue and spy rings and agents provocateurs in the paper at breakfast and say, ‘Poor chaps, and it’s tough luck, but thank God I’m not one of them’—and then turn to the sports page, finish their kippers, shove on their bowlers, and catch the 8.15 to the office and ask the other fellows in the carriage how their tomatoes are coming along—”
    Debonnair’s