Convoy of War (A John Mason Kemp Thriller) by McCutchan Philip

Author:McCutchan, Philip [McCutchan, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2014-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

TEN

Various domestic matters were to engage the attentions of a number of the men in the convoy once they had entered the blessings, the mixed blessings for some, of the land. One of the less fortunate was to be Mr Portway, for events had stirred up trouble back across the sea in Essex, trouble that arose for no other reason than the fact that there was a war on and Mrs Portway’s laundry had been put out of action by a bomb. Mrs Portway had never done her own washing: it was infra dig for the wife of the second steward of the Ardara. The trouble was that hers had been the only laundry left in business in Thurrock and she had quarrelled with the only one she knew in Grays. But she knew there was one in Tilbury, for that was where the second steward of the Ardara had on occasions negotiated for the laundering of his underlings’ white jackets, so Mrs Portway went personally to Tilbury: she had tried telephoning but the instrument was out of order; Hitler again, no doubt. But it wasn’t far by train.

The moment she set eyes on the fat girl with the poor skin she had the feeling she’d seen her somewhere before but at first she couldn’t think where. Then she had been asked her name.

‘Portway,’ she said. ‘Mrs Portway. Thurrock.’

The girl’s face had been a picture — a picture of guilt Mrs Portway knew, for suddenly it had come back. The girl outside the Co-op, and the funny look that had passed between the girl and Herbert. A pity she hadn’t tackled him about it there and then. Her face suffused and her jaw came out and she grasped her umbrella like a lance.

‘You seem to know the name,’ she said.

‘Oh no — no I never — ’

‘Never what?’

‘Never heard the name,’ Mabel said, almost in tears already.

‘I don’t believe you, girl. What’s your name?’

‘Miss Tucker.’

‘Tucker. I’ll remember that. Now let me tell you something: I saw you once, not long ago, in Grays. You all but bumped into my husband. I sensed something then, I did.’ It was odd, the way things went, the way the human mind and memory, or awareness, worked: all of a sudden other things had all come back to Mrs Portway — the times Herbert, when in Tilbury between voyages in peacetime and when somewhere up north after the war had started, hadn’t been home when he should have been. Always some excuse, harder to find once the Ardara had quit her Tilbury base, but he always found something and here before her, in the laundry, was the cause. It stood to reason and Mrs Portway was convinced she wasn’t imagining anything.

‘You little bitch,’ she said. ‘You dirty little whore!’

Mabel found strength, hidden reserves of pride coming to the surface. ‘Old cow,’ she said as the tears ran. ‘Give it him yourself and he wouldn’t have wanted me. I’m not all that attractive, I know that.

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