Dead and Alive

Dead and Alive Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: Dead and Alive Read Online Free PDF
Author: Hammond Innes
bigger storms during the winter.
    Bill and Anne came down to commiserate with us and we drove over to Boscastle for lunch. Stuart was in a sombre mood. He seemed dispirited about the whole thing. And his mood flared dangerously at an innocent remark of Bill’s, who was trying to cheer him up. “You think I’m a child to be patted on the hand and given crumbs of comfort like a bag of sticky sweets,” Stuart cried, banging down his knife and fork. His voice wastense and strained and his eyes strangely narrowed. “When things go wrong with you, you can go crying to Anne for comfort. But I’ve got no one. Nobody in the world. All I’ve got to show for my life is an old landing craft. And that’s on the rocks—like my life. I’m on the rocks. I’m no good. I’m finished. And bloody little fools like you come with words of comfort. I don’t want your comfort. I don’t want it—do you understand?” And he flung out of the room.
    It was a side of him that I hadn’t known about until then.
    There was a stunned silence. And then Bill said, “What an extraordinary fellow!”
    I said, “Not so extraordinary.” Then I asked him if he’d been overseas.
    “No,” he replied. “I was in a reserved occupation—they lowered the age just in time.”
    I said, “Well, Stuart was nearly four years overseas. He was wounded twice. And I rather fancy—he hasn’t told me, but I think I’m right—that his wife and child were killed by a flying bomb.”
    Anne nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, I understand now. Those photographs—and that charred furniture. What hell for him! Find him a girl, David, before it drives him crazy.”
    “He’s trying to marry a landing craft at the moment,” I told her. “That’s why he’s so upset.”
    After lunch I sought out old Garth and asked him about the weather. He told me there should be at least two weeks of fine weather now.
    I made no attempt to find out where Stuart had gone. I’d known men in his mood in the Med. He’d walk it off. The three of us drove into Tintagel and saw a frightful film which was made pleasant because Anne held my hand. She was a very sweet and understanding girl. She insisted on coming back and cooking dinner for us.
    Down in the cove Stuart had already started rebuilding the ramp.
    We were up next morning at dawn and were at workwhilst the cove was still dark and sunless though the sky was blue. We decided to build the ramp of sand this time for it was difficult to find rocks. But the curve along which the stern would be shifted had to be of rocks in order to support the girders.
    Stuart was in terrific form. He nicknamed the half-wit Boo, because of his goggle eyes. And for some reason the queer boy was pleased at that. Stuart drove him unmercifully. He drove the trippers too. A man had only to pause a second gazing upon our labours and Stuart, who had suddenly cultivated a broad Cornish accent, suggested that a little physical exercise would do him a power of good. They fell for it practically every time. And as soon as they’d a shovel in their hands, he’d got them. “Man, thee’ll never stand it for as much as a quarter of an hour.” And then when they did stand it for quarter of an hour, he’d be so full of compliments that blisters or no they just had to go on. He paced them himself or set off one against the other. And all the time he sang old sea shanties and snatches of negro spirituals. And periodically he directed a stream of curses at Boo’s rhythmically swinging back. And Boo would give him a loose grin and the sand would fly from his shovel.
    It was a great day and by sundown sand and boulders were piled amongst the rocks.
    The next day Bill and Anne came down and Stuart even bullied Anne into taking a shovel. And for the next hour there wasn’t a man in that cove who dared refuse the proferred tool. We ran short of sand as well as rocks by midday and after lunch we rigged one of the winches and, using an old piece of corrugated iron
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