unopened. No one knows what he's keeping it for.)
This weird procession crept along Kingsway until intercepted by a British cattle car or lorry. The Commandos climbed on, thanked everyone for a jolly evening and snarled away forever. Dahoud and Leroy climbed wearily into the cab.
'Billy Eckstine,' Dahoud grinned. 'Jeez.'
'We got to go back,' Leroy said. The driver made a U-turn and they circled back to the scene of the free-for-all. No more than fifteen minutes had passed; but the street was deserted. Quiet: no more firecrackers, shouts; nothing.
'I'll be damned,' said Dahoud.
'You'd think it never happened,' said Leroy.
'Dockyard,' Clyde instructed the driver, yawning. 'Dry dock two. American tin can with the teeth marks of a screw-chewing fish.'
All the way out to the Dockyard Pappy snored.
Liberty had been expired an hour when they arrived. The two SP's bounded past the rows of latrines and across the gangplank. Clyde and Johnny, with Pappy in the middle, lagged.
'Now none of that was worth it,' Johnny said bitterly. Two figures, fat and slim, stood by the latrine wall.
'Come on,' Clyde urged Pappy. 'Few more steps.'
Nasty Chobb came running by, wearing an English sailor hat with H.M.S. Ceylon printed on the hand. The shadow-figures detached themselves from the latrine wall and approached. Pappy tripped.
'Robert,' she said. Not a question.
'Hello Pappy,' said the other.
'Who zat,' said Clyde.
Johnny stopped dead and Clyde's momentum carried Pappy round to face her directly. 'I'll be dipped in messhall coffee,' said Johnny.
'Poor Robert.' But she said it gently, and was smiling, and had either Johnny or Clyde been less drunk, they would have bawled like children.
Pappy waggled his arms. 'Go ahead,' he told them, 'I can stand. I'll be along.' From over on the quarterdeck Nasty Chobb was heard arguing with the OOD. 'What you mean go away,' yelled Nasty.
'Your hat says H.M.S. Ceylon, Chobb.'
'So.'
'So what can I say? You're on the wrong ship.'
'Profane,' said Pappy. 'You came back. I thought you would.'
'I didn't,' Profane said. 'But she did.' He went off to wait. Leaned against a latrine wall out of earshot, looking at the Scaffold.
'Hello Paola,' said Pappy. 'Sahha.' It means both.
'You -'
'You -' at the same time. He motioned her to talk.
'Tomorrow,' she said, 'you'll he hung over and probably will think this didn't happen. That the Metro's booze sends visions as well as a big head. But I'm real, and here, and if they restrict you -'
'I can put in a chit.'
'Or send you off to Egypt or anywhere else, it should make no difference. Because I will be back in Norfolk before you, and be there on the pier. Like any other wife. But wait till then to kiss or even touch you.'
'If I can get off?'
'I'll be gone. Let it be this way, Robert.' How tired her face looked, in the white scatter from the brow lights. 'It will be better, and more the way it should have been. You sailed a week after I left you. So a week is all we've lost. All that's gone on since then is only a sea-story. I will sit home in Norfolk, faithful, and spin. Spin a yarn for your coming-home present.'
'I love you,' was all he could find to say. He'd been saying it every night to a steel bulkhead and the earthwide sea on the other side.
White hands flickered up, behind her face. 'Here. In case you think tomorrow it was a dream.' Her hair fell loose. She handed him an ivory comb. Five crucified Limeys - five Kilroys - stared briefly at Valletta's sky till he pocketed it. 'Don't lose it in a poker game. I've had it a long time.'
He nodded. 'We ought to be back early December.'
'You'll get your good-night kiss then.' She smiled, withdrew, turned, was gone.
Pappy ambled on past the latrine without looking back. The American flag, skewered by spotlights, fluttered limp, high over them all. Pappy began his walk to the quarterdeck, across the long brow, hoping he'd be soberer when he reached the other end.
II
Of their dash across the Continent in a stolen Renault; Profane's one-night sojourn in a jail near Genoa, when the police mistook him for an American gangster; the drunk they all threw which began in Liguria and lasted well past Naples; the dropped transmission at the outskirts of that city and the week they spent waiting its repair in a
