Free A Bridge Of Magpies by Geoffrey Jenkins Page A

Instead, she occupied herself with studying the ship's side, trying to find a way in. Finally we located one and slipped and scrambled up on to the deck. It was a grim spectacle. Looters and strippers had picked the place clean. Green slime clung to a lot of the metal 'tween-decks and the stairways were dangerous.
    'What are you searching for, Junta?'
    'My mother's cabin.'
    `Number?'
    'I don't know. The most I could discover was that it was among the single accommodation on the starboard side.' `
    Single? How's that?'
    'She wasn't married.'
    'I see.'
    'You don't. But you're too polite to pry.'
    It was wartime.'
    `Wartime: Her voice took on an edge. 'If you only knew how that fogs everything I That simple question you asked about her cabin–you can't begin to guess the involvements it took to get the simple answer:
    'Jutta, what do you hope to find in your mother's cabin?'
    62
    She side-stepped my question. Instead she said, 'here's a passageway. It might lead to the cabins.'
    It did, but it was wet and half-dark. The liner had taken the torpedoes on her port side and probably all the passengers on the opposite side, where we now were, had got away safely. If they'd left anything behind in their flight, the looters had taken it. Every cabin was a bare steel shell. Coffin seemed a better description.
    I sniffed. 'Seals! Whew!'
    We explored until it was impossible to go farther because the 'tween-decks had collapsed. Jutta was very withdrawn when we found nothing.
    We retraced our steps to the bridge. It had shared the fate of the cabins. All the instruments, even the wheel, were missing. We had a wonderful view of the Bridge of Magpies, which seemed close enough to reach out and touch. The pillars on which the twin legs of the arch rested were striated by the weather–like the engine of a giant motor-cycle. At its highest point the structure narrowed to a mere couple of feet thick, which gave the whole thing an airy lightness. We shared the scene and the silence. It was companionable and felt good. Maybe what we were sharing was something more indefinable, more basic,
    'Why magpies?' I asked.
    'Not a clue. The name bad the American code-breakers stumped, too.'
    'Please, teacher!'
    We laughed at and with one another.
    'Do I sound as bad as that?'
    'Professor!'
    'It's all back there amongst my things: everything about U-160's mission.'
    'Mission?'
    'You heard the tape. It wasn't an operational cruise,' '
    There was enough shooting.'
    'Nevertheless, it wasn't. The first buzz of it emerged when Pearl Harbour intercepted a Japanese Fleet message to U-boat Headquarters. Those code-breaker boys were hot stuff, real super-stars at their job, but the name Bridge of Magpies had them beat. As a result the signal got shelved. It should have been passed on to the British because these waters were in the Royal Navy's sphere of operations; but it never was.'
    63
    `What's at the back of all this sleuthing of yours-Jutta?'
    You could almost hear the barrier clang down between us! I wasn't so far along with her as I'd imagined.
    She said shortly, `To do with–my mother.'
    `Whom you never knew. That's a load of filial piety, Jutta.'
    `Please don't needle me, Struan. You've been very sweet and considerate bringing me here. Don't spoil it now.'
    'Would it spoil it to tell you I've suddenly thought of something?'
    'About my mother?'
    'It's what you want, isn't it?'
    'Yes ... no.' Her eyes–sea-green as deep water –had been on my face, but now she looked away. 'Tell me. The moment's gone, anyway.'
    I put my hand on her shoulder. Irrelevantly, I thought: Gigi must just be about opening the jetty bar now. That careless bit of breast that aJways showed. I wondered what Jutta's breasts were like. There was almost no shape to her because of' the suede jacket
    'Breekbout–that's my Man Friday–told me yesterday that there's an old graveyard back of the beach in the sandhills. Maybe your mother's buried there.'
    Her reaction wasn't what I'd expected.