Cold is the Sea Read Free

awareness now. Aconscious effort had been needed to put the awakened memories out of his mind, and he had not succeeded well.
    â€œNo,” he said, answering Laura’s question with the lie direct. He rationalized it by thinking he had no idea what Joan’s status was in Admiral Brighting’s group. But he was vaguely conscious of another motive, its essence glimmering at the fringe of conscious awareness.
    Joan had been out of his life since the war. He had made a decision then; so had she. It had been the right decision, difficult at the time because so abrupt and final, but for him it had not been hard to live with. Perhaps this was partly because the Navy moved one around so much anyway. That had been all right for him, but sometimes he had wondered about her. She had always seemed so self-contained, so undemanding. There had always been a private quality about her, some secret invulnerability. During the period of their intimacy she had somehow avoided telling him much about her background, what she had been doing before he knew her, what she was doing at the time. Then the war ended, and they parted. He would have liked to maintain some sort of contact with her, despite his approaching marriage to Laura—as one did with good friends in the Navy—but he could not think of anything but the wrong reasons for doing so. By consequence, he never had really tried. Neither had she.
    Like so much that had happened during those strenuous, halcyon years, Joan, too, had receded into the never-never land. He knew her well enough to realize that was the way she wanted it. She had given him his freedom, and claimed the same for herself. Now, fifteen years later, she was back. But was she? Did he dare ask her to reenter his life, even in a small way?

2
    D espite Laura’s misgivings about the lack of an intermediary, her suggestion had been a good one. For all Rich knew, Admiral Brighting had been expecting the request for a second interview. His offices were located in a separate, guarded, brick-and-concrete structure behind the “Main Navy” building dating from World War I. Now the sharp-featured, hawk-nosed, wizened little admiral peered across his book-and-paper-cluttered desk at Richardson. His eyes were mild, expressionless, slightly faded. He had been reading, but no glasses were in evidence. As previously, he was dressed in civilian shirt, tie and trousers. His jacket was hanging nearby. Two months ago, Richardson had come in uniform for his first interview, but today he had decided to match the admiral’s habitual attire. No one, however, had invited him to remove his jacket. The room was warm. The ancient air-conditioning unit in the window behind Brighting was whirring, blowing an ineffectual amount of humid, slightly cooled air toward him.
    â€œHello, Richardson. What do you want to see me about?” Itwas hardly an auspicious beginning. Admiral Brighting spoke in a monotone, barely loudly enough for Rich to hear him. He had the reputation of wasting no time in conversation, and in this he was running true to form. His eyes returned to the loose-leaf binder filled with pink flimsies from which he had been reading.
    Richardson had carefully thought over how he would broach the subject of his visit, had decided to try as well as he could to fit the admiral’s mood, whatever it might be; but he was already totally disarmed. His straight-backed wooden chair was as uncomfortable as it had been the first time, and he had long known the story about its front legs having been slightly shortened. Probably this was not true, but nevertheless it held him at an odd angle, and there seemed a tendency to slip forward. Determinedly, he planted both feet in front of him.
    How to begin? “I came to try to convince you to reconsider, sir,” he said. “I want very much to go to nuclear power school.”
    â€œDo you think just asking me will get you what you want?” Admiral