Cold Truth

by Richard Woodman

  Tomkins and Crichton both bent over the Official Log Book and I witnessed both signatures. The deed was done.

  ‘Thank you Patrick,’ Tomkins said looking up at the Chief Engineer. ‘Mr Jones, will you be good enough to raise steam. We’ll need your engines to clear the land. I think that it is time we all went home.’

  I wish I could say that the story ended there but, of course, it didn’t. Neither Hardacre nor Sykes were to be so easily placated and, as it turned out, Dr Patrick Crichton had his own agenda. We cleared the ice, our ensign at half-mast until we had buried Jimmie Dell. Thereafter the mood of the ship’s company lifted a little, as it always does when homeward bound, even if that did mean probable unemployment; first there would be a pay-off and money in hand – that was the way of things.

  Anyway, we were two days into our homeward passage, bowling along under easy sail somewhere off Edgeøya, the boilers banked at two hours’ notice when, at dinner that night, the Doc came into the wardroom and announced that Hanslip had taken a turn for the worse.

  ‘He has developed a high fever and I am not optimistic,’ he said shortly, ‘Despite my best efforts, his wound is infected. He sat down and pulled his serviette from its ring.

  Being now the Alert’s Chief Mate I was on my way up to the bridge at four the following morning and paused outside Hanslip’s cabin. After Dell’s death we had moved him back into the Master’s accommodation and I could hear him muttering deliriously. We had removed the seaman from guard-duty so I opened the door and stuck my head inside, just to see if all was well, or as well as it could be. Crichton was beside him and he was administering something by intravenous injection. The Doc realised I had popped my head into the cabin and turned towards me. He seemed startled to see me but that was not altogether surprising. Anyway, he shook his head as if to say Hanslip was a bad way and I assumed he was giving Hanslip an analgesic but from the sequel I am now all but certain that it was a lethal dose for at 06.00 Tomkins, now our Commander, of course, came up on the bridge and told me that Crichton had told him that Hanslip was dead.

  I didn’t make any connection between the two events except that Crichton failed to join us at breakfast that morning. Nor was he at lunch or dinner. I asked Alan if he was all right.

  ‘He’s upset,’ Alan explained, ‘very upset. He’s lost two patients, one of them being the man whom he was supposed to nurture through thick and thin. At his request I’ve had him served his meals in his cabin.’

  I didn’t think to connect Crichton’s conduct that morning with anything sinister, simply because at that time I was not suspicious but a few nights later – I say nights because we had crossed the Arctic Circle and there were a few hours when it grew darker than we had become accustomed to – Crichton began to mess with us again and the following night, at dinner, Hardacre and Sykes kicked-off in the ward-room. They must have been stewing for days but they made it quite clear that they intended to repudiate any sort of obligation Tomkins or I had laid them under, and told Crichton to his face.

  Now you have to understand that, like David Manners, our Sparkie, I was on watch at the time, while Tomkins had not yet gone into the ward-room for dinner, so I only had this second hand but it was played out in front of Nat Gardner, Owen Jones, Second Engineer Rayne, and the three Boffins: Maddox, Cronshaw and Doughty. Perhaps the absence of Tomkins emboldened the two newspaper men. Anyway, without uttering a word, Crichton apparently rose from the table and withdrew into his cabin, shutting the sliding door with a click so that Nat thought he had locked himself in.

  ‘That’s told him,’ Hardacre said with what Nat thought of as ‘gloating satisfaction,’ looking round the table and announcing that: ‘you bastards are not going to get away with this just to protect a drunken skipper…’

  ‘You should watch your tongue,’ Nat apparently warned Hardacre.

  ‘And you can shut your fucking mouth,’ Hardacre snapped, at which point Crichton’s cabin door flew back, he levelled a revolver at Hardacre and shot him in the head. According to Nat, as Hardacre crashed backwards all hell broke loose. Crichton fired next at Sykes and then, to quote Nat, ‘he again withdrew into his cabin, slammed the door and blew out his own brains.’

  The noise of the gun-shots, screams of the victims and shouts of the others, conjoined with the clatter of crockery and cutlery falling to the deck, brought Tomkins out of his cabin, where, it transpired, he had fallen asleep and left the quartermaster and myself on the bridge in a lather of curiosity and insecurity… In the end I went below to where Nat was trying his best to save Sykes, I think it was.

  That’s it, really. We brought the little barque home and the crew were all paid off, most of them cursing the voyage, the ship and, most likely, the whole sorry enterprise. I have no idea what happened to the scientific staff beyond that vague memory of some sort of scientific paper, but The Courier carried a short piece about the expedition being aborted owing to the mental distress of the Doctor who had taken the lives ‘of several of the ship’s company’. It made no waves because your father had a bigger news story to cover; the depression that had infected shipping had just got worse; there was a serious strike by British merchant seamen already in progress Down Under and then the General Strike was upon us to claim all the headlines. As for the clairvoyant rubbish, well, as you well know, general interest in such things evaporated and shortly after matters went from bad to worse with the Wall Street Crash, some sealers discovered the secret of Kvitøya, the White Island, in 1930, I think.

  *

  ‘You know the rest,’ he said, sitting back in his chair and lighting another cigarette. All-in-all, it was a bit of a bloody shambles.’

  He smiled wanly at her as she closed her notebook and looked up at him. He was hoarse with talking, but it seemed to her that he had the face of a man younger than he had been upon their first encounter. Was it only five nights ago? It seemed far longer.

  ‘Well, thank you for your candour,’ she said. ‘You have been very helpful and my father will be most grateful to you.’

  He shrugged and, for the first time, smiled at her properly. It revealed again that deeply concealed kindness, wiping away the cynicism and the hurt and the war-weariness.

  ‘Truth to tell, Lizzie,’ he said, using her name for the very first time and drawing on his cigarette as he leaned forward towards her in a posture of sudden intimacy, ‘relating all this in your company has done me good. Taken my mind off other things and stopped me brooding. I’m grateful for that.

  ‘You were something of a misanthrope,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘I’m sure I was…’

  ‘I think that you ought to know that Hal Hanslip, as he was known, was actually my father’s half-brother. Doctor Crichton was also a relative, my mother’s cousin.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ he said, leaning back in his chair nodding. So Southmoore had given his alcoholic half-brother a chance and the wretched fellow had blown it. ‘And do you know quite why…?

  ‘Why what he saw in that tent brought on the final fit of insanity, and why he had taken to drink in the first place? Yes, I do.’ Her face grew clouded and for the first time he saw the sensitive woman that lay beneath the tough façade of the reporter. With a sudden pang she reminded him again of Moira.

  ‘Will you tell me?’ he asked softly.

  She nodded, lifting up her empty glass, which he refilled.

  ‘You recall he was involved in the Allied Intervention in Northern Russia in 1919? Well, he had some dealings ashore, in charge of a naval party in Archangel where he met a young Russian woman. You will not need me to tell you that we, and particularly the Scots shipping and mercantile houses, did a lot of business with North Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution. He had a letter of introduction from a cousin in the trade to a merchant in Archangel and by this contact formed a liaison with a young woman named Alexandrovna. During the terrible and turbulent months that followed, they lost touch, then Uncle Hal got ashore again towards the end of the Intervent
ion and went in search of her. I gather he overstayed his leave and would have been cashiered had he not escaped…’

  ‘He was captured by the Bolsheviks?’

  She nodded. ‘He got cut off, then found himself with a small group of White Russians, mostly dispossessed men who had lost everything except their hunting rifles. Uncle Hal was with them in a desperate last stand as the Bolsheviks smoked them out of a barn and then fought them in four days of pursuit through the forest. They were all shot, except him, his British naval uniform saving him and eventually he was exchanged, but by that time he had almost lost his mind and was more of an embarrassment to the Bolsheviks who didn’t want a major incident just as the Allies were pulling out of North Russia and abandoning the Whites…’

  ‘I’m not surprised, having been to Uncle Joe’s Workers’ Paradise,’ he interjected. ‘But there’s more, isn’t there?’

  ‘Yes. What turned him into an alcoholic was, quite by chance when retreating through the forest, finding Alexandrovna…’ she paused, then shuddered, adding, ‘or what was left of her…’

  ‘Just like the Swedes?’

  She nodded. ‘Whether it was dogs, wolves or, as he maintained, hungry humans…’ She went no further for it was not necessary to do so. The grisly image hung between them as they stared at each other, then she shook her head and he emptied the bottle into their glasses.

  ‘What a fucking world,’ he murmured half to himself.

  She took a long drink and then said, brightly, ‘Changing the subject, I gather congratulations are in order.’

  He frowned, drawing himself away from her, suddenly the angry man she had first met. ‘How the hell…?’

  She laid her right hand on his left arm as he ground out the cigarette in the ashtray that lay between them. ‘I somewhat misled you on our first meeting. I do have a spy in Uncle Max’s den,’ she said coolly, ‘a school-friend in the Wrens… She works at Derby House.’’

  ‘Christ on a bike!’

  It was as though the revelation about Hanslip and the fact that she knew all about his personal news returned them to the exact point of their first encounter. This lasted for no more than a few seconds, as their lives drew apart again.

  ‘Anyway, it’s in the Gazette, so congratulations, Commander,’ she said, laying heavy emphasis on his new rank. ‘You might as well look pleased. Promotion and a decoration. And both well deserved.’

  He shrugged. ‘Well, the promotion, perhaps, but one doesn’t kill U-boats on one’s own, there’s my whole ship’s company…without them I’m just a stuffed shirt…’ He forbore saying that he had now reached the elevated status of her Uncle Hal. ‘What are you laughing about?’ he asked.

  ‘You must be the first naval officer to admit that. Isn’t the usual line: “I got the gong on behalf of you all?” ’ She finished the sentence with a put-on pompous male voice.

  It was his turn to laugh as he relaxed again.

  They found themselves suddenly tongue-tied and staring at each other, their hands close on the napery. Then, without moving, he seemed to retreat inside himself again, his eyes no longer focussed upon her face but, still staring at her, gazing at something far beyond her. She flushed and said quietly:

  ‘It would be nice if we could do this again, in different circumstances.’

  He frowned and looked at her again. ‘I’m sorry, what did you say? I was miles away.’

  ‘I said it would be nice if we could do this again, in different circumstances… Have dinner together…’

  ‘Oh. Yes…yes, it would, but…’ He hesitated, as if making to say more than merely shook his head.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I can’t,’ he said simply, ‘Not that I don’t want to, but I simply can’t, Lizzie, not until this bloody war is over, and God alone knows when that might be, or whether we will both live to see an end to it…or what that end might be…’

  They sat staring at each other for some minutes, then she sniffed and nodded, raising her near emptied glass, said thickly, ‘To the end of the war then.’

  He smiled, his eyes suddenly compassionate and moved by the tears in hers. ‘Yes. To the end of the war.’

  The chink of their glasses was drowned as the air-raid sirens began to sound their dismal alarm.

  Out in the darkened street full of hurrying people he held out his hand. ‘To the end of the war,’ he said again and she repeated the mantra. Then they parted only for him to turn back, an instant later and call: ‘Lizzie!’

  She had almost disappeared in the crowd but she turned and he closed the distance between them. ‘It has just come to me,’ he said smiling sadly.

  ‘What has?’ she asked almost gaily, he thought afterwards, as if glad that their parting had been delayed.

  ‘The name of the Alert’s Bosun,’ he replied with a chuckle.

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Tucker,’ he said, ‘Thomas Tucker. How on earth could a seaman forget a name like that, eh?’

  LONDON, MAY 1945.

  He emerged from the station into full daylight; the dark bulk of the Euston arch rose against the sky and he stopped, blinking with exhaustion. He had slept fitfully on the train, just as he had slept fitfully for the last five and a half years, unable now to break the habit of what seemed a lifetime – yet was not.

  He felt himself sway like a drunk and made the effort to steady himself. What in God’s name was he doing here in London, but chasing some chimera? A crazy Quixotic notion, conceived in the heady hour of victory when the triumphant young officers attending the wardroom party to which he had, by convention, been invited, asked him ‘what shall you do now, sir?’

  It was a moot point. Most of them were reservists of one sort or another, eager to get back to their interrupted careers; he could only shrug, smile graciously and respond ‘go back to sea, I suppose,’ swapping the command of one of His Majesty’s frigates for perhaps a Chief Officer’s job on a cargo-liner whence he had come.

  But the bone weariness would have to be overcome first, for he did not believe he could function without proper rest. He had seen enough men crack during the struggle for supremacy in the North Atlantic, the years of unrelenting toil, of having to win not once, but twice after the enemy revived the struggle with new advanced technologies in the autumn of forty-three after almost six months of what seemed the palm of victory having been awarded to the Allied cause.

  So why come to London? True his childhood home had been in its outer suburbs, but that had all gone now, swept away by war, his parents dead, the old house sold. After the death of Moira and her unborn child in the wild, ‘friendly-fire’ bombing in West Hendon, he had reverted to being the itinerant seafarer, as he had been when in the Merchant Service, a man bound to his ship, never the shore. The shore was for playing upon, for brief, heady interludes of whatever madness one could afford; a fling; a binge; sometimes – but rarely - a real holiday. And then the war had come and as a reservist he had been called to the colours and quickly been appointed to command a corvette. The rusty little war-bucket Nemesia had sunk a U-boat and earned Lieutenant Commander Edward Adams a DSC and promotion to Commander. The brass hat came with a brand new frigate and command of an escort group which had bagged two more U-boats and added a bar to his decoration. There had been wardroom parties, congratulations, even a visit from the Commander-in-Chief, Western Approaches, Admiral Horton himself, but all that was over. The frigate lay in dry-dock being prepared for service in the Far East, his own future in her uncertain. All that was certain was that he had three weeks leave ahead of him before he must give her another thought.

  So what could he think about? All the conscious wisdom of his age and experience told him to rest. He had fantasised about withdrawing into the country, Cheshire somewhere, or North Wales, the fastness of Snowdonia – anywhere away from the smell of hot oil, steam, rust, and the noise of the sea, or a ship-yard, or even the banal chatter of a wardroom where he felt he might at any moment slap the cheery red faces of young
naval officers wallowing in excessive amounts of gin to toast the defeat of Germany. They had done him proud, though, a wonderful troop of amateurs-turned-sea-warriors. The only person requiring a slap was himself; get yourself away from all this before you add to the number of men broken by the battle for the Atlantic, for already it was clear that the great conflict of the Western Ocean would sink under the glamorous supremacy of other theatres, better comprehended by the British public. The Spitfire was the war’s icon, along with the Brylcream boys who flew it, that much was clear now. What - it would soon be asked – was a corvette? And what did the Merchant Navy do in the war; and what was it anyway?

  All these bitter convictions had seeped into his soul but he could not quite drown them in liquor as others did, nor fuck his wits into stupidity, not after Moira. And so, a week after VE-Day, he had donned a civvie suit and followed his own foot-steps to Lime Street station to board a train for London.

  Now he stood blinking in the morning light, staring up at the great arch and asked himself ‘where now?’

  But, of course he knew. It was a long and very foolish shot that he was taking and the next thing to be decided was how to take it. He watched a bus move east along the Euston Road, shook his head at the soliciting cabbie at the head of the taxi rank and made to walk along the road towards King’s Cross and a small hotel he had occasionally used. Here he dumped his hold-all and secured a basic breakfast of tea and toast and sat alone reading the proffered copy of that morning’s The Courier.

  There was no point in jumping straight in and making a fool of himself, he had not seen or heard of her since… he could not recall when exactly it was, not without a mental effort that he was beyond making just then. Had it been March or April of forty-three? He hoped The Courier would yield him its oracle’s response. But he found he could not read it; the print wavered before his tired eyes and he crushed the broadsheet in his lap and leaned back in his uncomfortable chair.

  ‘You alright?’ a voice asked, and he looked up at the waitress, a dowdy woman who wore the war years as badly as did he.