The Glory Boys

by Douglas Reeman

  The driver, a Royal Marine, seemed confident, even suggesting his passenger sit ‘up front’ for a better view. Which was just as well, as the rear seats were cluttered with a Thompson submachine-gun, several magazines of ammunition, and the marine’s steel helmet.

  “Just to be on the safe side,” he had remarked cheerfully.

  It was not far to their original mooring place in Grand Harbour, nothing was far in Malta, but it seemed to take forever. And yet, despite the roughly repaired roads and avenues of bombed or abandoned buildings, there were people everywhere. They had no choice: between raids and warnings of raids, life had to go on.

  They passed a group of workmen clearing wreckage, which had half buried a local bus. Two of them waved as they drove by, and the marine responded with a blast of his horn.

  “Don’t know how they put up with it, poor sods!”

  There were several diversions, soldiers putting up new signs, others clearing the way for ambulances.

  “Nearly there, sir.” The marine braked and changed gear, and swore under his breath as he swerved to avoid a jagged hole in the road.

  Kearton leaned forward, steadying himself against the door; he had recognized one of the buildings, or thought he did. It had an elaborate balcony, outwardly unscathed, and he remembered it from that day. The rest was a shambles, gutted houses, their contents piled just clear enough for the car to get through. Brickwork and charred timber, mixed with pathetic pieces of furniture, a doll, a chair with a newspaper wedged against it, as if waiting for someone to return.

  More slowly now, crunching over fresh tyre-tracks; more uniforms at a checkpoint. The road was covered with sand, like a beach.

  All that remained of the triple-sandbagged entrance.

  Like hearing her voice that day. Defiant. I am home.

  “Far as I can manage, sir.”

  Kearton stood beside the car. Had something been trying to warn him?

  The driver added helpfully, “Bit earlier than I thought. You never know, in this place.”

  “Thanks.” He touched his cap. “Maybe you’ll be taking me back.”

  He did not hear him reply.

  He walked past piled debris, his shoe catching on a strand of barbed wire, and more sand.

  A direct hit. Even the smell was the same. London, Portsmouth, Valletta.

  He saw a low wall, massively built, a gate blasted from its hinges. Part of a building still standing, curtains flapping from windows like torn flags.

  “Just a minute! Nobody’s allowed in there!”

  It was the same lieutenant, Garrick’s aide, less smart and composed now, a tear in one sleeve, a strip of plaster across his cheek. But he tried to smile.

  “Damn sorry, sir. You took me by surprise.” He shrugged, and winced. “Been rather busy around the old place!”

  Kearton gripped his hand. It was shaking.

  “I’m glad you’re OK.” He looked at the house; the curtains were suddenly still. “Were there many casualties?”

  The lieutenant was staring around, although his eyes were blank.

  “Some. I’m not too sure.”

  He had had enough. Seen enough, done enough. And Kearton still did not know his name.

  “Ah, here we are, sir!”

  Like turning the clock back. The white coat, the patient smile. Why did they all speak like that?

  The lieutenant said nothing, and was staring at Kearton now as if he were a stranger. Kearton watched them go, the medic still chattering as they picked their way over the rubble.

  Someone else would come looking for him. Nothing had changed. Even if Garrick were to be replaced, or killed, once the wheels were in motion …

  He pushed open a door. It was partly jammed, but he heard nothing fall. There was damage enough, and a shaft of dusty sunlight through part of a wall, which had been a room. Another door, but it was jammed or locked. Had she been here when it happened?

  He heard brakes, another vehicle crunching to a halt. Voices.

  He swung round and stared toward the shaft of sunlight.

  She was standing with her back to the light, her face in shadow. Quite still, as if holding her breath.

  Then she said, “I hoped it was you. Someone said—someone told me as I arrived.” She reached up to push some hair from her eyes. “I was afraid you’d hear about it. That you might worry …”

  He did not know he had moved, but his arms were around here and her face was against his shoulder, and her voice was muffled. “You are here. You came.”

  He felt her shivering. Then she said, “I wasn’t here …” and looked up at him, her eyes filling her face. “I was visiting one of our typists—the sick quarters. It was her birthday. Otherwise—”

  She did not continue.

  He looked past her, at the courtyard garden, half buried under debris which he recognized as part of the roof.

  “Where will you go? Are you going to be all right?”

  His hand was against her belt; he could feel her skin, her breathing.

  She said, “It’s all arranged. It’s not the first time. I was just hoping …” She broke off as his hand touched her spine. “Don’t. Please don’t. Someone might …” She had stepped back slightly, her arms at her sides. “I have to go now. I—needed to know.” And then, desperately, “I’m not making much sense, am I?”

  Another voice.

  “I think he’s in there, sir.”

  She reached up and touched his face, his mouth. “Thank you … Bob.”

  She kissed him, and turned away in one movement.

  “I’ll let you know …”

  She was gone. It seemed as if the car started immediately.

  He strode to the door but another vehicle was already pulling up at the barrier.

  Another lieutenant was waiting to guide him to the appropriate department, above or below ground, but he walked blindly, clinging to those last few seconds. She would recognize the risk, the danger.

  If this meeting had been scheduled to take place at the new moorings, they might never have met again.

  He saw the door marked STAFF OFFICER OPERATIONS. The rest was a dream.

  The meeting was brief and final. Captain Garrick was elsewhere, but had left no room for doubt.

  All three M.T.B.s were required for active duty tomorrow, as stated in his orders. Garrick had even left a pencilled apology “for dragging you halfway across Malta” when he had better things to do.

  A car was arranged for his return journey.

  Afterwards, he wondered why he had not left immediately. She would not have returned to the damaged house so soon. If at all. I’ll let you know. He could still hear her. Feel her. He wanted to laugh it off, dismiss it. Like a young subbie in the throes of his first affair.

  He walked across the scattered sand to the wall, the pots of brilliant geraniums, and tensed as he saw a woman’s shadow stooping and crouching, heard her humming to herself in time with the sweep of a broom.

  She looked up, and grinned when she saw him.

  “I am Maria. Mrs Howard gone away for two or three days.” She shook the broom. “I clear up!” She moved toward the other door, which was now open. No apparent damage here, and a bed with a dustsheet draped over it. Her bed.

  Maria stopped sweeping long enough to call, “You watch your feet, sir! Broken glass!” She carried on with her work, still humming.

  There were fragments of glass neatly piled on a piece of newspaper. Then he saw a picture frame lying in a wastebasket beside a desk, where it might have fallen or been flung by the blast.

  More glass. Something made him hesitate, and then lift the frame into the light.

  A photograph, taken on their wedding day. She was all in white, a wide-brimmed hat held loosely in one hand. Very young, with a smile he had never seen. Lovely. A domed building in the background, probably here in Malta.

  He tilted the frame to look at the man beside her. A soldier, his rank obscured by the angle of the shot, smiling at her, v
ery relaxed. Older than his dark-haired bride, and somehow familiar …

  The frame fell back into the basket amongst the broken glass. The humming and the broom stopped together, and he called out something he never remembered as he walked toward the door.

  He saw the old Wolseley waiting for him, but he knew that if it had not been there he would have kept walking, going nowhere.

  How could he be so certain? The smart, confident army officer or the dishevelled, stinking vagrant they had been told to call Jethro … One and the same?

  To our next rendezvous.

  The driver glanced at him incuriously, and let in the clutch with a jerk.

  “Sounds as if there’s a flap on, sir.”

  The car edged out into the road where men who had been digging at wreckage were throwing their tools into a dust-caked van. Until the next time.

  He turned in his seat to stare back at the house with its demolished roof. The torn curtains had disappeared.

  He felt the car gathering speed.

  It was not a dream. But it was over.

  6

  Don’t Look Back

  TURNBULL STOOD JUST inside the cabin, his cap pressed under one arm, the usual clipboard in his hand.

  “Just wondered if you’ve any last-minute mail to go ashore, sir?”

  He watched Kearton shutting a drawer, then patting his pockets to make sure he had not forgotten anything. Automatic, without thought: he had done the same. Even now, his head was half turned to pick up the familiar sounds and snatches of conversation that merged with the steady vibration of a generator. His boat.

  Kearton smiled. “By the time any mail scrapes past the censors, the war’ll probably be over!”

  Feet thudding overhead, the rasp of a mooring-wire. Spiers was making certain there would be no delays when they were ordered to get under way. A hatch slammed and someone laughed. There was no tension; they seemed impatient to cast off. To get away from the raids and the explosions, when they were helpless onlookers.

  Turnbull said, “I got the new hand settled in, sir. Seems a steady sort of chap.” It sounded like a question.

  Kearton nodded. “Good gunnery rate. He’ll be with the Oerlikons.” Their eyes met. Dead man’s shoes. Nothing would be said; it never was. But it would take time. “Able Seaman York.”

  Turnbull grinned.

  “Yorke, sir.” He shook his clipboard. “With an ‘e’!”

  They both laughed.

  Turnbull heard something and said, “I’m wanted, sir.” He jammed on his cap. “No peace for the wicked!”

  Kearton buttoned his jacket and stared around the cabin, holding on to these last moments of privacy.

  It was still bright enough over the moorings, or had been when he was last on deck. But dusk would be early, and they were leaving in one hour’s time.

  He sat by the little table and tried to see everything at a distance, as if they were all markers on some Admiralty chart. Two destroyers had weighed and left harbour during the forenoon. A routine patrol, and the M.T.B.s would rendezvous with them tomorrow, and if nothing was reported to be on the move they would return to base. He patted his pockets again. It was never that simple.

  He had called a hurried meeting with the other commanding officers, Mostyn of 977, and Stirling the Canadian, of 986. The latter had been forthright about it. “They’re expecting a convoy from Gib. Stands out a mile. Malta’s running out of everything, that’s nothing new. But it’s getting tough for Rommel too, finally. Supplies are vital.”

  Stirling had been in the Mediterranean longer than any of them. Greece, Crete, Tobruk. He had added, “Jerry’ll be wise to the convoy. He’s got a lot of sympathetic eyes watching from Spain—Algeciras. And you can’t hide a bloody convoy!”

  Kearton opened a scuttle and peered at the sky. No clouds, no smoke. Holding its breath …

  He closed the scuttle and screwed down the deadlight. In those few seconds he had smelled the extra fuel which had been brought aboard in drums, as it had on his first passage from Gib. But this was different. The Chief would have to top up his tanks at sea, or cast them adrift at the first hint of trouble. One burst of tracer into a deck-cargo of petrol, and the boat would be an inferno.

  He felt the deck move, the squeak of the hull against rubber. Restless. Eager to be on the move again.

  He got up from the table and hurried to the door. Feet on the ladder, someone almost out of breath. It was Ainslie. He must have run all the way from the pier.

  He saw Kearton.

  “Fast as I could, Skipper!” He gestured behind him. “Just saw him! Heading right here, now!”

  Kearton took his arm and shook it gently.

  “Take it easy, Pilot. We’re all going to need you very soon, so just count to ten and tell me.”

  Ainslie collected himself.

  “Captain Garrick, large as life. No aides, no warning—”

  Kearton shook his arm again. “Let’s go and see what he has to say, shall we?”

  He was surprised that he felt nothing, neither anger nor apprehension. If anything, it was relief.

  Garrick, with Spiers close on his heels, strode past the W/T office and into the cabin. He tossed his cap on to the table and looked sharply around at the others.

  “Just want a brief word with our S.O. Would have come earlier—” He shrugged. “But I’m here now!”

  The door closed and Garrick sat abruptly on a chair, as if a wire had snapped. He looked at the door and said, “Good. Don’t want half the fleet listening in, do we?” He leaned back and pulled a hip flash from a pocket. “Won’t offer you one, Bob, under the circumstances, but I really do need it.”

  Kearton put a glass quietly on the table, and saw it half filled from the flask. Scotch, by the smell of it, and not the first one.

  Garrick saw his eyes and poured another.

  “R.H.I.P., Bob!”

  Rank Hath Its Privileges. Rarely heard in Coastal Forces, unless used with contempt.

  Garrick looked up as something thudded on the deck above him.

  “I keep ramming it home. We need more boats like this one, with range and firepower, even if they’re not as fast as we’d like.” He pushed the empty glass away. “The Chief of Staff was a good listener, I’ll give him that. But by the time he’s spilled everything to his lord and master, my troubles will have gone to the bottom of the pile!”

  Kearton thought of the men on deck, Spiers and Ainslie. They had all seen Garrick come aboard. Laidlaw and his team of mechanics would also know. This was no time for doubt, uncertainty.

  “Is it still on, sir?”

  Garrick looked at him, perhaps surprised, but concealed it. He leaned on one elbow and grinned.

  “I asked for that!” He was fumbling in a breast pocket. “It’s still on, very much so.”

  He had taken out his cigarette lighter, and clicked it deliberately. “The way things are going, I’ll be hard put to fill this soon.”

  “Are we getting more boats, sir?”

  Garrick looked away, as though listening to something.

  “They’re coming, eventually. As I told C.O.S., so is Christmas!”

  He smoked in silence for a minute, and when he spoke again his voice was calmer, almost relaxed.

  “Convoys are vital, especially here, more especially now. Axis forces in North Africa are on the defensive. In a few months they’ll have their backs to the sea, or be trying to cross it. Their supply line is an artery, and Malta, more than ever, is like a poised dagger. Battered, bloody, and defiant—it’s a pity some of their lordships can’t see that and act on it!” He was on his feet. “I was a lad at Jutland. I hope I learned something from it. I sometimes wonder …”

  He tugged down the front of his jacket and flicked something from his sleeve.

  “I think the enemy will have a plan to stop or divert this convoy. Probably mines. Just the hint of a new minefield is enough to stop things moving. Malta’s been through it several times. The mine is cheap
, the torpedo is not, and it’s a menace long after it’s dropped.” He looked down at his cap on the table. “The enemy is working on a new type of mine, to be fitted with a cutting device. If it can be perfected, it will sever the sweep as it cuts the mine adrift. One mine, one sweeper: not acceptable odds on any scoreboard.” He looked at Kearton keenly. “In Special Operations we’ve kept our ears and eyes wide open.” He half-turned, still listening. “I must be on my way. Would have come earlier, as I tried to explain to your young pilot.” He was reaching for the door. “I’ll do all I can.” He stepped over the coaming and paused when he saw Leading Seaman Dawson.

  “They’ve not enticed you back into the boxing-ring yet, Dawson? Our loss, but their gain if you go.” They laughed; Dawson wheezed something in reply, but Garrick had already walked to the ladder. “I’ll see myself over the side, Bob.”

  He paused on the second step and looked down, framed against the dying sunlight.

  “It’s … important.”

  Kearton went back to the cabin and stood for a few minutes, waiting for the boat to settle down again. No ceremonial, no bullshit. He pulled open the drawer and reached for his repaired pipe. Beside it was the little package, the clean handkerchief.

  Not perfect, I’m afraid. Best I could do.

  The tannoy squeaked into life.

  “All hands! Hands fall in for leaving harbour!”

  Just as suddenly, it was quiet again. He picked up his binoculars and slung them around his neck. The generator had stopped. He should be used to this moment, but they would all be watching him, trying to read something in his face, in his manner, that might reassure them.

  He hesitated at the door. The desk drawer was still open.

  He picked up the little package and folded it before slipping it into his pocket.

  Feet skidded to a halt.

  “Standing by on deck, sir!”

  He closed the drawer, and walked out of the cabin.

  “Thanks. Let’s go!”

  Lieutenant Toby Ainslie pressed his fist against his mouth to smother the yawn. It was infectious: if you gave into it, everybody would be yawning his head off.