by Louise Welsh
At 23.00 we saw the black, low shape of Z. We were much closer than I had expected, and on the wrong side. So we altered course for a while and rode more easily with the sea astern. Z. having been put in its right place, we continued on our way. The spray, which was being whipped off the water, was getting hellish. Shortly before midnight we were in the narrow waters that divide K. from Z. Here, considering we were almost hemmed in by islands, we expected to find some abatement. There was none. The lightning broke out in a vivid pink flash and we saw clearly, for the first time, exactly how enormous the waves were. It seemed odd that they should race at this size into this almost protected area. What I had not realised was the deterioration of the weather outside the islands. Within the past half hour, on the weather side of Z., which was in fact offering us stout protection, had begun the greatest storm in living memory in these stormy parts. The Peter was increasingly difficult to handle, her bow continuously swinging away from the wind, and she wouldn’t answer to the helm even when hard over. To turn her into those giant waves and that roaring wind we had to go full ahead on the engines, which nearly shook her to pieces, or play one engine off against the other, putting the outboard full ahead and the inboard half astern. The spray took the form of a rushing mist, which, seen in the lightning, had all the qualities of a nightmare. We wallowed down past K. bay. No bonfires. No red lanterns – though if they had lit twenty we should never have seen them. In any case, we could never have reached the jetty. The sea was tumbling from all sides, and I heard later the jetty had been carried away. Mercilessly our stern was lifted thirty feet in the air and then our bows, thirty feet in the air into this pink, hail-like mist, and then we were dropped with a sickening thud. To have used oil would have been sensible, but the movement of the ship was so violent it was impossible for a man to shift his position. To have gone on deck was certain death; where you were you stayed, holding on for very life.
We turned back. So far as any direction was possible we headed towards the south-west. I had no desire on arriving back at the far coast, to find myself on the wrong side of the front line of battle. The ship could not be steered in any sense of the word. All we could do was to try keep the heavy seas on the port bow. I must say the Peter rode them magnificently.
A few minutes after midnight there was a sound like a muffled pistol-shot heard above the deafening roar. I didn’t see it go, but it was the wireless mast.
At about 2 A.M. there began a curious phenomenon. There were four of us on the bridge – Jimmy, the signalman Douglas, a lookout nicknamed Hopeless, and myself. We were all drenched to the skin and exhausted by the violence of our beating from the wind. We huddled together, clutching at the sides of the bridge. It was impossible to speak, for even if we bawled the wind, now tearing past us at a hundred miles an hour, laden with stinging salt water, wrenched the sound away from our lips and drowned it in a howl. But Hopeless managed, after a couple of attempts, to make some words heard. “CAN YOU SEE? IS – IT – SPIRITS?” He was obviously upset about something. He couldn’t let go to point, but it wasn’t necessary, for we saw for ourselves. Creeping along the gunwale, starting from the bows, were ripples of bright blue light. In a minute they reached the bridge and crept under our fingers. Then the stump of the mast was ringed with blue – then every wire, every rope, all the edges of everything, including the hoods of our duffel coats, our fingernails, the tops of our sea-boots. The light varied in thickness from the tenth of an inch to the breadth of a thumb, but all was of equal brilliance, a vivid blue, and seemed to move to and fro as if alive. For two hours we battled on, bristling with blue light, fascinated, entranced by its prettiness, and each of us hardly daring to wonder how the night would end. Before dawn the light receded.
The dawn came very late that morning. Jimmy managed to say “Happy New Year!” in my ear. The dawn was more terrible than the night, for the waves were thirty feet and over, and we could see each one completely and calculate its danger. They were a dirty yellow in colour, where they weren’t white, as if they were scooping up the seabed. Some of them assumed fantastic toppling shapes, tapering up to narrow ribands of water through which we could see the wave behind; then the tops would be blown clean off, like eggs cut with a knife, and a solid mass of water would disappear in streaks in the air. Part of the port gunwale was smashed and washed away. At ten to eight we sighted a rocky island, tow hundred yards ahead. We saw it for the second we were balanced on top of a wave. We didn’t get another opportunity, for it was hidden by walls of water. That island rises to twenty feet above sea level. It is about a quarter of a mile in circumference and uninhabited. From our perch on the top of the wave we saw the whole island was awash and at the northern end submerged. From that glimpse I was able to ascertain our position. We had been blown twenty-six miles north of our rough course during the night. I turned the ship head on into the sea. On a calm day the Peter could knock up fourteen knots. Her speed of advance into this sea, flat out, was half a knot.
Throughout the day we maintained the same speed – half a knot. The four of us clung together, in the same position we had been in all the time. I bawled down the voice-pipe to the coxswain, asking him if he was all right. “Fine!” came the reply, and I think I heard whistling. We all longed for something to drink, but it was out of the question. Every man in the ship was pinned to his position. How the lads in the engine-room, in that sickly smell of hot oil, stood it out I shall never know.
I cannot remember when we began to pray. When we realised, I think, that at this speed we had no hope of shelter that night, and a very good chance three or four times a minute of capsizing or being pounded to pieces. When we saw the rocky island awash, I was aware that Douglas, crouched against me, had released his hand for a moment to cross himself. That, I think, set us all – anyway, those of us on the bridge – saying the Our Father. We mingled our muttered prayers with attempts at rather bawdy music-hall songs, not in defiance of God, but to relieve our minds of the strain. By the afternoon our faces were sodden with water, puffy and raw. Our eyes were ghastly to look at and painful to keep open. One at a time we probably dropped asleep, to awake thirty seconds later wondering how many hours had gone by. So we stayed there, having no alternative. At six o’clock I tried to sing “For those in peril on the sea” – and then it occurred to me to exorcise the ship. How silly and inexplicable that sounds! I am almost ashamed to write it. I wriggled round to face the after part of the ship, which included the cabin where I had experienced that evil thing. Jimmy and Douglas clasped me round the chest while I raised my right hand, making the sign of the cross. “In the name of Jesus Christ, leave us!” I said. Poor Hopeless! That depressed him more than anything. He began to cry.
The next morning we were weak and bitterly cold. The waves were of the same menacing height and ferocity, but the wind had dropped, probably to about eighty miles an hour. And we had lost our fear. We were all convinced we would die during the day. Shortly after noon we passed very close to the battered overturned hulk of a schooner. We could make out the name, Topaz. Subsequently we learnt that every one of those twelve that had sailed up the coast had been lost with all hands. On shore aircraft had been overturned by the wind on the airfields, gun emplacements on harbour walls had been washed away, with their gun crews, and in one well-protected harbour six sailors had been drowned. Giant waves rolled up the coast, in some cases running inland for two or three hundred yards.
Visibility was as bad as ever, but something about the sea suggested we were close to land. At 15.30 the engines, overheated, failed. We were drifting hopelessly. We were all resigned. The only anxiety of which I was conscious was the fact that Able Seaman Broadstairs couldn’t swim. We all knew swimming would be of no help, but it seemed bad that he had never learnt to swim. I remember thinking, “I wish I couldn’t swim, because that will make it worse. I shall struggle for life.” It was on such lines that I tried to comfort myself about Broadstairs.
It began to get dusk. Jimmy said, �
�Christ! Not another night! I couldn’t!” The waves were now of a tumbling, clumsy, falling-on-top-of-each-other nature. At 17.15 we grounded, twenty yards from a rocky beach. The sea was on the beam. “Abandon ship!” I yelled. One carley float was loosed by Hopeless. It somersaulted towards the shore before anyone could grab the line that held it. Then a gigantic wave, which made the others appear ripples, picked us up and carried us right inshore, flinging us on the rocks. We heard a splitting sound. The four of us on the bridge clambered down. The Peter was lying on her side, at an angle of thirty degrees, precariously balanced. She was still surrounded by heavy surf. It was then that Stoker White came out in his true colours. He girded himself with a rope and flung himself into the filthy yellow water. It looked suicidal – but he reached the shore and lay there – a large, fat, exhausted, panting creature – a link between us and safety. “Come on, you sons of she-devils!” he croaked. “Come on, sonny!”. This last to Broadstairs. Broadstairs, grinning, caught hold of the rope and sprang from the ship’s side. He slipped, fell, cracked his skull and broke his back. He didn’t make any noise. The surf washed him away. The others wasted no time. One by one, orderly, silently, they got ashore. Jimmy was next to last. Then my turn came. I was scared, and put off the moment, though I knew to do so was taking a far greater risk than swinging on the rope. I crawled along to the cabin. Everything was broken, upside down, ruined – as if that evil presence had sought revenge on harmless, inanimate objects, the friendly possessions of a man. I have always had some decent books on board. I couldn’t resist snatching one up from the deck, where it had fallen, splayed out. In drawing-room games of Desert Island Books I had always chosen the most rewarding to spend the rest of my life with – the Bible, Shakespeare, Dickens, Milton, and so on. I rejected them all at this moment and took a cheap thriller I hadn’t read. That, and my diary. I stepped out on deck. The crew were all halloaing me. Managed the rope easily. So there we all were. That is, all of us except Broadstairs. We recovered his body next day, terribly battered. It was difficult getting the rings off his fingers. We sent them to his mother.
The Peter slipped on her side, rolled over, and split in two. We were five miles behind the Allied lines. Good.
One thing we all understood, each in his different way. Everyone of us had been purged of a pet vice or special fear.
IS THERE A LIFE BEYOND THE GRAVY?
Stevie Smith
Florence Margaret Smith (1902–1971) was nicknamed Stevie after the jockey, Stevie Donoghue. Her father joined the merchant navy when Smith was four and soon after she was sent to a sanatorium to be treated for tuberculosis. It was during her stay there that she first contemplated suicide. After university she worked as a secretary. The 1950s were a difficult period for Smith, but she embraced – and was embraced by – the Beat culture of the 1960s. She was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1969.
It was a wonderfully sunny day; the willowherb waved in the ruins and the white fluff fell like snow. But alas – Celia glanced at the blue-faced clock in the Ministry tower – it was eleven o’clock.
She shook herself free of the rubble and stood up. The white earth fell from her hair and clothes.
“Are you all right?” said her cousin Casivalaunus, who was standing looking at her.
“Oh yes, thank you so much. Oh, hallo, Cas.”
“Hallo, Celia. Well, I’ll be off. See you at Uncle Heber’s.”
Celia took hold of her cousin’s arm and hung on like grim death.
“You’re sure you’re all right?” said Cas, flicking at the white fluff with his service gloves. “I say, would you mind letting go of my arm?”
“So long, Cas.”
“So long, Celia. You’ll soon get accustomed to it.”
He saluted, and walking quickly with elegant long strides made off down an avenue lined with broken pillars.
Celia leaped over the waterpipes that lay in the gutter and tore across the garden in the middle of the square. This was a short cut to the Ministry. She was already an hour late, but she thought it was a good thing to take the short cut, and very important to run.
“How do you do, Browser?” she called out, as she ran past the porter and up the stairs.
“Same as usual, miss,” said the porter with a wink.
Well, it was much the same really; for one thing Celia had never in her life been early.
“You’ve never in your lifetime been early.” Browser’s parting shot (what a very carrying voice he had to be sure) followed her up the stairs and across the threshold of her room.
Tiny was standing over by the window squashing flies on the curtain.
“Hallo, Tiny.”
“Hallo, Celia.”
Celia flung her gloves into the wastepaper basket and put her hat on the statue of the Young Octavius. What a really fine room it was, she thought, so high and square, with such a beautiful moulded ceiling. But rather untidy. Celia sighed. She began to count up the number of things that would have to be put away one day, but not just now. Perhaps Tiny would put them away.
There was a leather revolver holster on the radiator, a set of tennis-balls on the table by the window, a tin, marked Harrogate Toffee, with some cartridges in it, a large feather duster and a jigsaw puzzle. On the floor lay a copy of Sir Sefton Choate’s monograph Across the Sinai Desert with the Children of Israel, and sticking out of the tall bronze urn by the fireplace were a large landing-net and a couple of golf-clubs with broken sticks. A long thin climbing plant had managed to take root in the filing tray and was already half way up the wall.
Celia sighed again and closed her eyes. “Anything in today, Tiny, darling?”
“Just a telegram,” said Tiny, and read it out:
“To Criticisms Mainly Emanating Examerica He Anxiousest More Responsible Ministers Be Associated Cumhim But Sharpliest Protested Antisuggestion Camille Chautemps” – wang wang, Tiny struck a note and intoned the rest of it – “Quote Eye Appreciate Joke Buttwas He Who Signed Capitulation Abandoned Allies Sentenced Leaders Deathwards Unquote General DeGaulle Postremarking He Unthought Hed See Andre Maurois Again.
*
“It is from our cousin,” said Tiny. “‘Eye appreciate joke’, I do not. Look,” he pointed to the signature, Casivalaunus.
Tiny and Celia began to laugh their aggravating high-pitched laugh. This noise was very aggravating for Lord Loop – Augustus Loop – Tiny’s brother, who occupied the adjoining room. He began to pound on the wall. Tiny turned quite pale. “Oh, lord, there goes Augustus,” he said. He flicked at the papers on his desk and put a busy expression on his face.
“This cablegram,” he said, “is dated 1942.”
“I tell you what,” said Celia, “I’ll do the washing-up.”
Celia had a large red Bristol glass tumbler, out of which she drank her morning milk. She was delighted with the appearance of this tumbler in the wash-basin and swam it round for some time, admiring the reflection. “But of course,” she said, for she had acquired the habit of talking to herself, “it is to be seen at its best only with the white milk in it.” There was also Tiny’s old Spode cup and saucer to be washed – he had pinched this from Augustus – and a rather humdrum yellow jug that belonged to Sir Sefton. Celia suddenly remembered Sir Sefton and wondered if he was in yet. She was Sir Sefton’s Personal Assistant. How grand that sounded! Personal Assistant to Sir Sefton Choate, Bt., MP, MIME – yes, he was a famous mining engineer, or had been, before “like the rest of us” he had been caught by the Ministry. Had he not written in his famous monograph on the Children of Israel, “It is probable, in this rich oil-bearing district, that Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of asphalt, not salt”?
From somewhere in the distance came the sound of a harp – the thin beautiful sound. That must be Jacky Sparrow in Publications. He was a graceful harpist. Celia remembered that she was lunching with Jacky today. She must hurry up and get on with the morning. The morning was like a beautiful coloured ball to be bounced and
played with till the next thing came along to be done, and that was lunchtime.
Tiny came and banged on the door. “Hurry up, Celia! Crumbs, what ages you take. Sefton wants you.”
“’Morning, Miss Phoze.”
“’Morning, Sir Sefton.”
“I had a rotten night last night,” said the baronet. “I don’t know. This way and that. Couldn’t get a wink. Then I got up and sat on the side of the bath with my feet in hot water. No good. So I took a tablet. Thought it was Slumber-o, but must have got the wrong bottle. Turned it up next morning. D’you know what it was? Camomile. I was up all night.”
Sir Sefton was sitting at his desk doing the Morning Post crossword puzzle.
“What’s a difficult poem by Browning?”
“Paracelsus,” said Celia, who was trying to write an article for the Tribune – where was that envelope with the figures on it? Was it two-thirds or two-fifths?
“Eight letters,” said the baronet.
“Sordello.”
“Hrrump, hrrump! Yes, that’s it. Thank you very much, Miss Phoze… I don’t think there’s anything very much here.” He began to rummage under his blotter, holding it up with one hand and paddling underneath with the other. “Oh, here’s a note from the LCC. Let’s see, March 1942? Well, it’s answered itself by now.” He went back to his puzzle.
“Where did the Kings of Israel reign?”