Then why do we have to practise with life belts? thought Georg. He wondered how long a life belt would keep you floating. What if you drifted off, in the sea, and no one ever found you? What if the torpedo blew up half the ship and there was no one to tell them to go to the lifeboats? Would the children stand outside their cabins, like the guards outside the Palace, not moving as they sank under the waves?
‘What does being in charge mean?’ Jamie gestured at the two Joes and little Harris. Georg was glad Jamie asked the questions, not him.
‘Make sure they brush their teeth and go to bed when they are told and especially don’t try to climb the mast or up on the rails,’ said Miss Glossop. Georg had the feeling she was used to boys. She handed him and Jamie a typed sheet. It was the weekly timetable with clearly marked meal times and physical training and games times and lessons.
‘Any more questions?’ asked Miss Glossop.
‘When’s dinner?’
‘When the whistle blows twice you —’
‘I know. We stand out in the corridor and wait.’
Miss Glossop looked like she was going to correct Jamie for interrupting. But she didn’t.
‘You’ll like the food.’ Miss Glossop sounded resolutely cheery. ‘There’s bangers and mash tonight.’ She bent down and whispered, ‘And red jelly.’
‘I feel sick,’ said little Harris.
‘There’s a basin under the bottom bunks,’ said Miss Glossop. ‘Bathroom is down the corridor and down the stairs — they’re called a companionway on a ship, so I suppose we should also start saying that, just like real sailors. What do you think?’
‘I feel really sick,’ said little Harris.
‘It’s going to be a wonderful voyage,’ said Miss Glossop, smiling grimly. ‘Now I’ll see you all later.’ She shut the door.
The boys stared at each other. ‘Can I be sick now?’ asked Harris.
But he wasn’t. Instead he curled up like a hedgehog in winter on one of the bottom beds — the older boys decided they’d have the top ones and the youngest the bottom, and put their coats on the empty bunk in the middle.
Georg lay on his bunk and pretended to read. So did Jamie. He thought the two Joes were crying, but he knew they wouldn’t want him to look.
It was dusk when Georg felt the rumble of the ship’s engines.
‘We’re moving,’ said Jamie. He sat up. His eyes looked red, but they stared fiercely at Georg, daring him to even think that he’d been crying too.
Suddenly the whistle blew — once, twice.
‘Well, at least we’re not sinking yet,’ said Jamie. ‘That were a joke,’ he added, as the smaller boys stared at him.
‘Out into the corridor,’ said Georg.
They lined up against the wall, as one by one the other children came out of their cabins too. The escorts moved among them, lining them up, then two by two they marched along the corridor. The escorts called out ‘left right, left right’ as the children marched up the companionway and out onto the deck. Sailors strode here and there, doing whatever it was that sailors did.
The air tasted of salt and oil. The wind stung Georg’s cheeks. He ran with the others to the rail. There in front of them a chubby little tug pulled the ship away from the dock and into the main channel of the Thames.
They were under way.
He was vaguely aware of Jamie beside him, of Harris and the Joes on the other side. They were strangers, but they only had each other now.
The ship crept down the river to the sea, the big grey destroyer leading the way. At last the whistle blew. They lined up again, and marched down to their cabin.
Georg looked back, but his last sight of England was lost in the dark.
Harris wasn’t seasick. But the two Joes vomited for two days into bowls that Georg and Jamie took turns to empty down the ‘head’. Then suddenly they were well again, able to eat the slices of toast and jam and the porridge at breakfast and stew at night, and join in ball games on deck or sit with their age group for their lessons.
They weren’t hard lessons, not to a boy who already knew the textbooks off by heart. A lot of the time was spent rehearsing songs and dances for the ship’s concert. A few of the older girls said they could play the piano; and after that there was always a group singing around it.
They had exercises called physical jerks up on deck — they had to touch their toes a hundred times and then do running on the spot. There was life-belt drill and lifeboat drill, and cabin inspections by the captain, who said that their cabin was ‘acceptable’ (which Miss Glossop said was the highest praise he ever gave).
They marched everywhere, obeyed the blasts of the whistle, ate breakfast at exactly the same time every day, and lunch and tea and supper too.
In a strange way, despite the threat of torpedoes, of shipwreck and the cold, dark sea, and being responsible for the younger boys, the beginning of the voyage was almost peaceful. It was the first time in almost a year and a half that he had no decisions to make, no need to plan his day. Even his companions had been chosen by others. That was good too: almost like a family with younger brothers. They played tag and ‘sheep, sheep come home’ and ‘kitten in the corner’ up on deck, using chalk marks for places. At night there was his narrow bunk, and the reassuring breathing of four others.
Only Harris still cried each night, curled like a puppy around his pillow. He wet the bed too. Jamie and Georg took it in turns to get fresh sheets and rinse out the little boy’s pyjamas.
Even Jamie didn’t yell at Harris after the first time. The kid was scared. They were all scared and, in some deep part of them, all lost as well. You had to do your best with what you had.
Georg was making his bunk when the whistle blew. It was hard to ‘make the bed’ on a top bunk. He had to stand on Harris’s bunk to get the seams straight, and that meant Harris’s blanket got wrinkled so he had to straighten it for him again. But it was worth it for the tiny privacy the top bunk afforded.
One whistle, two whistles, three …
Three whistles! He froze.
‘Just a practice,’ said Jamie uncertainly. He reached for his coat, then handed Harris his too.
Georg listened to the engine’s beat. It sounded different. Faster. He had the faint sense that the ship was turning too.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Outside. Hurry.’
The other children muttered in the corridor. Some of them had also guessed that this wasn’t just a drill. But we can’t have been hit by a torpedo, thought Georg. There’d have been an explosion. We’d have felt it, heard it.
Was there an enemy plane above them? He supposed planes bombed ships as well as cities.
Miss Glossop strode down the corridor. ‘Right, everybody line up. You all have your coats?’
There was a chorus of ‘Yes, Miss Glossop’.
‘March to the boat station then. I will explain when we get there.’
The other escorts made their way through the children to walk behind them. Will they really tell us what’s happening? wondered Georg. Or will they pretend everything is all right in case we cry or panic?
The children’s boat station was the First Class lounge, where the richer passengers had gathered before the war. Georg supposed there had been fancier furniture then. Not the battered wooden chairs and tables the children used.
Miss Glossop clapped her hands for silence. She looked at them for a moment, as though considering.
‘I’m not going to pretend this is a practice,’ she said at last. ‘You are British boys and girls so I know there’ll be no screams or panicking. A torpedo was seen a few minutes ago. It just missed our escort. We think the enemy submarine left before our escort could retaliate, but it may come back, so we are all to sleep here till we’re sure it’s safe. Now could the oldest in each cabin go down and bring up a pillow and blanket for each of their cabin-mates.’
That’s me, thought Georg. He stood. He was older than Jamie by two months. He made his way with the others out of
the lounge and down the companionway. Already it felt funny to be walking normally, not marching.
He tried to feel the rhythm of the sea in the sway of the boat about him. But you couldn’t sense a torpedo before it hit you, could you?
He gathered the bedding quickly. He’d have liked to take a book too, but it was going to be hard enough to carry all the bedding.
What would happen if a torpedo struck when he was down here, alone? Bad enough to sink with others around you, horrible to be alone, like in the suitcase, just the dark and him.
He grabbed the last pillow and hurried out, up to the boat station. He handed out the bedding to the others. It was good to be together again. Somehow fear didn’t seem as bad when it was shared with friends. At least whatever happened now would happen to them all.
They slept in the boat station that night, a broken restless sleep. They were woken too often by kids crying out with nightmares. The lights were left on, Georg supposed so that they could get out quickly if the ship was hit.
He and Jamie checked Harris’s bottom sheet the next morning. It was wet again. Harris looked scared — more scared of the other kids finding out he’d wet his sheet than of the lurking submarine.
Jamie winked at him. ‘We’ll roll it up and put it over here, see? No one will know. You can sleep with one sheet tonight.’
Harris nodded. ‘I wish my mummy was here,’ he whispered.
I wish mine was too, thought Georg. Whatever danger they were in now, he knew that his mother — and Harris’s — might be in even more.
Miss Glossop clapped her hands again. She looked like she hadn’t slept at all. ‘All bedding pushed to the walls,’ she said wearily. ‘Then I want you sitting cross-legged on the floor. Breakfast will be served here today. Just bread and cheese, I’m afraid, and cocoa.’ She gave a determined smile. ‘Nothing’s too bad if there’s cocoa, is it?’
Some of the kids smiled back.
Miss Glossop played the piano after breakfast while they sang songs instead of doing their lessons. Georg didn’t know the words, but he opened and shut his mouth anyway, and followed the others when they sang the songs with gestures.
‘Under the spreading chestnut tree …’ He touched his hips for ‘spread’, his chest for ‘chest’, his head for ‘nut’. ‘There I sat’ (a touch on the bottom) ‘with you’ (pointing to Jamie) ‘and me’ (touching his chest again).
It was a bit like singing in the railway station while the planes snickered overhead and the city turned into stones and fire. But here there was only silence outside, the rumble of the ship’s engines, the sway of waves.
Lunch was more bread and cheese. Dinner was bread and corned beef. Georg ate his because that was the ship’s rule: you ate everything, even your crusts. Jamie nibbled his own sandwiches next to him. No one had much appetite tonight, both from fear and because their bodies had been cramped in this single room all day.
‘What happens if we have to get into the lifeboats?’ he whispered to Georg.
‘What do you mean?’
Jamie gestured at the walls around them. ‘Takes a big ship to cross an ocean, don’t it?’
Georg nodded.
‘Then how can we get back to England in lifeboats?’
‘Another ship will pick us up.’
‘Mebbe. But who says it’ll be an English ship? There’s more German ships than ours, ain’t there?’
‘Yes,’ said Georg slowly.
‘So what if a Jerry picks us up?’
‘I don’t know.’ Did they put children in concentration camps? They probably did. The children in this ship were enemies too. And he was a Jewish enemy.
Australia and safety seemed a long way away.
They slept in the boat station the next night too. We’ll have to give Harris one of our sheets if we stay here much longer, thought Georg, as he tried to make himself comfortable under his blankets. But after another restless sleep, they had only just gathered up the bedding — and Harris’s wet sheet — when Miss Glossop appeared again. Her face looked almost blue-white from tiredness today. Georg imagined her sitting with shark eyes, waiting for the crash that meant she had minutes, if they were lucky, to get her charges to the lifeboats and a chance to survive.
There was no need to clap her hands for silence. The children stared at her, quiet with fear.
‘It’s all right,’ said Miss Glossop. ‘The captain of the destroyer says the submarine has gone. Back to your cabins now. No lessons this morning, so you can have a nap if you want, then there’ll be physical jerks out in the fresh air.’ She tried a smile. ‘A game of deck cricket too. Won’t that be good?’
The children didn’t smile. A few nodded. Most looked blank-faced. The last two nights’ fear, on top of leaving their homes and the terror of falling bombs, had been more than most of them knew how to deal with.
Georg and Jamie got the two Joes and Harris lined up.
Harris tugged Georg’s hand. ‘Is it really gone?’
Georg nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Will it be back?’
‘No.’ I’m lying, he thought. I’m lying so he won’t cry, just like adults lie to us.
For the submarine could come back. Perhaps it was waiting till the destroyer left. Waiting till their ship was alone on the great ocean, with no one to see them when they sank. Who knew what lurked under the ocean? How could anyone see an enemy below?
The ship sailed along, a grey ship on a grey ocean, with grey skies above.
What colour are submarines? wondered Georg. Grey like the sea, he supposed. Or black, like the ocean depths, like thunderclouds that split the world with lightning.
He tried to look down over the rail after physical jerks on deck, to see into the water. Was that a submarine shimmering in the depths? But when he blinked the image was gone.
In any case, a submarine wouldn’t be close enough to see. That was why they had torpedoes that could zip unseen through the cold, dark water till they exploded, turning a ship into a sun of flames and wreckage.
Destroyers could fire torpedoes too. That was why the enemy sub had left, when their torpedo had missed before. But how long will the destroyer stay with us? he wondered. How long can it be spared to guide children across the sea?
Every day now the destroyer was the first thing he looked for, as soon as they came on deck, its reassuring bulk, the white waves in its wake, the seagulls that screamed above it, hoping the cooks would throw out scraps.
Then one morning it was gone. Overnight their destroyer had slipped back into the grey of sky and ocean to escort another ship away from England and the enemy who circled her. Now the children’s ship was on its own.
‘Think the sub is going to torpedo us tonight?’ Jamie, like all the children, knew the destroyer had left them. He spoke in a whisper over their bread and cocoa supper at the long wooden tables.
Georg considered, then shook his head. ‘Germany doesn’t have enough submarines, not to guard every part of the ocean. They’d be after more important targets than us.’
‘Do you really think so?’
Georg nodded.
He hoped that it was true.
It was midnight, perhaps, when Georg heard the scream. He tensed, listening for the three whistles that meant that they were in danger, but they didn’t come. He sat up in his bunk and put the light on.
The portholes were all closed, with blackout curtains across them, so no enemy ship or plane would see their lights. Below him the two Joes yawned. On the other side of the cabin Jamie leaped out of bed, and stood with his fists out in front of him, trembling. ‘What was that?’
‘Harris,’ said Georg. He swung his legs out of bed and kneeled by the younger boy’s bunk. ‘Harris, wake up. It’s just a nightmare. Wake up.’
Harris blinked, and looked like he was going to scream again. Georg put his fingers lightly over the boy’s mouth. ‘Shhh. You’ll wake the children in the other cabins. It’s all right. Go back to sleep.’
‘Want to
go home,’ said Harris.
‘Well, you can’t,’ said Jamie flatly.
‘Want to go home!’ Harris’s voice rose in a wail.
‘Blimey, he’s going to wake the whole ship,’ said one of the Joes.
‘Harris, you’re going to a new home. There’s lots of sunlight and … and butterflies.’ Georg searched for the little he knew about Australia.
Harris shook his head stubbornly. ‘Going to be blown up,’ he whispered. ‘The submarine is going to get us. Going to drown in the ocean, just like Uncle Herbert. Drowned men turn blue and then the fishes eat them.’
‘Shut up, will you?’ hissed Jamie. He looked at the two Joes, staring wide-eyed and white-faced from their bunks.
Georg felt the boy tremble against his arm. ‘How about I tell you a story?’ he said.
He hadn’t known he was going to say it till it came out. Once he had made up so many stories, but since he had left Germany it seemed the tales had fled.
‘What sort of story?’ asked Harris suspiciously.
‘A good story. A … a story about a dragon.’
‘A dragon?’ The other boys were listening now.
Georg thought quickly. ‘A fierce hungry dragon. It was grey, with metal scales, and fire came from its mouth. It was old, so old, hundreds of years old. But no one believed in dragons any more. No one was scared.
‘So the dragon decided to change into the scariest thing of all. A submarine!
‘It was long and grey, just like the dragon had been. It shot fire from its mouth, called torpedoes.’
The cabin was silent as they listened to his words. Heard how the dragon hunted its prey all over the grey ocean. No one could stop it, until a grey knight appeared: a British destroyer with smoke pouring from its smokestacks.
Silent through the battle, the two Joes sat side by side on an upper bunk. Harris was hardly breathing, intent on Georg’s words; and Jamie wore a half-smile as he watched what was happening.
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