All I could do was keep silent and bow my head. I hate him. I’m sorry to say it but it’s true, I hate my father. Just come back, my lover, and we’ll beat him! That will be the blaze of glory!
* * *
‘Why not concentrate on your own mail, Viktor Vasil’ich?’
Glancing up, he’d caught the flat brown eyes fixed on the letter which he hadn’t quite finished reading but now turned face-down. Radzianko’s gentle smile accompanying a shake of the pomaded head: somehow he managed never to look embarrassed. ‘One would have to be an eagle –’ pointing – ‘to read anything at that distance. All that caught my notice was the Cyrillic hand – whereas your envelopes—’
‘You’d checked them first, had you? Well, my mother is Russian, Viktor Vasil’ich. But neither she nor my sister-in-law would be so idiotic as to address envelopes in Russian when they’re to be handled by British postmen.’
Not bad, he thought – even by Jane’s standards. He got up, went outside to finish this last page of the letter on the flag deck, in a degree of shelter as well as out of those constantly prying eyes.
I have to tell you there’s a great deal of unrest in the country now – riots and other unpleasantness – and in Petersburg one really felt the undercurrents of it. Mama and I used this finally as our excuse to return to Yalta, where things do seem to be fairly normal still. And here we are, thank heavens. But one other scrap of news before I close this: do you remember the Derevyenko family? You met the father – Count Andrei – here at the house when he came visiting with his two daughters, Nadia and Aksana. Their brother Pavel, younger than them, was then at the military academy, just finishing and expecting to join a regiment of hussars – the girls talked on and on about him, I remember. Well – we met him, in Petersburg! He’s a lieutenant, although on the point of becoming a civilian; he was serving in Manchuria as an ensign, was promoted and decorated on the field of battle and only a week later severely wounded – in a continuation of the same battle, on the banks of a river called the Sha Ho – and lost his left arm, poor boy. He was cared for in some military hospital out there before being sent home to the hospital in Petersburg, which in fact he seemed to be using as a hotel while getting his final discharge. He’s still only just 22 – imagine it… But to come to the point, Mama and I were taken to lunch at Kontants – by none other than Ivan, who I must say has been very kind to us – and there at almost the next table was this boy with medals and an empty sleeve – Pavel Derevyenko, whom I wouldn’t have recognized but Mama did immediately; and before one had had time to blink he was at our table, Ivan ordering champagne!
He’s not here yet, but coming I believe quite soon, to his father’s and sisters’ great excitement – and this evening it’s with them that Mama and I are dining! Which is why I must close this now – having run on for so long. Oh Michael, my precious darling…
Leaning on the rail, looking out across the wilderness of leaping, rushing sea. Rollers still racing shoreward, their tops flying like hail. No sign of it easing. He’d crumpled her letter in his hand, thinking then, why not get rid of it – Jane’s too – all of it, straight away? There was nothing one needed to remember or comment on: and with Radzianko snuffling round like a pig after truffles – why keep it? Just as I told her not to keep mine, but burn them. Except for the scrap of newsprint, of course – otherwise, here goes! Ripping up the flimsy paper, letting the wind have it like confetti – gulls in full screech, swooping and soaring, some actually catching scraps, disgustedly letting them fly again.
* * *
The weather stayed as it was for the next two days, the battleships coaling when they could – a laborious and dangerous business with the boats, having to break off and hoist them inboard when things got worse again. Then, on the night of the 15th–16th, wind and sea dropped enough for the colliers to risk berthing alongside again, and by dawn it was clear the risk had been well justified – flat calm and fog. The big ships completed their coaling; according to Zakharov they’d each had about nine hundred tons remaining and had embarked another fourteen hundred, so for the long haul round the Cape to Madagascar they’d have more on board than they’d ever had. With Cape rollers to contend with, a lot more than was anything like safe. Colliers emerged from the bay while the battleships were washing-down, and berthed on the cruisers; others went out to the transports. Zakharov had been lunching in the flagship, came back aboard in the late afternoon when coaling was at its height. Michael had done his few hours at it, dragging sackfuls to the chutes, but he’d cleaned himself up since then and was on the flagdeck, out of the way of everything except the dust, when Zakharov on the way up to his sea-cabin with Burmin in company saw him and beckoned him to join them.
‘You might as well hear this, Mikhail Ivan’ich. As a purveyor of bad news yourself…’
It was a very small cabin. A high bunk with drawers under it, a table fixed to the for’ard bulkhead and a few hooks for such things as oilskins and binoculars. The only time Michael had been in here had been when he’d knocked on the door to tell him about that report of reservists rioting – what Zakharov had meant just then about purveying bad news. Dumping some paperwork on the desk now, then turning back to tell Michael and Burmin, ‘News of Port Arthur. Our admiral has twice had the so-called governor on board – a major in the German army – and apparently the steamer that came in during that lull a few days ago, bringing troops to fight some insurrection they’ve got on their hands, also brought news that the Japanese besieging Port Arthur have taken what’s known as 203 Metre Hill. Well, there’s a Captain Second Rank Selyeznov on the staff – you know him, Mikhail Ivan’ich—’
‘Yes.’
‘He was in the First Squadron, knows Port Arthur intimately. Has another name for that hill, as it happens – seems our own people call it Vissokaya. Don’t ask me why. Its importance is that it commands the whole tactical area, including strong-points – forts – and the town itself and the inner harbour. Selyeznov says that even if they can only use it as a spotting platform – that’s to say if they can’t haul guns to the summit – its capture must mark the beginning of the end. For one thing, if any of the First Squadron were still afloat in the harbour when they captured it, by now they’ll have been shelled to pieces. So there you are. If it looked bad before, it’s worse now. First point, therefore – Mikhail Ivan’ich, would you like to be landed here?’
‘No, thank you – sir.’
A shrug. ‘Don’t say you didn’t have the offer. Second point, Pyotr Fedor’ich – when we get the news that Port Arthur’s gone – which does seem inevitable – we say too bad, it’s a setback, but all it means for this squadron is that our base, when we get out there, will be Vladivostok. No despair, no panic. Right?’
17
Ryazan, scouting ahead of the squadron, sighted Cape Sainte Marie on Madagascar shortly before sunset on December 26th. Rojhestvensky had sent Zakharov ahead in the expectation of meeting the hospital-ship, with whom a rendezvous at this time and place had tentatively been arranged; they should in fact have met her earlier in the day and hadn’t, and with the short range of the German wireless equipment plus darkness and land close at hand it had been sensible to make some sort of reconnaissance. Result: Madagascar was there all right, but the Orel was not: had either pressed on ahead of them or delayed her departure from Cape Town until the gales that had been raging down there had eased off.
The squadron had made the trip from Angra Pequena in much better time than had been allowed for, not so much despite the foul conditions as with their help – a following wind practically all the way – and mercifully few breakdowns. There’d been a bunker fire in Suvarov – extinguished by injecting steam to smother it – and it seemed probable that the poor old Malay had foundered. She’d broken down at the height of the gale on December 21st, when the waves’ height had been estimated as sixty feet and from Ryazan’s bridge Michael at one stage had had an astonishing gull’s-eye view of the Aurora as she climbed a nea
r-vertical wall of sea – stern more or less submerged, ram high out of water pointing at the low-flying clouds: in those seconds her entire plan view had been exposed to him. The day before – 20th – when they’d rounded Cape Agulhas and entered the Indian Ocean, it had been bad enough, but this stronger blow was from the west-southwest, pretty well dead astern, and the pitching was ferocious. At Zakharov’s prompting Burmin had had men shoring bulkheads and rigging strongbacks under hatches that might otherwise have given way to the weight and power of seas crashing down on them; all the ships were dipping bows-under, Ryazan’s screws at times racing as they came up out of water – inviting serious, even irreparable damage to screws, shafts and bearings.
This was when the Malay developed engine trouble and began to fall astern. The squadron’s practice had been to stop while any temporarily immobilized ship put itself to rights, but to stop in these conditions was out of the question, so Zakharov, as tail-end Charlie, took the initiative of standing by her – turned back to circle her, signalling the admiral that he’d keep her company and bring her along when repairs had been completed. The emergency had developed very suddenly, and Michael, who’d had the watch, had moved to the telegraphs when the skipper had taken over. Anyway, Rojhestvensky wasn’t having it, ordered Zakharov to resume his station astern of the other cruisers. With which, of course, he complied – in another hair-raising turn across the full force of the storm. It had been more storm than gale by then. What was likely to remain one of Michael’s lifelong memories was the sight of the old transport, former ocean liner, rolling like a harpooned whale, beam-on to wind and sea, with men crabbing around her canting, wave-swept decks struggling to set small jury sails in the hope of bringing her head down-wind again – knowing that beam-on she wouldn’t last. While the rest of them carried on eastward in their own battering, staggering way – Ryazan from minute to minute with her snout deep in it, shaking like a great black dog with a rat in its jaws. It was dusk by then and one had had the sickening feeling of deserting friends. Envisaging how it might happen when it did – a cargo-hatch smashed in, that hold filling, and – curtains. Zakharov gave orders for a searchlight to be trained astern to flash the stricken ship’s pendant numbers at ten-minute intervals throughout the night.
Not that that would save her. Only provide guidance and maybe encouragement if by her own efforts she did survive, if any of her company were alive to catch glimpses of it even half an hour after that last sight of her. Speculating then – the mind wandering on other levels as it tended to in night watches – as to whether Pavel Derevyenko would have got home to Yalta yet. Visualizing candlelit dinners and cab-rides back from that Oreanda restaurant, for instance. Winter now, but the Yalta climate was mild enough, so they’d all claimed. They’d be wrapped in their furs anyway if it wasn’t. But a war hero and a count, and a family that was obviously well off. Empty sleeve or not, mightn’t he be as good an alternative candidate, in Anna Feodorovna’s calculating mind, as some Englishman on his way to be drowned in the Yellow Sea?
* * *
The squadron anchored at eight a.m. on December 29th in the channel between Madagascar and the island of Sainte Marie. Same name but no connection with the cape at Madagascar’s southern extremity; Sainte Marie island was a French-administered penal colony which they used as an overflow from Devil’s Island. As soon as they’d anchored and a boat had been lowered Zakharov had himself rowed over to the flagship, where he failed to see the admiral – who was said to be unwell – but talked with Clapier de Colongue and others, elicited that while the squadron’s intended destination had been Diego Suarez – an excellent, spacious harbour with modern communication facilities, i.e. a telegraph station – British pressure on the French and Paris’s ostensible surrender to it had led to the squadron officially being barred from it, and the General Staff in Petersburg had lacked the guts to argue the point, although the French would almost certainly have turned blind eyes. This had infuriated the admiral who, according to the doctor, Nyedozorov, was suffering mainly from exhaustion. He wasn’t a young man and he’d been on his flagship’s bridge, they said, for ten days and nights without a break. He’d doubtless be back on his feet in a day or two, but for the time being wasn’t seeing anyone except de Colongue and his flag lieutenant, Serebriakov.
Michael asked Zakharov over lunch in the wardroom, ‘So what’s our programme now?’
‘There isn’t one. We’re stuck in this highly insalubrious place with damn little shelter. Coaling will start tomorrow – so let’s pray the wind doesn’t get up. Although in some ways I wouldn’t mind a few clean breaths of it, the place stinks of fever, doesn’t it?’ Turning to Dr Baranov: ‘How are your stocks of quinine?’
‘Very little remaining, I’m sorry to say. At Gabon for instance—’
‘Better see where you can cadge some. Orel for instance – can’t be more than a day or so behind us.’ Back to Michael and the others: ‘For the staff the worst is they’ve no news of Felkerzam and his division. But since there’s no telegraph except in Diego Suarez – three hundred miles north, and we aren’t allowed in there anyway – and Tamatave about a hundred south – well, they’re sending the Rus to Tamatave tomorrow – leaving at first light. Your friend Selyeznov’s going in her.’
* * *
At four p.m. the hospital-ship arrived, looking as immaculate as ever, and anchored close to the Ryazan. She’d brought despatches, mail and newspapers from the Cape. They’d already sorted the mail, and ships were invited to send their boats for it; Ryazan’s cutter was already at the boom with steam up, and was on its way over within five minutes of that message being received. Being the first there, however, its coxswain was given the honour of delivering the admiral’s despatches, and while they were at it the Suvarov’s mailbags as well. Anxious watchers on Ryazan’s decks were surprised when it set off towards the flagship instead of coming straight back, and by the time it did, word had already flown round – having been picked up from exchanges of semaphore messages between the Orel and other ships – that the First Pacific Squadron had been annihilated in the harbour at Port Arthur.
Michael now had his own despatches, enclosed in a rather bulky letter from Jane and by courtesy of her nephew William. In the same packet was a letter from Tasha which he slid into a pocket to read later.
Jane had written,
William’s come up trumps, as you’ll see from the enclosures. Also, I’m sure far more exciting, a letter from T at last. Do wish I could read Russian! I’ve had one from you meanwhile from darkest Africa and will reply shortly at greater length but it’s only a few days since I wrote and the important thing is to get this off to you prontissimo. Look after yourself! Love
Young William’s contributions included a cutting from the Daily Telegraph listing the ships of this squadron and those under Felkerzam en route via the Red Sea, and ‘third section’ under Admiral Botrovosky – of whom one had never heard – consisting of the cruisers Oleg and Izumrud, eight torpedo boats and ‘several transports’. Felkerzam’s group having split up, presumably – unless the paper was mistaken, and God only knew where this Botrovosky had sprung from.
Next came what read like an essay – perhaps mostly because of the boyish handwriting – in two parts, the first headed ‘Northern Theatre of War’:
The Russians are using all their resources to reinforce and reorganize their army and it would be inviting another defeat were they to attempt to move until their troops were again fully equipped and ready to advance. On the other hand the Japanese have every reason for not making any hasty move. The further they advance north the longer does their line of communications become and the greater the need of caution. It is probable that they have hopes of shortly releasing, by the capture of Port Arthur, a large number of seasoned troops for the reinforcement of Marshal Oyama’s army and are therefore wisely biding their time until they can attack in such numbers that they will be certain of success. In any case the battle when it comes will be unsurpassed i
n fierceness, and should the Russians, if beaten, be unable to again draw off in the masterly way they have hitherto, it might result in a crushing and completely disorganising defeat for them.
The other piece began:
Floating Madhouse Page 25