by Tim Pears
Then Leo saw paper blowing out of the after hatch on the quarterdeck. Reams of white paper streamed out, spare rolls of chart paper from the gunnery office. Like pennants or bunting wildly celebrating freedom, they went trailing away over the side of the ship into the bubbling sea.
Petty Officer Jeffers was suddenly there beside them, clutching the starboard-side rail. ‘Come on, you lads,’ he yelled. ‘She’s going under. Into the drink.’
‘She’ll float for a long time yet,’ Sergeant Nutley called back. Leo wanted to believe him, for no seaman wished to leave his ship for the great grey waves of the North Sea. But he could not. Someone had shouted that the bow was sinking but he must have been wrong for Leo could see it now sticking up in the air. And looking the other way the stern, too, many of its metal plates red hot, was lifting up off the surface of the sea. HMS Queen Mary was broken amidships.
The PO did not pause to persuade anyone further but clambered over the rail and slid over the slimy bilge keel and dropped into the water. One or two men followed. Leo did likewise. The boy entered the cold water and began to swim hard away from the ship. He was vaguely aware of others around him doing the same. He did not know how long he swam for or how far he got, twenty-five or thirty yards perhaps, when there was suddenly a huge explosion behind him, greater than any of those that had blown already.
The boy took a deep breath and dived under the water but then he was sucked down anyway by the shock waves of the explosion. He looked up and saw through the water a distorted vision of a storm of debris flying through the air, pieces of the ship large and small, great chunks of metal and fragments of wood, but he could see less and less as he was pulled deeper into the sea by the suction or backwash from the huge bulk of the great ship sinking and Leo knew now that this was it. He gave up, for had he not been told that to fall into the drink and drown was not the worst way to die so long as you did not fight it? No, he need not struggle. The boy relaxed and sank. Death did not have to be the horror Leo had just seen. This was easy enough. But then it occurred to him that there was something he still had to do in his life, though he could not at this very moment quite remember what it was. And so he fought against the suction. And he found that it was growing weaker, if he kicked and paddled hard he could prevail against it, and so Leo Sercombe rose and in time broke the surface of the water and gulped air.
The boy felt sick, and spewed and retched. He had swallowed not only saltwater but also oil. The filthy taste of it was in his mouth and throat. He could see a thick black layer all over the surface around him. He saw wreckage, and men’s heads bobbing in the foul water. Were they alive or dead men floating? There were great numbers of fish lying on the surface, different kinds of them, stunned by the detonation. The water rose and fell. Whether this was further reverberation from the sinking ship or the natural swell of the sea Leo did not know. Something floated close by. He reached out and grabbed it. It was a large hammock, or part of one, with a big timber spar, and he was able to grasp the rope that fanned out from the spar along its length. He wished to pull himself up onto the timber but doubted whether he had the strength to do so. But then the swell of the sea lifted him and with a little effort Leo reached over the timber and hung on.
Smoke wafted through the air. There was mist too, more in the distance. Amongst the debris all around him were floating brass cylinders, by which a smoke-screen was made, for it was easier to aim at an enemy out of smoke than into it. Perhaps there was mist or fog to the south and so in terms of weather the German gunners had the advantage. That would explain the inexplicable.
Gradually Leo became aware of ships moving by, and he turned to watch the dreadnoughts of the Fifth Battle Squadron steaming past, firing their huge guns. So Willy Burd was right, they had all come out behind the Queen Mary, out of Scapa Flow. Too late! The enemies’ shells landed in the water around him. The battleships ploughed on. In their wake the water rose and fell more strongly. Now the Huns were in trouble. In the added turbulence, Leo hung on, until the ocean calmed again somewhat, and he clung on more. He would hold on until help came. He could do that. He must do that.
It seemed a long time before destroyers came. They zigzagged to and fro, dodged oncoming shells, slashing and churning the water. They did not stop for the survivors but sped on into the battle, flinging themselves from tack to tack. Perhaps their crews could not see the men floating there in the water. Their swell, too, roughed up the sea. Leo held tight to the timber.
Then he saw that one destroyer had slowed. Though it was under fire it turned to port and lowered its whaler. His hopes rose. But he watched and saw that the whaler could not be forced through the wreckage of parts of the Queen Mary, the debris was too thick on the surface. So then the guns’ crews and the upper-deck hands of the destroyer hung over the side on fenders and lines and nets trying to haul any survivors that they could reach aboard, even as they began to steam ahead once more. Enemy shells still fell about them. The men of the destroyer struggled to pull survivors out but these men in the water were covered in oil and so the crew were unable to hold onto them. Leo could not tell how many they saved, a few, but he saw they would not save him for the boat veered away. He thought it would have been a help if they had left the whaler, perhaps he could have made his way to it. But they had hauled it back on board.
When the sea was calm once more, and empty of vessels, the boy looked about. He saw fewer heads bobbing above the surface now. Dusk was falling. The green-black water was bitterly cold. The smell of the fuel oil was almost as horrible as its taste. Leo saw something moving slowly towards him. He could not work out what it was, nosing its way through wreckage just beneath the surface. Then he understood. A torpedo. It slowed down and floated past no more than twenty feet away, and came to undetonated rest.
How much time passed then? Around the boy, men went under. Whether they lost consciousness and sank or let themselves go deliberately Leo could not tell. To see the destroyer stop to help then leave had been a cruel blow. He clung to the hammock spar. His eyes felt a new sensation and Leo could not work out what caused it. Then he realised he was weeping, or trying to. ‘My God,’ he cried out. ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ Darkness fell over all the sea. Leo cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. He fell asleep.
7
8.40 p.m., Wednesday 31 May
When the boy awoke he was halfway off the spar of the hammock. With a great effort he managed to haul himself back. He felt very sick, full of fuel oil, his stomach, his innards, clogged with it. His eyes were blocked up and he could barely see. He felt his jersey and found it thick with oil but rolled back one arm and wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his flannel shirt. He got rid of enough of the thick oil to be able to see again but his eyes ached badly. Which was worse, the pain in his eyes or the cold? He shivered and his teeth chattered and he felt the chill deep and resident down in his thin bones. ‘He casts forth his ice like morsels,’ a voice said. ‘Who can stand before His cold? ’
But just as he began to understand that there were many stations on the way to death, you did not choose which one would be the last, before he could contemplate the matter in his exhaustion, so just then more destroyers appeared, all lit up on the horizon, and came closer, and one slowed. Leo rose up on the spar of the hammock and waved. In doing so he lost his grip and fell back in the cold water. He hardly knew whether he was alive or not, conscious or unconscious. Perhaps now he was dreaming, and the boats were part of his delirium. But then the destroyer was there, huge above him, and he saw that a line had been thrown. He caught it and held on with his cold weak hands and would not let go even if he lost consciousness, no, he would not, and they hauled the skinny boy in his oil-sodden clothes up onto the decks of the destroyer.
Leo did not know who they were. A man spoke English but perhaps he was an educated German. Or a spy. Leo could not speak. He could not see, or hear, or think.
When he came to, he was lying on some kind of se
ttee or bunk. Someone told him he was all right, another that he should not struggle so. He could not see who spoke and concluded that he was blind, but it did not matter much. The Lord had smote him with madness and blindness and confusion of mind. He would grope at noonday, as the blind grope in darkness. He was given brandy or whisky or other spirit to drink, and fell back asleep. He dreamed of a white hunter standing in a stable somewhere in England, waiting for his master.
When Leo woke again it was to find a surgeon bathing his face. His eyes caused him awful agony and the surgeon cleaned what he could of the oil away. Leo asked where they were going and someone said, ‘The lad can speak and is one of ours, I was right.’
The surgeon said they were steaming at reduced speed back to Rosyth, for they themselves had been badly hit after they had picked him up. Despite the pain, Leo slept again. They reached the Forth in darkness. He woke and heard someone tell the surgeon that as they passed under the bridge just now railwaymen had thrown lumps of coal at them, yelling that they were cowards who’d run away from the enemy.
A hospital boat came over. The boy joined half a dozen wounded men. They were taken to Queensferry Hospital. There he was made comfortable in bed and fell asleep. He woke to find a doctor waiting to clean his eyes. He said he had not wished to disturb the boy before. When he had finished he applied a bandage. He told Leo that they would change this daily for a week. He said that he hoped the boy’s eyes would be all right again in time.
Leo asked the doctor for news of survivors of his ship. HMS Queen Mary. For names. The doctor paused. Leo could not see him but he sensed the man look away, then he turned back and said there were plenty of other survivors, he did not know how many for certain, he could not say. Leo was unsure whether or not he believed him.
Part Two
THE VET 1916–1917
1
The veterinary surgeon Patrick Jago lifted the pony’s foot and examined it. A stable lad held the halter. The girl watched.
‘I suppose I am too big for Blaze, poor boy,’ Lottie said. ‘Or he is too small for me.’
Herb Shattock, her father’s head groom, told Jago that he had considered corns, quitter and canker, and did not believe the problem was any of those.
‘Perhaps the likeliest explanation is the simplest,’ said the vet. ‘When was he last shod?’
‘Four days ago,’ Herb Shattock said. ‘But yon Crocker won’t be at fault, I’ll guarantee that. I don’t say as he’s never drove a nail into the sensitive parts a the hoof, but he don’t hide it when he does. Then we deals with it. And his son, he’s learned as good as Crocker himself.’
‘But that’s the son who’s gone, Mister Shattock,’ Lottie said.
The vet walked across the loose box to where he’d laid his bag of tools.
The groom frowned. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Jacob’s back on the farrier work. The other son’s not much good.’
‘The cripple?’ Patrick Jago asked. He returned to the side of the pony. ‘How old is Crocker now?’
‘Can’t be no more’n a year older’n me,’ Herb Shattock told him. He nodded in the general direction of the village. ‘We was in the same class at school.’
The veterinary surgeon tapped Blaze’s hoof with his hammer. ‘Remove the shoe, please,’ he said.
Herb Shattock told the stable lad to fetch pliers and clippers. Lottie held her pony’s halter and spoke to him, reassuring him that he was in good hands. The best. The lad returned and took the halter once again, while Herb Shattock set to removing the shoe.
‘We’ve always struggled with their feet, of course,’ Patrick Jago said. ‘“Then were the horsehoofs broken, by the means of their prancings.” Judges.’
Lottie understood that it was she who was being addressed.
‘Entire Roman armies had to be disbanded in consequence of their horses’ hoofs wearing out.’ The vet laughed. ‘I blame those endless stone roads of theirs.’
Herb Shattock stood with the pony’s leg between his like a smith and clipped all the turned-over ends of the nails, then he levered the shoe off. Lottie could see that Blaze was discomfited by his doing so. Another lad meanwhile brought a bucket of warm water.
‘William the Conqueror is generally credited with introducing the art of shoeing into this country,’ the vet continued. ‘Though I’ve not heard any evidence for that. On the farms of your father’s estate the horses are generally reshod every four to six weeks, I’m glad to say.’
The lad holding Blaze’s halter said, ‘No foot, no horse, sir.’
Herb Shattock lowered the pony’s foot and stepped away. Patrick Jago took his place. The vet lifted Blaze’s foot and with the knife that he called a searcher cut the horn of the hoof, explaining that he was looking for a bruised area. Then he passed the knife to the groom and asked for his pincers. Herb Shattock handed these to him and he pressed them into the foot, until the animal flinched. He asked for the water bucket and cleaned the foot. Then he dressed away the sole of the hoof, following the black spot with the point of his knife. Out of the bottom of one nail-hole came a dirty, thin, dark-coloured fluid.
Lottie asked what this was. Herb Shattock said it was gravel, and the vet declared this to be an obscure local name for a kind of pus or feculence. Once this dark matter had escaped, the vet told Herb Shattock to prepare a cold bran-poultice with a tablespoonful of carbolic acid or phenyl or indeed any good antiseptic if he had some other preference.
‘When the inflammation has subsided,’ Patrick Jago said, ‘dress it with a tow and tar ointment. Protect the hoof with a leather sole, and put the shoe back on.’
Lottie asked what tow and tar consisted of. The vet explained that it was a mixture of one part of green tar and three parts hard fat, melted together. Herb Shattock said that he would prefer to use palm oil if the vet did not object. Patrick Jago said that he did not, palm oil would surely work just as well. Such an ointment was useful in general to counteract the brittle nature of a horse’s hoof. He had seen it used often for sand crack, while a student at the Royal Veterinary College in London.
‘I’ve hardly ever seen the condition here,’ he said. ‘Sand crack appears to be a lot less common in the countryside.’
Herb Shattock agreed with this observation. Patrick Jago collected his tools and walked out of the loose box. The groom accompanied him. The girl followed. Herb Shattock asked the vet what he thought of stopping the feet of a horse. Lottie had never heard this expression. The groom explained that it referred to the practice of stuffing the bottom of the feet with matter of a moist constitution.
‘Numerous authorities are against it,’ Patrick Jago said. ‘I myself am undecided.’ He asked Herb Shattock for his opinion. Lottie looked from one man to the other. She thought that she could listen to them talk of horses all day.
‘In my experience,’ the groom said, ‘there’s two kinds a weather where it may be useful – a long hard frost or a hot spell, when a horse is workin every day on a hard dry road. The moisture of the horn’s liable to become exhausted. Then I am in favour of stoppin the feet. Keep ’em moist and pliable. The horse don’t half appreciate it.’
The vet nodded. He asked what Mister Shattock used for the purpose.
‘I’ve not yet found nothin to beat equal parts a cow-dung and clay,’ he said. ‘Applied alternate nights.’
Patrick Jago considered this potion. ‘Ideal,’ he said. He shook hands with the groom. He told Lottie that her pony would be ready to bear weight again within a week but that she was probably right. She was a full-grown woman now, if slender yet, but she had likely reached her full height and could ride a much larger horse. If neither of her father’s remaining hunters appealed perhaps Lord Prideaux should look out for a new one for her, though he conceded it would not be easy to find one in wartime. He walked across the yard towards his own horse tethered to a ring.
Lottie told Herb Shattock that she would be back. He said that he and the lad would attend to the horse. She trotted after Patric
k Jago. When she reached him he was putting his tools into a saddlebag.
‘Mr Jago,’ Lottie said. He turned. ‘Would you take me on your rounds as your assistant?’
The vet frowned. He asked what her father would think of the idea.
Lottie said they had already discussed it. ‘Father believes it would be good for me,’ she said. ‘He thinks I am in need of a useful role. If I were older he would not discourage me from joining the Ambulance Service.’ She was intent, serious, then her eyes widened suddenly, and she said, ‘It was practically his idea, actually.’
Patrick Jago tightened the strap of the saddlebag. ‘It is often hard physical labour,’ he said. He looked her up and down, in her trousers and waistcoat. ‘I’m not sure you would be up to it.’
Lottie said that she was strong. With her left hand she rolled up the right sleeve of her white shirt and flexed her bicep muscle and said that she could ride or fight as well as any boy her size, he had only to ask her cousins, and she had no fear of hard work. The vet said he had no doubt that Lottie told the truth.
She said that she would cut her hair. ‘None need even know that I am a girl.’
Patrick Jago smiled, raising his eyebrows, and said that he thought that would be a fine trick for such a pretty girl to pull off. He put his foot in the stirrup and mounted the horse. ‘Both my assistants have been conscripted,’ he said. ‘Let us try it, Lottie.’
She watched the vet surgeon ride away, then she ran to the house. She found her father in his study and told him that Patrick Jago had just asked, practically begged, her to help him in his work. He was desperate, she said, for his assistants had gone to the trenches.