The Tribunal of Inquiry was still in session, with a lot of ground to cover yet. Chalk heard from Random meanwhile that Trumpeter was going to be stripped of all her fittings and then rebuilt. She’d be hauled back on to the stocks at Barlows’ and eventually relaunched. Random was even able to tell him that her new name was to be Tracker.
‘Not a bad name.’ He’d been lunching with him at his club, the ‘Senior’. He’d added, ‘Horrible idea, though.’
‘I don’t see why. There is a certain amount of sensitivity on the subject, in certain quarters – and initially it won’t be made any more public than we can help. Ideally there’d be no known link between the two, Tracker would simply be another new “T”. But it’d be bound to leak out. The shipyard workers, for instance – you can’t swear ’em to secrecy, and they have to know. Then some local paper’ll get hold of it, and next day it’ll be all over the Mirror. Probably better – in my opinion – to bring it out in the open, make no bones about it. Be much worse if we tried to keep it secret and it then got out. Anyway, what the hell – there’ll be nothing of Trumpeter except the hull.’
‘The hull in which a hundred men died.’
Random pointed towards a window. ‘Men have died in that street out there. Over the centuries, probably at least a hundred. Nobody says dig it up, throw it away.’
‘No, sir, but a street’s a street, a ship’s a ship. Closer analogy might be a house in which there’s been some tragedy.’
‘We’re not talking about haunted houses, Chalk!’
‘The problem’s how people feel, though, isn’t it? As we all know, sir, sailors tend to be superstitious. In fact most people—’
‘D’you know what a T-class submarine costs to build?’
He’d nodded, opened his mouth to give him the figure, but Random was driving on: ‘Not that it’s by any means the only consideration. Time’s a major factor. We’ve got to catch up – fast. Well – as you know, as well as I do. And here we have a hull ready-made and as sound as any other, why on earth not use it?’
* * *
In December there was news of a Loyalist offensive having opened near Teruel – which Chalk looked up in an atlas and found to be about a hundred and fifty miles east of Madrid. He guessed this might be the ‘great things in the wind’ – or one of them – to which Guy had alluded in that letter. The offensive had opened on 5 December, apparently, and the following weekend – 11th–12th, which he spent with the Traills, Betty and her husband – it was reported that fierce fighting was still in progress and it was going well for the Loyalists.
They drank a toast to Guy that evening, Betty adding, ‘And may he then come home to us. Laurels and all.’
Chalk murmured, ‘Happily do without the laurels.’
‘Taking the long view—’ Traill put down his glass – ‘it won’t have done him any lasting harm, you know. With that experience under his belt – well, I’m sure he’d be given an immediate commission in the TA, for instance – if he wanted it, which one might hope—’
‘I should hope he’ll have had more than enough of playing soldiers!’
Betty had glanced rather contemptuously at her husband, who was a keen Territorial Army man and spent a lot of weekends ‘playing soldiers’, as she called it. He told Chalk, ‘Give your sister her way, she’d have us all bloody pacifists!’
‘Oh, don’t be idiotic, Dick…’
A week later – on the 19th, the following Sunday – the news was of a Loyalist victory, the seizure of Teruel from Franco’s forces. Chalk telephoned Betty: ‘Did you hear about Teruel?’
‘Yes, I did. What I want is a word from Guy.’
* * *
It was Christmas, then. He went up on the Thursday night train and arrived on Christmas Eve. Alastair met him at Tyndrum in the shooting brake. The snow was quite deep and he’d put chains on its tyres, but there was a clearing sky, no sign of any more to come in the immediate future. Leaning in the train corridor after an excellent breakfast, gazing out at the whitened landscape while smoking the first cigarette of that day, he’d thought of Diana under her blue African sky and blazing sun, and wondered whether that long and lissom body might not have been cooling off in her parents’ swimming-pool at that very moment.
Those two days and nights in London had been thrilling, but the first one – at Glendarragh – had been the best of all.
Best ever.
He glanced at Alastair: ‘How’s the Army?’
‘Hard work, rather.’ He took a hand off the wheel, to remove a fag-end from his mouth and flick it out of the window. Winding it up again, then… ‘Training like mad. Actually they may be sending us to Ireland shortly. We’d heard Palestine, but Ireland’s the latest… How’s your Tribunal?’
‘Grinding on. Exceedingly slow. Should finish before the end of January, touch wood.’
‘Then a Command course? In one of her letters to Suzie, Diana said something about your having hopes.’
‘COQC – Commanding Officers’ Qualifying Course. It’s predominantly periscope-attack training, thus known more familiarly as the “perisher”.’ He flipped his cigarette-case open: ‘Want one?’
‘No, thanks. You’ll be on it, will you?’
‘Seems so.’ He lit his own, in the shelter of cupped hands. Straightening then, expelling smoke… ‘One thing Diana may not have grasped is that by no means all starters get home. Some fall at fences along the way.’
‘What happens to them then?’
‘Back to sea as first lieutenants until someone thinks they’re ready for another crack at it. Alternatively, some revert to General Service. Surface ships. From a submariner’s viewpoint, that’s a come-down.’
‘I’m sure you’ll make the grade.’
He held up crossed fingers, and changed the subject. ‘All of your clan all right?’
‘Right enough. The ambience chez nous seems to have turned a bit serious, mind you. Patricia spends most of her time reading foreign newspapers – someone at her designated place of employment sends them in batches, one lot before she arrived and another this morning. You’d think she’d want to be out and about a bit, wouldn’t you, when she’s home for the first time in months?’
‘And Suzie?’
‘Hardly ever on the ground. Even when she is she isn’t, if you know what I mean. She has homework too – navigation. Might as well bark like a dog as speak to her.’
‘Still doing well with her flying, is she?’
‘Brilliantly, so one’s told. An embryo Amy Mollison in the family. Only thing is, with this war coming – as we’re promised – opportunities for round-the-world solo flights may be rather limited. And there’ll be no joy-riding, will there. Might fly a fighter, I suppose – if she could pass herself off as a man.’
‘Can’t quite envisage that.’
‘No. Nor me.’ He glanced sideways: ‘What news of Guy?’
‘None very recently. But he wrote a few weeks ago that he considered himself quite competent as a soldier. Hinted at something big coming soon, too.’
‘He’s probably in the thick of it. I envy him, in a way.’
* * *
Those old stone steps, then: and Suzie herself descending them at some rate of knots, old MacKenzie shuffling down after her: a scene evocatively déja vu. And she looked terrific, he thought. She had the family good looks – meaning Patricia’s, there were striking similarities between them, when one had come to know them well – but on top of it in Suzie’s case that marvellous colouring – the light-blue eyes, dark hair, a vivid look.
Some figure, too…
‘You’re a sight for sore eyes, Suzie. Flying obviously suits you.’
‘So does having you here for Christmas. Hope you don’t mind going to church, by the way. We get frightfully keen on it, this time of year. Well, we could leave you on your own, of course… Hello, Alastair.’
‘I’ll be jiggered! The bird-woman has actually acknowledged the presence of an earthbound mortal!’
‘Two earthbound mortals, dimwit. If you’d been on your own I wouldn’t have bothered. Good trip up, Rufus?’
‘Slept like a hog. You sleeping well, these days?’
‘Oh – mostly.’ She’d hesitated before she’d answered, though, and he thought he’d blundered, been stupid to have asked… She was smiling at him though as he exchanged greetings with MacKenzie. Then: ‘Nearly forgot – congratulations. You’re a commander or something now, aren’t you?’
‘I’m an uncle, I’ll tell you that. But – acting lieutenant-commander, that’s all. And as soon as I leave my desk-job I’ll be reverting to lieutenant.’
‘Not for long, I bet. Have you heard any more from Guy?’
‘No more. He doesn’t write all that often. And the Spanish posts don’t exactly run like clockwork, either.’
‘I suppose not. Would have been nice to hear from him before Christmas, all the same. I sent him a card. Will your letters be forwarded to you here, in the next few days?’
He shook his head. ‘Be hardly worth it, would it?’
‘Perhaps not. Is the flat nice?’
‘It’s all right. As flats go… You really are looking marvellous, you know.’
‘Not too bad yourself. And – Rufus, you can enjoy Christmas knowing there will be a letter from him on the doormat when you get home. Will you ring me at once, tell me what he says?’
‘Of course.’
Patricia was on a stepladder in the staircase hall, decorating an outsize Christmas tree.
‘Rufus!’
‘Careful—’
‘Oh, Rufus, it is you.’ Lady C-G, emerging from the drawing-room: ‘How very nice…’ She raised her voice: ‘Innes! Innes, Rufus Chalk is here!’
* * *
Other guests staying over the Christmas weekend were Alastair’s tall, red-headed girlfriend Midge Campbell; a wild-eyed fellow subaltern from his regiment by name of Forbes; and the ninety-year-old aunt of Lady C-G’s who’d taken Patricia to France with her. She’d come up from Yorkshire, was a widow, lived on her own and knew about aeroplanes, apparently. Over sherry before dinner that evening Chalk heard her telling Suzie about the fighters her brother had flown in the Great War; Sopwith Camels and SE5s were mentioned, with a surprising amount of technical detail and graphic accounts of her brother’s exploits over the Flanders fields.
Patricia told him, ‘She was a prodigious horsewoman in her day. Rode to hounds regularly until she was darned near eighty.’
He tuned in again: the great-aunt was telling Suzie, ‘It’s all in the hands. Horses and ’planes – same thing exactly, Jack used to say. And you were never off that pony of yours, were you, until this new bug bit you?’
He turned back to Patricia. ‘Hope I’m as bright when I’m ninety.’
‘Me too. Actually I don’t think there’s much point staying alive that long if one isn’t. But she is exceptional. How’s your Inquiry going, Rufus?’
‘Not far to go. Should finish in another two or three weeks, touch wood.’
‘Is it awful, having to relive it all again?’
‘Not really. I mean, one doesn’t. If one let one’s imagination run riot I suppose it could get to be.’
It was, though. Some of the time. But it was his own cross to be borne, no-one else’s business. The price one paid for being alive, he’d thought more than once.
She asked him, ‘I suppose the wreck’s been raised? Must have – last time we saw each other, I remember you told me—’
‘Sustenance.’ Alastair, with the sherry decanter poised. ‘Cook’s dragging her feet a bit, and Mama’s getting distinctly pink around the gills. Here, Pat—’
‘Not for me. Any more, I’d turn puce around the gills.’ She smiled at Chalk: ‘Excuse me. Must have a natter with the old girl…’
‘Got Trumpeter up, I heard her asking.’ Alastair poured sherry into Chalk’s glass, then reached to put the decanter down. ‘I gather they have. What’s more, it’s being bruited about that they’re going to patch her up and push her out again with some other name. Is it true, d’you know?’
‘Where did you hear it?’
‘From the old man, actually. He knows all the bigwigs, picks up the gossip. Perhaps that’s all it is – gossip?’
‘No. It’s true.’ He glanced round; then lowered his voice. ‘I had no idea it was already general knowledge. You wouldn’t talk about it in Suzie’s hearing, I imagine.’
‘I suppose not. Haven’t given it much thought, tell you the truth. The old man did tell me in strict confidence – but that usually means only pass it on to your friends, doesn’t it?’ He nodded his close-cropped head. ‘Good thinking, anyway. Might have a word in the paternal earhole, too.’
‘You might, or I might?’
‘Well, easier for me—’
‘Yes, I agree. But – Alastair – it’s not just a matter of “patching her up”. They’ll put her back on the stocks, strip her down to a bare hull and start from scratch. Creepy thought, I know – struck me that way when I first heard it – but it makes sense, actually.’ He was giving him George Random’s argument, he realized. ‘All Trumpeter and her new incarnation will have in common is the steel hull – which it would be crazy not to make use of – when we’re building ships hand-over-fist, and have to stick within the Naval Estimates?’
‘Sense, of a sort.’ Reaching for the decanter, to resume his rounds. ‘Rather a grisly sort… Tell me this – how would you feel if you finished this course you’re going on and they gave you command of what you called the new incarnation?’
He’d asked himself the same hypothetical question after that lunch with Random, and the answer was dead simple – as well as very much to the point he’d just been making. He told Alastair, ‘I’d be CO of a brand-new submarine – called Tracker – and I’d feel damn proud, that’s what. As well as flabbergasted – as a first command, a new “T”?’
* * *
He told me, fifty years later – departing from his notes at this point – ‘As it happened, my first command was one of the old “H” boats. In the Portland flotilla, November of ’38. I’d joined the perisher course in April – by which time Diana’d got back to England. She’d stayed an extra month on account of her mother, who’d died at about the time she’d originally intended to come back. Anyway – there I was at Portland, Lieutenant-in-Command of this old “H”, and I still had her when the balloon went up – September ’39. I was a two-and-a-half by then – a real one, promotion had come through in February. We spent most of our time patrolling off the Dutch coast, in those first months of the war. Pretty foul winter that was, too, as I remember it. There were six – no seven – boats in the flotilla—’
I’d switched off the recorder.
‘What are you doing?’
‘You’ve skipped two years. Christmas ’37 at Glendarragh: next breath you’re on patrol off the Dutch coast, Christmas ’39.’
He spread his hands, sighed. ‘Sorry.’
‘Back to Glendarragh, then?’
‘Well – hang on a minute. Re my first command – and so forth, all that period really – I don’t think we’ll need to go into it – do you?’
‘Perhaps not. But—’
‘I certainly don’t want to go on about my war. No inclination to, for one thing, and for another it seems to me irrelevant – isn’t it?’
‘Largely, I suppose… But some, we’ll need.’
‘Just bare bones, then. Bare facts. Cover them in a line or two. In fact you probably know as much as you’ll need about that side of it.’
I nodded. ‘I dare say. Save us time, anyway, that is a point. But let’s get back to Glendarragh now? Guy hadn’t written, you and Suzie were worried about him, and the news was getting out about Trumpeter being rebuilt.’ I switched the tape on. Chalk was thinking about it: his eyes were on the sea, the streaks and whorls of colour that changed with tidal streams and depths, and the ceaseless advance and retreat of blue water breaking whit
e and melting back to blue again around the headland and the island out there in the middle.
Hypnotic – if you let it be.
He’d turned back.
‘At lunch – Christmas Day – the great-aunt made an announcement that staggered everyone. Suzie in particular. Well – for “staggered”, read “delighted”… But she was an original, that old bird. She’d said, to start with, why did we have to have damn turkey? She could get that at home in Yorkshire. This was Scotland – why not haggis, for God’s sake?’
‘And the announcement?’
A nod, and a slight frown. But we had been wasting time…
‘She started by asking Suzie whether she’d noticed that she hadn’t brought her a Christmas present. Suzie did a good job of looking surprised, and said no, she hadn’t noticed.’
‘“You’re fibbing, Suzie.” The old girl wagged a finger at her. “And I’ll tell you why you didn’t have anything from me under the damn tree. It’s because I couldn’t easily have dragged a red-and-white striped Puss Moth into this house. It’s at Buxton – Derbyshire, that is. Not quite new but it’s been very thoroughly checked over. Better arrange for your instructor to fly down there with you. And when you’re safe with it you can take me up for a flight. In the spring, perhaps, you could fetch me and bring me up here for a day or two – bore you all stiff again, then you could fly me home. You need to get in all the hours you can, you said—”’
‘She hadn’t given Suzie or anyone else any chance of getting a word in, but Suzie jumped up, dashed round the table and hugged her – tears streaming, she could hardly speak. And so lovely – I can see her now – I suppose not as she was just at that moment, all floppy dark hair and tears, but soon after – absolutely radiant. Like another of those snapshots printed on what’s left of a brain: because I also remember what came into my thoughts then – recollection of the sharp reminder I’d had to give myself a few weeks earlier, to the effect that I wasn’t Dymock’s rival, Guy was.’
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