by Dudley Pope
Ned put down the telephone. Any conversation with Captain Watts was exhausting because he had a quick enough mind to anticipate most questions and answer them before they were asked.
Mr Churchill on Tuesday, the Palace on Thursday. And he was home. Should he ’phone? No, he had a key, and if Captain Watts had made sure that Clare had a day’s leave from St Stephen’s Hospital to attend the Investiture with him and his mother on Thursday, news of his arrival would have been passed on. His left hand throbbed, as though there was too much blood in it. He had used it to hold the telephone, out of sheer habit, leaving his right hand free to write notes. Now it was slightly swollen, the skin purplish. Well, he had been warned to expect it.
Ned joined the queue outside the station.
He deliberately took his time paying off the cab, savouring Palace Street. The brick houses on one side, the malt smell from the brewery nearby. The brass doorknocker was polished (his mother refused to have a bell fitted: too shrill and unexpected, she said) and so was the letterbox. The cab driver flicked up the flag and drove off towards Victoria Street.
He carried his bag to the door, felt for his key and as he reached towards the lock, the door slowly opened. He pushed his way into the house and Clare was in his arms.
‘Your train came in hours ago,’ she said breathlessly.
‘It could have been late!’
‘But it wasn’t — I ’phoned the station.’
‘Is Mother home?’
‘No, she’s out until this evening.’
He picked up his bag. ‘I’d love a bath.’
She rubbed his cheek. ‘And you should shave first,’ she said, in a sentence which ended in a row of dots.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Carry on, Commander. And congratulations on the halfstripe. Oh Ned,’ she said and burst into tears, ‘it really is you!’
When he left the house on Monday morning after a weekend of the worst night bombing he had ever experienced — and made worse because Clare had to return to St Stephen’s on Saturday, beginning a week of night duty — it seemed that all of London must have been blown up or burned down. Daylight when it came seemed little more than faded night: black, grey and white smoke coiling up from burning buildings and drifting to join up in low clouds driven on by a west wind made him think of Pompeii, when three days had been black as night. The last days of London? No, it was so huge that it would take the Luftwaffe fifty years of night bombing to destroy it. What they were destroying were the buildings that made London unique: the Wren churches, the Queen Anne and Georgian houses, even the stone water troughs for horses, relics from Victorian charities. The House of Commons was gone; Members had to meet in the House of Lords now. Yet Westminster Abbey, St Margaret’s, St Paul’s, the Tower of London — all were still standing. And Big Ben. The light in the tower showing that the House was sitting was of course extinguished for the war. Curious how bombs missed the really ugly buildings…
He turned right, up Buckingham Palace Road. As in Palace Street, odd sandbags, the sacking burned so that the sand spread into low and blackened pyramids, showed where incendiary bombs had landed in the road and on the pavement, and been stifled by sandbags placed by brave men risking blazing magnesium. Brave and usually middle-aged and elderly men who by day went about their ordinary business, running a local tobacconist’s working in an office, acting as caretaker of a building. And women, too. Last night as he hurriedly dumped one sandbag on an incendiary in the road (after making sure none was lodged in the roof), a figure in an air raid warden’s tin hat had called out encouragement while tackling another bomb, and it had been a woman.
As he strode along it seemed only a few days ago that, fresh from hospital, he had first made his way through St James’s Park to the Admiralty to be given the task of finding out how ships in the middle of convoys were being torpedoed, apparently by phantoms. That had stayed a mystery until he went to sea in a convoy. Now, he wondered, what had Captain Watts in store for him? Nothing very exciting, from the sound of his voice on the telephone. Graphs and statistics of how many million tons of merchant ships were torpedoed last month, and how many million remained, and how long they would last at the present rapid rate of sinking and slow rate of construction.
There was the same old gardener in St James’s Park collecting scraps of paper, stabbing them with a spear made of a broom handle with a nail at the end and then putting them in the sack slung across his shoulders on a piece of rope.
‘Been away, then, guv!’
‘Yes. I see you’re still busy.’
‘Ah.’ He dug into a pocket as though he had been waiting to see Ned again. ‘You’re a naval man so you’ll be able to tell me what this is what I’ve just found.’
Yorke walked towards him and took the proffered brass-coloured cone.
‘Nose cap of an anti-aircraft shell.’
‘Can I sell it?’
Yorke laughed at the man’s uncomplicated approach. ‘Yes, I’m sure someone would like it as a souvenir.’
‘Not you, though?’
‘Afraid not.’
‘Seen too many, eh guv?’ The old man gestured at the medal ribbon and then, catching sight of Yorke’s left hand, exclaimed, ‘’Ere, you just done that?’
‘No, it’s quite a while ago now.’
‘Didn’t notice it a’fore when I used ter see yer,’ he said, almost suspiciously.
‘I was wearing a glove.’
‘Ah, ’counts for it, dunnit? ’Fraid it’ll put off the girls, eh?’
‘I suppose so. That’s how I felt then. Now you see I’m carrying my gloves!’
‘’Ave to, doncher? All part of the uniform. But take my tip, guv, don’t worry about the girls. Them as’d be put orf, they ain’t worth bothering with anyway. Wounded, was you?’
When Yorke nodded, the old man said, a complaining note in his voice, ‘You ain’t wearing a wound stripe. I ’ad two in the last lot, the proper war that was. Mortar bomb in the trench cut my legs up the first time. Got treated fer that in Boolong. Could see England on a fine day. Second one was a bullet — and a Blighty one, too! They sent me ’ome fer that and give me a pension, too. Wouldn’t fink I’m ticking over with one lung, wouldjer?’
Yorke looked at his watch as he shook his head. The casual mention of a lung made him shiver. ‘I must be off!’
‘’Ow much should I ask fer this?’ the old man asked, holding up the nose cap.
‘I don’t know the going price. The guns fire a few thousand shells every night… Still, you might get a fiver from an American soldier. Or you might have to sell it for scrap!’
The Citadel was easier to see now: the trees had finally surrendered all their leaves to the twin blasts of high explosive and the cold winds of early winter. Only the pigeons seemed unconcerned whether there was war or peace: lunchtime always brought people scattering welcome crumbs, and one old man in pince-nez, who seemed to have come straight out of the Pickwick Papers, was always sitting in the same seat at this time of the morning scattering corn to an eagerly pecking circle of birds. Plump sparrows which always seemed slightly grubby weaved among the pigeons like cocky corvettes working through a lumbering convoy. Who was the old man? Ned pictured him at home sitting in an armchair, a fez-shaped velvet smoking cap on his head, a blue velvet smoking jacket round his shoulders, and reading. It would be something by Sir Walter Scott, and he would be quietly puffing Digger Shag in a meerschaum and probably existing on an Indian Civil Service pension.
And now Ned was almost abreast the Captain Cook statue, placed low as though Nelson’s column, beyond Admiralty Arch, had made the Board shy of honouring yet another of Britain’s heroes. That was one of the major faults of the Navy: it took the credit for the men like Cook and Nelson and Scott when the credit in fact was due to the country that bred them, since the Navy was anxious t
o forget its failures, the Hyde Parkers, Roddams, Manns, and so on, and was skilled at putting unearned gloss on its Ansons, St Vincents and Jellicoes.
The messenger just inside the entrance recognized him and welcomed him back — but still wanted to examine his pass. The building with its mosaic floors, long corridors and high ceilings smelled as dusty as ever, a vast trap for hayfever victims. Then Ned turned off the corridor and down the steps to the thick steel doors and concrete of the Citadel, changing in half a dozen paces from the atmosphere of the ‘down funnel, up screw’ of the Victorian Navy slowly moving from sail to steam (and hating it) to the modern Navy with turbines spun by superheated steam.
The thick piping along the walls: hot and cold water, sewage, air conditioning — it was all here, so that the low-ceilinged bowels of the Citadel resembled the inside of a ship. The only thing missing was the distant rumble and vibration of propellers and their shafts, and the garbled bellows coming over the loudspeakers which, in the modern Navy, replaced with electrical incoherence the garbled bellows of the sailing Navy’s bosun’s mates.
He had reached his desk before Jemmy, the only person yet in the room, spotted him and leapt to his feet with a welcoming bellow.
‘My hero!’ he exclaimed. ‘Hollywood wants to film us with you in the leading role: the Swedes are planting rows of turnips from sheer remorse; and keep your hands off Joan.’ With that his head jerked back with the nervous twitch that had inspired his nickname, derived from the Earl of Sandwich who was First Lord of the Admiralty in Samuel Pepys’ time and better known as Jemmy Twitcher, who was also a villain in John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera.
‘How’s Clare?’ he continued. ‘Glad to see you back, no doubt, the poor misguided wench. Watch your Ma — Captain Watts has been taking her out to dinner!’
‘My turn now,’ Ned said. ‘It’s wonderful to be back. I can’t tell you how I’ve missed all this paperwork and — ’ he waved at the piping along the walls and overhead — ‘all this tubing hissing and clanking and belching. And no one assassinates tea leaves like Joan, and I haven’t seen a good twitch in weeks.’
Jemmy, thin-faced and with deepset eyes, gaunt of visage according to Joan, the Wren officer who was his mistress, had the kind of neck-twisting, head-jerking twitch that was a common sight in wartime, especially among air crews, submariners and men who served in the smaller fighting vessels (the large fighting vessels usually meant cruisers and upwards). It was usually a sign of an intelligent and imaginative man who had lived under intense mental strain for months on end, with the responsibility for the lives of many other men as well. Occasionally it led men to crack up. When this happened to the pilots of fighters, or a member of a bomber’s crew, the Air Ministry bundled the man out of sight and labelled his file ‘LMF’, lacking in moral fibre, a polite way of calling him a coward. The Navy in its lack of wisdom was accidentally more humane. Not understanding what was happening to the man but unable to admit that a naval officer could be a coward (not in the numbers who were being affected), it gave him a shore job. This often cured him by relieving the strain, so that bureaucratic stupidity achieved a cure beyond the abilities of the doctors at the great naval hospital at Haslar.
Still, Jemmy looked less gaunt; his eyes were less sunken. Ned thought he had less of the ‘lean and hungry’ look of Cassius and more of the lean cat who had swallowed the canary — due no doubt to Joan.
The door swung open and the Croupier walked in, a gangling young lieutenant whose every joint seemed too loose, as though nuts and bolts needed a quarter turn with a spanner. Had he been serving in a ship, his long curly hair would have had the First Lieutenant suggesting a haircut, not merely a trim. The Croupier pointed an accusing finger at Ned.
‘You owe us double gins!’
‘I’ll buy you gins, but I don’t know about “owing”!’ Ned said mildly.
‘One of the oldest rules of ASIU,’ the Croupier said nonchalantly, ‘is that if you prove you’re right, then it’s doubles all round.’
‘I’ve never heard of that one,’ Jemmy protested. ’I’d be paying every day because I’m so often right.’
‘You haven’t heard of it because I’ve just made it up. Proposed, seconded, passed nem. con.’
‘Nem. con?’ Jemmy asked suspiciously.
‘Latin,’ the Croupier said airily. ‘Means unanimous. Do you want a free gin or not?’
‘No such thing as a free gin,’ Jemmy grumbled. ‘Chap buys you a gin, he wants a favour, or you have to listen to his boring stories, or he’s lining up to pinch your girl. “You don’t get owt for nowt”, as our Yorkshire brethren say.’
‘You had a bad weekend?’ the Croupier asked sympathetically. ‘This is no way to greet Ned. Welcome back, by the way. You’ve just made the ASIU into one of their Lordships’ star turns. Much good joss comes our way from Number Ten. In fact Uncle expects a bottle of brandy from the PM any moment.’
‘He’s got it already, so Joan says,’ Jemmy commented.
‘Ah well, not all of us get the between-the-sheets confidences of Uncle’s secretary. Nothing for Ned, then?’
‘Well, he’s got another gong.’
‘And I am due at Number Ten for tea tomorrow,’ Ned said. ‘I go with Uncle.’
‘Tea!’ Jemmy snorted. ‘Well, knock off a handful of his cigars: I haven’t had a good smoke since Uncle Hubert left me his stock of Havanas in his will. Two gross of ’em. Never been able to touch a Havana since. I was fourteen at the time.’
At that moment Joan came in, honey-coloured hair neatly tied back, her uniform well pressed, and with several tan-coloured dockets under her arm. ‘Ned! Welcome back! I’ve just been phoning Palace Street. Uncle is waiting impatiently, and here you are, gossiping with these derelict barrow boys!’
Ned kissed the proffered cheek. ‘Lead me to him!’
As he came into the room Ned thought that Captain Henry Watts looked as though he had just stepped out of a Noël Coward war film. Those slightly heavy features, black wavy hair (in which Ned noticed the first flecks of grey at the temples), rugby player’s build and excellently tailored uniform belonged on the bridge of a destroyer steaming at full speed on a cinema screen.
‘Ah, Ned…’ The two men shook hands. Watts had commanded his own destroyer flotilla and sunk four U-boats. Yet he still looks rather raffish, which is ten years older than debonair, thought Ned. Another ten years and he’ll be combing his hair across the crown of his head to disguise the pink skin showing through like a maiden’s blush, and telling himself that the bright light over the shaving mirror, not Nature, is to blame.
‘Coffee?’
Ned shook his head. It was too early for Camp coffee poured from a bottle… For a man brought up on French coffee made in the French way, the artificial substitutes made unpleasant alternatives.
‘Don’t be too sure. Tell him, Joan.’
‘One of the merchant ships in your convoy was so delighted by the way you found that U-boat that the captain presented a case of Brazilian coffee beans to the convoy boys in Liverpool. They had the decency to send half of it down to us. Seems merchant ships stock up with the scarce items when they visit places like Brazil. Pity there was no ship in the convoy from New York: I could have done with a few more pairs of silk stockings.’ She looked down at her legs and raised her skirt an inch or two.
‘They’re silk,’ Watts said.
‘Yes,’ Joan said matter-of-factly, ‘but they don’t last for ever.’
‘I bet Jemmy doesn’t know where you got those.’
‘You always say you only bet on certainties, sir,’ Joan said demurely. ‘Jemmy’s glad to be allowed to inspect them.’
‘Well, we can all do that,’ Watts observed.
‘Can you?’
Ned pictured Joan, wearing only black silk stockings and perhaps a matching brassière, a carefull
y hoarded pre-war French one (what did they call those special ones? Slings?).
‘Very well, I’ll have some coffee,’ he said. ‘Black.’
‘And you, sir?’
‘Black for me, too, but not shiny,’ Watts said, and Ned knew he had not been alone in his fantasy. A glance at Joan showed she too knew the thoughts going through their minds.
‘Two blacks,’ she said and walked over to plug in the battered electric kettle. She flicked on the switch. ‘And when you’re near a shop that sells children’s chemistry sets, we need some new filter papers for these.’ She gestured at the small metal coffee filters.
‘How about grinding the beans?’ Watts asked anxiously, and explained to Ned: ‘I happened to have an old coffee grinder in the flat, but the lid can fly off. Makes an awful mess.’
‘He speaks as though he cleans it up,’ Joan said sarcastically.
‘More respect, Third Officer Barclay, or I’ll report to the Boss Wren that one of her eggs is addled.’
‘If she knew one of her precious chicks was — ’
‘Yes?’ Watts inquired as Joan paused. ‘You know a surprising amount about periscopes for a Wren who has never served at sea.’
A blushing Joan gathered up the mugs. ‘I must go and wash up.’
As the door shut behind her, Ned took a deep breath and before Watts had time to say anything said: ‘I want to apply for sea duty, sir.’
‘Very well, all such applications have to be in writing, as you know. Address it to me and leave it with Joan.’
Captain Watts was far too affable: he was speaking in a mild ‘Knock and it shall be opened unto you’ tone. Or had Ned misjudged the whole situation and would Watts in fact be glad to get rid of him? Had the convoy business been a naval success but, because of the revelation about the duplicity of the ‘neutral’ Swedes, a diplomatic disaster?