England Expects (Empires Lost)

by Jackson, Charles S.

  Among them stood Malaya, Warspite, Queen Elizabeth, Nelson and Repulse; a powerful collection of battleships and battlecruiser that should’ve put the fear of God into any prospective enemy battlefleet. Yet Nelson, completed soon after the signing of the Washington Treaty in the mid-thirties, was the only ship present that wasn’t of World War One vintage. In Realtime, none of those capital ships anchored there would still exist by the time of his birth in 1965: Repulse would be lost in action off Malaya in 1941, and the rest would be struck off just a few years later, having succumbed to post-war navy cut backs and that last, terminal voyage to the breakers’ yards.

  Just the Americans’ Iowa class battleships had ‘fought’ on, clinging to sporadic periods of service in Korea, Vietnam and other conflicts as floating batteries and then, during the 1980s and ‘90s, as refurbished combat vessels intended to counter new Soviet warship classes. They’d fired Tomahawk cruise missiles and their 16-inch shells into Kuwait and Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, but they’d been decommissioned again soon after, this time for good.

  For many students of modern military history living at the end of the Realtime 20th Century, the age of the battleship was the last great, ‘romantic’ era of naval prowess prior to the ascension of the aircraft carrier and sterile air power. It was to some extent a symptom of comfortable hindsight produced of having not lived through the age itself, and Thorne had been one who’d sometimes ascribed to it. To be able to now sit and stare out across such a collection of powerful warships was almost as intoxicating a drug as the white rum he carried in his often-used hip flask… the same flask at which he now sipped carefully.

  He knew his alcoholism was creating serious problems (there was no point in ignoring the fact that alcoholism was exactly what it was), and he also knew it wasn’t getting better… quite the opposite in fact. Thorne was still at a complete loss however to explain to himself, or his conscience, why he wasn’t able to arrest the continuing slide into booze and despair that had gripped him almost from the moment of their arrival at Scapa Flow. Prior to their departure back in 21st Century Britain, he’d been able to control the problem – barely – but this had become impossible now he was alone and to all intents and purposes devoid of higher authority in any direct sense.

  He knew all of this, but his usually-strong willpower had nevertheless failed him miserably. Instead of galvanising him into action, his spirit had instead ‘seized up’ and chosen pathetic resignation, and as is often the case in such situations, the guilt and sense of failure that came with his inability to stop what he was doing in turn made the cravings worse and created a vicious circle of secret self-loathing.

  Thorne heard the approach of the Austin sedan as it drove along the track behind him and came to a halt beside the empty truck. He hurriedly hid the hip flask within the large pockets of his RAF greatcoat as Eileen stepped from the car and began to make her way down the shallow slope toward the pillbox. His uneasiness over her unexpected presence was as clearly visible as the uncomfortable expression on Eileen’s face as Thorne unsuccessfully attempted to hide his misgivings in a thin and insincere smile.

  “Enjoying the view?” She ventured hopefully, her own emotions and nerves whirling as she tried to decide on the best way to reveal what was on her mind.

  “Something like that,” he replied dully, making no effort to stand as he returned his gaze to the dark waters and gusts of cold wind whipped past them both, whistling about the base of the tower.

  “It was the ‘anniversary’ of VJ day the other day,” Thorne spoke softly, almost reverently, as he attempted to control the course of any conversation. “It hasn’t even happened yet...” She crouched down beside him and waited for him to continue. “August 15th… the day of unconditional Japanese surrender… with Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few days before that. All that’s supposed to be five years from now, and odds are it won’t ever happen.”

  “Aye,” Donelson agreed, noting the lost tone in his voice. “It’s not an easy thing to come to term with, I’ll grant ye that!”

  “We buried men whose families I can never write to: families that in some cases haven’t even been born yet. Every day it’s getting harder to believe we’ve ever lived anything else but ‘here’ and ‘now’.”

  “The rest of us have been lucky, I guess,” Eileen mused thoughtfully, nerves fraying further as she sought some way to broach the subject of her visit. “Having plenty to do has made it easier to ignore what’s happening in the ‘big picture’ and concentrate on the day to day stuff… how about you?”

  Thorne gave a non-committal shrug. “I could be more active in a physical sense I guess, but being CO means I can’t really avoid having to look at the ‘big picture’.”

  She took a deep breath and plunged on in. “Nothing bothering you then, other than the problems at hand?” The question blindsided Thorne in spite of his nerves, and he glanced sharply in her direction, internal defences that until that point had been idling in neutral at the back of his mind suddenly alert and at the forefront of his consciousness.

  “Should there be any other problems?” He snapped back curtly, turning his gaze away. “What are you implying?”

  “There’ve been discrepancies in the alcohol stocks at the Hindsight Officers’ Mess ... particularly the rum: someone’s been drinking an awful lot of it.”

  “Really…?” Thorne was almost snarling now. “I wouldn’t know anything about that...”

  “Maybe,” Eileen shot back. “But if that’s the case, why can’t you look me in the eyes?”

  “Don’t take that tone with me, commander!” Thorne stared her square in the face then as he rose to his feet in an aggressive stance, the words not quite a shout, but close enough.

  “Then don’t pull rank on me, mister!” Eileen countered evenly as she stood fully also, lowering the volume of the discussion once more, although there was no lack of anger in her words. “We’ve known each other far too fuckin’ long for you to get away with that!”

  “I just said I don’t know what you’re talking about...”

  “And I don’t fuckin’ believe you!” Donelson snapped back, letting more of her anger loose. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Max, but if there’s a problem, you need to talk to someone about it. The morning of that first air raid, you barely got that bloody Lightning off the ground without wrecking it! Yesterday you wouldn’t even fly the fuckin’ thing, and pushed Trumbull into it instead! He did a fine job, but he can’t fly that jet like you could have. We need you, Max, but we need you sober and with your shit together!”

  “Well thank you for the impromptu therapy session…!” He snarled back, turning at the last remark and stalking off in a rage. “Do you take AMEX, or shall I leave a cheque at reception?” Pure sarcasm dripped from his words, born of desperation.

  “Oh for Christ’s sake, Max, cut it out!” Donelson was now shouting almost as loudly as he. “It’s me you’re talking to, not some UN-appointed shrink you can bullshit! I know you! This shit we’ve all been dealing with since we arrived is bad enough without throwing the added pressure of command on you, and all the pain you brought back with you! There’s nothing wrong with grief, but you’ve got to work through it, not bottle it up! Three years is too long to tear yourself apart over something that wasn’t your bloody fault!”

  “What would you know about it?” Thorne demanded in fury, tears welling in his eyes as he whirled on her once more and forced her to take a step backward. She’d found the raw, open wound within his mind and he reacted in a completely instinctive manner: with thoughtless retaliation. “What the fuck would you know about it? Twelve God-Damned years married to the fucking navy! What human being did you ever care enough about to be afraid of losing them?” He regretted the words the moment he’d said them… the moment he saw the reaction in Donelson’s face. The tears she’d been holding back began to pour down her cheeks as she stood stock still, momentarily stunned.

  “You need to ask me that…?”
Eileen hissed at him, acid rising harshly in her voice. “You, of all people…?” The sharpness of the tone plunged a knife through his very core. “I lost the only man I ever cared about years ago, and the only reason I’m even standing here is because I’m not prepared tae fuckin’ go through that again!” She whirled as she spoke those words and strode off the way she’d come, back toward the tower and her car.

  “Eileen, wait… please...” He was now completely and utterly deflated and honestly meant to apologise, but she ignored him as she continued up the slope. “Eileen!” He repeated, louder and more forcefully, but again she ignored him. “Fuck!” He added under his breath, and he took off in hot pursuit, the only anger left in him now focussed on his own stupidity.

  Involved in reorganising the radar detection systems for Hindsight all day, Alec Trumbull and Evan Lloyd were only just finishing up their work on activating the last of those units: all four of the BRTs had been relocated to render useless any information Klein had passed on to the Wehrmacht regarding their positions. It’d been hard work carting their equipment out of the back of their truck and up to the roof of the Hackness Martello Tower, and it had taken the better part of two hours to set up the unit and its diesel generator, and get it connected to their reinstalled wireless network.

  Trumbull enjoyed working with Corporal Lloyd, and he found the man to be an almost inexhaustible source of historical information. The young Australian loved to speak on what he knew of his world’s history, and Trumbull was hungry for as much information as he could accumulate on the world that Hindsight had left behind… history that came from personal perspectives as well the information held on Hindsight’s storage discs and computer hard drives. He very much wanted to understand the motives and ideas of the people he now worked alongside, something that wasn’t easy considering the seventy intervening years of between his world and the one they’d come from.

  Wrapped up in their own work and conversations, the pair were completely unaware of Max Thorne’s presence by the pillbox below them, nor had they heard the approach of Eileen’s car over the sound of the generator as they’d worked on the tower’s roof. It was after they’d completed their work and finally exited the fortress at ground level, engaged in an intriguing discussion regarding the assassination of an American president named Kennedy, that Trumbull first noticed Donelson running back up the hill from the direction of the pill box, Max Thorne behind her and closing as he called out her name.

  “Well, they’re usually the other way around…” Trumbull observed: the sight of Thorne running after having made some joke at Eileen’s expense and incurring her wrath had been a relatively common sight about the base, but the situation was reversed here, and things just didn’t look ‘right’. There was still a reasonable amount of daylight left that evening, and even from a distance it was apparent she was crying.

  “Looks like a problem, sir,” Lloyd observed quietly, also noting the tears and a little apprehensive as the pair halted by the flatbed Ford.

  “Yes,” Trumbull agreed slowly as the officer within him took over. “You just wait here, corporal… I’ll find out what on earth’s going on...”

  Donelson’s boots were more easily adapted to running on grass than Thorne’s slick-soled dress shoes, and she could easily have outrun him in a fair race, but her heart wasn’t in it and determination was on his side. He finally caught her a few metres from her car, grabbing her by the upper arm and able to turn her around without too much effort.

  “Eileen, I’m sorry,” he began, breathing heavily. “I shouldn’t have...” He was prevented from saying anything more as she threw her right fist across in a roundhouse punch, striking him squarely on the jaw. He was more shocked by the fact that she’d hit him than by the actual impact, although it was nevertheless powerful enough to knock him backward and sit him squarely on his backside.

  “Fuckin’ leave me alone!” Eileen snarled angrily, turning away from him again and climbing into the Austin sedan without looking back. This time he decided against going after her, preferring to sit for a while and contemplate the bruise he knew would rise on the left side of his chin. He dabbed gingerly at his offended jaw with one hand and found a smear of blood where the decorative ring Eileen wore on her middle finger had left a small cut beside his mouth.

  “Fancy talking about it, Old Man?” Alec Trumbull asked, standing a metre away with hands on his hips as the car powered away along the track in a spray of earth and gravel. “I’d have asked Eileen, but she didn’t seem likely to stop for a chat.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Thorne said sourly, shaking his head.

  “Was this something to do with what happened yesterday? I’d hate to think that was a disagreement over professional matters.”

  “It wasn’t,” Thorne reassured as he slowly dragged himself from the dewy grass, the seat of his trousers soaked through, as was the rear of the great coat. “That was a purely personal matter, and if there was one thing I did deserve, it was a smack in the mouth!”

  “You were acting less than a gentleman?” Trumbull tried to lighten the situation a little, noting the unusual severity of the Australian’s expression. “I find that difficult to believe, of course…”

  “I was acting like a complete arsehole!” Thorne growled, fixing the man with a stare that was far angrier over his own actions than anything else. “And you can believe that!” He shook his head. “I really don’t want to go into the details, and you probably don’t want to hear them, anyway.”

  “Possibly,” Trumbull agreed slowly, nodding. “I hope it was nothing serious between the two of you,” he ventured, immediately thinking the statement stupid; any altercation such as that could hardly be considered minor between friends.

  “Well, I sort of struck her on a raw nerve.” Thorne shook his head sadly this time as he walked over toward the tower, Trumbull in tow. “We’ve known each other now for over ten years, and I thought she’d gotten over it a long time ago...”

  “Over what…?”

  “Being in love with me,” Thorne answered softly in a matter-of-fact tone that surprised the squadron leader. “I met her as she was about to graduate, while I was doing some lecture work for the Royal Navy Academy at Dartmouth.” Thorne was suddenly and rather unusually gripped by a great need to talk about serious personal matters. “We became good friends and we went out a couple of times… one thing led to another and we were suddenly more than just friends… but in the end we found she cared a lot more about me than I did in return. To me, we were really just good friends, and I preferred things that way. She said she was all right with it too… at the time...” The last sentence sounded as obviously lame and sheepish to him as it did to Trumbull.

  “Do men of the Twenty-First Century know so little of women that they’d believe such a statement?”

  “Sounds naive, I know,” Thorne forced a slight grin, still dabbing at the corner of his mouth, “but it’s a bit hard to see things objectively when you’re talking about yourself. My ego’s not so big I think women are beating doors down to get at me…”

  “I suppose she still should’ve gotten over it by now, though,” Trumbull observed thoughtfully. “It seems to me a bit ill-advised to have come back with you if she still felt that way: problems dragged back from the future like that might well jeopardise your mission here.”

  Thorne nodded slowly, solemn once more. “I think she was actually trying to tell me the same thing!” He winced as he considered his next actions. “Think I’ll keep out of her way for a bit… let her cool down a little before trying to apologise…” He nodded slowly again to himself. “That might be a better idea.”

  “Mmm,” Trumbull mused, smiling ever so slightly. “I shouldn’t think I’d like to face a right hook like that twice in one day either!”

  “Anyone tell you you’ve learned how to become a smartarse too bloody quickly?” Thorne observed with a wry expression.

  “My commanding officer has been an exemplary tea
cher,” Trumbull replied glibly and Thorne actually laughed at some rare and welcome humour.

  “Smart bastard…!” He said, shaking his head and almost not wincing in pain because of his jaw. “I’ll have to watch what I say from now on when you’re about.”

  “Probably a ‘good call’,” Trumbull nodded sagely, getting the last word.

  Thorne cried out as he woke, bathed in his own sweat as usual in the middle of the night. He was also shivering, but that was no reflection on the temperature within the strange room that was his new quarters. The intensity of the nightmares had set every nerve in his body on edge, and he was almost hyperventilating, each breath rasping in his lungs as his bare chest heaved in exaggerated movement. His hands clutched at the covers of his bed as he drew them up, trying to reassure himself of the reality of the room. The voice he heard to his left at that moment almost startled him as much as the dream from which he’d just escaped.

  “Is it always like this…?”

  He snapped his head sideways to see a dark silhouette seated in a chair by his bedside that spoke with the voice of Eileen Donelson. He’d been so captured by the nightmare that he’d not even noticed her unexpected presence.

  “Sometimes worse,” Thorne admitted slowly, his voice thick and hoarse “...though not often.” He no longer possessed any strength to fuel anger or fear… all he felt was exhaustion.

  “When I was a wee bairn, I used to wake up to my father screaming in the next room as he dreamed about what the IRA did to him… he never really got over it…” Eileen said softly after a pause. “My mother and I spent sixteen bloody years listening to that… and enduring the abuse and the violence that went with it… in the end, I joined the navy so I wouldn’t have to deal with it any more. Ma left him later the same year… I guess it was that much more difficult, with no one else in the house.”

  “I’m sorry… for what I said... I thought...” His voice trailed off – he had no idea what he might say that would make any difference. “I don’t know what I thought…” he added finally with a sigh of resignation.