That had been another good twenty-four hours for the Seahound. She was a lucky ship: some submarines had the damnedest luck, patrol after patrol without a glimpse of the enemy. Seahound had never yet had a blank patrol: each time, when she returned to her base, she had been able to fly the Jolly Roger, and always the flag bore some symbol of a new success: a bar for a ship torpedoed, a star for one sunk by gunfire. Even the very first time, the “working-up” patrol in the North Sea, when Seahound had been sent to patrol a quiet area where there was little likelihood of any excitement. The object was to give her men a chance to settle down to each other and to their new ship, to get used to the routine of patrol. They weren’t expected to sink anything. But from that patrol they returned in triumph with a red bar sewn on the virgin Jolly Roger, red for a warship, a big U-boat which they blew in half with a torpedo, on a dismal rainy morning with the visibility so low that from the time of sighting the U-boat to the time of firing the salvo the hands of the Control Room clock covered only six minutes. The U-boat sank in two separate parts, and Seahound’s Captain jumped up and down like a little boy at the periscope, shouting, “We’ve got her, by Christ, we’ve got her!”
There was a warm welcome from the Depot Ship when a week later they slid into the Loch, and there had been frank surprise in many faces. The Seahounds were due for leave, a last leave in England before they sailed for the Far East: the officers were all going south, to London, and they left together in the Depot Ship’s motor-boat, passed close to their submarine which lay alongside and on whose casing Number One stood to wave farewell: he had had his leave, before the last patrol, and now he regretted having taken it. The boat jumped and bounced through the choppy grey waters to the landing-place near the Bay Hotel, and the Seahounds had time for a drink in the American bar before they caught their train for Glasgow.
Of course, none of them got sleepers at Glasgow. It was the usual routine: the man in the office said they were all reserved, for Generals and Very Important Persons, but that when the train started the attendant might be able to help them. In other words, any sleepers that remained would go to the highest bidders.
The Captain said, “Not worth enriching the attendant. May get a compartment to ourselves, if we’re quick.” They found an empty first at the front of the train, and while the Captain and Sub were stowing their cases in the racks, Chief opened his and drew out a small T-shaped metal object. He inserted it in the keyhole of the door and turned it.
“I’ve had this since I was a midshipman,” he told them. “Pinched it from a guard. I used to have some stickers with ‘Reserved’ printed on them, but I’ve used them up.” The train lurched and gathered way, southward bound: they had a corner each, plenty to read, a set of dice and a bottle of whisky.
The train stopped at York. Just before it was due to leave, the Captain ordered Sub to go and buy some sandwiches. There was a fighting crowd round the refreshment barrow, and he had just got his food and his change when the train shrieked and began to move. He ran, clutching the paper bag, wrenched at the door of the last carriage, but it was locked or jammed. He threw the parcel into the dark window and followed it, head first, landing heavily on a sailor and a girl. It was Able Seaman Young, of the Seahound. Young cursed, and the girl screamed.
“Sorry, Young. Nearly missed it.”
“Nothing doing, Mr Ferris. You’ll ‘ave to find one of your own: this one’s mine.” The truth of his statement was only too obvious.
They seemed surprised when he eventually turned up.
“Thought we’d have to go hungry. What d’you get?”
“Sausage-rolls. You ought to see Young’s girl-friend. I’d like to be Young, till London.”
“Trust a torpedoman,” observed the Captain. The train rattled and rumbled into the south. Throughout the length of it soldiers, sailors and airmen dozed and slept. Most of them were going on leave: some for a weekend, some, just home from overseas, for a longer, gay, embarrassing reunion: some, like the Seahounds, to say good-bye to people and things that they had always known and might not know again. The train was part of the war-time life: whether the end was an end or a beginning it was all the same to the engine: crash, rattle, wallop down the line, down to London and the fleshpots of the south.
Early morning in London: the train stood steaming, exhausted, in a grey station that smelled of hangover. Long after the other passengers had dispersed, Very Important Persons slumbered on in their sleepers. They were getting the Govemment’s money’s-worth. The attendants brewed tea, and waited for tips.
* * *
The Sub leant forward to hear what the taxi-man was saying. He was a stranger in Ambershott, and any local information would be of interest.
“You’ll find it a bit of a dead-end up there, sir.”
“Dead-end?”
“Ah, sir. Quiet. Big old ’ouses, they are, quiet as the grave, you might say. Which p’ticular ‘ouse, sir?”
“It’s called Tregowan.”
“Tregowan, sir?” The old head whisked round in surprise, and the taxi swerved savagely across the empty sodden street.
“Tregowan, sir?”
“Yes. Why – is it haunted, or something?” The driver steadied his course, said nothing while he blew his horn at a tabby cat.
“No, sir, not as I’ve ’eard. But that’s where the big boss lives, sir. Foreigner, ’e is.”
“Foreigner?”
“Yessir. Canadian. A General, too: boss o’ the ‘ole bag o’ tricks, ’e is. Perhaps you got the name wrong, sir?”
“No. That’ll be the one.” The driver made no further comment: he was wondering how to explain all this to his wife. There would have to be a good reason for a young Naval fellow taking all his bags and such to Tregowan, and the driver’s wife was satisfied only with the fullest details. The taxi rattled along the narrow streets, under the grim, Victorian house-fronts, an absorbed and worried man at the wheel.
“Shall I drive in, sir?”
“If there’s room. You’re right: it is quiet, up here.”
“Ah. Quiet as the grave.” The gateposts drew slowly past, as though the taxi, or its driver, or both, were unwilling to enter the domain of so exalted a foreigner.
“You wouldn’t be a Canadian, now, would you, sir?”
“No, I’m English. But my mother’s married to a Canadian. The General.” The driver expelled a long breath. So that was it. One more of the town girls got swept off her feet. There’d be a pretty to-do when the lads came back: he had often said so. Not that they were bad chaps, these Canadians: only a bit queer, being from foreign parts.
“‘Ere’s y’ bags, sir. Four shillings.”
“Five to you?”
“Thank ye, sir. But I can see you ain’t no Canadian. I’d get more ‘n that, from a Canadian.”
“Perhaps they get paid more.”
“They do that. And y’ see, sir, I’ve ’eard as ’ow there ain’t nothing in Canada for ’em to spend money on. So of course, when they gets to Ambershott, well!” The old man spread out his hands: what did you expect? “I ‘ope you’ll like it ‘ere, sir. Better ring the bell.”
“Thanks. I will.” But he waited until the taxi had trundled itself backwards out through the gates: then he rang, heard the ringing deep inside the house. It was half-past nine on a Sunday morning.
* * *
It was later on the same day that the Captain took a taxi: he climbed into it at Portsmouth station, paid it off outside the Queens Hotel. When he had unpacked his grip, he went downstairs to the phone box.
Pamela was delighted to hear of his arrival: she was on duty, she told him, all day, but he could pick her up at five at the Wrennery. She’d have to break her date with George Witherton. Arthur said that he didn’t think she’d have a date, when they were almost engaged: he meant it as a joke, but Pamela took it seriously, just sighed and said that she’d see him at five.
Rather a silly girl, he thought. But she’s fun, when she gets what she wan
ts and nothing is difficult. The Captain had a feeling that she only tolerated Naval Officers because, being a Wren, she found them handy, usually presentable escorts. He had a feeling that she regarded men as something to be made use of: when she wanted one to be nice to her, she was nice to him, but only for a good reason.
Arthur had dropped in to see his mother, in London, before he caught the Portsmouth train. He had been permitted to see her in bed, having breakfast. Mrs Hallet was a self-preserved woman of middle age: she never rose before ten, and began her war-work after lunch. For want of anything better to say, Arthur told her that he was thinking of becoming engaged.
“Ridiculous, Arthur! At your age! Who is she?”
“She’s a Wren: Pamela Sainsbury.”
“Sounds like a grocer’s daughter. You had better go and shave, Arthur. Was there no hot water in the train?”
He left the phone booth, deciding to spend a little time in the bar, before lunch. It was lonely in the crowd of strangers, and he was beginning to wonder why he had left London, when a couple of friends whom he hadn’t seen for years emerged from the throng beside him. Of course, this was Pompey, where you always met your friends.
Friends? Well, acquaintances: brother officers. Not necessarily friends: only one in a hundred came into that category. Most of them you’d known since you were thirteen: by the time you were seventeen and Chief Cadet Captain at Dartmouth, few of them were friends. They were careful to stay on good terms with you: they watched carefully, waiting for you to slip up. Then, perhaps, “Remember Hallet? He was Chief C.C. You’d never think so, now. Going down the drain, old boy… Missed getting an operational command… Got hat frightful Southsea slut for a mistress… Flash in the pan, old boy.”
They couldn’t say it yet.
The tankards were empty:
“Three more, please,” he called, and he watched the barmaid as she dragged the handles down: she thought of her permanent wave, and while her hands and wrists moved the handles her bright smile faded and she wondered about whether or not she’d have to lose a tooth the next time she visited the dentist.
* * *
The bell pealed again inside the house called Tregowan. It was remote, nothing to do with the bell-push: like the cry of pain that came separately, a little moment after the squeeze on the trigger. Obviously nobody was going to answer the door: the Sub left the porch, walked round to the back door. It was locked, and there was no sound from inside: probably this was where the bell rang when he pressed the button on the front.
The top part of the window was open. It was a small window, and limited in its opening, but there might be room to worm through. The Sub wedged one foot on the curve of the kitchen waste-pipe, curled the fingers of one hand round the edge of the window-frame. He stuck his head and shoulders into the kitchen, leant on the inner sill, slid through. He stood up, dusted down his Number One uniform.
He hoped that this was the right house: things could be a little awkward otherwise. Even the crash of his entry had caused no sign of life, no voice or footstep. He left the kitchen, explored the lower rooms: in the drawing-room were photographs that he knew: there was even one of himself, at the age of sixteen, a Cadet, a small, undamaged face, clean white tabs on the lapels. The ashes of a fire lay in the grate.
Leaving the house through the front door, he carried in his two suitcases, dumped them in the hall before he climbed the stairs, cream-painted stairs, the carpet thick and soft. On the landing, he knew for the first time that the house held life: he heard a snore. It was a deep snore, a pleasant sound. The Sub opened the door, and his mother shrieked.
Not with fear. His mother had never really been frightened in her life. She came of an old Border family that had in its blood the acceptance of surprise. Now, it was with surprise and delight that she shrieked: beside her, in the bed, lay the man she loved, in the doorway the boy she had reared. Her exclamation woke the General, who heaved himself still half asleep into a sitting position in his broadly-striped pyjamas.
“Well!” The big man drawled the word in a pleasantly soft accent. He had a big, friendly face.
* * *
“So there we are. You’re rushing off to God knows where, and I’m expected to stay here like an old maid for the next five years. The fact that I’m ill doesn’t worry you at all, does it?”
“Don’t be an idiot.” Harry, the Engineer, looked wearily across at his wife. “There’s a war on: you know I have to go where I’m sent.”
“Is there a war on, Harry? I wouldn’t have known. Do you think I’m used to living like this?”
“Like what?”
“Oh, it’s all right for you. You come here for a few days and expect to find a loving little wife waiting for you. At least you get about, see people. You’ve got a job to be interested in. What have I got to think about? You think…”
She had the look that said she was about to cry. Harry was sick of tears. There were people who had something to cry about and yet didn’t…
“You could join the Wrens again. The doctor says you’re fit.”
“Fit? For what? This? Oh, I can’t expect you to understand, can I?”
Harry knocked out his pipe. There was little point in trying to answer. He looked quickly round as though he hadn’t known where the door was, and as though he was relieved at finding it, the way out.
“I think I’ll ring Arthur, at the Queens.”
“At this time of night?”
“Pubs are shut. He’ll be just about back. I said I’d ring.” He thought, I’m making excuses, explaining myself now. What happens when there’s no war to go to?
“And you imagine that just because the pubs are shut Arthur’ll go straight back to his little bed?” The Engineer’s wife smiled. “He’s not married yet, you now.”
* * *
After a few days at Ambershott, the Sub travelled down to Sussex to stay with the Bishop family. Before his mother married the General, they had always lived there, in Sussex, always known the Bishops. The Bishops were a part of Sussex as rooted as the Downs, as permanent and necessary as the sweep of country that fell clear from the Three Bells to the distant sea. For the Sub, the Bishops were as much a family as his own, particularly when he felt that his mother had a new life of her own to make and that if he married a widow he’d rather not have her children as well.
Major Bishop was known to his friends as Bish. He was a man of late middle age, bald and a little stocky. His heart was in the land that had reared the generations before him, and when the spirits moved him his talk was always of the ‘14 War, in which, he would state in support of any argument, he had “Gone over the Top”. Whenever he made that statement, his wife was inclined to start giggling, and his son and daughter were apt to remind him that they had heard it on previous occasions. In the Sub’s opinion, there was no family in England more wholly English or more completely united in itself than the family Bishop.
Bish was a busy man, these days. Well over military age, he had enrolled as a part-time worker in a local factory that produced fuel-tanks for aircraft. He had become a foreman: intensely interested, he was ready at any time to describe in detail the production problems of a modern factory. Determined to play a full part in his country’s battle, Bish enrolled for night duty as a Special Constable, wearing the helmet and belt with all the confidence of a regular policeman. When he returned home, late in the evening, and laid down these badges of office on the arm of a settee, his family saw the strain in the face of a man who had never played any part smaller than that within his reach.
As the Sub had once said, over a pint of bitter, to a friend in the Ram’s Head, Bish was a lovely man. Now, leaning on the oaken bar of that establishment, he listened and watched while Bishop talked to old Todd. Todd was saying that he’d never known a gentleman like Mr Forster, never, God rest his soul.
“H’m. Handy man with a gun, wasn’t he?”
“’e was that, Major. And I never knew a man wi’ such knowledge o�
� fruit.”
“Fruit, eh?”
“Ah. There’s been many a time ’e’d take a seat by that window, and I’d take an apple or a pear, or whatever it might be, out o’ me pocket, and ’e’d look at un, an’ maybe ’e’d take a sniff at un, apple or pear, or whatever it might be, and ’e’d say, ‘Why,’ ’e’d say, ‘that’s a so-an’-so apple or pear’; or whatever it might be. Never known ’im wrong, Major, never.”
Later, walking slowly home, the Sub said:
“You know, Bish, I reckon that men who love the land and men who love the sea have a lot in common. The same sort of love: the same faith, if you like.”
“Daresay you’re right, boy.” Bish looked faintly surprised. Next thing you knew, the boy’d be writing to the papers.
The Sussex evening and the quiet, homely friendship: here, awake and in daylight, he was dreaming again. He was dreaming that this belonged to him, that he belonged here, that roots existed for him as much as they did for the Bishops. He remembered a school report that had worried his mother: it said, “John lives in a world of his own…”
It was easier to dream, to see things as he wanted them to be. He could even imagine, for instance, that his father had also been worried by that report. In his heart, the Sub knew that his father had never had any lasting interest in his youngest son, the product of his second marriage. His father lived in the past, among friends who were already, most of them, dead. They were not dead to the Sub’s father: they lived as hard as they had always done, riding hard, drinking hard, living in the only way that they had ever wanted to live. Only the Sub’s father was condemned to go on living for ten years longer, alone with the past, in a seaside villa with a single yapping terrier and a young family with whom he had nothing in common.
Once he had told them, “I want to live long enough to see my son in uniform.”
Strange, thought the Sub, to have been so thrilled at such a remark! When he heard it, he had felt as though he had been given an unexpected, needed present, his father’s interest. It was the first and only sign of it that he had ever seen. Not that he missed consciously something that he had never held: only that a taste, a flashing glimpse, filled him with longing.
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