‘Aye aye, sir.’
The commander nodded, understanding perfectly what had not been said. His captain had carefully not mentioned the talk of a ‘flap’, the rumours that were circulating about activity on the German side. There’d been so many alarms and so much disappointment; one didn’t want to add credence to fleet gossip. Mowbray, a big, slow-moving man who looked too old for his lieutenant’s stripes, ordered quietly. ‘Pipe!’ His hand jerked up to the salute as the bosun’s call shrilled: a low note that swelled higher, hovered, fell away again. Crick was saluting too. Hugh put a hand to his cap as he stepped on to the platform at the head of the ladder and saw his gig waiting at its foot, bowman and stroke oar holding her there with boathooks whose brass fittings gleamed like pale gold. The other four crewmen had their oars turned fore-and-aft and sat to attention as Able Seaman Bates, Hugh’s coxswain, saluted him.
He stepped into the boat and sat down, picking up the yokelines of the tiller. He nodded to Bates, who sat down in the sternsheets a few feet further for’ard.
The role of captain’s coxswain made George Bates much more than just the man who looked after this gig and steered it when Hugh wasn’t actually in it. He was also butler, valet, messenger and general factotum. Domestically, he organised Hugh’s life for him. He was a short, wiry man, with grizzled curly hair and a monkeyish face. His eyes seemed particularly like a monkey’s, brown, watchful, crafty. Toughness made up for lack of bulk. It was said that during a bar-room brawl in Durban before the war Bates had driven his fist clean through a solid oak door ‒ an opponent having had the sense to duck.
He’d done more than his share of bar brawling ‒ which was why he’d never made petty officer or even leading seaman. But at least he had all three good conduct badges back now, and since he’d had the job with Hugh he’d stayed out of trouble. He’d been with him at the Falklands battle, too.
Hugh ordered, ‘Shove off for’ard and aft!’
Sunlight glittered on the boathooks as they were shipped.
‘Oars forward! Give way together!’
They rowed with the slow sweeping, ceremonial stroke exclusive to a captain’s personal crew. They were a privileged bunch of men, and proud of their jobs. If Hugh had had a house of his own ashore he could have used them to mow grass, fell trees, groom horses, drive motors. The gig was his private conveyance, and its crew his personal staff. But apart from manning the boat and looking after it, either at the boom or inboard, and cleaning Hugh’s cabins under Bates’s supervision, he hadn’t much work to offer them. At sea, of course, they kept watches and had their various action stations, like any other members of the ship’s company.
Hugh took a quick glance astern, to check the straightness of the course that he was steering; his eyes rested for a few seconds on Nile’s warlike bulk. He was proud of her, of his command of her. But it struck him suddenly that while aboard that ship he was God, here and now in this small boat heading for North Queensferry he felt more like a schoolboy playing truant. And with a rather schoolboyish sense of defiance. He could quite easily have had himself put ashore in say, the steam pinnace. This gig, even without his pendant flying in its bows – as it would be on a more formal occasion ‒ was patently his, Hugh Everard’s boat. Or at least, Nile’s captain’s boat. He was clearly in view here at its tiller; and this was the forenoon, when nobody went ashore except on duty, and when Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty might quite likely be on Lion’s quarterdeck with a telescope at his eye.
Beatty could put it to his eye, Hugh thought coarsely, or wherever else he pleased. And if he wanted to see how a ship should be run efficiently and happily, he could take some time off himself and pay Nile a visit…
He must have grunted, or made some sound. Bates’s eyes were on him, questioningly. Hugh shook his head.
He liked Bates. Tom Crick didn’t. Crick, who’d read Bates’s Service documents, the record of his past crimes, regarded him with wary suspicion. But Hugh was satisfied that a new leaf had been turned in that interesting ‒ if not immaculate – career. He’d noticed the trouble Bates was taking to keep it turned ‒ by, for instance, the simple though somewhat drastic expedient of hardly ever going ashore, unless Hugh actually sent him on some errand. Bates obviously knew his limitations, one of which was that in shoreside bars he tended to become provoked.
All up and down the Firth, warships lay as still as rocks in the glassy, shimmering tide. The mist was lifting rapidly, except down near the bridge where it still hung about in patches. A collier was casting-off from a destroyer depot-ship; picket-boats traced lines across the polished surface. A tug puffed up-stream with barges placid as ducks astern of her, but leaving a great roll of wash to rock ammunition-lighters moored in trots in St Margaret’s Bay. A string of multi-coloured bunting broke at a cruiser’s yardarm, hung limply in the windless air; within seconds a red-and-white answering pendant slid up above another ship in the same squadron. A shore signal-station sprang to life, sputtering a message to seaward in blinding flashes. Out of habit, Hugh watched it, piecing words together: Berth on oiler at number… Turning, he saw the narrow, almost bow-on shape of a destroyer coming up from the direction of the bridge at about five or six knots, with her signal letters flying and her searchlight above the stubby bridge acknowledging in quick stabs of brilliance each word as it reached her from the shore.
Hugh called, ‘Oars!’
His men took one more slow stroke, then sat stiff, motionless, holding their oars horizontal, blades flat to the river’s surface. But the destroyer had appeared suddenly out of the seaward mists and the gig still had way on which would take her too quickly into the wash.
‘Hold water!’
As upright in the stern as the crew were on their thwarts, he used rudder to compensate for the boat’s tendency to slew until the way came off her.
‘Oars!’ He sat still and waited for the destroyer to pass ahead.
* * *
Lieutenant-Commander Mortimer, immaculate now in what was probably his best uniform ‒ a destroyer captain, who with various special allowances was paid more than three hundred pounds a year, could afford to pay his Gieves bills ‒ glared at Lanyard’s navigator, Sub-Lieutenant Hastings.
‘Well? Which is number eleven buoy?’
Hastings had been comparing the marked chart in his hands with the actual scene into which Lanyard had been steaming at what had felt, in the last couple of minutes, like breakneck speed. But he’d sorted it out now; he pointed, trying to look as if the matter had never really been in doubt.
‘There sir. That’s our oiler.’
Mortimer raised his glasses. He muttered. ‘And that’s a destroyer alongside her. If they’d meant us to double up, they’d have said so.’ Lowering the glasses, he looked round at Hastings. ‘Are you certain that’s the oiler?’
Hastings nodded. ‘Perhaps we’re supposed to berth on her other side?’
‘Who took that signal?’
‘I did, sir.’
Mortimer looked round, and asked the man who’d spoken, ‘Garret, are you certain the number was eleven, not twelve?’
‘Number eleven they said, sir.’ Garret was bony, haggard-looking, with pale blue eyes burning in a narrow, sea-tanned face and dark hair greying at the temples. A leading signalman, he was the senior signal rating in the ship.
‘We’ll take a chance on her inshore side, then. Pilot, come round a point to starboard. Number One, we’ll be berthing port side to the oiler.’
‘Aye aye, sir… Everard!’
‘Sir?’ Hastings was calling down to the quartermaster for a change of course; now Mortimer was pushing him aside taking over. It all seemed haphazard ‒ a pleasant contrast to the battleship rituals one was used to.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Go aft, tell Lieutenant Reynolds port side to, and stay there and assist him.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ Heading for the ladder, he heard Mortimer call for slow speed, then the clang of telegraphs from the steering-pos
ition, the lower bridge. Nick dropped down to the upper deck and hurried aft… A gig lay on its oars, bow-on; he’d only glimpsed it out of the corner of his eye, and by the time he’d stopped and turned to look at her more closely she’d been left astern. But a six-oared gig, with a tallish senior officer at her tiller ‒ Nick had been left with a snapshot-like impression of a broad-shouldered man and a gold-peaked cap.
Might it have been his uncle? It could be: that was the Fifth Battle Squadron over there. But he’d been thinking about Hugh Everard, and he might have imagined it: the boat had appeared and then dropped astern so fast. He could see her again now, a long way back, see the slow sweep of her oars as she pitched across Lanyard’s wake.
He saluted Reynolds, whose berthing party of a dozen sailors was lined up ‘at ease’ on the quarterdeck. ‘First lieutenant says port side to, sir, and I’m to stay and help you.’
‘You’re entirely welcome.’ Reynolds glanced to his left. ‘Hear that Petty Officer Shaw?’
‘Yessir.’ Shaw took a pace forward and turned about. ‘Port side to, then. Thomson, ’Arris, Mills ‒ jump to it!’
Reynolds asked Nick. ‘What’s Morty doing? Singing hymns this morning?’ Nick looked surprised. Reynolds added, ‘He does quite often, entering harbour. He’s quite cracked you know.’
Cracked or not, Mortimer handled Lanyard as if she were a skiff. Within minutes, she was secured alongside the oiler, and if there’d been a crate of eggs floating at the waterline they’d all have remained intact. One had heard often enough that destroyer captains tended to be both marvellous ship-handlers and personally insane. He was coming aft now, followed by his first lieutenant, to whom Nick was waiting to report.
The oil pipes were already being dragged over and screwed to Lanyard’s fuel intakes up for’ard, under Mr Worsfold’s sharp-eyed supervision. Mortimer glanced at Nick.
‘What are you giving Everard to do this forenoon, Number One?’
‘I’ll be instructing him in his duties as assistant GCO, sir. After that he can lend a hand with storing ship.’
‘Good. Now look here ‒ I need someone to go into Edinburgh for me. God knows whether we’ll be granting shore leave, but at least we’re safe until we’ve fuelled and stored and I have to go and pay my respects to Captain (D.) Who can you spare?
‘Garret, sir?’
‘Why him?’
‘Well, sir, as you know, he got spliced, two days before we left here. I understand he’s – well, anxious to ‒ er—’
Mortimer shook his head. ‘The possibility that Leading Signalman Garret may be in a state of ‒ er ‒ suspended animation shall we say, is hardly relevant. I’m not offering someone a run ashore, I simply want a package delivered to my bank.’
‘Garret would still be a suitable messenger, sir.’ Johnson glanced over his shoulder. ‘Wouldn’t you say so, Cox’n?’
Chief Petty Officer Cuthbertson nodded. He was a heavy man: thick-necked, bulky round the middle. If he let himself get out of condition, he’d be fat.
‘’Ighly suitable, sir. Very responsible ’and, is Garret.’
Mortimer gave in. ‘All right. Send him along, right away.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ The captain went below. Johnson cocked an eye at Cuthbertson: ‘All right Cox’n?’
‘Garret’s messmates ’ll bless you sir. They say its bin like livin’ with a mad stallion on ’ot bricks.’
‘Tell him to report to the Captain. And warn him not to let us down. If he spends half an hour with his wife we shan’t know about it; but if he stays there an hour or more…’
The coxswain’s eyebrows twitched. ‘What I‘m told, sir, five an’ a ’alf minutes is about what ’e’ll need.’
On the bridge, Johnson showed Nick how to operate the Bar and Stroud fire-control transmitter.
‘Three dials, which are manually set according to my orders. The guns are laid and trained individually by their crews, and the gunlayers apply ranges and deflection as they read them off their receivers ‒ which of course show the same as I put on here. D’you follow that?’
Nick was relieved that the system was so simple.
‘Third dial here shows the order: load, fire, rapid independent, cease fire… Clear enough?’
‘I order settings and corrections and our wardroom steward, Blewitt, puts them on the transmitter. It’s easy for me to control the for’ard gun, since it’s just down there. I can actually look down on it and talk to the layer by voicepipe. But you’ll take charge as officer of the quarters aft ‒ of both the other guns. If I’m knocked out, you take my place here. Same if the captain’s hit ‒ I take his job, you take mine.’ He stared at Nick as if he was trying to see inside his skull. ‘Is that all clear, Everard?’
Nick asked a few questions and Johnson answered them without impatience or criticism. Talking directly to the point like this, he seemed far less of a David-type character; his professional interest in the subject under discussion seemed to clear away the personal prejudices or reservations. It was possible, Nick began to think, that things might not turn out too badly.
‘We’ll go aft now and take a look at the guns themselves. And one other vitally important aspect namely—’ He checked, and asked Nick, ‘Namely what?’
‘Ammunition supply.’
‘Good.’ The man actually looked pleased. ‘I’ve made some changes in the after supply parties. They seem to know what they’re doing, but you’ll need to keep an eye on ’em while they settle down. And you must see to it they learn each other’s jobs, so they can switch around and no hang-ups in the routine if we get casualties.’
Casualties… Walking aft, half listening to Johnson, glancing round at the quiet although busy harbour scene, the idea of deaths or woundings seemed remote. Obviously it was not, and one had to realise it and be prepared; this was a warship, designed and built for battle. But to imagine damage, shell-bursts, here where a group of bluejackets were chipping away old paint, others polishing brass, another neatly flemishing a boat’s fall; Nick closed his eyes, trying to imagine what it would feel like to be under fire.
‘What the blazes are you doing, Everard?’
Opening his eyes, he found Johnson staring at him: with that Davidish expression…
* * *
‘Sarah ‒ I couldn’t begin to tell you how much I’ve been looking forward—’
‘Ah. Everard!’
He turned, with his sister-in-law’s hands still clasped in his, as her father came slowly through the door of the morning room. ‘Well, sir! Splendid to see you again!’
‘A great pleasure to see you, sir.’ White-haired, lame from gout. Sir Robert Buchanan extended a limp hand towards his guest. Then he gestured towards the bell-cord: ‘Pull that, will ye, gel?’ Hugh glanced round the stuffy, high-ceilinged room; a long-dead salmon topped a book-case, and stags’ heads stared down glassily, resentfully even, from the brownish-papered walls. He told Buchanan. ‘You’re looking well sir.’ Like an old, tired sheep, he thought. ‘But Sarah’s rather pale, would you agree?’
‘Which is more than anyone could say of you, Hugh dear.’ She smiled as she returned to them. ‘You’re as brown as a sailor ought to be. Is it all sunshine in the Orkneys?’
‘How long shall we have you with us, Everard?’
‘Ah.’ Glancing back at her father. ‘It’s hard to tell. Not very long. I fancy. But more to the point, how long is Sarah to be here with you?’
‘I think I should like—’ Sarah paused, as a servant appeared and her father sent him to fetch biscuits and madeira ‒ ‘I think I should like to come and live here permanently ‒ I mean while John’s at the front. You can’t imagine how dreary Mullbergh’s become, Hugh and since Father’s on his own here—’
‘First-class idea. Wouldn’t you say so, sir?’ Looking back at Sarah, he said, ‘You’d leave a few people to keep Mullbergh warm, I suppose?’
‘Warm? Mullbergh?’
‘I needn’t tell you, my dear, you’d be more than we
lcome here.’ The white head nodded. ‘Sit down, Everard… Entirely welcome, whenever you like and for as long as you like. Longer the better, in fact. But don’t you think your husband might rather you kept his home fires burning?’
Hugh coughed. ‘My brother’s first thought would surely be for Sarah’s comfort.’ But he thought, last thought, more likely. He was studying Sarah, her hazel eyes and soft brown hair and that tender, vulnerable mouth. She was paler than she should have been; but even if she’d turned bright blue, he thought, she’d still have been beautiful.
‘Since Mullbergh’s lonely for you, and it was always a damp, cold, place why not tell John you propose to come up here?’
Buchanan, Sarah’s father, was a widower, and rich. He’d been a shipowner twenty years ago. Now they’d found coal under land which he owned here in Scotland, and he was piling up yet another fortune from the royalties.
‘I’d like to ‒ I’d adore to. But it’s quite impossible,’ Sarah was telling Hugh, more than her father. ‘Mullbergh has to be looked after. It’s my—’ she made a face — ‘war-work. I’m afraid.’
They talked about Hugh’s brother, and what he’d said in recent letters. He’d spent a leave at Mullbergh several months ago; Sarah had no idea when she’d see him next. The fighting was still fierce around Verdun, where French losses were hideous in the face of a German onslaught which hadn’t slackened since it began three months ago, and there was talk of a new British offensive being mounted to make the Hun relax that pressure. It would be on the Somme, people said.
War-talk with madeira and the old man crunching biscuits. Small, rapid jaw movements; like a rat’s, Hugh thought.
The Blooding of the Guns Page 3