Maggie Bright

by Tracy Groot

  “Cointreau,” said the bleary-eyed man.

  “Cointreau! I recommend it highly. I am back to a state of pleasant numbness.”

  “I’ll bet you are.” Jamie tossed Griggs a canteen.

  “What happened to you?” said Griggs. He opened the canteen and drank it half down. He wiped his mouth.

  “Got lost. I did find some asparagus.” He tossed him a tin.

  “I hate asparagus.” Griggs flipped it to Curtis. “How could you possibly get lost? The sea is north. You just sort of face north and walk until your feet are wet.”

  Jamie handed out the other canteens and went to drop beside Balantine.

  After Balantine had taken a drink, he asked quietly, “Feeling better?”

  “I am, actually.”

  “Good.”

  “Did you see the Lizzie Rose?”

  “No. Griggs watched with me, but we can’t really make out names from here. A lot of the names are blacked over. I wonder why. Anything much to see in town?”

  “Nothing much. Place is bombed to bits. I did have a chat with—the fellow we saw yesterday. The naval man in charge. Good bloke.”

  “Tennant. He gets around. I saw him not ten minutes ago. Seems a good leader.”

  Jamie smiled a little. He wondered if Balantine knew that he himself was a good leader.

  The two took up the only thing there was to do: watching. They watched the slow-moving lines of men, they watched the small boats on the beaches, they watched men wade out from lines and clamber aboard whatever awaited, one by one.

  They watched a sea littered with flaming flotsam and jetsam, patches of burning oil, and the bobbing, oil-slicked faces of men trying to swim back to shore or back to a boat.

  “What’s that?” Curtis suddenly sat up, gazing wildly about. He looked up and groaned. “Oh no. Not again.”

  “I wondered where they were,” said Balantine stoically. “They’re late this morning.”

  They watched the eastern sky fill with a grid of dark, droning dots growing ever larger.

  “This time I am not dodging,” Baylor declared. “I shall fend them off with my bottle.” He waved it in the air. “They will respect my—what is it again?”

  “Cointreau.”

  “You’re such a good chap.”

  “Baylor, you’re not in any position to dodge,” said Griggs crossly. All understood. It meant they had to shield him. Not one of them would leave him exposed.

  “Gather round, men!” said Baylor, raising high the bottle. “I will keep you safe! Me and my Cointreau.”

  Milton patted Baylor’s arm. “What in me is dark, illumine. What is low—”

  “Raise and support,” the men chorused with the captain.

  After a surprised moment, Milton’s lips twitched into a faint smile. The men glanced at one another, grinning.

  Then planes came on and bombs began to fall.

  “Keep us safe, Baylor,” said Balantine, as he rose to stand over him. One by one, the others followed suit.

  THE MAGGIE BRIGHT CLOSED in on a scene straight from an alien nightmare.

  A black ball of smoke hung over Dunkirk. Flaming wrecks of every size dotted the far harbor, and a first glance at their own immediate approach afforded an ominous sight, dark obstructions everywhere in the water; but nothing could compare to the sight of the beaches themselves.

  “What is that?” Murray said slowly, gripping a mast stay.

  “Men.”

  They covered miles of sand like great oil spills; they wound like wide, curved asphalt roads from where they stood in the water, up through the beaches and up into the dunes, into the city, past what they could see.

  “So this is what an army looks like,” Murray said faintly.

  “And a lot them got off already.”

  William slowed the Maggie Bright to a crawl to try and take stock.

  “But—where do we go for orders?” asked a stunned Smudge, looking about under his hand.

  “You’re tryin’ to find who’s in charge of this mess?” said Murray. “Good luck, pal. I think we’re on our own.”

  “Look there—what is that?” Smudge pointed. “That line, with all those . . . things in the water. What are the men standing on?”

  “Lorries,” William said, hardly believing it. He rose, one hand on the helm. “Transports. Must’ve driven them out at low tide. Brilliant!” At least one worry dropped off. “Look at some of those wrecks further in. Maggie would’ve grounded same as them. Well, that’s a relief. I wasn’t aching to get into that harbor. We’ll load from the lorries, then, and head out for one of those ships.” He grabbed the binoculars to look north and see what ships were standing out—they had to be a mile off. “I see a destroyer, and another—some sort of other battleship, a bit smaller. Hang on—can’t be.” He brought the focus tighter, hardly believing what he saw. “It’s the Medway Queen!”

  “The what?” Murray asked.

  “Why, a paddle steamer! A holiday craft! I’ve seen her on the Thames. Can’t believe she’s here.” He suddenly thought of Clare, and aged aunties and grandmothers running for the front with pistols—it was that bizarre, this decorative bit of England that should belong to a civilized world, here in a warring one. It was a sharply poignant mix he felt, seeing the Medway Queen: pride, and fear, and hope.

  Murray shook his fist at the appearance of the next set of bombers. “Give us a break, will you?”

  “That’s quite a traffic jam of boats at the jetty,” said Smudge. “Can we get some on faster than that?”

  William looked through the lenses, mentally mapping a way through wreckage to the lorries, sickened at the thought of wreckage not seen. Soldiers were lined up in the water, high as their armpits, holding their weapons above their heads. He watched a lifeboat, surely from the Ramsgate station, run straight up to the sand: a man leapt out and waved men down. A young naval rating hurried over to supervise the embarkation.

  William picked out other naval personnel; they walked the beaches, patrolling, calling out instructions, keeping order, most with revolvers in hand. No one broke order that he could see, but the revolvers said they had or might. He briefly trained on the mass of soldiers—helmeted Tommies, smoking, talking. Waiting.

  “Getting closer,” Murray warned, eyes on the sky.

  “How’s she running?” asked William. He lowered the binoculars.

  “She ain’t gonna quit. We just gotta keep her fueled and clear of junk.”

  They watched the lifeboat load.

  “Well, what do you think?” said Smudge, anxious to get moving. “Can’t we try and follow suit? We’d get them on faster than that queue of boats.”

  William wanted nothing more than instant action, but caution had to be the watchword if they were to keep it up. He carefully considered, and shook his head. “Her draft is too deep. It’s either the end of that lorry jetty, and even then we’ve got to look sharp, or else we make for the harbor.”

  “Getting closer . . .”

  “Look at that!” Smudge shouted. “It’s the RAF!”

  Two English Spitfires came roaring, chasing down four German planes. Machine gun fire erupted from the navy ships at the same time the Spitfires opened up. One of the four exploded, and another suddenly belched black smoke and peeled off, a Spitfire hot on its tail. A great roar of cheers went up from the beach.

  But immediately came the whistling dives of planes attacking destroyers, and bombs began to fall from planes now overhead—a spume of surf erupted near the lorry jetty, men dove or were blown into the water . . .

  “Bobby!”

  William looked where Murray pointed, north, toward the standing-off ships, and wasn’t sure what he saw.

  “That big boat got hit! There’s a bunch of men in the water!”

  “Smudge, run forward and call it back. Murray, get the ladder net ready.”

  William powered up Maggie, and surged ahead for the flaming wreck.

  Maggie Bright delivered her first loa
d of nineteen men to a destroyer, none taken from the jetty or the beach, all survivors of the sinking river barge that had just loaded and was heading out to sea. It wasn’t long before Maggie’s decks were slippery with oil and congealed blood.

  It took ten minutes to pull the men aboard, twenty minutes to make it out to the destroyer, dodging obstructions on the way—other boats, floating debris, bodies. It took ten minutes to help the nineteen off Maggie and onto the rope nets and ladders hanging from the destroyer’s side. Some were so exhausted they could barely hold on to the nets and had to be half carried up by the destroyer’s deckhands or Maggie’s.

  Forty minutes, one load of nineteen, and the three men were already exhausted.

  “My arms are noodles,” Murray said. He sat beside Smudge on the bench behind the helm.

  “No wonder they load from the lorry jetty,” said Smudge. “They can jump aboard.”

  “Didn’t figure on ’em bein’ starved,” said Murray. “Wish we had food for ’em. I pull in a guy charred and half-drowned, first thing he says, ‘You got anything to eat?’”

  “That’s not our focus,” said William. “We catch the fish, others will clean them.”

  “Yes, and now we haven’t any food for ourselves,” Smudge accused Murray. “You gave away all our rations.”

  “No more ‘Mr. Vance’? Attaboy. All I gotta do is make you mad, and you’ll treat me regular.”

  “Well done, Maggie.” William patted the helm console. “How’s the petrol and paraffin?”

  “I better go see,” Murray said. “’Cept I can’t move.”

  “Well, you’d better call up some reserves. It’s going to be a very long day. Smudge, why don’t you clear the decks. Won’t do for new guests to see it. Should be a bucket in one of the lockers.”

  William suddenly thought of Mrs. Shrewsbury.

  “We’re being prayed for, you know,” he announced, feeling only a trace foolish. “We’d better act like it.” It seemed the responsible thing to do.

  Smudge said, puzzled, “How do you act like you’re being prayed for?”

  “By producing things prayer should produce, I suppose.”

  “Like what?” Murray asked.

  “Stamina,” William enunciated. “Get moving.”

  “Then am I makin’ it happen, or is it the prayers?”

  “Both.”

  “Ha! Sounds like somethin’ the Fitz would say. How’s your head, Smudge pie?”

  The two rose and started toward their tasks.

  “It’ll mend. Say, Mr.—Murray. What were you thinking to kill off Salamander? My mates and I see a possibility for bringing him back. I could tell you our ideas.”

  “Well, I got a secret. Swear you won’t tell, but—he ain’t dead.”

  “He ain’t? He isn’t? Fantastic!”

  They moved off, talking, and William finally allowed the sensation within to well up and tip the banks—an exhilaration he had never known, and it had to do with nineteen worlds plucked from the sea.

  Nineteen little worlds.

  The number 5 was carved on the foremast. Now 19 would be added, and if things went right, if they kept dodging bombs above and wreckage below, then more numbers after that, more little worlds, more of Maggie’s exploits. Just wait until Clare saw it.

  Don’t forget her, Mrs. Shrewsbury.

  William put Maggie in gear, powered her up, and swung back toward the hellish fray, praying that Mrs. Shrewsbury was praying.

  BALANTINE EMPTIED THE last drops of his canteen into his mouth and screwed the cap back on. “Look how often they’re running groups down to the beach, not just the harbor. It really is going faster. We may be off by tomorrow. I thought we’d be here for a week.”

  “We’d never last that long,” said Griggs, a bit muffled, from beneath his helmet. He lay stretched out with his hands behind his head.

  “The little boats are really making a difference,” said Balantine.

  “Yes, you’ve said that before,” said Griggs. “About fifty times.”

  “Do you sail?” Jamie asked Balantine.

  “No.” He studied the small craft on the waters. “I’ve just never seen anything like this.”

  “It is inspiring,” said Baylor sweetly, and then his tone went acid. “That is, it would be, if anyone would lift me up to see.”

  “No,” they all said, and Balantine added patiently, for the fiftieth time, “You’ve got to save it for the journey home.”

  Twilight was not far off. It would be the second night the men passed on the beaches. The Cointreau and its bearer had long gone, leaving Baylor out of sorts.

  “Well, I can prepare for it, can’t I, with a nice bit of exercise to get me up and looking around? Can’t see a bloody thing except your arses or faces when planes fly over—so I can’t even see planes! My one bit of entertainment, gone.”

  “Yes, you’re missing a lot,” Griggs said into his helmet.

  “I wish you all would leave me alone!” Baylor’s tone went forlorn. “Don’t you understand? If any one of you is hit because of me . . .”

  “Bit of luck about them bombs, eh?” said Balantine. “Just like the bloke said. Unless they hit you direct, they don’t do to us what they do to . . .” He nodded to the sea.

  “Does anyone have a toothpick?” said Curtis.

  “What is there to pick?”

  “I want to be ready. I have a gap between two molars.”

  Idle chatter helped drown the cries of the dying and the wounded, some of those very close by; it helped distract from hunger and thirst. It helped turn a blind eye to sights that would ordinarily send them running to help or running for help; instead, great hulking ships exploded into concussive infernos they could feel, and men bobbed in the water, choking on oil and petrol if they were alive to choke at all, and here they sat chatting idly, clinging to any bit of sanity they could with talk of the cinema, and home cooking, and girls, and toothpicks.

  “Curtis, why do you bite your nails?” Baylor said, back to his peevish tone. Curtis shrugged, and continued nibbling his pinky nail. “I can understand tobacco, or too many profiteroles. And for the first time in my life I understand alcohol. But what sort of actual pleasure could you possibly derive from biting your nails?”

  Curtis shrugged and nibbled.

  “I want my Cointreau,” Baylor said plaintively.

  “I wish you had it,” said Griggs. “I like you better drunk.”

  “If ever I have a postwar party, you are not invited, Griggs,” said Baylor. “I shall invite Elliott, and Balantine, and Captain Jacobs, and even Curtis, but your invitation will not arrive.”

  “Thank God for small favors.”

  “What do you mean, ‘even’ Curtis?” asked Curtis.

  “I genuinely dislike you, Griggs. I’ve been taught I can never say hate, I can never hate another human being, but oh, the day I discovered I could dislike them.”

  “Let’s keep it civil, shall we?” said Balantine, and employed his usual trick of distraction. “Elliott, what will you do after the war?”

  “Open a pub.”

  “Will you serve Cointreau?” asked Baylor hopefully.

  “If it’s good. It’s got to be good, not like that other French swill. I’ll serve Jenner’s, Bass—”

  “My mum says they’re taxing beer,” Curtis said indignantly.

  “—and Guinness. I’ll have a state-of-the-art wireless where—”

  “You and I will look at each other across the room, and we’ll lift our mugs. I think you quote Milton because your heart is broken, mate, not your head.”

  It took a moment to realize it was Milton.

  A riot of goosebumps rose on Jamie’s arms and raced into his neck.

  Griggs lifted his helmet to squint at Milton. “Was that you, loony bin?”

  “It was,” said Baylor in hushed amazement. “I was looking right at him.”

  “It’s what I said to him,” Jamie said slowly, sitting up. “I was telling him ab
out my pub. . . .”

  Captain Jacobs took no notice. He watched the sea, idly twisting his wedding ring.

  “I told him the little girls we saw would be avenged. I said we’d be back in force, and Hitler would get his. I said we’d lift our mugs to each other . . .”

  The five men watched Milton closely, but he performed no more verbal acrobatics. He twisted the wedding ring and watched the sea, his expression the same as ever, one that managed to be watchful and pensive and vacant at the same time.

  Griggs lowered his helmet, and Curtis went back to his nail.

  Maybe the others could go back to business as usual, but not Jamie.

  You’re in there. You’re not a Milton box; you’re a man. You’re my friend.

  “We will lift our mugs to each other,” said Baylor, the only other still eyeing Milton.

  We will get you out of here, Captain Jacobs. We’ll see you right.

  The Stukas and the Heinkels came, and with them their bombs, and all got up as a matter of course to stand shelter over Baylor, while Baylor cursed them away.

  “Elliott! How can he possibly sleep in this? Elliott—wake up.”

  He’d dreamed of his old dog Toby, who wore Milton’s bandage and seemed ready to say something wise.

  Balantine stood over him. “They’re moving us down to the beach.” He nudged Jamie with his boot. “Upsadaisy.”

  Jamie sat up and looked about. Everything was dove gray. The air was damp and chilly. “What time is it?” he asked hoarsely.

  “Dunno,” said Curtis. “It’s early.”

  “The night’s gone?”

  “Wish I could sleep like you,” said Balantine. “That’s one way out of this nightmare.”

  “Not if you dream that your old dead dog is about to speak Milton and mean it.” He looked down at the harbor. “We’re loading, then?” The other men in their loose group of fifty were gathering up their gear.

  “Don’t get your hopes up.” Balantine shouldered his knapsack. “We’re not moving to the harbor itself, but we are moving closer.”