There was a silence while his friends absorbed this extreme claim. Somebody at last was moved to speak.
“If it did even half what you say,” he remarked gently, “you wouldn’t be here to say it. You’d have hit the deck so hard that you’d come up in Australia – like a ruddy bulb!”
And Moaner sat there, looking at us all with a provocative eye. The scar on his cheek twitched as an impish grin stirred his sallow features. A lock of dark hair hung down over his forehead. A can of beer dangled by its handle from his thumb.
His bitter disappointment egged him on to shoot a yet bigger line about his Gremlin. Fortified by another pint, he proceeded to justify his stupendous claim.
“Even though you chaps are pretty ham-handed,” he said, amidst cries of “Oh!” “you can most of you recognize genius when you see it! So you’ll know that I never make a floater! Yet, the last week or two, every bit of dirt that’s flying about has stuck to ME!
“Course it has, you line-shooting bus-driver!” said somebody. But Moaner would not have his “patron saint” denied.
“’S a Gremlin!” he mumbled into his tankard. “One colossal, stinking, evil-minded, all-powerful Gremlin!” And he eyed the lot of us, under that lock of hair, deliberately provoking somebody to argue the point.
Somebody did. Moaner’s chair, Moaner’s beer and Moaner himself went over backwards and, in a split second, a rough-and-tumble was on – in which six “attached” pilots of the Fleet Air Arm instantly joined. I saved the radiogram and a table full of cups and beer-mugs and withdrew out of range before my glasses got smashed. Moaner fought gallantly but was much outnumbered, and soon succumbed.
As we laughed and righted the chairs, tables, rugs, cushions, and tankards, Moaner – still panting from his exertions – said, “Must be a super-Gremlin! Isn’t room in a ‘Beau’ for all the departmental Gremlins that have been playing ME up!” And he added “Ouch! Blast you!” as another cushion caught him in the tummy.
But peace finally returned. The tankards were refuelled at Moaner’s expense – in expiation of his line-shooting. And he grinned sourly, yet amiably, and fell asleep.
An hour later he woke, yawned, and set off to bed, pausing at the door.
“If I’ve been shooting a bit of a line, chaps,” he said, “don’t blame me! Blame the beer! Must’ve been a Gremlin in it!” And off he went.
A foolish, pointless evening? Not a bit of it. A good time was had by all – and I had learned a little more of what lay behind Old Moaner’s wry humour. I was to need it. And soon.
Upon the following day Moaner and his crew set forth to dare the Gremlin again, not to mention their intention to disturb an enemy convoy which reconnaissance had located off the Dutch coast. I remember faintly dreading the job of interrogating him later. He was a touchy, strange, awkward sort of a customer to question when the exhaustion of a long and difficult operation combined with his cussed brand of humour to make things difficult for the questioner.
At such times, when a pilot and his crew are weary and suffering the inevitable reaction after prolonged strain, even the most placid of men needs and deserves the most delicate handling, and the Intelligence Officer can make use of everything he knows about each airman’s way of looking at things. They are always courteous and eager to help; but there are men who, under such stress, cannot at once recall some of the minute details which, though maybe seen only for an instant, are the stuff of which “Intelligence” is built up.
When “Moaner” and his crew came shuffling in, in their soft flying-boots, they were red-eyed and stiff with cold, and their normally pink and fresh young faces looked drawn and stubble-marked under the office lights. It appeared, to my not inexperienced eye, that the Super-Gremlin was still aboard that Beaufort.
They had been roaming the inhospitable airs over the North Sea, ploughing through the dirtiest conditions, and sampling an unseemly warmth of welcome from the enemy coasts, not to mention a bit of trouble flung at them from the skulking convoy which, even in that mucky weather, they had duly found and attacked.
“Moaner” had seen a couple of his formation go “in the drink” – and it was no time or place for bathing. His own aircraft had been shot up, and he had limped it home for the last hundred miles upon one labouring engine and with one eye on the temperature gauges all the way. But he had put a torpedo, sweet and pretty, into “a large motor-vessel strongly escorted by flak ships” – as the wireless news expressed it later on.
He was in the hell of a mood, elated by his success and yet depressed by his ordeal. He stumbled into a chair and gave me the outline of his adventures, with which his crew agreed. But, at the end of it all, I somehow sensed that there was something more. Some little point which he or they had spotted, momentarily, out there in the flak and the mucky weather, and which would not now be brought to mind. One learns to sense such things.
But neither he nor his crew could recall it, though the navigator gave me my first real clue. “There was something, sir!” said he to “Moaner”; “you called out something to me just as we jinked to avoid the flak from the little ship. I couldn’t get it. . . but you called out something!”
No answering recollection lit Moaner’s tired eyes. He shook his head wearily, slumped in his chair and then, pulling himself together, treated me to a tirade about his Gremlin.
It had summoned clouds when visibility was wanted, dispersing them when cover was the urgent need. It had fiddled with his controls so that the ruddy kite wouldn’t go where he put it. Passing lightly from the compass to the undercart control, it had jammed the wheels in the “up” position so that, to cap all, Moaner had just had the nasty job of making a belly landing on a misty evening after seven hours of the most exhausting strain, though he didn’t put it that way. “Ruined a hundred yards of perfectly good turf” was his version. The Gremlin had been having a field-day.
The crew shuffled and coughed, as though a drop of shut-eye would be welcome. I could feel their hunger in my own stomach. Their fatigue made my own eyelids ache. But still I probed to evoke that fleeting, forgotten memory which I felt sure was there.
But Moaner was getting obstinate now – due to fatigue and strain. The fact that he could not remember now strengthened his conviction that there was nothing to recall. His mind was set in the bitterness of reaction.
“I tell you, there was nothing else . . . nothing of importance. If there had been I’d have remembered it, or one of the boys would.” He rose to his feet and stifled a soul-deep yawn. “We’re going to beat it . . . we’re all-in. See me to-morrow if you must go on yapping!” And he headed for the door towards which, after an instant’s hesitation, his crew began to follow him.
My last chance was going. By to-morrow, maybe, sleep would have cleaned the slate of his mind from every trace of the incident I sought. Would a change of subject release his brain from the worn channels of fatigue?
“O.K.,” said I. “I reckon you had some beer on board!”
He stopped dead, his brow creasing irritably as he sought some connection between my idiotic remark and our previous conversation.
“Beer?” he said. “What the hell are you suggesting?”
“Beer!” I said. “With a Gremlin in it, to make you talk like that!” And the trick was done.
His tired mind was jerked backward to the previous night, to the warm fireside, to the chaffing of his friends, to that comradeship which linked even my plodding duties with his valiant adventure. The strain was relaxed and I ceased to be a pestilential official who sat safely on his bottom while better men went a-flying. I became, instead, to his refreshed outlook, a cog – small but vital – in the pattern of service of the R.A.F. A bloke, in short, who was trying to do his job.
Moaner raised a smile . . . wan and weary . . . but still a smile. “Sorry, old boy,” he said, “but there really isn’t anything else . . . not a thing! You don’t mind if we push off? We’ve had quite a party out there!”
“I’m sur
e you have,” I answered, “and thanks for being so patient – all of you. Good night!”
But, even as the sergeants chorused “Good night, sir,” the shutter clicked in Moaner’s brain.
“Gosh!” he cried. “There was something. . . .Ginger! Bradley! Jones! Didn’t any of you chaps spot it, too? I yelled out on the intercom . . . and a moment later that flak burst turned us bottom up’ards. Damn nearly slipped my memory . . .”
And out it came.
It was flashed to Group, to Command, to the Air Ministry, Admiralty and War Office. A mere scrap of “gen”, photographed on to Moaner’s mind in that perilous instant while he fought for control of his machine over the enemy ships. Yet it fitted, like a lost piece of a jig-saw, into a picture which “Intelligence” had been struggling to complete for months. A night’s intervening sleep might have lost it for ever.
At the first opportunity I stood Moaner a pint of beer – Gremlin or no Gremlin. And he winked over the tankard’s edge as he said “Cheers” in the accepted style.
Money for Jam
Sir Alec Guinness
Location: Vis island, Yugoslavia.
Time: December, 1943.
Eyewitness Description: “I woke up with a start, the sweat pouring off me. I trembled. The cabin was filled with an evil presence and it was concentrated twelve to eighteen inches from my left ear. Fully awake, I heard with my ear, so it seemed to me, the word, ‘TOMORROW’ . . .”
Author: Sir Alec Guinness (1914–2000), like Derek Barnes, began his working life as an advertising copywriter before he discovered his real metier as an actor and made his stage debut in 1934. After several years at the Old Vic, he joined the Royal Navy in 1941 as an ordinary seaman and the following year was commissioned, experiencing action off Malta, Sicily and Yugoslavia. Returned to his profession, Guinness broke into films and became an international star as Fagin in Oliver Twist in 1948. Other great character roles ensured his reputation, while his autobiography, Blessings in Disguise (1985), also revealed a striking literary talent. Sir Alec never forget a ghostly experience he had in 1943 while commanding a Landing Craft off Yugoslavia under orders to evacuate 400 women and children in advance of an anticipated German invasion. The day proved to be one filled with surprises and shocks: the boat was hit by a hurricane, lit up by the weird St Elmo’s fire and a sinister voice whispered a warning to him. Afterwards he wrote a chilling ghost story around the events for John Lehmann’s New Writing (1945), which is now reprinted here for the first time in over 60 years.
The sun was hot and the foreign sea like plate-glass, the colour of peacocks’ tails. Little breezes played around a salt, low, bare, rocky Arcadia, and at noon, when we sailed, the day sang with prettiness. It was like the sound of a flute. Or an oboe. Or was that the wind? The wind? No, little breezes, pirouetting down from the north, a trifle cold, for they came from high, snow-covered mountains. Even in retrospect the day held nothing sinister, not until the sun went down. There was nothing that wasn’t quite as it ought to be. Yet this was the day dated 31 December, 1943. Curiously enough, I still have my diary for that time, somewhat battered and stained, but legible, and a proof to myself what life was like before the storm and what I was after it. There is no entry under 31 December except a jotting in pencil, “St. Luke 12. And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants.” Why does this fascinate? Then it is blank for three days. Finally in ink, with a strange borrowed pen and writing mine, but not like my own, are the words, “January 2. Not the second or third watches. Unprepared in the morning, but resigned in the Dogs.” For January 3 there is entered up, “We took the rings off Broadstairs’ hand.” After that I didn’t bother to keep a diary.
This was the situation. The enemy, thirty miles up the coast, also held all the opposite shore except the island of K. During the week ending 28 December they had attacked and overrun the three large islands that are grouped round K. It was apparent they would land on K. at any moment. They had complete air superiority in that part of the world, and no Allied craft could sail in those waters except under cover of darkness. The idea was that the ninety-foot schooner, of which I was captain, should run fifty tons of ammunition to the resistance group on K. and take off as many women and children as possible. K, being the last link on the opposite coast, must be saved at best, or turned into a battlefield at worst. Losing it was out of the question. It meant a trip of two hundred and twenty miles for us, there and back. The plans were hurried, but reasonably good and simple. We were to arrive at midnight and leave not later than 2 a.m. That would give us six hours of darkness at ten knots to get away from enemy reconnaissance planes. Everything had to be done in the dark, and if, by some misfortune, such as a breakdown or encountering an enemy vessel off the island, it would be imprudent for us to get away at the prescribed time, we were to find a small creek, run the schooner alongside rocks, disguise her with branches and camouflage netting and try our luck the following night. That is if we weren’t spotted during the day. When loaded with the “ammo” the Peter – for that was her name – sat down squarely in the water.
“You know what to look for, don’t you?” said the wiry little naval officer who brought me my sailing orders. “There’s no moon, but if it’s a clear night you should see the mountains of B. fine on your port bow by 22.00. Z. island is very low, but, as you can see on the chart, there’s plenty of water round it. Keep as close inshore as possible in case of mines. When you come into the bay keep the guns closed up and slow down. And for God’s sake tell the crew to keep their mouths shut. Silence is vital. When the chaps on K. spot you they will light a bonfire for ten minutes. If they light two bonfires or no bonfire, buzz off – it means we are too late. If it’s all O.K. and they are ready for you, they’ll swing a red lantern at the end of the jetty. There’s a Major Backslide there, a drunken old so-and-so, but he knows his onions. He’ll give you the latest dope which, incidentally, we’d like in the office when you get back. So long! It’s money for jam.”
“One moment,” I said. “What other craft are out tonight?”
“Well, there’s the usual patrol, but they won’t touch you. Anything you see will be enemy. Except for twelve schooners, including Mother of God, Topaz and Helena, which are leaving here a few hours after you and working their way up the coast. Secret job. But you won’t see them on the outward passage. Possibly coming back, though.”
He went as briskly as he came, leaving my first lieutenant muttering “Money for jam!” Jimmy had an instinctive, and often unreasonable, dislike of the people who issued orders from offices. But really it wasn’t a bad-looking little job, so long as the weather lasted. Never cared for the Peter when the sea got up. Always considered her top heavy.
So we sailed at noon on this cloudless day, hardly apprehensive, pleased to think we were on a mission of some small importance, but grumbling that it was going to mean New Year’s Eve at sea. This annoyed the Scots lads in particular, but Taffey said “Think of the WOMEN we will be bringing back”; and the coxswain said, “Got a tin of turkey and two of ham. Big eats!” Able Seaman Broadstairs went down to the mess-deck, stripped, and vigorously applied hair-oil to his chest. “You’ll never get it to grow by to-morrow night, son,” grunted Stoker White, the oldest member of the crew. Broadstairs had a fine figure, and was a decent living kid, but he had no hair on his chest, which distressed him deeply. Whenever women were mentioned out came the violently-smelling hair-oil. Now he put it away and took to cleaning his silver signet rings with metal polish. He wore five of them and had a ring tattooed on the little finger of his left hand.
“Money for jam!” said Jimmy. “I could kick the tight little arse of that office boy!”
We sailed up the coast for ten miles, then pushed out to sea. I came off watch at tea-time and Jimmy took over. The crew consisted of the two of us and fourteen ratings, and we worked it watch and watch about, which is easy going on these short trips. Off watch in t
he daytime I usually sat in the cabin reading. Thinking to myself, I’m bound to be up all night, I turned in to get some early sleep after tea. The sun had grown dim, the bright blue sky was overcast with pale grey, and the sea was oily looking, shot with patches of dark satinlike water. No stars, tonight, I thought, and turned away from the scuttle and the light. A minute later Broadstairs entered the cabin to “darken ship.” Very easily and swiftly I fell asleep. No dreams that I can remember. I slept for nearly two hours. When I woke it was with the strangest notion I have ever had in my life.
I am not a deeply religious man, and before the war was avowedly irreligious. I did not have convictions that could be called atheistic, but they were certainly agnostic. The war brought me back to an acceptance of the doctrines of the Church of England. I suppose I believe in ghosts. Certainly in good and evil spirits. But all that speculation had always seemed unimportant – chit-chat for a winter’s evening at home, by a log fire, in the good old days of indifference. All thoughts of religious subjects, angelology, demons and what not were far from my mind that evening. I had no worries, other than the navigational one of successfully finding the island K.; and there was no obvious difficulty about that; I only call it “worry”, because I have never sailed anywhere without wondering whether I would find the place. It is difficult to describe what happened to me at six o’clock that evening, yet I must attempt it, for on it hangs the whole significance of this experience from a personal point of view. It was as if—. It is impossible to state it simply enough and sound credible. It was as if—. I woke up with a start, the sweat pouring off me. I trembled. The cabin was filled with an evil presence and it was concentrated twelve or eighteen inches from my left ear. Fully awake, I heard with my ear, so it seemed to me, the word “TOMORROW.” It was spoken clearly and quite loudly. Then the evil thing withdrew. Never have I felt so relieved at the departure of an unwanted guest as I was by that one. The electric light on the table, throwing its warm, yellow circle of light on the dark blue cloth, the books on the shelves, the luminous clock, the barometer, the coffee percolator, the chairs, a pair of sea-boots, an old sweater, an etching of New York on the bulkhead, all these things seemed so friendly and clinging, as if they had resented the intruder as much as myself. For there was no doubt of the meaning conveyed in that one word “Tomorrow”. A whole sentence had been condensed, with evil intent, into that word. It had said, in fact, “Tomorrow you will die an unpleasant death.” Now, death is a fearful thing, and often terrible, and much has been thought and written on the subject, but it has never preoccupied my mind. We are hedged in with platitudes about death . . . we must all die – that makes death seem easier and less important. The poems of Beddoes I have always found funny. Death held no special terrors for me, I’m convinced. But there was something in that evil experience which shook me. Not so much the personal, unpleasant message as the feeling that swept through me that this had been a devil’s voice, and if the workings of this curious world were controlled by devils, then life was the most wretched affair, human kind the saddest creation, children merely sent into the world to mock a man with. This was diametrically opposed to what I had always believed to be true. To have trusted such a voice would have been to banish God and render Christ ridiculous. “If I am to die tomorrow,” I said to myself, “why can I not be informed by an angel, or one of the fates, or the ghost of an angry saint, if I must be told supernaturally? Why must I be told by this evil, sneaking, contemptible thing?” That gave me hope, for there was something gossipy, hearsay and underhand about that voice. I went on to the bridge.
The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories Page 32