by Alan Evans
Sparrow’s Chief grinned at them comfortably, “Well, if you can’t take a joke you shouldn’t ha’ joined.”
Sparrow ran down the channel in the last of the light with her crew manning the side. McGraw’s head thumped with every turn of Sparrow’s screws but like the rest of the men on her deck he peered up at the bridge. Faintly on the wind came the sound of a mouth-organ. Smith was on the bridge and Galt was playing at his orders. ‘Oh, I do like to be beside the sea-side!’
McGraw held his head. “Mad bastard!”
The next day Trist had a word with Smith. “That was a disgraceful business! I had a full report from the Provost Marshall. Disgraceful! The offenders have been dealt with?”
“Yes, sir. I took a very serious view of the affair.” Smith slipped the question. He doubted whether Trist’s view of suitable punishment coincided with his own.
Garrick had spoken to all of the offenders on the quay after Smith had gone, spoken in a voice tight with suppressed rage in a way that left them stiff-faced and silent. “You have commanding this flotilla the finest seaman and sea-fighter I’ve ever known. A man who will lead you and fight for you and never let you down. I won’t let him down if I can help it and, by God, neither will you!”
So Sparrow entered again the grind of patrol work. But they were lucky. Sparrow had steamed her seventeen days and came up for boiler-clean, so they got a break early on. She was laid up for three days and her crew sent on leave.
Smith was explicit on that. He told Garrick and Dunbar, “The punishments I leave to you. Work them as much as you like but I want no man’s leave stopped.”
So the men got their leave.
Smith got a summons. Naval Intelligence wanted to talk to Sanders and himself about Schwertträger. Smith thought it would prove a waste of time but with Sanders he crossed to Dover and took a train to London. He was right. Intelligence appropriated Sanders’s notebook with its record of the Kapitänleutnant’s last words, and questioned the pair of them to see if there was any scrap of information that had been forgotten or overlooked and so omitted from Smith’s report. There was none.
Sanders hurried off to his home in Wimbledon and a girl. Smith went to see Rear-Admiral Braddock — at Braddock’s request. “Heard you were in the building and visiting Intelligence.” He grinned at Smith. “I have an intelligence system of my own. A lot of people talk to me. Sometimes they even listen.” He scowled at that. Then he said, eyeing Smith, “That reminds me. We’re still pushing the convoy system and we’re gaining ground. The counter-argument now is that we can’t find enough ships for escorts. Rubbish! It’s just a delaying tactic.” He got up and took a turn around the room, stumping bad-temperedly.
Smith shifted restlessly in the chair.
Braddock said, “I hear you sank a U-boat.”
“Sparrow did, sir.”
“You didn’t waste much time. Trist claims it proves that his idea of an anti-submarine flotilla works. Did you know that?”
Smith blinked “No, sir.”
Braddock grumbled, “Lloyd George does. It got back to him, somehow. He wants my opinion. I want yours as the man commanding the anti-submarine flotilla, the man who sank the Uboat.”
Smith hesitated, trying to pick his words because they might be repeated to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister! But the careful, chosen words would not come and so he spoke his mind, harshly. “We found the U-boat by sheer luck; just ran across her. And she nearly got away, might as easily have sunk us. The flotilla is doing good work patrolling and bombarding — we have to hold the Straits and hit their bases — but it can’t and won’t stop the U-boats. Nor would a hundred anti-submarine flotillas. The ships would be better used escorting convoys, and convoys must come and soon.”
Braddock stared at him for several seconds, as if letting the words soak in so as to repeat them later. Then he stirred, started prowling again. “And how is the flotilla?”
“I’ve no complaints, sir.” Smith’s face was blank now.
Braddock thought, so it’s like that. He said slowly, “I know Trist. I knew the kind of flotilla it would be when I got you the appointment, but there were other suggestions designed to bury you alive in some shore job with a big title and no command. I thought you’d prefer the flotilla.”
“Yes, sir.” That was definite.
“Can you make something of them?”
“They can. There’s good stuff there, sir.”
“What? Wildfire and Bloody Mary?”
Smith blinked again. Braddock’s intelligence system was impressive. “Yes. To start with there’s Garrick and Dunbar…” He told Braddock about the ships and their men, at first stiffly, self-consciously, but soon his enthusiasm set him talking freely.
Braddock listened until Smith talked himself out and only then said dryly, as he opened the door to end the interview, “It’s a good job Beatty can’t hear you.” Beatty now commanded the Grand Fleet. “If he believed you he’d want to swap for your paragons.”
* * *
Smith went to his hotel. Sanders had diffidently invited Smith to spend the short leave at the house in Wimbledon but Smith knew about Sanders’s girl and he wasn’t going to get in the way there. Smith had no home to go to. The CPO and his wife who had brought up Smith had both died in his first year as a cadet in Britannia. But he had always managed happily enough in a hotel before. Now he stared out of the window and wasn’t so sure. He had three days to get through. Get through? That was hardly the way to look at a short leave after a gruelling period of service in the Channel. He was used to being alone but now he felt lonely, a very different thing. He scowled moodily out at the rain that spotted the panes and thought about the ships.
* * *
She was fast and modern, slim and strong. Not a ship. Eleanor Hurst was twenty-four years old, with money of her own, and the man she wanted and could not get had been killed on the Somme. She sat at the table in the Savoy, between the subaltern and the young Lieutenant-Colonel with the red tabs of the Staff, and watched Smith. He was aware of her: pretty, blonde, the dress low-cut, the eyes watching him coolly. Not challenging, just watching. He wondered whether she was too cool; was there a tenseness about her?
The big room was brilliantly lit by the chandeliers, the orchestra played ragtime and the dance floor was filled with young officers and girls. The supper party was given by the subaltern’s mother who was in a nervous state because he was returning to France and the Front the next day. The average life-span of a subaltern at the Front was three months. Smith sat between her and a Mrs. Pink — he couldn’t remember her name but thought of her as Mrs. Pink. She was large and pink-faced and pink bosomed, expensively dressed and she kept laying her hand on his thigh under the table. Her shadowy, absent husband was making a lot of money, she was vocally patriotic and got on Smith’s nerves.
Sanders sat opposite him with a pretty, dark-haired girl who laughed a great deal. Smith’s invitation had come through Sanders because the subaltern and Sanders were old friends. Sanders had been apologetic. “I can put ’em off — make some excuse, you know — although they were very keen I should ask you.” Smith had hesitated but accepted, telling himself it was a chance to relax and briefly forget the war, but now he was regretting it. He found he was something of a celebrity. A lot of people wanted to talk to him because the action in the Pacific had been widely reported. He did not like it. He told himself he should be pleased, he was pleased that some people thought well of him but the fact was that it embarrassed him and he did not wish to talk about the Pacific.
There was a lot he wanted to forget. He thought he might have enjoyed the luxury, war-time shabby though it was, the air of gaiety that sometimes bordered on wildness, if he could have been one of a party like those young Flying Corps officers. He envied them. They seemed to be Canadians and hell-bent on enjoying themselves. But then he told himself brutally that he was not one of them nor like them and if he was miserable it was his own bloody fault.
&nb
sp; He found Eleanor Hurst’s direct gaze disturbing. And Hacker, the remarkably young Lieutenant-Colonel on the Staff asked him some probing questions. There was a toughness about his dark good looks. The subaltern had muttered earlier, “Son of a friend of mother’s. Wangled himself a cushy billet as a temporary Brasshat on movements or something in Dunkerque.”
Hacker was attentive to Eleanor Hurst. They talked, sometimes in low tones, their heads close together. In the general conversation Smith learned that Hacker’s commission was only for the duration of hostilities but he could hardly be called a ‘temporary gentleman’. He was wealthy, an all-round athlete and a Doctor of Philosophy. Smith learned none of this from Hacker, who talked well but not of himself. Hacker made Smith feel shabby and awkward. This was very much Hacker’s world.
Smith tried to stick it out but as Mrs. Pink badgered him with questions about the action in the Pacific his answers became monosyllabic. Until Mrs. Pink was leaning towards him, her voice shrill and affected, “You showed them, Commander! The only way! We’ve got to finish them off for good no matter what it costs!”
But Smith had taken all he could stand. He had a fleeting vision of the Kapitänleutnant dying before his eyes. ‘No matter what it costs’? He knew the cost and had seen men paying it in blood and broken bodies. He shoved back his chair and made a little bow to his hostess. “If you will excuse me.” To the subaltern: “Good luck.” And then he was gone, walking quickly to the door and out of their sight.
In the Strand he turned towards the river, away from his hotel because it was too early to return there. This was summer but the night was chill and a fine rain falling. He walked quickly through the gloom of a wartime, blacked-out London, unaware of the rain. He knew that to most of them his behaviour had been offhand to the point of rudeness, but he could not help that. He was restless, on edge. He did not want to go back to sea nor to any more parties like that. He did not want to go back to the hotel. He did not know what he wanted.
The horse slowed from a trot to a walk and a cab rolled alongside him, keeping pace. He did not notice it until she called “Commander!”
He turned and saw the face of Eleanor Hurst at the pulleddown window of the cab and stared at that face, a pale smudge in the darkness of the cab with the eyes catching the faintest of light. The cab stopped and so did he. She said, “If that’s the only uniform you have then you’d better keep it dry.” She pushed the door open.
He still stared at her but after a moment he stumbled into the cab and sat in a corner and the cab jolted away. He did not say “Thank you”. They sat in silence as the horse alternately trotted and walked eastward through the dimly-lit streets, it seemed for a long time. When the cab stopped for good it was in a street hard by the river, a cobbled street flanked by warehouses, but slotted between two of them was a little house. It looked to have been one of a terrace, the rest torn down on either side to make room for the warehouses. Its front door opened from the pavement without any garden or yard before it. A knocker and handle gleamed brassily and above the door was a fanlight.
Eleanor Hurst was down before he could precede her. The cabbie said, “One and tuppence, sir.” Smith fumbled out his change and handed up three sixpences. “Thank ye, guv. G’night.”
Eleanor had gone and the door stood open. He passed through and found himself in a sitting-room. There was a fire in the grate and before it a guard. In the firelight he saw her standing by the table in the middle of the small room, reaching up. She said, “Close the door.” As he did so there was the snap of a match, then the brief hiss and plop! as the gas ignited and lit the room. He saw that at the back of it was a door that led to a kitchen. To his left a flight of stairs ran up out of the sitting-room to the floor above.
She still held the burning match in her fingers and looked at him over its flame until it burned down and she shook it out, dropped it in the fire-place.
“Would you like a drink, Commander?” She nodded to a glass-fronted cabinet that held a row of bottles, a syphon. Her voice was different now, husky. He shook his head, still standing by the door.
At the foot of the stairs she paused, her back to him. “Commander. What’s your name? Your first name?”
“David.”
She nodded and went up the stairs.
He should leave. This was a strange young woman; not bold, nor wild, but too cool. He knew nothing of her. He had got himself into trouble enough. The door was behind him. He was still wondering, hesitating, when she called him.
“David?” A question. Asked of herself? Doubting?
He went up to her.
* * *
In the night she woke and lifted on to one elbow to look down at him. She wondered if he thought she took home every man she met. At home in Dorset some had said that the Hurst girl would come to no good. She looked at him and thought they could be right but he had looked so — lost. Now he slept as if drugged but she was afraid and slid over on top of him, woke him, demanded him.
* * *
He stayed with her for the rest of his leave. On the first day he paid his bill at the hotel and brought back his valise and stood it against the wall close by the door. They took a train into the country and walked. Or they wandered down by the river. They did not go to the West End, to its shows or its restaurants. They went to bed when it suited them and lay late in the mornings. They did not talk much, but enough. He found she was cool and she was wild and she was bold. He thought he learned a great deal about her but in fact he did not.
On the second day of his leave they took a cab to the house of a distant cousin of Eleanor’s. He was in France with the Royal Flying Corps and they borrowed his motor-car. In the cab Eleanor said, “It’s a fourteen-horse Foy Steele two-seater with a double dickey-seat behind.”
Smith said, “Oh.” And: “There’s a chauffeur?”
“A chauffeur? No!” She laughed. “Why?”
“Well, I can’t steer one of the things. Never tried.”
“That’s all right. Driving is what I do. I drive a Staff car, carting Generals and what-not all over London. Just at the moment I’m on leave.” She glanced at him, amused but with an edge to her voice now. “Or did you think I spent my time comforting lonely officers?”
“Good God, no!” said Smith, startled at the thought. “To tell you the truth I hadn’t thought about you doing anything — although everybody seems to have a job now.”
She drove him out of London in the Foy Steele and they explored the lanes of Surrey, lunched at a pub and walked in Oxshott woods. In the end she persuaded him to try to drive and it took little persuasion. He was eager. Only the certainty that he would make a fool of himself in front of a girl caused him to hesitate. Then he thought that it didn’t matter if he did look a fool in front of this girl. She explained the workings of the clutch, gears and brakes and how to start and to adjust the mixture and he made a terrible bash of it. But finally he got something of the hang of it and took it careering for two or three miles until a near-collision with a farm cart decided Eleanor that it was enough for one day.
They drove back to London and left the car in its garage, ate dinner at a quiet restaurant and walked back to the little house.
That night she was afraid but did not tell him, clung to him.
They woke muzzily to the rumble and clank of the ironwheeled milk cart with its churns and heard the boy come running to take their can, fill it and replace it on the front-door step. Between sleeping and waking he stared through half-open eyes at the ceiling and thought that today he had to go back to the flotilla. He thought about Sparrow and Marshall Marmont, and the U-boat commander, and young Morris, the airman…He hoped Naval Intelligence would make some sense of his report. He could not. But it haunted him. Schwertträger…Hinterrücks anfallen…Springtau…He mumbled, “Damn silly. Skipping-rope!”
“What?” She turned and rolled into his arms.
“A word. German. Springtau, springtie, something like that. Sanders said it meant skipp
ing-rope.”
“Springtij isn’t German. I’d have thought you knew that one, being a salty sailor.” She snuggled into him.
“Not German?”
“No. It’s Flemish.”
He stared down at her. “How do you know?”
“Because my grandmother was Belgian and I’ve lived there a lot. I speak Flemish like I speak English. I said so that night at the Savoy but I don’t suppose you heard me with that woman bawling in your ear. Springtij is the extra high tide you get once or twice a month.”
“Twice.” He was wide awake now. Flemish. Springtij. Spring tide. The exceptionally high twice-monthly tide. He rolled away from her and out of her bed, pulled on his bath-robe over his nakedness and made for the door.
She sat up in the bed. “Where are you going?”
“To make a cup of tea! Breakfast! I’ve thought of something I must tell the Admiralty!” His voice came up from the stairs.
“What have you thought of?”
“Can’t tell you!” Flemish! Of course! The U-boat was out of a Flanders port and her commander had picked up the local term.
Eleanor Hurst said, “Oh!” He was leaving her today but she had known he would. She huddled down in the bed, shivering.
* * *
He told Intelligence about the spring tide because they had asked him to tell them anything he remembered but it did not help. A spring tide — but where? Flanders? Maybe. But then what? They were no nearer solving the puzzle. He left the Admiralty and ran to catch a passing cab. He had to return to Dunkerque — but first he must go to Eleanor Hurst’s house. He was ready to go back to sea but reluctant to say farewell to Eleanor Hurst. He worried at it as the cab rolled eastwards. How deep was her feeling towards him? He did not want to hurt her — and then he told himself coldly that he should have thought of that before. If he’d hurt her, then he was sorry. He had wanted her and taken her but — love? He was not sure, wary of the word.