Ransome pictured it. More guns meant extra hands. The ship was already overcrowded; they all were.
'You and Ranger will be carrying doctors too.'
Ransome nodded slowly. Doctors were rare in small ships. He said, 'We're going to invade, sir? The other way round for a change?'
Moncrieff frowned. 'I've said nothing. Keep it to yourself, but yes, I think an invasion is in the wind. Sicily is my guess.'
There was a tap at the door and Hargrave poked his head around the curtain.
'Come in, Number One.'
Moncrieff nodded. 'How d'you do?' As usual he did not remove his hand from his pocket to take Hargrave's as he made a half-attempt to offer it.
Ransome marked his expression. He would see it as a snub, or rudeness from another reservist. In fact, Moncrieff rarely showed his hand except to throw up a casual salute. He had lost his three middle fingers in an air attack at Dunkirk. His hand was like a crude pair of callipers. It was fortunate that he was left-handed anyway.
Moncrieff said bluntly, 'You think sweeping a bit of a letdown, eh?' Then he shook his head, 'No, your C.O. didn't tell me anything. I guessed it.'
He warmed to his pet theme. 'There was a time, when this war started, when reservists were outnumbered by the regular navy. Looked down on in some ships, I would say. Well, as you now know, that situation has fortunately changed. All these young men you work with joined up for one thing only, to fight the Hun — not to make a nice comfortable career for themselves, right?'
'I didn't see it like that, sir.'
'Good.' Moncrieff glanced at his empty glass. ' 'Cause if you did, I'd remind you that but for these Wavy Navy chaps and old codgers like meself, Mr bloody Hitler would have run up his flag over Buck House two years ago!'
Ransome felt sorry for Hargrave and asked, 'What did you want, Number One?'
Hargrave took the question like a lifeline. 'It's the base padre on the telephone, sir.' He looked at Moncrieff. 'About a service for Fawn.'
Moncrieff struggled to his feet. 'Yes, I forgot. I suppose it won't hurt to have a few words with God. Can't help poor Peter Bracelin though.'
He turned and stared at Ransome. 'You've earned a rest, fifty times over, Ian. So use it. Lose yourself. Leave this little lot to me.' He held out his uninjured hand and shook Ransome's very gently. 'And don't worry about Rob Roy either. She's my next of kin now.'
They went on deck together and watched a khaki ambulance pulling away from the brow. The last of Fawn's survivors who had died while the ship had headed up the Medway.
All told, Fawn had lost thirty of her company.
They had all worked together for many months, a lifetime in any war. They would be sadly missed. So would Fawn. Ransome saluted as Moncrieff strode heavily across the brow. Poor old Smokey Joe.
He said, 'Get the people away on leave, Number One. The cox'n and leading writer will help you. They know what to do.'
'I was wondering, sir —'
Ransome watched him calmly. Invasion. It was like seeing it in bright painted letters a mile high. The where didn't much matter. They only had to care about the how.
He said, 'I'm afraid you'll have to forget it, if you were about to ask me about leave, Number One. I need a good officer here in my absence. And, well, let's face it, Number One, you've only been aboard a dog-watch. Right?'
Hargrave gave a rueful grin. 'Understood, sir.'
I doubt that, Ransome thought. He said, 'It's ten days. I'll see what I can do for you.'
That evening Ransome left the ship. It felt like no other time. The emptiness, the stillness, the voices and daily routine already like another memory.
He waited in the dusk and looked down at her. Tomorrow she would stand upright in dry-dock.
Ransome turned and walked quickly towards the gates. But that was tomorrow.
Up the Line
The train from Waterloo's mainline station seemed to wait for ages before it eventually moved off. Unlike the first part of the journey from Chatham when the train had been filled mostly with sailors, this one was crammed almost to bursting-point with a strong proportion of all three services.
Gerald Boyes was fortunate and had a window-seat, although with anti-blast netting pasted across the glass it made little difference, except that he was only being squashed from one side. It was a corridor train, and that too was packed. Boyes noted that he had not seen a single civilian climb aboard, or maybe they had been no match for the wild stampede of servicemen, partly rushing to avoid losing a precious minute of their leave; also by sheer weight of numbers some had hoped to crash through the handful of military policemen and railway inspectors to prevent anyone from discovering they had no tickets.
There had been a brief hit-and-run air-raid on London, someone said. Another complained that the train was too overloaded to move. Boyes glanced at his companions; curiously they were all sailors although he did not know any of them. It never failed to amaze him that they could sleep instantly, anywhere, and without effort.
He had seven days' leave. His stomach churned with both excitement and uncertainty at this unexpected break. He had tried to sleep on the slow, clattering journey from Chatham through the Medway towns and finally to London. It was different from the last leave when he had been so full of hopes for his chance of getting a commission. He could still feel liis mother's disappointment, as if it was some kind of slur on her and the family. But the events of the past weeks had changed him, although he could not understand how. When he had tried to sleep on the train he had found no peace, but had relived the terrible moment when he had seen Fawn explode and disintegrate. The survivors hauled aboard, some coughing and gasping, black with coal-dust and oil, others horribly burned so that had he wanted to look away. As a boy he had always imagined that death in battle had dignity. There had been none there on Rob Roy's deck as Masefield the petty officer S.B.A. had knelt amongst them, working with dressings and bandages, his expression like a mask.
One badly wounded man had looked up at Boyes when he had carried fresh dressings from the sick-bay.
His face had been scorched away, with only his bulging, pleading eyes left to stare at Boyes. For that brief moment Boyes had felt no fear. He had wanted to help the dying man without knowing how. The Gunner (T) had dragged a bloodstained cloth over the man's face and had barked, 'Can't do nothin' more for this one.' But even he had been moved by it.
Boyes glanced down at his uniform. Next time he would find a way of buying a proper, made-to-measure jumper and bell-bottoms like the real sailors wore. He turned his cap over in his hands after making sure that he was the only one awake. He had rid himself of the regulation cap tally with the plain HMS embroidered in the centre. He held it so that it caught the afternoon sunlight even through the dirty, net-covered window. In real gold wire, he had bought it from Rob Roy's leading supply assistant, whom the others called Jack Dusty for some reason.
He felt a shiver run through him. HM Minesweeper. Pride, a sense of daring, it was neither. Or was it?
The corridor door jerked open even as the train gave a sudden lurch and began to move from the station.
Boyes glanced round and saw a girl in khaki peering in, a second girl close behind her.
She said, 'No seats here either. God, my feet are killing me!'
She glanced along the sleeping sailors. 'Looks as if they've all died!'
Boyes stood up, clinging to the luggage rack as the train tilted to the first set of points.
'Take mine.'
The girl in the A.T.S. uniform eyed him suspiciously, then said, 'A proper little gent, eh?' She gave a tired grin and slipped into his seat. 'I'd give you a medal if I had one.'
Boyes struggled out into the corridor where men clung to the safety rail across each window, or sat hunched on their suitcases. The lavatory door at the end of the corridor was wedged open and Boyes could see some soldiers squatting around the toilet, shuffling cards with grim determination.
'She wasn't kidding
either. Poor Sheila has been on the move for days.'
Boyes faced the other A.T.S. girl for the first time. She was wearing battledress blouse and skirt, her cap tugged down over some dark, curling hair. She was pretty, with an amused smile on her lips, and had nice hands, both of which she was using to grip the rail as the train gathered speed.
'Had a good look, sailor?'
Boyes felt his face flushing uncontrollably. 'Sorry, I -'
Her eyes lifted to his cap and she gave a silent whistle. 'Mine-sweeping — is that what you do?'
He nodded, his skin still burning. 'Yes.' He wanted to sound matter-of-fact, casual even. 'It's just a job.'
She wrinkled her nose. 'I can imagine.'
She had very nice eyes. Not blue, more like violet. She was older than he was, he decided. By a year or two. But who wasn't?
She asked directly, 'You going back?'
He shook his head. 'No. Some leave.'
'Lucky you. I've just had mine.'
She had an accent he could not place. He asked carefully, 'Where do you come from?'
'Well, Woolwich actually.' She watched him challengingly. 'Where did you think, then?'
'Sorry —'
She gripped his arm. 'Don't keep apologising. It's the way I talk. Like you - we're different, OK?'
Boyes was losing his way fast. 'Your family - what do they do ?'
She watched him again. He was just someone to pass the time with. They would never meet again. And yet she knew he was not like anyone she had met. Not because he had given Sheila his seat, or because of his careful, posh accent. She shied away from it. Not again. It was too soon.
'My dad's on the docks. Makes good money with the war on, and that. Most of it goes against the wall, but that's life, right?'
'Can I ask, where are you going?'
She shrugged. 'In the park, near Kingston. Know it?'
He nodded. 'My home's in Surbiton. Quite close.'
She said, 'I belong to an ack-ack battery there. God, I wish I was in the bloody Wrens. I'd give anything to see the sea every day instead of a lot of randy gunners and the deer!' She laughed. 'Did I shock you?'
'N — no. Of course not.' He stared through the window. It was not possible. They were almost there.
He stammered, 'I'm Gerald Boyes. Maybe we shall —'
She touched his arm, then dropped her eyes. 'I'm Connie.' She peered past him and said, 'I must wake her up. We're getting off here too.'
The next moments were lost in confusion as the train came to a halt and disgorged a living tide of uniforms on to the platform.
She said quickly, 'I've only been here a month. I was in North London before. I suppose you know your way around in these parts?'
The other girl exclaimed, 'Where's my bloody cap?'
The girl called Connie laughed and pointed to her respirator haversack. 'In there, you goof!'
Sheila said, 'I see they've sent the old Chewy to fetch us.'
She stood discreetly away as Boyes said, 'Here, this is my address. If you ever want —'
She stuck the piece of paper in her blouse pocket. 'You're a real card, you are!' But her eyes were suddenly warm, vulnerable. 'Maybe. We'll see, eh?'
The two girls hurried away towards a camouflaged lorry where some others in A.T.S. uniforms were already sorting out their bags and parcels from home.
Boyes walked slowly down the slope from the platform. Apart from all the uniforms it had not changed much. Shabbier, but so was everywhere else.
He would walk the rest of the way to his home, steeling himself as he went up St Mark's Hill, just as he had that morning on his way to school when he had been dreaming of being accepted for early entry into the navy.
He had known that church on the hill for most of his life, and had sung in the choir there because of his mother's insistence.
But that morning it had been quite different. When he had passed the last houses he had looked for the church tower and steeple, a landmark thereabouts. There had been nothing but the steeple left standing; a German bomb had wiped the rest away. It had felt like an invasion, like being assaulted by something obscene. He shivered, as he had done when the Fawn had finally dived to the bottom.
Then he gripped his case and walked into the sunlight. He turned once to stare after the lorry but it had already swung out on to the main road, and he thought he could hear the girls singing some army song.
A real gifl. And she had liked him.
He caught sight of himself in a shop window and tipped his cap to a more jaunty angle.
Home is the sailor.
Lieutenant Philip Sherwood paused on the steps of the club and waited for his eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness. He breathed deeply like a farmer returning to the land; even in wartime it was still London. Bombed, battered and rationed, with traffic groping up St James's Street towards Piccadilly, the night sky already criss-crossed by early searchlights, nothing seemed able to take away its personality.
He half-smiled. Like the old club he had just left, where he had dined alone in the high panelled room with its portraits of stern-faced bankers and businessmen.
His father had put his name down for membership years back when he had left school for Cambridge. His grandfather had been a member there too.
Just now he had asked an elderly servant if the club had ever been bombed.
The man, in his Pickwick-style brass-buttoned tailcoat, had given a wry smile while he had glanced at some equally old members who were sleeping in their chairs, faces hidden by their newspapers.
'It is my belief, Mr Sherwood, Hitler wouldn't dare!'
Mr Sherwood. Even that sounded old and quaint. Sherwood was twenty-six and had been in the navy since the beginning. His father had wanted him to wait a while. The business would not function without a younger head in the boardroom. Anyway, the war would be over by Christmas. That was four years ago.
In the club's elegant entrance hall hung one huge chandelier, unlit now because of the black-out and power cuts. But it was a chandelier which had once been the pride of London's clubland.
It had been made, or built as they called it in the profession, by one of the oldest chandelier companies, Sherwood's.
It had gone during the first devastating fire-blitz on London. They had all been there, that was the worst part, his father, mother and two sisters, helping after hours, to pack some of the antique, priceless pieces which would be sent into the country for the duration. The whole street had been demolished, and the blaze had been so terrible that the firemen had been unable to fight near enough to save anyone still inside.
It was still hard to accept that life could change so completely and remorselessly. Sherwood had left the affairs of his family in the hands of a solicitor who had been his father's friend and a cousin from Scotland he hardly knew. He could not face going back to the family home outside London in the quiet suburbs. Sherwood's had always kept a small flat in Mayfair, for foreign buyers and the like. By some miracle it had so far avoided both the bombing and being commandeered for some deskbound warrior from Whitehall, so Sherwood stayed there whenever he was able to reach London. To many people the city was a rambling maze; to Sherwood it was sheer escape, and could have been a desert island for all the notice he took of those around him.
An air-raid siren began its nightly wail, rising and falling above the growl of traffic, with barely a passer-by glancing at the sky. It was all too commonplace. To think about it could bring nothing but dread and despair. You just kept going.
Sherwood could see beyond the thousands of servicemen of so many nationalities who thronged the cinemas, pubs and dance-halls in search of momentary enjoyment. He saw instead the people, as they went about their daily affairs almost unnoticed. People who set out each day for the office or shop by any form of transport left running after a night's air-raid, not even knowing if the place of work would still be standing when they reached it. And at the end of their stint, returning home again, with that same grippin
g fear that it too might have been wiped away in their absence.
They were the real heroes, he thought. Without their courage under fire, all the sea battles and tanks in the world could not keep this island going for long.
He thought suddenly of Hargrave, their first meeting in the wardroom. Confrontation. His question about fear, his own reply about its only coming when there was an alternative. It was terribly true, but how could anybody like Hargrave understand?
Sherwood knew he was being unreasonable. Once he had tried to contain it. Now he did not care any more.
After his family had been killed he had returned to his ship and straight away had volunteered for mine disposal. He had been in Rob Roy about nine months. He had not expected to be alive this long when he had first volunteered for what they called the most dangerous work in any war.
His mind lingered on fear. That was the strange part. With him it was no act. He really did not feel it. He had supposed that one day he would either crack up completely as some had done, or make a stupid error which in the blink of an eye would have solved everything.
A dark figure seemed to slide from a doorway and he heard a girl say, 'Hello, love, d'you feel like a go?'
Sherwood quickened his pace, angry at the interruption, the intrusion into his solitude.
She insisted, 'Anything you like, and I'm clean!'
Sherwood caught the scent of strong perfume and sweat.
He snapped, 'Bugger off!'
She yelled after him. 'You stuck-up bastard! 1 hope they get you!'
Sherwood swung round. 'What did you say?'
He heard her high heels tapping on the pavement as she ran into the jostling figures and disappeared.
Sherwood walked on more slowly, his hands deep in his raincoat pockets.
Perhaps he should have gone with her. He almost laughed out loud. Probably end up in Rose Cottage, as they called the officers' V.D. hospital.
He looked up and saw the tiny pinpricks of bursting flak. Soundless from here. The searchlights were groping across some clouds; it all seemed quite harmless, unreal. It was south of the Thames somewhere.
In Danger's Hour Page 9