by James Philip
And now Margaret Thatcher; widowed in the October War - scarred forever by that loss - had been cruelly robbed of the man who would surely have been her rock in years to come.
The door to the Prime Minister’s office opened and a tall broad figure emerged. Sternly lugubrious at the best of times James Callaghan, the fifty-two year old leader of the Labour and Co-operative Party, Secretary of State for Wales and Margaret Thatcher’s deputy in the Unity Administration of the United Kingdom trudged wearily towards the Harding-Graysons.
“Thank goodness you are here, Pat,” the big man sighed. “Margaret was unspeakably rude to the First Sea Lord earlier; she wouldn’t listen to a word he had to say to her. She was almost as bad with the Chief of the Air Staff. Willie is trying to smooth things over. This is a terrible business but we should be keeping our powder dry for dealing with the Americans not squabbling amongst ourselves.”
Tom Harding-Grayson groaned out aloud.
“We can’t blame the Americans, Jim!” He protested, not troubling to veil his exasperation. “What happened yesterday was a massive failure of intelligence and of political imagination on both sides of the Atlantic!”
“You try telling that to the Prime Minister, Tom. I wish you luck because I’ve been trying to talk some sense into her for the last two hours and all I’ve got for my pains is a splitting headache!”
Pat Harding-Grayson sometimes asked herself why even intelligent men with wide and varied experience of life were often such complete asses?
“Don’t you understand? Margaret was engaged to be married to Julian Christopher,” she whispered angrily. Adding: “You idiots!”
The two men looked at her with momentarily slack jaws.
“Pat, you said nothing?” Her husband blurted, wide-eyed.
“It was supposed to be a secret!”
“Oh, yes, but...”
“She absolutely adored that man!” The Foreign Secretary’s wife hissed in unmitigated exasperation. “She must be distraught...”
“Oh,” her husband muttered. “You never...”
“Of course I didn’t tell you, Tom,” she retorted impatiently. “You’re a politician now. The last thing anybody with any sense does is share their innermost secrets with a politician! And besides, Margaret swore me to secrecy.”
“Oh, fair enough.”
James Callaghan was looking at the husband and wife as if they were lunatics. Tom Harding-Grayson ignored the Deputy Prime Minister’s incredulity.
“Who is in with Margaret at the moment, Jim?”
“Er, Airey and Iain have just gone in.” Weariness fell upon him as he explained. “Iain thinks Margaret might lose the Party over this. Malta, I mean.”
The Foreign Secretary said nothing.
His wife was made of sterner stuff.
Airey was forty-six year old Airey Middleton Sheffield Neave, the Minister of Supply and the Prime Minister’s closest friend in politics. Airey Neave was universally recognised as that most rare and precious of things in this post-October War age; a living national treasure. Among his many distinctions Airey Neave had been the first British officer to escape from the infamous German prisoner-of-war camp Oflag IV-C, Colditz, and subsequently make a successful ‘home run’ back to the United Kingdom in 1942. A qualified lawyer who spoke fluent German he was the man who had read the indictments to the surviving senior members of the Nazi hierarchy at the Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal after Second World War. He had been involved with the Special Operations Executive after he returned to the British Isles from Colditz, and retained links with MI6 ever since. Within the Conservative and Unionist Party of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland he had been, as was still, regarded by many as something of a loner, not really a team man and in some respects a political lightweight, but everybody actually in the government knew that he was a key member of the UAUK and had the attentive ear of his protégé, Margaret Hilda Thatcher.
Iain was Iain Norman Macleod, the fifty year old ‘brain’ of the post cataclysm Conservative Party. At the time of the October War he had been Party Chairman and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Since the formation of the UAUK he had made the post of Minister of Information his, and resumed his pre-war role as Leader of the – newly reconvened – House of Commons. A brilliant, moody, irascible man of deep convictions he and Airey Neave had become their Party Leader’s and their Prime Minister’s, most vociferous and eloquently devoted public supporters and proponents. To the Angry Widow’s detractors they were Cassius and Brutus to her Caesar; to the Party faithful and to countless men and women in the street they were the indefatigable twin spokesmen for the new ‘one nation Unity Administration of the United Kingdom’.
Not only was Pat Harding-Grayson made of indefinably ‘sterner stuff’ than her husband – whose greatest weakness had always been his tendency to resort to the cerebral, rather than the emotional in times of direst peril – she was also a profoundly political animal with a lifelong understanding of how the game of politics was played. This meant that while she was confident that with people like Willie Whitelaw, Airey Neave and Iain Macleod at her back – assuming nothing else went catastrophically wrong in the next few days and weeks - her friend Margaret Thatcher would, if she still wanted to survive, survive the Maltese disaster. But who did Jim Callaghan, the leader of the rump of the splintered Labour and Co-operative Party have to guard his back?
“What about you with your people, Jim?” She asked.
Her husband frowned at her, mystified by her question to his friend.
“Ah,” James Callaghan murmured, meeting Pat Harding-Grayson’s concerned grey eyes in a moment replete with new respect. “Now that’s a question, isn’t it?”
Chapter 20
02:20 Hours
Saturday 4th April 1964
USS Berkeley (DDG-15), Entering Grand Harbour, Malta
Commander Peter Christopher was practically out on his feet by the time the handset was pressed into his hands. He found himself alone in the Captain’s Stateroom of the guided missile destroyer. He did not trouble to hide his irritation – he was too tired to be angry – to be called away from supervising the preparations for the transfer of his wounded to the barges and launches waiting for the USS Berkeley to tie up, bow and stern, to the emergency destroyer buoys in Kalkara Creek beneath the low cliffs upon which Royal Naval Hospital Bighi had stood for over a hundred years.
“Christopher speaking,” he grunted. All that was keeping him going was strong black coffee and the two ‘pep pills’ the commanding officer of the USS Berkeley had persuaded his ship’s surgeon to prescribe him a couple of hours ago. His twisted and savagely aching right knee and ankle were heavily strapped up, his cuts and abrasions cleansed and bandaged, one or two of his deeper nicks and gashes stitched but he badly needed a bath or shower and the crisp clean new US Navy uniform his hosts had given him did not really fit him. But then nothing would feel right about anything for a long time he guessed, not after he had lost his ship.
“I am sorry to keep you waiting, sir,” a prim and proper young woman’s voice apologised at the other end of the hissing, squeaking scrambled connection, “the First Sea Lord has been informed that the secure connection has been established.”
Peter Christopher’s exhaustion and bloody mindedness lifted briefly. But only briefly. By the time Sir David Luce, the professional head of the Royal Navy’s cultured, evenly modulated voice broke into the tired spiral of his melancholy his mood had soured somewhat.
“I was told that you were wounded, Peter?”
The use of his Christian name completely disorientated the last commanding officer of the battle class destroyer HMS Talavera. Peter had only spoken to the First Sea Lord on one previous occasion, shortly after his graduation from Dartmouth.
‘I am sure you will do your family proud, young man,’ the lean, urbane man with the immaculate manners and courtly air had said, shaking his hand before turning back to continue his conversation with Peter’s fath
er.
“Er, nothing very serious, sir. I probably look a bit of sight for sore eyes. But nothing to complain about. Nothing compared to some of the poor fellows we are about to transfer to RNH Bighi.”
Damn it! I did not intend to come across as a sulky brat!
“I apologise for the timing of this conversation, Peter,” the older man assured him calmly, severely. “I wouldn’t have placed this call if this interview could have waited for the morning.”
“No, sorry, sir,” Peter said instantly, ashamed of himself. The Head of the Navy had put a call through to him. In the aftermath of a battle the First Sea Lord could pay his men and he not greater compliment, especially at a time like this when he would have World on his back demanding to know what had gone wrong at Malta. “I’m not entirely myself, sir. Please forgive me.”
“I completely understand, Peter,” the older man said paternally. “You must be feeling dreadful at the moment?”
The younger man desperately wanted to deny it.
“Half my people are dead, missing or seriously wounded, sir.” In fact only three of his ten senior officers– Miles Weiss, Alan Rachel and his Canadian Navigator, Dermot O’Reilly – had survived the afternoon’s action and like himself, all three fell into the category of ‘walking wounded requiring hospitalization’. He took a deep breath. He needed to say what needed to be said. “You should know that my father put a call through to Talavera while we were alongside in the Grand Harbour provisioning and ammunitioning the ship in the minutes before the bombardment commenced, sir.”
“Yes,” the First Sea Lord acknowledged. “What did he tell you to do, Peter?”
“He told me to ‘cut my lines and go’, sir.”
Peter Christopher thought he heard the other man chuckle; he might have been imagining it.
“Sir?”
“My old friend probably hoped you’d run for the open sea,” Sir David Luce explained, his tone tinged with proud sadness, “but he knew you well enough to know that whatever he told you to do that you would steam towards the sound of guns at top speed, Peter.”
The younger man said nothing, a little choked. He had just been paid a very high tribute by the man whom, in the Royal Navy was if not God, then His trusted right hand man.
He swallowed hard.
“I ordered the Yarmouth to draw the enemy’s fire during Talavera’s torpedo run, sir,” he confessed, very nearly choking on the words. “I don’t know what happened to her.”
“Yarmouth ran herself aground in St Paul’s Bay,” he was informed. ‘Local fishermen and boats from the USS Charles F. Adams rescued approximately half her crew. Several of the most seriously wounded survivors have been airlifted to the USS Independence for treatment in her sick bay.”
Peter Christopher drew what comfort he could from this; he had ordered Yarmouth’s captain – a full commander to his ‘acting-commander’ and by any standard a man who was actually his superior – to draw the enemy’s fire knowing he was almost certainly signing both their death sentences.
“Be content that Talavera and Yarmouth acquitted themselves in accordance with the finest traditions of the Service, Peter,” the older man assured him.
The timbre of the First Sea Lord’s voice changed, forewarning Peter of sombre news to come.
“There has been no official announcement as yet,” Sir David Luce prefaced sombrely. “However, it is my sad duty to have to inform you that your father died from wounds sustained defending his headquarters in the Citadel at Mdina at around thirteen-fifty hours yesterday afternoon. His loss is an immeasurable loss to the Service and to the nation. I am sorry it was not possible for me to give you this sad news face to face.”
Peter stared into space.
It did not sink in for several seconds.
“I am given to believe,” the older man continued, “that your father’s last words concerned the great pride he felt in you and your achievements in life and in the Service.” He paused, let this hang in the air. “I know it will be of little comfort now but I think it is important for you to know that at the time of his death your father was aware that Talavera’s actions had already turned the battle for Malta decisively in favour of British forces.”
Peter knew he ought to feel something, anything. Instead there was only a void, a numb absence of emotions.
“Thirteen-fifty hours or thereabouts was about when the Talavera went down, sir,” he said blankly. The coldness spread through his soul in those moments. Not like a curse, more like a fog that blunted the hard edges of his psyche, killing anger and regret, curbing any urge towards retribution or the assignation of blame.
Peter Christopher did not recollect the First Sea Lord making his excuses and the line going dead. He held the handset to his ear for so long after the call had finished that his right arm went numb.
There was a knocking at the cabin door.
Chief Petty Officer Spider McCann stuck his gnarled head into the stateroom.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” the older man grimaced. “The Yanks were getting worried. You didn’t answer their knocking. They didn’t want to trouble you,” HMS Talavera’s former Master at Arms shrugged apologetically, “so they asked me to check if you were okay, like...”
Peter stared at him, blinking blindly as if he had just awoken from a hypnotic trance.
Habit, duty and reality snapped back into cruel sharp focus.
He dropped the handset back into its cradle and got to his feet, straightening his sleeves, carelessly running a hand through his tousled fair hair. His palm brushed recently inserted sutures.
“Thank you, Mr McCann,” he sniffed, seeking and finding the strength to act the part that his men had every right to expect him to play. He looked the old seaman in the eye. “I have just learned that my father died of his wounds at about the same time Talavera went down yesterday afternoon.”
The Master at Arms had pushed the door fully open.
He stiffened to attention.
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir. He was a fine man, sir,” he said soberly. “Sir Julian was the finest captain I ever sailed with,” he added, and then with a suggestion of a frown, added, “well, until that shindig at Lampedusa. If you’ll excuse my impertinence, sir.”
Peter Christopher had never been one to easily accept a compliment.
It was when his mentor and the destroyer’s commanding officer, Captain David Penberthy, had been cut down in the first minutes of the vicious inshore fire fight to subdue the defenders of the island of Lampedusa in January that he had first assumed command of HMS Talavera.
Involuntarily he ran a hand through his hair again.
He felt naked without his cap.
“My place is on deck,” he decided. “Lead on, Mr McCann.”
Kalkara Creek was lit by a battery of blazing arc lamps that instantly destroyed the night vision of anybody so unwise as to look into the burning orbs of near and distant light. The fishing village on the hillside around the Creek was similarly illuminated as, to Peter’s surprise, were several areas of Valletta across the cold waters of the Grand Harbour. A lot of people had been buried in the rubble of collapsed buildings; the rescuers would not rest until the last bodies had been recovered.
He tried not to think about Marija.
A small tug was industriously nudging the sharp, elegant prow of the USS Berkeley onto the forward emergency destroyer buoy. The ship seemed to be ridiculously close inshore, surrounded by small boats, their dark silhouettes dancing on waters reflecting the shore lights.
“I told you to get into the first boat?” Peter reminded Alan Hannay. His newly acquired Supply Officer and Purser had been his father’s marvellously efficient and ever-present Flag Lieutenant until he had induced Peter to request his services to fill a vacancy in Talavera’s Wardroom after the Lampedusa action. His father had thought highly of the Alan; who in turn had been devoted to him.
“There are chaps in a much worse state than me, sir.”
Peter looked around to see check who was in earshot.
He lowered his voice.
“My father was killed in the fighting at the Citadel yesterday,” he confided. “Probably best to keep that under your hat until there is a proper public announcement.”
“Oh, I see.” Alan Hannay’s voice was crushed, a murmur of regret that was in no way fabricated. “God, I don’t...”
Peter patted the other man’s arm
“Chin up,” he whispered. “The chaps will be watching us, Alan. Especially as Miles is a little the worse for wear at the moment.”
Miles Weiss, HMS Talavera’s executive officer, was one of the stretcher cases waiting to transfer to RNH Bighi; badly concussed the USS Berkeley’s surgeon speculated, he was unable to stand unaided and any attempt to move prompted disabling nausea.
“Yes, sir. Oh, this is a bloody business...”
Peter took the other man’s elbow, made eye contact.
Alan Hannay nodded, straightened, set his face against the world.
“People are looking to us,” he said quietly.
“That’s the ticket.”
The two men limped and stumbled into the pool of brilliant light below the bridge of the guided missile destroyer where the stretcher cases were being readied with infinite, almost tender care to be slowly lowered into the waiting boats. Many of the wounded were attended by two or more American seaman, several held saline or plasma infusion bags aloft while the USS Berkeley’s surgeon moved from man to man, checking, fussing as if he was caring for his own children.
Peter Christopher patted hands, shoulders, leaned down painfully to murmur reassuring words. He yearned to step into the shadows, to shed a tear for the dead. But that, like vengeance, was a thing that would have to wait for another time and another place.