Right of Reply

by John Harris

  ‘Makes you feel bolshie, sir, don’t it?’ he said to White. ‘If they tell me to go in, I’ll go, but, by God, sir, I’m beginning to think the same way as them lads in the cells.’

  To the men in the cells, the news had come via a disgusted Sergeant O’Mara.

  ‘Well, that does it, brothers,’ Leach said. ‘That makes us spot ball. They haven’t recalled us, I notice.’

  Ginger Bowen listened to the low-pitched conversation glumly. He was still suffering from resentment that he was under lock and key through no fault of his own, and the look in his eye as he stared at Leach was full of bitter dislike that was rapidly boiling up to the point of physical action.

  ‘They’ll never get the blokes out of the ships,’ Leach was saying. ‘They’ll never go.’

  ‘They’ll never even get the Guards out now,’ Wedderburn agreed. ‘They’ll soon know what’s in the wind.’

  ‘Guardsmen don’t know anything,’ Snaith said dryly. ‘Guardsmen don’t think. The officers wind ’em up and off they go like clockwork.’

  ‘But, Christ, brother’ – Leach was noisily indignant – ‘they can’t expect men to lay down their lives for their mates against odds.’

  Ginger’s dislike came out in a low bitter growl that stopped the conversation dead in its tracks.

  ‘You’d never throw down your life for your mate,’ he said. ‘Your wife, yes, but not your life. In any case, you’re under arrest and, thanks to you, old Jesus-Joseph Malaki’s got a hole in the guts big enough to drive a bus through.’

  ‘Serve him right,’ Leach said. ‘He should have stuck with us. I expect the black bastard got cold feet.’

  Ginger turned slowly, his face full of menace as his fists clenched and unclenched. All his resentment at his incarceration boiled up with his dislike of Leach.

  ‘I shouldn’t be ’ere,’ he said slowly. ‘By rights I shouldn’t be ’ere. And I’m blaming it directly on you, Leach. So you just say one more word about Joe Malaki – or me – or anybody else – that’s all, and I’ll come across there and ram it straight down your throat. Even if they hang me by the short hairs from the yardarm. OK?’

  It was a long speech for Ginger and Leach looked up, his expression changing from startled amazement at the bitter words to sullenness. Wedderburn, McKechnie and Snaith were watching him carefully, waiting for his retort, but for once Leach had none. He looked quickly at them, and then again at Ginger, and then he rolled over on the iron bunk and stuck his hands silently in his pockets.

  On the bridge of Leopard, Downes turned to General Hodges.

  ‘We’re now five miles outside Khanzian territorial waters, Horace,’ he said quietly. ‘If you’re going to do anything, now’s the time to do it.’

  Hodges turned his head, slowly, almost as though he were sleepwalking.

  So the moment had come at last when he had to make his decision. There was no longer any time to equivocate or delay. He knew what Downes meant. With a fleet the size of that moving along silently behind them, they needed room to manoeuvre, and he couldn’t any longer hold back his decision.

  ‘How long have I got?’ he asked.

  ‘Ten minutes,’ Downes said. ‘Half an hour from now the aircraft take off.’

  ‘Give me that long.’

  ‘There’s one more thing.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Radar shows that there are at least five unknown ships following us now, all small, all the size of submarines, and one larger one, the Chorniye Kazach, which has been with us all the time. We’ve also had a signal from the DNI that there are others believed to be within ten miles of us.’

  ‘I see. Thank you. I’ll let you know.’

  Downes hesitated, knowing how full Hodges’ mind must be.

  ‘By the way,’ he said at last, ‘you don’t seem to have noticed, but this rain’s becoming rather heavy. Shouldn’t you go below?’

  ‘No.’ Hodges managed a smile. ‘It feels fresh and clean, and I don’t.’

  ‘Would you like an oilskin? I’ll have one sent up.’

  ‘Don’t bother, Dennis. I shan’t be brooding much longer.’

  Downes nodded then, realising Hodges’ need to think, moved to the other end of the bridge.

  Hodges put his empty pipe in his mouth and chewed at the stem in the darkness, feeling desperately alone and friendless. He had been hoping and praying for hours that someone in England would come to his senses and turn the convoy round before he, himself, was forced to make a decision one way or the other. Whatever he decided in the next ten minutes, he couldn’t imagine it would look right in history. Across the intervening years, he had a feeling that people would tend to judge the general in command rather than the politicians who had placed him in such a private hell.

  He thought of the men below decks and the arrangements that had been made to see that they disembarked at the right time when ordered. Even that problem seemed to have grown out of all proportion. Mutiny or no mutiny, he couldn’t honestly be expected to order them ashore with the force abruptly halved. It wasn’t even fair to the brave men who had not raised any protest. With his mind stiff with anxiety, to Hodges there wasn’t the faintest hope now of Stabledoor succeeding. All reports showed that the Khanzians were not only ready for them, with every black man in Africa firmly behind them, but that they had been more prepared than anyone in England had ever dreamed when they had rushed so hastily into the decision to launch the operation. It seemed impossible to him that the people back in Westminster, even engrossed as they were with their ponderous political saraband, would be stupid enough to let them continue. The country was surely sick of politics and in need of government.

  Below him, in the wardroom, trestle tables had been erected and the ship’s surgeon, in white overalls, with his stethoscope in his pocket and a gauze mask dangling under his chin, had laid out his instruments and bottles of blood plasma. The surgery was ready to receive casualties, and stretcher bearers were taking up their stations at vantage points through the ship. The drugs locker was unsealed and the sick-berth attendants were checking the sterilisers.

  Driven into cabins out of the way, the Pressmen waited, smoking and a little edgy, aware of something happening that they knew nothing about and resentful that they hadn’t been told. So far, they hadn’t asked and Hodges had no intention of telling them anything until he had to.

  He glanced at his watch. Two minutes had already gone by with futile thinking. That left eight. Eight short minutes, that could mean life or death to hundreds of men in the convoy around him, disgrace to himself, and humiliation and disaster to his country. Why was it that politicians, in the hothouse atmosphere of Westminster, obsessed with office and the niceties of Parliamentary procedure, never managed to see a soldier’s problem from a soldier’s point of view? As his mind dwelt on the subject, he began to wonder how many statesmen, having made a war, had ever shown themselves willing to support their views by going to fight in it. None in England, that he could recall, since Cromwell.

  Thinking about Cromwell, his mind turned to the prayer of Sir Jacob Astley before the battle of Edgehill in 1642. He’d used it more than once in the course of his Army life, once even in orders. ‘Oh, Lord, Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me.’

  It had always seemed a good soldierly prayer to utter before a battle – the sort of prayer that God would expect from a simple man, without frills or requests for special favours, and no fear of death. Hodges frowned, wishing things were as simple nowadays as they had been for Cromwell and Sir Jacob Astley.

  He stopped himself abruptly again as he realised he was allowing his mind to be sidetracked into interesting hypotheses, when it should be fixed rigidly on the problem in hand. He glanced again at his watch and saw that the time at his disposal was now only seven minutes. It was amazing how fast time could go when one wanted it to run out slowly.

  With the departure of the Malalans, he realised, the possibility of a third wor
ld war had abruptly receded. America and Russia might well now not trouble themselves to move their nuclear weapons and align themselves for a greater combat. Perhaps they would be prepared to sit back, contented to let the adventure end in the chaos of its own making, and allow the British statesmen to destroy themselves by their own obstinacy.

  For the life of him, Hodges couldn’t see that Stabledoor had the faintest chance of success. His appeal, through the Chief of Defence Staff, for a change of mind at home had gone unanswered, and to Hodges it seemed impossible that any man could possibly turn down such a request when he knew how much depended on it. Even the appeal to the Leader of the Opposition had gone unanswered.

  Considering it, Hodges realised that the Leader of the Opposition was in his own cleft stick. Any alteration in his feelings, any retraction of anything he had said, could well be taken by the rest of the world for a tacit agreement with Stabledoor, and the Leader of the Opposition had taken a stand against just this possibility, just as he was expecting to have to do within the next few minutes.

  Another glance at his watch. Five minutes! The time seemed to be slipping by so fast Hodges was aghast. In the whole of his military career he couldn’t remember a single commander-in-chief who had ever made a decision such as he was now contemplating – refusing, on a point of conscience, to follow the instructions issued to him by his government. There had been cases where officers had translated them freely, but none that he knew of where generals in command had refused point blank to carry them out.

  On the surface there would be no excuse. But if a man did something of which he would be ashamed for ever, could he be expected to live the rest of his life with his conscience? When the Leaders of the Light Brigade at Balaclava had been faced with a similar decision, they’d disagreed but obeyed orders, knowing full well what the consequences would be. And, although they’d ever since been regarded as fools, militarily they’d behaved correctly, because refusal to obey orders was simply reducing the Army to a state of anarchy; and not long before he, Hodges, had been taking precautions against the men of the 17th/105th doing just that very thing.

  What was more, what other chain of events might he be starting by refusing to follow instructions? Although he believed he knew the facts, it could be that other greater events of which he had no knowledge hinged on his obeying orders – even if the orders appeared to be wrong and resulted in the deaths of many men. It had happened again and again between 1914 and 1918 and in his heart of hearts Hodges knew he hadn’t a leg to stand on. While he might, as the owner of a conscience, refuse to do what he was instructed, as a soldier he had no option whatsoever but to do as he was told. He had to make up his mind. The moment had come. It was no longer possible to wait.

  ‘Dennis…’

  Downes turned towards him from his corner of the bridge as he spoke. They both looked haggard with the weight of the decision hanging over them.

  ‘Dennis, I’ve no option. None at all. We carry on as instructed.’

  He thought he heard Downes’ breath come out in a sigh and thought he caught a subtle flicker of relief come over his face in the shadows.

  ‘It’s on my own responsibility,’ he explained. ‘It doesn’t involve you.’

  Downes shrugged. ‘It involves me all right, Horace,’ he said. ‘And though I’m not sure just now what I think about it all, I don’t honestly think you could do differently.’

  ‘Thanks, Dennis. That helps.’

  Downes made a little gesture with his hand ‘You’ll never be blamed by me,’ he said. ‘I’ll back you to the hilt.’ He paused and drew a deep breath. ‘And now,’ he ended, ‘I suppose we’d better do something about it, and God help us both.’

  ‘Sir…’

  As they turned away from each other, Hodges heard the signal officer’s voice. He swung round. The signal officer was a young man, and to Hodges just then he seemed like a mere boy. Then he noticed the youngster was looking at him, not at Downes, and he crossed the bridge quickly and took the signal. It was in plain language.

  ‘COMCENT to COMHOJ. Hodgeforce will change direction west. Manoeuvres to be terminated at once repeat at once.’

  A series of elaborate and rigid courses followed, which were obviously intended to bear out the farce that they were on exercise, and Hodges stared at the message for some time before the full import of it sank in. Then he swung round on Downes, smiling. The man on the white horse had galloped up at last.

  ‘Dennis,’ he said, and Downes was at his side in a second.

  ‘It’s the reprieve, Dennis,’ he said. ‘It’s been called off.’

  Downes gazed at him, reading the relief in his face.

  ‘About time someone came to their senses,’ he said shortly.

  Four

  The rain that had been dogging Hodgeforce for days had drifted away behind them at last as the ships headed due west; and as they turned and began to limp north towards Gibraltar, the sun rose on a placid sea like a millpond. Fuel was short, food was short, and thousands of men were suffering from being kept too long in confined spaces. But there was no longer any grumbling.

  With the rest of the world, the men of Hodgeforce were breathing again without that feeling of constriction that came from fear and indignation and fury.

  They had steamed a series of full-speed courses to the west, heading out into the South Atlantic for hours until Downes had been worried about their ability to reach even Gibraltar, then a second signal had reached them, ordering them, with considerable relief, to head north.

  The vast pretence had continued. ‘Exercise Stabledoor terminated,’ the signal had concluded. ‘Reports requested from all commanding officers.’ There had also been a performance of elaborate gratitude towards the Malalans for the use of the port of Pepul for a practice embarkation under tropical conditions, but this was purely for world consumption, to keep up the diplomatic charade that Stabledoor had been nothing more than a vast manoeuvre put on with the Malalans’ agreement, from their port and with the full co-operation of their Army, Navy and Air Force.

  No one was even faintly deluded. The BBC news had been full of snippets from home that told the story. Faced with the facts, the Cabinet had at last accepted with relief the Chief of Defence Staff’s recommendation that the operation be abandoned. The Prime Minister had disappeared into a nursing home, apparently a very sick man unable even to present his resignation at the Palace, and his party had admitted that they could not form a Government. The Leader of the Opposition, having climbed to power over a humiliation he himself had helped to bring about, had agreed to try, and was at that moment, with an air of Divine Right, selecting his Ministers. There seemed little likelihood that he would fail.

  Foreign journalists, however, were not deceived, and the air was full of soured commentaries. And judging by the quotations, it was clear that the London newspapers were no more blinded than those of Paris and Berlin and New York and Moscow. Only at the eleventh hour had the resignations of the Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer turned the tables. Nobody was talking, but the intense activity in Westminster was implicit. The Prime Minister had been forced out of office by his own party and they would take years to live down the fact.

  To Hodges, it seemed a satisfactory enough ending to an unrealistic adventure. At the United Nations Assembly, the bubbling broth of international hatred had collapsed into nothing more than a simmering brew, with national passions cooling rapidly in an atmosphere of relief.

  The generous Americans had announced an immediate new loan to Britain and to Malala, and the conference at Nairobi of African nations, suddenly bereft of its point of resentment, had fallen back on a mixture of jubilation and squabbling. Their guns, aimed at the white man in Africa, had been spiked; and most of them, well aware that they still needed European finance, were willing to forgive and forget so long as the United Nations was prepared to make sure that no such crisis could occur again.

  The horizon was ful
l of shattered loyalties and at the United Nations the frostiness between the British and the Americans would not die away until someone found a way to rebuild the transatlantic alliance. In Britain, they were moving swiftly towards an acute political upheaval. Divided, isolated and abused, there was still a feeling beyond the relief that they had been let down by their friends, and that the Americans had interfered unnecessarily in something that wasn’t even their business. There was even a joke going the rounds – somehow it had reached Leopard by radio – that British diplomats were busy now trying to obtain permission from Washington to allow Starke to leave the nursing home, so that he could convalesce. The bitterness was strong and acrid in the throat.

  Starke’s party, unable to explain itself in the House, was searching for excuses to explain the diplomatic defeat as a victory which had been spoiled at the last moment. But they were no longer in power and what they said no longer mattered. Ahead of them was a bleak prospect of years of opposition. Their opponents, satisfied to be allowed to put things right, were managing to be restrained and were making no political capital out of their gain. The man who was forming a government, still acting with the utmost honour and rectitude, had allowed no demonstrations of triumph, apparently regarding the recent crisis as too grave for any joy to be drawn from it.

  There had been remarkably little comment aboard Leopard. Hodges and Downes had seen the force turned west and then moved, without a word passing between them, to Hodges’ cabin. Leggo was there and he had poured them drinks without speaking.

  ‘Here’s to common sense, Horace,’ Downes had said, raising his glass.