by Ian Slater
The guard saluted her and smiled. She said hello, not recognizing the man, and turned to the car before she lost her composure.
Leading Seaman Lambrecker’s farewell in a downtown Victoria apartment had been much shorter. His face, dominated by pale blue, deep-set eyes, was long and thin like the rest of his body, and for a man of barely thirty-five he had a hungry, tired look. He had been awake since five that morning, lying still in the darkness of the bedroom, his creased face illuminated now and then by the glow of a cigarette as he tried endlessly to unravel the tangle of lies and frustrations threatening to strangle what remained of his two-year-old marriage.
Before going to bed he and Frances had been arguing again. They had been shouting louder than usual. “You’re a monk,” she had yelled. “You always want to stay in. Jesus Christ—hanging around that tub of yours all the goddamn time, you’d think when you had a chance you’d want to break out. I’m twenty-seven, not fifty-seven! I want some fun. Christ, I don’t know—why can’t you let your hair down like normal people do instead of locking yourself up like a monk?”
“Like Morgan, you mean,” he had replied acidly.
“Yeah, like Morgan,” she answered, her jaw moving up and down on her wad of gum. “At least he knows how to enjoy himself.”
“Son of a bitch is too dumb to do anything else.”
Fran pouted her lips as if addressing a petulant child. “Tch, tch. That a fact? Well, he’s not too dumb to be a lieutenant, is he now?”
It was then that Lambrecker had lost his temper and grabbed her by the arm. For months Morgan—his half brother, a lieutenant in air force stores—had come between them, ever since the day he arrived from back east with that damned imitation French Canadian accent of his that sent Fran into gales of laughter.
A hundred times Lambrecker had wanted to smash Morgan’s face in, but instead he kept hoping that Fran would get tired of him. Besides, he knew that if he ever laid a hand on Morgan, it would be an enlisted man’s word against an officer’s.
Still, whenever he thought of all the times he had come home from Esquimalt Base to find Morgan lounging nonchalantly in the kitchen, his feet up on the window ledge, laughing and drinking with Fran, Lambrecker wanted to kill him. His grip had tightened on Fran’s arm.
She had screamed. “Let go of me, you idiot!”
Lambrecker had pushed her away roughly before he could hurt her.
“Oh dear me,” she taunted, straightening the transparent blouse that looked like a second skin. “Look at his wittle eyes—they all bulging out. Poor wittle him.”
“Jesus Christ!” he had yelled, sweeping the kitchen table clean with his fists, sending a pile of sticky sauce bottles, plastic plates, and spent beer cans crashing to the floor. Fran surveyed the debris scattered about the cheap linoleum. She flushed with anger, but then smiled sweetly. “Oh—wittle man’s gone all crazy again. Poor, poor wittle man.”
They hadn’t spoken since. It was a repetition of what had happened a hundred times before—the unbearably long silence that he knew he would break though he’d vowed not to.
He didn’t know whether Morgan was sleeping with her yet. But underneath it all, beneath the hatred he had for his half brother, he still loved Fran. He couldn’t explain why and he didn’t even try to. He only knew that while he was a loner, a man who did not need friends like others, he did need at least one person who needed him, and that person, he still believed, was Fran. It never occurred to him that she might be staying with him only for simple financial security.
He drew heavily on another cigarette. It wasn’t sex that had been the cause of it all—at least that hadn’t been the trouble at the beginning. Now, of course, they never made love. But he recalled that even when that part of their life had been all right, she had started acting strangely—yelling and screaming at him over trivialities each time he had come home.
It was only then, that morning as he lay silently smoking beside her, that it occurred to him that it was possible she’d been sleeping with someone before Morgan had even arrived on the scene, that she was just using Morgan as an excuse after the fact. Her remark about his half brother’s being a lieutenant came back to Lambrecker as he lay staring out at the pale wash of dawn. The other man must be an officer. It would have to be some son of a bitch impressing her with his rank, he thought. She loved to imagine herself always moving up in society, refused to settle for what she had.
Lambrecker turned towards his wife. His eyes followed the contour of her body from her hip to her neck. He could see nothing else. She took care nowadays to wrap her shapely figure in uninviting nightdresses obviously designed to dissuade him from making any advance. He put his cigarette out, pushed it so hard that the still burning butt scorched his finger. He turned back to look at her. Who was it? For a moment he had the impulse to slap her awake and beat her until she told him, put his hands around her neck and choke the life out of her. Instead, he quickly got up and dressed, then gulped some cereal and shaved.
After a while he returned to the bedroom and stood motionless in the doorway, watching. She moved a little in her sleep and the blanket slid off her shoulders, revealing the gentle rise and fall of her breasts beneath the pink nylon as she breathed.
He thought her more beautiful than when he had married her. He knew women were supposed to become less attractive more rapidly than men, but to him she had improved with age. There was now a fullness about her figure that made her seem even more sensuous. He remembered when he had first seen her; she had reminded him of Lauren Bacall. She still did. Gradually, after the realization that he would not see her for three months had struck him full force, his anger started to ebb. He bent down to kiss her forehead. Suddenly her hands shot out from beneath the covers and pulled the blankets over her head. Aware now that she had known he’d been watching her—desiring her—Lambrecker felt humiliated. He grabbed viciously at his seabag, stamped into the kitchen, and rang for a cab. The dispatcher, bothered by static, asked him to repeat the address. He shouted it this time and slammed down the receiver. Taking care to bang the door, he walked out into the gray, crushed-stone parking lot where the sun never came, and waited in the early morning chill.
He was beginning to hate the coming patrol—more than he had any other. It would take him, not for a rest, but away from the chance to fix what was wrong. For some men such a cruise would have meant an escape. For Lambrecker it would be torture. The only possible explanation for Fran’s behavior was that she had taken a lover even before Morgan. He tried not to think who the other man might be. He wanted to lock out the thought until he returned from sea, until he could do something about it. But the more he tried not to think about it, the more it filled his mind, until it was the only thought he had. For a moment he contemplated going AWOL; then he dismissed the idea, not because he thought it was wrong, but because it would not help him solve anything if the MPs were hunting him.
His wife’s comment about Morgan’s being a lieutenant kept haunting him, and the more he thought of the other man, the more certain he became that it was an officer. “And what,” he thought as the cab drove down towards the taverns on Esquimalt Road, “can you do against an officer?”
The executive officer of H.M.C.S. Swordfish gave Kyle a brisk salute. “Welcome aboard, sir.”
“Thank you. Bud O’Brien, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pleased to meet you.” They shook hands. O’Brien, a tall, deeply tanned man in his early thirties, nodded appreciatively.
“Same here, sir,” he said, his heavy eyebrows not moving as he took care not to register surprise at Kyle’s age. Kyle didn’t notice; he was too busy looking at the boat. From the moment he had stepped aboard the long, black sub, resting in the water like a harbor seal, he had felt the old sense of security afforded by the various symbols and the familiar routine, from the Canadian flag at the stern to the officer on watch. Doubtless first impressions were often wrong, but O’Brien immediately added t
o Kyle’s general sense of well-being. The sub’s black, slatted decking was spotless, the flag lanyard taut, and though the bridge surface had been recently painted, the small night-running light set aft of it at the base of the metal sail was clear of even a speck of paint. They were small things, but they told Kyle a lot about the first officer. O’Brien might be much younger, but he obviously wasn’t a paid-up member of the “new breed.” He did things right.
Of course the sub’s performance and endurance had been updated. She had been fitted out with large Exide-Tarpon batteries that greatly reduced recharging time, and a streamlined hull that now gave her a submerged speed of eighteen knots. Even so, for a moment Kyle felt as if he had just stepped back in time and said good-bye to Sarah before going on yet another Arctic convoy run. Some things would be unfamiliar, but from the refresher courses he knew that things had not changed so much that all the old ways had been abandoned. Before he unpacked his seabag he asked to see his engineering, electrical, navigating, and weapons officers in the control room, immediately below the conning tower. With such a short time remaining before sailing, he had no time for a more informal gathering with his officers. His first job was to ascertain the state of the sub’s readiness.
“Engineering Officer?”
“Sir?”
“Diesels fully charged?”
“Yes, sir, and all air banks fully charged.”
Kyle grinned slightly. “Good, but never volunteer additional information.” The others laughed, and the moment of tension when a new commander first meets his officers was over. Kyle went on. “But seeing as you’re so keen, Chief, how about the compressors? All operational?”
“A-l, sir.”
“Good. Navigating Officer?”
O’Brien stepped forward. “I’m doubling up for that, sir.”
“Right. How about our charts?”
“Everything we need, sir.”
“Sea of Japan?”
O’Brien was impressed. The Old Man might look like a museum piece, but he was certainly up to date. “Yes, sir, I know it’s just been revised. It came down this morning.”
Kyle nodded. “Fine. Weapons Officer?”
O’Brien spoke again. “He’s been held up in traffic, sir.” Kyle glanced disapprovingly at his watch. “Hm. Well, he’d better hurry it up. Can you tell me what fish we’re carrying?”
O’Brien opened his tunic pocket and flipped over some pages of his notebook. “Six war shots and eight exercise, sir.”
Kyle nodded. “Right, carry on. I’ll discuss our course with you later, Mr. O’Brien.”
“Yes, sir.”
After O’Brien showed the captain to his tiny cabin, the two men went up to the bridge so that Kyle could inspect the new compass mounting. They were just in time to see a crewman coming down the gangplank. Pretending not to see them, the sailor raised his hand in a particularly sloppy salute to the Canadian flag astern instead of to O’Brien as officer of the watch. O’Brien called out angrily to him.
“Lambrecker!” Lambrecker wheeled a little unsteadily and walked up to the bridge without answering, openly scowling at the first officer.
“Lambrecker, why didn’t you salute the officer of the watch?”
Lambrecker stared ahead. “Didn’t see you. Sir.”
Kyle had noticed something odd in the way Lambrecker had swung about in response to O’Brien’s call. He stepped forward. “Are you ill?”
Lambrecker stared ahead.
Kyle’s face flushed. “I asked you if you’re ill.”
“No.”
“No sir!” bellowed O’Brien.
“No, sir,” answered Lambrecker sourly, still staring ahead. Kyle turned to O’Brien, who by now knew as well as the captain what was the matter. “This man’s drunk. Put him on a charge.”
“Yes, sir. Lambrecker, follow me.”
Applying extraordinary concentration to his walk, Lambrecker endeavored to walk a straight line behind O’Brien. As he disappeared down the conning tower he shot a defiant glare at Kyle. The captain shouted after him, “Come back up here, you!”
Lambrecker hesitated for a second, then crawled up. As regulations dictated, he stood at attention; but his slovenly demeanor plainly teetered on the brink of insolence.
Kyle’s face was purple. Nothing enraged him more than this kind of unspoken insubordination. He came across it daily on shore. The “democratization” of the navy. Well, “democratization” or not, the only way to deal with old-fashioned insubordination was by the old-fashioned method—let the smartasses know that you weren’t going to tolerate it.
“Stand up straight, man,” Kyle snapped.
“I am. Sir.”
“You listen to me, sailor. You look at me like that again and there’ll be trouble. Understand?”
Lambrecker looked down at O’Brien as if utterly confounded, then turned back to face Kyle. “How are we supposed to look? Sir?”
Kyle ignored the baiting tone. “You’re supposed to look respectful.”
“Of what? Sir.”
O’Brien glanced first at the deck, then out to sea. Jesus, he thought, what a start to a three-month cruise, and a training one at that.
“Respectful of rank, sailor—that’s what,” answered Kyle.
“Oh,” began Lambrecker, and belched, issuing another cloud of spirit fumes. “Oh, now I remember, sir,” he said facetiously. “It’s not the man we salute; it’s the rank, isn’t it?”
Kyle had not known such anger since the war. The veins in his temples bulged and he clung desperately to his self-control. “Get below!” he snapped. “Long voyage or not, sailor, you ever turn up in this condition again and you’ll be more than on the charge sheet. You’ll be in front of a court-martial. Now get yourself sober before we cast off.”
Lambrecker saluted and descended the conning tower for a second time, grinning smugly to himself.
O’Brien climbed to the bridge again. Quite unreasonably, he somehow felt responsible for the crewman’s condition. “Sorry about that, sir,” he said apologetically.
Kyle, by now somewhat cooler, waved it aside. “Not your fault. Is that his usual style? Or is he a newcomer?”
“No, he’s one of the old hands,” answered O’Brien, looking puzzled. “Matter of fact, I don’t recall him ever being drunk before. He’s a bit moody at times, but he’s not normally the drinking type—or I didn’t think he was.”
Kyle raised his eyes from the new compass mounting. “Hmm. He did at least salute the ship. But it’s his attitude that I mind. I’ve seen that bitter look before, and it’s poison, especially among new recruits. How’s he get on with the rest of the old crew?”
O’Brien shrugged. “He’s quiet—very quiet. But I’ve had no complaints.”
“We’ll keep an eye on Mr. Lambrecker just the same. Don’t want any of the new lot bothered by him.”
“No, sir.”
“Then again,” added Kyle, “maybe I shouldn’t have chewed him up so much, but dammit, you can’t let that kind of thing pass.”
“No, sir, I agree.”
There was a long silence. Then Kyle said hopefully, “’Course, he was probably working off a head of steam. No doubt he’ll be a new man when he sobers up.”
“I expect so, sir.”
Kyle looked at his Rolex Oyster. “We cast off at 1500, Number One. Call me at ETD minus five.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
In crew’s quarters Lambrecker, having arrived earlier than most of the men on shore leave, tossed his seabag onto the lower bunk, which he considered his by right of long service. His eyes didn’t seem to be focusing properly, so he didn’t see another seabag whose owner had chosen the same sleeping space. Before the double occupancy registered, a young, fresh-faced seaman, obviously a newcomer, rushed to apologize. “Sorry, sir.”
Lambrecker scowled. “Don’t call me sir.”
“No, sir. I mean no. Sorry.”
Lambrecker swayed a little, steadied himself against the
upper bunk, lit another cigarette, then stuck out a callused hand. “Name’s Lambrecker.”
“Naim,” said the newcomer quickly, only too anxious to make friends.
Quite apart from Lambrecker’s drunkenness, there was something about the way his pale blue eyes seemed to look right past you as he was talking which immediately put the youngster on his guard.
“You want the bottom slab?” grunted Lambrecker in the friendliest tone he could manage.
“Oh, doesn’t matter. I just tossed my kit there,” answered Naim. “Not much room, is there?”
“It’s yours,” said Lambrecker, throwing his seabag onto the top bunk.
“I don’t mind really—” began Naim.
Lambrecker cut him short. “It’s yours,” he said, dragging out his tin of homemade cigarettes and offering it to Naim.
“No thanks. I don’t smoke, but thanks for the bunk.”
Lambrecker didn’t answer. He pulled down a few things from his bag and stuffed them into a small drawer in the dull scratched aluminum locker. Naim, not sure what to do, tried to think of something to say. He lifted up the leaves of a small wall calendar hanging on the side of the locker. Each month’s leaf had a British Columbia mountain scene on it, and as he flicked up June to see what July’s mountain was, he said lightly, “Going to be a long one.”
Lambrecker dragged himself laboriously up to the top bunk, wanting to get some sleep before the sub got under way and he was required on station. Thinking that Lambrecker hadn’t heard him, Nairn spoke again. “They normally this long? The patrols, I mean.”
“All fucking long,” answered Lambrecker, dragging a blanket up to his shoulders.
Nairn nodded slightly. “Ah, would you like some coffee? I managed to find the galley.” There was no reply.
When he returned from the mess, Naim sat down on the bunk and drank the lukewarm liquid. It was the worst coffee he’d had for weeks, but he drank it all, partly from habit, partly for something to do. It wasn’t until he got up to wash out the sandy dregs from his cup that he noticed three leaves missing from the calendar. June, July, and August had been tom off and lay crumpled on the honeycomb decking. He glanced up at Lambrecker, who now lay smoking and staring at the metal deckhead no more than two or three inches from his nose. The steel plate that seemed to be pressing down on Lambrecker reminded Naim of stories he had heard at training school about men going claustro, raving mad in close confinement. The thought made him feel uneasy. He looked at the calendar again—at September—and then up at the top bunk. He wondered what would happen when Lambrecker’s hangover had passed.