The Little Ship

by Margaret Mayhew

  About the Book

  At first there were just the three of them who went sailing on the North Sea estuary in the years before the war – Guy, who was so handsome and so good at everything, Matt, his younger brother, determined to succeed despite everything, and Lizzie, their small, shy cousin who adored them both. Later they were joined by two more – Anna, the young Jewish refugee from Vienna, and Otto, a Berliner, sent to an English public school to perfect his knowledge of the language and to spy for his Nazi father.

  As time passed, the tensions between them grew. Otto and Guy became fierce rivals at school and, in spite of his indoctrination against her race, Otto found himself fascinated by the beautiful Anna who despised him for his beliefs as much as she mocked Guy’s conceit. Matt struggled to overcome his secret terror of the sea, while Lizzie battled with her jealousy of Anna. But there was one perfect summer’s day when they sailed together on the sunny blue water and, in unaccustomed amity, carved their initials on the port bow of the Rose of England. Then the war exploded about them.

  It was May 1940 when their paths crossed again, on the desperate retreat from Dunkirk – when the Rose of England, the little ship, against all the odds, sailed to the rescue.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Foreword

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Postscript

  About the Author

  Also by Margaret Mayhew

  Copyright

  THE LITTLE SHIP

  Margaret Mayhew

  For Tricia and Derik

  Acknowledgements

  I should like to thank the following for all their kind help and advice: James McMaster, Derik Quitmann, John Allen, Stephan Stritter, Joyce and Shimon Camiel, Neal Kaplan, Kay Huffner, Diane Pearson, my editor, and, as always Philip Kaplan.

  Foreword

  In May, 1940, eight months after the start of the Second World War, the armies of Nazi Germany surged across North Western Europe in a surprise Blitzkrieg, driving the British and Allied Forces back towards the coast and encircling them at the French port of Dunkirk.

  A desperate plan, code-named Operation Dynamo, was hurriedly concocted in Britain to send as many ships as possible to rescue the trapped troops. Appeals broadcast on the wireless to civilian boat-owners produced a huge response. Together with the big ships of the Royal Navy, an extraordinary and heroic armada composed of craft of all sorts and sizes emerged from the rivers and ports along England’s south and south-eastern coasts and set out across the Channel: paddle-steamers, barges, lifeboats, ferries, fire floats, oyster-dredgers, drifters, motor boats, mud-hoppers, cockle boats, yachts, fishing trawlers, pleasure-excursion launches … some of which had never been to sea before. A number of them were manned by Royal Navy personnel, but many were taken by civilian volunteers and weekend sailors, often with little experience of maritime hazards.

  Over the following ten days, under heavy bombardment from the Luftwaffe and with the German army closing in, 338,226 British and French troops were snatched from the port and beaches and transported to England. During most of the period the sea remained, quite uncharacteristically, dead calm. The episode became known as the Miracle of Dunkirk and the ships as the Little Ships.

  The bungalow is called Hove-To. It stands alone at the end of a potholed track that peters out near the river. I park the car by the gate and walk up a concrete pathway past a scruffy square of lawn and a bed of straggling petunias. The place seems deserted but when I press the bell at the front door there is a shuffling sound from inside and an amorphous shape looms behind the frosted glass. The door opens.

  ‘Mr Potter?’ I ask.

  He is an old man – in his mid-eighties I judge – and wearing a food-stained cardigan and maroon carpet slippers. He looks at me suspiciously.

  ‘You collecting for something?’

  I shake my head. ‘No.’

  ‘Because I don’t give any more. You never know where your money’s going. Into other people’s pockets more often than not, I reckon. You one of those Jehovahs?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Blooming nuisance they are. Used to get them where we lived before. You must be selling something, then.’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  I can see that he doesn’t believe me. ‘I don’t want insurance. Or double glazing. Nothing like that.’ He starts to shut the door.

  I say quickly: ‘I’m not selling anything, Mr Potter, I promise you. On the contrary, I want to buy something.’

  He frowns. ‘You’re wasting your time. I’ve got nothing of any value here. No antiques, or anything like that.’ He starts to close the door.

  I press on. ‘It’s your boat I’m interested in.’

  The frown deepens. ‘My boat? How do you know I’ve got one?’

  ‘I was told. A fourteen-foot fishing boat called Rose of England.’

  ‘Well, she’d be no use to you, unless you want her for firewood. She’s a wreck.’

  ‘Just the same, I’d like to buy her, if you’re willing to sell.’

  He looks me up and down, still suspicious. ‘Whatever for? You look like you could afford a lot better than her.’

  ‘It’s for sentimental reasons … a connection with former owners.’

  He grunts. ‘She’s been left out in all weathers for years. Not fit to sail. She wouldn’t be worth buying.’

  ‘She would to me. Could we talk about it?’

  He stared at me for a moment. ‘You sure you’re not selling something.’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  He shrugs. ‘Better come in then, I suppose.’

  I step into a narrow hallway and follow him into the living-room. The furnishings are drear, the house stale-smelling, but the view through the large picture window makes up for it. I gaze out at the river Crouch flowing beneath wide and glorious summer skies to meet the North Sea; at great white, puffy clouds piled high against blue; at mud flats glistening and greenish water sparkling; at boats sailing and sea birds flying. The tall, feathery grasses on the banks ripple in the wind. Always the wind, I remember. Always the wind. ‘Wonderful view you have here.’

  He grunts again, sits down in an armchair beside the gas fireplace and reaches for the pipe and tobacco pouch on the mantelpiece. ‘You don’t see it any more once you’re used to it. The wife and I bought this place when we sold our shop in Margate and retired twenty years back. That’s when I got the boat. She wasn’t much to look at then but I thought she’d be nice and steady and she was cheap. I always thought the name was a bit daft for something her size. More like for one of those big ones that go across the Channel. I reckoned I’d tidy her up and do a bit of sailing. Nothing fancy – just going up and down the river. I’d done some when I was a nipper and always had a dream of having a boat of my own. Only Molly didn’t take to it. She got seasick first time out and that was that.’

  ‘What a pity.’

  He begins to fill his pipe. ‘Life’s full of disappointments, that’s one thing I’ve learned. Things never work out like you’ve planned. We’d all sorts of ideas for our retirement but Molly passed away soon after that and none of them ever happened. I’ve been here on my own ever since. Y
ou work hard all your life and in the end it’s for nothing.’ He tamps down the tobacco with his thumb, bitterness in every jab. Finally, he scrapes a match alight and holds it to the pipe bowl, drawing hard on the stem. Clouds of smoke emerge and the tobacco glows red. He leans back, puffing away for a moment. I wait. ‘And what makes you think my Rose is the one you want? Could be another one of the same name. You don’t have to register boats that small.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’ve traced all the owners. She’s been bought and sold several times since the late Forties. In fact, the trail went stone-cold and I’d given up hope of finding her. I put advertisements in every newspaper and sailing magazine I could think of and then out of the blue I got an answer from a man who said he’d sold her to you. If she is the same boat I’ll be able to tell for certain when I see her.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Some carving near the bow.’

  ‘Huh. I’ve never noticed anything like that.’ The pipe is going well now and he puffs away at it, studying me over the bowl. He is trying hard to size me up. ‘Sentimental reasons, you said?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s only an ordinary boat. Not much more than a dinghy. Nothing special.’

  I can see I will have to tell him the whole truth, though it will probably raise the price. It might even stop him selling at all. ‘She’s very special, as a matter of fact. She’s one of the Little Ships.’

  He takes the pipe out of his mouth, staring. ‘You mean she went to Dunkirk? Rubbish! She can’t’ve done. She’s only fourteen foot and she’s got no power. Just oars and sails. There wouldn’t’ve been any boats as small as that – not on their own. They were steamers, motor yachts, lifeboats, launches, ferries … that sort of thing. We lived at Margate then. We saw a lot of them coming back.’

  ‘But she did.’

  ‘Huh!’ He sticks out a slippered foot. ‘Try this one, it’s got bells on it. I told you, they were all much bigger. Molly and I went to the pier to watch the troops coming off the boats. We stood there cheering and Molly cried her eyes out. They’d taken our lads from under the Germans’ very noses. Grabbed them off the beaches and brought them safe home. Hundreds of men packed tight on those decks, not an inch to spare, some of the boats half-sinking with the weight. And the Jerry planes’d been dive-bombing them. God knows how they made it. The sea was dead calm, though: flat as a millpond. It was like a miracle. A bloody miracle.’ He looks off into space for a moment, lost in the past, and then brings himself back to the present with a shake of his head. ‘You’ve got it all wrong.’

  ‘Well, you see, I know all about what the Rose did – the whole story.’

  He says suspiciously: ‘I don’t believe any of this. You’re spinning me some fairy tale. Trying to con me, aren’t you? I don’t know what your game is but I’m not selling you my boat, or anything else, so you can leave now. This very minute.’

  I’ve handled things badly. A real con artist would laugh himself silly at the mess I’ve made of it. ‘Would you let me tell you the story? Before you make up your mind?’

  He looks at me long and hard again and gives another of his bad-tempered grunts. ‘You can tell it if you want. I doubt I’ll believe it.’

  ‘It will take some time.’

  ‘Time’s one thing I’ve plenty of these days.’

  He sticks his pipe in his mouth and leans back in his chair, eyeing me sceptically. Since he has never invited me to sit down, I am still standing by the picture window overlooking the estuary. A clinker-built sailing-dinghy with a white sail is tacking to windward, pitching her way along with the spray shooting over her bows. Probably nine foot, or so – about the same size as the Bean Goose. I watch the helmsman alter course, the boom swing over, the three figures in the boat duck. Just kids, all of them.

  ‘I’m not sure where to start.’

  ‘The beginning’ll do.’

  I lean against the window, still watching the dinghy. I’m not certain from such a distance, but it looks like two boys and a girl. Strange, that. The long arm of coincidence. ‘Well, I suppose you could say it really begins long before the war. Just a mile downstream from here, in fact. In the summer of 1934.’

  Chapter One

  ‘Look Lizzie, there’s a heron!’

  Matt was pointing and she twisted round quickly in time to see the big bird skimming over the surface of the water, head drawn back, long legs tucked up behind him, arched wings beating slowly. She watched him flapping away down the creek and half stood up in the dinghy so she could see better. Bean Goose rocked sharply.

  ‘Sit down, Lizzie. You can’t come out with us again if you don’t keep still.’

  ‘Sorry, Guy.’

  She sat down with a bump on the planks in the bottom of the boat. It was uncomfortable there and her skirt was wet through to her knickers from all the water slopping about, but she didn’t dare to complain. Guy hadn’t wanted to take her out sailing in the first place. She’d overheard him talking to Aunt Sheila.

  ‘Do we have to, Mother? It’ll be an awful nuisance.’

  ‘Yes, you do, Guy. It’s not fair to leave her behind on her own. She’s a guest. You’re supposed to entertain her.’

  ‘She’s not a proper guest. She’s only a cousin. And she’s only twelve. She probably can’t even swim.’

  ‘Yes, she can. Go upstream and sail round the creeks. It will be perfectly safe there.’

  Guy had muttered something and she could tell he was really cross about it. ‘Are you sure you can swim?’ he’d asked her later when they were walking across the lawn towards the wooden steps leading down to the river. He was striding out fast and she’d had to hop and skip to keep up.

  ‘Yes. I learned at the swimming-baths.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to do exactly what I tell you.’

  ‘Yes, Guy.’

  Matt, on her other side, had winked at her. ‘He’s the captain, see. I’m just the mate. If you don’t behave he’ll have you keelhauled, Lizzie. Or make you walk the plank.’

  She was afraid of Guy. He was nearly sixteen and already as tall as a man. She wasn’t afraid of Matt. Fourteen wasn’t so much older than herself and he wasn’t much taller; and he didn’t stride around like Guy, or order her about either. And she was sorry for him with his funny arm. Something had gone wrong when he was growing inside Aunt Sheila, Mummy had explained. His right arm hadn’t finished forming so that he’d been born with an arm that only went as far as the elbow with a sort of hand on the end of it – except that it only had a thumb and one finger, a bit like a lobster’s claw. Whenever she turned round in the dinghy she could see it poking out from the short sleeve of his green aertex shirt. He was using it as a hook to hold onto the rope that worked the small sail at the front and it made her feel rather sick to look at it.

  The heron had gone and Lizzie sat very still where Guy had told her to sit – in the bottom of the boat towards the front. Forrard, he’d called it. Matt and Guy sat on whichever side the sail wasn’t and Guy was the helmsman, which meant he moved the handle thing at the back which made the boat turn left or right and he held the rope that made the big sail do what he wanted. The little sail that Matt was working was called a jib. And ropes were called sheets – she must remember that. She was just ballast, that’s all, Matt had told her, with his crooked grin: weight to keep the boat steady. Whenever Guy shouted ‘ready about’ and then ‘lee-oh’ she was to duck down so she didn’t get hit on the head by the piece of wood on the bottom of the big sail as it swung across. The boom, Guy called it.

  It was the first time she’d ever been sailing and she’d been scared stiff out on the main bit of river. The dinghy had kept tipping steeply to one side or the other and she’d clung on terrified she’d fall into the water. The bank was a long way away and the water wasn’t nice and clear but greenish brown, like soup, so that you couldn’t tell how deep it was, or what horrible things might be underneath. It was better when they sailed into the narrow creek. The tide was ou
t and there was mud all along each side – thick, wet mud, all brown and shiny like melting milk chocolate. Underneath, though, it was black and slimy and stinky. She’d found that out when she’d trodden in it by mistake near the jetty. She went on sitting as still as she could, facing forward and watching the channel of water ahead. The wind was blowing her plaits about and she could hear it making a humming sound in the long grasses on the banks. Grey and white seagulls swooped overhead, screeching, and some birds she’d never seen before with long bills and legs were pecking about in the mud.

  ‘You’ll have a lovely time while we’re away, Lizzie,’ Mummy had said. ‘Much better than being cooped up in London.’ On the train she’d sat rigidly in a corner seat, afraid that she’d miss getting out at Burnham-on-Crouch station. Aunt Sheila had met her and they’d driven in an open car along a lane running between fields full of golden corn and past trees with long, silvery leaves blowing in the wind. They’d gone under a railway bridge and round a corner and suddenly the river had appeared, right in front of them. The road turned and went along beside it for a little way until the river began to bend to the left and the lane ended at a white five-barred gate beside a group of trees. A gravel driveway led to Tideways. She remembered the house quite well from visits in the past: the slippery wooden floors covered with fringed rugs, the staircase with the sharp turn halfway up, the blue carpet all along the landing, the smell of furniture polish and flowers, the rooms full of light and, through nearly every window, the view of the wide river flowing out to meet the sea. Uncle William was away on his ship with the Royal Navy and Guy and Matthew had gone out sailing. ‘We’ll go down and watch them come in,’ Aunt Sheila had suggested.

  Nereus the black Labrador padded after them across the lawn, past the grass tennis court and down the flight of steps to a beach that was mostly mud except for a narrow pebbly bit above the reach of the high tide. There was a slipway leading up to a boathouse at one end and a wooden jetty sticking out into the water from the steps. Aunt Sheila had pointed out the dinghy, Bean Goose, in the distance and Nereus had started to wag his tail and bark and run up and down the beach. Lizzie had watched the dinghy coming closer and closer, its big white sail puffed out with wind. She’d never heard of a bean goose before but Aunt Sheila had told her that they came from cold countries, like Russia, to winter on the marshes. Her cousins were leaning out on one side of the boat and she’d known which was which from a distance because Guy was fair and Matt dark. When they had come alongside the jetty Guy had waved casually, busy with the boat, but Matt had shouted out to her, grinning all over his face.