The Little Ship

by Margaret Mayhew

‘If you like.’ She moved into his arms. He didn’t make the mistake of trying to hold her too near at first. Instead he engineered it very gradually, by degrees. She was wearing some kind of marvellous perfume and her hair felt like silk against his cheek.

  The door crashed open, the overhead light snapped on and glared down. Lewis stood there, swaying belligerently. ‘So there you two are. What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘You’ve missed your breakfast, Mr Ransome. I’m sorry but I can’t serve it after eight and it’s nearly eleven. I left you to sleep, seeing as it’s a Sunday.’

  Matt’s landlady was standing at the bottom of the stairs. She had taken out her curlers and was wearing what he knew to be her best: a plum-coloured silk dress and a matching hat decorated at the side with a very large black feather – origin uncertain. Crow? Rook? He had often wondered. A black cloth coat would go over the dress for church. ‘It was a nice kipper, too.’

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Honeywell.’

  ‘Won’t be quite so nice tomorrow.’

  The kippers were never nice, whatever day they were served. They were desiccated, jaundiced creatures with papery skins and a thousand little bones. Even so, the one he had missed would have been something to eat, as opposed to nothing, and he was starving. He’d been swotting up anatomy until late. This term it would be his turn for a leg. Last term it had been an arm. He was looking forward to dissecting the foot. Like the hand, the foot was an amazingly beautiful piece of mechanism. Brilliantly designed. The organ of locomotion of invertebrates. The knee was another wondrous thing, too, of course. Without knees locomotion would be pretty tricky. Come to that, the whole human body was nothing less than a miracle. Mrs Honeywell was still at the bottom of the stairs. Funny she hadn’t yet left for church.

  ‘If you want to listen in the front room, Mr Ransome, you’re quite welcome.’

  ‘Listen?’

  ‘To Mr Chamberlain speaking on the wireless. Quarter-past eleven. He’s going to tell us if there’s going to be a war. They made a special announcement early this morning. I shan’t be going to church today. If Mr Hitler doesn’t promise by eleven o’clock to get out of Poland, then it means there’s going to be one.’

  By eleven o’clock! Nobody would expect them to, of course. The Germans hadn’t invaded Poland and dropped bombs all over the place just to turn round and go tamely home again because Mr Chamberlain had told them to. Mrs Honeywell’s long-case clock started clunking and whirring in its dark corner of the hall. Matt and his landlady stayed glued to where they were, one at the top of the stairs, the other at the bottom, listening for the first strike. They waited until the eleventh one had died away and went on standing in an uncertain silence for a few more moments. ‘Well that’s that, then,’ Mrs Honeywell said emphatically, as though she had been expecting a personal telephone call from Hitler. ‘We’d better switch on the wireless.’

  He followed her into her front room. It was the first time he had been invited to cross the threshold. The door was always kept shut and, previously, he had only had brief glimpses when Mrs Honeywell entered or exited. It was a gloomy room: mottled wallpaper, brown armchairs, dark red patterned carpet, aspidistras in pots and fading sepia photographs of the late Mr Honeywell who had been gassed in the last war. Mrs Honeywell’s large tabby cat was curled up on the most comfortable-looking of the armchairs and opened one malevolent green eye at him.

  ‘You can sit down if you like, Mr Ransome.’ She had switched on the wireless. ‘We’ll just let it warm up. Then I’ll find the Home Service.’ He perched on the edge of an armchair, waiting while she twirled the knob and the wireless crackled and gabbled. Father was away somewhere at sea but Mother would be listening at Tideways. Guy was in Paris, having some fun before the balloon went up – as he’d put it. He might not know a thing about it. Mrs Honeywell had tuned in successfully and lowered herself onto one of the other chairs. She sat bolt upright, hands clasped in her lap; he realized that she was wearing her hat in recognition of the solemnity of the occasion. Due to some oversight, she was also wearing her bedroom slippers.

  Presently Mr Chamberlain’s dry, metallic voice began. ‘I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at ten Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they are prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.’ Mrs Honeywell got up to switch off the wireless. ‘It’s happening all over again,’ she said heavily. ‘All over again. All you young men’ll be going off to war, just like before. Just like my Cedric.’

  The sudden noise of a siren made them both jump. It wailed and shrieked, rising and falling. Mrs Honeywell seized hold of the cat who struggled indignantly. ‘That’s the air-raid warning. We must go to the Anderson at once, Mr Ransome. The Germans are coming to bomb us.’ She hurried out of the room with the cat clawing and spitting in her arms.

  Matt went out into the street and stood listening to the siren’s howl and looking up at the sky. There was no sign of any enemy planes. People ran past him on their way to the nearest public shelter: a mother pushing a pram, dragging a small child who was howling with fright; an old woman being hustled along by a young one. ‘Come on, Gran, for God’s sake. We’ve got to get a move on.’ A white-faced couple – the wife with a tiny baby wrapped in a shawl in her arms. A policeman called out as he hurried by. ‘Get to a shelter, sir. Quick as you can.’

  All you young men’ll be going off to war. He touched his right sleeve. What bloody use was he going to be?

  ‘I know how he felt,’ the old man says. ‘Felt just the same myself. What use am I going to be? I remember that day like yesterday. The whole country’d been waiting for it to happen for months. We’d been digging trenches and building shelters and filling sandbags … I’d already put an Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden that summer and they’d given out the gas masks long before. Most of us’d not been too sorry about what happened at Munich – what were the Czechs to us? We didn’t know a thing about them. But then I reckon we started to feel a bit ashamed of selling them out, so when we finally did something, it was a relief. Mind you, it wasn’t so much fighting for the Czechs or the Poles, but that we were fighting against Hitler, at last. Molly and me sat and listened to the wireless together and when Mr Chamberlain had finished she says to me, “You needn’t think you’re going to go off and join up and get yourself killed, because they won’t have you.” She was right, of course.’ He sighs. ‘I remember you couldn’t get blinds for the blackout for love nor money, or drawing-pins or brown paper. We made do somehow with old curtains and cardboard and I put that sticky tape criss-cross across the shop windows. It was pitch black after dark. Nearly broke my neck the first night, falling down some steps.’

  ‘And then nothing happened. Not for a long while.’

  He nods. ‘That’s right. No bombs, no enemy planes, nothing. Our forces went off to France and Belgium and sat around waiting for Jerry to do something. The Phoney War, we called it. The Bore War. Some people thought it’d be over before it’d begun. Different at sea, though. The U-boats were already after our merchant ships – and they got the Royal Oak, didn’t they? Sneaked into Scapa Flow and sank her at anchor. But then we got the Graf Spee, so we were even. I don’t know what the RAF were doing. Dropping propaganda leaflets, I think, that’s all. What happened to Guy? Did he get into the RAF?’

  ‘He’d received his call-up papers within two weeks of the outbreak of war and when he reported to the Aircrew Receiving Centre at Oxford they took him in the Volunteer Reserve. He did initial training and then got a commission almost at once because of his time in the University Air Squadron. He was sent to another training centre for a fortnight for drill and lectures and then, finally, he was posted up to a flying training school on the n
orth-east coast of Scotland where he learned to fly Harvards. After that, he was sent to an Operational Training Unit near Wales to train on Hurricanes.’

  Mr Potter sighs again. ‘He was lucky. I’d like to have done something like that. Not just the ARP. How about the girl, Anna? Did she have any luck getting her parents out in time?’

  ‘She went to stay with Mademoiselle Gilbert and her mother in Lille and made contact with the organization, but when war broke out she still hadn’t had any news of them.’

  He shakes his head. ‘They went and left it too late.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  The sparkling white walls of the cloud canyon soared up like tall cliffs and its cotton-wool floor stretched far ahead. Above the perspex of the cockpit, beyond the white cliffs, the sky was pure azure blue. Guy flew the Hurricane very fast straight down the centre. He could see the shadow of the fighter flitting alongside him, like a ghostly companion. At the end of the corridor he burst out from the canyon into clear, sunlit sky and went into a long, slow barrel roll. He felt drunk with exaltation. The speed, the power, the sheer freedom were the most incredible things that he had ever experienced. He felt as though he had thrown off iron shackles. As though he could do anything.

  And he remembered the bridge.

  He banked and took the Hurricane down in a long, shallow dive until he could see it spanning the river. One or two of the other chaps in the Mess had bragged about flying under it and he’d been impressed but not sure he was capable of it. Now, he knew that he could. He brought the fighter down low and followed the river’s course upstream for a way before turning back. As the bridge loomed ahead he came down still lower to within a few feet of the water, skimming its surface. There was quite a bit of cross-wind and the archway ahead looked impossibly small but he held the stick very steady. Come on, girl. We can do it. We can do anything, you and I. Anything. For a split second he thought they were going to hit and then they shot into the narrow opening and were through and out on the other side. Guy pulled back hard on the stick and he and the Hurricane rocketed up into the skies. He shouted aloud in triumph.

  ‘I congratulate you, Leutnant von Reichenau. An excellent day’s manoeuvres. The Panzer Corps is fortunate to have such able and dedicated young officers as yourself. What a pity you had not completed your training in time to join us in Poland.’

  ‘I regret that, General.’

  ‘Don’t worry, you will soon be winning your spurs on our next campaign. When the time comes, we shall have no difficulty in overrunning northern Europe. The Norwegians and Danes will capitulate at once, the Belgians have no army to speak of and a stubborn fool for a king, and the Dutch have only antiquated weapons to match our new tanks and planes. We shall steamroller our way into France.’ The general smiled at him jovially. ‘Der Schritt über di Grenzen, eh? The march across frontiers. And once we are in France we shall devour the French army.’

  ‘And the British, sir?’

  ‘We need not worry too much about the British. Our Intelligence tells us that their forces are poorly armed and inexperienced and their communications a disaster. Their leaders are jealous of each other and are under the command of the French who are incompetent. The British and French have hated each other for years; they do not make happy bedfellows. Best of all, their own Intelligence is non-existent. They sit on their backsides behind their sacred Maginot Line and believe that they are safe and sound. Their men are growing bored, undisciplined, careless … That will prove to be their greatest mistake of all.’ The general smiled. ‘We shall give them the shock of their lives.’

  ‘How soon, sir?’

  ‘Come, come, leutenant, such things are Top Secret. But I am pleased to see you so keen. Let us say that the Führer is just as eager as yourself, but with winter already upon us you may have to contain your impatience until the spring.’ The general tapped him playfully on the shoulder. ‘Not even the Panzers and their tanks are immune to the weather.’

  Otto came rigidly to attention and saluted as the general left. Stephan Stange, a fellow officer, sauntered up. ‘You’re the blue-eyed boy, Otto. They’ll be pinning medals on you next. What did the old boy say to you?’

  ‘He believes that we shall have no difficulty taking the Low Countries. And that the French and British will not withstand a surprise attack.’

  Stephan nodded. ‘I think he’s right.’

  ‘I am not quite so sure about the British.’

  ‘Well, you know them better than I. What are they like?’

  ‘Never to be underestimated.’

  Guy appeared in Lizzie’s attic studio one Saturday evening in December. She was busy cleaning brushes when she heard the door open and there he was in his RAF uniform, officer’s cap dangling from his hand. He looked marvellous.

  ‘I’ve got a couple of days’ leave and thought I’d drop by. Aunt Helen said you were up here in your eyrie, as usual.’ He came over and bent to kiss her cheek. He smiled down at her and flicked her chin lightly. ‘There’s some paint on your chin, did you know, Cousin Lizzie? No, don’t rub it off, it looks very artistic.’ He tossed his cap onto the table and took a silver case from a breast pocket that had wings sewn above it. ‘Cigarette? No, of course, you’re much too young for vices. Shocking habit.’

  She watched him as he lit up. ‘Aunt Sheila told us you’re flying fighters.’

  ‘That’s right. Hurricanes. I’m rather hoping to transfer to Spitfires eventually but the Hurry’s not bad at all.’

  She pictured him swooping through the skies; very fast, very confident, very smooth. ‘Is it a difficult plane to fly?’

  ‘Piece of cake, really.’ He put his lighter away in his trouser pocket and perched on the edge of the table. ‘I gather Anna’s still in France. Aunt Helen said she and your father are pretty worried about her.’

  ‘They went over to Lille in October to try and persuade her to come back but she wouldn’t. She’s still hoping to arrange for her parents to get to Switzerland but she hasn’t heard anything from them since the war started. Nor have my parents.’

  ‘If she won’t come back to England, then she ought to try to go to Switzerland herself. If the Germans manage to invade France she could get caught there.’

  ‘That’s what Mummy and Daddy keep telling her, but she won’t listen. She says the French insist it’s not possible for the Germans to invade. They wouldn’t get past their defences.’

  ‘As always, she hasn’t a clue what she’s talking about. On recent form, I’d say the Huns were capable of anything. She’s mad to stay there. I’ll get the address from Aunt Helen and write and tell her not to be such a damn fool. Not that she’ll take any notice of me. In fact, on second thoughts, it’d probably make her do just the opposite. I take it you’ll be staying in London, Lizzie? Not packed off to the country with all the evacuees.’

  ‘I’m rather old to be sent away with a label tied to me.’

  He smiled at her. ‘Sorry, I always forget. You must be what now …?’

  ‘Nearly eighteen.’

  ‘God, are you really! How time flies. I always think of you as that little girl with pigtails.’

  ‘I know you do.’

  ‘You were such a solemn, anxious little thing. I used to believe you were a bit afraid of me.’

  ‘I was. A bit.’

  ‘Lord, was I that bad?’

  ‘No. You were just very good at everything. It was rather nerve-racking.’

  ‘Do you think Matt’s ever felt like that? In the shade, because of his arm. Mother once said something of the sort, a long time ago.’

  ‘I’m not sure. He’s never talked about it to me.’

  ‘Well, I damn well hope not. I never thought he minded about the arm, did you? He manages incredibly well with it. Anyway, he’s going to be a fantastic doctor.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Lord, is that the time. Sorry, Lizzie, but I’ve got to dash. I’m due to pick someone up to go to the theatre.’ He bent to kiss her cheek again. ‘You know, you
really oughtn’t to stay here. London won’t be exactly the safest place to be if things hot up.’

  ‘If the Germans drop bombs on us, you mean. They don’t seem to be bothering to.’

  ‘They’re too far away for their fighters to be able to protect their bombers at the moment, but that could change. You’d be much safer somewhere like Tideways. Mother would have you all like a shot.’

  ‘Daddy wouldn’t leave because of his work,’ she said. ‘And Mummy wouldn’t want to leave him. Besides she’s got involved with the WVS and she’s awfully busy. And I wouldn’t want to leave them.’

  ‘Well, that’s that, then. I’ll just have to keep the Huns at bay for you.’

  ‘We’ve turned the coal cellar into a shelter – it’s right under the pavement, you know. It’d be perfectly safe and we’ve got bunks in it so we could sleep in there all night.’

  ‘You might have to.’ He picked up his cap and bent to kiss her cheek again. ‘’Bye then, Lizzie. Take care of yourself.’

  ‘You, too, Guy.’

  He smiled at her from the doorway: his most charming smile. ‘I always do.’

  If I’d ever been silly enough to let it happen, she thought wryly, he could have broken my heart.

  At Christmas they went to Tideways. Guy was somewhere with the RAF and Uncle William away at sea, but Matt had come home. He was decorating the tree in the hall when Lizzie arrived with her parents. She gave him a hand. ‘Thank God you’re here to cheer us up, Lizzie,’ he told her. ‘Mother’s in a real state about Father and Guy. She’s convinced herself that Father’s ship’s going to be sunk by a U-boat. And now Guy’s squadron’s been sent to France.’

  She said, dismayed, ‘I didn’t know that, Matt. He came to the house a week or two ago – when he was on some leave – but he didn’t say anything about it.’

  ‘Probably didn’t know himself, then. And anyway they’re not allowed to tell anyone any details. We had a letter from him two days ago, saying he was somewhere in France. He says they’re living in the lap of luxury, billeted in a commandeered château, and that the food and wine are fantastic but the weather’s awful. Freezing cold and lots of snow and almost no flying. Here, you always do this one.’ He gave her the beautiful glass angel with outstretched wings. She stood on tiptoe and hung it as high as she could reach. ‘How long will he be there, do you think?’