She thought of his hand on her wrist, the sudden pain in his eyes, and of the card he had given her. She would never telephone him. How could she? And what might he think?
At Waterloo the concourse was crammed with sailors, returning from leave, a Friday run-up to the Smoke or going to new ships. She saw two lieutenants, made even younger by the massive pipes they were smoking. Wavy stripes like his – going where? Doing what?
She found a compartment that was empty but for a young sailor who was saying goodbye to his mother through the window. She sat in one corner and took out the novel she had brought with her. It would be dark by the time she reached Portsmouth, and with the heavily masked lamps it would be impossible to read.
She heard the woman say, ‘Don’t give all the tarts away, Bobby. I made them myself, so enjoy them.’ Hands touched and somewhere a whistle shrilled. Most of the sailors would have packed into the other end of the train, ready to leap out at Portsmouth Harbour and charge through the barriers en masse to avoid the inspectors and so save their tickets for another journey.
‘Write when you can, son.’ There was a break in the voice. How many people went through this every day of the week, she wondered.
A door slammed and the train began to move slowly along the platform, a few people waving, others sobbing quietly into handkerchiefs. The young sailor sat down and stared out of the window. He said nothing. It was all in his face.
She undipped her handbag and after a slight hesitation took out the wedding ring and slipped it on to her finger.
She had wanted the job, but she discovered she had no regrets. She had met Mr Tweed once before. She knew he had a riverside flat at Hammersmith; was that where the final interview was to have been, when it was too late for her to get home?
She opened her book, but found herself staring at her wrist where Charles Villiers had gripped it so intensely.
She gazed through the anti-splinter netting at the serried rows of slate-covered roofs, orange now in the sunset that hid the scars and the gaps in every street.
She looked at the ring on her finger and sighed. Just a dream. The lieutenant with the same name as the portrait would already have forgotten her.
Rear-Admiral Oswald Dyer, ‘Ossie’ to all his friends, sat behind the large, empty desk and listened to the muted growl of London’s traffic. There was no petrol or diesel fuel available except for essential services, they proclaimed. He frowned. You could have fooled me.
He stared around the office, bare and newly decorated – and for what? Dyer was old for his rank and had been retired between the wars as a commander. Being recalled at the outbreak of war had been like a rebirth. Promoted to captain and eventually rear-admiral, he had made his unpromising appointment as head of the Special Operations, underwater weapons section, something of which to be proud. They had started with almost nothing; the Navy had needed every kind of escort vessel, minesweeper and patrol craft just to survive when the daily losses to enemy action had long outstripped their ability to replace them. Nobody had cared much for Ossie Dyer’s Special Operations units, his circus – not then. Defence and survival were the priorities: hitting back and hurting the enemy were pipe dreams.
He had helped to change all that. In a small, commandeered Scottish castle overlooking the loch where their training had begun, Dyer had spared nobody, himself least of all. It was crude, dangerous, often fatal, but they never let up. Even the first chariot had been a wooden dummy nicknamed ‘Cassidy’ which, towed by a motor-boat, had put the luckless divers through every possible manoeuvre. A far cry from their recent successes in Norway and Sicily, he thought. He could remember most of their faces, the very young, and the not so young, like Ross, who had won the Victoria Cross.
What now? He would miss the old castle by the loch. Before the war, it had been used as a hotel for keen and wealthy anglers. The huge hall, which even the title of Wardroom could not change and which looked like something from an Errol Flynn film, had seen great celebrations and equally intense sadness when a training scheme or an actual operation had gone wrong.
And old Ossie Dyer had nursed them all. With his bald head, the colour of a brown farm egg, and two wings of white hair, he had made himself approachable day or night to his growing teams of divers and, later, the four-man crews of the more sophisticated X-craft or midget submarines. With his old black labrador, Slouch, he had watched them go, and greeted their returns.
He glared at the spartan office. Slouch would miss the heather and the wet grass, chasing the birds back into the water.
Like me, no longer a part of things.
He thought of the man who had been appointed to the new Special Operations Section: Captain Ralph Pryce, D.S.O., Royal Navy, a submariner like his father before him, who had gained a V.C. at Zeebrugge. They needed younger blood, of course. Pryce was probably the right choice. A full captain already, he would soon be offered promotion. The youngest admiral since Nelson, he had heard someone predict.
The war would go on for ages. They would soon forget what it had been like in those first brave desperate years. He would be given some appointment in a vague advisory capacity. He would see it in the eyes of the young officers he visited: the impatient tolerance of men who were forced to put up with one more old duffer who should have been put out to grass long ago.
He banged his fist on the bare desk. But they would not know, could not understand what it had been like. A team, a band of brothers which he had helped to mould into a deadly weapon.
The door opened and a severe-looking Wren second officer with a clip of signals in her hand stood watching him.
‘Did you call, sir?’
He looked at his clenched fist. ‘Sorry, Sue, letting off steam.’
‘Jean,’ she corrected gently. ‘It’ll be all right, you know, sir. It just takes getting used to, that’s all.’
He smiled at her. ‘Not much company today.’
She glanced around the office, picturing the new map and where it should hang. The desk, too. Some flowers would not come amiss. She looked at the rows of medal ribbons on the rear-admiral’s jacket. She recognized only one: her father had got the same one at Jutland.
He was saying, ‘My old dog won’t like London, not after . . .’ He shook himself. ‘Ah, well – we’ll get used to it, like you say.’ He did not sound very hopeful.
She said, ‘I’ve a list of the new units, sir. I knew you’d want to see it.’
He glanced at it and noted that Captain Ralph Pryce had already seen and initialled it.
‘Let me know when Lieutenant Ross arrives, will you – er, Jean?’
She replied calmly, ‘He is already here, sir. Lieutenant-Commander Ross, as he is now.’
He grimaced. ‘I didn’t know that, either.’
She watched his resentment, his hurt. Stay at a distance. Don’t get involved beyond duty and obligation. But she heard herself say, ‘I’ve been out of the service, sir. I was married. He went down in the Lightning a few months ago. So I came back. I didn’t know how else to get back at them.’
She was angry with herself, her eyes too blurred to realize that the old rear-admiral with the two white wings of hair was beside her, holding his handkerchief to her face.
He said quietly, ‘Right, Jean. New start for both of us. No looking back.’
She sat down in a chair and watched while he produced two cups from a filing cabinet.
He smiled down at her. ‘Sun’s almost over the yardarm. Brandy, I’m afraid.’
She raised the cup, the tears still wet on her cheeks. ‘Cheers, sir!’ Then she smiled back, perhaps for the first time since getting the telegram.
A tired-looking Wren, a petty officer writer, opened the door of the small ante-room and waited for the only occupant to look up at her.
‘Captain Pryce will see you now, sir.’
James Ross picked up his cap and followed her. He had seen the glances from the other Wrens: curiosity, an eagerness to see one of the men they dealt wit
h every day but rarely met, men represented only by the clattering teleprinters, files of incoming and outgoing signals, and every so often, the casualty lists.
Apart from the new uniform with the two-and-a-half stripes of bright gold lace on the sleeves, he was, he told himself, the same person. And yet everything was different. Being back in England, in the Admiralty itself, and about to be interviewed by a man who, knowingly or otherwise, had always been a part of his life, seemed in some ways more hostile than planning an attack. He recalled again the lull in the busy typewriters when he had arrived, the quick stares and appraisal of the man who had been called a hero more than once in the newspapers. He had seen their eyes move to the crimson ribbon with its miniature cross. So this is what a hero looks like. Like the women’s faces at one of the funerals after a trial attack had misfired. Why him, and not my man?
When he had spoken briefly to his father on the telephone, he had been touched by his excitement and genuine pleasure. Life was strange, he thought. Captain Ralph Pryce was the son of the man who had been Big Andy’s own commanding officer during their attempt to ram the dock with an obsolete submarine filled to the gills with explosives. It had read and sounded like something from Boys’ Own Paper. Pryce’s father had been killed and awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross. Ross himself would never have learned the truth of what really happened on that bloody St George’s Day if he had not been entered as a boarder at Highmead School, an old and respected establishment nestling in Dorset where the sons of serving officers and senior civil servants were prepared, usually to follow in their fathers’ footsteps. It was an expensive school, and Ross still marvelled at the way his father had used much of his hard-earned salvage money to coax, persuade or threaten the school into accepting a boy from such a lowly family. The reason for his father’s choice and determination were immediately apparent. At the top of Highmead’s Roll of Honour was the name of Francis Pryce, Victoria Cross, one of the school’s heroes.
And on this bright July day their two sons were about to meet for the first time.
The Wren opened the door. ‘Lieutenant-Commander Ross, sir.’
Ross found himself glancing at his sleeve: the new lace made him feel like a stranger.
The captain stood up behind his desk and reached over it to grasp his hand without effort. Ross had the distinct impression that Pryce had been preparing for and even timing the exact moment of this first encounter.
Pryce was tall and lean, his uniform revealing a hardened, athletic physique, as if all surplus and unwanted flesh had been honed or worked away. His hair, dark but slightly grey at the sideburns, was cut very short, so that his face looked narrow, chiselled. A tight mouth with deep lines at the corners and a hooked nose, and the most piercing eyes Ross had ever seen. Very steady, like the man: outwardly controlled, and yet giving all the signs of a consuming, restless energy.
‘Sit.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘You don’t smoke, do you?’
It was more of a statement than a question.
‘A pipe, usually.’ Ross noticed that apart from a solitary file the desk-top was empty. There was certainly no ashtray.
Pryce said, ‘You went to Highmead, special entry to Dartmouth. I had to start right at the beginning as a cadet in Britannia. But it knocks the rough edges off you. My father went to Highmead too.’
Ross saw his fingers move to the unopened file and was reminded of his housemaster at that school. He kept a record of each and every boy: habits, good or bad, qualities and vices. Pryce would have known all about his education and his humble beginnings, and Ross felt a flicker of the same anger he had managed to contain when his father had visited the school for the first Open Day. Recalling the nudges and sniggers at the big, rough character who had called the headmaster ‘sir’. They had not sneered so much the second time, when Big Andy had arrived in his spanking new Bentley.
‘Yes, I know, sir. My father served under him at Zeebrugge.’
Again the fingers almost touched the file. ‘Really? But there was only one officer in the passage crew that day when he was killed.’
Ross allowed himself to relax, muscle by muscle. ‘That’s right. My father was a stoker.’
Pryce regarded him calmly, his eyes strangely opaque. Like a shark’s, Ross thought.
‘You know, of course, that your recent mission in Sicily should have been aborted. But we lost contact with the submarine, otherwise . . .’ The eyes moved quickly as Ross massaged one wrist. Below the cuff of his reefer was a livid red mark on the skin, like a burn. Too many dives, the rawness of working under water against the clock. ‘Fortunately, the attack was a complete success. I never doubted it would be. But another team could have been sent in your place.’ It sounded like an accusation.
‘Rear-Admiral Dyer was convinced . . .’
Pryce interrupted, ‘I know. I was not, which is why you are here.’ He stood up, the movement sparing, like part of an exercise. ‘Sicily is a beginning. It will be Italy next. Eventually we will be faced with the real task of invading France. A long hard fight, but it can and will be done.’ He gave a small smile. ‘Must be done. The work of Special Operations must change – the attacks by chariots, even X-craft will become a part of something more fluid, more deadly, and working at close quarters. Several new Special Operations units are being formed, to work in some cases with the Army and other reconnaissance sections. I need a new breed of leadership, officers who put success before all else. I don’t care a damn about their motives. I just want results.’
Ross waited, wondering if he could ever work with this man.
Pryce said evenly, ‘The Far East. Where the enemy rules by terror and a brutality unknown in modern warfare. International Law, the rights of sick and wounded, prisoners-of-war – they regard them as our weakness. Perhaps we have been slow to realize it.’ His eyes flashed in the sunlight. ‘I want you to take charge of one such unit. A different war, one without rules.’ He glanced down at the file. ‘You are not averse to killing the enemy. War cannot always be fought through the impartial distance of a gun or bomb-sight.’ Again the smile. ‘As somebody once said, a German I think, “War demands that sooner or later we must dirty our hands a little.” I believe it.’
Ross looked at him, framed against the windows and the clear sky. Two barrage-balloons like tiny silver whales, probably somewhere towards dockland, appeared to be attached to Pryce’s left shoulder.
‘If you have any doubts, this is the time to say so.’ Pryce’s tone had sharpened. Was that rehearsed, too?
He wondered what Pryce would say if he told him that his father had been killed well before the obsolete submarine, the floating bomb, had reached its objective. That a common, lower-deck stoker had in fact taken the wheel on that unprotected conning tower, and had conned the boat directly to the target. Big Andy would never discuss those last moments. What powerful link had held him to his young skipper both before and after the attack? Ross could not imagine anything like that kind of loyalty, then the idea made him think of Tucker. He smiled faintly. Tommy Tucker.
‘I would like my leading hand to be advanced to petty officer. It would give him more authority for this sort of job.’
Pryce shook his head, momentarily off-balance. ‘You agree, then? I can put your appointment in orders?’ He did not bother to hide his impatience, his eagerness to move on.
‘I’ll just drop in and see Rear-Admiral Dyer, sir.’
Again, the sharp glance. ‘If you must. I am afraid he doesn’t approve of my methods. Where strategy is concerned, we dwell in entirely different worlds.’
The telephone rang. Timed to the second.
Pryce snapped, ‘The Prime Minister. Yes, I’ll call back in a few minutes.’
He held out his hand. Hard and dry, like the man.
Ross walked from the office and again the typewriters hesitated. By the end of the day every one of those girls would have heard what he had let himself in for. Never volunteer. God knew what Tucker would say, or eve
n if he would agree to transfer to yet another section where he was even more likely to be killed.
A fresh start, new faces. He turned towards Dyer’s door.
But not David, with all his jokes and youthful optimism.
It was over. Nothing could bring him back.
3
Men at Arms
THE KHAKI STAFF-CAR slowed at yet another bend and then, all at once, spread out and below them, was the glittering expanse of Portsmouth Harbour. After the green hedgerows of the Surrey countryside with its inviting hotels and pubs, and then the great patchwork of the Hampshire fields, the contrast was almost unexpected: the water, the countless grey shapes of every kind of warship, and the huddle of Portsmouth itself, still too far away to reveal the scars of a city under frequent attack from the air.
Captain Ralph Pryce was sitting in the front seat beside the Royal Marine driver, his cap with the bright gold oak leaves around the peak tilted at an unusually rakish angle. He twisted round to study the other two passengers.
‘Good old Pompey – still gives me that feeling, especially from up here on Portsdown Hill. Knocked about, most certainly, but still the same. Where I joined my first ship. Where I took over my first command.’
Lieutenant-Commander James Ross glanced at his companion, who had barely said a word since leaving London. He had been told as much about Lieutenant Charles Villiers as Pryce apparently thought prudent, but he hated the way he had thrown them together like this. An hour in one of those quiet little pubs, just the two of them, might have made it easier. He knew about Villiers’ parents and his sister who had been killed at Singapore, and the incredible detail Pryce had let slip about Villiers’ return there on some secret mission under the noses of the Japanese Occupation Army. Had he been betrayed and captured, his fate would have been horrific. Old Ossie Dyer had also mentioned it when he had called on him at the Admiralty. He had been furious that any senior officer should ever allow such a terrible risk even to be contemplated, let alone taken.
A Dawn Like Thunder Page 4