Gibraltar Road

by Philip McCutchan

  And then the telephone had rung.

  Hammersley reached out for that phone, jerked the handset off. The sudden quiet was almost ominous . . . and then an urgent voice came along the wire, and at first Hammersley didn’t take in what it had to say.

  “Forbes here, sir. It’s all right now. Shaw’s aboard one of the oiling-hulks, and a boat’s gone out to get him. Ackroyd is with him, and they’ve got the missing part of the power unit.”

  Hammersley dropped back into his chair, feeling strangely weak, and then sat deathly still, didn’t answer.

  “Are you there, sir?” Forbes sounded impatient.

  Just for a moment, everything had gone swinging away before him, and the General felt almost light-headed. At the other end of the line the receiver-rest was jiggled up and down. Anxious now, Forbes repeated, “Are you there?”

  “Yes, Forbes, I’m here.” The General’s voice was remote. “I’m sorry—go on.”

  “I’m going down to the Tower Steps at once, sir, to meet Shaw. I’ll warn the men working on the fuel unit, tell them to hang on a little longer and reassemble the works as quick as they can—stripping down hasn’t done any good anyway—and disregard any orders to leave—if you’re agreeable?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll have a naval doctor at the Tower as well.”

  “Doctor? What d’you want him for—is Shaw hurt, Forbes?”

  “No. But I understand Ackroyd is a bit off his rocker.” The phone shook in Hammersley’s fingers. He thought, God, what a damnably cruel thing to happen now. . . . He said, “That’s a bit of bad luck, isn’t it?” There was a tremor in his voice now, a tremor which he was quite unable to conceal.

  “Yes, I know, sir. We’ll do all we can, though. Do I take it you’ll authorize a further delay, sir?”

  Hammersley said, “It’s chancy now, but I’ll give you one more hour—one hour, Forbes, no longer. See to your end, will you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And I’ll meet you at Tower Steps.” Hammersley put down the receiver. Taking it up again a moment later, he spoke to the Deputy Fortress Commander and then rang through direct to the broadcasting people to postpone his announcement.

  Shaw came fast through the darkness towards the bright lights of the harbour and the town and made in through the moles. As he neared the jetty he could see the reception committee at Tower Steps—H.E., the Flag Officer, Major Staunton, and others. All the way across from the hulk Shaw had been trying to get Ackroyd to understand what he had to do, how everything depended on him now; he’d tried to get the little man into some sort of frame of mind in which he could grasp what was happening beneath the Rock. And all Ackroyd had done had been to look up at him and giggle.

  It had given Shaw the shudders. The pain in his guts had come back tenfold, was coming up to gall the back of his throat. As soon as the boat touched he ran up the steps, pushing Ackroyd ahead of him, the small, vital piece of metal safe in his pocket now. Leaving Debonnair in the boat, he pushed brusquely through the reception committee, a bag of reflexes wanting to rush Ackroyd to AFPU ONE.

  He caught Hammersley’s eye. “Reporting back, sir. And now we’d better hurry.”

  “Of course.”

  Transport was waiting, and Shaw took Ackroyd’s arm and propelled him towards the leading truck. The naval surgeon came towards them, eyes blinking rapidly through thick lenses. He put a hand on Shaw’s shoulder. “Just a moment, Commander,” he said. “My patient.”

  Shaw rounded on him, shook off the detaining hand. “Your patient, hell!” he snapped. “He’s got a job to do first. After that you can put him to bed for a year for all I care.”

  “But I understand . . . the man . . . I may be able to help in some way—”

  “Get in the back of the truck with him, then, and help him as we go along.” Shaw gave the doctor a hard look. “I’m relying on his reacting automatically when we get there. That’s the only way and the only hope. Pills—stethoscopes— they won’t be any good.”

  The Surgeon-Commander nodded non-committally, noting that Shaw himself was about all in. Then he got into the back of the truck with Ackroyd and they moved off, Shaw in the front seat, Hammersley and the others in another vehicle behind. They drove quickly along the jetty below the Tower, turned to the right by the Ragged Staff gate and moved along the dockyard’s eastern boundary until they came to the black hole which was the entry to Dockyard Tunnel; they drove under the arch into the gloom. The drips of water, ancient rains which had filtered down through the rock, fell on them, cold as a kiss of death—all the way Shaw could hear the Surgeon-Commander talking to Ackroyd in a low, soothing, continuous flow of words. Now and then Ackroyd’s giggle broke through to exacerbate what was left of Shaw’s nervous system, and then, farther along, the little man started that grotesque humming: Dum-da, dum-da, dum-da.

  After a while the going became hard, the truck seemed to bog down; they had to go slower. Shaw, seething with impatience, was relieved when he heard Hammersley’s order to stop. The General called, “Quicker on foot—pile out, there!”

  They left the vehicles where they stood and went forward at the double. If that thing ahead of them went up now at least they wouldn’t know a thing about it. Shortly after they’d started running Shaw could hear the noise of the machine itself; as it got nearer it seemed almost to thud and drum through the living rock itself, a crescendo of sound which battered at the ears and drowned everything else. It was much faster than Shaw remembered it the day he’d first heard it, only—what was it?—five days before.

  The noise grew louder, much louder, as they came up to the side tunnel, went along the narrow passage towards the power-house. Shaw glanced at Ackroyd; the man, though pale and shaky, was looking about him, as though more aware of his surroundings now; a chord, Shaw thought, may have been struck already. He prayed fervently that it had, that it would remain responsive.

  The heat was intense, and it seemed to Shaw as though it was coming in great waves from the power-house itself; and when they crowded in through the entrance to the vast cavern he saw that the men working on the fuel unit were stripped down to their shorts, great beads of sweat rolling down their glistening bodies. In here, the heat was almost unbearable, and it made Shaw feel faint. He looked across at Ackroyd again, willing him to get cracking on the machine and sort things out. The little man had a frown on his face now, and he looked back at Shaw appealingly, and then away from him to the great thundering machine behind its lead curtain, now half stripped away. As Shaw followed his glance he saw that the metal casing proper was glowing faintly in parts as though it was red-hot.

  One of the men looked up, spotted Ackroyd in the group. Hope came into tired, anxious eyes. Ignoring the brass, he yelled out, “Here he is—he’s back, Mr. Ackroyd is!”

  Ackroyd giggled; the technician looked at him, startled. Then the physicist stumbled forward; Shaw gestured the others urgently away. Better, he thought, to let the man do things in his own manner and hope something would click in that disordered mind of his . . . and then suddenly the pathetic little figure lurched heavily into the machine. There was a scream. A scream which tore across the strung-up nerves of every one in the power-house. Ackroyd bounded backward, body curved like a bow, shuddering and twisting; but he didn’t fall. There was a stench, the sharp, acrid smell of burnt flesh and clothing. As the doctor went forward Ackroyd turned. Shaw caught a glimpse of a reddened patch on his chest where the blackened edges of the burnt shirt gaped, and a huge blister forming on one arm, red and angry and bulbous with undischarged liquid.

  And then Ackroyd started cursing.

  Tears pouring down his face, he screamed out with perfect lucidity every word which those present had ever heard in their lives, together with a great many more that they hadn’t—a stream of back-street abuse which came oddly from the respectable-looking little form.

  He broke off to deflect the doctor; he said, “Leave me be, lad, leave me be for a while. I’m ok
eydoke.” The tears of rage, of pain, still ran down his cheeks. Shaw grabbed the doctor’s arm, pulled him away.

  He said, “Leave him, P.M.O. If you don’t let him get on with it he’s going to die anyway—and I believe the shock of that burn has done the trick.”

  After that the only sound was the thudding, the dum-da, of the fuel unit. Every one was staring at Ackroyd. Shaw felt the atmosphere like a blow, felt his skin creep. Ackroyd took a pace back and turned towards the machine again. Speaking to one of the mechanics, he said, “Eh, lad, you’ve let ’er over’eat, that’s what.”

  The man stared back at him, licked his lips. Shaw signalled urgently to him, and he nodded back understanding^. In a soothing tone he said, “That’s right, Mr Ackroyd, sir. We were waiting for you . . . see, we knew you were the only one who really understands her.”

  Ackroyd nodded, frowned. He lurched over to the main control panel, examined the dials. Pursing his lips, he whistled. Somehow he seemed oblivious of his pain now, though it must have racked his body. “Poor old beauty,” he said in a low voice. “She’s just about wore ’erself out, she ’as. We’ll need some spares before she’ll go again.”

  He was quite unconcerned; seemingly quite unaware of the danger, though the dials showed the hands hovering on the red mark, even slightly over it. They all held their breath, the men down there. Mr Ackroyd studied the dials again, critically, scratched his head. Hammersley was standing as still as a statue, intent, as it seemed to Shaw, on doing nothing that might rattle Ackroyd. Shaw’s own nerves were jumping just as though he had St Vitus’ Dance and then—very suddenly—it happened. Mr Ackroyd moved two dials on the control panel and AFPU ONE changed its note with shocking abruptness, changed its tempo, its whole dreadful rhythm. The dum-da seemed to speed up, very quickly, became one long, continuous wail, a shrill whistle which filled the enclosed cavern with an unbearable, unearthly din—a shriek from the depths of very hell which reverberated off the rocky walls.

  Ackroyd’s body went rigid; for a moment it looked as though he was going to panic, and then he ran to the starting-panel in the side of the fuel unit. The look in his eyes was quite different now. Working swiftly, deftly, he opened the panel, fingers twiddled at knobs and lever. In an automatic motion he put a hand out behind him. He said, “Quick now, lad.” A technician, his fingers shaking badly, passed him a screwdriver. Shaw moved closer, felt the sweat pour off his body. The atmosphere seemed alive now. Ackroyd removed a steel plate with that screwdriver and fumbled about inside —not looking, just feeling—his eyes staring with a frown of concentration, unseeingly, on to the hot, blank side of that shaking, shrieking machine. He was working very swiftly now. When he put his hand out again Shaw slid into it the little sliver of metal with the serrated, semicircular head.

  Ackroyd took it. He said briskly, “That’s the ticket, lad, that’s the ticket.”

  As they watched Ackroyd slid the metal part into the innards of the starting-mechanism, fiddled about for a little while, then started to screw back the steel plate. He stopped, frowned, moved his knobs and levers again, then once again slid the screwdriver into the grooves of the screw-heads to finish replacing the panel.

  The rest of the group stood quite still, as though fascinated into immobility, while that horrible noise shrieked on around them. Suddenly the note altered again. Mr Ackroyd, who was nearly finished with the panel, left it as it was. His hand moved to the little red button.

  He pressed it

  Shaw heard a loud click, a kind of plop as the cogs and gears—he presumed—engaged. The light on the control-panel began to die away, the hand on the dial dropped back to zero.

  AFPU ONE stopped.

  As that whistling note died out Mr Ackroyd began to tremble violently, and then seemed to stagger. Turning to the Surgeon-Commander, Shaw said, “All right, doctor. He’s all yours now.”

  Shaw found his own body heaving in great unconcerted, uncontrollable jerks as Hammersley quietly picked up the phone and passed the orders cancelling the evacuation, the orders diverting the shipping back to its normal occasions but under escort of the Navy so as to keep up the pretence of the exercise. Shaw felt almost unable to move towards the exit from that awful compartment, and afterwards he remembered nothing at all of the walk and drive back along Dockyard Tunnel to The Convent, nor of the congratulations, nor of being put to bed in The Convent under the care of Lady Hammersley herself.

  Next morning the sun came up over a Gibraltar which had subsided into complete normality. During the night all the troops with their lorries and equipment had left those steep, white streets, and the big ships (all except the Cambridge, now at the South Mole) had stolen away through the Straits or past Europa, stolen away into the night, and ‘Exercise Convoy’ was ending. The people were quite prepared now to accept that explanation of an ‘exercise’—after all, the Services were always messing about at something like that to keep themselves occupied. There was even a feeling of half-angry anticlimax, and those who had been most anxious before now released their tension in blistering remarks about the Governor—he had caused, they said, quite needless alarm by his realism.

  Shaw himself didn’t know a thing more until nearly thirty-six hours later. They’d given him a sedative, of course, and then just let him sleep it off—but even without it, he’d have slept the clock round those three times, he thought. After he woke they told him that Ackroyd had collapsed altogether after leaving the power-house, but he was getting on fairly well now, and it was quite likely that in time he’d forget his experiences enough to regain his full normal capacity. For a start he would be flown home shortly so as to free his mind from local associations, and he’d have expert psychiatric treatment. Meanwhile AFPU ONE was out of action indefinitely, and other experts on nuclear matters were to be given a chance of putting it to rights and of learning all about the thing. Ackroyd’s monopoly was to be broken now; quite right, of course—but Shaw couldn’t help feeling sorry for the little man.

  Seven days later Shaw got stiffly out of the Portsmouth train at Waterloo and made for the Underground. It was fairly late in the day, and he decided his visit to the Old Man could wait until next morning. They’d already had his full report by cyphered signal; he’d sent that in during his last days in Gibraltar before embarking for home in the Cambridge when Debonnair had seen him off—she wasn’t coming home just yet, as her company’s business, owing to sundry interruptions, hadn’t yet been concluded. Waiting for a train to take him to Charing Cross, where he would change on to the District Line, Shaw grinned to himself as he thought back to that homeward run. Captain Kent-Thomas, of the Cambridge, had said, when he’d greeted Shaw on his quarterdeck:

  “You again, Shaw, what? Haven’t they scragged the Admiralty Inspector?” The large, square form had frowned down at him, hands clasped behind the immense back, face glowering in mock scorn which hadn’t been all that mock. “Bet it was your blasted nose-poking that caused all that damn silly flap and panic the other day.”

  Shaw had asked innocently, “Oh? What was that, sir? I must have missed it.”

  “Missed it!” Kent-Thomas snorted. “S.N.A.S.O. tells me you’ve been gallivantin’ about in Tangier, so I’m not surprised you missed it.”

  “Quite, sir,” Shaw murmured. “It was very nice in Tangier.”

  “I’m certain it was. Wine, women, and song.” Kent-

  Thomas sniffed. “I’ve been patrolling off Malaga, lookin’ out for some damn’ crook who’s wanted for extradition.” Shaw lifted an eyebrow. “What—-all the time, sir?”

  Kent-Thomas flushed. “Don’t be silly. Best part of twenty-four hours.”

  “Well, I dare say it made a change. Er . . . did you find him—the crook?”

  “No.”

  At about six-fifteen Shaw got out of the District Line train at West Kensington station. He crossed over the road at the traffic lights and left-inclined into Gunterstone Road past the gardens in the Gunterstone and Gwendwr Roads intersection. I
t was so colourful—very colourful and gay. Something about it sent Shaw’s mind racing away from thoughts of the deserted flat which was waiting for him, and which would smell as dank as all places smell when they have been shut up for a time; sent his thoughts racing back to the Plaza Generalisimo Franco in La Linea, which was also a colourful little square; that reminded him once again that he’d have to see Latymer to-morrow. He fumbled in his pocket for his Dr Jenner’s and slid a tablet into his mouth, keeping it to one side so that it would melt slowly as the directions on the packet said. There was a sour taste in his mouth which the tablet soothed; though it couldn’t soothe it right away, for it was partly the sour taste of loathing for his job, of a nameless longing, and of defeat and self-reproach—that reactive feeling he always had except when he was actually on a job. The diplomatic hoo-ha over the boarding of the Ostrowiec was still going on, and he felt sorry for Hammersley, though the worst of the fuss was over now. And almost certainly there were things he could have handled better in the last two or three weeks, and he’d get a bawling-out, a bawling-out which wouldn’t stop Latymer giving him another assignment as soon as he’d have a spot of leave.

  He gave a deep sigh. He didn’t realize he’d sighed aloud, very much aloud. The typist, who by some wonderful stroke of luck had happened to be on the same train as Shaw, and had pushed up against him in the crush, and was now devotedly dogging his homeward footsteps, heard it. It distressed her. She hadn’t seen the interesting-looking man for seventeen days, and now he looked thinner and more lonely than ever. And his face! It had given her quite a turn, it had really, quite grey and so worried-looking. Starved. It was dreadful. In the tube she’d wanted to stroke his cares away. The typist was inclined to think Mum had been right about him being a musician—he’s been away, probably, for part of the season, at the seaside. Her mind ran on and on . . . Clacton, Blackpool, Ramsgate . . . some dance-hall, or perhaps the pier. They must have worked him very hard, perhaps he hadn’t been able to stand the hours and he’d been given the sack. . . .