The huge locomotive slowly came into view, belching smoke and spraying clouds of steam as its bell clanged. The engineer tooted at the street crossing, where striped barriers were lowered. The conductors leaned from the coaches’ stairwells, holding onto the railing with one hand and waving yellow stoops with the other. The platform was crowded as usual, and the children watched this procession of rotating machinery with round eyes and open mouths. The engineer waved. Everyone connected with this iron monster seemed to have an immense dignity—even the telegraph clerk who wore armbands on his white shirt and a green shade over his eyes.
There were soldiers and sailors and airmen, commercial travellers, and mothers with children. They spilled out of the coaches and into the sunlight. The doors of the deluxe lunch counter opened, and two men in red kepis pushed trolleys towards the baggage car to collect packages, suitcases, and mail. “Ten minutes for Amherst, Moncton, Quebec, and Montreal!” shouted the conductors. “Change trains for Sydney on track four, connecting with Pictou, New Glasgow, Antigonish, and Glace Bay!”
Eva MacQueen saw the tall naval officer emerge and step onto the sunny platform. The cap shaded his face, and he had a Burberry slung over one shoulder. She raised an arm and waved for attention. He saw her, and his face broke into a wide grin. They always seemed to be walking towards one another…or walking away. He wondered if he loved his mother—or if he was in love with her. He didn’t dare to ponder the point.
“Let me look at you,” said his mother after they had embraced. “That is certainly better than that dreadful outfit you had in the army! Patrick, it’s been almost two years!”
They waited by the baggage room until his things were delivered. “All ab-o-o-o-o-ard,” intoned the conductors. Patrick had a wooden sea chest with brass corners and his name painted on it, and a canvas gunnysack tied with a cord at one end.
“That’s it?” asked his mother. “You’re getting very Spartan.”
This was wheeled to the back of the black Buick, and MacQueen over-tipped the baggage boy a quarter. He opened the right-hand door for his mother then climbed into the driver’s seat. Four children stood on the platform in front of the car—and one waved.
“Who are they?” asked Patrick as he backed onto the street.
“I don’t know,” answered Eva MacQueen. “It’s been such a long time. Slim Cocker bounced somebody and got me a seat on the clipper from Lisbon. I put our things on a ship but I haven’t heard anything. It worries me.….”
“All of your Chinese furniture?” They drove down Prince Street, under the high arch of elm trees.
“I’m afraid so,” answered his mother, with a faint sigh. She had removed her hat and her brown hair blew across her face. “Will this war ever end?”
Almost automatically, Patrick turned into the cemetery off Robie Street, just outside of Truro and on the way towards Rosemere. They drove down a narrow road towards a small crossroad, where a pine tree had been planted following his little sister’s death. It was a family plot, and looked past a large crucifix of Christ, towards the marshlands at the head of the Bay of Fundy. The small stone had been selected by his father and featured a kneeling angel with a little spray of Easter lilies at the base. Fleur-de-lis, thought Patrick.
They stepped out of the long black car and held hands above the buried corpse of the one they had both loved the most.
“I took her portrait under my arm on the plane,” said Eva MacQueen. “At least that is still with us.”
Patrick had once tried to write a poem about this headstone.
It’s a windswept stone that signifies
To prying eyes
That once you were alive…
That was as far as he ever got.
As yet the only other stone in the plot was that of his aunt’s war-hero husband. It stated that he had been decorated at Buckingham Palace in 1918. He had rammed a German submarine, then a German submarine had torpedoed him. He had died of the flu in 1919 and had left no descendants.
The copper-haired little girl never had a chance to have descendants either. The priest had comforted his mother by saying that she was now the mother of an angel.
Patrick hoped he was right.
64
The three corvettes floated in the middle of Pictou Harbour like toys in a bathtub. Sun shimmered off the water’s surface and evergreen trees grew thickly to the shoreline on the other side. Two church spires rose into the air, and a large mansion sat on a point of land overlooking the water. Patrick and his mother viewed this scene from the cab of a half-ton Dodge truck, which he had parked on a rise. “Rosemere Farm” was painted in yellow on the blue doors of the truck, and his gear was stowed in the back. His mother would drive it back over the forty miles of gravel road to Truro.
“They look awfully tiny,” said Eva MacQueen, recalling Admiral Drax and the HMS Norfolk. “Surely you could have done better than that?”
Patrick laughed and offered her a Lucky Strike. He lit her cigarette with a cupped match, then his own. “I’d have never got out of Halifax if Captain Bayard hadn’t pulled a switch,” said Patrick. It was Monday morning and the family weekend was behind them. Eva MacQueen was seeing her son off to the war.
They drove down Water Street of Pictou, with its old stone Scot buildings, and across a railway track. FERGUSON INDUSTRIES LIMITED was painted in white on a large brick building and the steeply gabled railway station overlooked the harbour. Patrick stopped at a guardhouse and asked for directions.
“The duty boat docks by those steps, sir,” said the commissionaire. “Dump your stuff there and the matelots will look after it for you. It’s a great day.” He looked at Eva MacQueen and touched the peak of his cap.
The time had come for them to part again. “Don’t hang around, mother,” he said quietly as he swung the truck to the landing. “Just move over, shift the gears, and drive off.”
“Saying goodbye to sailors comes naturally to me,” said Eva MacQueen. Patrick climbed onto the wharf and his mother moved over behind the steering wheel. They smiled at one another in a tight-lipped sort of way. He kissed her hand and she murmured, “Patrick.” Then she shifted the gears and drove through the gate. He stood beside his small pile of gear and watched the truck disappear. He blinked and realized his surroundings, as well as his new reality.
“Are you for the Fleur-de-Lis, sir?”
The harbour craft had coasted to the foot of the steps. One rating was crouched on the bow holding the painter, and another stood behind the engine cowling, spinning a small brass wheel. A small boy seemed to materialize and caught the rope.
“Yes,” answered Patrick. “Can we set this stuff aboard?” The sailors had his gear stowed in a moment, then steadied the officer as he gingerly stepped aboard. Every harbour smells the same. It’s that combination of fish, fuel oil, seaweed, and salt. The water was calm and the ships swung idly at anchor while the screaming seagulls soared and plunged against the pale northern sky. The helmsman reversed engines and Patrick caught a whiff of exhaust fumes. The boy cast off the lines and they swung around to head for the ships. They were painted in pastel blue, green, and white, and in the pattern of the Western Approaches. Adventure was in the air, and there was no other course left. The dice had rolled and landed.
Eva MacQueen didn’t even look in the rearview mirror. Her ideas of men and their heroics were never recorded, but her memories of the Halifax Explosion were vivid. Her technique for coping with any disaster was to turn it into a party as soon as possible. Sometimes she felt as though she were dancing with death himself; if she was, she would pass him a cocktail.
65
The Royal Canadian Navy’s self-designated “Destroyer Flotilla” considered themselves elite, and no career officers served on corvettes or minesweepers. These destroyer officers unbuttoned the top button of their jackets as a symbol, and they regarded the other officers as a necessary pain in the neck. It might have been inevitable that the others responded by flouting their differ
ences. Some men sported gold earrings in one ear, like corsairs. They painted flamboyant (and sometimes tasteless) cartoons on their gun shields. They accented toughness, which was good—at the expense of discipline, which was not so good. They were individualists in a war that demanded more and more coordination. They exasperated the Royal Navy and upset the Americans. Without them, the Battle of the Atlantic would have been lost, but they posed serious problems to the new commander in chief.
This, then, was the world into which Patrick MacQueen was now stepping. At headquarters in Halifax, the road ahead had been paved with British accents and Royal Naval attitudes. Patrick already had what they termed a “mid-Atlantic” accent, and he had learned to tuck his handkerchief up his sleeve. The captain waiting for him had an American naval sword hanging on the bulkhead of his cabin, sported a red beard, and intended to add to his ship’s laurels by winning the war single-handedly.
Destiny must have her little laughs. They were two proud men of differing age and rank, sharing the same goal, but with very different ideas about how to achieve it. MacQueen had been schooled in the tradition that the crown covers everything; the captain’s restless faith in the frontier knew no bounds, and he was a true revolutionary of the Yankee pattern.
On the gun shield of this ship of such noble name, much to the irreverent delight of the captain, was painted the symbol of Donald Duck. That was the first blow to offend young MacQueen’s feudal sensibilities. This captain was also a sensitive and highly strung man who wrote lyrically about the battles in which he had engaged.
Patrick MacQueen was escorted to the captain’s cabin by a relieved and chattering duty officer of his own age. This ship’s company had been gradually assembled all the way from Galveston to Pictou, and it was now finally complete. MacQueen had properly saluted the quarterdeck, and his duffle bag was being stowed in a small cabin that he would share with the duty officer, Sub-lieutenant Rockwood.
The captain was hunched over a small table facing the door and flanked by a willowy officer wearing the uniform of a lieutenant RCNVR with the wavy stripes. Sunlight filtered through a porthole, or scuttle, above the captain’s head and reflected off his thinning reddish hair. One hand was tugging at the point of his short beard, and he seemed to be emitting short barks from a wide but unsmiling mouth. The rationing of the ship was being completed, and there was a barge being unloaded on the starboard side.
“Sub-lieutenant MacQueen, sir,” said the duty officer. He left and closed the door.
The captain raised his haggard face, and the other officer diverted his eyes with what seemed to be a pout. They saw before them a spruce and well-proportioned young man with refined features and dark brown hair. MacQueen’s good looks had never been an asset; they had only caused him trouble.
“Welcome aboard, MacQueen,” said the captain. His smile was engaging, but he had a cadaverous face, and his eyes were piercing. He nervously offered his hand. “This is our number one, Lieutenant Broadly,” he said. Number one was the term for the executive officer or second-in-command. Lieutenant Broadly smiled vaguely, glanced up and down at MacQueen’s well-pressed uniform, then looked out of the porthole. The cabin was obsessively neat, and the Annapolis sword was suspended over the captain’s head.
This man is intelligent, thought MacQueen. Not a universal virtue in naval officers…but something behind those eyes is off the rails.
“I am honoured to be here, sir,” said MacQueen. The two other officers exchanged the barest of glances. That was hardly corvette talk, but Patrick was not a chameleon.
“I see,” said the captain, emitting another little series of staccato barks that Patrick decided must be laughter. “Well, we’re pleased to have you. Workups start tomorrow and we drive ’em hard. In seven days one of your headquarters blokes will come here to put us through the paces, then we’re off. I want a good performance.”
“I’ll do my best, sir,” said Patrick MacQueen.
“Do better than that,” said the captain. He barked again, like the sound of a lonely Spandau machine gun through the mists of the Argonne Forest. This man has a death wish, thought Patrick in an instant of revelation. He was familiar with the symptoms, sharing them to a lesser degree.
The thought of death did not dismay Patrick, but sometimes he worried a little about the preliminaries.
66
It is not part of the British tradition to humiliate junior officers at the start of an assignment. This arbitrary type of practice might jolt them into reality, but the price that is paid is too high. In training schools or academies, where they are with their peers, such treatment is forgivable. In front of the men they are supposed to command it is not.
The ship’s captain was only a senior lieutenant by rank. He studied MacQueen’s documents and decided that this lad should be taken down a notch or two. The pace for working up was hectic in order to get the ship’s company working as a team, or as groups of interlocking teams. There were gunnery ratings, signals ratings, engine room personnel, radar specialists, the sick berth attendant, cooks, and stewards—every ship was self-contained. Then they had to coordinate with the other ships and conduct joint exercises in the Northumberland Straits. Each ship contained approximately ninety men, including six officers, a number of petty officers, and other ranks. The POs were quartered near the stern, the seamen and stokers in the fo’c’sle at the bow, and the officers’ tiny cabins clustered around the wardroom in the middle. HMCS Fleur-de-Lis had been fitted with new electronic gear in Galveston, Texas, and the captain was very proud of it.
There was one rating doing additional punishment duty for insubordination. This man was placed in charge of the new gunnery officer, and Patrick and he were given three pots of paint. These were to mark and identify every terminal, switch, fuse, and junction of the new wiring system throughout the vessel, which the Americans had neglected to do.
“I like my officers to know every rivet, bolt, and nut of their ship,” explained the captain. “This is a great opportunity for you to learn.”
There is no point belabouring the difficulties of this job during a hot summer, when activity was busiest and the time for rest minimal. The secret, wet, and dark chambers of any ship are almost inaccessible in places, and to wield a paintbrush by dim flashlight is virtually impossible. Naturally, it got into their hair and splashed onto everything. This went on for the entire week; the captain thought it was a good joke. Even at meals in the wardroom, he would emit those startling bursts of jumpy laughs as MacQueen ground his teeth and the other officers ignored it or felt mildly ashamed.
Of course, the crew saw it all. Most of them thought that MacQueen’s companion had been unjustly punished in the first place, and this merely served to alienate the other officers and create some sympathy for Patrick MacQueen. He never mentioned once that he had served in the ranks in the army, but he knew what they were thinking, and that dismayed him even more. Why are people willing to sacrifice so much just to nail me to the wall? he wondered.
The Englishmen and the Canadians got along tolerably better with each other than with their US counterparts. Patrick became friendly with one of the watch officers, whom he would see again in St. John’s, and in Derry. His own companions tended to treat him with circumspection, until the captain’s motives were clear. That is the usual path of human conduct, and it didn’t surprise MacQueen.
The first lieutenant was from Montreal, or possibly Westmount. The navigation officer was very tall, with sloping shoulders and a wide empty smile—MacQueen would stand watch on the bridge with him for the graveyard watch, from midnight to four A.M., then from noon to four P.M., or “eight bells”. The signals officer was a young veteran from western Canada with premature circles under his eyes and a face for the girls; he was also a sub-lieutenant. Then there was diminutive Sub-lieutenant Rockwood, who supervised the radar and asdic. The coxswain was a Royal Naval petty officer, the chief engineer was a Scot-Canadian petty officer, and the gunner’s mate was a leading seam
an from Ontario. Patrick MacQueen was assigned the depth charges, the four-inch gun, two Oerlikon cannons, and a pom-pom anti-aircraft gun, plus other assorted small arms. By now he also knew something about the wiring in the ship.
The overall length of a Flower-class corvette was approximately two hundred feet long, with a thirty-foot beam and a moulded depth of seventeen feet. They were originally designed as whalers, then converted into coastal escorts, and finally—in desperation—flung out into the north Atlantic. They stayed afloat and could be built in the Great Lakes; so, along with other modified models, they became the workhorses of the navy.
Patrick was told one of the corvettes had sailed out of the harbour and never came back. It was Flower-class, too, but from the Royal Navy, and named after a potted plant.
The commander from headquarters finally arrived. He stomped about, banging his cane on the metal decks and asking some pretty absurd questions of the seamen. He drank a pink gin in the wardroom, surrounded by the officers in their best uniforms. The White Ensigns fluttered bravely as the two little ships sailed out of the harbour for exercises, and the commander stood on the bridge of the Fleur-de-Lis looking like Lord Nelson after a seven-course dinner.
They dropped a depth charge in shallow water, which broke the crockery, and Sub-lieutenant MacQueen was cast adrift in the ship’s boat with the cook, the steward, and the sick-berth attendant to rescue “survivors”. No one but MacQueen knew how to row a boat. Fortunately, his gunner’s mate jumped in as they were being lowered, for which the captain never forgave him, but he saved the day: MacQueen’s hands were raw from washing them in kerosene to remove the paint.
Back in the harbour, the commander ordered the four-inch gun to be elevated. He stood under this on the gun platform to deliver an inspiring address to the crew. He affected an English accent. “When the troops were taken off the beaches of Dunkirk,” he said, “they left their equipment behind. Except for the guards. The guards even came off the beaches with their boots polished!”
The Broken Sword Page 28