Armada

by Steven Wilson

  “Jordan,” Dickie said softly. “She knew. She loved you. She’d want you to carry on. Sometimes … sometimes there aren’t any words.”

  “Yeah,” Cole said. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. Sometimes all you can do is put one foot in front of the other and keep on.”

  Dickie nodded.

  Cole straightened. “Time to shove off.” He swung aboard the PT boat and looked down at Dickie. “There wasn’t enough time, Dickie.”

  “There never is, my friend,” Dickie said. “God bless you.”

  Cole turned and spun his finger in the air. “Crank her up, Randy.”

  Dickie watched as the crew cast off lines and the boat slowly backed away from the dock. He saw Cole make his way to the cockpit and watched as he took up station to one side, away from everyone. He would make himself alone, Dickie knew. He would seal himself up inside and never emerge again. He was a child, Dickie realized, as Rebecca said he was. He had never dared let himself grow emotionally for fear of being hurt. Once deeply hurt by someone he would only come slowly to trust again. The pain was too great, otherwise. A fragile man, Dickie reckoned, who found it safer to live in a cold world than seek the warmth of human companionship.

  The PT boat moved slowly into the harbor and, joined by several others, headed out into the Channel. Dickie waited until they were nearly out of sight and then turned and walked back to his car.

  Waldvogel nodded slowly as he listened to Oberleutnant zur zee Waymann. The young man’s account was delivered slowly, a calm detailed explanation of what had happened in the Channel. It seemed totally out of place in the pandemonium that had broken out in the hospital. Orderlies and nurses rushed about, trying to gather up those patients that were ambulatory, stuffing records in boxes, carefully packing the medicines that were left. Men were shouting orders down corridors that had once been avenues of faint whispers. It was offensive to Waldvogel, this lack of order and organization.

  The Allies added to it with the constant bombardment of heavy artillery and the deep rumble of exploding bombs.

  Waldvogel’s bandage had been removed, and now all that remained of his injury was a jagged line of stitches along his skull and an occasional headache.

  “We tried to get past them,” Waymann continued. “The boats performed beautifully, but we lost Fregattenkapitan Reubold.”

  “Lost?” Waldvogel said.

  “Captured,” Waymann said. “Or dead. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I would have told you before but I couldn’t get away. There was simply too much going on, you understand. The invasion.”

  “The others? The other boats?”

  “We lost two, then. One was strafed and sunk on the way back. In the past three weeks,” Waymann continued—his face was drawn and his sunken eyes were those of a man who had seen far too much—“we lost three in combat. All of them are gone.”

  “Oh,” Waldvogel said. “Then it’s over.”

  Waymann shook his head. “They want you back in Germany. You and me. I received a dispatch this morning. They’re sending some of us out. A few of us.”

  “But why?” Waldvogel said.

  “Your boats, I think,” Waymann said. “They’re important to the war effort. You’re important, Korvettenkapitan. You must return to Germany.”

  Waldvogel watched as a nurse rushed by, carrying a bundle of uniforms, crying. It was collapsing—the city would fall soon as the beaches fell, and the heights and villages beyond them.

  “It’s only a matter of time,” Treinies had cried as the fighting neared the city and the crash of the cannons grew louder. “The Fuehrer won’t abandon us. Don’t you see that? Can’t you understand? It’s only a matter of time until he sends reenforcements and we push those Jews back into the sea.” He said it as if he intended to pick up a rifle and lead the assault—as if he were merely waiting on the phalanx of storm troopers that he knew would arrive soon. “Only a matter of time,” the surgeon insisted, but it was a desperate cry. Waldvogel realized that Treinies was a prophet.

  It was only a matter of time before Cherbourg fell, before France was carried away in the Allied onslaught, before they arrived at the steps of Berlin demanding entry.

  He had seen it in the sky—thousands of bombers that flew overhead, uncontested by German fighters. He had heard about the invasion fleet: thousands of ships that disgorged hundreds of thousands of men and then returned with more.

  I am a scientist, Waldvogel told himself when the shock of the invasion and the panic that surrounded him had worn off. I gather facts and analyze them and from that information, present my conclusion. It is indeed only a matter of time.

  “We are to go down to Lorient,” Waymann said. “Winter has a U-boat waiting to take us to Germany. We don’t have much time, Korvettenkapitan.”

  “Yes,” Waldvogel said, broken from his thoughts. “Of course.” He hesitated a moment and then said: “Tell me, young man, were they fine boats? Were they as wonderful as I had hoped?”

  Waymann looked shocked and then gave the question some thought. After a moment he smiled. “Korvettenkapitan. They were such wonderful boats.”

  Topper heard first, at the pub of course. Because any news worth knowing found a home at the pub. Then he rushed home to tell Beatrice, who did her best to hide her delight and barely had time to snatch her hat and coat while Topper ushered her hurriedly out the door.

  “You go on now, Bea. I’ll see to everything here,” he had said.

  Beatrice hurried down the street, hopped on the Ellsworth Street tram, and silently begged it to go faster. It was crowded with riders—seamen, men and women, mothers with crying children, old men who were as patient as Job—knowing that the tram would arrive where it was intended to arrive in a timely manner.

  She tried to keep her mind busy by studying the passengers, pretending they had come for a sitting and she was going to paint their portraits. She examined eyes, noses, chins, and the way that hair curled around ears, eyebrows bristled, eyebrows curved gracefully, nostrils flared as their owners breathed. She studied everything. How coats hung off bony shoulders, how fabric fell over breasts, how pleats formed in slacks and dresses, and all the time the tram seemed to be getting slower and slower.

  Beatrice felt that she would scream with frustration until she saw the gates of the naval yard, and then her heart raced.

  Before the tram came to a complete stop she was on the ground and running, trying to shoulder her way past others moving through the gates. Two bored sailors stood, one on either side of the gate, watching with amusement as the throng made its way into the yard.

  It was unseemly, Beatrice thought, all of this pushing and shoving, and much more so because she had every reason to be there and they didn’t. Then she realized with shame that the others were just like her; their loved ones were coming back from war. She forced herself to a casual walk, trying to catch her breath. Around her she heard people talking and laughing. It was celebration—homecoming. She caught bits of conversations. Bill will be so proud of little Andy. Do you think he’ll recognize me, Floe? Well, first I’m going to buy the boy a pint because he’s earned it.

  She stopped when she saw Firedancer and had to catch her breath. The boat was blackened in spots, and pieces of metal hung away from her superstructure. There was more rust covering her and Beatrice couldn’t be sure but she thought Firedancer was listing. She was a terrible sight, all right, all bruised and battered. And if ever there was a ship that looked worn out, it was Firedancer.

  She saw men filing down the gangplank and stood patiently, knowing that it would be best if she kept her emotions in check. She watched with envy as women and men held each other closely and men scooped up children and held them close. There was a swirl of humanity on the dock, sailors and civilians, all in a common ritual of sailors coming home once more. She looked for Hardy, stepping first to one side and then the other, her hands clasped in front of her, fingers so tightly intertwined that she realized they hurt.

  Beatric
e saw him at last. Captain George Hardy, moving slowly through the crowd, stopping to remark on a child, being introduced to a wife, tipping his hat to an elderly lady. She saw that he had his arm in a sling and for a moment was overwhelmed by panic, but that quickly subsided. She would take no notice of it, she decided; George wouldn’t approve.

  Finally he broke free and as he moved toward her she removed her hat and carefully patted her hair into place.

  “Hello, old girl,” he said when he got to her. His voice was caring and surprisingly soft.

  “Hello, George,” she said, her mouth dry with anticipation. “You’ve hurt your arm,” she added, forgetting her earlier vow.

  He glanced at it. “Not much of a hurt. More an inconvenience, I’d say,” he looked back to her and smiled. “Nothing to worry about, my dear.”

  Beatrice looked past him. “Your poor ship. Firedancer looks as if she’s had a hard time of it.”

  Hardy followed her gaze. “That she has. We tangled with some E-boats and she took a few bricks all right. We lost a couple of the chaps. We were lucky though—we could have lost more.”

  “Are you home for a bit, then?” Beatrice said.

  “Yes,” Hardy said. “She needs tending to before we go out again, so she’ll go to the yard man for a spot of fixing up.”

  “Perhaps you’ll need that as well,” Beatrice said, gently touching his arm.

  “Old girl,” Hardy said, locking his good arm into her and turning her around, “I was thinking the very same thing.”

  They walked away, arm in arm, as Firedancer watched them go. The crowd that had gathered around her gangplank began to dissipate until all that remained were the few personnel of the duty crew. Firedancer was silent, still, resting quietly alongside her quay, waiting until she was led to dry dock—until the yard gang boarded her and began repairing the battle damage.

  She had gone out and had done what was expected of her in service to the King, but more important, she had returned the men who sailed aboard her to their families. She was no longer young, and there were faster, bigger, stronger vessels, that, when moored next to her, made her look shabby. But she was a fighter and would go where she was sent, and at the end of each encounter she would do what she had always done in the past—come home.

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  Copyright © 2007 Steven Wilson

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  ISBN: 978-0-7860-1822-2