Scotty searched back in his crowded mind and suddenly the memory of the tearful little WAAF came to him.
‘Oh, good God, sir, that! Yes.’ He laughed shortly and nervously. ‘That! That was nothing. Heavens, I told her nothing at all. Nothing at all.’
‘You told her enough for her to feel quite certain about it.’
.‘The stupid child.’ Scotty laughed again, trying to disengage his eyes from Taudevin’s. ‘Silly little thing. Funny little girl. That’s a fine thing to say, isn’t it? Just the sort of thing to make me look a fool.’
Taudevin stared at him. ‘As you know,’ he went on, ‘quite apart from the fact that you’d no right to tell her what was going on in the Operations Room, nothing was known about Harding’s crew at that time. Nothing is known yet, in fact. We have no idea that they’re even alive.’
‘Really, sir?’ Scotty was beginning to realize by this time that he was in a spot and he was growing cautious. He tried to distract Taudevin with sympathy. ‘That’s tough for them, isn’t it?’
‘It was tough for that girl.’ Taudevin’s voice rose slightly.
‘But, Heavens, sir!’ Scotty gestured vaguely as he realized he had not moved Taudevin from his intentions. ‘I told her nothing. If she gets it into her stupid little head that I say things when I don’t, surely that’s her fault. I was only trying to stop her being too upset. That’s the worst of WAAFS. Women and war don’t mix. Too much emotion.’ He was talking quickly to stave off Taudevin’s anger, saying anything that came into his head. Taudevin cut him short.
‘There’s another point I learned in the Sick Quarters, too, Scotty. I gather the story about Mackay taking the petrol is all over the camp.’
‘Good God, sir, no!’ Scotty gasped with a nicely simulated horror – the horror of a silly old lady, Taudevin thought angrily. ‘Those damn Station Police have been talking, I suppose!’
‘I have gathered, rather, that you told the Met. Officer and one of his forecasters overheard the conversation. Probably you even told someone else.’
‘Good Lord, sir!’ Scotty shook his head vehemently.
‘I wouldn’t do that. You know I wouldn’t. You told me not to.’
‘Exactly. I told you not to.’
‘Those damn people in my office,’ Scotty snapped, his eyes flickering to hide his unhappiness. ‘That Sergeant Starr. I’ve been suspecting for a long time he’s been watching all the stuff that goes across my desk. I believe he reads everything that comes through.’
‘Sergeant Starr was doing that job before you came, Scotty, and without complaint.’
Scotty took a new line and plunged into a diatribe on the lack of support he received. ‘I don’t know what it is,’ he mourned. ‘I seem to get no damn loyalty from my subordinates. If he could do the job for someone else, why the devil can’t he for me—?’
‘One thing more, Scotty.’ Taudevin reached over his desk and tossed a sheet of paper towards the Administration Officer. ‘This.’
Scotty picked it up and stared at it. Then his jaw dropped again. He flashed a quick glance at Taudevin and his face lost what was left of its jauntiness and became sagging and old.
‘It’s a charge sheet, sir,’ he gasped. ‘Made out against Mackay.’
‘Exactly.’
‘But…’ Scotty gaped for a moment, his face reddening with his sense of guilt. ‘We’ll have to go through with it now. The Special Investigation people won’t let up on it – not with this made out. They’re bound to have seen it. Our own police might let up but not those people. How the devil did they get it?’ He searched frantically in his mind for an explanation.
‘You dropped the file on the Station Warrant Officer’s desk with some other papers,’ Taudevin pointed out. ‘You asked his clerk to see that they were dealt with. Naturally, the man passed it on to the police who made out the charge sheet.’
‘I dropped – I dropped it on his desk?’
‘Yesterday. Immediately after you’d left my office at lunch-time. Unfortunately, the S.W.O. was out of the room at the time or it might have been stopped.’
Scotty passed his hand underneath his moustache in an empty gesture of stroking it. He felt suddenly weary and sick as he remembered the missing file on Mackay and how he had puzzled over finding the folder about the accommodation in the hutted camp among the disorder on his desk after tea. He knew now what had happened. He had dropped the wrong file in the Station Warrant Officer’s office.
‘I particularly asked you to sit on that, Scotty,’ Taudevin was saying.
‘Yes, sir.’ Scotty sought a way out. ‘I can’t think how it happened. I’ll have to clobber Starr about it. He never has a due about what he’s doing. I’ll have to tear him a tremendous strip—’
‘For God’s sake, Scotty,’ Taudevin snapped, irritated by Scotty’s desperate dodging, ‘stop talking that infantile jargon to me.’
Scotty gulped.
‘Sir, it seems I can rely on nobody round here to do their jobs properly – neither Starr nor the Station Warrant Officer nor anyone. Those damn police should have known not to proceed with this thing—’
‘Why? You asked the S.W.O.’s people to deal with it and they did so as they imagined you would want them to. And so did the police.’
‘Sir, you can’t expect anyone in this place to use any initiative at all. It seems—’
‘It seems to me they used their initiative remarkably well. Fortunately the Station Warrant Officer had enough sense to realize I’d be interested in this and he saw that I got a copy of it.’
‘Yessir.’ Scotty was floundering. ‘But it strikes me there are times when they might check back on me first before taking action. It seems they’re only waiting for the opportunity to put one across me. I seem to get damn little loyalty anywhere.’
‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Scotty, shut up about your infernal loyalty! You’ve had more loyalty than you realize. The S.W.O.’s been covering up for you for ages.’
‘Sir—’
‘Nobody’s to blame for this foul-up except yourself. You handed the wrong file over, I suppose. I expect you muddled the lot up in your office.’
Scotty stood by the table, holding his sheaves of notes, his references to the bus service and the A.O.C.’s inspection, his figure crumpled, all the bounce gone out of him. Taudevin tossed in his direction Mackay’s application for a commission.
‘What about this?’ he said. ‘I can’t let that go through in the circumstances. He’s earned it. He deserves it. But it can’t go through now because of this charge – something I could have cleared up myself without having to make a charge of it. He’s not a dishonest man. He’s just been a fool. Now this has come to nothing.’
‘Sir – if only people…’ Scotty swallowed, and his complaint died unborn. He swallowed again, his face twisted and broken, then he straightened up. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said stiffly. ‘I seem to have made rather a cock of things.’
Taudevin looked over his shoulder at him from the window, touched by Scotty’s taut, pompous voice. Scotty seemed to have aged ten years suddenly, and Taudevin, a sensitive man, was immediately sorry for him. After all, he found himself thinking, Scotty was not a young man. Perhaps, he thought, when he was too old for the job some other war might break out and some whippersnapper might tell him to shut up.
He hardened his heart again. Scotty would have to go. There was no room for him on an operational aerodrome where the crews had the right to expect the best men to be looking after their interests. He would have to go to a recruit-training depot where they’d respect his rank and his medals and his age and not notice what an old duffer he was. It could be arranged without any loss of dignity.
Taudevin was about to continue speaking when there was a knock on the door and the Operations Room sergeant came in, holding out a message form to him.
‘The Squadron Leader thought you’d like to see this, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s from the launch.’
Taudevin took the p
aper and Scotty stepped back a pace, suddenly forgotten and thankful for the break.
Dinghy sighted, Taudevin read. Survivors on board. Position…
Taudevin’s face lifted for a moment and Scotty was relieved to see the anger disappear. Then Taudevin seemed to clutch at his gaiety and his brows came down again.
‘Thank you, Sergeant. Tell the Squadron Leader I’ll be up to see him in a moment.’
When the sergeant had disappeared Taudevin turned again to Scotty.
‘Since we can’t withdraw this charge, Scotty,’ he said more gently, ‘we must at least do everything we can to see that someone else does. I’ll deal with Mackay myself later. I don’t want to lose him from flying. I want him to finish his tour of operations and I want him to have his commission. He might be of great value when the war moves to the Pacific. Get over to Felwell and see the Group Captain there. Tell him I want to borrow that K.G. chap, Ryder, he has on his staff. I must have him for Mackay. I want him to look into this charge and the facts that go with it and see if he can’t find a loophole. If Mackay comes ashore injured, there must be no chance of any charge sticking. He’s had enough.’
He walked to the window, his raw hands thrust into his pockets. He was itching to go upstairs to the Operations Room but, he forced himself to conduct his business first. ‘If necessary, we must arrange for a posting here for Ryder for a while. They can have him back immediately afterwards. But we’ve got to put up a show for Mackay, Get off now, Scotty. If there’s any difficulty, phone me, but I think the Group Captain there will play bail. For God’s sake, don’t slip up this time.’
‘No, sir, I’ll not slip up.’
‘I’ll get in touch with them myself as soon as I’ve sorted out this business of Harding.’
Scotty turned away thankfully, determined to do his utmost, but at the door he crashed into the Controller as he entered.
Jones thrust him aside, almost rudely.
‘Sir,’ he said to Taudevin, ignoring Scotty. ‘This message followed the other from the launch.’
Taudevin glanced quickly at Jones and took the message form.
Dinghy inside sand-bank. Shore guns silent. I am going in… he read.
‘There the message ended abruptly,’ Jones pointed out quietly. ‘There’s now wireless silence. It was never finished and we can’t get in touch with them. They’ve gone off the air completely. Something must have happened to them.’
II
The dawn had come wet and cold and grey. The waves changed gradually from black to navy blue and eventually to a cold green-grey. First the white crests slowly became visible and then later the veinous streaks that marked the wind as it whipped off the crests. The water in the bottom of the dinghy changed from black to grey-yellow, a dirty colour that seemed symbolic of their position.
The sky was still covered from one horizon to the other by the close ridges of cloud, hard-packed together like old snow, and very low down. The rain fell in squally patches now, too, in a steeply slanting drizzle that blew into their faces, wetting them through and blurring the distance. It was difficult to tell the direction of the wind without looking at the compass, as the dinghy was constantly being whirled round in circles.
Waltby felt drunk with cold – as though he had been cold all his life. He felt as though he could never remember ever having been in any other State but this cheerless misery. He had begun to hate the sea with all the hate he possessed.
Whatever happened, he felt he could never look with kindly eyes on it again, not even on its gentlest day, no matter where he saw it – not even if it were the peacock blue of Cornwall or the rich ultramarine of the Mediterranean. Always he would remember it only as this ugly green-grey colour, turbulent, threatening, vast and utterly empty.
His arms ached with baling and his mind was stiff with worry and – away at the back – fear. all the time there was only this rhythmic surge of the waves, the slow climbing up the crests, the lurch over the top and the sickening slide down the other side to the valley where the water sloshed over them in icy jets.
He had never fallen asleep again throughout the long night. When his mind had cried out for rest and the others, even the determined Mackay, had fallen for a few minutes into a stupefied, frozen doze, he had remained awake, his spur the brief case between his legs which he must hand over complete with all its secrets. After that one horrifying slip away into nothingness he had sat rigidly upright, holding the case. Mackay had stayed awake, laboriously rubbing Harding’s hands and arms, holding him clamped tight against his own great frame for warmth, until weariness and the frosty cold had carried him off into a sleep that was full of twitchings and protesting grunts.
As his mind came back to the present Waltby realized with a start that the other two were also awake and staring at him. Their faces were pinched and that sure hope that had been in their eyes the previous day had disappeared. Their eyes were sunken and dark-ringed with weariness, and their gauntness was accentuated by their beards; they looked as though the cold had eaten away the flesh from under their skin. Harding’s lips were white now and Waltby well knew he couldn’t last much longer, whatever his injuries might be – not without warmth to combat the shock.
He wanted to say something to cheer the others up, something to bring back the sparkle to Ponsettia’s eyes, even the anger to Mackay’s, but there seemed nothing intelligent he could say and, without speaking, they divided the chocolate and the biscuit with stiff fingers that wouldn’t move properly.
As he chewed, Waltby thought of food with what amounted to nausea as the juices welled up in his mouth, almost choking him, and the lurch of the dinghy stressed the emptiness of his stomach.
‘Well,’ Ponsettia said at last, ‘if that’s breakfast, we’ve had it. How long do you reckon we’ll last out on that in this weather?’
Waltby immediately remembered Harding’s words soon after they had taken to the dinghy – days ago now, it seemed. ‘Exposure’s as great a danger as running out of food,’ he had said, and Waltby became sickeningly aware how wet they all were.
He found he could not be honest, however, as he replied.
‘Days, I imagine,’ he said, forcing the lightness into his voice in an effort to hide the listless indifference that he knew he must keep at bay. ‘One chap I heard of sailed for days in a one-man dinghy. No reason why we shouldn’t.’
Ponsettia smiled wryly and disbelievingly. The zest and the humour had gone out of him, as though he were tiring of the struggle with the cold. Mackay sat rigidly upright, one arm still round Harding, with the grimness, the unsmiling, humourless grimness, the unbending determination and the one-track faith of a Scottish covenanter. For all his eager energy of the previous day, he seemed during the night to have learned patience.
‘Brandy seems to be indicated,’ Waltby said and they all had a sip and forced a little between Harding’s teeth.
‘I once read you couldn’t get rheumatism from sea water,’ Ponsettia said wearily. ‘But the guy who wrote the book probably didn’t include sitting up to your waist in it for twenty-four hours at this time of the year.’
‘Think we’ll be picked up, Syd?’ he asked after a while during which they all sat in silence, baling or slapping their chests or legs with an automatic hopelessness.
‘Yes,’ Waltby said, realizing what an appalling lie he was telling. By this time he no longer felt there was any likelihood of rescue. He felt they would inevitably succumb to the cold – first Harding, then the others, probably Ponsettia next, then Mackay. He put himself last without thinking, taking as his source of strength his determination to deliver the briefcase, but he knew that Harding at least could not survive another night.
‘Hope you’re right,’ Ponsettia said. He was apathetic and slow-speaking now. ‘I had a nightmare last night – I dreamed we were cast up on the shore and, just when we were looking forward to being warm again, it turned out to be the North Pole and we were colder than ever. Hey!’
He sat
up sharply as he finished speaking, throwing off his lethargy so that the others involuntarily sat up, too, spurred by his excitement.
‘The shore,’ Ponsettia continued, his voice higher. ‘Remember? The E-boats. I’d forgotten ’em. We must be within reach of land. We ought to be able to see it by now, I guess. Keep your eyes skinned. Let’s have a look at the compass.’
They all crouched over the swinging needle, Waltby miserably conscious of Harding’s pale, silent face upturned away from them against Mackay’s shoulder.
‘Wind’s still blowing from the north,’ Ponsettia pointed out. ‘That sets the Jerry coast over there, in the east.’
He pointed and their eyes followed his outstretched hand.
They waited a long time in weary patience for the rain to slacken off a little. It was as though the squall that dragged their hair in limp strands over their eyes drew a curtain between them and the distance to shut off their view as effectively as if it had been solid.
‘It’s slackening,’ Ponsettia said after a while and they could see the white crests in the distance appearing again, blurred at first then gradually becoming more distinct. Then, as a wave lifted them, they all strained upwards, their tired eyes peering out of their salt-stiffened faces.
They saw it suddenly, just a long low shadow, blue-grey through the rain across the white-flecked metallic water, lifting upwards with them with slow deliberation above the intervening waves.
‘There!’ Mackay said sharply, flinging out an arm. ‘I saw it! There!’
As the rain stopped briefly they could see flat-fronted houses – even the blank windows which suggested they must be unoccupied by civilians – and the taller bulk of the trees behind. There was a long sea-wall running along the shore with, here and there, the low humps of what appeared to be pill-boxes and sandbagged gun-positions. They could even see the yellow line of beach below the dunes with posts sticking upright out of it as though they held barbed wire.
‘Houses,’ Ponsettia breathed. ‘Real houses! Jesus, don’t they look warm?’
The Sea Shall Not Have Them Page 21