The doctor grinned. ‘Sure?’
‘I’m all right, sir. Honest.’
‘O.K. Have it your own way. As soon as you’ve eaten, mind. You did a good job, son.’
As the doctor turned away with the sergeant Milliken’s proud heart was singing with pure joy. He had been to sea – and he knew suddenly he would be going again. He had been in action. He had fought the enemy. He had spoken sharply to an air commodore in the heat of battle. And, finally, he had been complimented for his part in it all. For all his youth, he was a man – now and for ever.
The boat crew stood about the deck in their oilskins, coiling ropes with a slowness that spoke of fatigue, their hair hanging over their eyes, their bodies slack and weary. Skinner emerged from the engine-room, his best uniform ruined, his date gone, his eyes red with strain. ‘Thank Christ that’s over,’ he murmured feelingly.
Then the boat began to empty. Ponsettia and Mackay appeared on deck, wrapped in blankets, helped by the station medical orderlies.
‘Canada,’ Mackay was saying as he hopped towards the iron ladder up the jetty, one arm in a sling, ‘I reckon you were right. They say the Skipper’s going to be O.K. He’ll be buying his greengroceries from my shop after all.’ ‘Sure, he will, you soft clot. If I didn’t have so far to come from River Falls, I would, too.’
Ponsettia saw Milliken and slapped his shoulder as he passed. ‘S’long, doc,’ he said warmly. ‘I thought the cow was going to turn over when she rolled that time as we turned away from the trawler. Jees-us, give me flying any day. I wouldn’t serve on these tubs for a fortune.’
Milliken smiled faintly and watched them as they were helped on to the jetty and towards the ambulance, incongruous among the uniforms in their survivors’ clothing. Then the Group Captain emerged with the other brass-hat and the Air Commodore from the dinghy who was looking more like a well-scrubbed tramp now, with the fatigue in his face and his civilian trousers and ill-fitting overcoat, his face dark with beard, and his hair awry in thin spikes on his head. He still clutched the water-blackened brief case in his hand.
‘Anyway, thank God you’re safe,’ Taudevin was saying. ‘Eve’s looking forward to seeing you. She’s waiting at home. We can send the brief case on, if you like, and you can get over it a bit before you need go.’
‘I’m all right,’ Waltby said. ‘I’ll be fine in a day or so. I’m glad Eve took it all right and didn’t knock herself up.’ Taudevin helped him up to the jetty, then turned towards Treherne and the crew of the boat, standing huddled together on the after-deck round the stretcher they’d lowered for Harding.
‘Good show, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Thank you all very much.’
Then he waved and disappeared along the jetty.
Milliken sat on the Carley float, too tired to stand up, letting the sergeant and the doctor and the others superintend the lifting of Harding to the jetty. Treherne and Botterill followed them to the ambulance in a little cortège.
Then, as he heard the ambulance door shut and the gears grind, he saw Slingsby in front of him with Robb. Slingsby was staring after Treherne. ‘You know,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if that Group Captain or the Air Commodore or somebody didn’t recommend the Lad for a gong. That’d shove Loxton’s nose out of joint with his lousy little Mention. Shore guns. Mast gone. Duff engines. Broken shoulder. No air cover. It was a good show, whichever way you look at it. It was worth a gong. Hell, what do they want for their money?’
Milliken was startled at the warmth in his tones. Then Slingsby turned round and seemed to see Milliken for the first time.
‘Fag, Milliken?’ he asked abruptly, and Milliken became acutely conscious of the fact that he had known his name all the time.
‘Thanks, Flight,’ he said, quite forgetting he was a non-smoker. The offer made him one with the rest of the crew. It made him one with all those sly, wily, courageous men who were old in the Service. He had become a veteran.
‘I hope you’re grateful to us all,’ Slingsby went on in his harsh voice as he offered a match. ‘You’ve made a pick-up. You’re one of God’s chosen few.’
Robb laughed. ‘Enjoy the trip?’ he asked.
Milliken coughed over his first drag at the cigarette. ‘I never thought we’d get back,’ he said honestly.
‘Get back?’ Slingsby was once more the tough, vulgar little martinet with the taut frame and the iron voice, and Milliken jumped instinctively. ‘Get back? God, after a pick-up like that I’d have swum under the bastard, if necessary, and held her up all the way home.’
Milliken grinned. ‘I’ll bet you would, Flight,’ he said, meaning every word.
Slingsby stared unsmilingly, weary for the first time. ‘All in a day’s work, son, all in a day’s work.’
His voice had lost its bark and Milliken felt no need to be humble before him any longer. Robb was grinning as they helped him up the iron ladder to the jetty, followed by the others. Tebbitt brought up the rear, in survivor’s clothing, his shoulders hunched, his face flabby and old-looking, and Milliken wondered what he was going to do with his worries.
Milliken’s legs were aching with every heavy-footed step he took, and he walked along the hollow, echoing piles towards the land aware only of hunger and the desire for sleep, which lay on him, warm and cloying and comforting, making him indifferent to the cold rain that drifted into his face and the breeze that plucked at his hair.
Behind him, across the width of the river, the beat of the weather swept out to sea and across the Channel, where it harried the Continent and there died.
Milliken plodded on, weary but tremendously uplifted by triumph and the sensation he suddenly and joyously knew he’d cause among the WAAFS in the cookhouse. He wanted to sing, but then he remembered Slingsby’s words, ‘All in a day’s work, son, all in a day’s work.’ He reached up, took off the neat blue side-hat he wore and, bashing it shapeless, shoved it cross-wise over his bandage and slouched after the others in a rolling piratical gait.
Next in The WWII Naval Thrillers:
Ride Out the Storm
The incredible account of the nine days which decided the Second World War
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First published in the United Kingdom in 1953 by Hurst & Blackett
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
57 Shepherds Lane
Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU
United Kingdom
Copyright © John Harris, 1953
The moral right of John Harris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788636803
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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The Sea Shall Not Have Them Page 25