He fell asleep for about half an hour, aroused when the train suddenly jerked into motion, as though jolted from illicit sleep itself. Clark swore with deep sincerity and rubbed his eyes. His mouth tasted foul, his eyes ground grittily in their sockets and, he cursed again, he had none of the consoling tasks he had come to rely upon to make this ghastly morning moment tolerable. When occupied on escorting convoys in the North Atlantic there had been a cup of kye to ease the misery, merchant ships to count up, signals from the escort leader to respond to, and sometimes a miserable schoolboy lookout to chastise for some real or imagined inattention. All he had that morning was the sticky chill of his cramped body, the rasp of the melton collar of his bridge coat on his stiff and sensitive neck, the disgusting taste of himself and the abrasive quality of his conjunctivae.
‘Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck…’ he growled, clasping himself for warmth and trying to rearrange his stiff legs and aching body into some more comfortable posture on the seat. But it was no good and, in the end, he gave up. He was saved by some selfless soul on Doncaster station who, even at that ungodly hour, had a trolley from which what passed for tea was available to the wretches travelling north that winter morning.
Clark descended to the platform, walking like a man whose joints had seized up.
‘Not much of a Christmas, is it, sir?’ a soldier remarked as he warmed his hands round the brown brew and sought some goodwill amongst his fellow travellers.
Clark shook his head, grasping his own mug and taking a sip. He did not feel like talking, but clearly the young soldier was of a different mind.
‘Going home on leave, sir?’
Clark shook his head. Home? On leave? What the fuck for? He thought bitterly of Magda and how she would enjoy Christmas with the Cranbrookes and the irony of her Jewishness in such a social setting. It would, of course, glitter unrestricted by wartime austerity. The Cranbrookes’ were wealthy, possessors of old, East India money, it was said; certainly Sir Desmond’s family had been in shipping longer than the Holts and Bibbys, the Cunards and the Ellermans; older, he used to claim, than the Brocklebanks of Whitehaven. Bugger Magda and the Cranbrookes!
‘No,’ he said to the soldier, ‘no such luck. Off to join a ship.’
‘Bad luck, sir.’
‘Yes, it is, isn’t it.’ Clark roused himself. ‘What about you?’
‘Bit of leave. Newcastle, like. Not long but, well, nice just the same.’
‘Very nice,’ Clark said with little conviction.
‘Should make it nicely,’ the soldier said with a happy smile. ‘Can’t wait to see their faces when I walk in on them.’
It occurred to Clark that it was Christmas Eve. He made an effort and smiled at his young companion who seemed satisfied with such a plethora of English niceness.
‘No, it will be quite a shock for them, I imagine.’
The soldier grinned and nodded. ‘Aye, it will that.’
The piercing note of the guard’s whistle made their ears ring, so that his subsequent order of ‘All aboard!’ was imperfectly heard. The two men tossed off their mugs, thanked the lady behind the tea trolley and turned to their respective compartment doors.
‘Good luck, sir,’ the soldier said.
‘And you,’ Clark responded, slightly ashamed that he had not been more cordial.
‘God bless you and happy Christmas,’ the woman said to their retreating backs.
In due course, and what to Clark seemed like half a lifetime later, they drew into Stockton-on-Tees. Clambering down and assembling his sea kit on the platform, he caught a porter’s attention. As the train pulled out he saw the friendly grin of the watching soldier going on northwards to Newcastle. He nodded and smiled back.
‘Middlesbrough train,’ he told the porter.
Clark was very hungry when he finally arrived at Middlesbrough and the shipyard at South Bank. Making his way to the offices of the Smith’s Dock Company he found he was not too late for lunch, and could get something to eat in the managers’ canteen. It was therefore almost mid-afternoon before he found himself trekking across the disordered yard. Though humming with industry the place could not shake off its appearance of a wasteland. Steel is not a material sympathetic to man; it is cold to the touch and cruel in appearance, its virtue lying in its utility. It is devoid of charm, is worked by fire and, unlike a yard building in wood, it never forms a landscape to which the romantic eye is drawn.
The building slips and dry docks were all full. Two colliers lay in the latter, their decks more or less level with the ground, their rusty grey-black hulls being repaired. One had struck a mine and was lucky to have been saved, salvaged from a timely grounding in shallow water; the other had received damage from a near miss, her shell plating buckled and strained so that she leaked badly. On the building slips the hulls of two corvettes rose grey inside their greyer cocoons of scaffolding. Erected above ground level they seemed to Clark so much larger than they did at sea. Over, on and around, and moving back and forth between these ships, the men of the workforce spun a web of activity, their individual garb of old clothes combined with the ubiquitous flat cloth caps of the working man assuming a uniform grey under the grey sky which leached a cold and drizzling rain. In his present mood, Clark was easily persuaded that this too was grey, for it fell into a river grey with filth and sediment. Only the swirl of the tide as it tugged at a midstream trot of moorings told of its relationship with the raw, clean and biting tang of the Atlantic somewhere far beyond its outermost debouchement.
Between the mooring buoys two vessels were secured alongside one another. One was a battered and rusty anti-submarine trawler, beyond her, partially hidden, lay what Clark had been told was His Majesty’s Armed Whaler Sheba. From the trawler a damp white ensign showed a flash of colour to break the melancholic monochrome of the afternoon.
But even as he watched, the keen note of the piped ‘still’ came to him and the flag descended. Amid all this greyness, in defiance of the meteorological conditions of the miserable day, the ceremony of sunset went on at its prescribed moment. Clark saw the movement of figures, the upsweep of arm in salute, and in that defiant little moment an unmanly lump formed in his throat and he found himself drawing himself up into a half-heartedly erect pose until the ‘carry on’ bade him relax.
‘I say, are you Sheba?’ The imperious enquiry broke into his moment of reflection. Sniffing, he turned. His interlocutor was a short, portly individual in rather grubby blue battledress. His epaulets proclaimed him an equal in rank to Clark, though the accumulated verdigris emphasised the fact that he was clearly Clark’s senior by some time. ‘I’m Nottingham Forest and if you’re Sheba I must say it’s about bloody time you turned up. They made me look after your ship as well as my own…’ having closed the distance between them by crossing several apparently discarded coils of rusty wire, some steel plates of ancient and uncertain origin and a small, almost neat pile of emptied paint kettles, ‘Nottingham Forest’ stopped, looked up at Clark and held out his hand. ‘John Forrest, late of the Clan Line and now, alas, commanding one of His Majesty’s less grand men-of-war.’ As they shook hands, Forrest went on, ‘Yes, it’s a damned bad joke, but I suppose it is evidence that the Admiralty has a sense of humour or, God forbid, they haven’t noticed the irony…’ Forrest paused, cocking his head to one side. ‘Christ, you don’t understand it either, do you?’
‘You will have to forgive me being obtuse,’ Clark apologised. ‘I spent last night on a train and got no sleep. I take it your trawler is named after the football team and, by coincidence, or perhaps design, you have been appointed to her…’
‘That’s about the size of it. My crew think it’s sublimely bloody funny.’
Clark gave a tired grin. ‘Well, I suppose that’s understandable. I’m Jack Clark. Late of the Daisy…’
‘Christ, that’s worse than Nottingham Forest,’ Forrest exclaimed with glee. ‘Anyway,’ he went on rapidly, ‘I’ve got a long way to go, so enough of the courtesi
es. You can do me a favour. I think I’m right in claiming seniority – anyway, I’m past caring. I’m in for essential repairs and I want to get home and buss the wife for Christmas. You can look after both ships until the day after Boxing Day. I’ve a subby and the blue watch on board. You’ve had some hands arriving all afternoon, so I guess you’ll manage.’ Forrest peered at him. ‘You look a bit P & O to me…’
‘Eastern Steam,’ Clark explained, somewhat overwhelmed by Forrest’s robust decisiveness.
‘Ah, Dentco, good outfit… Anyway, on board you’ve also got some strange creature who might be a naval officer, though he might equally be a stick insect, I’m not sure. He seems to entertain a prejudice about uniform, or indeed pyjamas, for he doesn’t appear to have removed the flannels and hacking jacket in which he arrived yesterday. Says his ship’s not in commission so it doesn’t matter…’
Clark frowned. His fatigue had produced a few grey spots which danced across Forrest’s face like some sinisterly mobile acne. He had no idea to whom Forrest might be referring.
‘Claims to be your first lieutenant,’ Forrest hinted darkly. Seeing Clark shrug he went on, ‘Well, old boy, you look as though you could do with a kip. Get yourself aboard and do me a favour by letting me leave with a clear conscience. Make yourself at home in my cabin. I’ve a new baby to see and I’d really like to get away.’ Forrest hesitated a moment and then asked, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Perfectly.’ Clark realised the import of Forrest’s abrupt manner and smiled. ‘Of course, and congratulations.’
‘Poor little bugger’s nearly three months old. Still, I could have been up the Hooghly or the Perishing Gulf on two-year articles, so perhaps this isn’t so bad after all.’ Forrest sank his head into his shoulders and stared about him with a pronounced grimace. The coarse serge of his battledress blouse sparkled with raindrops. ‘Though it’s bloody hard to see how,’ he added. Forrest held out his hand again. ‘Well, I’ll be off then. Got my kit in the car…’ he waved towards a row of wooden huts. An Austin saloon stood behind them.
‘Hail and farewell,’ Clark said, and watched the rotund little man as he scrambled over the wires, plates and paint kettles. A moment later the Austin moved off and Clark was left alone on the quayside. As if to emphasise his desolation, the yard’s steam whistle hooted the end of the working day. Faint and irregular cheers came from workmen who had, Clark realised, been drifting away from the building slips and the colliers in dock for some time. The notion of ‘knocking off’ mildly offended him, quarrelling with his notions of wartime duty. At sea in convoy the only respite would be the change of watch, on man-of-war and merchantman alike. Then he realised it was Christmas Eve and supposed that even the work of building and repairing ships should stop for a few hours. Perhaps, on the other hand, he thought wearily, it was just a change of shift.
‘You aren’t wanting to go out to one of those bloody ships, are you?’ The voice was accusingly hostile. Clark looked round. A tall workman with a ruddy face confronted him. Clark realised the man had just ascended from a motor boat tied up at the foot of a flight of wooden steps set into the staithing.
‘Er, yes, I was, actually.’
The man sighed. ‘They’re supposed to run their own boats after four o’clock…’
Clark looked at his watch. It was just past three forty. He stared up at the boatman. ‘You want to knock off early…’
‘It’s Christmas Eve, mate,’ the boatman said, ‘and you heard the siren. I’m not knocking off early, there’s a war on.’
‘I hadn’t noticed.’
The boatman ignored the sarcasm and eyed Clark’s epaulets. ‘You the commander of the whaler?’ Clark nodded. ‘I saw you talking to the skipper of the Notts Forest and guessed who you was.’ He jerked his head. ‘Come on, I’ll take you out before I go. Call it a Christmas present. Goodwill to all men, and all that claptrap.’
The man threw the last words over his shoulder as he turned and stumped back down the steps. Clark picked up his holdall. He had left his heavy kit in the ship manager’s office and would pick it up later. He stepped into the wooden workboat just as the boatman threw the engine into life. As they pulled away from the wooden staithing and swung into the ebb tide, Clark rummaged in his pocket. A few minutes later they passed under the bows of the two vessels and ran alongside the low grey sides of HMS Sheba. Two man-ropes and a short, wooden-runged rope ladder hung down the side. Clark passed the boatman half a crown. ‘I’m obliged to you. Get something for your children,’ he said.
‘Oh, thanks skipper, thanks very much. Go on, up you go. I’ll bend your bag on to t’man-rope.’
Clark watched as the motor boat headed for the shore, churning the grey River Tees into yeasty foam in the last of the daylight. He lifted his hand and the boatman responded, then Clark turned his attention to the ship. The narrow side deck was bounded by a deckhouse, above which rose the funnel. In the gloom forward he could see the edge of the foredeck and the forecastle bulkhead. Aft the plating curved round to the stern with its two depth-charge mortars on the port quarter. She did not seem much of a ship, he thought, nor was she very welcoming, despite the news that her crew had been arriving, for she was cold and had every appearance of being uninhabited. Although Clark had no very great expectations, this was a somewhat depressing anticlimax to his tedious journey, not helped by the onset of night, his exhaustion or his mood.
‘Anyone aboard?’ he shouted, but it evoked no response whatsoever. A brief walk round the unlit deck and a stumbling progress through the blackness of the accommodation confirmed his impression that the ship was deserted. It was only as he walked down the starboard side deck that he heard laughter. This came from the trawler Nottingham Forest moored alongside, separated from the Sheba only by the squashed volume of a dozen rattan fenders that creaked between the two hulls as they worked together in the tide. The trawler betrayed her occupied state by a fingernail of light escaping from a porthole over which the deadlight had not been properly secured. Clark’s riddle was solved. Leaving his holdall on Sheba’s deck he scrambled over on to the Nottingham Forest. The trawler had steam up and was warm to the point of cosiness. It took him only a moment to discover that what passed on the extempore warship for a wardroom was empty. Another gale of laughter erupted and this was quickly traced to the mess deck.
Clark descended the steel ladder, aware that he was revealing himself from his shoes upwards, a gradual process which was at first unremarkable, but then resolved itself in kid gloves and brass buttons, reaching a climax with his epaulets, face and cap. The noise of mirth became subdued in proportion to the exposure of his figure. At the foot of the ladder Clark confronted them. Sitting on benches, lounging across the mess tables, a few leaning on radiators, were the men of Nottingham Forest’s duty watch, the blue watch Forrest had mentioned. They possessed an almost palpable immunity from any unpleasantness arising from Clark’s intrusion. The handful of men assigned to Sheba, and who were playing hookey from their own vessel, kept still in the manner of small animals caught in the open by a possible predator. All, however, nursed bottles of beer. Only the Nottingham Forest’s sub-lieutenant, dressed like his absent commander in battledress, drew himself up, put down his beer bottle, donned his cap and saluted.
‘Afternoon, sir,’ he said, looking round at the assembly with a half-embarrassed, half-defensive expression.
Clark returned the salute and removed his own cap, a gesture designed to acknowledge his presence as an intrusion into their privacy. ‘Good afternoon.’ He stared about him. ‘I’m Lieutenant Commander Clark of the Sheba. D’you have any of my men aboard?’
From beside the Nottingham Forest’s sub-lieutenant a man stirred. In reverse to Clark’s own appearance on the scene, he now watched a straw-blond head rise, followed by houndstooth check over a yellow pullover. As the apparition elevated itself, the blond head had to curve over and tuck itself under the deckhead so that it was half-hidden behind the bulb-angled deckhead be
am before this curious elongation ceased.
‘Ah,’ said Clark quickly, recognising the stick insect Forrest had alluded to, ‘my first lieutenant…’
The blond head inclined itself graciously. ‘Dirk Frobisher á votre service, Commander,’ he enunciated facetiously in an accent that would cut glass and provoked a snigger from the young seamen assembled about him. Intuitively Clark knew it was Frobisher who had been amusing the ratings. ‘We were just discussing the ship-keeping arrangements for Christmas, sir,’ Frobisher explained, ‘the air-raid precautions and the action stations necessary to make best use of the combined armament of the two vessels.’
Clark inclined his head, only half believing Frobisher’s explanation. ‘Very well. Perhaps, when you have completed your dispositions, you would come aboard.’
‘If I might suggest, sir, we meet in the wardroom above? Charlie here,’ Frobisher nodded at the sub-lieutenant beside him, ‘won’t mind.’
‘Go ahead, sir,’ volunteered Charlie.
‘Very well.’ Clark looked at his watch.
‘I shan’t be a moment, sir. Incidentally, we’ve decided to mess together over the next couple of days.’
‘It wasn’t that, Mr Frobisher. I’m more concerned with the time. I understand you are running a ship’s boat from 1600.’
‘Charlie’s chaps are doing that, sir.’
‘Well, I’ve my kit to get on board and time’s getting on…’
‘I’ll send someone up to the yard for it.’
‘Thank you. It’s in the ship manager’s office.’ Clark turned and ascended the ladder. Below, the noise of laughter and conversation revived. Clark was too tired to care much about the improprieties in the conduct of Lieutenant Frobisher, but as he sank into a chair in the trawler’s wardroom, he realised that much would depend upon the relationship he established with the man.
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