‘Ah, there you are, sir,’ Frobisher’s cheerful greeting woke Clark from the depths of a profound sleep. He looked at his watch: he had been asleep for no more than ten minutes. ‘Gin, sir?’
Clark shook his head. ‘No thanks.’ He was befuddled and caught at a disadvantage, cross with himself for dropping off to sleep.
‘Mind if I do?’
Clark shook his head again. As if reading his commander’s mind, Frobisher added, ‘We’ve rather made ourselves at home here, sir. It seemed the sensible thing to do. I don’t know what you’ve been told, but Sheba won’t be ready for service for some time.’
‘Oh? That’s not what I understood.’
‘I thought not. Well, there’s trouble with one of the boilers. That’s what the yard says, anyway, though they’re very cagey about our Asdic set and I’m convinced there’s a problem there.’
Clark nodded. ‘Could be,’ he said, affecting disinterest. He did not feel mentally capable of embracing his command wholeheartedly, let alone appearing eager. He simply wanted to sleep. It was quite dark outside. ‘We can talk about this tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Do we have a steward aboard?’
‘Yes we do, but it’s bloody miserable aboard Sheba, sir. I’m sleeping aboard here. It’s easier than getting ashore and looking for digs. Shall I get the bedding changed in L’tenant Commander Forrest’s cabin?’
Clark was inclined to go aboard Sheba but he was desperate for a proper night’s sleep and, recalling Forrest’s kind offer, capitulated to Frobisher’s suggestion. ‘Very well.’
‘We’re still supposed to be sleeping ashore, sir. I thought you knew. Mind you, I only found out when I got here. It’s all a bit odd, if not downright disorganised.’
‘I, er, guess it’s up to us to organise it then,’ Clark said, yawning. ‘Look, I’m all in, Number One. Pass word that I’m going to occupy Forrest’s bunk and that I’d like a mug of kye when that’s been done.’ He hauled himself out of his chair and stretched. ‘Under other circumstances I’d join you in that gin but, if you’ll excuse me, I just want to hit the hay.’
‘Of course, sir. I’ll go and rouse out the steward.’ Frobisher dipped his head and made for the door.
‘Oh, and Number One…’
‘Sir?’ Frobisher turned.
‘Uniform tomorrow. In commission or not.’
Clark met Frobisher’s bright blue eyes and saw the sparkle kindle in them. ‘Aye, aye, sir. Battledress all right?’
Clark wrinkled his nose. He loathed the utility uniform. ‘Only while we’re in the shipyard’s hands. Once we commission, proper reefers.’
‘Have you been to the Arctic, sir?’
Clark smiled to himself. He knew what Frobisher was driving at, but he had gone just a smidgin too far. ‘Oh, yes, Number One. And under sail, too.’
Clark was quite pleased with the expression on Frobisher’s face as he followed the first lieutenant out of the wardroom and went to fetch his holdall.
* * *
Clark woke late next morning, momentarily confused at his surroundings. He lay in Forrest’s narrow bunk and stared at the deckhead. The white paint, its matt surface irregular over the cork-chip insulation and the rivet heads, reminded him as he regarded it through half-closed eyes, of the Arctic ice. His mind, drifting indolently between waking and sleeping, conjured up the vastness of the open pack ice as the ship thrust the floes easily aside and he watched from aloft, sitting astride the topgallant yard of the brigantine Island. He was a boy again, his life bright with promise, keen to learn and undergoing the experience that would form the man he would become.
A knock at the cabin door snatched him from reverie: ‘Come in!’
‘Morning, sir.’ Lieutenant Frobisher, resplendent in reefer jacket, his cuffs girdled with the straight lace of a regular officer, his feet in black leather boots, ducked his blond head, clumped over the sea step and removed his hat. ‘The steward’s on his way up with some breakfast.’
Clark leaned on his elbow and stared at the figure looming over him. ‘Do sit down, Number One.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘If you’ll forgive me holding court from my bunk, I think this an opportunity to get to know each other.’
‘Good idea, sir. Rather regal though…’
‘What is?’ Clark asked, as the steward appeared with a tray and he hauled himself up into a sitting position. Clark noticed the two cups and saucers on the tray.
‘Holding court from your bed,’ Frobisher explained.
‘Ahh, yes.’ The two officers waited until the steward had set down the tray and disappeared. Clark gestured at the door and Frobisher rose, checked the steward had gone and resumed his seat. Clark handed him a cup of tea, recalling the list of personnel Gifford had shown him at the Admiralty.
‘Tell me, Number One, I know Dirk is not your real name, though it has a suitably piratical and Tudor ring.’
Frobisher grinned. ‘It’s an acronym. My name is Douglas Ireton Robertson Keith Frobisher. Something of a handle, especially at Dartmouth…’
‘Ah yes, Dartmouth. So why, Douglas Ireton Robert Keith, are you not aboard one of his Majesty’s principal capital ships?’
‘Robertson Keith, sir,’ Frobisher corrected dryly. ‘Well, I’ve done my bit in Warspite as a midshipman, and I’ve been in destroyers since October ’39, but for some reason I was asked by my captain to consider an opening in a special service vessel. I would have to serve, he said, under a reserve officer – you, apparently, sir – but it would prove a great opportunity. At the moment I am somewhat at a loss to see the faintest sign of an opportunity…’ Frobisher let the sentence hang, and smiled at Clark’s pyjama-ed state.
‘I understand you have had some experience in combat. Hand-to-hand combat, I mean.’
‘Oh that?’ Frobisher’s face wrinkled in distaste. ‘Is that what recommended me to Their Lordships? I had hoped it was my skill in navigation.’
‘That too, I believe. But what did this hand-to-hand combat consist of?’ Clark asked, buttering a slice of toast.
‘Oh, a bit of a scrap up a fjord in Norway. We killed a few Germans before they did the same to us. We rather wanted to get home, sir.’
‘Yes, that seems reasonable.’ Clark spread the marmalade thickly, salivating in anticipation. ‘And what have they told you about our present mission?’
‘Nothing, sir, beyond the fact that I was expected to volunteer. I hope you’re going to enlighten me, sir.’
Clark masticated furiously and swallowed a mouthful then shook his head. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Number One, but our first priority is to get the Sheba into commission. Now, when I’ve finished this and had a shave and so forth, you and I will take a walk round the ship.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Then at 1100 we’ll clear the lower deck and hold a brief church service. Is there a dinner of any sort?’
Frobisher nodded. ‘Don’t ask where it came from, but there is a remarkably fat goose now roasting in the Forest’s galley. It will feed the lot of us. Please join us in the wardroom at 1300.’
‘Thank you, I will.’
Frobisher set down his tea cup and rose to his full height. ‘I’ll see you on deck shortly, sir.’
‘Very well, but before you go, how many of our ship’s company have we got aboard?’
‘Oh, all of them, sir. You were the last to join.’ And picking up his hat, Frobisher passed through the door, leaving Clark staring after him, wondering where the other officers had been last night. Nor had he seen Carter, and the thought brought him roundly to his duty. Flinging his blankets aside, he dropped on to the deck.
* * *
He and Frobisher toured the little whaler, from its forecastle head with its four-inch Mark XIX gun, to its cruiser stern with its depth-charge racks. They ducked into stores, peered down hatches and remarked on the ability a dockyard had, even with a brand new ship, to leave it looking like a bombed site. It was a new metaphor to the English and their language, but one graphically ap
t, both in the evocation of its image and to the case in point. Although Sheba was newly painted, there was an air of haste and shoddiness about the work: where grey abutted black or white, the cutting-in was carelessly done and patches of grit had been caught up in the wet paint; her green corticene decking was disfigured with footprints whose reproduction in adjacent alleyways was evidence of a careless migration on some dockyard matey’s boots. The corners of Frobisher’s mouth were pulled down in mute disapproval, while Clark could not help contrasting the obvious rush in Sheba’s building with the painstaking construction of the Ernest Shackleton in the Hamburg shipyard of their enemies.
‘I hope the riveting is to a higher standard than the painting,’ Frobisher said at last, provoked out of silence. ‘I see they haven’t bothered to give her any dazzle paint,’ he added, referring to the whale catcher’s lack of camouflage.
‘No,’ Clark said flatly. Perhaps the standard of the paint finish did not matter: they would have to repaint her anyway, once they went into the ice. He kept the thought to himself, not wanting to ease the first lieutenant’s burden if only to see how the younger man coped with the challenges ahead of him. Frobisher kicked at a cardboard carton left under the depth-charge racks aft. The thing was sodden from the night’s rain and merely succumbed silently to the impact of his boot.
‘Well, happy Christmas, Number One,’ Clark said wryly. ‘Shall we take a look below?’
* * *
Aboard Nottingham Forest, Clark regarded the combined ship’s companies of His Britannic Majesty’s least consequential men-of-war as they sang ‘Oh, Come All Ye Faithful’. The trawler’s sub-lieutenant was already known to him, the other officers were, he deduced, his own. There was a stocky, grey-haired man in the uniform of the Royal Norwegian Navy and beside him a younger man in the same uniform: the engineer, Lieutenant Olsen and his fellow countryman whose name Clark could not recall. The young sub-lieutenant next to Frobisher wore the single wavy braid of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. He would be Pearson, Clark’s third watch-keeping officer; Clark wondered what experience Pearson had had. The youngster seemed hardly old enough to drive a car, let alone a ship.
The carol ended and Clark read the second lesson from St Luke’s gospel, telling of the appearance of the angel to the shepherds, and their subsequent visit to the stable to see the Christ child in the manger. Then the congregation raised their voices and bawled ‘While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night’. From the merrily suppressed grins of some ordinary seamen belonging to Nottingham Forest, he knew they were singing, ‘While shepherds washed their socks by night…’
Clark always felt uneasy about Divine Service. Regular naval officers like Frobisher were brought up to it from preparatory school onwards until, in every warship in which they served, Divine Service broke the weeks up and they prayed to the Eternal God who alone commanded the oceans of the world and who was, implicitly, on the side of the Royal Navy. For Clark, Divine Service, more than any other established naval ritual, exposed his pragmatic, mercantile background. His deep-rooted agnosticism and his prejudice against empty forms made him approve the boy-sailors’ mild blasphemy and, catching their eyes, he had some difficulty in suppressing his own smile. He shifted his glance and saw Carter among the carollers. Carter’s face was pallid, his eyes deep-ringed, and then the penny dropped. Clark suddenly realised that most of his ship’s company had only come aboard late last night or, more likely, first thing this morning. They were now sweating off their excesses and, judging by their slack, hungover faces, they had returned to their ship sufficiently drunk to cultivate headaches; Clark hoped there was nothing more enduring lurking in their bloodstreams.
Once the ritual of Divine Service was over and Frobisher had called the ship’s companies to attention to dismiss them, Clark followed Frobisher up to the Nottingham Forest’s little wardroom.
Frobisher made the introductions while Charlie dispensed large gins. ‘Lieutenant Olsen, sir, Royal Norwegian Navy and our engineer officer.’
The grey-haired man inclined his head and shook hands. ‘Fridtjof Olsen, Captain. Pleased to meet you.’
‘And delighted to meet you, Lieutenant. I understand there are problems with the Sheba’s boilers…’
Olsen shrugged. ‘I do not know, Captain, but I will report to you tomorrow when I have had a good look. The water-tube boilers we have here are usually very good, but maybe a few leaks at first. Nothing to worry about, I think.’
‘Good, I’m glad to hear that,’ he said, relieved. ‘Where are you from, Lieutenant?’
‘A place near Alesund, Captain. Do you know it?’
‘I’m afraid not, though I’ve been to Bergen and Kristiansund.’
‘Ah, Bergen is good. A beautiful city. My wife is from Bergen.’ Olsen’s remark brought Clark up with a round turn.
‘Where is your wife now?’ he asked, Magda’s image swimming into his imagination.
Olsen shrugged. ‘I hope in our home near Alesund, but who knows?’
Clark nodded, his expression as sympathetic as it could be but his sensibilities shamed by his selfish preoccupation with Magda.
‘Do you have children?’ he asked.
Olsen nodded. ‘Two daughters; twelve and fourteen years of age.’
An awkward silence filled the wardroom. A wife and two daughters left behind in occupied territory was not a comfortable thought. Suddenly Clark was immensely glad Magda had cut him free. A man should not be married in such times, let alone have children.
‘Lieutenant Per Storheill,’ Frobisher went on, and Clark faced a pleasant-looking man in his mid-twenties.
‘I’m from Bodo, captain, in the northwards. Many years in Wilhelmsen’s…’
‘Of Tönsberg,’ Clark finished the sentence.
‘You know the ships then,’ Storheill smiled with pleasure.
‘Oh yes, two blue bands on a black funnel and all names beginning with T.’
Storheill laughed. ‘Black and blue, not much to eat and plenty to do,’ he quoted the old slander against his former employers.
‘Good to have you aboard.’ They shook hands and Clark recollected that Norwegian naval officers had all served in merchant ships as a matter of course.
‘Sub-lieutenant Derek Pearson, sir. The wardroom’s baby.’ Frobisher grinned.
‘Hello, Pearson. I’m sure you must be good at something or the Admiralty wouldn’t have sent you here.’
‘He’s very good with the women, captain,’ Olsen said.
‘Which is commendation enough,’ Clark joked, raising his glass. ‘May I wish you all a happy Christmas.’ He waited until they had drunk to the toast and sensed that they had relaxed, the ice between them broken. ‘I’m sorry we are all stuck aboard here,’ he went on. ‘However, we’ve to get the Sheba in commission as quickly as possible. Now, I don’t anticipate much cooperation from the yard until the day after tomorrow, but by then I want you all to be aware of what you require in your various departments. Since you’ve only just joined, with the exception of Lieutenant Olsen and the First Lieutenant, you won’t be too clear of what’s expected of you, so this afternoon, after what my nose tells me is going to be rather a grand Christmas dinner, Lieutenant Frobisher and I will get down to some paperwork and we’ll have the Watch and Quarters Bill organised by 1800.’ Clark looked round them. ‘Any questions?’
‘What exactly are we going to do, sir?’ Pearson asked. ‘I mean, we all know that this ship,’ he pointed at the carpet on the Nottingham Forest’s wardroom deck, ‘is no ordinary anti-submarine trawler and, looking at the Sheba’s lot, it’s difficult not to come to the same conclusion.’
Clark had no idea of there being anything special about the Nottingham Forest, though had he thought about it he would have noted the absence of any of her former peacetime fishermen and the fact that she seemed unusually pukka for an extemporised man-of-war. But this was not the time to think of the trawler.
‘Well, gentlemen, I’m somewhat in the dark mys
elf at the moment,’ he fibbed, ‘but I am assured that we have an important function to perform and we have to go to Scapa to start it.’
‘That sounds as though we’re going to be a training ship,’ said Pearson with the conviction of a young man to whom the world is full of certainties and logic. ‘I’ll bet we end up in the Western Isles playing doggie to Western Approaches ships.’
‘Well, we’ll see about that, I’m sure…’ Clark cocked an eye at Frobisher. ‘Any chance of dinner, Number One?’
It was only when they assembled round the wardroom table and the tops were being levered off the bottles of beer that Frobisher was dispensing in a jolly but essentially false reproduction of a family Christmas, that Clark thought of the last time he had sat down properly to a meal. It had been with Jenny at the sparse little supper they had enjoyed on their last night as lovers. With a pang of remorse he realised he had forgotten all about her.
* * *
After dinner, Clark and Frobisher clambered over to the Sheba and made their way up into her cold wheelhouse. It smelt of new paint and sawdust and both officers stared about them with an air of frustration.
‘I really expected all this to be completed,’ Clark said, irritatedly gesturing round the space.
‘I rather got that impression,’ Frobisher said with a sigh. They leaned upon the unvarnished chart table and contemplated the list of their crew. Frobisher spread a clean sheet of paper between them and Clark fished a fountain pen from the breast pocket of his reefer jacket, handing it to Frobisher. Taking it, the first lieutenant added, ‘I appreciate you can’t spill the beans, sir, but tell me Pearson’s got it wrong and we are not destined to be used to work up Western Approaches escorts?’ Clark looked at Frobisher. The lick of blond hair and the startling brilliance of the blue eyes made him think of his cousin Johannes and the Nazi ideal of manhood. It was a disconcertingly uncomfortable feeling and it rattled him to the extent of increasing his reticence, so that his silence provoked Frobisher further.
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