by James Philip
Well, until he met her, or so he said…
Men were so full off…nonsense!
Dermot was a good man, she had decided. Not that anybody had a bad word to say about him. She liked him, he made her feel good about herself; whether she loved him, well, that was a different thing.
Did that matter?
Neither of them was exactly a spring chicken anymore!
It was a still, humid night.
She kicked off her shoes and although it was late, turned on the small black and white TV in the corner of the parlour, with the sound turned down low. How odd it was these days that while most people lived like their parents had in the thirties, without general excess, and very frugally not necessarily knowing if there would be bread, or anything at all, in the shops the next day; yet, by a marvel of modern technical wizardry an American President could talk not only to his own people but to anybody who had a TV in Europe, also?
The picture flickered into life a few seconds behind the sound as Lottie dumped herself wearily, stiffly in the room’s single, threadbare arm chair.
Making love was marvellous, messy too, obviously; and she ought to have known that she would be sore that first morning afterwards. Sore and aching, having tested a whole retinue of muscles she had forgotten she had, eagerly accommodating her beau’s enthusiastic exploration of her coital delights. Notwithstanding Dermot’s seemingly undimmed enthusiasm she had been no sorer following the second, or the third night’s exploration of all those pleasures half-forgotten. Which was a relief; what would the girls in her department have said to each other if she had limped into work in the morning?
Nevertheless, she planned a long lie-in tomorrow…
My, my…
Wasn’t President Nixon a shifty-looking man?
Apparently, on a colour TV screen he just looked a little less sweaty and devious; but in monochrome he looked like a man in a police mugshot, the sort of dirty old man that fiddled about with choir boys. It did not help that he seemed desperately tired, prematurely aged, his sagging jowls and the bags under his eyes pronounced.
The BBC announcer had said something about the President making an ‘eagerly awaited’ statement about events in the Far East. He had sounded full of anticipation, literally on tenterhooks.
Lottie had not been paying much attention to world events during the last week. She had quite enough on her plate trying to keep her ships at sea and as for finally getting the chance to shamelessly canoodle with her handsome – not to say, rugged – Canadian hero, it was hardly surprising she had not got around to buying, let alone reading, a newspaper in the last few days!
That was not to say that she had not heard about the huge anti-war demonstrations which had brought districts of San Francisco, Philadelphia and Washington to a standstill last weekend and were threatening to spread, like an angry rash across a score of other American cities this coming weekend.
It had always been a mystery to her why the people of her own country, let alone North America, had put up with so much for so long, without going out onto the streets to complain. Perhaps, in England it was different; things had been so bad, so many people had died and the Americans had got off fairly lightly in comparison, at least until that dreadful war in the Midwest and the attacks on those cities…
Either way, the surviving peoples of the western democracies had been surprisingly quiescent for most of the last five-and-a-half years. So, it was hardly to be wondered at when – given the duplicity and the self-evident incompetence of the Nixon regime – large numbers of Americans eventually turned around and said: ‘Enough!’
Not that it was easy to know, let alone understand, what was actually going on over there in America. These days one never knew if the BBC was telling the truth, and ought one to believe anything one read in the papers? One could check if the press got the score of Portsmouth’s latest soccer match right: but what else could one know to be true? What could one really tell from a few grainy TV clips of police with batons advancing on hordes of protesters through a fog of tear gas?
In any event, thankfully, it was all going on a long way away; and would hopefully never come to pass nearer to home.
She thought about getting up again to make herself a mug of cocoa, something to sip as she settled down after all her recent excitements.
My fellow Americans.
The President would make a good undertaker, Lottie thought.
Four days ago, the forces of the evil empire of Chinese Communism in league with their murderous Korean surrogates, launched a sneak attack on US Navy warships operating in international water in the vicinity of the Tsushima Archipelago in the southern Sea of Japan.
Richard Nixon paused to allow the portent of his words to sink in, staring fixedly into the camera broadcasting his speech to the world. Apparently, now the Americans had given up on putting a man on the Moon, those clever people at NASA were busily launching ‘communications satellites’ into orbit – one every few weeks, apparently - so they could ‘bounce’ radio and television signals off them. It all seemed very Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers to Lottie, a disproportionate amount of trouble to go to just to transmit a creepy-looking man’s face and words into one’s home thousands of miles away.
Science was marvellous, yet at the same time she was aware that there were houses in the street where she lived which had never been completely repaired after Portsmouth was bombed by the German Luftwaffe in 1940 and 1941. The houses too badly damaged to be quickly patched up had been demolished in those days and later, post-Second War new buildings erected, which now stood out from their shabbier, battered neighbours. Structural cracks in the masonry of her own dwelling had been plastered over and from the road one could immediately see a slight kink in the roof line. Apparently, the local council had been planning to do something about its most dilapidated housing stock around the time of the October War; all of which had, understandably, been put off indefinitely in the last few years. So, while Lottie was impressed by technology; she was not star struck. There were a lot of things her Government ought to be spending money on that it was not. It had badly needed the Navy in the aftermath of the war and she had been proud to serve: but times were changing and like most of her friends, she yearned to get on with normal life.
She hoped that breaking the ice with Dermot had been stage one of that plan!
As to whatever President Nixon wanted – generally speaking, politicians either wanted your vote or to tell you that the ills of the world were somebody else’s fault, although there was something about Margaret Thatcher that always made her feel she was talking to her, personally – it was unlikely to be anything that she wanted to hear.
The last three American presidents had all been disasters.
JFK had tried and very nearly succeeded in blowing up the world.
LBJ had had to be talked out of nuking the British Isles by Peter and Marija Christopher on the steps of the Philadelphia White House, as the reset clock to Armageddon relentlessly ticked down to a few seconds before midnight.
Nixon had overseen the defeat of American arms in Korea, and sleepwalked into a Civil War – missing what was going on in the Midwest - because at the time he and his minions were too busy spying on tens of thousands of his own citizens!
Lottie had asked Dermot O’Reilly what he thought about the sinking of ‘that’ destroyer in the Taiwan Strait?
Obviously, they had not heard about the latest US Navy disaster at the time.
‘Berkeley was the ship that saved my life off Sliema when the Talavera went down,’ he had reminded her.
She had felt dreadful forgetting, or not remembering that.
Fortunately, he was not the sort of man who was going to hold it against her.
‘That is, me, Peter, Alan Hannay and most of the men who survived the battle,’ he had added. ‘The Berkeley stood alongside us as the ship went down; despite Peter warning her skipper to stand off in case Talavera’s magazines cooked off…’
&nb
sp; Of course, Dermot had been on Talavera’s bridge throughout that last, terrible battle. Lottie had seen the jagged, mercifully superficial shrapnel marks on his torso and back, run her fingertips along the stitched up gashes.
That had tickled, Dermot had chuckled.
‘Peter and me weren’t a pretty sight, I suppose,’ he had joked ruefully, a flicker of pain in his eyes as he remembered the men who had died around them that day. ‘Anyway, that was the Berkeley. From what I gather the US Navy had been sending ships through the strait on the Communist side most days for a couple of weeks before the attack. I don’t know if the Yanks were deliberately trying to provoke an incident but if they weren’t, they were acting like they did!’
Lottie had got the distinct impression her beau was glad to be half-a-world away from the idiocy going on in the Far East. He had been quick to assure her that the small Royal Navy flotilla still based at Hong Kong, was going to stay in port.
‘It isn’t our fight. We made our peace with the Communists with the Hong Kong Treaty.’
Lottie blinked.
Did I just hear Nixon say what I thought I heard him say?
Two of our ships have since sunk and another has had to be abandoned in the stormy waters of the Tsushima Strait…
Lottie was suddenly listening hard.
I have to tell you that the USS Ranger, a Forrestal class aircraft carrier was struck by at least three ship-killing missiles of Soviet design. These weapons, codenamed STYX by NATO, struck her in the vicinity of her bridge and her midships elevator. One missile detonated on her hangar deck and started a fire which took over twenty-four hours to contain. Aircraft, fuel and munitions on deck were consumed by the inferno, as we fear were over a thousand men of the Ranger’s gallant crew.
The President’s haggard gravitas communicated better than words the epic magnitude of the catastrophe.
Nobody listening could doubt that worse was to come.
The ships of the Ranger’s escorting screen fought with immense bravery and great self-sacrifice to defend the flagship. The light cruiser USS Roanoke, in placing herself between the attackers and the Ranger was also hit by at least three STYX missiles…
STYX…
Lottie assumed he must be talking about the P-15 Termit near-supersonic flying bomb. Nineteen feet long, four or five tons deadweight at launch with a one-thousand pound hollow-charge warhead located behind the fuel tank, it was designed to break through a ship’s side-plates and detonate deep within the hull. The combined explosion, its effect enhanced and perhaps multiplied by the detonation of the missile’s remaining fuel would tear a ship the size of a destroyer or a frigate, or anything smaller in half!
The Roanoke’s crew fought to save her but twelve hours ago, the fleet commander gave the order to abandon her.
The Roanoke was a fifteen thousand-ton cruiser with a crew of thirteen or fourteen hundred men.
Sadly, I must also report the loss of the USS Semmes and the combat stores ship USS Niagara Falls; and that the guided missile destroyers USS Halsey and USS Luce were both badly damaged in the course of the battle.
No, Nixon was still holding bad news back.
At the request of the Navy Department all news about the battle in the Tsushima Strait was embargoed until the Ranger, the Halsey and the Luce had safely made harbour. I regret that it is too soon to make a full accounting of our casualties at this time and sadly, I can give you little further information about the battle for fear of divulging combat-sensitive intelligence to our enemies.
That sounded like hogwash to Lottie!
If anybody already knew exactly what had gone wrong for the US Navy in the Sea of Japan it was going to be the enemy!
At this time my prayers and thoughts go out to the men who have died and been injured, and their families and friends across our great nation. Be assured, that vengeance will be ours and that in the last forty-eight hours naval and air forces of the United States of America have struck targets at sea and on land in the People’s Republic of China with great and continuing ferocity…
How many bloody wars do the Yanks want?
The evil regime in Chongqing has sowed the wind; now they will reap the whirlwind.
Lottie thought she was going to be sick.
God bless America!
Chapter 40
Saturday 15th June, 1968
Government House, Yarralumla
When fifty-seven-year-old Admiral John Sidney ‘Jack’ McCain Jr., the US Ambassador to Australia, presented himself without warning – accompanied only by two uniformed Marine Corps bodyguards - at the door of Government House he was greeted by Lady Marija Christopher, who happened by chance, to be in the reception lobby restraining her three-and-a-half year old daughter Elisabetta, while simultaneously attempting to have a sensible conversation with an older woman, Lady Ellen Tyrell, the wife of her husband’s long-suffering Official Secretary, Sir Murray.
The veteran US Navy submariner, the legendary ‘little man with a big cigar’ who had been one of the main movers of US strategic naval doctrine in the years before he fell out of favour with the Nixon Administration, and his subsequent banishment to Australasia for his troubles, could see immediately that even the normally seraphically even-tempered, saintly wife of the Governor General of Australia, was about to lose her temper with her infant daughter.
Magically, the arrival of ‘Uncle Jack’ seemed to have a transformative effect on Elisabetta, who immediately stopped trying to escape her harassed mother’s clutches and ran to the newcomer, who, creaking somewhat at the knees, came down to her level and caught her in his arms.
“How’s my little monster today?” The supposedly crusty old admiral inquired, with gruff, paternal friendliness.
“She wants to bother Mary all the time,” Marija sighed.
Mary Griffin, Marija’s Appointments Secretary had given birth to a rosy-cheeked little bruiser called Henry – already altered to ‘Harry’ within the Yarralumla family – that spring. In fact, it had been a difficult delivery and Mary had been very unwell, having had to spend over a week in hospital. She was slowly getting her strength back, time was the best healer and the Governor’s wife was nothing, if not protective, of her friend.
“You must want to talk to Peter about this horrible situation in China?” Marija accurately divined as the US Ambassador struggled to his feet, Elisabetta doggedly clinging to his right hand as if afraid her wicked mother would lock her away in a dungeon if she let go. “He’s playing tennis with Lucy.”
“Oh, right…” Jack McCain had come alone, without ceremony as often he did, confident that he would always be welcomed at Yarralumla.
“Peter’s hopeless at ball games. You’d think he would have a little more hand-eye co-ordination but,” Marija smiled fondly, “nobody’s perfect. Asking if Ellen Tyrell would entertain Jack while she fetched her husband, Marija, limping perceptibly after her struggles with her daughter, made her way through the mansion to the gardens at its rear.
She heard the pinging ‘thwack’ of a tennis ball in play before she turned a corner and was very nearly decapitated by a ball which had ricocheted off the rim of her husband’s racket.
From past experience she knew the ‘thwacking’ was mostly on Lucy’s side of the net and the defensive, almost slow-motion ‘pinging’ was Peter’s invariably hopeless attempt to either defend himself, or to occasionally, invariably more by luck than design, to return the ball towards the vicinity of the net.
The Governor-General of Australia was hot, bothered and even happier than usual to see his wife. Lucy De L’Isle, of course, was raring to carry on their one-sided match.
“Jack has come all the way over from the Embassy to see you, husband,” Marija confided, smiling to Lucy as the teenager athletically hurdled the net at a sprint to join the couple.
Peter Christopher took a few moments to catch his breath, giving his de facto ward a mildly accusative look.
“Lucy has been running me all over the da
mned court for the last half-an-hour. Again! I’m she does it deliberately!”
The object of his complaint smiled innocently.
“Yes, well,” Marija remarked, pointedly, “the sooner that your daughter starts playing tennis the better. She’s another one who has far too much energy to spare!”
Elisabetta was very much a daddy’s girl.
Peter could do no wrong; whereas, Marija and her daughter would always been a little ‘ying and yang’ as the Chinese said. Life was like that sometimes.
“It’ll be about the China situation,” Peter declared. “We’ll have to call it a day, I’m afraid,” he apologised to Lucy, unable to hide his relief to find an honourable excuse to bravely run away from the field of battle. Turning back to Marija he said: “I’ll wash up and be with you and Jack in the morning room in five minutes.”
Lucy, who had hardly broken a single bead of sweat, frowned. She had been having a lot of fun. Still in her tennis whites she dropped her racket on a hallway table and followed Marija into the big, airy room. On the broad, grassy slopes in front of Yarralumla a gang of Kangaroos was coalescing in the shade of the trees to the south, careless of the nearby road, or the presence of people around the house.
Elisabetta had already planted herself on Uncle Jack’s knee and was telling him all about the latest, tiny, junior addition to the Yarralumla family. Apparently, Harry looked just like his dad which the old admiral took with a pinch of salt, since he well knew that Jack Griffin was a red-headed and bearded hard case. Albeit a hard case with a heart of gold, of demonstrably the very best kind; but definitely no baby face!
It was late autumn, nearly winter here at the bottom of the world. Needless to say, it was still warm, a little humid apart from when the rains came, and although chill winds sometimes followed wet weather, otherwise the climate was more often than not, pleasantly Mediterranean. Marija’s bones had ached a lot in the autumns and winters in Philadelphia and in Washington, in Australia she had felt like a new woman. However, if she secretly dreaded the thought of enduring English winters in the years to come, she kept those fears to herself. She had vowed to honour and obey her husband, and she would follow him wherever he went.