by David Black
Harry, dragged back from dreaming his own dream of this island paradise, thought the Governor took it quite well, at first. But after the exchange of pleasantries, and after Harry had been paraded in his uniform, matters became somewhat heated between M’sieur le Gouverneur and Captain Syvret.
The temperature cranked up another notch when Madame, M’sieur le Gouverneur’s wife, came down, equally, if not more, irritated by this inexplicable and wholly indefensible lack of pampering she’d been subjected to. She didn’t take this intrusion well at all. After a cool appraisal of the room, she promptly decided she would become hysterical and let everyone else deal with it. There was a lot of fast, flamboyant French talked, and a lot of gutter French too.
Unable to follow most of it, Harry excused himself and led Lydia off, wandering through the house, absently wondering if he might stumble on a quiet corner for a lengthier tryst with his new admirer.
It was a very vulgar, and very rich house; one that could not possibly have been sustained on a government stipend no matter how lavish a grateful nation might have felt for all of M’sieur le Gouverneur’s efforts on their behalf. The likelihood that M’sieur le Gouverneur was corrupt did not surprise Harry. Pretty soon, he and Lydia had found just the secluded spot.
Not long after, Syvret had the Gouverneur and his noisy wife locked in a basement pantry. Then the phone began to ring. The first of a series of calls that soon made it apparent that the landing force’s coup de main had achieved a complete, if somewhat anti-climactic, success.
The three government officials – one of the two magistrates and the two gendarme officers who Harbinson had identified as being the likeliest candidates to object – had all been apprehended by the Fusiliers Marins – they had all been in the throes of various sexual indiscretions and had been in no position to offer any resistance.
The other magistrate, a man of advancing years, had been sound asleep in bed with his equally aged and corpulent wife. According to the Fusilier Marins on the end of the phone, the old bastard hadn’t seemed at all surprised when his manservant had announced their arrival, and once he’d been assured he and his wife would still be having their morning coffee, he was indeed quite eager to cooperate.
As for the rest of the apparatus of island government, it had met Thierry’s force with a collective Gallic shrug. Not a shot had been fired, nor a blow landed; and when Syvret had sat down to convene a post mortem on the operation, it was realised that the only opposition they had encountered had been from the mango-hurling monkeys.
‘Island life,’ Syvret had observed philosophically. ‘You can overturn the government and no one bothers, eh? I could get used to living like that.’
By mid-afternoon, Syvret had everyone in his party gather in the residence’s huge reception room which was cooled by its three external walls made up of French windows, each framed by gathered silken drapes of blue, and picked out in golden fleur-de-lis, as well as by fans ranked across the length of its ceiling. Big, warm slabs of sunlight filled the space.
Maître Gilet, the elderly, coffee-loving magistrate and his argosy of a wife, had also been summoned and he was told he was to act as a one-man judiciary to Captain Syvret’s new role as a one-man executive. The apprehended members of the island’s administration stood around looking very disgruntled, at the centre of a loose corral of Fusiliers Marins. Their fates would be decided by the new civil administration, whenever it arrived, Captain Syvret informed them. In the meantime, they would be held under lock and key in the fort.
Madame Tassereau greeted this news by becoming hysterical again, but everybody had heard it all before and just looked bored. When she swooned, Thierry advised her coolly that she could either get up and walk out with the rest, or be dragged. A sizeable crowd of servants and locals were already outside hoping to see just such a sight, he assured her. She got up and walked with the rest, dispensing gypsyesque curses at all and sundry as she went.
With the culprits gone, toasts were drunk using the finest vintage champagnes from Tassereau’s cellar. Harry watched it all with growing impatience. He wanted to get back to Radegonde. There were signals to be sent; a duty he had been neglecting on the grounds that there had not been much to report. Now there was. But he was being kept from it by the Frenchmen all elaborately congratulating themselves in bumpers of foaming wine. Also, the sooner he reported, the sooner he could be back to renew his acquaintance with Lydia.
As he twiddled his thumbs, he couldn’t help but be amused as he watched Harbinson off to the side, trying to do deals with the staff to ship a few extra bottles back to his bungalow. It all seemed just so undisciplined and slap-dash and not at all how he imagined you took control of a . . . a . . . a what? A country? A colony? Were they here as usurpers or victors, or was this just a police action to reimpose legitimate rule? Surely they had to tell somebody. And then Captain Syvret was before him, beaming.
‘More champagne, Harry?’
‘Thank you, Sir,’ said Harry, returning the smile, holding out his empty glass and thinking to himself, oh fuck it! Why the hell not? I’m not in charge.
Chapter Eighteen
Harry was with Harbinson, leaning over a parapet on the fort’s harbour side, looking down on the harbour, watching a paint-scabbed museum-piece of a steamer creep up towards Fort-de-France’s wharves. The tub – for a veritable tub she was – must have been about 4,000 tons by Harry’s best guess; a couple of hundred feet long, with her bridge and two accommodation decks in the middle and a towering, greenish coloured natural draught smokestack with a red band round it which was belching oily smoke that only rose so high before it hung and then puddled out all over the harbour sky like spilt watercolour paint. Her hull was grey, her superstructure white, and both were crazy-paved with erupting rust. She flew a huge Stars and Stripes from a stubby little mast atop her sun-and-wind-bleached slatted, wooden wheelhouse. She was the Pascagoula, a Caribbean cargo-passenger tramp, out of San Juan, Puerto Rico, with nowhere better to be than here. The only thing that puzzled Harry was how she managed to get here so soon.
The question only served to underline his growing feeling that the seeming random events of the past several days had, in fact, all been part of the same meticulous plan that no one had bothered to tell him anything about. But then, why should he, the lowest form of marine life ever, be kept up to date on the intricacies of grand strategy? Who cared if the likes of him wanted to be kept in the know? Just shut up and get on with it.
Harry had written his signals, showed them to Syvret, who nodded as usual and, as usual, suggested no changes; then Harry had encoded them and transmitted. Syvret had written, encoded and transmitted his own signals without showing them to Harry. But then why should he? What was French diplomacy to do with Harry, a lowly RNVR Sub-Lieutenant? So why did Fleming’s terse acknowledgement to Harry’s signal demand to know what Syvret was telling Free French HQ in Carlton Gardens? What did that sleek rat expect Harry to do? Rifle the Captain’s sock drawer for the French code books and spend hours secreted in the heads decoding the Captain’s dispatch? Surreptitiously?
Always assuming it was Fleming who was receiving and replying. Harry had no real idea who he was reporting to. He’d sent his Navy report to Halifax, up the chain of command, as was expected of him; a repeat of Radegonde’s log, basically: course, speed, events – the usual. And he’d received his acknowledgment, as expected. His duty was done. But the other shower, Fleming’s lot, whoever the hell they were, wanted more, and they always got shirty if it wasn’t enough; and it was never enough.
Days had passed. Then a US Navy PB2Y Coronado flying boat had arrived in Fort-de-France out of the blue, carrying the new French civilian administration. Harry had watched it lumber overhead, its four roaring piston engines throwing out plumes of exhaust smoke and the most tremendous racket. It was like one of those new-fangled, huge American railroad diesel locos, but with wings; like the ones he used to see in National Geographic, along with the jungle photo-e
ssays and, of course, the bare-breasted African tribeswomen. And now look, he’d said to himself, smugly, as he watched the huge flying boat angle down to land in the harbour, You’ve now seen all three for real.
Only when the spray had finally settled from the Coronado’s touchdown, did he actually get his one and only sighting of the new civilian administration: three distant, indistinct stick figures in identical white tropical suits, standing, vacant-looking, as they were carried towards the town on the back of the asthmatic steam pinnace that Harry had first seen carrying M’sieur le Gouverneur’s representative out to meet Radegonde, all that long time ago.
Ident. new civ. admin. members – stop – report agenda political prog. soonest – stop, had been Fleming’s reply to that particular item of news.
Arsehole, Harry said to himself. He was feeling unappreciated, bored, grumpy and irrelevant.
‘Charming,’ said Harbinson, looking at him askance. Apparently Harry had said it aloud.
Harry was too hot to realise or care. He could feel his shirt sticking to his back, and trickles of sweat in his hairline. He adjusted his cap and rubbed his eyes, which felt strained through perpetually having to squint against the glare from the water below.
‘Not you,’ he snapped.
‘Now you’re surely not referring to that fine gentleman Captain over there,’ said Harbinson, waving at the American tramp steamer, ‘who’s been kind enough to navigate his equally fine big tub full of lamb and pork belly and every kind of beer and bourbon . . . not to mention petrol for my nice new government-surplus Citroën that I have recently liberated from Fascist control . . . all the way to this here harbour . . . just for me and my future peace of mind . . . as an arsehole, Harry?’
Harry turned and looked at the wreck of Harbinson’s slouched frame propped against the hot stonework of the parapet. After a while, Harbinson could tell Harry wasn’t in a jollying mood.
‘Whit about ye, Harry?’ he said.
‘What about me?’ said Harry. ‘What about you? What are you really doing here? What’s all this about? You, here on this island. Drunk. Running little private armies one minute, doing laying on of hands for the natives the next. Like you’re Robin Hood and Jesus all rolled into one—’
‘You’re cruisin’ fer a bruisin’, sonny,’ interrupted Harbinson, turning away, his face flat as an iron. ‘I’d chuck it while I was ahead if I was youse.’
But what did Harry care? He had an assignation ashore, and a nice big brass bed in which to conduct it. And he wasn’t the only one bent on enjoying himself. Most of the crew had been billeted in the town and Fort-de-France had proved a welcoming port of call for the boys off the Radegonde – well, most of them. Stalin, for one, wasn’t so sure.
Coming and going from the boat, you frequently noticed him, standing on his hind legs, propped against the aft guard rail of the conning tower, which was where, almost from the moment Radegonde had secured alongside, Stalin had stood guard for the boat, never once even attempting to go ashore, forever glowering along the quayside. For the first time for many of her crew, they had heard him bark. No suspicious longshoreman or shuffling dockside trader or dockyard cat escaped his notice. But there was never any attempt at hot pursuit. This was Stalin’s first real exotic port, and he didn’t like it. He was lord of what he knew, and he was going to stick with that, and defend it against all comers.
What Stalin didn’t get to see in the old town of Fort-de-France was a warren of three- and four-storey houses, with long, shuttered upper windows and iron fretwork balconies, their wood and stone all painted in pastel blues, yellows, pinks and greens; all peeling in various degrees of genteel neglect. Trees shaded most of the wider streets where seas of people – black, creole, white – milled and traded. Or just sat about watching the world go by in their loose-fitting white linen trousers and patterned skirts with light and airy shirts and blouses, some men in hats, some women in scarves. Harry had been watching them from his window, and now he was lying on his bed, in the little pension up from the docks he shared with Radegonde’s officers, and, more often than not, Lydia, listening to the hum of streets drifting in through the open shutters.
The streets had thronged since the Pascagoula had come in, with people busy trading for goods not on her cargo manifest, and enjoying the newly stocked shops. Lydia was out there now, likely in the thick of it. Harry, on the other hand, was feeling ruminative; the sailor far from home and the people he’d left behind. Thinking about Shirley, really, and not completely understanding what he was thinking, or feeling.
The door burst open, and in the doorway stood Lydia, all bright-eyed with excitement; breathless even.
‘Vite! Vite! Harree!’ She was saying in her heavily accented French. Quick! Quick! ‘Venez voir! Venez voir!’ Come and see, come and see!
He went out with her, into the blazing afternoon heat, and was sopping wet in the humidity before they’d gone a dozen yards, even though it was impossible to hurry in the busy streets. They reached the Rue de la Liberté and went down it – the big park, La Savane, on their left – to the little place on the shorefront, and when they emerged from the small crowd gathering there, no explanation was needed as to the cause of Lydia’s excitement. There she was, lying about a quarter of a mile out from Fort St Louis, bows pointed into the port area, her 12-inch gun levelled for firing over open sights; the huge Tricolour above her bridge flapping listlessly in the land breeze. There was only one boat it could be: the Durandal.
She was huge, almost 400 feet, Harry estimated, and painted in two tones of grey, like some sedate roadster. Her long, low hull was adorned by a huge cylinder for a superstructure. Forward, it ended in a scalloped bulb, with the fat slug of its gun projecting. The gun itself had a strange, scab-like device at the end of the barrel. Obviously some kind of watertight and automatic tompion to keep the sea out when submerged. It was open now, and at this distance, the way it hung looked like a lump of frozen discharge.
Abaft the gun was the bridge; a small thing by comparison, like the cab of a Roman chariot, with two periscope stands, one carrying her flag. Harry could see a lot of figures on the bridge and a lot of bustle. Down a step, and a long tube extended out, its watertight hatch open to what looked like rails running half the length of the aft casing; there was a little crane with another clutch of figures, using it to hoist out some kind of motor boat. The Pascagoula was still in the port area, so was Radegonde, snug alongside, engines shut down and nearly all her crew ashore. Harry had seen enough. He needed to find Captain Syvret.
Harry, in his best whites, stood with Faujanet behind Captain Syvret, Poulenc and the little magistrate – whose name turned out to be Hippolyte Dix. The three civilian administrators, who had been somehow miraculously transported from London via the US Navy flying boat, were nowhere to be seen. This was awkward because Durandal’s Captain, who was about to arrive in a state of some pomp and circumstance, had demanded their presence; and he had the 12-inch gun.
While they waited, Harry leaned forward and, whispering in Syvret’s ear, asked just exactly what was going on.
‘Well,’ said Syvret, ‘overcome by your government’s generosity in paying for the Brooklyn Navy Yard to fix his boat, Captain Boudron de Vatry has obviously discovered that his heart really lies with Vichy, and so he has sailed down here to ensure that France’s colonies do not fall into the hands of any traitorous Free French rabble. That’s us, by the way. And that’s why he wants us all, including our newly arrived Carlton Gardens political cadre, here on the jetty waiting for him so as he doesn’t have to go to the bother of rounding us up before he shoots us.’
‘The fiend,’ said Harry in a voice dripping with sarcasm. Somehow he couldn’t take the arrival of this renegade tub with its overgrown pop-gun seriously. He’d didn’t know it then, but he’d learn to think differently. ‘I take it you’re going to set Enseigne Thierry and his thugs on him,’ he added.
Syvret didn’t answer. He was watching a tiny monoplane
seaplane that had been unfolded from the bowels of the Durandal some hours earlier begin its take-off run across the waters of the bay. It lifted and climbed away, coming over their heads, vvvvv-ing away like a sewing machine on a power surge. The giant submarine’s motor launch continued its approach, a matelot in the bow clutching his boathook.
Captain Boudron de Vatry was about to make his landing.
His arrival had been presaged by fevered Aldis lamp activity all morning, during which demands were made to Syvret and nearly all ignored.
Eventually Syvret had succumbed and dispatched a reply. He agreed that de Vatry could come ashore to pay his respects. No mention was made about de Vatry’s demands for the island’s surrender. Instructions were flashed as to which jetty Durandal’s motor launch should come alongside. The steps where it was to land were conveniently located between Radegonde and the Pascagoula.
Harry watched as the motor launch drew near. He could still see only the matelot on the bow and presumed the Durandal delegation were all in the launch’s deck cabin – giving their paperwork a final check, perhaps, or having a nice cup of coffee, or a brandy to stiffen their sinews. In fact, he was quite taken by the entire notion of a motor launch being carried on a submarine, a motor launch with a cabin; imagine ever seeing that?
The matelot made his salute with the boathook and the launch swept up to the steps with an impressive precision. Crew emerged and brought their own lines to secure her. Once fast against the jetty, Durandal’s delegation emerged too, led by Captain de Vatry, who was wearing a sword. Harry tried to imagine the luxury the Captain must live in that allowed him room to stow a ceremonial sword among his kit on a submarine. Syvret ordered the five Fusiliers Marins he’d been allowed by Thierry to attention in salute. They smartly stamped their feet and presented arms as de Vatry mounted the steps, followed by two other officers.
‘I am Capitaine de Vaisseau Bourdon de Vatry,’ he said, presenting himself directly to Syvret. ‘Commanding Officer of the Marine Nationale submarine battlecruiser Durandal. Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?’