Raging Sea, Searing Sky

by Christopher Nicole

  ‘Lewis is a Yank,’ Robby explained. ‘Fighting for us.’

  ‘And he was on the Lusitania,’ Tommy put in.

  ‘You must let me warm you up,’ Wanda suggested. ‘I ain’t never had a Yank. You do it different?’

  Lew could only goggle at her, and had his arm taken by the other woman, who was shorter and was definitely the one with the large breasts. ‘I’m Lucy,’ she said invitingly.

  It was necessary to have another pint, after which the room began to rotate as if he had already joined his ship and was at sea. Then they left the pub and made their unsteady way along the street. As it was now mid-June it was still broad daylight, and there could be no doubt that the passersby knew just what the girls’ profession was and just what they were about to do. Lew felt terribly embarrassed and was beginning to realise that he had forgotten to go to the toilet before leaving the pub. But he didn’t dare suggest they stop on the road; anyway, the two girls each had hold of one of his arms.

  ‘Lost his mother and sister, he did,’ Tommy said. ‘Drowned before his eyes.’

  ‘That’s why he wants to kill Germans,’ Ginger told them.

  ‘And a good thing too,’ Wanda agreed. ‘I’ve never had a German, neither.’

  ‘Here we are,’ Lucy said, producing a key from her pocket, and unlocking the front door of a somewhat decrepit looking house.

  They entered a gloomy and odorous front hall. ‘That you, Lucy?’ someone called.

  ‘It’s me and Wanda, Aunt Flo,’ Lucy replied. ‘We got company.’

  ‘There’s a good girl,’ Aunt Flo remarked.

  ‘Grasping old hag,’ Wanda muttered. ‘She takes half, would you believe it?’

  ‘Is she really your aunt?’ Lew asked.

  Lucy gave a peal of laughter. ‘Christ, no. That’s for the bluebottles. Me aunt would have the skin of me ass if she knew what I was at.’

  Lew wondered what Father would do if he knew what he was at. But he didn’t even know what he was at himself. Now they were in the house Ginger and Tommy and Robby were making very free with the girls bodies, squeezing their bottoms and their breasts and kissing them. He didn’t dare do that, although they didn’t seem to mind; besides, they were still holding his arms.

  ‘Up here,’ Lucy said, and now she released him to climb the stairs in front of him; Lew watched the skirts swaying over the hips immediately before his nose.

  ‘Oh, she’s nice,’ Wanda told him, observing what he was looking at. ‘But you’re mine, Yankee boy. She may have the tits, but I have a better ass.’

  To his increasing horror, there was only one room, which contained two beds. ‘We’ll have the money now, if you don’t mind,’ Lucy said.

  ‘Come along, fellows,’ Robby said, and took out his half a crown. The others followed his example, and Lucy held each coin up to the light and then clinked them together. As if she had been a shopkeeper, Lew thought. But then, she was a shopkeeper, who was about to sell them her wares.

  ‘That’s nice,’ she said, and placed the money on the mantlepiece. ‘Now then, who’s first?’ she demanded, unbuttoning her blouse. ‘You taking big boy, Wanda?’

  ‘You’re damned right,’ Wanda said. ‘This I got to have.’

  ‘Then it’ll be me and Lewis,’ Robby said. ‘You two can watch.’ He began to undress to match Lucy, and as he had considerably less to remove, he was naked in seconds, and totally aroused.

  But both Lucy and Wanda were also naked; unlike the endless underclothing worn by Mom or Shirley, they apparently had only a single shift beneath their gowns, and neither wore drawers at all. Once again Lew was goggling. He had never seen a naked woman before — although he had shared a cabin on the Lusitania he had of course been required to use the bathroom while Mom and Shirley had actually been undressing — and Wanda, for all her thinness, had a good figure. Again she made him think of May, or how May might look, and he hated himself. But she didn’t compare for curves with Lucy, and he was horrified to see that Robby was fondling the huge breasts, which she seemed to enjoy, while at the same time giving himself an erection. Before all of them.

  But he was going to have to do the same.

  ‘Well?’ Wanda asked. ‘What’s keeping you down, big boy?’

  ‘I have to...’ he licked his lips.

  ‘Might have known.’ She reached beneath the bed and pulled out a chamber pot. ‘I’ll hold it for you.’

  Before the woman? Lew looked desperately at Ginger and Tommy, who were laughing, and then at Robby...but Robby was already on top of Lucy and jerking up and down, while she was laughing too, and saying, ‘Easy, sailor, easy.’

  He couldn’t wait any longer, however embarrassing it might be, dropped his pants, and relieved himself. ‘Holy Christ,’ Wanda remarked. ‘You must have a bladder like a whale.’ She put the pot back under the bed. ‘Now, that feels better, don’t it?’ She smiled at him. ‘What are you hiding for?’

  Because he had instinctively pulled his pants back up. Now she took them down herself, sliding her hands over his buttocks and then coming round in front to take him in her fingers. He just would not have believed it was possible, was overwhelmed with a mixture of embarrassment and ecstasy as she fondled him to hardness, and then took him into her mouth. That any woman would do something like was incredible. His emotions grew still more confused, the pleasure and the embarrassment at being virtually raped in front of his friends being joined by a tremendous affection for the girl in front of him, as well as total shame as he thought of May doing this to him — and total exultation as he thought that she might. But May was not a prostitute. She would never dream of this, yet...’Why don’t you touch me, big boy,’ Wanda said. ‘You paid for them.’ She turned round and presented her buttocks, and cautiously he squeezed them; they were tight and hard.

  ‘I have titties too,’ she reminded him, turning back. Even more cautiously he touched her breasts, and she laughed. ‘They won’t fall off, not even if you pull.’ But she was satisfied with him now, and lay back on the bed. ‘Come down, big boy,’ she said. ‘Come down. You won’t believe this, Lucy,’ she said chattily, ‘but this one’s a virgin.’

  ‘Lord love a duck,’ Lucy commented. She was lying totally relaxed, as Robby was spent and panting on her chest.

  ‘In you come,’ Wanda said cheerfully. ‘Oh, but you’re going to make some girl real happy, one of these days. Real happy,’ she sighed, as Lew knelt between her spread legs, and she guided him inside.

  *

  He was desperately ashamed of himself when they left the brothel, but his friends seemed to have had the time of their lives. ‘Second time around was better,’ Ginger told him. ‘Wanda was proper warmed up.’

  But then, had he not also had the time of his life? Part of his shame was the result of the pleasure he had experienced, the warm beauty of being enclosed between her legs and inside her, the intimacy of the ejaculation, all seemed part of some marvellous dream.

  The others could hardly wait for the following week when they would be able to afford the girls again, but Lew cried off, on the grounds that he wasn’t feeling well. It wasn’t that he didn’t want the sensation of lying on that soft body again...he just didn’t want it to be Wanda’s so well-used soft body, and he didn’t want it to be so entirely loveless — and he was disturbed by the images it had introduced. Of Mother, so beautiful and calm...and Father? And then of May and himself — or May and some other fellow, which was far worse.

  He was desperate to get to sea, and in fact the time passed very quickly, even if his continued refusal to go on the town on Saturday nights cost him some of his initial popularity. ‘You’re just a bloody queer at heart,’ Robby told him in disgust. ‘Those girls are asking after you.’

  ‘So I’m queer,’ Lew agreed pleasantly, not at all sure what was meant by the word, except for the obvious. Once again his size protected him from any ragging by the others.

  He kept much to himself after that, counting the days until the passing o
ut parade, which was taken by the captain, with the various chief petty officers standing proudly by as their charges swung by the rostrum, eyes right, shoulders back, arms and legs moving in perfect unison in complete contrast to their early days in the establishment. And after the parade they were told where they were going, and given their rail passes.

  ‘McGann, you’re for Queen Mary. Rosyth,’ Mr Wright told him, giving him his warrant. ‘You have one night’s furlough in London, then you’ll be on that train. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Wright.’

  ‘Rollins, you’re also for Queen Mary. One night in London, remember.’

  Tommy looked at Lew. ‘Well, hell,’ he said. ‘We’re going to be shipmates.’

  *

  They travelled up to town together, sitting in a crowded third-class compartment, but now they wore uniform and carried heavy kitbags, and were the centre of attention. ‘We’re for HMS Queen Mary,’ Tommy told the other passengers proudly. ‘In Rosyth.’

  ‘That’s Admiral Beatty’s squadron,’ someone said admiringly. ‘Oh, he’s a fighting admiral, is Admiral Beatty.’

  ‘Battlecruisers,’ said someone else. ‘The greyhounds of the sea.’

  Lew had read that destroyers were considered the greyhounds of the sea, but he didn’t argue. He thought they had said too much already. ‘Do you think you should have told them where we’re going?’ he muttered to Tommy when the interest had subsided. ‘Suppose one of them was a German spy?’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Tommy protested.

  ‘It could happen,’ Lew argued.

  ‘So the Kaiser is going to win the war when he finds out we’re joining Admiral Beatty?’

  Lew supposed his contempt was justified, but he still felt that they should have kept their destination secret. He was, however, more concerned at the prospect of his reunion with Father. Father would not know that his young son had become a man, and now knew all the secrets of the universe. And he wasn’t sure he wanted Father to find out. So to conceal his private embarrassment he found himself telling Father where he was going as well — but of course there was no risk of Father turning out to be a German spy.

  ‘Your mother would be proud of you, boy,’ Joe McGann said, looking him up and down. ‘A British tar. Land of Hope and Glory, Hearts of Oak! Do you know the ship?’

  ‘Only that she’s a battlecruiser,’ Lew said. ‘Yes. I wish she were a battleship.’

  ‘Everyone in Portsmouth says battlecruisers are the ships to be on. They’re the only ones which have done anything in this war. The Falklands, the Dogger Bank...’

  ‘Oh, they’re fast,’ Joe agreed. ‘And they pack one hell of a punch. But have they the armour to take one, there’s the point?’ He grinned. ‘Maybe you won’t ever have to find out.’

  ‘I bet I do. They say Admiral Beatty is a fighting admiral.’

  ‘He is that,’ Joe agreed, and threw his arm around his son’s shoulders. ‘God damn, how I wish I were coming with you.’

  *

  The battlecruiser squadron was lying in the harbour of Rosyth, in the Firth of Forth, a couple of hundred miles south of the Grand Fleet, which was in Scapa Flow. This was because the fast ships were required to scout and if possible catch and hold any German sortie into the North Sea until the Grand Fleet could come up. Tommy and Lew therefore went to Edinburgh, a very long and uncomfortable overnight journey sitting upright in their hard third class seats, and from there took a bus out to the naval base, where they caught their first glimpse of the squadron, and stood on the shore with their hearts pounding as they gazed at the great ships, gleaming in the July sunlight.

  Admiral Beatty’s fleet consisted of ten capital ships, with the usual complement of destroyers. Four of the big vessels were the very latest battleships to be built, Barham, Malaya, Valiant and Warspite — there was a fifth ship in this class, Queen Elizabeth, but she was not yet returned to duty after serving in the abortive Dardanelles operation — huge monsters of nearly thirty thousand tons each, armed with fifteen-inch guns, and yet capable of speeds of twenty-five knots, which enabled them to keep pace with the battlecruisers.

  There were six of these, and Lion flew the flag of the admiral. Tiger, Princess Royal and Queen Mary were of the same class, displacing twenty-six thousand tons, and armed with eight thirteen-point-five-inch guns as well as sixteen four-inch, and also two twenty-one-inch torpedo tubes. Two funnelled, they were powered by steam turbines capable of delivering seventy thousand shaft horsepower which would drive their six hundred and fifty odd feet of length, ninety-odd of beam, and thirty-six of draught at twenty-eight knots maximum, while the three and a half thousand tons of coal each carried gave them a cruising range of over five thousand miles. Lew realised that he was going to sea on a ship not all that much smaller than the Lusitania — and a ship which could defend itself too. The other two ships in the squadron, New Zealand and Indefagitable, were somewhat smaller and slower, as they were older, but it was still the most impressive accumulation of seapower Lew had ever seen, and when he thought that there were more than twenty other dreadnought battleships, as well as some battlecruisers, up at Scapa Flow under the command of Admiral Jellicoe, he could understand the almost arrogant confidence of his shipmates. As the picket boat took Tommy and himself out to their new home his heart soared, and he almost wished he were British himself. Then they were on the deck and saluting the bridge, which rose above them in its turreted splendour, gazing up at the immense gun barrels, and being assigned their mess and watch by the commander, who was the executive officer of the ship below the captain.

  They never actually saw the captain at all for several days, because the size and organisation of this floating township — containing roughly twelve hundred men — was also on a scale beyond anything Lew had ever known before. The ship was the centre of the universe to all who served on her, and was a completely self-contained universe as well, save when fuelling. Although she carried just over a thousand tons of oil for her generators and her various hydraulic systems, her boilers were coal-driven, as were those of all the ships save for the new battleships lying close by — they were oil-driven, and for that reason were the envy of the rest of the fleet, because of the ease and comfort with which their tanks could be replenished. Coaling, and victualling, were lengthy and tedious operations for the crew of Queen Mary, and coaling left the entire ship a mass of glutinous black dust which had to be cleaned by hand — indeed, fuelling apart, Lew rapidly discovered that for all the theory and practice taught him in Portsmouth, his main reason for being in the Navy seemed to be to scrub decks like any housemaid — but that apart, life was very pleasant, although strenuous enough. Now for the first time Lew came into contact with officers in a big way, for in addition to lieutenants of every rank and every aspect of the service — paymasters and engineers as well as watch keepers — there was a full complement of midshipmen, boys hardly older than himself, who wore smart uniforms and were required to supervise the various daily cleaning and polishing tasks assigned to the ordinary seamen, as well as acting as officers’ assistants in time of battle, and whose principal means of communication with the lower deck was by means of, ‘Look lively there, look lively!’

  The seamen regarded them as their natural enemies, in a good humoured fashion; Lew could not help but remind himself that he hoped to be a midshipman too, in a year or so.

  But first the battle! Would there be one? Everyone in the fleet was confident that there would be. ‘They have to come out,’ said Able Seaman Gerraghty, who was in charge of the mess in which Lew and Tommy found themselves. ‘They have sixteen dreadnoughts. They didn’t build them to look at.’

  But when would they come out? And if they did, could they be caught? The North Sea was a very large stretch of water. And as the Germans did not immediately emerge, life at anchor in the river soon became somewhat tedious. As the very lowest of ordinary seamen, Lew and Tommy spent their days holystoning and mopping and polishing, everything from guns to deck. The
re was training as well, for they were each assigned a battle station; Lew’s was in the after turret as one of the gun crew. They were commanded by a lieutenant, and trained at loading and unloading for an hour every day, wearing masks to resist the fumes which would be swirling around them in battle — but without ever actually firing the gun in the peaceful confines of the Firth of Forth.

  There were the usual kit inspections and medical parades, the usual feuds and indeed occasionally fights in the mess decks, which brought swift loss of privileges for the guilty parties, but which were caused, Lew was sure, more by boredom mixed with tension than anything else. Again as usual, although there were men willing to take exception to his being an American, they all respected his size, especially when they noted his prowess in the boxing ring, and by and large he was able to keep out of trouble. While he became a man apart after the day Admiral Beatty visited them, and the whole crew was assembled for his inspection. The admiral was a heavy-jawed man with piercing eyes, who also happened to be married to an American wife — a millionairess it was whispered on the lower deck — and who insisted on meeting the American volunteer. ‘I wish there were more of your countrymen with your point of view,’ he remarked. ‘Good sailing, McGann.’ Even the captain, who rarely came forward and had not hitherto given the slightest sign of being aware that Lew was a member of his crew, smiled and shook his hand.

  Their principal external activities were boat races with the crews of other ships, to keep them fit and their minds active. But there was no substitute for action, and one could almost feel the wave of relief that went through the squadron whenever they were ordered to sea. This was nearly always in response to information by radio from one of the many light cruisers on patrol in the North Sea, or indeed from London, where the navy experts had broken the German code, that a sortie from Kiel or Wilhelmshaven was under way.