Somewhere in the building he heard the clang of metal doors, the sudden purr of a lift, the murmur of voices. A new arrival, maybe, or one less fortunate, who had just “stepped off.” Almost reluctantly he unbuttoned his greatcoat and laid it on the chair, the cap with the bright oak leaves on top. He wanted to yawn, the way men do when they are about to go into action. Not fear: there was never time for that.
He should not have come. Nobody would have blamed him. Not more than they already did.
Footsteps on that polished linoleum floor so beloved by hospitals, then the resonant tones of the P.M.O. and a woman’s voice.
He turned towards the corridor and saw her, all in blue, a naval crown in diamonds glittering on one lapel. Alison always looked elegant and attractive no matter what she wore, and despite the war and the rationing. She had laughed at him when he had remarked on it, the laugh which could turn any man’s head, and said, “ This thing? I’ve had it for years! You never notice!”
He had first met her just as a complacent nation was at last realizing war was inevitable; it had been at Portsmouth, when he had just put up his second stripe. It seemed a hazy dream, like so many he had suffered in hospital after he had been brought back, after losing his ship. Trying to piece the fragments together. Alison’s smile at the church, the avenue of drawn swords on their wedding day. Two years ago.
She was looking at him now, and her chin was lifted slightly, her eyes very bright as if she had been crying. She did not smile or offer her hand. In his mind he could see her throwing her arms around him or one of her friends, kicking up one heel as if to seal it. She was twenty-seven years old, and she was a stranger.
The P.M.O., a bluff surgeon commander, shook hands and said, “Sorry to have kept you hanging about, Graham. Short-staffed.” He peered at his watch, frowning. “We shall have to operate, I’m afraid. Sooner rather than later.”
He leaned over the desk to speak with the nurse on duty, and Alison said, “It was good of you to come. I hear you’re joining your new ship.”
“Tomorrow.” He glanced at her hand. No ring. “How is he?”
He. Another stranger. Lieutenant Mike Loring had been first lieutenant in his last ship, the F Class destroyer Firebrand. A good officer, and a firm friend, he came from a well-established naval family; one of his ancestors had been at Trafalgar, and his father was an admiral. After that last tour of duty he was to have left Firebrand for a command of his own. It had been a straightforward convoy, no better or worse than others they had done together.
Alison had told him when he had left their borrowed flat to return to sea. It could not have come at a worse time, although there was never a suitable time, especially in war. Separation, and eventually divorce.
And now Mike Loring was to have another operation. How many was that? Firebrand had already been hit several times, and then one of the enemy’s shells had killed or wounded the damage control party he had been leading.
Alison said, “More splinters. In the spine. He is heavily drugged most of the time.” She sounded as if she was repeating it for her own benefit, as if she could not come to terms with it. She was strong-willed, determined, but this was something she could not control.
Martineau said, “Are you managing?” He stared at the window again. He could not even call her by name. What is the matter with me?
“I shall stay here until I hear something.”
When he was able to face her again he saw her eyes move away from the small crimson ribbon with its miniature cross. It had taken only a split second, but her expression was quite clear. Resentment, anger, because he was alive and the man for whom she had left him, her lover, was fighting for his life. At best Mike would be a survivor, and she would have nothing.
“If there is anything I can do . . .”
The P.M.O. put down a telephone and said abruptly, “I can give you a few minutes, Graham.”
Martineau turned to follow him but stopped as he heard her say softly, “Haven’t you done enough?”
The room was in semi-darkness, blackout curtains drawn almost to their night position, so that bars of hard sunshine played across the white-painted bed and glittering instruments like searchlights.
Mike Loring was connected by tubes and wires to a side-table, one bare arm lying motionless on a pillow, the skin pockmarked by probes and needles. He still wore a bandage across one eye, but the other moved slowly as if independent from the rest of the body, as if that was already dead.
Martineau made to reach out, but saw the P.M.O. shake his head.
Instead he said, “Rough, is it?”
“I—I did walk, you know.” Loring closed his eye as if the effort was too much. Then he added, “Back in that other bloody place. I did walk.”
Martineau said, “I shall keep in touch . . .”
Loring moved his head from side to side. “You’ll be too busy.”
So he knew about Hakka, even here. Like this. The family.
Loring persisted, “Your new Number One, what’s he like?”
“Not met him yet.”
“Give him hell, eh?” He turned his head again as someone laughed, outside or in a corridor. Just a laugh. Something to take for granted.
When Martineau looked again he was shocked to see a tear running down his cheek. Reminded of some precious moment, or person? Of Alison, his friend’s wife. His lover.
Sunlight flashed on the P.M.O.’s wristwatch. It was time.
Martineau said, “I have to go, Mike.”
The drug was taking charge again. His voice was dull, slurred.
But he said, “Sorry about the mess, Skipper.”
The surgeon commander opened the door; a nurse and two orderlies were waiting to enter.
“We’ll do what we can, Graham.” His mind was already moving on. Martineau had seen him looking at the crimson ribbon also. All right for some. But he was one of those who had to pick up the human pieces and try to mend them. Afterwards.
The duty nurse was still at the desk. She said brightly, “One of our people will give you a lift, sir.” She could not sustain it. “Mrs Martineau left earlier.”
As soon as I was out of the way. So she did blame him. Did the rest count for nothing?
“She left you this, sir.”
Martineau picked up his cap and took the small buff envelope. There was no letter, only the wedding ring. Alison’s timing had always been impeccable.
So why could he not accept it? Every day somebody was going through it, on the wireless and the interminable news bulletins. The Secretary of the Admiralty regrets to announce the loss of HMS so-and-so, next of kin have been informed. All those telegrams, father . . . husband . . . son. Or that well-meaning letter from a “friend.” I thought it only right that you should know about your wife carrying on while you’re away . . . And so on.
The nurse studied him. She knew what he had done, that he had rammed an enemy cruiser with his own ship, even how old he was; it had been in all the papers. And she had seen the medal ribbon for herself. This was a real hero. A lively, alert face, she thought, not silly and boasting like some they got in here. Very dark hair, and she had seen the flecks of grey at the temples when he had tugged on his cap. And there was sadness, and she sensed it had nothing to do with the scene she had witnessed earlier. A lot of men, his men, had died that day.
She had said as much to one of the sick berth petty officers. He had retorted, “Well, he had a choice, Sister, those poor buggers didn’t!”
Outside in the biting air Martineau saw the car which was to take him to Ipswich. Tomorrow there would be no comparisons, no contests. It was a new beginning. It had to be.
He glanced back at the lines of faceless windows and thought of the man he had wanted to hate.
Sorry about the mess, Skipper.
It had saved him.
The train was so overloaded that it sounded as if it could barely drag itself along the track. And it was packed with humanity, a few patches of khaki or ai
r force blue, but overwhelmingly navy.
Extra carriages had been added along the way, most without corridors, so that in each compartment there were men who were wishing they had not drunk an extra pint of beer before climbing aboard, or praying for the next stop, when there would be a concerted rush to the station’s meagre facilities. The truly desperate were not so particular.
The initial disturbance, good-natured or otherwise, had given way to the usual dull acceptance of men returning from leave. Leave at the end of a training course or following promotion, local leave for the lucky ones, compassionate leave for others who now had little to say and sat mostly in silence, even looking forward to going back to routine and the disciplined life they had always been ready to curse. Men whose families had been killed or injured in air raids, men who, in many cases, had only been able to visit an empty space, or the charred wreckage where they had once lived, loved, and hoped.
And there were still a few for whom it was all part of a continuing adventure. Ordinary Seaman Ian Wishart sat jammed between two other sailors, one in the corner seat asleep with his head lolling against the window, on his other side a fat three-badged stoker jerking back and forth, playing cards with some friends sitting opposite. It was a non-smoking compartment and the air was solid with fumes, both pipe and cigarette, and there was a strong smell of rum; Wishart had seen a large bottle being passed around the card players, growing emptier by the mile. Wishart had been in the Royal Navy for only a few months, and until yesterday he had been under training at the shore establishment HMS St Vincent on the Gosport side of Portsmouth Harbour. Everything at the double, everything strictly pusser. He had noticed the uniforms of the men in the compartment: real sailors, some of them going to the same destination, maybe the same ship. Real sailors, in their skin-tight tailored jumpers with low fronts and collars scrubbed so hard that the cloth had faded as pale as Cambridge blue. Bell-bottomed trousers, far wider than those issued at stores, and caps worn flat-a-back. Wishart thought of his own cap, the bow tied correctly above his left ear. These sailors, “Jolly Jacks,” one of his old instructors had scornfully described them, had hand-made bows flapping rakishly above one eye. At St Vincent you would be crucified for that.
It had not been easy, but Wishart was as quick to learn as he was to observe, and this was what he had wanted. Like many of the boys in his class at school, he had been dreading that the war might end before he could join up.
He had got used to the rough, often crude humour from other recruits no older than himself, had learned to put up with the jibes at what they called his posh accent. He had been attending a local grammar school when his papers had at last been accepted, but the way some of his companions pulled his leg about it, anyone would have thought he had been at Eton or Harrow.
But it was behind him now. The square-bashing, the intricacies of gun drill with some elderly six-inch pieces from the Great War, the seamanship and the boatwork, bends and hitches, taking a ship’s wheel, albeit a working model, for the first time.
He looked around the compartment again. And he was listed as a potential candidate for a commission, Hostilities Only of course. That was for ever, as far as he could see.
His senior instructor, an old Chief Petty Officer brought back from retirement, had explained the importance of the rigorous training.
“Wherever you go, my son, no matter what ship you land yourself in, you will be grateful to this place.” He had offered a rare grin. “It is, I agree, a fucking awful place to be in at the time!”
Wishart smiled. He had even blushed about that.
The train gave a great lurch and two small cases fell from the luggage rack overhead.
Someone shouted, “Bloody cow! One more jerk like that an’ I’ll have to piss out ’er the winder!”
The fat stoker grunted, “You’ll follow it if you does!”
Wishart picked up one of the cases and tried to stand up, but the man next to him was suddenly awake, and said, “That’s mine!” He shook his head as if to clear it. “Give it to me.” He looked at Wishart for the first time, that single glance taking in the new uniform and dark collar, and the youthful face above it.
He said, “Sorry,” and folded his hands across the little case, closing his eyes again.
Wishart studied him, still startled by the edge in his voice. He recalled seeing him being stopped by the naval patrol at the ticket barrier, where the redcaps and R.A.F. provost allegedly hunted for deserters and enemy agents. He had heard one disgruntled seaman say, “Couldn’t catch a bloody cold, that lot!”
An interesting face, hawkish—it might be described in the Rover or the Hotspur, Wishart’s two favourite magazines. Intelligent, too. A slight accent, a Londoner perhaps. He could even smile at his own speculation. Before joining St Vincent, he had never been further than Brighton for family holidays.
The other man said suddenly, “What ship?”
Wishart thought of all the posters and warnings about careless talk, and the cartoon of Hitler and Goering kneeling under a table where a loud-mouthed sailor was spilling secrets of the next convoy to his tarty girlfriend. But he answered readily, “HMS Hakka. ” He saw the eyes open again. “A Tribal Class. I was told that—”
The man dug him with his elbow. “Me too. Name’s Bob Forward. Very apt.” He did not explain. “Leading Seaman.” Then he looked briefly at the broken threads on his sleeve, which Wishart had already noticed. “ Ex -leading seaman.”
Wishart nodded, and tried to contain the rumbling of his stomach. Forward studied him.
“Not eaten lately?” He unclipped the case and took out a bar of chocolate. “Here, have a bit of nutty.”
Wishart took it gratefully and did not see Forward gripping the lid of the case, nor that he was staring at the bundle of letters and papers which had slid to one side of it. The photograph was looking directly at him, and even in the poor light he could see her smile, provoking, mocking. The compartment was quiet, and for an instant he thought they were all watching him. But he was mistaken, as if he had been temporarily rendered deaf. God help me!
Like the moment, the second she had realized that he knew. That it was over. Mercifully that same deafness had acted like a shock-absorber, otherwise . . .
And she had still been staring at him. Despite the terrible wounds, the blood.
He said in the same abrupt tone, “I’m in Nine Mess. Suit you?”
“I expect I shall be detailed . . .”
Forward looked at his hands. As if expecting them to be shaking, or that he would still see the blood. Like the moment when the naval patrol had stopped him. Afterwards he had almost laughed aloud. How could they know anything? How could anybody?
He said, “I’ll fix it, OK?”
Wishart nodded. He was no longer just a recruit.
Graham Martineau stooped almost to the sill of the window to look at a rectangle of sky above the opposite rooftop. It was cloudless, what he could see of it, another fine, crisp day, although the street below was still in darkness. He moved back to the table, hearing the floor creak underfoot. The owners of the hotel, whoever they were, must have been delighted to hand it over to the navy for the duration. Even the sparse items of furniture seemed to lean towards you as you passed.
He glanced at the half-empty cup of coffee and decided against it. He could not recall when he had last eaten a proper meal. He had risen even earlier than usual, his mind clearing reluctantly while he sorted through what he had to do. The uniform laid out across two chairs: his other self. His defence. Notes and intelligence folder arranged and packed, like the rest of his kit. Ready to go.
He had gone down to breakfast and had found one other officer at a table, the Daily Mirror propped up in front of his plate. The headlines were glaring: MONTY ADVANCING. AFRIKA KORPS ON THE RUN. Was it really possible? After so many reverses, it was unwise to believe in anything.
He had had too many gins the night before, hoping for one good night’s sleep, to prepare himself.
It should have worked; there had been only a few drunks in the street, and then the voice of authority, moving them on. Not like London . . . sirens, the drone of aircraft, the sickening vibration of falling bombs. It never failed to surprise, even to move him, that civilians managed to put up with it, going about their work, trying to lead normal lives in a world which was threatening to destroy them. He had seen the great gaps where houses had stood, the walled-up shops, the air raid shelters, men and women sleeping as best they could, curled up on the platforms of some miserable Underground station. At sea it was different. Or so they all believed.
The dream had come then. More intense than last time, vivid and stark, with faces he could recognize. And Firebrand ’s bows rising up in front of him like a ram, the vague outline of the cruiser reaching out in both directions like some jagged grey cliff. In the dream there were always guns firing, soundless and terrible. Sometimes he tried to see it as it had been, how his poor, reeling ship must have looked to the enemy in those last insane minutes. The German Captain had attempted to avoid the collision, probably astonished that his blanket of heavy shells had not smashed the destroyer into oblivion even before she had worked her way into range. He could not imagine how Firebrand had appeared to the handful of merchant vessels as they struggled to disperse and take advantage of his desperate gesture.
They had fired all their remaining torpedoes, otherwise . . . That one word. Otherwise. In his heart he knew it would have made no difference.
At one moment the ship had been out of command when a shell had exploded on the port wing of the bridge, killing most of the men in the wheelhouse, and then an unknown voice had called up the pipe, “Steady as she goes, sir!” Then, seconds before the surging, nauseating impact and the thunder of tearing steel, he had heard a terrifying scream. Like the ship herself. A last defiance.
The rest was blurred. Icy water. Voices calling out and then fading. And then boats, hands hauling him to safety. As they had done themselves so many times.
For Valour Page 2
