Sixty Minutes for St George
Page 27
The Navy was made of men like Garfield.
Warwick passing close… Daylight coming rapidly: the Belgian coast was a low black line with a haze of mauve-tinted dawn behind it. Nick had come back to the binnacle, but the stool seemed about twelve feet high. He let himself slide down, sat on the step and leant back against the binnacle’s round solidity. He shut his eyes. Garfield said quietly, ‘Sub-lieutenant, sir…’
Warwick had flashed, I am ordering Moloch to stand by you. What is your situation. Jowitt was using a hand-lamp; the twenty-inch had been blown overboard a long time ago. Raikes, the gunner (T), was crouching beside Nick. ‘You all right, sir?’ York looked down at him: ‘Get McAllister and a stretcher, gunner, would you?’ He turned to Jowitt, and told him, ‘Make to Warwick: Bravo towing Grebe. Believe can make Dover if weather holds. Very heavy casualties. Captain has just succumbed to wounds. Sub-lieutenant York assuming command.
Jowitt wanted to know how to spell ‘succumbed’.
Sarah had said in her letter,
There is something I must tell you, because I must share it with someone and I believe that you, my dearest Nick will at least try to understand. Please? You may remember that I introduced an old friend to you – Alastair Kinloch-Stuart, a major in one of the Highland regiments, here some months ago. Since then he has visited several times in this neighbourhood, and I cannot pretend otherwise than that his purpose has been to be close to me. I have not, I admit it and beg you to understand the circumstances, been as firm as I know I should have been in preventing this. He was such a very old friend, my family and his were on almost cousinly terms when he and I were only children. But – Nick, my dear, I should like to be speaking to you about this, not struggling to describe it so inadequately in a letter – he fell in love with me, and I have always had a high and warm regard for him; he was a good and honourable person and had no despicable intentions, indeed it was in some ways an agony for us both, and all the worse, that is to say more difficult for me at least to – oh, Nick, I am only saying what you know so well, that your father and I have not made the great thing of our marriage that I had hoped we should and intended. I must not ramble on, although I could scribble and scribble and still not tell you half of what I have in my heart and in my brain, of my feelings and deep sadness. But I did nothing wrong, Nick, ever. I promise you. And now poor Alastair has been killed in action. It was on March 22nd when the enemy broke through south of the Somme. Alastair had written a letter addressed to me, and it was brought to me here by his sister, to whom he had entrusted it. Now I have wept again. Nick, you are the one person on whose sympathy and love I place reliance: please come as soon as you can – please, Nick dear?
McAllister was crouching beside him. Two sailors were opening the folding stretcher, placing it where they could lift him on to it.
Garfield asked without moving his eyes from the lubber’s line, ‘Will he be all right, sir?’
The surgeon-probationer looked up. He gestured to the stretcher-bearers. Rising to his feet, he answered slowly, emphatically, ‘If he does not become “all right”, cox’n, you may shoot me.’
The coxswain looked at him, and nodded.
‘You said that, sir. There’s some might ’old you to it.’
Nick murmured, ‘Sarah. Oh, Sarah.’
McAllister and York exchanged glances. Nick spoke again; he’d been away somewhere, but for the moment he was back.
‘Sub.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘We’re supposed to rendezvous at Thornton Roads. North-west for fifteen miles. Don’t forget the tide. Transfer the tow when you get a chance.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ They were lifting the stretcher, with Nick on it. York added, ‘But now you – take it easy, sir, don’t—’
Garfield laughed. Sudden, explosive. Then he was himself again – stolid, not even smiling. McAllister and York were staring at him, wondering what had caused that uncharacteristic bark of mirth. He wasn’t bothering to explain.
First published in the United Kingdom in 1977 by Michael Joseph Ltd
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
57 Shepherds Lane
Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU
United Kingdom
Copyright © Alexander Fullerton, 1977
The moral right of Alexander Fullerton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781911591511
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Look for more great books at www.canelo.co