by Peter Albano
The captain felt a new terror. They would pass through their own friendly fire. He had no choice. He moved his glasses to the German destroyer. It had been badly hit. Only one funnel remained, the pilot house and bridge were torn and blackened, wireless room wrecked, and there was no trace of the mainmast and director. White-clad crewmen could be seen working frantically on A-mount and a half dozen more were on the fantail unlimbering a machine gun and studying Lancer through binoculars. Others were inert bundles huddled on the deck. She was listing and her speed was no more than twelve knots. He could see B-23 in large white letters on the side of her hull.
It was time. “Torpedoes away!” came from the voice pipe. With a hiss of compressed air, two twenty-one-inch torpedoes leapt from their tubes and plunged into the sea, leaving long trails like white daggers in the sea. At a range of six hundred yards, it was hard to miss. But B-23 was not finished, a single torpedo splashing into the water and heading for Lancer.
“Starboard full!” Reginald shouted into the pipe.
“Starboard full rudder on, sir,” the voice came back. Lancer heeled and rolled as full right radder was put on at thirty knots. The German, too, was turning, but slowly like an injured man negotiating a difficult stair.
As Reginald shouted more commands and Lancer picked her way past the trail of white bubbles, B-23 was struck by both torpedoes. The result was instantaneous and cataclysmic: two great holes flooded her starboard side, abruptly rolling her over and at the same instant her aft magazine exploded, disintegrating her stern. Within seconds nothing was left on the sea except planks, wreckage, and the heads of a few survivors and the usual burning oil.
Now there was a huge gap in the German line and Reginald took it. More flashes on the horizon, more waterspouts and the sky rained bellowing death. Chasing the salvos, Reginald evaded the friendly fire and wove his way into the Channel. The surviving German destroyers—Reginald counted three under way, two wallowing helplessly in the burning sea and three more that had never been engaged racing from Ostend and Zeebrugge—fell off quickly far astern and the cruisers’ fire ripped far overhead. Reginald reduced speed.
He raised his glasses and looked astern at the vast killing ground: towering explosions still spreading rings of tortured water and spray; acres of burning oil and palls of thick black smoke carrying all the way to the Belgian coast; the stern of one sunken German destroyer pointing at the sky; casks, broken furniture, brass powder casings bobbing up and down like stubby yellow fingers; huge bubbles of air and oil vomiting up from sunken ships; bodies everywhere, caught in the oil like flies on fly paper, stretched on wreckage or just drifting in clusters with arms and legs extended the way dead men always float. He had led Wolcott, Woolridge, and Blankenship and their crews into the jaws of hell and they had been devoured.
A strange air of unreality permeated everything. A dream. A nightmare. An asylum. A zoo peopled by savage animals. He had fallen into a whirlpool of insanity that had sucked him into its vortex. The young commander felt as if his entire being had just been carried off by the fury of the storm and now, slowly, he was seeping back into himself. Where else can men do these things to each other? Where else can you rip throats, mangle, obliterate, and be called hero for it? Farrar knew. Maybe the insane pilot had been the wisest one of all—the only one who truly belonged in this place.
There was a new presence on the bridge; the leading sick bay attendant and an assistant were hunched over ordinary signalman Heathstone and yeoman of signals Leslie Henshaw. Both were moaning and writhing. Tucker was an inert bloody heap in the middle of the platform, Farrar sat propped up against the windscreen, stilled by the cold hand of death. His eyes were open and to Reginald, they seemed to mock him still.
A cold stab of air shocked the commander erect and cleared the strange thoughts. Pochhammer was at his side, but the captain ignored him. Reginald cursed. He knuckled his temple and for the first time noticed the blood running over his hand and the torn sleeve. His chest burned and so did his forearm. “Ticket to blighty.” He snickered to himself crazily. Then there was rage—blind, white-hot rage that twisted in his viscera like a hot snake and caused his hands to tremble and perspiration to bead even in the cold air. Watts. The incompetent, fatuous swine. All his dead men—the fine young men, the new widows, the new orphans.
“You’re hit, sir,” Pochhammer said. The first officer’s eyes were glassy with shock and his voice dead.
“Nothing. Nothing at all in this show,” Reginald said. He licked the blood from his hand like a small child. But his chest was sticky and warm and there was a throbbing there. Pochhammer remained silent.
Goodenough’s voice interrupted him. The youngster was sobbing, but he managed to blurt, “Ships—ships, sir. Fine on the starboard bow.”
Reginald raised his glasses with one hand. They were very heavy. English destroyers charging over the horizon. But late. Too late. He dropped his binoculars to his waist and rubbed his heavy eyes, leaving traces of blood on his cheeks.
There was a terrible pain in his chest and suddenly his knees were rubber and he began to sink. But Pochhammer’s strong arm caught him. “I’m quite all right—really, Number One.”
Brenda was there for a fleeting instant, white face distinct as if backlighted in the growing twilight. Then the black curtain of night fell.
IX
Brenda’s face was back, framed by a penumbra of light diffused by curtains like clouds behind her. A new vision, the face of an angel, soft, white like ivory, eyes colored with the depths of the Mediterranean searching his anxiously. He would lose himself in this vision, wipe out the sight of Farrar, Goodenough, Henshaw, Heathstone, and the others. The destroyed Destroyer Squadron Four and his dead captains; Liddel Wolcott, Nathanial Blankenship, and Dewey Woolridge and their crews. And the burning sea. The burning sea with the dust of battle on it.
And the pitching and rolling had stopped as if Lancer had been set in concrete. The whole front of his body burned and there was pain in his arm and there were bandages on his face. She leaned close and her lips were on his forehead; cool, soft like satin.
He said to the vision, “I love you, Brenda.”
The apparition moved her lips to his ear. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, Reggie.”
“You’re real! I thought I was dead.”
She smiled. “A slight miscalculation.”
He started a chuckle, but it was cut short by rippling pain in his chest and abdomen. “Someone used me for a dart board,” he managed, grimacing.
Brenda looked around. For the first time Reginald noticed a woman in white at the foot of his bed. Brenda gestured. “This is your QA.”
A tall, heavyset middle-aged woman with her hair pulled back in an iron gray chignon stepped forward. “Carolyn Vertigan, Queen Alexandra’s Royal Navy Nursing Corps, Commander,” she said with a voice strident enough to shame a chief boatswain’s mate. “You’ve lost a lot of blood and you should have pain. It took one hundred seventy-two sutures to put you back together again.”
“My ship?”
The timbre of the nurse’s voice softened. “Your first officer was just here.”
“Pochhammer?”
“Yes, Commander. He said your ship’s at Chatham.”
“She’s bought it?”
“He didn’t say. Just that she needs some work.”
“Needs some work?” He rolled his eyes back. “Dear God above,” he said laconically. Then, in a firm voice, “Am I in Canterbury?”
“Yes,” Vertigan answered. “The Royal Navy Hospital for Officers.”
“Not again. Do you have a room to let? How long have I been here?
“They brought you in last night, Commander.”
“I want a report from my first officer.” He turned his lips under and his eyes were suddenly very moist. His voice came from deep in his throat. “Casualty lists—I’ve got to write;
write a lot of letters.”
“In due time, sir,” the nurse said gently.
“And there’s a vice admiral I’ve got to kill.”
The women looked at each other and Vertigan hooked a clipboard to the foot of the bed. “Got to continue my rounds. The doctor will be in shortly.”
Reginald stopped her. “When do I get out?”
She smiled. “You have no broken bones. It’s a question of your lacerations healing and picking splinters out of your face and chest. Eat, regain your strength, and be a good boy and don’t threaten admirals.” She turned and left.
Reginald said, “A few minutes ago I told you I love you. You didn’t answer.” Brenda took a breath and leaned close as if to answer. He stopped her gently with a finger to her lips. “I say, that wasn’t fair. The wounded warrior and all that rot.” He moved his hand to her cheek and held her eyes with his. Gently, she touched his lips with hers.
“I am very fond of you, Reggie.”
“Love?”
Her forehead creased and she pursed her lips. “I don’t know if I love you. I’m not sure I even know what it is.”
“You’re no hypocrite, Brenda.” She leaned back, but he smothered her tiny hand in his. “Dinner, Brenda, when they turn me loose? Right?”
“Of course, Reggie. Of course. I want to be with you so very much and if that’s love, then I feel it for you.” He pulled her back and she kissed him again with an open, warm mouth and he held her with a hand to the back of the head as if he were afraid she would flee him. But she did not try to pull away. Instead, she kissed his cheek, his temple, the cord in his neck while carefully avoiding the bandages.
“Hard to kiss me without getting a mouthful of gauze, iodine, and tape,” he said.
“I’ll manage.” She kissed him again.
Carolyn Vertigan’s voice boomed from the door. “It’s time, madam.”
“No!” Reginald shouted, feeling unbelievable new strength.
“Be a good boy or I’ll chain you to your bed,” came back from the door.
“I’ll be back,” Brenda said, pulling away from his grasp.
“Promise?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Say yes again.”
“Yes, Reggie. Yes,” she whispered.
Smiling, he sank back into his pillow.
She paused with her hand on the doorknob. “Reggie.”
“Yes.”
She smiled wryly. “No more safe training cruises. Stroll through the East End instead.”
He chuckled despite the pain.
Lloyd, Bernice, Rebecca, and Walter were seated on battered sofas and chairs in a small alcove off the hall, which was a bedlam of hurrying doctors and nurses, attendants pushing wheeled stretchers loaded with mangled young men. Lloyd was smoking a Woodbine cigarette: one of the most evil smokes ever made—a stench that attacked Brenda’s nostrils like a gaseous acid. Walter was puffing on a pipe, adding to the unbearable atmosphere.
Walter complained, “Dash it all, they won’t let us see him.”
“One visitor,” Rebecca said.
“I know—I know,” Walter grumbled. “The nurse with the big mouth told us.” He glared at his daughter-in-law. “And Reginald only wanted to see you.”
Ignoring Walter, Brenda turned to Rebecca and Lloyd and described Reginald’s condition. “And he’s lost a lot of blood and he’s heavily sedated,” she concluded.
“Nasty business in the Channel,” Lloyd said. “Rumors of a U-boat ambush. We lost a cruiser—the admiralty admits that and Reginald’s squadron was mauled.”
“Mauled?” Walter said. “The whole lot was sunk except Lancer. The Times reported that.” He pulled a silver flask from an inside pocket, took a deep drink, and handed it to Lloyd. Lloyd drank. Coughing and clearing his throat gutturally, Walter wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Sank eight Kraut destroyers, though,” he said proudly.
“Someone made a muck of it,” Lloyd said. “They should’ve expected the U-boats.” He pulled the flask from Walter’s hand and drank again.
Walter scratched a new red blotch on his nostril. “The Jerries will think again before raiding our Channel ports. Eight sunk and most of the rest were damaged. Reginald’s squadron saw to that.”
There was a scream from the hall and a young man with no nose or eyes was carted past.
“Hundreds of our boys are dead and wounded,” Bernice said. Her voice was anguished and she was verging on tears.
Brenda felt anger and frustration swell beyond containment. “Terrible trade—terrible trade,” she said angrily.
“See here, Yank,” Walter said. “You have no right. . .”
“No! I won’t see here,” Brenda said, bristling.
“Yes, you will!” Walter shouted, rising.
The memory of Reginald’s torn body, the knowledge that most of the young men she had met on Lancer were dead, the gnawing fear for Randolph, which had eaten at her like a cancer for over a year, and the lingering bitterness over her husband’s death exploded from her lips. “You bloody hypocrite,” she screamed, bolting from her chair.
Rebecca cried out, “Not here, you two. Have you no respect?”
Walter stepped toward her. Brenda did not give an inch. But Lloyd was there, placing himself between the pair. “Enough,” he said.
“No. Never enough,” Brenda hissed, turning toward the exit.
The next week the Reo town car left Brenda’s home on Grosvenor Crescent daily for the long drive to the naval hospital at Canterbury. Reginald’s recovery was slow, his wounds far more serious than at first believed, requiring surgery to stop internal bleeding, which began on the second day. The muscles of his left arm had been ripped and his entire torso scarred by shrapnel like a crazy quilt, and there was danger of blood poisoning and gangrene. Frequent injections of morphia dulled his senses and slurred his speech and often he slept throughout Brenda’s visits.
One afternoon Bernice was waiting for Brenda when she returned form a particularly depressing visit to the hospital. Seated in the sitting room sipping tea, Bernice showed new enthusiasm through her usual anxiety. “Lloyd George has been appointed PM,” she said as if the statement were a reprieve for her husband.
Brenda had read of the appointment. Battered by disasters on the Somme, the Dardanelles, in Mesopotamia, and in Rumania as well as by rebellion in Ireland and crippling losses to U-boats, the Asquith government had collapsed and the liberal war minister, Lloyd George, had been asked to form a new government.
“He’s Rebecca’s favorite cousin and Lloyd’s godfather, you know. In fact, my husband is named after David Lloyd George.”
“I didn’t know,” Brenda said with surprise. “I never heard him mentioned at Fenwyck.”
“Ha!” Bernice snorted. “Fell out with Walter right after the christening. Politics, of course. Walter’s to the right of Henry the Eighth and couldn’t stand David Lloyd George’s liberalness.” She shrugged and turned her palms up. “And Lloyd George is from a poor Welsh family and, of course, Walter has no patience for poverty, either.” Brenda smiled and nodded her agreement. Bernice continued. “But he’ll lead us out of this, Brenda,” she enthused. “You’ll see.”
Brenda stared at Bernice, moved by a feverish glint in her sister-in-law’s eyes. She knew Bernice lived in a perpetual state of dread while Lloyd was gone. Now that he was home, Brenda sensed Bernice verged on hysteria at just the thought of her husband leaving again. And Lloyd had suffered—the changes in his character deepening. His countenance had become a relief map of horror and pain as if a fiend had hurled acid in his face, scarring him with deep new lines that belonged to a very old man. And he drank too much and when his tongue was oiled with liquor he spoke of dead comrades in the idiom of the trenches—an endless parade of names and personalities who existed no more.
Bernice ran on. “There’ll be a reception for the new PM at Ten Downing Street next Saturday and Lloyd George wants you to come.”
“Wants me to come? He doesn’t even know me.”
Her demeanor easing suddenly, Bernice giggled nervously. “He’s heard of you. Saw you once at a party before the war.” She toyed with her cup. “He has an eye for attractive women.”
Brenda laughed. “I hear he’ll mount any woman who’ll stand still for thirty seconds.”
Bernice recoiled in mock horror. “Please, sister-in-law. That wasn’t very nice.”
Brenda laughed for the first time in a week. She held up her cup. “Here’s to Lloyd George.” Smiling, Bernice touched the lip of her cup to Brenda’s. “Stay out of his bedroom,” Brenda added.
“Hear! Hear!” Bernice laughed. She drank and changed direction again in her disconcerting mercurial fashion. “You’ve been seeing Reginald?”
“Every day.”
“He’s better?”
“Yes, but it’s slow. The first officer told me he refused attention when first wounded—so many of the crew were injured. He lost a lot of blood, has some internal injuries, and he’ll be terribly scarred. The ship’s surgeon and first officer saved him or he would’ve bled to death.”
Bernice tapped the bone china with a single manicured nail. “Do you love him?”
Brenda knew Bernice too well to be surprised by the forwardness of the question. “I’ve only known him for six or seven months.”
“You can learn all you need to know about a man in six or seven minutes.” She placed her cup on the table and challenged Brenda’s eyes with a hard stare. “You never loved Geoffry, did you, Brenda?”
Brenda was taken aback by the bold, incisive remark. She felt her cheeks flush. “Bernice, you’ve gone too far.”
“I’m sorry, Brenda. But you can’t live in a world of guilt—cloister yourself, become a nun without a convent. You’re too young—beautiful, and,” she sighed resignedly, “and before you can tell me, I know this is none of my business.”
