‘A pity you don’t expect to be here long, Everard. It must be grand to come under the orders of Sir David Beatty, after your stuffed-shirt Jellicoe up there!’
‘Jellicoe’s the best we could have, sir!’ Hugh spoke sharply. ‘Certainly no stuffed shirt. He’s brilliant – and the whole fleet loves him. Believe me, he is the one man we trust.’
‘But Beatty, surely—’
‘Beatty holds his command under Admiral Jellicoe, our Commander-in-Chief.’
‘Would you not say that Beatty was – was an exceptionally able and inspiring leader?’
Hugh hesitated. One could hardly express one‘s views on such a matter to an outsider like Buchanan, or to anyone, in fact, except close friends in the Navy. Beatty was – well, as a young lieutenant he’d commanded a gunboat on the Nile during Kitchener’s campaign against the Mahdi, and out of that he’d won a DSO and promotion to commander years ahead of his contemporaries. Then he was on the China station when the Boxer Rebellion started, and he was landed with a party of sailors and marines to break through to the relief of the Peking legations. Another display of dash and courage – he was wounded, decorated and promoted to post captain at the age of twenty-nine.
Hugh said carefully, ‘His early achievements were certainly spectacular.’
‘And isn’t he the sort of leader our Navy needs? Not just the Navy –the country?’
‘Well…’ Hugh rubbed his jaw. ‘There’s always room for leadership, certainly.’
But did a young, hot-blooded, self-opinionated Irishman who was useful with a cutlass in a rough-house necessarily grow into a modern fleet commander?
Buchanan said stuffily, ‘Sir David and Lady Beatty reside now as you’re perhaps aware at Aberdour House here. Lady Beatty is the most charming, delightful person. A major asset, I may say, to our small community.’
‘I’m sure she must be.’
She was American. Back from China with wounds newly healed, the glamorous young Captain Beatty had married the daughter of a Chicago millionaire, Marshall Field. London’s society lay open to him. In 1910 he’d become the youngest admiral since ‒ Nelson and Nelson had only completed the course in one year less. But that comparison, in Hugh Everard’s view, was ludicrous.
Buchanan was like a dog with a bone…
‘Was it not Winston Churchill who appointed him to command the battle cruisers?’
Churchill had made Beatty his naval secretary in 1911. Despite that meteoric rise. Beatty had seemed to have reached his ceiling; he was on half-pay and close to being compulsorily retired. He’d refused an appointment in the Atlantic Fleet, considering it beneath him, and Their Lordships were not thinking of offering him alternatives. They’d warned Churchill that the young admiral had already been over-promoted; but Churchill took to him, liked the vigour of his personality, which he’d felt matched his own.
Beatty, Hugh Everard felt, had had a run of stupendous luck. For the Navy’s sake one had to hope that it had not run out.
* * *
Leading Signalman Garret of HMS Lanyard was so sick of jokes and innuendo about his marital condition that he’d considered, just for a moment, asking to be excused the privilege of carrying the captain’s package to the bank.
He’d hesitated, seeing in the corners of his imagination the winks and nudges, hearing his messmates’ guffaws… But the hell with them! He wasn’t passing-up a chance to see Margaret.
‘Aye aye, Cox’n.’
‘Don’t look so sad about it, lad. It’s a favour we’re doin’ you!’
The destroyer berthed on the oiler’s other side had had a boat actually alongside and about to cross to Hawes Pier; Sub-Lieutenant Hastings, acting as officer of the day, had arranged for Garret to steal a ride in it. From Hawes Pier it was only a stone’s throw to Dalmeny Station, and from there a short train journey to the Caledonian Station.
From Princes Street he turned into Hanover Street and found the bank, where an elderly assistant manager in striped trousers took the package and gave him a signature for it on the captain’s chit.
Duty done. Now to surprise Margaret. He’d get a tram and then cut through the back streets. He hoped to God he’d find her at home. She’d been about to start finding out what jobs might be going; until now she’d helped her mother in the shop, but they were determined to start saving, so she wanted to earn money now, not just pocket-money. There was no certainty he’d find her, only hope. Fearing disappointment, he warned himself as he hurried up Hanover Street and turned right into Queen Street, crossing it diagonally then towards the tram stop, don’t count your chickens, lad!
They’d known before the wedding that Lanyard and the rest of her flotilla would be sailing in a day or two for Scapa. What they had not known was that having arrived there she’d develop trouble with an A-bracket and have to dock to fix it; worse still, have to wait more than a week until the one and only floating dock was able to receive her.
He was burning to see Margaret, see she was all right; see her, speak with her; to establish contact, that was the urgent need. At first he’d put up easily with the shipboard humour; then he’d begun to hate it, and his increasingly short temper with his messmates’ teasing had only made things worse. They were decent lads, but in the last few days he’d come close to loathing them.
He was smiling at his own thoughts… They were all right. He’d let it get him down, but from now on everything would be back to normal. He was rattling north-eastwards…This wasn’t his town, it was Margaret’s ‒ and she called it a ‘toon’! He smiled again as he dropped off the tram at a corner which he recognised by its horse-trough with angels over it.
He broke into a trot. The thought that he might just miss her by minutes or even seconds tormented him. He was in a bit of a jumpy state, he knew that; but he knew also that taking Margaret’s hands in his, looking into her eyes and talking to her, hearing her voice, was the only medicine likely to do him good. Rounding a corner, he had to slam on starboard rudder to avoid collision with a hawker’s cart, a load of vegetables; his cap went skidding, he stumbled, scooped it up, ran on, an old man’s cracked laughter floating after him. At the end of this cobbled part he’d come into the wider, newer street, and just a short way up it was the shop.
The skipper had been as fair as he could have been. ‘Back aboard by noon. Garret. That’ll allow you ‒ oh, an hour or more, for your own purposes.’
Say half an hour. There’d be other days, and shore leave granted. Sundays would be the best, if he could swap watches with unmarried men ‒ which wouldn’t be difficult, since three-quarters of Lanyard’s ship’s company were bachelors ‒ because whatever job she found herself, on Sundays Margaret wouldn’t have to work. And since all shore leave expired at sunset… Well, they’d known, both of them, they’d faced quite clearly what sort of half-life they’d be leading in terms of marriage; it was the war, the way things had to be in wartime. What they were investing their lives in was a long-term future, the time when there’d be no war.
The bell on the shop door clanged dully as Garret burst in, breathless
‘Mrs McKie, it’s me! Where’s—’
‘Wha’s that? Wha’s that ye—’
Margaret’s mother had swung round, as cumbersome as a turret in a battleship. Now she was goggling at him across the counter. There was practically nothing in the shop; Lord only knew how they made a living.
‘Och, you back, wi’ us, Geoffrey!’
He nodded, anxious, and already edging towards the back, the stairs door. ‘Is Margaret in? Upstairs, is she?’
‘Aye, but ‒ I’d thought tae let her sleep, she’s been sae—’
‘She’s not ill?’
‘I’d not say ill, no. I couldn’a say ill, Geoffrey; but she’s no been hersel’, she’s—’
He realised that she’d shifted her broad-based bulk so that it was now blanking-off the doorway. And was Margaret ill, or wasn’t she? He thought he saw confusion ‒ hesitance, a sort of fear, even ‒
in the woman’s face. He stared at her. She was uneasy, caught off-guard, it was as evident as the black hairs curling on her chin.
Pushing past her, Garret hurled himself up the stairs; narrow, curving, hollow-sounding under his heavy boots. Before he was halfway up he heard Margaret’s voice call sharply ‘Who’s there? Who’s that?’ He wrenched the door open.
‘Geoff! Geoff! Och, I canna believe it!’
He could hardly believe his eyes, either. She wasn’t dressed nor quite undressed either. Just enough on for decoration, to make her look like something wicked – something that stunned him, winded him. He kicked the door shut with his heel.
It was necessary, he realised, to speak.
‘What’s she on about, you being ill?’
Margaret laughed, put a finger to her lips. She was kneeling on the bed. He’d forgotten how she thrilled him: or had she, had she ever, quite like this? He could hardly get his breath in or out.
‘She doesn’ae want me lookin’ for work, that’s a’!’ Laughing: he laughed with her. He’d forgotten what suspicions had been in his mind when he’d come rushing up the stairs. She asked him softly, ‘Lock the door?’
He’d only come to see her, talk to her.
* * *
They’d lunched late and very slowly, and then Buchanan had wanted to smoke a cigar with his guest before he’d hauled his old bones away to rest them. It was nearly five before Hugh had Sarah to himself, and by that time he was uncomfortably divided in his impulses. He’d had no real chance to talk to her, but he felt he should soon be starting back; on the other hand it had been his idea that she should come up from Yorkshire. He could hardly spend so short a time and just rush away.
The chance of the fleet being ordered to sea was nothing new. The ships were always at short notice, and there were always ‘buzzes’. Besides, there’d be no time wasted in getting back, since the old man had placed his motor and chauffeur at his disposal.
Still, the feeling of being an absentee persisted. There was a tension in him which refused to be dispelled.
Sarah had asked him a question about Nick.
‘Hasn’t he written to you lately?’
She nodded. ‘He writes quite often. But about everything except the Navy.’ She touched her brown hair; a filtered ray of sun from the window gave golden tints to it. ‘I worry for him. He’s so ‒ so wholehearted, and responsive to friendship. One might almost imagine he’d never had any! He admires you, enormously, but you’re—’ she gestured upwards ‒ ‘out of his reach. The Navy seems to ‒ isolate people, somehow?’
Hugh cleared his throat.
‘What Nick had to learn is that one has to fit into one’s surroundings as one finds them. We ‒ the Navy ‒ have our faults, there’s no body or organisation that doesn’t. But we know the faults, and we work to remove them. It’s no good just—’ he turned back from the window ‒ ‘Nick’s too ready to stand at bay, so to speak, and tell everyone to go to the devil. Perhaps that’s how he’s learned to cope with ‒ oh—’
‘With his father?’
‘In the Navy, it won’t do.’ Hugh frowned. ‘One thing that might help him, probably, would be some action. That’s my fault. I dare say ‒ when he was younger I rather fed him the glamour of the Service: battles, victories, the great days… And as you say, he’s ‒ a forthright lad, at heart. All he’s seen has been Scapa Flow and a lot of drills and no fighting ‒ and this in time of war, too. I suppose that is a lot of his trouble.’ He raised his eyebrows and spread his hands. ‘But for heaven’s sake, it’s the same for all the rest of us ‒ and nobody can whistle up the German fleet just to please one discontented little sub-lieutenant!’
Sarah smiled. He went on, ‘Strictly between us, though ‒ I’ve done what I can towards getting him a second chance.’
‘Has he lost some first chance?’
‘He’s in danger of going “under report”, as it’s called. It’d mean he’d be kept more or less for ever in a capital ship and have reports on his conduct submitted to the Admiralty. It’s a system I’d like to see abolished, frankly ‒ it does no good, and often makes matters much worse. Very few sub-lieutenants who get to that stage ever get promoted to lieutenant, I can tell you.’ He sat down. ‘As you can imagine I’d like to avoid it happening to Nick.’
‘And you think it’s just that he’s bored ‒ disappointed at not to have been in any fighting?’
‘I don’t know… except he’s got to pull himself together. Did you know that when he was still a midshipman he physically assaulted a sub-lieutenant?’
She shook her head.
‘I’m sure he must have had good reason.’
‘During an evening of what’s called “gunroom evolutions”. It’s a sort of traditional horseplay they indulge in. I think Nick was largely in the right, but you can’t have people striking their superior officers, you see. These “evolutions” are harmless enough if they aren’t overdone; but up at Scapa, cooped up in gunrooms with no real outlets for their adolescent energies…’ He shook his head. ‘It can get, well ‒ it can degenerate into plain bullying. I’ve put a stop to it in my own ship ‒ had the doors taken off the gunroom, so the young savages have less privacy than they’d like. ’
Beatty, he’d been told, encouraged ‘evolutions’, even insisted on them for his own after-dinner entertainment.
Sarah asked him, ‘What sort of second chance?’
‘I don’t know if anything’s been done. I sent a note ‒ a letter ‒ to Doveton Sturdee.’
‘The Admiral?’ Hugh nodded. She asked him, ‘Now, how is it I know of him?’
‘You’ll have heard of him because he commanded the Falklands operation. It was through him that I went out there. He’s an extremely capable and forthright man, and a good friend. He also happens to be flag officer of the Fourth Division of the battle fleet, and the Fourth Division includes Nick’s ship. I asked him whether he’d forestall the inevitable by having Nick moved to a destroyer or a light cruiser. If it’s at all possible, I think he’ll do it for me.’
‘I’ll pray for it.’
‘Then between us we’ll have a double-barrelled prayer.’
Sarah laughed. ‘You are simply not the ironclad you’re supposed to be!’
‘Me? Ironclad?’
‘Oh, what’s said, here and there. Perhaps you don’t hear it. The brilliant Captain Everard, who should never have been allowed to leave the Navy and who’s bound now to become an admiral?’
‘More power to their sooth-saying!’
‘It truly does matter to you, doesn’t it. More than ‒ anything?’
‘Perhaps’ The window, with the bright colours of the garden, drew his eyes. ‘Yes I suppose so.’
‘What are you really after, Hugh? To square accounts?’
‘Good Lord, who with? Fisher’s gone. In any case, he had his reasons. No.’
‘You want to prove you can do it.’ He nodded. She asked him. ‘Prove it to whom?’
‘Perhaps to men of my own vintage who saw me forced out. Or younger ones who’ve shot up the ladder since. Look here, it’s said I’ve done well since I’ve been back – and perhaps I have ‒ but there’s a man named Dreyer who’s captain of Iron Duke, Jellicoe’s flagship. I’m forty-five and he’s only thirty-eight and he’s where I would’ve been d’you see?’
‘And this is your second chance. It’s vitally important to you isn’t it. Before any other consideration.’
Her hands moved expressively. She was inviting comment and he’d none to make. She said more quietly, I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. I’ve no right to pry or criticise.’
‘It would be the most glorious thing imaginable if you did have such a right.’
He’d heard himself say it. He could still hear the words. And see Sarah’s eyes on him, wide and startled.
Was this how lives were changed, re-directed? By words that spoke themselves? There’d been no forethought, he’d not had the least intention…
&
nbsp; They were staring at each other as if each was trying to test the solidity, the safety of new ground. And there was no safety in it whatsoever, he realised. It would be as reckless as it would be – marvellous. As damaging as the idea of it was thrilling. How long had it been in his mind ‒ without his knowing it?
It must have been there. I’ve just put it into words…
To act on it would be suicide. His brother’s wife: the war, and his brother at the front. How much more of a destructive scandal could one invite?
‘You mustn’t—’ Sarah looked away – ‘we mustn’t allow ourselves even to think of—’
‘I know.’
Two words, as final as ‘full stop’. As if a door had been open a crack and suddenly slammed shut. If he’d answered in some quite different way…
Well, he hadn’t. He’d made the opening: or it had made itself: and he’d looked through it into a new world, a whole new future. And then ‒ shut the door. For the sake of ‒ safety? But what did one want most?
Looking at her, he thought he knew the answer.
‘Sarah, Sarah, listen…’
Her eyes rested on his face. He’d paused: he was lost, he needed time to test the words before he uttered them. She shook her head just slightly, almost imperceptibly, as if it was some idea of her own she was rejecting. She asked him, rather stiffly. ‘If they let Nick move as you’ve asked, would it make so much difference to him?’
‘It could.’
His mind was still on her, not Nick.
‘What if he’s just not interested? I know how you feel about the Navy, but does that mean he has to?’
The change of subject was a tide one went with, unwillingly. He said. ‘There’ve been Everards in the Navy List for two hundred years.’
‘But the Navy List has you in it, and it has David. Isn’t that good enough reading for you?’
It wouldn’t have been easy to explain, even if his mind had been fully on it. He thought Nick was right for the Navy, but he was less sure about David. Some lack of stamina or leadership, that one sensed? Hard to say why, in the light of Nick’s performance so far, one should have such feelings: and a feeling was all it was, an instinct. He explained, ‘Nick’s in the Navy. It’s what he always wanted to do. It’s up to him to make a go of it.’ He set himself to play devil’s advocate. ‘As David has. David’s won first-class passes in all subjects, he’s well thought of in his present appointment, he’s—’
The Blooding of the Guns Page 4
