by John Harris
The boat gave an unexpected lurch, which slung Milliken sideways on his back to the deck. Tebbitt picked him up, still talking, and helped him back on to the bunk. He was obviously sick with worry and anxious to share it with anyone, even a stranger. Milliken was beginning to suspect that the rest of the crew had heard his story so often they wouldn’t listen any more and that Tebbitt had to take advantage of any uninitiated audience whose attention would give him courage. Milliken even began to think the frightening Flight Sergeant might be a pleasant change.
“Says she wouldn’t mind the V.1s or the V.2s if she could only get back to London,” Tebbitt was saying earnestly. “All she wants is London again – with shelter-life and everything, too! She says she misses the pubs and the dance halls and things. So I’ve persuaded her to come down here for a bit and see if she likes it. I’ve got her some digs for a week or two. She’ll be on her way now, I suppose.”
He fished in his wallet and produced a photograph, which he passed over. Milliken was already quite used to the nostalgic Service ritual of photograph-showing and he studied with over-elaborate interest the picture of a tall handsome blonde whose good looks were marred by her tight mouth and her too strong chin.
“She says if I’m not at the station to meet her she’ll get back in the train – it’s a London train – and go straight on with it.” Tebbitt laughed nervously and mirthlessly. “‘I’m not going to be on my own in some strange town,’ she says. ‘Not on my Jack Jones.’ She’s like that. Straight John Bull. Says what she thinks. And it’ll be just my luck to get back too late to meet her. I’m sure we shan’t make it. Aren’t you?”
Milliken hadn’t the slightest idea but he nodded and said he thought they’d make it all right.
“Well, maybe we will,” Tebbitt agreed gloomily, suddenly cast down into a vast huddled heap of despair, a colossus of unhappiness, so that Milliken wasn’t sure whether he wanted to get home in time or not, whether he wanted to meet his wife or be free of her for good.
“So long as I can meet the train, it’s all right,” he said. “But we shall never make it. The engines will break down or something.”
The gloomy jeremiad went on and on, pausing only while Milliken went outside to be sick once more, and starting again like a serial story as he crawled back to the bunk. It did not come to a stop even when he finally turned his back. When Robb entered the cabin, eating another sandwich, and interrupted, Milliken actually managed to raise a thankful smile in spite of his stomach.
“You still alive, doc?” Robb grinned. “How do you feel?”
Milliken gave a nervous, unhappy snigger and Robb went on. “Why don’t you go into the forecastle?” he said. “There’s some hot soup there. It’ll warm you up.”
“Self-heating soup?” Tebbitt asked as Milliken lowered his feet cautiously to the deck preparatory to a dash, holding his nose, through the galley. “Is that all there is again?”
“Self-heating soup and meat sandwiches. A cup of tea if we can keep a kettle on the stove long enough.”
“I’ll have another cigarette.”
The forecastle had a damp, misty look about it in the weak glow of the deckhead lights that made Milliken wary. He lifted his foot cautiously over the step, only to be flung to his knees into the forecastle as the boat gave a fearsome roll, and in alarm he realised it was heaving if anything even more violently than the sick bay. Robb helped him to his feet with an “Upsy-Daisy” that made Milliken hate him for his condescension, and while he was still having difficulty in wedging himself on a seat Robb thrust a can of steaming soup into his hand and flung a spoon down beside him.
“Here, fill your boots.”
Milliken almost dropped the tin as it burned his hand, and he groped frantically for a handkerchief, gasping at the pain in his fingers’ ends. With him in the forecastle were only Robb and a man he recognised as Corporal Skinner, the engine-room NCO. The forecastle was silent except for the slap of the water outside and the clanking of a couple of empty soup tins that rolled maddeningly backwards and forwards in the rubbish box on the deck. An oilskin swung in stiff, jerky arcs across the white-painted bulkhead and the smoke from Corporal Skinner’s cigarette-end hung in the air, moving in a curiously erratic fashion to the roll of the boat. The forecastle had an oddly crowded look about it.
Milliken glanced about him with unhappy eyes. The low deckhead made Robb stand with his shoulders stooped and, on the table, a loaf of bread slid from side to side with the bread knife, chasing an empty mug round and round the polished surface.
Skinner was looking quizzically at Robb. “When’s the ‘Return to base’ coming through?” he asked. “I’m sick of this bit of sea.”
“It’s all alike,” Robb pointed out. “The other bits are just the same.”
Skinner stared at his cigarette, then burst out explosively in a fretful anger.
“Christ, I’m sick of this bloody boat,” he said. “I seem to have looked at nothing but these bulkheads for months. I never want to see a boat again after the war. Never as long as I live. Twelve men and a medical orderly” – Milliken noticed the differentiation with bitterness – “to say nothing of pigeons, crammed into this damned tub, all doing nothing just in case some silly bastard falls in the sea. I wish I had an office job. I wish I was a flight mechanic again. If only we could have a spot of decent weather it would make it easier. These bitches roll so much.”
“We had some sun a fortnight ago.” Robb grinned. “About ten minutes.”
“Sun?” Skinner went on with his noisy whine while Milliken watched him with wide inexperienced eyes. “It’s about time we all had a bit of leave. That’s what. A few hours’ sleep at night, without that flaming Tannoy squawking at you fit to bust to get down to the base. Day after day. Week after week. Not even time for a fag in the canteen. It’s Saturday today but there’ll be no night out for us, and there’ll be no lie-in tomorrow, Sunday or no Sunday. We’ll be staring at the sea same as usual while everyone else’s having their breakfast.” He paused and jerked a finger at Robb. “And that’s another thing, the grub! If we’re lucky and it’s not too rough, we can have a cup of tea, providing the kettle can be tied tight enough to the stove. And the lid can be tied tight enough to the kettle. And the cork will stay in the spout. And the stove don’t break loose with the rolling. Sandwiches and self-heating soup for meals!”
“You can always have corned beef for a change.” Robb took a bite at his own sandwich and spoke with his mouth full.
Skinner glanced up sourly.
“What’s the matter, Skinner?” Robb asked. “Spit it out. It isn’t really the grub, is it?”
“I’ll put a spanner in the starboard engine one of these days and have a week up the slip for an engine-change. Then we’d get some time off.”
“In danger of missing a date?”
Milliken watched Robb in wonderment that he should know all of Skinner’s affairs. He had not yet become aware of the absence of any secrets in a boat crowded with crew. Secrets, like duffel coats and jerseys, were everybody’s property among men living constantly on top of each other.
Skinner glanced up at Robb, a look of disgust on his face.
“A WAAF in camp,” he said sourly. “You have to have your bints in camp these days. No chance of getting one outside. Issue underwear and brass buttons. Jesus!”
Robb was spooning soup now from a tin, his back to Milliken, leaning with one arm through the forward hatch ladder to steady himself. “And now there’s alarm and despondency in the Waafery because there’s no sign yet of the great lover, Canteen-Cowboy Skinner? That it?” he asked.
“It’s a good job for Air-Sea Rescue there are WAAFS,” Skinner said with an odd grin that changed his face. “I don’t know what we’d do without ’em, bless ’em. We couldn’t live a normal sex life cooped up on this bastard. You have to get what you can.” He grinned again and flipped the ash from his cigarette. “When I go out, chum, the ASR on my badge means ‘Advance, Strike, R
etire’. They think I’m out harrying the Huns up and down the ocean from bunghole to breakfast time. It pays dividends after dark when I start harrying the WAAFS. Every girl loves a hero. And I’m a hero who’s prepared to love every girl.”
Robb smiled in a knowing way that made Milliken suddenly think he’d had more women in his life than he knew what to do with.
“From the day you discovered you were a different shape from women, Skinner,” he said, “you were lost to decent mankind.”
“Whacko!” Skinner grinned again, obviously unworried by the insult. “I was going to meet her at the station dance tonight,” he said.
“You’ll be back in time to take her home.” Robb pointed out. “If you’re lucky, anyway. And that’s the only part you’re interested in, I’ll bet – the bit that follows the dance.”
“She promised me last night she’d see me there.”
“You with her last night?” Robb glanced sharply under his eyebrow at Skinner and even Milliken saw his expression change. His blue eyes became colder and his smile faded.
“Had a few drinks in the pub outside the camp.”
“Thought you were overhauling the oil-feed on the port engine?”
“Oh, that!” Skinner bent hurriedly and drew quickly on his cigarette. “That! Hell, I did that in a few minutes!”
“Thought it was a big job.”
“Not that big.”
“Bigger than a few minutes, all the same, I’ll bet.”
“I patched it up.” Skinner kept his eyes on his cigarette and Milliken watched them both carefully, aware of a sudden coolness in Robb’s manner.
“You’d better not let Chiefy know,” Robb said. “He’ll shop you if he knows you’ve skimped the job.”
“I didn’t skimp it. I taped it up.” Skinner looked up quickly, then bent over the cigarette again. “Listen, d’you think I’m going to roll about in the bloody bilges taking jubilee clips off when I’ve got my best suit on?”
“You’ve always got your blasted best suit on,” Robb snorted.
Skinner grinned, unabashed. “Have to be ready,” he said. “Can’t waste time, when we do get some off. You know the Boy Scouts’ motto. ‘Be Prepared’.”
But Robb’s smile didn’t come back. “One thing Chiefy’s fussy about and that’s engines,” he said.
“The Lad said I could go when I’d finished. I asked him.”
“I’ll bet the Skipper hadn’t the slightest idea what you were doing. He’s only a kid straight from navigational school, anyway.” Robb spoke with the authority of his twenty-eight years.
“He said it was OK.”
“How long did it take you? Honestly.”
Skinner lay back on the bunk and stared at the smoke he was blowing through his nostrils. The cheerless little forecastle was silent for a while except for the monotonous clank of the empty tins and the slither of the loaf across the table. “Quarter of an hour,” he said.
“Quarter of an hour?” Robb raised his eyebrows. “I thought it was a job lasting all evening. Chiefy got us off stand-by duty so you could do it. If it had been a quarter of an hour’s job he wouldn’t have done that.”
“He’s too keen. Always wanting to get to sea. The engines got us here, didn’t they? They’ll get us back. What more do you want?”
“We might want ’em to give us full revs in a hurry and for a long time. Somebody might be in the drink.”
Skinner glanced up sharply, his face heavily shadowed by the weak lights in the deckhead.
“God, some of you people! Are you and Chiefy after a gong or a mention in despatches or something? All you ever want to do is fetch somebody out of the drink.”
“That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”
“Ah, you’re too bloody keen! This was a cushy billet before you two were posted to it. Now it’s work all the time. I tell you, you’re too keen.”
“It’s a pity you’re not more keen. We shouldn’t have so many breakdowns if you were.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my engines.”
“7526 doesn’t get so many breakdowns.”
“She’s a better boat.”
“She’s a sister ship.”
Milliken, feeling better after the soup, listened to the exchanges anxiously, only half understanding the import of them.
“Listen,” Skinner was saying. “This old bastard has had a warp in her ever since she last went up the slip for an overhaul. Chiefy Rollo got her on the cradle wrong. He’s not your fussy Chiefy Slingsby. Haven’t you ever seen the way the bow whips when she hits a wave?”
“Skinner, I don’t care if she’s got a granny knot in her; it isn’t the boat that makes 7526 smarter off the mark. It’s not the engines either, come to that.”
“It’s the crew, eh? God, all I ever hear from you and Slingsby is 7526. What’s the matter – trying to do the same as Loxton, that gong-hunting skipper of theirs? I get sick of you two wanting to know why we can’t get more out of her. Chiefy Rollo never bothered. It’s just luck that 7526’s a faster boat. Their fitter always was a lucky swine. He’s got his third stripe. I haven’t.”
“Perhaps it’s because he overhauls his oil-feed when it goes haywire, instead of taking a girl to a pub.”
Robb pulled himself to his feet and lurched towards the galley. He was still crossing the step when the sudden high-pitched squeak of morse from the wireless cabin stopped him in his tracks.
“Hello” – he cocked an ear – “here it is, Skinner. The one thing you can do well ‘Return to base’.”
“Those joyous words!”
Skinner began to lower his legs casually to the deck, whistling softly, then the high-pitched chirrup of the morse stopped. “Botty!” the voice of Knox, the wireless operator, yelling for his mate came through the open doorway, disembodied and urgent. “Stand by to check!” And there was the thump of boots on a ladder.
They heard the Flight Sergeant’s feet hit the deck of the wheelhouse as he leapt up from the bunk up there where he had been sitting. Robb made a dive for the wheelhouse ladder and they heard the Flight Sergeant’s voice as he appeared above.
“That’s not the ‘Return to base’, Robby,” he was saying. “Knocker can read that before it’s decoded.”
Suddenly, miraculously, without any visible signs beyond the abrupt silence, the boat began to wear an air of attention that was manifest even to the inexperienced Milliken, now sitting bolt upright in the forecastle watching the taut figure of Skinner, halted motionless by the galley entrance. There was silence from the wireless cabin for a while and Milliken found himself holding his breath and listening to the slap and splash of water under the boat’s chine, and the clank of the soup tins in the box by his feet.
Then he heard a pencil rattle sharply in the frame of the hatchway between the wireless cabin and the bridge.
“Chiefy! Chiefy!” The wireless operator’s voice came thinly to them, muffled and small, as though he had diminished in stature, and they heard the Flight Sergeant’s feet and Knox’s voice again.
“It’s us, Flight! Kite in the drink. North-east of here. Botty’s decoding the bearing now.”
“Kite in the drink!” Slingsby’s voice came down to them, then it rose to a shout. “SKINNER!”
Skinner, already staring up into the wheelhouse from the gloom at the bottom of the wheelhouse ladder, indulged in a little wishful thinking. “‘Return to base’, Chiefy?”
“Kite in the drink. Start up!”
Skinner turned away, his face angry, and stumbled noisily towards the sick bay and the engine-room.
“And wake the Skipper as you go past,” Slingsby shouted. “On deck, everybody!”
Milliken dived for the sick bay and, reaching for his bag of bandages and lints was on the point of laying them out and nervously inspecting them when he remembered Robb’s words at the beginning of the day, and decided to leave them where they were.
He was filled with an exultant excitement. Here, at last,
he felt he was on the point of serving his country. He was really going to war this time.
Then the port engine exploded into life with a roar and a splash of water astern, and the boat began to surge forward a little. The starboard engine crashed into movement a moment later and, as Slingsby in the wheelhouse moved the engine-room telegraph to ahead and the throttles to full speed, the bow of the great boat lifted swiftly and the stern settled to the down-drag of the screws.
As the seas hit the port bow on her swing round to the north-east she canted alarmingly in one of those sickening rolls over on to her beam ends. Milliken hurriedly forgot his heroic feeling of going to war and clutched wildly for a handhold as he was slung in a one-legged dance from one side of the sick bay to the other; then the launch was butting frantically into the waves in a series of shuddering jars as she headed north-east.
Four
By the time Waltby and the others had settled themselves in the dinghy they were beginning to realise just how cold the wind blew, particularly against their saturated clothing. The high inflated sides of the raft offered a little protection but they were too near to the surface of the sea not to get some of its reflected chill.
Huddled between Ponsettia and Mackay, Waltby looked round at the others and it seemed he saw them for the first time. Previously, he had had no time to study them in the hasty introductions before taking off, and these men who crouched with him in the rubber boat among the odds and ends of equipment they had managed to snatch up before the aircraft struck the water seemed to be complete strangers.
Harding was a tall fair young man, with the aged look that comes with responsibility, the look the war had inflicted on so many schoolboys. His features were good and about them there was the same easy, unaffected self-confidence that showed in his manners and speech. Ponsettia, the navigator, was small and slight with a serious dry manner which belied an obvious humour. It was as though he had formed his humour into a protective weapon against his own slightness – as though it were some defence against the vastness of Canada where he came from and the heftiness of his Canadian friends. It was like the great yellow moustache he affected, now hanging wetly on either side of his mouth – something that added a little to his stature.
