by John Harris
“That’s it, clout her, Tebby,” Slingsby had offered as advice once when they’d been trying to discuss it in the forecastle over a mug of tea in a noisy give-and-take which no one but Tebbitt was inclined to take seriously. “Tell her to put her dukes up and give her a fat eye so she can’t go out for a fortnight.
“Give everybody what they ask for, I always say, whoever they are. I remember a Jerry we picked up in the Channel during the Battle of Britain – in the days when they were lording it over half Europe. He sat in his dinghy and heiled Hitler a bit and said he wouldn’t come on our stinking rotten British boat and insisted we tow the dinghy with him in it back to shore. So he wouldn’t taint himself, I suppose. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘we will.’ Big-hearted Arthur, that’s me. Give folks what they ask for. So we did. We gave him his bloody treat at forty knots. By the time he’d been airborne a bit he was glad to come aboard. That just shows you. Give ’em what they ask for, I say, and you can’t go wrong.” And he went off into a boisterous reminiscence of the early days of the war, before Tebbitt was in uniform, that amused the forecastle but didn’t help Tebbitt at all.
For clouting her wouldn’t do much good, he knew in his heart of hearts. She’d have slipped off as fast as she could carry her bag to the station – not to the arms of another man, which was the trouble with most unhappy husbands, but to the subtle charms of that damned city, to the sound of Bow Bells and the sight of the River Thames.
Tebbitt felt frustrated every time he thought about it. He would willingly have smashed in the face of any other man he found interested in Hilda but he was baffled when it came to dealing with a city. He couldn’t bash in eight million faces and wreck a million buildings. He couldn’t destroy a tradition. Even Goering’s whole air force couldn’t do that.
He glowered angrily at the thought as he stared sightlessly at the sea and the growing speck of the Walrus. He could imagine her already, sitting in a window seat of the train, in that plaid coat she’d bought with the coupons he’d cadged, the one she always kept for best. And on the rack above her head there’d be the bag he’d given her – the one he’d got from a naval signaller on the base, with her initials painted carefully on it, HT. He’d painted them himself one night on boat watch with black paint he’d found in the after locker. He’d been proud of the job until he caught a rocket from her in her next letter for not remembering her name had become Linda.
She’d be sitting in some corner – his eyes became sad and unhappy as he thought of it – with the light bright on her blonde hair, doubtless talking to some damn Yank about London, about Streatham High Road, or the Ice Rink or the Astoria where she’d liked to dance, or that place she always talked about which made him so insanely jealous, the Rookery – the place where she’d sat after dark on the seats with the boys she constantly remembered.
Tebbitt’s mind raced away into a fantasy of his own invention in which Hilda, on arrival at the station, was a different person, ready and willing to be co-operative and loving. It could be done, he tried hard to persuade himself. Money could do it. He’d managed to rouse unwilling affection in her occasionally with presents. Then as his mind ran on, covering the whole of his torment in a few hastening seconds, he wondered unhappily where the hell he was going to get the money from to give her the good time she would demand. His own money would never last out at the pace Hilda liked to spend it. All he had was a pound and a few shillings in his pocket, which might see them through the first day.
His mind writhed with its efforts to see beyond the immediate future and he had completely forgotten the Walrus, in spite of its increasing nearness, by the time Slingsby appeared on the bridge beside him.
“Comfortable, Tebby?” Tebbitt jumped as Slingsby’s voice grated in his ear, harsh and hard with twenty years of shouting orders at people like Tebbitt.
“That’s right, Flight,” Tebbitt said.
“Well, it ain’t right,” Slingsby bawled. “Get off your bloody knees. Get them great barges of yours down on the deck – both of ’em. You stand like a pregnant WAAF. Now look at that goddam sea till your eyes start looping the loop or I’ll put you in the rattle.”
He was quivering with his anger and Tebbitt straightened himself up hastily, still thinking, however, even as he did so, about his wife and that train he had to meet, that train he had arranged to meet and had confidently expected to meet – but for the awkward circumstance of an aircraft ditching in the sea in their area of search.
“In case you haven’t noticed it,” Slingsby went on harshly, “there’s an aircraft over there and it’s coming over here – fast! And it might be a Jerry coming to blow us to bloody bits like they blew my mate to bits in the Whaleback off Dungeness in ’41.”
“Er – yes, Flight. I had seen it, Flight.”
Slingsby exploded. “Well, report it, you fool!”
Tebbitt looked at Slingsby with sad round eyes, the fact that he could have crushed the little man with one swing of his great fist not entering his head.
“Aircraft on the starboard quarter, Flight,” he said sullenly, still a little surprised that he hadn’t already reported the machine. “It’s a Walrus.”
“Knox!” Slingsby gave him a final glare and bent to the wireless cabin hatch and shouted – in that rough file-on-an-anvil voice which was the driving force of the boat, the thing which turned the propellers and kept the boat moving through the water, the power to the wireless batteries, the rope’s end that stirred the war-weariness out of them all, the goad, the pin-prick and the whip.
They could hear the hum of the Walrus’ engine now, and as it approached it seemed to disappear in a flash of light, which stabbed across the sky towards them.
“Knox!” Slingsby bellowed. “On deck! And jump to it! There’s a Walrus flashing us.”
With Treherne just behind, Knox burst out of the wheelhouse, carrying the Aldis signalling-lamp with him and, shoving Westover to one side, he wedged his lanky frame into a corner of the bridge and took a glance at the aircraft through the telescopic sight. Westover heaved himself on the wireless cabin roof and clung there, his arms round the mast, as the Walrus dissolved again in a series of flashes that stood out sharply against the darkening sky.
“Body” – Knox intoned slowly – “in – water – due – north – of – you – stop – investigate – will – circle – and – mark – for – you.”
“Give him the OK,” Treherne said. “Due north, Robby,” he shouted into the wheelhouse. And he dived inside, as though chasing his own words, as he reached for the parallel rules at the chart table.
The boat heeled over on its side on top of a wave as Robb swung the wheel – over, over, over, in a sickening, hanging motion that sent them all sliding to the starboard side of the bridge. Down below there was a crash of crockery, then the boat’s motion changed abruptly from a heaving corkscrew to a solid, thumping crash as it butted head-on into the waves. Tebbitt dully rubbed his chin which he had banged on the searchlight stanchion and wondered if this meant they would soon turn round and head west for home.
“Suppose it’s the dinghy, Flight?” he asked Slingsby warily. “Suppose the Walrus goes down and picks ’em up before we get there?”
“Suppose they do!” Slingsby grunted. “Suppose we ram the bastards, that’s all. That’s what I say. I’m not having any Navy birdcage spoiling my pick-ups. Sink the swine and have done.”
The keel of the boat was making a steady crunching hiss as it plunged squarely into the rolling water, a solid thump that shook the spars and jarred the nerves. Every time the bow rose to a new wave Tebbitt braced himself forward, then with every sudden drop his heels left the deck and came down again in a jolt that rattled his spine.
Knox finished flashing his message to the aircraft and put down the Aldis lamp as the Walrus roared past overhead and turned towards the north again.
“Looks like we’re too late, Chiefy,” he said.
“We’re never too late,” Slingsby said, his eyes squinting
against the wind. “Not until we know we’re too late. And that’ll be two days from now with a gale blowing and no fuel left”
Conscious of being in charge of something Slingsby had never mastered, the wireless operator was unperturbed and pretended not to notice the rebuke. “7526’s around here somewhere, Chiefy. They’ve called her into the search.”
“I thought they would.” Slingsby scowled. “You sure?”
“I can tell that wireless op. of theirs anywhere. I could tell him in a blast of atmospherics when he’s batting it out. He’s good and he likes to show off a bit.”
Slingsby was staring ahead again. “Where are they?”
“Almost due north of here, Chiefy. Botterill got a bearing on them. They’ll be heading south-east.”
“And we were heading north-east until that Walrus called us up. It’ll be the usual race, with Skinner’s engines as the handicap. Keep your ear on that boy in ’76 and let us know if you hear anything further. Three times we’ve been on the point of a pick-up and he’s pipped us. Next time I’ll sink him with the Oerlikon.”
Tebbitt glowered sullenly out of the corner of his eye at the Flight Sergeant’s dapper little form as he spoke. To Tebbitt, like Milliken, Slingsby in the two or three weeks he’d been in charge of the launch had taken on the form of some devil incarnate conjured to life by the Air Force high-ups solely to plague Tebbitt. Each was as far removed from the other’s ideal as it was possible to be and Tebbitt, with his mind constantly elsewhere, knew he was already in the Flight Sergeant’s bad books. Nevertheless, his misery over his wife caused him to carry on the masochistic self-torture with Slingsby in which he’d been indulging with Milliken. Knowing perfectly well what sort of replies he’d get, he persisted in investigating the matter of the launch’s return.
“Flight,” he said, “think we’ll be back home tonight? Or do you think they’ll keep us out till morning?”
Slingsby’s reply was discouraging. “What’s the matter? Can’t you sleep without a night light or something?”
Tebbitt ignored the insult and probed further, fully aware of the rage he might rouse. “But they usually do recall us after dark, don’t they? Not much good searching in the darkness, is it, Flight?” He was still trying to reassure himself that he’d be back at camp in time to meet that early morning train – almost as though by his persistence he could put agreement on to Slingsby’s tongue and so help to influence the authorities ashore. He was quite prepared to miss the boat on call-out if necessary the following morning. The only thing he knew he must not miss was that train which would stop at the local station in the early hours on its way to London.
Slingsby’s reply to his question was a grunt.
Tebbitt’s face was expressionless as he watched the sea, his eyes never still as he searched the valleys of the waves. His uncovered hair was whipped by a wind that blew it the wrong way and his great shoulders were hunched against the cold. He glanced again at Slingsby, who was still staring forward in inscrutable silence.
“If they keep us out all night, Flight,” he went on doggedly, in spite of Slingsby’s warning silence, “what time will they recall us tomorrow, do you think?”
“Holy suffering St Peter,” Slingsby burst out, his red face darkening. “For Christ’s sake, put a sock in it! They might keep us out all tomorrow night as well. And all the next day. And everlastingly till the flaming sea dries up, so long as there’s a chance. And a good thing, too. That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? Not to go rushing home at the first opportunity to meet silly bloody wives.”
Tebbitt stood in his corner of the bridge in staggered silence for a moment, for the first time aware that Slingsby knew why he wanted to get home. He was not looking at the Flight Sergeant, but still stared out over the waves, his eyes watering a little at the teasing of the wind. Then Slingsby dodged into the wheelhouse and Tebbitt caught a glimpse of Westover looking curiously at him over his shoulder.
“I wish he’d forget the bitch and get on with his job,” he heard Slingsby saying furiously below. “The whole bloody crew puts years on me. You can easily tell who had this packet before they posted us to it, Robby. The Old Man was right when he said the Lad needed someone to look after him. Chiefy Rollo’s left his mark on this tub as clear as if it was tattooed all up and down the mast. All he ever did was use his jaw. It was the only part of him that ever worked. I once took over a boat from him before. That was just the same. Everybody trying to rat on you at once. The only time they move is when it’s knocking-off time. A good pick-up would do them all a bit of good.”
Tebbitt assumed that the skipper had disappeared into his cabin below for a moment, for in spite of his rage Slingsby’s voice had a warmth about it that showed only when be was talking to Robb. They had served overseas together and they had a confident intimacy of experiences and hardships shared, of mutual difficulties surmounted.
“Ashore, he can do as he pleases about his blasted wife,” Slingsby went on, “but at sea he’s got something else to do. He can forget her.”
“I don’t know that I could, with a wife like that,” Robb pointed out with the privilege of long acquaintance, and Tebbitt, unable to shut out the conversation, had to listen humiliated as they discussed him. “Could you?”
“I could lay an egg if I tried. I had a wife like that myself, didn’t I? Christ, you remember that, surely? When we went overseas in 1940, I spent my days, when we weren’t being chased all over the shop by Jerry, sending letters to her so fast they looked like confetti. Mooning over Vera Lynn’s songs and all that – you know the stuff – ‘Yours in the grey of December’ and all that cock – it made your heart bleed at that distance. And when I came back I found she’d been going around with a naval petty officer and I’d had me chips. Rat with a face like an old fender, he was. She said she couldn’t stand it on her own for three years. After thirteen years of married life. All me eye and Betty Martin. We arranged a divorce – big-hearted like, that’s me, one of God’s chosen few – and that was that. All in a day’s work.”
“I remember, Flight. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? Hell, I’m still laughing about it. I split a gut every time I remember. She’d no sooner got her divorce from me organised, and arranged to marry her sailor, when he was posted overseas. And there she was with me, who she’d slung out, back home, and the sailor, who she wanted to marry, posted to the Middle East. Laugh? I thought I’d bust my poop string.” But Slingsby’s face showed no traces of mirth.
“Think I like chasing Tebbitt?” he went on. “It’s my job. Think I like riding that kid – the medical orderly? I got one like him myself, waiting to be called up. He’s got guts, that kid.”
“You’re telling me! You’ve got him in the galley again, washing up. He looks as gay as an old street-walker, but he’s not complained yet.”
“He’s in the Air Force now. This isn’t the Infants’ Department. I don’t hold with all this kiss-and-be-friends stuff between NCOs and other ranks they’re trying to kid us into these days. Oh, sure” – he nodded as Robb opened his mouth to speak – “I know. They’re not the same as the recruits we had before the war. They’re civilians really. They’ve got to be wet-nursed. Lots of love and kisses and hoping it finds you as it leaves me at present. Hell” – he glared at Robb – “you’re a civilian in for the duration, aren’t you? You made it – and the same way as this kid’s got to make it. With nasty little flight sergeants coming the old acid all the time.”
“I was a bit older.”
“He’ll soon grow old. I’ll see that he does.” Slingsby scowled through the Perspex window for a while, his eyes angry, then he burst out again. “Hell, I know what’s wrong,” he said. “It’s my fault. I ought to be helping the war effort as an air-raid warden or something, playing darts and pinching lady telephonists’ behinds. I’m a reservist, I am. I’d left the Raff and I’d settled down. I was called back. That’s what’s wrong. I’ve got ten years too many on my back for this game. Besi
des, I’m the sergeant and the sergeant’s got to be a bastard. You’ve read Beau Geste, haven’t you? Now wrap up!”
Tebbitt heard Treherne return to the wheelhouse and Slingsby became silent. Then Treherne put his head through the wheelhouse door and thrust himself up the two steps to the bridge and stood beside Tebbitt. Ahead of them, they could now see the Walrus slowly circling over the water.
The bridge was crowded by this time, everyone staring ahead at the plane. As the launch drew closer the aircraft roared over them, low enough for them to see the pilot pointing ahead and down.
“Keep your eyes skinned,” Treherne warned.
“Some poor beggar’s had it,” Knox said. “Here comes the funeral party.”
Slingsby glared at him but said nothing. Then Westover, on the sick bay roof flung out an arm and pointed.
“Something in the water dead ahead, Skipper!” he shouted. “Looks like a stiff.”
“Throttle back a bit, Robby,” Treherne said into the wheelhouse. “Keep your eye on it, Gus!”
“I’ve got it, Skipper. Looks like a man, all right.”
The Walrus roared overhead again and began to circle once more. Everybody on the bridge had become silent. Then Westover shouted again and his voice was suddenly excited.
“It’s not a man, Skipper. If it is, he’s had all his clothes blown off.”
Slingsby gave a great shout of glee as he stared and did a little jig. “It’s a fish,” he yelled joyously. “It’s a porpoise! Ha, the Navy’s made a balls-up of it again!”
He turned towards the Walrus and waved both arms in a wash-out sign as the launch passed the great fish that floated low on the surface of the water in a long valley between two waves, its silver belly facing the sky, the victim of some mine or depth-charge blast, then he held his nose and pulled an imaginary chain.
“Let the Walrus know, Knocker,” Treherne said. “OK, Robby, back on your original course. We’ll sort out this five minutes’ run at the other end.”
