Back to Battle

by Max Hennessy

  A few minutes later, his temper under control again and dressed in dazzling white with his sword at his side, he headed for the deck. The navigator and the signals officer were waiting for him, with Petty Officer Albert Rumbelo just to one side. Good old Rumbelo, he thought warmly. He’d been in more unpleasant situations with Rumbelo than either of them cared to remember and Rumbelo had always reacted as he was reacting now, with his potato face devoid of expression, his thick body relaxed. By contrast, the two officers seemed on edge, the signals officer distinctly nervous.

  Kelly paused, moving with deliberation so that both the Spaniards and the British should see him as unperturbed and in command of the situation. He stared about him. Badger’s guns were trained on Pero Lopez de Ayala. They seemed to be jammed almost up the Spaniards’ nostrils and he wondered what it felt like to look down a lethal four-incher at that distance.

  ‘If there’s trouble, don’t hesitate to let ‘em have it,’ he said. ‘We’re not playing ring-a-roses.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’ Smart smiled. ‘How about you if we do?’

  ‘It’ll be up to us to jump over the side and up to you to pick us up.’

  Clambering into the whaler, they were lowered down the side of the ship and rowed across the surge of the swell.

  ‘Hope the Spanish react with good manners,’ the officer of the watch said dryly. ‘After all, these people butchered their officers at the beginning of the war.’

  Smart grunted. ‘I’d like to see anybody try to butcher Ginger Maguire,’ he observed. ‘I reckon he’s about the most unbutcherable officer in the Navy.’

  The Spaniards gave the whaler a bowline and lowered a jumping ladder. As they bumped alongside, Kelly began to clamber up the hull of the ship. It was grubby, he noticed, and he was forcibly reminded of the German ships at Scapa Flow in 1919 after their surrender, dirty, unkempt and uncared for, their crews mutinous and ugly. Then another unhappy memory jogged at his mind, as he recalled almost pleading with the ship’s company of the battleship, Rebuke – his own men! – at Invergordon. Was it only five years ago? But for a bit of luck and a lot of understanding on both sides, he thought, Rebuke might just have gone the same way then as Pero Lopez de Ayala had now. It had been a shattering experience.

  There was a tense atmosphere of expectation as he reached the deck, followed by the signals officer, the navigator and Rumbelo. The Spanish crew were unshaven and dressed in a mixture of clothing, among which only occasional scraps of uniform were visible. Spanish Republican soldiers fought in overalls and braces so perhaps the Republican navy felt they ought to show their oneness with their comrades by following suit.

  To his surprise, a bosun’s pipe twittered and he was pleased at the sign of normality. The Spanish sailors crowded round, pressing forward to see him and his party, those at the front leaning back in order to avoid rubbing their grubby clothes against the spotless white drill which seemed to leave them somewhat awed. Then an older man, dressed indifferently like the rest but wearing a petty officer’s cap, pushed through the crowd.

  ‘A quién está buscando Usted?’

  There was no indication of respect but at least they were getting somewhere and Kelly was grateful for the hours he’d spent studying Spanish. It was still far from good Spanish but it enabled him to speak directly.

  ‘I wish to see your captain,’ he said.

  ‘We have no captain. We shot him.’

  If the Spaniards had expected to see any change of expression on Kelly’s face they were mistaken. He remained wooden, but polite.

  ‘Who’s in command then?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then we’d better get on with it, hadn’t we?’

  As he explained why they’d come, Kelly could see the navigator’s eyes skating hurriedly over the surrounding Spanish sailors. He remained rigidly stiff, however, while the signals officer, a precise young man, seemed to be edging backwards all the time as if he was afraid of having his whites dirtied. This business of dealing with mutinous Spanish sailors was new to the Navy but, Kelly felt, it was something they had to cope with and, when they were back aboard, the signals officer might well benefit from a few sharp words. He decided to suggest it to Smart. Naval occasions weren’t always social and sometimes it was necessary to get dirty, something the signals officer clearly needed to learn. Rumbelo was Rumbelo, blank-faced, immovable and quite imperturbable.

  ‘The ship’s now being run by a committee of forty sailors of all trades,’ the man with the petty officer’s cap was explaining, as if he felt democracy, his type of democracy, was something not easily understood.

  Kelly remained polite. ‘Don’t you find it difficult getting things done?’ he asked blandly.

  The petty officer smiled and shrugged. He had a curiously likeable smile. ‘Sometimes,’ he agreed. ‘It’s a good job the committee are all big and strong.’

  Kelly smiled back, putting on a show of affability when everything connected with mutiny roused a feeling of black hatred in him. ‘I’d like to speak to your navigating officer,’ he said.

  The Spaniard shrugged. ‘We haven’t got one,’ he pointed out. ‘Only me. I’ve done some small boat sailing so I’m acting as navigator.’

  ‘I see.’ Kelly smiled again. ‘Well, you’re a bit out in your working, I think.’

  ‘Never.’ The Spaniard was certain of himself. ‘We’re well inside Spanish waters.’

  ‘Suppose we go to the chart room.’

  The petty officer pushed a way through the crowding sailors towards the bridge. The decks were littered with cigarette ends and the paint-work was dirty, and the chart room was so untidy it took him what seemed ages to find the correct chart. Spreading it on the table, he jabbed his finger at it.

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘That’s where we are.’

  ‘May I see your workings?’ the navigator asked.

  The petty officer produced his workings willingly enough and they pored over them together, the navigator polite and interested, taking his lead from Kelly.

  ‘We don’t recognise a three-mile limit,’ the Spaniard said. ‘For us it’s twelve miles.’

  ‘Still no good,’ the navigator said cheerfully. ‘You’re a mile and a half outside it. Jeb el Aioun’s thirteen and a half miles from the coast. She’s in neutral waters.’

  The Spaniard stared and scratched his head. ‘Well,’ he admitted, ‘I’m not an expert.

  ‘Must make it a bit difficult at times,’ Kelly said cheerfully.

  The Spaniard changed his stance. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘it makes no difference. She’s a British vessel from Gibraltar gun-running for the revolutionaries.’

  Kelly smiled. ‘Nothing of the kind. She’s on her normal trade run, cleared by the authorities in Gibraltar to proceed on her lawful occasions. If you check her log book, you’ll find she does the run regularly.’

  He smiled again, seeing the funny side of the situation. Pero Lopez de Ayala, representing the government of Spain with a crew who’d revolted against their officers, was trying to oppose another revolution ashore and being frustrated on the technicality of accurate navigation. He took a cigarette case from his pocket and raised his eyebrows. The Spaniard gestured to him to go ahead.

  He offered the case and they lit up, peering at the chart as they smoked, while the signals officer stood at the back of the chartroom, wide-eyed at the sight of an immaculate British commander with gold on his cap sharing cigarettes with a scruffy and mutinous Spanish petty officer. Knowing Kelly and having known him since 1911, Rumbelo still remained totally undisturbed.

  The navigator found the Spaniard’s mistake and Kelly leaned over the chart. ‘You’ll have to let her go,’ he said. The Spaniard grinned and nodded.

  ‘Otherwise we’ll be forced to sink you.’

  ‘Think you could?’

  ‘Before your people could get your guns to bear. You haven’t even bothered to man them.’

  The petty officer grinned again. ‘It’s harder than you t
hink being part of a social revolution when everybody thinks they’re equal.’

  He showed them round the ship. It was drab and uncared for, the decks dirty under the grime of hundreds of feet. Breech mechanisms, sighting instruments and range-finders looked rusty and unclean, and Kelly suspected even that magazines and shell rooms were only half full. In the wardroom they were shown the bullet holes in the panelling where the officers had been murdered. The signals officer winced slightly but the others remained totally blank-faced. In the captain’s cabin they were joined by several other men, all full of political catch phrases and all over-earnest and lacking the petty officer’s humour. But there was no hostility and one of them even produced a bottle of brandy and glasses.

  The petty officer indicated the chair alongside the desk. ‘The captain was sitting there,’ he said, ‘when he was shot.’

  They were pressed into accepting long Spanish cigars and when they’d finished their drinks, they were escorted back to the ship’s side. Kelly noticed at once that many of the sailors, if they hadn’t put on uniforms, at least had put on uniform caps, and as he turned to climb down the ladder, he stiffened and saluted the petty officer. The Spaniard looked a little disconcerted and he guessed that saluting had been done away with. Then he saw one of the sailors nudge him and he stiffened to attention and saluted back. Immediately, there were so many salutes they looked like waving corn, and someone shouted ‘Vivan los mariñeros ingleses.’

  Kelly smiled, feeling the initiative was still his, as it had been throughout the interview. He had stamped his own presence on the opposition and that, surely, was the way to success. Master of your fate. Captain of your soul. Nobody pushed Kelly Maguire about. Not even the Spanish government.

  As he began to climb down the jumping ladder back to the whaler, he was aware of dozens of heads hanging over the rails above him. As the boat began to draw away, there were even a few friendly waves but he kept his gaze firmly ahead and showed no signs of having seen them.

  Back aboard Badger, he climbed to the bridge where he was met by Smart. As he nodded, Smart turned to the voice pipe. ‘Half ahead both.’

  As they passed the old freighter, they could see a fat man wearing a peaked cap leaning on the bridge. The bridge messenger handed over a megaphone and Kelly shouted into it.

  ‘You may carry on,’ he said. ‘They’ve accepted that you’re outside territorial waters.’

  The man in the cap waved and, a few moments later, they saw the water churning at her stern as she began to move off.

  ‘I’ll go and change,’ Kelly said.

  As they watched him go to his cabin, Smart turned to the navigating officer.

  ‘How did he do it?’ he asked.

  The navigator looked bewildered for a moment, then he grinned. ‘Talked to ‘em like a Dutch uncle,’ he said. ‘At one point, I thought he was even going to put his arm round that bloody Spaniard’s shoulder.’

  Smart smiled. ‘I bet he had the other behind his back, though,’ he said. ‘Wearing a knuckle-duster.’

  Two

  Gibraltar lay like a crouching lion across the sea, a vast lump of limestone on the southern tip of Spain, dominating the narrow stretch of water that was a cross-roads for ships hurrying east and west, to and from the Mediterranean, and north and south on the North African trade route.

  It was never entirely foreign. The beer had a different label, sherry was a novelty and the brandy sometimes produced disastrous results, but the pubs and cafés were much the same as in Portsmouth, dispensing egg and chips for the sailors and providing pianos so they could thrash the keys in a sing-song when they felt like it.

  Since the Ayala-Jeb el Aioun incident, the war had grown. In the early days it hadn’t been a real war at all, just a comic opera with an occasional death, run by the grandees of the Right against the dozens of parties of the Left, all known by a different set of initials – POUM, PSUC, FAI, CNT, UGT – who couldn’t even agree among themselves. The whole thing had been ruled by ‘mañana’ – tomorrow – that single word that seemed to regulate the whole of Spanish life, while the artillery shells that were fired were said to be so old and useless the belligerents just fired them back; there was even said to be one which had been going backwards and forwards for months.

  It was different now. Russian support for the government had increased, and international brigades had been formed from volunteers from every country in Europe – many of them young men of wealthy families out to show their disgust at their parents’ indifference to the poverty and misery of the Depression by fighting for the wrong side. The reaction, of course, had been strong German and Italian support for the fascist revolutionaries which had brought their soldiers, aeroplanes and ships into the conflict. A policy of non-intervention was still being followed by the French and British Governments but with international meddling had come increased bitterness, and in a savage war of ideologies, it was now far from abnormal for women teachers to be stripped, marched about with shaven heads or even shot, and for priests to fight against priests and not hesitate to kill. To the Fascists the Republicans were ‘anti-Christ Marxist canaille,’ while to the Republicans, Franco’s men were ‘anti-Marxist priests’ bastards.’ It was hard to tell which were the most virulent in their hatred, with prisoners taken in arms shot out of hand and officers shot whatever the situation.

  In February, the Nationalists had eliminated the Republican pocket round Malaga, with the Italians helping on land and the new German pocket battleship, Graf Spee, standing by in support. In April, the Kondor Legion of the German Luftwaffe had wiped out Guernica, the Basque market town. In May the destroyer, Hunter, had struck an Italian-made Nationalist mine off Almeria, with eight killed and nine wounded – and a fortnight later, Graf Spee’s sister ship, Deutschland, had been bombed by government aircraft off Ibiza, and after landing her wounded at Gib, had bombarded Almeria in revenge.

  By this time, General Franco’s forces controlled the west and south coasts of Spain with part of the north, while the government held the east coast with the great ports of Barcelona and Valencia. Though a fascist blockade had been declared and considerable efforts had been made to enforce it, it had not been recognised by the British government and, attracted by enormous profits, British shipowners were now operating whole lines of small steamers to break it. Like Jeb el Aioun, they were constantly in trouble, and merchant ships of all nationalities continued to be sent to the bottom, while one British destroyer, narrowly missed by a torpedo, had not hesitated to call up her flotilla mates so that the Italian submarine which had fired the torpedo had only just escaped, damaged and unnerved. Nobody in the Navy was kidding themselves any more that the Spanish Civil War wasn’t the prelude to a major conflict. The gathering storm was just off the quarterdeck.

  Walking home to his flat in Main Street under the Rock, Kelly stared round him at the towering fortress, wondering if it could be held. If war came would there be another great siege? Those whose job was the strategy of the British Empire had probably already abandoned it in their plans because a siege would be a useless piece of heroics.

  It was clear the Germans were treating the Spanish war as a rehearsal for a more serious conflagration and, with the powers constantly trying to draw military lessons from it, Kelly himself had been involved in drawing up reports on the influence of the air on land and sea warfare. It had not been difficult to notice that, in air attacks on warships, though no ships had been sunk, many had been damaged and every endeavour was now being made to improve anti-aircraft armament.

  Stopping by his door, he wasn’t looking forward to spending another evening alone. Yet he’d spent too many dining with people who had wives to feel he could impose any more. Even Rumbelo had gone now, his time in the Navy finished, and was back at Thakeham, near Esher, where his wife, Biddy, looked after the vast empty house Kelly owned. He’d gone with no regrets because, contrary to the romantic legends about the pull of the sea, there weren’t many long-serving sailors wh
o didn’t happily give it up.

  His hand in his pocket feeling for his key, Kelly wondered what he’d do when his own time came to retire. It couldn’t be far off because, unless something happened soon, he could see himself being passed over for captain’s rank in favour of the experts who’d built such a reputation in capital ships. Would he marry? He didn’t think so. Not again, though judging by the people who kept pushing their daughters at him, he supposed he must still be a good catch.

  You, Kelly Maguire, he thought as he took out the key, are a bloody fool.

  It was a thought that often came to him these days. Ten years before he would have believed that his life had been laid out for him: a steady climb up the ladder and a happy home provided by Charley Upfold, the one woman he’d loved all his life. But he’d been too involved with the Navy, and she’d escaped him to marry his term-mate, Kimister, and on Kimister’s death, had vanished to America – so he understood, to marry an American. He’d never heard from her since, while his own wife, Christina had left him for another naval officer, James Verschoyle.

  He was just pushing the key into the lock when he was surprised to hear a voice calling inside the flat.

  ‘It’s open!’

  Throwing the door back, he was confronted by a young man in grey flannels and tweed jacket.

  ‘Hugh! When did you arrive?’

  ‘This afternoon.’ The boy smiled. ‘The caretaker let me in.’

  Kelly’s face was pink with pleasure. Out of the whole sorry business of his broken marriage, the only worthwhile thing that had come to him had been his stepson, Christina’s son by her first marriage. Twenty now, and on indifferent terms with his mother, he had spent all his time away from school or university with Kelly, visiting his ships with an enthusiasm that led Kelly to hope he might eventually join the Navy himself.