by The Rock
The petty officer said, "You bloody Brylcreem boys don't have much to boast about, come to that. The Jerries are dropping bombs on England just where they fucking like, and…."
"... so the Governor replies, no, in principle he has no objection to the next male apelet which is born to be called Anthony, after Anthony Eden. But the C.R.A. says..."
1942
"... never saw so many ruddy airplanes in one place in all my bleeding life. The ruddy airfield's full of them. You couldn't fit another in with a shoehorn." The infantry sergeant drank thirstily.
"You're not supposed to see them," Flight said, brushing up his gingerish R.A.F. mustache.
"I'd have to be blind, man! My platoon's on the Upper Galleries, and we're looking straight down on them. They've been flying off all day today."
"No Spanish laborers in town. First time that happen, ever."
"What! No senoritas, either? Christ. I've been saving up for a month to carry a bag tonight! Christ, I was going to fill one of them senoritas up to the brim tonight!"
"It's the invasion of North Africa," Mr. Wardrop said.
"Here, here, cuidado," Joe said, pointing to a sign tacked up behind the bar: Loose talk costs lives.
The Ape Corporal said, "I knew it was coming. Had a Yank general up day before yesterday to inspect the apes. Didn't look too much different from one himself, if you ask me."
Chaddock drank up. The first ten minutes every day in the Star & Garter were like a foreign holiday, a breath of fresh air, a dramatic change from the harsh tunnel and his barren quarters. But soon a sense of unease would begin to possess him, and then it was time to drink up and get out. Whatever it was they talked or fought about here was unreal; the people themselves were unreal—they didn't exist, and being among them made him wonder whether he did. Only rock was real. He lit another cigarette, paid, and went out. He was smoking too much. God, how long, how long?
Inside the Rock he tramped along the drive under the lights. Gradually the pub and its sounds faded into dream. A little diesel loco puttered past on its way to the spoil box with half a dozen tubs. Lieutenant Glass passed on his way out. "We made eight feet on the shift," he said triumphantly.
Major Hughes was watching the shifts hand over at the face. He came back to Chaddock and said, "Glass's lot made eight feet."
"I know," Chaddock said curtly. "He just told me." Hughes said, "You've got to increase your yardage overall, Chaddock. Tunneling H.Q.'s on my back all the time. We've given you the loaders, and the yardage ought to go on up fifty percent, but you're only up twenty-three percent."
Chaddock's head ached, and he wanted to shout in the other's face, but he controlled himself and said, "I'll improve the figures."
"For all our sakes," Hughes said, a little more gently. "The C.E.'s biting Tunneling H.Q., and the Governor's biting the C.E., and Winston's probably biting the Governor. You're just the chap at the bottom of the pile." He left, and Chaddock went to look at the men working on development head No. 42, Black Watch Raise. What the hell could he do to increase the yardage? ... Train the men to work the new loaders more efficiently. Keep the drills sharper. Place and fire the charges more quickly. Hughes had said he was at the bottom of the pile, but he wasn't—that man there was, the man with the drill at the face, the mucker, the loco driver.... Those diesels cleaned their own exhausts of everything except carbon monoxide. That was okay for the face men as long as the ventilation, natural or artificial, was working well; but for the loco drivers, sitting right beyond the exhaust, it must be different. And the ventilation wasn't working well, especially in the development heads. The metal ducts were not doing the job, and how the hell could man or machine work without air? At 300 feet from the air pump, rubberized canvas increased ventilation by 400 percent. Quite apart from that, it could be taken down before blasting and put together again afterward in a quarter the time of metal. How long since he had put all this in his report? Four months, three months? And still no canvas ducting.
"You look as though you just swallowed a dose of paregoric, captain."
Sergeant Farley's face was dim under the helmet lamp. "We had two men go to hospital yesterday," Chaddock said, "and the medical reports says bronchitis for both of them."
The sergeant said, "It's just a chill on their chests."
"Are you sure the doctors aren't lying?"
"Captain, what are you saying?"
"I'm saying they're so bloody keen to win their bloody K.C.B.'s that they may have told any doctor who finds a trace of silicosis in our men to say it's something else so they won't have to start wet-drilling."
The sergeant chuckled. "Ee, that's a booger of a notion! ... P'raps ye'd better be taking a holiday, sir."
Chaddock said, "We've got to increase our yardage, sergeant. Come to my office after shift." He walked back to the main drive. Some rails needed replacing before a loco got derailed. The concrete floor of the spoil box was getting damaged. It ought to be relaid before the rails came loose and caught a tub load, or they'd have hell's own job freeing it.
At the end of the drive he turned left, strode into the company offices, knocked on Major Hughes' door, and walked in without waiting. "When are we going to get the Meco rubberized ducting?" he snapped.
Major Hughes looked up frowning from a pile of papers on his table. He took off his glasses, and his Welsh accent was strong. "When we are sent it from U.K.," he said. "And, Chaddock, it is customary to call your company commander 'sir.' "
"Fuck that," Chaddock said. "The C.E. told me to investigate the rubber ducting. I did. You saw my report. You saw the Tunneling H.Q.'s forwarding letter saying we must have the Meco at once. Why haven't we got it?"
"Because there isn't any for us, yet," Hughes said. "We have been allotted a priority below..."
"Below what, for Christ's sake? Are they tunneling in the desert? ... Another thing, here we are trying to improve our yardage a few percent by cutting safety comers, fiddling about with old-fashioned methods. Is anyone investigating what we could do with diamond-drill techniques?"
"That's only suitable for blasting big chambers."
"That's what is said now, because that's what the Canadians did. But who knows what the limitations are? Who's been working to find out? Give me a diamond-drill team and I'll..."
Hughes stood up. "Look you, Chaddock, I have work to do, and I bloody know you have, too. When you have done your own work, it is time to think about taking on other responsibilities, eh? Now get back..." He peered more closely at Chaddock. "Look, man, I'm sorry. We are all tired. I have bad news, you know. My wife ... well, that's war, too."
"I'm sorry," Chaddock muttered, because it was a reflex response to the other's tone. He had no idea what Hughes was talking about.
"Why don't you take a couple of days off? Sit on the beach behind the barbed wire, eh? Have your batman bring you tea in bed. Go along now."
Joan was waiting for him when he arrived at the door of the nurses' quarters. It was a levanter day, sun shining everywhere but on Gibraltar. She was in Q.A. uniform and examined him critically. "You look tired. Are you suffering from night starvation?" She giggled and said, "All you men are, really, aren't you?"
He tried to smile but couldn't manage it. Her energy sometimes wearied him. They had met soon after he arrived in Gibraltar, and something had clicked between them at once. Two or three times they had even managed to make love in the dark on the hillside, but it was not important for either of them, and Chaddock sometimes wondered why.
She rested her hand on his sleeve and then took it away. "Oh, dear, officers mustn't walk hand in hand, must they?"
"You look a little down yourself," he said.
Her mouth tightened to the professional calm, cool feeling. "Oh, we had some merchant seamen brought in," she said, "rather badly burned. There was no room for them in the naval hospital.... It was quite exhausting, and several of us were on extra shifts..."
He had heard a badly burned man once, for two days, a
nd said, "I don't know how you can..."
She interrupted brightly, "Isn't Lower St. Michael's Cave marvelous?" They fell into step together and started down the road to Europa Point. She was tall, well made, and blond, rather like his mother. "The sapper officer who took us in said there are hundreds of caves on Gibraltar." He said, "There must be. It's all Jurassic limestone, and limestone gets eaten away by water—chemical reaction. There are a few minor faults, but nothing we can't get through, except one in there"—he nodded at Windmill Hill—"where we've run into trouble, but..."
She said, "Now don't talk shop, Sam. Look at the flowers. Look at that funny little cucumber." She stooped to pick a furry green cucumber three inches long. It leaped into the air with a sharp pop, and she jumped back with a gasp. A blob of creamy white liquid lay in her palm. She blushed and wiped it on the grass. "Goodness, that gave me a turn. What is it?"
"I have no idea," Sam said.
They walked on around the level Europa flat. "Well," she said, pointing, "that's an autumn crocus. You know, if you dry those stamens, that's saffron."
He smiled, more easily now. She smelled of soap and water, not very feminine, but at any rate different from miners' sweat and limestone dust and gelignite fumes. She was about thirty and definitely in the marriage market. If he married her she'd be Mrs. Chaddock. Or should it be Mrs. Crapp? Perhaps she'd mind that as much as his mother had. He frowned, remembering the flight sergeant's story in the pub. Could his father have changed his name twice?
Joan said, "You're not listening. You're always daydreaming, Sam. What is it now?"
He said, "I was wondering who I am."
"What? ... Are you feeling all right, Sam?"
"My father changed his name right after he came to England from South Africa. Mother says she refused to marry him unless he did, but I think he may have done something disreputable in South Africa."
"What was his name before?" she asked, suddenly suspicious.
He said, "It took me ages before he'd tell me—Crapp." She laughed, obviously relieved. "I thought for a moment he might have been a Jew. I can't stand Jews."
"Nor can my mother," he said. "That's what makes me wonder."
They walked on, round and round. Joan was fit and brave and clean and honest. She would face up to the Nazis come hell or high water. She was indomitable, admirable. "Wonder what?"
He said, "Whether my father had changed his name twice. Who he really is, in other words. So, who I am. One reason I think my father did something bad in South Africa is that he's always been a maniac for respectability, for doing the right thing. Of course my mother may have caused that.... He made his pile in gold and diamonds, but my God, he's turned himself into a country squire. He reads books but pretends not to so the fox-hunting crowd will take to him. I was to inherit everything ... Darley Court, the squiredom, Joint Master of the Tedworth, the lot. I went through Don and Cambridge, then I wanted to do something real..." He was talking to himself now. "Real, with my hands. With my brain. I went to mining school. I became a mining engineer. Father nearly died of chagrin. And, do you know, until I got my degree I didn't even know he had made his loot in mining! Am I me or my father over again? Or someone else?"
They walked round and round. After two hours they returned to the quarters. When he kissed her goodbye, she said, "I think you'd better take a good dose of Epsom salts, Sam, and ask for a couple of days off. I'll take two days at the same time, and we'll play tennis all day...."
Sam went to his quarters. Constipation as the root of all disquiet. It was an old female shibboleth, and Joan was female to the tips of her toes, in spite of the outward severities.
He sat down at his table and found his writing pad. He had to know. The doubt had been drilling into his mind all day—through the talk with Farley, through the scene with Hughes, all the time with Joan; especially with Joan. After what she had said, if he cared for her, he must get down behind the face, tunnel through the dark, reach the open.
"Dear Father," he wrote, " What was your name before it was Crapp?"
1943
" 'Swift is the flash that lights up the obscurity Sudden in answer the echoing roar Where ye light hearted ones now your security Mind ye tonight the world is at war?
Thunder the monsters aloft on the Ridge Echo the pop guns below on the Moles, Jews, Buffadero, Levant...' "
"What's that about Jews?" Chaddock snapped, thumping his tankard down on the counter and half-standing.
Mr. Wardrop eyed him owlishly. "Name of a battery, my boy. Jews' Battery. Joe, another gin for me, and a pint for Captain Whatsisname here. You're looking a mite distray tonight, captain."
"I've got things on my mind," Chaddock said shortly. "Wouldn't you find it more congenial, shall we say, in the Piccadilly? That's the officers' pub."
"I came here first with some Canadians, officers and O.R.'s together," Chaddock said. "They didn't give a damn for this separate officers' pub business, and nor do I." He turned his back.
"I hear you're importing apes from Morocco," a petty officer said to the Ape Corporal.
The Ape Corporal nodded. "Yes, we are. On Winston's orders, express. Though mind, getting the ones already here to accept the new ones so they can settle in, that's another kettle of fish. We put them together in threes, the ones from Morocco, 'cause their coats aren't so thick as ours, and they can huddle together for warmth...."
"It wasn't warmth I saw two of 'em huddling together for," the petty officer said. "It was you know what. So Gibraltar's safe again."
Old Sergeant Tamlyn said, "Those monkeys are nobbut a damn nuisance. It's the Barbary partridge we ought to be saving. There are too many people on the Rock, so the hens can't sit."
A sergeant-major of signals turned to the petty officer. "Had a little trouble with the Italians, haven't you?" he said.
The sailor said, "No."
"I see a ship's mast and funnels sticking out of the water outside the Detached Mole. What happened?"
The sailor ostentatiously turned his back. Flight said, "Eyetie frogmen. It took our noble bluejackets rather a long time to find out."
The petty officer said "Fuck you," and stalked out, slamming the door behind him.
Mr. Wardrop said, "Seeing that you Brylcreem boys can't fly a Polish general a hundred yards without killing him, I don't think you've got much to boast about."
"Thank God for our allies. Look at the Russians! Look at Stalingrad!"
"What about Alamein?"
"What about Arakan?"
"Eighteen months and I haven't seen a bit of skirt."
"Three and a half years for us," Joe said. "But things looking better, maybe. Today the army asked me if okay to strengthen my roof, to put anti-aircraft Bren gun up there. Last year, they do it, don't ask. Someone smell the end of war, maybe."
"This is not the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning."
Mr. Wardrop said, "This is better than any female in the world." He raised his gin glass. "What woman could have written
'Down in the city, lights are a-twinkle,
Hums the close hive with the evening's affairs ...' "
"And they're tough! We had to put Monty down. Three bananas loaded with nembutal. Another shot full of cyanide. He just acted a little sozzled. A couple of days later ..
Chaddock slammed down his tankard so hard that it shattered. Beer splashed his tunic and Joe's face and Flight's feet.
"Shut up, shut up!" he yelled.
"Here, here! What the..."
"Hey!"
The lights swung in front of Chaddock's eyes. "Apes. Skirts. Stand here filling your bellies with beer. We are in the presence of EVIL," he shouted. "This ... Hitler ... this is not a war for glory ... not a cup final. We are fighting the most evil thing in the history of the world. Until it's burned out, it affects us all, we're all unclean because we're all human, too, like him."
He stopped, his hands clenched at his side. Joe was mopping up the counter. Flight said awk
wardly, "We're all with you, sir.... I mean, none of us want to invite Hitler to tea, you know. Here, take a seat."
Chaddock stared at them, their faces wavering. The lights grew bright, dim. He ran for the door and out.
Chaddock felt a little more solid on his feet as soon as he entered the tunnel, and the gradually growing stutter of the drills acted to settle his jangling nerves. By the time he came near the face he felt sure of his balance and did not wonder at every step why he was not falling.
The round of charges were set, and the explosives were being tamped in. Three men were dismantling the last hundred feet of the ventilation ducting. He glowered at the work, for it was still the sheet-metal type.
"Who are you?"
The voice was in his ear. He wheeled round. "Conquy," he said.
Major Hughes frowned. "This is Captain Chaddock, sir. My second-in-command."
"Is your name Conquy or Chaddock? Or do you mean conky, C.O.N.K.Y? ... I'm Greenway, the new C.E." Chaddock saluted.
The whistle blew for the safety check. Everyone started to move back behind the safety line. The new chief engineer was round and youngish and popeyed. "What delays are you using?" he asked.
"Zero in the cut, one-second easers, two top outers, three side outers, four bottom outers."
"It works well? Leaves a clean advance?"
"Clean enough. There's no need to have the walls smooth as a house corridor, is there?"
The C.E. poked out a thick forefinger. "What you civilian mining engineers have got to understand is that the basic principle of military mining is exactly the opposite of what you have been brought up in."
"It's the time that matters, not the cost," Major Hughes said, quoting the previous chief engineer's favorite dictum. Chaddock said, "Hole not string."
"Eh? By God yes, that's it. In normal mining, your object is to extract a valuable substance—coal, ore, whatever. The shape of the hole doesn't matter, per se. In military mining your object is to make a valuable hole. The shape or value of quantity of the extract doesn't matter, per se.... Hole, not string, like a net. Very good."
