Look to the Wolves

by Look to the Wolves (retail) (epub)

  She picked up her pen and resumed the letter to her sister.

  The six hours we spent on that platform were nothing compared to the discomfort that was to follow – five nights and four days in a train so crowded that one could hardly move a finger! We were lucky to have food and drink with us – by courtesy of the RAF – since many of our fellow passengers were really starving, hunting for food at every halt and either finding nothing or indescribably awful stuff at exorbitant prices. We saw some people exchanging items of jewellery, furs, etc, for nothing more than loaves of black bread. Of course we did what we could to help, but had to keep enough for ourselves – physical weakening is particularly undesirable in an area where typhus is now endemic. At least the stove in our carriage was kept burning, so we didn’t freeze, and both Bob and Sam (Major Scott) went to enormous lengths to make us as comfortable as was possible. But the crowding, and the lack of air, and revoltingly inadequate facilities – not to mention the fact that our train was twice fired on by brigands or Bolsheviks – well, am I giving you some idea of the delights of long-distance travel in the Caucasus? Enough for the moment anyway. All good things come to an end, so they say – but what follows? In our case it was arrival at Novorossisk – where, if you’ll believe this, the town was under attack by Bolshevik artillery, the train-driver could not or would not continue to the actual station and we were left – dumped – in a siding where there was no platform, no facilities of any kind, nobody from whom to ask directions, only this panic-stricken mob – and total darkness, the town’s electricity supply had either failed or been switched off! Shells were exploding every few minutes – nowhere near us, thank heavens, but one never knows where the next might fall – and warships, British and French, lying in the bay, were firing back with their big guns at the Bolshevik artillery. The gun-flashes lit the sky like sheet lightning. Jean, my dear, I tell you honestly, I have never in my life been so…

  She’d stopped writing: glancing round as Mary burst into the cabin. Propping herself in the doorway while the ship flung over and the scuttle turned green again, another great weight of sea booming across the iron deck overhead, exploding around the torpedo-tubes and the after superstructure – which as well as supporting a searchlight housed the ladder down to this and other cabins and the wardroom…

  ‘Bouncy.’ Mary shut the door, came across the cabin and flopped down on the Admiralty-issue, horsehair-stuffed sofa. ‘Really, quite bouncy… Our patient sleeping?’

  ‘Was, when last peeked at.’ Kate blotted the page she’d been writing. ‘And golly, Mary – I was just thinking, we are so lucky.’

  ‘You mean he is.’ Nodding towards the sleeping-cabin. ‘But he’s as strong as an ox, as well as lucky.’

  ‘Personally, I’d say it’s nurses’ luck as well as patient’s.’

  Mary smiled, showing her big teeth. ‘But that’s an entirely personal view, isn’t it? You might as well admit, Katey.’

  ‘Nothing to admit.’ She turned that page of her letter face-down. ‘Anyway, what d’you mean, might admit?’

  ‘Well, never mind.’ Mary stretched, yawning. ‘Time will tell…’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it will. But Mary, there is one thing I wanted to say. When we get to Constantinople—’

  ‘Hang on – that’s what I was supposed to tell you. It’s now more likely to be the day after tomorrow than tomorrow night. Even if the weather does moderate tomorrow, as they expect. This is straight from the horse’s mouth – namely that of Lieutenant Wells, the navigating officer. We’ve slowed right down, did you notice?’

  ‘All to the good.’ Kate nodded. ‘Give him a bit more time. What I was saying, anyway – when we do get there, obviously he’ll have to stay put for a while. Time to recuperate, but also you may remember he told us in the train he’s going to apply for release from the Navy – which he’s entitled to—’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, the red tape’ll take a little time, one imagines. And the point is, I think I’ll stay with him – if it can be arranged.’

  ‘You mean if he—’

  ‘He will need looking after, Mary.’

  ‘Whether he wants it or not, you mean, you’ll—’

  ‘How dare you!’ The blue eyes flashed at her. ‘What a horrible thing to say!’

  ‘Oh – go on with you.’ Mary laughed. ‘I was only teasing. Come on, don’t be so touchy! Of course he’ll need looking after. Good heavens, he hasn’t even got out of bed, yet…’ She came over to the desk, stooped to kiss Kate’s forehead. ‘But, Katey, I’m extremely fond of you – even if you do have a tendency to fly off the handle – and I’d hate to see you – well, let down. Seriously – reading between the lines of all that raving, for instance—’

  ‘Nadia Solovyeva.’

  ‘Well, yes…’

  ‘Two things. One, she was married to someone else. Two, she’s dead.’

  ‘As long as he can get that into his head – really accept it. Because otherwise—’

  ‘I know, Mary. I’m not a complete idiot, you know.’

  * * *

  Bob lay drowsily with their low voices in his ears. Too low to hear anything they said: not that he’d have wanted to. Memory was patchy still and he wasn’t fighting it, he was content to let his mind drift while bits and pieces fell into place in their own time. This destroyer, for instance, HMS Mistral – Lightfoot-class, built as a flotilla leader, as was obvious from this cabin layout. It was accommodation for a senior officer, not for your common-or-garden destroyer skipper. He’d mentioned this to Katya a few hours ago – or last night, whenever they’d last chatted. Intervals of time were vague, to say the least… Anyway, while she’d pretended to be interested, she obviously hadn’t been, not in the least; those light-blue eyes miles away, reflecting whatever she was thinking so hard about.

  Getting home to Mummy and Daddy, probably.

  Very nice kid, anyway. Efficient nurse, too. He probably owed her his life. Katherine Reid. A little jingle surfaced in memory: Mary Pilkington and Katherine Reid…

  Scott, and the Welshman, in the train to Kupyansk. The flavour of malt whisky, and the train’s wheels beating out their rhythm: biddle-de-dum, biddle-de-dum, biddle-de-dum… Then the same rhythm – different train – and Ibraim, at Tikhoretsk. That impassive face, as if carved crudely from mahogany, with tears gleaming in its slanting eyes. One hand raised, the figure dwindling and as unmoving as a statue as the train curved around the long bend to head south-west and its rear carriages shut off one’s view of the platform. Schelokov’s mutter in the dark: By God, I’m glad Ibraim’s on our side…

  He thought of the wolves. Not, strangely enough, with any great sense of horror. Unlike another image which only flashed into mind for a split second, and was gone.

  Mercifully. But the threat of it would always be there. Like a malarial infection that could flare at any time.

  * * *

  The girls’ conversation had been interrupted by a telephone call from the bridge, the captain enquiring about their patient’s progress. Resting quietly, Kate was telling him, and she hoped he might manage a light meal later on.

  ‘Well, that’s splendid!’

  ‘Yes. And thank you so much—’

  ‘None of that, now… Are you two standing the weather all right? Back on your three square meals a day, I hope?’

  Bridge and quarterdeck areas were virtually cut off from each other, that was the point. There was no way through a destroyer below decks, her centre part was all engine-room and boiler-rooms, with no through-connections. When the really big seas swept over, if you happened to be on her upper deck you needed to be quick on your feet, have all your wits about you and both hands for hanging on with. Life-lines had been rigged for this purpose but it was still a gauntlet to run. Despite which the captain – a lieutenant-commander by name of Claverhouse – told her before he rang off that Major Scott wanted them to know he’d be paying them a visit shortly.

  She hung up. Mary said, glan
cing up from a book which the first lieutenant had lent her – a new novel by Somerset Maugham entitled The Moon and Sixpence – ‘He’s changed his tune a bit, hasn’t he!’

  ‘We did rather take advantage of him. I think considering everything he’s been marvellous.’

  Claverhouse hadn’t known he was getting a passenger who had typhus. Hadn’t wanted any passengers at all, let alone that kind.

  Kate returned to her letter. Pausing in thought for a moment, she put the last page aside and started a new one, giving it a heading:

  JEAN. PRIVATE NOTE!

  I’ll continue with my narrative of events later. Just for now and while it’s in my mind I want to explain why I’m writing all this when you might think that being on my way home I could as well wait and tell it to you. Well, to start with, I’ll probably be stopping off for a while at Constantinople, in order to continue looking after Bob Cowan, who has been extremely ill – in fact might easily have died – as most typhus patients do. Yes, it was typhus, and he’s on the mend now, but he’s going to need quite a bit more looking after and it really is my responsibility. After that, with any luck we may be able to travel on home in the same ship – a hospital ship, perhaps, in which case I might be able to ‘work my passage’. But Jean, this is strictly between us – I don’t believe he has any home or family in Britain, but he will want to come to Scotland, as he has connections of some kind I believe in Glasgow, and it might be a good idea for him to come to us. After all, there’s masses of room, and the peace and quiet would do him good. Do me good too – I’m dying to get home. And – again, strictly between ourselves – I think he and Father would ‘hit it off’ very well. To be perfectly frank, I can’t imagine any normal person not liking him. Which I suppose must give you an idea how I feel about him, dear Jeannie.

  Now destroy this, please – and be a darling, see if you can prepare the ground a little?

  He’d been thinking about Colonel Temple and the report he’d have to make to him. It had seemed tricky at first, but he’d got it straight now and it was actually very simple. He’d put the girls in the observer’s cockpit in Scott’s DH9 because that had been the only sure way to get them out. Having then to get out himself, his best bet had seemed to be to team up with this Major Schelokov, who’d been hoping to find and bring out with him the personnel of another letuchka, then supposedly in the same area. They’d failed in this, had had several brushes with Red cavalry units and been on their way south with horses acquired in one of those actions when they’d heard about the train.

  In other words one would tell the truth, except for saying nothing of having had any personal interest in that letuchka.

  He heard the door slide open, slide shut again. Then Katya’s whisper: ‘Are you awake, Bob?’

  ‘Hello, Katya.’

  ‘Are you always going to call me that?’

  ‘Shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Oh – I don’t mind. Only at home I’ve always been called Kate. Or Katherine when I’ve misbehaved.’

  ‘Misbehave often, do you?’

  ‘Hah. That’s a matter of opinion.’ She was beside his bunk; the distance to it from the sliding door was only about three feet. The sleeping-cabin was really a sort of closet with this bunk in it, drawers under the bunk, a hanging-cupboard at one end and a scuttle in the ship’s side at the other. Green water was flooding up over it at this moment: as the ship rolled he was looking down at it, past his feet at that end of the bunk.

  He told her – with a picture in his mind of exactly how the ship and her surroundings would be looking at this moment from her bridge – ‘Katya’s a pretty name.’

  ‘Well, if you think so…’ She was straightening the bedclothes. ‘Bob, I came to tell you that Sam Scott’s here. D’you feel up to receiving visitors?’

  ‘Receive that one, certainly. And don’t you go.’

  She’d smiled as if that had pleased her. ‘Mary’s here too. But perhaps—’

  ‘More the merrier. Let’s have a party!’

  ‘Well – no parties quite yet…’ She slid the door back. ‘Sam, come on in. You too, Mary, if you like.’

  Scott loomed over him. ‘Say, this is how the other half lives!’

  ‘Us Grand Dukes, you mean.’

  ‘Ah. Remember that nonsense, do you… How’s your Highness feeling?’

  ‘Not nearly as low as he was, thank God. Or rather thanks to these girls. But I believe I owe you for the fact we got here at all.’

  ‘Bob, old chap, in present circumstances just about everyone owes just about everyone else. But you surely did pick a peach of a time to do it!’

  ‘I’d felt bloody awful all that day. I think I’d passed out once or twice in the train.’

  ‘Didn’t think of mentioning it.’

  ‘What could anyone have done?’

  ‘You have a point… Did you think then it might be typhus?’

  ‘All I remember is hoping to God we’d make it to the port before I keeled over altogether. Tell me your side of it, Sam?’

  ‘They’ve said I mustn’t tire you out—’

  ‘Go on. I’m nothing like tired out.’

  ‘Well. We got out into the road – from where the train gave up on us. Remember? No, I suppose you wouldn’t. You’d gone flat on your face once, pretended you’d tripped. I didn’t guess the truth, but Kate here did. Well, both you girls did – eh?’

  ‘Had a suspicion.’ Mary shrugged. ‘Said a prayer or two.’

  And Kate grabbed my arm, hissed at me we had to get you aboard some ship double-quick no matter what. She has a way with her, you know, this half-pint one here.’

  ‘Hasn’t she, though…’

  ‘We were something like four miles from the port, in a mob of about four thousand other people all with the same idea. Bloody chaos, I tell you – sorry ladies, but the language is well justified, as you know… Then this motor came along, big old Ford hooting and waving through the peasantry, you could be damn sure someone was going to stop it before it got much further and I thought it might as well be me. So I did. Driver tried to circle around us, I got up on the running-board, put my revolver against his head, and he stopped. We had to be quick then – 3,996 other people saw their chance too. There was this fat Russian in the Ford, making an awful song and dance – politician of some kind making a run for it, I’d guess, or an oil nabob from Baku. Something of that sort. Ground-length sable coat, big fur hat, face like a blancmange. I hauled him out, pushed you in with the girls each side of you – should’ve mentioned, you’d passed out again, I’d had you over my shoulder the last hundred yards or so, I tipped you in and got in with the driver myself, told him to take us to the docks or I’d blow his brains out.’

  Mary said, ‘Literally. Revolver against the poor man’s ear, cocked. Actually he’d cocked it when he intimidated some others who tried to cram in with us.’

  ‘And he drove us to the docks?’

  ‘Wasn’t easy. Roads full of people, wrecked motors, dead horses, smashed-up carts – oh, and shell-holes – the railway station and the docks were being shelled, did I mention that? Some Bolshevik horse-artillery that had broken through – so they told us when we got on board here. And ships outside the port shooting back at ’em – ranging on the flashes maybe, I don’t know. Battleships. The word is chaos – real, total—’

  Katya interrupted: ‘This ship was alongside one of the quays, and easy to spot because it was the only one.’

  ‘Right. With a guard of bluejackets with fixed bayonets on the quay, a searchlight and machine-guns manned on deck. We’d crashed through a barrier, and damn near went into the basin at one point, incidentally. They were taking in oil-fuel and fresh water, from an oiler and a water-boat on the quay close by. Hoses still connected, but as soon as they’d filled her tanks she was going to push off. The one and only chance we had, I tell you – every other ship that had been in port had cleared off to escape the shelling. And this one was not about to embark refugees, let me tell y
ou, she was sailing for the Kerch peninsula – east side of the Crimea, right?’

  ‘Right. But—’

  ‘I got on board. Pulling rank like I was at least a general – and briefed by guess-who. This one. You’d come back to life temporarily, in the motor, she’d asked you did you have a rash of a certain kind, you said you surely did, and described it – no recollection I suppose—’

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘Well, these two knew for sure then. Kate also guessed that the chances of any ship welcoming a typhus case on board weren’t all that good. So she told me it was your head wound, nothing else, delayed concussion that had caught up with you. So, I told this guy – very snooty, unfriendly second-in-command – first lieutenant, right? First thing he said was – Scott put on a plummy pseudo-English voice – “Kindly get off this ship, sir, we’re about to sail” – Captain Bligh in person, whom we now know as Charlie Dimmock, as nice a guy as ever walked the plank – I told him who I was, pointed out that I had with me two British nurses who’d escaped from the Bolsheviks by the skin of their lovely teeth, and last but far from least Lieutenant-Commander Robert Cowan from the Commander-in-Chief’s staff at the Horn, suffering from a head wound and in urgent need of treatment which he couldn’t get on a dockside under shellfire. “Ah, but we have no doctor,” Dimmock tried to tell me—’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Seems they lent him to some hospital ship that was in dire straits for lack of them.’

  ‘Lucky, then. If there had been—’

  ‘Wouldn’t’ve made an ounce of difference. They couldn’t have checked you out on that quayside, and by the time we had you on board the ship was sailing. I stayed where I was, in case they tried to pull a fast one, two sailors carried you up and the girls came up with you. The gangway was being taken off then, but also the skipper’d joined us, got an eyeful of these two and started Oh by Jove, we could use his quarters here, what?’