‘Sam, that’s nonsense!’
‘It’s God’s truth. But he has a little sea-cabin behind the bridge, uh? So then his steward was rushing around scooping up his gear, and – oh, general haste and confusion, no one had time to think about you any more. Gangway gone – ropes away – propellers churning. Then of course Nurses Reid and Pilkington discovered the whole truth – brown rash, when they were stripping you.’
‘Stripping me.’
‘Sure. I helped them. You’re no featherweight, you know.’
‘He is now. He’s lost a couple of stone, I should guess.’ Katya nodded. ‘Reminds me, Bob. Lunch. You could have chicken broth – with toast, I suppose – or a poached egg—’
‘This is where I came in.’ Scott checked the time. ‘How the other half lives… Better leave you now, Bob. Five minutes, I was told.’
‘Thanks anyway, Sam. For lugging me on board, and—’
‘Forget it. Glad you decided to stick around, that’s all. Oh, listen. Skipper asked me to tell you he’s had a signal from Constantinople saying they’re glad too. He’ll be down to see you when the weather eases, show it to you then.’
* * *
He’d had the broth and an egg, and slept again. Wide awake then after an hour or so, he decided to try his legs out. He’d had enough of bed-pans anyway, felt sure they must have too.
Embarrassing. And stripping him, for God’s sake. They weren’t real nurses, they were young girls he’d been on a train with. He sat up, swung his legs off the bunk, and slid down. Careful at first, getting used to the ship’s movement as well as to being upright. There was slight dizziness to start with, but it soon passed, and so far he felt no worse than he had lying down.
No worse than Dr Markov had looked standing up, as he remembered him. And Markov had been setting off to trek about a hundred and fifty miles to Debaltsevo.
Probably never got there. Might have, but one’s instincts told one he probably had not. There’d been just him and the matron and that other nurse, and only one able-bodied male with them – the Tartar driver. Not all Tartars were of Ibraim’s calibre.
All right. Reasonably steady on the pins: and decently covered, in someone’s striped pyjamas. He slid the door back.
‘Bob!’
Katya was on duty again. She seemed to have been taking the lion’s share of it. At the desk, writing a letter, but starting up now, pushing the chair back… ‘Bob, you should not—’
‘Don’t worry. Trying it out – so far so good – and a brief trip to the heads. No, I know where it is. Anyhow, if we’re going to be at the Horn tomorrow—’
‘Day after, now. We’ve had to slow down.’ She came across the cabin to help him, but he warded her off, assured her, ‘I’m all right. Truly.’ A big sea smacked down overhead at that moment, and his eyes went to the scuttle, the stream of brilliant white as the ship threw herself the other way. He was holding the back of the sofa for support: glancing at Katya again now. ‘How long have we been on board?’
‘Just over a week. They were patrolling off Kerch – inside the Sea of Azov?’
‘Keeping the Bolsheviks out of the Crimea. More vital than ever now.’
‘I suppose so. We went into Kerch itself twice, then this last time into Theodosia, to refuel. Must be nine days we’ve been on board.’
‘And you’ve been cooped up down here all that time.’
‘Oh – not all the time. Anyway, it’s—’
She’d cut that short. He guessed she’d been going to say ‘it’s my job’. She was pointing at the deckhead: ‘I wouldn’t want to be up there, anyway!’
‘Not at this moment, perhaps.’ He’d come round the end of the sofa, thinking he might sit for a few minutes. Picking up Mary’s novel, glancing at its spine. ‘Maugham… Tell me, what’s for supper?’
‘Are you feeling that well?’
‘Not bad at all. Thanks to you.’ He let himself flop down. Pointing at a camp-bed that was folded and lying against the bulkhead near the desk. ‘Is that what you sleep on?’
‘No. Where you’re sitting.’
‘On this?’
‘Mary’s too long for it, she has the camp-bed… Bob, d’you think Colonel Temple will want to keep you long in Constantinople?’
‘He’ll want to be rid of me as soon as possible, I’d imagine.’
‘Seriously. Because you’ll need – oh, at least two or three weeks, to get your strength back.’
‘They’ll keep me that long, I dare say.’ He nodded. ‘Probably a bit of work to clear up, anyway. And getting my papers through. A few weeks, I’d guess.’
‘The thing is, Bob – someone ought to keep an eye on you, for a while. And if I did – well, there’s sure to be a nurses’ hostel or somewhere where I could put up. Then we could travel on home together, you see—’
‘Katya—’ he was shaking his head – ‘from my own point of view it would be lovely – of course – but—’
‘You won’t be really fit at least for—’
‘I’m sure I will be. Admittedly I’m feeling a bit weak now, but – well, look, Katya, first of all this is very kind of you – and I appreciate it very much – but—’
‘Not kind, at all!’
‘I think it is. But it would also be very unkind to your parents. Secondly – as I say, I’ll be right as rain in a matter of a day or two, and third, I’ll most likely get a berth home in one of HM ships. Keep a watch, earn my pay. I won’t actually be released until I get to England, you see. So really that’s not very practical. It is sweet of you to offer, but—’
‘I’d like to stay with you, Bob.’
She was standing facing him with her hands behind her gripping the edge of the desk, and looking – he saw it in that moment – quite desperately anxious.
‘My parents will know I’m on the way. I've been writing a long letter home, explaining… They won’t be worrying now, Bob. So you don’t have to. And it’s not kindness, it’s what I want – don’t you understand, I—’
‘But – here’s another thing now, Katya.’ He pushed himself up. Hardly believing this, but having to, and realizing in the same breath how important it was that she shouldn’t see his understanding of it. Having to act and speak casually, and not look at her more than he had to… Telling her – on his way over to the scuttle – ‘They’re bound to have passages arranged for you both. Right away. Absolutely sure to. After all, when I was sent to find you they were all screaming blue murder to know where you’d got to and get you packed off home. This came through the Admiralty, let me tell you – political strings, see? Oh, you can bet on it – you’ll be shipped off long before I will…’ At the scuttle, with his back to her, gazing out at the wilderness of sea through the distorting effect of streaming-wet thick glass… ‘Heavens. What a sight this is…’
* * *
God, he thought, but I can be slow in the bloody uptake, when I try.
Early morning now: he was wide awake after a long, dreamless sleep. On his back in the narrow bunk, recalling with shame how damnably slow he’d been to catch on.
He hoped it was going to be all right. That she’d believe he’d meant all along to get in touch with her when they were home, not just dredged it up on the spur of the moment – as he had… Then he’d gone from the day-cabin to the heads, and back to his bunk as expeditiously as he could have done without making the escape seem too obvious, and he hadn’t seen her since. Mary had brought him his supper. Corned beef hash – a reminder of cruder versions of the same dish prepared by Boris Schelokov in those snowbound forests.
Mary might well have a good idea of how the wind had been blowing, he thought. She had a shrewd head on her shoulders, that one. Not that Katya was anything like stupid…
He would see her. At least, write to her, ask to see her.
He thought the weather might have begun to moderate a little, by the feel of it. Might have…
Get up there – out of this damn cupboard?
The
suddenness and strength of the urge bewildered him.
Hearing the storm up there: even if it had moderated – a little… Lying still and listening to it, as it were sending his mind up there ahead of him. Asking himself, Crazy?
Shut in, here. Claustrophobic. And having begun to think about it made it worse. For ‘cupboard’, read ‘coffin’. As it might well have been, at that… Well, God, why not… sliding his weight off the bunk. No more thinking to be done: except the problem of getting out through the day-cabin without waking them. Once outside – well, there’d be oilskins hanging in the wardroom flat, for instance. There always were. Men came off watch, had to hang the things somewhere. He found a sweater in one of the drawers, too. Not a watchkeeper’s sweater, more the sort a cricketer might wear, with the Royal Navy colours knitted into its ‘V’ neck. He pulled it on over his pyjamas and wrapped a towel around his neck to fill the ‘V’. Looking for footwear then, he found nothing he could get his feet into – except for the boots he’d acquired at Valki, and they’d have filled with water in the first minute he was on deck. Therefore, no point in borrowing any of the skipper’s socks either.
He slid the door back very, very cautiously – about one centimetre at a time. Expecting a squawk at any moment… Although there was more than enough ship-noise and weather-noise to drown any small sounds he might make. The influx of light from the cabin flat when he opened the outer door might be the main danger. But it wasn’t a bright light: it showed through the air-slots in the top of the door, not much more than the glow you’d get from a night-light in a nursery. He crept around the back of the sofa – aware of the small figure humped under blankets, moving on past without glancing down again. He’d seen the camp-bed’s oblong against the bulkhead too, hoped she was as sound asleep. Reaching the door now, turning the handle slowly, then opening it no further than he had to, to slide out into the flat.
He’d escaped. Could breathe now.
As he’d expected, there were wet oilskins on the hooks below the steel ladderway. There was also one pair of seaboots; but they wouldn’t have fitted, and his feet had been wet and cold so often in the Ukrainian snow he didn’t think one more time would hurt. He took down an ‘oily’ that looked bigger than the others, and under it on the same hook was a pair of baggy waterproof trousers with a draw-string waistband. So-called waterproof – he knew them of old – but they’d be a lot better than nothing. He pulled them on over the pyjama trousers, buttoned the coat and went up the ladder.
The watertight door in the caboosh at the top was held shut by only one clip – as he’d have expected. He stepped out over the high sill, and put the same clip back on the door, all in one swift motion while the ship was on a more or less even keel.
The twenty-inch searchlight was mounted on this structure: a barrel-shaped object, black against the night sky. Wind screaming and buffeting and the air wet with continuous icy spray… He found the life-lines – steel-wire rope set up taut on both sides of the foremost pair of torpedo-tubes, between them and the ship’s sides. Sea racing by close on his left, coming closer every second as she rolled and a mound of it lifted – mountainous, threatening…
Swamping over – now. He was holding with both hands to the jackstay as the torrent swept around him waist-deep. She’d been bow-down and leaning hard to port – this way – and now there was a second rush of sea behind the first, pouring over the fo’c’sl break, seething like a mill-race around the funnels and the mounting of the four-inch gun there. He was on the move again as it leaked away – she’d come soaring up, then her stern dropped as a valley opened under her quarter, and she was rolling hard to starboard. Bow still well up – for the moment… He’d passed one funnel, and that gun-mounting, was between the middle funnel and a seaboat in its davits when the forepart began its powerful downward lunge, sea flying white like a shroud back over her whole length. He covered the last few yards at a run – bare feet had something to be said for them – guessing there’d be a big one coming in about five seconds. Past the foremost funnel – narrower than the other two, almost stovepipe-like in comparison – and the foot of the mast, and he was on the ladder, climbing, as that next one rushed aft, slamming against the front of the bridge – he didn’t see that, only heard and felt it through the steel rungs and handrails – then flooding over the ladders port and starboard, deluging down into the waist. If he’d been slower he’d have had that lot on top of him.
The first level of the bridge structure – it was actually fo’c’sl deck level – housed the wireless office, skipper’s sea-cabin and chartroom. One level higher – the physical effort was telling on him more than he’d realized, he might even have accepted at this stage that he’d been less than sensible to have left the cabin – this next level now was the after end of the bridge, the signal deck, and he was hauling himself into it. Breathless, heart hammering, and that dizziness again… But he was off the ladder: among signal-lockers, a central structure with another searchlight on it, a proliferation of cleated halyards slanting up to the yard and masthead, and other signal paraphernalia. In the bridge itself – there was a step up into that forward section – he could see three dark figures hunched, two at its forefront and one – the helmsman – at the binnacle behind them. It wasn’t likely they’d notice him: they had their work cut out with keeping a lookout ahead and steering a more or less straight course, without worrying about some outsize passenger lurking in the background.
He was feeling better now. The dizzy spell had passed, and his heart wasn’t pounding as it had been. More cure than kill, perhaps: two minutes ago he wouldn’t have put money on it. Jamming himself into the starboard after corner – hanging on, as the bow came down like an axe-head to split an oncoming mass of sea, the ship’s frames shuddering from the impact and displaced water leaping like a geyser, black fringed with white, a few tons of it lifting on the wind to sheet solidly over the bridge’s forefront. He was in the way of some of that: spitting out salt water, and the pyjama-top and sweater not much drier now than the pyjama trousers.
But it was fine here in this corner, with one arm locked around the top rail and the other shoulder hard up against the metal side of a signal-locker. The rails had splinter-mattresses lashed outside them. Starboard side rolling down, the ship jolting as she leant her shoulder into a lifting, oncoming mound of sea. When she listed this hard, in his railed corner he was out over the sea itself, that seething whiteness directly under him until she began to come back and eventually the dark curve of the ship’s side broke up through it. Rolling hard to port now, and bow-down, burying her snout deep and a mass of black water thundering up over her fo’c’sl, drowning the gun down there – he guessed, couldn’t see it from this position – then almost literally exploding – sound and impact like a collision or a shellburst, the ship feeling it so drastically that it had almost stopped her: and again, an avalanche of solid water cascading over into the bridge. Not a shellburst, he thought – as she recovered, her forepart breaking out of the welter of engulfing sea – a chemodan, that one. If that had been snow instead of foam, and laced with scarlet. Not that there’d have been any such traces for a long time now, under the snowfalls of recent weeks. No trace at all – except in memory, and dreams of what might have been. He spat salt down-wind again. Feeling much stronger now, and thinking that if they continued to leave him to himself he’d stay up here and see the dawn.
Historical Note
‘B’ flight of 47 Squadron RAF were stranded at Kupyansk for only three days – from 3rd to 6th December 1919 – after the engine of their train had been stolen. Encirclement by Red cavalry was very much on the cards; the airmen were issued with rifles and prepared to fight. But on the 6th their CO (Lt.Col. Raymond Collishaw, a Canadian whose personal score of ‘kills’ on the Western Front had been sixty-eight) and General Holman arrived with an engine, and the long haul to Novorossisk via Debaltsevo began. Taganrog was under attack when they passed through, the train itself was attacked near Rostov, and
the situation in Novorossisk was a great deal worse than my fictional Sam Scott’s rather flippant description might suggest. Nor was it a brief ordeal, as Odessa’s had been. Refugees continued to flood into the town from December until the end of March, during which time British and French ships struggled to maintain a shuttle service to the Crimea. Ashore, thousands died – of starvation, typhus and the intense cold – and the evacuation was hampered by icing in the port. The end – for those left behind, as the last ships pulled out on the night of 27th March and Budyonny’s formations swept down from the hills, is sickening to imagine.
There was a young RN officer by name of Peter Ashmore billeted at the Kist Hotel in Sevastopol in the latter part of 1919. He was later to become an admiral but at that time he was working for Colonel Temple, RM, chief of naval intelligence in Constantinople. My descriptions of the Kist Hotel, Captain Kotter with his Lewis gun set up in the foyer, and of the French treatment of refugees in Sevastopol are drawn from Ashmore’s own notes which are embodied in a typescript now in the Ministry of Defence’s naval library. It may be of interest that part of his brief was to (a) find, (b) arrange repatriation for, English women who had formerly been employed as governesses in Russian households in the Crimea.
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Look to the Wolves
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First published in the United Kingdom in 1992 by Little, Brown and Company
Look to the Wolves Page 41
