And what about Cavendish? A tragedy, Beveridge had called it. Well, possibly. But an accident? It didn’t ring true.
And now a new captain, as screwed up as everybody who had preceded him. What was it about this ship? I’m a fine one to talk.
He turned and saw a midshipman, his face red with cold, standing self-consciously behind his chair.
‘The Officer-of-the-Day sends his respects, sir. Signal from Operations.’ His eyes were moving along the busy plates: midshipmen did not change much in any century, where food was concerned.
Frazier prompted, ‘And?’
‘The admiral will be coming off at 1445, sir. An hour earlier than expected.’
‘Thank you, Mr Potter.’ A steward dragged back his chair, and Frazier stood. ‘I’ll tell the captain.’
Onslow mopped up the last of his soup with some fresh bread. You could say what you liked, he thought, but you couldn’t fault the big ships when it came to bread. They baked their own.
‘Trouble, John?’
Frazier touched his fat shoulder. In his heart, he somehow knew that by next Sunday the Chief would be back in his immaculate white overalls again.
‘I have a feeling, Chief, that the balloon is about to go up.’ He saw some of the others looking over at them, guessing. ‘Again.’
Onslow reached for another piece of bread. War was a bloody inconvenience.
The piercing shrill of boatswain’s calls had barely died away when Rear-Admiral Vincent Stagg appeared at the top of the long accommodation ladder, his hand to his cap in salute. Sherbrooke saw his eyes flit briefly but searchingly across Reliant’s broad expanse of quarterdeck, to his flag at the masthead, and back again, taking in the rigid side-party. It was a steep climb from the launch alongside, but Stagg was not even breathless.
Their eyes met for the first time, and Sherbrooke said, ‘Welcome aboard, sir.’
Stagg nodded. ‘And the same to you, Guy. Good to have you. Capital!’
Sherbrooke remembered the eyes well. Hazel, very clear; like the man, full of energy and questions. Despite the flag officer’s thick band of gold on his sleeve, and the double row of oak leaves around his peak, Stagg seemed much the same as when they had last met, at Scapa, between convoys, about eighteen months ago. At first glance he appeared tall, taller than he actually was, but he was careful to hold his trim figure erect at all times, and his personality did the rest. He had always distinguished himself in matters of fitness, and sport of a decidedly personal nature. As a young subbie, he had proved himself to be a fierce and skilled fighter in the boxing ring, and the legacy of a broken nose still gave him a raffish, almost jaunty appearance, which had made him popular with certain newspapers and war correspondents. He had also made his name in competitions throughout the fleet, at squash, where he was rarely beaten, and fencing with both foil and sabre, where he never lost a contest. A man’s man. And, in time of war, the sort of no-nonsense leader the country had too long been denied, or so the press insisted.
Stagg was moving again, his hands emphasising various points as he strode toward the lobby, which led the way to his quarters aft. A small procession seemed to flow in his wake: Howe, his flag lieutenant, a tall, harassed-looking officer with a bulging briefcase, who had been ashore to meet his master at the local R.A.F. station, and another lieutenant with a paymaster’s white cloth between his stripes, also trying to keep up. He was Villar, the rear-admiral’s secretary. There were others too, including a chief writer and an anxious midshipman, whose sole duty appeared to be to take the admiral’s cap and gloves.
Sherbrooke sighed inwardly. He would soon know all of them. Stagg had never been one to tolerate ignorance where the men under his charge were concerned.
Stagg strode into the huge day cabin and glared around. ‘Open some scuttles! This place is like a tomb!’
He walked to a table and glanced at some letters arranged on a silver tray.
A voice said, ‘The commander is here, sir.’
Frazier entered, his cap under one arm, his eyes questioning.
‘Sir?’
‘I’ll want a full report on the replacements for men drafted to other ships, or ashore for training. I’m not happy with the way their lordships are ignoring our need for top-quality personnel.’ He looked up, his eyes bright, impatient. ‘Officers, too.’
‘Yes, sir. We’ve been lucky so far.’
Stagg turned toward a long mirror on one bulkhead. ‘This is a flagship. Luck doesn’t come into it.’
Sherbrooke was very aware of the tension, and that the others in their various postures around the big cabin were trying not to notice it.
‘Another thing.’ Stagg touched a lock of hair which had been flattened by his cap. ‘When I was coming out to the ship just now, I saw some ratings on the four-inch director platform. They were smoking.’
There was a loud click as the flag lieutenant opened his briefcase, and took out a pair of binoculars.
Frazier said, ‘It is Sunday, sir. Some of the hands have been doing extra work because of the leave period.’
Stagg did not turn from the glass. ‘I don’t care if it’s bloody Christmas, John. I’ll not abide lower standards in this ship.’
The use of Frazier’s first name made it worse, in some way.
Stagg faced them. Even that movement revealed a restless energy. Senior officers often went to great lengths to appear absolutely aloof and remote, even in the presence of danger. Rear-Admiral Vincent Stagg was the very opposite. As if he could barely contain his vigour, like something too powerful to be controlled.
‘You will know Captain Sherbrooke, by reputation if nothing else. Together we will make this ship, this command, an example to others. We are entering a phase of the war which may well determine the strategy of final victory.’
The secretary was handing out sealed envelopes to his minions. Stagg waited until Frazier had returned his attention to him, and said, ‘About leave, John. Not too many compassionate cases, right? If any man is a malingerer, replace him. I’d rather have a bunch of new, eager recruits than a collection of moaning barrack stanchions.’
Frazier swallowed. ‘There were two bad air raids last night. London and Portsmouth. There are bound to be more requests for leave.’
Stagg grinned. ‘Ignore them. Carry on, if you please.’
They moved from the cabin, lastly the midshipman, who handed the admiral’s gleaming cap to a steward.
Stagg spread his arms. ‘That’s more like it.’ He looked keenly at Sherbrooke. ‘You think I was a bit hard on Frazier? That, as captain, any censure should come from you? I can see it written all over your face!’ He paused while Price, his own chief steward, placed a tray of glasses and a decanter on the table, and then said, ‘You’re absolutely right, of course, or will be, when you’ve found your feet. You’ve been hard at it since you came aboard – yesterday, right? You’ll soon get the weight.’
He looked at the framed picture of the ship. ‘That’s why I asked for you to replace poor old Cavendish. I know you’ve been through it – I read all the reports about Pyrrhus, what you did to save the convoy. Against odds. What I need, I thought, the right man. Determination and guts. What they respect in the end, you know. Norway, Greece, Crete, and all too often in the Atlantic, we’ve both seen enough bloody waste and incompetence. Old women dressed as officers, men who learned absolutely nothing from the experiences of the Great War, or ever since, in some cases.’
Sherbrooke watched him. Who did he mean? Frazier, because he had overlooked some small flaw in the pattern when Stagg had come on board? Or Cavendish?
Stagg said sharply, ‘Scotch, right?’ He nodded to the steward. ‘The sun’s long past the yardarm!’
Then he said, ‘You went to the funeral, I hear.’
Sherbrooke tried to relax. This was more like the man he had known as a lieutenant, full of surprises, perhaps secretly hoping you might be disconcerted by his private knowledge, or its source.
He tast
ed the Scotch, like fire on his tongue, and noticed that Stagg had not touched his. Another test, perhaps? To see if his new captain was bomb-happy, still back there with his old ship and her silent company?
He said, ‘I was in London, too, sir.’
Stagg grinned. ‘Well, I had better things to do that day.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’ll be ashore again tonight. I expect they’ll ask you to the wardroom. To size you up. See what they’re in for.’
It was no assumption. Stagg already knew, had probably ordered it.
‘The ship seems in good hands, sir.’
Stagg swallowed some whisky, frowning slightly as if he detected some inferiority.
‘Can’t always tell by the ship’s books – but then you know that, of course.’
The door closed, as if to some secret signal. They were alone.
Stagg said, ‘The fact is, Guy, I shall be getting more scope for this command. That’s why I was up at the Admiralty. Doesn’t do any harm to show them what we’re doing to fight this war.’
He turned to the mirror again, his eyes almost cold as he examined his reflection, as if it were some subordinate who did not quite measure up. Like Frazier.
He said over his shoulder, ‘And don’t worry about Cavendish – what happened, I mean. Dead men’s shoes. As far as this ship is concerned, it’s just so much history.’
Sherbrooke realized that the reflected eyes were fixed upon him.
‘It crossed my mind, sir.’
Stagg did not smile. ‘Just make certain the shoes don’t pinch, right?’
Sherbrooke put down the glass, to give himself time. They had been lieutenants together; they had both been captains.
Today we are as different as two languages.
There was a painting of Beatty beside one of the doors, a battlecruiser, like some great phantom ship, in the background: Sir David Beatty, who had commanded the battlecruisers at Jutland, a generation and another war ago. The battlecruiser had been a new concept, a dream, and a legend: at Jutland, it had become a nightmare, when these great ships, with too little armour, had been blasted apart by superior German shells and gunnery.
He looked at Stagg as he turned away from the mirror. Was that how he saw himself? Another Beatty?
Stagg asked suddenly, ‘You never married, did you, Guy?’
‘No, sir.’ He found he could answer without anger, without the terrible grief he had once suffered. But Stagg knew that also, that she had been killed in an air raid, while Pyrrhus had been on one of her runs to North Russia.
Stagg nodded, as though privately satisfied. ‘A new beginning, then.’ He glanced at the picture of his flagship. ‘She’ll not let you down.’
Sherbrooke was reminded suddenly of the churchyard in Esher, close to Sandown Park racecourse. And the tall girl in black. No sense in brooding . . .
No better epitaph.
3
Coming to Terms
It seemed to take an age to drag his mind back to reality, to the present. Now. And yet Sherbrooke had come to know from bitter experience that it was only a matter of seconds. Almost without thinking he had rolled over on the narrow bunk, his feet planted on the deck, his ear and mind adjusting, taking stock. He glanced at the small clock. It was just after six in the morning, halfway through the morning watch. Surprisingly, he had been able to sleep, for a while anyway, the small bunkside reading light left on as a precaution. A link with routine, a barrier against the nightmare which could strike without mercy if he dropped his guard.
Perhaps he was mistaken, and it would never return.
He pulled on his sea-boots, and glanced around at the small sea-cabin which had been his home for most of the time since Reliant had weighed anchor on a cold, misty morning, slipping silently from the Firth of Forth to join her destroyer escort without fuss or ceremony. That had been five days ago, steering north into these familiar, hostile waters. Sherbrooke stood up and waited for the deck to tell him the motion, as it would have done immediately in Pyrrhus. It was there all right, but slow and steady, in time with the sea, like deep breathing. He leaned on the small wash basin and studied his face in the mirror. He had shaved before turning in, a habit he had developed somewhere along the way, when the real edge of war had shown itself. It did not do the watchkeepers any good to see their captain unshaven and bleary-eyed when he first appeared on the bridge. Like that morning when they had weighed anchor: the forecastle party, shining black like beetles in their oilskins, and seemingly miles away from his lofty position on the upper bridge. Two tugs hovering nearby in case the new captain made a cock-up of it. At least Rear-Admiral Stagg had stayed away during the manoeuvre, although his presence was very real, nevertheless.
The great bows swinging, as if the land and not the ship was gliding past, while the Jack was hauled down and the anchor appeared above the water like a giant pendulum. And so quiet. The coxswain and telegraphsmen far below the bridge, hidden behind armour plate, the officers on the lookout for unexpected harbour craft, the navigator, Lieutenant-Commander Rhodes, a great, bearded figure bending over his chart table, his big fingers supple and almost delicate as they worked busily with dividers and parallel rulers. In Pyrrhus, the pilot had been an R.N.R. officer, an ex-merchant navy man with a master’s ticket. During some of the long night watches Sherbrooke had found a form of escape in listening to him and his tales of another world, of cruise ships and long voyages, of money, and of the passengers, many of whom reappeared every year for one cruise or another.
In time he would get to know Rhodes, too. But even that memory opened the wound again.
There was a tap at the door. ‘Captain, sir?’
It was a bridge messenger, a mug of tea carefully balanced on a tray. Sherbrooke had been surprised, moved, when for the first two mornings at sea his own steward, Petty Officer Long, had brought the tea himself, as if he did not trust anybody else, or perhaps for other reasons at which one could only guess. Either way, he had got out of a warm bunk to do it.
He sipped the tea, the typical navy mixture of sugar and tinned milk: stuck to your ribs, they said. It would be going round the upper deck positions now, the secondary armament, and the anti-aircraft gun crews. Even up here, they were manned. Not even a battlecruiser could afford to be careless.
He could picture the chart exactly in his mind, as if he had just examined it. They were three hundred miles south of the Icelandic coast, Seydisfjord to be exact, and some two hundred miles west of the Faroes. A wilderness, but a jungle, too, where hunter could so easily change roles with the hunted.
Their destroyer escort numbered six, some of the new M-class, probably the largest of their type yet built. Even so, they would be finding it hard going in these waters, keeping station on their giant consort, men trying to stay on their feet with the hulls bucking and plunging, attempting to cripple the unwary.
‘What’s it like out there?’
The seaman hesitated, surprised that the captain had spoken to him.
‘Bit rough, sir. She can take it, though.’
He looked away as Sherbrooke glanced at him, afraid, perhaps, that he had gone too far.
But Sherbrooke had caught the man’s sense of belonging, of pride. How old was he? Certainly not yet twenty, or old enough to draw his tot.
The seaman left quietly. And there were twelve hundred more like him crammed into this great hull. There had been a few absentees when Reliant had left the Firth of Forth, a couple of men who had been sent on compassionate leave, their homes and families wiped out in air raids, and another who had gone south to see his wife. The welfare people had reported that she had been having an affair with somebody else. It was common enough in wartime, but no less heartbreaking for the one involved. Neighbours had heard screams, and the local police had discovered the woman more dead than alive, with a real chance that she might not recover. The naval patrols would be out looking, and the police would know all the likely hiding-places by now. That was one face he would rather not see acros
s the defaulters’ table. A good seaman, to all accounts. Now he was a deserter, and far worse.
And there had been the usual ones who had overstayed their brief liberty. Too much to drink, a woman maybe: it would all drop in Commander Frazier’s lap. He smiled and reached for his cap. The Bloke.
He slid open the door and glanced back at the small, businesslike bunk. Stagg would have slept down aft in his own lavish quarters. He closed the door. He probably had the right idea.
He turned and listened to the muted stammer of morse, the occasional rasp of static. My ship. It was still hard to accept, let alone take for granted.
They would know he was on his way. They always did.
The Old Man’s coming up. What’s he like today?
Roll on my bleedin’ twelve!
Sherbrooke stepped into the gloom of the upper bridge and waited to get his bearings, as the ship’s bows sank slowly into a bank of solid water. Icy spray dashed across the bridge windows like hail, and the clearview screens squeaked in protest.
He was slowly becoming accustomed to the breadth and size of this bridge, the place of command, the nerve-centre, the eyes and brain of the ship. Dark figures stood around in their familiar positions, although to a layman they might appear casual, or unemployed. Messengers at the rank of polished voicepipes, a boatswain’s mate by the tannoy microphone, somebody gathering up empty mugs from the deck. The navigating officer had the morning watch: he always did. As the senior lieutenant-commander, he was always ready for the dawning of a new day, a time when fatigue and thoughts of breakfast, no matter how ordinary, could make a man careless, vulnerable. And it only took one man.
Rhodes’s assistant was a young lieutenant named Frost, very keen and eager, who had his leg pulled mercilessly because of the beard he was trying to grow, without much success. At the moment it looked more like something a child might stick to his face for a school pantomime.
Battlecruiser (1997) Page 4
