Davenport sighed. 'Well, it helps of course. My father wanted me to go into the army.' He added vaguely, 'One of the household regiments, actually.'
Campbell glanced at Hargrave, then walked across to him. 'Drink, Number One?'
They eyed each other like duellists, then the engineer said, 'If you will forget it, I can.' He lowered his lanky frame into another chair and signalled to Petty Officer Kellett. ' 'Nother Horse's Neck, or whatever it is, for the first lieutenant!' He regarded Hargrave curiously. 'What did the Old Man say?'
Hargrave put down the newspaper. 'Nothing much.' His own surprise was clear in his voice. 'In his place I think I'd have hit the roof.'
The Chief grinned. 'Well, you ain't, sir! He raised his glass. 'To a new start, wherever it takes us.'
Hargrave leaned forward. 'Have you heard something?'
Campbell glanced across at Davenport, who was trying to interest Fallows.
'Sometimes I feel I'd like to beat the shit out of that pompous little snob!' He seemed to recall the question and tapped his nose with his glass. 'I've got friends over in the stores. They're breaking out shorts and fair-weather gear for the flotilla.'
Hargrave smiled. 'In that case it could be the Arctic.' They both laughed.
At that moment Sub-Lieutenant Morgan, who was O.O.D., drew back the curtain and entered with another young officer wearing a single wavy stripe on his sleeve.
Hargrave stood up to greet the new arrival. 'Sub-Lieutenant Tritton? I'm the first lieutenant.'
He had noticed that both Morgan and the newcomer had been in close conversation when they had entered the wardroom. They must have known each other elsewhere. The navy's way.
Tritton looked around. A pleasant, youthful face, with a ready and innocent smile.
'I'm glad to be here, sir.' He glanced at Morgan. 'I was a snotty in his last ship. One of the reasons I volunteered for minesweepers, as a matter of fact.'
Fallows said irritably, 'Don't swing the lamp yet!'
Bone peered across his beer. 'What's yer name?' For the Gunner (T) he was being remarkably friendly; his trip home must have done him some good.
'Actually, it's Vere.'
Bone nodded sagely. 'That's a queer sort of 'andle to 'ave!'
Tritton looked at his friend. 'Most people call me Bunny.'
Hargrave heard Fallows choking on his tomato juice and said, 'Welcome to Rob Roy.' He added, 'Funny, we already have a Bunny in the mess.'
'Really, sir?' Tritton's eyes were like saucers. 'Well, of course we do breed quite quickly.'
Morgan slapped Fallows on the shoulders. 'All right, Bunny? Cough it up, eh?'
By the quartermaster's lobby Beckett heard the laughter and thought suddenly of Tinker. Heartless bastards.
The Buffer hurried along the side-deck and beamed at him. He looked ev£n more like a monkey, Beckett thought.
'Time for yer tot, Swain. I'll tell you about the party I picked up when I was up the line.'
Beckett grinned. 'Why not?' Tinker was forgotten.
Lieutenant Philip Sherwood wrenched open the door of a First Class compartment and stared with distaste at the occupants. He tried the next, where to his surprise there was a corner seat by the corridor. In the navy you learned to cherish privacy, even lying on a table with your cap over your face.
He slumped down and turned up the collar of his raincoat. It was early morning, with the clattering, lurching journey to the Medway towns and Chatham still stretching ahead.
It had been cool, icy even when he had left the flat in Mayfair. For once no sirens had split the night apart, and the barrage balloons, floating high above the beleaguered city, shone in faint sunlight, although on the ground it was still as dark as pitch. Sherwood had left early so that he could walk all the way to Waterloo. He had not realised how out of condition shipboard life had made him. He thought of the woman he had left sprawled across the bed, sleeping as if she was dead. Maybe when she awoke, she might wish she was.
Sherwood closed his eyes as an air force officer smiled across, as if he was about to open a conversation.
Sherwood thought of their night of passion. He was still not sure how it had begun. In her case it had been a release probably. He had taken her to hotels and restaurants she had only heard about. Even a red-tabbed general had turned to stare when a head-waiter had called Sherwood respectfully by name. It had reminded him of the staff officer he had knocked down with a chair. He still could not believe that he had changed so much.
Working within a hair's breadth of self-destruction, defusing mines and sometimes huge bombs with delayed-action booby traps, he had taught himself to empty his mind of everything but the job, and the one after that. Even of fear, for himself and for others.
It had simply happened. He could place no time or exact reason. That final evening they had walked back to the flat, across Berkeley Square, then along Hill Street.
She had not spoken about her dead husband, and he had said nothing further about his family.
Once she had caught him looking up at a chandelier in one hotel restaurant, and he had found himself telling her about the company.
She had watched him closely as if she had been trying to remember every feature of his face.
'What will you do when the war's over, Philip?'
He had heard himself say, 'Over? It'll go on for years and years. I try not to think about it.'
Once their hands had touched across the table and he had found himself holding her fingers, as her husband must have acted.
Perhaps that had done it, he thought.
When they had returned to the flat last night they had stood in the centre of the room without speaking.
Then he had remarked, 'No sirens yet. We'll get a good sleep for once.'
She had been unable to look at him. 'Don't sleep in the kitchen. Not tonight, Philip.' That was all.
He had held her without yearning, lifting her chin to look into her eyes, to see a pulse beating in her throat like a tiny, trapped creature.
It had started like a brushfire, and had ended with them both sprawled naked and breathless across the bed. He had hurt her; she had not had a man since her husband had gone overseas. She had cried out in pain and in a wild desire which neither of them had expected. Just once, when she fell asleep on his shoulder, she had spoken his name. Tom. It was a secret Sherwood knew he would keep.
Later he had stood by the window and waited for the first hint of morning. The clink of a milkman's basket, a policeman's boots on the pavement below. Men and women had died, probably in their thousands, while they had been making love in this room, he had thought. But that had been somewhere else.
He thought desperately, I must not see her again. I can't. Any connection now would make me careless and unaware. It might also break her heart.
Her name $vas Rosemary. It was better to leave now, brutally and finally. They had had their precious moment, both of them. In war that was rare indeed.
Ransome leaned on one elbow and plucked his shirt away from his chest. With the deadlights screwed tightly shut for another night alongside the dockyard wall the air felt clammy and unmoving, in spite of the deckhead fans and a breeze from the Medway.
He stared at the pile of ledgers and files through which he had worked with barely a break, but could find no reward in what he had done. As if the day had been empty.
Dockyard reports to check and sign, signals to read, orders from the Staff Officer Minesweeping, from even higher authority at the Admiralty, which all had to be examined; translated was a more apt description.
Dockyard foremen had come and gone, and his own heads of departments, from the first lieutenant to Wakeford the leading writer, once a physics master at a grammar school, had all visited this cabin to increase or diminish his workload.
Now it was done. Even a personal letter to Tinker's father, although he wondered if it could make any difference to him. Had he acted correctly with Hargrave? No matter what he had told old Moncrieff he
still felt some lingering doubts.
But the other rumour was now a fact. Rob Roy and the flotilla would soon be heading for the Mediterranean, to a real war, where it would take every ounce of skill and endurance to carry out the work for which this class of warship had been designed. It would not just be 'putting up with it', a conflict of boredom punctuated occasionally by stark and violent death and destruction. It was no time to start changing the team around. He had met the new sub, Tritton, a likeable youngster who probably saw the dangerous grind of sweeping mines as something glamourous. Fallows might have to leave soon when his promotion was announced. He might end up as somebody's first lieutenant. Better them than me, he thought. But be did knoiv bis job. In war that was vital, at the top of the stakes. In another year, there would be even more eager, barely trained amateurs filling gaps left by the Fallows of this world.
He thought about his brief meeting with Surgeon Lieutenant Sean Cusack RNVR. He had not been what he had been expecting. If small ships were fortunate enough or otherwise, to carry a doctor, they were usually little more than medical students with stripes on their sleeves. He pictured Cusack as he had sat opposite him that afternoon in the other chair. In his thirties, with dark, almost swarthy features and the brightest pair of twinkling blue eyes he had ever seen.
He had said in reply to Ransome's question, 'I got fed up with the R.N.H., and one damned barracks after another. I am in the navy, so why not a ship, I asked myself?' He had chuckled at Ransome's surprise. 'It's the Irish in me, I suppose.' Then he had said with equal candour, 'There'll be a lot of stress in a job like this one, eh?'
He had sat back in the chair, his head on one side like a watchful bird. It had made Ransome feel defensive, unguarded.
He had replied, 'I suppose that's true. You tend to think death is the only enemy, that you can cope with all else, like a sort of god. When you discover you can't, it leaves you raw. Vulnerable.'
'Like the boy Tinker I've been hearing about.' The blue eyes had barely blinked. 'Perhaps I could have helped. I have some experience in that field.'
Ransome had made some excuse and the new doctor had departed.
He reached down to the cupboard and took out one of Mon-crieff's bottles of Scotch. He poured a full measure and added a dash of soda. The first today. What would Cusack have made of that, he wondered?
The ship felt quiet and still, with only occasionally footsteps on deck, and the creak of rope fenders between the hull and Ranger alongside.
A full flotilla, with more new faces, different characters to know and understand.
They might be working with the fleet, taking part in an invasion which must not fail. If it did, all the sacrifices which had left a bloody trail from Dunkirk to Singapore, Norway to Crete, would be wasted. There would be no second chance. If they put a foot back into Europe, no matter where, it must advance. Otherwise it would not be a question of a retreat, or a strategic withdrawal as the war correspondents optimistically described them. It would mean an inevitable defeat. He thought of his parents as he had seen them on this last leave. No, it must not fail.
There was a tap at the door and the doctor looked in at him, his eyes everywhere as he took in the piles of papers and files which filled the desk and part of the deck too.
'And there's me been enjoying meself with my new comrades, sir!'
'What is it, Doc? Your cabin not to your liking?'
Cusack stepped into the light. 'I'm such a fool. I completely forgot in all the excitement of joining the ship today!' He held out a letter. 'This was given in my care at the gates, to hand to you. To be sure, you'd have got it faster if they'd entrusted it to a blind man!'
He watched as Ransome took the letter and examined it without recognition.
Cusack said, 'A woman's hand, I'll wager, sir.' He nodded. 'I'll be off to finish unpacking and to put my strange S.B.A. straight on a few facts of life.'
Ransome looked at the handwriting. It was addressed correctly, c/o G.P.O. London, but the writer had upgraded his rank to Commander. Somebody's wife or mother trying to dodge the rules and red tape, he decided.
He said, Thanks, Doc. One thing before you go.'
The doctor's eyes fell hopefully on the Scotch but Ransome asked, 'Are you from the north or the south of Ireland?'
Cusack pretended to be offended. 'No true Irishman comes from the North, sir!' He withdrew quickly.
Things might be very different with him around.
Ransome glanced at the bulkhead clock. An early night, a drink in Ranger, or a walk along the wall to clear his thoughts.
Orders would be arriving tomorrow.
He looked at the unopened letter and noticed it was postmarked Plymouth.
Something made him reach for his knife and he slit it open.
First he turned the neatly written letter over and then he felt a chill run down his spine. It was signed, Sincerely, Eve Warwick.
The ship, his worries, everything seemed to fade as he read it, very slowly and carefully. He should have known, although he had never seen her handwriting before; ought to have guessed, even though he had never trusted too much in fate.
Sentences stood out from each page as if lit from beneath. / have thought about you since we last met. Worried about you more than I could tell anyone. I went to see your funny boat. Imagined us sitting there in the sun, and you answering all my daft questions. 1 saw your brother Tony —
Ransome raised his glass to his lips but it was empty.
I wanted to know what you were doing, how you wereRansome reread it a third time. He could see her smile, her sadness too. Hear her voice in the writing.
Once or twice he glanced up at the drawing on the bulkhead. She was in Plymouth where her father was now a canon. He stared at the date. It had taken several days to reach here.
He sat bolt upright in the chair, recalled how the train had been held up by another raid on Plymouth.
They were used to them down there. Like Coventry and London, Portsmouth and Liverpool.
But he could not push the anxiety from his thoughts. Now he knew what it felt like to worry about someone who was as much under fire as any serviceman.
He examined his feelings, and was surprised but grateful that he no longer felt foolish because of his — he hesitated over the word. Love - how could that be?
Eventually, the question still unanswered and the letter lying open in the lamplight, Ransome took time to fill a pipe of tobacco.
It had been a full day after all.
Victims
The three weeks which followed the minesweepers' departure from Chatham were the busiest and probably the most maddening Ransome could remember.
The ships steamed west through the Channel, dodging a sudden and concentrated bombardment from the Cap Gris Nez guns and arriving eventually in Falmouth. There they joined up with the rest of the flotilla, the first time they had all been together for months.
Apart from the newcomers, the Dutch minesweeper Willem-stad and the very useful additional heavy trawler Senja from the Free Norwegian navy, the other ships were quite familiar. But in the time they had been apart, transfers, promotion, even death in a few cases, meant different faces and minds to contend with.
Commander Hugh Moncrieff, true to his fearsome reputation, kept his brood hard at it during every hour of daylight, and quite often during the night watches. They steamed around Land's End and into the Bristol Channel where Moncrieff threw every exercise and manoeuvre in the book at them, and many which he had apparently dreamed up on the spot. He was in his element. He even cajoled the C-in-C Western Approaches to lend him a submarine on one occasion to break through the flotilla's defences in the role of a U-boat.
With half of their number still sweeping, the rest of them had carried out repeated attacks on the submarine until she eventually surfaced to make the signal, 'You've given me a headache. I'm not playing with you any more!'
Each ship's company must have cursed Moncrieff until his ears had burned, b
ut Ransome had felt the old pride coming back, the feeling perhaps that the minesweepers were no longer the drudges of the fleet.
It must have been even more difficult for the two foreign captains, he thought. Both the Norwegian and the Dutchman were skilled and experienced, but had been used more for local escort work than chalking up kills in the minefields.
Moncrieff had remarked on one occasion, 'No matter, Ian, they've got the edge on the rest of us.'
Ransome knew what he meant. Like all the servicemen who had left their countries in the face of German invasion, they wanted only to fight, to free their homelands, and rejoin those they loved.
It was hard to imagine how it must feel, to know that a wife or family was in occupied Europe or Scandinavia. If news of their work alongside the Allies reached the Gestapo there was little doubt of what might happen. The bang on the door before dawn. Humiliation, agony, oblivion.
The flotilla even found time to work with the army, covering landing craffcin a mock invasion along the Welsh coast, repeating signals for a mythical bombarding squadron.
As Beckett had complained, 'Gets more like a bleedin' circus every day!'
Then, when even Moncrieff was apparently satisfied, the flotilla returned to Falmouth.
Ransome had written a letter to Eve Warwick, but either there had been no time for her to reply or she had had second thoughts. In Falmouth, he decided to telephone her at the number shown on her letter. He presumed it was a vicarage, and waited, rehearsing like a teenage midshipman, planning his exact words should Eve's mother or father pick up the telephone.
In fact, he was unable to make any contact. He thought again of the air-raids, and called the switchboard supervisor.
She had said wearily, 'The telephone at that number is out of action.' When he had persisted she had snapped, 'There is a war on, you know, sir!'
Curiously, it had been Moncrieff who had unknowingly presented a solution.
'I've been summoned to the C-in-C's office at Plymouth, Ian.' He had attempted to conceal his rising excitement. 'Bit of a flap on apparently. I was asked today about our readiness to sail. 1 told them, God help any of my skippers who isn't!'
In Danger's Hour Page 13
