J. E. MacDonnell - 114

by The Worst Enemy(lit)

  J E MacDonnell - 114 - The Worst Enemy

  CHAPTER ONE

  CAPTAIN Peter Bentley lay in his bunk with his jack-knifed knees making a tent of the sheet and hands clasped behind his head. It was a relaxed posture-physically. His face belied it.

  The bunk's inward edge was bounded by the white-painted steel and rivets of Wind Rode's side. Along the outer edge there ran a board high enough to prevent his being rolled out on to the deck; right now he had no worries about that.

  At the bunk's head, close beside his head, yawned the mouth of a voice pipe; this gave him instant communication with the bridge, even more quickly than a telephone, for through the pipe he could hear a shouted warning if he were out in the main cabin.

  Close by the pipe, handy to his reach, were fitted several sound-powered phones; sound-powered because a destroyer's electrical energy could be quickly and effectively cut. It was for this same reason that most of her vital functions could be performed manually as well as by power; not so efficiently, of course, but still allowing her to remain in action. She could also remain on-course, using the auxiliary magnetic compass.

  At the foot of the bunk, above the level of his head as it lay on the pillow, was fitted a repeat of the master gyrocompass, so that at a glance he could tell the ship's course; and, for that matter, how the quartermaster was holding to it.

  But now the gyro repeat was dead, no quiet clicks coming from its bland face, and Bentley's eyes were not interested in it. His eyes were fixed on the deck-head above him, in a steady, almost unblinking and morose stare.

  Suddenly there came a sound, the hiss and the splatter of running water. At once his head jerked sideways and automatically his mouth opened. He was not ready for his shower, and wasting water aboard a destroyer was a heinous offence.

  Then his mouth shut, the bellow choked off by realisation. Brisbane had a plentiful water supply, and Wind Rode was connected to it. A cheerful voice spoke beside his head.

  "Good morning, sir. Your shower's running."

  "So I hear."

  "Lovely morning, sir. Clear and sunny, with a slight breeze from seaward."

  "Damn you and your blasted weather."

  "Yes, sir. We have a nice steak for breakfast."

  "What!"

  "Steak, sir. With fresh mushrooms done in..."

  "I'm not bloody well deaf. Steak, steak, day after day. Is that all this damned town grows, steak?"

  Petty Officer Steward Jarrett could mind the time-it was mostly all the time-when rump steak was as foreign to the captain's table as champagne and caviare; something to be looked upon with incredulity and partaken of with salivatory delight. Disciplined, poker-faced, and knowing, he said:

  "Sorry, sir. I haven't started it yet. Would you prefer something else? I'm sure I could rustle up some of those tinned sausages you're so partial to."

  Bentley swung his legs from the bunk and looked up at him; and Jarrett, who had never been inside a boxing ring in his life, knew precisely what that stoker had felt like and seen the instant before he stopped with his jaw the punch which had transferred the Fleet heavyweight title from him to Bentley.

  "Ah..." said Jarrett. "Perhaps fried eggs and bacon, sir?"

  "Oh, cook your damned steak and be done with it," growled Bentley.

  He tugged off his pyjama shorts, hurled them on to the bunk and strode naked to the shower.

  "Jesus," Jarrett muttered to himself, looking after the big brown body, "they'd better smack it about with that asdic dome, or else."

  Here-safe and secure, in the capital of a State world-renowned for the quality of its beef, with the light of a golden morning dappling the cabin through wide-open scuttles-breakfast should have been a bright and cheerful meal. It was a moody one.

  Jarrett cleared away, noting the half-eaten steak left by fourteen stone of normally hungry muscle; even the toast and marmalade were untouched. He walked down the passage on his way to the offal bins and there, coming in, he met the yeoman of signals.

  "G'day," smiled Nutty Ferris, his stomach happily full of steak and the daily signal log under his arm.

  "Watch it, Flags," warned Jarrett.

  "Eh? Why?"

  "He's worse. Got an outsize liver on this morning."

  "Again? Why, for Pete's sake?"

  "You know."

  "Yeah," muttered Ferris; along with Jarrett and the first-lieutenant he was closer to the captain than most men, being in many things his confidant. Then he slowly wagged his head. "Though it beats me, brother. After all, we've only been in port ten days, and he's got his squarie and mother ashore. What else could a man... ? Hold it, hold it," Ferris said, triumph dawning in his grin, "maybe that's what's got him by the cods." He nudged Jarrett with the log book. "Too many cooks, eh?"

  "Come again?"

  "Gawd... Too many women, you bollardhead. In his squarie's house at New Farm there's her, her mother, and his mother. Hell's bells, that'd cramp any bugger's style!"

  It was Jarrett's turn for head-wagging. "I think he's fair dinkum about Doctor Prescott. She's not just his squarie."

  "There's a difference?"

  "Not to you, maybe. You'd come at a hairy goat. No," Jarrett decided, "he's worried about the flotilla up there, the strife they could get into."

  "Ah, bollicks. Dalziel's got the weight, and he didn't join yesterday. I still reckon it's all that skirt ashore..."

  Ferris stopped. His face went rigid. Jarrett swivelled. Now they could both see-the open cabin door, and the wide-shouldered figure standing there, and its face. And both petty officers, at the same instant, wondered the same thing: had they been heard? If so, how much?

  In a quiet voice that held all the softness of a razor's edge Bentley said:

  "You were saying, Yeoman?"

  Now you don't become chief of a Flotilla Leader's visual communication system through being a muddleminded moron. Nor, in a ship of Wind Rode's violent experience, do you retain that elevated position by lack of guts. So, trapped, Nutty Ferris straightened himself, looked his captain in the eye, and with manful intent, not wanting to hurt, he lied to the best of his ability.

  "I was talking to Jarrett here, sir, about all the skirt ashore. I mean squaries, sir. With no Yank ships in port it's, well, laid on, sort of."

  "I see."

  Ferris felt a vast relief, and hoped to hell it didn't show.

  "Though no doubt of considerable interest to Jarrett," Bentley went on in that quiet, cutting tone, "the availability of feminine company ashore is of no interest whatever to me. Therefore, in future, you will confine discussion of the subject to your own quarters, and not outside mine."

  Relief was still in Ferris; that had been just a normal captainly blast.

  "Aye aye, sir. Ah, I have the signal log here, sir."

  "Then it might be a good idea to bring it in."

  "Yessir!"

  Bentley turned away. Ferris' mouth made a silent Phew at Jarrett, then he hurried along the passage.

  Bentley took the log, still standing. "Anything from the flotilla?"

  "No sir. No news is good news, eh?"

  Sharp as a lance the grey eyes jabbed at him. Ferris' smile dropped off.

  "No mention of our time of departure?"

  "No, sir." Unaccountably, unless it was because Jarrett's diagnosis had stuck in his mind, Ferris made his second mistake. "But that shouldn't be too long now, sir."

  Quite distinctly Ferris heard the breath drawn in through his captain's nostrils.

  "Tell me, Yeoman, what is it? You've taken to analysis? Or can't you wait to get back to sea?"

  "Ah... I'm not sure I follow you, sir."

  "You lie, like a pig in mud."

  Faced with the truth, Fe
rris thought it best not to argue.

  "Out in the passage we're as talkative as a barber's cat," Bentley went on remorselessly, driven by what was eating him, "but all of sudden we're tongue-tied, eh? I must say it's a refreshing change. However, as it seems you are in possession of facts regarding the ship's state which have been withheld from me..."

  "No, sir."

  "... I'd be most grateful if you would acquaint me with them. Our time of departure shouldn't be too long now, you were kind enough to reveal. Now be kind enough to reveal how you know this. The dockyard manager's taken you into his confidence? Or maybe he's the father of one of your numerous squaries?"

  Ferris looked hurt: he just succeeded in hiding his rising anger. The captain sometimes talked in this strain, but never in this tone, nor from a face set like that.

  "Well, man? I'm waiting."

  On a sudden impulse Ferris decided to play the captain at his own game; he would take him literally.

  "No, sir, I am not in the dockyard manager's confidence, and he is not the father of any girl I know."

  Ferris' decision faltered under the abrupt hard intentness of Bentley's stare, but he was a brave man.

  "I'm sorry if I misled you, sir. My comment on the time of departure was idle, not meant to be serious. I have no idea of when we leave, therefore I have nothing to reveal. Will I wait for the log, sir?"

  It was a long time since Bentley had been pulled up with a round turn by a lowerdeckman, or for that matter by any junior. His anger flashed quick and fierce. Yet it was also a long time since he had lost control of himself.

  In automatic reaction he forced down on his anger, and in the doing of this there flicked through his consciousness certain vivid images of the man before him-of cool courage, of absolute loyalty, and complete competence; whenever there'd been trouble, Ferris was always beside him, staunch as a stanchion.

  His anger cooled. He wanted to make it up with Ferris. But the other thing causing his present state of moroseness would not allow him to go that far.

  "No," he said. "I'll send the log down when I'm finished. That's all."

  "Aye aye, sir."

  Ferris went out quickly. He closed the door quietly and strode down the passage to his mess.

  There were a few minutes before hands fell-in for the day's work. The mess was full. A short man with the crossed guns and surmounting crown on his sleeve of a gunner's mate, or gunnery instructor, looked up at Ferris' entry. His glance was idle, and then sharp.

  "What's eating you?" he asked. It was more a demand, uttered in a voice of brass, but then Saunders could speak no other way, having been trained to it for years. He was responsible for the ship's gunnery efficiency. "Your mother-in-law's lobbed here with the wife and kids?"

  This was the worst eventuality Saunders could imagine; but Ferris was single, and so his comment referred to the yeoman's expression.

  "The bastard," Ferris scowled, thumping down on a padded bench. "The big bullocky bastard."

  "Who?" asked another man, reasonably enough. This fellow, in proportion, was as big as a bullock; he had a horn, too, in the form of a shining steel hook at the end of his right arm.

  "The Old Man." Ferris dug out a cigarette from a pack on the table, lit it and puffed jerkily. Saunders casually poked the pack in a safer place, the pocket of his shorts.

  "Tore a strip off you, did he?" asked Hooky Walker. This was an unusual thing to happen to a chief yeoman of signals, yet Hooky seemed less surprised than he might have been expected to.

  "No, not that," said Ferris, "not in the normal way. It was just his..."

  "Attitude," Hooky finished for him. "Yeah, I know. He bit my head off yesterday."

  "You?"

  Ferris, all of them, looked at Hooky with surprise, knowing that he and Bentley were as close as captain and rating could get. Then memory swamped back over Ferris, making his tone bitter.

  "He had no call to come at me like that. Sarcastic as hell, that's what sticks in my craw. It's that bloody dame ashore, I tell you, keeping her legs crossed. But that's no excuse for him to take it out on us, I'm buggered if it is. If she won't come across, let him look somewhere else. God knows there's lashings of grommet ashore, specially for officers. What about that girl reporter he knows? She made him happy. But this bloody doctor dame... !"

  A cough sounded.

  It was a quiet cough, coming from a quiet-faced white-haired man at the head of the table, yet it swung all their heads towards him.

  "Nutty," he said, his voice soft, "I don't think I like your reference to the captain's friend. I'd say she's close to being his fiancee."

  Ferris looked down, jerkily tapped ash off his cigarette, and looked up again.

  "Okay, Swain, okay. Maybe I went off half-cocked. But I'm still right, and you bloody well know it."

  "No," said Rennie, "I know you're wrong. It's nothing to do with the girl."

  "Oh? I suppose he sobbed his head out on your shoulder?"

  Rennie ignored that. He was the coxswain, the senior noncommissioned officer in the ship, but here they were all chiefs together, and this was mess talk. Not a word of it would reach past the door.

  "He's worried-fretting might be a better word-about the flotilla," Rennie said.

  "Come off it, Jack," Ferris said, smiling twistedly. "You sound like Jarrett. Damn it all, Dalziel's up there. He's a three-ringed commander, not a bloody sideboy!"

  Ferris was at one end of the table, Rennie the other. As each man spoke in turn, the heads of the others turned towards him, then back again, like spectators at a tennis match. It seemed from their expressions that not all of them agreed with Rennie's diagnosis of the captain's complaint. Hooky did; he was simply curious to learn how his friend would vindicate it.

  Rennie was silent, his weathered face thoughtful. Ferris seized the advantage.

  "No man's indispensable, Swain. The captain knows that. He also knows, or he bloody well should, that a man has to delegate responsibility."

  Their heads swung to Rennie.

  "Nutty, when did you last check your flag lockers?" he asked with apparent irrelevance.

  Ferris frowned. "Yesterday afternoon, and two days before that. Why? What's that got to do with the price of fish?"

  "You checked them?"

  "Of course. I always do."

  "Not Leading-Signalman Corby, or one of your junior hands?"

  "You're joking! Who cops the can if the right flag's not in the right locker? Look, what the hell has this..."

  "Why can't Corby check them?" Rennie persisted in the same quiet tone. "He's a leading-hand, not a bloody sideboy."

  At those last words Hooky's grin started.

  "Who said he was?" Ferris demanded. "I trained him, didn't I? But it's just like I said. Who cops the can if the right..."

  His voice loitered to silence. A pipe shrilled out, calling the hands to muster. Hooky rose, his grin wide and malicious.

  "Save yourself a lot of worry, Flags," he said, "if you learned to delegate responsibility. Talk it over with the Old Man."

  "You bastard," Ferris said, but he said it to Rennie, and somehow he looked relieved.

  "Not to worry," the coxswain smiled faintly. "Once we're at sea, heading back, I think you'll find the Old Man's back to normal.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE Old Man-he was just on the weather side of thirty-was at that moment doing his damndest to get back to normal.

  Up and down the cabin he paced, his face frowning with the memory of how he had acted, and with regret that he had. The passage outside was common ground; as well as his cabin at one end, it gave access to the wheelhouse and the chart-house from the other. There was no reason why two senior men like Jarrett and Ferris should not pass a few words there, and no excuse for him to treat Ferris the way he had.

  After all, the yeoman's comment was idle. It shouldn't be too long now. Just a conversational statement, as innocent as say We should get some rain out of that muck up there.

  B
ut was it innocent? There could have been a point to it; helpfully meant, but still a point. If so, Bentley realised with an unpleasant jolt, then the reason for his chaffing moroseness must be understood, and not only by Ferris.

  This was bad. As is the captain, so is the crew, and that meant the ship. The chain of reaction was so elementary, yet potentially dangerous. Ferris had gone out obviously upset. He might snap at his leading-hand, who would in turn deliver a rocket to one of the signalmen, and so the canker of discontent would grow. Not fast, in a ship so disciplined, but insidious and definite just the same.