J. E. MacDonnell - 139

by Death Of A Destroyer(lit)

  Sainsbury frowned. "Sailing, so soon?"

  "Dunno about that, sir," Hooky hastened to assure him. "It's just that we're in and out like a flamin' yo-yo up here. Patrols and convoys, mostly patrols." He saw the captain glance at his watch. "Well, sir, I'll be off. Just wanted to..."

  "Be damned to that." And be damned to his shower; plenty of time later. "Take a pew."

  "Thank you, sir," said Hooky, sitting down. "Do up your fly." He grinned. "Looks like I'll have to look after you. Remember?" Sainsbury's mind was swarming with memories. The main one concerned Skeleton Park; more correctly, an old and reverenced cemetery behind one of Hobart's better-known churches, and in which he, Sub-Lieutenant Sainsbury, had inexcusably caroused with a dozen bottles of beer and Hooky Walker and two of his petty-officer shipmates. From that same cruiser...

  "Do you know who I was thinking of in the work boat? This really is quite extraordinary. First him, then you. Extraordinary."

  "Who, sir?" asked Hooky reasonably.

  "Buster Crewe."

  "Well, I'm buggered."

  "Yes.'

  "I bet he doesn't know about Skeleton Park. I hope."

  "He does not. Nor does anyone else. Understand?"

  "I'll keep it in mind."

  "Blackmail?"

  "Yes, sir. Where've you been lately?"

  Now that was a long story, a couple of books in fact. Like the shower, it would have to wait. "I remember...yes, it was you," Sainsbury said reminiscently, "who first told me the meaning of the expression `pierhead jump'."

  Hooky didn't remember, but he nodded, for in those early days he had told his present captain most of what he now knew about sailor's language; and a deal besides, not all of it presentable.

  "So now you really know," Hooky stated.

  "There I was in Sydney one minute, having a nice rest as first lieutenant of an eight-inch cruiser, and the next I was on the pier with my gear packed."

  "Headed for command of a destroyer. It's terrible," Hooky said poker-faced, "the things they can do to a man these days."

  Sainsbury hesitated; his question was one for the first lieutenant. But then he knew Hooky Walker - backwards, and inwards and outwards.

  "What happened to your other captain?" he asked.

  And waited, even now not sure if he'd done the right thing, for when a captain leaves a ship suddenly, it could be for all sorts of delicate reasons. Like drunkenness, or proven incompetence - even cowardice.

  Hooky might have read his mind; certainly he could have got nothing from his mask of a face. "Simple, sir," he smiled. "He was a good bloke, name of Evans. No?" in answer to the shake of Sainsbury's head. "Bit before your time, probably. Anyway, we were coming into harbour, pretty rough, everything wet, and the captain just turned to speak to the Jimmy. That's all, just turned. But the grating round the binnacle was wet and slippery, and he stepped on the side of it with one foot. Slipped off and down he went, thump, on his right side. Broke his arm and dislocated his shoulder. Our Doc did his best, but, you know, a broken wing in a bloody destroyer... They flew him out to Townsville yesterday afternoon. And look what we..." But this officer was no longer a sub-lieutenant. "Who we got to replace him," Hooky amended. "Just like old times, sir."

  Sainsbury nodded, while his mind was at its usual machinations. Hooky would spread the word about the new captain. But could he, on the mess-decks? Certainly he would amongst his own messmates, but the Buffer of a destroyer, second only to the coxswain in seniority, couldn't go round buttonholing able-seamen or even leading-hands, telling them what a good Joe the new Old Man was. It just wasn't right. To the great majority of the crew, he still had to prove himself. And by God, he thought, suddenly but briefly hard, so did they.

  "Anybody else we know around here?" he asked. "Lieutenant Bentley, for instance?"

  Hooky shook his head. "Haven't seen him for ages." It was about six months, actually, but in a war like this that can be a hell of a long time; with scores of ships sunk and hundreds of men killed. In six days, let alone months. "Not Lieutenant Randall, neither," Hooky went on, adding: "Dave Hobden's still in a cruiser, and Pop Barr's gunner's mate of a sloop." These last two had been of the party in Skeleton Park. No mention was made of a gentleman named Dutchy Holland, for at this date neither of them had met him.

  "Any fowls on board?" Sainsbury asked; this being a legitimate query of a chief bosun's mate, and referring to skulkers, messdeck lawyers, malingerers, pleasant types like that.

  "A few, but nothing to worry about,' Hooky said, and was to remember it as the understatement of the war.

  "Good," nodded Sainsbury, for a ship's company without at least one fowl to foul things up would be unnatural. "Well, old chap, I have to meet the officers presently." No questioning here, absolutely not, of even such a man as Hooky Walker. A captain can be pleasant, even affable, with a certain rating, but a ship's company is divided by discipline and authority into rigid compartments, and into certain of these no rating may penetrate.

  "Yes, sir," Hooky said, and rose at once. "When would you like to meet the Cox'n?"

  Now here was a man, as important in his way as the first lieutenant; but still a rating. "I'll send for him when I'm ready."

  "Aye aye, sir." Hooky opened the door and very nearly said, "I'll be seeing you..." In a ship three hundred feet long. He smiled instead and went out.

  Chapter Two

  Lieutenant-Commander Sainsbury was the captain of this ship: which means to say - to be brief, but in no way inexact - that in it he was God. Just the same by virtue of the wisdom of my Lords of the Admiralty and of the Australian Commonwealth Naval Board, sailors have certain rights. Most of these are disciplinary - for instance, a captain may not strike the lowliest of his ordinary-seamen - and a few of them are social. Thus, if he were to walk through a messdeck where men lived, Sainsbury would remove his cap while doing so. And thus - though of all men, unquestioning obedience was required most from his officers - before entering the mess where they lived, the wardroom, Sainsbury knocked. Admittedly a sharpish, perfunctory knock, then he pulled the brown curtain back and entered. As one man they rose to their feet.

  They were surprised: Caswell the first lieutenant was astonished, and visibly discomfited. He darted a look at the clock on the bulkhead, but what he read there didn't help much, not in the face of this fait accompli. For it was his duty to have gone to the captain, informed him of the officers' presence in the wardroom, and then led him down.

  "I'm sorry, sir," he blurted, "I thought you said in an..." He pulled himself up, a fact which pleased Sainsbury: No midshipman's excuses; good. "Gentlemen," Caswell went on, recovering his wits, "this is the captain, Lieutenant-Commander Sainsbury. Sir, our asdic..."

  But Sainsbury was holding up his hand. "In an hour, Number One? You are quite right, and my watch, damn it..." glancing at the wall clock, "is ten minutes fast." He corrected it. "My apologies, gentlemen. Now, Number One?"

  And so they met him, this captain whose name had not yet become the legend it was to be, and right off - accidentally, for he had not planned this, his watch had really been fast - he made a favourable impression by his ready and unstinting apology to Caswell. What they thought of his appearance was not voiced until later; and some time later than that they learned things about him which made them realise a homely truth - that in some cases appearances are not only deceptive, they don't really matter a pinch of dog crap.

  "The asdic officer, Barry Cramer."

  Sainsbury received only brief impressions right now: of a chubby lieutenant reaching somewhere below Caswell's second shirt button; respectful of men, naturally, one of those faces that never sunburn properly, covered with large freckles.

  "The torpedo officer, sir, Ken Brown." As stolid looking and honest as his name: good, strong face, handy for one in his job.

  "The sub, sir, Henry Rowley." Young, diffident -he'd better be! but well-built and extraordinarily handsome. Not always diffident, Sainsbury thought; hiding, h
e hoped, his envy.

  "The torpedo-gunner, sir, Mr Meeking." The oldest of them, about forty; up from the lower deck, a wise old face, as weathered as Hooky's, and blocky body.

  "Pilot you've met, sir. Last but not least, anyway in his opinion, the engineer officer, Tom Minnett."

  Sainsbury felt surprise. Minnett had not the liveliest of expressions on his pallid face, but then all engineers were by trade and nature the unhappiest of men, at least according to seamen. "Chief stoker" was even the nickname for a seagull: seagulls being said to embody the souls of dead chief stokers, because they "laughed" like one. Yet the cause of Sainsbury's surprise lay not in the Chief's face, but on the rings of his shoulder straps. These were well enough weathered, indeed as much as his own, but where his were straight, Minnett's were wavy. He was a Reserve officer. In a fully-commissioned Fleet destroyer, the only officer of his branch? This was sufficiently unusual for Sainsbury to make a valid comment in it.

  "Reserve, Chief," he said, making a statement of it, and careful not to sound in the slightest derogatory. "You're the first I've come across, in a Fleet destroyer."

  "Is that so, sir?"

  Hmmm. Not too promising. It might be better if he made his questions direct and official; again, a valid approach from a new captain.

  "I assume you didn't join yesterday?"

  "The Navy?"

  "No, your first engine-room."

  Minnett answered him directly enough. "In case you're worried, sir, I've had ten years in the Naval Reserve, and twenty afloat in the Merchant Marine. I've been torpedoed twice, once off Tobruk and once off Borneo. I've been in this ship for a year and a half. Up till now, the bridge has got every revolution they asked for. Anything else, sir?"

  Sainsbury judged him to be self-defensive, not insubordinate like Caswell about his walking-stick appearance.

  "That's enough information, Chief," he answered, keeping his tone formal, making it appear as if Minnett had simply answered formally. "But for your further information, I was not in the least worried, but simply curious. However," looking about their tensed faces, "I do have a worry. It concerns in this heat and at this time of day, the state of my gullet. In short, Chief, my bearings are running hot."

  There was Minnett's out. He took it, even without Caswell's glare.

  "Then you'd better lubricate `em, sir," he said, and leaned sideways to press the pantry buzzer.

  And so Bruce Thornton Sainsbury took his first glass of beer aboard his new ship, pleasantly amongst his new officers. He enjoyed it and its followers immensely, which, considering the future state of things, was just as well.

  * * *

  Sainsbury stayed only an hour in the wardroom. He wanted that shower and he wanted his lunch. He'd had the one and was halfway through the other when the knock came at his door. Sailing orders? He wouldn't be surprised. After all, destroyers were maids of all work, as the newspapers said. He said: "Come."

  The door opened and a man stepped in over the coaming. Sainsbury noticed two things simultaneously. He was young, in his early twenties - nothing noteworthy about that, war being a young man's business, at least in the junior ranks of its fighters - and he was wholly bald. Not thinning, not with a fringe over his ears: bald, as in billiard ball.

  "Good afternoon, sir," he greeted crisply. Sainsbury noted that, too.

  "Good afternoon," he replied. "Who are you?" The newcomer smiled, easily. "I'm your doctor, sir." "No you're not," Sainsbury answered at once, and even more crisply.

  "Sir... ? Oh, I see. The ship's doctor, then." "No you're not," Sainsbury repeated: he disliked cockiness in anyone, but especially so in a member of a branch about which he knew little. "You are the ship's surgeon. The Navy does not carry doctors."

  "Oh well, if you want to be pedantic about it."

  "Pedantry does not concern me. Accuracy of nomenclature does. Sit down." As the surgeon, face reddening, took the chair opposite him at the table, Sainsbury had a momentary vision of Buster Crewe: Here he was, performing the same function as his mentor had, though, he conceded, Crewe had been more pleasant about it. But then his pupil hadn't been so cocky.

  "In a Service like the Navy," Sainsbury said levelly, "accuracy of nomenclature is vital. An object, a bearing, anything, must be called by its correct and known name. You think I exaggerate? There was a time, in a cruiser. A man fell overboard. The bosun's mate piped "Away seaboat's crew." He should have piped, and was told to pipe, "Away lifeboat's crew." No difference? A considerable difference. A seaboat is manned by its correct, detailed crew; they could be anywhere, in a turret, in the bathroom. They take time to man the boat. But a lifeboat... that means any man who is close to the boat jumps into it, a stoker, a signalman, anyone. It is an emergency. In this case, the use of the wrong term cost a man his sight. Minutes were wasted before the officer of the watch corrected the bosun's mate's error. By the time the lifeboat got up to the man who'd fallen overboard a bunch of big seabirds had pecked his eyes out. He was hurt and shocked, you see, he could not defend himself. Now he's blind."

  "Yes, sir," the surgeon said after a moment. "I can understand the difference in those terms. But doctor... surgeon?"

  "The principle," Sainsbury said, "is precisely the same. If you use a wrong term in one regard, you will use it in another. In the Navy, with an emergency waiting to jump on you without warning, we cannot afford to be slipshod. Apart from which," he said, leaning back with his hands still on the table, "the term `doctor' is not seamanlike, it is not shipshape. In short, it brands the user as green. Now Surgeon-Lieutenant, are you green?"

  "No, I'm not."

  "I am delighted to hear that. May I ask how long you've been qualified?"

  The surgeon hesitated. "Three years." Then he blurted, "But damnitall, I don't claim to be a professor of surgery!"

  "Quite so." The surgeon was to learn that it took more than a burst of anger to ruffle this pedant's prim pose. "However, I understand that you operated on the previous captain quite successfully." This was taking a bit of liberty with Hooky's brief and wholly unqualified disclosure, but Sainsbury decided it was time to get off the surgeon's subject and back to his own.

  "Well, yes, I suppose I did," sounding somewhat mollified.

  "Good. Now you might be kind enough to tell me why you were not in the wardroom with the rest of the officers when I met them." And Caswell, he thought, had something to explain about that.

  "I was ashore replenishing medical supplies."

  "A sound reason. What is your name?"

  "Doherty."

  Sainsbury kept his eyes on him. "Surgeon-Lieutenant Doherty. In a situation like this, tete-a-tete, you might say, I do not expect an officer constantly to use the title `sir'. However, its use is customary every, shall we say, third or fourth sentence. I would be obliged if you could bring yourself to abide by that custom."

  Doherty breathed in, deep. My God, he was thinking, what have we got here? Not the attitude so much, or even that purse-mouthed face - but the bloody diction, that pedagogue's phrasing... He also had his new captain here.

  "Very well, sir. I'm sorry; guess I just wasn't thinking."

  But Crewe-Sainsbury hadn't quite finished with him. "In the Navy," he said, "the term `Very well' is used only by a senior officer to a junior. When acknowledging an order, or in your case, a suggestion, shall we say, the correct answer is `Aye aye, sir' or `Yes, sir'. You follow?"

  "Yes, sir!"

  "Splendid. Now, Doc, be good enough to ask the first lieutenant to step up here."

  Doherty shoved himself up. "Doc! After all that...!"

  Sainsbury held up a hand with fingers like pencils. "Now you bring us to the subject of sea-language, or colloquialisms, or catchphrases, as opposed to more formal naval nomenclature. In the first category, officers of your branch are known variously, and with varying degrees of humour, or contempt, as Sawbones, Chemist and Quack. But amongst the gentlemen of the wardroom the usual appellation is Doc. Yet surely you have been so add
ressed? Or is it," Sainsbury asked, his face a mask, "that you have a more personal nickname?"

  Doherty compressed his lips; then he said, "You'll hear it anyway...sir. They call me - or that bloody engineer does - Hairy."

  Showing no surprise, Sainsbury said, "I am surprised to find he is capable of such levity. Hairy... Hmmm. Like most naval nicknames, it is the opposite of fact. A huge man, for instance, is usually Tiny, a tall man, Shorty. There is even my own case. For some reason which I confess quite escapes me, my nickname is Aunty."

  Doherty stared at him. The tone was the same, the face just as acridulous, but there, somewhere way in the back of those pinched grey eyes, a glint of amusement? He couldn't be sure. He didn't dare chuckle, even dutifully. He said, "Yes, sir, is that all?" and at Sainsbury's nod he went out.

  Caswell came quickly, armed by Doherty's warning about his absence.