The Lion at Sea

by Max Hennessy

  ‘I intend to. That’s why I’m glad we’re going home, because we’re due eventually for Scapa or Rosyth and that’s where the commander-in-chief is. And where the commander-in-chief is James Caspar Verschoyle should be.’

  ‘I hope you’re lucky.’

  ‘It won’t be luck, old fruit,’ Verschoyle said cheerfully. ‘It’ll be good solid planning. More planning than Their Lordships at the Admiralty appear to have indulged in since Nelson.’

  Kelly made no attempt to be friendly and Verschoyle was aware of something very different about him. This, he decided, was not the young Maguire he’d known and happily bullied in the past. There was a thin edge of tension about him now, as though he would no longer accept being pushed around by Verschoyle simply because Verschoyle was a few months older, cleverer, more poised, more sarcastic and more cruel. This young man – and Verschoyle was the first to acknowledge he was no longer a boy – looked as though he could be dangerous if driven too far, and Verschoyle found himself treading surprisingly warily.

  ‘How’s that little flower of yours, Charlotte Upfold?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s all right.’

  ‘She has a pretty elder sister. I met her at a coming-out dance just before the war and now, happily for me, her family have taken a house near Esher, only nine miles from where yours truly lives. Don’t you think that’s lucky.’

  Kelly glared. The idea that James Caspar Verschoyle was getting into his social life was almost more than he could stand.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ he snapped. ‘Because it means you’ll be only nine miles from where I live now, and that’s something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.’

  Verschoyle found himself swallowing the insult. ‘We are becoming vitriolic, aren’t we?’ he said. ‘However, for your information, Sister Mabel’s been writing to me, so perhaps next time you call on your own little flower, you’ll find me in attendance on her elder sister.’

  Kelly scowled. ‘That’ll be no bloody pleasure, I can assure you,’ he said. ‘In any case, I think you’re a liar, because she’s almost engaged to a chap in the dragoons.’

  ‘Almost,’ Verschoyle said blandly. ‘But not quite, and in love, as in gunnery, a miss is as good as a mile. In any case, our friend is in France fighting for his life while I’m here in Gibraltar and due to go back to England where Mabel’s waiting with her tongue hanging out for a little male company. I shall make a point of seeing her. I have her address and one might as well take advantage, what?’

  Kelly scowled. ‘I always thought you were a bit of a dirty dog, Verschoyle,’ he said. ‘Now I’m certain.’

  Verschoyle smiled but his eyes were hard. ‘Don’t you call me a dirty dog, young Maguire,’ he said gently. ‘I’ll have you know I’m the best man there is with his fists in the fleet. I won the cruiser-weight championship of the command three months ago. I beat a stoker who looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, so if you call me names I shall be obliged to suggest we meet in the gym somewhere. There’s nothing would have pleased me more from the first day you stopped me showing that little weed, Kimister, how to behave. How is he, by the way? Have you heard of him?’

  ‘I’m wearing his clothes.’

  ‘In God’s name, why?’

  ‘Because I lost mine in Cressy.’

  For the first time, Verschoyle realised what it was that was so different about this old enemy of his. His eyes were full of knowledge and experience and the subtle difference about him came from having faced the brutal facts of war. Verschoyle had enjoyed the balmy weather of the Mediterranean ever since hostilities had started – had even managed to dodge a posting to the Far East – and he had imagined himself lucky to be out of the war because he was not called upon to endure harsh duties and harsher realities. Now, somehow, looking at Kelly, he had an uncomfortable suspicion that he was the loser.

  ‘Were you in that little bunfight?’ He put on a pretence of contempt. ‘Well, I suppose one of those old cows was where you really belonged. You’d better go now. We’re due to cast off any minute. If I get a chance while we’re on passage, I’ll trip you up. You might even fall in the sea.’

  Norseman left Gibraltar on the third day of October. After an uneventful passage they reached the Sunk Light off the mouth of the Orwell, and Kelly was just looking forward to stepping ashore at Harwich when he realised that the ship had turned east and south and showed no signs of stopping.

  Verschoyle gave him a beaming smile as he demanded an explanation. ‘I’m afraid your travels aren’t over yet, young Maguire,’ he said. ‘We’re not going to Harwich after all. We’re going to Antwerp.’

  ‘Antwerp!’

  ‘It seems Winston’s got the Naval Brigade into a bit of a mess there. He offered to hold the place for the army and now they’re stuck and we’ve been told to contact them. They’re trying to get to Ostend, but some of ’em seem to have been cut off and we’ve got to find ’em.’

  Off the Hook they saw the dead from Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy, still doing their ghostly patrol with the tide, six hours one way and six the other. The Scheldt was flat and greasy-looking as they turned into it and headed upstream and, as they approached Antwerp in the early hours of the morning, they could see the sky was full of smoke. As they lay off, the great Hoboren oil refineries lining the river were aflame from end to end, the oil running into the water to cause a blazing mass to flow into midstream. Deserted steamers lay at their berths against the wharves, licked by the flames in an eerie scene accentuated by the blackness of the night and the flash of heavy shells beyond the buildings. Kelly was told to report to the bridge.

  ‘Ah, Maguire,’ the captain said. ‘I’ve got a job for you.’

  ‘Not too dangerous, I hope, sir.’

  The captain smiled. ‘Shouldn’t think so. But we can use that French lingo of yours.’

  ‘Which French lingo, sir?’

  ‘You’ve got French blood, haven’t you?’

  ‘If I have, sir, I’m not aware of it.’

  ‘One of my officers said you had. Your mother’s name’s de la Trouve, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, it’s one of them, sir, but she doesn’t speak French and no more do I.’

  The captain smiled. ‘My chap said you’d be modest about it. But he said you were good and I want someone who’ll be able to find their way about in that shambles ashore. Since you’re supernumerary and speak the lingo, it looks like you’ve got a job. Any objections?’

  ‘No, sir. So long as it’s understood that I’m not an expert.’

  ‘I expect you’ll do. We’ve been told to pick up stragglers, but it seems to me that we’re no bloody good to anybody if they don’t know we’re here. So I want you to take the pinnace and a dozen of my jolly jacks armed to the teeth and establish contact with the troops ashore.’

  Kelly doubted his ability to establish contact even with a public lavatory because his French was largely of the schoolboy variety, but the captain of Norseman seemed to have accepted already that he spoke the language like a native and he decided that he ought to be able to find an English-speaking Frenchman who could be bribed to help.

  ‘When you’ve got ’em all together,’ the captain was saying, ‘send the pinnace back and we’ll come alongside. I can’t risk being shelled until I know where to go.’

  As they crowded into the pinnace, the faces of the midshipman in command and the sailors packed in the stern, armed with rifles and strapped up like Christmas trees in their webbing, were lit by the flames ashore.

  Verschoyle saw them off, bland and smiling as usual. ‘If you don’t make it,’ he told Kelly, ‘I’ll offer my condolences to that virtuous little damozel of yours when I go to pay my respects to her elder sister.’

  His smile grew hard as he spoke. Beneath his suave and self-satisfied surface, there was growing in him a thin core of envy for Kell
y, even for the devotion he seemed to inspire in Charley Upfold. It was something Verschoyle, in his own shallow, indifferent, cynical circle, had never met before and he suspected that it sprang from some thread of loyalty and trust that neither he nor any of his girl friends possessed. He gestured, unable to resist a small triumph.

  ‘They wanted yours truly to go on this little caper,’ he said. ‘But I wasn’t having any of that. I suggested you. It’s known as watching one’s stern. It’s the Grand Fleet I’m going to, not Antwerp.’

  As the pinnace headed upriver, with Kelly still glaring back at Verschoyle, the light of the flames became brighter and the sailors crowded to the side to stare at the shore. One of them touched Kelly’s arm.

  ‘Excuse me, sir. Are you Lieutenant Maguire?’

  Weighed down by revolver and ammunition, Kelly turned. There was something familiar in the sailor’s face. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am. And I know you, too, don’t I?’

  ‘Yes, sir, you do.’

  ‘Then where – ?’ Kelly grinned. ‘I’ve got it: You’re the chap I pulled out of the sea after the Coronation Review.’

  ‘That’s it, sir. Albert Rumbelo. I’m an able seaman, now.’

  Rumbelo had broadened out into a thickset sturdy man whose size seemed to dwarf Kelly.

  ‘Been doing any more high-diving?’

  Rumbelo grinned. ‘No, sir. But I ’ave learned to swim.’

  The lights in Antwerp were still on and shining on the black water. Along the lighter skyline they could see a fleet of dark little clouds, each one the smoke from a different burning part of the town. The air was full of scraps of charred paper and soot and in the distance they could see the flash of gunfire and hear the rumble of artillery. As the pinnace slipped alongside, Kelly jumped ashore with Norseman’s seamen.

  ‘Wait here,’ he called down to the midshipman. ‘Lay off in the shadows so you can make a quick getaway if necessary. I’ll flash with a torch when I come back.’

  Heading into the town, almost the first thing they saw was a London Transport bus, heavily scarred by shell splinters but complete with red sides and even a sign to Cricklewood.

  ‘I heard they sent a few over to take the lads up to the front, sir,’ Rumbelo said.

  The bus was empty and several of its windows were smashed and there was blood on the seats inside. Around it were wrecked houses and uprooted paving blocks, and here and there dead horses among the broken buildings, some of them still in the shafts of ruined service wagons. There was no sign of life, though a few of the houses bore tricolours and even an occasional union jack or a notice welcoming the Marines of the Naval brigade as the saviours of Belgium.

  Across the road was a barricade of carts, felled trees and beds, and, nearby in a church, what seemed thousands of civilians in rows round the walls, crouching on piles of straw. Some of them, in an attempt at privacy, had heaped barriers of it between themselves and their neighbours, but for the most part they seemed indifferent to each other, respectable bourgeoisie sitting next to women who’d obviously been harlots from back-street slums. Old men waited on guard, sitting on chairs, their hands in their laps, a child whimpered and was rocked to sleep, and two young marrieds lay together, the boy holding the hand of a girl who looked as frighteningly young as Charley.

  ‘C’est bien triste.’

  The voice made Kelly turn. It was a priest and Kelly nodded, thinking that ‘triste’ was hardly the word. The scene transcended all sorrow.

  In his halting French he asked about the Marines and was informed that most of them had already got away.

  ‘Et les autres?’

  ‘Prisonniers, Monsieur.’

  It didn’t sound very promising but they could hardly go back without trying a little harder.

  A Belgian battery rattled past as they emerged into the street, swerving in the rough sandy track that fringed the pewter-coloured cobbles. The men’s faces contained not terror but sullen disgust, and as they stopped alongside a group of tall buildings, the artillery men jumped down and stared up into the sky where a German monoplane seemed to hover, the first glimmerings of light catching the underside of its curved wings.

  As they pushed past, they began to meet refugees, all heading out of the city towards the west, leading horses and carts hung with lanterns, and pushing wheelbarrows and perambulators full of what was left of their belongings. The carts seemed to be packed with children, as if the entire infant population of the neighbouring villages was in them, all dirty, grey-faced and nodding with fatigue. They passed at a walking pace, the drivers hunched over the reins. At first they came singly, but soon there were other small vehicles until they became a steady stream. Some of the carts were open so that they could see the loads they carried – a mangle, a blackboard, a tin trunk oozing clothing, a three-coloured madonna with a sad grin leaning against a cooking stove. Behind them was a woman leading a goat hung about with saucepans and a lame girl with a wooden crutch who was bent beneath a feather bed, her face stained with tears. Scattered among them were Belgian soldiers, some of them wounded, the stragglers from the Belgian army which had withdrawn some days before to reform at Dunkirk and Ostend, smut-soiled men, scarecrow warriors too weary to brush away the phlegm from their moustaches or the dribbles of nicotine from their chins. Their narrow, hungry faces were hollow-eyed and passive with weariness.

  Kelly tried his French on them uncertainly. ‘Fusiliers marins anglais?’ he asked. ‘Vous avez vu?’

  They seemed too tired to understand and merely shook their heads and begged cigarettes before stumbling on into the darkness.

  ‘That was a lot of bloody help,’ Kelly observed.

  As they searched, shells started dropping beyond the buildings they’d just passed and they could hear the crack and see the flash over the roofs as they exploded.

  ‘In the river, sir,’ Rumbelo said. ‘They’ll probably ’ave to move Norseman.’

  Finding a square surrounded by tall flat-fronted buildings with empty windows like eyeless sockets, Kelly split his party up and told them to explore the neighbouring streets and buildings and bring any British stragglers they found back to the square, then set off himself with three men under Rumbelo.

  ‘Might as well have you handy,’ he observed. ‘You never know, you might get a chance to do what you promised in 1911 and save my life. Antwerp seems just the place for it.’

  After a while, they came upon an armoured car with the letters ‘RN’ painted on its stern. There were the bodies of two men in it, a naval officer and a seaman who had been caught by shell splinters. While they were still inspecting it, a shadowy group of figures emerged from among the buildings, and advanced towards them, rifles at the ready. Kelly thought he saw Belgian képis and addressed them in French.

  ‘Qui est là?’

  Immediately a volley of rifle shots rang out and he and his party dived into an alley for shelter as the bullets dug plaster from the buildings around them and whined off into the shadows. There was a clatter of boots and a harsh yell – ‘Get the buggers before they fetch their pals!’

  Kelly stared at Rumbelo. ‘They’re British,’ he said, and putting his shoulders back against the wall, he began to shout. ‘Ahoy there! Avast shooting! This is the Navy!’

  Immediately the firing died down and when it seemed safe to stick his head out, Kelly emerged into the square. The group of men were standing bunched together, looking warily at him.

  ‘’Oo the ’ell are you?’

  ‘Norseman – come to evacuate you.’

  There was a dead silence then a burst of ragged cheering as the men crowded round Kelly and his party. They were a mixture of Marines and sailors of the Naval Brigade. A few of them wore items of Belgian uniform and they looked exhausted, unshaven and dirty, but one of them still defiantly clutched a union jack and a banner with a skull and cross
bones painted on it.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Well–’ it was a burly Marine sergeant who spoke ‘–we were at Willryck, sir. Most of us are bandsmen acting as stretcher bearers. We gave our clothes to the wounded and had to borrow from the Belgies. We landed on the 6th and went straight up to the trenches. Not that anything much happened except that we got shelled. We never saw no Germans. Nothing but nine-inchers and four-twos. Krupp shells lobbing over us into Antwerp. Then we was pulled out for the second line. There was woods in front and a clear field of fire but still no Germans. By this time they were shelling the city and we lost some men from shrapnel. It never stopped all night. Is the war lost, sir?’

  ‘Good God, not yet! We’re here to take you off.’

  ‘Where’s the ship, sir?’

  Kelly pointed and the sergeant shook his head. ‘They started shelling round there, sir. Not half an hour ago. Some of ’em dropped in the basin.’

  ‘Where are all the other men?’ Kelly asked.

  ‘There aren’t any others, sir. Us lot – Hawke battalion and Marines – was supposed to cover the withdrawal but we never saw the others again. I heard they was ambushed on a train at Moedecke and only a few got away. The rest surrendered or crossed over into Holland and was interned.’

  ‘There must be more, for God’s sake!’

  ‘Well, there might be, sir. But they’ll take some finding, because they’ll be hiding. Jerry’s expected any minute.’

  Kelly made his decision quickly. He could see Rumbelo and the other sailors watching him and he knew exactly what they were thinking: Marines were ham-fisted, club-footed lumps who cluttered up any ship they served in. Despite a splendid record stretching back over the centuries, they were always an isolated entity whose legs were being perpetually pulled by the seamen for their clumsiness aboard ship. This was just another case of them getting themselves and everybody else into trouble and having to call in the seamen to drag them clear.

  ‘You’d better go and find them,’ he said. ‘Be back in an hour’s time. Bring everybody you can. I’ll wait here.’