The Lonely Voyage

by Max Hennessy

  Turning, my glance flung frantically over my shoulder, I had a momentary glimpse of Old Boxer leaping to his feet, the shabby coat flying, his eyes wide and horrified. Then as the sound in my ears snarled into a screaming metallic roar that seemed to envelop the whole boat in quivering sound, he crashed into me, knocking me flying across the deck, and thumped down on top of me with a weight that forced all the breath out of my body. Even as I huddled, dazed, under the shadow of the wheelhouse, Old Boxer sprawling across me, I heard the rattle of guns again and felt the boat shudder as she was hit. The wheelhouse seemed to cry out in protest as splinters flew from it and the windows disintegrated into sharp, flying slivers of glass. Somewhere aft there was an explosion, then the motors above roared away into the general confused murmur of noise.

  For a moment I lay collecting my senses, conscious of a ringbolt pressing into my side, and Old Boxer grunting on top of me as though at a blow, then I realized the spluttering marine engine below us had stopped again.

  I struggled to my feet still dizzy with shock and wincing from bruised ribs, and saw Old Boxer heaving himself to his knees, holding his side as he dragged himself up by a stanchion.

  ‘Did it get you?’ I asked, and he turned a grey, twisted face towards me.

  ‘No, no,’ he panted, pushing me away fretfully. ‘Bumped me side. Nothing. Getting old now. That’s all.’

  ‘Get to the wheel then,’ I said, ‘in case he comes back. I’ll see if they’ve got the engine going.’

  He moved along the deck towards the shattered wheelhouse, shuffling and crouching and holding his side with one brown knotted hand, bunching his jersey to his ribs in obvious pain.

  I could only spare him a glance, then I hurried to the engine-room. The decks were torn in places to splinters where the bullets had struck and ricocheted off, and there was a gaping hole near the after hatch, a tangle of splintered planks, from which a grey wisp of smoke spiralled upwards. The aircraft had disappeared now, and I realized as I searched the horizon for it that since we’d started drifting dusk had begun to fall, and the ships and wreckage behind us and the smoke over ruined Dunkirk were already hazy with the glow of summer darkness.

  As I bent to the engine-room hatch Dig’s face appeared, and I saw it was ashen, and that there were splashes of blood among the oilstains on his coat. There was a look of thunderstruck amazement in his eyes.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I grabbed his wrist and yanked him through the hatchway almost off his feet.

  ‘Yes!’ He was leaning on the wheelhouse, gasping for breath, brushing the blood off his sleeve with a kind of sick horror. ‘Didn’t touch me. It was Yorky.’ He waved a hand vaguely, then suddenly leaned over the side and vomited violently into the water.

  I stared at him for a second, then half jumped into the engine-room.

  There was a gaping hole where a cannon-shell had entered through the stern of the boat and exploded in the after hatch. The bulkheads were scarred and pitted with more holes, and daylight glowed through the jagged rents in the planking. The concertina that had so often wheezed out ‘Shenandoah’ drooped, crumpled and lifeless-looking, over the soap-box where Yorky had sat throughout the interminable day, and his parcel, bursting open inevitably, was still jammed in the top of the tool-box, its brown paper saturated now with the drips from the oilcan.

  Yorky was huddled between the starboard engine and the bulkhead, where he’d been working. His grimy body, still shiny and black with oil, was half submerged by the greasy bilge-water that seeped over the floor-boards. His fingers still gripped a severed pipe from which the oil drip-dripped monotonously on to his wrist and down his arm.

  VII

  Dig appeared to have recovered a little when I reached the deck again, but his thin face was still drained of colour.

  ‘Sorry,’ he murmured. ‘It was a bit sudden. One minute he was alive and whistling between his teeth. The next minute… He drew a deep breath like a sigh and became silent.’

  I looked round quickly into the growing darkness. We were still drifting, and the beaches were away on the bow now. I could still see the flicker of flames in Dunkirk and where a burning ship sank lower into the water.

  Then I remembered the smoke from the after hatch. There was a red glow in it now, sharp and bright against the darkening sea.

  ‘We’re on fire,’ I said. ‘See if you can put it out. I’ll try and get an engine going.’

  As Dig hurried away I called out to Old Boxer, who was leaning heavily on the wheel.

  ‘Stand by!’ I shouted. ‘There’s a lot of wreckage around us. If I get this engine going take her straight out to sea.’

  I knew he wasn’t in a fit state to go below, and I was better without his clumsy fingers dropping things. He was safer where he could do his job well.

  He acknowledged the instructions with a wave, and I clattered down the engine-room ladder again.

  Below in the dusky greyness I dragged Yorky clear of the engine and, laying him in the narrow alleyway, covered him with a tarpaulin, I remember a feeling of amazement as I looked at him – very little more – at the thought that his vitality had all gone, snuffed out in a second by someone he’d never seen.

  As I straightened my back I could see the red glow of flames through the splintered hole aft and could hear Dig’s shoes on the deck above my head as he tried to clear the rope and canvas and debris to get at the blaze.

  The bilgewater in the engine-room was up to the level of the floor-boards by this time and aft, where the boat had settled a little, they were floating. I climbed round the starboard engine and jammed myself between its warm bulk and the hull, struggling with a pocket torch in water and oil that sloshed backwards and forwards round my ankles to the sluggish movement of the boat. Several times I tried the starters but there was only a dead whirr in response, then I realized the water was flowing in a thick stream through a hole just by my foot. I ripped off my jersey and jammed it into the gashed wood. I reduced the rush of water to a trickle.

  The engine-room was in darkness before I knew where I was. The lights had been shattered by the shock of explosions early in the day, and it was lit only by the weak glow of the green summer night in the square of the hatchway and the feeble beam of the ailing torch.

  Yorky’s body was lapped by the oily black water now, and the forrard floor-boards were floating clear of their Tests and bumping gently against the starboard engine. Oil still dripped from a severed pipe into the bilges. I struggled to get the broken ends together, but I knew even as I worked there were further breakages. I could hear a steady drip somewhere in the blackness beyond the port engine.

  Suddenly I noticed the engine-room was getting hotter. I reached out and put my hand against the bulkhead, but snatched it away again as it burnt my fingers.

  ‘Dig!’ I shouted. ‘Can’t you put it out?’

  ‘No, Jess,’ I heard him pant. ‘Can’t get at it. There’s paraffin in here as well. And oil, I think.’

  I splashed through the deepening water in the blackness of the engine-room towards the hatchway. Then I bent and lifted Yorky’s body, still wrapped in the tarpaulin.

  ‘Leave it,’ I shouted to Dig, ‘and give us a hand. We’ll have to abandon her. She’s leaking like a sieve down here.’ Between us we got the sagging little body on deck and rested to get our breath back. I glanced towards the wheel-house, but I could see no sign of Old Boxer.

  ‘Blast the old fool!’ I muttered half to myself. ‘He’s down below with that damned bottle again.’

  The fire was roaring now in the light breeze that had got up, and we could see the redness of the flames through the splintered deck. The boat had settled noticeably by the stern, and she was heeling over a little to starboard.

  ‘I hope somebody sees us,’ I said. ‘Keep a sharp lookout and I’ll chase Old Boxer out.’

  I stumbled along the deck and into the wheelhouse, feeling my way with familiar hands, conserving the feeble torch in case we had to use it in the wate
r, for we’d only a life-raft aboard.

  ‘Where are you?’ I shouted into the darkness of the wheelhouse. ‘Come out of there and give a hand!’

  My voice re-echoed in a hollow shell. All the life had gone from the boat and she was only a dead thing now, wallowing on the swell. My voice sounded dead with it.

  ‘Come on!’ I roared angrily. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  Then, in the stillness that was broken only by the slapping of water alongside, I heard a heavy breathing near me, and I whirled, expecting to find the old man drunk.

  I turned on the torch and in its weak glow I saw his great bulk sagging over the wheel, his eyes staring, his face drawn and twisted into a mask of pain, his hand still clutching at his side.

  I leapt to him but he pushed me away feebly.

  ‘Too late, Jess.’ His voice came weakly and with difficulty through taut lips. ‘The ’plane got me. Here, in my side.’

  ‘Sit down, man!’ I lowered him to a sitting position on the deck among the splintered wood and broken glass that crunched under my boots. His side was saturated with blood.

  ‘No good, Jess,’ he said, and his head lolled back as he spoke. ‘Too late. It was always too late.’

  ‘Don’t be a bloody fool!’ I said, and I was panicking for the first time. As I stared at the wound in the yellow glow of the torch I knew he was right.

  ‘It was all I had to give you, Jess,’ he whispered. ‘Life – that was the only thing I’d got that you could have.’

  I knelt beside him. I knew already that he was dying.

  ‘It’s so cold, Jess,’ he muttered. ‘My back’s perishing.’

  ‘I’ll get a coat,’ I said, half-starting to my feet.

  He laid a hand on my arm in the darkness. ‘No, Jess. Coats are no good. There’s a rum bottle in my pocket. Give me a drink. Just a little one.’

  ‘That’s no good to you,’ I said.

  ‘It’ll help.’ He smiled feebly.

  I fished in the rumpled coat and handed the bottle silently to him.

  ‘Just one, Jess,’ he said. ‘Just an eyeful.’

  As he drank the spirit ran out of the corners of his mouth and down his chin. Then the bottle slipped from his nerveless fingers, and for a second he rolled his head from side to side, his flabby features sharp with pain in the feeble glimmer from the dying torch.

  He was silent for a moment, then he whispered something I could hardly catch.

  ‘My sword. In the forecastle. Fetch it, Jess.’

  I stared at him for a second, then ducked into the forecastle that was knee-deep in water and found the shabby sword in its tarnished scabbard. Taking it back to him I laid it gently across his sprawling legs.

  He shook his head feebly.

  ‘No, Jess,’ he muttered. ‘You take it. It’s yours by right now.’

  * * *

  Dig was peaked and shivering with cold when I got back to the deck.

  ‘What’s up?’ he said. ‘Is he drunk?’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘The ’plane got him.’

  I got a grip on myself with an effort and looked at Dig, who was staring at me, his mouth open. ‘Anything in sight?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Dig said, as though he sensed it wasn’t the time to ask questions, ‘Looks like we’re going to spend a cold night.’

  The boat had settled considerably as we unlashed the life-raft.

  ‘We’ll hang on to her as a long as we can,’ I said. ‘No sense in swimming before it’s necessary.’

  As I spoke I wondered whether we could lash the bodies to the raft. The bulky heap where Yorky lay huddled under his tarpaulin was hazy in the darkness now. I thought of Old Boxer lolling in the wheelhouse among the rubbish, and the splinters of glass and wood, his old coat still twisted round his great sagging body, his feet flopping from one side to the other, the empty rum bottle rolling backwards and forwards nearby as the boat sagged into the valleys of the swell that set the wheelhouse door banging, and I was aware of sudden stinging tears in my eyes…

  The fire aft had died a little when we heard the beat of engines, and we hurried to toss canvas and discarded great-coats and military packs from the cabin into the blaze, making it roar up again so that the flames glowed through the holes in the hull and sparkled on the inky sea around.

  The water was little more than a foot or two from the decks now, and had begun to seep through into the wheelhouse and round the body of Old Boxer. The engine-room was only a black cavern where we could hear it slopping over the engines.

  ‘It’s a launch of some kind,’ I said. I cocked my head to listen to the drum of the engines and strained my ears to try and recognize their tone.

  ‘Hope to God they see us,’ Dig had torn off his jacket and was flapping it above the burning hatchway.

  ‘Hope to God it’s one of ours,’ I said.

  Then we saw the white glow of a bow wave, and the beating engines were shut off as the bulk of a boat came gliding towards us out of the darkness. An English voice shouted:

  ‘Hello, there! How many of you are there?’

  ‘Two alive,’ Dig shouted. The words I was going to speak were stuck in my throat.

  ‘Hang on. We’ll take you off.’

  The engines started up once more, and the launch circled and bumped gently alongside.

  ‘Come on! Look slippy!’ The voice came crisp and disembodied out of the darkness beyond the glow of the flames. ‘She won’t last long.’

  It was a naval torpedo-boat, crammed to the gunwales with soldiers and sailors, some of them wounded, some of them saturated and covered with oil, their faces taut in the red glow.

  ‘Christ!’ The voice was suddenly sharp and strained. ‘Don’t take all day. There are E-boats out.’

  ‘There’s two dead.’ I got the words out at last.

  ‘You’ll have to leave ’em,’ the voice said unemotionally. ‘Can’t take any more. We’re top-heavy and dangerous already. You’re damn’ lucky we saw you.’

  ‘There’s only two.’ My voice was cracked with strain.

  ‘Sorry. Not enough room for the living. Come on if you’re coming.’

  I looked silently at Dig, then together we clambered aboard the other boat.

  ‘By Jeeze!’ Someone spoke out of the darkness near us as the torpedo-boat moved ahead. ‘You were lucky, mate. You’d have had to swim for sure in another minute. She’s going.’

  ‘Full ahead!’ The voice from the bridge spoke to the cox’n and the engines roared.

  The boat throbbed to life and I clung on among the crowded men round the bridge. Looking back, I saw our own boat heel over as her bows rose, and I had an agonizing picture of a great flabby body sliding across the wheelhouse floor with the clattering glass and wood and the rolling bottle, and Yorky huddled underneath his tarpaulin, jammed against the engine-room hatch where we’d left him, then I saw the boat slide out of sight and the names suddenly died, except for a flicker of burning oil on the surface of the water.

  A weary reaction came over me, leaving me weak and numb. So much had happened. So many things had crowded in on me in the last few days. First the torpedoing. Then Minnie. I hurriedly shut her from my mind as I remembered her in Pat’s flat, sluttish, wanton and sly, invective streaming from her lips.

  Then, when I’d felt there was nothing more could hurt me, I’d found my father, and almost in the same few crowded hours I’d seen him die, smelling of booze – as I’d always known him alive – a rum bottle near his hand, inseparable even in death from Yorky, who’d followed him from one end of the earth to the other. I felt miserable and near to tears suddenly at the thought of him. His had always been a lonely voyage, too, and he’d spent it desperate and solitary, despite the people around him, tormented and afraid. If only he’d had the courage we might both of us have been less lonely.

  Dig seemed to sense my thoughts. He couldn’t have seen my face in the darkness. He put a hand on my shoulder and there was nothing in him now of the
old stumbling inefficiency. He seemed to have grown in stature in the shambles of Dunkirk.

  ‘Funny,’ he was saying, and his voice had a trace of bewilderment in it. ‘I thought it’d be me as wouldn’t come back.’

  He’d expected to die. He’d almost hoped he might die, I think, for there was little happiness in his future with Ma. Yet he’d survived to go home and struggle again with the drab remnants of his marriage. Instead, it had been Yorky, with his vast love and his concertina and his everlasting parcel, who’d gone; and Old Boxer, my father, sinking fathoms down into the darkness.

  I suddenly realized how he’d always represented the sea to me while Dig had symbolized the land; one restless, shifting and uneasy, never still, never under control, always with a hint of adventure and romance that never quite materialized; the other calm and dusty and solid, unemotional and immovable, as sure as the earth that was his background.

  As I thought of Old Boxer, bitter, sardonic and moody, the father I’d lost as soon as I’d found him, I knew there was something predestined in the way everything had worked out. There could never have been a future for us as father and son.

  ‘I was thinking about Yorky and Old Boxer,’ I said aloud, fingering the shabby scabbard of the old naval sword I clutched in my frozen fingers. ‘He always said he ought to go down with his ship.’

  ‘He’s all right, Jess lad. You’ve no need to be ashamed of him,’ Dig said, and I realized without looking at him that he’d always known Old Boxer was my father. ‘“The sea’s a tomb,” Jess,’ he quoted, ‘“that’s proper for the brave.” They’re in good company.’

  I nodded. ‘I reckon so,’ I said. ‘But he seemed to have so little in his life.’

  Dig was silent for a moment. Then I felt him move uneasily. ‘Perhaps he’d got more than most of us,’ he ended wistfully.

  I nodded again and we huddled among the dark, muttering mass of exhausted men who sheltered in the lee of the bridge from the chilling wind that raced along the decks; staring backwards over the stern of the hurrying, bucketing boat into the blackness that was lit only by the glow from our own tumbling wake.