She said quietly, ‘I’d have driven you anyway. Those HQ drivers are crook.’
Her mother said reprovingly, ‘I don’t know, Claire, you’re as bad as your father!’
As the girl went for the car her mother took Blake to one side, her face grave as she said, ‘I hope you can come again, Captain Blake.’
‘Please. Call me Richard.’
She smiled. ‘When you come again.’ She glanced round to see if the others were out of earshot. ‘Don’t hurt my girl. She’s been through enough. You’re a fine young man, but war changes things.’ She stretched up and kissed his cheek. ‘Take care of yourself, and God bless you.’
After shaking hands with the others, Blake went over to the car, strangely moved.
She asked, ‘All set?’
‘Yes.’
He gasped as she let in the clutch and sent the car bouncing back up the hill, the headlights cutting through the dusk like sword-blades.
They did not speak much on the way back to the city, but as the car made the last turn towards the sea, the horizon glittering in the moonlight in an unbroken line, Blake said abruptly, ‘Stop the car, will you?’
She obediently pulled off the road and turned to look at him through the darkness. ‘What’s wrong?’ She sounded on edge, guarded.
‘I have to say something.’ He reached out and took her hand from the wheel. It felt hot, as if she had fever. ‘I want you to like me so much I’ll probably make a mess of this. But if I do, please, Claire, don’t shut me out, give me sea-room to manoeuvre for an approach which you will recognize as genuine.’
He pulled her hand towards him, feeling her resisting, knowing that in seconds he could smash everything.
‘I went shopping in Melbourne before I met you at the Navy Office.’ He lifted the ring from his pocket where it had been burning a hole all evening. Gently he slipped it over her finger, hearing her startled intake of breath. Then he said, ‘I’m in love with you and there’s nothing I can do about it, even if I wanted to. Later, if you can feel something towards me, put the ring on your left hand. Then I’ll know.’ He waited, his heart pounding painfully. ‘It can be our secret.’
She gripped her hands together and he thought she was trying to drag the ring from her finger.
Then she said huskily, ‘We’d better get going if it’s urgent.’
She put her hand on the wheel and Blake suddenly saw that she had moved the ring to her left hand.
Almost defiantly she said, ‘They can all think what the hell they like.’
She leaned over and kissed his cheek and he thought he could taste salt from a tear.
‘As far as I’m concerned, we’re engaged!’
The rest of the journey was like a dream sequence, and had he thought about it Blake would have been thankful there was so little traffic on the road as she drove the car like a speed-boat.
Before they entered the Navy Office, which was in almost total darkness, she said, ‘You can kiss me, if you like.’
He held her carefully and then more firmly as she came against him. She kissed him like a child, but with such tenderness that Blake could barely contain his longing for her.
Then she stood back from him and straightened her tricorn hat.
She said shakily, ‘That’s settled then.’
The map room was glaring bright and some noisy insects were banging against the lampshades like pellets. The overhead fans had stopped for some reason and the faces of the officers around the big table were glistening with sweat.
Blake hated the way she was hemmed in by these people who were unknown to him. She nodded to each of them as she sat at a small desk and studied herself in a mirror from her bag.
It was hard to believe it was the same girl. Then as she glanced over the rim of the mirror and looked directly at him he saw the quick thrust of her breasts against her white shirt and he knew her defence was barely holding.
The double doors swung inwards and Blake saw Captain Quintin being wheeled into the map room by an orderly. He was strained and pale beneath his suntan, but his face was set with determination.
‘Evening, all!’ He saw Blake and grinned. ‘Hello, Dick, sorry about this, but I had no choice.’ He glanced at the girl. ‘You’re here, too, Claire. Fine.’ His eyes swivelled back to Blake, half questioning, partly amused. ‘Fine.’
The lieutenant-commander who had received the worst end of Stagg’s anger said, ‘You should be in hospital, sir. I can manage –’
Quintin gave him a cheerful grin. ‘They want the dog for this work, Bill, not his bloody breakfast!’
To the room at large he said, ‘An oil tanker was sunk yesterday. She was sailing alone as the area was supposed to be clear. Fortunately, she got her Mayday off in time and most of her lads were picked up this morning.’
Blake leaned over the table with its bright counters and flags. Allied ships, convoys, sinkings, hostile sightings, the panorama of war.
Names jumped out at him, places he had visited in the past, in peacetime. A million years ago. Seychelles, Mauritius, Dar es Salaam. A black cross marked with the name ss Kawar Shell showed where the latest sinking had been.
Then he glanced at the other officers around him. Mostly lieutenant-commanders, and he guessed they were escort commanders and from the local patrol services.
Quintin said, ‘I’ve not got the whole gen yet, but the signal I received from NOIC Aden leaves no doubt, the tanker was put down by a mine, and the M/S boys have discovered another ‘drifter’ in the same area and landed it. It was German, so it must have been dropped by the raider.’ He seemed to be getting weary. ‘Anyway, gentlemen, this is to keep you in the picture. I suggest you return to your commands and be ready to reinforce the convoy escorts.’ His eyes settled on Blake, ‘Except you, that is.’
He waited for the anxious-looking orderly to wheel him to a table with some decanters upon it and said, ‘You can shove off, son. I’ll call when I need a tow.’
He looked at the girl. ‘You pour the drinks, Claire. Just like old times.’
To Blake he said, ‘Fremantle’s weighed. She’s on her way north-east to make a sweep of the area. Too late of course, but we have to go through the motions.’
Blake wondered if Quintin had been back long enough to hear about Stagg’s bait. He doubted it, but it would not take long.
‘Fact is, Dick,’ Quintin held his glass to the light, ‘that area was clean. Nothing but a mouse could have penetrated the patrols.’ He looked at Blake and added, ‘There was a ship reported heading north, the Swedish Patricia. She was vetted by Fremantle and ordered to join a convoy. The one which was blown to hell.’ He waited, his face creased against the pain in his leg. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking, by any chance?’
Blake looked across at the big map table. It would destroy Stagg if it came out. That he had been hoodwinked by the raider in broad daylight and had even opened the door for him to blast the convoy into scrap.
He suddenly recalled his own words, the ones he used to new and junior officers joining his command. What his previous captain had once said to him. You must not see something merely because you expect to see it. Because you want to see it.
He said, ‘It’s possible. Barely possible. But if it’s true then the German must have guts of steel and the ingenuity of ten men!’
‘Anyway, it means Commodore Stagg is well and truly in trouble.’
Quintin sat back and waited, while from another chair the girl watched Blake with equal curiosity.
Blake said slowly, ‘I think it’s best left alone. The raider will feel more secure, think we have taken the hook, line and sinker. And if the admiral was to blame Stagg, I feel the friction might do us real harm.’
Quintin nodded, as if he had already known. ‘And that means you would decline to take over the command? Stagg would act differently in your shoes. Well, it’s not up to me, but still –’ He did not finish.
Instead, he groped in his pocket and dragged out a sm
all package. ‘Here, Claire, unwrap it while our gallant captain wheels this old relic to the table again.’
As she stooped over the chair Quintin seized her wrist and held it like a vice.
The ring was hand-made, fashioned in the design of a shell, with a solitary pearl set inside it. In the overhead lights it shone from her finger like a tiny star.
Quintin nodded slowly. ‘Very nice.’ He pulled her down and kissed her cheek. ‘I’ll say nothing, Claire. But I’m sure it will turn out just fine for you both.’
Blake watched her, seeing the confusion and indecision crossing her face. But she was pleased too, excited by the old captain’s acceptance.
Quintin barked, ‘Well, don’t stand there, girl, open the package.’
She unfolded the wrapping and held out something shiny.
Quintin passed it to Blake. ‘Take a look.’
It was an ordinary boatswain’s call, the kind which was rarely absent from any messdeck throughout the Navy.
Blake turned it over and saw a scratched inscription on the keel, Tasmanian Devil.
Quintin grabbed a pointer and tapped it on the chart. ‘A whale-catcher on her way to the Cape from the ice put a party ashore here.’ The pointer touched some tiny scattered islands, specks on the Indian Ocean, some three and a half thousand miles west-south-west of this very room. ‘They were looking for some fresh water for their tanks. There are plenty of islands scattered around there, most of them unpopulated, for obvious reasons. Anyway, one of the whalers found this bosun’s call jammed in a rock.’ He looked up, his eyes grim. ‘Tasmanian Devil was HMAS Devonport’s nickname.’
Blake stared at the map. Tiny, meaningless islets, south of the forty-fifth parallel and off all the sea routes. It was just possible.
Quintin said, ‘I’ve got top approval. You’ll sail today. Round up your people or leave without them if necessary. I want you to search those islands, and that one in particular. It may be nothing. But that bosun’s call didn’t get there on its own. I can’t send half a dozen destroyers, even if I had them to spare. This must be kept “in the family”.’ He tapped his nose. ‘There have been enough cock-ups without adding to the list!’
Blake looked at the wall clock. It was two in the morning.
‘Sorry to hear about your father.’ Quintin looked at him sadly. ‘Fine man. But it seems to me that something good has happened, too.’ He glanced at the girl. ‘Off with you and get some sleep. I’m back now, and intend to stay until this lot’s sorted out, and no damn arguments!’
She followed Blake into the empty corridor and said, ‘I’ll be thinking of you.’
A night-worker from the code room paused and looked down the corridor. A naval officer with a Wren in his arms. Just like the movies. All right for some, he thought.
Alone by the map table, Captain Jack Quintin wheeled himself towards the decanters and poured another, larger drink. Then he sat back and thought about the girl with the ring on her finger, the young captain who would be her lover, and what his own wife would have to say when she heard he had discharged himself from hospital.
He was still sleeping with the empty glass in his fist when the early morning cleaners arrived.
11
‘It Happens –’
BLAKE RAN THE last few steps of the ladder to the upper bridge and saw the watchkeepers stiffen as they always did when their captain was about. After the sticky humidity of his sea cabin it was almost a relief to be on the bridge again, even though he had left it barely two hours earlier as dawn had tried to force an appearance.
This was the morning of the seventh day out of Williamstown after Quintin’s dramatic announcement about the whaler’s discovery. And now, here were the islets, sprawled untidily across the starboard bow, colourless in the strange light. For as Andromeda had ploughed her way steadily towards the west the sea had risen, and for the past three days they had battered through ranks of angry rollers while the ship had been washed with heavy rain and incoming waves until there was barely a dry set of clothing to be had.
Blake touched his cap to Lieutenant Friar, the Australian torpedo officer, who was in charge of the watch.
‘All quiet?’ He had to shout above the rumbling din of water as it surged aft from the plunging stem and crashed around A turret like a fast tideway.
‘Aye, sir. Revolutions for twenty-one knots, course two-five-two.’
Blake gripped his chair and climbed to the fore-gratings. Like the change of weather, it was strange to see all the tanned faces around him, eyes squinting against needles of spray, while each man was made even more uncomfortable by a heavy, glistening oilskin.
Blake slid on to the seat and watched the islets. Still a good way off. Bleak, wet, inhospitable. Many a good ship had ended her days there.
For a week they had pushed through a vast, empty ocean, with depths falling away to nearly three thousand fathoms to a dark unknown world. Then with the startling suddenness of cathedral spires the sea-bed had showed itself in tiny groups of scattered islands, boundaries of the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, the submarine mountain range which made man’s knowledge a mockery. As if to remind him of this, Blake heard the muffled bleep of the echo-sounder, seemingly ineffectual when set against the world beneath the cruiser’s keel.
He would have liked to fly off the Seafox for a quick recce around the islands. It would have saved time. But the sea was rising and falling in an impressive swell, and it would be pointless to lose their one aircraft for no good purpose.
Blake smiled to himself. Had he suggested it to Masters he would have taken off from the catapult without even a murmur.
He said, ‘Reduce to twelve knots and bring her up two points to starboard. One watch is at breakfast, remember? It might stop some of the plates from flying if we head into it a bit more.’
He left it to Friar, who had already proved himself a good officer, and returned his gaze to the islands. Uninhabited except for the hardy sea-birds, but Scovell, who had once served down here in a survey ship just before the outbreak of war, had painted a grim picture. The islets were littered with driftwood, discarded fireplaces where survivors from wrecked vessels had clung to a hope of rescue until they had died. Scratches on rocks to mark the passing days perhaps, or to measure the issue of dwindling rations.
Cocoa was being passed around the gun positions, and he saw a seaman pause by a guard-rail, legs braced, a fanny of ‘kye’ steaming in his spare hand while he watched the bows begin to rise free of the sea before he made his next dash for safety.
Blake had had a lot of time to think during the restless, uncomfortable week. He missed Fairfax, and often wondered what he was doing, and if anyone had explained about Stagg’s proposed big game hunt. Scovell had withdrawn into his haughty shell even more than usual. Maybe he was thinking how short-lived his position of acting-commander would be, or was cursing the wasted days searching for the raider when he could have been in England on his commanding officer’s course. Either way, Blake had been left much to himself. It was good for him, he thought. For the ship also. The rough edges between the old hands and the new ‘owners’, as Moon called them, were fast smoothing away. Palliser, the gunnery officer, had remarked loudly, ‘We’re down to those who know it all and those who only think they know it all!’ But by and large they were getting on well.
Harry Buck, the chief yeoman of signals, had been less charitable to one of his young Australian signalmen.
‘Listen, Bunts, of course you’re gettin’ used to it all! You’ve bugger all else to do on this billet, right?’
Blake had not heard the signalman’s reply. The Toby Jug was too formidable to accept any sort of argument from anyone, except possibly his captain.
Blake felt the deck sidle more comfortably into an oncoming sea and pictured the grateful faces in the engine and boiler rooms as the telegraphs signalled a reduction of speed.
He raised his glasses and levelled them on the nearest islet. Like a basking sea-monster, ugly with spray-soa
ked bushes and brown grass. A few hillocks but no trees.
Behind him he heard the navigating officer unclipping the canvas hood above his ready-use chart table, and someone asking, ‘Do you think we will get any closer to that lot, sir?’
Then the South African’s harsh reply, ‘Why not, eh? According to my little book of words there is only an average of sixty-eight cyclones a month in this part of the Indian Ocean around this time of the year, so why worry?’
Blake knew Villar was on edge about something. A letter from home or, like most good navigating officers, he was probably worried at the ship’s nearness to the islets. No anchorage, no bottom at all until the last mile or so, it would not need a cyclone to make things hazardous.
Scovell appeared on the bridge, his eyes cold as he surveyed the humps of land.
Blake said, ‘We’ll do it as planned. One island at a time. Take the best motor-boat and hand-pick your landing party. See that they’re armed. Just in case.’
Scovell shrugged. ‘There’s nothing there, sir. I think we’re clutching at straws. Wasting time.’
‘Perhaps.’
Blake felt suddenly irritated by Scovell’s attitude. He had been getting steadily worse since their arrival in Australia. He wanted to go, pick up the threads, and for that Blake could not blame him. But in his heart Blake felt a nagging certainty that sooner or later they would meet the raider, and fight. For that he was saving his strength without conscious thought. Like his reluctance to fly off the Seafox. No lives were at risk, no battle undecided, so, like her sister Ajax at the River Plate, Andromeda would hold her resources until the precise moment.
He said, ‘The sea’s eased a bit since dawn and the sky’s clearer. Be ready to hoist out the boat in about an hour.’ He met Scovell’s flat stare. ‘Carry on.’
Blake thought about the girl he had left in Melbourne. Taut, eager and frightened all at the same time. He wondered if she was still wearing the ring, defying the curious stares and subtle questions. Why she was prepared to accept the embarrassment which his gesture must be costing her. Unless of course she had put the ring in a drawer in an effort to change things back again.
A Ship Must Die (1981) Page 17
