by Nevil Shute
The fire shot up into the starry night, enveloping the ruined houses, violent, uncontrollable. It made a flaming beacon in the night a hundred feet in height; the Germans took it for an aiming point and sowed the area with bombs. It was two hours before the sweating, cursing firemen got it down.
* * * * *
The news came to Boden forty hours later, in this way. H.M.T. Grimsby Emerald came in at about seven in the evening and dropped anchor off the trawler base. A lamp began to flicker from the signal tower. The captain stood in Monkey’s Island beside the signalman and spelled it out.
He turned to the lad. “All right. Nip down and tell Mr. Boden.”
The signalman went up to Boden on the forecastle. “Captain said to tell you, sir, there’s been a signal. You’ve got to report to the captain’s office, on shore. They’re sending the launch out for you.”
Boden glanced ashore; already the launch was casting off from the quay. “My Christ!” he said. “I’d better go and get clean.”
Ten minutes later, in a collar and his best monkey jacket, he slipped over the side into the launch. He landed at the harbour steps still straightening his tie. There was an officer he knew slightly waiting for the Ferry, an R.N.V.R. serving in Rodney. To this chap Boden remarked “Baa”, according to the custom of the service at that time, and passed on to the Naval Centre and the office of the captain (Mine-sweepers).
In the outer office he asked the secretary, another R.N.V.R. officer: “What does he want me for?”
“I don’t know, old man.” Instinctively, Boden knew that he was lying.
He went into the inner room, his hat under his arm, and there was his father, standing with the captain.
“Eh, lad,” George Boden said directly. “I’ve brought bad news, and you must take it like a man.”
And then, in plain unvarnished terms he told him what had happened.
The next few days passed in a horrible, unreal dream. He went in to Edinburgh with his father and they caught the night train down to London. His captain with unobtrusive naval kindness had telephoned to C.-in-C. Rosyth, the admiral himself, explaining the position, who in turn had telephoned demanding sleepers at an hour’s notice, so that on the first night young Boden had a chance of sleep. His father dosed him well with allonal, and he slept fitfully to London.
They went to Dover Street and saw the blackened ruin of three houses, with men working to dislodge the crumbling, tottering walls in clouds of dust and filth. They went to the A.F.S. station, a garage in a near-by mews, and there they interviewed an awkward, embarrassed man of fifty with grizzled grey hair, still wearing a tin hat and a dirty boiler-suit. They gave a statement to the police for records. There was nothing more that they could do in London, and they went home to Yorkshire.
Oliver Boden stayed there for three days. Then, because there was nothing for him to do there, and because he ached to get away from everything, he took the train north to Port Edgar, and reported back for duty.
He made two more sweeps in Grimsby Emerald. They anchored off Elie, on the north side of the Firth, one evening; the captain let a few of the ratings go on shore to stretch their legs. He pressed Boden to go with them, but the boy refused.
“I don’t feel like it, sir, if you don’t mind,” he said awkwardly.
The late bank manager went himself, and walked about the little greystone town for an hour, and had a drink at the hotel. And coming back on board in the twilight, he saw Boden standing alone up in Monkey’s Island, and went up to him.
“Fine night,” he said, for want of something to say. “Anything doing?”
“No, sir.” The boy hesitated, and then said: “Sir, would you mind very much if I put in to leave the ship?”
The older man said: “I should mind the hell of a lot. Probably help you over the side with the toe of my boot.” Boden smiled faintly. “Still, I’d probably get over it. If that’s what you want, I’ll see the captain for you, if you like. What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. But I want to get away from here.”
The other nodded. “I know. Not much fun going on shore.”
“No, sir.”
Two days later he was saying the same thing to his captain in the Naval Centre at Port Edgar. “I don’t like coming on shore here, sir,” he said awkwardly. He was flushing, and fumbling with his cap. “Do you think I could get in some ship going overseas?”
“I don’t know about that. Sit down, Boden. Have a cigarette.” He made the boy comfortable, and a little more at ease. “You’ve only been in trawlers, haven’t you?”
“Yes, sir. I was in a ship called Harebell before this.”
“I remember,” said the captain directly. “She was sunk. You haven’t had much luck.”
“No, sir.”
“I don’t think you’ll get overseas at once, Boden. You’re not a gunner, and you’re not a navigator. You’re a trawler officer. I tell you what I can do for you, though. I can put you forward for an anti-submarine course, and you can go on in an A/S trawler on the west coast somewhere. Would that suit you, do you think?”
“I’d like that, sir.” Boden hesitated, and then said: “I’d like to do something a bit more active than just sweeping up mines all the time.”
The older man nodded. “If you go in now for anti-submarine work, and if in a year’s time you still want to go overseas, you probably won’t have much difficulty in getting a destroyer or a corvette, as a qualified A/S officer. I think that’s your best course.”
They talked about it for a time, and the senior officer gave him a cup of tea. In the end:
“All right, Boden,” said the captain. “I’ll put you in for that course right away. You’ll probably be going in two or three days’ time—I’ll let you know.”
The young man got up to go. “I’m terribly sorry to be leaving,” he said awkwardly.
“I’m sorry to lose you, Boden,” said the other. “You’ve done very well, and I shall say so in your record. I’m very sorry that you’ve had this bad luck. I think you’re doing right to make a change.”
“Thank you, sir.”
A week later he left Grimsby Emerald and travelled to a far part of the country, to a place that he had never seen before, where nobody knew anything about him. Here he began his anti-submarine course, and for a month he learned the technicalities of Asdic and of depth charges, and of the methods of attack. He passed out well, and found himself with a second stripe upon his arm, a full lieutenant. Having been in two ships already, and been sunk in one, he found himself regarded as an officer of some experience.
He was posted to a trawler based on Dartmouth, H.M.T. Gracie Fields. His captain was another officer of the last war, a printer in civil life, who ran a little business of his own in Exeter. He was a pleasant, easy-going man and reasonably competent. Boden settled down to his new work with him quite happily; that was in November, 1940.
The work absorbed him; the long hours of watching, hunting, were a pleasure to him and an occupation for his mind. Three or four times in those first winter months they made a contact and dropped depth charges with indeterminate results. Once, with an M.L. and another trawler to assist, they kept the contact for two hours, and started leaks in their own ship with the continual detonations of their charges. They produced a wide slick of oil upon the surface of the sea and a great mass of bubbles in the dusk of a winter afternoon. The water was too deep for sweeping to investigate effectively, and at the conference on shore the team was credited with a “probable”. Young Boden got the keenest pleasure out of that.
His days on shore were much less satisfactory. He was awkward and lonely, and he never settled down to his new life. He was unable to adjust himself. For many years he had looked only to Marjorie in his times of leisure; he could not now take any pleasure in dances, and even cinemas now seemed to him artificial, tinsel things, and rather painful. He liked the company of men of his own sort in hotel bars as much as he liked anything, but he did not care
to spend an evening upon beer and cigarettes. In short, nothing that in his loneliness he found to do on shore pleased him so much as his work. Killing the Germans was the greatest fun of all, chasing them, listening for the ping, making fierce detonations all around them in their narrow steel hulls. He lay night after night in his narrow bunk, picturing how the hull would split, the lights go out, and the air pressure rise intolerably round trapped and drowning men. That was the line of thought that gave him most real pleasure at that time.
Presently the problem of his off days on shore became acute. As the days grew longer it became imperative to him to find some outlet for his restlessness on shore, something to do. Once in April, casting around to try something different, he took a little sailing-boat and set off up the Dart upon a voyage of discovery.
It was a warm afternoon of late spring, with a gentle southerly breeze. He went up-river on the flood from the trawler anchorage off Kingswear, in between the wooded hills beyond the town. The quiet, easy progress of the boat rested and contented him; in spite of all his painful sailing memories, it was good to be sailing again. He went up past the Naval College, past Mill Creek. He skirted by the Anchor Stone, and so came to Dittisham, with its whitewashed and thatched cottages straggling down to the creek.
Just below Dittisham his eye caught a ship, and his interest was aroused. She was a very large, black fishing-boat, perhaps seventy feet in length. She had an enormously high, straight bow and a great sweeping sheer down to the stern; forward there was one short, thick mast in a tabernacle, now struck down and lying with the truck down aft. The mast and some of the upper works were painted light blue, and there was a little white moulding running down her sheer. On her transom, picked out in white, was her name and port, Geneviève—D’Nez.
She was lying at a mooring in the river, and there was an ancient rowing-boat streaming behind her on a length of painter. That meant that there was somebody on board. Boden eyed her appreciatively as he swept past; she had something of the lines and figure of a drifter, but without the funnel or the upper works. Above the sheer-line there was little of her showing. Probably, he thought, she had a great big engine in her; indeed, he noticed an exhaust-pipe like the town drain sticking through her side. She must, he thought, be a fine sea boat with those lines.
He tacked upon an impulse, and stemmed the tide up towards her from the stern to have another look at her. The little bow wave of his boat made a small noise, and a man stood up on deck and looked towards him. It was a naval officer, an R.N.V.R. sub-lieutenant.
Boden knew the man by sight, but did not know his name. He was a dark-haired young special branch officer; that meant that for some reason he was classed unfit for watch-keeping at sea, and that he wore a green stripe below the wavy golden ring upon his arm. He worked in some shore job in the N.O.I.C.’s office. Boden was a little bit surprised to see him in a ship.
He sailed up very close to the black topsides, slowly creeping past her up against the tide. “Just having a look at your ship,” he said. “There’s plenty of her.”
The other said: “She’s not my ship. I’m just having a look at her myself.”
“Whose ship is she.”
“I don’t think she belongs to anyone. She’s French.”
“Has she got any accommodation?”
“Not so as you’d notice. Come on board and have a look.”
Boden hesitated. Then he said: “All right. Take my painter and I’ll drop astern.”
He eased his sheet and threw the painter over the black bulwarks; the special officer took it and made it fast. Boden lowered and stowed his sail; the other pulled his boat alongside again, and he stepped aboard the Frenchman.
He looked around her as he stepped on deck, and liked what he saw. There was a small forecastle hatch forward of the tabernacle, probably for gear. The well of the ship was split into two holds, covered by hatches. Aft there was a companion, and a tiny skylight indicated some sort of cabin or bunk-room.
“What sort of motor has she got in her?” he asked.
“Ruddy great Sulzer Diesel.” The other paused. “They say that these boats go like hell. They do about twelve knots.”
They walked around the deck together, and looked down at the engine in its section of the boat. “What’s her history?” Boden asked. “What’s she doing here?”
“She came over with a lot of refugees last summer, I believe,” the other said. “They all left her, and the Harbour Master had her moved up here. We want a launch down in the Boom Defence, and I knew that she was up here, and I thought I’d come and look at her, and see if we could snaffle her. But I’m afraid she’s much too big for what we want.”
They stared around them. “Yes,” said Boden. “She’s a real sea-going boat. Pity she can’t be used.”
The special officer said slowly. “I believe she could be used, if people only had the guts.”
Boden glanced at the man beside him curiously. He noticed that he had dark, smooth hair and keen, thin features; he looked rather a delicate man. He was about twenty-four or twenty-five; they were much of an age.
“How do you mean?” asked Boden. “How do you think she could be used?” He lit a cigarette with the quick, nervous motion that had become customary with him in the last few months. The other filled a pipe.
The special officer said diffidently: “Oh, I don’t really know. But I think something could be done with her. She’s French-built. I believe you could go anywhere in her and never be questioned. Over on the other side, I mean.”
“What’d you do when you got there?”
The other shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. It’s only a crack-pot idea I had.” He laughed awkwardly. “We chaps who stay on shore get frightfully brave.”
“I suppose you’re some kind of a scientist,” said Boden.
The other nodded. “I couldn’t get into the Executive—I’m colour-blind.” He hesitated, and then said: “You’re in a trawler, aren’t you? I think I’ve seen you in the pub.”
“That’s right. My name is Boden.”
The dark-haired special officer said: “Mine is Rhodes.”
4
MICHAEL SEYMOUR RHODES was the son of a doctor in Derby, who died when he was fifteen. His mother was left in rather difficult circumstances, but she sold capital to finish the boy’s education. He went to Birmingham University at a younger age than usual, and passed out when he was nineteen with a degree in chemistry.
He got a job with the great chemical combine, British Toilet Products Ltd. at their works at Bristol. The concern employed nine thousand hands at Bristol and about twice that number at the Preston works. They demanded about fifty young industrial chemists from the universities each year to feed the great machine with new ideas. Most of the young men left them six or seven years later, finding promotion to the higher grades completely blocked, but there were always new ones coming on to fill the gaps.
Rhodes was one of these, and as one of the team he left a little mark upon the country’s modes and manners. It was his idea to put the stuff into Titania foot tablets that gave a faint brown tinge of tan to tired feet, making them more becoming and toning down the angry redness of the aching corn upon a dead white foot. The slow effervescence of Blue Grotto bath-cubes, protracted over half an hour, was one of his. In the field of basic research he did good work upon the solubility of solid organic perfumes in soya oil which influenced both soaps and face creams considerably in 1938 and 1939. He was, in fact, a very competent if rather inexperienced young industrial chemist.
He lived in a bed-sitting-room in a little house in a suburb of Bristol, and he lived quite alone. His landlady was a widow who looked after him quite well; on his part, he made very little trouble for her. He was a very shy young man. He was good company in the office and quite popular with the staff, but outside office hours he had little contact with his fellow-men. He joined no sports clubs because he was not interested in sports. He did not go to dances because he felt himsel
f to be shy and awkward with young women, and consequently he had an idea, that they were laughing at him. He did not drink at all before he joined the navy, and he smoked very moderately. In consequence of these ascetic habits he was rather a lonely young man, and that loneliness made him more shy and more awkward still. He spent most of his evenings and week-ends in long, solitary walks, or brooding on the solubility of substances in soya oil. Occasionally he went to the pictures.
In the autumn of 1937, when he had been at Bristol for about a year, a great interest came into his life. He had been to Derby for the week-end to see his mother, and returning late to the little house outside Bristol on Sunday night, he was surprised to find a very large black dog upon the doorstep. It slunk away into the front garden as he entered the front gate. He looked over his shoulder at it, curiously and uneasily, as he let himself in with his latchkey. It was a very big dog indeed, and very black and fierce-looking.
His landlady met him in the hall, fussed and a little frightened. It seemed that the dog had been standing up against the front door for the last two hours and blowing through the letter-box; in that position he could look in through the little windows of the door like the Hound of the Baskervilles. The snuffling snorts in at the letter-box, the blood-curdling whines, and the fierce glaring eyes had troubled her considerably.
Rhodes went to the door, opened it, and looked out. The dog pushed past him and stalked into the sitting-room, wagging his stern. He saw the gas fire and sat down in front of it, beaming up at them. He took up most of the hearth-rug.
“Coo, look at that!” said the woman. “Makes himself at home, don’t he?”
They stood and marvelled at the dog. It was a very large black Labrador perhaps three years old, short-haired, with a great dripping jowl, brown eyes, and a permanent expression of perplexity. It weighed a good six stone. They very soon became accustomed to it; indeed they had to, for it obviously meant to spend the night with them. They tried it with a bit of bread and it ate that ravenously; it ate the rest of the loaf and the rest of the cold lamb and a lump of suet pudding and a good many biscuits, and asked for more. It made no objection when Rhodes scrutinised its collar, but there was no name on it.
