Ship of Force (11 page)

The tap came at the door and the messenger said, “Mr. Chivers’s compliments, sir.” Chivers had the watch. “Sorry to disturb you but there’s a signal from the Provost Marshall. There’s trouble ashore with the libertymen.”

Garrick said, “Blast!”

“I’ll come.” Smith picked up his cap.

They went ashore in the pinnace, running up the channel past the lighthouse and up the length of the basin of the Port d’Echouage to the fish-market quay at the head of it. Smith climbed the steps with Garrick at his shoulder and found Dunbar already on the quay, pacing back and forth like a caged tiger and glowering at the party of seamen drawn up on the quay in four ranks. There were some thirty in all, a dejected, battered group. There were blood-stained jerseys and torn collars to be seen in plenty but few caps. Smith recognised men from
Sparrow
and
Marshall Marmont
, including the two young stokers from the monitor. The group was encircled by twenty or so military police and men of the Naval Shore Patrol under a petty officer.

Dunbar called them all to attention and Smith acknowledged his salute. “What happened?”

Dunbar nodded curtly at the petty officer, who barked in a monotone: “We was called along ’cause of a fight in that there bar, sir.” He gave a sideways jerk of the head and Smith saw the glass-littered road and the shattered windows, the door hanging askew on its hinges. The petty officer went on reciting: “We found ’em smashing up each other an’ the place in the bygoing. All well-known to me, sir. The same had hats from
Wildfire
and
Bloody Mary
—”

“That will do!” Smith’s rasp cut the man short. He went on quietly, “Take your patrol away.”

Garrick looked at him sharply when he heard that tone; he knew Smith a little now. The petty officer did not. He objected, “Sir! My orders was to see them embarked and —”

He stopped as Smith’s eye turned from the bedraggled group to fall on him. Then he blinked and saluted, turned on his heel and bawled at his men, marched them away. The corporal in the rear file said from the corner of his mouth, “What did he say, then?”

The petty officer muttered, “Nothing. Not a bloody word. But better them than me. He’s got an eye as goes right through yer.”

Smith looked at this sample of his flotilla. He knew he was no good at speeches and he would not make one now. He stood still, eyes going to each one in turn and holding theirs before passing on. A squall swept up the basin, hurling rain in the men’s faces and they hunched their shoulders, bent their heads to it.

“Look up!” He did not shout but the order snapped them straight. “I have never been ashamed of any ship in which I have served and I will not start now. You’re going to sea. All of you.”

He turned to speak briefly to Dunbar and Garrick while the men cast uneasy glances at each other. If they were all going to sea then surely
Marshall Marmont’s
orders must have been changed, they thought. But it was not so. Instead Garrick and Dunbar had to quickly compare notes and revise watch-bills. So that when
Sparrow
sailed an hour later a dozen of her complement who had not gone ashore were settling in bemusedly on board the anchored
Marshall Marmont
, while all the party from the quay were aboard
Sparrow
, as look-outs, ammunition numbers on the guns, or in the engine-room where two young stokers were being initiated into the painful and rigorous art of stoking a coal-burning ship. They were learning how to balance on the stoke-hold plating that in good weather rose and fell and tilted and in bad weather bucked like a horse. How to knock open the furnace door with the slice, the long-handled rake, probe with it at the white-hot embers and drag out the clinker and ash that pulsed with heat. How to shovel fresh coal into that roaring, red maw and spread it to burn evenly. Then move to the next furnace and do it all again. And again. Cursing their way steadily through the watch, the hours spent in sweltering heat, filth, steam, the deafening, churning thump of the engines and the roar of the draught that forced the furnaces to that white heat.

Sparrow
’s Chief grinned at them comfortably, “Well, if you can’t take a joke you shouldn’t ha’ joined.”

Sparrow
ran down the channel in the last of the light with her crew manning the side. McGraw’s head thumped with every turn of
Sparrow’s
screws but like the rest of the men on her deck he peered up at the bridge. Faintly on the wind came the sound of a mouth-organ. Smith was on the bridge and Galt was playing at his orders. ‘Oh, I do like to be beside the sea-side!’

McGraw held his head. “Mad bastard!”

The next day Trist had a word with Smith. “That was a disgraceful business! I had a full report from the Provost Marshall. Disgraceful! The offenders have been dealt with?”

“Yes, sir. I took a very serious view of the affair.” Smith slipped the question. He doubted whether Trist’s view of suitable punishment coincided with his own.

Garrick had spoken to all of the offenders on the quay after Smith had gone, spoken in a voice tight with suppressed rage in a way that left them stiff-faced and silent. “You have commanding this flotilla the finest seaman and sea-fighter I’ve ever known. A man who will lead you and fight for you and never let you down. I won’t let him down if I can help it and, by God, neither will you!”

So
Sparrow
entered again the grind of patrol work. But they were lucky.
Sparrow
had steamed her seventeen days and came up for boiler-clean, so they got a break early on. She was laid up for three days and her crew sent on leave.

Smith was explicit on that. He told Garrick and Dunbar, “The punishments I leave to you. Work them as much as you like but I want no man’s leave stopped.”

So the men got their leave.

Smith got a summons. Naval Intelligence wanted to talk to Sanders and himself about
Schwertträger
. Smith thought it would prove a waste of time but with Sanders he crossed to Dover and took a train to London. He was right. Intelligence appropriated Sanders’s notebook with its record of the Kapitänleutnant’s last words, and questioned the pair of them to see if there was any scrap of information that had been forgotten or overlooked and so omitted from Smith’s report. There was none.

Sanders hurried off to his home in Wimbledon and a girl. Smith went to see Rear-Admiral Braddock — at Braddock’s request. “Heard you were in the building and visiting Intelligence.” He grinned at Smith. “I have an intelligence system of my own. A lot of people talk to me. Sometimes they even listen.” He scowled at that. Then he said, eyeing Smith, “That reminds me. We’re still pushing the convoy system and we’re gaining ground. The counter-argument now is that we can’t find enough ships for escorts. Rubbish! It’s just a delaying tactic.” He got up and took a turn around the room, stumping bad-temperedly.

Smith shifted restlessly in the chair.

Braddock said, “I hear you sank a U-boat.”

“
Sparrow
did, sir.”

“You didn’t waste much time. Trist claims it proves that his idea of an anti-submarine flotilla works. Did you know that?”

Smith blinked “No, sir.”

Braddock grumbled, “Lloyd George does. It got back to him, somehow. He wants my opinion. I want yours as the man commanding the anti-submarine flotilla, the man who sank the Uboat.”

Smith hesitated, trying to pick his words because they might be repeated to the Prime Minister. The
Prime Minister
! But the careful, chosen words would not come and so he spoke his mind, harshly. “We found the U-boat by sheer luck; just ran across her. And she nearly got away, might as easily have sunk us. The flotilla is doing good work patrolling and bombarding — we have to hold the Straits and hit their bases — but it can’t and won’t stop the U-boats. Nor would a hundred anti-submarine flotillas. The ships would be better used escorting convoys, and convoys must come and soon.”

Braddock stared at him for several seconds, as if letting the words soak in so as to repeat them later. Then he stirred, started prowling again. “And how is the flotilla?”

“I’ve no complaints, sir.” Smith’s face was blank now.

Braddock thought, so it’s like that. He said slowly, “I know Trist. I knew the kind of flotilla it would be when I got you the appointment, but there were other suggestions designed to bury you alive in some shore job with a big title and no command. I thought you’d prefer the flotilla.”

“Yes, sir.” That was definite.

“Can you make something of them?”

“They can. There’s good stuff there, sir.”

“What?
Wildfire
and
Bloody Mary
?”

Smith blinked again. Braddock’s intelligence system was impressive. “Yes. To start with there’s Garrick and Dunbar…” He told Braddock about the ships and their men, at first stiffly, self-consciously, but soon his enthusiasm set him talking freely.

Braddock listened until Smith talked himself out and only then said dryly, as he opened the door to end the interview, “It’s a good job Beatty can’t hear you.” Beatty now commanded the Grand Fleet. “If he believed you he’d want to swap for your paragons.”

* * *

Smith went to his hotel. Sanders had diffidently invited Smith to spend the short leave at the house in Wimbledon but Smith knew about Sanders’s girl and he wasn’t going to get in the way there. Smith had no home to go to. The CPO and his wife who had brought up Smith had both died in his first year as a cadet in
Britannia
. But he had always managed happily enough in a hotel before. Now he stared out of the window and wasn’t so sure. He had three days to get through. Get through? That was hardly the way to look at a short leave after a gruelling period of service in the Channel. He was used to being alone but now he felt lonely, a very different thing. He scowled moodily out at the rain that spotted the panes and thought about the ships.

* * *

She was fast and modern, slim and strong. Not a ship. Eleanor Hurst was twenty-four years old, with money of her own, and the man she wanted and could not get had been killed on the Somme. She sat at the table in the Savoy, between the subaltern and the young Lieutenant-Colonel with the red tabs of the Staff, and watched Smith. He was aware of her: pretty, blonde, the dress low-cut, the eyes watching him coolly. Not challenging, just watching. He wondered whether she was too cool; was there a tenseness about her?

The big room was brilliantly lit by the chandeliers, the orchestra played ragtime and the dance floor was filled with young officers and girls. The supper party was given by the subaltern’s mother who was in a nervous state because he was returning to France and the Front the next day. The average life-span of a subaltern at the Front was three months. Smith sat between her and a Mrs. Pink — he couldn’t remember her name but thought of her as Mrs. Pink. She was large and pink-faced and pink bosomed, expensively dressed and she kept laying her hand on his thigh under the table. Her shadowy, absent husband was making a lot of money, she was vocally patriotic and got on Smith’s nerves.

Sanders sat opposite him with a pretty, dark-haired girl who laughed a great deal. Smith’s invitation had come through Sanders because the subaltern and Sanders were old friends. Sanders had been apologetic. “I can put ’em off — make some excuse, you know — although they were very keen I should ask you.” Smith had hesitated but accepted, telling himself it was a chance to relax and briefly forget the war, but now he was regretting it. He found he was something of a celebrity. A lot of people wanted to talk to him because the action in the Pacific had been widely reported. He did not like it. He told himself he should be pleased, he
was
pleased that some people thought well of him but the fact was that it embarrassed him and he did not wish to talk about the Pacific.

There was a lot he wanted to forget. He thought he might have enjoyed the luxury, war-time shabby though it was, the air of gaiety that sometimes bordered on wildness, if he could have been one of a party like those young Flying Corps officers. He envied them. They seemed to be Canadians and hell-bent on enjoying themselves. But then he told himself brutally that he was not one of them nor like them and if he was miserable it was his own bloody fault.

He found Eleanor Hurst’s direct gaze disturbing. And Hacker, the remarkably young Lieutenant-Colonel on the Staff asked him some probing questions. There was a toughness about his dark good looks. The subaltern had muttered earlier, “Son of a friend of mother’s. Wangled himself a cushy billet as a temporary Brasshat on movements or something in Dunkerque.”

Hacker was attentive to Eleanor Hurst. They talked, sometimes in low tones, their heads close together. In the general conversation Smith learned that Hacker’s commission was only for the duration of hostilities but he could hardly be called a ‘temporary gentleman’. He was wealthy, an all-round athlete and a Doctor of Philosophy. Smith learned none of this from Hacker, who talked well but not of himself. Hacker made Smith feel shabby and awkward. This was very much Hacker’s world.

Smith tried to stick it out but as Mrs. Pink badgered him with questions about the action in the Pacific his answers became monosyllabic. Until Mrs. Pink was leaning towards him, her voice shrill and affected, “You showed them, Commander! The only way! We’ve got to finish them off for good no matter what it costs!”

But Smith had taken all he could stand. He had a fleeting vision of the Kapitänleutnant dying before his eyes. ‘No matter what it costs’? He knew the cost and had seen men paying it in blood and broken bodies. He shoved back his chair and made a little bow to his hostess. “If you will excuse me.” To the subaltern: “Good luck.” And then he was gone, walking quickly to the door and out of their sight.

In the Strand he turned towards the river, away from his hotel because it was too early to return there. This was summer but the night was chill and a fine rain falling. He walked quickly through the gloom of a wartime, blacked-out London, unaware of the rain. He knew that to most of them his behaviour had been offhand to the point of rudeness, but he could not help that. He was restless, on edge. He did not want to go back to sea nor to any more parties like that. He did not want to go back to the hotel. He did not know what he wanted.