Sunset (7 page)

Pike was a heavy man but could move like a cat if need be. He had uncorked the bottle of hoarded rum and poured a full glass for the stricken yeoman. Not once did he take his eyes from him, nor did he spill a drop.

‘Get this down you, Yeo.' Onslow's home was in London. He could guess the rest. The kid had been what – two years old? The skipper had allowed her to be christened on board, with the old ship's bell used as a font.

Onslow looked at the letter with his pen still resting across it. ‘Must finish it . . .' He broke off and lowered his face across his arm. ‘It was the whole street. They couldn't have felt anything, could they?'

Laird the chief stoker gripped his shoulder. ‘'Course not!' But a glance at Pike said everything. The wartime myth that nobody suffered when they were torn apart. Especially kids.

The tannoy said sharply, ‘Will the chief bosun's mate lay aft immediately.'

Fox groped for his cap. He had forgotten all about Rounds. The face of war had once again invaded their private world.

Pike asked quietly, ‘Did you see the Old Man?'

Discipline and routine were taking over again. It was just as well, he thought. Being a Portsmouth ship, many of
Serpent
's company came from London and the south. It was grim when you considered it. Pike had moved from Bethnal Green, where he had been born, to a little house in Portsmouth so that his wife would be spared the bombing. His big fists tightened on the table. Last year and as recently as four months ago, Old Portsmouth had been laid in ruins after continuous and relentless air raids. The old
George Inn
where Nelson had stayed, the fine Guildhall and many other landmarks were destroyed, and only the desperate courage of the fire-fighters had managed to save the cathedral, which, with its plaques and memorials, was a history of the Royal Navy itself. Nowhere was safe any more. But his wife had come
through it, his ‘old girl' as he called her. Hundreds and hundreds of others had not, and many still lay in the ruins of some three thousand devastated houses.

‘Yes.' Onslow's voice was faraway. ‘He was very nice to me. So was Jimmy the One. I bloody near broke down, Swain.'

‘Stand by for Rounds!'

Petty Officer Fox pulled back the curtain while Kerr hung back in the lobby. To the mess at large he said, ‘Carry on!' but his eyes were on the yeoman of signals. Then he said compassionately, ‘The Captain will try and get you some leave, Yeo. It's not impossible.'

Onslow raised his chin and afterwards Pike thought it was an act of pure courage. Onslow said, ‘They're all I've got, sir.
Had
.' He shook his head. ‘I'll stay with my mates.'

They heard the Rounds moving away to the main messdeck, and Pike said, ‘If there's anything . . .'

Onslow stood up. ‘Thanks, Swain, but no.' He looked past the untouched rum without seeing it. ‘I'll go and check the signals.'

Then he picked up the letter and folded it with great care. As he left the mess the others watched without speaking. Some of them had shared the misery he was enduring, but there were no words: there never had been. At least up there on the deserted bridge amongst his flags and signal lamps he would be safe. For a while.

Pike sat down heavily. ‘Another casualty.'

Andy Laird, the chief stoker, glanced meaningly at the rum. ‘What about us, then?'

Pike forced a grin and poured another glass. ‘
Sod
it!'

A dart hit the board and somebody had switched on the wireless speaker: some dreary girl crooner doing her bit for the war effort.

But it worked. The face of war had departed.

Lieutenant Richard Kerr tapped on the door marked
Captain
and waited for a steward to open it.

With the deadlights clipped shut and the fans turned down the cabin seemed almost humid, and Kerr was surprised to see
Calvert, the new navigator, sitting at the same table as the captain, both without their jackets.

Brooke was smoking his pipe while Calvert was leafing through some of the intelligence pack the guard-boat had brought out to the ship.

Kerr said, ‘Rounds completed, sir.' He was surprised and rather angry with himself for feeling a spark of resentment – or was it plain jealousy that Calvert should be here and not him? He thought of the yeoman's face when Brooke had broken the news about the signal. Simply said, with no ponderous offerings of hope or promises he could not keep.

Kerr could not imagine the previous captain, James Greenwood, showing the same sincerity. He knew it was Brooke's manner that had prevented the yeoman from breaking down completely.

Brooke glanced up at him and Kerr realised he was coming to know those quick, searching appraisals.

He asked, ‘All settled down?'

Kerr smiled. ‘A few comedians as usual, sir. Ideas of where we are bound this time. Most think the Med.'

Brooke waved him to a chair and pushed a bottle of gin and some bitters across to him. ‘Help yourself.'

Kerr poured a measure and watched the pink bitters tinge the glass like a stain. He noticed that the navigator was drinking what looked like barley-water. Something to do with his past and the experience which had marked him for life. It was common enough for some officers to prepare themselves for a bad convoy or the prospect of action with several large drinks. Usually they did not live very long, and neither did the men who were relying on their judgment under fire.

Kerr swallowed the pink gin and said, ‘All libertymen are aboard, sir – not even Eggy Bacon's adrift.' He saw Brooke's quick puzzled frown. ‘Sorry, sir. Leading Seaman Bacon, the chief quartermaster.'

Brooke smiled and again the lines of strain seemed to smooth away. ‘Don't apologise, Number One. It takes a while, but I'll get to know every man-jack, given time.' He became serious just as quickly. ‘We should get plenty of
that
.' He glanced at the pile
of papers and instructions, the signatures and the Top Secret stickers. ‘Fact is, we're eventually meeting a fast convoy when we've left Gibraltar.' He thought of the Chief-of-Staff's emphasis on convoys and the ships needed to carry the most precious cargo of all:
men
. ‘To Singapore, then on to Hong Kong.' He saw Kerr's sudden interest and added, ‘Fast troopers apparently, but Intelligence will fill in the gaps at Gib.'

‘Are they expecting trouble, sir?'

Brooke shrugged. ‘They say it's unlikely. But there are some valuable and experienced troops out there who would be better employed at home or in the Western Desert. These will be a holding force, a show of strength rather than anything more definite.' He reached out and turned over one of the papers. ‘The Admiralty seem to believe that the Germans are going to try and break out into the Atlantic with some of their big chaps, ships like the
Bismarck
, the floating fortress as they call her. It might explain the urgency – getting us and the convoy safely clear of the usual convoy routes.'

‘If a battleship did break out . . .' Kerr hesitated as the captain's eyes settled on his.

Brooke answered quietly, ‘It would be a massacre.'

‘Why us, sir?'

‘
Serpent
's fast, and will have no difficulty in keeping up with converted liners or whatever they are. There will be others with us.' He held a match to his pipe and was surprised that his hand was so steady. Perhaps he should have told Kerr the truth about the choice. Somehow the word
expendable
seemed to linger at the back of his mind.

He looked around the quiet cabin with sudden resentment. When he had been taken back into the navy in spite of his earlier discharge for ill-health and personal injury, one thing had haunted him: that in the two and a half years since he had been put on the beach, he would have been left behind both in experience and strategy. He need not have worried. The greatest navy in the world had still been controlled by minds obsessed with the line of battle, and most senior officers had been originally in the gunnery branch. As his father had scornfully commented when they had discussed it, ‘All mouth and gaiters!'

Battleships and cruisers had taken precedence over carriers while the aircraft and the torpedo were considered something not quite decent. Little destroyers like this one had been well built, and had they been properly maintained, held in reserve even when the first rumbles of aggression had come from Germany, the navy would never have been so desperate for convoy escorts when they were most needed.

Instead they had taken over fifty lease-lend destroyers from the U.S. navy, elderly vessels which were totally unsuitable for anything but calm seas. Because of their four funnels they were nicknamed ‘Uncle Sam's four-pipers', and were notorious for rolling so much they could do it on wet grass. The fleet was certainly paying for it now, and with U-boat sinkings outstripping every shipbuilding programme, Brooke had sometimes wondered how they had managed to survive so long.

Calvert looked up from his pile of papers and the list of new charts he would be needing.

‘I think the Japs will attack Singapore, sir. They have nothing to lose and they're hell-bent on controlling the whole of the Far East while we're occupied everywhere else.'

Kerr said incredulously, ‘They were our allies in the last war!'

Calvert went back to his work. ‘So were the Italians.'

Brooke smiled. ‘At least it would bring the Yanks in . . . maybe.'

He glanced at the framed photograph his father had given him.
Tell me how she looks, eh?
Almost the last words he had spoken to him, and he could still hear them clearly.

Brooke had always been close to his father, especially when they had kicked him out of the service. His father had shared a similar fate in the twenties when lieutenant-commanders had been two-a-penny, and discharged officers, lost without their naval environment, had wandered from one job to another, becoming secretaries of golf clubs, publicans, chicken farmers – the list had been endless. Brooke could barely remember his mother: she had died immediately after the Great War in one of the sweeping 'flu epidemics. But unlike many service wives she had always had money, quite a lot of it. Brooke's father had held on to the old house on the Thames and had turned it into a
country hotel for the sort of people who wanted to fish and shoot, and, remarkably, in a time of recession and unemployment with discharged soldiers and sailors filling the dole and soup queues, it had worked. Soon after the outbreak of war the buildings and grounds had been taken over by the army, and an anti-aircraft battery and other personnel had transformed the place into a military camp. It had broken the old man. No more boats to offer river trips for fishing and sightseeing; no petrol either. The world had turned its back on leisure and hope.

Clogged lungs and a bad heart had done what the Zeebrugge raid in 1918 could not.

Brooke glanced around again, seeing it as it must have been, imagining how his father, as the captain Pike the coxswain could still remember, must have looked and behaved.

He stood up and faced his two lieutenants, the one so hungry for his own command, and the other haunted by those who had died for his V.C.

He said, ‘Oh-eight-thirty tomorrow. You know the drill, Number One. A day we'll all remember.'

For a few seconds they were lost in their own thoughts, Kerr no doubt recalling the convoys
Serpent
had tried to defend, burning ships and drowning seamen, while Calvert's mind obviously still lingered on the image of his carrier, capsizing under fire from the German battle-cruisers, and the recollection of the madness which had driven him into an attack, David and Goliath. Brooke felt the gentle quiver of machinery and wondered if the ship,
our ship,
as Pike had put it, was feeling it too. Like the yeoman of signals and the young rating who had lost everything, and even his own father, who had loved this ship more than any other.

Kerr seemed to sum it up for all of them.

‘I'm not sorry to go. It can't be any worse than this.' He downed his drink and added, ‘I'll tell the others, sir.'

Calvert, too, was leaving. He said, ‘It's all so
quiet
, sir.' It sounded like an apology. ‘After a carrier, I mean.'

Brooke thought he could feel the man's anguish, and said gently, ‘I'm glad you're here, Pilot. What we are doing
is
important. It has to be, otherwise there's no point in going on.'

When the door closed Brooke turned and looked at the ship's crest again.

He gave a wry smile and asked aloud, ‘How's the new captain, Dad?'

It was only some of the Chief's machinery, of course, but he could have sworn he heard him chuckle.

‘Starboard watch to defence stations! Special sea-dutymen close up!'

Brooke glanced around his compact sleeping-cabin, ensuring that nothing was left lying about that might be broken if the sea got up.

He caught sight of himself in the mirror, observing himself as though he were a stranger. He was wearing the old sea-going reefer jacket, with the lace on the sleeves more brown than gold after so many months of watchkeeping. He had lost some weight so that the jacket was too large for him, but that enabled him to wear even the thickest sweater underneath. Grey flannel trousers and his scuffed leather sea-boots: they were older than the jacket, he realised.

‘Close all watertight doors and scuttles! Down all deadlights!'

A ship reawakening, preparing to return to the life she understood. Back to the ocean where only vigilance marked the margin between survival and death.

Brooke could feel the insistent vibration of machinery, the Chief waiting for the telegraphs to ring out the first orders from the bridge.

Kerr had already been down to report that the ship was to all intents ready for sea. The postman was back on board, the galley secured: everything about which a good first lieutenant should be informed. To question any such item would be resented. He smiled, recalling how he himself had once felt when his own commanding officer had wanted to query some small detail.