On the Edge of Darkness (Special Force Orca Book 1) (14 page)

“
Most of them have been drafted off;” he dropped his voice even lower, “The rumour is it’s going to take two years to get her sea-worthy.”

“
As long as that! That’s one hell of a refit; I didn’t think things were that bad.”

Crosswall-Brown lifted an eyebrow,
“It doesn’t look that bad, I agree but, we were right at the time, you remember we thought she might have broken her back.”

Grant pulled a face,
“Hence your draft, I suppose.”

“
That’s right old man…It’s an ill wind…The buzz is they’re going to keep some of the gunnery department on board. No need for the old eight- inch or the bods who manned them, so here I am. Can’t say I sorry I was getting a bit…”

Charlotte arrived with three piping hot cups of railway tea.

“Here, let me pay for those,” said Grant.

“
Wouldn’t hear of it, old boy!” said Crosswall-Brown, “this one’s on the old girl. She’s no one else to spend it on.”

“
Not so much of the old. Just remember you’re still my little brother. Keep your place. Little boys should be seen and not heard.”

“
Yes miss!” grinned Crosswall-Brown, “See how she bullies me, Robert, she only follows me around so that she can cramp my style.”

“
What style?” laughed his sister.

“
You two musical-hall turns catching the train for Pompey?” asked Grant.

“
Yes, are you going on to Yarmouth?” asked Crosswall-Brown.

“
Only to visit, I’m be spending my leave near Pompey.”

“
Where abouts?”

“
Southsea…a boarding house I’ve used before.”

“
Did you say boarding or bawdy?” teased Charlotte.

“
Leave him alone, you pest…We wouldn’t hear of it, old chap, you must stay with us… right old girl? Stacks of room, you know, in the old pile.”

“
Well, that’s awfully good of you, but…”

“
I hate to admit to my brother having a good idea… but he’s right, he’s not much company, as you must know, so I for one would enjoy having a house guest with some conversational skills.”

*     *     *

Nuneaton Station

Goddard’s right eye was streaming he’d been looking out of the train window waiting for his first sighting of Nuneaton Station when he got the piece of grit in his eye. He’d tried blowing his nose, tried pulling his eyelid down over the, by now, bloodshot eye, nothing seemed to budge it. He peered through the good eye into the speckled mirror of the empty carriage. He sighed. He looked a right state one red eye, tears running down his cheek and his face all screwed up. Just his luck, here he was the returning hero, and he looked like a sprog with the screaming hab-dabs.

The train slowed
, he hastily grabbed his case and the bunch of flowers. For a second he thought of stuffing the flowers into the case. It had seemed a good idea to buy the flowers when he was having a few pints with the lads, but now he’d sobered up a bit…

He jumped down from the slowing train and slammed the carriage door
behind him. There was no one at the station to meet him; the fact that he hadn’t really expected anyone did little to ease the disappointment. He had thought that perhaps they would surprise him, a banner or two, even a small cheering crowd. The station was empty, apart from the old ticket collector who stared at his sore eye as he stood blinking, waiting for the man to punch his ticket.

*     *     *

Central London

O’Neill punched the copper on the nose while he was still fumbling for his whistle, the policeman fell back and his tin helmet rolled noisily across the cobbles.

O
’Neill, grinned, his head nodding, as if in total agreement with his fist, he swayed drunkenly and took another swig at the bottle of black market rum. Hiccupping grandly, chin on his chest, he attempted to focus on the prostrate form before him, failed and said to the blurred image, “Get some sea-time in you bloody Englishman.”

Seemly satisfied at this incoherent rendering he
slid loose-limbed down the wall.

*     *     *

Lower Road, Rotherhithe.

The rain stopped as the bus neared the corner of Maynard Road. Able Seaman Wyatt jumped off, tipped toeing to avoid the puddles on the cracked and pitted pavement.

The bus continued, splashing its way up the main road, towards the underground station, spraying the pavement with muddy waves as it
progressed.

He hoisted his bag onto
one shoulder and sprinted across the road and round the corner by the doctor’s; a dog-eared notice in the window proclaimed it was ‘Closed until we’ve beaten Hitler’.

Their flat was at the far end of the road, only a few houses between it and the dockyard wal
l. A group of kids playing ‘stick and fuggel’, yelling as they splashed through the wet after the fuggel’, socks down around dirty ankles.

He recognised, Terry Rawlings, from the flat next door, one bare knee
grazed and bleeding. The youngster gave the piece of firewood a good whack with the stick and it flew into the air high above the heads of the fielders.

Wyatt paused for a moment watching the game he had played himself so many times when he had been their age.

Nothing much had changed, beneath his feet the pavement was marked with the kids chalk drawings and the dockyard wall had a lopsided goal chalked on it in the same place where there had been one for as many years as he could remember.

He walked pass the screams and the laughter and in through the gate to the flats. Out the back, in the courtyard
, a long line of washing flapped tiredly, stark and crisp-white against the mossy walls.

He
ran up the draughty stairwell, impatient now to get indoors, up he climbed, through the faint smell of urine to the top veranda and along to the end flat. It was bag-wash day and bulging pillowcases, full of dirty washing, lay piled up outside each of the front doors. He remembered how, on bag-wash days, he and Terry’s brother, Roy, had used the bags, just like them, as cover while they had shot at each other with their Winchester repeaters.

Roy was dead now, killed over Norway early in the war, he
’d been on Wellington bombers. He remembered how proud he’d been when he told him of the posting. Tail gunner….they’d both become gunners…all that practice on bag-wash days.

The bottle
-green door opened before he could use the knocker. His mum grabbed him in one of her bear-hugs crushing the breath from his body rendering him incapable of speech.

His sister, Susan, black pigtailed, hung to his leg in a pale intimation of his mum
’s death-hug.

“
Welcome home son.” she said, as she dragged him in through the front door. He kissed her on one fire-flushed cheek and patted his sister’s head as she clung to his leg. She held on while he hobbled stiff legged along the dark passage to the kitchen.

A fire burned orange-red in the black cast iron range, a clothes stand of
‘airing’ stood beside it, his dad’s rack of stained clay pipes on the mantle-piece. He felt for a moment as if he hadn’t been away, as though the past few months had never been.

“
Where’s the old bastard? Working?”

“ Spect so…he never came back this morning so I suppose he’s gone and got a day’s work in one or other of the docks…
Hope so, it’s been ‘ard going lately, not much work about…and yer know what ‘e’s like when ‘e ain’t got nothing to do. Thank Gawd for the fire-watching… keeps him busy.”

“
And out from under your feet?” he added.

His mum laughed, the years dropped away from her tired face, she was, in that short moment, a young girl again.

“How’d you know that?… never mind I don’t wanna know, cheeky sod…The kettle’s on the boil, I’ll make us a nice cuppa and you can put your feet up, I expect you’re worn out after that journey.” She moved to the fire. “Where you’ve bin son, anywhere nice?”

*     *     *

Silvertown

“It needs to be done proper, or not at all, you supposed to do it on one knee.”

“
Which one?” asked Able Seaman Wilson.

“
It don’t matter which…” began Maude, then she saw the twinkle in his eye. She pulled a face, “No! Don’t play the silly bugger you’ll spoil it.”

“
What me knee?”

“
Look if you ain’t gonna behave your…”

“
All right; all right.” Wilson took up the classic pose, hand on heart.

She pulled his hand away,
“Don’t overdo it!”

“
Blimey, make yer mind up.”

“
What am I going to do with yer?”

“
Do yer want a list? I’m game for anything,” he started to giggle… Maude joined in.

“
Look, you sure you wanna do this, or not?”

“‘
Course I do.” he said.

“
I mean, what’s the difference, you know? We’ve been together all these years. It ain’t mattered before.”

“
Well…you know the blokes were talking onboard…”

“
Surely that don’t bother yer!”

“Nar!… Not about us, let me finish.
They were saying as ‘ow they… some of ‘em anyway, thought there could be problems with wills and that if you ain’t married proper… You know if something was to ‘appen to somebody.”

Maude
’s eyes glistened, “You can ‘alf be a morbid bugger when yer want,” she sniffed.

“
No! No!… It’s only right… So, anyway, I got permission off the skipper, and asked about a license and that.”

“
You were sure of yourself, weren’t yer!”

“‘Course
I was.”

“
Well…at least you can ask me proper.”

“
Maude, will you be my wife.”

“
No.”

“
What yer mean?”

“
Oh, all right then,” she said, laughing at his face, “you’ve talked me into it, but I want you in a proper suit when we get married.”

“
I thought I could get married in the rig.”

“
You know what thought done.”

“
No.”

Neither did Maude, but she wasn
’t going to let on. “Like I was saying, if we’re going to do it, I want it done proper. I want us to be able to forget about the war, just for a while…and we can’t do that with you’re in uniform.”

“
I ain’t got no suit, you know that.”

“
You got that money your uncle left yer. Every man should have a suit anyway.”

“
Well… I suppose I could use Uncle Tom’s money… Seems a bit of a waste though.”

She laughed
, “It could double as a laying-out suit, when the time comes.”

“
Yeah, you could get someone to row it out to me, afore they sew me up in me ‘ammock.”

“
Don’t!”

“
You started it!”

“
Yeah… well, now I’m ending it.”

They fell silent.

*     *     *

Central London

The wooden pillow wasn’t meant to be comfortable; in fact O’Neill thought the whole cell left much to be d
esired in that particular area, but, looking on the bright side, at least he had more room to himself than he had on the mess deck. He put his hands behind his head as a cushion and wondered what the ‘beak’ would give him.

He only had three days leave left and he hadn
’t even reached home yet, odds were he wouldn’t make it back again this trip. The little woman would go daft. He shouldn’t have told her he was coming home. Could have surprised her, come to think of it, it would have been a surprise for him as well, if he had managed to get home for once. He reached for a cigarette…either he’d smoked his last one or them thieving coppers had nicked ‘em.

*     *     *

Silvertown

“ ‘Course I wanna special price! Didn’t we go to school together for crying out loud.” said Wilson.

“
Business is business, me boy, I gotta make a living, and this is quality gear, feel the width.”