All The Nice Girls

First published by Michael Joseph Ltd

© Copyright 1964 by John Winton

‘Not often we get a submarine up here,’ said the Oozemouth River Pilot, conversationally. The rain streamed off the back of his cap.

‘Not often we come up here,’ replied Lieutenant Gavin Doyle, the Navigating Officer, brusquely. The rain had penetrated the towel round his neck and was now soaking under his oilskin and into his shirt and vest.

‘Going to be here long?’

‘About a year, I expect.’

‘A year!’ The River Pilot grimaced. ‘Not often we get one for that long.’

‘Not often we send one here for refit.’

‘Refit? At Harvey McNichol and Drummond’s?’

‘That’s right.’ If there was one thing Gavin Doyle disliked more than navigating an industrial river in freezing rain, it was having to do it with a chatty Pilot. Still, Gavin consoled himself, this was the last time. This time tomorrow he would be on leave in London and then good-bye rain, good-bye watch-keeping, good-bye
Seahorse
. A roseate vision of inviting arms, seductively curved lips and warm comfortable bosoms fleeted across Gavin’s mind.

The rain increased in a vicious gust, driving horizontally into the faces of the men on the submarine’s bridge. Gavin and the River Pilot ducked and remained with their heads bowed, letting the water run off their noses.

Behind them, the Captain still stood bolt upright. He had a megaphone at his face, held reversed so that the wide end covered his face and he could look out through the narrow end into rain which would otherwise have blinded him. It was a resourceful little trick and it was typical of the man. The Captain had a reputation as one of the wiliest officers in the Submarine Service; he had been selected to go to America for nuclear submarine training and he was leaving the ship that night. This was now for him a moment of farewell. He was handling his ship, H.M.S.
Seahorse
, for the last time, bringing her into refit at the end of her commission, and reflecting as he did so how curious it was that the ends of commissions in H.M. Ships, like babies’ births and remote cousins’ weddings, always took place in disgusting weather.

The rain eased for short periods, before lashing the submarine’s bridge again with fresh violence. During one of the lulls, the Captain was able to lower his megaphone.

‘Mr Gillespie,’ he said, ‘I take it that’s the Great Iron Bridge I can see up there?’

‘Aye, that’s it.’ There was a note of pride in the River Pilot’s voice. The Great Iron Bridge was the City of Oozemouth’s main landmark and the symbol of her civic pride. Bristol might have the Clifton Bridge, London her Tower, Liverpool her Liver Birds which flap their wings when a virgin passes by - Oozemouth had the Great Iron Bridge, a hundred years old and a monument to its creator, the incomparable Brunel.

‘What’s that white post fine on the port bow, looking like a spar buoy?’ The Captain retreated behind his megaphone again.

‘That’s the beacon for Harvey McNichol and Drummond, Captain. You’ll leave that to port and then turn hard to port for the entrance. You’ll need to watch the tide just at the entrance, Captain. The current’s always ebbing past the entrance, even when the tide’s flooding. It’s just slack water now, but you’ll find it ebbing past the entrance.’

An easterly wind whipped the dun brown waters of the estuary, raising a short swell which was flattened and speckled by the sweeping rain. Even on a fine summer’s day the shoreline of Oozemouth was an unlovely prospect; on a dark February morning with visibility interrupted by drenching squalls the waterfront had taken on that appearance of aggressive squalor common to all industrial rivers. The waterfront was both the city’s blight and its strength. Although it chilled an onlooker’s heart to realise that man had actually laboured to create such an appearance, the city’s prosperity still largely depended upon those seven miles of docks, wharves, building slips, puddled roads, tangled railway sidings and heaps of coal tumbled haphazardly together just as they had grown under a skyline of cranes, elevators and tall chimneys.

Behind the Captain, Wilfred Garnham, the First Lieutenant, stooped and shook the rain off the rim of his oilskin hood. For him too, this was a moment of farewell, of nostalgia. This was his last hour on
Seahorse
’s bridge as First Lieutenant. He would be leaving the ship that night to join the training course for future submarine captains. The next time he stood on a submarine bridge in an executive capacity he hoped it would be as captain. In any case, there was no alternative; if he failed the course, he would never go to sea in a submarine again except as a spectator.

The fourth, and last, occupant of the bridge was the Leading Signalman. He was also leaving the ship that day and was glad of it. The Signalman was a bitter man, like all of his calling. (No branch of the Navy develops a more embittered view of life or a more cynical temperament than the Communications Branch.) The Leading Signalman had long ago formed his own final opinion of Oozemouth and its river.

‘Like a wet afternoon in a bloody Welsh graveyard,’ he told himself. ‘With no cigarettes.’

The submarine rounded the beacon and headed towards the biggest cranes and the highest and dirtiest buildings on the waterfront, where an enormous sign read: ‘HARVEY McNICHOL & DRUMMOND (SHIPBUILDING & ENGINEERING) CO. LTD.’. Two very much smaller notices, one on either side of the basin entrance, read: ‘DEAD SLOW.’

‘I hope that’s not an omen for the refit,’ said the Captain, when he saw them.

As the River Pilot had warned, it was a tricky approach. The Captain had to strike a nice balance between wind and tide to avoid hitting the downstream knuckle of the opening. The Captain was particularly anxious not to make a mistake. After handling the ship for eighteen months without colliding with anything, it would be a pity if he damaged her now. The Captain drove his submarine as cautiously as a man driving his car to the garage to sell it.

His caution was almost in itself an error and there was one moment of suspense when the Captain ordered full astern (while the dockside magically cleared of spectators) before the submarine slid quietly through the entrance and into the calm of the basin where she was secured by wires from the dockside. Behind her, the caisson started to move across the opening and seal her off from the tidal estuary. As the first wire was winched in, the Captain felt a great weight drop from his shoulders.

The Leading Signalman’s opportunity was now at hand. It was his duty to report to the Captain the movements of the propellers while the ship was manoeuvring. For two years the Signalman had stood on the bridge, in summer and winter, rain or fine, through all the comedies and tragedies of entering and leaving harbour, and had solemnly recited his own interpretations of the water washing to and fro at the stern. It had always been the Signalman’s secret conviction that nobody had taken notice of anything he had ever said. The Signalman had often promised himself that one day he would put his conviction to the test. That day had now come to pass.

‘Port and starboard screws dropped right off, sir,’ he reported, in his most neutral, official tone of voice.

‘Very good,’ said the Captain, mechanically.

The Signalman choked on a gasp of glee and hugged himself exultantly. ‘
Got’im!
’

‘Signalman,’ said the Captain.

‘Sir.’

‘I know you’ve been
bursting
to say something like that the whole commission. Let me assure you, I do notice what you say even though I may sometimes forget to acknowledge it. Thank you for your assistance during the last eighteen months.’

The Signalman blushed remorsefully and mumbled to himself.

A man in a brown overcoat and a bowler hat had climbed on board from a small rowing boat. ‘Good morning, Captain. Will you stop your shafts now, please? We’ll take the ship from here.’

‘Here you are, Signalman,’ said the Captain. ‘Here’s your chance to shine. There’s the voicepipe. Tell the control room, finished with main motors and steering.’

Still blushing, the Signalman passed the order, whereupon a great surging cheer came up the voicepipe.

The Captain grinned. ‘No sentimental nonsense about the end of
this
commission, anyway,’ he said.

The man in the bowler hat climbed on top of the bridge and began to wave his arms, shout and blow short blasts on a whistle. In obedience to the bowler-hatted man’s signals the wires rose and dipped as the submarine was warped into the centre of the basin. The Captain looked on with the superfluous, unemployed feeling of a captain whose ship is being handled by others.

The dockside of Harvey McNichol & Drummond had a devastated, almost lunar, appearance. Close to the jetty’s edge there were several corrugated iron sheds which looked as though they had been hastily assembled to meet some long- past emergency and never pulled down again. Underneath the cranes and between the railway tracks lay the debris of years - baulks of timber, strangely contorted pieces of rusting metal, lengths of corroded anchor chain and a stack of rusty acetylene bottles. A small locomotive, apparently abandoned, was hissing and blowing steam between its wheels. Groups of workmen gathered listlessly to watch
Seahorse
come alongside. The dockyard looked like the camp of several hundred displaced persons who had squatters’ rights in a junk yard.

As
Seahorse
reached a position in the centre of the basin, a hooter blew over the rooftops. The sound had no significance for the Captain but it had a remarkable effect upon Harvey McNichol & Drummond. The man in the bowler hat pocketed his whistle, nodded to the Captain, climbed into his boat and pulled for the dockside. The men who had been handling the wires on the winches dropped the bights and doubled away. Simultaneously, from every doorway, every alley, every nook and crevice of the yard, men poured out and began to run round a corner and out of sight. More men leaped down from cranes and from the backs of lorries to join the throng. Within a minute the side of the basin was a moving mass of men. Within another minute the same dockside was deserted, frozen still, as though under an enchantment. The Captain, Wilfred and Gavin looked about them in bewilderment.

‘Now what?’ said the Captain.

‘That was the nine o’clock hooter, Captain,’ said the River Pilot.

‘What about it?’

‘They stop work, Captain. It’s the tea-break.’

‘But they can’t leave us here! ‘

‘They have, Captain.’

It was quite true. The Captain looked disbelievingly along the jetty. The only sign of movement came from a group of three men who had been sheltering from the rain under an overhanging shed roof. Two of the men wore grey raincoats and trilby hats. The third wore a blue naval raincoat and, above a wide grin, the uniform cap and gold braid of a Commander. The Captain hailed him.

‘Hello Bodger!’

‘Hello Broody,’ said the grinning Commander. ‘How’s yourself?’

‘Bloody awful. Look Bodger, what’s happening here?’

‘You’ll have to stay where you are for the moment.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s the tea-break, old man.’

‘So what?’

‘So they won’t work during the tea-break. There’s a no overtime ban on! ‘

‘We can do the rest ourselves, can’t we?’

The two civilians beside The Bodger each took a sharp step backwards, as though Broody had made an indecent suggestion.

‘Can’t do that, old boy. The unions!’

‘Well, can we at least put the Pilot ashore?’

‘Yes, that’s all right.’

‘I’m very grateful to you, Bodger.’

‘Don’t mention it.’

‘What time will they be back?’

‘A quarter past nine.’

‘Have we just got to stay here doing nothing while they have their tea?’ said Broody, incredulously.

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘You’re not serious, Bodger.’

‘I am. Think yourself lucky this isn’t the annual holiday. You’d have been stuck where you are for a fortnight!’

‘Good God!’

‘See you in fifteen minutes’ time, Broody.’

Not trusting himself to say another word, Broody left the bridge and climbed down into the control room, where he met interrogative looks from the control room watch below.

‘Cox’n.’

‘Sir?’

 ‘Enter in the log: Secured by four wires in the middle of Harvey McNichol and Drummond Main Basin while the British Workman has his tea-break.’

‘Aye aye sir.’

In the wardroom,
Seahorse
’s two technical officers had overheard the outcries from bridge and control room and were awaiting the Captain’s arrival with the liveliest anticipation.

Ollie Frith, the Engineer Officer, was a burly man, prematurely bald, who had the sort of beaming bonhomie normally associated with the landlords of successful hotels. He had been promoted from a submarine artificer and had served in submarines, as rating and officer, for more than fifteen years. Ollie’s uniform was always the oldest in the wardroom, his buttons the greenest and his gold lace the most tattered. If a pair of mouldering sea-going shoes were discovered hidden behind a pipe two minutes before an Admiral was expected they always belonged to Ollie. His cap could always be distinguished from a long row of others outside the depot-ship wardroom by its khaki-coloured cap cover. Ollie had a tendency to entertain the wives of senior officers with his most Rabelaisian anecdotes and Broody had sometimes suspected that he drank too much, though he had carefully avoided putting his suspicions to the test. Ollie might not have been thought a very prepossessing member of a submarine wardroom but he had one quality, one supreme gift, worth more than gold or rubies. If Ollie announced that the ship would be ready for sea by a certain time then the ship was ready. Against all probability, in the face of the blackest of outlooks, the most acute shortage of spare gear or the most pressing demands of time, if Ollie said he would be ready, it was so. Broody could go to the Submarine Staff Office and confidently announce, amidst general disbelief, that he would be ready. Similarly, on the rare occasions when Ollie admitted that he could not finish in time, Broody had learned that it was fruitless to debate the point. No matter how much the workforce was augmented, no matter what the pressure from above to get the submarine to sea, if Ollie said he would not be ready then it was so; as Broody said, it was like having someone who could always tell you whether a horse would win or not.