Killing Ground (18 page)

The tannoy again. “Out pipes! Hands carry on with your work!”

Bizley nodded. “Perhaps I
shall
be able to pay them a visit when I get some proper leave. It will be easier to tell them now there's been some time since …” He broke off as Finlay came striding aft to the bow.

The lieutenant exclaimed angrily, “I
told
you to warn me, Sub!”

The captain was at the foot of the brow, a pipe in his mouth which he removed only to salute the quarterdeck as he came aboard.

Howard sensed the tension between them but decided to ignore it. It had been agreed that Treherne should take over as first lieutenant, for the moment anyway. There was no available replacement in any case, so he would have to go over the watch-bill with Treherne when he arrived.

“Ask Number One to join me in my cabin, will you, Guns?” He could tell from Finlay's curiosity that Marrack had said
nothing to anybody. He was playing it close to his chest. As usual.

He would tell the wardroom when Treherne was present; the others who were on leave would get the news later.

He looked at the bright sky. It was hard to believe that the ice and bitter weather had existed. That the convoys had ever been. He thought of the exploding Hurricane, and his father's simple explanation. “She thinks she killed him.” Surely that was impossible?

He saw Marrack strolling towards him. “It's on, Number One.”

Marrack smiled. “Sun's over the yardarm, sir. Will you join me in a gin?”

Finlay glared after them and said, “Don't do that again, Sub,
ever!
Or I'll have your guts for a necktie!”

If Bizley had retained any reservations about what he had done, Finlay's anger had dispelled them.

Just you wait, you Scottish bastard! You'll soon change your tune!

It was such a warm evening that the Guvnor could not bear to go indoors. He was on his knees, his hand digging into the soft earth like a grubby crab searching for food, while the garden around him was alive with bees and other insects, and a blackbird began a late bath in the dish he kept for them.

He would stay out as long as possible, watching the late sunshine; there was always a chance that someone would pause at the wall for a chat. Once inside the house the loneliness always tightened its grip.

Perhaps it would be another quiet night. The area had been lucky recently, as if the enemy was staying his hand while he concentrated on London and the northeast.

He thought of his two sons, especially of David, who had gone back to his ship to face more problems. The refit was taking longer than expected. It would be the end of July by the time they went back to sea. He gave a satisfied grunt and pulled a fine
bunch of radishes out into the sunshine.

“Not bad at all!” He slapped them on his patched gardening trousers, then laid them in a basket with some crisp-looking lettuces he had also cut that afternoon.

When Mister Mills dropped in for a glass of something they would share them and pass the time together.

He got painfully to his feet and felt a tiny insect fly into his eye. He blinked it away and dabbed his eye with his handkerchief. It was an ever-present fear. That the other eye would go bad on him.

He heard the muffled roar of engines from the main road, voices raised in song. As regular as clockwork, he thought. The mobile anti-aircraft batteries taking up their positions for the night. He smiled grimly. Typical, Mister Mills would say. The old horse and stable-door policy.

The Guvnor opened his tin of duty-frees and lit one with great care. As he watched the smoke rising straight up by the greenhouse, he thought about his own war. That day at Zeebrugge.

He looked up as more wheels grated along the pot-holed lane. Some soldiers who had taken the wrong turning. It happened often enough. He walked slowly towards the gate and then stopped with surprise. A khaki Humber staff car was parked outside, almost filling the lane. A sailor sat behind the wheel and for a moment the Guvnor could not get his breath. He felt suddenly angry with himself. Getting senile. If anything was wrong they wouldn't send a bloody great staff car. It would be a telegram, like all the others which had been delivered around here over the months.

Anyway, sailors lost their way too.

He got a second surprise when a Wren officer stepped from the rear of the car and adjusted her tricorn hat over her eyes against the low sunlight. She wore two pale blue stripes on her sleeve—a second officer, then. She was slim and neat in her uniform, and it was only when she walked uncertainly towards
him that he remembered. The shabby hacking jacket, the old corduroys; like another person entirely.

She paused by the gate and said, “I'm sorry to do this to you again, Commander Howard.” She reached out impulsively and touched his arm.

He stared at her, sensing her nearness, her freshness and youth, so that he felt old and dirty by comparison.

“Please come in, my dear. I'm afraid it's in a bit of a mess!”

A voice called after her from the car. “Don't be too long, Celia, we're late as it is!”

The Guvnor strained his eye but the car was in deep shadow so that he could not see the man, except that he too was in uniform.

“Ten minutes, Daddy!”

She walked with him up the path and took off her hat to shake out her short curls.

The Guvnor said, “How can I help you? I'm afraid …” He smiled. “There, now
I'm
apologising again too!”

She turned and faced him in the same direct manner she had used with David. “I hope you like dogs.” She hurried on, “Some friends of mine were bombed-out. The dog escaped. I would take her, but I'm back in the ‘regiment,' as you can see.” She looked at him and added quietly, “They were both killed. My friends, I mean.”

He saw her lip quiver and guessed they had been close.

He said awkwardly, “Well, fetch her over, my dear. A dog would be nice company. I get a bit fed up discussing Venice with my two POWs!”

She called, “Let her go, please, Tom!”

The door opened and then the gate, as a plump Labrador padded curiously up the path.

She stooped down and ruffled her ears. “She's called Lucy. She's not young, but she's such a dear. She'll eat you penniless if she gets the chance!” She hugged the animal and said, “You can take care of each other. I'll come and see you one day!” When
she stood up there were tears in her eyes.

He said gruffly, “Be certain you do.” He walked with her to the gate and was astonished to see that the dog was already lying on the mat by the front door.

“See? She feels at home already!”

The girl replaced her hat, then leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. She said, “Goodbye, again.” Then she was in the car without another glance at the yellow Labrador, who was snapping at flies by the mat. But not before the Guvnor had seen the gold lace on her father's sleeve. A rear-admiral, no less.

He watched as the big car reversed carefully, to the main road before turning across it towards Portsmouth.

Aloud he said, “Don't keep punishing yourself, my girl. It's the bloody war, not you.”

He walked back to the gate and stared at his new companion. “Well, now. That was a turn up for the book, eh?”

D
AVID
Howard returned the salutes of the dock sentries and presented his identity card to an armed policeman. Around him the place seemed to be teeming with sailors, naval and merchant alike, and although it had only just stopped raining there was an air of scruffy defiance which appeared to be Liverpool's stock in trade.

Howard slowed his pace as he approached Gladstone Dock, where
Gladiator
lay with many other Atlantic escorts. He had just left the imposing presence of the new Captain (D), a tall, powerful man with the battered features of someone who had been well known on the rugby field in the impossible days of peace. Even the flotilla-leader had changed while
Gladiator
had been fighting to stay afloat on the North Russian “run,” as it was discreetly called in the press. Captain Ernle Vickers DSO, DSC, Royal Navy, had as his own command the
Kinsale,
one of the famous K's which had been almost the only new destroyers available when the war had begun. Like Mountbatten's
Kelly,
which with some of her consorts had been bombed and sunk near Crete in the spring of last year. Raked bows, with a single funnel instead of the usual pair, and an impressive armament, she would make any recruit's heart beat faster, Howard thought. Like her captain, whose record he knew very well; he was exactly what they needed when things looked so bad in the Western Ocean.

All the captains had been there to meet the great man, and Howard was relieved to discover that Spike Colvin's
Ganymede
and another of their old team,
Garnet,
were still with the flotilla. She was commanded by an impish two-and-a-half named Tom Woodhouse whom Howard had known for years. They had done the long gunnery course at Whale Island together as sublieutenants, and the instructors in that fearsome place had more
than met their match with Woodhouse and all his practical jokes.

Most of the other ships had been less lucky and had been sunk in the first two years of conflict. Their names, the places where they had gone down, read like a brutal record of the country's lost campaigns.
Gipsy,
mined off Harwich just two months after the declaration of war.
Glowworm
dying bravely off Norway,
Grenade
and
Grafton
bombed and sunk at Dunkirk, and
Grenville
lost in the North Sea, all in 1940; the list seemed endless.

Captain Vickers had presented his own summing-up of events and the current measures, which it was hoped would cut down the appalling loss of tonnage in the Atlantic convoys. “The enemy are already moving more submarines from the Norwegian and Baltic bases down to the Biscay coastline. Large surface units too, but at least the Air Force should be able to keep an eye on them after what happened in March.”

Howard recalled it well. While they had been riding out storms in the Arctic, dodging bombs and torpedoes while trying to protect their convoys, there had come one of those bright moments which flare up in all campaigns. A touch of hope, like the sun after a northerly gale. An ancient destroyer named
Campbeltown,
one of those transferred from the US Navy almost at the end of their useful life, had been expended like one giant, floating bomb when she had rammed the lock gates at St Nazaire and blown them to pieces. It had been the only dock on Hitler's impregnable West Wall which was large enough to hold and repair the battle-cruisers, or even the mighty
Tirpitz
if she ever left her Norwegian lair.

Destroyer men always felt different from anyone else. That one incident had convinced them.

Vickers had continued in his thick, resonant voice, “We shall use new tactics too. To meet their wolf-packs of U-Boats we shall increase the use and deployment of small killer-groups. To this end the yards are now producing newer and faster frigates, solely designed to find and destroy U-Boats. If we can get these vessels to sea, and release other destroyers and corvettes from
elsewhere, and
if
we can cling on until that time.” He had given an eloquent shrug. “I will not dwell on the consequences of the
if nots,
gentlemen. You know them as well as anyone.”

Howard had found a quiet moment to explain to him about Treherne, and his new standing as first lieutenant.

Vickers had nodded, his mind already grappling with some other problem. “I shall see what I can do. Good navigators are at a premium just now. But so are efficient escorts. I'll try and get you fixed up with an extra hand as soon as I can.” A pretty Wren had entered at that moment to present Vickers with a clip of new signals, and he had left.

Howard had pondered on the girl called Celia Kirke a good deal while his ship sorted herself out from the Greenock refit.

While his father had told him about his new companion, Lucy, he had thought about her even more. What had prompted her to do it after she had left so abruptly? There were so many things he wanted to know about her, even though he knew he was being ridiculous. An escape, then? Perhaps; but it stayed with him nonetheless.

The Guvnor had told him that the girl had been returning to Portsmouth, but when he had found occasion to speak with that naval base on the telephone and had asked casually about her, the Wren on the end of the line had replied sharply, “No second officers of
that
name here!”

Perhaps she had put it about that she wanted to speak with no one who might remind her of her husband's terrible death.

No wonder she had been so confident about returning to the WRNS; her father held flag-rank and could probably pull all the strings for her. But with the way the war was going it seemed unlikely she would have any difficulty in getting back to the world she understood.

Howard was pleased about the Labrador. His father had spoken of little else. Just what the doctor ordered.

The thought brought a frown to his face. He had hoped to get rid of Surgeon-Lieutenant Jocelyn Lawford, but doctors,
like good Scotch, were apparently very thin on the ground. If Lawford was confronted with another convoy like the last one
Gladiator
had brought across the Atlantic, he would be utterly useless.

He paused and saw his ship waiting for him, her dazzle-paint shining faintly in the smoky sunshine.

If ever he was ordered into Portsmouth … He felt his lips move in a smile.
Pompey.
He would try and find her himself. It would probably mean the brush-off, he thought. Everyone would be after her once they knew what had happened.

He strode down the brow and touched his cap to the quarterdeck where the gangway staff and Sub-Lieutenant Ayres stood at attention.

“Hello, Sub, got you on duty already? Good leave?”