The Lion at Sea (2 page)

‘But then, of course,’ Verschoyle often pointed out, ‘I’m stinking rich.’

And, unlike Kelly Maguire, who, apart from a shock of red hair, was shortish, squarish and indifferent as to colouring and features, he was also tall, patrician and intelligent. Kelly Maguire envied him not only for his airs and graces but also because Verschoyle was an excellent boxer who had had his own way with people all his young life, for no other reason than that he’d always had too much money and too many good looks. The fact that Kelly’s father was a rear admiral and a baronet made no difference whatsoever, and Verschoyle, who knew everything about everybody, was quick to point out why. ‘He’s a rear admiral because he retired as a captain and commodore,’ he said, ‘and he’s a baronet only because his elder brother died of enteric in Bloemfontein during the Boer War. And since the title carries no wealth, young Ginger, you’re really just a lot of bog-trotters, aren’t you? – as poor as church mice and obliged to live in Ireland, unlike my family which has a town house in London.’

Kelly scowled, far from unaware of the circumstances that made up his background. His grandfather, Colonel Seamus Aloysius Kelly – together with his younger brother, Kelly’s Uncle Patrick, lately a major in the Royal Irish Fusiliers but now retired and existing largely on his elder brother’s charity – had had to live for years off the rundown remains of the family estate, so that it had seemed wise at the time to get rid of his daughter, Kelly’s mother, as quickly as possible to the first bidder, Kelly’s father. Instead of getting rid of his daughter, however, Colonel Kelly had merely acquired another hanger-on. The only taste of glory in the long career of Admiral Maguire had been the day when he’d put up his admiral’s stripe just in time to discard it again on settling down in retirement, to wipe out by scrimping and saving some of the debts he’d incurred in a lifetime of enjoying himself at sea.

There had never been much love lost between the two sides of the family, and no advantages whatsoever for Kelly from his father’s rank. Not even when he’d gone none too willingly to Dartmouth. It had been bitterly cold and an elderly petty officer with a nose like a ripe cherry had lined them all up, even the sobbing Kimister, who’d been brought by his mother – something that had taken a lot of living down – and let them know exactly where they stood.

‘You’d better get it into your ’eads ’ere and now, young gentlemen,’ he’d said, ‘You’ve got very varied backgrounds, and some of you even ’ave important fathers. Here we’re all equal and you at the moment are on the lowest rung of the naval ladder.’

Kelly had hated it. Even his six months at sea in the training cruiser,
Cumberland
,
where, if nothing else, he’d learned to be sick over the lee side, hadn’t seemed terribly full of promise, while his arrival in
Huguenot
had positively failed to warm his heart.

‘You are a wart,’ the sub-lieutenant of the gunroom had told him firmly. ‘An excrescence. An ullage. A growth. You probably imagine that when signalled “House your topmast”, you should reply, “fine, how’s yours?” and doubtless the only time you’ll show any enthusiasm for the navy will be on full-belly nights when we’re entertaining visitors.’

It seemed just then to Kelly Maguire that the Navy was not only single-minded but also a touch narrow-minded, too.

He came back to the present with a jerk. Over the lap of the water, he could hear the drone of an engine. In the line of seamen drawn up on deck behind him with the submissiveness of a herd of cows at milking time, there were a few murmurs of interest, and he saw a seaplane moving down the line of dreadnoughts, spidery, ungainly, but somehow a pointer to a different future.

The sun had gone again and the sparkling water had become grey and sombre once more. The seaplane had disappeared now beyond the dreadnoughts and, as the wind grew keener, Kelly began to wonder how much longer they were all going to have to line the decks. He glanced to his left. Verschoyle was waiting with his own group of bearded, heavy-handed men. He seemed quite at ease, and Kelly could never imagine him seething inside with envy and humiliation. He was a tall young man, pale-faced, fair-haired, but lean-bodied with strong shoulders. Kelly disliked him, and disliked him even more because Verschoyle was clever. It would have been so much more satisfactory to be able to feel that Verschoyle would never get anywhere in the Navy or, that, if he did, he would do it only through influence and wealth. Unfortunately, this was not so and
never would be. Certain he’d dislike Verschoyle until day he
died, Kelly was equally certain that Verschoyle would never
be a failure, and that one day he’d be an admiral while Kelly was still trailing behind among the passed-over captains.

On his right was Albert Edward Kimister, the other midshipman who had joined with him. Kimister was a born victim. Small, slight, not as clever as Verschoyle nor as tough-minded as Kelly, he had suffered from bullying all through Dartmouth and still suffered in the gunroom of
Huguenot
,
and Kelly had had more than one good hiding from Verschoyle for standing up for him.

‘I wonder–’ Verschoyle’s low voice came over the drum of the signal halyards and the slap of water alongside ‘–how many senior officers there are still afloat to whom naval history is nothing but posturing heroics gleaming in an eternal empire of
brass and new paint. Good at seamanship and having the whitest decks in the fleet, and entirely satisfied because they know how to blacklead their projectiles and paint a gun.’

Certain to a T what to use, Kelly thought. ‘A foot of grey, an inch of black and the rest white makes a damn good colour,’ his father had often said.

‘Sad lack of imagination among ’em,’ Verschoyle murmured. ‘Outlook limited to
The
Sporting Times, Country Life
and
The Illustrated London News,
shouldn’t wonder. I’m finding all this rather a bore, you know, young Ginger. I think I’ll get out of it.’

‘How?’ Kelly’s head half-turned as he spoke out of the corner of his mouth.

‘Fall in a fit.’

‘They’ll know you’re faking.’

‘Not they!’ Verschoyle looked smugly self-confident. ‘I took the precaution of reporting sick this morning. Of course, they suggested I stood down, but I heroically insisted on carrying on.’

Kelly tried to ignore Verschoyle’s sly comments and kept his eyes ahead. Beyond the surface ships, he could see the low hulls of submarines. Despite his father’s attitude that they were a ‘damned un-English weapon,’ he had a feeling that when war came, like aeroplanes, they might prove highly important. He had argued it out many times – admittedly not with his father, who, brought up to believe the big gun was the only gentleman’s weapon, could never be persuaded to listen to such blasphemy. Not even with his mother who, being Irish and an ardent follower of hounds, was far more concerned with his unfortunate habit of falling off the horses she gave him to ride. But with Charlotte Upfold, who lived two miles away across the fields from Balmero House where Kelly lived, and was a good listener and always had been. Admittedly she was still only a schoolgirl, but she could ride – better than Kelly himself – knew how to shoot and could handle ferrets with the best of them. She was
forthright, intelligent and no-nonsense, and they had been friends all their lives. It had been to her that he had bewailed having to go to Dartmouth and poured out his woes about bullying. ‘The sub-lieutenant’s left-handed–’ he could clearly remember his conversation with her ‘–and Verschoyle’s right-handed so that when they go at you with a dirk scabbard, they make cross patterns on your bum. We had a look in the Midshipmen’s bathroom.’

Charley Upfold never questioned his assertions, because she expected her whole life to lead towards marriage with him. She told him so when she was barely out of the nursery and had repeated the announcement regularly since.

Bored, he shifted from one foot to the other. Somewhere to his left he could see a group of senior officers in heavy dress coats and glittering epaulettes.

‘Discussing the racing at Goodwood, shouldn’t wonder,’ Verschoyle murmured, and Kelly had to admit he was probably, right. With their intense concentration on gunnery and torpedoes, while they excelled at technical details, they rarely appeared to think about strategy, let alone pass it on to their juniors. Only a few of them had done the course at the war college, and the very idea of lesser beings being interested, seemed to be enough to take their breath away.

As the breeze increased, the flags began to snap in the wind and the water slapped more heavily against the side of the ship. Kelly shivered and began to wish he’d put on something warmer under his uniform.

‘Probably rain before long,’ Verschoyle observed quietly. ‘Then we’ll all get wet and the fireworks will be spoiled.’

Certainly the sun had not reappeared and a long low bank of cloud, the forerunner of rain, was moving up from the south-west, like the vanguard of an advancing army. The popple and slap of water increased and a sudden gust set the halyards thrumming and the flags clattering noisily. Verschoyle had been growing more and more restless in the increasing cold and Kelly finally heard him give a deep sigh.

‘I suppose I shouldn’t have joined if I couldn’t take a joke,’ he muttered, and before Kelly realised what had happened, he had slid to the deck.

There was an immediate scuffle and a murmur of voices and the Divisional Officer turned, scowling at Kelly and Kimister.

‘You two! Get him below!’

Picking up Verschoyle’s shoulders while Kimister grabbed his feet, Kelly bundled the limp figure out of sight. Below deck Verschoyle pushed them away with a smile.

‘That’s all right, chaps,’ he said. ‘I can manage on my own now. I think I’ll go and have a fag in my hammock.’

‘But it’s the King!’ Kimister’s face was shocked. ‘God, you are a swine, Verschoyle!’

Verschoyle smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve often thought so myself.’ His smile died. ‘But at least I’m not a wretched little bore like you, Kimister. Now, shove off back to mummy on deck and leave yours truly to enjoy the first bit of peace he’s had on this bloody ship since he joined.’

Kimister bolted, terrified he’d miss the chance to salute his sovereign. ‘It’s so beastly unpatriotic,’ he said in a high, indignant voice and Kelly grinned. Although Verschoyle was a rotter, he thought, at least he was a rotter with style.

He had barely taken up his place again in the division when there was a stir on his left.

‘Here she comes!’

A petty officer – in fore and aft rig with a made-up bow tie – spoke sharply, the words carrying down the line on the breeze, then he saw the royal yacht, small and gay-looking among the preponderance of grey paint, and there was a sudden bang that made him jump, as
Lord Nelson
fired the first gun of the royal salute. It was taken up at once by the rest of the fleet, and for a few noisy minutes Kelly had a rough idea of what a battle might sound like. As the royal yacht drew nearer, old-fashioned and civilian among the angular shapes of the battleships, he saw groups of people standing on her deck, and the bright colours of women’s clothes. The water was white under her forefoot and her flags were streaming in the wind, and she was near enough now for him to see her seamen with their jumpers tucked into cloth trousers, even the silver badges on their arms.
Huguenot
’s band burst into the National Anthem, a little unsteady at first but picking up quickly into an uneven blare of sound. Then somewhere behind him there was a clatter of blocks as flags rose to the yardarm and, as the royal yacht came abeam, the high twittering of bosuns’ pipes. Someone called for three cheers, and suddenly, bewilderingly, it all seemed worthwhile. After all, the little man just across the water represented in his person the strength, the power and the dignity of the British Empire, and like Nelson himself, he’d always been noted for his kindness. Into the bargain, he
was
a sailor king. He’d served at sea and loved the Navy. And he
was
their commander-in-chief and, if it came to a pinch, could even lead them into battle. His very smallness, even his pop eyes and knock knees, seemed to lend him a sort of homeliness.

There was a crash of cheering all round Kelly and caps were lifted. As he caught sight of the star-studded figure in blue and gold on
Victoria and Albert
’s bridge acknowledging the cheers, he decided that if the King’s heart was as full of pride as his own was at that moment, then his throat probably also felt choked and his eyes were probably dim with moisture.

Some fool was screaming his enthusiasm and to his surprise Kelly realised it was himself. Verschoyle, he decided impulsively, didn’t know what he was missing.

The fleet was dispersing. The royal yacht had gone, followed by the German Emperor’s yacht and all the other foreign ships. All the bunfights ashore had finished, all the gatherings marked by splendid uniforms, champagne and caviar; with the heads of state and their ministers, all splashed with ribbons and decorations, all being cautious and diplomatic as they tried to be enthusiastic, while their womenfolk fought to outdo each other for colour and style and poise.

Presumably, the affair had been a success. Receptions had been held for the principal British and foreign officers on board
Victoria and Albert
then she had left for harbour, followed by the thuddings and bangings and the drifting blue smoke of a farewell salute. The firework display ashore had not reached expectations because of the rain, and even the illumination of the fleet had not come up to scratch because the downpour had caused fuses to blow in lighting circuits. One great ship was able only to illuminate its admiral’s flag, and when Kelly had arrived in
Huguenot
’s
steam pinnace with a message for her captain, he had found the commander, with a face like an old seaboot, storming up and down the foredeck looking for someone to throw overboard.

There had also been a few alarms and excursions.
Achilles
’
cutter had been swamped after a collision with a picket boat off Clarence Pier, and a steam pinnace from
Implacable
, taking guests ashore to see the George Hotel, where Nelson had spent his last hours in England before Trafalgar, had been rammed by a pinnace from another ship and dumped a party of naval ladies in the water – fortunately without much damage except to dresses and hair styles. A few officers had attended a daring new farce at the Theatre Royal but only one-fifth of ships’ companies had been granted leave so that, apart from senior officers and a few favoured juniors, nobody had profited greatly from the affair, a fact which had prompted a letter in
The Portsmouth Evening News
attacking the social conditions in the fleet and suggesting the ultimate horror of a trade union for all naval personnel to improve hours, wages, leave and food.