Sunset Read online

  Newly painted in pale grey, she seemed to stand out from the dull, shadowy shapes beyond her. Her pendant number, H-50, was also sharp and clear after her recent overhaul.

  Brooke saw two figures by the short accommodation ladder, one of whom had his cap tilted sloppily on the back of his head.

  ‘I believe they’re expecting a new skipper today, sir?’

  Brooke watched one of the figures hurry to the ladder as if to wave them away. Then he reached for his cap and jammed it on to his tousled hair.

  He smiled, but it did not reach his tawny eyes. ‘Yes. Me,’ he said.

  Perhaps for the first time, he knew how his father had felt.

  On this particular April morning the destroyer’s wardroom seemed quite spacious when compared with Serpent’s cramped and slender hull. As is the way of destroyers, new or old, personal comfort took a poor second place to machinery and fuel, magazines and stores. The wardroom, which was situated well aft of the engine and boiler room and separated from the rest of the ship by heavy watertight bulkheads, was a separate world from the overcrowded messdecks in the forecastle, and the nerve centres of bridge and weapon spaces. It ran the whole breadth of the hull: one side was used mainly for the officers’ meals or for snatching a hot mug of something during those precious hours off watch; the other was where they relaxed when, like now, the ship swung gently to her cable. There were comfortable, if worn, red leather chairs and bench seats, magazine and letter racks, a locked glass case of revolvers, and the inevitable portraits of the King, in naval uniform, and Her Majesty on the opposite side of the outdated wardroom stove with its club fender.

  In the centre of the bulkhead was the ship’s crest, a serpent that looked more like some fairy-tale dragon, with the motto beneath it: Hostibus Nocens, Innocens Amicus – Deadly to Foes, Harmless to Friends. Near the small hatch that acted as a bar was the builder’s plate: John Brown & Co, Clydebank 1916.

  Lieutenant Richard Kerr toyed with a half-empty cup of coffee and considered the silence. As if the ship were still asleep, he thought. It was hardly surprising, with three-quarters of the ship’s company of ninety souls on leave of one sort or another. Long leave for many of them while the refit had been completed, local leave for ‘natives’ and compassionate leave for two sailors who had been sent home to face the pain of bombed homes and dead families. The small duty part of the watch would be falling in again soon, knowing that by the end of the week every man would be back on board. Kerr was the first lieutenant and had a thousand things to remember. With a new commanding officer expected aboard today it was bad enough, but in addition the ship had lost two lieutenants, Rowley the gunnery officer, and the Pilot, Lieutenant Johns, key members of their little team. A new navigator was supposed to be joining within the next couple of days, but their one and only sub-lieutenant was to have the gunnery department put on to his shoulders.

  Kerr glanced along the table. It was strange to see the place so deserted. The familiar faces, the nervous jokes after some particularly hairy convoy or air attack, the flare-ups of temper like those within most close-knit families. In the same breath he admitted that within a month or so the two missing faces would be forgotten. He felt envy too. The two lieutenants had been snatched away, one for promotion, another to a brand-new destroyer still being completed.

  He dropped his eyes to his cup. Even the captain, Lieutenant-Commander Greenwood, had been promoted to full commander of a powerful fleet destroyer just off the stocks. A dream for any destroyer man.

  He looked up as one of the other two occupants cleared his throat and closed yet another gardening catalogue. Ian Cusack had a home in Newcastle but spoke with a Londonderry accent you could cut with a saw. He was Serpent’s engineering officer, the Chief. It was unusual to see him decked out in his best uniform, presumably because the new commanding officer would need to know the state of the engines as well as the man who controlled them. Cusack had a seamed, polished face, and when he was in his working rig he wore a faded woolly hat with a bobble on top, so that he took on the appearance of a small, darting gnome. Apart from the purple cloth below his single gold ring which marked him as an engineer, he wore the same rank as the sub-lieutenant. But the subbie and the Chief were separated by more than many years of service. Their worlds were completely different. The former was only eighteen months out of training; the latter had begun as a boy and then gone on from one engine room to another in almost every sort of ship until, as a senior commissioned warrant officer, he had become the head of his own department. Good with his own people, the stokers, mechanics and artificers who kept the screws turning and watched like hawks over the ship’s greedy intake of fuel, but he was quick to react to criticism from all others.

  Kerr had heard him snap at the gunnery officer on one occasion, ‘If you lot were wiped out on the bridge I reckon I could take over at a pinch! Fat lot of use any of you would be in the engine room – couldn’t fit a new battery in a torch, most of you!’

  Cusack said now, ‘What d’you think, Number One? About the new skipper, I mean?’

  Kerr shrugged. ‘Probably hot stuff. He was first lieutenant in a flotilla leader. And this will be his first command, I’m told.’

  Cusack pricked up his ears. Like his engines, he could sense a change of beat or rhythm without even thinking about them. He had detected the hint of bitterness in the first lieutenant’s reply. Kerr was a good officer, cool in a tight corner, and never one to let things get slack. With the war spreading in every direction even junior officers were having their promotions advanced for the duration, although how anyone could gauge that must be a magician. He had thought the departing skipper might have persuaded someone to use some influence for Kerr. Cusack’s bright eyes sharpened. It was suddenly as plain as a pikestaff: Kerr had been expecting to get this ship for himself. It might seem the obvious solution. Losing the captain and two inexperienced lieutenants, Kerr would have held the team together until his own promotion took him to greener pastures.

  Cusack sighed. ‘I’ll not be sorry to get back to sea. I’m sick of the stench of all this new paint.’

  Kerr forced a smile. ‘I wouldn’t have thought a plumber would even notice it!’

  The other officer, who was watching the solitary messman pour the last of the coffee into his cup, remarked, ‘I bet they’ll take some of our key ratings too when we next attract the attention of some admiral.’

  Kerr watched him thoughtfully. Vivian Barlow, who wore the single thin stripe of a warrant officer, was the Gunner (T), torpedo expert, and an old dog for this kind of work. Serpent was Barlow’s first ship as an officer. He, like Cusack, had come up the hard way, and for much of his service he had been more used to a chief petty officers’ and P.O.s’ mess than a wardroom.

  If it had seemed difficult for himself, Kerr knew how much worse it must have been for a man like Barlow to change everything he had taken for granted since he had joined the navy at the tender age of twelve.

  They had been invited to the destroyer depot ship at Rosyth for some celebration or anniversary dinner, and Kerr had had to force himself not to watch while Barlow had hung back to observe the uses of various knives and forks as practised by other officers.

  A year in Serpent had given him confidence, and his rugged seamanlike comments about almost everything had made even the hard men chuckle.

  Kerr said, ‘We’ll have to accept it. With the way this war is going we must hope we get time to train the new entries.’

  Cusack looked across. ‘At least you’ve kept your torpedoes, Podger. Most of our old sister-ships have been turned into minelayers and patrol vessels.’ He glared around the wardroom with something like defiance. ‘Serpent’s a destroyer, not a bloody relic!’

  The curtain across the door swirled back and Sub-Lieutenant Nigel Barrington-Purvis swept into the wardroom. He was tall and fair-skinned, with perfectly cut hair, the very picture of a naval officer.

  Kerr watched him calmly. He was the first lieutenant and
could not allow himself to have favourites in so small a company. Or the opposite, he thought. But try as he might, he had never been able to like Barrington-Purvis. What made it more irritating was that he was good, and more than competent for one so junior. Usually, as now, he wore an expression of keen disapproval, and nothing anyone ever did seemed to come up to his own standards. The son of an admiral, he would make life hell for his men when eventually promotion came his way. As it certainly would.

  Barrington-Purvis said, ‘Just checked the iron-deck, Number One. It’ll need another going-over before stand-easy.’ He glared at the messman. ‘Fresh coffee, Kellock.’ He never said please.

  Kerr said, ‘It’s all finished. Time to get things moving anyway. The new commanding officer will want to see everyone, I expect.’

  The sub-lieutenant scowled. ‘I certainly want to see him!’

  Cusack stood up and groped for his cap. ‘I’m sure that’ll put the shits up the poor fellow!’ He went out, grinning.

  Barrington-Purvis sniffed. ‘What can you expect?’ He followed Kerr to the door. ‘I mean, Number One, I didn’t want to get lumbered with the gunnery department when Rowley left the ship.’

  Kerr regarded him evenly. ‘Not too difficult, I’d have thought? Three four-inch guns and a few short-range weapons. It’s not exactly the Warspite.’

  Barrington-Purvis clenched his fists but saw the danger just in time. ‘It’s not that, Number One. I have to think of my career, my future. I don’t want to get stuck in an old ship and sent out to some station where the war’s just a rumour.’

  Kerr’s mind clicked into place. The subbie’s father was an admiral. Maybe he had told his son what lay in store for them. The dockyard had put in new fans and the old Atlantic dazzle paint had been covered by a coat of pale grey. Maybe it meant the Gulf, or some backwater like Ceylon. Barrington-Purvis would certainly care about that. He seemed to think more of advanced promotion and appointments where he would be noticed than anything else. Perhaps that was why he had shown no emotion during the air and sea attacks while he had been aboard Serpent. The war was to be used, not feared. That was for lesser people.

  ‘Well, let’s get the bloody war over first, eh?’

  The duty quartermaster thrust his face around the curtain. He ignored Barrington-Purvis, who was officer-of-the-day, and looked at Kerr instead. ‘Beg pardon, sir, but the NAAFI boat is headin’ our way.’ He grimaced. ‘Won’t do the new paint-job much good if he barges alongside.’

  Kerr sighed. ‘Deal with it, Sub. The NAAFI boat isn’t due today anyway.’

  Barrington-Purvis pushed past the quartermaster and ran up the ladder to the quarterdeck lobby.

  Kerr nodded to the messman. ‘You can clear away, Kellock.’ He was angry with himself for being so curt with the subbie. That he had shown his irritation so openly, although he knew he had felt the same way about the last captain’s promotion and appointment.

  The tannoy squeaked and the quartermaster’s voice filtered through the ship.

  ‘D’you hear there! Out pipes, duty part of the watch fall in!’

  Kerr glanced around the freshly painted wardroom. Without effort he could see it after that last convoy from St John’s, covered with used dressings and every space filled with injured men, merchant sailors from some of the vessels they had lost on that terrible convoy. Forty ships had set out from the harsh coastline of Newfoundland. Less than twenty had reached Liverpool. Some of the men who had lain here had already been rescued from other ships, only to have their rescuers blasted from beneath them.

  You shouldn’t have joined if you can’t take a joke. The navy’s way of overcoming even the most horrific disaster. But the old black humour didn’t seem to work any more.

  He frowned as he heard Barrington-Purvis’s aristocratic tones from the upper deck.

  ‘Stand away, there! We don’t need you here!’

  Kerr swore silently and jammed on his cap. If they stayed in Scapa much longer they would certainly need the NAAFI boat.

  He reached the quarterdeck and the hard sunshine even as the boat came expertly alongside the accommodation ladder, while Barrington-Purvis screamed, ‘Not here, damn you!’

  Kerr strode to the guard-rail. In one glance he saw the luggage in the cockpit, the officer in the plain raincoat, and the way the boatmen were watching with unconcealed delight.

  He snapped to the startled quartermaster, ‘Pipe!’

  He strode in front of the sub-lieutenant and raised his hand to his cap. The newcomer ran lightly up the ladder and returned his salute, while a solitary boatswain’s call made every face peer aft.

  ‘Welcome aboard, sir.’

  Brooke looked at him gravely, sensing the tension. ‘My fault. Couldn’t wait any longer.’ He glanced at the sub-lieutenant and added in the same calm tone, ‘Barrington-Purvis, I presume?’

  It was the first time Kerr had seen the subbie wilt, as if the new captain had shouted some terrible obscenity at him.

  Brooke walked a few paces and saw the duty part of the watch falling into two ranks. His mind was crammed with details about this ship, her state of readiness and her immediate past record, like a history of the war itself. Narvik, Dunkirk, the Atlantic, one disaster after another. The men he would have to discover for himself. If he was to know them, they too must know him.

  One square figure was facing aft, his hand to his cap in salute. It was the coxswain, next to the first lieutenant the most vital man in the ship. This one was shorter than he appeared but built like a tank. The familiar crossed torpedoes on his lapels, the chief petty officer’s cap badge: he was someone you would not forget. The coxswain was the man who took the helm for all the difficult tasks, entering and leaving harbour, anchoring or picking up a mooring-buoy in a force eight gale. Above all, in action, he was the core of the ship. He was also father-confessor, guardian of the company’s welfare, policeman at the defaulters’ table, feared if necessary, but above all respected.

  Kerr saw the exchange of glances, and was surprised. George Pike, the coxswain, rarely showed emotion. He always seemed to be above it.

  He said, ‘This is the Cox’n, sir.’

  Pike shambled towards them. ‘I’m sorry about this, sir.’ A deep throaty voice, once from London, Brooke thought, but not for many years. ‘I wasn’t sure till you come aboard, sir, otherwise I’d have bin there.’

  Kerr watched them. The sudden resolution on Pike’s reddened features, the wariness on the new captain’s face.

  ‘You know me, then?’

  Pike said, ‘This was my first ship, sir. I was a rookie torpedoman when she first commissioned.’ His eyes clouded. ‘When your father took command. I saw him just now when you come over the side.’

  Brooke smiled. It was hard to regard himself as the image of the man he had last seen a few days ago. Broken in health . . . He tried to accept it. Dying.

  Kerr said awkwardly, ‘I – I didn’t realise, sir.’

  Brooke turned and gave a casual wave to the NAAFI boat as it moved astern, pouring out even more diesel fumes.

  Kerr said, ‘I’ll show you your quarters, and lay on some breakfast, if you like.’ He watched his profile. Good, even features but deep lines at the mouth, and shadows beneath the steady, tawny eyes. A man with a past. And only George Pike had known and understood.

  Brooke said, ‘I’d like that.’ He followed Kerr through the quartermaster’s lobby with its little desk and the officers’ name board with its slides labelled Ashore or Aboard. He turned to glance at a rack of cutlasses and a stand of rifles. Last resort, perhaps.

  Kerr was saying, ‘I’m afraid Petty Officer Kingsmill, our wardroom steward, is still ashore, sir. But I’ll . . .’ He broke off and did not know if the other man had heard him or not. He watched him throw his raincoat and cap on to the neat bunk and saw the DSC on his left breast and another darker ribbon on the right side, which he guessed had been awarded by the Humane Society. Brooke was looking up at a small skylight in the centre of
the deckhead, the glass reflecting the water and the gulls, the steel shutters raised like a sign of peace or welcome.

  A voice whispered at the door and Kerr explained, ‘Time for Colours, sir.’

  Brooke heard him hurry away up the ladder again, no doubt wondering what sort of a nut he had been lumbered with. An experienced officer, a man who might resent that he was being kept aboard to hold the new captain’s hand. But he knew there was more to Kerr’s uneasiness than that. He moved about the cabin and saw the other one through an adjoining door. The day cabin. He smiled, and some of the tension seemed to drain away. What luxury!

  There was another crest here too, the ship’s battle honours displayed underneath. A part of history, another war. His father’s.

  Dover Patrol. Belgian Coast. Zeebrugge.

  Feet shuffled overhead and the tannoy squeaked again.

  ‘Attention on the upper deck! Face aft and salute!’

  Then another voice, almost directly overhead it seemed.

  ‘Colours, sir!’

  And Kerr’s acknowledgement, crisp and formal. ‘Make it so!’

  The calls trilled, as they would aboard every ship in the Flow. Brooke could picture the Ensign rising to the staff. Routine, even necessary perhaps, despite the war, despite everything.

  ‘Carry on!’

  As the call died away the ship seemed to come alive again. He imagined the men discussing him, wondering how the new captain might affect their lives. In battle, or across the defaulters’ table. Men he would come to know: the good, the bad, the brave and those who would crack if badly led.

  He tried to think of his father standing in this cabin, not as the broken man he had last seen in hospital.